Wednesday, 20 May 2026

Wednesday, 20 May 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

TEANAU TUIONO (Assistant Speaker) (14:00): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kīngi, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

[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 and humility, for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Presentation

Petitions

SPEAKER (14:00): Five petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK (14:01):

Petition of Juressa Lee requesting that the House urge the Government not to sign an agreement with the United States to facilitate priority access to minerals

petition of Mathews Jose requesting that the House urge the Associate Minister of Immigration to allow Aidhan Nithan to remain in New Zealand

petition of Reza Parvizi requesting that the House urge the Prime Minister to propose to invite exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to address the House about developments in Iran

petition of Russell Killgour requesting that the House urge the Government to put a hold on the Kāinga Ora development on Wellington Street, Pukekohe and undertake an assessment as to whether this land would be better utilised for expansion of Parkside Specialist School

petition of Trevarr McCarthy requesting that the House urge the Government to conduct a transparent, formal review of the data and modelling used in the child support formula.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

Papers

SPEAKER (14:01): Ministers have delivered four papers.

CLERK (14:02):

Government responses to the petition of Stephen Lincoln, the petition of Tree of Humanity for All, and the petition of Fiona Legae

report of the Attorney-General, under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

Select Committee Reports

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

CLERK (14:02):

Report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Controller and Auditor-General, Draft Annual Plan 2026-27

report of the Justice Committee on the review briefing on the 2024-25 annual review of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Long-Term Insights Briefing 2025

SPEAKER: The reports on the Controller and Auditor-General’s draft annual plan, the review briefing, and the long-term insights briefing are all set down for consideration.

No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Regulation

Question No. 1

Todd Stephenson: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No problem.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (14:02) to the Minister for Regulation: What announcements has he made on the state of regulation in New Zealand?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Minister for Regulation) (14:03): Today, I released a piece of work from the Ministry for Regulation that describes the regulatory landscape that New Zealanders face. This has involved using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to, actually, count the number of regulators, which was previously, unbelievably, unknown. There’s 267 regulators in this country—that is one for every group of people the size of the town of Feilding, and that may explain why New Zealanders feel that when they seek to get something done, the process of getting permission, understanding what is required, and ongoing—[Interruption] I beg your pardon. You guys have got an opportunity to learn something, and you can’t even concentrate for a moment. That is exactly the kind of information that’s required, and if it was paid more attention, we wouldn’t be in the regulatory mess that holds New Zealanders back today.

Todd Stephenson: What are some of the ways the regulatory landscape has grown?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The way that we’ve ended up with so many regulators, over such a long period of time, is in part because, in this Parliament, when something goes wrong, politicians want to be seen to do something, and we get new laws coming about that way. Sometimes, it is the people who are in the regulatory agencies who, like all humans everywhere, want to expand their power and resources, and they grow that way. Other times, perversely, it’s the regulated parties themselves who are seeking to find more protection from competition, which they seek from regulators. But what we do know is that the only people that should be seeking regulation are New Zealanders who have problems that can’t be solved in any other way than Government intervention. That should be the purpose, and this report allows us to set a direction towards that outcome.

Todd Stephenson: What is an example of the complex regulatory environment the Ministry for Regulation’s work has revealed?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: To give what should be a simple example, is the regulation of dogs in this country, which, as it turns out, is regulated by five different agencies: Internal Affairs, Primary Industries, Health, Conservation, and Justice. Amongst those, there are 11 Acts of Parliament to administer that regulate dogs. Then you find that there are several other agencies, from various types of rangers, authorised offices, the Police, SPCA, Department of Conservation staff, and public health. Now, to have that many people involved in a relatively simple area, many people would say is barking.

Todd Stephenson: What is the Government going to do about reforming the regulatory landscape?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The landscape outlined by this AI-driven process to actually just identify all the regulators harassing New Zealanders trying to get stuff done, becomes a map for a journey. The journey is a place where you only have to deal with one person and only one door to knock on to get something done. That saves taxpayer money and fees for those regulated parties, so that we return to something that actually this country was built upon: that is the simple idea that each of us have the authority and power to act in our lives, to solve our problems for ourselves and those that we care about, instead of being constantly restrained and infantilised by endless procedure, red tape, and regulation that has disconnected effort and reward, because there’s too much compliance activity and nowhere near enough productive activity in this country.

Rail

Question No. 2

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) (14:07) to the Minister for Rail: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Rail) (14:07): Yes, including our statement that if trains turn up on time, customers use them. As the network and rolling-stock reliability improves, so does KiwiRail’s profitability and the share of rail moving New Zealand goods. KiwiRail’s half-year results show the evidence: $73 million in profit, exceeding its target, and volumes up 7 percent versus road lifting by 2 percent. That shows freight is moving from road to rail. The network is in a far better condition thanks to our changing the law to fund rail infrastructure like State highways, with iterative, prudent investments made each year to rebuild the network, and this is an industry that’s regaining its purpose and its confidence, and more importantly it’s doing so in service of our country.

Jenny Marcroft: Does he stand by his statement that rail freight is a solution within the fuel response plan?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, because rail freight is 2.5 times more fuel efficient than trucks, on average. In plain terms, that translates to avoiding 14,000 litres of fuel by using a train from Auckland to Palmerston North instead of by truck. After all, being Green is a rational economic choice, requiring none of the eye-rolling, virtue-signalling nonsense shown by some. This country needs every part of its transport system—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Woke trains!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —to serve its economy. Well, we got trains back on track, and they’re working, unlike when you guys were there. This country needs every part of its transport system to serve its economy; roads, rails, and coastal. The idea that one should be favoured at the expense of another would be economic idiocy, but, thankfully, those arguments don’t last much longer than a lobbyist’s lunch. Instead, we want competition based on reliability and price.

Jenny Marcroft: Does he stand by his statement that Interislander reliability has vastly improved?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Most certainly. In fact, the Interislander scheduled reliability is near 100 percent. This is a yawning attraction of a difference from the bad old days of Ministers waging their fingers after ferry breakdowns while nothing changed. Thankfully, common sense is back in charge. In response to our expectations—

Hon Willie Jackson: Tangi’s got the answer.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —KiwiRail has righted the ship by boosting its asset management systems and made some investments. And why Willie Jackson is burbling on, letting the wind blow his tongue around, I don’t know. As a result, sailings cancelled due to mechanical faults have dropped from 70 percent of all sailings in 2021 to 1 percent in 2025: from 70 percent down to 1 percent. Service reliability was 97 percent in 2025, a major improvement of only 81 percent of services running on schedule in 2021 and 83 percent in 2022. That’s the progress we’re making; the charts are all there, and it’s all great news.

Jenny Marcroft: Does he stand by his statements regarding the Marsden Point Rail Link?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: As it so happens, yes, we do. This includes our statements to the Mayor of Auckland, an engineer with expertise in infrastructure building, who rightly observed some city over-engineering in the original Marsden Point Rail Link design that can be easily simplified, with lower costs. Last year, we completely overhauled the Marsden Point process with KiwiRail, opened the design data to the market, who put forward their own designs at their cost to identify cheaper ways of building. KiwiRail is now in the process of engaging civil construction firms to push forward and give the Government a far lower number to proceed with.

Jenny Marcroft: Does he stand by his statements made to the Media Council?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, indeed we do. Earlier this month, the Media Council upheld a complaint by the Minister for Rail following a report by Andrea Vance in The Post that the no-nonsense ferry replacement programme was over budget by $167 million. This was false, wrong, blathering nonsense, and the Media Council found them to have been inaccurate and misleading. We remain well within budget, carrying on with the good work to serve and save the taxpayer $2.3 billion. To quote Ice Cube, the song in 1992, “Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” Point of order. I seek leave of the House to table our complaint to the Media Council, the post-ChatGPT response, and our final response, none of which is in public documents.

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

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Prime Minister

Question No. 3

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:11) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (14:12) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, absolutely, and particularly this Government’s commitment to reforming the public sector to upskill the best and brightest so we have seriously talented people coming through in the public sector, to consolidate the number of departments, to reduce the fulltime-equivalent headcount by around 8,000, and to make greater use of technology. This represents a sense of imagination and hope that we can actually raise productivity in the public sector and provide the services that New Zealanders require more productively, using less resources. That is what the whole country needs—to raise productivity and produce more for less so that we can all live happier, healthier, longer lives.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Will the Ministry for Regulation be exempt from the public service headcount reduction target, given it’s now well above the level of staffing predicted when it was established and it has amongst the highest average salaries in the Public Service?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: First of all, yes. In fact, the Ministry for Regulation has already offered up savings in this year’s Budget, because the ministry is a team player, which is what’s needed in Government in challenging times. The predictions that the member refers to are a mystery to me, because it’s the third-smallest ministry, and being a ministry that mainly has policy analysts, its salaries are in line with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Social Investment Agency, and the Treasury. These are agencies that tend to have people at that level of policy analysis, so the salaries are not surprising. It’s the third-smallest that there is, and the number of people is exactly what was—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Explaining is losing.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: She says explaining is losing. That is the refuge of people who have no explanations for their own actions, and if I had the record of that member in Government, I would say explaining is losing, because if she ever tries to explain her own performance, she will lose.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If the Ministry for Regulation is one of the smallest ministries, will it be forced to merge with other ministries, as Nicola Willis has indicated she wants bigger ministries?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, that logic does not follow. The question is does the ministry have a purpose, and if you look at the purpose of the Ministry for Regulation, already in its short life it has made savings for Kiwis at, roughly, 10 to 17 times the cost that’s been into it. People might say, “I can’t believe that. It can’t be that good.” Well, it can, because we have so much red tape holding Kiwis back in this country that you don’t need to cut much to release a wellspring of innovation and creativity that is natural to New Zealanders, but was suppressed for so long under the dead hand of “Chippy’s” Labour Government.

SPEAKER: Oh no—the last comment was not necessary.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So, if having a clear purpose is a justification for not merging a Government agency, why is the Ministry for the Environment being disestablished under his Government?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The Ministry for the Environment is being replaced by the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport. That is an organisation that will have a very clear purpose, and that is building New Zealand and connecting together opportunities. Whether they be housing or jobs or education, all of those things connect together, and they require to be built within an envelope of environmental tolerance. It makes perfect sense to bring people together under one roof with that purpose. Perhaps if the previous Government had done it, we wouldn’t have seen house prices go through the roof; spending on things that went nowhere, like the City Rail Link; and, ultimately, the people there being sent on their way for wasting all our money.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Will the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade be exempt from the Public Service headcount reduction target; if not, why has the Minister of Foreign Affairs suggested that it will be?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The very simple answer is that it will be liable, like any other, because we have to make the most of every single taxpayer dollar. We know that every person in this Government is committed to ensuring that we get value for taxpayer money, and I have no doubt that the Minister of Foreign Affairs is committed to getting value for taxpayer money, too.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Will he guarantee that no front-line roles will be cut in agencies like the Department of Conversation and the New Zealand Customs Service; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The simple answer is that sometimes you can actually do something smarter and get a better result with the same or fewer people. It’s a very simple answer, and it would be quite extraordinary to have this kind of teenaged political commitment to sloganeering, instead of raising productivity and getting better services for New Zealanders. Rather than spending more money—because, see, we’ve tried that as a country. We had some jokers in there who thought that if they just threw money at every problem, they’d solve it. Now, the money’s all gone and these guys that have been elected have to solve all the problems you left, too.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How will artificial intelligence be used to replace the work of a front-line corrections officer working in prison?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I tell you what, if that member got artificial intelligence, it wouldn’t be replacing anything—

SPEAKER: No, no—hang on. Hang on, wait on. Just withdraw that remark and answer the question.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw that remark. Clearly, there is some physical work—[Interruption] Oh, touchy, touchy. Oh—

SPEAKER: No, no, just answer the question.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, but, clearly, there are some roles that can’t be enhanced by AI. On the other hand, you could imagine, for example, ensuring that you scheduled guards on to manage more risky prisoners in a more efficient way, and perhaps that would actually enhance the safety of prison officers. There’s no shortage of what can be achieved through better use of technology, but you have to be prepared to have an adult conversation about using it, which, thankfully, this Government is.

Rawiri Waititi: What is his response to the Waitangi Tribunal, who have said that downgrading Treaty obligations in education law to a requirement no higher than “take into account” will damage Māori-Crown relationships and will be even worse than the Government’s failed Treaty principles bill?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: My response, on behalf of the Prime Minister, would be to point to the success that young Māori are having in education, because at the end of the day, you can have as many Treaty principles in law as you like and as many Waitangi Tribunals as you like, but do you know what really makes the difference? Reading and writing and maths and science to navigate the 21st century, and under this Government—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: And going to school.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —that’s what those—and what’s Minister Goldsmith saying?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: And going to school.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: And going to school—well, Minister Goldsmith never missed a day. That’s why he is the way he is today, and so that’s—

SPEAKER: Look, are you really trying to sell a policy?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I think he got the message.

Rawiri Waititi: If the goal of the Treaty clause review is to “create consistency”, what is stopping him from amending all Treaty clauses so that the Government must give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, one of the goals of the Treaty clause review is consistency, as the member notes. But there also needs to be clarity about what actions a Government department or a person acting under that particular law must do. Actually clarifying that and giving practical instruction rather than simply saying “you must give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi”, whatever that may mean, is actually making it easier for people to honour Treaty obligations on behalf of the Crown—something I thought that member would actually be really happy about.

Rawiri Waititi: Can he name a single substantive action his Government has taken that has strengthened the Crown’s obligations to Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi when he is planning to weaken Treaty obligations across 19 pieces of legislation, ignoring warnings from his own officials and the Waitangi Tribunal, and when his own coalition partners are campaigning to abolish the Māori seats and rewrite Te Tiriti?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I absolutely can. You see, one of the reasons that the rangatira signed the Treaty back in 1840 is that they were concerned about lawlessness and crime, and sadly there was too much lawlessness and crime when this Government was elected. What we’ve done is we’ve smashed it by putting victims at the centre in order to ensure that people can be safe. That’s probably the most important Treaty promise there is—that people can be safe in the street and safe in their homes. If you look at every single crime statistic, we’ve put victims first, criminals in the slammer, and delivered by smashing crime.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Government’s planning reforms will allow Māori take advantage of aquaculture settlements, for which, after 20 years under the Resource Management Act, there has not been a single development consented since 2004?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I can absolutely confirm that just as the Minister fed it to me—it’s completely accurate. It is a great tragedy that so many Māori who have an affinity to the sea, who have customary fishing right, who believe that it is a taonga to access the moana and the kai in it have been held back by this colonially imposed bureaucracy, which has prevented them from reaching their true mana. Well, the Māori Party will be pleased to know that this coalition Government of ACT and National and New Zealand First is restoring their mana and their kaimoana. Ka pai, bro!

SPEAKER: We’ll all just draw a bit of breath.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How will cutting 9,000 more jobs help New Zealand families struggling with the cost of living or businesses going into liquidation at near record levels, particularly given that there already 29,000 fewer jobs today than when his Government took office?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I never through I’d say this, but I actually enjoyed Rawiri Waititi’s questions more. However, to answer this rather pedestrian one, it’s pretty simple. You see, when the Government takes or borrows money and employs someone in the public sector, that has a cost, and that money can’t be spent by the taxpayers who earned it. They can’t go and spend it at a shop or at any other private business, and those businesses can’t employ as many people. If we can make the public sector more efficient—if we can make it produce the healthcare and the education and the roads and all the things that people need, and we can do that for less money—we actually free up money that can be spent elsewhere in the economy, creating jobs elsewhere in the economy. Now, if the member’s interested, there’s actually a great book about this. It’s quite old; it’s by Henry Hazlitt, and it’s called Economics in One Lesson, and I recommend it to the member.

Prime Minister

Question No. 4

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) (14:24) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (14:24) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, on behalf of the Acting Prime Minister I stand by all—

SPEAKER: No, no—hang on. You’re not answering on behalf of the Acting Prime Minister. On behalf of the Prime Minister.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, you’re right, Mr Speaker. I just got a bit carried away. On behalf of the Prime Minister—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: You know, you wear a lot of hats in this job. On behalf of the Prime Minister, yes, I absolutely stand by all this Government’s statements and actions, and in particular, the release today of the regulatory mapping exercise. Revealing that there are 267 regulators shows that this country is over-regulated, over-governed, and we need a smaller, more efficient Government. That report is a road map to go on a journey to just that destination.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he stand by his statement, in question time yesterday, that front-line workers are “the people that are delivering the services to Kiwis who desperately need them.”?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, absolutely.

Hon Marama Davidson: Are social workers who support the 209,000 incidents of sexual violence per year front line; and, if so, why will his Government not fund Wellington’s only specialist sexual violence prevention agency?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, in answer to the first part of the question, yes. It’s very sensitive work and it’s very important work for people at a very difficult time. There’s no question about that. But that doesn’t mean that a Government that spends millions of dollars, potentially billions of dollars, every year addressing this very problem is not doing its job because it hasn’t funded one particular agency. In fact, we have a responsibility to always make sure that we are funding the best and getting the best value. Because if you care about saving taxpayer money or you care about getting better services for those survivors, or both, then it’s critical that you keep refreshing and doing better.

Hon Marama Davidson: Are the community organisations who look after our tamariki in State care front line; and, if so, why did he cut $120 million from them in Budget 2024?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, first of all, yes. Second of all, it has to be seen in the context of the Government’s overall spending and its overall management. If you look at the management of Oranga Tamariki, it has actually got fewer incidences in their care. The Minister has visited every single facility, and they’ve been upgraded so that we don’t constantly have the spectacle of their people who are supposed to be looked after being bribed off the roof with KFC. So, altogether, we can point to much better—

Chlöe Swarbrick: They were on the roof two weeks ago.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Yes, and Chlöe Swarbrick says they were on the roof two weeks ago—that is absolutely true. But they were down and they were safe. They weren’t up there for days, creating a media spectacle and getting bribed with KFC. It also happens far less frequently because of the upgrades to security that the Minister has made. So, as usual, Chlöe Swarbrick has something that sounds good and is half true, but not the whole truth.

Hon Marama Davidson: Are our Kāinga Ora (KO) staff who work directly with New Zealanders struggling to find a home front line; and, if so, can he promise his upcoming Budget will see no cuts to their funding?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, in answer to the first part: yes, they are front line. But I just make the point that sometimes we start with a problem and we have a solution, and somewhere along the way we become more attached to the solution than solving the original problem. Under this Government, community housing providers (CHPs) often do a much better job of connecting with communities and getting people into care then perhaps a Government department or a Crown entity’s been doing. So the question I have all the time in this Government is not “Are we wedded to a particular solution?”, but “Are we delivering the best solutions for vulnerable people?” And the answer may be that it’s better to do it through a CHP than through KO.

Hon Marama Davidson: Are our nurses who are experiencing unsafe staffing levels—levels which were linked to a tragic increase in deaths of babies—front line; and, if so, will his Budget fund Te Whatu Ora to implement urgent, safe midwife-to-patient and nurse-to-patient ratios?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, first of all, I think that’s a very unfair characterisation of our health system. The idea that, up and down New Zealand, the healthcare system is unsafe and babies are unnecessarily dying, as if that’s a standard picture of what’s going on—we just reject that. That’s the first point. The second point is, if you look at the basic facts and numbers since this Government’s been in place, we’ve hired another 2,000 nurses. That’s a lot of nurses. Second of all, a nurse in New Zealand gets paid up to $127,000. That is equivalent to what they can get paid in New South Wales. So, you know, if you look at the overall picture, yes, there is a challenge in every healthcare system in the Western world, that is true. But we’re actually doing pretty well, and I don’t think characterisations like that member gave are fair to the hard-working men and women who are delivering in our healthcare system.

Public Service and Digitising Government

Question No. 5

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth) (14:30) to the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government: What action is the Government taking to improve services and deliver better value for money in the public service?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (14:30): Yesterday, the Minister of Finance and I announced that the Government will be embarking on a fundamental overhaul of the Public Service to lift productivity and deliver better value for money, and to improve services for all New Zealanders. This comprises three elements: streamlining the number of Government agencies and entities, digitising the Public Service to make it easier and more affordable to interact with the Government, and to return the size of the Public Service to a more sustainable level that aligns with historic norms. New Zealanders expect a Public Service that grows smarter and is not simply larger.

David MacLeod: How will streamlining the number of Government agencies and entities improve services, lift productivity, and deliver better value for money?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, New Zealand has 39 departments and ministries administering budget lines. That compares with 16 in Australia, 24 in the UK, and 12 in Finland. More departments equal more management and administration functions that are duplicated across the Public Service, more interdepartmental consultation, and more costs for citizens and businesses, who must multiply their interactions across the Government. Public Service agencies have been asked to come up with proposals to logically merge their existing activities around citizen-facing functions using common technology platforms, and the Government expects there will be fewer agencies over the next three to five years.

David MacLeod: How will digitising the Public Service improve services, lift productivity, and deliver better value for money?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, the world is adapting and changing, and more and more New Zealanders are utilising digital tools and artificial intelligence (AI). However, many parts of the Public Service haven’t kept pace. Digitising both customer-facing services and back-office systems will make it easier and more affordable for people to interact with Government agencies. An example of this is the health sector, where the use of AI scribe tools in hospital emergency rooms is reducing the amount of time clinicians have to spend on file notes and increasing the time that they can spend with patients. Now, this delivers better outcomes for all New Zealanders.

David MacLeod: How will returning the size of the Public Service to a more sustainable level improved services, lift productivity, and deliver better value for money?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, as the Leader of the Opposition said on RNZ yesterday, bigger isn’t always better, and we completely agree. Historically, core Public Service numbers have been equivalent to about 1 percent of the population; under the previous Government, that blew out to 1.2 percent with no discernible gain or improvement in outcomes. We’re putting the brakes on and bringing renewed focus to the essential tasks of attracting, retaining, and developing a great Public Service, because every dollar that’s saved through fixing duplication and inefficiency is a dollar that can be redirected towards improving productivity, supporting growth, and improving New Zealand’s long-term economic resilience.

Finance

Question No. 6

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (14:34) to the Minister of Finance: Vinaka vakalevu, Mr Speaker. Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:34): In context, yes. I particularly stand by my statement that New Zealanders expect public services that are responsive, effective, and easy to use, but too often people and businesses are still navigating fragmented systems, duplication, and outdated processes. A more connected and digitally enabled Public Service will improve services, reduce duplication, and deliver better value for taxpayers.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: How was the $2.4 billion in savings from the loss of 8,700 jobs calculated?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: It was calculated by calculating the 2 percent baseline saving reduction that agencies have already delivered for this year’s Budget and then a 5 percent reduction in their administrative budgets in each of the next two out-years.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Will the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade make the required reduction in their baselines within the forecast period, as required for her Budget?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was excluded from the 2 percent baseline reduction but has not been excluded from the out-years.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with the Rt Hon Winston Peters in the context of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade cuts that “Everything’s going to stay the same.”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I agree with Winston Peters on the important things, but on that particular statement, not really, because I think we are in a changing world and I think that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade needs to adapt with that world, and that includes making the most of efficiencies available to it in the back office to better support our diplomats and front-line workers around the world. It is the case, as I think the member is implying, that Mr Peters and I have had extensive debates about what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s budget should be, and it’s fair to say our views sometimes differ.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Has she directed Treasury to reset the baseline reduction for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, given the Minister’s comments yesterday?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Look, I think the member is in search of some sort of a mystery that isn’t there. I’ve been clear. There has been extensive debate with the Minister of Foreign Affairs about what his budget should be. I want it to be smaller than he wants it to be; that’s no secret. You’re not on to a big surprise there, Barbara Edmonds. What is the case is they’ve been excluded from this year’s 2 percent baseline reduction. They’re included in the out-years. It is the case that the Minister of Foreign Affairs will probably, as has always been the case, continue to argue his corner that he won’t want to deliver on those savings, but overall, he has been asked to. That is what is in the Budget, and, yes, it is a fiscal risk that all savings could be a fiscal risk that they wouldn’t be delivered, but the Treasury has judged that Cabinet’s decisions are clear.

Hon David Seymour: Can the Minister of Finance confirm that there are 27 other Ministers in the Government, and without exception, they would all like to see more money spent in some parts of their portfolios, and her job is to keep a firm hand on the public purse?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, and should that member think that she is in an audition for this role, let me tell her that part of this role is constantly—

SPEAKER: No. Hang on—sorry.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —debating with your colleagues about how much funding their initiatives should receive, and often they disagree with me.

SPEAKER: You cannot use a supplementary to, effectively, attack the Opposition, so there will be some penalty further in the afternoon for that.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Who was correct: the Minister of Finance, who has said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is not exempt from job losses, or the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who has said about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade that everything is going to stay the same?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, once again, as the member has done in this House repeatedly, she’s mischaracterising a statement from another member. In this case, yes, what the Minister of Foreign Affairs is reflecting fairly, as he said to me face to face, as he said to journalists, as the member has picked up on, is that he would like to see the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade continue to receive more funding into the future. It is the case that we have agreed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will submit savings proposals as part of the baseline savings exercise.

Health

Question No. 7

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (14:39) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcement has he made about improving access to healthcare services for people living in the Otago Central Lakes region?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (14:39): The Government is fixing the basics and building the future of our healthcare system by delivering healthcare closer to home for New Zealanders. Earlier this month, I announced that planning is under way for the expansion of locally delivered healthcare services across the Otago Central Lakes region because people should not have to drive for hours simply to see a specialist, get a scan, or access maternity care. Our plan will grow primary care, diagnostic services, outpatient services, and mental health and addiction support, alongside further work to develop maternity care, obstetrics, and gynaecology, ensuring healthcare keeps pace with one of the fastest-growing parts of New Zealand. Every patient treated locally is one fewer patient forced to spend hours on the road travelling to Dunedin or Invercargill for care.

Miles Anderson: Why is this investment so important for the Otago Central Lakes community?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Otago Central Lakes region is one of the fastest-growing regions in New Zealand, and healthcare services have struggled to keep pace with that growth. Currently, around 70 percent of New Zealanders who live more than two hours from a main hospital live in this region. That means many families have had to travel long distances for specialist appointments, maternity services, scans, and treatment. For too long, these communities have been overlooked, and this Government is ensuring that as communities grow, healthcare services grow with them, delivering timely, quality care closer to where people live.

Joseph Mooney: What improvements can local families expect to see under this plan?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Health New Zealand has agreed in principle to invest $25 million in new operating funding for the region from 2027-2028, alongside a further estimated $103 million over the following three years, as well as $52 million in capital upgrades. This plan will support expanded out-patient and diagnostics services, including improved MRI access and point-of-care testing, and enhanced mental health and addiction care. Importantly, Health New Zealand is also progressing work on a new maternity model for the region, in partnership with midwives, obstetricians, GPs, and front-line clinicians, ensuring services are safe, sustainable, and designed around the needs of local families.

Joseph Mooney: How does this announcement reflect the Government’s wider approach to health?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: This announcement reflects exactly what this Government was elected to do: fixing the basics and building the future. We are focused on reducing wait times, meeting our health targets, growing the front-line workforce, and ensuring New Zealanders can access quality healthcare no matter where they live. I also want to acknowledge and thank local MPs Miles Anderson and Joseph Mooney, who have been strong advocates for their communities and have worked constructively to ensure the voices of local families, clinicians, and health providers have been heard throughout this process.

Public Service and Digitising Government

Question No. 8

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (14:42) to the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (14:42): Yes, particularly this statement from yesterday: “There was a hiring spree under the previous Government for six years, and that’s an easy thing to do. They also exploded the use of consultants, so what we’ve got is a harder task to try and dial some of that back to historic averages, but it’s the right thing to do, because we want to deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders through public service, and like everyone else in the entire economy, everybody is looking to use technology better but also to be more productive, and that is what this is all about.”

Reuben Davidson: Which specific roles does he expect to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) in the Public Service?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, that is the process that we’ll be working our way through over the next three years, and it would be wrong to make any predictions, but what we had dealt with is a historic rise in the number of public servants over the six years of the previous administration, and that, of course, is economically unsustainable, so what we’re looking to is a range of things to bring that back to the historic norms. One element would be a greater use of technology, and the specific roles is something that will emerge over time.

Reuben Davidson: Does he have evidence that shows AI can safely do the roles of the Public Service at scale?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, it depends on what particular roles one has in mind, but currently, already, AI is being used in certain circumstances across the public sector, as it’s used across the wider world. One example that I referred to earlier was in the health departments, emergency departments, using the transcribing abilities to take time off the hands of doctors and specialists so they can focus more on their patients.

Reuben Davidson: Does he have a coherent AI workforce plan, given Minister Penny Simmonds’ statement that departments can simply work through how to use AI?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, all of that is in the process of development. We’ve got the chief digital officer working away on that. I think my broad observation would be to say that if you were to ask the CEO of a private, say, communications company—one of our telcos—to ask them what they’re worried about most, they’ll say, well, they’re worried that their competitors might figure out how to use AI and new technologies faster than I do, and therefore I might lose my customers. In the public sector you don’t have that same discipline because there is no competition to the IRD, for example. Our task in Government is to ensure that we’ve got the systems in place and the leadership from Government to ensure that Government departments are thinking very hard about the opportunities and making the most of them.

Reuben Davidson: What is the rollout and licensing cost of implementing AI technologies across the Public Service?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, I don’t have that exact figure at the moment, but of course, it varies. What we inherited of course was a wide variety of arrangements in place across many Government departments, and that is precisely why we’re putting together a more coherent and centrally guided system in place so that we can get the advantages of scale, but also the coherency to our investment in technology.

Reuben Davidson: Does the Public Service intend to use local AI, or does it anticipate a lot of the technology to come from overseas?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I’m not aware of a current local AI provider in the scale of Claude or Copilot. But what I would say is that we’re making use of the best technology available, because we want New Zealand’s citizens to have better access to public services—that’s what it’s all about. If we’re not going to be using technology, that would be a very strange thing.

Hon David Seymour: Will the Public Service invest in making its own silicon chips as the basis for New Zealand AI, or will it instead import that technology?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I’m not aware of current plans to invest in the development of silicon chips, and my suggestion is that we focus on the things that we do well and sell them to the world, and then we purchase the things that other people in the world do better than us, and hopefully, if we’ve made enough money in our economy, we can afford to have the best ones.

Education

Question No. 9

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (14:47) to the Minister of Education: What recent pre-Budget announcement did she make about investment into reading, writing, and maths?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:48): The Government recently announced a $131 million Budget 2026 initiative into the next phase of Teaching the Basics Brilliantly with a clear focus on lifting student achievement in reading, writing, and maths. The Government backs Kiwi kids to excel in maths and that’s why we’re investing in maths hubs to strengthen teacher confidence and capability and build centres of excellence in teaching of mathematics, hands-on maths resources for every year 0 to 8 classroom, additional maths intervention teachers, and a new year 5 times table and division check that will support more than 60,000 students each year. These investments double down on our commitment to raising student achievement. The message to teachers is: thank you, the early results are a testament to your hard work.

Rima Nakhle: How will students be supported in their reading and writing?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Students and teachers will receive new curriculum-aligned writing workbooks that are available to benefit up to 130,000 year 4 and 5 students—

Rawiri Waititi: Any Māori ones, Minister?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: —a funded digital writing tool benefiting more than 200,000 students in years 6 to 8 each year; new decodable books for older learners in years 3 to 10 to provide additional help for those who need extra support and a new year 2 literacy check covering reading comprehension, writing, spelling, punctuation. Members calling out to my right might like to know that it’s all going to be available in te reo Māori as well. We’re also strengthening literacy support guidance and professional learning for teachers to help ensure every child builds strong foundations for future success.

Rima Nakhle: How does this build on previous investments?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: This announcement builds on the significant reforms and investments already under way through the Teaching the Basics Brilliantly reforms. We are delivering a major refresh of the Curriculum; comprehensive progress monitoring, including phonics checks, Year 2 maths checks, and Years 3 to 8 assessment in reading, writing, and maths; $750 million invested into learning support; significant investment in teacher training, professional learning and development; and aspiring school leaders. Our new investment in practical classroom resources, targeted interventions, and professional learning and development will continue to raise student achievement across New Zealand.

Rima Nakhle: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: No, we’ll go to question No. 10.

Disability Issues

Question No. 10

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (14:50) to the Minister for Disability Issues: Does she stand by her statement that “Our Government is committed to improving the lives of disabled people and their families”; if so, why?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (14:50) on behalf of the Minister for Disability Issues: Yes, I do. Over the last 18 months, our Government has taken action to stabilise disability support services, and we are now focused on strengthening that system. That’s why we’ve introduced the Disability Support Services Bill this week. This is the first step in creating a legislative foundation that will provide clarity and stability to the system, supporting thousands of disabled New Zealanders and their families. This bill changes nothing for disabled people, their families, and carers. It does not alter the support that is available today.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How is the Government improving the lives of disabled people when, under her watch, 82 percent of households with disabled people have experienced food insecurity?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government continues to provide support to those who need it the most, including to disabled people, and including through targeted, temporary, and timely supports that we are providing to those hurting the most due to the current energy crisis.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How can she stand by her statement when disabled people tell us that her Government’s cuts to the Total Mobility scheme will increase transport costs for disabled people and result in those who can’t afford it experiencing increased isolation?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: On behalf of the Minister for Disability Issues, the previous Government left the system as quite an unsustainable system, which ultimately required changes, and I acknowledge the work that the Minister and the Minister of Transport have done to try to address that.

Hon Chris Bishop: Supplementary question?

SPEAKER: We’ll just go to three here.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How is her Government improving the lives of disabled people when they removed flexible funding, only to reinstate it two years later, and is now introducing a bill that will bring in means testing for disabled families, which they say will increase their anxiety even more?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government is continuing to work with the disabled community to understand and consult—

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: There was no consultation.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, the bill is going to go to a select committee, and I expect that anyone who wishes to make a submission will be able to make a submission. It will go through a process, and, of course, the Government will consider those submissions.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How can she stand by her statement when, under her watch, the unemployment rate has increased to over 14 percent for disabled people, compared to just over 5 percent for non-disabled people?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government is very focused on fixing the basics and building the future and growing an economy which ultimately grows jobs and opportunities, and unfortunately the politics and the agenda of the previous Government—which drove up inflation, drove up interest rates—ended up with high unemployment, which ultimately impacts all New Zealanders, but often the most marginalised hurt the most.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why should New Zealanders believe her when her Government’s response to the rising cost of living is to reduce Government support and increase anxiety and cost to disabled people and their families?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: On behalf of the Minister for Disability Issues, the bill that is before the Parliament will go through a select committee. It does not change anything for disabled people, their families, and carers, and it doesn’t alter the support that is available today.

Prime Minister

Question No. 11

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (14:54) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (14:54) on behalf of the Prime Minister: On behalf of the Prime Minister yes, including the Prime Minister's attendance today at the launch of Air New Zealand’s three new routes. They’ll be flying direct from Christchurch to Tokyo, Singapore, and Perth, and I understand that, if you book early, you can get pretty affordable business class fares. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: One person asking a question.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he stand by the statement of his Deputy Prime Minister, “We will continue to fight for the truth that all Kiwis are equal”?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Absolutely. I believe that the Prime Minister—on his behalf—believes, first of all, that truth is important and, also, equality between New Zealanders is also important.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why, then, is his Government introducing law to enable the criminalisation of homelessness, which Attorney-General Chris Bishop says “is an unjustified limit on the right of freedom of movement”?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, the Government is not introducing laws that criminalise homelessness. There is no law that says a person must have a home. Unfortunately, despite what that member may wish, you can’t just pass a law and make something so. The Government is, however, carrying out extensive reforms in land-use planning, infrastructure funding and financing, and building consenting and materials to ensure that homes are built more quickly, more efficiently, and more affordably, so that more New Zealanders will actually be able to have a home, not just have it legislated that they have one as that member seems to think she can do.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is it the Government’s view that New Zealanders experiencing homelessness are less equal and deserving of basic human rights and freedoms?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, no, the Government doesn’t believe that.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Then why is the Government progressing legislation to potentially criminalise homelessness that experts, social services—

SPEAKER: No—sorry. Ask the question, but don’t put those suppositions in. That’s not reasonable.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why is the Government, then, progressing legislation in the form of the move-on orders with the backstop of enabling the criminalisation of homelessness that experts, social service providers, and even—[Interruption] Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: Well, you need to—

Hon Chris Bishop: It doesn’t criminalise homelessness.

Chlöe Swarbrick: It does enable the criminalisation—that is literally in the regulatory impact statement.

SPEAKER: Hang on. Just a moment—just a moment. No, in a question, that’s not a reasonable point to make.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why is the Government progressing legislation that social service providers have been explicit enables the criminalisation of homelessness, and even his own officials say is not only worse than doing nothing but could also increase the risks to the safety of those experiencing homelessness and make it harder to support them?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, we’ve now had three formulations that the law “criminalises homelessness”; then we’ve said it “potentially criminalises homelessness”; then we’ve said it “criminalises homelessness as a backstop”; and then we’ve said, “Well, we’re not sure about that, but somebody said it might be worse than doing nothing.” I suggest the member should have asked the Minister of Education if she can get a refund on her law degree.

Local Government

Question No. 12

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga) (14:58) to the Minister of Local Government: What recent announcement has he made about progressing a city and regional deal for the Western Bay of Plenty?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Local Government) (14:58): Last week, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Infrastructure, and I announced the Western Bay of Plenty regional deal. This deal is building the future between the Government, Tauranga City Council, Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Bay of Plenty Regional Council, the private sector, and iwi Māori. It sets out how we will work together to unlock long-term economic growth in one of our fastest-growing regions. Like the Auckland deal announced a few weeks ago, we are focusing on aligning central and local government to deliver productivity and growth.

Sam Uffindell: What’s in the Western Bay of Plenty city and regional deal?

Hon SIMON WATTS: To name just a few of the outcomes in the deal: we are supporting urban growth across the Eastern, Western and Northern Corridors—this is expected to deliver around 12,000 greenfield homes and 3,000 infilled and intensified homes over the next decade; we’ve identified Takitimu North Link stage two and the Tauriko West roads of national significance as a priority project—this will be reflected in the next Government policy statement on land transport in 2027; and, finally, we’ve ensured that health and education infrastructure is delivered in step with that urban growth. There is a lot to be excited about, so I encourage everyone in the House to read the full deal.

Sam Uffindell: How will the deal change the way Wellington and the Western Bay work together?

Hon SIMON WATTS: City and regional deals are a new way of working together, with a focus on alignment of delivery and investment certainty. For too long, the relationship between central and local government has been fragmented and uncoordinated. The Western Bay of Plenty deal established shared accountability, recognises that the region is a critical export gateway, it sets joint priorities, and levels up the relationship between central government and one of New Zealand’s economic powerhouses. With two signed deals, this Government is charting a new course for how central government and local government work together and build the future.

Sam Uffindell: Supplementary—supplementary.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions.

Sam Uffindell: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: We’ll take a 30-second break while those who need to go, can go.

Sam Uffindell: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No, it’s over. Those members who need to leave the House should do so quietly and without any discussion on the way.

Debates

General Debate

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:01): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Next week, the Government will deliver our third Budget. It’s a Budget that will secure New Zealand’s future. It is a Budget that will ensure that this Government’s finances are in good stead, that we are tracking a path to surplus and debt reduction, a Budget that will invest in the public infrastructure needed for growth, a Budget that will invest in our health system, our education system, our law and order system, and that will continue our mission to rebuild the capacity of our defence forces. Meanwhile, colleagues, the great quest continues to find a single Labour Party policy!

I’ll tell you who was on the case this morning. The person on the case this morning was Ingrid Hipkiss on Morning Report. I want to read you the transcript. It’s almost pure satire, but this is the actual transcript. Ingrid Hipkiss said to Carmel Sepuloni, deputy leader of the Labour Party, “Carmel, how soon after the Budget is Labour going to start releasing policies?” And Carmel Sepuloni said, “Well, we need to see the detail, and we’ve been clear. You will see—you will see—policy announcements in the lead up to the election, and I guarantee you—I guarantee you—but I’m not going to announce the timeline for our policies right now.” Then, when Hipkiss, fairly enough, on behalf of every single voter in the country says, “Why not?”, Carmel gave the most honest response I’ve ever heard her give. I want to give her credit for it, because this is what she said when she was asked why she’s not releasing the policy. She simply said it straight. She said, “Well, I think that might be career limiting.”

That’s what she said! And isn’t she absolutely right? She hasn’t had a trip down that lane, but I’ll tell you who did: Barbara Edmonds. She had a pretty career-limiting moment yesterday when she decided to try to describe Labour’s Future Fund policy. She was asked a few simple questions, because her leader had said at the weekend that it was “a cornerstone policy”. She was asked a couple of simple things. She was asked which State assets would be rolled into it. She said, “Well, I won’t be telling you that till after the election.” She’s going to get a working group to work that out. Then she was asked, “Well, if it’s a cornerstone policy to create jobs, how many jobs do you think it’ll create?” She said, “I don’t know.” Then she was asked, “How much will it cost?”, and she said, “Well, that depends.”

What we have here is a situation in which the Labour Party is too embarrassed to release its policies, because it knows that when New Zealanders work out how dumb they are, they won’t be voting for them. When New Zealanders work out that all they’ve got in the basket is more of the same old stuff—because let’s remember the Labour Party’s greatest hits. Who remembers KiwiBuild? That was a winner. It was a bit like the Future Fund. It was, “100,000 houses will be built. We don’t know how much it’ll cost. We don’t know how we’re going to do it. But we’ll tell you after the election.” Well, did they tell us after the election? Did the working group sort it out for them? No. What happened was I think about, what, a thousand houses were built, and then they gave up on it. It went on the policy bonfire, because it was a dumb idea.

What else did we have in the Labour Party greatest hits parade of awesome policies? Who remembers the cost of living payment? That was awesome. Do you know who was really grateful for that? The French backpackers who spent a couple of weeks here. Do you know who else really loved it? The dead people who had it put into their trust funds. Do you know what it did? It helped fuel the inflation fire that was burning down the household budgets of far too many Kiwis.

What they’re asking New Zealanders to do is just trust them. It’s just a narrow capital gains tax. It’ll never get bigger. It’s clear these people cannot be trusted. Their policy track record has no credibility, and Carmel Sepuloni is the most honest woman in this House. It will be extremely career-limiting when you finally reveal that you’re bereft of ideas, can’t cost a thing, and would put this country at risk.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (15:07): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Those people in the public wondering who’s going to replace—

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: There’s a point of order—Simon Court.

Simon Court: I apologise for interrupting the member’s call there. Mr Speaker, I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that, at the end of question time, as the Hon David Seymour left the Chamber, it was observed that one of the co-leaders of the Green Party mouthed something which looked like exceptionally foul language at the Deputy Prime Minister. I’m wondering if the Speaker would like to go back and review the silent transcript or the video or potentially ask that member for an explanation of what it exactly was that they mouthed at the Deputy Prime Minister. Certainly, if it’s what I assume it to be, it would bring the Parliament into disrepute and should be deserving of apology. Thank you.

SPEAKER: I’d just refer the member to Speakers’ rulings—I can’t recall exactly which one, but I will for him if he wishes at a later time. That makes it clear that the Speaker does not retrospectively take into account things where a moment has passed. As the member knows, points of order need to be taken in a timely fashion. While that might be a concern, it wasn’t something that was raised at the time.

Simon Court: Speaking to the point of order, I was extremely reluctant—

SPEAKER: No, you’re not speaking to the point of order. I’ve just ruled on it.

Simon Court: Further point of order, then, Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Oh, a new point of order—and listen, points of order are heard in silence.

Simon Court: The reason that I’ve raised this now is because I felt it was rather improper to interrupt a member in full flight during the general debate. This is the earliest time—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Do you both want to leave? Then don’t talk.

Simon Court: With due respect, this was the earliest time that I could raise it, because I felt it was improper to interrupt a member in full flight—as, again, I apologise to the previous speaker for rising to interrupt when he’d begun his speech. I ask that you do consider it in that context. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Well, the point I’d just make in reply is that there was a 30-second break between the end of question time and the start of the person speaking. Presumably, during that time is where the incident occurred and where it should have been brought to the attention of the Speaker. We’ll move on. The Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, whose time will start again.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. If Nicola Willis was hoping to replace Christopher Luxon as leader of the National Party, I think her chances just took somewhat of a knock after that contribution in the House. They may have to bring Christopher Luxon out of witness protection after all. Kiwis who have been wondering how Nicola Willis is actually going to pay for her tax cuts for landlords, her tax cuts for tobacco companies, and her tax cuts for tech giants—Kiwis wanting to know the answer to that just got it: she’s going to do that by coming after their jobs. Not content with having cut 29,000 jobs from the New Zealand economy since this Government took office, the Government have now set their sights on another 9,000. They want more Kiwis out of work; that’s their pledge at this election. Vote National; sack more people. That is ultimately what they are offering New Zealanders.

Let’s talk about the jobs that are going to be at risk: Oranga Tamariki social workers, the people who work with our most vulnerable children up and down the country; corrections officers, those who keep people safe by keeping people in prison safe are also facing the chopping block; the people who work at the Ministry of Education, who do jobs like physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, school maintenance staff. They’re all on the chopping block. People who work at the Cancer Control Agency.

The Government are so confused about who they’re cutting and why. They say that all agencies are going to have to meet the headcount reduction, and then they say, “Oh, but these other agencies are exempt from the baseline savings, but they’re going to have to cut staff, as well.” They can’t seem to make their mind up about that, because if those agencies were actually excluded, 35 percent of the increase in staff would have been excluded from the cuts. So which is it? Are they excluded or are they not excluded? What about the agencies that they don’t say are excluded but people like Winston Peters say they are—like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example?

Let’s just focus on the agencies that they’re really clear are in the gun and are going to be cutting staff, because if these agencies are going to have to bear all of the burden of the cuts, a quarter of all of their staff are going to be cut.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: What?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A quarter of all of the target agency staff will have to be cut in order to meet the target that the Government have set.

So who are they? Department of Conservation rangers. Forget “Bye-bye, Freddie”. You can forget “Bye-bye, nature” and “Bye-bye, tourism” if they’re cutting staff from the Department of Conservation—potentially a quarter of them. A quarter of those people who are working at the border for the New Zealand Customs Service could find their jobs disappearing to meet their target. So we’ve said, “Bye-bye, nature; hello, drugs”, because those working at the border to keep them out of the country—a quarter of them could lose their jobs. Biosecurity officers, also working at the border: “Hello, foot-and-mouth; goodbye, farming. Don’t worry about that.” The people who keep the country safe from those kind of incursions could find that they are also on the chopping block.

Food safety officers who keep us all safe; fisheries officers; animal welfare officers could all be cut; family violence teams, those dealing with our most vulnerable families and children—but this Government doesn’t like to talk about family violence, because they think if the victimisation happens in someone’s own home, then it’s not something the Government should care about at all. National Library of New Zealand librarians; tell that to the teachers who rely on the resources that they supply to teach things like literacy in schools. The Department of Internal Affairs; Internal Affairs is an easy agency, because of its name, to pick on. What about the staff working to prevent child pornography and child exploitation? They’ve already been cut by this Government and now they’re coming back for more.

What about the labour inspectors that prevent people being exploited in the workplace? Well, this Government are in favour of that, so they’re going to be cutting those as well. What about those who work in emergency management? Oh, don’t worry, you can contact a chatbot when your house is flooded after a natural disaster. That’s the attitude from the current Government. They are going after the jobs of the people who Kiwis rely on every day. The disability sector, who rely on public services for their support, not only face the prospect of means testing under this Government—which they’re changing the law to allow for—they now face the very real prospect of more public sector cuts. All on the fairytale idea that if you cut the public sector, the private sector will grow. It doesn’t work that way; it hasn’t worked that way for the last 2½ years, it hasn’t worked that way in the past, and it won’t in the future, either.

SCOTT WILLIS (Green) (15:15): Mr Speaker, I am charged up because earlier this week, I was at the Electrify Queenstown conference, where we heard the ambition, we heard the hunger, we heard the enthusiasm to power our nation on renewable electrons. We heard the hunger for warm, healthy homes. We heard the desire to build energy efficiency into everything we do, to power mobility, to power our manufacturing; not to decarbonise with manufacturing. [Interruption]

I experienced the power of the Naut boat under a full electric propulsion—

SPEAKER: Just a moment. Mr Willis, just a moment. The barracking from over here is too much, all right? Rare and reasonable. Carry on, Mr Willis, the clock will go back on.

SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I took Saul Griffith’s Lightfoot solar scooter for a spin and I had a blast—I had a blast on the Street Dog ER, manufactured in Kirikiriroa Hamilton. Energy levels at that conference were high and were powered by full renewables. Here at Parliament, I’ve had the privilege of hosting some of the brightest minds in the energy sector to help me strategise for energy independence and to develop our plans to electrify the nation. Everyone I’ve met with—everyone from the big end of town: the gentailers, the Major Electricity Users’ Group, Electricity Networks Aotearoa, the Energy Trusts of New Zealand, the gas industry, to the smaller actors like the independent generators and retailers, the social retailers, the innovators, and those working at the bleeding edge of energy hardship, the Community Energy Network members—everyone has said that we need a national energy strategy.

So imagine my astonishment, this week, to see the Government Ministers, as a bloc, outright refuse a national energy strategy on stage at Electrify Queenstown. You could hear the astonished gasps of the 300 members in the room. How could this Government be so idiotic?

This is the Government that claims to be delivering certainty for the energy sector and the energy transition while cancelling the battery project and the portfolio options, killing off the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund and the Clean Car Discount, failing—failing—to deliver 10,000 EV chargers, and gutting the emissions trading scheme while piling on subsidies for fossil fuels. We’re in a never-ending resource management reform and still demonstrating indecision on whether they’re going to waste a billion dollars on a liquefied natural gas import terminal. If that is giving confidence to the energy sector, I’d hate to see what uncertainty is from this Government. Trumpism is well and truly here. Even the Prime Minister doesn’t seem aware of what his own Ministers are up to because, yesterday, the Prime Minister claimed that the Government has an energy strategy, apparently unaware that his new Minister for Energy, Simeon Brown, cancelled the work on an energy strategy, for good, in early April. What the hell is going on with this Government?

This is the Government that has overseen a dramatic rise in fuel poverty and energy hardship, putting our most vulnerable at risk. The latest stats are shocking. They’re horrific: 44,000 more people could not pay their gas, electricity, or water bills on time; 65,000 more households couldn’t afford to keep their homes affordably warm; 23,000 more households had a major problem with damp and mould.

And I hear the calls for more gas—gas that causes respiratory illness in homes; gas that fuels the climate fire. I visited homes where the weather boards are so rotted it’s like lace around our windows. These are the people that this Government has left behind. These are the Kiwis who are suffering now. These are the people who are suffering. I visited homes where grandparents are looking after their grandchildren, where there is black mould in the bathroom. It looks as though it’s been painted on. It’s in the bedrooms, and these children will have lifelong illness. They will not only suffer lifelong illness; they will cost our health system even more. I’ve just come from a meeting with Hauora Taiwhenua - the Rural Health Network, and I have heard how much work they are doing. People are suffering. The social drivers of health are costing us high, and this is because this Government has forgotten Kiwis, is not willing to deliver an energy strategy, and is not working for our most vulnerable.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (15:20): Well, of course Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori oppose moves to make the public sector more efficient and to get value for taxpayers’ money. They think the public purse is Hermione Granger’s bag, a bottomless fund—you just keep pulling what you need out of it. Of course, no one likes job losses, but here are some home truths: under Labour, the number of public servants increased from 47,250 to 65,700. Between 2017 and 2023, front-line service delivery roles grew by around 18 percent, compared with approximately 46 percent growth in support and administrative functions. As the Minister of Health, I want to see the focus go on the front line—more doctors, more nurses. I want to see more teachers and more police officers. Labour is standing up here defending communication officers and making sure we have people to do the administrative HR roles.

We need people on the front line, delivering the services that Kiwis rely on, and those services need to be paid for. The majority of Public Service jobs, of course, will remain, and some roles will be changed. There will be a change over the coming years, but in a dynamic economy, this is about making sure that we ensure we are making the Public Service fit for the future. The Public Service is not a make-work scheme. It’s paid for by taxpayers, and there’s huge demand on that money, and New Zealand cannot sustain administrative growth outpacing the productive part of our economy.

Of course, if you look at Labour’s track record in the last little while, they have not supported anything this Government has been trying to do. They didn’t support—except for the Indian free-trade agreement, of course, which they belatedly supported right at the end. But what have they supported? Let’s go through what they are in favour of and what their track record on growth actually is. Labour is growing inflation up to 7.3 percent in 2022. Growth in debt: they tripled Government debt in dollar terms. Spending: they lifted spending by 73 percent and house prices by 42 percent. Labour has nothing to talk about the future. They’ve got only their record and to talk about the past.

Of course, when it comes to policies, this week, we’ve seen their policy starting to crumble apart. The only three policies they’ve got are crumbling apart and in front of New Zealanders—a secret future fund that might be subject to Treaty claims, according to the Labour Party. It’s so secret that it might be subject to Treaty claims and they can’t tell you what’s in it. Well, I can tell you what: the Treaty has more principles than the Labour Party. It certainly has more transparency than the Labour Party.

Let’s talk about their three free doctor visits, which, of course, Mr Hipkins is travelling up and down the country trying to explain to New Zealanders why people earning over $300,000 a year need a free doctors visit. Then, of course, it was great to see their health spokesperson in The Post, talking about their policy this week. There are no plans to increase the health workforce and no plans to try and increase access to general practice. What they were talking about was setting up a nationwide triage service to decide whether or not you can actually see a GP in the first place. Well, of course New Zealanders remember managed isolation and quarantine, don’t they? They remember what it was like trying to be able to see a loved one during the lockdowns. Of course, the bureaucrats were in Wellington making the decisions about how New Zealanders could live their lives, while that’s back with a nationwide triage service under the three free doctors visits.

Well, I spent my weekend at the Northern regional conference and Central North Island regional conference of the National Party. The mood there was great. We are building the future and fixing the basics. We’re delivering on law and order, we’ve banned gang patches, and we’ve got police back on the beat and have reduced the number of victims of crime by 49,000. We’re teaching the basics brilliantly. Our economy is growing. We’ve announced the new law and order policy for no good character references for sex offenders, and we’ll be providing more plans for the future for our country as we head towards the election—not announcing policy with detail after the election. We’ll be announcing the policy before the election.

This election will be a contest of ideas, not a contest of secrets. Under this Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, National is fixing the basics and building the future, and it’s a better future because of National’s policies that we’re implementing.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Deputy Leader—Labour) (15:25): Wow! You know they’re in trouble when they spend four out of their five minutes in the general debate talking about the Labour Party. I just want to thank the honourable member Simeon Brown because, in this day and age, it’s very difficult to communicate policy announcements, given all of the platforms that people listen to, but he did a fantastic job of selling and re-announcing our three free GP visits. Well done, Simeon Brown. We might need to put you on the payroll.

Interestingly, Nicola Willis did the same. I think she spent the vast majority of her speech talking about us, including me. She wasn’t going to get a mention in my speech, but, hey, I’ll bat that one back. This morning, when we were on Radio New Zealand and, even before that, when talking about the Public Service job cuts, she’s been very clear, and she’s used this line where she’s been saying, “Let’s get out of the 1980s.” Now, I was reflecting on that. I was a child of the 1980s and 1990s, and what I remember very clearly was in the early 1990s when both my parents lost their jobs in a community where the vast majority of people lost jobs, because of the closure of things like the freezing works. These were people that had always worked, these were people that wanted to work, but the jobs simply weren’t there. The political narrative of the time was that they needed to get off their butts, they needed to not be dole-bludgers, and they needed to go and find work. A Government—a National-led Government—at the time was completely dismissive of the fact that there were no other jobs out there for those people that had lost jobs, and here we are again. It’s déjà vu—different decades, same beep.

Here we are. We have heard senior Ministers in this House and through the public talking about job losses, dismissing the importance, the urgency, and the stress that that causes. We had Minister Bishop in the House yesterday, answering questions and saying that this is what happens—you lose jobs, and you go and get another job—as if the jobs are just there to be picked up. We’ve had Nicola Willis in the media, talking about the 8,700 jobs that she intends to cut from the public sector almost gleefully, excited that she’s going to take jobs away from 8,700 New Zealanders, impacting 8,700 families, impacting all of the businesses that are reliant on these people having jobs and having decent incomes, and forgetting that, actually, we are human, we are interconnected, and the private sector relies on all of us having jobs and doing well for them to thrive. She is completely dismissive of the reality and the impacts that being made unemployed have on an individual, on their family, and on business and the wider community.

Christopher Luxon and National promised to fix the economy, and they haven’t. They promised growth, they’ve talked up growth, and the only growth that we’ve seen is the growth in unemployment, the growth in business liquidations, and the growth in the number of Kiwis leaving for Australia and other countries because the opportunities are simply not here. I can’t stand—and I know there’s a lot of Kiwis out there that would share the sentiment—the wedge that is being driven between New Zealanders by a Government who makes out like the public servants are villains, like they are second-class citizens who deserve to be treated in such a way and have their job losses treated as if they are nothing.

There are people out there who are not public servants, but who appreciate the work that our public servants do. We appreciate our customs officers for keeping us safe at the borders. Our superannuitants appreciate the Ministry of Social Development case managers who help them with their super and any additional support that they need. Our public servants are not second-rate citizens. I have watched from this side of the House; I have watched over the course of the last two days the way in which that Government treat job losses and dismiss it as if it nothing. It is not nothing. Unemployment is on the rise under their watch, and it is due to the decisions that they have taken.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (15:30): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This Government, of course, is restoring the basics and building the future. One of the most basic things in any Government repertoire is to restore law and order to keep our people safe in this country. What did we do? We set a goal. We said we’d reduce the number of victims of crime by 20,000 by 2029 because we wanted to have fewer victims of serious, violent, and sexual offending in this country.

What did we do? We set out to achieve that by bringing in real consequences for crime, by bringing back three strikes and a reduction in the amount of discounts that could be offered. Why? Because an obvious place to start if you want to reduce the number of victims of crime is with that very small group of New Zealanders who create new victims over and over again. That’s why we toughened up the consequences for repeat serious offenders. That’s why we went after the gangs. Less than a quarter of 1 percent of adult New Zealanders are a member of a gang, but they’re associated with 20 to 25 percent of the violent crime. A very good place to start if you want to reduce the number of victims of crime is to toughen up the consequences for the gangs.

We did all these things, and we’ve had a particular focus on sexual offending, which has been something that has got worse over the years. I’m very pleased that next week we’ll be having the stalking legislation taking effect in this country, which has been something that has been called for by many people over a long period of time. Previous Governments didn’t prioritise it. We did, and we got it through, and so now Parliament is sending a very clear message to would-be stalkers that your activities will no longer be tolerated, and there will be consequences.

We’ve also changed the rules around name suppression. There’s nothing worse than people who have been the victim of a rape or a sexual assault and being told by the courts that they can never talk to anybody else about what happened to them because there’s a permanent name suppression for the adult offender. We don’t think that’s right, and so we’ve changed the rule so that permanent name suppression can only be granted if the victim agrees. Part of that is tougher consequences as well; if you get a conviction and the consequence is a bit of time on the couch playing PlayStation, well that doesn’t send a clear message that society denounces the act, and so that’s why we’re doing it.

On the weekend, the National Party announced it would be following that up with changes around good character discounts for sexual offending as well. Quite often, it’s the so-called good character that enables some of that offending, and we don’t think that’s right, so we’re making those changes.

It’s also been mentioned that we’re doing changes to the Public Service. Yes, there is concern around the number of public servants who over the next few years won’t be further employed, because we do need to get the numbers down. But what we don’t hear about quite so much from the other side is that during the six years when Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins were running the country, they increased the number by around 19,000. They went on a hiring spree that wasn’t sustainable. I think all New Zealanders can appreciate that if you’re running massive deficits like we’re still trying to grapple our way through and get back into a surplus, and if you’ve increased debt by hundreds of billions of dollars, there will be consequences. That’s why we as a Government are being careful and sensible and prudent with our spending and why we’re determined to get the overall size of the public sector back to historic norms. The good news is that with better arrangements and structuring and with the greater use of technology, New Zealanders will get better services as a result.

Finally, I just want to come to the question of policy. I thought the thing was quite interesting, isn’t it? The only policy, really, that they’ve announced is that they’re going to introduce a capital gains tax, because Labour want to spend and, therefore, they need to tax. It’s been interesting watching across the Tasman to the Australians. Labour is saying, “Oh, now we’re bringing in a capital gains tax, but it won’t apply to you; it’ll apply to just a very small group of people. There’s nothing to worry about here. Vote for us; we’ll take money off them and we’ll give it to you. Don’t worry, everything will be sweet.”

Well, of course, the problem is that it never works out that way. They get the new tax in and then they just keep on expanding and expanding and expanding. The Aussies are seeing that now, because a big part of the capital gains is inflation. You’re being taxed for inflation. In Australia, there was a discount of 50 percent—that’s gone, and now they’re going to be taxing your inflation. If you give the Labour Party half a chance, they’ll be coming after your tax in a big way, and we can’t let that happen. That’s why we want to steer clear of what’s on offer on the other side of the House.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs) (15:35): In 1984, the incoming Labour and Roger Douglas Government launched a neoliberal experiment on New Zealand, which was continued by Ruth Richardson in 1990. This was just after the Bob Hawke - Keating Government got to Government in Australia and began the incremental change. Over the next 25 years, their economy in real terms grew 35 percent better than ours. This is a sign of massive failure.

This document here, of course, is an inquiry into what happened to the BNZ triggered by yours truly way back in 1988, because I suspected that there was a serious crime going on and that major political parties were covering it up, and we proved that conclusively. Why am I raising it? Because these are the very same people today who are saying that buying back the BNZ is a bad idea. Where were they in the 1980s, for example, all these so-called experts—and one in particular, Ruth Richardson?

Do you remember what our policy was in 1990? It was to underwrite the bank and have a full-scale inquiry. We never had a full-scale inquiry. That’s the kind of deceit that happened, and then there was three and half pages of bad debts, the Adbro deal, which was siphoned off, which the poor New Zealand taxpayer paid for, and then they flogged it off to the National Australia Bank in November of 1992, and the rest is history. When someone comes along and says, “Why are all of our accounts at local and central government being siphoned off to Westpac Australia and not handled by our own banks?”, none of these people have got an answer. They still want to continue this neoliberal stupidity as if the idea of owning your own bank is not a good idea.

When the bank was sold, six out of 10 banking customers were with the BNZ. We had competition back then; we’ve got none now, and Ned Kelly is robbing this country blind. We all know they’re making greater money and profits in New Zealand now—in a much smaller market, one-fifth or one-sixth the size—than they’re making in Australia. How do you get away with that? Everything about this thing is wrong.

When they say it’s not a good idea to buy back the bank, my question is: who says you’re an expert? Where were you when just five or six years ago Kiwibank was saying they were going to buy into the BNZ? Did any of these people raise a question then? Did Ruth Richardson say a word then? Did any of these so-called economists and experts say a word then? No. Not a word, not a not a sound, not a mutter, not a murmur, but all of a sudden, when somebody comes along and says something common sense like we did—and the people are going to back this to the hilt—they are shouting out “this is a bad idea, and we can’t afford it”. They don’t even know how we’re going to buy it. They don’t even bother to read the document—or, in some cases, they need some crayons and illustrations to just see what I mean, because these people are just damn incompetent, and I can prove it over and over again.

Their idea is that the Government should own no assets at all; it should all be owned by private enterprise. They know nothing of the brilliance of our economy when first Labour and then the National Party successfully took us to No. 1 in the world. It’s 1952, and political scientists are getting off boats and coming to see this country because we have been so magnificent. The Minister of Labour didn’t have an elephantine memory, but he knew every unemployed person because—guess why—there were only 29. Not 100, not 1,000; just 29. Now, we’ve got this new experiment, which is now being shoved down our throats from some political parties trying to justify four decades of failure against Australia.

When I first went to Australia, it was $1.30 for their dollar—that’s how far we’ve slipped over these years. Yet we’ve got the resources, we’ve got everything here, but we need the political leadership, and we also need a plan where we get the added value when it comes to tourism, when it comes to our airline. These people would flog our airline off as well. In fact, they did. They flogged the airline off until it went broke, and we had to buy that back. They sold KiwiRail—remember that? That went broke, and we had to buy that back.

So over and over it goes, and I’m saying to the media up there to get off your backsides and do some research. Start looking at comparisons in history and tell me that we’re wrong in this matter—because we’re not. Out there, I can tell you, the halls are packed to the walls of people in New Zealand who believe in their country, and they are sick of you selling the status quo. They’ve had a gutsful of the status quo. They don’t believe this is good enough and they don’t believe we can’t make any changes. They want change and they’re going to get it because there is a better way to run this economy, and the key part of it is to get as much of our wealth and keep it to ourselves in order to add value to the max.

How come, for example, we are not the infant formula capital of the world? We are the best producers of milk. Why aren’t we the infant formula capital of the world? Do you know what’s happened?

Hon Shane Jones: Hocking it off.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: They’ve flogged off Fonterra, they’ve flogged off Alliance meats, and they’ve flogged off Silver Ferns Farms, one after the other. Well, ladies and gentlemen, on 7 November, all that’s going to stop.

SPEAKER: The Hon—

Hon Shane Jones: It’s all here—here’s the proof.

SPEAKER: Are you tabling that? Are you seeking leave to table that document?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, I don’t seek leave to table it. It’s an evidentiary matter—it’s all there. I suggest that some people ought to read it.

SPEAKER: Yeah, good.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:41): Oh, thank you, Mr Speaker—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: It went all the way to the Privy Council.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: —and that’s why I disagree—

SPEAKER: Sorry, wait on—sorry. Is it a point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, I was saying that this matter went all the way to the Privy Council. That’s why the people should read it.

SPEAKER: OK, and so it’s well-travelled.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and that’s why—

SPEAKER: Start again, sorry.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Yeah, thank you, Mr Speaker. That’s why I disagree when the Minister of Finance says that the Rt Hon Winston Peters is very, very confused. I absolutely do not agree with that, because the Rt Hon Winston Peters is very clear what he’s up to. For example, I notice that the Rt Hon Winston Peters enjoys the Spurs. I’m actually supporting the Thunder this year in the NBA play-offs, and so good luck to you, sir.

The second thing as well that the Rt Hon Winston Peters talked about today, which I was surprised about—he quoted Ice Cube. He said, “check yourself before you wreck yourself”, and if anybody wants to see that, just Spotify Ice Cube. It’s a very, very good song.

But that is a lesson to Nicola Willis, who, in the week before her Budget, spent a good five minutes—five minutes—talking about the Labour Party. She cannot help herself, but she just talked about the Labour Party. No good news for New Zealand and no set-up for her last Budget, but instead she spent five minutes talking about the Labour Party, and then the next Minister spoke for another minute about the Labour Party, and that goes to show for everyday New Zealanders what exactly is the priority of this Government, as the attacks—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: They’re worried.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: It’s because they’re worried. They’re so worried, they have to check themselves before they wreck themselves. Well, it’s too late; they’ve already wrecked themselves—thank you, Ice Cube.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: They’ve wrecked us, too.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: They’ve wrecked New Zealand, and if you think that Christopher Luxon has any idea of what it’s like for everyday New Zealanders when he says that he’s entitled to his entitlements and that his supermarket bill only cost $60 a week, where is he?

Hon Kieran McAnulty: No one believes him.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: No one believes him—absolutely nobody believes him—and that’s because he has no idea how hard it is for everyday New Zealanders.

At a time when unemployment is at an all-time high and we have high business liquidations—a 15-year record in high business liquidations—what does this Government do? They are putting on the table for this year’s Budget more business liquidations and more unemployment, with the loss of 8,700 public sector roles. Now, the interesting thing is what they haven’t talked about—and which was revealed today in the House through question time—is that they have actually exempted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) from the first year of those Public Service cuts.

Hon Member: Oh, forensic—forensic.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Exactly. So it seems to be that there are secret cuts, because we don’t actually know enough.

How can we trust the words of the Minister of Finance, given that yesterday she had the platform to make it really clear to New Zealand where those cuts were going to be, but it’s not until the next day that she revealed that MFAT was exempt from that. How can we trust exactly what the Minister of Finance says with regard to those job cuts? If you ask her, “Well, what are those job cuts?”, she says, “Oh well, we have to work through the job cuts.” Well, then, how do you know you’re going to make the savings by doing that?

Ryan Hamilton: Tell us about the Future Fund.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Here we go again, they’re wanting to talk about the Future Fund. Again, one of the problems for New Zealand with regard to our low productivity is the access to capital, and so what does the Government put on the table around low productivity to help access to capital? Cuts. That’s not how you grow an economy. That’s not how you grow productivity. You help small businesses access capital and you help businesses access capital, and that’s exactly what the Future Fund will do—just like it has done in Ireland. Again, the Government likes to talk about the international comparators, and they talk a lot about how Ireland is doing in their economy. That’s exactly what the Future Fund will be predicated on to help our economy grow, but what are the solutions that have come from the other side? More cuts.

Never mind the customs border officers that reduce the amount of illicit drugs that come into New Zealand—never mind them. Never mind all the school-based nurses in Porirua and Wairarapa that have been cut already under this Government—cut already under this Government. Never mind all the graduate nurses who are no longer confirmed to have a job within our public health system. I would have thought that the Government would want to hire Kiwi nurses who have gone through our tertiary education system, who have sweated for three years, who have got their qualification, and who now want a job. But, no, there are more cuts by this Government, and that’s exactly what this Budget will be about. It’s about secret cuts. I know that Nicola Willis loves a restructure, and one is coming her way on 7 November.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn) (15:46): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We are operating in a world that’s increasingly uncertain, with global instability, a fragile economy, and a persistently high cost of living. In the face of all of these conditions, I would like to draw the public’s attention to a number of facts.

The first fact is that our small nation of New Zealand has had to up its game in international relations and trade. We needed to look outwards and strengthen those relationships following a period of lacklustre representation and advocacy on the international stage. New Zealand has focused on strengthening those relationships.

The Government has fired up, reaching out to the world, and we had immediately off the bat a trade mission to Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines, of which I have been a happy participant. Through that trade mission, we now come to a New Zealand and India free-trade agreement that was initially considered an impossible task, but it is something that we have achieved, none the less. It is an agreement that will open up relationships for our exporters and that will draw attention to New Zealand from India. In addition to that, we have the Singapore - New Zealand essential supplies agreement. What that does is bring to New Zealanders—to all of us—the stability of supply. This is stability that’s important for all the industries that are dependent on fuel for their businesses, and for all New Zealanders, especially my constituents in New Lynn who drive to work; for the Filipino migrant community, who all work hard; and for everyone in New Zealand who needs to rely on fuel.

I also speak to a second fact, which is the fact that we in New Zealand need a fiscally responsible and prudent Government whose focus is on getting the fundamentals right. We have to rebuild the economy while we’re paying down enormous debt. We are going to have to go for growth, and focus on growing investment from overseas and creating conditions that let businesses thrive. We want to enable our youth to be ready to get into the workforce, for them to have been able to study and learn the skills that they need so that they can contribute to an economy that needs them to grow, to continue to grow. I also acknowledge that the work is a difficult one—it’s not an overnight delivery. We do need a continued pathway, a runway for New Zealand to excel and do better and be great for the many families who depend on this country for their lives. We are a country that is the site of a large migrant community, this migrant community that includes my community from the Philippines, who work tremendously hard. We want to be able to give New Zealand, and everyone in New Zealand, the opportunity to thrive and to live well.

I wanted to just take this opportunity to greet the Filipinos out there for the national Independence Day, or month of June, for all of us that we celebrate. And also, I look forward to seeing all of them in the many Independence Day celebrations that I will be going to throughout the month of June. Mabuhay for the Philippines, Mabuhay for New Zealand.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (15:51): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to start this general debate speech with some sad acknowledgment. Nick Wilson, the principal of Ponsonby Intermediate, sadly passed away suddenly on Saturday. I want to acknowledge his family, friends, the staff and students, and the board of trustees of Ponsonby Intermediate. May his legacy be remembered through the many thousands of students he helped to educate.

I want my contribution today in the general debate to look at what has been a very, very serious announcement, that will take New Zealand backwards, by the Government. We are currently in a cost of living crisis. We have unemployment at some of the highest rates in decades. We have global instability. And what is the Government’s answer to this problem? Their answer is to sack almost 9,000 public servants. Now, this makes no sense. We know that we need to have a Public Service that works for New Zealanders. We know that we need to take up new technologies and be efficient, and that is what—I have to say—successive Governments have tried to focus on. We saw, in the John Key Government, moves towards reducing the Public Service. In the end, that was unsuccessful; and I have to say, this is likely to go the same way too. But along that path, this will cause an immense amount of pain to many, many thousands of New Zealanders and their families.

The Government has put forward Budget projections that relied on everything going right, and, sadly, nothing did. So what they’re doing now is they are trying to make their Budget add up, and the people who are paying that price are public servants, their families, and New Zealanders who rely on public services.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: It was women, last Budget.

CAMILLA BELICH: It was woman last Budget, and this Budget it will be New Zealanders, public services, and public servants and their families who pay the price. This isn’t an inevitable consequence, like the Government would make you think, of some decisions that the last Government made. This Government has to take responsibility for its own decisions, and some of its decisions included irresponsible tax cuts and tax breaks for tobacco companies and landlords. These are not the priorities that New Zealanders share with this Government, and they have meant that they’re in a situation now where they’re having to balance their Budget by sacking people.

This is a serious matter. Many people, if not everyone in this House, would have been affected by family members who have been made redundant. And I bet, to a person, they remember that, because redundancy is so significant. I know, as a former employment lawyer, that jobs matter. Jobs are important not just for earning money but for your sense of self worth. What this Government has done is, unfortunately, made every single public servant nervous about their position, nervous about their value, and nervous about their future. As I said, this goes on top of a situation where there is so much global instability and high unemployment. The idea that simply by sacking these people, suddenly we will have a Public Service that works better and delivers for New Zealanders is simply, as Chris Hipkins said, “a fairytale”. It won’t work. They are banking these savings, but the delivery of better public services and more jobs for New Zealand will not result from this.

We have very little detail on how this is going to be implemented, and through questioning in the House that became even more clear. Where is the funding for this AI transformation that will allow us to lose almost 9,000 public servants? We haven’t seen any of that information. We haven’t seen any detail on how this is actually going to work, and unfortunately—or fortunately—it won’t work. It’s a plan that’s destined to fail, and the people who will pay the price are everyday New Zealanders who either rely on public services or are public servants or have public servants in their families. It is a sad day for them. But I say to those people, “You have a friend in Labour, and we will back you. We will back you to stay in work. We will back public services that actually deliver for New Zealanders. This plan won’t be implemented by the time of the election. New Zealanders have a choice. On 7 November, I say vote for your family and vote for your future and vote to change the Government.

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (15:56): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to take my five minutes of general debate time not to talk about the Labour Party, because I just sort of think that actually it’s a really good opportunity to talk about ACT’s achievements. Our achievements in law and order, our achievements in the changes that we’ve made for the victims of crime, because we heard from them, we heard what they were missing and we have looked to address it. The victims told us that they weren’t included adequately when it came to participation within the system, that they felt like they were being revictimised continuously through the processes. And also, being revictimised—especially—through lack of consequences to those perpetrators. Consequences matter, and changes that we have made mean that victims have been heard in this space. By hearing them, we’re also protecting our communities.

How have we done this? Well, we’ve done it by introducing tougher sentencing laws. We are ensuring that the courts are moving faster, especially in the district criminal jurisdiction. There are stronger actions on gangs and real consequences for serious and repeat offending. We have abolished Labour’s prisoner reduction targets, increased funding for Corrections with savings that have been found by the ACT Party, I might add. We have brought back three strikes, but not only have we brought it back, we’ve added sexual offending as one of the eligible offences for a strike.

We’ve amended sentencing laws, making sure that they are harsher and have real consequences to determine that those that commit crimes will be punished for it. We’ve introduced a criminal elements for those that attack workers who live in the same place in which they work, protecting those retailers especially. We’ve strengthened the firearm prohibition orders, making sure that we gave them teeth—the teeth that they lacked in the past. We’ve made gang membership an aggravating factor when it comes to sentencing decisions, and, most importantly, we’ve taken the money from the gangs that they have profited from and we are giving it back to the communities in the form of $11.9 million going to the police programme initiative called ROCC—Resilience of Organised Crime in Communities. We are taking the money from the gangs and we are using it to make sure that there is less gang recruitment and that we are looking after the victims and attacking those that are addicted to meth. Not giving the money back to the gangs in the first place.

We’ve been tackling youth crime with accountability and intervention because youth crime was completely out of control.

There was no encouragement, there was no oversight, there were no kids even going to school. The previous Government left it in the too-hard basket. I’d like to do a big shout-out here to the Hon Karen Chhour for the work that she has done in this space. Serious repeat youth offending is down 22 percent, ahead of the 2030 target of a 15 percent reduction. She’s got there already. Ram raids are down by 85 percent. That means fewer businesses are being smashed up and fewer communities are living in fear.

Karen Chhour has brought together a better working relationship with the Police, with Oranga Tamariki, with our court systems, with our service providers. She’s deliberately showing youth that they too are accountable for their actions, so as they grow older, they realise there will be consequences.

We’re making the justice system faster, as I mentioned just before, and more effective. The District Court criminal backlog has decreased by the largest ever reduction—a 22 percent drop over 12 months. That’s 1,500 fewer cases going through the District Court. We reject the soft-on-crime ideology of the Opposition. We defunded the taxpayer money pit for section 27 cultural reports, but we will never defund the Police.

We’re making a smarter approach to law and order, addressing emerging issues like 3D printing of firearms, but also my colleague Laura McClure’s Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, which is set to be debated in the House today. What’s the result? There are 49,000 fewer victims of crime under this Government, with ACT being there under law and order. We’re proud to stand up for law and order, for our communities, for our families, for our society, and for New Zealand.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga) (16:01): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Last Thursday, I was back in Tauranga. It was a beautiful day; it really was, as it often is. There was a festival atmosphere as we signed the Western Bay of Plenty City and Regional Deal. It was at beautiful Bay Oval. I’ve watched many fantastic cricket matches there, but today we signed the regional deal.

It’s a commitment and it gives long-term certainty between central and local government in the Western Bay around what the key priorities are and how to deliver them. It commits to the roads of national significance along TNL2, Taureka Northern Link 2, State Highway 29, and State Highway 29A. There are significant opportunities that come off the back of that.

In housing and urban growth, over 10 years, we expect to see 12,000 more greenfield houses and 3,000 more infill projects. Key eastern, western, and northern corridors have been identified and have the infrastructure in place for it to be delivered. In the east, Papamoa East, Wairākei, Te Tumu, finally, finally coming to fruition, and Bell Road—huge housing potential out there. In the north, Ōmokoroa and Katikati. In Tauriko West, around Belk Road and Keenan Road, and through Tauriko West development areas.

There was also focus on the social infrastructure that needs to be delivered. We’re talking about the health and education facilities that our region desperately needs and has lacked as its exponential growth hasn’t had the infrastructure to keep up with it. That includes redeveloping Tauranga Hospital, a new ambulatory hub, new future schooling—and people watching this from Ōmokoroa will be very keen to have their district included in the future discussions too around Welcome Bay and Ōhauiti.

There was also discussion on the deal around export-led growth. I want to thank all of our wonderful kiwifruit growers and Zespri for all of the amazing work that you do delivering a world-class product to the world market.

We are a success story. Since 2000, we have had population growth of 76 percent, compared to the national average of 38 percent. We have seen GDP growth since 2000 of 148 percent, compared to the national average of 87 percent. This is a proud and successful region, and it has been delivering for the Bay and for New Zealand.

I want to give a shout-out, too. I want to make mention of some of the comments that people in our community have made. Zespri welcomed the deal, saying that it’s an important step towards supporting growth in the region. They said—allow me to quote—“This plan provides greater confidence that bottlenecks will be addressed and gives industry more certainty to invest and meet future demand while continuing to deliver value to growers in the communities [they] support.”

I want to thank Priority One, Nigel Tutt, and current CEO Dave Courtney for all the work they did in this. They say the deal signals a new phase of confidence, delivering what has often been missing: certainty. For businesses and investors, that clarity matters. It reduces risk, it improves sequencing, and it provides a stronger foundation for long-term investment.

I want to acknowledge Tauranga City Council Mayor Mahé Drysdale and all of his team for the work they have done putting this together. I want to congratulate Western Bay of Plenty Mayor James Denyer and the Western Bay Council, Western Bay of Plenty Regional Council Chair Matemoana McDonald, and everyone at the regional council for the work you have done. We were very fortunate to have the three councils, the local MPs, all of the key businesses, and the community all aligned on what the most important things were for our region. If I look back over the last three years—well, since I’ve been an MP—we’ve spent a lot of hours trying to get our key spokespeople and our Ministers up to Tauranga to see how important our region is and impressing upon them the investment and the commitment that’s needed. I want to thank everyone on the Western Bank of Plenty Infrastructure Forum for all of the work you have done in making sure that we are aligned in this space, too.

Most importantly, I want to thank the good people of the Bay of Plenty. We have a fantastic region—the best part of New Zealand. I want to thank my colleague Tom Rutherford, a hard-working MP. I want to thank Cameron Luxton. I want to thank the Hon Scott Simpson. This Government cares about the Bay of Plenty. We are very proud to have the Western Bay of Plenty City and Regional Deal signed, sealed, and delivered. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 29 April.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Last time we were reading the bill, we were up to call No. 5.

Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (16:07): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill. This is important in and of itself, so care must be taken in integrating with the inquiry into online harm, and I know that Laura will be supportive of that.

We’re talking about artificial intelligence (AI), deepfakes, and impersonations. We’re talking about identity fraud. These things are reaching into other parts of our lives, such as scams, fraud, impersonations, and identity fraud, just to name a few. But what follows from those things is coercion, shame, and blackmail, and they often follow those events. It’s so important for us to get this right in the context that it is.

First of all, I just want to say thank you to Laura McClure for bringing this issue to Parliament. Thank you very much for your courage in doing this. The bill outlines a clear violation of self-ownership and personal autonomy. It does this by amending both the Crimes Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act, both of which need updating to take account of how things are moving so fast online.

One of those is, for example: what does “harmful” mean? We don’t actually have a very good definition of “harmful” yet, so that we can actually, if you like, prosecute the people that are crossing the line. One of the things that came out of the inquiry into harm young New Zealanders encounter online was the establishment of an independent national regulator for online safety. In a shifting world, this responsibility is absolutely vital, and we need to understand what the Government architecture underlying that will be to ensure that we’re going to approach this in the best possible way.

When you’re looking at how digitally altered, synthesised images or videos are used without an individual’s consent, we need to be able to hold those individuals and those platforms to account.

I am a father and this kind of activity is abhorrent. It makes my blood boil. These people are stealing and expropriating people’s identities. The full force of the law should be visited upon them, and New Zealand First wholeheartedly supports this bill.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato) (16:10): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mā Te Pāti Māori i tēnei rangi mō tēnei pire.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Indeed, greetings to us all in the House. I stand to give voice to statements on behalf of the Māori Party today regarding this bill.]

I just want to, before I start, thank the member not only for bringing this bill into Parliament but also for working in a bipartisan way on such an important issue, particularly for wahine and rangatahi. It takes a lot of courage to bring in something like this, and although the ACT Party and Te Pāti Māori don’t agree on a lot of things, this is where it was really important that we could agree on this. For myself—and actually being told by other people that they don’t think I should support this bill—there are many reasons why I beg to differ.

Recently—last week—we also had different social media bills. We had the online digital harm bill inquiry come to the House, and that’s when I said in my opening speech that to put it into perspective, I’m Gen Z, so I don’t know a world without the internet. Generation Alpha doesn’t know a world without social media, and Generation Beta doesn’t know a world without artificial intelligence (AI), and that’s the reality of our future, and we’re completely underestimating how rapidly the online internet world and even the dark web have, if not already, taken over our lives.

To create bills and legislation that can move with these evolving times is really important. In today’s society, the fabric that is made up of algorithms that we see as young people, whether you’re Māori or non-Māori, completely alters the psychological effects we have of interacting with each other, our behaviours—everything amazing and dangerous has collided in one space, and AI takes it that further step.

This bill, the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, is essentially dealing with the creation of AI pornographic images of young people without their consent. This bill criminalises that. It’s a scary world when these realities come into the classrooms of our kids and when they come into the hands of our kids, and whether that’s through iPhones or the internet, it can be a really scary world. We are doing everything in our power to get this bill in quicker and faster and I’m looking forward to hearing what the general public have to say in the select committee.

Just to add some data, the volume of deepfake files shared online surged from 500,000 in 2023 to millions, representing an annual growth rate of over 900,000 percent. Global data estimates that approximately 98 percent of deepfake videos online are non-consensual pornographic material that overwhelmingly targets women.

Last week I also shared that when we were over in New York at one of the AI summits, we were notified that there’s a five- to 10-year window that we have, and as well as many tech leaders, including Google DeepMind CEOs, Project AGI, the consensus is echoed by recent academic surveys which suggest that there is a 50 percent chance that AI will surpass human intelligence within the next five to 10 years.

Although this sounds very long-term or futuristic thinking, it’s definitely on our doorstep, so I want to thank the member for bringing in this bill and we look forward to hearing the submissions at the select committee.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:15): Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, congratulations to the member Laura McClure for having this bill drawn and for getting support across the House on what is a really important and serious issue that we’re facing.

I recall the first time that we talked about the issues of deepfake images being used was probably in 2020, when I was first elected to Parliament and this issue has only grown in importance. I think everyone can see, as soon as they pick up their phone, the prevalence of AI images and how often people seem to not be able to tell what is real and what is not real. I think the case for this type of legislation gets stronger as that technology gets more sophisticated and more widespread in its usage.

As my colleague Helen White indicated in an earlier part of this first reading, we are very supportive of this bill and we want to acknowledge the work that Laura and Helen and a lot of others have done to discuss this and also the work as part of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, who have looked at this issue—because it is a gendered issue. As many speakers have noticed and recorded, it is an issue that mainly affects women. This bill does make what we were talking about today—that is, the creation, without consent, of an intimate visual recording that is fake—a crime.

That is very serious and I think that reflects the seriousness with which the House sees that type of behaviour, and I think it’s an important part of the police being able to take prosecutions on this, but it’s also the message that this is not acceptable behaviour. It is important to be respectful of people’s image and not to take advantage of someone or seek to shame or embarrass them through the utilisation of this new technology.

Hopefully, that is a message that will come from this House too, and no doubt we will hear at the select committee many of the stories that have impacted people. I have just been reading an email about someone who was the subject of a deepfake intimate visual recording, and it’s horrific to think of going through that process. I know that everyone in this House will not want that to become normalised as a part of our society. I do hope that people who have been subjected to this type of behaviour and wish to speak out against it feel that they can submit to the select committee.

I know that that is probably something that the member would have covered in her speech, but I do think it’s really important to say that my experience, no matter the make-up of a committee or the year of the Parliament, has been that when people have courageously wanted to tell their stories, that has been done in a sympathetic way, a private way if necessary, and in a way that honours their dignity. That has been my almost universal experience when people have wanted to share quite difficult intimate stories, and I want to say to submitters who are thinking about sharing their stories that my expectation and I’m sure the expectation of Laura McClure and other members of this House would be that they can share those stories, if they wish, in a way that will make them feel heard, respected, empowered, and it will hopefully mean that what they have suffered will not go on to be suffered by other people needlessly.

This is a good bill. We will be supporting it, and I think it will be something that is important to work through at select committee, and I look forward to contributing to that.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:19): I wanted to come down to the House and support this piece of legislation, which has support right across the House, to deal with an issue that is driven fundamentally by technological change and the rapid rise of deepfakes and all the trouble and strife that is caused to the victims of that, which is potentially highly traumatic but also part of scams and sextortion and many other elements.

So, we’re talking about using technology to make fake nudes or a wide variety of other sexualised images. The current legislation isn’t sufficient to deal with the task, so there’s two pieces of legislation: the Crimes Act, and the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which have references to the posting of visual images which has been an ongoing problem that we sought to deal with. Now we are extending that to digital images that have been created using the various apps that are available.

I commend the member for bringing them into the House and we support them, and we support it very much in the context of a wide range of pieces of legislation that Government has brought in to help address the issue of sexual offending, that being the stalking legislation that comes into effect next week, and changes around name suppression for convicted sex offenders, and the toughening up of sentencing generally.

It is an interesting observation that while there is universal support across the House for some of the legislation such as stalking and such as this one in relation to deepfakes, both of which have criminal consequences and potentially time in jail—while there is agreement on that, there is less agreement on the consequences for crimes. It’s all very well having a piece of legislation that has consequences and criminalises behaviours but if fundamentally there are parties in this Government that actually don’t even believe in jail and they don’t believe in real consequences in any way, shape, or form, and they’ve fought back against any effort made by this Government to strengthen up the sentencing regime—so, generally, we’ve have had a slightly mixed attitude to that across the House.

We, however, are clear that part of what the sentencing regime and the justice system is about is about denouncing the act, and part of that denunciation of the act—in this case, creating a fake nude and distributing it—is it needs to be clear and there needs to be real consequences for that, not a bit of time on the couch playing PlayStation, necessarily, but something else. So we’re very supportive of this legislation. We have zero tolerance for this kind of harassment of individuals, particularly women, who are, quite clearly, far more likely to be the victims of this sort of what will become a crime. We want to send a clear message about that.

It’s steady work because the reality is that with the changing of legislation, new opportunities for people who are of the mind to do so—to create mayhem—arise. That’s why part of fixing the basics in the context of the justice system that we have is that we’ve got to make sure that our legislation is up to date with trends and practices that are developing. Like I say, next week, stalking; this week, we’re sending off to select committee this bill, which is dealing with deepfakes. We support this and we look forward to a good, thorough examination through the select committee process. Thank you, Madam Chair.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (16:24): It’s Youth Week. Happy Youth Week to everyone who has celebrated in Parliament this week, to everyone working around the country in our youth organisations, our youth hubs, and our youth outreach facilities. It is incredible mahi that we do to support rangatahi in their aspirations, and I want to commend the member who has brought this bill on what is such an important issue for those young people, to look around a generation of young New Zealanders who are growing up with some unique challenges that are so different from the ones that we faced.

I was 16-year-old girl 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, the challenges that faced young people were so, so far from AI massively changing the way not only that we learn, that we socialise, the jobs that we can expect our young people to be able to get, but the kind of sexual harm and abuse that they are facing online. This is one thing where we can show young people that the Government will use the power of the State to help them cope with some of the worst consequences of widespread use of AI in this way. What would it feel like to have been that 16-year-old girl in your school and discovered that naked photos of you were being shared around your school by people you know, by your classmates, and your friends—maybe even your boyfriend—and the images were fake? What would it feel like to know someone made them in under 30 seconds using an app they had downloaded on their phone? What would it feel like to walk into class the next morning knowing everybody had seen them anyway?

That’s not hypothetical anymore; this is the experience that so many young women are facing. We can do something about it, about a law that has not kept up. That’s why Labour supports the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill because we believe New Zealanders should be able to participate in modern digital life without that being an ordinary part of it and something we just ask young people to accept in the modern world. Young people deserve better than what is happening to them online right now, and that applies to many things. We should constantly hold to account the companies that are profiting off their misery. But this is something where we should say there is no reason why you should offer these products. They should not be profitable and they should not be legal.

This is something where we can send a really clear message to anyone using these apps that we’ve drawn a line in the sand and said, “No, you cannot treat young women in this way. There is a level of conduct here which is not acceptable for any New Zealander against any other New Zealander, and we see this as a crime.” This is a good bill.

That harm is still happening, and it’s happening in our schools. Young women and girls are facing being pasted on explicit websites without consent and then distributed to their peers in this way and, while the image might be fake, that abuse is still completely real. The way that it is felt has nothing to do with the way that the image was created. The humiliation is real, the fear of this kind of conduct is real, and the way that it impacts young people’s trust not only amongst their peers but with their family and amongst their wider social group is real. There is real harm from this going forward for them, as well; a level of psychological harm that when this has been done to you, how do you continue to relate not only to the technology that you use in your life but to the people who are around you? It’s casualised, it’s normalised, and it shouldn't be.

I think the most important thing about this bill is that it actually confronts quite a difficult definition to read. So often in this kind of legislation, where we are trying to deal with young people’s issues, legislators will shy away from the gritty reality of what these young people are dealing with. I want to commend Laura McClure for spelling it out about what girls are actually facing, in our legislation. That is not how the law is usually drafted. It usually skirts around these issues and makes nice out of what people are actually facing.

I would recommend to any submitters to actually read the bill and realise what sort of intimate recordings are being shared on a daily basis, because young people at the moment are facing this and they’re a generation that are far more conservative than mine or the members on the other side. The young people are all right; they’re smoking less, they’re drinking less, but the level of online harm that they are facing is rapidly increasing. The kind of sexual exploitation is following their online experience out into the real world too. The level of sexual harm, the level of sexual violence, the level of unsafe, violent sexual practices that are happening for our rangatahi and becoming normalised is huge and we must confront that. This is one step but the work is not done. We should all keep going.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) (16:29): Look, I think we stand here today with another significant moment in this House, where we are seeing cross-party support for us to move to protect not only children online but adults online, as well. I do want to commend Laura McClure for bringing this really important bill to the House. It was actually quite coincidental that we got our members’ bills drawn on exactly the same day. Of course, my member’s bill is to ban social media for under-16s and protect our kids online—two very important issues, because, of course, we see the deepfakes being driven by social media, so we want to see regulation in both areas: regulation in the deepfake and AI images being populated without women’s, children’s, people’s consent, but we also want to see some restrictions around social media use for our most vulnerable children, as well. So I think these are two very, very important bills, but they also show us that working across party is really, really important in achieving the best outcomes, and that outcome is to protect our kids, our women, and our girls online.

I would encourage support for both of these issues, both in the social media space and, of course, in this deepfake space, as well, because we are seeing the rise of sexually explicit deepfakes, and it is a growing concern not only in New Zealand but worldwide. Deepfakes, as we know, are digitally altered images or videos that misappropriate an individual’s likeness and transform it into sexually explicit material, and that’s often populated without consent. This technology, as we know, is advancing rapidly. The member just spoke about her back when she was 16—like myself; we didn’t have this type of technology, this kind of fear, this kind of anxiety. For me, that was actually 30 years ago, so quite some time ago, and certainly, technology has changed a lot.

The impact that these AI deepfake images have is huge. It violates personal autonomy and it can be extremely damaging, not only to mental health but it creates a fear, it erodes trust, and we need to be more respectful. Other countries have recognised the seriousness of deepfakes and have made significant progress in legislating against it, and it is time for us to act here, and it is great to see that agreement across the House.

We’ve already had the Education and Workforce Committee inquiry, in which they also raised this really important issue of deepfakes. Looking at amending the Crimes Act to explicitly include images created, synthesised, or altered without consent is, of course, a very important step forward here today, because it will empower victims and hold offenders to account. Of course, on this side of the House, we are very much on the side of victims. Under this Government, we have seen 49,000 less victims of crime. That is really, really important, because we are driving legislation through that, of course, is going to be on the side of victims.

Our Minister of Justice pointed out that we’ve made stalking now an offence, and, of course, that legislation is about to come through. I’d liken this to stalking and harassment online, because often when we see deepfakes, that can happen over a period of time, publishing those deepfakes online, and deepfakes can be used for, as we know, bullying—we see a lot of cyber-bullying—and it erodes that trust online, as well.

Studies show that we’re seeing deepfakes around the world and in New Zealand on the rise, and it is time that we need to act. I often say that we have many safety rails in the physical world, but we have absolutely no safety rails in the online world, and of course, women and girls are most vulnerable to sextortion, to sexploitation, and to these deepfakes being populated online. It is time that we act. I commend the member and I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Laura McClure, in reply.

LAURA McCLURE (ACT) (16:34): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to say thank you so much for all the members’ contributions in this debate. They’ve been absolutely wonderful and supportive, and we don’t often get this in the House, so we should really celebrate this when we do actually get it right.

Because I have the right of reply, there’s a couple of things that I wanted to do. Firstly, I wanted to explain a little bit about why I brought this bill to the House, I want to thank some people, and then I want to actually address some of the concerns from some of the members and some of the points that they raised.

As a member of Parliament, as a backbencher, you have an opportunity to have a member’s bill on the tin. Sometimes you have a grand idea, something that could be revolutionary; sometimes it can be just a really small tweak to a piece of legislation; and other times, it can be because a constituent or somebody has come to you with an area, a gap in our legislation, that needs to be fixed, and this is one of those areas where this bill came about. I was approached by a couple of young women who had found themselves victims to deepfaking, and it wasn’t just a case of being put into a bikini or a nude where it definitely doesn’t look like you. It was imagery that only the person who was deepfaked knew it wasn’t real, and the person who deepfaked you. Other than that, everybody else thought these images were real, and the harm was real. One of these victims was only 13 and she was completely humiliated at school and found herself in such despair she actually attempted suicide. That is real harm. That is a really serious thing.

From that, this bill was drafted and created, and once that happened, the floodgates opened and I was absolutely inundated by messages of other people—mostly women, but there have been a couple of males—where this has happened to them, and it was really apparent that the harm was very, very real. Actually, both the members Arena Williams and Camilla Belich actually alluded to the fact that this has become a little bit normalised with our young people, and that’s a real worry when something becomes normalised, because the harms from the flip side of this are actually really serious. I do think that some of the young guys, when they are deepfaking somebody else in their class, they probably think it’s a bit of a laugh, but it’s actually really serious, and I want to say to them that it’s so serious that every single party in this Parliament says that it should be illegal. That’s the very first thing that we should be doing, is setting an example and a standard at the very minimum.

Camilla Belich said that this is about sending a message, and I 100 percent agree with her. The member David Wilson sort of discussed a little bit about what “harmful” would mean in this context. I just want to assure the member that the Harmful Digital Communications Act, and particularly the revenge porn aspect, has actually been there for a long time, so this is well and truly tested, in terms of what that level is at this point in case law, so I think that they’ve got a pretty good handle on that—although it is going to be a select committee process, and if there are any concerns from individuals in that space, whether they’ve had their real nude shared, maybe they’ve taken a prosecution or attempted to, we would like to hear from you, as well, because it is important that we do get those definitions right so that we see the intent of this bill actually being adhered to.

Helen White—she gave a wonderful speech. She talked a lot about other kinds of sexual, violent harms that are happening out there. Quite a few members actually addressed the issue that the online world is quite scary for our young people, and it is actually a really tricky area around what we do in that space. I do think what I’ve heard today is that we can all work together to come to some kind of solution, and I think that’s something that we should actually drive to do.

Catherine Wedd—I think you might have suggested the cross-party solutions. It wasn’t a coincidence that our bills were actually pulled on the same day. It was a coincidence, sorry. We didn’t rig it. A lot of people thought that we did. But I think what this shows is that we are really concerned about our young people and how they are interacting online.

The Hon Paul Goldsmith, I do want to actually shout out to him, because he did actually meet with me over this bill and did try and find time within his work programme to get this done, and I know he was looking at it and my bill got drawn.

I want to thank all the journalists that actually took this on board and highlighted this issue. I’m running out of time so I can’t go through all of you, but, ultimately, I want to thank those young women that had the courage to reach out to a member of Parliament. This bill is for you, and it’s for my children, our children, and anybody else that might be affected by this kind of harm in the future.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

DEPUTY SPEAKER (16:40): The question is, That the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Congratulations, Laura McClure.

Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill

First Reading

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (16:40): I move, That the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill.

I am delighted to introduce this bill in the first reading: the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill. I would begin my contribution by acknowledging my colleagues Tangi Utikere, Labour transport spokesperson, and Tracey McLellan, who are both members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Also thanks to the parliamentary chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Mr Andy Foster, who approved and welcomed me to join members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee due to the parliamentary Transport and Infrastructure Committee inquiry into ports and the maritime sector which began last year in 2025, and allowing me to be included in some of those visits to the Port of Auckland, Port of Tauranga, Ruakura Inland Port, and Northport Whangārei.

I acknowledge representatives of the Maritime Union who provided further information and understanding of the issues port workers face on those gruelling schedules, but am pleased that some of the ports have had good progress, due to port bosses and employees, with safety standards and employee responsibilities that have been able to be afforded and negotiated. I want to acknowledge all the CEOs and their boards, and operational teams who were generous with their time and their hosting and in answering some of the critical questions that I asked around ports’ accountability. I thank them for the ability to better understand those issues in the world of New Zealand ports.

The world of imports and exports is coherent and complex, and the financial, domestic, and international issues of their daily operations are sometimes contentious, which they are now facing in many of our New Zealand ports. It was helpful to understand their overall goals, although they did not cover commercial sensitivity information, which is only privy to that port company.

In those specific port visit sites, with other colleagues, I was able to hear from these CEOs, their board members, the operational teams, Maritime Union members, and port workers, up close and personal, about the stories of the various issues facing port boards’ ancillary businesses, which are vital to the industries, such as the trucking industry, the rail operations—movement in and out of ports is vital to every local economy, specifically because it provides jobs and because the ports are vital to the livelihood of those workers—and understanding of the containers in and out of those port sites and the importance of having the framework to support the ins and outs of every single port we visited. Thank you also to the officials who helped me get to this point.

What really struck me at the port sites and at the port visits was the absolute importance of safety standards, the understanding of the operations 24 hours a day, and the commitment of all of those companies to port safety. Port operations in New Zealand: New Zealand has 34 ports, including 13 major commercial ports, regulated by Maritime NZ. The New Zealand port network consists of these ports, originally built by early European settlers and developed over time to do with trade, fishing, and transport purposes. These ports vary in size and function, ranging from small regional harbours to large commercial hubs. The five largest ports in New Zealand are Port of Tauranga, Port of Auckland, Lyttelton Port, Port of Napier, and Port of Wellington, which handle the majority of container and cargo traffic.

The purpose of this bill would be to reverse the exclusion of port companies and their subsidiaries from certain rules that apply to council-controlled organisations in the Local Government Act 2002. My request in this Parliament would be to gain your support across the House in being able to test this bill by voting for it to pass the first reading, to allow the process to go through to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and for them to then exercise their consideration through their process and also to request public submissions.

I am aware, as mentioned before, that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, who commenced the ports and maritime inquiry—that specific process has not been completed, and perhaps by consideration, public submissions through this bill may assist some of the recommendations around transparency and other factors of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Some of the knowledge that I attained is that 99 percent of New Zealand exports—or volume—pass through the 13 main international sea ports, making them indispensable national infrastructure. The maritime economy contributes billions to the national GDP, highlighting the high stakes of any mismanagement within the sector. Ports are not just commercial entities; they are utilities under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, required to be immediately operational following a natural disaster.

Under the current model, the legacy of the Port Companies Act 1988 encourages a disorganised and inefficient competition between New Zealand ports. As a result, this leads to smaller ports over-investing in infrastructure for large vessels, and sometimes they rarely attract them, creating stranded assets and immense financial pressures. The current system is a patchwork of competing interests, not cohesive national assets working for the collective good. But there is also an opportunity for a hub-and-spoke model or a national strategy for ports in New Zealand to have a unified port strategy, which is a crucial part to restoring the potential of New Zealand’s maritime freight sector. It could also rationalise investment, which includes assets and perhaps workforce, and enhance coastal shipping, which would promote cooperation between ports, enabling better planning, and, perhaps, better investment decisions to enable coastal shipping. It could also create efficiencies that benefit the entire nationwide New Zealand supply chain, specifically for rail and road operations to be better planned and have better investment, allowing port companies to work cohesively in their day-to-day operations.

Additionally, ports worldwide have become central to the 2026 fuel crisis. They are primary yet currently constrained gatekeepers of the global energy supply, with many centres, which includes New Zealand’s reliance entirely on imports. The current fuel crisis, driven by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and the closure of major shipping routes like the Strait of Hormuz, has made ports a critical focal point for securing supply, and, secondly, for managing fuel worldwide to avoid different shortages. That has an impact on New Zealand’s ongoing fuel issues, which this Government and Parliament have to contend with.

Before, I did say that the point of this bill is to reverse the exclusion of port companies of certain rules that apply to council-controlled organisations in the Local Government Act. This will have the effect of applying normal accountabilities to port companies, including the application of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 to be a good employer and the requirement to exhibit a sense of social and environmental responsibility with regard to the interests of the community in which they operate. I want to thank the members who I had a number of conservations with to support this bill or to consider it, and I thank them for that work. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

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

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (16:50): Madam Speaker, thank you. Can I just start by congratulating Lemauga Lydia Sosene, firstly, on working up the bill. I know it takes a lot of time to work on an issue like this. I heard in her speech how she’s travelled around with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and it’s obviously an issue that she’s passionate about and something that she’s sought to learn about, and it sounds like she’s invested a lot of time and effort into that. I have the pleasure of sitting on the Governance and Administration Committee with Lemauga Lydia, and we’ve been working through the civil defence bill, the national emergency management amendment bill, at the moment, and it touches on the lifeline utility issues, and I will aim to get to that within my allotted time to campaign on it. I just wanted to start, firstly, by congratulating her on getting to this point and just to pick up some of the big issues that she touched on in the last three minutes of her speech, just then, setting up this bill.

She talked about ports being an important lifeline utility across New Zealand. I’m sure we’re going to hear plenty on this matter from Andy Foster as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I’m sure he’ll have plenty to say on this. I was interested to hear her suggestion of the port strategy, looking at what our strategy is as a country, looking at how these different ports in New Zealand could work. She used the word “cohesive”. How do they work in a cohesive way or, perhaps, in a collaborative way? How do we streamline? I’m all for streamlining the way that our supply chains in New Zealand run and the way businesses run, cutting through the bureaucracy, cutting through the red tape and the overly restrictive layers of compliance that I think we’ve built up in a culture in New Zealand—a culture of compliance rather than judgment. We put more and more requirements on people and don’t let them get on and do the thing that they’re trying to do—in this case, run a port.

A great example that I thought she touched on was the fuel crisis at the end. Actually, in that setting, when you think about companies bringing fuel into New Zealand, which they do every week of every year and have done for a long time, we want them to be focused on doing that. We sort of throw the words “fuel crisis” around. It certainly has been a challenging time. I think it’s great to see this new deal signed with Singapore, which shores up those that supply our fuel, should there be a disruption to other means. I just mention that because sometimes when we use words and throw around terms like “fuel crisis”, I think those watching can suddenly think, “Jeez, maybe I should panic buy.” We don’t want that. Actually, our supply lines have been maintained and the fuel stocks in New Zealand are the same as they’ve always been. It’s great to see prices coming down. I saw in Kāpiti the other day that it actually went under $3 a litre for the first time in a while. Diesel’s cheaper than petrol. These are really positive signs to see.

We need to keep working hard on that, but a big part of that, as Lemauga Lydia said, was our ports. They play a vital role in what they do, and we want to make sure they can keep functioning. I think, when we come back to the bill—because I think they’re great strategies; I’m sure she’ll be bringing more ideas to the House around that port strategy and around the cohesive plan and around how we value ports in New Zealand. But the bill in itself is focused on official information and what information they have to make public. I think my concern here is that I’m not sure that the two aims—in the Venn diagram of that speech, they don’t quite overlap, perhaps, to extent that we think. I think, actually, if you start putting more and more requirements on to a port company with more and more official information and the ability for people to request this information and you’ve got 20 days to do that, I’ve seen in Government departments what that does. I’ve seen in local councils the impact that can have. I’ve seen in Parliament the impact that that can have and the amount of work that goes into it.

I actually agree with what she said at the end. I want them focused on bringing fuel into the country, getting it to where it needs to go, and running a successful port. I’m not sure that loading them up with more requirements in terms of official information is going to be the thing that unlocks them. I like the idea of thinking about that national port strategy, and I think there’s are discussion there that’s worth exploring, but I’m not sure that loading them up is the right way, because I don’t know that regulation, more rules, will help. I like the idea of simplicity. I think the intent is good. I think the intent that she has is good, but the difference between intent and execution can be quite vast.

Celia Wade-Brown: Well, improve it.

TIM COSTLEY: I didn’t quite hear what that was, but if you want examples, I will just point to the previous six years. Intent: “We’re going to build 100,000 homes.” Execution: “We built 1,000.” It’s great to have the intent, but we need the execution that can actually deliver it, and I don’t know that adding more compliance achieves the intent that, perhaps, was set out to be delivered here. We want them focused on the ships that are coming in and out. We want them focused on growth. We want them focused on keeping costs down for businesses. That starts by keeping costs down at the port. If you think of the Port of Tauranga, that Tom Rutherford frequently advocates for, along with Sam Uffindell, in this place—we want them focused on their future growth strategy. Are they going to expand? How’s that going to get on? How are they going to bring more supplies in and, of course, ship our exports out? Those exports are vital, as well. It’s a two-way street here. Yep, we’re bringing fuel in, but New Zealand is a country that makes its way in the world by selling stuff to the world.

A big part of this Government’s strategy is to double the value of exports, and we’ve seen tremendous growth. A key milestone, I guess, was the signing of the free-trade agreement with India only a couple of weeks ago, the one that Chris Hipkins said would never happen—“How are you going to do that?” He mocked the Prime Minister. He mocked the Prime Minister on national television and said, “You’ll never do it. No one else has done it. We don’t even think it’s that important. It will never happen.” And here it is—here it is, and it cannot exist without our ports, which are where we send these goods overseas. I want them focused on doing that, not focused on official information.

I think there are a couple of technical questions that we should consider, as well. First, of course, is that ports aren’t council-controlled organisations. I mentioned before the Port of Tauranga. It’s actually a publicly listed company. It’s a publicly listed company that, if you’re watching at home today, you could go and buy shares in if that’s something you want to do. At what point do we say it’s OK for publicly listed companies to then be subject to official information?

Now, there’s a point—and, actually, it was touched on in the first speech—around commercial competitive advantage, right? Every company wants to leverage their best advantage, and then we’re going to have to, probably, add in a rule that says, “Well, that’ll be public information, but if it’s commercially restricted, there might be a carve-out of anything commercial.”, but everything the port is doing this commercial—everything they’re doing is commercial. How are we going to balance that tension? How do we balance that? If we were to say, “Actually, we think ports are in the remit now and ports should be open to this, even if they’re not a council-controlled organisation and even if they’re publicly listed, what else does that extend to? Does that extend to power companies? I use this because they can be publicly owned. In this case, it would be the official information, not the local government equivalent, but they can be publicly owned. I think of Genesis, Meridian, Mercury—they are, appropriately, not subject to the Official Information Act for those reasons, and it becomes problematic, I think, when we start to open up a new thing.

So the intent—I get it. I understand the intent. I think people want to understand where their money is going. Auckland’s just sold a number of shares in Auckland Airport and transferred them into their future fund—a future fund that actually has detail available to the public. You don’t have to wait until after the election to see how it’s going to work. They are open that they sold an asset to invest into others. They were very clear about what assets would be sold to fund that. They had a plan, and they were transparent about it, and it involved selling assets. It was the only way to get capital in. There’s perhaps a lesson for members on the other side about that one. It was really clear, and the public have a means to hold Auckland Council to account. There are rules about what has to go through the long-term plan if they want to change that or if they want to spend more than their allotment. That’s set down now in law. It’s really clear, so there are means for people to hold councils to account.

Equally, companies, like the Port of Tauranga, like other ports around New Zealand, have to make disclosures to their shareholders, including councils. There is a regime in place, and as I look at it and I weigh up the bill and I think about the options on the table, I think the disclosure system we have in place is suitable as it stands now. I want the ports to do what they do best and not be weighed down by compliance. For that reason, National won’t be supporting this bill.

MIKE DAVIDSON (Green) (17:00): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party in support of this member’s bill, and I’d like to thank Lemauga Lydia Sosene for bringing this to the House today. It’s actually an excellent bill. I’d just like to comment on Tim Costley’s 10-minute contribution, because he actually had a lot of questions. I would have thought, with all the questions he has, he’d want this to go to a select committee so they could dive into it a little bit further and work out how it could be put forward in a better way for National to be able to support something that is actually quite a common-sense approach. It is a good thing that it is going to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which is chaired by Andy Foster, who has a very long history with local government, and he’ll know the value in this amendment bill. I’m sure that New Zealand First will be supporting this amendment bill. It’s a short bill, but it’s an important bill.

I come from the great city of Ōtautahi Christchurch, where we have Lyttelton Port, in the beautiful Whakaraupō Harbour. The owners of the port are the great people of Ōtautahi. They own the port. Like all our other companies that are owned by the people of Christchurch, it too should have the same oversight. It seems a little bit absurd that the ports can be controlled by an Act and, therefore, not become a council-controlled organisation (CCO) and not be held to the same standards. This bill will actually fix this. I think it’s really important that, actually, we give people the ability to put in local government official information requests. I think it’s really important when you look at what has happened in Ōtautahi over the last few years, where the port is looking to expand. They’re needing a significant amount of money, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and we know from what has been put in the media that DP World is looking around. They’re having talks, but it’s very, very secret, and I think we need a little bit more accountability and transparency for the people of Christchurch, to know what’s happening, especially in this very unique environment of Lyttelton Harbour, the home of the Hector’s dolphin, a beautiful, beautiful creature that should be protected, and we just need to make sure that we do that.

When we look at what this bill will achieve if it’s passed into legislation, it will ensure that the port companies will be treated the same as the other CCOs, and therefore they will some achieve some really good outcomes, including making sure they have a sense of social and environmental responsibility and having regard to the interests of the community in which they operate. I’d have to say, also, in that area, Ngāti Wheke is the local rūnanga. They treasure that harbour—absolutely treasure it—and they’re concerned about some of the actions, so it’s really important that, if the bill is passed, it actually ensures they have even more say in what happens in their backyard. I’m happy to stand today and support this bill along with the Green Party. We think this is actually a really common-sense bill. We’re pretty sure that it’ll get through this stage, because New Zealand First apparently—apparently—backs common sense, so we can count on them. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (17:04): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to talk about the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill and acknowledge Lemauga Lydia Sosene for bringing this bill to the House. As she mentioned in her contribution, there is a port inquiry under way with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Now, I was able to go on a couple of these—

Tangi Utikere: Come back.

CAMERON LUXTON: Thank you, Tangi. I was able to go on a couple of these excursions to visit port companies as a former member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I have to say there was not a haggling for these companies to be accountable under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA). I think there are a few issues, and so I’ll just say upfront that the ACT Party opposes this bill. I think it’s because, when you look at it, what is the problem definition here? We’ve had a speech. We’ve had the Greens’ Mike Davidson talk about the Hector’s dolphin, randomly, but we haven’t actually heard any problem definition and how this is a solution.

When you look at my beautiful part of the world, Tauranga, where we have the Port of Tauranga, our vital connection to our trading links around the globe, you are talking about companies that have to compete on a global stage. They have to go out there to shipping lines and shipping companies and explain why they are efficient and worthwhile docking at to get goods into New Zealand and our goods out of New Zealand. These companies do not need to be having LGOIMA questions about their negotiations with lines companies, about whether they are able to sell these berthing spots, how long people are going to be parked up—these are already things they are accountable for. What we do not need is commercial sensitivity being added to this.

We’ve talked about the fuel crisis that these ports are helping assist New Zealand through. They are the places, the terminal points, where fuel is landed in New Zealand, stored in siloes, like we see up and down Hewletts Road and Hull Road in Tauranga. It’s great to see siloes full of fuel. This is not the sort of thing that a trading company that is competing with other trading companies—being other ports—needs to be accountable to in the same way that a monopoly like a local government organisation must be. These are enterprises trading in a market. They are not lone, non-rivalrous, non-exclusionary entities. These port companies, and especially in my area, with the Port of Tauranga, are competing for labour. This is not the job at the end of the line when you’ve got nowhere else to go. These are highly valued, highly skilled jobs, in an area with kiwifruit and farming, with packhouses, with a whole lot of opportunities for Kiwis in Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty to be employed. These port companies are competing hard for labour. This is not a place that needs more compliance. They have enough going on already.

I think also about the consents to operate. This Government is replacing the Resource Management Act (RMA), and rightfully so, because if you look at the consent hurdles that ports around New Zealand have had to go through, the fast-track bill is the reason that the Port of Auckland has been able to extend so efficiently and quickly to make sure that the good people of Auckland have got capacity to bring goods into New Zealand. Now we’re waiting for yet another wave, after the original RMA application was given up on by the Port of Tauranga, of fast-track applications that have to go in. Now we’re looking at a new RMA coming down the pipe, and well and truly long overdue. These port companies operate in a highly regulated system. They’re subject to commercial disclosures. This bill does not address the issues of blurred governance. It creates a risk of politicisation of an incredibly important part of our economic network. It’s reducing efficiency, as Tim Costley pointed out. There is no reason that the Zen diagram of more compliance will ever solve the undefined problem that was put out there.

We need to be allowing port companies to trade, to find the most efficient way to get our goods to the world and the most efficient way for New Zealanders to get the stuff they need from around the world into our country, so that when a painter or a tradie goes out to buy a length of wood or a pail of paint, they’re not paying more; so that when a New Zealander goes to the grocery store, they’re not paying more for that overseas product; and so that when our exporters are sending it to the world, there is not an extra burden of more compliance, making the cost of getting our goods to the people around the world who are demanding it—I can’t support this bill.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (17:09): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First, and I want to start off by congratulating Lemauga Lydia Sosene for the work that has gone on behind this, and it was great to actually have her and also Cam Luxton—it’s always good to speak after you—accompanying us on some of the “excursions”, as you put it, Cam, to some of the ports. Actually, it was really educational to go there as part of our ports inquiry.

The key part of this bill is about making ports subject to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA). We can see some benefits in greater transparency—and I’ll come to some specific examples of that which have actually come out of our ports inquiry—but we can also see the concerns that there are around business confidentiality, legal confidentiality, and those sorts of issues as well.

We are, as you’ve heard, undertaking a ports inquiry, and there’s no question that ports are absolutely critical. It was interesting, actually; when we were considering what we were going to conduct an inquiry into, we had a number of choices. We ended up with ports, and I think part of the reason for that is because they’re not owned by the Government, they’re sort of a little bit out of sight, out of mind. As you’ve already heard, nearly all of our exports and nearly all of our export value goes out through ports—and of course all the imports that come in as well.

In terms of the issues around transparency and some of those examples where it might be useful. One of the things we’ve heard as part of our ports inquiry is around port charges, how those port charges get applied, and the size of those port charges. They’re not terribly clear, and a lot of ports are quite clearly operating in effect as monopolies in that situation and charging what they can charge. Those charges, of course, go to the transport operators and then get fed back to the exporters or to the importers.

Then there are operations. Now, we’ve had some ports who have actually directly accused other ports, saying, well, they are operating parts of their business in a way that is, effectively, subsidised because they are ratepayer owned, they’re able to shelter that, and they’re operating parts of their business in competition with the other ports in a way that is subsidised. Transparency there might be useful as well. They’re potentially hiding uneconomic activities, is the accusation.

Then, of course, there are investment decisions, and some of the port investments that are being proposed are really significant. Of the 11 major ports we’ve got, all of them are at least partially council owned; seven are fully council owned; three are partially privatised—Tauranga, Napier, and South Port—and one, Eastland, is owned by a community trust. If you’ve got a fully council-owned entity that is looking at a major investment—hundreds of millions of dollars of investment—that sometimes has a material impact directly on ratepayers and directly on the risk that ratepayers wear. I think some of you around the table will know exactly which ports I’m talking about in that situation. Some transparency around those kinds of decisions may be valuable as well. That’s the transparency side.

Then there are also concerns on the other side. There’s the cost, which we’ve already heard about, of meeting the costs of LGOIMA. We all know that sometimes we have serial and other unhelpful LGOIMA requests, which can really tie an organisation up. I’ve seen that a lot in my local Government times, and that is a real issue. Secondly, there are concerns about business confidentiality—we’ve already heard that traversed very well—and legal confidentiality. That’s important as well. As we’ve already heard, ports are all subject to the Port Companies Act, they’re all subject to the Companies Act as well, and there are all sorts of disclosures that are there.

I’m going to finish with a couple of things to mention before coming to where we’re actually at as a party on this bill. Those entities subject to LGOIMA at the moment are councils, local and community boards, irrigation boards, licensing trusts, Reserves Act administering bodies—and there’s a whole schedule of wonderful organisations; museums trusts like Auckland, the Museum of Transport and Technology, Canterbury, Otago, the Aotea Centre, Riccarton Bush; there’s a nice list there. They’re subject to LGOIMA.

Airports’ authorities are subject to LGOIMA; council-controlled organisations are subject to LGOIMA; but specifically excluded are airport companies. Now, I was on the board of Wellington airport company; we were not subject to LGOIMA because we were operating in a very, very intensely commercial environment. Ports are specifically excluded—that’s the purpose of this piece of legislation that is being proposed at the moment—and energy companies are excluded as well.

We are going to be cautiously supporting this to go to select committee, but that’s as far as we’ve gone at this stage. We want to hear from people as to what they’ve got to say about this. We think it might actually add some value to the ports inquiry, because we’ll be concluding that roughly about the same kind of time. We’ll see what comes out of that—it may assist the conclusion of our inquiry—and I look forward to seeing the submissions and weighing them up, and then we’ll make a decision on what we do thereafter. Thank you.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (17:14): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on members’ day on this bill, and I want to acknowledge my colleague Lemauga Lydia Sosene, who is shepherding this bill through the Parliament. It’s always wonderful when you are able to have a bill drawn from the biscuit tin, so I offer her my congratulations. I also acknowledge the contribution just made by Mr Foster with the New Zealand First Party supporting this bill, which I think is the right thing to do. There have been a number of issues that have been raised, and, naturally, the select committee is the appropriate step and the appropriate place where a lot of those issues can be got into. I certainly look forward to being part of that process.

Mr Foster rightly touched on the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and one piece that is taking quite a bit of focus with that committee is the Inquiry into Ports and the Maritime Sector. This has meant that committee members have had an opportunity to visit quite a number of ports around New Zealand and get to grips with some of the issues that they’re facing—and some of the opportunities that they’re facing. I think that the bill that my colleague has before the House at the moment just adds further to the issues that are looked at in the committee, so I agree with Mr Foster that this is, I guess, well timed in that it could be considered alongside the work that the committee is doing.

As we know, there are a number of ports around the country. We do have a port in Palmerston North; it’s an inland port. I don’t think this bill, though, applies to it, but the work of Te Utanganui is pretty important. Perhaps that could be something that the select committee might be able to turn its mind to, ensuring that decisions that are taken in that space—

Carl Bates: Shameless!

TANGI UTIKERE: I am absolutely shameless when it comes to my constituency of Palmerston North, I’ll give the member that.

The decisions that port companies do take are significant decisions, and what this bill seeks to do is to bring into the fold of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) the operations of port companies in New Zealand. This is not about additional work; it’s not about sort of uncovering these mass issues that are arising in port companies; but it is actually about providing a level of transparency and accountability. I think that, given that there are significant public monies that are pumped through port companies by the mere fact that many of them are owned by local authorities, that’s not actually a difficult thing to ask of or expect from port companies.

We are familiar in our communities around the nature of council-controlled organisations (CCOs)—often they are museums or library or theatre organisations and groups—but there are always opportunities within the LGOIMA legislation, which does provide for some information to be withheld from the public. I think everyone in this House has experienced or is aware of the thresholds that exist around the withholding of information being supplied as a result of a public request. This bill will not simply mean that port companies have to provide all the information under the sun. The limitations around access to information would still exist—that’s contained within the principal Act here. If there are commercial situations where commercial sensitivity is an issue that is a justification for withholding that information, ports would still be able to rely on that. Now, that’s not to say that there is an expectation that ports, or other CCOs for that matter, would just use that as they wish, because the threshold still needs to be met.

This is a good bill that applies three existing provisions within LGOIMA, and they relate to the principal objectives of the council-controlled organisation. The member has touched on that—around being good employers, about the objectives in terms of return opportunities to shareholders, but also how they can show environmental and social responsibilities to the communities within which these entities do operate. The others relate to the access to information and how information might be withheld if appropriate.

In conclusion, I congratulate the member on having the bill drawn. I do hope that it does make its way to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I think there are absolute synergies there alongside the work that’s currently under way, and it’s an important piece of legislation.

Hon Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangārei) (17:19): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too want to congratulate the member for having this bill drawn. I think across a political career, roughly 30 to 50 percent of MPs have their bills drawn from the ballot box, so congratulations for working it up, getting it through caucus, and then getting it drawn. That’s quite a process.

This bill speaks to accountability, transparency, and community interests, which are all values we support. I guess the question is whether the bill is the right way to achieve this, or whether it’s maybe too blunt for what’s quite a complex system.

As we’ve heard, ports are not like most council-controlled organisations; they operate in a highly competitive commercial environment, making decisions in real time. If the goal is to enhance transparency, some of the risks surely also could be, as we’ve heard addressed, exposing commercially sensitive information, delaying decision making, and creating uncertainty for partners and investors. You’ll also note, as we’ve heard from Andy Foster, that the port inquiry through the Transport and Infrastructure Committee may well conclude at around the same time as this bill is making its way, and I’m sure that will throw further light on.

Look, I think, in summary, there’s three arguments that concern us. One, there’s already distinct commercial legislation: the Port Companies Act 1988; two, the acts that that Act describes required governance structures, and what’s being proposed here would duplicate these; and thirdly, the different focus of ports to be highly competitive compared to the focus that the OIA for local government is. I would also just point out the political lineage of the exclusions in the 2002 Act was actually brought to the House in December 2001 by Labour MP Sandra Lee under a Labour Government. It was then passed over to Chris Carter, who took it through its third reading in December 2002. So it’s actually come from within the team; they thought that the exclusion was important, and I think it is too. So thank you. Thank you for that opportunity to speak to the bill, and we’ll monitor its progress through the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) (17:21): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call on the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill. Can I begin by congratulating my colleague Lemauga Lydia Sosene on having her bill drawn and on making it this far. I hope that it will pass tonight, and it sounds like maybe it will with the support of New Zealand First. So congratulations again to my colleague.

This nearly could have become a “Who has the best port?” competition-type speech tonight. I have the best port in my electorate. I’m sure you agree with me, Madam Speaker—I’ll just indulge the House and bring you into the debate a little bit naughtily. I’m really proud to represent an electorate that has a strong port, an excellent port company led by the wonderful Matt McDonald, which is obviously owned by the Nelson and Tasman councils—and that’s another story, around our two councils.

I think this is an excellent bill, and I don’t want to take too much of the House’s time tonight. I just want to respond to some of the criticisms brought up by the other side. The first is that any concerns around how this bill will operate, that can be teased out at select committee. That is the purpose of a select committee, and I want to acknowledge New Zealand First for pointing out some of the things they believe need to be addressed at a select committee. That is the role of a select committee; so that’s where this bill needs to go.

The second point that I want to make is that there are reasons, under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act—just like there are under the Official Information Act—to withhold information. You can write that into legislation very easily to actually address those times when it would be inappropriate to release the information. It could be matters of commercial sensitivity, or other matters that where the public interest does not outweigh the importance of keeping that information from the public at that time. That is one of the concepts that sits behind our official information legislation, so I don’t see why we can’t have the principles of this, which is: these ports are publicly owned companies through our councils and they therefore should have that transparency, should have that accountability mechanism, because it is about the use of ratepayer money. It is about, at times, the use of central government money when money flows into the ports for projects, like we’ve had in Nelson. So there is actually that right for that transparency for the people who are paying for services that are provided by our ports.

However, I absolutely respect there will be times when it would be wholly inappropriate for matters related to commercial sensitivity or matters where something could be put at risk if that information was released to the public at that time. That is why we have these Acts; they do exactly that. I encourage National and ACT to rethink their position. Send this bill to the select committee so that those conversations can be teased out through official advice at select committee. It’s the place to have that conversation so that we can say, “Yes, we support transparency. Here are the areas where we would need to have carve-outs, to ensure that we didn’t put the port companies, operations, and their profitability at risk.”

We can get that balance right through a select committee process. That’s what we’re here to do. It’s a fantastic bill; congratulations again to my colleague, and I commend it to the House.

Hon MELISSA LEE (National) (17:25): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to start off by congratulating my colleague across the House Lemauga Lydia Sosene, who I serve with on the Governance and Administration Committee. This Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill, which she is the sponsor for, this side of the House—the National Party—will not be supporting it. We do actually oppose it. Let me start and explain why that is.

I have to agree with my colleague from the ACT Party Cameron Luxton. I was sitting here listening to him, and he makes perfect sense: where is the problem definition? It actually reminded me of a saying. As a Korean who learnt English as a second language, often some of the English vernacular didn’t make a lot of sense to me when I was growing up. There was a saying, “A solution looking for a problem”. I’m going, what the heck does that actually mean? This sort of describes that, I think. It’s like, this is supposed to be a solution looking for problem, because I have not heard that side of the House telling us why we actually need to change the Act, why we need this member’s bill in order to fix a problem. There is no problem.

The reason why that is, is that there is an exclusion for our ports, and I think it is rightly sore because—I know lots of people have actually said “LGOIMA”, there might be some people who don’t actually understand what “LGOIMA” is: Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. Just like the Official Information Act that we have in Parliament for Ministers, for example, and Government departments who receive this request for information. There are certain things that cannot actually be answered, and often you see redacted documents that actually shows that, you know, it protects our privacy or free and frank conversations that Ministers might actually have with the Government officials. That’s fair enough. But the thing is that they’re trying to say that there is no transparency.

I think it was member from the Green Party Mike Davidson who was actually saying almost like that there are things that we need to discover, these secret things that are happening. Well, as a company—and often these port companies, some of them are local government entities, as in council-controlled organisations. But some of them are actually, like Port of Tauranga is, you know, it’s a private company. I remember—and a lot of them are listed in the Stock Exchange. And when these commercial entities have to report back, often they do as a commercial entity to their owners, to their shareholders, to the councils. They actually are very transparent as to what they do and how much they’ve earned, all that kind of stuff. It’s not as if nobody finds out about their activity.

But I just want to give a different, slightly different perspective. When my family actually first moved to New Zealand, my parents set up an import and export company. One of the things that I had to do, as the person who apparently spoke better English than my parents, I had to be responsible for the documentation for all of the importing and exporting. I remember having to clear Customs, and then having to actually take receipt of 40-tonne truck containers that got delivered from Korea. We were responsible for import of the Korean instant noodles that you now enjoy at supermarkets, you know, and my favourite is the one—Shin Ramyun is my favourite. But the thing is that when food companies, for example, have to do LGOIMA or Official Information Act kind of thing, when they incur costs, guess who actually pays for it! It’s actually the customers who have to pay, because they’ve incurred costs. They’re actually not going to not pass on the costs that they incur.

You know, they already have transparency. These are companies that actually are doing their very best to help New Zealand grow. I have seen Auckland port—I know somebody said it’s a bit of a competition—Port of Auckland going, from 1988 when it wasn’t as spick-and-span as it is currently now, and doing more containers per week, per day and actually helping our exporters and importers trade through that port. I’m so very proud of the work that they do.

I think that this is an overreach and it is a solution looking for a problem. But I actually wish my colleague best of luck at select committee.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (17:29): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to reply to a number of the contributions that have been made. It is disappointing that the speakers on the other side will not be supporting it through the first reading to the select committee process. I think that’s the very thing that I wanted to point out. A couple of speakers have talked about the problem definition, and what I’m asking for, through this bill, is transparency and the ability to look at a possible national port strategy that would have a more complementary strategy for ports within New Zealand. I appreciate that a number of members have made some specific comments around the port strategy and around the fuel crisis, which is a couple of parts that I did speak about. In my personal view, it does not overlap. Each port that I have looked at and that I have studied has obviously got strengths and weaknesses. Importantly, it was a real delight to be able to understand the infrastructure.

I come back to the points that were made by other members in terms of transparency, and I do want to acknowledge the support of the Greens and also New Zealand First, in terms of the speakers around transparency. It is important that under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, port companies do have the ability to report, and, as we’ve heard from speakers on this side, there is still the ability to withhold specific information that is not privy. Through the process of the first reading to the select committee, it allows that to be tested, and should the select committee choose, if the bill gets through, to hear from public submissions, then the theory or the intent could be tested through that process.

I do want to acknowledge and I am pleased that the different members have provided a contribution because it’s always good to be able to test the thinking in different political contributions, but I do stand behind the reason for this bill, which is to achieve that transparency and to have a better model within New Zealand, given our location and given the complexities of the current ports within New Zealand—you’ve got some big ports who are very successful, then you’ve got those who are really struggling, specifically around their job and workforce investment strategies. Then the port companies spend a large amount of money in terms of investment but don’t attract the vessels that should be coming, so is there a better way to do that within New Zealand? Are there strengths? Are there weaknesses? Can that be better aligned? Can Parliament be able to provide better legislation in order to complement rather than compete? My understanding—and I did hear—was that there was competition for ports within New Zealand for probably the same business vessels that come through, picking up imports and dropping those off to New Zealand and then providing the exports. There is a better way to do business, and I strongly believe that this bill will achieve that. It will be able to even be just tested through the process within Parliament.

I do want to thank everyone that has offered some thinking around business strategies and the protection for businesses to keep some information privy just to that port company, but I go back to why employment at the ports is really, really important, and I talked about the safety standards that ports are equipped with. It’s important to recognise that it’s specialist work and that it’s work around the clock. Local communities who rely on those workers to work at those ports in different locations in New Zealand want a better national port strategy or even just to have that discussion. It has become really important because of our location in the world globe. Things like imports, like fuel, are just one of the components. What is next? What is next that New Zealand has to rely on, and then Parliament or the Government of the day has to come up with a decent strategy involving the conversation not just with these companies but with the workers?

Hopefully, we’ll be able to progress this. I am grateful for everyone that contributed. I commend this bill. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Noes 59

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (17:36): The question is, That the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill

First Reading

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (17:37): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

I would like to ask the House to imagine for a moment that—in a different country, in a different world—someone sold a teenager a lolly filled with poison. The teenager in this distant world reacts violently to the poison. The Government of this imaginary country pays the person—who sold the poisonous lolly to the youth—money to give the youth the antidote. Indeed, many would agree that this sounds like a twisted plot from a disturbing movie, but this actually happened right here on our beautiful shores of New Zealand merely a few years ago.

A few years ago, $2.75 million of public funds were given to an organisation linked to the gang named the Mongrel Mob. As many of us around this House know, the Mongrel Mob is responsible for, and continues to engage in, selling drugs, including methamphetamine, to many communities around New Zealand.

Carl Bates: It’s shameful.

RIMA NAKHLE: What’s even more shameful, as my colleague Carl Bates just said, is the fact that this is legal, right now, in New Zealand. What my member’s bill proposes to do is make sure that giving public money to gangs, who peddle violence and drugs in our communities, will never happen again.

Now, I’d like to acknowledge the Hon Simeon Brown. This member’s bill was indeed his idea, thought out and drafted out of sheer disgust and being mortified after that $2.75 million was so blazingly given to this group, closely associated with, and run by, the Mongrel Mob. The simple principle behind my member’s bill, which I inherited from the Hon Simeon Brown, is that public funds should never end up in the hands of gangs.

New Zealanders rightfully expect funds to strengthen communities, not to benefit criminal organisations. This bill closes the loophole that currently exists. That public money should not be given directly or indirectly to gangs or groups affiliated with gangs.

I feel very strongly about this. I feel very strongly that the person administering the poison should not be the person or group administering the antidote. I feel very strongly that the ones selling the drugs are not going to pull the wool over New Zealanders’ eyes and say that, all of a sudden, they’ve become the saviours.

Also, it not only prohibits Crown agencies from giving even $1 to gang groups or groups affiliated with gangs closely; it also creates offences for knowingly providing or making money available to gangs without reasonable excuse. It also says that Crown agencies need to apply due diligence when they’re granting public funds to different groups.

I’ve heard a number of people across New Zealand—because we’ve heard comments on the radio, via social media, on different news outlets—have their different views. I want to make one thing extremely clear: this debate is not about whether addiction recovery matters; it does. I’m extremely proud of the fact that our Government is the first Government to ever have a Minister for Mental Health. It shows how much we take mental health seriously. We’ve heard that drug addictions are a form, are an issue, under the mental health milieu. Mental health, drug addiction recovery, rehabilitation matters a lot to our Government. Every New Zealander struggling with addiction deserves support and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

But who are the ones giving the support? What are we saying when we allow groups that are run by current gangs to be the ones that emerge as though they are going to be victorious in helping people through their meth addictions. It’s a joke. It’s offensive. It’s offensive that these groups and these gangs, as I said earlier, are the ones that are contributing greatly to the horror, the living hell, that many families, parents, grandparents, are going through watching their children and their grandchildren go through the living hell of a drug addiction—drugs supplied many times, often, by organised gangs, organised crime. It is shameful.

For us to continue to allow this loophole, which we saw in 2021, $2.75 million of money that is actually supposed to be for victims, for community organisations, for the members of public, go to a group that is effectively, was effectively and still is, run by the Mongrel Mob. It’s not right. This is why my bill is needed.

Back when that happened, we saw serious concern from front-line police. I know my colleagues on this side of the House have spoken to many of our excellent hard-working police people that thanked us for the changes we’ve made with respect to gangs and the banning of gang patches in public because it’s helped them combat crime, combat violence, combat drugs even more.

Back in 2021, when this $2.75 million was handed to this group that’s run by the Mongrel Mob, Detective Sergeant Mark Moorhouse publicly rejected claims—and he’s based in Hawke’s Bay, where this programme was being run—that local police broadly supported the programme. He said, “the bulk of us do not support it.” He also said that he had seen no evidence that the gang wanted to move away from profits generated through methamphetamine dealing.

Now, we hear a lot. We hear a lot about lived experience, and we hear a lot about people that were part of gangs. They can offer their lived experience to these poor souls that are addicted to drugs. What I’d like to say is this: hopefully we will be going through a select committee process and we’ll be able to hear from officials from different organisations that provide these rehabilitation services. Good, decent organisations, for example, Salvation Army, and many around South and East Auckland. But what I’d like to say is this: lived experience is absolutely very important. But I’m not going to expect the lived experience of someone that is still living the life of a current, lifelong, very proud gang member.

What we want to do with this bill, as I said, is prohibit Crown agencies from funnelling any public money to groups that are part of gangs or that are strongly linked to gangs. But for those groups, those decent organisations doing the hard mahi, helping people through their addictions, as long as they’re not being run by a lifelong gang member, for example, then absolutely, they don’t need to worry. Public money should go towards communities, towards victims, towards health services, towards prevention, and genuine rehabilitation providers—not towards gangs that are wolves dressed up as sheep.

I hope the parties across the House also commend my bill today because it is small but it’s mighty in its effect and its mighty in what it tells victims: that your voices are heard and we’re not going to slap you with the audacity of those that caused the crime against you being given money that’s actually owed do you. I commend this bill to the House.

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

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:47): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to first start by congratulating the member for having a bill drawn from the House. It’s always a good opportunity to put forward some possible change to legislation through the member’s bill process, so congratulations to Rima Nakhle.

First of all, I just wanted to start by saying that gangs are a terrible thing to have in our society. They are a negative impact on public safety, they participate in a disproportionate amount of violent crime and drug trafficking and firearms offences—also with homicides and violent crime. This is a serious part of what having gangs means to New Zealand. We shouldn’t be supporting gang activities, and, certainly, I think probably everyone across the House would agree that gangs have a very negative impact, overall, in New Zealand. That is certainly not something that the Labour Party supports.

I think also just, in terms of the history of this, and I appreciate that the member maybe did not, herself, discuss this exactly, but money has gone to the Mongrel Mob starting in 2017, when the previous National Government gave $30,000 to the Hard2Reach programme for methamphetamine treatment. And, of course, as the member has alluded to, that was then extended by the following Labour Government. I think it’s important to recognise that this isn’t something that the Labour Government has only done itself; this was actually started under a National Government. If we’re reflecting on the decisions to give people associated with gangs money and whether we should do that or not, then that is something that we, collectively, as the two major parties, have to both wear. I think it’s important just to have that history set out.

There are issues in this bill which I think are serious, and if this bill does get to select committee, which I suspect it will, I think need to be looked at carefully by the select committee. I’m a member of the Justice Committee, and I know that the Justice Committee will do the work and hear the submissions needed to look into these issues.

The main concern that I wanted to raise on behalf of Labour was: as the bill is drafted now, it does not, to me, reflect exactly what the member stated its aim was. In the change that is made to the Public Finance Act, the change is that the Crown must not pay money directly or indirectly to a gang.

Now, I think everyone in the House will be united in not wanting to see this extend to student loans, to student allowances, to Work and Income New Zealand payments of family members of gang members, or even to gang members themselves who are wanting to better themselves through education. I think it is really important that—I’m sure that’s not the member’s intention, but I do think we need to make sure and clarify that the mischief that the member is attempting to prevent is a direct Crown grant to an organisation that is meaningfully connected with an existing gang or gang member. That is my understanding of how she described the bill, and it would be good to have this bill amended to clarify that that is what the case is.

I’ve already stated that gangs are not a positive part of society at all, to say the least; they’re responsible for a huge amount of crime, but we must not be a society which taints those who have family members who participate in illegal activity with the same brush as those who perpetrate that. I’m sure that’s not the member’s intention. Again, as I say, I just think, because in legislation we need to be really specific, we need to make sure that that isn’t the case.

Also, this is not a directly related—well, I was hoping it’s related to this bill; not directly affected by this bill, but hopefully those in gangs can be provided with paths to become good members of society who contribute. I think that would be all of our aim, and not to write people off. I don’t think this bill says that, but I certainly think that’s a sentiment that, hopefully, most people would share.

We will support this bill to select committee. Like I said, I do think there are some problematic issues with the drafting that I hope we can iron out, but we do share the view of the negative impact that gangs have on society, and we do encourage people to submit on this bill in terms of how the impact might actually work. Again, I recognise that both sides of the House have previously engaged in the activity that the member is seeking to prevent, so if we are as a Parliament deciding that’s not what we are going to do, let’s look at that together at select committee and see if we can find a way forward that doesn’t provide, as the member said, money to criminal organisations but also doesn’t mean that their families, who are blameless, are disadvantaged, and also provides a way for those members to become good citizens and participate in society in the way that we would hope for every New Zealander. Once again, congratulations to the member for bringing this bill.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (17:53): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to oppose this bill, the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill. I want to sort of cut through some of the fearmongering that we have heard from the member who proposes this bill, Rima Nakhle, as well as the predecessor of this bill, the Hon Simeon Brown, and actually talk about the fact of why we think as the Green Party that this bill is non-practical and ill conceived.

I think, to start off with, what this bill does is actually not address the issues we’re seeing and the harm that’s being perpetuated by gangs here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor in 2023 stated that the “ ‘zero tolerance’ style of policy builds distrust in … communities” and “risks fuelling gang membership and [increased] gang dislocation and isolation.” Indeed, under this Government, since this Government came in, gang membership has increased by 13 percent. There are now more gang members than there are police officers. I think that’s an important thing for people to consider and let sink in. What is the impact and broader impact that this bill will have and the chilling impact this will have on funding being provided to community organisations that potentially are in the best place to serve vulnerable communities?

We already know that the New Zealand police force, in various areas, have to work with gangs, so does that mean that we are using public funds in the style of the money that we have for the Public Service—though increasingly limited, as we have seen from this week’s announcement? Is that going to be a part of consideration for this bill?

Also, with this particular Government, what we’re seeing is that they are not actually addressing the root cause. They have all of the levers to address the root cause of gang membership in terms of housing, in terms of welfare, in terms of mental health support—all of those things—but instead we’re seeing that they are cherry-picking who they choose to punish via a suite of bills like the gangs legislation bill—which, by the way, is also against the Bill of Rights Act here in New Zealand—but at the same time allow groups like Destiny Church to run absolutely rampant in our communities and do harm to our migrant and also rainbow communities. They seem to be fine with that.

Just to finish off, in terms of my contribution, this Government claims that they care about victims, but let’s be clear: this is also the Government that has punished victims when they changed the accommodation supplement. This is the Government that has punished victims with their latest Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill, after so many people in Aotearoa New Zealand have been harmed at the hands of the State. This is a Government where they talk about experiences and also funding. This is the Government that has decided to defund prevention against sexual violence, like RespectEd. This is the Government—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can the member relate his contribution to this bill.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: This relates to the purpose of this bill, Madam Speaker, which is that the bill itself is aimed to address gang membership and also address the kind of harm that we’re seeing in our communities. This is a bill that is steeped in this Government’s “tough on crime” approach, and that’s the overall intent and purpose of this bill.

What I want to just pick up on as one last thing is what the member in charge of this bill has said: experience matters. I want to finish off by saying that this is also the same member from the same political party that opposed my friend Kahurangi Carter’s member’s bill, the good Samaritan bill, and has decided, despite hearing the experience of those like Jacob Gunnell and their families, to go against and oppose that particular bill.

There is nothing in here, in this bill, that will do what it is intending to do, so the Green Party will not support this bill.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (17:58): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it actually gives me real pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT and speak on the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge my parliamentary colleague Rima Nakhle. I am lucky enough to sit beside Rima Nakhle in the Justice Committee, and—

Hon James Meager: Great member.

TODD STEPHENSON: Yes, she is a great member, and it’s great that she’s had this bill drawn from the ballot. One thing I can tell you about Rima Nakhle is she is very passionate about victims’ rights and about a tough criminal justice system. Occasionally, I have to talk her down from hanging everyone, but we work through those discussions, because her heart is in the right place, and she has actually brought this piece of legislation with the truest of intentions. We absolutely are going to support it in ACT, and I want to acknowledge Labour for supporting it as well. This is going to the select committee, I can tell you that now.

I actually did try to talk Rima Nakhle out of sending it to the Justice Committee and sending it to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because it does actually deal with the Public Finance Act, but I would’ve ended up dealing with it either way, so I’m happy to be dealing with it in Justice. It is a simple bill, but it’s an important bill, and it’s actually a little bit scary, in a sense, that we actually have to have this bill saying that we shouldn’t give public money to, basically, criminal organisations. While it’s simple—and, again, I want to acknowledge Camilla Belich’s contribution. There may be a few things to work through, but I know Camilla Belich is on the Justice Committee. I think she’s raised some points, but we can work through those. I think we can actually get somewhere where we can deliver what I know the member has intended.

The other thing I really like is that it actually fits in with the Government’s overall law and order agenda. It is, basically, victim focused and public focused. One of the things I just want to reflect on is that, on this side of the House, I think we can say that in all three coalition parties we actually are listening to what the community wants in law and order and trying to reflect that back, and, actually, what they want is us to take a stand on some issues around criminal justice. That’s why we have reintroduced things like three strikes, the gang patch ban, etc. Also, I think they would be very happy to see that we’re taking action on how their public funds are supported.

It also fits in nicely—and I think Minister McKee earlier today talked about the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities programme, which actually takes money from the Proceeds of Crime Fund, which is where we actually take money off the gangs. We actually seize their assets and take their money and then put it into approved programmes.

Again, I just want to acknowledge our justice team on this side here. We’ve got Paul Goldsmith, we’ve got Nicole McKee, we’ve got Casey Costello, we’ve got Mark Mitchell, and, again, they are working together, supported by their excellent MPs from across the coalition parties, in saying, “What do New Zealanders actually want reflected in their law and order policies?” I just think that this ban on providing public funds just fits so nicely into that, where we are actually taking money from criminal organisations—the gangs—putting it into programmes that are not are affiliated or related in any way to these criminal organisations, and actually trying to get results in our community, actually help people back on the path to being contributing members of society. I just see that this bill actually fits in perfectly with what we are trying to achieve.

I actually really look forward to the discussions we’ll have. I think there’ll be some robust discussions. We’ll try and make sure this is totally workable, but I think we can actually make this work. We can actually ensure that the community’s expectations about how their money is being spent—because if we’re giving money to criminals, regardless of whether the programmes that they deliver are good or not, it means that, actually, we can’t spend money on something else: can’t spend money on health; can’t spend money on education. Again, the mantra of this Government is we actually are looking at every dollar that the taxpayer gives us and asking: is it delivering value? Is it going to the right place? This bill is certainly a piece of that puzzle. It’s going to ask the right questions, and I really look forward to working on it in the select committee. I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, I’m terribly sorry, but it’s time for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.03 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Good evening, members. We’re on the first reading of the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill. We’re on call No. 5.

Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (19:30): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill. It addresses concerns that public money, including the Proceeds of Crime Fund, could end up in the hands of legitimate-looking entities. The bill mandates due diligence by the Crown and introduces criminal offences for knowingly facilitating payments to gangs. It also prohibits the Crown from paying money directly or indirectly to a gang unless expressly authorised, and so it’s by exception and not as a matter of course. It also creates a new offence of paying or making money available to an entity while knowing it is a gang, without some kind of reasonable excuse.

New Zealand First likes the pragmatic solutions that have been offered up in this bill. We like it that the proceeds from ill-gotten and illegal activities are not recycled to the very people who have committed the crime in the first place. We look forward to the select committee process, and we commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (19:31): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill. This is a fantastic member’s bill from my colleague Rima Nakhle, whose passion for victims and for making sure that we look after victims and that we respect victims is unchallenged in this House.

This bill is about making sure we honour and respect and acknowledge victims and the role of victims in our criminal justice system. Let’s reflect for a moment on what has gotten us here, and I heard earlier one of the members from the other side trying to compare what was, I think, some $30,000 that a previous Government gave to some programme with the $2.75 million that the last Labour Government gave to the Mongrel Mob in the Hawke’s Bay. Those two things are very, very different. It’s a little bit like our inflation rates being down here, and Labour’s inflation rates being up there.

But let’s not talk about all of the problems the previous Labour Government had. Let’s get back to the bill and focus on what this bill is about. It’s about understanding that that happened because there were proceeds from crime, and those members said, “Hey, you guys have been involved in this crime. You guys did this deed. You’ve created this fund through your ill-gotten gains, and we think we should give some of it back to you to see if you can amend things and help out in solving some of the challenges you have created in our society.”

I appreciate that the Opposition have said that they will be voting for this bill this evening. Let’s hope that that continues not only through the first reading but through the select committee process, through the second reading, and, ultimately, through to turning this into law. That would show that if you did a crime and you got some dough from it, and you had to give that dough over to the Crown because you were caught, that doesn’t come back to you as clean money through a programme in the future.

Where should it go instead? Well, it should go to organisations that actually do the work, do the mahi, in our community from the right place and that have the right values and have the right heart, like, for example, the Salvation Army, or the Billy Graham Youth Foundation, which has got some of this money from the proceeds of crime fund in the past. I’d like to think that even great organisations like the City Mission in Whanganui, which serves the underprivileged in our community—and it serves those who have been affected when someone has come in and they’ve robbed them out of house and home and they’ve left them with nothing. It’s the City Mission that is there that evening and the next day, and the week ahead, maybe, to support those victims of crime, and those are the sorts of organisations that we should be supporting.

It’s not the Mongrel Mob—not gangs. It’s not people who have literally—and I loved the analogy, or the metaphor is probably the better word. I loved the metaphor that Rima Nakhle used at the beginning of her contribution. It’s probably not in the context of something that one should love when we’re talking about gangs, but she used this analogy of giving someone a lollipop full of poison, and then paying the person who gave that person the lollipop full of poison—paying the person who gave them the lollipop—to give the person the antidote. That’s literally what the law allows right now, and what the work of Rima and the Hon Simeon Brown—who put together this member’s bill and handed it to Rima—is trying to do is to ensure that that cannot happen in the future.

This is part of ensuring that we restore law and order in this country, and that includes not allowing any future Government to hand money over to the Mongrel Mob. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): I’d just remind the member that we use full names when we’re in here, Mr Bates. The Hon Dr Duncan Webb.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (19:36): Thank you, Mr Speaker. That is my full name, and so thank you for that.

First of all, look, I think we all accept across this House that gangs are invidious organisations. That’s the starting point for this bill, and, as the member Carl Bates has just noted, we are going to support this bill to select committee to have a good look at it. But it’s a little more complex than the member has suggested, and that’s why we want to send it to select committee to have a good look at it.

For example, he’s just mentioned the funding of the Whanganui City Mission. It’s a great organisation, but I’m pretty sure, knowing the gang communities in Whanganui—of which there are several—that the City Mission will be supporting families which are gang families. They will have people in their day shelters who are gang members, and so Government funds will be going to the City Mission and going to support people who are in gangs.

When we have a piece of legislation which says—and this is the key phrase—“Except as expressly authorised by any Act, the Crown must not pay money (directly or indirectly) to a gang.”, then we need to be careful about what we are saying. If giving a gang member money to buy groceries for their kids is, in fact, indirectly funding a gang, we need to be careful, and we also need to make clear that—over here, we agree. I repeat: gangs are invidious organisations. We should do our utmost to do two things, which are to get rid of gangs but also—more importantly—stop young people getting on the path which puts them into gangs. If funding programmes which address meth addiction is necessary, we should do that. If taking people who are on the path to gang membership in order to take them off it requires Government resources, we should do that, and so we’ve got to be really careful. If we have a piece of legislation which is so sweeping that it cuts across what both this side of the House and that side of the House want to do, which is to reduce the influence of gangs and, ultimately, get rid of gangs, we need to be very cautious indeed.

So, yes, we agree that, in terms of money coming from Government to fund the invidious activities of gangs, the absolutely despicable activity of gangs recruiting young people into a life of crime and violence and coercion—of course we don’t like that; of course we want to get rid of it. But in terms of Government funding that addresses the genuine drivers of crime that cause harm in our communities, we want to send Government funds where it is most effective, where it has the greatest impact in reducing crime and harm and violence and sexual harm in our communities.

Let’s not get too picky about whether that’s going indirectly to someone who has had some affiliation with a gang. Of course, the big question about this—one of the other questions in terms of gang membership—is there is no test for gang membership. In her letter to members, the member Rima Nakhle said that there’s a national gang list, the secret Police intelligence list, that they won’t tell people whether they are on it or not. We can’t use that. That’s not useful information.

This is a bill that has a good heart and we’ll look at it in the select committee, but let’s be clear about the purpose: to eliminate the harm that gangs cause and to eliminate gangs.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (19:42): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The previous speaker seems to be a gang apologist, standing up and saying, “Well, you know, it’s not about the gangs. What they do in the community, who really knows?” They peddle harm, they peddle meth in our community. To earn gang patches, they have to have committed some of the most heinous and ridiculous crimes that put the victims across New Zealand in real safety, and yet we’re apologising for them on that side. What a disgrace.

Then we see and we hear from their friends on that side of the house, the Green Party, who are saying also—

Hon Member: I don’t think you actually heard his speech. Didn’t listen, did you, Mr Rutherford?

TOM RUTHERFORD: No, no, no, no—remember what Kahurangi Carter said? “Who would you be more afraid of seeing down an alleyway; would it be a police officer or patched gang member?” Which one would it be? They’ve chosen to choose the side of the gang members. What a disgrace.

My colleague Rima Nakhle, whose member’s bill this is, is probably the strongest victims’ advocate in this House. She stands up every single time on the side of victims in New Zealand to say, “Let’s put them back at the heart of our justice system; let’s put them in place No. 1.”—and Rima, to you, I take my hat off, because your tenacity, your passion, your strength, and your advocacy in this place on behalf of victims across New Zealand is really, really appreciated.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Why didn’t she support sensitive claimants then?

TOM RUTHERFORD: And yet, here we go: Ricardo Menéndez March from the Green Party is going to heckle, to apologise on behalf of the gangs, to say, “It’s not their fault, don’t pick on them. They’re nice people, they do good things in our community.” What a disgrace from the Green Party to stand up and heckle from their side to say, “Please don’t pick on the gangs; they’re actually really nice people.” That is the Green Party of 2026, that is the Green Party of today, and that’s the people the Labour Party want to be mates with, and I think that’s disgraceful.

Rima Nakhle, in bringing together this bill to the House and having it drawn, is really wanting to say that we’re sick and tired of the people who peddle the misery in our communities, then being the ones to receive taxpayer funding—it’s not Government funding, it’s taxpayer funding from hard-working, everyday New Zealanders—to then rectify the problem that they have created. That is the hypocrisy that we see. It’s the issue of, they’ve created the issue—the gangs have peddled the meth in our communities, for example—and now we’re going to pay them money to clean up the mess that they created. Then it creates this infinite loop that never ever gets rectified. Whereas Carl Bates rightly said in his contribution, there are many, many fantastic organisations up and down this country in all of our communities who would be crying out for that Government funding, that taxpayer funding, to actually create greater support for our communities rather than those gangs themselves that have created the exact harm we’re trying to eradicate.

When I read through Rima Nakhle’s member’s bill, it was really clear and her focus was really direct; that New Zealanders do rightly expect that taxpayer money goes towards supporting victims and trustworthy support programmes—trustworthy, not those run by gang members and gang affiliates; not the criminal gangs that bring fear and harm to our streets and our communities. Up and down this country, men and women every day are tormented by members of a gang, and yet those that want to defend them in this House say we should continue to reward them by giving them taxpayer money so that they can keep on that cycle of causing harm and misery in our communities.

Let’s focus on the particular detail that this bill will change. It’s going to insert a new clause 73A into the Public Finance Act which will, “(1) Except as expressly authorised by any Act, the Crown must not pay money (directly or indirectly) to a gang.”. That’s the really simple change that this piece of legislation is going to bring about. It’s going to have a really positive influence on our communities, because for too long New Zealanders have been scared of the damage that gang members have caused across New Zealand. Today we put a full stop, we put a line in the sand, and we say enough is enough. No more taxpayer funding is going to go to them, because they are the ones that peddle the misery across our community.

Gangs absolutely represent the worst of our society. They peddle the misery in our communities. They do terrible things to earn their gang patches, and they are the scum of our community across New Zealand. I recognise and acknowledge the advocacy and hard work of my colleague Rima Nakhle, and I commend the bill to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (19:47): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party and want to be very clear that we are supporting this bill going to select committee. I want to place that on Hansard, because the contributions of late would seem to indicate that that is not the position that the Labour Party is taking. That is far from it. When the votes are cast on this bill, the Labour Party will be voting in favour of a first reading for this bill.

I don’t like gangs. Gangs, as many members have said, are insidious. They are a part of our community that create harm, create violence, and create poor opportunities for some that are involved in it. But the interesting point is that there are often people who are caught in that cycle of gang life who actually don’t have the element of choice. They are children, they are women, they are family members that have grown up in this community knowing nothing different. For them, they have no choice around this, and that’s not right—that is not right. So any suggestion that the Labour Party seems to support or condone gang behaviour and activity is far from it.

We are supporting this bill through to select committee and I think there will be some robust conversations at select committee, because there are a few things that do need to be ironed out to ensure that, for the people that need to be punished by not being able to receive or access public finance or funding, the line is in the right place. I think what we can’t afford to have is a circumstance, perhaps, where the people that are going to be worse off—that are going to pay, in many circumstances, perhaps, the ultimate price at some point in the future—are our young people, are our children, are those who are innocent, who haven’t actually got into this cycle of life because they have chosen to be there themselves.

I would hate to think that there was a group that was operating and the support was being given in a way that actually made life a bit easier for those young people and those children, those babies who can’t speak for themselves. This is the real nature of the sort of conversation that I think will need to be had at select committee. I know the Justice Committee is a hard-working one, it seems, and they will certainly turn their minds to it.

What this bill does is it seeks to limit the direct and the indirect nature of public finance or assistance to various individuals or agencies or organisations, and we have fantastic agencies and organisations out in our community. But it’s the indirect nature that, I think, is going to be a tension point. Whilst it might be OK to be able to identify a direct form of a link between a gang organisation, perhaps, and public finance or funding, for the indirect stuff, I think there is a real conversation that needs to be had around how far that goes. What is the nature of the link between gang activity or the gang organisation and the funding? That’s why I agree that this does need to go to select committee—so that we can hear from the community and we can hear from officials and others to form a view to make sure that this bill is in a better place.

We could, in this House, talk about the blame game of different Governments over years. Members opposite have talked about previous stuff, and we could talk about John Key and his last days of his administration and signing off on just under $1 million with links to a life member associated with the Black Power. Now, we could do that, but, actually, that’s not going to make a heck of a lot of difference in terms of moving this issue forward. The support, in terms of sending it to a select committee today, is so that these issues can be canvassed and they can be ironed out. Maybe the Labour Party won’t support this bill when it comes back—maybe it will; I don’t know—but we need to be able to tease out those opportunities through the submission process.

Likewise, with the penalty provision that I see from the member’s bill and in her own explanatory note, are those quantums, including a potential period of imprisonment, appropriate, or are they not? You only get that, as you know, from listening to the community and landing on what is right. We will support this at first reading tonight. It will go off to a select committee. I hope that the community will engage with it and, when it returns for second reading, that there will be a pile of information that will make an informed decision easy.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): In reply—Rima Nakhle.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (19:52): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First and foremost, I’d like to thank all the parties across the House that have supported the bill to select committee and the profound and important intentions behind my member’s bill. It’s shame—it’s a shame—that we don’t have that support from the Green Party, the party that professes to care a lot about victims. I’ve been in Parliament for about two and a bit years, and it constantly astounds me as to the length the Green Party would go to stick up for criminals. It astounds me, to be honest, and it’s a shame. Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan from the Green Party said that I’m fearmongering people with this member’s bill and that there’s going to be a chilling impact that this bill will have on community organisations that have to work with gangs, and he spoke about the fact that police work with gangs and asked: does that mean we’re going to stop public funding going to Police? Well, unlike the Green Party, we are not aspiring to “Defund Da Police—Whoop, Whoop”. No, we’re going to continue to fund the police. Unlike the Green Party, victims are actually first on our agenda and at the forefront of our minds when we’re drafting bills. It’s a shame. It’s a shame that they seem to think—if I can make a conclusion from their members’ conversations—that, because we have more gang members now, does this mean we should continue to give them money through various paths?

This bill is going to amend the Public Finance Act, and it’s, essentially, going to amend it in a way that closes a loophole that exists because part of our work—not just writing letters of support for people that do graffiti all over cities for some parties—on this side, is looking at laws that need to be amended where loopholes exist and working towards closing those gaps. There is a loophole in the Public Finance Act, and we saw that loophole being exercised grossly in 2021, where $2.75 million was funnelled to a group that is basically run by the Mongrel Mob. We need to close that gap. Yes, someone from the Labour Party mentioned $30,000 going under a National Party Government. This Government—this 54^th Parliament—is extremely focused on sending a strong message to the friends of the Greens, the gangs, saying that enough’s enough with them tormenting our good, innocent, decent people; enough is enough with them creating more victims; and we’re not going to stand by and allow a loophole to let more money funnel through to gangs that already make enough money, ruining the lives of many people through their crime.

I’m glad that most sensible people across the House have supported this bill tonight. There’s a lot to unpick in the select committee. There is going to be a lot to unpick, and I respect the fact that this was conveyed by members across the House that are supporting the intention of this bill, the good intention, which, at its core, puts victims at the forefront.

So, if we were to just wrap up for the benefit of those that have just walked into the debating chamber screaming but weren’t here earlier, this bill would prohibit Crown agencies from giving any public money to groups that are run by gangs or strongly affiliated to gangs. In the select committee process, we are going to unpick how that would look in a clear and very easy to understand manner, because it’s important. I’m glad that the Gangs Act 2024 has Schedule 2, which has a list of current gangs—including the Green Party’s best friends, the Mongrel Mob. I look forward to this going to select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 101

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor) (19:57): The question is, That the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill

First Reading

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) (19:58): I move, That the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill be now read the first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

New Zealand has led the world in women’s rights. We’ve been driven by a pioneering spirit that dates back to 1893, when Kate Sheppard led an historic movement granting women the right to vote. For over a century, women have fought for specific rights based on their biological sex. These were hard-won rights, and there have been many advances that have come since, but the fight is not over; the job is not yet done.

Over recent years, a set of ideas often described as “gender identity” has moved rapidly from theory into practice. Progressive politics prioritise ideology over reality and identity over biology. If anyone can be a man or woman purely by declaration, then those words cease to have clear meaning, and when words lose meaning, the law that depends on them becomes unstable. This is not a trivial issue and should concern every member of this House. What it means to be a woman is under attack. The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill will ensure clarity and consistency in New Zealand law by providing biologically grounded meanings for the terms “woman” and “man”.

The bill will amend the Legislation Act 2019 by inserting two new sections—new section 13A defines “woman” as “an adult human biological female” and new section 13B defines “man” as “an adult human biological male”—and mandates that these definitions apply across all New Zealand legislation, regardless of gender identity, unless a specific Act explicitly states otherwise. The Legislation Act 2019 provides the default definitions for all New Zealand laws. By fixing these definitions there, we ensure legal certainty across the entire statute book, preventing conflicting or ideologically driven interpretations from creeping into different areas of the law. Legal certainty for biological women and biological men.

To date, this has been a one-sided conversation, where one group of people have demanded their rights, but at the expense of another group’s rights. This debate we’re having today has resulted from the infringing on the rights of women. The proposition that seeking rights for a particular group while trampling on the rights of others invalidates one’s moral high ground—this is fundamental principle in ethics, political philosophy, and human rights law, often described as the need for a “balance of rights”. The balancing of competing rights is, essentially, the task of this House. That is why it is necessary for Parliament to balance the rights of women, because, unless we do so, there is no fair outcome for women.

This amendment bill is a return to a common-sense approach to law-making that reflects the views of the quiet majority of New Zealanders. It upholds the common view that has existed for millennia about what men and women are. Since Adam and Eve, people have known what a woman and a man are and, even if you’re not a person of faith, people have known this since the dawn of time.

New Zealanders should have confidence that their institutions and the very language of their laws reflect reality. Clarity in law is not a distraction. It is a prerequisite for a functioning society. Social cohesion is destroyed when a minority tries to use social engineering to redefine reality for the quiet majority. True cohesion comes from laws that make common sense and protect our communities.

There is legal precedence for this if we look to the UK. A landmark ruling by the UK Supreme Court in April last year found that the term “woman” refers to “biological sex”. This ruling was a victory for the rights of women and girls. Most people already know this: biological sex matters. The UK’s unanimous ruling is confirmation. So let us be clear: there is no New Zealand exception to biological reality. Kiwi women, on the other side of the planet, could not be defined differently to a woman in the UK. To do so is an absurdity; that is legal nonsense—and crikey, someone needs to let the Aussies know.

Our Parliament should be backing women all the way. New Zealand First has long been aware of the issues at stake and the dismay of those being told they must change their thinking and accept fringe ideas as being perfectly normal. Women have had a guts full of the gaslighting. It is misogyny in a modern form to cancel women when we speak up. It is misogyny in a modern form to deny our biological reality.

Australia’s Federal Court sent shock waves around the world last Friday with its decision in the Tickle v Giggle case. The ruling found against the creator of a female-only app who had removed membership from a biological male. As the app’s creator, Sall Grover, says, “Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia”. Misogyny much, across the Ditch? Now, they are scrambling, with urgent calls for the Australian Parliament to amend their law to include a definition of a man and a woman.

Today, our Parliament has an opportunity to show our neighbours across the Tasman that New Zealand stands for the rights of women and girls to have safe, single-sex spaces and places by voting for this amendment bill—lest we become a laughing stock like Australia.

While some critics tried to dismiss my member’s bill as unimportant, the pendulum is swinging back towards common sense. We’re seeing a growing realisation that ignoring biological reality has negative consequences for women’s safety and fair competition in sports. The National - New Zealand First coalition agreement is crystal clear that publicly funded sporting bodies support fair competition that is not compromised by rules relating to gender. We don’t accept that doping is fair in any sport, so why should female athletes be made to accept the unfair advantages that male athletes have over them? Fairness also means safety. The performance gap is predictable. Biological males competing in female sports have an advantage. The International Olympic Committee recognised this reality in March this year, now stating that the eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games is now limited to biological females. Biological reality, please take the podium.

The protection of women and girls should not be controversial. Their rights to safety, dignity, privacy, and fairness are common sense. According to Speak Up For Women—and I quote—“When the law loses the ability to distinguish between sex and identity, it becomes almost impossible to maintain genuine female-only spaces, services and protections”. Their recent nationwide review of council-owned swimming pool facilities has revealed that only eight councils across New Zealand clearly provide female-only changing and showering facilities. Nearly nine out of 10 either do not or cannot clearly say that they do. Our councils are captured by ideology and don’t give a hoot about the privacy and dignity of women and girls.

Words matter. The language we use in legislation matters. My colleague, the Hon Casey Costello, directed the Ministry of Health to use sex-specific language. This was necessary, because the ministry seems to have erased the word “women”. Perhaps it was the invisible ink they were using. It’s clear a woke contagion infected the health department, deleting the word “women” to be substituted with “pregnant people”, “people with a cervix”, “individuals capable of childbearing”, and “chest-feeders”. It defies absolute biological reality. What’s more, it is deeply insulting to women. Like all ideologies captured and constructed on a gobbledegook of pejorative phrases, they fly over the heads of ordinary people who are, frankly, tired of being told how they must think and feel.

Without this amendment bill, it will leave the law open to ambiguous or ideologically driven interpretations which gives rise to the pompous speak of officialdom captured by ideology. There is a gap between what the law says and how it is being implemented. That gap has been filled not by Parliament but by guidance, advocacy, and institutional interpretation. That is not how laws should evolve. It is the role of this House to provide clarity.

It surprises me, as it surprises many, that this bill is needed—and yet, this is what we’ve come to. The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill will not take away the rights of anyone. It is not anti-anyone or anti-anything, and it is important to state this plainly. Protecting sex-based rights does not mean denying the rights of others to live free from harassment or discrimination; those protections already exist.

So I ask, does this Parliament have the will to vote on the side of sex-based rights for women and girls—and for men and boys—to vote for reality and law? Will we end up like Australia and the shame that they now face, or like the UK, where it took their Supreme Court to tell their Parliament the most fundamental and obvious thing: that biological sex matters?

My leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, declared a “war on woke”, and so I ask this Parliament to vote for reality in law. I’m hearing an echo ripple across the generations. I’m hearing the words of our suffragist forebearers: vote for women.

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for Women) (20:08): I rise to speak on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill. At the outset, I want to acknowledge that this is a sensitive and deeply personal issue for many New Zealanders. It raises questions of identity, fairness, and how we reflect those concepts in our law. It’s important that we approach this debate with care, with respect, and with a genuine willingness to listen to one another.

This bill proposes inserting definitions into the Legislation Act 2019 defining “woman” as “an adult human biological female” and “man” as “an adult human biological male”. Supporters argue that doing so would provide clarity and consistency in law. They contend it would ensure the meaning of these terms is clear across legislation and that this clarity is necessary to protect what are described as “sex-based rights”.

However, there are real and substantive concerns with this approach. The first is a practical one. New Zealand legislation has, over time, generally moved away from the use of gender-specific language. Most laws apply to all people regardless of sex or gender, and, therefore, do not rely on terms like “woman” or “man” in the first place. Where gender-specific language is used, it is typically for very targeted policy purposes, such as in relation to pregnancy or cervical screening, where it is necessary to deliver practical, real-world outcomes. In those contexts, precision already exists where it is required.

That raises a very real question about whether inserting broad, sweeping definitions into the Legislation Act would have any meaningful effect, which brings me to the second concern—whether this bill would achieve anything of substance. Inserting these terms across legislation, it is far from clear that it would deliver the clarity that proponents suggest. In many cases, legislation already functions effectively without relying on these definitions at all. In other words, there is a risk that this bill would create complexity without delivering tangible benefit. But the most important point is this: I’m not convinced that this bill will advance the rights and opportunities or the wellbeing of women and girls in any way, shape, or form in New Zealand.

As Minister for Women, my focus is firmly on the real challenges facing women today. That includes closing the gender pay gap so women are fairly recognised and rewarded in the workforce. It includes supporting more women into leadership across business, across rural sectors, and across public life. It includes addressing issues of safety—particularly family and sexual violence—which continues to disproportionately affect women. And it includes improving access to economic opportunities so that women and girls can thrive no matter where they live. These are the issues that make a material difference to women’s lives. This bill does not in any way contribute to those outcomes.

It does not mean, however, that the issues it raises should be dismissed. As I’ve said, there are New Zealanders who feel strongly about the questions that this bill engages with, particularly around clarity in law and the assumption this will protect sex-based rights. Those views exist in our communities, and they deserve to be heard. Parliament has an important role in providing a forum for that discussion. For that reason, while I do have strong reservations about this bill, the National Party will support this bill to select committee. We do so to ensure that New Zealanders have the opportunity to have their say through a proper democratic process. The select committee stage is important. It will allow us to hear from a wide range of submitters, it will test assumptions underpinning the bill, and it will consider whether there are unintended consequences.

Shanan Halbert: Dirty sell-out!

Hon NICOLA GRIGG: I note Shanan Halbert has called me a dirty sell-out. I did make a very clear point that, for this bill to advance the rights of women and girls in this country, this conversation must be respectful, and you can do better than that, Shanan Halbert.

The select committee will allow us to carefully assess whether the bill would, in practice, improve the operation of our laws or whether it would create more issues than it resolves. This is not a simple issue, and it is not one that should be reduced to slogans or simplified arguments. It requires careful thought, Shanan Halbert, a balanced approach, and a commitment to evidence.

As we consider this bill, my focus and the Government’s focus remain clear. We are committed to advancing the rights and wellbeing of women and girls in New Zealand in ways that are practical, meaningful, and enduring. For now, the National Party is supporting this bill. We will listen to New Zealanders through the select committee process, we will consider the evidence with an open mind, and we will ultimately assess this bill against that test. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call Vanushi Walters, I didn’t interfere on that comment, because I think the speaker handled it well, but I just wonder, in a sensitive topic like this, whether such emotive terminology and insulting terminology is really adding to the decorum of the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (20:14): Thank you, Mr Speaker. There is a word for this bill, and it is “irresponsible”. I’m very disappointed that the National Party colleagues are supporting this through to select committee, because that is extremely irresponsible. The reason it is irresponsible is because it creates a platform for hate, and that is what we’re going to see in the select committee process. We firmly, firmly oppose this bill. We stand in support of the rights of the rainbow New Zealanders out there. We also stand in support of New Zealanders who would like this Government to be focused on addressing the cost of living, as opposed to supporting a bill that will take up the time of the House and that will encourage division.

The bill confronts the development of human rights principles internationally and in New Zealand, it also ignores the medical reality for a number of New Zealanders, and it also ignores the progress that the House made last term in maturing our approach to human rights. In terms of the international framework, the UN has acknowledged that trans rights require protection. Here in New Zealand, we have a Solicitor-General legal opinion that says the Human Rights Act already covers gender identity; it is already there, and legislation that affects that could be in breach, therefore, of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Intersex Aotearoa points out that, in the 2023 census, approximately 15,000 people noted being born with a variation of their sex characteristics. This includes people who are XXY or who may have one gene rather than two. This is a medical reality for people that New Zealand First would just like to ignore. They’re alsoignoring the great progress this House made together last term when the changes to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act were passed and the House, without New Zealand First present, recognised the right of self-identification.

Now, for anyone interested in a responsible, well-researched, evidence-based assessment of the rights of transand non-binary and intersex New Zealanders in New Zealand, I would recommend that they do not read this bill but that they read the Law Commission report that was produced last year that set out a number of recommendations that were evidence based. The Government’s response to that well-researched piece of work was that there’s not enough time on the House’s agenda to be able to consider those well-researched recommendations.However, there is apparently time for the Government to support the House’s use of the time for this bill that will create division.

Hon Members: It’s a members’ day.

VANUSHI WALTERS: It’s a members’ day, but the National Party have decided to support it through to select committee, and that is absolutely appalling. I oppose this bill and all attempts by New Zealand First, whether in relation to race or in relation to gender identity, to seed division between New Zealanders.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (20:18): I, along with so many millions of New Zealanders and so many billions of people around this world, am tired. We’re tired of Governments throwing minorities under the bus with one hand and syphoning all of our communities’ wealth up to corporations and slashing public services with the other. All that New Zealanders want is affordable groceries, affordable power bills, and affordable housing. They want clean drinking water; they want decent jobs and education; they want a functional healthcare system; they want emergency services that aren’t having to go on strike twice a week because the fire trucks meant to save lives are falling apart; they want to go on great walks in nature; and they want to spend time with their families and friends and do the things that they love.

If this Government cared about women, they wouldn’t have surprised our 300,000 lowest-paid working women by cutting off their rights to pay equity days before last year’s Budget. If this Government cared about women, they would not be cutting funding to sexual violence prevention services, which are now being forced to close their doors. If this Government cared about women, they wouldn’t be forcing them into being financially dependent upon their partners when they lose paid employment.

But I think that what we’re learning about this Government is that they don’t really care about anything other than carving up our country, our public assets, and our environment and selling them to the highest bidder.

I don’t really know if, at the end of the day, they really actually care about, believe in, or stand for anything. Every day this Government shows us that they would not have stood against apartheid South Africa. They would not have been the Government that granted same-sex marriage. They, as Christopher Luxon frequently demonstrates, would not have stood up against the United States for a nuclear-free Pacific. Honestly, I don’t think, if we didn’t already have it, this would have been a Government that granted women the right to vote. This debate is a time warp back more than 100 years when men in power sought to define and suppress women to our physical parts alone.

What is a woman? Whatever the hell she wants to be. New Zealanders have so, so much more in common with their fellow New Zealander—man, woman, trans, non-binary, intersex, all of the colours of the rainbow—than they do with the divisive politicians on that side of the House and the corporate overlords that they so diligently serve. We have seen, the world over, that communities and people can become divided when they are under immense financial pressure, stressed, and subjected to incessant, well-funded political messaging that paints a bogeyman of migrants and trans people.

My message tonight is not for this cynical, bitterly disappointing one-term Government. My message is for New Zealanders: if something scares you about a group of people that you don’t really know or understand, I invite you to reach out and to try and understand. To my woke lefties, I invite you to put down your armour. If we are to rebuild this country into something that we can be proud of, we need to work together—that is, regular New Zealanders, side by side, for something bigger than any one of us could ever achieve alone. I am talking about real safety and security, the kind that comes from knowing that you belong and that other people in this country will fight for your basic rights in the same way that you will fight for theirs. That’s going to take a lot of deprogramming, but, really simply, it just means talking to each other and listening.

We have so much in common. We need the same basic things. When the world feels really complicated, we can go back to the basics—not the esoteric basics that so many politicians seem to talk about; the basic basics, the things that everybody needs to live a baseline decent life: a home, an education, food, a job, transport, and energy. Those are the basic things that bring New Zealanders together, and that’s what the Green Party is here to fight for.

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children) (20:23): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill asks Parliament to affirm something that until very recently most New Zealanders never imagined would be controversial, that men and women are biologically different—not socially different, not stereotypically different, but biologically different. For many New Zealanders, the confusion is not about science; it is about why speaking plainly about basic reality has suddenly become treated as offensive.

Most people understand instinctively that biological sex is real. It is observable at birth, and it matters in medicine, reproduction, sports, prisons, and spaces where privacy and safety are important. Yet, increasingly, people are being told that acknowledging these realities is somehow hateful or discriminatory. It is not hateful to observe reality. It is not hateful to believe women deserve fairness in sport, or that vulnerable women deserve sex-based protections. It’s not hateful for mothers to want language that recognises motherhood without being treated as exclusionary for using the word “woman”. What many New Zealanders are growing tired of is the pressure to pretend—to pretend biology is meaningless and doesn’t matter, to pretend words no longer have stable meaning, and to pretend that reality itself can bend to ideology.

Free societies cannot function properly when people are afraid to say what they know to be true. History teaches us that progress comes through open debate, honest inquiry, and the freedom to question ideas without fear. Once society starts demanding that people deny the truths in public life, it creates something corrosive: fear of speaking honestly, fear of asking questions, fear of losing your job, fear of losing your reputation for expressing what, until recently, was considered entirely normal.

Most New Zealanders are compassionate people. They want people who choose to identify the way they want to, to live a safe, dignified life free from harassment and abuse, and they should. Every person deserves dignity and respect, but respect cannot mean compelled agreement, and inclusion cannot mean removing rights, language, or protections of others. Rights sometimes come into conflict, and Parliament has a responsibility to navigate these conflicts honestly.

Women fought for generations for sex-based protections and opportunities because biological differences matter. They matter in sport, where male puberty creates physical advantages that can’t be ignored. They matter in healthcare, where biological sex affects diagnosis and treatment. They matter in safeguarding vulnerable women and girls. If society cannot clearly define men and women, it will lose the ability to measure discrimination fairly at all.

I hear concerns from many New Zealanders about the policing of language. People notice terms like “pregnant people” or “chest-feeding” replacing previously understood terminologies. They notice women being shouted down for raising concerns about their fairness or safety. They notice ordinary people self-censoring because they fear being labelled hateful. I think many New Zealanders are just simply saying, “Enough with pretending. Enough with punishing dissent. Enough with turning ordinary people into villains for believing what humanity has understood for thousands of years.”

This debate should never become an excuse for cruelty. There are people struggling deeply with identity and belonging. There are children and young people trying to understand themselves in a world that is often confusing and unforgiving. They deserve compassion and support, but compassion cannot require society to abandon truth, and kindness cannot require silence from everyone else.

A mature society should be capable of holding two ideas at once. People deserve respect and safety, and biological sex is real and matters. At the same time, I do not believe these deeply personal issues are helped by reducing them to slogans or culture war politics. Many New Zealanders are trying to navigate this issue in good faith. They want compassion for people who are different, but they also want fairness, privacy, and freedom to speak honestly without fear of cancellation.

At its heart, this debate is not about hate; it is about whether ordinary people are still allowed to trust their own eyes, speak honestly, and defend sex-based rights without being shamed into silence. ACT believe they should be, and for those reasons, ACT will support this bill to select committee.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (20:28): When I entered this House, I entered with my entire being, and that was, basically, as the first representative of Te Aho Matua. Te Aho Matua is the foundation of kura kaupapa Māori. As one of the first-generation graduates of Te Aho Matua, I need to explain—well, not explain but maybe educate the House on the philosophies and the ethos of kura kaupapa Māori, which is this: section one, “Te Ira Tangata”: “ahakoa iti, he iti māpihi pounamu. He kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea, e kore ia e ngaro. Kia mārama rawa te hunga whakaako ki te āhua o te tangata, kātahi ka taea te hanga kaupapa whakaako mō te hunga tamariki.

1.1 Nō ngā rangi tūhāhā te wairua o te tangata. I tōna whakairatanga, ka hono te wairua me te tinana o te tangata. I tērā wā tonu, ka tau tōna mauri, tōna tapu, tōna wehi, tōna ihomatua, tōna hinengaro, tōna auahatanga, tōna ngākau, tōna pūmanawa. Nā ka tupu ngātahi te wairua me te tinana i roto i te kōpū o te whaea, ā whānau noa.”

A simple translation: a human being is just that, a being descended from te wāhi ngaro, from Io, from Rangi-e-tū-nei, from Papa-e-takoto-nei, from our atua Māori.

In te reo Māori, there is no differentiation of a man and woman. It is tangata. One of the most prominent proverbs that we hear generation after generation hails from the Far North by a kuia and it has been twisted in context, but it has become what is known as a very profound proverb—a whakataukī: “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata” [“What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people”]. It doesn’t say, nor define, a man or a woman.

He wahine ahau—I am a woman. The architect of this bill does not speak for me, does not speak for Māori communities who safeguard our trans whānau, who are trans themselves. My very first kaiako in life, my very first teacher—[Interruption] Let me speak. My very first kaiako was a trans. At that time, at kōhanga reo—language nest—in 1983, my very first kaiako was given a chance by my grandparents—a man and a woman from Tūhoe. They took a chance on this person because this person was ostracised by their own whānau, who didn’t, couldn’t accept a trans member within their whānau rangatira. They came to Tāmaki-makau-rau searching for an opportunity. My grandparents gave them an opportunity to teach te reo Māori, tikanga. That’s where my reo comes from, that’s where my tuakiri—my identity—comes from. It comes from people who cared about us, who care about us still, and I care about them.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Talk about the bill.

ORIINI KAIPARA: I will. I’ll talk about the people that this bill aims to discriminate continuously. This is not a fair conversation when it is not received with care and respect from the other side of this country, where Māori are tangata whenua and mātauranga Māori tuku iho [traditional Māori knowledge handed down] in this House of Representatives. I represent Māori. I represent te ao Māori in Tāmaki Makarau.

This bill achieves almost nothing in practical legal terms but it risks causing enormous social harm to trans and takatāpui communities, the majority of whom live in my rohe. I represent the vast majority of Māori in all of Aotearoa—more than 200,000 reside in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, you don’t. Don’t make us laugh.

ORIINI KAIPARA: Check your facts—check your facts. The fact is this—with respect.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): You’re talking to me.

ORIINI KAIPARA: I’m talking to you, Mr Speaker, and I implore this House to have careful consideration but urgent attention to what are the founding principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that is to protect our taonga. Our taonga—our most important taonga—is people, tangata. Nō reira kāore rawa atu au e whakaae ki tēnei pire.

[Therefore, I absolutely do not agree with this bill.]

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (20:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very sorry that we are debating on this issue in the House tonight. Although this bill professes to define two groups, the actual target of this bill is not defined in this legislation. It is the trans community in New Zealand whom this bill attempts to exclude, some of them, from the definition that they choose for themselves. It is regretful.

I always think of children who I know myself and I’ve seen grow up who do not associate with the identity they were born with. I believe that they are people this House needs to respect. I don’t think this bill does that, and I am so sorry—so sorry—that this bill has come to the House and for the hurt that this will cause many people, not only here but during the select committee process. We oppose this bill because of what I’ve just outlined: that it seeks to exclude. We also oppose this bill because it is in many ways unworkable, and I will explain to you why.

I’ve read the opinion of the Attorney-General, and the Attorney-General has acknowledged that this bill cannot be justified because it is contrary to the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of age. That is because this bill includes the word “adult” before it defines “woman” and “man”. That means quite a serious thing, actually. I’d be interested to know whether people thought that a select committee process that no one has any control over what will get changed—whether this was still a responsible thing to take to select committee.

I’m not making this up myself. I am quoting from the opinion of the Attorney-General, who is a member of the National Party. He has outlined concerns that women under the age of 20, after the passage of this bill, may no longer be eligible to apply to the court for a declaration of paternity. They may no longer be able to access the defence on infanticide under the Crimes Act. No penalty would be available under the Crimes Act for giving in marriage or transferring a woman under the age of 20 to another person without their consent. A partner or spouse of a woman under the age of 20 would be unable to take parental leave because the law requires a certificate certifying that a woman is pregnant. The death of a woman under the age of 20 while giving birth would not have to be reported to the Police. And there’s another matter, which has always been very important to people who have fought for women’s rights in this country, and that is the abortion and sterilisation Act. In that Act, it defines and references women.

Now, the bill that defines the age of maturity—it’s actually mentioned in this. The age of majority in 1970 states that, if you do not clarify what “adult” means, it means someone who is 20. That means that, if this bill was to pass as it stands at the moment—and it is a very short bill, so people say it may be changed at select committee; you’d be looking at changing almost 50 percent of the contents—this may prevent women under the age of 20 accessing abortion services. This shows how problematic this type of bill is. If you remove the word “adult” from this, which would be the only way to fix this bill, you would have to define “women” as meaning “children”. Now, we know, when we talk about women—or men—we don’t mean boys and girls.

This is an unworkable bill. I commend the fact that the Attorney-General has looked into this and seen that it is unworkable. I agree with what Nicola Grigg said when she said we need to be focusing on closing the gender pay gap, we need to be focusing on gender-based violence. There is no issue that will be solved for New Zealand women by the passage of this bill. This bill will do harm. I am sorry to our trans community that is up for debate in this House. But, separate to that, this bill does not work, and it risks the rights that New Zealanders hold dear.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (20:38): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill. As my colleague the Hon Nicola Grigg said in our first National Party contribution, we are providing our support as the National Party to this bill at the first reading. We think it’s important that we provide New Zealanders across the country the opportunity to have their say on this legislation at the select committee stage, where the member has instructed that it’s going to be going to the Social Services and Community Committee. We want to hear from New Zealanders, around their views on this piece of legislation, both in favour and opposed to it. We want to hear a balanced argument across the country from people around their views about the changes this bill is looking to make in our legislation.

One of the points I want to focus on in my contribution does relate to the report of the Attorney-General. We know, in this House, it has a section 7 report—around how does this piece of legislation refer or relate or is pertinent to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. Now, we are supporting the legislation, but I do want to raise the concerns that the Attorney-General has raised in his contribution, where he has concluded that the bill limits the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of the age and cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I quote, “I consider the bill gives rise to discrimination on the basis of age. This is because the bill defines ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in a way that requires them to be adults. This effect of the bill means that people under 20 would be excluded from the scope of statutory provisions that use terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ unless the content or context of the legislation requires a different interpretation.” The concern the Attorney-General is raising in his section 7 report is that, for people under the age of 20, they will not be able to have the term “woman” or “man” that this legislation is seeking to bring associated with them. Now, what I’m doing by bringing that into the debate is raising that concern so that I can welcome the select committee and submissions from members of the public to say, “Does there need to be a fix here to actually fix that issue that the Attorney-General is raising in his report?”, which we will call “section 7”.

I’ve heard, over the last few days, from many, many New Zealanders across New Zealand, but many also in my local Bay of Plenty community who have written to me. The majority, by far, have sought to ask that I, as their local representative, support this legislation so that they can have the opportunity to have their say at the select committee stage. To those members of my local community who wrote, who got in touch, not just to me but to all members of Parliament across this House, we say thank you. That is your democratic right to us as your elected members, and we thank you for getting in touch and sharing your views with us. Now we put the onus back on you. This is now your opportunity, when the bill is referred to the select committee, to have your say, and we encourage you to do so.

One email I received from a constituent—I want to quote him. He said, “Woman and our female children and grandchildren need to be safe without the threat of, in this case, biological males taking advantage.” Many of the emails I received from local constituents share that concern. There is genuine and widespread concern, and that’s why we are supporting this bill at the first reading. The select committee is the perfect opportunity to allow a proper testing of the detail and consideration of evidence. It’s the perfect opportunity to dive into the section 7 report and see if there’s an opportunity for it to be ironed out.

This is a really sensitive and personal issue for many New Zealanders, and I’ve been disappointed by some of the backhanded comments and remarks made by some members in this House—

Hon Member: Below the belt.

TOM RUTHERFORD: —which have really been below the belt. Because the debate needs to be respectful, needs to be compassionate, it needs to be based on evidence and not ideology. Recognising biological reality in law is not bigotry. At the same time, I think it’s only fair that all New Zealanders are treated with dignity and respect. The bill is about clarity, not cruelty. We commend the bill to the select committee. We look forward to receiving submissions from New Zealanders up and down this country, and I commend it to the House.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour) (20:43): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. In about six weeks, we will be commemorating something in this House, a time of courage, a time of stepping against the odds, a time of stepping out against the cultural norms at a time when hate and homophobia was still rife in this country. In this very Chamber, coming up 40 years ago, members of this House were courageous and walked through the Ayes door to support homosexual law reform. I was 10 years old, and I didn’t want to be queer. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want people to notice who I was, but 40 years later, I’m proud to be the person I am and to be part of the community I’m part of. While I’m acknowledge my privilege, I’m a white cis gay man, and I cannot fathom what it is like to be a member of the transgender community. We’ve come a long way as a nation, but we have a long way to go, and I encourage anyone to walk in my shoes or walk in the shoes of the transgender community and understand the challenges that are there.

What does this bill do? It risks further marginalising our transgender, our intersex, and our gender diverse communities. To our transgender community tonight, if you’re watching this debate, I want you to hear something very clearly from the floor of this Parliament. You belong, you are enough, and you are loved. You are valued members of our community. You enrich our workplaces, our schools, our whānau, our churches, our sports groups, our arts groups, our music groups, our public life. I want to acknowledge the extraordinary courage it takes to live authentically in a world that does not always make space for you.

This bill isn’t just a legal tidy-up, it is a political choice, a choice to single out and target some of our most vulnerable communities. At its heart, this debate is not about definitions. This debate is about who is in and who is out; it’s about who is included and who is excluded. It makes me very sad to be standing here tonight discussing it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Can I just ask some of those conversations down here, just keep it down, they’re interfering with the noise around the House. Carry on, Mr Bennett.

GLEN BENNETT: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Colleagues on this side of the House acknowledge the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act about self-identification, a piece of legislation first worked on by a New Zealand First Minister, then voted on by the ACT party, by the National Party, by the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, and Labour.

I don’t want to prolong this debate because this debate does hurt, but to our transgender, our intersex, to our gender diverse communities, thank you for being vibrant, for being funny, for being talented, for being generous, for being resilient, for being creative. And, yes, thank you for being wonderfully fabulous.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (20:47): I rise to add my thoughts on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill in its first reading, a member’s bill in the name of our New Zealand First colleague Mrs Jenny Marcroft. I too want to begin my kōrero by saying and acknowledging the delicacy of this subject matter, the delicacy of what we are embarking upon.

It’s interesting that we need to talk about delicacy, Madam Speaker—welcome to the Chair. It’s interesting that we have to talk about delicacy when it’s something that for many people is a biological fact, whether someone is born as a woman or born as a man. There are many thoughts that are going to be expressed around the House. To be honest, I’m disgusted with what we’ve heard from some members of the Opposition parties in terms of referring to our Minister for Women, the Hon Nicola Grigg. Nicola Grigg’s great, great, great grandfather was Sir John Hall, who sponsored Kate Sheppard’s petition to give women the right to vote. It is said that the roll of petition signatures was so long that it reached the end of the debating chamber with a thud. So, please, please, members of the Opposition, please have some respect when we’re approaching this subject with respect.

I also heard an Opposition member say that we’re being irresponsible. Well, I have letters and letters from constituents in the great electorate of Takanini that have sent me emails asking for me to support this bill. Now, I love the fact that in our caucus room, as a broad church of the National Party, yes, we have robust conversations, but we have decided to support this bill to select committee because we acknowledge, notwithstanding the delicacies, that these are real concerns for many people in our communities.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to refer to one of the ladies in my electorate in the Conifer Grove suburb that wrote to me and ended her letter with, “Please ensure that language in law reflects biological reality. Where the needs of others need to be protected, let it be done explicitly in specific legislation, but the overall definition should refer to biology.”

I want to say this. I’ve spoken about one of my sisters who is a psychologist. She has shared with me that some of the most heartbreaking clients she has had to work with are people who are struggling with their gender, and it actually has made her cry after the sessions. We understand that there are people who may feel they might be targeted with this bill, but I’m resting assured that that is not going to be the case, because we won’t allow that to happen.

One area that is a big issue of contention for many mothers I speak to is the area of sports. I know that I have nieces and I have cousins’ children and their mothers have decided not to bother letting them go into cross-country running or any other sports because they ask what the point is if, in their early adulthood, there’s just going to be an unfair advantage for people who weren’t biologically born as a woman and who will just surpass them very easily with what happens with the male chromosomes. That’s a real issue.

That is something that a lot of parents take very seriously. Does it mean they’re being bigots? No. Does it mean they’re being hateful, as has been suggested by the other side? Absolutely not. It’s a real issue, and it goes back to biology, and to continue to be somehow in denial about this is really rejecting the serious concerns of many parents out there around our beautiful country of New Zealand.

Let’s get this bill to select committee, let’s listen to different views, and let’s see if it is really necessary that in law we need to clarify that the definitions of a “man” and a “woman” are based on biology. Let’s be respectful about it, and let’s keep in mind everyone who is part of our beautiful community of New Zealand. Whether they be homosexual, whether they be trans, or whether they be straight, let’s have respect for everyone, including those who are of the view that the definitions of a “man” and a “woman” are ones linked to biology. For now, I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Jenny Marcroft, in reply.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) (20:52): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to begin this speech in reply by thanking the members of the House for their contributions today. It has traversed many emotions, I believe.

I would particularly like to thank the National Party for putting their support behind taking this piece of legislation to the select committee. I’d also particularly like to acknowledge and thank and say that I am very grateful to the ACT Party as well, for showing courage to speak to this bill in support of it.

I think it will be an important piece of legislation for the select committee to do a lot of work on and to hear the voices of the public, because this is a particular topic that people really feel afraid to speak up about. Perhaps providing this opportunity through the select committee process will give them the opportunity to share their voice, and so I’m looking forward to the work that the committee will be doing.

I acknowledge that the chair of the committee will no doubt get very busy. We’re expecting to see quite a lot of submissions come in, and I wish them all the very best. Thank you very much to all of the members on the Social Services and Community Committee, which will be looking at this bill.

I’d also like to acknowledge a couple of other people: Suzanne Levy, for your advocacy for Speak Up For Women; and Bob McCoskrie from Family First. There was one other email I received yesterday, and I was surprised but delighted to receive support from this particular group to see that this bill goes to select committee. I’d like to do a shout-out to the LGB Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand. They want to see this piece of legislation discussed and analysed through the select committee process, and so I very much thank them for sharing their thoughts on it.

I’d like to talk about a couple of things. The conversation flowed a little bit around trans rights, and I wanted to point out to members of this House that one of the original architects of the Yogyakarta Principles, Robert Wintemute, has actually pushed back on what the transgender activists want the law to be. He claims that an abuse of sympathy and an escalation of demand, including the call to remove sex from birth certificates, has seen, in fact, a political backlash. Wintemute—now, this is a guy who was involved in writing those original Yogyakarta Principles—said that, in fact, there is a conflict of rights and he argues that freedom of expression must protect women’s right to question certain demands made by trans activists, even if those questions cause offence. Perhaps members of this House could reflect on that.

This bill is to address an issue that many New Zealanders recognise that far too few feel able to discuss openly. It’s not because the issue is trivial; it’s because it has become in some circles unsayable, and that in itself should concern every member of this House.

There’s been a bit of confusion in institutions, Government agencies, councils, and all of that. Much of this confusion actually traces back to a 2006 Crown Law opinion. That opinion suggested that transgender people may be protected from discrimination under the ground of sex, but it did not say that sex and gender identity are the same thing, and it did not suggest that sex-based exceptions in the law should be reinterpreted to include the opposite sex. That distinction matters, because what has followed was not the careful legal development, but policy drift, and that drift has consequences.

In conclusion, this issue is not going away. Public awareness is growing, concerns are increasing, and the current lack of clarity is unsustainable. We can continue as we are, with confusion, inconsistency, and a quiet erosion of rights, or we can do what Parliament is here to do, which is to define our terms, clarify our laws, and ensure that they operate as intended. This bill is an opportunity to begin that process—not to end the discussion but to bring it into the open, where it belongs. I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

DEPUTY SPEAKER (20:58): The question is, That the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Better Regional Boundaries Bill

First Reading

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (20:59): I move, That the Better Regional Boundaries Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill, and at the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 21 September 2026.

I am proud to be the MP for Ōtaki, and although the electorate is changing its name this year to Kāpiti, towns like Ōtaki still really matter to me. This country is full of small towns like this, which can sometimes feel like they have been left behind. They were, of course, the heart of New Zealand and the place in which our nation’s growth was built, in them and around them. But, over time, in the drift towards the larger urban centres, the big cities, the big smoke, we saw that sort of utilitarian approach. I spoke about this in my maiden speech—that thought that we just do the greatest good for the greatest number. The problem is it can marginalise those who are left on the edges.

There has been great development that comes to places like Ōtaki. I think of Transmission Gully, the Kāpiti Expressway, and the Ōtaki expressway, which was built by the last National Government, and now our Government is extending it up to Levin. It’s important that we do things like bypass the traffic but not the people. As I walked down the street on Monday and I spoke with Jill, Gary, and Nicky, helping them with Kāinga Ora, and I think about Martin and Rob, who I was helping with health issues, and many others, and I think: what is it? As a backbench MP, we get to do one thing. We get to put one idea in the biscuit tin to try and do one thing. Some people will choose something that’s really important to them at a personal level, or it might be based on ideology or party values. I wasn’t going let that opportunity go past without doing something that would make a meaningful difference to people in the community that I have the privilege of representing.

So, if you are in a town like Ōtaki—wherever you are around the country—this bill is for you. Let me tell you a story. It’s about a gentleman—and he’s given me permission to share his story this evening—from Ōtaki who is in his fifth year battling leukaemia. In fact, this Saturday, I’ll be climbing the Sky Tower with all our firefighters to raise money for Blood Cancer New Zealand. I’m doing that in memory of my dad, who passed away nine years ago, but also, now, Uncle Denny, who sadly passed away over the weekend. This gentleman from Ōtaki—he’s in his fifth year of battling leukaemia—and he tells me that when he needs care, he gets excellent care in Wellington Hospital—great treatment. The problem is, because our hospital boundaries are different to the primary health organisation boundaries, and they are also all different to the ambulance boundaries—because we have Wellington Free and St John’s—if he calls an ambulance, it will take him to Palmerston North, but the support he needs is in Wellington. Because of these conflicting boundaries, three times in the last five years when he has had to go to hospital, instead of being able to call an ambulance, his partner has driven him so that he can get to Wellington Hospital to get his support.

It shouldn’t be that hard, but sadly it’s not just in health that we hit this issue. Police, courts, Corrections—they all have different area boundaries or inconsistent boundaries in our area. If you want social housing, you go to Kāinga Ora, and you have to go to Porirua, but they’ll say first of all go to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to get on the wait-list, but you can’t go to the Porirua MSD office. You don’t even go to the Paraparaumu one. You now have to turn around and go an hour and a bit up north, up to Levin, but there’s, effectively, no public transport between Ōtaki and Levin, because council lines, which organise public transport, divide the two in half. Civil Defence: well, Ōtaki is part of Kāpiti Coast, and so the civil defence committee meets in Paraparaumu, but the police that meet there aren’t actually responsible for Ōtaki. Now, I back our police to make sure people get looked after, but the ones they need are actually meeting with the Horowhenua Council in Levin.

I could give you examples from education as well. In fact, I’ll give you one to show that this is broader than just my electorate. I’ve spoken to two staff members from Ruapehu College in Ohakune. Their support comes from the four winds. They might get Oranga Tamariki out of Whanganui, police out of Taumarunui, and MSD might come from somewhere else—they’ve had Taihape; they’ve had Tūrangi. Someone I spoke to today said, “Actually one lot are getting support from Rotorua.” The problem is that it is all over the place, it is inconsistent, and I could give examples like Mayor Tim King, the mayor of Tasman, who spoke to me and told me about the social services meeting he has and how it should be 10 people in the room from the 10 organisations. It’s 25, because their boundaries all overlap, and he needs a little bit from this area and a bit from that area. I think I’ve heard examples from Murupara, caught between Whakatāne and Rotorua. I’ve heard examples from Taupō and other parts of Waikato overlapping; East Coast and Hawke’s Bay, Southland—on and on it goes.

What is the point? This bill fixes the messy web. I’ve just got to show the messy web of confusion. This is just a few of the many different conflicting boundaries that sit—here’s Ōtaki, here’s Kāpiti office, here’s Horowhenua; they’re all over the place—the boundaries. This is the web. This is the problem that this bill is going to fix, and it fixes it with a really simple and elegant solution. It requires that every Crown agency must use the same boundary. It’s that simple. We could get caught up and we could focus on the time frames for implementation—I’m sure we’ll cover that in select committee, if members will support it there.

We can focus on exactly where the line goes, but let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. It is requiring that there is one single line that every Government agency uses for consistency, and my starting point for that, in this first draft, is to use local council boundaries. We have asked local councils to do their homework this year to look at where regional councils sit—because they don’t all line up—to look at where they should amalgamate and where they can work together and increase efficiency. It is appropriate that Government agencies would be doing the same thing and looking at how can we make Government simpler: less bureaucracy, less red tape—the kind of values that our Government believes in. That’s what this bill is about.

Of course, there will be big cities that will have to—think about Auckland; it’s not just going to have one site or one hub. Yes, that can get divided up. This bill specifically allows for that. There may be some smaller councils that will group together into one area. That’s fine. There will be exceptions, and the bill specifically allows for this, but what we have now is a mess that is easily solvable. That’s what this bill does.

Take my electorate for example. Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Levin and Paraparaumu—both have an MSD office; they both have health; they both have Oranga Tamariki; they both have corrections; they both have police. Ōtaki could always be going one way or the other, and I suggest to Kāpiti because it looks south and that’s the council it’s a part of. It could be doing that all the time, but at the moment, it is stuck in the mess that it is in and we can fix that.

Now, I don’t want to create more work. I don’t want to increase cost. I’m not setting up a new office. It doesn’t employ more staff. In fact, it gives a five-year time frame for implementation. If the adjustment means that there’s one job that’s currently in Levin that has to move to Paraparaumu, it can do that through natural attrition over the next five years. This is not a rush of bureaucracy. This is about making pragmatic changes that make it easier for our community.

Let me be clear, it is too hard to get help. There are too many small towns where good, honest Kiwis feel left behind, overlooked, where they feel undervalued or forgotten. They deserve support as much as any other New Zealander. We cannot let prioritising Government bureaucrats be the excuse that we don’t prioritise the people that we are here to serve. This is not about making it easier for the Government to exist; it’s about making it easier for every Kiwi to access the support that their Government exists to provide for them. That’s what this bill is about.

I do believe this will make it easier for Government agencies and the civil servants that look after us, because simpler boundaries, consistent relationships, lead to simpler and stronger relationships, and that leads to better support for our community. I’m genuinely open to good engagement through the select committee process to look at the time frames, to look at the boundaries to see where this can be improved further. I would love to get to that point so that we can engage on this and say, “How do we make our Government agencies work for the people of this country?”

I only have one bottom line, and it’s a really simple line; it’s a line on a map like this, but it’s a line that aligns every Crown agency so that we can all navigate our way with simplicity and clarity through what is, currently, a messy web of confusing and conflicting bureaucracy that makes life harder for the very ones that it is designed to support. Everything else is on the table. My motivation here is helping the people of Kāpiti, helping the people of Ōtaki; the people in every town across New Zealand so that they can live a better life, an easier life with more opportunity. If fixing the basics of our regional boundaries enables that, enables families where I come from to build a better future, if it takes one step towards that, I’m proud to put my name to it and I commend the bill to the House.

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

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (21:09): Madam Speaker, thank you. Kia orana. I want to acknowledge the member who has had his bill drawn. This is a sort of strange, peculiar thing of the New Zealand Parliament that we rely on a DEKA biscuit tin to determine what’s going to be debated on members’ days. I do want to acknowledge Tim Costley for having his bill drawn. Those members who have had their opportunity know that it is something that’s unique, but also pretty special. I also know that Mr Costley alluded to his sort of family connection and why he’s doing certain things, and I also want to acknowledge his late father, Mr Costley, who was my lecturer at Teacher’s College—who was a fellow history teacher. I do want to acknowledge that. It just reminded me actually of that. He was a fine man, and I just wanted to make the connection there.

I’ll put the member out of the misery of having to wait: the Labour Party will be supporting this bill through to select committee this evening. The interesting thing is that there are a number of issues that Mr Costley has touched on that we think, actually, the select committee process will be a good way to tease some of that stuff out.

One of the interesting things that many in this House will know—and it’s actually not just if you are located perhaps in a rural or provincial area; sometimes, when you are located in wholly urban areas, it kind of beggars belief where you happen to be lumped into in terms of a regional sort of construct there. We do think there are some opportunities here to try and make things a bit easier for households in terms of who they can liaise with when they decide they need some support or they want to go and have a conversation about something, because it is very frustrating. I acknowledge that primarily in regional New Zealand, this is indeed an issue, but I also want to note that it’s not just in regional New Zealand. Sometimes, in other parts of the country, this is the same issue that folk do come up against.

If we look at a family that might be engaging with a whole range of different Government departments, entities, agencies—they go to one place which happens to be where the Ministry of Education region is located; perhaps in Whanganui, whereas the Ministry of Social Development location might be further south. If a family or others might need to engage with Oranga Tamariki, that might be a whole different region as well. We get into this kind of web where the points of contact that a family has to go through or an individual has to go through—one day you are contacting the person based in Palmerston North; the next day you’re contacting someone based on the East Coast; the next day you’re contacting someone perhaps in Whanganui or in the Hutt; and you have not moved house—you are in the same location. There are some opportunities around trying to clarify how far that goes.

At the end of the day, it creates, often, another barrier for dealing with some of these agencies. Sometimes, you don’t have the choice as a person about where that agency might reside, because you have to engage with them, but if this is the difference between actually wanting to find out some information and not, the fact that you are dealing with multiple locations could be a disincentive for you to want to engage. I would hope that the focus of this bill is about encouraging a little bit of conformity in that sense, and also making it easier for people to engage with the process. I know that the member whose bill this is talked about wanting to be pragmatic around that, and I think the select committee process will certainly be a part of that.

We in the Labour Party welcome the aspiration around the possibility of what has been defined as regional hubs: that you could have one singular door that you would go through, in terms of being able to access regional services, based on where you live. Where the lines on the map are, I think, will be the interesting sort of situation there.

It is interesting, though, that the reason why we are discussing this is because it has relied on a member putting this bill in the tin and the luck of the draw of being drawn out. The reality is that the Government could initiate a change like this tomorrow. The Cabinet could issue a minute that would give effect to entities and agencies having a particular focus in a regional sense around where they would function. I guess it’s peculiar, or curious, that if this is something that makes some sense, the Government is relying on one of its own members to pursue this rather than utilising the options that are already available to it.

There are some consequences that might be expected if an agency doesn’t follow this or the reporting mechanism, in terms of a requirement to report back to the House if not followed through with, but there are actually no consequences in the bill as drafted if nobody takes that course of action. The bill itself says that there’s a requirement to inform or disclose—what might that look like? I take the five-year time frame, but what happens if someone doesn’t do that? In that sense, the bill should perhaps have some teeth as a penalty provision or an incentive to ensure that someone does actually abide by it. There’s nothing at the moment, that I can see, that actually acts as a disincentive, to ensure that, actually, “This is the expectation; you need to do it.” What are the consequences if someone doesn’t do it? That might be something that the select committee turns its mind to, around, “OK, these are the expectations and obligations or responsibilities, but if they’re not done, then what is the consequence?”

If there’s a five-year time frame—and let’s say Manawatū is a particular region that needs to be drawn up—there’s an expectation under the bill that, once those lines are drawn, that information is effectively tabled, but if the people that are making these decisions don’t do it, what is going to be the consequence or the follow-up of that? While it’s important to have these things, having some teeth in that space is important.

One of the other avenues the Government could pursue is that the Public Service Commissioner could issue some guidance around how that works with the Public Service Act 2020—but, of course, the Government wouldn’t be doing that right now, because they’re too busy looking at sacking people in the Public Service, which seems to be their modus operandi at the moment.

Dana Kirkpatrick: You were going so well, Tangi!

TANGI UTIKERE: I just speak the truth and the reality of the circumstance, Dana Kirkpatrick—that’s what it’s all about. There are options available to the Government, and it’s, again, just a little bit peculiar that they haven’t decided to exercise that.

One of the things that is also going to be perhaps a bit of a challenge is that there is an expectation that local government, as a sector, would be part of this process, in terms of looking at a map and where one might draw the lines. Of course, the current Government have started on a bit of a process—this head-start process—that still is a little bit uncertain. There is a little bit of unease around where the role of local government might sit within the context of the member’s bill. Now, who knows what might happen in terms of the future. Some of those boundaries might look different than they do today; they might look similar, we don’t know.

I accept that the bill itself was lodged well before the current Government’s local government reforms were initiated, but I do think that is a tricky area, which certainly colleagues on the side of the House would be keen to tease out through the select committee process around this expectation that local government—the boundaries and catchment opportunities that sit there. It makes logical sense that, if you’re looking to have some better regional boundaries, surely there must be some applicability of local government and local councils. The issue that we would have at the moment is just the uncertainty that might present itself as a result of a process that’s currently under way without that particular process being concluded.

The select committee will have a number of things that it will need to turn its mind to. We are supporting this bill here at first reading as a way in which we’re supporting it going to select committee, so that some of these issues can be ironed out. I know the member is keen to make this bill workable; he has indicated that. The Labour Party is keen to work with him to ensure that what is coming out of the select committee process is something that we can perhaps continue to support. I hope that the sort of observations and reflections that have been identified already will be part of a constructive approach to trying to make this bill a better bill, and fundamentally that’s what the select committee process is about. We’ll hear from the community and look forward to seeing what emerges. For now, I’m happy to commend this bill in the House.

MIKE DAVIDSON (Green) (21:19): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak to the Better Regional Boundaries Bill. I’d like to acknowledge Tim Costley for the luck of drawing this one out—and, not only that, just 20 days later, it is in front of us. Well done on that effort.

When we look at this this bill, as mentioned earlier, this doesn’t need to be legislation to happen. It didn’t actually require that legislative change. The Ministers do have the levers right now to actually make these changes. There is a little bit of concern that this bill could lead to unproductive restructuring of regional offices of departments, which needs to be worked through to ensure that doesn’t happen—and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see that happen yourself.

But in reality, it’s a pretty small bill, but it does have the potential to actually make a bit of difference for a lot of people that are finding access to Government agencies difficult if they’re in different locations, and so therefore, it does have merit. It is a shame that we’re having to use legislation to actually do this when it could have been done without it, and potentially imagine what else you could have had as a member’s bill if they had just actually done this, which potentially does make sense and could achieve a lot of issues for people that are struggling, especially in those more isolated communities.

The Green Party will be supporting this to the select committee, and it is interesting with the timing, which was also just mentioned. Obviously, you probably weren’t aware of what was happening in the local government space when you drafted this bill, but obviously, regional councils will soon not exist and local territorial authorities are going for a big reform of lots of restructure, boundary changes, mergers. It’s just making sure that the outcome of that doesn’t impact too greatly your intent here, and how that also all works together when it’s all tied together.

This will be good when it goes through the select committee process. I think it’s actually got the nuggets of a really good outcome for people, and especially people that that you serve and other MPs in similar constituencies where their constituents are isolated a bit more than in the urban environment. Once again, the Green Party will support this bill to the select committee. Kia ora.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (21:22): Thank you. Madam Speaker. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of a local MP who has identified issues that he feels are important in his community and drafted what he’s put on the table as a potential solution to that. Well done, Tim Costley, on your hard work in your constituency on coming up with this. I think the debate highlights some issues that small towns across New Zealand are torn in different ways, and the member himself acknowledged that as the society, the way our demographic spread has happened, the way our country has built up, boundaries have been changed, created, drawn apart, pushed together, spread out, and boundaries have grown and changed, perhaps not as originally designed but evolving as our country has changed. There are towns like Ōtaki and Levin that the member has mentioned. He also mentioned another town, Murupara—I think I know where he got that suggestion from—that is divided in different ways for different public services. I can see the rationale, and there is a rationale there.

However, when I read this bill, without going too hard on the member, it’s a little bit toothless in a way. It says that a relevant agency must divide New Zealand into administrative areas “to the greatest extent possible”. As the member Tangi Utikere has described, there’s not a lot in there. It said that the relevant agencies “must co-operate with and coordinate activities with … other relevant agencies.” That begs the question: when this is going through, when St John says this should be our boundary and Health New Zealand says we want this boundary, how is the conflict worked out? In the hierarchy of decisions, who actually gets the say on that? When it’s coming to coordinating these, that is something that I feel like a piece of legislation passed through the House without, as I’ll go on, some more teeth, and perhaps a hierarchy and a schedule, it’s hard to make the call on who holds precedent there. And you can imagine some public servants would be protective of their patch and the people they serve in their part of that process.

It’s got another part here, “Before issuing guidance the Commissioner,”—meaning the Public Service Commissioner—“must consult with Local Government New Zealand.” Well, as has been identified, we have a change in local government coming over the next five years. Yeah, it’s good to consult and that, but writing it into a bill in the middle of a change process sort of doesn’t seem like it’s going to make things any simpler. The member has acknowledged—and rightfully so, because I know he’s in it that efficient member of this House who wants things to be done right and cost-effectively—he doesn’t want to create more work and I worry that this would be a costly process to go through.

There’s another part in there that, “The Commissioner must report annually to the Minister on how relevant agencies have been complying with this Act.” I know in my area of Tauranga, there are specific requirements about how much housing supply has to be organised. And ever since the dark days of the commission, Tauranga City Council has just been writing to the Government and saying, we can’t comply with this law, and nothing changes from that. It’s one thing to pass law, it’s another thing to actually have it enforced and just writing and saying, “no, we haven’t complied yet” seems like another bureaucratic hurdle that will be in place until some future Parliament decides maybe this wasn’t relevant anymore.

The bill does not confer—and this is something Tangi Utikere talked about, the consequences, as the bill does not confer or impose a legal right or obligation, which is kind of the point at the end of the reading of this not super long bill. It doesn’t seem to have a force function. It doesn’t seem to get anywhere if you haven’t gone through it. As I say, there’s a whole lot of friction in the process before that that I can’t see, without something making that friction move, is going to go anywhere.

Finally, I’d just like to say we do have a Minister for the Public Service. The Minister for the Public Service and the Minister of Finance oversee the Public Service Commission. There is a pathway to having this sort of change brought about. It’s writing to the Ministers in charge, advocating for this, saying maybe we should do some rationalisation. Having it as a policy to simplify government is a direction that could be pursued. But up until this point, Madam Speaker, I cannot commend this bill to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (21:27): Thanks, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on this bill, and first of all, congratulations to Tim Costley and the work you’ve done to get to this point. The purpose sounds admirable, the rationalisation of boundaries and the lining boundaries and so on, but we’ve already heard—and, in fact it was from that very member himself on a previous bill tonight—about problem definition, about actually making sure that there actually is a problem, and this to some degree feels like a solution which is looking for a problem. The question to us is: what is the scale of the problem, and then what is the cost of fixing that problem? It is not a cost-free one as I will come to very, very shortly.

The question is whether a problem naturally exists. Now, what we’re talking about here is central government services. Now, if it’s central government—if I want the police, I ring the police. I don’t actually care particularly whether it’s the Wellington Police, the Otago Police, whatever it might be—I want the police. If it’s the hospital, it’s the local hospital. You know what I’m saying. If it’s the Department of Conservation (DOC), I want—which conservancy do I want? I will ring that one. It doesn’t matter that I happen to live in that area or don’t happen to live in there. I’m going up Mount Taranaki? OK, I’ll get in touch with the Taranaki ones. That’s the way that you deal with Government agencies because they are national agencies—they just happen to be split or organised across the country in particular ways.

Now, the idea here is, unusually, to have central government agencies aligned with local government. Normally, we do it the other way around—central government tells local government to do, but anyway. The interesting thing there is we’ve got this idea that we will consult with Local Government New Zealand in putting this together. We’ll probably do more consultation on doing this than we will on changing the local government boundaries, I might say, as Tangi Utikere has just said. Now, I do note that many councils want change, but they’re a little worried about the rate and the way in which it’s being proposed at the moment. Now, let’s have a look at how many agencies we’ve got. At the moment, we have 67 territorial authorities (TAs), 67 local government councils. That may well reduce over a period of time. Now, think about the central government agencies. NZTA is actually pretty well-aligned. Why are they aligned with local government pretty well? Because they work hand in glove all the time with local government. That is not generally true with most of the others.

I invite you to think about what the complexities will be, and the costs would be, of changing not just the boundaries, but inevitably you would need to change the organisational structures of just about every single Government agency to respond to this if it was mandated.

Think about the police. We’ve already said—how many did we say?—67 TAs. The police have 12 districts—three of them are actually in Auckland, so they’d have to combine those three because we will not have three of them where you’ve got one council. That means nine for the rest of the country. That’s the police.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) has 15 conservancies. They’re not actually badly aligned; a little bit off in the North Island but the South Island’s actually pretty well aligned with wider regions, but not entirely. Social welfare; 11 districts. Fire and Emergency New Zealand, one of Tim Costley’s and my favourite organisations at the moment; they have five districts. Health has four regions; they used to have 20 district health boards. Heritage New Zealand has six. That’s just a starter.

Now, my point is that if you said to every one of them, they’ve got to start aligning their boundaries in some way, or their organisational structure in some way, with territorial authority boundaries, you’re going to have to throw the whole lot up in the air and they will have to work that out. Instead of having X number of district commissioners, they’ll have to have a completely different number of district commissioners. That is not a cost-free exercise by any stretch of the imagination, and that is not the direction that this Government has been going. It’s been trying to make things more efficient. This potentially could make things a lot less efficient.

There’s one thing I’ve learnt and that is things are usually a way for a particular reason. Each one of those Government agencies has probably arranged itself in a particular way because that fits with the way in which it delivers its services. Police, Health, DOC do not deliver the same services in the same way, by any stretch of the imagination. I think we all know that. They’re organised to deliver completely different services, and so they are organised in the way that works for them to do that.

Now, we don’t want to create more work. I think Tim Costley said that. This, I think, will create a lot more work. You said it wouldn’t change one job, that it wouldn’t matter whether the job is in Levin or Paraparaumu, but it’s not about doing that. It’s about changing entire organisational structures, and that is the challenge. Just to finish off: Tangi Utikere also said, look, if we had an agency, if I’ve got to go and deal with one agency in Palmerston, one in Hawke’s Bay, and one in Whanganui, are we saying to them, actually, instead of doing that, I want them all in Palmerston? That is a very expensive proposition to start doing that, to relocate organisations.

The one other thing I would say, just to finish off: if this does go through—as it looks it probably will at this stage, and I will counsel you to think again about it—how do Government agencies engage with this bill as they go through? Normally, we don’t have Government agencies come and advocate to us, but we would need to make damn sure that the Government agencies could tell us why they’re organised the way they are organised, and if they think this is going to be a problem and think it’s going to be a costly problem, we would need—sorry for the pun, there: a “Costley” problem—we would need to make sure they told us that and they were enabled to do so. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangārei) (21:32): I’d like to congratulate the member Tim Costley, one, for the work going into this bill and, two, for having it drawn through the ballot box. Well done, and thank you.

It’s really clear what the problem is to solve here; the problem definition: it’s Government agencies administratively being able to use different territorial and regional boundaries. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve. It’s really simple. There are five mechanisms that the member is putting forward to do this: the Public Service agencies and Crown agents must use the same geographic administrative boundaries as territorial local authorities (TLA) and regions; agencies are required to consult with each other; the Public Service Commissioner is to issue guidance. Point 4: the existing administrative boundaries have a five-year transition period. The final point there is that it’s not legally enforceable—the Act as it’s being described here now.

Now, of course, there will be challenges. I could think of a challenge, for example, in Taupō. That is one TLA that actually has four regions passing into Taupō district. That could be a challenge, but this is all navigable. If I look at Northland district health board (DHB), Northland DHB region had three TLAs: Kaipara, Northland, and Far North. Their southern boundary was all the same, at Topuni, which is the southern part of Kaipara. This has been done before, and I’m sure it can be done again. I think the member’s putting a very reasonable proposition, giving a reasonable time frame for transition, not making it specifically legally enforceable.

I’d make the point that there are many things that come through members’ bills that, for one reason or another, are not Government orders of the day, and that relates to a number of things including the attention that a private member’s bill can bring in a busy legislative agenda, the resources that a private member’s bill can bring, as well. I don’t find this at all unusual that a quality proposition like this should come through as a member’s bill. In fact, again, I congratulate the member for the work he’s done to get it to this place. I commend the bill to the House.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (21:34): Madam Speaker, thank you. I’m pleased to take a call on this member’s bill, and, like the other members’ bills I’ve been honoured to be able to take a call on today, I’d like to take the opportunity to congratulate the member for having this bill drawn from the ballots. It’s a difficult thing, and it’s always something to celebrate when it does happen.

My colleague Tangi Utikere has really set out Labour’s fundamental position in relation to this. I think it is worth noting that the intention here really is for efficiency and ease, as far as I can see, for members of the public. I think, especially for those who live in regional New Zealand, that can be particularly tricky. I think it can be difficult. One example that especially sprung to mind as I was looking at this bill was the Chatham Islands. For example, they have a number of different areas which are responsible for them. I know that’s probably not the area that the member was thinking of, but health and their council—I mean, they’re in different islands, literally, where they get different services, on the Chatham Islands. So I do think there is value in this.

We have heard that this could be something that the Government could do separately, and there is, of course, the review of local government that’s happening at the moment. Obviously, that’s not something the member can control—either of those things, actually—and so I do acknowledge that, with members’ bills, we often take the path that is available to us in order to make a change. It is interesting to hear others speaking against it in relation to cost. I would assume—and it would be good to know in select committee and to have that through the member’s submission on this—that the objective in due course would be to reduce cost, and that would be the basis of us supporting this and also supporting the greater alignment of this bill.

I didn’t catch exactly where this bill is going to be sent. I assume it’s the Governance and Administration Committee, which is a great committee. I enjoyed my time on the Governance and Administration Committee very much, and I think it will be the perfect place to make sure any issues are ironed out. I’m sure this will be a popular bill and many of the people who are very passionate about local government will submit to it. I hope, and I know, the member will take it really seriously, as well, because that’s the type of MP he is, and we’ll make sure that it’s in the best possible place when it comes back to the House.

I don’t really have that much more to add on it. I do have quite extensive notes here, but I won’t delay the passage of the bill any further by going through all of them. They have been covered extensively, mainly by Tangi Utikere. I do want to commend the member and also commend this bill to the House.

Hon MELISSA LEE (National) (21:37): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to begin by saying that obviously I support this bill, and I’d like to acknowledge my colleague Tim Costley, who is an excellent local member. I just want to say I was really jealous when this bill went into the ballot, when it actually came to caucus. I don’t know how it is in other parties, but members actually draw up a member’s bill and they have to take it to caucus and it has to pass caucus before it can be put in the ballot.

The reason why I say I was really jealous is that I was working on something very similar. The reason why I was actually working on something very similar is that one of the things that I found very annoying, as a member of Parliament, is trying to engage with Government departments, for example, the Police. When you’re in a particular electorate, sometimes you don’t just deal with one policing district; you’re having to engage with three or four, because the boundary actually means that the police boundary is different to the electorate boundary. I thought this is totally annoying and then realised that it’s a similar thing with the Ministry of Social Development, Kāinga Ora, all that kind of stuff. I thought, “Oh my god, there’s got to be a better way.”

I started working on something very similar. I got the Library to help me, and by the time they actually finished, I had this map. Tim Costley called it a web. Mine actually looked like—I don’t know what to call it; it was just a gigantic mess. It was like boundaries everywhere, one after the other. Nothing really aligned. Then I thought, “This could be an absolutely perfect member’s bill to take to caucus and actually do this.” And then he beat me to it. He had already written up the bill. That’s why I say I’m really, really jealous.

I hope this actually works—you know, Speedy Gonzalez he is. Anyway, I’m really proud that he worked on a very similar concept, and I just think this will actually be a fantastic thing for a lot of the communities who find themselves in situations that Tim explained, having to go to hospitals and if they’re taken by one particular ambulance, they go to one part, as in Palmerston North, and the other one actually goes to Wellington. I think that will be something that we can iron out through this bill.

One of the things you find when you’re talking to people is that people want simple answers to their issues. When you are ill, you want to know that you’re looked after—not exactly wanting to know “Do I belong in this health district?”, or “Do I belong in this Kāinga Ora office?”, or “Do I have to go to this Ministry of Social Development office?” They actually want to know there is one place they can go and get their business sorted.

When you actually get the Public Service agencies and Crown agents—I mean, the way that Tim’s said, we need to set this boundary and it will take five years for each Government entity to align their boundaries and align them with local authority boundaries. I like the fact that, when he spoke on this, he said there might be some areas where you can’t exactly align it to the local boundary areas, because rural areas will be different to the city areas. Urban areas will be very different to, let’s say—Auckland will be very different to Palmerston North or Ōtaki or Kaipara, wherever it is. Tauranga will be very different. The thing is that, if there is a boundary that is very clearly lineated so that people are not having to cross over, they’re not actually having to ring three different entities trying to get to the one that they need to actually get to, to get the answer or the help, I think that would be a very, very good thing.

I am unsure, because I never actually got to work out how much what I was working on was going to cost, and I have to take the member’s word that this actually doesn’t really have a financial cost to it. Having said that, I look forward to hearing submissions from the public as to what they think of this bill, because I think there’ll be lots and lots of people who would have an opinion. I would urge the public to make submissions on why this will help or hinder them. I commend the bill to the House.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (21:42): Thank you. Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill. I want to acknowledge my colleague Tim Costley, and it’s good to hear that this bill is going to the Governance and Administration Committee—probably one of the best select committees in the House. A number of us sit on that committee.

A lot of the points have been traversed already by colleagues, in terms of trying to get efficiency for better regional services, and it doesn’t just exist in that part of the North Island; it’s actually even in Auckland, and my colleague just spoke earlier on the difficulties of the various Government agency boundaries and the confusion with local government boundaries. I look forward to it, because I think that public submissions need to be tested in terms of the efficiencies and cost, in terms of achieving the intent of the bill. I do welcome the bill, and Labour will be supporting this bill to the select committee process to try and achieve alignment and better coordination, because we’ve seen the Government just make a recent announcement on cuts to public services. It’s going to be interesting, but it is needed work. It needs to be reviewed to achieve that.

My colleague Tangi Utikere spoke on some of the components—[Interruption] Just waiting for my colleagues here because they’re talking over me. No, they’re just reminding me of a few things.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s fair—they were probably distracting you more because you could hear them.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: It’s important to attain accountability of the various Government services, so I do welcome and I thank member Costley for raising all those issues and the processes and also the rationalisation, because if there is a better solution that is cost-effective, I’m sure public officials would want to hear that, as well as CEOs and Ministers who do the Votes.

I am interested in just hearing from the public what they think, because it’s one thing to deal with Government agencies; it’s different to deal with people from diverse backgrounds. If you’re trying to explain to a matua who’s about 75 going to an appointment that, because they live in one area, they have to go to another area, they just don’t get why it is that that’s the case. In terms of the alignment of the bill, better regional boundaries, that would be very helpful. But it’s also true: are there cost savings that can be made in delivering different Government agency services? I know for local council it’s actually quite frustrating for a lot of residents, and I’m using an example up in Auckland.

I did hear a colleague talk about simplicity of rules and regulations, and so, hopefully, we are trying to fix the problem that has been identified. It’s important that infrastructure and investment is aligned as we go into quite a difficult time with the cost of living. I don’t have much more to add. Labour will be supporting it to select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Tim Costley, in reply.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (21:45): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to, firstly, thank parties across the House who are supporting this bill and enabling it to go to select committee, where we can iron out some of the issues. They were well surmised; there were no surprises in there, but let me just quickly race through a few just to acknowledge the points that were made.

One of them was: “Does it need teeth, does it need a bit more?” Tangi Utikere mentioned that; so did Cameron Luxton. It’s an interesting question. Is putting something in law and saying this is a requirement—is that enough, or do you have to have a stick as well to punish someone if they don’t do it? I don’t think New Zealand is the kind of country that you have to have a punishment for everything, that we have to do that. There are a lot of things that are put into law, into legislation in New Zealand, that impose a requirement on someone but don’t have a penalty out the other side. That’s OK. I can think of many from my days in the Defence Force, I can think of some in local government, I can think of them across different agencies, but it’s something I’m very happy to explore in select committee, and I’m open to options, if there is a sensible one, to go with it.

The local government amalgamations, obviously, as was mentioned, weren’t happening at the time this was done. I don’t think that changes it. What we’re saying is the fundamental point is that everyone needs to work within the one area. If you live in Horowhenua-Kāpiti; let’s say that they amalgamate—that could just be one big area, because at the moment we’re stretched between offices in Palmerston North, Levin, Paraparaumu, the little one in Ōtaki, Porirua, and Wellington. What we’re saying is let’s have everyone get consistent access. They can pick between Levin or Paraparaumu—that’s fine—or you could split it into two sub-areas that are roughly the current Kāpiti and roughly the current Horowhenua. Auckland will clearly have to be more than one big area, because it’s such a large area. I think that’s a fair consideration and one worth exploring, but also I would note that by the time this passes into law, anyone that’s taking the head-start approach with the current council amalgamations will be locked in; we will know what it is, then the five-year clock starts, so there’ll be plenty of time.

The one good point that I thought Andy Foster made was about what will be the impact—

Arena Williams: Lots of good points—lots of good points.

TIM COSTLEY: —yeah, the one good point—on Government agencies that maybe can’t submit to the select committee. That’s why I will be asking for advisers from the Public Service Commission to see if they can come and give us that perspective. I think it is a useful perspective to consider.

I pick up the point that Tangi Utikere made about having regional hubs as an end goal. That’s certainly what I would like to see, where we can one day, as buildings and facilities gradually get done—we just had a new Ministry of Social Development facility last year in Paraparaumu—have a hub where you can literally go to a one-stop shop and get the support you need across Government. It’s not just about one place to go for customers; if you’ve got staff that are regularly working together, building those collaborative relationships, I think that ends up generating a much better experience.

I’ll just touch on ACT, and I’m obviously disappointed that colleagues there aren’t supporting this bill. I was actually going to, if it wasn’t drawn a couple of weeks ago—I thought, if I don’t get drawn today, I know how I’ll get this done: I’ll just ring the red tape hotline, because there are some people out there that don’t like regulation that’s holding this country back. They love to do it. That agency seems to be OK, growing, but apparently this one’s not going to help. That’s OK. I don’t know, I just wonder if through the select committee process there might be an opportunity to demonstrate that this is actually about simplifying government—limited government. It’s about having smaller hurdles in the way. It’s about cost savings and efficiency and things that I think are pretty important, but perhaps I don’t share those views with ACT.

Can I just finish with Andy Foster, who encouraged members across the House to not support this. I think the fundamental point that may be demonstrated is when you have a party that doesn’t have electorate MPs.

The way he described things is, “When I pick up the phone, I just want to get the police. I don’t care where they come from. When I pick up the phone, I just want to get an ambulance.” Well, that’s great, but the problem of the people that I meet day in and day out, in Kāpiti and Ōtaki, is that when they ring 111, they can’t get the ambulance because it will go to the wrong hospital, and that’s where they need to get their care—their specialist care for leukaemia. That was the fundamental point. When they go to see the Ministry of Social Development, they can’t get the service because that office gets supported out of somewhere else. When the when the principal from Te Horo School meets with all the other principals in Kāpiti, and meets with the Oranga Tamariki, it’s the wrong person because it’s from the wrong office.

I am not here to make it easier for Government to do government and bureaucracy. I’m here to support the people that sent me and sent every one of us into this place to make it easy for them to get access. That’s what this bill is about, not supporting Government for the sake of government. It’s about supporting people. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Better Regional Boundaries Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 97

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.

Noes 25

ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Tim Costley: Madam Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We have another question here. It’s OK—I know what you’re going to recommend. I think I’ll probably be able to deal with it from here, OK? Tell me if I’m wrong afterwards.

Referral to Select Committee

DEPUTY SPEAKER (21:52): The question is, That the Better Regional Boundaries Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Instruction to Select Committee

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (21:52): I move, That the Better Regional Boundaries Bill be reported to the House by 21 September 2026.

Motion agreed to.

TIM COSTLEY: Point of order. Madam Speaker, I seek leave to Table the map of the web of boundaries around Ōtaki.

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

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill

First Reading

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (21:53): I move, That the Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

This is a bill about one of the most profound and preventable cruelties in our justice system: the refusal of a convicted murderer to disclose where they have hidden their victim’s body. It is a bill that puts victims and their families at the heart of our justice system. It acknowledges the additional anguish faced by families who cannot lay their loved ones to rest because an offender selfishly withholds that information.

I want to begin by acknowledging the families who have lived that nightmare and who have courageously shared their stories with me and with this House. Simon McGrath’s brother, Christchurch builder, Michael, was murdered in 2017 by his childhood friend David Benbow. Michael’s body has never been found. Simon told me, when we met, that he still wakes in the night thinking of places Michael could be. He gets in his car and he goes searching, only to return home still without answers. As Simon has written, and I quote, “There’s not a day that goes by that I wonder where my brother’s remains lie. It is overwhelmingly a hugely haunting experience.” Simon has been a tireless advocate for this law, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Trish Fabish’s half-brother David Roigard murdered his own son Aaron in 2014. Aaron’s body has never been recovered. Trish has described how David’s ongoing refusal to disclose the location denies her family and Aaron’s friends the dignity of laying him to rest. It allows David to retain a sense of control, even from prison. Trish’s advocacy has been powerful, and I acknowledge her today.

And then there’s the case of Sara Neithe. In March 2003, she was injected with methamphetamine by Mark Pakenham and died. Her body was disposed of and has never been found. At sentencing in 2013, the judge found that Pakenham did know where the body was. The judge described the concealment as akin to perverting the course of justice and added six months to the starting point for sentence. Yet, nearly 23 years later, Sara’s three children, now adults with families of their own, still cannot bury their mother. Yet Mr Pakenham walks and lives in our community freely.

I also want to acknowledge the extraordinary work of Bruce Currie, a former detective, senior sergeant, and now private investigator. Bruce has spent more than 2,000 hours pro bono investigating Sara’s case on behalf of her family. Bruce, your dedication has been instrumental.

These families are not asking for revenge; they’re asking for basic human dignity, the chance to say goodbye properly, to have a grave to visit, to have some form of measure of closure, so they can begin to heal.

Under the current law, while concealment can be taken into account at sentencing, there is no specific statutory requirement for the parole board to refuse parole to an offender who continues to withhold the location of the body. That gap is what this bill closes. The Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill does two simple targeted things: first, it amends section 9 of the Sentencing Act to add as an aggravating factor in homicide cases, “any failure or refusal by the offender … to reveal, or to co-operate in any efforts to identify, the location of the [victim’s] body or of any remains”; second, it inserts new section 28A into the Parole Act. It requires the Parole Board when considering an offender convicted of homicide, to refuse parole unless the Board is satisfied that the offender has cooperated satisfactorily, either before or after sentencing, in the investigation to identify the victim’s location.” The board must have regard to information from Police about the nature, extent, and usefulness of any cooperation; any information about the offender’s capacity to cooperate; and the transcript of the sentencing remarks. This is not a rigid automatic bar; it is a clear, principled test focused on genuine cooperation to the best of the offender’s ability.

The bill is modelled directly on legislation passed in the United Kingdom in 2020 and in New South Wales in 2022. Both have proven to be highly effective. In New South Wales, the “No Body, No Parole” law has been credited with prompting double murderer Beaumont Lamarre-Condon to reveal the location of his victim’s bodies. Similar success stories have emerged in Queensland and elsewhere. Offenders who previously had no incentive to disclose, suddenly found one.

This bill also aligns squarely with our Government’s “tough on crime, victims first” approach. We have said repeatedly that the justice system must put victims at its centre. This bill delivers exactly that.

Others will note that the number of such cases is relatively small, and that is true. However, one family living with this torment is one family too many. The number of people affected should never be the measure of whether we act. What matters is the depth of their suffering.

To those concerned about wrongful convictions, the bill changes nothing about the right to appeal. If a conviction is overturned, the parole restriction no longer applies. The test is about genuine cooperation to the best of the offender’s ability. Murder convictions already require proof beyond reasonable doubt. The bill does not undermine those safeguards. It simply ensures that those who are rightly convicted cannot use the justice system to inflict further pain.

The public feedback on this bill has been overwhelmingly positive. New Zealanders want this change. They understand that offenders should not be released back into the community while they continue to deny grieving families the opportunity for closure.

To Simon McGrath, Trish Fabish, Bruce Currie, and every other family member and advocate who has carried this burden for years, today I stand with you. Your persistence and courage have brought us to this moment.

This bill is not about vengeance. It’s about restoring basic human decency to our justice system. It’s about telling every family that their loved one’s memory matters and that we will no longer allow offenders to use silence as a final weapon against the people they have devastated. For too long, murderers have been able to withhold the one piece of information that could bring grieving families some measure of peace. Today, we draw a line in the sand. I commend the Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10.02 p.m.