Thursday, 14 May 2026

Thursday, 14 May 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

BARBARA KURIGER (Deputy Speaker) (14:00): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and the peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Visitors

Lao People’s Democratic Republic—Delegation

SPEAKER (14:01): Members, I am sure you will want to join with me to wish a welcome to His Excellency Thongsavan Phomvihane, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and his delegation, who are present in the gallery.

Business of the House

Business Statement

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Leader of the House) (14:01): Next week, the House will consider further stages of the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill. The hours of Tuesday will be extended into Wednesday morning for Government business, and Wednesday afternoon will be a members’ day.

Presentation

Papers

SPEAKER (14:01): No petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation. Ministers have—

Business interrupted.

Points of Order

Parliamentary Forecourt—Flag Positions

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs) (14:02): Point of order. Can I ask as to why there are so many flags flying outside of this Parliament at this moment, and visiting delegations from other countries are given a secondary position? How did that arise, and what’s the authority or mandate for that?

SPEAKER (14:02): No, they’re not given a secondary position; they’re either side of the parliamentary steps, which is the primary position. The other flags on the forecourt are the New Zealand flags, and then flags that represent a particular—I can’t remember exactly what they are, but they traditionally have been flown for quite some years on this particular date. There is no intention to offer any slight to anybody. The two flagpoles that are either side of the parliamentary steps are the premium sites for flags and to welcome visitors.

Presentation

Papers

Business resumed.

SPEAKER (14:03): Ministers have delivered two papers for presentation.

CLERK (14:03):

Government response to the Petition of Consumer NZ

report of the Attorney-General under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. No select committee reports have been delivered.

Bills

Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill

Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill

Introduction

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

CLERK (14:03):

Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill, introduction

Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Energy

Question No. 1

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:03) to the Minister for Energy: Does he stand by the Hon Simon Watts’ statement that “Rooftop solar will play a crucial role in supporting energy security”; if so, what, if anything, has he done to make the installation of solar affordable for New Zealand households?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy) (14:04): In the context it was made, yes. Rooftop solar will play a significant role to ensure New Zealand has secure, affordable energy, and that is why this Government is making it easier for Kiwis to get it on their roofs. We’ve scrapped the building consent requirements for most home installations, saving households around a thousand dollars and weeks of red tape. Where consent is still needed, councils now have to process it in 10 working days, not 20. We’ve widened the network voltage range so families can export more power back to the grid and install larger systems. We’re better rewarding consumers who are providing solar to the grid to help meet peak demands. Networks are now required to offer a rebate for electricity injected back into the grid at peak times. And we’re launching a review into the installation of solar to make installation in New Zealand the simplest in the developed world—practical, common-sense changes that help put Kiwis back in charge of their power bills.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Does he agree with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) advice in September 2025 that the Government’s regulatory changes to solar policy will only deliver small reductions to power bills?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: MBIE provides a lot of advice from time to time to the Minister for Energy, and what we’re focused on is making practical changes—$1,000 off installation is quite a significant amount considering installations could be between $10,000 and $20,000. That’s a significant cut in the cost for people putting solar on their roofs. We’re increasing voltage range so that people can export more back to the grid. It all makes a difference. I welcome the member’s support.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is he satisfied that small reductions in power bills are sufficient given the current cost of living pressures on households?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Our focus is on affordable and reliable energy for New Zealanders, and that’s why we’ve made a number of decisions as a Government. We’ve stopped work on the Lake Onslow boondoggle, which was having a chilling effect on our renewable generation. We now have the biggest renewable boom under way. We’re seeing lower power prices in the wholesale market and Australian Securities Exchange futures. Of course, these changes around solar make it easier for people to put solar on their roofs to further lower their power bills. It’s all making a difference. I welcome the member’s support.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: How many additional households does he expect to install rooftop solar, as a direct result of the Government’s solar regulatory review, over the next 12 months?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Many.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Has he received modelling advice to tell him that “many” will?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Look, I just know that we’re seeing a significant increase in rooftop solar, year on year. I think, last year, we had one of the biggest increases in rooftop solar, and if we can remove some more red tape, I’m sure many more will.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Are there specific initiatives to enable more people to access solar in the upcoming Budget?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: We don’t talk about the Budget. I think it’s two weeks away. That’s about 14 sleeps or something or thereabouts.

Hon Tama Potaka: 16 for some.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Minister Potaka says, “16 for some.” But we’re very focused on making sure we have affordable and reliable power for New Zealanders.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: When Simon Watts said we should “watch this space” on solar, should we still be watching, or is this it?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: We should always keep watching.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 2

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (14:07) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Has the number of declined advances to pay for power bills increased since she became a Minister; if so, how many people had their application for an advance for electricity costs declined in the last quarter?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:08): We acknowledge that winter months bring higher power bills for Kiwis. Around 900 applications for advances for energy costs have been declined in the last quarter. At the same time, more than 6,700 applications have been granted, totalling nearly $4 million in payments. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) regularly help people with a range of urgent needs and work with them closely to ensure that they are getting the assistance they are entitled to. We encourage people to talk to Work and Income and discuss their situation and the support that they may be eligible for. Our Government is focused on building the economy to ease the costs that New Zealanders face.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is she aware that Work and Income declined an almost record number of advances or power bills last quarter between June and September, and will she ensure this does not happen again this winter?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, there haven’t been any policy changes around advance payments, and MSD make decisions at the front line to assess an individual’s situation and their needs. Particularly with advanced payments, there is a caution because, obviously, when payments are made in advance, that means there are less in the following weeks for a beneficiary to look after their costs with.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Why are more people declined for assistance for power bills despite rising power bills and rising energy hardship demonstrating a clear need?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, the member is conflating a number of issues. I’ve just stated that there have been no policy changes around advanced payments for energy. We do know that, over winter, it is more challenging for people to pay their costs. That’s why we have assistance like the winter energy payment.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Will she direct Work and Income to use their discretion to ensure that nobody living in poverty goes without power this winter?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As I said, I would encourage anyone who is facing costs that they’re unable to deal with to approach MSD and see if they are eligible for additional assistance and support.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is she confident that everyone in energy hardship is getting the assistance they need from Work and Income?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, there’s a number of things that contribute to energy price and therefore the subsequent energy hardship, which I’m not going to address here. What I would say is that the winter energy payment is the main mechanism by which taxpayers provide assistance to those with energy costs, and over a million New Zealanders receive that support.

Ricardo Menéndez March: How is the winter energy payment fit for purpose when, since it was introduced, electricity prices have surged 28 percent while the winter energy payment hasn’t increased a cent and a very high number of people got declined last winter for power bill assistance?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It’s been traversed in this House on multiple occasions. If you look at the contributing factors to energy costs, that member might want to look in the mirror.

Health

Question No. 3

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (14:11) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made about improving specialist paediatric palliative care support for children and families across New Zealand?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (14:11): Today, the Government has announced that through Budget 2026 we will establish a nationally consistent specialist paediatric palliative care service, helping ensure seriously ill children and their families can access compassionate specialist support closer to home. For families facing the unimaginable reality of caring for a child with a life-limiting illness, knowing the right care and support will be there can make an enormous difference. This initiative establishes dedicated specialist teams in both the North and South Islands, helping more children receive care in the comfort of their homes and communities, surrounded by the people they love most. Through Budget 2026, we’re investing in the services that matter most to families, building a health system that delivers dignity, compassion, and support during life’s hardest moments.

Dr Hamish Campbell: Why has improving special specialist paediatric palliative care been a priority for the Government?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Ensuring children have access to nationally consistent specialist paediatric palliative care services is critically important to not only the Government but also to the many families who, unfortunately, face these circumstances. That is why, today, we’ve prioritised this initiative, because no parent should ever feel alone while caring for a seriously ill child. Families going through these circumstances are carrying an immense emotional burden, often while navigating complex medical needs and long hospital stays. This investment is about wrapping greater support around those families and reducing the emotional, physical, and financial strain they face. It means more children can spend precious time at home creating memories with their families rather than away from loved ones in hospital. This is exactly the kind of compassionate healthcare New Zealanders expect and deserve.

Dr Hamish Campbell: What will the new specialist paediatric palliative care service provide?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The new service will include specialist paediatric palliative care physicians, clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners, social workers, and clinical psychologists working together to support children and their families. Importantly, these teams will also support and train local healthcare providers across New Zealand, helping ensure families receive consistent, high-quality care regardless of where they live. The investment also provides funding for national service coordination and one registrar training position each year to help secure the workforce needed for the future, so that this service can continue to grow over time.

Dr Hamish Campbell: How does this investment reflect the Government’s broader priorities in Budget 2026?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, Budget 2026 is about securing New Zealand’s future by making responsible investments in the services that matter most to New Zealanders. Supporting children with life-threatening conditions and the families who care for them is one of the clearest examples of why careful fiscal management matters. Because we’re managing the Government’s finances responsibly, we can invest in compassionate front-line health services that provide comfort, dignity, and support to families during the most difficult times imaginable. Every child deserves the very best care possible and every family deserves to know they will not face these challenges alone. That is what today was about.

Māori Development

Question No. 4

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (14:15) to the Minister for Māori Development: What specific actions, if any, is he taking to improve the Māori unemployment rate, and what measurable targets, if any, has he set to bring that rate down?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Development) (14:15): The Minister for Māori Development is not solely responsible for delivering employment services or setting operational labour market targets. These functions sit with agencies such as Te Manatū Whakahiato Ora the Ministry of Social Development and Hīkina Whakatutuki the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. However, I am taking action through system-level stewardship, monitoring, and advocacy supported by Te Puni Kōkiri, and one of the statutory roles of Te Puni Kōkiri, as the member should know, is monitoring and liaising with Crown entities to ensure the adequacy of training and employment. We do this by maintaining quarterly visibility of labour market outcomes, identifying and highlighting where system settings are not delivering for Māori, advocating to responsible Ministers for changes to systems settings and, of course, working across agencies.

Hon Willie Jackson: How does he explain the fact that Māori unemployment has climbed while his Government has been cutting back programmes for Māori, and does he accept that those decisions have made things worse?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Thank you for that question. Yes, the numbers are challenging for our whānau, communities, and country, but that’s one of the reasons why we call on the member and his colleagues across the Opposition to support this Government’s efforts for fast track; to support a variety of Māori owned, operated, and managed projects—whether or not that’s Rangitoopuni in Minister Penk’s rohe up there by Riverhead, or Hananui Aquaculture down near Minister Simmonds’ place next door to Rakiura, or indeed a range of other opportunities up and down the country. I won’t stop there—I’ll go to Nelson, too, and the Mahitahi project, which Minister Bishop has announced previously is fulfilling the needs for fast track approval. That’s another reason why we call on the Opposition member and his colleagues to support the tourism and events kaupapa that Minister Upston is sponsoring, because when you support kaupapa like Homegrown in Hamilton East, you actually create a lot of jobs for riggers, for security folks—for a whole bunch of people, kaimahi, in Hamilton to work. That’s what we call on the Opposition to support, and that’s one of the things that we are doing to help support employment across the country for Māori.

Hon Willie Jackson: Can the Minister point to a single credible Māori employment initiative of his own that has actually shifted the dial on Māori unemployment?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: One of the data points and data references that I can refer today is that Māori exits from jobseeker and into work have actually increased by nearly 7,000 in the quarter ending March 2026. This is a good trajectory, and it’s something that we want to make sure is durable. What we’ve done, since the member left his previous role as the Minister for Māori Development, is we actually continued to support and scaffold significant housing opportunities across the country. Now, social housing and Māori housing wasn’t made up by the previous Government; that’s been going for decades. What we’ve done is made sure that we continue, where credible, housing opportunities built by Māori for Māori and for New Zealanders. That’s what we believe in. When I went up to Ohakune recently—

SPEAKER: Yeah, good—brief.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: —and opened those ten houses, the Ngāti Rangi iwi absolutely congratulated me on that effort. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: That general barrage has got to stop.

Hon Willie Jackson: When the Government decided to not fund Māori trades training, did he think that conditions would get better or worse for Māori, or did he just think that whānau just wouldn’t notice?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: There’s a range of trades training initiatives throughout the country—and education initiatives and employment initiatives and, indeed, project initiatives that members of this coalition Government are absolutely spearheading. One of the things that I like, and I absolutely encourage, is the work that Minister Stanford and Minister Brown have been undertaking to ensure that we get credibility in the cost of building things like schools and hospitals. When you do that right across the country—when you actually reduce the per-classroom costs—that helps generate more pūtea to reinvest in schools, to reinvest in education, and to actually create the jobs that the member is speaking about right now. Rather than wasting money on $1.2 million classrooms right up and down the country, which actually can strip the range and number of jobs out there, Minister Stanford, and Minister Brown in Health, have been absolutely focused, deliberate, diligent, and professional, and prudently managing the fiscals.

Hon Willie Jackson: Why did the Minister not support Māori trade training when the evaluation of the programme said that Māori trade training exceeded expectations?

SPEAKER: We’ll have a much briefer answer this time—something to match the question.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: It was like groundhog day. I do support Māori trade training, and what I also support is making sure that the reset of Whānau Ora actually encourages more navigators than the previous Government encouraged. That’s what we believe in—making sure that the money that taxpayers provide this Government is used in a constructive, efficient, and effective way. It’s their money and we have the privilege to look after it; it’s not the Government’s money to spend at will.

Hon Willie Jackson: How can he claim that he’s doing a good job when there are 2,400 more Māori not in work than the last time I asked him a question?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I would recommend that the member sends his data reference points to my office with the appropriate written question. But what I will do is reinforce that nearly 7,000 Māori have exited from jobseeker into work in the last quarter, and I absolutely acknowledge and applaud the work of Minister Upston and others who are doing the mahi to get more Māori into mahi.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. I’m wanting to find out how you could possibly allow that last question which ended when he said “between the time I asked the last question”, which was actually a minute before that, so how he could assemble that information is beyond me.

Hon Willie Jackson: We get pretty quick statistics.

SPEAKER: Just a moment. I took it that the member had said, “between the last time I asked the question.” If I misheard, I’m sorry. I just thought, well I’m surprised he asked that because it would obviously be a very long time.

Hon Willie Jackson: How does he justify sitting at the Cabinet table while jobs are cut in construction, regional development, and services for Māori, and then show up in Māori communities claiming he’s advocating for them?

SPEAKER: That question is also wide of the mark.

Hon Willie Jackson: OK. I can ask another one.

SPEAKER: Well, to be fair, it’s a Thursday, so you can reword it.

Hon Willie Jackson: Can I ask another one—a different question?

SPEAKER: Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got your prepared questions in front of me.

Hon Willie Jackson: I’ll just ask another question. Will the Minister admit that since he’s become the Minister, he’s delivered more Māori into unemployment than employment?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Again, I want to ensure that the maths from the Opposition member is accurate and credible, because, as we know, sometimes it isn’t.

Health

Question No. 5

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (14:23) to the Associate Minister of Health: What recent announcement has he made about increasing access to planned care in rural communities?

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Associate Minister of Health) (14:23): I recently announced at the inaugural World Rural Health Conference in New Zealand that the Government would invest $1 million to train rural GPs to deliver planned-care services locally. This will increase access to support for people living in rural areas and reduce the need for hospital visits. Planned care is traditionally delivered in hospital settings and organised ahead of time. People living in rural areas are having to travel long distances or wait longer than necessary for this type of care. This will help reduce the need for travel. By investing in our rural front-line workforce, rural communities can have confidence that care will be there when they need it.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Why is this funding targeted at rural general practitioners?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: More than 100 rural communities rely on a rural GP as the backbone of their local healthcare. Strengthening rural GPs planned-care skills will help people receive treatment sooner and closer to home, prevent conditions from worsening, and reduce unnecessary travel and wait times. The funding will cover agreed training costs and cover for GPs while they train, enabling rural practitioners to take part without patients being disrupted.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: What types of planned care will rural GPs be trained to deliver?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Rural communities shouldn’t have to travel unnecessarily for planned healthcare. Planned care is traditionally delivered in hospital settings, but much of it can be safely provided in the community, with the right training. Training will focus on practical skills, such as assessing and treating heavy or unusual bleeding and removing and examining skin legions, along with other planned care priorities. Our rural and remote communities are spread across long coastlines, mountain ranges, and islands; the nearest hospital can be hours away. Now, more patients will be able to access planned care locally without having to travel long distances or wait longer than necessary.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: What other actions is the Government taking to improve healthcare for people living in rural communities?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Another good question. Alongside upskilling rural GPs to deliver more planned care locally, we’re also investing in rural training hubs to grow and retain the rural workforce; expanding after-hours healthcare across 70 rural and remote locations, so 98 percent of Kiwis can access in-person care within a one hour drive; and progressing work on a third medical school, with a strong focus on rural and primary care. Kiwis living in rural communities deserve to get the care they need, when they need it, closer at home, and that’s exactly what we’re delivering. We’re also backing our rural health workforce, who are doing fantastic work.

Education

Question No. 6

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (14:26) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:26): Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Does she stand by her personal explanation, made yesterday, in which she stated her officials from the Ministry of Education incorrectly advised her on the progress of Te Marautanga o Aotearoa under the previous Government?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Yes.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Is it correct that she received advice on 25 January 2024 entitled Update on Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories and Te Takanga o Te Wā, which updated her on just some of the work already done to Te Marautanga o Aotearoa?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Directly before I was in the chair in the House, I asked my officials why it was that were so far behind that we had to truncate the consultation process for Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. Their advice to me was that no curriculum learning areas had been developed—directly before I came down to the House. That advice was incorrect, I relied on it, and as soon as I was made aware that they had incorrectly advised me directly before I was down in the House, I made a statement to the House correcting that statement.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why did she state she was incorrectly advised by her officials when she already knew, based on the advice that she had received on 25 January 2024, that work on Te Marautanga o Aotearoa had already begun under the previous Government?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I was advised directly before coming down to speak in the House. The question that I asked was around whether or not the curriculum areas had been worked on, and the answer was that they hadn’t been—the learning areas. I relied on that advice when coming down to the House. I made an incorrect statement, and, again, as soon as I knew that it was incorrect, I corrected my answer. I would make the point that any documents that the previous Minister is referring to were from a very long time ago. I receive a huge amount of paperwork, and, perhaps, unlike that previous Minister, I like to read all my documents, but there is a lot of it. Unfortunately, the—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: A question has been asked; we’ll hear the answer.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I asked a direct question of my officials. They incorrectly advised me before coming down to the House. They wrote an apology letter to me yesterday, and I have corrected my answer.

Hon Nicola Willis: In the experience of the Minister of Education when she meets with parents, teachers, and educators, are they more focused on what it takes to lift children’s learning achievement or on explanations made in the House, and has she received any emails about it?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: What parents do like to talk to me about is the curriculum, and not only the New Zealand curriculum but the refreshed Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, which is an amazing document that we have completely refreshed in under two years, and I would have expected questions around the work we have done on Te Marautanga o Aotearoa rather than a defence of their woeful education record in Government.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why did she state she was incorrectly advised when she noted and signed, in response to the advice she received on 25 January 2024, that the new curriculum content of Te Takanga o te Wā had been required to be taught in all schools and kura since the beginning of 2023?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Because they advised me incorrectly right before I walked down to the House.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How can she stand by her statement made yesterday, where she said she was incorrectly advised by her officials, when not only was she advised in 2024 that work on Te Marautanga o Aotearoa had begun under the previous Government but she actually signed it off, too?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: This question’s been asked multiple times. I relied on the most recent advice that I had before I came down to the House. I directly asked my officials if any work had been done on the curriculum learning areas, and they told me that nothing had been done. That was incorrect, and, as always, when you are incorrectly advised, as soon as you are aware of that, you come down to the House and you make a correction.

Justice

Question No. 7

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Earlier today, looking at the questions, question No. 7 was for Tākuta Ferris, but I see on the final copy that there’s no question for him at all. Given the chaos in the Māori Party, I move that he be given a chance to ask a question.

SPEAKER: I’m sorry, what was your last part—that you seek leave to do what?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: He was down to ask question No. 7 today in preliminary question time, and in the final question he is not there. And so I said that given the circus or collapse of the Māori Party, perhaps we should move that he be given the chance to ask a question now—

SPEAKER: No, he had a chance.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —in the interests of parliamentary democracy.

SPEAKER: No, he had a chance—every chance, just like your party does and every other party in here does, but he didn’t lodge the question, so it’s not on the sheet. We’ll go to question No. 7—Todd Stephenson.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (14:32) to the Associate Minister of Justice: What recent changes has she led to anti-money laundering laws?

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (14:32): On Tuesday, the House passed two bills reforming New Zealand’s anti - money-laundering and countering financing of terrorism laws, which I’ll refer to from now on as AML laws. Together, these reforms cut red tape, improve clarity, and ensure requirements on businesses and customers are genuinely risk-based, while strengthening the detection and disruption of serious financial crime. These changes represent the most significant reduction in AML red tape since the regime was introduced over a decade ago.

Todd Stephenson: What will these changes mean for Kiwis making basic financial transactions?

Hon NICOLE McKEE: Many New Zealanders who have bought or sold a house, tried to open a bank account for their child, or needed an accountant for small business have run into anti - money-laundering red tape. It’s added cost, delays, and headaches to basic low-risk financial transactions without effectively deterring serious financial crime. These reforms cut paperwork and duplication, as well as reducing the need to repeatedly verify identity or source of wealth where the risk is low. One example is relaxing customer due diligence requirements for lower-risk family trusts.

Todd Stephenson: What does the move to a single AML supervisor mean for Kiwi businesses?

Hon NICOLE McKEE: The current three-supervisor model has created confusion, delays, and inconsistent guidance. The move to a single supervisor in the Department of Internal Affairs will mean clearer accountability, faster guidance, and more reliable support for businesses who are trying to comply with the law. The transition is on track to go live on 1 July 2026, with the Department of Internal Affairs working alongside the Financial Markets Authority and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to ensure a coordinated and seamless transition for all involved.

Todd Stephenson: What feedback has she received on these reforms?

Hon NICOLE McKEE: I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from businesses, advocacy organisations, and even members from across the House. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand said earlier in the week that these reforms are “a balanced and practical solution that maintains robust protections while making the system work more efficiently for New Zealanders”. They pointed out some real estate brands currently spend in excess of $1 million annually on AML compliance. Reducing this red-tape cost on businesses will ultimately reduce costs and delays for customers across New Zealand.

Todd Stephenson: Why was it important to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to AML compliance?

Hon NICOLE McKEE: The previous system increasingly treated low-risk New Zealanders and ordinary business activity as if they pose the same risk as organised criminal networks. These reforms ensure the compliance effort is focused where it will make the biggest difference in detecting and disrupting serious financial crime. Some parties in this House may support freeing criminals and punishing success, but this Government has flipped the script, and we’re freeing New Zealanders to succeed and making sure the criminals get punished.

Tourism and Hospitality

Question No. 8

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (14:36) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent announcements has she made about the Great Rides cycle trails?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality) (14:36): Last week, Minister Potaka and I announced the Government is investing up to $7.1 million to upgrade six of the Great Rides of New Zealand cycle trails. Upgrading these trails ensures that we can continue to strengthen regional tourism, supporting local businesses and providing high-quality outdoor experiences for visitors and New Zealanders alike. More than 2 million people enjoy our 23 Great Rides each year, contributing an estimated $1.28 billion to regional economies. They’re also a great example of partnership with local government. Our Government is working together to build a future that delivers for communities, conservation, and the economy.

Miles Anderson: What will this investment go towards?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The six investments are for the Roxburgh Gorge Trail, to close a 12 kilometre gap in the trail; the Queen Charlotte Track realignment; the St James Cycle Trail upgrades; Mountains to Sea cycle trail enhancements; the Otago Central Rail Trail restoration; and the Remutaka Cycle Trail, at the Wild Coast Section, resurfacing and upgrades. The projects are co-funded through the New Zealand Cycle Trail Fund and the Department of Conservation. These projects will support regional dispersal of visitors and futureproof our Great Rides for both domestic and international riders.

Miles Anderson: Why is the Government investing in the Great Rides?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Our Great Rides are important tourism assets and help encourage visitors to move into our regions. We know the Great Rides contribute an estimated $1.28 billion into our local economies. More people using the Great Rides means more people spending on visitor spending, such as accommodation, food, and hospitality outlets, which is, of course, bringing more customers for local businesses. Our Government is committed to ensuring that our Great Rides continue to attract visitors and, of course, deliver significant economic benefit so that people can keep enjoying the unique experience of pedalling through some of New Zealand’s most beautiful landscapes.

Miles Anderson: What feedback has she seen on this announcement?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: We’ve had some great feedback. Lynley Twyman from Ngā Ara Tūhono Charitable Trust has said, “It’s really good news … we’re grateful for the help to bring this together so we can continue growing our visitors.” and “The new funding will absolutely help to improve the accessibility of our trails and make them a better, more exciting, safer, more resilient experience.” It’s also great to see endorsement from across the House. Glen Bennett has agreed that this is a good investment. Tourism plays a key role in our plan to fix the basics and build the future. These investments will ensure that we maximise the Great Rides’ potential to deliver ongoing economic benefits to New Zealanders.

Immigration

Question No. 9

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (14:39) to the Minister of Immigration: Does she agree with the Prime Minister, who told a business audience that “when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time”; if so, why?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration) (14:39): Yes, particularly in the wider context of the Prime Minister’s speech. New Zealand has a long and proud history of welcoming migrants. They make a valued contribution and bring a rich cultural diversity to our shores. However, we must also maintain public trust and confidence, that has been undermined by unsustainable net migration, inadequate checks and balances in 2022 and 2023, record migrant exploitation over that time, and residence decisions in 2021 that waived the usual English and health requirements and gave residence to over 230,000 people. I am working hard to improve that trust, including by requiring relevant experience and basic English for lower-skilled roles, action when employers are not engaging with the Ministry of Social Development when required, enforcing maximum continuous-stay requirements for temporary work visas, and, yes, holding the line on English language requirements for skilled residents.

Hon Phil Twyford: Does she stand by her statement that “Oh, well, that’s an election year. I’m not the type of person that uses immigration to dog-whistle.”, and, if so, can she explain to the House what social instability the Prime Minister was referring to?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: There are two legs to that, and I’ll answer the first leg. I made those comments not in relation to the Prime Minister’s comments or speech. In fact, the Prime Minister’s comments were extraordinarily balanced in trying to explain that on the one hand, we have to have this very delicate balance between making sure that we are protecting jobs for Kiwis and maintaining the integrity of the immigration system while also, on the other hand, ensuring that businesses have access to the skills that they need. That careful and delicate balance we have been doing for the last two years to restore the public confidence in the immigration system, and we’ve done a very good job at it.

Hon Phil Twyford: Why didn’t she call out Shane Jones for his “butter chicken” comments if she’s not the type of person that uses immigration to dog-whistle?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I made comments on the tiles that those comments were—

Hon Shane Jones: What about the phone book? What about the Chinese names in the phone book? Pot, kettle.

Hon Nicola Willis: Isn’t it Chinese-sounding names?

SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s enough.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How does the Government reconcile signing on to the India free-trade agreement’s novel immigration settings for 5,000 new migrant visas covering “skills shortages” like musicians and yoga teachers when there are 163,000 unemployed New Zealanders?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, two things: firstly, they’re not novel. There are very similar things that were put into the China Free Trade Agreement. Predominantly, for the most part of those 5,000, a vast majority of those are jobs that are on the green list, people that we need, like doctors, lawyers—sorry, not lawyers; we don’t need any more lawyers—nurses, teachers, engineers, and people who are in high-skilled roles that are in demand on the green list. There are a very small number of other occupations that, similar to the China Free Trade Agreement, are included, like chefs and yoga instructors. But the first thing I’d have to note is that they have to be labour market tested and there has to be a genuine job here in New Zealand for those roles. If there are no genuine jobs available, then they will not be filled. That is evidenced under the China Free Trade Agreement for those similar occupations—those iconic occupations, we call them—in that, for the most part, we don’t fill them, apart from the chefs, because there is just not the demand in New Zealand for those roles.

SPEAKER: Just—

Hon Phil Twyford: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, well, I’m just about to say that your last answer was drowned out predominantly by the Minister’s side, so you can ask that question again.

Hon Phil Twyford: Thank you. That was going to be my point of order. Why didn’t she call out Shane Jones for his “butter chicken” comments if she’s not the type of person that uses immigration to dog-whistle?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: The answer to that question is: I did.

Hon Phil Twyford: Who is correct, Christopher Luxon, who said, “Look, I mean, we’re going to really need more immigration into New Zealand.”, or Winston Peters, who repeatedly says the opposite?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, I always agree with the Prime Minister, and he is correct. We are not producing enough babies in this country to ensure that we have a stable or even growing population. We are going to rely on migration. A smart, targeted immigration system that makes sure—there are some members in the House who have done quite well, like the two people to my left, but on balance, we’re not having enough babies to ensure that our population is stable. [Interruption] It’s actually a very serious point. We will have a declining population if it isn’t for smart, skilled immigration, which is why I’ve been working really hard over the last two years to make sure that our policies, while also well balanced, are attracting the skilled migrants that we need to make sure that we are growing a productive economy.

Hon Simeon Brown: Is it her policy—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a moment. When your own side is quiet, you can continue.

Hon Simeon Brown: Is it her policy to determine people’s citizenship based on whether or not they have a Chinese-sounding last name, as a former Labour Party housing spokesperson may or may not have done in the past?

SPEAKER: No, no, no—sorry, that’s not a reasonable question, and there’ll be a consequential penalty for that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: The Rt Hon Winston Peters, a point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, no.

SPEAKER: Well, the problem here is that New Zealand First have used up their supplementary allocation—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: This’ll be priceless.

SPEAKER: —for the week, but given the—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You’ll be wanting to hear this.

SPEAKER: Excuse me, just a moment—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In the interests of this country’s future.

SPEAKER: Given the nature of the question, the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you. How does the Government reconcile signing on to the India free-trade agreement’s novel immigration settings for uncapped student visas when youth not in employment, education, or training is at the high of 14.4 percent, and New Zealand youth are the ones that deserve the work first?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Granting international student places is a very different thing than making sure that there are jobs here for New Zealanders. I would also like to note that we have not, for a very long time—as long as I can remember—relied on caps for any student numbers. We have a range of different levers that we pull and push to determine student numbers, like the amount of money they have to bring with them, like prior qualifications. There are a number of things that we can use to either increase or decrease the numbers, and we do that depending on New Zealand’s requirements.

Hon Phil Twyford: Who’s correct: the Prime Minister, who last night signalled he would cut immigration in the name of social stability, or Christopher Luxon, who said, “You’ve got to actually free up immigration settings and get rid of red tape so that business can grow?”

SPEAKER: Sorry, can you ask the question again—I think you used the same person twice.

Hon Phil Twyford: One was the Prime Minister; one was Christopher Luxon.

SPEAKER: Oh yeah, well—

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order, sir.

SPEAKER: Just a moment, Mr Jones. You’ve got to ask a question that the Minister has direct responsibility for. You can’t ask them to reflect on your views.

Hon Phil Twyford: Mr Speaker, they’re not my views; they’re both direct quotes—one from the Prime Minister; one from that person before he was the Prime Minister.

SPEAKER: You’re asking the Minister to reflect on two quotes that you’re pulling out from two different people. She has responsibility for her portfolio responsibilities, not for anything else.

Hon Phil Twyford: Who’s correct: the Prime Minister, who signalled he would cut immigration in the name of social stability?

Hon Members: Or?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: That is not an accurate representation of what the Prime Minister said. He did not say that he would cut immigration; what he was talking about was a smart—

Hon Shane Jones: Or, or—or, or.

SPEAKER: That’s enough, Mr Jones.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: The Prime Minister was talking about having a well-balanced and smart immigration system that works for New Zealanders and, as I mentioned before, getting that balance right between making sure we’re putting Kiwis first for jobs—which is why we have insisted on maintaining the maximum continuous stay rule of three years, so that when low-skilled workers are required to leave, they do leave to free up jobs for New Zealanders—while also making sure that businesses have access to the skills that they need. It is a delicate balance, and one that we have been undertaking in the last two years extraordinarily well.

Hon Phil Twyford: Why does the Government continue to put out mixed messages on immigration, and why are they joining New Zealand First in a culture war that no one asked for?

SPEAKER: No, you can’t ask that. No, that’s out.

Finance

Question No. 10

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (14:49) to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:49): In context, yes. In particular, I stand by my statement last year that the Greens’ alternative Budget was a circus of an idea, and for Labour not to rule it out is a sign of how far they have departed from economic common sense.

Francisco Hernandez: Why did she not include students in the $50-a-week support payment during this fossil fuel crisis?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because that payment is targeted at working families with children.

Francisco Hernandez: Is the Minister aware that tens of thousands of students are required to work unpaid placements as part of their requirements for study—for example, students at Lincoln University studying agriculture, 9,000 enrolments at Otago, and all undergraduate students at the University of Otago, and, if so, why did she exclude these working students from the $50-a-week payment?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because, unlike most working New Zealanders, students are eligible for interest-free loans not only for their fees but for their living costs. They are also eligible for student allowances based on their incomes.

Francisco Hernandez: Is the Minister comfortable with nursing students resorting to “buy now, pay later” schemes to pay for fuel to get to their required placements, as reported in the Bay of Plenty Times, and, if not, will she commit to U-turning and providing financial relief, such as the $50 Fossil Fuel Crisis Relief Payment?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: When anecdotal feedback of that sort is brought to me, I always seek to verify how widespread that is.

Francisco Hernandez: How can the Minister justify, at a time when the rate of youth not in education, employment, or training is at over 14.4 percent—a record high—cutting funding and eligibility for youth apprenticeships and now signalling the end to the Fees Free scheme?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, contrary to one of the assertions made in the question, this was the Government that saved the Apprenticeship Boost scheme, which had been left unfunded by the last Government. As it relates to Fees Free, for a socialist, I think he should be interested that only 1.3 percent—that’s 230—of the fees-free students at university came from the most socio-economically disadvantaged schools. If you care about equality of outcome, you would be focused on lifting the achievement of students at school so that they can access university with a decent qualification.

Francisco Hernandez: Will the Minister commit to at least ensuring that all of the savings from the end of the Fees Free scheme will be redirected to support tertiary or vocational education or to support students, or will she, in fact, seek to balance the Budget on the backs of students once again?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I will seek to ensure that the Budget delivers the public services that New Zealanders of all walks of life rely on. That includes our health service; ensuring that they can get elective surgery when they need it and see a doctor when they need it. That includes ensuring our police have the resources they need to crack down on violent offenders. That ensures building the infrastructure we need for future growth. That’s called good priorities—not a wasteful scheme that missed every target it ever set for itself.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs

Question No. 11

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:53) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What recent announcements has he made about fair trading?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (14:53): Can I firstly congratulate the member for Hamilton East, Ryan Hamilton, for being appointed chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee yesterday.Also yesterday, economic growth Minister, the Hon Nicola Willis, and I announced the introduction of significant new legislation designed to increase penalties for breaches of the Fair Trading Act. These changes are intended to strengthen deterrence against unfair trading practices that harm both consumers and law-abiding businesses. By raising the penalties for these violations, this Government is sending a strong message: we are serious about protecting New Zealanders from unfair treatment in the marketplace.

Ryan Hamilton: What changes have been proposed to strengthen these penalties under the Fair Trading Act and how do these compare to the current penalty structure?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: At present, the steepest penalty for breaches is capped at $600,000. The new framework, inspired by approaches used in Australia and the United Kingdom, introduces a flexible upper limit. The maximum fine will now be the highest of three times the value gained from the offending conduct, the total value of the transactions involved, or a flat $5 million. This ensures that penalties are appropriately scaled to the size and impact of the breach.

Ryan Hamilton: Does the proposed legislation mean that every breach of the Fair Trading Act will now be met with stiffer penalties, or will judges still have room to decide?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: The new legislation does not mandate that every violation will incur the maximum penalty available. Judicial discretion remains and is important. Courts will take into account various considerations, such as the severity and intent of the misconduct, and history of prior breaches, the size and nature of the business or individual involved, and the overall impact of the infringement. This approach is consistent with international best practice, and, in practice, most penalties handed down tend to fall well below the statutory maximum.

Ryan Hamilton: Why is it timely to adjust Fair Trading Act penalties, and how might these changes benefit New Zealanders?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: The economic landscape and consumer habits have evolved rapidly since the last revision of Fair Trading Act penalties, in 2014, under the last National Government. With the rise of digital marketplaces and increasingly sophisticated business models, low penalties no longer provide sufficient deterrence against misconduct. By strengthening penalties, New Zealand aligns itself with international standards, sending a clear message that fair play is expected and enforced. These reforms will help ensure accountability, bolster consumer trust, and support businesses that they do the right thing.

Question No. 9 to Minister

Amended Answer to Oral Question

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration) (14:56): Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to correct answers to question No. 9 today.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The resident visa 2021 granted residence to nearly 213,000 people, not 230,000 people. And temporary work visas under the Indian free-trade agreement have to have a genuine job offer, but they’re not labour market tested. This is consistent with the current approach to green list roles.

SPEAKER: Thank you. That concludes oral questions. There will be people who need to leave the House. I ask every day for people to do so quickly, quietly, and without conversations on the way.

Bills

Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for the Environment) (14:58): I present a legislative statement on the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill.

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

First Reading

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for the Environment) (14:58): I move, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 17 September 2026.

This bill delivers targeted improvements to New Zealand’s hazardous substances regulatory regime. It responds directly to the findings of the Ministry for Regulation’s review of the agricultural and horticultural products approval system, and it reflects the Government’s commitment to regulation that is effective and fit for purpose. The bill also includes a small number of sensible and overdue improvements to the new organisms framework, improving clarity and practical workability.

Following this bill, the Minister for Biosecurity and the Minister for Food Safety, the Hon Andrew Hoggard, will present amendments to the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act (ACVM Act).

For now, though, I will talk to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNO). These reforms together are intended to operate as a package. HSNO approvals remain the gateway into the ACVM system, and the changes to the HSNO are designed to support that pathway rather than bypass it. Even when approvals are streamlined, the ACVM regime continues to apply, with the Environmental Protection Authority and the Ministry for Primary Industries working closely together to ensure decisions are aligned and proportionate.

Hazardous substances regulation plays a critical role in protecting people and the environment. It underpins public confidence, environmental stewardship, and international trust in New Zealand’s regulatory systems. The HSNO framework has served New Zealand well for more than 20 years, but over time the way the hazardous substances regime operates has become outdated. The system has become too slow, complex, and costly for those using it. In response to those concerns, the Ministry for Regulation undertook a system wide review in 2024 into how hazardous substances and agricultural compounds are approved and regulated.

The review’s conclusions are important. It found that while New Zealand’s regulatory systems managed risks to human, animal, and plant health, and the environment, biosecurity, and trade effectively, the approval pathway is inefficient, not always proportionate, and especially when it comes to lower risk products and well understood uses. It found that delays, duplication, and regulatory complexity are imposing real costs on industry without always delivering corresponding safety or environmental benefits.

The Ministry for Regulation made 16 recommendations aimed at improving the overall performance of the system. Those recommendations seek to better align regulatory effort with risk, improve the timelines and predictability of decision making, remove unnecessary barriers where they’re not adding value, and ensure regulators are equipped with the framework, tools, and resources that they need to operate effectively. Cabinet accepted those recommendations as a package. This bill gives effect to key aspects of that review within the HSNO hazardous substances regime.

This is a targeted amendment bill. It does not rewrite the HSNO Act, and it does not change its core purpose or principles. Instead, it improves how the hazardous substances regime operates in practice. In particular, it supports more efficient and proportionate regulatory pathways where risks are well understood, it reduces unnecessary complexity and duplication within the system, it improves clarity and flexibility in decision making, and it strengthens the overall workability of the hazardous substances framework.

This bill is about removing unnecessary approval bottlenecks, so that our system keeps pace with international practice and allows timely access to safe, modern tools where the evidence supports their use. There are many pest control and crop protection products that are approved in comparable overseas jurisdictions and used safely overseas by our partners and our competitors that New Zealand farmers and growers cannot currently access in a timely way. These products support agricultural productivity and biosecurity outcomes but remain unavailable here despite applications being lodged.

Alongside those changes, the bill also includes modest amendments to the new organisms regime. These are not substantive policy shifts; rather, they are practical improvements designed to clarify the operation of certain provisions, address technical issues, and support more consistent and effective administration of the Act. These changes are about clarity and workability, not about changing risk thresholds or gene technology policy. The bill keeps existing protections, the precautionary foundation, and the Environmental Protection Authority’s (EPA) independent role, while making HSNO more flexible and futureproofed, while remaining fully aligned with its current purpose and principles. These changes will improve how the hazardous substances and new organisms part of the HSNO framework operate in practice.

I want to be clear about what this bill does not do. It does not weaken protections for people or the environment, it does not remove the precautionary foundation of the HSNO Act, and it does not change the role of independent regulatory decision-making by the Environmental Protection Authority.

The review established that New Zealand’s hazardous substances regime is effective at managing risk, but what we need is a system that builds on this strength so that any greater flexibility introduced is grounded in evidence and guided by risk. Hazardous substances, particularly those used in agriculture and horticulture, are essential to productivity, innovation, and competitiveness. For many farmers and growers, access to effective products is not optional—it is fundamental to remaining viable in increasingly competitive international markets. The HSNO amendment bill supports productivity by ensuring that the regulatory system is more responsive and proportionate while continuing to uphold New Zealand’s high standards for human health, environmental protection, and biosecurity. Furthermore, it responds directly to concerns from research and industry by making HSNO clearer and more flexible for R & D, enabling proportionate risk-based approvals for controlled research while maintaining strong protections and the EPA’s independent role.

I’m aware of some suggestions that New Zealand is becoming a dumping ground for older chemical products. This bill makes clear that products remain available here because they meet New Zealand’s regulatory tests, not because they’re unwanted elsewhere. Good regulation must protect what matters while still enabling innovation where risks are well understood. That is the balance that this bill seeks to achieve.

Hazardous substances and new organisms regulation is inherently complex and affects a wide range of interests. As Minister for the Environment, I take seriously the Government’s stewardship responsibility for this system. I welcome scrutiny of this bill through the select committee process. That scrutiny will allow submitters, including iwi, industry participants, environmental groups, scientists, and members of the public, to test whether the bill achieves the right balance between effective risk-management and enabling timely access to beneficial products.

In conclusion, the bill responds directly to an independent regulatory review. It improves the operation of the hazardous substances regime. It includes sensible improvements to the new organisms framework and does so without compromising safety or environmental protection. It supports productivity, innovation, and regulatory certainty, and it strengthens the long-term stewardship of one of New Zealand’s core environmental regulatory systems. I commend the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill to the House.

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

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (15:07): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Hazardous Substances and New Organism Amendment Bill. I was heartened to hear a lot of the things that the Minister for the Environment has just said, one of them being that the bill does not change the precautionary approach of the underlying legislation that is being amended. That is good to hear, and it would be good if the Government took that approach to all pieces of environmental legislation that they were dealing with. I also note that this piece of legislation—

Hon Nicola Grigg: You were doing so well—being positive.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I started by being positive. I also note that this bill is going to the Primary Production Committee along with the other will that will come up next, the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill, and I understand the rationale for considering both of those together, and also that the Environment Committee is obviously a bit bogged down at the moment. Hazardous substances are one thing—and that is what the Minister spent most of her time talking about, and what I will move to in a minute—but new organisms are important as well—that being the other half of the title of the Act.

We have legislation going through the House at the moment that deals with new organisms, and that has been contentious. There is the issue of what happens in labs—not so contentious as what happens in the wild, as that was much more contentious. I’ve heard from the Minister that the policy intent is very clearly not to intertwine with that legislative process that is also going on, and I think it is important that she said that and that that is what happens with this legislation. But there are elements of this amendment legislation that do refer to new organisms, and I suspect that my colleague Reuben Davidson will cover this in more detail around how, at first glance, some of those provisions could be widening those new organisms provisions, which gets into this debate that is happening around another piece of legislation. So it is important, as the Minister said, that there is scrutiny of this bill, and that’s something that we’ll be particularly looking at.

I want to note the Minister referred to the review that happened with the 16 recommendations that recommended an omnibus bill. I don’t know why the omnibus bill hasn’t worked out—why we’ve got two separate ones. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it that one of the Government members might like to tell us about.

Those recommendations built on work that Labour did when there was an amendment in 2022 to this legislation looking at making the processes simpler where there was an overseas jurisdiction that had already looked at it. There’s quite a lot of detail about the process of that in the regulatory impact statement. What that regulatory review, by this Government, said was that it was still too slow. If you look at the regulatory impact statement, some of the wording used to justify making changes to those 2022 changes really do make it sound like it’s not based on strong evidence. Here’s a quote on page 12: “While the use of the new pathway is still bedding in, there is a sense that its restrictions are overly cautious”. I’m sure the select committee and submitters will have more to say on that, about how it works.

It is really important that we look after our New Zealand ecology. We’re far away from the rest of the world, and we do have very unique ecology, and so it is important that that is addressed in a sensible way by experts who know about these things.

I say that I welcome the submissions that will be on this bill and that Labour is supporting it in this first reading to the select committee, because, of course, we want good regulation. Where both the environment can be protected—and that is very important—but we can get these better-for-the-environment new chemicals that we can use to replace those, then that is a good thing.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (15:12): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the acknowledgment from the Minister for the Environment in her interjection that my lobbying had the effect of protecting the precautionary approach.

This is a dense piece of legislation. I use that term not to reflect on the Government but on the legislation itself. It’s a thick tome of law, and, as we well know with the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, the devil is indeed in the detail. To understand the full impact of the proposals, we think, takes some decent scrutiny.

Noting that in the regulatory impact statement, the primary driver—the recommendations “driving force behind this work”—was the Ministry for Regulation’s review, and there’s an acknowledgment that the pace of reform meant the tight time frame has limited the identification of options, the depth of analysis, the collation and review of evidence and data, and the engagement with stakeholders. The urgency meant only targeted engagement with stakeholders was possible and public consultation was not conducted. It also limited the ability to test final options with stakeholders.

These things are concerning in terms of an important piece of legislation. I acknowledge that the panel considered, in terms of quality assurance, that the regulatory impact statement only partially met the criteria.

We would be fools, in the context of a Government that was keen to radically deregulate our genetic engineering laws, to not pay close attention to amendments to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, which indeed manages the regulation of genetically modified organisms.

Now, in that context of scepticism, we nevertheless recognise the need for improving the regulatory regime. We do think, in a broader sense, that it is probably more sensible that we are dealing with the existing HSNO Act in setting up a new gene-tech law. We do think that there are certain substances that need to be more readily accessed, as alternatives to incumbent chemicals that are used that are highly persistent and toxic, and it would be better if we had some of these newer chemicals available in our agricultural systems, for example. But the idea that in some part of this law—particularly the amendment to section 26—we can be certain that the EPA, the Environmental Protection Authority, is the right authority to make determinations on whether or not an organism is a new organism—this does have the red flag of being a potential deregulation of GMO by stealth. Hear me out here.

Now, unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Authority has form in making an incorrect determination on whether an organism was a novel organism or not. Indeed, they were taken court in 2012, and the High Court found that they had been overly liberal in their interpretation and wrongly categorised gene-edited organisms as not genetically modified organisms. That was the first finding globally that set about other jurisdictions making similar recognitions that gene editing is a form of genetic modification, and rightly, scientifically, that’s where it belongs.

We are open to supporting this legislation if some of those details are clarified, but at this stage there are sufficient red flags and a sufficient lack of clarity for us to support this legislation. We think the select committee—and it’s appropriate that it goes to the Primary Production Committee; thank you for that determination, Minister—should go north, south, east, and west on really scrutinising what the impact of this legislation will be to make sure it doesn’t give too much leeway to the EPA to make determinations on what are novel organisms, and that it does indeed protect people and the environment. And we would like a significant broadening of those who are consulted on the legislation. It was acknowledged in the regulatory impact statement that it was a pretty narrow bunch of groups consulted. Why wasn’t the Sustainability Council or Te Waka Kai Ora there? These are things that could be achieved at the select committee, but at this stage we will not be supporting this bill. We, as I said, are open to supporting it, and we will be supporting the veterinary one but just not this one at this stage. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Biosecurity) (15:17): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m rather disappointed to hear my colleague Steve Abel there. I thought we almost had him in supporting, but never mind. Hopefully we can get him back.

I rise in support of this bill. As my colleague the Hon Nicola Grigg mentioned, this bill works in tandem with the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill, which I’ll be introducing next. Both of these bills come about through the work of the Ministry for Regulation review into the approval process of agricultural chemicals and horticultural products.

The review identified that our system—whilst it does do an overall good job of protecting the environment, food safety, and trade, the speed has been a challenge. We’ve heard from many companies that it’s taken upwards of five years, when they’ve already been approved overseas, to be able to get these products into New Zealand. We need to do better. Our farmers, our growers, need access to newer proven technologies far quicker. That’s why this is important for our sector to remain competitive.

I think it’s good that these bills are going together through the Primary Production Committee. It makes a lot of sense for them to be considered together because, quite frankly, most of the compounds we’re talking about will require both sets of approvals. So that makes a lot of sense.

I’m very happy to see this bill also picks up on the provision to recognise where stuff has been approved overseas. As I mentioned, we shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel in New Zealand. Where we’ve got competent authorities that we recognise overseas, we should be using their work—we should be just looking for “Is there a New Zealand - specific angle that we need to be focused on here?”, focusing on that, and saving time and effort rather than redoing the whole thing completely.

One other component of this. As the Minister for Biosecurity, I welcome the changes in this bill that will increase the workability of rapid approvals where they are needed to respond to adverse events, including a biosecurity incursion—for example, a crop protection product that is necessary to control some new insect that we might be seeking to eradicate. Speed is the key with these situations, and so having access to those tools and having a regulatory system that can respond quickly is vitally important.

This bill is a great example of how Government is making real regulatory change that will benefit farming businesses and the wider primary sector. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK PATTERSON (Associate Minister of Agriculture) (15:20): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to also support this Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill, or the HSNO Bill, recognising as well—as the previous speakers, Minister Grigg and others, have mentioned—this sits alongside the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill we’re about to pass subsequently.

These are fundamental pieces of legislation that underpin our economy, essentially. We have a biological economy. Our agricultural sector, our horticultural sector, our primary sector, is $63 billion—some 82 percent of our merchandise exports. This is absolutely critical, foundational, and fundamental for the New Zealand economy. We’re also very proud and very blessed with our nature, our environment, our native flora and fauna—so we do have to have a really robust set of regulations that protect all of those elements that are so important to New Zealanders. The intent of this bill is really, really good.

We have heard multiple stakeholders, and I’m sure all the other parties would have been hearing the same thing. Our system had become constipated and was in need of an upgrade. There are certain lower-risk substances and organisms that are well understood that can be guided through the drafting gate a little bit quicker—and allowing, actually, time for the Environmental Protection Authority to focus on the more novel and less understood substances and organisms. It’s all about efficiencies—removing unnecessary red tape. I think the mechanism in here to recognise our comparator countries, where we have high trust in their systems and where there’s lower risk—that’s definitely quite a positive.

I will say, from a New Zealand First perspective, we too are looking at this weighty tome—300-odd pages—and hoping that the Minister for the Environment is not trying to slip past the goalie some changes to the gene-tech legislation, which is also in front of the Parliament as a separate piece of work. We will be scrutinising this, and we hope there will be a full select committee process, because this is a very important bill but we don’t want this to be a stalking horse for doing some other things that it’s not necessarily intended to do. There is a different process for that.

But, that said, this is a worthy piece of work. The Primary Production Committee will do a good job of scrutinising it. It is very important for those sectors, so it’s appropriate it goes there. New Zealand First supports this bill.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (15:23): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill for its first reading. I’m very pleased that it’s been referred to the Primary Production Committee. As we’ve already heard throughout the House, there’s certainly a number of issues with the current system that need to be unclogged, Mr Patterson. I look forward to seeing it through the select committee process.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (15:24): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The original Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, the original HSNO Act, is the primary law for protecting the environment and human health from the many risks that exist posed by hazardous substances and also new organisms. It was focused on ensuring that we prevent and manage the adverse effects of those substances and organisms through a whole process that included risk assessments, approvals, and controls just to make sure that we’ve got the checks and balances right when dealing with those substances.

This particular amendment bill has arisen from a specific review and it aims to do a bunch of things, which, as the Minister for the Environment has laid out, focuses on things like streamlining the regulatory processes that are involved. The aim is to ensure that there’s an improved transparency that results from these changes. It aims to improve application pathways and certainty for applicants as well. There is some risk, potentially, at this point, that some stakeholders have raised, that if the application pathways are changed to the point—or streamlined, as the Government says; as the Minister says—that it is quite rushed. I take the Minister’s point that there’s no massive change—or “any change”, I think, is what the Minister said—to risk thresholds per se. But in trying to speed up the process, if the checks and balances aren’t there to ensure the appropriate management of these substances and new organisms, then there is a risk there.

One of the things that we will be looking for when this bill goes to select committee—and I too am pleased to hear that it’s going to the Primary Production Committee and not to the Environment Committee given that we have had a number of complex and very technical bills that have been rushed through our select committee so we wouldn’t have the capacity to do this justice. So it’s very good that it goes to the Primary Production Committee. But one of the things we will be looking for is to make sure that the checks and balances are still appropriate; that in streamlining the application process, it’s not reduced to a point that there are adverse impacts. Given that a large part of this legislation is to protect the environment and human health, we would want to ensure that there are no—inadvertent maybe—adverse impacts to the protection of the environment as well. The Minister has said that there will not be adverse impacts to the environment, but I will come back to that in a minute because while I appreciate her laying that out, I am slightly sceptical and I’ll come back to why in a second.

The other parts of this bill are related to supporting proportionate decision-making and public participation, noting that in the departmental disclosure statement, it is said that there has been targeted consultation to date—not as broad as it potentially could be, but, hopefully, we will see that when it gets to the select committee stage as well.

There is also a focus on strengthening compliance, and the monitoring and enforcement provisions of this legislation, and those are all aspects of the bill that we’re OK with; that we’re comfortable with. It is really whether or not the changes go too far and whether, in an attempt to support more timely—as the Government says—and proportionate regulatory decision-making and reducing unnecessary compliance and administrative burden, whether that goes too far or not. But we’ll keep an eye out for that.

In my final minute or so, the reason I’m sceptical that this won’t weaken environmental protections is because this Government’s track record when it comes to protecting the environment is appalling. What they’ve just done is the process of disestablishing the Ministry for the Environment; cutting a significant amount of funding for conservation; replacing that with funding from the International Visitor Levy (IVL), which was never the point of the IVL—that was supposed to be additional funding—amending the Conservation Act to put economic growth ahead of protecting the environment, which is the same trend that underpins their fast-track legislation which does the same thing; and legislation which will replace the Resource Management Act that also will weaken protections for the environment. So forgive me if I’m a little sceptical when this Minister—or any Minister on that side—says that they won’t weaken protections for the environment.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (15:29): This bill cuts unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape. Trusting credible overseas regulators like Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US is smart. It’s about delivering for our farmers and growers. We are fixing the basics and building the future for our rock star primary producers. I commend this bill.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (15:30): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand and take a call on this Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (HSNO). Some of the most hazardous things we’ve seen in the House this afternoon is the speed of some of the speeches about a very important piece of legislation. And if you take the comms lines out of them, they’re even shorter. So I think, in my contribution this afternoon, I want to ensure that both what we’ve been told is the objective of this bill is fully explored but also the process that will follow in going to select committee is followed as well.

This bill sets out to implement policy changes responding to and building on recommendations of the Agricultural and Horticultural Products Regulatory Review. And I think what we need to keep front of mind throughout the process of this bill’s passage is that we also need to protect our place in the global agricultural and horticultural marketplace. I don’t think anybody is arguing that we don’t do that, but we need to balance that very carefully with protecting and enhancing our unique environment. So, as one of the earlier contributions from my colleague Rachel Brooking spelt out, HSNO stands for two different things: “HS” obviously for hazardous substances, but the “NO” stands for new organisms. And a number of members have spoken to the importance of scrutiny to ensure that what we’re doing here doesn’t overlap with the relatively stalled progress on the Gene Technology Bill that came through the Health Committee. Some of the concerns around the progress of that bill were around the lack of consultation with parties that would be very affected by the implications of what that bill set out to do. And that lack of consultation led to a lot of frustration and, ultimately, it could be argued, has led to that bill not being able to progress further than it has to date.

So it was good to hear the assurance from the Minister for the Environment, both in her contribution and in her responses to other contributions in the House this afternoon, that this is not an attempt to, by stealth, slip something through that is going to provide access to those new organisms that would be better regulated through the legislation at such a time as it’s able to progress.

The balance that we’re trying to strike with this bill, and the balance that will be good to examine fulsomely and wholesomely at the Primary Production Committee, is about managing the risk versus the access to products, because that is, ultimately, what this bill is helping to manage for our agricultural and horticultural sector and stakeholders. But we do need to make sure that that is done responsibly and that the progress that this bill sets out to make isn’t unneeded progress, and isn’t based on, as some commentary has suggested, reckons, because reckons are a very dangerous thing when it comes to introducing new bills or changing laws. If we’re just going to do that based on some reckons, we have to be very certain through the select committee process to establish that that’s not the case and actually to follow a good process. So it’s good to see, from this first reading, that it will go through to that Primary Production Committee.

The other thing that I think is good that this bill sets out to do is to enable and empower greater use of data and information. And I think as we see a move towards a world in which we have greater, stronger, and far more powerful systems to use, process, and obtain value from data and information, the ability for us to have greater powers to access that information and use it will be and should be hugely beneficial. So it’s good to see that that’s factored in there.

The core goals in this bill are around streamlining; they’re around providing certainty for our agricultural and horticultural marketplace. They must also provide certainty for our unique and natural environment. That’s what the select committee process needs to make sure that happens. And the request from me, in supporting this bill, would be that that public participation component at select committee is robust, that strong voices and opinions are brought to the table, and that it is a risk-proportionate decision making that is enshrined in this bill when it comes back to the House for a second reading.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (15:35): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to speak on this bill on behalf of the farmers. You know, since we’ve come into Government 2½ years ago, all we’ve done is: how can we support farmers more? How do we get the red tape out of the way? How do we unglue the economy? For a small country that feeds 40 million people, it’s pretty crucial.

This came out of a review that was led by the Minister for Regulation, the Minister for Primary Industries, the Ministry for the Environment, the Environmental Protection Agency—it’s a no brainer. I commend the bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 20

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (15:36): The question is, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.

Instruction to Select Committee

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for the Environment) (15:36): I move, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill will be reported to the House by 17 September 2026.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Food Safety) (15:38): I present a legislative statement for the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can I just check with the member that he’s seeking leave to do so?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: I seek leave to do so—sorry.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? Appears to be none.

Legislative statement published under the authority of the House.

First Reading

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Food Safety) (15:38): I move, That the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill now be read for the first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House by the 17 September 2026.

The Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act 1997, which I will now refer to as the ACVM Act for everyone’s convenience, is the legislation that regulates how products that are put on crops or administered to animals are approved and used. It’s an important piece of legislation that helps protect not only Kiwi’s health but also animal welfare and our international trade and food.

Generally, this legislation has served New Zealand well and contributed to the outstanding performance of our food exporters over a long period of time. But we need to get the balance right, and it has been obvious from talking to farmers and growers who use these products, that our rules have become too cumbersome and approvals are taking too long. These issues were highlighted by a Ministry for Regulation review into the agricultural and horticultural products. It found that for the agricultural sector to remain a powerhouse, New Zealand needs to be internationally competitive in attracting new and innovative products. To do that, we have to focus on managing risk proportionally and achieving positive outcomes, more so than focusing on prescriptive processes. Because the system is harder to navigate than it needs to be, it is slower and more costly to bring in better products to market. Ultimately, this means our farmers suffer because they don’t have access to tools that will boost productivity, reduce cost, and generally make their lives easier. This bill responds to that challenge by making targeted amendments to improve the efficiency, clarity, and flexibility of the ACVM system. This bill does not change the fundamental purpose of the ACVM Act, and it maintains an oversight of products to ensure our primary industry is protected. It focuses on practical improvements that will actually make a difference for New Zealand farming businesses.

This bill gives effect to the Government’s policy objectives through a package of targeted legislative changes. One of the most important things this bill does is provide for formal recognition of overseas regulators and enable use of their assessments. It builds on an existing system where manufacturers of veterinary medicines for companion animals can request that we use Australia’s regulatory assessment report when considering approval for use in New Zealand. This has worked well but it is narrow in scope. The changes proposed in this bill will allow greater recognition of overseas regulators, such as the EU, Canada, and the UK. It will also broaden the scope to other types of veterinary medicines, not just those for companion animals but also for agricultural products like agrichemicals.

This is a very important change, because the companies that are developing, manufacturing, and marketing these products operate internationally, and New Zealand is really the first market that they want to sell in. It is just not justifiable on the grounds of food safety or international trade to force the sort of duplication of effort to register products in New Zealand when they have long ago been approved in countries that have mature and trusted approvals processes.

I’ve often been told, and may have said it once or twice myself, that New Zealand has a unique farming environment, and that’s true. Our farmers are obviously much better than any other country, but the grass-based livestock system isn’t so different from agricultural systems overseas that we can’t rely on expert assessments from those countries. A cow is a cow. Where there is a New Zealand - specific risk that arises from our farming system or trading patterns, it can be assessed, but, overall, this will bring down the cost for industry and increase access for farmers.

This is particularly true for applications for registration of arguably the most important new products, often called novel products. Those are the ones which contain an active ingredient not previously approved in New Zealand. They’re the products that are better for the environment, safer for the user, and can really unlock productivity gains for the farmer.

Another thing this bill does is modernise and strengthen the framework for assessing these novel products. It removes the provisional registration scheme and replaces it with a clearer and more proportionate consent pathway for approving products for research and information-gathering purposes. This removes duplication and allows new agricultural compounds to be assessed and used under controlled conditions to support that final registration.

The bill also supports efficient and timely decision-making by moving the time limits for registration currently identified in the ACVM Act to regulations. This will allow greater flexibility, improve transparency, and mean clearer performance expectations. We will be able to be upfront and hold ourselves to account for approvals in a way that’s better aligned with risk and impact. What stakeholders want to see is a focus on the most impactful new types of product, for which those assessments are much more complex. Being able to set different processing targets for different types of products will help bring that focus. In addition, the bill makes processes relating to applications and other matters clearer, more consistent, but also more flexible. It clarifies the information that applicants may be required to provide, enables clearer decision-making for variations to product approvals, and provides for manufacturing and other specifications to be approved, applied, and varied where necessary.

Finally, the bill enhances transparency by improving public notification of applications and other matters. It modernises public notification requirements by enabling a broad range of notification methods that are appropriate to the circumstances. It also strengthens provisions relating to assessment and suspension of products, to ensure greater protection of trade and public health. These amendments focus regulatory effort on managing real risks and supporting good outcomes by removing avoidable complexity and ensuring more timely approaches to considering novel products.

I want to touch on how this bill works in tandem with the bill we just considered, which is the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (HSNO). I acknowledge my colleague the Hon Nicola Grigg, the Minister for the Environment, who is leading that work. We’re a team on this issue because this bill doesn’t purport to fix the problem of delayed approvals on its own. Most agricultural and horticultural products require approval under both HSNO and ACVM. These two pieces of legislation assess different risks, but from the stakeholder point of view, it’s an end-to-end experience. The consumer only sees one process, so that’s why it’s very important that we consider these together to take that into account.

I would also like to make clear that these legislative changes are not the end of the work to simplify and accelerate the approvals process. We are also making a suite of operational changes within the ACVM approvals group so that wherever legislation allows, internal processes are as efficient as possible.

This bill is about making the ACVM system work better in practice. It improves clarity where processes have been unclear and supports timely, risk-proportionate decision-making, and improves access to modern agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines, supporting productivity and innovation in the primary sector, and it reduces unnecessary burden so that effort is focused on outcomes that protect animal health, public health, trade, and agricultural security rather than process. These changes will make life easier for famers and growers by giving them access to better products earlier. This will give them confidence to invest in increased productivity. That’s not only a big win for farmers and growers but also for the New Zealand economy because it supports even faster-growing economic growth being driving by the primary sector. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I note for the record that the Minister’s legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour) (15:47): It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill, and I’m very pleased to say that Labour is supporting this bill. We would like to see what comes out of the select committee process, though. So we are supporting the bill to select committee.

One of the things that I’ve heard often from those in the agricultural and horticultural sector is the amount of time it takes to get things approved here in our country for their use. And one of the things that I have been thinking about quite a lot with this particular piece of legislation is that our farmers are hugely innovative, but if they wish to remain competitive on the world stage, they do need access to some of the new technologies, the new insecticides, the new whatever these things might be to ensure that they do remain competitive.

One of the things that I did want to highlight that I was a little bit concerned about—well, I don’t know if “concerned” is the right word—or had a little bit of an issue with is that the external consultation on this particular policy on the draft bill was only provided to 10 industry representative bodies, and that was due to the restricted time frame for getting this piece of legislation to the House. Whilst I acknowledge that those bodies are some of the main players within this space, I do think it would have been good to include others in that, but I do suppose that that will go through when we have the select committee process where the wider community and New Zealanders will be able to have their say on this piece of legislation.

One of the things that I mentioned before was the amount of time that it takes for some of these products to get through the process in order to be approved here in New Zealand, and I was interested to note in an article I read from 2025 that over a decade ago, we were seen as a global leader in this space and we were approving up to seven new active ingredients a year. Now, compared to over the past few years, that number has dropped to just two or three, and that is why we are seeing so much frustration. I do think that with the passing of this bill today, this first reading, we might be hearing a collective sigh of relief out there in the agricultural sector to see that this is something that is going to be under way and hopefully worked through and approved at the other end when we get to that third reading stage.

One of the issues with having it taking so long to get approval for a lot of these ingredients and products is the issue we’re seeing around some really big players in this space actually leaving New Zealand because it’s just too long for them to get things approved here in this country. Companies like Bayers, they exited the Hastings research facility simply because of that reason, and that does jeopardise us falling further behind in our agricultural innovation if we do see big players like that exiting our country when it is a really important thing for our agricultural sector.

We did hear the Minister for Food Safety talk about the importance of being able to use proven science where it’s been approved overseas for use, and I do think that that is a really good thing, that we won’t be duplicating science, but I do think it is important, and I think the Minister did mention that we will take into account the specific special nature of our flora and fauna here in New Zealand to ensure that it isn’t jeopardised, and our environment, in any way.

With this piece of legislation, we must ensure that it does deliver on its intent, and that will be something that we really scrutinise during that select committee process. Speeding up approvals and avoiding the duplication; applying a risk-based assessment to enable faster access to softer, lower-risk chemicals, and allow broader cross-crop approvals; prioritise assessments based on cost-benefits so the most important tools reach farmers soon; but we must ensure strong environmental outcomes, ensuring our flora and fauna ecosystems and waterways are protected. I commend this bill to the House.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (15:53): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m speaking to the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. We’ll be supporting this one to select committee, but there are some concerns. One of the obvious ones, which my colleague Jo Luxton just alluded to, is who was chosen to be consulted with on this bill. It’s a veterinary medicines and agricultural compounds bill, and who was chosen to be consulted with: AgriZeroNZ, the Fertiliser Association, Federated Farmers, Horticulture New Zealand, the Meat Industry Association, Beef + Lamb—

Hon Mark Patterson: Great people.

STEVE ABEL: Fine. Animal and Plant Health Association, Dairy New Zealand, the New Zealand Pet Food Association, and New Zealand Winegrowers. Are there any vet groups missing from that list, do you think? There are. There are clearly. The SPCA, who I understand—

Suze Redmayne: Oh!

STEVE ABEL: What’s with that reaction, Suze Redmayne? What is your problem? My goodness. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It includes 28 animal welfare centres across New Zealand, approximately 60 inspectors appointed under the Animal Welfare Act. It’s a major institution. The Royal Society—Suze Redmayne, sort out your issues. Go and have a talk to them. Why would they not be included in this? Specifically, the SPCA has corresponded with Minister Hoggard on this very issue. In fact, they’ve written superb submission on the Proposed Amendments to the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines (Exemption and Prohibited Substances), in August 2025. Why would they not be included in the consultation? I certainly hope at the next stage they will be included.

Miles Anderson: It is a consultation, isn’t it, Steve?

STEVE ABEL: OK, have a look at this external consultation list. I just read it out to you. The SPCA wasn’t on it, and no veterinary organisation was on that list. Given it’s veterinary medicines, it seems a strange omission. A specific concern that they’ve raised with me is with bird gel. Bird gel repellents are cruel substances that stick to wild birds and are designed to repel them from car parks and buildings and sports arenas and so forth. But in fact, they’re aversive chemicals that cause irritation and harm to the birds, and there’s ongoing incidents as birds are killed coming into contact with them. They experience frustration, distress, and related injuries trying to remove these gels when they stick to their feet. That’s one of the issues where you shouldn’t have an exemption for a chemical like that and a substance like that, and it’s one that can be addressed at the select committee.

I’ve articulated concerns about the targeting of the consultation not including vets, and I would love to hear the Minister for Food Safety’s explanation for that, but we will be supporting this bill. We do recognise that legislative efficiencies that allow regulatory frameworks with appropriate precaution to give vets and the agricultural sector access to useful, new technologies or medicines is a good thing, and it’s just about getting that balance right.

I’ll make a final comment, which my friend Mark Cameron from the ACT Party will probably appreciate. Noting from the SPCA submission, “SPCA is concerned that allowing biologically active compounds such as methane inhibitors to bypass full registration undermines the regulatory system’s ability to ensure animal safety, efficacy, and well-being may have unintended effects on animal health and welfare if used at scale without thorough oversight.” Now, you might be interested to hear that the Greens are concerned about the use of some of those boluses and so forth, but we are, because we want to know that they are not affecting animal health in a negative way and that they’re not a greenwashing exercise. We want to know they’re actually having a meaningful impact without harming the animal, so we share the SPCA’s concerns about a lack of oversight on things like those compounds animals are forced to ingest that supposedly help with methane. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (15:58): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to talk about the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. It makes sense that it goes hand in hand with the previous bill that was passed just earlier. I guess, some of the concerns that Steve Abel raised can be dealt with through the select committee process, and I expect them to be, and I look forward as a member of the Primary Production Committee to hearing all the submissions and looking at all the evidence. I commend the bill.

Hon MARK PATTERSON (Minister for Rural Communities) (15:58): Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of New Zealand First on this Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. I’m very, very supportive of this bill and commend Minister Hoggard for bringing it through and the practical improvements that it will make. There’s just an exasperation out there on behalf of participants in industry at the time it’s taking to get through a regulatory system for what are considered to be quite low-risk veterinary medicines and agricultural compounds.

As it was pointed out earlier, we might have the best cows in the world, we’ve certainly got the best sheep in the world producing the best strong, white wool in the world, approaching $6 a kilo—it’s Auction Day today, and I know everyone’s looking to see if we’re going to breakthrough that $6 barrier today—but essentially, biologically, they’re identical to cows or sheep anywhere else in the world, so there should be a streamlined pathway and there just is not at this point, and we’re hearing that loud and clear from those participants in industry. So where there are comparative countries that have got similar agricultural systems and highly regarded regulatory systems, we can use that and give a higher weighting to that in terms of approval.

It also allows research and development to be done. Bayer having closed down their Hawke’s Bay research facility, which had been operation for decades in New Zealand, was an absolute travesty. That was Government regulation and just exasperation with that—that means scientists and research that’s actually being done in New Zealand conditions is now not being doing. A major international company just gave up, and some others are on the cusp of doing that if we don’t amend these very regulations. It does have real-world consequences.

I would say, just adding that note of caution, we have got some history here, too. I know of the dicyandiamide issue that Fonterra had with what was a compound additive to fertiliser; it ended up in the food chain, and it was incredibly disruptive to our markets in Asia in particular—those critical markets. This is just to assure anyone listening or watching—and hello, Mum—that there will be a rigorous process behind this.

The stakes are really high for us, so this is not about being reckless in any way. It will be important that the Primary Production Committee tests what’s being proposed here so that we can be absolutely sure that what we’re doing is what it says on the tin—streamlining those lower-risk activities but still maintaining a rigorous process so that we down have some own goals.

With that, I think New Zealand First look forward to the select committee process. Chairman Anderson and his team, I’m sure, will do a really rigorous job on this. We support this bill through the first reading. Thank you.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (16:02): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill is about ensuring access to modern agricultural products and veterinary compounds—tools our farmers and growers need to succeed. We are fixing the basics and building the future for the engine room of the New Zealand economy.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (16:02): I seek leave of the House for Suze Redmayne to continue with her speech, because I feel she was just getting into her stride.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection?

Hon Members: Yes!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’m afraid there is.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: That is a very sobering example of the National Party and how they treat their MPs—very, very sad to see. As much as I want to, I’m not going to engage in a kind of bidding war in this speech to say how New Zealand farmers are the best in the world—they’re the most this and the most that; the most sustainable, and the most efficient—because I know that is the treasured pastime of members on the National Party benches. That’s what they love to do every time they give a speech on agriculture—to sing hymns to our farmers in worship of their wondrousness, and I certainly wouldn’t want to compete with them on that.

It’s obvious from all the contributions so far that there is very little controversy on the previous bill and this bill. Even the Green Party are supporting this bill at first reading, and they don’t give out their favours very easily on these kinds of bills. The fact that the Greens are supporting this one is a pretty good indication that it’s going to, I think, fly through to the select committee for it to have further scrutiny.

The rationale is that agricultural and veterinary products need a more efficient and more streamlined process for considering any possible risks in applications and ensuring that they’re made available in a much more timely way, when they are approved, to our animal industries.

I think, it’s already been said, that there are good reasons why we should all support that. The bill’s provisions really flow out of a review that was carried out by the Ministry for Regulation, and it does a number of things. It aims to reduce the barriers to accessing new agricultural products while ensuring that they are subject to appropriate levels of a risk-based approach; to modernise and strengthen the legislative framework to support efficient and timely decision-making; to make processes that relate to those applications more consistent and more flexible; and to enhance transparency. Well, how could you disagree with that? That’s basically apple pie and motherhood.

If you look at the bill itself in more detail, at the provisions, it does a number of things. It replaces a power for regulations to exempt agricultural compounds from registration, with a power for the director-general of the Ministry of Primary Industries to exempt them from registration. It allows the registration to be done not through regulation making but through a process down the legislative chain so that the director-general of the ministry can do it themselves. And there are a number of other measures that are designed to kind of speed up and streamline the whole process.

I wanted to make two points, really for the benefit of colleagues who are on the Primary Production Committee. As I said, it’s virtually impossible at first reading to form a view about whether or not the language in the bill makes sense, and whether in fact there is an appropriate balancing of the benefits—innovation in the industry, for example—against the possible risks to the environment and public health. It’s impossible to know at face value whether or not the processes that are proposed in the bill allow for sufficient rigour in the testing of the claims that are made by the proponents of these products. It’s very, very difficult to judge whether or not the process allows for a sufficiently wide and open examination of where the risks might come from. It’s really only at the select committee, with people have real-life experience of this and who have the expertise to advise the committee, to test those claims.

It's always worth remembering, with regulation, that our recent history in this country is stuffed full of examples of badly judged regulation. We only need to look at, for instance, the building products, we only need to look at health and safety, where the balance has not been in the right place.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) (16:08): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is my pleasure to rise and take a call on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill, introduced by our colleague the Hon Andrew Hoggard.

Access to modern tools, in this day and age, is critical to hoisting this country further into greatness in terms of the primary production sector. We are about reducing unnecessary barriers, in this Government. We want to get Government out of the way so our country can grow our productive sector, increase the value of our exports, and get ahead. We are fixing the basics and building the future. I commend the bill to the House.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (16:09): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be back on my feet and able to take a call on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. This is the first reading, so it’s important that we take the time here to talk about both the intention of the bill but also what we’re hoping to see at select committee when it gets there, as far as the examination of the bill goes.

This is a bill that’s ultimately about maintaining our competitive edge, and I’m surprised that there are members on the other side of the House that don’t want to set out more fulsomely exactly how they think that needs to happen. They’re happy to trot out a short, succinct comms line, which I’ve heard several times before, but they don’t want to talk about how we get the balance between quality and price right, and how we progress a bill like this so that we can ensure that we are managing the risks but also getting the opportunities that we need in New Zealand for a vital sector of our economy.

I guess the starting point of that is to really make certain that everybody on the other side of the House is aware of the fact that agriculture, including horticulture, is the largest sector of New Zealand’s tradable economy and represents about 80 percent of all merchandise exports. That is why I think it’s so important that we step through the very real risks that this bill is setting out to address. If we’re looking at maintaining our competitive edge and wanting to ensure that things can move faster to serve those members of that very productive sector of our economy, then it’s worth coming back to what these risks are.

I’m going to step through the risks that are highlighted in the report here from the Ministry of Regulation, because there are some in here that you wouldn’t think of necessarily if you were simply to read the title of the bill. Then, in fairness, some of the contributions of the speeches made today haven’t done much more than read the title of the bill.

The first is around human health and usage, which is specifically speaking to products that cause safety concerns due to uses by applicators, operators, workers, farmers, and veterinarians, who are very important people that we need to ensure our protected by the regulations that this bill has in place or, in this case, that this bill seeks to amend. There are also further human health considerations around food safety, around chemical residue levels detected in food higher than safe thresholds that lead to impacts on consumers, both domestic and international via our exports.

There are very real concerns and considerations that are required in this space, particularly around reputational risk. We want to continue to be, as we claim, the best in the world. There are also animal health and plant health detrimental effects that can occur to the target animal or plant caused by either incorrect use of product or the product causing harm through contamination or side effects. Environmentally, we need to ensure that we’re looking at whether products are negatively impacting drinking water, groundwater quality, soil quality, aquatic species and vertebrates, fish, and soil organisms.

These are the considerations that are in this bill and that we need to ensure that the select committee process allows the conversations to take place with appropriate stakeholders and affected people and representatives, to ensure that the changes that are proposed to be made aren’t going to cause further risk of those very real harms continuing.

Now, I’m not going to go through the balance of the specific harms in great detail because there simply is not time—although if I could have taken some of the time that has been surrendered from the other side of the House through shorter offerings, I’m sure I’d get there—but in the heading form, they are trade, animal welfare, anti-microbial resistance, and agricultural security or biosecurity. Very, very real considerations and concerns—things that if we want to maintain our competitive edge in New Zealand, we need to manage the risks of.

So we are supporting this bill at first reading through to the Primary Production Committee, but we need to ensure that the intention is met and that the right balance is struck between making sure that this bill works for those people and parts of our economy that need to access the products that this covers. But we also need to ensure that we get the balance right to protect our environment and our own taonga species as we do that.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (16:14): Thank you, Madam Speaker. In a previous life overseas, I ran a vaccine manufacturer for production animals, and so I appreciate the importance of the regulatory systems that enable those vaccines to come to the market and be used by our agriculture and our horticultural backbone of the New Zealand economy. But one of the things that we don’t often appreciate about use of medicines in veterinary services here in New Zealand is where’s there’s not an appropriate product approved for a dog or a cat, we use the equivalent human medicine. These are available internationally, but they’re not used here because we haven’t been able to get them approved. As one vet said to me, “It takes ages for them to get here.” This bill will enable us to use the right products for the right animals here in New Zealand, and therefore I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 118

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Noes 4

Te Pāti Māori 4.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (16:16): The question is, That the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.

Instruction to Select Committee

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Food Safety) (16:16): I move, That the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 17 September 2026.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (16:17): I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection. There appears to be none.

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

Second Reading

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (16:17): I move, That the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill, commonly referred to as the CCCFA, is one of the three bills developed by the Government to address the complex legislative landscape governing financial services. The bill aims to streamline these overly complex financial services regulations and remove unnecessary compliance costs. Previous reforms are focused on reducing harm from irresponsible lending by imposing greater obligations on lenders. In doing so, they increase the overall burden of regulation and this has resulted in inefficiencies that affect the majority of borrowers. We have seen examples of credit-worthy borrowers being declined credit, and unnecessarily long processing times due to excessive risk aversion. This is just not good enough and we have acted to change it.

The bill was a continuation of the work from 2024 to remove the overly prescriptive requirements that were preventing Kiwis from accessing affordable finance. I want to quickly acknowledge two of my predecessors for their hard work making these reforms possible: the Hon Andrew Bayly, who helped develop these proposals, and the Hon Scott Simpson, who brought these three bills to the House and saw them through select committee.

The bill further improves regulation of consumer credit in four ways. It transfers regulatory responsibility for the CCCFA from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority. It better aligns the regulatory model with that used for other financial services. This includes bringing consumer credit into the licensing regime of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). It removes a due diligence duty on directors and senior managers that doesn’t fit with the new regulatory model, and it better ensures consequences for breaching certain disclosure requirements are proportionate.

I want to thank the very learned Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) for its thoughtful consideration of the bill and submissions. Having chaired that committee, I now find myself responsible for a bill I know was carefully considered by all members on the FEC. Thank you to everyone who took the time to make submissions. The committee received 1,634 written submissions and heard 35 oral submissions.

Due to the heightened interest in a particular part of this bill—the retrospective elements—I will focus on this. The bill achieves proportion in how lenders are regulated by addressing historical issues with the law, the result of which could be that lenders who breached disclosure obligations between 2015 and 2019 were not entitled to any interest or fees during the period of their non-compliance.

I don’t think it had ever been the intention of Parliament to disproportionately punish financial service organisations for making minor mistakes around their disclosures—for example, getting people’s middle names wrong in their mortgage documents. Parliament has already recognised that this outcome is likely to be excessive in some cases, and in 2019, Parliament provided a very sensible solution: let the courts decide whether it would be just and equitable to give lenders relief from the effect of this provision. All the bill does is extend that solution back to cover potential disclosure failures between 2015 and 2019. This is the bill’s retrospective change.

My predecessor explained to the House already why the Government believes this retrospective change is justified in the public interest. How liability for disclosure failures between 2015 and 2019 is determined under the current law has recently been considered by the High Court in a judgement against ANZ. The judgement confirms the Government’s concern. The High Court found it is indeed bound to require lenders to refund the full costs of borrowing from any period of non-compliance to affected borrowers, whether the court thinks that is a just and equitable outcome or not.

Ultimately, the intent is to ensure that courts have the discretion to reach fair and equitable outcomes. The Finance and Expenditure Committee considered concerns about the fact this retrospective change would have applied to class litigation against ANZ and ASB that was active at the time. It concluded that the cases should be allowed to run on the basis of the law that stood at the time when the case was first brought. The Government has accepted that conclusion. My predecessor was clear that he welcomed the committee’s scrutiny of this part of the bill. The public expressed its views and the Government listened. The bill is concerned with ensuring the courts are able to avoid any injustice the historical law might cause in the case of other disclosure failures that may have been committed between 2015 and 2019.

Before closing, I wish to draw the House’s attention to some amendments that I will propose be adopted by the committee of the whole House. The first purpose of Amendment Paper 505 is to set a date for most of the bill’s changes to take effect. The proposed commencement date is 1 July 2026—obviously, to coincide with the beginning of the next financial year. This will enable stakeholders, including the Commerce Commission and the FMA, to plan towards a realistic date for implementation of the changes, including the transfer of the functions.

Conclusion: to conclude, this bill—we’ve got a headline for “conclusion”, then “pause”. To conclude, this bill will ensure the burden of consumer credit regulation is (1) proportionate for lenders, (2) streamlined across financial services, and (3) overseen by a regulator that is effectively equipped to protect the interests of consumers. This is a sensible bill—“said to applause”. In all seriousness, I thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its well-considered amendments, and I encourage members to support this bill.

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

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (16:25): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, good on that new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, boxing on down to the House and giving a speech about a bill which has sunk two of his predecessors. New Zealanders can see that if there was any single bill that told them exactly who this Government is for, it’s this one. In the face of two banks required to pay back debts that they owe thousands of New Zealanders who have held mortgages, loans for their cars, personal lending, this Government chose to forgive those debts.

This is a bill that reached back in time. It took a period from 2015 to 2019, after the Key Government had decided that it was fair that banks should be punished squarely when they get things wrong for their consumers, because ordinary mums and dads who have this lending can’t go along to the bank and renegotiate their terms. They can’t go through the screeds of documents to make sure that everything is perfect. Even if they did, they wouldn’t have any power to renegotiate with their big lender.

At the time, the Key-English Government, following the practice internationally, attributed harsh penalties for those things—indeed, the sorts of harsh penalties that this Minister got up on the stump about yesterday. He made an announcement, to wild applause, that he would now gladly defend his Government taking away these penalties at the first sniff that a big bank didn’t like them, at a first sniff that one of the four major banks in New Zealand, which they have been at pains to call having a cosy pillow fight—to call big bad lenders who need to be dealt to by this tough Government that’s going to stand up for consumers. As soon as they were penalised, as soon as it was possible for those millions of dollars which had been wrongly charged to consumers, they rode in and made a decision that the Labour Cabinet in 2019 would not.

That is what their Minister has stood up and delivered in this House. He has pointed back on the record and he has said that in the Key Government, they made the decision to make the penalties. In 2019, Labour was asked to remove those penalties and they didn’t, but in 2024, when the National Cabinet was asked to do the same, it did. Why did it do that? A history of different points of our Government being asked to do so by banks. It is on record that not only Ministers but the Public Service was asked repeatedly by the banks for this change. What did National do? It gave it to them.

This was legislation that was made to serve the interests of big corporates at the absolute detriment of the consumers who were going to pay for it—$135 million paid out by ASB; $135 million ordered by a court for ANZ to refund. This is what it means for consumers. Hundreds and thousands of dollars that mums and dads need right now that National would have kept for them. More than any tax cut, more than any transfer payments, more than any subsidy that is being taken away from students right now by fees free—so much money that National would have given the banks to enable this legislation to go through.

That is why we still oppose it. We still oppose this until the committee stage, because when the Minister stands up there and he says that the Government has accepted this conclusion from the select committee, I don’t believe him. Why should New Zealanders buy into the idea that this Government would stand by its promise to Kiwi consumers when at every turn, behind closed doors, it has made decisions in the interests of the corporates who ask for them?

This is a bill which is evidence of that. This is a bill which was wrong from the get-go and the Government was found out. It is also, frankly, a bill that walks back some important consumer protections that existed within the law in the first place and that were bipartisan. The Key Government and Labour Government both upheld those protections for consumers, because when you have consumer law which punishes large corporates for getting things wrong, that’s the right kind of balance, because consumers can’t renegotiate these things. That’s why we have this law in the first place. National has walked that back, not just retrospectively but in the future. There is a balancing act to apply here, but when we show consumers that the Government won’t act in their interests, what happens? We get the kind of politics that we are seeing around the world now, where citizens all around the world see strong-man politicians say they’re going to do something about the cost of living and fail to deliver—in fact, they act in the interests of their mates.

We need to show people that Government will act in their interests. We need to show consumers that when they are owned money by their banks, or they are owed money by their insurers, or someone has charged them more money than they should have, that the Government will enforce the law in their favour, and that everyone is viewed equally in the eyes of the law. The most important thing for economic development in a country like ours is the rule of law and people’s faith in the system. This is a bill that undermines that. That is why it’s so wrong.

There are also parts of this bill that shouldn’t be progressed. This particular provision took up everyone’s time and energy; there were 1,500 submissions that opposed the retrospectivity from the get-go. It was unfair, because we had mums and dads coming along to the committee and saying, “I think I’m owed a few thousand dollars, and the bank won’t pay me back if this goes through.”

There are other parts of this that reverse longstanding consumer protections that are important. Credit contracts and consumer financing provisions—yes, they are about making sure that there is a responsibility at the lenders level to make sure that people are getting the kind of deal that they know they can get. It’s not just about their middle names, Mr Brewer; it’s also about those things like: how much are you paying? How much will you pay over time? When will you have to pay back the terms of your loan? All of those things, which are really important to consumers, are the things that are protected by this legislation and legislation like it.

It’s this that means New Zealanders can have faith in our financial system. It’s these kinds of rules, alongside our banking supervisory system, that are the thing that keep consumers continuing to be able to invest in long-term savings products and long-term products that give them access to the finance that they need. If we undermine those protections, people become not only more and more mistrustful of the banking and financing system but also of the law that protects them from misuse of it in the first place. It creates unequal treatment for people in litigation going forward as well.

The record of this Government on banking reform is actions like this repeatedly. These are three bills that the Minister points to are all part of a system that has undermined protections for consumers across the board. In some circumstances, you can imagine that it would be useful for consumers to be able to access lending quicker and to be able to access banking services more easily, and those are important provisions. But the three bills here work together to undermine some of those most important protections. That’s why there are still things in this that on their own would make sense, but within the framework of the three, create some problems going forward.

This is something that, unfortunately, we had to work through at the Finance and Expenditure Committee with the officials. We constantly had to keep asking officials to help us to understand the other provisions that were being drowned out by not only the legal advice that we had, the timelines that we had, and the submissions that we had on the retrospectivity point, but also the level of public interest in the retrospectivity point because it affected thousands of New Zealanders and their financial interests directly.

This was bad lawmaking from the get-go, but it was also bad lawmaking through the process, because we were no able to properly interrogate how consumers were affected by every other provision within the bill. It’s a shame that we are doing something like this, which in the past has been bipartisan, and now, in the future, becomes just another battleground for what the State can do to ordinary people. The mums and dads who are harmed by this kind of lawmaking approach won’t forget this.

I will never forget the ASB customer who came along to the committee, and he said: “I live on the North Shore. I’ve voted for National all my life. I can’t believe that this Government, who I still support, would make a decision like this, which affects me in this way. I had a mortgage, and I thought that National was the party that would bring down my cost of mortgage.” But National is a party that has constantly this legislation, which would cost him more. This is legislation with the intention and the design—and in full knowledge of that, every Cabinet Minister voted for it—to cost him and his wife more on the cost of their home. He was a first-home buyer.

The impact of a decision like that is not just about National, is it? It’s about every politician in this House using their power against someone like him. If we continue to accept that kind of lawmaking in the New Zealand Parliament, we will lose not just him but people who vote for every party, because they need to see us acting in their interest—especially on things like the cost of lending, the cost of basic food, and the cost of electricity.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (16:35): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill tells us that when the National Party says that they’re back on track, they mean back on track to back big corporates.

This bill does not benefit everyday people; it turns its back on them. I think it’s outrageous that while the previous member was rightly pointing out that this is a capitulation to the big banks, rather than engaging constructively, what I saw from the other side of the House was literal mocking, laughing, and finger pointing. It’s so telling that—on a bill that literally extinguishes the right of borrowers to pursue claims for past disclosures breaches between 2016 and 2019 and, as the previous speaker noted, their ability, in this case, and I’m talking about as the bill stands, for consumers to be able to recover millions of dollars—this Government introduces legislation that extinguishes those rights.

I note that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs spoke about the intention to move some amendments in the committee of the whole House addressing some of the commencement date issues. This is not a solution. This is a form of harm minimisation because of the humongous backlash that the Government received, including, as it has been noted, from National voters who were affected by this. ASB and ANZ do not need any form of assistance or handouts. They are very well and fine. In fact, those banks are actually doing OK considering that many New Zealanders who are paying the price of the cost of living crisis.

I think this is also a bit of an evolution of the previous position that was taken by the former National Government. To turn their back on an approach that was taken and upheld by two successive Governments is deeply problematic. What this tells us is that this is a Government that would rather ignore countless consumers who were affected by the behaviour of the big banks and capitulate to those banks.

I think it’s also telling that the Minister, when justifying and explaining the bill, used the example of getting middle names wrong. I don’t think that stands. We cannot just simply take the Minister’s approach in good faith when we know that middle names are not the issue at heart in this bill. We’re talking about consumers who were genuinely negatively affected by the banks, not for just simply getting middle names wrong but for not adequately disclosing information.

I just think it’s a really gross form of deflection to try to fixate on something like the accuracy of middle names as opposed to upholding the dignity of hundreds of submitters who were generous enough to share with us their experiences that they had in challenging these big banks. I’m specifically talking about ASB and ANZ here, who obviously have been the subject of discussion in relation to this bill.

I particularly want to thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their engagement on this bill. I got to sub in to some of the sessions, particularly later down the line, in juggling the many commitments that we have being a smaller party that often has its members moving in and out of multiple select committees at once. Something that was really clear to me was the inability of Government members to see the harm that this bill was causing to consumers’ faith in our own Government to be on their side instead of the side of big, huge corporate players—many of whom take their profits offshore at the expenses of consumers.

I think this is part of a trend that we’ve seen where the Government tells us that they’re making decisions for the benefit of the many, and then we see the detail of their legislation, and it says the exact opposite. This is a Government that is choosing to continuously make legislation for the powerful few.

There’s a whole different conversation around the need to strengthen consumer protection and simplify enforcement under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, but this is not what we’re seeing in this legislation. It’s a shame, in my view, that the retrospectivity element has sucked so much of the oxygen in a debate that should have been around genuinely enhancing consumer rights, as opposed to the debate of whether we are capitulating to the big banks.

Once again, the Green Party reiterates our position that consumers deserve access to clear information when engaging with banks when they’re taking out loans—loans that often will affect people in the longer term and their ability to make ends meet. When people end up engaging with the banks and taking out these loans, we got to remember we’re talking about people who are juggling perhaps multiple jobs to make ends meet; who often just do not have access to the support and the information that they need to engage with these big players—players that make big profits that they could be redirecting to adequately support consumers to engage adequately when they need these loans for whatever reasons they may be needed, whether it’s a personal loan or getting a mortgage, etc. Whenever somebody takes a loan from a big bank, it’s a humongous—sometimes lifelong—decision that has lifelong impacts. I think if consumers feel like they have been done wrong by one of those big players and pursues action through the courts, as a Parliament I think we should allow that process to run its course and I think we shouldn’t rush to legislate to basically try to legalise something that we know is wrong.

On the issue around the amendments—and I go back to the comments from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs around the commencement date—this once again does not fix the underlying issue. Ultimately, sure, this may be dealing with a group of people who were trying to fight the system to get justice, but it still legalises something that we know should not be happening and it will prevent future consumers from being able to take this sort of action that we’ve seen before.

I’m really hopeful that consumers will continue rising up and challenging a Government if they want a Government that rules for the many and not for the big banks. The best course of action is probably not through litigation through the courts; it’s actually through a change of Government to actually have a Government that upholds the pushback that the previous Government did in 2019 when it was recommended to basically erase these provisions and into take on the side of regular, everyday people and to put its legislative efforts into enhancing consumer protections. We did spend a humongous amount of time—and the members who are permanent members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee spent a huge amount of time—on this legislation. It feels like a waste of time for consumers to have to come to select committee to plead for the Government to not take on the side of the big banks.

Right now, as the legislation stands, the Green Party continues to be opposing it and I do not believe that our position will change simply because of a commencement date change. That’s just simply not good enough. I think the commencement date is a concession that was granted because I genuinely believe that the National Party members realise—and probably its coalition partners as well—that votes are at stake; that their own constituents’ livelihoods are at stake. This is not about fixing a piece of legislation; this is about minimising the harm that this legislation is doing to its voter base because the mum and dad investors and the mum and dad landlords—the people who this Government claims to represent—were upset. We saw that upset in the select committee stage, and I think we shouldn’t take these sorts of concessions as some sort of gracious offering from the Government. But I think it’s an acknowledgement that this bill should have never been introduced as it was to begin with, and that this bill as it stands was a betrayal to everyday people and a capitulation to huge banks. We know that they are not the ones struggling in a cost of living crisis—shareholders certainly aren’t, and the people running it certainly are not.

This goes back to the need to ensure that we have a Government that actually puts consumer protections and looks at reforms within the banking sector that benefit the many and enhanced competition at the forefront—not this piece of legislation and the package of legislation that accompanies it, which ultimately won’t be there for the people.

I go back to the contribution from the previous member, who noted one specific submitter who noted that they had voted for this Government and now feels betrayed. This is the kind of feedback that we are seeing left, right, and centre out in our communities: people who are wondering whether they got a fair deal when voting for this Government. My message to those people is: if they feel like they didn’t get a fair deal, vote them out—7 November. Thank you.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT) (16:45): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill.

I’ve listened to speeches from the Labour Party and the Green Party, and I’ll say this: the ACT Party will always support consumers if we see that consumers are hurting. On the other side, if we see businesses are hurting, we will support them as well. We want to bring a balanced approach where we are ensuring that businesses are not hurting at the cost of consumers and consumers are not hurting at the cost of businesses. We need to have that balanced approach in our marketplaces for our marketplaces to function properly. The way the penalties are being adjusted, they actually bring that kind of balance and that is why the ACT Party supports this.

As this is the second reading of this bill, I would like to talk about the select committee process. I’m not a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, but I do want to acknowledge my colleague Todd Stephenson—who is a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and all other members for working so diligently on this bill and making some really good changes in the select committee; recommending some really good changes to this bill in the select committee.

To this bill, as the Minister in charge said, attracted a reasonable number of submissions—more than 1,600 submissions were received. If I just focus on one change that the select committee has recommended, which is the most important change in this bill, that change attracted submissions from 1,500-plus individuals or organisations basically opposing that retrospective change to how the penalties would work for lenders who fail to provide certain disclosures. Here what is really good to note is that the select committee took that on board and made changes. The two class action cases, we know that the active ones which were known to the select committee at that time were excluded from the retrospective provision. It’s a really good change, and other changes are also good changes. That’s why we support this bill in the second reading. Thank you.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (16:47): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and also on behalf of Dr David Wilson to sub and speak on this bill. I’m not a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, but I will try and do what I can in terms of encapsulating our views.

First of all, what’s the bill all about? Well, it’s about streamlining the regulation of financial services and reducing compliance burdens. Of course, we’ve already heard about the transfer of regulatory responsibility from the Commerce Commission to the FMA, the Financial Markets Authority—and I will come back to that shortly.

I’ve heard a lot from the Opposition—they’ve focused very much, it seems to me, on this issue of the court cases. There were quite some discussions about that, I can say. I’m aware of some of those and some of the discomfort around them. But my understanding is that the Labour Government, as it was then, actually wanted to make sure that courts had discretion over what penalties to apply for disclosure failures, but what they didn’t do is cover the period between 2015 and 2019. Now, yes, there’s an issue of retrospectivity in there, but maybe they just overlooked it in the legislation which they passed when they did. Usually we hear from the Opposition parties that they are very, very keen on courts being able to exercise discretion—in fact, they regularly tell us that. Here it seems that they don’t want to do that. So I’m not sure about the consistency which they are displaying.

I also just wanted to touch on a couple of other things here. We support the bill and we think that credit regulation should be reasonable. We also want to get rid of any undue red tape. We also want to see a regulatory system which balances the needs of lenders and borrowers, and doesn’t unfairly penalise or benefit one or the other too much—that’s about striking balance. Also we believe in streamlining the credit laws and bringing regulatory oversight to the FMA.

Look, if I might just finish off by saying—I’ve had this conversation with Dr David Wilson; I know the people involved in this—that there have been noticeable improvements in the performance of the Financial Markets Authority under the leadership of I think it is now ex-chair Craig Stobo.

We very much hope that, looking forward, we have the kind of experience, the kind of expertise, the kind of knowledge, and the approach that Mr Stobo has brought to this very important function in the financial sector. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER (16:50): Just before I call Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, I just want people to be very careful about mentioning people who are not in the House in future speeches. It’s OK to say that you’re speaking on behalf of somebody else; I don’t want my colleagues over here to be upset by not pointing it out.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:50): I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to oppose the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill, which is, in some ways, a little bit of a shame. Like my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March has said, there are some genuinely, supposedly good aspects of this bill, particularly with some of the changes and some of the transfers of functions, etc. We’ll talk more about that in a little bit, and I think that is in some ways—actually, I’ll talk about that first.

In some ways, I think the main policies around the transfer of functions from the Consumer Commission to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), or even aligning aspects of the regulatory model under the CCCFA, the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, with the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA) is, in some ways, supposed to be, I guess, a good move towards some sort of regulatory adjustment. But, again, when we’re looking at this in conjunction with some of the other bills, and I know that today there have been questions—and the previous weeks, we’ve been speaking on the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill in terms of shifting the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and FMA functions now to the Department of Internal Affairs. There is a lot of shifting of functions, so as part of the committee stage, one of the things I will be quite interested in is what that means to the actual staffing and expertise of part of that transfer of functions from the Consumer Commission this time to the Financial Markets Authority.

I think the biggest challenge that it has presented, which in some ways tainted this bill overall, and potentially the package of bills that’s going to come through, is around this idea of retrospectivity. A retrospective change will extinguish the rights of borrowers to pursue claims for past exposure breaches between 2015 and 2019. This is specifically in relation to the class action suit, and I know a lot of them did submit on this during the committee stage, and that is Simons & Ors v ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited & ASB Bank Limited.

This is interesting because in the select committee stage, the select committee received 1,586 submissions from individuals and 48 from organisations, and it’s important to point out that, particularly when it comes to the individuals that submitted on the retrospectivity aspect of this bill, 1,530 of them opposed it and only three people supported it. That means 99.8 percent of submitters opposed the retrospectivity and yet, once again, we see the Government going through with something that does not have the public interest at heart and does not have the public at heart in its decision making.

This is something that we see over and over and over again with this Government when it comes to these retrospective changes that affect a current case or current legal proceedings in the court. We see over and over again this Government’s complete and utter disregard for the principle of comity and the separation and ability for the judiciary to act independently—

Andy Foster: Exactly, and you don’t want them to do it.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: —and for them to do the job they’re meant to be doing. This retrospectivity, Andy Foster, will destroy that. This retrospectivity is actually affecting and impeding on that principle of comity, which is something that that particular party knows all too well with a deputy leader constantly mouthing off and undermining the judiciary.

This is a persistent and ongoing pattern we see with this Government. This Government, they love to talk about victims, but not when it comes to financial victims: victims of financial scams and also abuse—let’s just say abuse—by large banks. In fact, this Government, through this bill, signals that they are going to be siding with financial abusers over your everyday New Zealanders. There are normal, everyday, ordinary people who are just trying to get on with their lives, but this Government has decided to rip them off and side with big corporations. That’s what we’re seeing with this bill: we’re seeing the Government punching down and punishing the weak and the poor in order for them to please their financial and corporate overlords. The Green Party will not stand for that.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (16:55): I feel sorry for the member that’s just sat down because clearly he hasn’t read the bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Which one?

DAN BIDOIS: Lawrence Xu-Nan. He hasn’t read the bill. He called it the “Consumer Commission”; no, it’s the Commerce Commission, firstly, and then, secondly, he talked about the FMCA—there’s no FMCA, and if the member checks the Hansard, he’ll realise he hasn’t actually read the bill.

This is a very important bill to streamline and modernise the law. It is being led by my colleague Cameron Brewer and we do just want to mention, about the retrospectivity clause, we did have a carve out for the two active cases that are in train. I thought, actually, we struck the right balance: that we applied the retrospectivity but kept those carve outs for those existing cases. I think we’ve reached the right balance in this piece of legislation and I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour) (16:56): Unlike other speakers, I’m not going to talk about this retrospectivity issue; I think we’ve had a great deal of focus on it. It is an important issue, although it was, in some ways, an issue that was sandwiched into this bill a little bit. There are some other important measures in this bill that I think it is worth talking about in terms of credit contracts and the legislation that is set up to support the little guy, really.

The interesting this is, I’ve sat on a couple of sets of credit contracts legislation, in previous Parliaments and on this one, and in those case we’ve usually had FinCap and budgeting services—so, the associations of budgeting services and financial advisers. Not the financial advisers who are doing highfalutin investment, but the financial advisers who are working with people who are in trouble and needing a hand with their finances. They’ve repeatedly come to select committee and urged for more action to be taken.

The interesting thing is that the various budget advisers, financial counsellors, and FinCap—the umbrella organisation—came and talked to the select committee. One by one by one, they said, actually, they support a lot of the work that is being done in this bill, so there’s plenty in this bill which is good work, which is being agreed on across the House in terms of trying to protect people who have, one way or another, ended up in onerous credit contracts. And it continues, a body of work that was started, as far as I know—it certainly was done when we were in Government. But, of course, that work has extended back through Government after Government after Government trying to do work to protect consumers. We can argue about the extend and the detail of it, but the objective has always been to provide better protections for consumers, and it is work that has carried on under Governments of various colours.

I guess what I can see in this bill, though, is some missed opportunities where more work could have been done to protect vulnerable consumers. I’ve had an interest in this since I first became a member of Parliament, when one of the first things that I dealt with in the first year or two, as an electorate MP, was an onerous credit contract where one of my constituents had bought a car, had been pressured into a particular loan at a particular rate. But, in fact, the only way that he could get the car was by taking the finance from the car dealer. Then he ended up with a bit of a dud car which didn’t work, and onerous debt which built up more and more and more. My staff and I worked quite hard on that case and worked hard with—I think at that stage it was the Salvation Army, to help him to get it sorted. We were able to resolve some things for him. But it did mean that I have developed a deep interest in this particular area as to how we protect vulnerable consumers.

While we’ve tidied up some stuff like the mobile truck - lending that was going on—and I’d like to pay credit, in particular, to Andrew Bayly, who was very strong on this and talked about how he had chased those trucks out of his electorate every time he saw them; frankly, I’m with Mr Bayly on that—there are some other aspects that could have been done better. FinCap has gone through them in its submission.

FinCap came along with a pretty good submission, really, and said, “Hang on a second, we need a prohibition on flex commissions.” Those are commissions where the lender or the insurer can get, kind of, extra money themselves by providing a flex commission—a little bit of extra on the top. It makes the price of the contract harder for the borrower in the first place. FinCap said could we not do some work on that, and we haven’t actually done it. This committee hasn’t adopted those suggestions, but I will be putting in some amendments at the committee stage to see if we could do that.

They wanted us to do some work—and this seems particularly onerous, where a person can enter into a credit contract to buy a car, but then the lender can, if the repayments on that car are not being met, install a disabling device; a tyre lock on the car. And, in fact, you have to pay an upfront cost that’s included in the fee for installing that device; you have to pay a regular rental payment for the device to be active, and then there’s a fee for removing the device at the end of the loan.

FinCap has gone through some of what their financial mentors have been told about these disabling devices and where they are used—cars stopped in car parks—and where fines and towing costs have compounded the issue; cases where a person has taken their child to a hospital and the car is in a hospital car park and then it gets disabled there. So there’s something a bit—there’s a word I want to use but I mustn’t use it in this House. But there is something onerous going on that means that vulnerable people are being exploited again by these lenders who are—well, they’re not the most reputable of lenders. They’re not like the lenders that people in this House would normally be able to access, like banks. They’re kind of the less reputable lenders. So that’s a shame that we didn’t perhaps do some work on that within the context of this bill.

We could also have maybe done some work on debt collection and the extent to which debts can be passed over to debt agencies who then impose onerous costs as well; so a whole series of areas where more work could have been done. The one that I would particularly have liked to have seen some work done on was on Afterpay. Now, in the previous set of Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act legislation that went through the House, we did do some work on Afterpay, and now a lot of the buy now, pay later operators who operate will only extend a certain amount of buy now, pay later credit in the first place. A person has to establish a good record of repaying them before a person can get more buy now, pay later schemes. That sounds like there’s protection in there, and buy now pay, later is a good service. Madam Speaker, you and I probably remember putting clothes on lay-by or shoes on lay-by in our younger days.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: So do I, Madam Speaker. Of course, the difference with buy now, pay later is that a person gets the goods in their hands straight away. I’m not convinced this is a great idea compared to the old-fashioned lay-bys.

I was in Palmerston North a couple of weeks ago doing some visits.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: I’m sorry to hear that.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I enjoyed my time in Palmerston North, thank you very much, Kieran McAnulty. Tangi Utikere and I visited Moneywise there—some of the financial counsellors there—and they said, “Well, look, buy now, pay later schemes can work well” but they’ve come across clients who have four or five or six or seven or eight buy now, pay later loans; they get rid of one only to get another and they build up and up and up. Not just that, but they have people who are using buy now, pay later for everyday consumable items: food and petrol. I feel as though those are some of the schemes that are quite good for buying shoes and clothes, but perhaps not so good for buying consumables like that. So I do think we need some more regulation in the buy now, pay later space, particularly when it comes to vulnerable borrowers. There’s something that needs to be done there which it would have been good to have seen this legislation address.

So as I said, there’s plenty of good stuff in this bill and when we have FinCap and the financial counsellors coming and saying, “Actually, this bill has got some good stuff in it.”, you have to take them at their word and believe them. They are saying, “We’re on the right track.” But they are also saying, “Could we please go further?”

I think that brings us to the point of who this legislation should support. Now, obviously, we need to have legislation that is fair to the lenders—fair to the businesses. We need to get the right measures in place so that business can be transacted reasonably easily. But it also has to be fair to the consumers, and there’s a basic principle that comes into play there that if we have to legislate and we have a choice in who that legislation is going to favour—it doesn’t need to be excessive, but we should always favour the weaker party.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (17:07): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill is about streamlining the financial services regulatory landscape. It’s about removing unnecessary compliance costs and improving outcomes for consumers. This bill is about fixing the basics and building the future for, amongst other things, making it easier for Kiwis to access affordable finance.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (17:07): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Gee, what a hard act to follow there, Suze.

Otirā tēnā rā tātou katoa e te Whare. Kei te tū ake awau i te whakahē i tēnei pire mā te Pāti Reipa.

[However, greetings to us all in the House. I stand to oppose this bill on behalf of the Labour Party.]

As I traverse Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and, indeed, Aotearoa, very few people approach me to talk about credit contracts and even fewer have been reading the consumer finance Act. But what whānau in my electorate do understand is that while they’re struggling to get ahead in Aotearoa, while they’re struggling to make a living, struggling to find good housing, access to education, and good healthcare, banks are continuing to make massive profits. While whānau are struggling, banks are still making massive profits—and they don’t understand that.

So I just want to do a big mihi to my colleagues, and colleagues across the House, who decided to protect the rights of consumers. That’s a win for the people who matter, the people who put us here, and that’s actually a win for Parliament to demonstrate that when it matters, we can prioritise the people who put us here.

Suze Redmayne: Well said.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Thank you, Suze. Borrowing—often, for a lot of people I know—represents security. It represents giving their whānau some hope. It represents putting a roof over their heads. I know the Minister talked about excessive risk aversion, just before he said, “Pause, for conclusion”, and I understand that a lot of people will do whatever it takes to get the loan to get their whānau a car to get from A to B. They’ll do whatever it takes to get their whānau into a home. But, often, when the risks of that lending are not fully explained to them, all their dreams are shattered. Not only are they left without the home and without the vehicle, they are still left with the shattered dreams and with the debt. They are far worse off than they would have been with the disappointment of getting refused credit.

Currently, we have whānau in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti who are using Afterpay to buy groceries. They’re using Afterpay, so they’re borrowing to buy the essentials just to get by. And while, as I said, I can understand the desire to just get your lending and get on with it; we also have to think about what’s at risk for everyday people across Aotearoa. It’s not just low-income earners and beneficiaries who are at risk of this. When the Hon Dr Deborah Russell mentioned lay-by, which actually was even a thing when I was young. There was also a thing—a professional couple that I know became victim to—called balloon payments. So here they were paying off their late-model vehicle, had the means to do that, lo and behold, just when they thought it was going to be the last instalment, they were hit with a massive final payment, effectively paying for the vehicle, probably, thrice at that point. So while I can understand that people want to get on with their borrowing, I think we also have to be mindful of the real-life risks for everyday New Zealanders here; people for whom borrowing represents a dream for their whānau.

And since we’re talking about risk aversion, something I think we could move forward as a Parliament, if we really want to have some benefit for Māori, is, perhaps, start looking closely at lending on things like multiply owned Māori land, especially when people have the means to service the mortgages and the loans for that. That is something that could have some real impact, because people can already borrow according to the criteria now.

So koirā tāku [that’s mine]—just to think of, once again, the parties who got the win for the consumer and to be mindful of what is at risk when we fast track some processes. Kei te whakahē au i tēnei pire.

[I do not agree with this bill.]

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (17:12): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill is about reducing the compliance burden for making simple transactions and lending; for people to get on and get things done that they want. This is a practical and responsible bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (17:13): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. You know, there’s a division, I think, when it comes to dealing with credit, between the National Party and the Labour Party, because, here, in the Labour Party, we understand that people are, in fact, vulnerable, and whilst you can blow the trumpet of individual responsibility and free choice, when your baby’s crying and it needs food and you haven’t got cash to pay for that food, there’s not a lot of choice there. And if you’re going to put that baby formula on Afterpay, if you can put it on Afterpay, or on your credit card, you will, because that’s, you know, a natural human demand. And, essentially, that kind of situation is what the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, in this amendment, should be aimed at addressing.

It’s worth just recognising, at the outset there, this is a moving feast in a number of ways. Certainly, when I first came into Parliament the issue was loan sharks. These were lenders who would lend to people in vulnerable circumstances. We saw instances, on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, of interest rates sometimes in excess of 600 percent per annum. They might be a loan of 200 bucks for six weeks, but when you saw that it was a $200 interest payment and worked out exactly how much interest there was, it might sound like it’s not a lot of money, but it was truly exorbitant and often couldn’t be repaid—and then, of course, it would compound. And that was running into huge issues.

The other thing, which I think is worth recognising, just in terms of landscape, is the change in technology space. We see, for example—Afterpay’s a good example of that—where, essentially, an app-based payment system allows someone to have a continuous stream of credit. Whilst Afterpay and other—I shouldn’t just say Afterpay, because there are a number of providers out there and they’re all pretty much of a muchness—whilst they would say, “Well this is an interest-free payment.”, the fact of the matter is that, firstly, there are merchant fees that drive costs up overall; and second, that there are penal provisions—there are penalties if you don’t repay. That Government over there recently passed a rule which said they don’t have to be reasonable penalties in buy now, pay later transactions.

Then we’ve got this piece of legislation here, and, I’ve got to be honest, when I first saw this and I first discussed it with people, it appeared that the Government was retrospectively changing the law to let banks—two of our biggest banks—off lawsuits, for hundreds of millions of dollars, that consumers were bringing. I kind of didn’t believe it. I was like, “No, no, this is not some kind of authoritarian state where you change the rules at any moment because it favours your mates.” I was like, “No. I know it’s the National Party, but they’re not like that. They’re the party who talk about rule of law, who talk about the protection of property rights.” But you know, as I read it, it was explained to me, and I spoke to people who were involved in it—it was true. It was true that the National Party was sponsoring the bill, the Minister was sponsoring the bill, in this House, that would change the law retrospectively to strip consumers of rights to hundreds of millions of dollars in favour of fat cat banks.

Camilla Belich: Meow!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: That’s right. I’m not sure how that’s going to come up on Hansard.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was wondering that myself.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: But, you know, it really did shock me.

Look, I’m glad to see that the select committee—and, you know, huge ups to the thousands of people who submitted on this; not only the academics and people in the industry, but also those ordinary people who are like, “Are you for real?”

Of course, to put it in context, the rule was—a rule created by the National Government, the Key Government—that if the bank didn’t disclose to you, didn’t give you the full information about your loan, including how much interest you had to pay, then the cost of credit, which is pretty much the interest bill, is suspended until they disclose it correctly. Now, the banks didn’t do that. They made mistakes about, you know, what the interest rate was and what the repayment amounts were and all kinds of things. The rule was clear: if you made a mistake in your disclosure, if you didn’t disclose properly, you couldn’t charge interest. They had, of course, been charging interest, but they’ve been doing so illegally, and, in fact, they owed money. This what the court case that was recently decided against ANZ had found. They were obliged and are obliged to repay the consumers the interest that they wrongly charged; that they charged in breach of law.

Now, the original version of this bill, though, would have done away with that rule entirely and retrospectively. I’m glad to see that the select committee has come around to the position that, at least in respect of those two cases—the two cases that were already filed—that that shouldn’t be the case. It does still make it retrospective in respect of, and we know that there are other cases out there. We know that some of the smaller banks have also done this, but it looks like they’re actually going to get off the hook, and that’s not a good thing.

The other thing is this: now, the way the rule is being changed is that the borrower has to show, firstly, that there’s been a non-disclosure, a breach of the disclosure rules; then they have to prove that they suffered loss or damage by the failure; and then—and this is even weirder—must show that it’s just inequitable to make an order.

Now, in what case do you have to show not only that you’ve suffered loss and that there’s been a breach in a contract but also that it’s just not fair? That’ not how contract law works. They had a promise to keep, they broke it, you suffered loss, they pay. So this “just inequitable” addition is entirely surplus. I have real problems with this bill, as you can no doubt see. The fact of the matter is that the bill in a number of ways improves the law, and that’s good. And, look, the National Party actually have a pretty good track record on understanding that central to our financial markets is a good credit market, and underpinning that is a fair credit market—and that’s not what this creates—and a certain credit market, one where people can predict what the rules are. One of the basic ideas of the rule of law is that the rules that are in place today will apply to things that happen today. You won’t do something today and two months later the rules are changed under you, and you discover that the contracts you entered into, the obligations you agreed to, are entirely different. So there are some real problems with that.

The disclosure rules themselves are really good, and I want to make it clear disclosure is actually one of the most important and useful parts of the Credit Contracts Act regime, because at the centre of it is that you want people to know what they’re getting into, and not in some confused way but in a relatively simple and transparent way. The classic example is to say, “OK, you’re borrowing $500,000 and you’ve got it for 15 years at X percent. That means the total cost of credit will be such and such.” I can’t do it in my head but it’s going to be like $800,000 or $900,000. That lets people know exactly what they’re going to pay in the long run. Your payments are due on this date or these dates and will be this much—that’s what disclosure does, and it’s really important because it’s not necessarily that straightforward if someone says, “Yes, you can borrow $20,000 at 15.5 percent, repayable in, you know, equal weekly instalments.”, for people to know what that means and what the actual financial impact is.

That is why this provision, the provision that was still being retrospectively changed, was important—because it said disclosure is so critically important that we want a relatively tough response when disclosure doesn’t occur. That’s why there was a presumption of no cost of credit if disclosure wasn’t made.

This is a retrograde step and it weakens protections for consumers, and it still has a retrospective element, so it’s pretty disappointing that that’s come from the National Party, the so-called protector of rights and freedoms. Not on this occasion, not at all, not one bit.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (17:23): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is all about fixing the basics so that build a future for Kiwi families, Kiwi families that could be moving into their own house today but have been stopped by rules that are onerous and put unnecessary obligations particularly on lenders. We saw back in 2024 in the first round where there was bad lending and the old rules where you had to go, “Oh, I bought McDonalds this week and I got Netflix. Can I have a loan now?”, and it was just ridiculous. This is now about the impact that it had on putting rules on directors and they felt accountable to the point where they wouldn’t give loans that were affordable, safe, and good. We want to fix the basics so that these Kiwi families can go and build a house, so they can build their own future in their own home. That’s why we’re doing this. I commend the bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Vote Correction

Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Musterer—Green) (17:25): I seek leave to correct a vote in order to cast Tākuta Ferris’ vote against Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 to 3, and clauses 1 to 3 standing part of the Environment (Disestablishment of the Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill, during the committee stage of that bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The record will be corrected.

Bills

Public Service Amendment Bill

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (17:26): on behalf of the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government: I move, That the Public Service Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill will ensure that the Public Service can efficiently and effectively serve the Government of the day to deliver maximum value for all New Zealanders. Public Service chief executives and their agencies are entrusted with significant taxpayer funding and have a critical role in delivering the Government’s priorities. The Government, on behalf of all New Zealanders, has a legitimate interest in how the Public Service Commissioner is driving performance across the system. The changes in this bill are about sharpening focus, clarifying responsibilities, and lifting performance while ensuring that the Public Service acts with professionalism, accountability, and integrity.

This starts with refocusing the statutory purpose of the Public Service to get back to basics, delivering service and outcomes for taxpayers while supporting constitutional and democratic government. This focus does not change our commitment to the political neutrality of the Public Service and the provision of free and frank advice. These are enduring principles of our democracy and they are retained in the Act unchanged. Nor does it mean that long-term thinking will not be a core feature of the Public Service. The Act will retain the fundamental principle of stewardship and chief executives will still be required to provide support to their Minister by providing advice on the long-term implications of policies. However, a high-performing Public Service always starts with people, and the way that we appoint Public Service leaders and hold them to account matters. As such, this bill reaffirms the principle of merit-based appointments. It clarifies chief executive responsibilities, and it improves the mechanisms for performance management.

Merit-based appointments mean drawing from the widest possible talent pool and selecting the best person for the job—not the most familiar or the candidate of least resilience but the person with the right skills, the right experience, and the right leadership qualities to deliver.

To support this, the bill will remove the option of automatic reappointments for public chief executives and that will mean that all future reappointments will be subject to a contestable process. The bill will also strengthen the provisions around chief executive and agency performance management, requiring the commissioner to publish a clear framework for the performance review of chief executives and codifying the existing practice of consulting relevant Ministers when the commissioner is setting and reviewing performance expectations and key performance indicators. This will increase the robustness of the process and drive confidence and transparency for Ministers and for the public.

These changes are not a politicisation of the Public Service—oh no. Chief executives will still be appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the commissioner or their deputy. The commissioner will still be required to act independently when making decisions about individual chief executives and, like any other Public Service leader, they will still be bound by the principles of political neutrality and merit-based appointments.

The bill will provide a specific mandate for performance improvement reviews of public sector agencies and reintroduce key positions, allowing the commissioner or other system leaders to play a role in the appointment and performance management for key back-office positions such as those in finance or digital leadership.

The Public Service must also maintain the trust and confidence of the public and we need zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour or for wrongdoing. The bill will require chief executives to notify the commissioner before undertaking investigations into serious misconduct of senior leaders, to ensure the timely advice about how standards of integrity and conduct should apply, and for agencies to report annually on such investigations overall.

The bill also removes unnecessary prescription and duplication. It removes provisions relating to freedom from bias and remuneration and diversity inclusion in the Act. Most of these objectives are already substantially provided for in other laws, including the Human Rights Act, the Employment Relations Act, the Equal Pay Act, and the good employer obligations already embedded in the Public Service Act itself. The Government considers these objectives are something more appropriately addressed through the particular Government of the day’s workforce policy statement.

Removing these provisions does not remove our commitment to the Public Service drawing from that widest possible talent pool and eliminating bias in recruitment. These things are the essence of merit-based appointment. Agencies will still be required to treat employees fairly and properly, still be required to maintain equal opportunity programmes, and still be required to recognise the employment requirements of different people, as they should.

The bill also removes the need for each Public Service agency to prepare an individual long-term insights briefing in favour of one briefing prepared by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) on behalf of the Public Service. DPMC will provide guidance to the public sector to support capability and long-term thinking, but we do not think that we need 34 separate briefings with such considerable overlap and duplication. Rather, we think that it is better to ensure a focus on such thinking or enable parliamentary scrutiny of the executive to come from DPMC.

Finally, the Public Service must be better prepared to manage for increasing strategic competition and risk. While it must continue to innovate and adapt to new technologies, this bill will empower the Public Service Commissioner to protect the Public Service from malicious or disruptive actors by restricting access to specific products, services, or vendors where necessary to protect national security or national interests.

The Public Service exists to serve the Government of the day and to serve taxpayers—the people who fund and who rely on such services. This bill provides a targeted, practical set of amendments to restore purpose, discipline, and professionalism to the Public Service while preserving its constitutional role as a politically neutral institution. It focuses the Public Service on results, not on processes.

With this bill, we will have a Public Service that is clear in its role, strong in its leadership, and better focused on its core mission to serve the Government of the day with the efficiency and integrity that New Zealanders deserve. I commend the bill to the House.

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

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:33): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, this is a dark day for New Zealand’s Public Service. I want to take a moment in this third reading of the Public Service Amendment Bill to do a shout-out to New Zealand’s public servants. Under this Government, they have lost their jobs, they have undergone restructuring, and now they’re facing the very clear risk of the politicisation of something that is integral to New Zealand’s democracy.

We do not support this bill, and I’ll go through the reasons why. This bill could have been an opportunity for a bipartisan project into how our Public Service can best serve New Zealanders and can best provide the neutral professional advice that they have provided for over 110 years in New Zealand. Instead, this bill is an attack on some of the greatest achievements of the Public Service, and there is a real risk that it will take New Zealand backwards in terms of what it achieves, and I’ll go through some of those things.

I want to talk first about something which has been brushed over, I think, throughout the readings on this bill and also through the select committee process. That is, the fact that in this bill, the long-term insights briefing—there used to be 34 of those provided to the House; usefully used by this House to scrutinise the Government—will be turned back to one long-term insights briefing that is compiled by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. I just think we need to go into what those long-term insights briefings actually look at, because some of the subject matters that the long-term insights briefings have recently looked at are incredibly important for the long-term strategic thinking of this country.

Some of the most recent examples that I just found when I was looking for some of the already published ones on the internet were things like technology in Corrections and in Defence; productivity—a huge issue for New Zealand; long-term resilience to hazards; Public Service integrity; sustainable and resilient fiscal policy through economic shocks; precision diagnosis in health; the future of New Zealand’s food sector; how biodiversity can thrive; national security; and long-term insights into imprisonment. I can’t think of a more relevant list of issues that New Zealand needs to be looking at. Sadly, because of this bill, those types of papers will not be produced and put before select committees. They will not be published for the public.

You cannot tell me with a straight face—not you, Madam Speaker. One cannot be told or convinced that DPMC is going to go through all of those topics to the same extent as they are now. This is a clear loss in long-term thinking in New Zealand and a clear loss for scrutiny of this Parliament.

Don’t just take our word for it on the Opposition; listen to the Clerk of the House. When the Clerk gave their submission to the Governance and Administration Committee, they said that this would be a loss of opportunity for the scrutiny of the executive. As I said at the beginning, it’s a sad day for the New Zealand Public Service and the New Zealand public.

Another key change in this bill which I strongly disagree with is the fact that up until today—and hopefully this bill won’t pass today, but up until the passage of this bill—chief executives have been required to tackle pay equity. One of the reasons that they have done this is the Public Service has been a leader in pay inequality. Actually, it was the first anywhere in New Zealand to have a specific bill on equal pay. The Public Service has always been a leader on equal pay and it has always had a commitment to leading equal pay. The progress that we’ve seen in the reduction of the gender pay gap has been, in the main, due to the work that has been undertaken by the Public Service. This bill takes that backwards. It takes away the requirement for chief executives to make progress on pay equity.

This doesn’t need to be repeated, but I will repeat it: this goes just after the Government has taken away pay equity from thousands of New Zealand women. Shame on this Government for another step backwards for equal rights for women.

Another thing that this bill does is it gets rid of the diversity and inclusion requirements in the Public Service. We scrutinised this requirement at the Governance and Administration Committee. I asked officials, “Can you point to a single example when a public servant has not been appointed on the basis of merit?” They could not give one example. So I ask the Government: what is the basis for removing this excellent requirement that the Public Service represents the community it serves? It seems basic to me that that would be an ideal that we’d have of a Public Service. We can’t find a single example where that has not occurred, so why are we changing the law? What will this do? It’s likely to decrease the diversity of our Public Service workforce. It’s likely to decrease the reflection that New Zealanders see when they look towards their public servants. So I think that that in and of itself is shameful.

It also leads to the potential for politicisation. We heard submissions from the Human Rights Commission and academics and people who represent Public Service workers about how this was a retrograde step. We heard about the fact that the PAG group, the Prime Minister’s Advisory Group, would now be appointed on fixed-term contracts, leading to lack of job security for them, and the increased likelihood that they may be minded to give political advice which is not free and frank. I must say, there’s no evidence that that has occurred at all to date, but this bill does make that situation and set up the conditions to make that more likely.

Also for chief executives, they have to go through a new recruitment process every five years. If I was a chief executive and I was looking to be recruited and I had to impress the Minister, I just cannot believe that it wouldn’t go through the chief executive’s mind to try and reflect the politics of the Government of the day. I think that’s a shame, because I think that New Zealanders want a free and frank Public Service. They want political neutrality. It’s an important part of our democracy. That is another thing that is happening in this bill which I think is deeply shameful.

Now, when we talk about public servants, I think it’s really important that we are not under the misapprehension that we are just talking about people who live in Wellington.

A lot of public servants do live in Wellington, but this is something that is affecting New Zealanders throughout the country. I live in Auckland, and 30 percent of central government employees live in Auckland. I also looked at who is employed in the Public Service in our regions, and I think there are 1,627 in Northland; 464 in Taranaki; in Hawke’s Bay, 1,502; in Nelson, which happens to be in the South Island, 501; in Otago, 1523; Southland, 663—and it goes on. People around New Zealand are part of our Public Service; they are doing an excellent job, and this bill is really challenging the type of work that they do it, but unfortunately not in a bipartisan way.

I want to reflect on that, too, if I can. This bill does go to the very heart of what a public servant is meant to be. We heard from a number of academics on how unfortunate it was that this was not used as an opportunity to come together across this Parliament—at a time when democratic institutions are being challenged again and again throughout the world—and to reaffirm New Zealand’s leadership in providing a free, fair, frank, politically neutral Public Service. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

This bill was brought to the House by the previous Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, Judith Collins; it’s now under the stewardship of the new Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, Paul Goldsmith. I encourage that Minister, as he’s reading his papers, his briefing to the incoming Minister, to think, is this really the start he wants to make as Minister for the Public Service—putting in place a bill that not only gets rid of important diversity and inclusion mechanisms; it gets rid of long-term thinking in the public service. It makes it more likely that there is a challenge to political neutrality; it gets rid of job security; it takes away pay equity.

That is not something that I would want on my record as Minister for the Public Service, and I encourage the current Minister to look at this bill and think about it and decide whether he actually wants to go through with what is clearly a backwards step that will take not only New Zealand backwards, and not only the Public Service backwards, but in fact the very essence of what makes New Zealand a wonderful, independent democracy. I cannot commend this bill to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (17:42): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re not supporting this bill—we’ve made that extremely clear—and I want to commend my colleague Francisco Hernandez, who has been leading the fight against this bill, both in the Governance and Administration Committee and out in the community. We support the comments made by many submitters, including the Public Service Association, that this is indeed a backwards step. I think there are several elements that I want to capture in my speech as to why I think this does not deliver better outcomes for everyday people.

I think the term “efficiency” does not accurately, in my view, describe the fact that ultimately what this bill actually ends up doing is undermining the public sector’s drive towards achieving, for example things like pay equity and closing the gender and ethnic pay gaps. It tries to, in my view, paint these changes as wanting to create a Public Service that is based on merit, but as the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, pointed out, when evidence was sought that appointments were not being made on the basis of merit, there was no evidence that could be presented to support that argument.

What I find particularly concerning is that the Government is wanting to dismantle provisions to achieve like pay equity or to work towards, for example, better representing disabled people within the public sector, while at the very same time, Ministers are getting found in the courts for unlawfully appointing people to lead the Human Rights Commission. I think there is a bit of a disconnect between what they have aimed for the Public Service, but then what they are actually doing themselves when it comes to appointing specific roles.

One of the things that I think it worth mentioning, and this was touched on by the previous speaker, is the downgrading of long-term insights briefings. I want to acknowledge the Clerk and the Office of the Clerk for their submission on this, because we do also agree that the shifting of these long-term insights briefings from dozens of agencies to just the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) will actually also represent backwards steps for adequate scrutiny.

These long-term insights briefing represent the ability for agencies to provide a long-term vision that then, yeah, sure, parliamentarians can scrutinise. These long-term insights briefings may contain nuggets of information and goals that perhaps not every MP in this House will agree with, but they serve as a blueprint for MPs to then be able to scrutinise that very same direction, those very same goals, and whether the long-terms insights and goals that those agencies have actually marry up to political parties’ different objectives.

I think particularly of first-term MPs in their first scrutiny week and their ability to scrutinise Government; those documents serve as a really useful tool. I don’t think parliamentarians should be expected to come into this place with a full breadth of knowledge of every agency and every goal that every agency has—I don’t think that’s reasonable. Those documents actually support adequate scrutiny and actually support a much more representative democracy and Parliament by enabling people from all backgrounds to engage on the long-term goals of different agencies. To simply pretend that DPMC will have the capacity those long-term goals—I don’t think it’s adequate.

When I’m door-knocking out in the electorate of Mt Albert, I often hear people wanting a cross-partisan approach and long-term vision for our Government agencies. I think the downgrading of these long-term insights briefings is against the feedback that I think many of us receive, no matter our party colours, and this downgrading is really, really problematic.

I talked a bit about the issue around pay equity and inclusion clauses. Now, this whole debate around DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—I think, unfortunately, has moved away from a conversation about how could, for example, make our workplaces more accessible for disabled people. For example, how can we create workplaces that are genuinely able to accommodate neurodivergent people? How can we create workplaces that can better accommodate people with invisible disabilities—or visible? How can we make sure that our workplaces, our literal physical spaces, are accessible for people who may need to use a wheelchair, or who may even be injured. Those disabilities may not be lifelong.

Instead, we’ve had this shift from those issues to imported culture wars, and these sorts of debates have become less about empowerment and removing barriers and more about claims of efforts being made to appoint people not on the basis of merit. When you don’t have policies in place that genuinely include disabled people, we inherently default to exclusion. Disabled people particularly, I think—and I want to echo the Disabled Persons Assembly that these approaches to remove barriers to disabled people are, and I quote, “essential to delivering fair and effective public services that are sensitive to the needs of all New Zealanders. The public service does its job well and is legitimate because it represents our diverse country”. Achieving this, in my view, is simply about having a Public Service that every New Zealander could see themselves working in and serving the needs of people and the front lines.

On pay equity—the goal, I would say, of every workplace should be around closing and eliminating the gender pay gap. I particularly remember, in my first term, canvassing the efforts that were made by different agencies around (a) even identifying gender and ethnic pay gaps, and (b) addressing them. I think the changes on clauses 21, 34, 39, and 46 are counterproductive to achieving these goals. We know that we cannot just default to assuming that the gender and ethnic pay gaps will close or be eliminated just through the status quo, but that we need policies in place that help address these. Public sector agencies have done, I think, quite good work in leading the way on this. The removal of these references around equity and pay equity, in my view, are also deeply, deeply problematic.

Now my colleague Francisco Hernandez has, in his differing view that he put on our behalf, also noted that the removal and the deletion of references around successive Governments’ long-term public interests are also problematic. This goes back to something that I think many people pointed out and which I kind of touched on at the beginning: that not having references around long-term public interest defaults to the short-term thinking that often leads to decisions being made without future generations being taken into account. In this Parliament, I think that is particularly problematic because we have three-year terms, which means that decisions that are not made with the long-term public interest are made in particularly short-term thinking because Governments try to then create things that they can see outcomes in the short term without necessarily always reflecting on long-term benefits.

An example of this, I would say, would be the tax cuts that were delivered under this term of Government, where, sure, some people—particularly those on higher incomes—may see some short-term gains, but we know that those short-term gains have come at the long-term expense of the ability for public services to deliver for everyday people. When we don’t have public services that are mandated to take that approach of long-term thinking and, particularly, long-term public interest, we also degrade the ability to keep public services for the public good. We also open the way for political agendas that may deem to take some of these public services into the private sector, which, as the evidence points out, hasn’t resulted in better outcomes or affordable services for everyday people.

Just to close off, I want to commend all the organisations that submitted on this bill. I think this is one of those bills that, unless you have worked in the Public Service, serving people, it can be particularly difficult to get your head around what the language means in terms of actual outcomes, in terms of goals, and in terms of agendas, but I think submitters have captured their concerns extremely well.

Once again, the Green Party stands with the Public Service workers who I know come to work every day wanting to do well for their community and thinking of that very same long-term public interest. I know that many of them will continue to hold those values, but my concern is that the people at the top will, due to this, now not be able to reflect them. Thank you.

SIMON COURT (ACT) (17:53): The ACT Party supports this bill because at its core, it’s about restoring focus to the Public Service. It should not be controversial to say the Public Service exists to serve the democratically elected Government of the day and to deliver quality services for New Zealanders, but after the last few years, apparently, this has to be written back into the law. Too many New Zealanders are looking at the Public Service today and asking a very fair question: with all of these extra staff—tens of thousands hired under the previous Labour and Green Government—why did results get worse and why are we still not getting the services our taxpayer dollars are paying for?

The purpose of the Public Service is straightforward: deliver efficient services, support the Government, act professionally and demonstrate at all times political neutrality, and, above all, focus on outcomes for New Zealanders paying the bills for the Public Service. That is what this legislation reinforces.

ACT has long argued that New Zealanders deserve a Public Service based on competence, advancement, and merit, not ideology and not identity politics, as the member Camilla Belich was championing in her speech. The taxpayer does not care what box a public servant ticks on a diversity spreadsheet. They care whether they can see meaningful changes in their own lives and the lives of their families based on the work that Public Service is doing, and this bill makes important changes to deliver on that. And that is what New Zealanders have voted for these coalition parties in Government to do, and that is what we are doing today.

This bill reinforces that political neutrality is paramount, and merit-based appointments are the only way to advance in the public sector. It strengthens performance expectations for chief executives and clarifies responsibilities for the Public Service. Frankly, all this is long overdue because under Labour and the Greens we saw a Public Service that was distracted. It was not delivering for ordinary New Zealanders trying to get ahead.

ACT believes in a simple proposition: New Zealand works best when people are judged on their ability and the results they deliver, not on their identity, and the Public Service is meant to do just that. ACT is proud to support this legislation because it moves New Zealand back towards a culture of responsibility, professionalism, and service. It puts the focus back where it belongs: on the needs of New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 May 2026.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.56 p.m.