Wednesday, 27 May 2026

Wednesday, 27 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.]

Visitors

Sri Lanka—Hon Vijitha Herath, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism

SPEAKER (14:01): Members, I am sure that you would wish to welcome the Hon Vijitha Herath, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and his delegation, who are present in the gallery.

Presentation

Petitions

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

CLERK (14:01):

Petition of Alan Moffitt requesting that the House require hospitals to provide written information regarding the possible side effects of sleep deprivation for patients who are woken every few hours for tests

petition of Lambs Pharmacy requesting that the House urge the Government to keep open the Post Shop at Lambs Pharmacy at Karangahape Road.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

Papers

SPEAKER (14:02): A paper has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK (14:02): Ministry for Women, Long-term Insights Briefing 2026.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House. No select committee reports have been delivered. No bills have been introduced. The House comes to oral questions.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Prime Minister

Question No. 1

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (14:02) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:02): Yes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister stand by his statement yesterday that the official in his office who received the briefing notes from Z Energy and Fonterra “left a while ago”, and, if so, when exactly did that official leave?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first leg of the question, yes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the official who received this until now secret briefing note was his former chief policy adviser?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I have said, and I’ve addressed this issue in recent days, I don’t think it’s appropriate that I identify specific members of staff. All I said is that the staff member left a while ago.

Chlöe Swarbrick: How is it credible for the Prime Minister to not know that his chief policy adviser—

SPEAKER: No, sorry, you can’t make an accusation in a question. Ask a question.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is it credible for the Prime Minister to not know that his chief policy adviser was meeting with the largest company in the country actively lobbying to change the law in their interest?

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I just ask for you to reflect on whether it is helpful for the reputation of the House for members to use their privilege to identify a specific person who is not in a position to defend themselves, and ask what exactly the public interest is in doing that.

SPEAKER: Yes, I’d ask the member to refer to—in her cubbyhole there, or whatever you call it—the Speakers’ ruling 57/1, which makes it very clear that it is inappropriate for—well, it doesn’t make it clear; it says, basically, I think, have some consideration of that.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I was listening carefully to Chlöe Swarbrick’s question. She did not name the individual; she described a job, and there is a difference here. Somebody occupying a very senior position within the Prime Minister’s Office having their position named is totally consistent with the practices of this House. Naming the person concerned by name would be something that is done very, very rarely, but naming somebody’s position, particularly when it’s the chief policy adviser to the Prime Minister, is absolutely consistent with the practices that have been followed in this House.

SPEAKER: Well, it would be—

Steve Abel: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Oh well, away we go. Yes, Steve Abel.

Steve Abel: Speaking to the point of order, in your rulings, Speakers’ rulings 57/1 and Speaker’s ruling 57/2, it does allow the naming of officials. As the leader of the Labour Party pointed out, Chlöe, our co-leader, didn’t name the official, but the point is that the office of the official has been named. It is not calling into question the conduct of the official, but the extent to which the Prime Minister was not aware of the conduct of their chief policy adviser.

SPEAKER: Yeah, well, I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Hon Louise Upston: Speaking to the point of order, the Prime Minister has answered the question and been clear about the intent in terms of individuals. Anyone in this House would know that if you use particular titles, it is very easy to then identify people, and so it has the same result as the intent of not naming an individual, by that connection. It’s pretty obvious.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: Final point.

Chlöe Swarbrick: My point, Mr Speaker, is what the Prime Minister knew when. I very intentionally am not naming the person, who—just for the sake of the knowledge of the House—has actually been named this afternoon in a publication from Stuff.

SPEAKER: So the question that comes—[Interruption] Thank you. Are you finished? Yeah. The question that comes to mind is, firstly, Speakers’ ruling 57/1 makes it clear that while a name can be given, people should bear in mind that public officials do not have the opportunity to defend themselves in this House. I would go further and say that by naming a position, it would be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that people couldn’t work out who that person was. The question then becomes is it absolutely necessary for that to be part of the question for the information to be sought from the Prime Minister, and I would say that in this case, it doesn’t.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I think we need to be very clear here. The motives and the conduct of the position that has just been named are not being questioned by Chlöe Swarbrick’s question; it’s whether the Prime Minister was aware of the actions that person was taking that’s being questioned. The Prime Minister is being questioned, as is absolutely acceptable in this House. The motives of the individual concerned—named—have not been questioned; what’s merely being pointed out was the fact that they were in a senior job in the Prime Minister’s office.

SPEAKER: And if it were that broad and was asked exactly as you’ve just asked, that would be fine, but I think that throwing in the person’s position, effectively, names that person. But we’ll see where we go.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is it credible for the Prime Minister to not know that one of his most senior staff members was meeting with the largest company in the country, who was actively lobbying for a law change in their favour, which they ultimately got?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I reject the characterisation of that question. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: There’s only one person speaking when a question is being asked.

Chlöe Swarbrick: When exactly did the Prime Minister learn about these secret meetings and documents that his office held and received from Z Energy and Fonterra, and how can he be certain that it had no influence on the law announced last week, which fulfils exactly what those corporate lobbyists had been asking for?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, in answer to the second leg of the question, there’s no doubt about it that Ministers felt strongly about this issue, as did many politicians, I suspect, before the last election, and I can tell the member that certainly in the first 100 days, Ministers were up for exploring legislative options at that point in time. We have done a sensible thing here. The content of the actions that we have taken is that climate change frameworks are pulled together by previous Governments; they’re administered by the State, not by the courts or by businesses. We’re not interested in running a duplicate system. We believe in having certainty in the system, and that’s the principal issue about the merits of the actions that we’ve taken. That’s what this is about.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Can the Prime Minister confirm whether the until-now secret briefing papers from Fonterra and Z Energy were passed on to Ministry of Justice officials, and if he doesn’t know, does he think it might be his job to find out?

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister can answer one of those questions.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve said in answer to the first leg of the question, there is no record or recollection of the interaction from 2024. Ideally, there should be. There hasn’t been, and, as a result, my office has asked Ministerial Services to remind staff of their obligations.

Finance

Question No. 2

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:10) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:10): I’ve seen reports and commentary about what Budget 2026 should deliver. Tomorrow, Kiwis will see what a responsible Budget that secures New Zealand’s future looks like. It will be a Budget that strengthens New Zealand’s resilience in a more uncertain and volatile world. The Government’s fiscal strategy has underpinned the approach we have taken when putting together this year’s Budget. We remain committed to putting debt on a downward path towards 40 percent of GDP, and to returning the books to surplus by the 2028-2029 fiscal year. Just one more sleep to go.

Ryan Hamilton: Why does the Government place importance on reducing debt and returning the books to surplus?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because New Zealanders work hard for their money and they expect the Government to treat taxpayer dollars with care and discipline. Families across the country sit around their kitchen tables every week making difficult decisions about what they can afford and where they need to prioritise. Government should be held to the same standard. There is an alternative approach where Governments just spray the money gun around, borrow more, and hope for the best, but New Zealanders have seen where that leads: higher inflation, bigger interest bills, and, ultimately, more pressure on households. This year alone, New Zealand is expected to spend around $9 billion servicing debt. That is more than four times our operating allowance and it is now one of the Government’s largest annual expenses. It is taxpayer money going towards interest costs before we build a single classroom, fund a single operation, or repair a single road. That is why this Government is focused on disciplined spending, getting the books back in balance, and bending the debt curve down.

Ryan Hamilton: What approach has the Government taken in Budget 2026 to support New Zealanders while maintaining fiscal discipline?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: This is a responsible Budget that invests in the things New Zealanders need while also keeping the country’s finances under control. The Budget reflects disciplined choices and clear priorities. We are continuing to invest in front-line services and critical infrastructure, while also asking Government agencies to find savings and focus spending where it delivers the greatest value for taxpayers. That means investing in areas like public infrastructure, health, education, law and order, and defence, while reducing lower value spending and ensuring Government spending becomes more sustainable over time. This Budget recognises that easy choices are gone. It reflects careful prioritisation and responsible trade-offs, because if we want to invest in the future, we also have to make sure the country can afford it. To quote one commentator, “No lollies this time, just stronger foundations for the decades ahead.”

Ryan Hamilton: Why is responsible fiscal management important?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because New Zealand is a small trading nation and we do not have the luxury of pretending debt doesn’t matter. We rely on international confidence to keep borrowing costs manageable and to support jobs, investment, and growth here at home. If Governments lose control of spending and debt, the consequences flow quickly through the economy: higher borrowing costs, weaker investment, and less resilience when future shocks arrive. This Government believes responsible economic management is about making sure New Zealand is stronger and better prepared for the future, not leaving the next generation with bigger taxes, bigger interest bills, and fewer choices.

Prime Minister

Question No. 3

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:14): Yes.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Did the staff member in his office who received the briefing from Z Energy and Fonterra leave his office before or after he responded to the Official Information Act request that didn’t contain the information his office had received?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’m not sure.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why hasn’t he asked?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’ve been very clear in the last few days, there is no record or no documentation from that interaction from 2024—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a moment. Wait on—sorry. It’s an important question, so we’ll hear the answer without anybody else adding to it.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: The member is more than welcome to put it in a written question, but I’ve been very clear that there is no record or no documentation from that interaction in 2024. There ideally should be—absolutely. That is why my office has asked Ministerial Services to go and make sure that staff understand their obligations going forward. But this was a Cabinet decision, and it was a Cabinet decision on a matter of policy about not wanting to have a parallel system determining adherence or not to our climate change frameworks. That is a State responsibility, not a court or a business responsibility.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: When was the Official Information Act request in question sent to the person who asked for the information?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: If the member puts that in writing, I can get him an answer.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: When he said yesterday that the person had left his office “a while ago”, does he regard “a while ago” as within the last few weeks?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I stand by the statement I made yesterday. The reporting is wrong.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why can’t he tell the New Zealand public why his office withheld a briefing that he had received from Fonterra and Z Energy asking for a change to the law—in their favour—that his Government has subsequently agreed to make?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I reject the characterisation of the way the member is presenting that question. This is an issue that was well understood and socialised before even the election in 2023. Many Ministers in the newly formed Government had very strong views, actually, that legislative action was needed because we are not going to tolerate having a parallel system where climate change frameworks are administered by courts. That’s as simple as it is. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. We made the right decision with the intervention and the actions that we have taken around that legislation because we are not interested in having duplicate systems—end of story.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If the Government had already decided, after the election, that it was intending to change the law in favour of those who were defending themselves in court, why did he make no effort in his office to record the information around lobbying from those very same firms?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve said in recent days, there should have been a record of that. In this case, there isn’t—there is no record; there are not documents from that interaction in 2024. Yes, there should be; yes, Ministerial Services are advising all staff about their obligations and reminding of them of those obligations going forward. But this was a Cabinet decision, and that’s important, because this point of policy is an important one to get right and to correct.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If he thinks that there should have been records kept, why hasn’t he asked his office about the records they have, like when the meeting took place, who held the meeting, when they left, and when the Official Information Act request was responded to?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’ve already addressed that with my previous answers to the member’s questions.

Education

Question No. 4

LAURA McCLURE (ACT) (14:18) to the Associate Minister of Education: What recent announcements has he made about charter schools?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education) (14:18): Last Friday, I released figures that show that, contrary to some commentary from education unions, charter schools are actually cheaper to open than equivalent State schools. These figures show a new primary school with 100 students would receive $400,000 or thereabouts as a charter school, but roughly $640,000 were it a State school. Similarly, for a secondary school, $950,000 in set-up costs for a State school, but only roughly $480,000 for a charter school. This follows information about the costs of running the schools once they are set up: for a primary school, around $8,800 for a State school, but around $8,300 for a charter school; and at secondary level, $11,000 for a State school, and $10,700 per year for a charter school. This should finally put to bed the incessant but incorrect claims that charter schools somehow cost more to the taxpayer than State schools. They cost less, and the students who choose to attend them are just as worthy of a State-funded education as any other student in New Zealand.

Laura McClure: Are charter schools proving popular?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Yes, indeed. The demand is growing rapidly. There are currently over 1,600 students enrolled, up from only a few hundred on day one last year. There are now 17 charter schools today, and by the start of next year there will be 21. They cater to a range of students with a range of different interests. There are schools that support autistic and neurodivergent kids, and schools that provide outdoor immersion alongside the New Zealand Curriculum. The original seven schools alone have seen their rolls triple from 200 to 700. You see North West College in Henderson which is having to move to a bigger building, as has Twin Oaks Classical School in Greenlane. Despite only beginning in term 3 last year, they are literally bursting at the seams.

Hon Damien O'Connor: Three times the cost.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The other thing charter schools are doing is listening comprehension. You heard what I just said, giving the figures showing they are cheaper, but Damien O’Connor, the former member from the West Coast—

SPEAKER: No—that’s enough.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —is baying on that they cost more. Listen carefully or rewind the tape.

SPEAKER: That’s enough.

Laura McClure: What have attendance levels been like at charter schools?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, more very good news. They are already proving their worth. We are seeing attendance at charter schools slightly exceeding that of State schools, which I have to say has also been improving in every term but one that this Government has been in power. People may have seen on One News last night that Māori attendance at charter schools is 68.5 percent regular attendance. That is at or slightly above the level of average State school attendance. Just sit on this for a moment: charter schools are getting Māori students to attend at the same rate as the New Zealand average. That is the professed dream of many on the other side of the House, but the people on this side of the House and those running charter schools are making that dream for Māori a reality.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 5

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (14:22) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Has she announced or introduced any reforms in the past fortnight that will see any low-income families worse off; if so, how many families will be worse off because of these reforms?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:22): Last week, our Government announced a review of social housing which will deliver a fairer, more effective, and more efficient social housing system. The changes will mean that around 111,000 families will gain increases between $10 and $30 per week from the accommodation supplement. We are also making changes to temporary additional support, so it is just that—temporary additional support and not a top-up for housing. It was never meant for that purpose. This will be an average reduction of $10.82 per week for about 45,000 households. We are fixing the basics so we can deliver better housing support to those who need it the most.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is it correct that the temporary additional support payment is one of the last lifelines for people who can’t cover basics, such as keeping the power on, prescriptions for life-saving medication, or keeping a roof over their head; and if so, what is her message to families who may not be able to afford these essentials as a result of the reduction in the temporary additional support payments?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, as I said in my primary answer, temporary additional support is meant to be just that. What it has proven to be over many, many years is a top-up for housing. By increasing the accommodation supplement for those in private housing, we want to ensure that the housing support products are doing their job, rather than a temporary additional support that was never intended for that purpose. That’s why we have undertaken this change.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she stand by her statement that “Our Government is focused on targeting financial assistance to those most in need.”; if so, how would she describe the financial situation of those who rely on the lifeline that is temporary additional support for things like life-saving prescription medicine?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, as I said, and the number I’ve seen previously is that about 95 percent of the temporary additional support is used for housing, not for the other items the member mentions. It is used for housing, which is why the change that we are making in the review of social housing that we announced last week for Budget 2026 quite rightly puts the housing support where it should be, which is in the accommodation supplement.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Was it a tough choice to cut accommodation support for thousands of low-income households by $42 a week on average while Ministers are still able to claim $1,000 a week in ministerial entitlements for a property they already own mortgage-free?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Speaking to the first part of that question, which is around the review of social housing, we’ve been really clear about the fact that, unfortunately, social housing isn’t reaching those who need it most. What we do know is there is a large number of people in private rentals who have been struggling. We want to ensure that the incentives are right and that they have additional support with the additional $10 to $30 a week for those in private rentals, and we want to ensure that, actually, the incentives are in the right place for them to get ahead.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Was it a tough choice to proceed with policy changes that would, according to her own ministry, leave those very same families she talked about with “less money available for spending on other necessities such as food, clothing, and transport”; and, if it was a tough choice, how does she justify people struggling to make ends meet as a result of these reforms?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, I think the other point to make is that the temporary additional support is meant to be that—it is meant to be temporary—and for areas where there are challenges around food or other costs, that’s where we have hardship grants. I don’t want the member confusing two different items. We are talking about the temporary additional support. As I said, about 95 percent of that has been used for housing. That is why we are doing the review of social housing and making this change in Budget 2026 to ensure that, where the housing support product is, it is being utilised more effectively. Equally, where households are challenged by food, then the appropriate place to seek assistance is Work and Income through food-hardship grants.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What’s the difference between Green MP Wade-Brown’s accommodation or McAnulty from Labour’s accommodation as opposed to yours? What is the difference? The answer is none.

SPEAKER: Oh, good. Thank you. There’s no need for the Minister to respond.

Housing

Question No. 6

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (14:27) to the Minister of Housing: What announcements has the Government made about improving social housing?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (14:27): Last week, I announced Cabinet has agreed to a multi-year programme of work to reform social housing. Social housing should be there for those who need it for the time that they need it; but where people can move to independence, the system should help them do that. The system is currently not fair, it’s not targeted to those who need it most, and it’s trapping people in dependency. It also costs the Crown around $5.5 billion dollars per year and that number is growing. The system is broken and not sustainable, so we are changing the system through three key shifts.

Dr Carlos Cheung: Is the current system fair?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: In my view, the answer is no. Similar households can receive very different levels of support depending on whether they’re in a social house or a private rental. Take two sole parents in similar situations—they can have considerably different financial outcomes, with the family in a private market rental receiving accommodation supplement being $65 a week worse off compared to a comparable family in social housing. On average, social housing tenants on a main benefit have $105 more per week left after housing costs compared to their equivalents in the private rental market receiving the accommodation supplement. I think most reasonable people would look at this and say that it’s not an equitable situation. Many people struggle to afford their housing costs, not just people in social housing.

Chlöe Swarbrick: You know it’s a subsidy for landlords, Bish!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, actually, it’s not like that. There’s—

Chlöe Swarbrick: You know it. You said that in a debate with me three years ago.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —and there’s been extensive economic evidence to the contrary.

SPEAKER: Hold on. Wait on. Sorry, Mr Bishop.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’m just responding to the—

SPEAKER: No. Well, the person who is calling out across the House like that, that is disorderly. Please don’t do that anymore.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’d invite the member to look at the screeds of economic evidence that’s been conducted by Governments, both red and blue, in the past and of all different stripes by academic economists and others that indicates that the accommodation supplement, whilst not perfect, is a form of income support that goes to people in relation to their housing costs.

Dr Carlos Cheung: Does the current system prioritise those in most need?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The current system does not necessarily prioritise those most in need. It is an expensive intervention by the Government. The Government’s view is, therefore, that it should be targeted to those that need it most. The current system is currently letting down some of the most vulnerable people it is designed to help. The social housing assessment system overweights immediate affordability challenges, which is an issue that many New Zealand households face. Quite often, the difference between someone that gets into a social home compared to one that doesn’t is nothing, which shows the arbitrary nature of the social housing system. It’s also the case that some people on the register are arguably in greater need than some people in social housing. As I said in the House yesterday, 29 percent of households in social housing have sufficient income to manage a lower quartile private rental and modest expenses. There are over 1,000 people in social housing who pay market rents. So, in other words, they earn enough to pay the market rent for the area they live in. This Government’s view is that we can do a better job targeting social housing for those who genuinely need it.

Dr Carlos Cheung: What steps is the Government taking to support greater independence?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Social housing should be a safety net. Thirty percent of social housing tenants have been there for over 10 years. Households in social housing are expected to spend a further 16.7 further years on average; this number has gone up from 12.4 years in 2017.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How many of them have disabilities?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Many, and that’s part of the problem—many—and the system treats them badly. That’s part of the problem. You’ve neatly highlighted through your intervention, Carmel Sepuloni, precisely the problem with the system: what we have inherited is a social housing system where a man in New Plymouth was living in a motel—a studio apartment motel—with his son for three years, because the social house he was allocated to was not ready and it took nine months for ACC to do the ramp and it took another nine months to get the resource consent. Exactly the situation that member is talking about is precisely what this Government is trying to fix. Disabled people are poorly treated by the system, and that’s precisely what we are trying to fix through the social housing reform programme. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: We’ll just have a little bit of silence from everyone, until I call the Hon Barbara Edmonds.

Finance

Question No. 7

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (14:32) to the Minister of Finance: Fa‘afetai tele lava, Mr Speaker. Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:32): In their full context, yes.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she stand by her statement that she expects Crown entities to “reflect on the Government’s overall objectives”, including to make headcount reductions; if so, why?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she expect Fire and Emergency New Zealand, a Crown entity, to make headcount reductions because of her Budget?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I need to be careful not to step too deeply into the portfolio of another Minister, but I don’t think I would be alone among New Zealanders to say that Fire and Emergency New Zealand is an entity that could do a better job of converting public money and levy funds into results, not only for the people it serves but actually the people who work for it.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: What support will there be in Budget for Mary, who has 15 years of IT experience but cannot find a job after more than 50 applications, as reported by media?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, obviously I’m not in a position to comment on the individual circumstances of Mary, nor do I expect that the member—Miss Edmonds—is either, because we do not know the full story of her background, circumstances, or experiences. What I can say is that I feel for any New Zealander who is working hard to get a job, who is doing their very best, and is struggling to do so. That is a challenging position to be in, and that’s why when we deliver the Budget tomorrow, one of the things I will be very pleased to be able to confirm is that we will be creating many more jobs in this economy over the coming years.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Well, then what support will there be in the Budget for Benj who was made redundant in the last round of cuts, in 2024, and has applied for 130 jobs but is still out of work?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Mr Speaker, if you listen to that question very, very carefully, she’s inviting the Minister to breach the longstanding convention about the Budget secrecy, and she’s doing it openly in front of this House, and no one’s opposing it.

SPEAKER: That’s a view. I just heard it as a question about a person who’s been—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, she says, “What support is there in the Budget for this case?”

SPEAKER: No wait, wait.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: That’s what she said.

SPEAKER: That might be right, but I’m sure the Minister is well capable of answering what is essentially a hypothetical question.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, again, similar to my previous answer, I’m simply not in a position to comment on the particular circumstances that Benj has been experiencing, although I can express empathy and sympathy for that situation. To see what’s in the Budget, the member just has one more sleep to go.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: What support will there be for young people across the country, including in Ōpōtiki, where 43 percent of youth are not in employment, education, or training?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, there will be things in store for those young people quite specifically. It’s also the case that one of the most reckless things a Government can do to young people is spend so much today that we end up having to tax those young people more tomorrow. That is the member’s approach, it’s not mine.

Health

Question No. 8

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) (14:36) to the Associate Minister of Health: What recent announcements has she made about funding for road ambulance services?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health) (14:36): Last week, the Minister of Health, the Hon Simeon Brown, and I announced that Budget 2026 will provide $35 million over four years to strengthen road ambulance services, delivering immediate improvement for patients and front-line staff. This is on top of an additional $77.7 million that has been invested since 2023, which brought total funding for road ambulance services to $452 million for this financial year. I’m pleased that this increased investment means there are now record ambulance staffing levels and faster response times for the most serious emergencies, and that it contributes to the New Zealand First - National coalition commitment.

Jamie Arbuckle: What will this increased funding support?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: The funding, announced last week, will provide for the establishment of two ambulance hubs in Auckland, with one already confirmed for South Auckland; deployment of an electronic patient clinical record system, which means better access to the information front-line staff need; additional training and support for ambulance communications centre staff; and additional clinical welfare checks for patients. This investment is further demonstration of this Government’s commitment to ensuring New Zealanders can access timely, quality care when they need it most, by investing in the right tools and approaches to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of services.

Jamie Arbuckle: Will there be additional funding for road ambulances?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: I’m pleased to say: absolutely. This funding announced through Budget 2026 will be in addition to an increase in funding from Health New Zealand and ACC for road ambulances to meet demand and cost pressures. The total funding package will be finalised following contract negotiations in the coming months. However, once finalised, the increased funding from Health New Zealand and ACC will support additional front-line ambulance crews and 111 call handlers, strengthened recruitment and retention of ambulance volunteers—particularly in rural and high deprivation areas—and an enhanced clinical hub that will provide clinical advice over the telephone and support more patients to resolve care needs without an ambulance response.

Jamie Arbuckle: How will these investments support front-line staff?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: These investments are about making front-line staff’s lives better. They’re delivering more staff, more training, better tools, and more volunteers. Staff I’ve spoken to have already told me that the two new ambulance hubs will be game-changers. We’re talking tangible, practical differences. Our support for front-line emergency services doesn’t just extend to investments, the New Zealand First - National coalition agreement committed to creating new offences to protect our front-line responders. Assaulting first responders or prison officers is in the Crimes Act Amendment Bill, currently with the Justice Committee, and it delivers on our commitment to protecting those who are doing so much to protect New Zealand.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 9

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (14:39) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Does she stand by her statement that “The Government believes that the welfare system should be a safety net for those who need it most”; if so, why?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:39): Yes. The social safety net is there when New Zealanders need it the most, but the system should be firm, fair, simple, and sustainable. That’s why the Government has announced a review of social housing that will ensure we deliver better housing support for those who need it most. That’s also why we’ve made changes to temporary additional support—to ensure it is temporary and targeted. We are ambitious for all New Zealanders. That’s why we are focused on fixing the basics and building the future so as many Kiwis as possible can share in that success.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How is she providing a safety net for those who need it most, when she’s cutting temporary additional support, which is for people who need immediate help paying for the basics?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The temporary additional support is intended to be exactly that—temporary. What we have seen for far too long are significant proportions of that being used on housing, which is why the review of social housing very carefully ensures that the accommodation supplement, which is the housing product that supports people, is increased $10 to $30 per week and we don’t use the temporary additional support for housing.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How many more struggling families will have to choose between rent, power, or food as a result of her cuts to income support?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I reject the assertion that we are cutting income support. We are making a change in the way that social housing is delivered. I’ve been clear about the fact that temporary additional support was never intended for housing and shouldn’t be. What we are doing is ensuring that the temporary additional support is exactly that—temporary and targeted.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why is she cutting the safety net from young people when youth unemployment is sky-high?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I reject the assertion in that question. Our side of the House has great aspirations for young people to ensure that they are in education, training, or employment, rather than being stuck on a benefit for 21-plus years. That is not living a life of opportunity. That is not sharing the success of this great and mighty country.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Was the Salvation Army wrong when they said her changes mean “increased debt, greater stress, and harder choices about how to get through the week in terms of the basics such as food and heating.”?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: No, because what we are very focused on is ensuring that, across the board, we have a financial system that is delivering for all New Zealanders. As I said in my answer to the primary question, the social safety net must be firm, fair, simple, and sustainable, and that is ensuring that we target support to those who need it the most, and when it is temporary, it should exactly be temporary.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Who exactly does she think needs a safety net: people who do not have enough income to pay for their rent or private landlords?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As both my colleague and I have talked about in the review of social housing, the current system is inordinately unfair for a range of reasons. Those who require social housing the most, often, are the ones that miss out. Those who are in very similar circumstances and who are in private rental should not be hundreds of dollars worse off. The incentives for people to shift their circumstances are completely wrong. That is also one of the reasons that we have made changes to the temporary additional support, because there is no incentive at all to change and to provide people’s circumstances.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Does the Minister agree that increasing rents for social housing tenants is fair, when, in the Far North alone, 2,241 Māori are experiencing severe housing deprivation?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Absolutely, because a review of social housing will mean that people who are currently on the social housing register and who have significantly higher needs than those currently in a social house will get a chance of getting access to it. My colleague spoke about the thousand people in social housing who pay market rent; no one in this House should argue that they need it more than those who are in the Far North who are currently in severe housing hardship and who don’t have access to that support.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: What does the Minister say to the more than 12,000 Māori in the Far North and Whangārei receiving main benefits who will hear her describe the welfare system as a “safety net” while their housing costs increase?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It is absolutely a safety net, and that is always what it was intended to be. Our side of House believes that we should be providing support in times of need, for people who need it, but actually we want to see people improve their circumstances. The temporary additional support does nothing to incentivise people to be in work, to work more than they are, or to improve their circumstances. That is fundamentally what is wrong with a temporary additional support and the significant percentage of it being used for housing. Our side believes that people can, and do, lift themselves up, and we want them to share in the success of this beautiful, amazing country we all live in.

Hon David Seymour: Would she expect criticism if she introduced a policy of further improving the terms for those in State houses at the expense of lower accommodation supplements for everyone else, and if she would, how is it possible for the same people to criticise levelling that very playing field?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The member makes a very good point, and that’s why the review of social housing has been very, very carefully considered, to ensure that we provide support to those who have the highest needs, and, actually, for those in very similar circumstances we need to have a much more level form of treatment. That is why this Budget puts an enormous amount of investment into the accommodation supplement, which is the primary housing support product, an increase of $10 to $30 a week into the accommodation supplement, when it hasn’t been changed since 2018.

Māori Development

Question No. 10

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (14:46) to the Minister for Māori Development: What assurances, if any, can he give Māori that te reo Māori revitalisation and Māori broadcasting are strengthening under his leadership, when concerns are being raised about reductions and a lack of new investment across sectors supporting Māori development?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Development) (14:47): He taonga te reo—the language is a treasure—and part of the DNA of New Zealand. I can assure the member and other commentators in the Opposition that the Government remains committed to the active protection and growth of te reo Māori across various portfolios, like Minister Goldsmith, in Culture and Heritage, where there is that outstanding commitment to Te Matatini; Minister Stanford, in kura kaupapa and other Māori language entities and schools; and, of course, under my leadership, there have been no reductions in the baseline funding to the four Māori language entities, and there has been considerable new investments in various iwi and Māori entities, such as the supercritical geothermal hot gas investment that Minister Jones has been leading with Kānoa, and, of course, some of the investments in agribusiness. I look forward to Fieldays. Kia ora.

SPEAKER: That’s very good, but we’ll just tighten those answers up a little bit.

Oriini Kaipara: Can the Minister identify one significant new initiative secured under his leadership since 2024 that has expanded supports for te reo Māori or strengthened Māori broadcasting rather than simply maintaining existing programmes?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: As we know, there was significant support given to Te Matatini, in a time-limited fashion by the previous Government. Under Minister Goldsmith, in the Culture and Heritage portfolio, with the support of the exemplary Minister of Finance, we doubled down on that and said, “No, there’s another $45 million to $50 million for Te Matatini.” I look forward to Te Matatini coming to the home of Te Matatini—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: That’s enough.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: —Waikato. Kia ora.

SPEAKER: There is a member down in the back corner of the House who really needs to contain his contributions to the House. He’s looking around at the moment, but there is no mirror, unfortunately.

Oriini Kaipara: As someone who understands the role that Māori media plays in normalising te reo and strengthening identity, I ask the Minister what measurable evidence he can point to that these sectors are stronger today—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order.

SPEAKER: I know what the point is, but make the point of order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: That boastful preface to that question should not be allowed.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Speaking to the point of order, if the rule is that there is to be no commentary before a question, that should be evenly applied, not just to members of the Opposition but to Government Ministers as well.

SPEAKER: That’s quite right, and there has been a number of those this afternoon.

Oriini Kaipara: Supplementary—so it’s a rephrasing of the question?

SPEAKER: Yeah, it’s the same question, but you’re going to ask a question rather than preface it with—

Oriini Kaipara: Tēnā koe. What measurable evidence can the Minister point to that these sectors are stronger today than they were in 2024?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: It is a bit ambiguous what specific sectors the member is referring to, but might I start with geothermal and the extraction of geothermal to help reduce the cost of electricity to ordinary Kiwis, including Māori. For the absolutely phenomenal support given to geothermal and of course fusion technology—OpenStar again—by the Regional Infrastructure Fund and Minister Willis: e mihi ana ki a koe. And those Puku pies—lovely. In relation particularly to the broadcasting agencies and Māori the broadcasting space and te reo Māori: again, there has been no reduction in the baseline funding for those entities, and indeed there was time-limited funding under the previous Government that wasn’t necessarily committed to baselining that investment in Māori entities. It’s pleasing to see that some of the Māori broadcasters are now being owned by Manukau Urban Māori Authority and Te Whānau o Waipareira. Kia ora.

SPEAKER: The answers to questions need to be far more concise than we’ve been getting for the last few supplementaries.

Hon Nicola Willis: As the Minister, has he inherited any fiscal cliffs in the funding track for Māori broadcasting?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Yes, and with the exemplary support and scaffolding of the Minister of Finance, we continue to support a variety of sectors, including Māori Development, in a material and fiscally prudent way.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: [Sighing] The Hon Paul Goldsmith.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m not sure I—I’m a little bit hurt by that tone.

SPEAKER: I’m delighted that you’re so sensitive.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Can I ask the Minister: is it the case that the single biggest investment this Government has made in the arts sector has been the funding of Te Matatini, because we recognise the power of waiata, kapa haka, and all the wonderful things that have been developed through that programme?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: The answer is yes—āna—and I absolutely tautoko the direction of travel that the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage has for supporting Māori arts, culture, and heritage. He and we are building the future.

SPEAKER: Question No. 11. Before I call Ginny Andersen, I’ve been advised that the answer to this question may be slightly longer than usual, although it would have to be long to top some of the answers today. The Hon Ginny Andersen.

Education

Question No. 11

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (14:53) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement, “we believe in choice for parents and we believe in accountability in the system”; if so, why did she lodge Amendment Paper 583 without consultation with home-schooling families?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:53): Yes. I lodged the Amendment Paper in line with the advice that I received and carefully considered at the time. I have acknowledged that the vast majority of home-schooling families do a great job, and we back their choice to educate at home. The Ministry of Education and Education Review Office advised in late 2025 and early 2026 that they held increasing concerns that some children were not receiving an adequate education and that there was very limited oversight. Once an application is approved for home-schooling, the Ministry may have no further contact with a student unless a complaint is received. The Ministry advised that some form of regulation was required to ensure that all children educated at home received an adequate level of education. In response, we had to move extremely quickly to draft and introduce an Amendment Paper to the education legislation that had already been introduced in November to provide for these appropriate checks. Subsequent feedback received from stakeholders, MPs, coalition partners, and those in the education sector show that the issue is more complex than anticipated, and we will now take time to get this right, which is why we are intending today to refer the bill back to the committee of the whole House to remove the amendments relating to home-schooling and consider them in future legislation. I want to thank the home-schooling community for their advocacy.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, sir. I think there’s a couple of Speakers’ rulings that are relevant here, with one being that when it is on notice, there’s an expectation that the Minister has been given the appropriate advice from officials to answer the question. They signalled to you that it was going to be a long answer, but, unfortunately, the second leg of this—and, specifically, why there was no consultation with home-schooling families—was not actually answered. Now, if we look at Speaker’s ruling 199/5, it makes it clear that when there is a two-part primary question on notice, both legs must be answered.

SPEAKER: Yeah, well, I took it that the—well, I don’t know if it was an announcement today by the Minister. But the announcement, certainly, to the House this afternoon that the bill was being withdrawn, or that the clause was being withdrawn, was probably an answer to the question about consultation.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Why did she try to bypass the concerns of thousands of affected families without consulting any of them?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I’ve already answered that in my primary answer, which was why I did it at length. We received quite late advice from the Education Review Office and the Ministry of Education—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a moment.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: —that raised serious and increasing concerns. We had to move extraordinarily quickly in order to get a Cabinet paper drafted—through Cabinet committees, through Cabinet, drafted—in order to get it included in the bill that was before the House. If we hadn’t done that, it would have been another couple of years down the track. We wanted to move at pace to make sure that we were protecting the very children that I was alerted to in December last year.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Why did it take thousands of families writing to her and political pressure from across the aisle for her to do, at the eleventh hour, what she should have done in the first place?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: At this point in time, I want to thank those home-schooling families who contacted me, but I also want to thank the coalition parties, who agreed to make this change, and, in particular, the time that was given to me by New Zealand First, who met with me last night and again this morning to discuss and help put in place solutions to the issues raised by the home-schooling community.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why did she propose more compliance and strict assessments for home-schooling when parents of disabled children tell us that they were, effectively, forced to home-school their children because the lack of flexibility in the mainstream system had failed them?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: It’s exactly why I said in the answer to my primary question that we back home-schooling parents and we back choice for these very reasons, but it is very important that in light of the information that we received, that there are children who are not receiving an adequate education and there is very limited oversight, that we take action. In fact, this is not the first time that this has been raised with the Government. It’s been raised many times, but this is the first time that a Government has taken it seriously and put something in place to help protect those young people.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Does she accept that parents who home-school disabled and neurodivergent children are already so stretched, and are now very concerned that her proposed rules are inappropriate and unsafe for their children, and that she would have realised this sooner if she had just consulted them in the first place?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, this is exactly why we are going to remove those provisions and consider them in future legislation, but it is also worthy of note that for those very same families who are doing it tough, this Government has been providing an enormous amount more choice when it comes to education provision and specialist provision by building the first two new specialist schools in 50 years and around 40 satellite classrooms, which were provided in the previous two Budgets. And if the member can wait until tomorrow, there will be some more good announcements for the special school sector.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does this new-found, last-minute willingness to engage mean that she will now start listening to all the other groups that have been shut out by her one-size-fits-all educational reforms?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, I think it’s worthy of bringing to light a question that Jack Tame asked once, where he said that it was extraordinary that there had been only 47 visits when 13,000 people had been given an exemption from home-schooling, and he asked, “How do we know that any of these kids are getting a good education?” The answer from Jan Tinetti at the time, in 2023, was “I don’t think that we do.”, and yet they did absolutely nothing about it—didn’t consult. She went on to say, “I’ve asked for some advice.” that she never actually asked for.

Defence

Question No. 12

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato) (15:00) to the Minister of Defence: How is Budget 2026 investing in our defence force?

Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister of Defence) (15:00): I thank the chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for the question. We are investing in drones, critical ship maintenance, and work to replace our ageing naval fleets to bolster New Zealand’s maritime capability of a defensive and offensive nature. Budget 2026 provides an additional $880 million worth of operating funding, and an extra $700 million of new capital funding for activities and operations, as well as priority projects identified in the Defence Capability Plan. In addition to a strong focus on maritime security, we will also deliver new and upgraded training facilities, and continue the long-term Homes for Families programme, building modern healthy homes for personnel of the defence force and their families.

Tim van de Molen: How will Kiwis benefit from the increased investment in defence?

Hon CHRIS PENK: Our prosperity and security depend on the sea. Recent events have shown how quickly disruptions to international shipping routes can affect supply chains. The oceans are a vital interest that must be actively secured. Defence also plays a critical role in supporting communities during severe weather events at home and elsewhere in the Pacific. Humanitarian assistance, disaster relief of other categories too, fisheries protection, environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and much more. We are fixing the basics of defence and building a secure future for New Zealand.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions. Every day, I ask people to leave the House quietly and quickly without talking on the way, and people seem to take it as an instruction to do exactly that. We’ll take 30 seconds before I call some honourable member to take note of some miscellaneous business.

Debates

General Debate

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (15:02): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. I’d like to talk about how wealth was made in this country. First of all, you take land that belongs to indigenous people—let’s say tangata w’enua. You pass laws to make taking that land legal. You break up communal ownership so individuals can be picked off one by one. You confiscate what remains after resistance. You extract timber, coal, gas, minerals from w’enua and moana that you did not steward and do not understand, and you build an economy on that foundation. You create a tax system that protects that wealth, and you call it success.

Simon Court: We do! Yes, we do. Yes!

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: This is the blueprint of New Zealand’s capitalism—you can hear them speaking out loud over there—and the wealth sitting at the top of this economy today is the wealth that this Government will protect in their Budget.

Let’s remember that wealth in Aotearoa has w’akapapa. It leads directly back to raupatu, directly back to confiscation, to the deliberate destruction of Māori economic systems so that another system could be built in their place. Every year, this Government will refuse to tax the rich, the super-rich made wealthy on that model of capitalism. Every year, they’ll protect capital gains, protect inheritance, protect the hoarding of land and assets by those who already hold them by compounding on the original theft—interest on injustice.

The world, thankfully, is waking up to what we have always known: the systems that are built on extraction are unsustainable. The old colonial imperial powers that wrote the rules of globalisation, whose powers are imploding—

Hon Shane Jones: AI! AI!

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Their economic model is eating itself—as you can see—bloated with eating itself. We see it in the climate; we see it in the inequality so extreme it destabilises democracies. We see it in the hollowing out of the communities—not just Māori communities but working communities everywhere—while a tiny number of people accumulate wealth faster than any generation in human history.

The Budget has one job—

Hon Member: Rubbish.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: —one moment to say “Enough.”—and you can hear it won’t happen—but it will fail tomorrow to redirect the flow. Instead, this Government will hand more to those who need nothing, and it will offer nothing to those who hold everything together on nothing.

Let me tell you what taxing wealth actually means, not as an ideology but as an investment. It means that children, tamariki in Hāwera, can go to the doctors and their parents don’t have to choose between kai or power. It means that the elderly in W’anganui can live with dignity in their own homes, on their own w’enua, cared for by their own people. It means solar energy on rooftops in community ownership so we can afford to power our homes—I know that just sounds so radical. It means we stop treating our awa like open sewers and start investing in the restoration our tūpuna practised for centuries. It means our tamariki inherit the coastline, a fishery, a climate they can actually live within. It means the taiao is treated not as a cost to be managed but as tūpuna to be honoured, because that is exactly what our taiao is to us: taonga.

This is what wealth tax funds. This is a choice that this Government—and Governments before—refused to do. All I want to say, directly to our people, is that they will tell you there is no money tomorrow; there is money. It is sitting in property portfolios and capital gains and trust structures designed specifically to keep it out of reach of the public good. The question is never whether the money exists; the question is always whose interests the Government is protecting when it decides not to touch it.

Here is what I know: the system they are protecting is not as permanent as they believe. The rules written by colonial power are fracturing globally, and when the world looks for a different model—one grounded in collective wellbeing, in intergenerational responsibility, and the inseparability of the people and the environment—they will find that the wealth, the wealthy, and the super-rich can no longer be protected. Capitalism can no longer be normalised. Te Pāti Māori will tax the rich. It’s horrible to hear and listen to it over here: it is not an “if”; it is a “when”. Kia ora rā.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Attorney-General) (15:07): Well, it’s NZ Music Month and tomorrow is the New Zealand music awards. I am very happy to cede the crown of the worst New Zealand music performance of all time to Dr Ayesha Verrall. What a shocker on the weekend! There’s a saying that if it walks like a duck, it sings—in Ayesha Verrall’s case—like a duck, then it is a duck. And the reality is the Labour Party are ducking the tough issues. They’re ducking releasing policy, and they’re ducking taking New Zealanders actually seriously in a serious election year and a pretty serious moment for the world and for the country.

Three events in the last two weeks have revealed some interesting things about the Labour Party. The first is the Labour Party regional conference. Imagine spending your weekend hanging out with these guys at a regional conference. Goodness gracious me! But what the leaked tape revealed was—I mean, it’s sort of funny on one level, obviously, but what it revealed was, I think, dripping contempt for Kiwis. The nasty jokes about the Government, the complaints about the media, the sort of deflection in the complaints about the staff during the Ardern Government regime.

They’ve sort of got this weird thing going on inside the Labour Party about why they failed so spectacularly between 2017 and 2023. Greg O’Connor kind of revealed all of that by saying, “Oh, look, I actually think the staff got it all wrong.” There’s no accountability for the leadership or the Ministers or, dare I say, the MPs who made up the largest absolute majority ever received in MMP history—no accountability for them. No, no, it was actually the fault of the poor staff who worked for Jacinda Ardern! The name calling—it was, I think, the sort of arrogant entitlement that came through. That was the biggest thing that came through to me from the audio: the dripping contempt for New Zealanders. This is from a party that is seeking the support of New Zealanders to govern the country after 7 November.

That’s the first sort of event. The second is actually more serious. Labour have got this policy—they call it their cornerstone policy; there is not a lot of flesh on the bones, to be fair. This is the so-called New Zealand Future Fund. It’s a cornerstone policy. What we learnt two weeks ago, via Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds, is that New Zealanders have to wait for the details of that policy until after the election. It’s sort of treating the public, I think—it’s taking them for fools. What it’s saying is “Vote for us, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do later. We’ll tell you what assets are in it later. We’ll tell you how it’s going to be constituted. We’ll tell you how it’s going to be structured. Don’t worry; we’ve got it sorted, and we’ll tell you later.”

I think it’s particularly interesting given the history, given the spectacular failure of so-called big, grand promises in the 2017-23 period. Everyone remembers the 100,000 homes that became 3,500 homes. Everyone remembers the spectacular failures like that. The cycle bridge—

Tom Rutherford: Light rail.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —light rail, thank you—Auckland light rail, which they said was going to be built and not a single metre of track was, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. So it’s a pretty interesting approach from a political party with an epic record of failure to turn up at the next election and say, “Don’t worry; we’ve got it all sorted. Vote for us, and we’ll tell you the details later.” The Treaty of Waitangi is blamed for many things in New Zealand—I think it is blamed far too often, for too many ills, unfairly—but it’s a new low in Treaty jurisprudence when the fact the Treaty exists is blamed for the inability of the Labour Party to actually do any serious policy. That was the other excuse, they said. They said, “We’ll tell you later, and we can’t tell you before the election, because of the Treaty.”—as if that’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is completely ridiculous.

The third event that indicates Labour’s attitude was what Chris Hipkins said when he was asked about policy. These are legitimate questions. These are the people who potentially govern the country. He said, “Oh well, Kiwis don’t really care about policy detail.” Well, I’ll tell you something for free: they do care about the Labour Party’s plans for the economy. They do care about how they’re going to deal with housing, and infrastructure, and law and order, and education, and mental health. To be honest, those things matter. They matter to Kiwis at this selection, and in 100 or so days’ time, New Zealanders will have a choice between a Government with a clear long-term plan for the country or a shambolic Opposition that is focused on nasty jokes, name calling, and no serious plan to govern this country.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:13): Never mind Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road”, can Siri play “Obsessed” by Mariah Carey, please. Again, for the third week in a row—the third week in a row—the night before your Budget—the night before your Budget—all the National Party has been talking about is the Labour Party. You’d expect that sort of speech when you’re in Opposition, but, no, the National Party, who are in Government, who are the Crown, are obsessed with the Labour Party, and that’s because they’ve got no good news for New Zealand. Last week, the Minister of Finance told New Zealanders—86,000 households who are in State housing—that they had won the lottery. Now, she regretted those comments, and she said she chose the wrong metaphor—

Joseph Mooney: Lazy Labour.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: —and I get it, Joseph Mooney; sometimes we say things that we regret—but, on the metaphor itself, she was closer to the truth than she actually knew, because a lottery is exactly how that Government runs this economy. It has run it that way for three years, and based on what we know about this year’s Budget, this Budget appears to be no different: a few people win, and they win big, but everyone else pays the price.

Tomorrow’s Budget is the Government’s last chance—it’s your last chance—to show that they understand what life is like for everyday New Zealanders, to make good on your promise of fixing the cost of living, to show a real plan for growth. To make good on your promise of fixing the cost of living, to show a real plan for growth.

Let’s look at who this Government has made winners in the last two years. Landlords were handed interest deductibility worth billions of dollars, and property speculators saw the brightline test reduced from 10 years to two. Guess who benefited from that? The Prime Minister. Tobacco companies were given a tax cut of 50 percent on heated tobacco products. Only one company benefits from that excise tax reduction.

Now, let’s look at who the Government has left to pay the price of their choices: in this Budget alone, 86,000 households will have their rent increased by $30, and 30,000 of those households are pensioners; the 8,700 public servants losing their jobs and everyday New Zealanders who will have to wait longer for their hospital appointments because they’re getting pushed back and whose children go without learning support; and the calls to the Inland Revenue Department that go unanswered; tertiary students who no longer have one year of tertiary education free.

This is not new. Last year, to help pay for the Budget, this Government extinguished pay equity for thousands of working women. They took billions of dollars off these working women to help them balance their Budget. Disabled people have to pay more for their transport under the Total Mobility scheme. We saw a handbrake on Government’s infrastructure projects. Those projects help to contribute to the whole economy, not just the 12,000 construction sector roles we’ve lost or the 1,500 engineers that we’ve lost. Local community providers who deliver much-needed services for women and new mothers—like the North Shore Family Centre, like Birthright in Hutt Valley—are closed. Young people who once had their bus fare or train fare free are now having to pay more, or, in my case, their parents are paying more. We’ve also seen high unemployment, record numbers of KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals, record youth Māori and Pacific unemployment, and record job losses. Government members on that side of the House say this stuff is old. Government members have clearly not been talking to everyday New Zealanders—just so out of touch.

Everything is on the chopping block with this Government. This Government has made its choices. They chose who won; they chose who lost. They chose landlords. They chose tobacco companies. They chose to balance their books on public servants, on the public services that New Zealand depend on every single day, and, worst of all, on the lowest-paid women in our economy. Shameful. Labour will choose differently. This November, New Zealand will have a choice too.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister for Seniors) (15:18): Well, a lot of passion, but let’s get round to some basics around what we will do. I rise to speak in defence of our seniors. Yet again, they are the target of quick, easy economic virtue signalling. It is so predictable that when we want to score some kind of political traction, the catch cry of superannuation affordability rings out.

What is more frustrating about this narrative is the disparaging tone in which New Zealand’s ageing population is viewed as a burden, a problem, an economic drain. Yes, we have an ageing population, but what an absolute affront it is to say that just because you have the temerity of living a long time, you are categorised as some kind of financial cost to this country.

Balancing our books by tinkering with superannuation seems to be endorsed even by the Opposition, who spent the last five minutes championing about how they were going to stand up for the underdog. Yet, they have, at the same time, said that, yes, they’ll have a conversation about adjusting the superannuation. Just yesterday in question time, with faux indignation, they said, “What about the pensioners?”, because of the adjustments to housing subsidies. “What will happen to those pensioners?” That’s great when you’re in question time and you’re promoting your faux indignation performance, but outside of this Chamber, “Oh, yes, we’ll have a look at that superannuation thing that’s getting in the way.”

New Zealand First stood in our coalition agreement to defend the superannuation age of entitlement at 65, and we will continue to protect that position. Superannuation is structured, in this country, in a fair, easy-to-administer way that is effective. Currently, superannuation costs New Zealand 5 percent of GDP; that is lower than the OECD average of 8 percent, and significantly lower than some other of the OECD countries who are at 15 percent and 16 percent of the GDP. Currently, that is the message we are hearing over and again, unfairly criticising our superannuitants.

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s Business of Ageing report released this year demonstrates the commitment to the contribution that our older New Zealanders make to our economy. With over $9 billion in paid work contributing annually; another $5 billion for those who are self-employed; but, most importantly, $20 billion a year is the value of the unpaid work contribution that our seniors make to this economy. This is the backbone of our economy. This is in every single community around our country. This is our families, our sports clubs, our charity shops, the list goes on—the backbone of our communities that rely on this contribution.

What is the impact on this frequently ignored and undervalued contribution to our economy if we start tinkering with our superannuation? It is even worse that it sends this message that our superannuitants are an economic burden. Yes, of course, there is economic benefit, and it’s an easy calculation to show that there is budgetary benefit to adjusting superannuation, but what is the true cost when we start messing around with these numbers?

There is a reason why New Zealand First protected superannuation entitlement: because it is the right thing to do—not just the right thing to do ethically and socially but economically. We are living longer but we need to be reminded that we are living well longer. Currently, only 10 percent of our over-65s are in the health system in terms of hospital, aged care, or in-home community care. That means the large majority are living independent, productive lives, contributing to our country. Yes, there is an opportunity to improve our health system—absolutely—and we can make economic savings, and the Minister of Health is doing great work to achieve those outcomes; we can also make significant economic gains by encouraging the skills, capability, innovation, and imagination of our seniors to invest, to teach, to employ, to volunteer, and to care, rather than categorising this entire demographic as a burden.

It is completely unacceptable to take a default position of economic savings by punishing those hard-working Kiwis who have planned and earned their entitlement of superannuation. New Zealand First does not defend superannuation as a political slogan, but because it is a sensible, practical, and economically sound proposition that puts New Zealand and New Zealanders first.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (15:23): Barbara Edmonds, in her speech just before, put it quite truthfully, I thought, when she said New Zealanders will have a choice on 7 November. They will have a choice. The reality is that elections are meant to be a choice, a contest of ideas—a contest of ideas, not a contest of secrets. It seems like the Labour Party is wanting to have a contest of secrets.

The problem with the Labour Party is that they’re like turning up to the Tour de France without a bike. You can’t turn up to the Tour de France without a bike—it misses the whole point. In fact, their lack of policy is so obvious, even Radio New Zealand will soon notice—even Radio New Zealand is soon going to notice.

Well, look, Barbara Edmonds says, “We can’t tell you the details of the Future Fund, because some State-owned enterprises might have some Treaty obligations.”—might have some Treaty obligations.

Hipkins is even worse, treating New Zealanders with absolute audacity, when he says, “We’re not telling you the policy, because, well, New Zealanders just don’t really care.”—don’t really care.

Rima Nakhle: Come to Takanini, they care!

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, exactly. They do care in Takanini. They do care in the Bay of Plenty. They do care in my electorate of Pakuranga.

The problem is that New Zealanders are finding out far more from their leaks, aren’t they? Far more from the leaks from the Labour Party than, actually, from their announcements. Their capital gains tax was leaked. Their media training’s been leaked. And, of course, Labour now has more leaks than Wellington Water. It’s up to them to keep their house in order, but if my house was leaking as much as that, I’d be calling a plumber.

Of course, we all learnt so much listening to that audio, didn’t we, on the weekend—so much, so much, so much. I’m not sure why Dr Ayesha Verrall is not in the House actually giving a speech for Music Month. Why is she not here giving a speech for Music Month? But it does outline some of the Labour Party’s intentions, doesn’t it? Here she is, saying, “I’m gonna take my duck to the old town pond, I’m gonna ride ‘til I can’t no more.” Is that what Labour’s policy is? Is that Labour’s policy? It must be. She repeated it. “I’m gonna take my duck to the old town pond”, she said, “I’m gonna ride ‘til I can’t no more. I’ve got the duck in the back and I’m going to do a quack.” She’s going to do a quack!

It isn’t true that we haven’t heard from Labour. What we heard from them has had people begging to stop. Please stop. But, of course, there’s another Billy Ray Cyrus song which I think many New Zealanders are actually singing: “We pay the bills. We pay the taxes.” That’s what New Zealanders know, and they know that a Labour Party will increase the bills—and it’s not the duck bills; it’s the bills in their back pocket, is what Labour will be doing. We know a Labour Government, if given the opportunity to be re-elected, will increase taxes, increase borrowing, increase spending, and it will be New Zealanders paying the bill—and it will be New Zealanders paying the bill.

Of course we are out there talking to New Zealanders each and every day—on the doorstep, hearing from New Zealanders. Just last week, I had a young tradesman in his early 20s stop his ute, pull over and say to me, “Keep going. We need a National Government to keep building the future of this country.” We hear you and we know what New Zealanders need is another term of a National-led Government, a Government focused on growing wages and opportunities and fixing up the economic mess left behind by the previous Government; a Government focused on keeping taxes low, not increasing taxes on hard-working New Zealanders, which is exactly what a Labour Government would do; a Government focused on making sure our streets are safe, and what a big thankyou to Paul Goldsmith this week for putting a law in place to criminalise stalking, another practical solution making our streets safer; and a Government focused on investing in health and education.

That is what this Government is doing. That is what tomorrow’s Budget is going to be all about: investing and fixing the basics, building the future for New Zealanders, creating an environment of stable and low inflation, supporting Kiwis to get ahead, driving value for money out of every single dollar of taxpayers’ money. That is what a National Government is doing. That is what tomorrow’s Budget will be about. I know that New Zealanders are seeing the work that we’re doing, but they’re also seeing what Labour really want to do: they not only want to sing some bad songs during Music Month but they’ve got bills that they want to put on every single New Zealander—not duck bills; tax bills. It’s only a party vote for National that can fix the basics and build the future for New Zealanders.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (15:28): I find it quite disgusting that the Government thinks it’s so crack-up making these dry jokes over and over again about, whatever, ducks, horses, when just last week—I mean, where do we start with all of the announcements that they made to punch down on the most vulnerable people in our society? But there was one particular announcement that they made that is still being felt heavily in Wellington, as the Public Service city of Aotearoa, and it was that this Government wants to lay off around 9,000 of our public servants.

Now, there was a massive rally on Sunday at Te Papa, against this announcement, and I was approached by a person who worked in the Public Service for 17 years. Now, this is a person with multiple degrees, actually—postgraduate degrees, Bachelor’s degrees in software technology and in artificial intelligence itself. This is a person who has delivered seven transformational digital projects for over seven different Government departments across our Public Service, and this is a person who has transformed the way that the general public engage with all of these different Government departments, from ACC to Oranga Tamariki to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet itself.

Now, this is a person who has been on the jobseeker benefit for two years. This is a person who has not been able to find a job. This is a person who was denied two roles this morning—this morning. He has had to use up his entire life savings over the last two years. He has had to sell his one and only family home. He now lives in a cold, dark, mouldy flat here in Wellington and he’s described it himself as having to restart his entire life after 58 years. This is a 58-year-old man having to start life from scratch. A highly educated person at that, who has been on the jobseeker benefit for two years. This is what is happening to our country: highly skilled, highly educated individuals sitting on the jobseeker benefit for years who are then going on to be sanctioned for not trying hard enough to apply for jobs that simply don’t exist.

Now, they’re saying that in these Public Service job cuts, they won’t touch the health or the education spaces. I think that this shows just how little they understand how the Public Service works and how deeply interdependent all of our Government ministries and departments are on each other. Because it’s not just nurses or doctors or health professionals working in our hospitals; it’s also people who work on the front line in the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), and in the back rooms in MSD, who go in and spend time in our hospitals supporting whaiora or patients in those hospitals.

I was also talking to a nurse who works in Wellington who said that cuts to MSD through these proposed thousands of job cuts will inevitably impact their work on the front line, regardless, because those specialists in the Public Service are the ones who come into our hospitals and work with patients to make sure that they have the wraparound care and support that they need. Now, instead of those MSD workers going into hospitals in Wellington to provide that support, they now have to say to them, “Sorry”—let’s say if there’s a patient in the Wellington hospital—“you’re actually going to have to go 25 kilometers down the road to Wainuiōmata to get the support that you need to be well and to be healthy and to live a decent life. That is not good enough, especially on top of them already closing the MSD office in Newtown alone.

What the Government doesn’t understand is by cutting down those administrative roles or getting rid of that technical expertise behind the scenes, it is going to inevitably have a massive impact on the workloads and the burden of those working on the front line. The Public Service is not only those in Wellington, although it does impact us the most. It means that every New Zealander, next time they walk into a hospital; walk into a school; walk into an MSD office; if they have an accident and end up in ACC; if they go for a passport through the Department of Internal Affairs; if they want their rent back through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; through Tenancy Services—good luck with that, because you’ll have an AI system on the other end of the phone who won’t understand anything you say, over and over again. Our public services will get worse without the people and the workers who are the backbone of our Public Service.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (15:33): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. Look, we hear a lot about the fact that there’s one more sleep—one more sleep until tomorrow, Budget day—and we will see if this Government has been listening to Kiwis all around the household. This is their last chance to present a plan to lift the burden that Kiwis are very clearly experiencing right now and have experienced for quite some time. Sadly, I don’t think there’s much hope that they’ve been listening and there won’t be much action coming tomorrow.

In fact, actually, this is a Government that is out of touch, and anyone who has a look at the front page of The Post will see this photo of the finance Minister and the associate finance Ministers eating some pies. Now, I think that’s an attempt to perhaps try and be a little bit more relative to folk out there. Based on that photo, it looks like they’ve never ever had a pie in their life. Now, I think, actually, it’s pretty sad because times are tough; people out in our community can’t afford a pie right now and this is being thrown in their face.

Christopher Luxon and his Government promised to make things better and they have very clearly made things worse. Tomorrow is the last chance—the last chance—that this Government will have to show that they actually have a plan to make life easier for Kiwis who continue to do it tough under their Government. Of course, we look at the context about what that means. At the moment, we have high prices when it comes to fuel; we have food prices that are high; we have power prices that are high; we have rents that are high; for those that can still afford insurance, they are high.

Every week, Kiwi households are sitting around, thinking about the tough decisions that they are forced to make about what they can afford to buy and what they have to actually forgo. They have to make those decisions because this is a Government that has prioritised property speculators and tobacco companies ahead of Kiwi households who continue to do it tough. More people are feeling the pinch every day, every week, and when they look at the choices that they have to make, they are tough choices that this Government is forcing upon them.

Track records do matter and this Government has a track record that’s not a very good one when it comes to transport. Recently, a couple of colleagues and I took our Bee Cards and we jumped on a bus to get from A to B. You know, it was timely, a lot of folk were on there, and there were real options. But as more and more people feel the pinch, more and more people are turning to public transport as an option. Last week, visiting Environment Canterbury, looking at the improvements that they’d made, again, an opportunity to have public transport as a real option. But this is a Government that is very clear in that it is doing nothing to support public transport and for communities to utilise public transport.

Why is that? Because, instead of actually putting some support, they would rather that the fares go up. The fact that public transport fares have increased in this country recently is a direct result of the prioritisation of this National Government in not supporting public transport and actually saying, “We’ve got this $56 billion suite of roads of National Party significance that we’d rather deliver. Don’t have a plan to do it, don’t have the money or the revenue to deliver it. But instead we are going to hike the opportunity for people to access public transport fares in order to try and deliver that.”

In the context of fares and no fuel relief that’s coming to households, what is the Budget going to actually do for those who are struggling to get to and from work? What is the Budget tomorrow going to do for households who simply want to get from point A to point B, as part of their everyday life activities and the choices that they make? We will hear tomorrow what this Government thinks about supporting Kiwis getting around their community. The track record of this Government is such that I wouldn’t hold my breath in terms of having any support for those who continue to do it tough right now.

Who are we talking about when we talk about these Kiwi households; when we talk about people out in the community that want to get on the bus, want to get on the train, want get from A to B? We’re talking about mums and dads, we’re talking about students, we’re talking about people on low to medium incomes, people who continue to struggle under the decisions that this National Government has made. This Government clearly does not understand the fact that an inability to access public transport is yet another barrier that they are putting in front of households and families who continue to simply struggle.

Access to public transport is an essential lifeline for so many in our communities, and now we have people that have traditionally relied on public transport who themselves are thinking, “Can I actually get to my job? Can I actually get to where I need to go?” Because this is a Government that is failing to support them, failing to deliver, failing to actually identify that there are real issues. And tomorrow, yes, there’s one more sleep. We all wait, but the hope is quickly dwindling.

Hon MELISSA LEE (National) (15:38): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can start off by saying that this is a Government that actually delivers for New Zealanders. It has only been one sleep since that stalking law has actually come into law—it’s only been one sleep, and already a 39-year-old man has been charged with stalking; allegedly stalking and harassing a woman getting off the bus. That’s already working. The Acting Director of Prevention Inspector Natasha Allan has already said, “We now have stronger tools to hold offenders to account … we are and will be using them.” to actually get offenders to answer for their crime.

That reminds me of a case that I thought of many, many times. It goes back to 2022. I’m thinking of Farzana Yaqubi, a 21-year-old law student, resident of West Auckland.

She was walking home, and she was stabbed to death. That is after eight weeks prior when she had complained to police about a stalker. It was a man who was 30 years old, who obviously fancied her, followed her, and tried to talk to her and she refused, and she said no. He kept continuing. He even threatened to pour acid on her face. He actually followed her, and when she said to stop doing it and when she called the police, he stopped for a little while and then he started back—typical, typical modus operandi of a stalker. He even managed to befriend her friends. He managed to befriend her family, trying to find out where she lived. He even sent a pizza delivery. He ordered pizza to be delivered to her house.

On the day that she actually died, which was 19 December, he was waiting in his car after work. After he finished work, he went to a location near her house, parked at the back of the badminton hall, waiting for her to arrive. As she was walking up the alley, he confronted her, trying to actually—I don’t know what he said; I wasn’t there. She tried to ring the police. When she tried, he stabbed her multiple times. When she collapsed to the ground, he stood over her and stabbed her even more. She died; he was charged. I’m so pleased to say that this man has got a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. I say that’s not long enough. A young 21-year-old girl who was studying law, she had the world in front of her, and he ended her life because it started off with a stalking, and she refused him, and he ended up killing her.

Do you know when we actually passed that stalking law I was so happy that perhaps if that murderer was caught when he was stalking Farzana, she may still be here. When we talk about law and order, everyone knows that National is pretty tough with law and order. I have to say that ram raids are virtually every night going back to the last election, everyone was complaining about ram raids. It’s down 85 percent. Everyone talks about victims. Yes, I was just talking about victims. We have 49,000 fewer victims because National is focused on making sure that we deliver on our promises. Increased patrol of police, 40 percent. As the Acting Director of Prevention, Inspector Natasha Allan said about the arrest of the first stalker, we now have stronger tools to hold offenders to account. This is a Government that is actually delivering for our police. We are delivering for New Zealanders, and the stalking law underpins our work to fix the basics in law and order, to build a future where all Kiwis can feel safe and their communities feel safe. I should know; I have been stalked many, many years ago, and that is a scary, scary experience.

HŪHANA LYNDON (Green) (15:43): E tangi ana ki ngā mate, ki Farzana me tōna whānau, haere, haere, oti atu. Hoki mai anō ki a tātou ngā waihotanga iho o rātou mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[I mourn those who have passed, to Farzana and her family, go well, rest in peace. I return now to those here, the legacy of those before us, I greet and acknowledge you all.]

I acknowledge the speech before me and give our thoughts and our prayers again to the whānau of our deceased and the many victims of stalking and those who have passed.

I come back to the dark cloud that we have over us right now where we see the prioritisation of big corporates and sacrificing cultural values, ecological wellbeing and putting the fast track first. That is what I’m going to speak about today. What we’ve had revealed recently by Radio New Zealand is the depth and the breadth and the length by which corporate friends of the coalition Government have been making political donations—political donations since 2022: $1 million. Of course we’ve got 149 fast-track projects that have been listed. Many of these fast-track projects are friends, political friends and donors to the coalition Government.

Now, I want to bring my kōrero back locally and recognise the fact that as a community, as hapū and iwi, we have been fighting for te taiao and for the betterment of our people and community in Bream Bay. My kōrero is about the McCallum Brothers’ application for sand mining in Bream Bay. I just want to remind the House that we have had McCallum Brothers as a constant donor to New Zealand First annually for the last few years. The McCallum Brothers have already lost and been proven to be negligent to te taiao for some 80 years of sand mining in Pākiri. They were removed from that rohe, and they turned their attention to Bream Bay. The Bream Bay application that the McCallum Brothers have before this independent panel is something that will have intergenerational impact on the taiao and on our connection as hapū, iwi, community, and residents, because it’s a 35-year consent. It’s a 35-year consent for 9 million cubic metres of sand to be dredged from the takutai moana across a 17-kilometre area of a beautiful coastline—beautiful.

If you come to Whangārei, you will come down Te Hurihanga a Kāwharu, the Brynderwyns, and you will see the crystal blue waters of Bream Bay. That’s the thing. The McCallum Brothers have been proven to be negligent. That’s why they lost in the Environment Court in Pākiri, but, you know, they’re donors, they’re good friends, and they get to progress through. Well, I want to recognise the fact that there is no proven benefit economically, regionally, or nationally for sand mining in Bream Bay. That’s a well-known fact. We have the research that has been commissioned from the community that demonstrates that there is no need to sand mine anymore, that there are alternatives available in manufactured sand in Tāmaki-makau-rau. There is no need for sand to be provided for Tāmaki or Northland. The evidence is really clear. There is no national or regional significance and need for the sand to be provided from out of our rohe.

Going over to the ecological impacts—oh my gosh, far out, did you know that we already have a fisheries closure on scallops in Whangārei Terenga Parāoa? So the closure of scallops protects the special taonga species in Whangārei and Bream Bay, and yet the dredging will provide—what would it be—huge impact, intergenerational breakage in connection to a taonga species such as the scallop, as well as our mammals, as well as our marine birds that we have in the rohe. And that’s part of the issue, is that we are prioritising corporates and this somehow fast-track application for Bream Bay as something good for our rohe when it’s well known there is no benefit to community, to our ecology, to hapū or iwi, and all of the cultural connection that will be mined.

Now on 26 May—that’s this week—there was the applications, or those who were submitters who had the opportunity to comment on this application to the independent panel. Some twenty groups mobilised, from community, from ratepayers and residents, from hapū, iwi to put submissions and responses and contributions in to the independent panel. I give a big shout out to the Bream Bay Guardians Society, to Patuharakeke, to Ngātiwai, to my whānau of Te Parawhau, Te Uriroroi, and the many tribes who work together to say no to fast-track sand mining.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (15:49): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to talk for a few minutes about something that is very important to Kiwis and that is health and our healthcare system. I know it’s going to be the Budget tomorrow. I know health is going to be front and centre, but I want to just talk about a few things that have already been announced and then also what ACT has been doing as part of this coalition Government to actually fix what matters in health.

So there’s been some pre-Budget announcements in relation to health. We know that $135 million is going to go into supporting our ambulance services across the country. We had the excellent announcement of around $15.5 million for specialist palliative care for children and that’s a really important investment When a family is actually dealing with a really difficult situation, they need that support, and this Government has recognised that that’s an area where we were falling behind. I think that is a worthy investment of taxpayers’ money.

Down my way, in Central Otago, we also had the excellent announcement of $180 million to go into the Southern Lakes area—some of it for operational funding over four years, and some of it for capital funding. Again, I want to acknowledge Joseph Mooney and Miles Anderson, my colleagues in the south in this coalition Government, and local councillors as well. We advocated for quite a while to highlight the lack of health services in the kind of Queenstown, Wānaka Lakes, Central Otago Lakes District, so that was really welcome news.

I also want to kind of cast our minds back, because ACT had a whole section in its coalition agreement with National, and we’ve just been really getting down and just ticking off those priorities as we saw them. As part of this Government, we got rid of the Therapeutic Products Act, a really bad piece of legislation that was actually going to send us backwards, not forwards. We got rid of the Māori Health Authority, people might remember. We actually got the second phase of the commission of inquiry into COVID up and going, and that again has delivered results and much more transparency. There’s just a couple of things that we got done in the first year.

The other thing which I’m really proud of is we’ve really got stuck in to modernising Pharmac, and so we are now seeing Pharmac—and in fact, you’ll see some information shortly where the New Zealand public is seeing Pharmac as a highly responsible and credible organisation around medicines funding. It, in fact, has put in what we wanted it to do, which was to listen to patients and the community more. It’s had the Consumer and Patient Working Group, and I want to thank Dr Malcolm Mulholland for chairing that working group. It really has brought the outside perspective into Pharmac, and, in fact, people who really were, I think, at war with Pharmac are now some of its staunchest advocates and supporters and are actually helping change that organisation and its culture for the better.

I also want to acknowledge that we’ve had some other working groups, like the Rare Disorders working group announced, and also the Blood Cancer working group. Again, I think it’s good to see my colleague Minister Simeon Brown seeing that you actually can get stakeholders around the table and deal with these issues, and I think, again, Chris Higgins from Rare Disorders and Tim Edmonds from Blood Cancer New Zealand should be congratulated for their advocacy.

We’ve also got on with some practical changes. I can’t tell you the number of times people still contact me about the fact they can get pseudoephedrine in their local pharmacy. We’re in kind of the winter season now, and it’s going to be going for a few more months. That is just a simple change. People can go in and actually get a medicine over the counter which relieves their symptoms. We didn’t just stop there, we also dealt with melatonin, which, again, we were asked for for many, many years. We’ve also ensured that pharmacists—talking of pharmacy—can actually operate at their maximum scope of practice and actually do some simple diagnosis and prescription. We’re going to be looking at more and more things that we can do with community pharmacies. ACT has obviously also supported GPs and GP capitation.

These are things that matter to Kiwis. We haven’t just talked the talk, we’ve actually got on as part of this coalition Government, and ACT is very proud of what we’ve been delivering in healthcare, because it is actually practical things for Kiwis. In just a few weeks’ time, we’re actually going to have expedited access to medicines—the accelerated pathway—and that’s very exciting. Where overseas regulators have already approved a medicine, there’s going to be an expedited pathway so we can get those treatments to Kiwis faster. Really, I want to say thank you for listening, and we really are focused on health.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) (15:54): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to have a general debate speech—I haven’t had one for quite a while, so it’s great to be back.

We’ve got a great Budget coming up tomorrow, but I want to talk about something that’s already been announced and that, certainly, for my part of the world, is very good news. I did hear the Minister of Finance say today that it’s a responsible Budget that secures New Zealand’s future, and the announcement about wilding pines is so welcome in my part of the world, and I know it’s welcome also on the plateau, and it’s welcomed in the Mackenzie Country and elsewhere around the South Island. They’re such a scourge on rural New Zealand.

There’s 58,000 hectares of wilding pines in the Leatham and Branch valleys in Marlborough—and I’m talking choked valleys. That’s a lot of area. The only way to really appreciate it is to fly in. People try to walk in, but it’s very difficult. The main species that have caused the issues are Pinus contorta, which a lot of people will have heard of. They’re a very hardy species. In New Zealand, they can survive up to 10,000 feet of altitude, so they could effectively take over all of the practical high country, right up into above the snow line.

I’ve seen on the top of Saxton Pass, which is at the top of those valleys and goes over into the Awatere and Molesworth Station, a scrubby little Pinus contorta tree, which would be less than half a metre high, and it was coning, right on the top, in the snow. The problem with those species is not just the nature of how they grow, it’s the light seeds that they have in the cones, and they fly a long way in the wind, and the prevailing wind is all heading out into that Awatere, so it’s a massive problem. I took Tama Potaka there, and I’ve got to give kudos to him—he’s been a great supporter. We flew up in there, had a look around, and landed in an area.

The other species I want to talk about is Scots Pine, which is even worse in lots of ways. It has branches coming out from right above the ground; it’s almost impenetrable, and nothing grows underneath it, unlike the native species. When you get mānuka stands, and so on, native plants can come up underneath. They’re really, effectively, mother plants for the other native species to come up through. That does not happen in wilding pines. It’s a massive issue; it’s a big problem—58,000 hectares—and it’s beyond someone with a chainsaw or with a drill to drill and fill. I know Marlborough Helicopters are wanding them around the edges. That means someone sitting in the door of a helicopter with a wand, and they fly up and spray them directly.

There are drones now being developed—long-duration drones with petrol engines rather than having the batteries, which have a very short life—and they can actually carry quite a bit of spray. They can deal with the isolated ones, where it’s not practical for people to do that on foot. But when you get 58,000 hectares, that’s a completely different problem. It’s either broad-acre spraying—I suppose you should call it broad-hectare spraying—or burning, but I suspect 58,000 hectares would be a hell of a lot of smoke, and I don’t think that’s going to be an option there. It has been trialled elsewhere in the high country in smaller patches, and they’ve found the great thing about it is that it kills all of the pine seeds in the ground, and native species come up.

Sometimes, you’ve got to make some hard decisions, but this money that’s being put aside for it is going to be phenomenal, and it will give us an opportunity to save Molesworth and other areas. In some catchments, if it gets hold, it can actually reduce water yield from there by 30 percent. That has a massive impact on aquifer recharging and on our hydro in the Mackenzie Country as well.

In my remaining time, while that’s really important, I’m quite excited about my member’s bill, and I want to briefly mention that. It’s my local government member’s bill which, really, is about the management of the authorities, and it enables and makes it very clear that the elected officials—that is the mayor and elected councillors—are the people responsible for the management of the council. Currently, under the Local Government Act, it’s the chief executive, and that leads to a lot of the issues that we’ve had around the country. I’m looking for support across the House for that bill, and I think it will make a tremendous difference. Thank you.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (15:59): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Now, it’s Budget eve, and tomorrow we’ll hear the final Budget from Nicola Willis and this failed coalition Government. A Government that promised to fix the cost of living; they haven’t just failed, they have, in fact, made it worse. Worst of all, they know what they’re doing, and they know the impact it’s having. They simply do not care. Tomorrow, they’ve explained—or they’ve promised that they’ll explain—how, with AI, they’ll cut thousands of people in the public sector; how they’ll cut thousands of real people’s jobs.

Now, who are these real people? They’re the health workers at our local hospital. They’re the support workers at our schools. They’re social workers. They’re people who help young people into work or education—who help young people into work or education at a time when youth unemployment is at 15 percent and, in some areas, NEET rates are over 40 percent. They’re the food safety inspectors, and they’re the court and tribunal inspectors. These are the people who hold our communities together, who will be cut by this Government and cut by this Budget—good people who are being forced out of vital work to pay for $3 billion of tax cuts for mega landlords and $300 million for big tobacco.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool. It has massive potential to add value, but you have to know what you’re doing, you have to do it well, you need a plan, you need a strategy, and intention and hope is not a strategy. Just yesterday, One NZ came here to Parliament and released their second annual report into trust in AI. Trust is the defining issue for AI adoption, and Jason Paris from One NZ spoke about quantifying AI’s value being like banking fog—like banking fog. There were five major signals highlighted in this report that shape AI trust in New Zealand: (1) AI is becoming mainstream, but meaningful adoption remains shallow; (2) public sentiment is shifting from curiosity to scrutiny; (3) trust is being shaped by experience, not perception; (4) human oversight is becoming the baseline for trust—that means that people need to be involved in these systems; these systems cannot simply step in and do the work of people—and (5) AI’s value case is narrowing as expectations of guard rails rise. The same Government that cut funding for people in the vital backroom roles that manage and build safe IT systems, and the same Government that cut funding for people who ensure that data, the precious data that good AI will rely on, is real and accurate—that same Government now want to cut more people from the Public Service.

Last week, I stood up in this House and asked the Minister questions. I asked the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government which specific roles he expected to be replaced with artificial intelligence. He said, “Well, that is the process that we’ll be working our way through over the next three years.” I don’t know how you make immediate savings, sir, if you’re working through that process over the next three years. I asked him if he had a coherent AI workforce plan, and he said, “Well, all of that is in the process of development.” I asked him, “What is the roll-out and licensing cost of implementing AI technologies across the Public Service?” He said, “Well, I don’t have that exact figure at the moment.” So, finally, I asked him, “Does the Public Service intend to use local AI, or does it anticipate a lot of the technology to come from overseas?” He replied, “I’m not aware of a current local AI provider of the scale of Claude or Copilot.”

The summary of those answers: “We are working our way through it.”; “In the process of development.”; “I do not have that exact figure.”; “I am not aware.”—“I am not aware.” This is the week before, and today is the day before, a Budget is revealed and read in this House that cuts thousands of people’s jobs in the Public Service and that claims that AI will replace those, and the Minister has absolutely no plan. And much like the actions they have taken to date, neither—do I think—does the Minister care.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’ll just remind members that the House is very welcoming of people not reading their speeches.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Fair Trading Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Statistics) (16:04): on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I present a legislative statement on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill.

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

First Reading

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Statistics) (16:05): on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move, That the Fair Trading Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill.

The Fair Trading Act is one of the core consumer-protection pieces of legislation in New Zealand. It sets the baseline rules that stop businesses from misleading people, making false claims, or using unfair business practices. It’s the Commerce Commission that enforces those rules, and then the courts decide whether there has been a breach and use their discretion to apply the penalties and remedies available under the Act. At its heart, this amendment bill is about fairness. It backs honest businesses and strengthens the consequences for those few who choose to cut corners. It gives New Zealanders confidence that they are being treated fairly by businesses, and it does that in three practical steps.

First, it modernises how the Act is enforced, by shifting most breaches into an easier-to-enforce civil liability regime. It also increases the penalties for breaching the Act. Secondly, it gives online service providers clearer legal protections when they act quickly and in good faith to disrupt suspected scams. The third element is that it streamlines product-safety requirements so that technical standards can be kept up to date.

I’ll now go through each of those three steps in a little more detail for the sake of the House. Firstly, modernising penalties and enforcement: the Act currently relies heavily on criminal enforcement to address a wide range of commercial conduct, and the current penalty settings are out of step with how similar conduct is regulated elsewhere. A civil liability regime is better suited to addressing this kind of commercial misconduct while still allowing meaningful court-imposed monetary penalties. It also brings the Act more into line with other commercial regimes such as the Financial Markets Conduct Act and the Commerce Act.

Now, we’ve seen how issues like pricing and specials can create real consumer harm, and that includes Fair Trading Act charges relating to misleading specials, for instance, and guilty pleas and prosecutions for misleading promotional pricing. This bill shifts most breaches from a criminal enforcement model to a civil liability regime, and that means the rules about what businesses must do and must not do stay the same. Criminal offences remain, however, for a limited set of very serious conduct issues. These include serious product-safety offending and behaviour that obstructs the regulator.

On top of shifting most breaches into a civil liability regime, the bill also lifts the maximum penalties for both civil and criminal offences. It does so in a tiered way so that consequences better match the seriousness and scale of the conduct. The change increases the maximum penalty from $600,000 to the greatest of $5 million, three times any gain made or loss avoided, or the value of the relevant transactions. For lower-level breaches, the bill applies a lower tier, with a maximum of $200,000 for businesses.

These changes, when taken together, intend to ensure that businesses are less likely to treat breaching the Act as a cost of doing business, while keeping the criminal law for truly serious deliberate conduct. These changes back honest businesses by helping ensure competition is based on playing by the rules, not cutting corners.

The second step that I want to spend a little bit of time talking about is enabling the proactive scam-disruption component of the legislation We all know that scams cause very significant harm in New Zealand. Payments NZ has reported losses of over $200 million for the 2025 financial year. Now, to help protect New Zealanders from scams, the Government and consumer groups and industries, including online service providers, have joined together to form the New Zealand Anti-Scam Alliance. One of the alliance initiatives is a safe harbour for online service providers. Telecommunications companies and the Domain Name Commission have indicated that they may be willing to do more to disrupt suspected scam content. However, they are concerned about potential civil liability if legitimate content may be removed in error. To address this concern, the bill introduces a statutory defence for online service providers who act in good faith to disrupt suspected scams. Now, the defence will only be available where the provider has reasonable grounds to believe that the scam activity is occurring and certain conditions have been met. If a mistake is made, the bill requires the provider to promptly reverse the action.

The third element I want to spend a minute talking about is the streamlining of product-safety settings. Product-safety regulations made under the Fair Trading Act are an effective way to manage risks that a product may pose to the safety of consumers. These regulations are made by exception. Typically, they require the product to comply with a particular version of a technical safety standard. However, safety standards are often revised, meaning that these regulations can quickly become out of date. Some product-safety standards referenced in regulations can lag behind updated international versions. For example, the Product Safety Standards (Pedal Bicycles) Regulations of 2000 still point to a superseded 1998 standard, and that kind of lag can lead to New Zealand businesses trying to navigate older legal references while the rest of the world pedals on.

To address this, the bill delegates more technical matters to MBIE. Following consultation, Cabinet will continue to decide whether product-safety regulations should be put in place, while MBIE will have the authority to issue product-safety notices that reference the relevant technical standards. Regulations would continue to set which products are regulated, but could authorise MBIE to specify or update the applicable versions of technical standards. This additional flexibility better ensures that the rules can keep pace with improvements to safety standards while reducing unnecessary compliance costs for business and for maintaining safety.

In conclusion, I want to make it clear that the bill will come into force in two stages. The penalties and enforcement framework starts six months after Royal assent. That is simply to give everyone time to get ready—the regulator can update guidance and systems, and businesses can have a clear notice of the changed consequences for non-compliance. The underlying conduct rules keep applying during that period. The scams, safe harbour, and product-safety notice - enabling powers start the day after Royal assent, and this is because they do not need a transition period and can be implemented immediately.

This bill modernises enforcement, it strengthens penalties, it supports proactive scam disruption, and it streamlines product-safety updates while keeping the core fair trading rules clear and workable. I commend it to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (16:13): Let me start by thanking the Minister for his legislative statement. I look forward to examining this bill—which will be interesting—at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, that hard-working committee.

This is a bill that might seem ancient and arcane, and it is. Company law, competition law, is some of the oldest law that New Zealand has imported from England; it’s centuries old and is essentially about this: who gets to enjoy the protections of the corporate veil? Who gets to trade, not as themselves, not in their own name, but who gets to transact in a special kind of vehicle that we now call a company, a limited partnership, a trust—whatever it is—and what conditions are we going to hold them to? And what will we do when things go wrong? Because the people who get to enjoy the corporate veil are people who have upstanding character, are great members of our community, are building things, creating things, and that is important, but these sorts of fair-trading rules are about the conduct we expect of them and what happens when things go wrong, consumers are worse off, and prices are used in such a way as to diminish competition in any given market.

Labour really supports these stronger consumer protections, because ordinary New Zealanders don’t go into these trading arrangements with equal power to large companies that they are transacting with. We need strong fair-trading laws because every single transaction in the market, whether it was the coffee that you bought at Copperfield’s earlier or whether it was the subscription on your phone which has just popped up to a new article on the Herald—we as consumers do not get to enjoy the kind of trading relationship which companies get to enjoy. So fair-trading rules are essential, and it is very important that the penalties for things that go wrong are very clear.

This is a bill that we tentatively support, because we support both the stronger penalties for misleading conduct, which are the civil liabilities—they should be higher, and this bill sets out to make them higher. But we have some questions about removing those criminal liabilities—because, at the end of the day, this is about the people who get to trade behind the corporate veil. This is about how people like you and I, when we transact with businesses, are doing so in our own name, and we are people. The Government has made some policy choices here to take away the punishments for the people that we are transacting with and leave them inside the corporate veil. That is a kind of capitalism which can result in really good outcomes for markets, but can also be punishing for the consumers who end up on the wrong side of it.

We also support the stronger enforcement tools for the Commerce Commission and the courts. Consumer law really only works if ordinary people can have confidence in those roles and the regulator bringing prosecutions. We also support the principle that markets only function properly if consumers trust them. That is the most important part of this: that we show New Zealanders that the Government will use its power to get into markets that aren’t working properly and to make sure that, in this case, the penalties are appropriate for conduct which is keeping prices high over a sustained period of time. We know that because of the Commerce Commission’s good work and its market studies in industries such as banking and supermarkets, building products, and fuel.

The things that we are going to be testing very closely in select committee, though, are around those penalties which shift them, as the Minister says, to easier-to-enforce civil penalties. We would like to test that. Are these, in fact, easier to enforce? Will they be a sufficient deterrent if there are not criminal liabilities which attach to them? We’ll also be testing whether the Commerce Commission has the resources, expertise, and enforcement capacity needed to make these reforms meaningful in practice. This has been raised constantly in the select committees that are considering the Minister’s other suite of reforms around the Commerce Commission’s structure. Many submitters in that forum are raising questions about whether the Commerce Commission can continue to be the courageous litigator that this Government first envisioned when it took office.

The next thing is whether the safe harbour provisions for online scan disruption, which we support, contain sufficient safeguards around civil liberties. Are we going to collect the wrong people in this net, and are we holding companies to account for then impinging on their rights—are ordinary, legitimate users going to be wrongly swept up in their new power? The next point will be testing, carefully, as to whether consumers will have clear, accessible, and timely pathways for redress if online platforms act incorrectly around that, and whether the shift towards civil liability around that regime is the right one.

And, finally, the product-safety standards—these are important to me. As a mum of two kids growing up in a very changing environment where they have access to all sorts of things which are not from the local store and not from people that I can take issues up with, it’s really important that we get this right. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment should have a greater role, but at the end of the day, the buck should stop with the Minister. That’s what we’ll be testing in select committee, and I commend it to there.

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

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (16:18): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the Fair Trading Amendment Bill, and we acknowledge the Minister’s legislative statement, as well.

I remember, when this bill was first announced by the Minister and Nicola Willis, that they paid tribute to Consumer New Zealand’s campaign of “Price it right”. I wanted to acknowledge that campaign by Consumer New Zealand and the advocacy that they have done for consumers, because this bill does take on one of the recommendations of this campaign. In that campaign, for example, they called for a mandatory supermarket pricing accuracy code, automatic compensation where shoppers were overcharged, a clear disclosure of consumer rights in-store and online, and tougher penalties and infringement notice powers like those used in Australia.

It is that last one, in particular, that this bill is taking on. It is obviously not the only thing that this bill is doing, but it is carrying on that recommendation. That campaign that led to this bill acknowledged that consumers locally were missing out on millions of dollars, collectively, due to issues relating to pricing errors.

One of the things that this bill will do is increase the maximum penalties for breaches of the Fair Trading Act. But, I think, more importantly, it moves it from a criminal liability regime to a civil liability regime. That in and of itself also does a range of things, like changing the burden of being able to carry out these consequences. It actually will make it easier for consumers to take on big corporates.

The previous speaker rightfully noted that, ultimately, we live in an economy where there’s often a power imbalance. The reality is that everyday individuals may not have the means to take on huge corporations such as supermarkets, for example, when they are seeing that there are systemic breaches and/or, for example, pricing issues that may lead to consumers being left worse off. Strengthening the Fair Trading Act will actually be particularly beneficial towards this.

I think what will be important in the select committee stage, which the Finance and Expenditure Committee will take on, will be to also assess what else may be needed. Other submitters may talk about, for example, what other avenues the Minister may need to consider. I hope, particularly, we hear from—and I’m sure we’ll hear from—Consumer New Zealand on this, because I assume that the reason they have a range of recommendations beyond tougher penalties is that, ultimately, we needed a broader range of interventions.

The tougher penalties will be good. They may act as a deterrent. But I think that also will need to be tested at the select committee stage in terms of what evidence we’ve seen overseas of where there are these civil liability regimes and whether they have acted as a deterrent in seeing the sort of evidential basis for this. Because, ultimately, I guess, what we could end up having is the reality that these interventions may not be enough on their own. It would be good to get reassurance from the Minister as to whether, for example, there are other pieces of work in the pipeline to address the other recommendations being put by the likes of Consumer New Zealand, who the Ministers acknowledged in their press release.

We also welcome the changes to product-safety standards and, basically, the delegation of those powers to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). We note that, currently, those can only be made and updated by the Government under the recommendation of the Minister, but ultimately MBIE does have the resources, the tools, and, ideally, the expertise to be able to do this well.

Obviously, we hope that these areas of work carried out by MBIE under this piece of legislation will be well resourced, so that that work can actually be done adequately. With the state of our public services, obviously, as with any additional powers, whether we support them or not, which are given to a Government agency or ministry, we have concerns that adequate resourcing and equipment of people with the expertise and the ability to carry out the new provisions and powers of this bill can be done to the degree that we need to.

But, like I said, overall, this bill does very much align with our Green Party policies and principles. We look forward to hearing from submitters on their experiences with particularly supermarkets, I would say, which have been in the spotlight a lot, and the contributions around whether they think that these new penalties and stronger penalties will act as a deterrent and what else we may need to do to have a system where consumers have a fair deal when it comes to dealing with large corporations.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (16:23): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill. It looks like this bill is getting support across the House to get to the select committee—so that’s very, very positive. As the Minister’s already outlined, this is going to update the Fair Trading Act of 1986. It’s a wee while ago—1986. It’s really got three areas that it’s going to focus on. As we’ve already heard from previous speakers, there are some reforms around penalties and enforcement—upping some of the penalties. We’ve got this safe harbour provision, particularly around scam prevention. I think that’s very, very important in this modern age. Then we’ve got some streamlining of safety settings and some other changes. I’m a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, so I do look forward to hearing submitters on this bill, but I commend it to the House.

Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (16:24): I commend the Fair Trading Amendment Bill to the House. I am very strongly behind having strong fair-trading rules. I would just add to what the Minister spoke to around scams being around $200 million. My information is actually they’re more like 10 times that, so this amendment is very much welcomed. It’s seeking to balance those power imbalances with fairness and stronger practices around how we judge incurrences and it increases penalties against those incurrences.

However, there are a couple of things that we’ll be looking forward to talking to at select committee. One is around the civil liability in clause 17, new section 41B(1)(g), where we’re moving from two paragraphs, (a) and (b), to (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g), right through to (n), which are all around defences for those in contravention—in other words, those that have caused harm. So it’s a very big extension and we’re really interested to see how that rolls out. Similarly, with the safe harbour, are we going to get that fair balance between those two competing things? Are we looking after the consumers and are we balancing those imbalances that often occur between large corporates and individuals?

We commend the direction on the tin to prohibit misleading and deceptive conduct. We look forward to upholding these ideals through select committee and we commend this bill to the House.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (16:26): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. One of the biggest frustrations that people have is when they pick something up from the supermarket shelf, for example, and they see one price there, and then they take it to the till and they see something completely different. For once, we are changing what is taking place. We are increasing—

Reuben Davidson: It’s like an election promise.

TOM RUTHERFORD: Oh, Reuben Davidson doesn’t like this change. We’ll remember that. People in Christchurch East will remember that. He wants you to have a different price at the till then you do on the shelf. He just said it across the House. We’re changing it. The maximum penalty for breaching the Fair Trading Act is going from $600,000 up to potentially $5 million. We’re going to hold these people to account. I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (16:27): The question is, That the Fair Trading Amendment Bill be considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (16:28): Point of order. Sorry, I’m just wondering if the Clerk wouldn’t mind repeating. I have that the next order of business is the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill committee stage recommittal.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The Minister is correct. We are up to the education bill.

Cameron Luxton: Committee stage?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): No. Well, we need the Minister here to move.

Hon Member: The Minister’s here.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Yeah. That’s all I need. Someone to stand up and move.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (16:28): Point of order. It clearly looks like the Government isn’t ready for the business in front of the House, so we should just move on, as we did in the last session.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth) (16:29): Speaking to the point of order. We have the order as being that particular bill, but it’s the committee stage. We’ve got a Minister ready to go into the chair.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): There is a motion that needs to be moved before we can get there. The Minister is waiting.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Deputy Leader of the House) (16:29): I so move.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I need the motion that’s on the crib sheet. We’re just dealing with this bit first.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (16:29): Point of order, Madam Speaker. I move, That the business for the rest of the day be discharged.

It’s clear that the Minister is not here to continue the business in front of the House. The last bill, you moved through quite quickly. On that basis, I ask that you apply the same to the current situation. I move that the remaining business of the day be discharged as a result.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’m not going to put that motion. We had a Minister on his feet—we’ve now got the—

Hon Scott Simpson: I’m yielding.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): You’re yielding to the Minister. I’m calling the Hon Erica Stanford, but I do want to say that this is extremely messy and there needs to be a bit more coordination about what’s going on in the House.

Recommittal

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:31): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the order of the day for the third reading of the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be discharged and the bill be recommitted immediately to consider Amendment Paper 633 in my name.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Which is the motion that I have on my crib sheet.

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

Ayes 83

New Zealand National 48; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8; Kapa-Kingi.

Noes 34

New Zealand Labour 34.

Motion agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 82, Noes 35

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Amendment Paper 633.

Committee of the whole House

Part 1 Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 633

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee. The House has resolved to recommit the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill to consider the Minister’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper (AP) 633. The scope of debate is narrow. It is confined to the amendments in that AP, which concern long-term exemptions from enrolments set out in clauses 5F and 51A. The AP also proposes amendments to clause 2, “Commencement”. Other matters addressed when the committee last considered the bill are not open for further debate. I remind members that the Chair is the sole judge of relevance and I will be looking for contributions that are directly related to the amendments before the committee. We come first to the amendments proposed to Part 1 of the bill, which is the debate on clauses 5F and 51A. The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 be agreed to.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:34): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m here to discuss Amendment Paper 633 in my name. It includes two changes to the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill.

The first relates to the removal of the changes that would have required anyone with a home-schooling exemption to meet specific requirements. The Government has listened to feedback that we’ve received and have decided to pause the work on these changes and include them in future legislation. Feedback from stakeholders, MPs, coalition partners, and those in the education sector show that the issue is more complex than first thought and will now take time to get it right. We still consider that it is reasonable to have some checks that ensure all home-schooled children receive an adequate education, but we do not intend to progress changes through this bill.

The second change is around the commencement dates for the establishment of NZSPA—the New Zealand School Property Agency—and the transfer of regulatory functions to the Education Review Order (ERO). With the bill being committed back to the committee of the whole House, I want to ensure that there remains sufficient time to prepare or keep proposals in relation to these. I’m proposing to amend the commencement date for the NZSPA and transfer of functions to ERO so that these changes come into effect by 1 November 2026, or at an earlier date through an Order in Council.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:36): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to rise to discuss—because I know that there are changes to clause 2 and also clause 2(3), which, substantially, is quite different from what we’re discussing with clause 5F and clause 51A.

Madam Chair, with the previous Chair in the seat, I want to start with the home-schooling section. I want to thank the Minister of Education for bringing this amendment to the committee because of the advocacy of particularly the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand, as well as other home educators who have raised this concern over the last week with various members of the House. I do want to check—the Ministers have said that this is in response to what members of the public, and also MPs, coalition partners, have said, but, previously, when we were debating this just yesterday, the Minister was basing it on advice given by the ministry. At that stage, we raised concerns around, particularly in the regulatory impact statement, with the home-schooling part, how that data—I remember asking this question of the Minister—was collected and anecdotal evidence, and if the Minister could be assured that that actually accurately reflects the home-schooling sector. At that stage, the Minister did say, to her knowledge, that is correct. But I want to check with the Minister, from yesterday through to today, as a first question: what has changed in terms of the Minister’s decision, and what has the Minister learnt within the last 24 hours, but, also, what is the Minister seeing as the path forward?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:38): Ministers rely on advice from their agencies. When the Education Review Office (ERO) writes that they have increasing concerns, frankly because of the lack of available data, because there are no regulations for them to rely on to be able to collect good data, apart from the fact that they were seeing more and more cases and, essentially, when they went into some at the end of last year, which confirmed their concerns, Ministers have to take that seriously. When you hear that there are child protection issues, the first thing you do is ask for advice from the ministry, which is exactly what I did, which confirmed those statements made by ERO in their letter to me.

Essentially, as I’ve already said, today, in the House, in question time, it is a more complex issue. We will take time to get this right. Are there children who are at risk? Yes, there are. We will have to look at this in the next education amendment bill (No 2), which we’ve already started work on. We do need to make sure—and, actually, when I was in conversations with the home-schooling bodies in my office earlier today, even they said that they also have concerns. So it is a shared concern. It has been a concern that’s been raised with multiple Governments. It’s not a new issue. We will need to look at this, but given the complexities of this, it had become clear that it’s better to take a bit of extra time to make sure that we get this right. That’s the balance: child protection and making sure we get this right.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (16:40): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I have a couple of tabled amendments, but they may still be being processed by the House Office, so they might not be available yet.

I understand that in clause 2 of Amendment Paper 633, it is proposed that 1 September 2026—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. We’re debating the deletion of clauses 5F and 51A. The paper you’re referring to, clause 2, is the next debate.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: It’s the next debate, sorry, I have some questions in general. You’re not wanting discussion around the date of implementation—that’s not what we’re discussing? That’s next?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): That’s in clause 2.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: OK—thank you very much. I was going off the paper that was available on the Table. I know they’re just putting them on as we’re getting here, so if the clerks are able to notify us if new papers are made available, that would also be helpful.

If the Minister of Education would be able to explain—thank you very much for the information in relation to what has happened today, and the change to now take home-schooling out of this amendment bill. I think that’s been warmly welcomed. We would like to understand a little bit more about why this decision was taken so late in the piece. We were in the Chamber last night, debating this stage in the committee of the whole House, and that would have been an opportunity for these amendments to be made at that stage. I’m unclear as to why the bill has had to be recommitted to the committee of the whole House and for these amendments to be made now. It would be interesting to understand why they weren’t made last night. I’m really interested to know.

The other point, if the Minister would be able to speak to it, is that from the initial Amendment Paper 583, the home-schooling group was just one group who were impacted by the changes in there. I’m interested to know if the Minister would be prepared to have discussions, as she did with the home-schooling representatives, with other groups who are also impacted by the amendments that were put through under the previous Amendment Paper 583. Thank you.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:43): As I’ve already said publicly, future changes to legislation will go through a process, and all of the affected groups will be part of those discussions.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:43): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just further with regard to this section, I do want to again acknowledge the Minister of Education for bringing this amendment to the House after hearing from the public. One of the things that was addressed as part of Amendment Paper 583 last week, when this particular section was brought to the House’s attention on the day of the committee of the whole House stage, without consultation and without a select committee stage—there were multiple areas in that Amendment Paper that affected broader aspects, not just in terms of the home-schooling section, but also in terms of changes to the Teaching Council.

My first question to the Minister is more of a process question, which is: nothing in Amendment Paper 583 that was released last week had public consultation and feedback, but we are seeing that the Minister is willing to change her mind in light of new evidence and new information. It does question in terms of whether the Minister considered what was then proposed—actually, that’s fine. What does the Minister consider to be appropriate process when it comes to something like this now happening? Was there then anything else that was in Amendment Paper 583 that the Minister then is unsure of because of the fact that we didn’t manage to hear from the public and that potentially has unintended consequences, that the Minister would consider removing?

The Minister has already mentioned that there is a subsequent education bill that’s currently in draft. Would that be an appropriate time to consider more broadly—and I’m not saying that the Minister doesn’t have the ability to do things—and to be able to consider some of those changes and allow for the public to actually hear or for us to get public submissions on the other changes that haven’t had time to consult? I want to check with the Minister if there’s anything else that she thinks should be removed.

I want to check with the Minister as well—because, again, the Minister talks about the fact that this is in light of public advocacy and new information that has come to light. I do want to check that one of the things is that the peak body for home-schooling—and I’m really pleased to hear that the Minister has met with them, but they have been requesting to meet with the Minister since November last year. This is not a new thing. This is both in response to the changes we’re seeing in Amendment Paper 633, but also in response to the questions that the Minister has had in the House today.

I wanted to check with the Minister why the Minister didn’t choose to engage with the sector then to balance the advice that she received from the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office at the same time with the peak body for home educators, and now we have to do some of the last-minute changes? Has that just been something that has been dropped off the radar by the ministerial office? I totally understand that is something that could have happened, but I want to check if the Minister had any—did the Minister know that the home educators collective contacted the Minister’s office and repeatedly asked for meetings since November last year?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:46): In relation to the second part of the question, I have met with home-schooling associations. There are a number of—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Today?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: There are a number of different home-schooling associations. I met with one recently in my electorate office in Auckland, and it’s in my ministerial diary.

Look, in terms of the advice that I received from the Ministry of Education on what the options were, that was not received until earlier this year. At that point in time, as I’ve already explained in the House today—from that point, to get it into this bill, given that I have serious concerns about child safety, we had to go like the clappers, and I’ve already said that there wasn’t time for consultation. It’s not about new information, as the speaker has suggested, it’s about additional complexities that we didn’t expect, which is why we will take this back to a full process.

Regarding the other part of the Amendment Paper, I already told the committee of the whole House that I would be taking further advice on the Teaching Council and warned of that, so there is nothing further in this Amendment Paper that relates to that, and that was given the Debbie Francis review. It’s not part of this; it’s out of scope, and it won’t be part of this.

In relation to the question from Ginny Andersen earlier about what changed between tonight and today: well, nothing. Part 1 was last week that we debated, and I couldn’t amend it this week, but obviously we’re doing it now through this Amendment Paper.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:48): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to follow on in terms of the home-schooling section. Again, I acknowledge what the Minister is saying in terms of child safety, and I agree that there have been things—and I agree with what the Minister said before in terms of response from the sector in terms of meetings with them today and earlier on.

I want to check, has the Minister then, at this stage, rather than making legislative changes—because one of the other things that we have heard, for example from the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand, is that changes could already be possible under the current legislative framework without having to make additional changes. This is particularly with regards to, I think, section—I can double check the particular clause.

My understanding is, and I want to check with the Minister, if the child safety is still something of concern, and which is a concern for everyone in this House, whether the Minister would have considered potentially looking at, for those who do receive the stipend from the Ministry of Education regarding homeschooling, that the Ministry is able to put in place certain criteria around that. For those who have signed a declaration of exemption who do not get the stipend from the Ministry, there are actually also other opportunities for the Ministry already, under the current legislative framework, to be able to review and oversee certain things. Is that something that has been considered?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:50): Look, the advice that I’ve had is that that is not possible. And of course, the whole purpose of this is to remove this part of the bill so that we can then go through a full process and work with the Home Schooling NZ association on their views. But the advice that I’ve had is that it’s not possible for the Ministry to do that.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (16:50): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I have a couple of amendments, and I think they’re just coming through shortly, and I’ll speak to those. I’m really interested to understand, in terms of the clause in the bill under 5F which is in and around exemptions. I know this is a particular area of home-school concern, the exemptions that are granted. If there’s any indication, is this one of the areas that she thinks that further work is needed to be done on, in particular? Because I also spoke with those groups who were here today out the front of Parliament, and that was one of the areas that is of key concern.

I would also like to understand, if possible, from the Minister—this whole kind of process has seemed very rushed, in that there has been very little consultation and communication with groups who are directly affected by this legislation. I would like to understand, she’s already indicated in her initial statements to the House that under Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill (No 2), that is where the home-schooling changes—that we’re removing now from this bill—will end up being in. Can the Minister indicate whether there will be an opportunity for consultation and also for select committee submissions to occur if it’s resubmitted under that bill, given the fact that that was bypassed in this legislation. I think that’s something that they would like to know. I’m also interested in knowing if there are any other parts of this bill that she’s reconsidering in terms of engagement—any further engagement. That would be good to know as well.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:52): In answer to those two questions: about consultation, yes; and anything else I’m considering, no.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:52): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m also seeking guidance from you, Madam Chair. The previous Chair mentioned that we’re only debating 5F and 51A at this stage, but we also notice there are changes to clause 2. How would that work?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): There’s another debate.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: That’s another debate. OK, cool. Thank you so much; that’s clear.

I just want to check with the Minister because—thank you, Minister, for responding to the previous; I know that the officials are also very prompt in terms of their advice. But I want to check with the Minister, because the way that the current legislative framework works is—for example I see over here, under section 556, that the Secretary is already able to determine the condition that may apply to the grant, this is to do with the grant for home educators, and required to provide the Secretary with any statistical or other information within the time specified. Is that not something that already kind of addresses some of the concerns that the Minister had regarding strengthening oversight of home education, and also take action if there are unsatisfactory home education conditions. That being the part of the home educators that does receive a grant from the Ministry—so this is section 556—but for those who, let’s say, sign a declaration of exemption, which they are allowed to do as well, is there a possibility, for example, when you’re looking at the way that the Education Review Office (ERO) is able to review or conduct home education families under section 466-469 of the Education and Training Act, ERO is also able to conduct some of the reviews etc., that already is within the current legislation.

Finally, section 38 of the bill—and I know that, for example, 5F refers to the insertion of section 38A; so this is the immediate, preceding clause of the section that we’re deleting here. Section 38 of the clause already provides for the possibility to revoke an exemption of the Secretary is not satisfied as to as regularly or as well as, in the context of the ERO review under section 466-469 of the Education and Training Act. So when we’re looking at the criteria that’s already been set under section 38, section 466-469, and section 556 of the Education and Training Act, I just want to get double reassurance from the Minister that none of those sections allows the Minister to do what the Minister intended to do under Amendment Paper 583, and now we’re seeing the removal of this.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (16:55): Just in relation to this question, section 556 has got nothing to do with home-schooling whatsoever.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (16:55): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Now, in relation to clause 51A which is under Amendment Paper 633, “delete cause 51A” which relates to new section 640A inserted around “Regulations relating to long-term exemptions from enrolment”. I just wanted to understand, with the Minister, whether in particular the change under that, has that been consulted with New Zealand First yet, or not? And if not, does that need to happen before we vote today?

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier) (16:56): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

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.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1, set out on Amendment Paper 633, be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Committee of the whole House

Clause 2 Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 633

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we come now to our final debate, which is clause 2 on the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper (AP) 633. The question is that the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on AP 633 be agreed to.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:59): Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the part that I was a little bit perplexed by, because it wasn’t part of anything that the—or at least I haven’t seen—Minister has indicated in terms of changing.

I wanted to check because the amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa), replacing “1 September 2026” with “by Order in Council” is quite a substantive change that does change quite a few sections of the legislation. That includes sections 5A to 5E, sections 47 to 50, section 52(1), section 55, and “section 61, but only for the purpose of Part 2 of Schedule 2”. This is quite a substantial change in terms of, essentially, the role of the Director of Regulation.

I want to check, first of all—the explanatory note doesn’t actually say why the Minister is changing it from a specific date to a date set by Order in Council. I do have an amendment on this particular part. I think that maybe rather than setting a specific date by Order in Council, it should maybe give a specified date but move it to 1 July 2027, which possibly could work with some of the other dates that we’re seeing here. It is curious though, because nothing in clause 2(2)(aaa) has anything to do with homeschooling. So I think that’s my first question to the Minister regarding that particular part.

Then a second part is in clause 2(3) replacing “subsection 2(a)” with “subsection 2(aaa)” and replacing “October” with “November” of 2026. Again, clause 2(a) refers to all of the changes, from memory, around the School Property Agency.

Can I just check. With both the Director of Regulation and the School Property Agency, they’re now both set by Order in Council. Why has the Director of Regulation been changed to be set by Order in Council; and, if the provision has not been met, why are they being deferred from 1 October to 1 November? Also, in terms of my amendment of changing the date from “by Order in Council” to “1 July 2027”.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (17:02): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a relatively simple explanation, and that is that we were meant to be in the third reading now, and all of those commencement dates were predicated on that. We’re now having to push the third reading out to a later date, so we are pushing those dates out with an Order in Council ability to be able to bring them forward depending on when the third reading falls. But it’s just to make sure that we can get the Director of Regulation transfer done correctly, and the same with the New Zealand School Property Agency.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (17:03): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for that response. But then the puzzling fact remains that the commencement date for the bill—the remainder of the section that isn’t part of that—still comes into effect on 6 July 2026. So why then has that particular date not changed but only the dates around the Director of Regulation and also around the New Zealand School Property Agency? From memory, when we did the public hearing on this bill, back during the select committee stage, the Minister already suggested that certain things are in the works.

Also, by the way—Madam Chair, just to the Minister—the Minister during that public hearing promised to send the select committee a copy of the updated 10-year school property plan, which we’re still waiting from the Minister on despite correspondence as well. So if the Minister wouldn’t mind sending that to the select committee, we would be very grateful.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m not sure that that’s relevant to this clause.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Just going back to the particular dates, if that’s the case—because presumably we know that there’s already been progress being made around the New Zealand School Property Agency. We’ve already seen the Minister making public announcements around some of those.

Just because of the fact the third reading of the bill is going to be pushed out, why did the Minister feel that it needs to be pushed out by an extra month?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (17:04): I have already explained that. We have to set up an entire new Crown entity, and we need time to be able to do that, hence the late commencement for the New Zealand School Property Agency. And the same with the Education Review Office. There are staff transfers within the ministry for government changes that we have to account for, and we had always had a different commencement date for that, and we need to make sure that we do that properly. And so, because of the delayed third reading, as I’ve already said—I repeat myself again—those dates need to be pushed out and with the ability to be flexible, depending on when that third reading will be.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (17:05): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate her explanation of the fact that the date for the third reading was initially set down for today and the fact that there has been this committee stage reopened again for whatever—we’re not quite sure exactly why, but it has.

I understand that the change to the commencement date for the relevant sections to be done by Order in Council is necessary, but the point I’d really like to understand from the Minister is that the groups directly impacted by the changes which we’re attempting to fix now have already had a huge amount of uncertainty. They have been seeking time to engage not only with the ministry but also with her in the past, and it’s only today that she’s met with them—which seems, you know, odd, but, never mind, that’s a good start.

My question is: why is there the uncertainty that this group have already had to deal with right throughout this process, when they’ve been shut out, like many other groups, from the educational reforms we’ve seen? They’ve still got uncertainty with the fact that there is no clear date when this is going to kick in.

In fact, through having it through secondary legislation, through having it by an Order in Council, that makes it, really, still quite unclear to those groups impacted. I think it’s only—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Minister has actually explained the timing issue twice. We need to accept that that answer has already been explained to the House.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Has she—[Interruption]. Oh right. Thank you. The Minister may still like to explain why indeed we have had to head those changes by inserting clauses that make a single set date by Order in Council.

I’m still interested to know if she will go on to get further engagement from those groups who she met with today to giver further understanding as to the next stages of the process and how this will work.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (17:07): Just for the member’s understanding, the changed dates have absolutely nothing to do with the home-schooling sector.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to take a call from Priyanca Radhakrishnan, but I really am expecting people to stay—this does not refer to the current member—on the clause that we’re up to.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (17:07): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one very quick clarification that I seek from the Minister. I didn’t actually hear her response to Ginny Andersen’s question. I note the Minister’s response that the fact that it’s a single date set by Order in Council is so that there is flexibility for the Minister. I think she said that in a previous response. I do want to check though—and I appreciate the Minister removing home schooling. I just want to check whether that flexibility is also to give her some time to engage with the many parents of disabled children who have written in about the specifics to do with home schooling. So I just want to know whether that flexibility is also flexibility for them when it comes to engagement on these changes.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (17:08): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

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.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa) to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” with “1 July 2026” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, there are eight tabled amendments from the Hon Ginny Andersen proposing to amend Amendment Paper 633 to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” in clause 2(2)(aaa) with “1 September” of different years between 2029 and 2041. To test the will of the committee, I will put the question on four of those amendments.

The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa) to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” with “1 September 2043” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa) to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” with “1 September 2039” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa) to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” with “1 September 2035” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(2)(aaa) to replace “a single date set by Order in Council” with “1 September 2029” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the will of the committee having been tested, the Hon Ginny Andersen’s remaining four tabled amendments replacing “a single date set by Order in Council” are out of order as inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 633 amending the proposed amendment to clause 2(3)(b) to replace “November” with “December” be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

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

Noes 67

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 633 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The amendments are agreed to. Therefore, clause 2 as amended stands part.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the report be adopted.

Ayes 102

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

Noes 19

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for the Environment) (17:20): I present a legislative statement on the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill.

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

Third Reading

Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for the Environment) (17:21): I move, That the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill completes a necessary legislative step to support the establishment of the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, which we’ll call MCERT. As the House is aware, the Ministry for the Environment is the only agency involved in the merger that was created by statute. Disestablishing it as a legal entity therefore requires an amendment to the Environment Act of 1986. This is the specific purpose of this amendment bill.

This bill ensures that the important environmental functions being carried out by the ministry every day since its creation in 1986 will continue. The Environment Act of 1986, with the requirement to advise the Minister for the Environment on all of the aspects of environmental administration, continues as it is today; it does not go away. The Act’s requirement to resolve conflicts with environmental policies does not go away. The role of the Secretary for the Environment does not go away. This bill represents a change of form but not function.

It is important, at this final stage, to restate the context for change and what it is intended to support. Some of New Zealand’s most persistent challenges, including environmental protection, housing affordability, infrastructure delivery, climate adaptation, regional growth, and productivity, are fundamentally interconnected. Despite this, our current system attempts to manage them through fragmented institutional arrangements and policy silos. Key policy and implementation expertise have been spread across multiple agencies, making it harder to provide coherent advice on issues that cross traditional system and portfolio boundaries, and harder to deliver timely outcomes for communities.

The decision to establish MCERT reflects the judgment that bringing these functions together within a single, system-led agency provides a stronger foundation for delivery. It is part of setting up the Public Service for the future through reducing the number of departments, increasing the use of artificial intelligence, and seizing the opportunity to innovate. MCERT will be at the forefront of a modern, high-performing Public Service.

Despite assertions to the contrary, the Ministry for the Environment was never established to be an advocate nor independent. It was established as a department of State under the control of the Minister to ensure a full and balanced account was taken to the management of natural and physical resources. It is not the Department of Conservation, the Environmental Protection Authority, nor the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. While the Ministry for the Environment plays an important role in the Public Service, it is not a role that must be performed in isolation. This Government believes solving the problems we are facing as a country requires working a different way. By viewing these challenges as an interconnected system, environmental considerations can now be at the heart of decisions about where and how we live, work, and play.

This bill also modernises the Environment Act 1986 so that it aligns more closely with the Public Service Act 2020, which sets the standard framework for departments across the Public Service. It also updates definitions to align with the modern drafting style in the Legislation Act 2019. The Act currently contains bespoke provisions reflecting arrangements put in place when the Ministry was first established nearly 40 years ago. This legislation updates those arrangements so that environmental functions sit within the same accountability and governance framework that applies to other constituent parts of MCERT, while preserving the statutory role and responsibility of the Secretary for the Environment. That consistency matters for clarity, transparency, and effective stewardship across Government. Environmental responsibilities are not being removed, and they are not being diluted. They transfer unchanged to the statutory role of the Secretary for the Environment, who remains directly accountable to the Minister for the Environment for their performance.

Select committee scrutinies further reinforced the need for accountability, recommending strengthened reporting and assurance requirements that require the secretary to report annually to Parliament and the public on the performance of their functions under the Environment Act of 1986. This will increase transparency over current arrangements, and enable this House and the public to better understand how environmental advice is provided within the new ministry. Indeed, you could argue there is a stronger level of scrutiny on the Secretary for the Environment than we have currently.

This amendment bill directly supports the Government’s ambitious reform agenda. Reforms to the resource management system, transport planning and funding, infrastructure delivery, and simplifying local government all rely on a Public Service that can work effectively across interconnected issues and support coordinated implementation. MCERT will enable this by bringing together the environmental planning, housing, transport, and local government functions that shape outcomes on the ground. Those with environmental policy and implementation expertise will be involved throughout, delivering on policy decisions that impact the environment and prosperity of our communities.

Let me be clear: bringing these functions together does not remove difficult choices. What it does do is provide the conditions needed to improve the quality of advice provided to Ministers—advice that clearly identifies trade-offs, clearly identifies risks, and clearly identifies the consequences across systems and portfolios to support better decision making and, ultimately, better outcomes for New Zealanders.

Some have suggested that combining environmental and development-related functions is without precedent internationally, or that precedent is limited to countries that we wouldn’t want to favourably compare ourselves to. I contend there are actually well-established international examples where responsibility for environmental protection and land-use planning is brought together within a single agency. Some examples include Switzerland’s Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications; Turkey’s Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change; and Finland’s Ministry of the Environment, which explicitly includes housing, building, and land-use planning. France provides another example of even broader integration, bringing together skills, experience, and expertise across environment and climate, transport, housing, and infrastructure policy within a single agency grouping the ministries of ecological transition, spatial planning, transport, cities, and housing. Similar name, strikingly similar functions. They may operate in different contexts to our own, with different pressures, but these models reflect a common understanding that environmental outcomes are strengthened, not weakened, when they are embedded within decisions about how cities grow, how infrastructure is delivered, and how land is used.

As Minister for the Environment, my expectations following the passage of this amendment bill are clear, and they are practical. I expect MCERT to operate in a way that consistently brings environmental considerations into decisions and advice—not as a late check in or afterthought, but as a core input. I expect the Secretary for the Environment to resource and maintain a strong environmental voice within MCERT, grounded in evidence, statutory responsibility, and long-term stewardship. I expect advice that is honest about trade-offs, clear about risks, and explicit about consequences so that Ministers can make well-informed decisions across portfolios. I also expect the new agency to work effectively with local government, iwi, and communities, reducing complexity at the centre and supporting more coherent implementation on the ground throughout our cities and regions—everywhere that New Zealanders live, work, and play. Importantly, I expect accountability through clear public reporting on how environmental responsibilities are being met and how they are shaping decisions across the wider system. Again, this bill does not change what the law requires in relation to the environment. It improves how the Public Service is organised to meet those requirements more effectively and support delivery of the Government’s broader reform programme.

The environment is deeply loved and deeply embraced by New Zealanders. I acknowledge that for many the disestablishment of the ministry may feel like the end of an era. For 40 years the ministry in its current form has been instrumental to the lives of New Zealanders and the wellbeing of our environment. It is understandable some may be feeling a sense of loss. But the ministry’s left us a legacy that we can all be proud of. I want to assure New Zealanders that this bill signals a new chapter for environmental management in New Zealand. It is not the end of the story. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (17:31): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It would be so nice to not be standing here with the deeply cynical mind-set about everything that that Minister has just said. That is because, whilst the Minister has just said some very nice things about the environment, some good things about outcomes, something about the importance of the environment to all New Zealanders—things that I agree with her on—the track record of this Government is just bad for our environment; everything that they’ve done. So I cannot come to this with a fresh, rosy perspective, because we have to look at the context of what this Government has done. So let’s have a look at that.

The Minister has promised that it’s going to be better, yet, in her very own words, she said that you could argue that the environment is going to be stronger in this ministry. She did not say that it must be. When we were in the committee of the whole House stage of the debate, I offered her up many suggestions for new titles that could have emphasised the importance of the environment in this new ministry, but she chose to not make any changes, which is a great shame. But what we’ve seen this Government do in terms of the environment is huge cuts to funding for the environment. No doubt we’ll see more of those tomorrow again. We have the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment talking about the $1 billion gone. We’ve seen the waste levy be dehypothecated so it now applies to any environmental issue—it does not have to relate to waste. Whilst that might sound nice—“Oh, we can spend some more money on the environment.”—what it means is the central tax fund is now not going to pay for environmental things, and so there is a huge decrease in overall environmental spending. That is not a good thing.

Hon Simon Watts: Rubbish!

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, it’s rubbish, I hear from opposite. Well, yes, that is the focus of this Government. It is on creating more rubbish and getting rid of the circular economy, isn’t it, Mr Watts? That is a great shame. We have seen that the previous Minister for the Environment has banned the phrase “circular economy”, because they have said that the balance has gone too far.

Cameron Luxton: Could we talk about this bill now?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, now I’m being asked to talk about the bill. Well, this is all in the context of this. This Minister has said that we are to believe that this Government will do better for the environment, when we know their track record is to cut, cut, cut, and to make things into culture wars. It is deplorable.

So we have seen the end of environmental hubs. We have seen the end of legal funds for environmental cases. This is all what this Government has done. We’ve seen speedy little changes to the Resource Management Act, which this Government has brought back, to enable pollution of waterways. That is this Government’s track record. We’ve seen a fast track promulgated to enable applicants to get around environmental protections. That is the point of their version of a fast track. We’ve seen every single climate change action gutted—totally gutted.

Hon Simon Watts: Oh, what a load of rubbish!

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, and the Minister of Climate Change seems to be disagreeing with me. So I look forward to him taking a call to explain how it is that this Government is doing all the actions of the Climate Emergency Response Fund, all the actions of the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund, all the actions to decrease climate pollution. I am yet to hear anything on what they’re doing about the $6 billion on climate adaptation that they got rid of.

This Government has also ended localism, after campaigning so strenuously on it. We have, in fact, seen the decimation of local community plans. So that is why I am not rosy about what the Minister just said. That is why I’m cynical and deeply concerned, and why we asked so many questions in the committee of the whole House stage about the methods that we could make sure that what the Minister said is going to happen would actually happen. But we did not get much comfort there.

Instead, we hear, and we heard the Minister—I think it’s the first time I’ve heard it in relation to this bill in these parliamentary debates—talk about artificial intelligence (AI), and that being one of the reasons for putting these different parts of Government together. We know that this Government just thinks it’s some sort of magical thing. AI is going to solve all the problems. “We can just give it to big international companies and they can deal with all of our data and all of our decision making and we’ll save a whole lot of money.” That is not how it works. It is much more difficult. Of course it’s a useful tool as well, but simply saying that artificial intelligence is going to fix everything shows a disdain for any inquiry or being curious about how it actually works.

We’ve seen as well the manifesto—I have the National Party’s manifesto here. There is no mention in there of getting rid of the Ministry for the Environment. We heard as well in a number of submissions this concern that there will be policy capture and it will be difficult for public servants to really be able to make a case for the environment, as they would do currently, and put things up to the Minister. We didn’t hear any answers about what happens to the Vote. At the moment there is a Vote Environment. I’m sure we’ll see that diminished tomorrow in the Budget. But we had no assurances over what would happen with that Vote, nor about whether or not there would even be a Minister for the Environment. That definition is removed from the bill.

And the Minister is the Minister for the Environment at the moment, but clearly the direction that this Government wants to go in is to not have a Minister for the Environment. They’re getting rid of the ministry; why have a Minister? You can have a secretary and that’ll be it. This is a big problem.

We’ve also heard from the Minister before that this would get rid of policy silos. But she has not given us any indication of how we will measure the getting rid of policy silos. Will it be simply because the environment will be diminished in amongst these other ministries that are currently ministries that are all joining together to be this one agency and be forgotten about? Is that a way to get rid of a silo? You just forget about one thing and then it’s not a silo—it doesn’t exist. A silo requires different bodies. So if one just dissolves away, it’s gone. That is what we are very concerned about.

Again, nothing has been said. Nobody from that side has said, “Do not worry, Labour Party. Do not worry, Green Party. We will make sure that there is a Minister for the Environment in Cabinet. We will make sure that we will not enable more pollution. We will have laws that set proper environmental limits.” These are all things that could be said. “We will make sure that there are separate policy avenues to go to the Minister, rather than going through a Secretary for the Environment.”, who is also the CEO of this new ministry and who also has transport and also has regions and also has cities. How are we going to be clear that the siloed approach is not just going to be dissolved?

Those are things that we could be asking for, but we come back to this question that’s been asked over and over of who will speak for the environment in Government. We know that there’s no Minister for the Environment at the Cabinet table currently. We have this track record that I’ve already spoken about, and this needs to change. The environment has already been deleted by this Government, and it’s a disgrace.

LAN PHAM (Green) (17:41): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just have to reflect in times like these, when bills are just so regularly coming through this Chamber at pace, on what it would take to understand that, as human beings, we are literally existing on this rock that is orbiting the sun at this precise point and that this actually allows life to flourish here on planet Earth.

We heard from the Minister for the Environment that this change is “necessary”, and what the context of this Government’s “necessary” involves is bureaucratic shuffling decision-making that is so shallow that it ultimately gets us nowhere as a country or as a collective of human beings. What ultimately is necessary for us, not just here in Aotearoa New Zealand but around the world, is to understand the true necessity of protecting our environment, and here in this country, all the things and all the data and information that comes from this very ministry, the Ministry for the Environment, all the factors across water, across air, across biodiversity, and across oceans—the data and evidence tells us that it’s not quite getting through as to how necessary those things are and how necessary it is that we actually prioritise them and make decisions that turn the dial and enable the conditions and the functional ecosystems that will allow us to exist in the future. That is so basic, and it just astounds me the amount of time we are here fighting this type of legislation that just so, so comprehensively misunderstands that.

I think what is really shocking with this, as well, is that it’s not just about a misunderstanding. It’s about the deliberate decision to do this, no matter what, and we’ve seen this with this bill. The very tiny process that we actually had at select committee in even considering to do this was so truncated that it was literally two hours and 45 minutes of public hearings. Then it came to select committee, and within 40 minutes, we had just decided that “Do you know what? We’re just going to rubber-stamp this. This is just going to go through.”, despite having no assurances about the very critical role that the Ministry for the Environment plays, about their work, or about the transparency of the Budget decisions which we’re, apparently, going to see tomorrow.

We didn’t know in deciding to do this what the implications were, and, quite frankly, I don’t think committee members cared, because we sat there in public hearings, and if they’d also read all of the submissions they would know that only one person supported this, compared to 587 submitters made up of academics, iwi and hapū, experts, community groups, and environmental stewards from across the country, who were saying, “This is a terrible idea. Do not do this to the country.” They said that because 40 years ago, New Zealand elected a Government that had campaigned specifically on the Ministry for the Environment being established because New Zealanders knew and appreciated—and still do, to this day—how important having that dedicated voice for the environment at the heart of Government decision-making is, and we’re scrapping that today. This is the last, final nail in the coffin for the existence of that dedicated Ministry for the Environment. It is a shameful end of an era.

I want to recognise the Minister for talking about the legacy of the Ministry for the Environment within those 40 years because the work that they’ve been doing is something to be proud of, but the context of the legacy of this Government is doing absolutely nothing to help that work. In fact, it’s taking us backwards. I want to particularly acknowledge those staff within the Ministry for the Environment because I want them to know how much we and New Zealand value their work and how much we are fighting to protect the very critical work that they do. The fact is that we need them so desperately to be able to continue that work, despite their being merged into this mega-ministry.

Now, we’ve heard again the Minister and the Government be at pains to explain that “You know, there is an ‘E’ in MCERT, and it does stand for the environment.”, and yet, other than that, we’re seeing no other assurance about their work. I want to show members this document—and no one is going to be able to see this, right? This is the actual risks to the Ministry for the Environment—

David MacLeod: Annual report to the House on the Environment Act.

LAN PHAM: —and this would be news to you, David MacLeod, because you did not ask—sorry, Madam Speaker.

Hon Member: Environment.

LAN PHAM: The Environment Committee did not ask to see this information, which outlines very clearly that there are extremely high risks to the department—which it will no longer be, because it’s being merged into the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT)—across competing priorities, across reduction in resource capacity risk, and across a lack of clarity of roles, because the Government didn’t care about the actual implications of this. It didn’t allow us, as a select committee, to at least be informed of them or to examine them. This is absolutely shameful, and I think it demonstrates what this Government is putting in front of us on such a regular basis, which is that the environment comes last.

The fact that the Minister continues to insist that none of the roles will be diminished or diluted frankly shows how little they understand of the actual role of MCERT. We saw from the Cabinet papers that the purpose is about economic development, region by region. There was very little, if any, mention of the environment, and we know that when we look at the actual Act that MCERT has responsibility for, there are only 15 environmental Acts, which will need to be balanced behind the scenes—not in a transparent way, but behind the scenes within the ministry—with 54 Acts that cross housing, urban development, transport, and local government. This means a dilution of environmental voice at the heart of Government in a way that is not transparent. Now, we would love to be proved wrong, we would love to believe that the Minister is right, that this is going to strengthen the environmental voice, but when you put this in the context of this Government’s decisions in the environmental space, that is impossible to believe.

This is a shocking indictment on this Government where not one party, including the National Party, campaigned on this. What I’m really looking forward to is this election, with those same people and the kids and future generations that are looking at this and saying, “You know what, we are going to do something about this. We are going to elect a Government that prioritises environment at the heart of decision making and who understands the absolute necessity of the environment and how critical its connection is to us as human beings and that nature is the backbone of our economy and our society.” That’s exactly what this Government is missing, and that’s exactly why they will not continue to be in power post this election, because they just don’t get it.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (17:51): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and inject a bit of life into this debate after the speaker from the Labour Party came in with all the cynicism of someone you’d expect to be a modern-day Dionysus living in a barrel on the street because we can’t build any houses. We’ve got a space cadet coming in from outer space to tell us all about how we rely on the environment. We know how much we rely on the environment. This Government represents the population of New Zealanders who love their environment and who want to live and thrive in this world, from farmers, from ENGOs, from people who get out and clean up our beaches. That’s who we’re here for.

We got promised an argument; all we got was a diatribe over there. What we really are talking about here is replacing the label of the “Minister for the Environment” with “the Minister” to align with every other piece of legislation. The idea of silos where you’re going to have a secretary for the environment in the new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, it is there. And the idea that the positions won’t exist, well, the Ministry of Education, the Department of Internal Affairs’ Local Government in New Zealand provisions, the Ministry of Transport, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, that will be a part of this new mega-ministry, as it’s being called. I commend this bill to the House.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) (17:52): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in the third reading to support the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill. We have heard a lot of alarm around this bill. We’ve heard obviously through the select committee people opposing the bill who are concerned about it. But the reason for that is this is something new. This is something bold from this side of the House. It is putting a label on it. The Ministry of the Environment doesn’t fix the environment. I’ve sat for 15 years as a resource consent hearings chairman, and often people would come in, and nothing in those consents would be about the environment. It was all about money. It was not about the things that should be focused on.

The current framework is of responsibility results in several aspects of a proposal being split between different portfolios. This is new, it is bold, it is the ministry that will be called the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport. It’s about cities, it’s about the environment, it’s about the regions, and it’s about transport. As we heard from the Minister, this is a change in form, not function. This is about ministries that will actually start to talk to each other. They will be embedded with the same values. As we just also heard, we’ll get rid of those silos and actually start working together.

One of the great things that came out of the select committee and through the committee of the whole House aspect was that the Secretary for the Environment will report, and they will report back every year to the Minister, and we firmly believe, in New Zealand First, that this will give better environmental and development outcomes. Also, I heard from the other side of the House, from the Labour speaker, about AI solving everything. Well, AI can’t solve everything, because it can’t give Labour any policies. I will commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (17:55): Thank you. I appreciate it. Look, I speak to this kaupapa as a mokopuna of muru raupatu, and I know that often when we speak to these kaupapa, it’s hard to make people realise the life that we come from, some that perhaps the Government doesn’t have connection to. So for us everyday at a taiao level, I’m very blessed to wake up beneath my maunga, Taranaki Maunga, knowing everyday that our tūpuna did the same and our mokopuna continue to be blessed to do the same. Our maunga is something very important to us, and, in fact, the Government’s recognised the significance by giving legal embodiment to him. I guess it’s in that basis as a native born kaitiaki that we have spent a long time trying to make sure that our taonga are understood and here for everyone’s mokopuna. It doesn’t matter whether you have indigenously arrived here or just arrived last week.

I think, you know, for us, nā te whenua te toto o te tangata—the land is the lifeblood of the people, all of our people. And so for us, what this risks doing with this disestablishment and the lack of focus as we feel, as tangata w’enua, on our kaitiakitanga, is it enables the Government to disconnect all those years of understanding what the maunga, the w’enua, the taiao, and, importantly, the descendants of those taonga are about. That’s not something that you can pass on from one Government agency to another. It’s taken years and years of trust and w’anaungatanga to understand.

It feels like this bill not only weakens our role as kaitiaki, but it also weakens the lessons and the value of that relationship that we together have as kaitiaki. It feels like every time we progress and get somewhere as Māori over the years and we’ve got these little wins, and believe me, this agency isn’t the perfect agency, but there’s such a lot of intel, there’s such a lot of cultural involvement and connection. And it feels like that’s up to be traded. I think that’s the that’s the sadness that we have, is that, yes, these agencies are bricks and mortar, but inside them are people who have built up that w’anaungatanga and that intel.

And so, I guess we’re still so used to the fact that we get a few steps ahead and then we lose it. I guess the thing that I want to emphasise to our people is that sometimes we just have to believe in what it is that we can do, even when the Government is going to threaten some of that with the closure of these agencies, the Ministry for the Environment, and remind us that, you know, we still were able to win the Trans-Tasman seabed mining. We were still able to win against Shane Jones’s own direct designed, customised fast-track seabed mining bill. We were still able to win against forcing the name of Egmont away from our maunga. We were able to win Te Awa Tupua as a legal entity. We were able to win and still stand in survival against muru raupatu. We were able to win against fracking wai pollution. Because we intergenerationally have this mātauranga and this connection to our taonga. Ka ora te whenua, ka ora te tangata.

[If the land thrives, so too do the people.]

So we can see Governments attempt to derail, disestablish, and dismantle, but they have truly learned nothing from the lessons of our forefathers—many who are on these walls. This ridiculous bill may attempt to shut up the doors of Crown accountability, to nail up the shutters of Government responsibility, to cut the w’are taiao beyond recognition. But now that we as tangata w’enua, we as natural kaitiaki, will be here beyond this Government and be here as we continue with our indigenous solutions to thrive and our w’akapapa to thrive. And we will make sure that our history shows where we stood when we were trying to stand up for our environment, just as we had to so many times before. So kia kaha to our w’ānau, kia kaha to those kaimahi. Kia ora rā.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Vote Correction

Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor) (19:30): Yes, good evening, members. I hoped you dined well. Just before we start, there’s a vote correction. Members, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi’s vote on the discharge and recommittal of the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill was incorrectly recorded as one vote opposed; the correct vote should have been one vote in favour. The result of the vote is, therefore, Ayes 83, Noes 34. The record will be corrected accordingly.

Bills

Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): We’re now on call six of the second split call of the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (19:30): The disestablishment of the Ministry for the Environment comes in the context of a Government that is the most radically anti-environment that we have seen in our history. The environment is gone already, you could say, so why do we need a Ministry for the Environment? “Let’s just shut it down. It’s done.” This Government has caused those New Zealanders who are passionate about caring for our environment to resort to gallows humour to survive, because that is how bad it is. They are watching dairy expansion in the Canterbury Plains, the primary cause of nitrate contamination, at the same time as their Prime Minister’s been lobbied by the biggest company in the country, and he’s denying it.

Hon Member: Shame.

STEVE ABEL: Shameful. They’re shredding our water protections, right from the beginning of this term, facilitating mining in wetlands, fast tracking mining, and removing sways of legislation from consideration through the fast-track process. They’re subsidising oil and gas exploration to the tune of $200 million, and building a $1 billion liquefied natural gas terminal, a white elephant. And they’re opening 60 percent of our conservation estate to mining and exploitation. And they’re swapping out the Resource Management Act for a bill that centres environmental protection around private property rights. You cannot have swimmable rivers by focusing on private property rights, you cannot have drinkable water, and you cannot have a stable climate or healthy biodiversity.

Now, let’s speak about the extraordinary and the magnificent biodiversity that exists in our country—the amazing endemic seabirds threatened by overfishing that this Government is about to pass a bill on, to worsen the state of our fisheries. David Attenborough’s favourite bird in the whole world—

Hon Member: Kākāpō.

STEVE ABEL: —the kākāpō, that’s right—our own native kiwi, and these amazing, rare amphibians that exist in only two places on Earth, both of them in the Waikato, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Whareorino Forest near Te Kūiti: Archey’s frog.

Let me tell you about Archey’s frog. Archey’s frog is about the size of the top end of your finger. It’s a tiny 3 centimetre frog. It has an extraordinary lifestyle. Its life cycle means that it lays eggs in wet bushland in the Coromandel. They don’t hatch as tadpoles; they hatch as froglets with little tails—in no other place on Earth do frogs do this; it only occurs in Aotearoa New Zealand. And then, their father has looked after them for eight weeks while they were incubating in eggs, they proceed to climb on to his back and spend five weeks carried around on their dad’s back until they get big enough to look after themselves. They’re mute and they’re deaf. Our birds don’t fly and our frogs don’t ribbit in Aotearoa New Zealand. These frogs live for about 30 to 40 years; they’re extraordinarily long lived. And they are critically endangered. And they are 200 million years old as a species; they existed in the time of the dinosaurs.

This Government’s attitude to that rare endemic species that only exists in the Waikato, in New Zealand, is “Bye, bye, Freddy.” That is literally their attitude. And they have just fast tracked a gold mine in their habitat. They have just fast tracked a gold mine in the Coromandel Forest Park, in the Waikato.

Andy Foster: You’re making things up.

STEVE ABEL: Facts. I visited it just before.

There is gold throughout the entire universe, but, so far as we know, in the vastness of that universe, there’s only one place that life exists, and it is on this earth. If anyone was looking down and wondering that we were choosing between looking after that rare endemic 200-million-year-old Archey’s frog, or we were choosing 30 years of royalties from a Canadian gold company, they would say, “You are fools for choosing the gold over the life that only exists in this country.”, that it is our duty to protect.

We should not be surprised that this Government is shutting down the Ministry for the Environment, because the environment that they disdain is what voters will be choosing to protect when they throw out the most destructive, anti-environmental Government in our history.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) (19:36): Look, we are streamlining the Public Service—less duplication, more efficiency. By merging environmental management, planning, and development, it makes sense. This is about fixing the basics and building the future. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (19:36): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Here we are, yet again, debating another bill that this Government has rushed through, something that they didn’t campaign on that, once again, will potentially erode protections for the environment. Members opposite contribute 30 seconds to this, including the chair of the Environment Committee—the chair of the Environment Committee, who arbitrarily decided that we will truncate submission hearings on this at select committee, something that this Parliament never discussed as we should have. I’m going to begin with that, with process, because it was an absolute travesty to democracy what happened here.

This is our last opportunity to debate this, and I will reiterate for the House, and anyone who’s watching, that this particular bill was referred to the Environment Committee on 19 February 2026, we were instructed by the House to report back no later than 24 April 2026, submissions were called with a closing date of 20 February, so one day for people to submit on the fact that this Government has decided to disestablish the Ministry for the Environment, without campaigning on it, with no heads-up to anyone who cares about the environment—one day to submit. We received and considered submissions from 588 interested individuals and organisations, we heard oral evidence from 22 submitters—that was under three hours of hearings—and, then, the committee deliberated for 40 minutes on this bill. And here we are today.

The Minister and members opposite have waxed lyrical about the fact that this is a change to form, not function; none of them could debate at committee stage the questions, or answer the questions that were raised by members on this side of the House that would have presented even a reasonable argument for what they’re doing. All of them have stood up on that side of the House and parroted lines from what they’ve been given, no real substance to the—

Grant McCallum: Oh, come on!

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I absolutely feel strongly about this. There’s been no debate on the substance of this bill, not by the new Minister and not by members opposite. I will go into a bit of detail as to why it is not just form over function; it looks like form over function, but it’s most probably not, and I will go into—

Hon Nicola Grigg: What a dud!

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Well, the Minister’s very vocal today, but she wasn’t at committee stage; couldn’t answer any of the questions that were raised, with no particular detail, dismissed the submission by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE), former National Minister Simon Upton, who gave us a very detailed submission but the Minister chose to dismiss it and not even give us a fulsome response to any of the points that were raised by Simon Upton. I will go into that in detail now.

One of the things that he said—his recommendation was for the Minister to leave out the Ministry for the Environment in this merger of the mega-ministry that they are proposing, which is why we’re here under rushed time frames to debate this bill. His ultimate recommendation was to leave this out. He made some really good points. It would have been good if the Minister had been able to actually do justice to an argument that refuted his points and that of submitters rather than just, with a fair sense of arrogance, dismissing what submitters have said. The point that the PCE made was that one of the things that falls away as a result of this amalgamation into a mega-ministry is a focus on rural communities, which, for a party that purports to be the party for rural New Zealand, didn’t seem to really care and never gave us any argument as to why that is not true. The onus should be on the Government to do that.

He says, and I quote, “What is missing from the focus of the agencies slated for merger is rural New Zealand, which arguably makes up most of New Zealand’s modified environment and where some of our biggest environmental challenges are present. One could have equally and perhaps more persuasively argued that the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for Primary Industries could have been combined.” For a Government that claims that they are all about efficiency and streamlining the Public Service, there were other options that would have made better sense than what is presented to this House today. That would have had its own challenges, but it could have been a better focus, a better use of their time and energy.

The other bit that I feel equally strongly about is the fact that there is an issue around trade-offs. He says, and I quote, “It would make sense for each bill to be managed by a separate agency so that the trade-offs are explicit and left for Ministers to decide rather than risking them being resolved within an organisation. Keeping these trade-offs explicit will be all the more important because, based on the current drafting of the bills”—and these are the bills that replace the Resource Management Act—“there is a requirement for decisions around trade-offs: environmental protections and infrastructure and economic growth.”

Now, all of this is going to be subsumed into one mega-ministry. As someone who has been the Minister of a large ministry where the chief executive reported to about seven different Ministers and had about seven or eight different portfolios to deal with, I know that it’s not always best. Sadly, this is a Government where previous iterations of National Governments are what created the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which doesn’t necessarily work more seamlessly and without silos than the rest of the Public Service. I find it a little cute when members opposite get up and read off their lines and say, “Oh, this is about silos. It is about the Public Service working more collaboratively.” Newsflash: you can actually make them work more collaboratively without a mega-ministry that subsumes the Ministry for the Environment.

Then you stand up and talk about form over function, where so many submitters have come to the Environment Committee and said that this Government’s track record gives them no confidence that there will be a focus on the environment. At this point, I want to point to the fact that I had an amendment at committee stage on the Table that would have given this Government the opportunity to strengthen the reporting by the chief executive to the Minister. It would have required annual reports that actually reported on matters related to the natural environment, that looked at the ministry’s performance of its statutory functions as they relate to the natural environment.

When the Minister gets up and says that we could make the argument that this would strengthen the new ministry’s focus on the environment, she has not given us one reason to believe that that would actually eventuate. All she has done is to stand up and say, “Well, it could happen.”, but there was no support for an amendment that would actually strengthen that. That is what gives us cause to be concerned. That is what has given those 588 submitters who were largely opposed to this bill the cause for concern. The fact is that all this Government has done is to water down protections for the Hauraki Gulf. They had a bill that they could have just passed which would have strengthened protections. Sure, they passed the bill, but they watered down those protections for the Hauraki Gulf. They have stripped $1 billion from a focus on the environment. They have a former Minister for the Environment who said that the pendulum has swung too far towards the protection of the environment.

All this Government has done is to pretend that we have a decision to make between economic growth and environmental protections. That is absolutely a false dichotomy. This Government keeps pretending, with their Fast-track Approvals Act that waters down environmental protections, with their Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill that water down environmental limits, that there is that choice between a strong economy and a healthy environment, but that is a political choice that this Government makes. There is no economy with polluted rivers. There is no productivity on eroded land. There is no growth on a warming planet. The environment is the economy, but they don’t seem to get that on that side of the House. They frame nature as an obstacle to growth, and that is lazy politics. That is lazy economics and lazier governance from that side of the House.

When members and Ministers say that it’s growth versus the economy, what they are really talking about is short-term gain for long-term loss on our part and long-term loss of wellbeing. This is a false dichotomy. It is a smokescreen from a Government that has a failing economic model, and they are pillaging the environment to prop that up. It is a Government that is out of touch. They can neither address the cost of living for people nor protect the environment.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland) (19:46): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, step back and think about it. How can you reflect the importance of the environment in our decision-making processes? How can you do that? You can do it by putting it at the heart of the planning for our roads and for our urban development and our housing—put it at the heart of that and make it a more efficient system so the decisions have to be made in consideration with the environment. That is what this Government is doing. It is fixing the basics and building the future, and I commend the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This is a five-minute split call.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (19:47): I rise to take a call—an unexpected call, actually—on the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill. It’s very disappointing that we’re getting such short calls. The member over there tried so hard to get to this House. Once he arrives here, he’s taking very short calls on a supposedly important bill.

I haven’t got much time, so I’ll keep this very brief, but I just want to reiterate a couple of points that I made in my earlier contribution. I really get a kick out of bringing tourists over here when people visit from overseas and we get to show them around New Zealand. A couple of years ago, I was able to host a Five Power Defence Arrangement delegation into Christchurch. We jumped on the bus, went through Amberley, took them up to Hanmer, and they were just absolutely amazed around this valuable asset that we have in New Zealand which is our environment. They could not believe that we would later on down the track try and derail or devalue the environment by putting in legislation like this that makes it almost like a second or a mixed priority in a mega-ministry.

It reminds me of—and I don’t intend to get too academic here, but there is an individual, an academic, by the name of Peter Feaver. He’s got this study around principal-agent theory. There are three types of oversight that he purports. One is community policing where the principal—i.e., the Minister—works with the ministries to make sure that they can get the best value for money and the best result for the people that they serve. Then you also have community policing which is alongside the agency, allowing them to come up with concerns and you work with them to try and address problems as they come up. The third one is the fire alarm model, where the Minister is absolutely hands-off and they rely on the fire alarm—i.e., something to go seriously wrong before they’ll pile in and address it. Usually, they rely on things like the media or a whistleblower within the agency to raise any concerns. What we’ve actually done with establishing this mega-ministry is create it from a community policing model into a fire-alarm model. We’re going to have to wait for something to go seriously wrong, which is a huge concern.

This brings me on to clause 13, because the closer the expert advice sits at the centre of a delivery-focused mega-ministry, the easier it is for that advice to be filtered, delayed, or reprioritised, or pushed outwards, particularly when it cuts across a whole lot of other different objectives. That’s not a criticism of officials; that’s just how large organisations work. That’s how the likes of academics like Peter Feaver see that principal agent theory panning out. Having an individual ministry with one main effort is a lot more efficient, and it serves the people a lot better.

I also just want to add, around other contributions by the ACT Party in the earlier readings, around purporting to remove red tape and remove layers of bureaucracy to make things easier: doing this and combining it into a mega-ministry actually creates more red tape. It actually makes it harder to navigate. This is what academics say. There’s empirical evidence that suggests this. What this Government is doing is just repeating mistakes that we’ve made in the past. I’d just like to highlight that to the ACT Party—that, inadvertently, they’ve actually made things more difficult for themselves.

The other thing is around how agencies work on the ground. Sometimes the legislation doesn’t keep up with their realities. One example I’ll quickly touch on is the Defence Act that was created 30-plus years ago. That Act still exists today, but it doesn’t actually reflect the operational realities of how the defence force works on the ground. The same thing with the Ministry for the Environment—it actually reflected the value that New Zealanders placed on the environment. Unfortunately, changing into this mega-ministry does not reflect the reality, and it will need amending later on—probably in the very near future.

For that reason, I do not support the bill, our party does not support the bill, and I’ll leave my contribution there.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (19:52): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I thought I’d make it really simple and use a bit of a diagram to help explain to the Opposition, because they seem a bit confused. They think that we’re dissolving the Ministry for the Environment and that we don’t care, but what we’re doing is—here we’ve got Cities. [Holds up a glass] This represents Cities. We’ve got Regions, and then we’ve got Transport. What we’ve got is Environment all by itself, all over here, feeling quite alone. What we’re going to do is bring them all together and integrate them all, so it makes a lot of sense and they can all get along together in an integrated fashion. We are fixing the basics and building the future.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call Mr Bennett: Mr Bayly, most members, I realise, do other things while they’re in the Chamber, but they go through the motions of pretending they’re actually attending to the business of the House. Sitting there with earphones on, in another space, I’m just not quite sure is keeping with that “pretence”, for want of a better word. I’ll invite you—not demand you—to show a little more attention to the House. I’ll leave it up to your wisdom and judgment as to whether you’re doing that.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour) (19:53): I’m assuming that the Hon Andrew Bayly was obviously trying to block out—

Grant McCallum: The speeches from the other side, absolutely!

GLEN BENNETT: —the speeches from this side of the room. That is exactly what I was going to say—the speeches from this side of the House, because he was convicted by what we are saying and by the truth of what we are saying in this House tonight. That’s why he had them on, because he didn’t want to be broken-hearted by the fact that his own party is walking away from the environment. His own party—maybe he was a member of the Bluegreens, and he had to put his headphones on to block it out because he was like, “I know they’re telling the truth. I know what they’re saying, and I’m so sorry, environment.”

Also, as I begin my contribution, the previous speaker, Ryan Hamilton, had a diagram which was, well, not paper, but it was some props, I think—some glasses—some empty glasses. I’m not sure what was in the glasses that have become empty now, in terms of that example of his, but I think his attempt to explain it to us does fall very short.

This is disestablishment. It says it on the tin. That’s what this Government is doing. Again, as we have traversed this this evening, as it has been through all the stages. This is around disestablishing a number of ministries, but the fact that it’s going to create a new mega-ministry—the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport. Now, we’ve been here before, a number of years ago, under a previous National Government. Of course, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was a ministry that was created. I want to give credit to the fact that I think that political parties and Government should try things, should give things a go, and I fully agree with that, but often I feel that, with the MBIE model that was created, so often ministries that were brought into that one mega-ministry get lost or get overlooked or get forgotten. Or, in terms of the money that goes into that mega ministry, sometimes it’s hard to sort of wade through and understand it. Having a stand-alone Ministry for the Environment obviously says what it means and does what it’s supposed to do. It’s around the environment.

My colleagues have made it clear, and Andrew Bayly struggled with it, so he had to put headphones on. What we have been saying from this side of the House is look at the track record of 2½ years and look at the track record of what has happened, as environmental protections are undone or, it feel likes, loosened and loosened a lot. Now, we’ve talked about the Fast-track Approvals Act that it now is. I spent my time on the Environment Committee when that bill came through the Environment Committee and then was enacted into law. Again, we had fast track as a Labour Government, we had fast track in our repeal and our new Resource Management Act reforms, but our fast track obviously had environmental measures, had environmental protections, because the whole thing, if you dig up a paddock, if you bulldoze a bank, if you pull down a bunch of trees, that piece of the environment, is changed for ever. We need to understand that that piece of the environment, that piece of land, that tree, that river, that stream, must have environmental elements put into it. Why? Because it is changed for ever. That’s why it is so important to make sure that we have a ministry and to make sure that we have advocates who are fighting for the protection of our natural environment.

Our environment is life. Our environment is what gives us life. It’s economics. The environment is economics. It’s around protecting a pristine environment—the fact that we are well cared for and looked after. For myself, as the spokesperson for tourism and hospitality, I know that very well. We often talk about the “100 percent pure” New Zealand brand. Well, the postcard we send to the world is our natural environment—the postcard we send to people on the other side of the world, to the people who have on their bucket lists that they want to come to New Zealand. Why do they want to come to New Zealand? Not for some road or some big pylon. Not for some big car park or four lanes here or there. The reason they come to New Zealand is for our natural environment. That is good economics. That is good economics. As we look at this and as we meander—

Grant McCallum: How are people going to drive to get there? Are they going to walk?

GLEN BENNETT: Well, no, I’m not saying that at all. We have roads already, I think. Unless the Government is now talking suddenly about getting rid of the roads, we have roads. We have the infrastructure that is in place, but we need to figure out how we actually honour our environment and protect it to make sure it is given to our grandchildren in better condition than we left it.

Now, looking at this legislation, I’ve got a few comments to make. In terms of some of the thoughts from select committee, and then in the report that came back to the House, there are things like the loss of independent advice and advocacy. That was something that was brought up and was very important—the institutional dilution and structural conflicts of interest within the new ministry. We had the three glasses that were brought together that were a bit empty in different places. Who knows what was in them. The fact that it actually dilutes the work of the Ministry for the Environment is a concern that we have.

So I acknowledge the three glasses sitting there, but if suddenly they are brought together, there is again the conflict of interest, the challenge, and then we have a piece around, if I can find it here—sorry about this; let me just find my page; it’s right here.

The piece around the Secretary for the Environment has become one of many that will inevitably be traded off against other priorities by the chief executive of the mega-ministry. That is the dilution, and that is something that—yes, of course we’ve got to look at models and doing things differently, but when it comes to something as precious, as important, and as fundamental, I think, to the values of what being a New Zealander is, I think we have to say no.

It goes on, in terms of the briefing that came to the select committee, that the process was concerned around governance, around consultation, and around perceived damage to democratic legitimacy, and that’s something we really need to note.

I talked about fast track and what that did in removing the environment. Of course, there’s now the piece of work being done around regional councils and their place, and maybe it’s something that we get rid of. And, again, that’s something that focuses on the environment. It focuses on water. It focuses on making sure the wellbeing of nature and of our communities.

I think as I listened to some of the submissions and as I read through some of the reports, what I saw was the fact that this piece of legislation reduces visibility. It reduces visibility on the environment.

I think, if anything, maybe we should have a mega-ministry of the environment—maybe a mega-ministry of the environment that brings in other ministries into it. Maybe there are things around the “Ministry for Water”, maybe around the “Ministry for Bird Life”, and the “Ministry for Biodiversity”. We could have a mega-ministry that is actually about protecting those things, because we know that New Zealand is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to our biodiversity and what is being done.

Hon Member: Nonsense. Absolute rubbish.

GLEN BENNETT: That’s completely factual—absolutely. Look at the statistics. Look at our wetlands. Look at what has been done in terms of our wetlands. It means, as someone who comes from Taranaki—of all of the indigenous wetlands, Taranaki has been impacted the worst. Therefore, we need to make sure—

David MacLeod: That’s a lie.

GLEN BENNETT: That’s absolutely true.

David MacLeod: No, it’s not.

GLEN BENNETT: Three percent—

David MacLeod: Of New Zealand?

GLEN BENNETT: —of Taranaki; that’s exactly right.

What I’m saying is we—the member can challenge it all he likes, but the fact that we’re standing here disestablishing—disestablishing—the Ministry for the Environment, just let that sink in. We are disestablishing the Ministry for the Environment. We’re tucking it away into another mega-ministry—when it comes to cities, when it comes to regions, when it comes to transport, and a bit of environment sprinkled in there. Maybe it’s to appease a few of the Bluegreens, maybe—I don’t know what it is. But I am concerned.

We cannot support this bill. It is yet again an attack on our environment. It is an attack on us. There is no way we will be supporting this legislation tonight.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth) (20:03): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is actually a very small bill. It’s a culmination of the fact that the Government of the day is wanting to join a number of ministries together—namely the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the Ministry of Transport, the local government functions of the Department of Internal Affairs, and, of course, the Ministry for the Environment—what this bill is primarily about. This bill is about it because that’s the only entity—the Ministry for the Environment—that needs an Act for it to be disestablished. That’s what the primary reason for this bill is all about. It’s a very small bill.

It’s absolutely correct that we’ve had a lot of submissions that have been saying that our environment is at risk, and the select committee took that very much into account when we made a very specific amendment about making sure that the Secretary for the Environment, which happens to be the new CE of the new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport (MCERT), is required to report annually to the House about them carrying out the responsibilities around the Environment Act. It is a fact that the function of the Ministry for the Environment continues exactly as it is in the new form of the ministry there, but it’s under a different form of MCERT. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill be now read a third 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 third time.

Public Service Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 26 May 2026.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): We come to call number six, a split call.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (20:06): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This bill really represents, I think, how polarised and extreme the right-wing parties in New Zealand have become. They are following the route of the Republicans in the United States, a Trump-style MAGA approach, which is really, I think, quite antithetical to what most ordinary New Zealanders—especially those who would have voted for the National Party—expect from politics in New Zealand.

We have Andy Foster here talking about how it’s common sense, so if he thinks that Trump and what’s happening in the US—which is the rapid dismantling of democracy in America—is common sense, that’s what voters should pay very close attention to, because this is not the National Party of John Key.

Under Luxon, with Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour and New Zealand First well down the rabbit hole of all kinds of Facebook conspiracy theories, we’re seeing the dismantling of democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s not yet as extreme as what’s happening in America, but, having watched that very closely over the last few decades, I can say we are going in that direction very, very quickly, and this bill demonstrates exactly why.

While it pretends to have some good objectives—as they always say, “Oh yes,” their little bumper sticker slogans, “We’re fixing the basics and building the future.” I’ve heard that statement in every single speech and every single answer from questions to the National Party, and it’s meaningless nonsense to obscure the fact that they are dismantling democracy. They’re doing that by politicising the Public Service, by making it more privatised, and by trying to cripple the ability of public servants to deliver on the long-term wellbeing and good for our country. That is how extreme.

Melissa Lee must remember the relatively moderate John Key Government. Remember the John Key who went and the National Party under his leadership voted to remove section 59 from the Crimes Act? That would never happen today. This National Party, this coalition Government, would buy into silly populist rhetoric and not do the right thing around protecting children. That’s who these people are, and the people at home watching need to know in this election year just how much is at stake.

Not only are they politicising and privatising the Public Service by weakening the independence of government; we see it actually with the approach to the Resource Management Act reform, the environment and planning bill. It’s basically Muldoonist style “give control to Ministers”. They’re trying to make it more difficult for the public to have their say so it’s easier for big corporates and the wealthy, vested elite to control the Government for their own purposes.

This is what happens—this is how we see the rise of fascism right around the world. It’s not as extreme here, but it is happening.

Andy Foster: This is getting ridiculous.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Are you paying any attention to what’s happening in the United States, Andy Foster? Because they have armed thugs wandering the streets and murdering citizens who are standing up for ordinary people. And you are all complicit—the members opposite are complicit in the undermining of the Public Service with this bill. It’s all driven by polarising politics, where they seek to blame the people who are the most marginalised, like they did last week—the New Zealand First Party, who want to harm people—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Ms Genter, I think we can come back a little bit closer to the bill.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It is related, Mr Speaker—if you will; if I can get there—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Yes, I’m waiting.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: What’s happening here is pay equity and inclusion clauses—for example, before, there was a cross-party consensus that we had the Ministry for Women, we had the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, the Ministry for Ethnic Affairs; we cared about trying to address long-term discrimination based on who people were, and they did that through diversity and inclusion policies, which are absolutely, utterly mainstream and considered basic HR practice at the really big corporates, but here we’re removing that from the Public Service, which is one of the largest employers, if not the largest employer, in the country. This is all driven by this weird polarisation where they claim that diversity and being, like, a good employer is somehow a bad thing.

The Green Party thinks this is a retrograde step. I think that all the members opposite should think hard about the bills that they have recently voted for. They are buying into “Trumpism”. They are actually very fascist-adjacent. I hope that New Zealanders are going to vote for something better.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Tim Costley. Welcome back, Mr Costley.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (20:11): Yeah, nice to see you again, sir. Look, I was going to give a 10-minute speech and talk about what the Human Rights Commission said, where they said that skill, not circumstance, determines opportunity, in regards to the appointment of chief executives. But, actually, I can sum up my whole 10-minute speech in about three seconds. What I wanted to say was the exact opposite of Julie Anne Genter. I commend the bill.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (20:11): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to take a call on this terrible, terrible bill: the Public Service Amendment Bill. We oppose this bill. Why do we oppose it? It’s because it is weakening integrity and the capability in the Public Service.

Listening to the speech that my colleague served up, it is important for those at home to understand what is at stake. The precious values of the Public Service workers—I want to give and elaborate on a few stories of what this will mean in my local community. In my local community, there are many health workers at our local hospital. Middlemore Hospital is one of the busiest hospitals in the country. It has a huge service, in terms of the emergency department, who operate 24 hours a day. My concern is that those local health workers will be losing their jobs. The other thing is the social workers at our children’s schools, the social workers in Māngere and South Auckland, who provide vital services for the public, members in our community—I want to reflect and pass on my thanks to many of those workers in our local community who provide vital services.

I want to reflect on social workers. Social workers in schools and social workers in our community help many of the individuals who are really struggling with the rise of the cost of living in our local communities—those social workers who provide those vital services for members in the community. I’ll give you an example: we have a number of community members in our community who cannot afford things like housing costs, who cannot afford the basic necessities in our local community. The worrying thing is that, when you don’t have a job, when your family relies on you to provide the income, with this Public Service Amendment Bill, they will lose their jobs, because that’s what this Government is promising; they’ve signalled 9,000 Public Service jobs will be gone.

What that means for the health workers in our communities is that there will be longer waits. Those support staff in our health services provide vital services, and there is a strong indication from the Government—and we will see that tomorrow—in terms of the vital services the social workers provide.

One of the things that I want to thank the social workers for with the homeless problem in Māngere, in South Auckland, is that it is the social workers that have been able to provide those vital services to connect to Government departments, with the Ministry of Social Development, to see what their entitlements are. Kāinga Ora, who provide social housing—without the social workers being able to connect them, there is going to be a real trepidation from our people in the community about who they will be speaking to and who will help them with the basic necessities and basic services.

With fewer health workers, one of the things that I am afraid of is the longer wait times. At a time when we are coming into winter, there are a lot of illnesses in our community, and it’s the social workers and the health workers that provide these vital services. What is going to happen when there are those people who are not there, who have provided services in the past? Where is our community going to go to?

One of the things with this bill—and why we are strongly opposing it—is that we understand that the Government has made the decision to take those Government funds and support landlords and property speculators, instead of investing more public funds so that people can attain and keep those vital public services. They’re going to disappear; that is our biggest worry. This is not a good bill. It does not provide the services that are needed. We need the commitment from the Government to be better at what they’re supposed to do and provide good jobs.

In terms of court staff, it has been indicated that court staff will be losing their jobs. I have been speaking to public officials who are very afraid about this programme that has been signalled by this Public Service Amendment Bill. What is going to happen? Those people are very worried. Who is going to help them with their family bills, with the cost of living crisis, with the fuel crisis? Those things are going to mount up.

Can I just refer to the social workers in schools—social workers in schools in Māngere. Speaking to principals, who are very worried about more and more neurodiverse children that are coming into schools, the parents need help; the neurodiverse students need help. With the winding down of professional services, specifically of health services and health workers, that is going to erode those specific services. Where are those families going to go? The worry for principals is that because they’re losing some of their education funding, the qualified teachers they currently have are overloaded with work because of the neurodiverse students that are coming in. There are extra services that are required. You have to go through assessments; you then have to replan your day. The principals are worried that, if there are cuts to these vital services in the Public Service, who is going to assist those specific schools?

It’s really important that we help people understand—especially the people listening to us this evening—about the Public Service Amendment Bill, about those Public Service cuts, and the effects and the impacts and what it means for families who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. It is important that our people who are going to be making very vital decisions about their voting rights—I do want to remind people that that Government has changed the law, and so people need to understand at home in terms of enrolment and that there will come a time when you have to enrol to get your voter pack.

What is important in this discussion is that the Public Service Amendment Bill—the effects and the impacts on communities like mine in Māngere, in South Auckland—people really rely on social workers. I want to keep coming back to the social workers.

There are people in my community who are sleeping on Māngere Mountain because they cannot afford social housing. There are elderly women—and I’ve mentioned this in the House before—who are, unfortunately, choosing to stay in bus shelters; that’s a public space. There are also people that are choosing because they don’t have anything. If you erode the Public Service, if you erode social workers, who is going to help those specific individuals? Now, marae and community organisations are reaching out to these individuals, but these individuals are finding it really tough, and they have to make choices they just cannot afford through the cost of living crisis.

The other thing that I wanted to mention: with fewer court staff, who do vital work as registrars, as clerks, who prepare a number of things in their roles, that means there will be longer waits through the court process. You’ve got families who will struggle when they have to appear before the magistrate or appear in court. They will be struggling, first of all, with the services. One of the good things that court staff provide is interpretation services. When you have families or individuals that rock up to the court, because English is not their first language, there will be longer wait times in terms of the proceedings. They won’t have the services, and it’ll cause more stress in their local community.

I understand that this amendment bill will have a lot of changes: the effects on jobs for Kiwis; more and more people will become unemployed. They’re very, very worried about their current circumstances and how that Government will help them. We will find out more tomorrow when the Government releases its Budget, but I wanted to raise those points in my contribution to really inform people at home who are listening to this debate, who have access to computers, and who can read in terms of the bill, and they need to understand. We oppose this bill.

Hon Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangārei) (20:21): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think further improving the Public Service towards a high-performing Public Service is a good thing that we all should be interested in. I particularly like the movement in this bill of the appointment of the Chief Statistician from the Public Service Act 2020 to the Data and Statistics Act 2022. I think that will be a good thing. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The Hon Jenny Salesa—five-minute call.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) (20:22): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to give a speech on the Public Service Amendment Bill.

Labour strongly opposes this bill. I want to be clear about what this bill will do. The Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government is stripping out every reference to “diversity”, every reference to “equity” and to “inclusion” from the Public Service Act—every single one. The requirement that the Public Service should reflect the community that it serves—that is totally gone. The requirement that the chief executives foster inclusive workplaces—gone. The requirement that remuneration decisions be free from bias—totally gone. Pay equity provisions from the Public Service Act is also gone.

The Minister claims that these matters are covered elsewhere, apparently—that it’s covered under the Human Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act,, and the Employment Relations Act—but this argument is disingenuous. Those Acts set the minimum floor for all employers. The law that we’re debating tonight, the Public Service Act—the amendment to the Public Service Act—sets the standard for the Public Service as a model employer, as it should, because the Public Service serves all New Zealanders, and it should reflect all New Zealanders. We are a diverse, multicultural country. We are close to 50 percent in this country of people that are not Pākehā. Our Public Service should reflect that. Removing these provisions sends a devastating signal. It tells tangata whenua Māori, Pacific peoples, women, disabled people, and our ethnic communities that, unfortunately, they are no longer a priority for this Government. It tells public servants from diverse backgrounds that this Government no longer values what they bring, and it tells the agencies themselves that they can deprioritise the work that is to do with diversity, with inclusion, and we do not agree with that.

The Minister for the Public Service has admitted that—and I quote; this is the previous Minister—she has not seen examples of people who had been hired into the Public Service for diversity rather than merit reasons, so what problem is being solved here? The answer could lie in the fact that this Government is bringing what is known overseas, in the US, as the “culture war” right here to Aotearoa New Zealand, importing an anti-DEI agenda from the US, and we in the Labour Party utterly reject that.

On pay equity, the Public Service has been at the forefront of pay equity in Aotearoa New Zealand since the Government Service Equal Pay Act 1960, so removing pay equity provisions from this Act is not streamlining; it is backwards, and it is regressive.

On the myth of meritocracy, the Government tells us that this particular amendment bill is all about merit, but one of the submissions to the select committee, from Te Uru Tāngata, the Centre for Workplace Inclusion, called that out for what it is. They said in their submission, on the myth of meritocracy: they warned the select committee that, without deliberate checks against bias, decision-makers unconsciously lean towards candidates who resemble themselves. The result, in their words—and I quote—is “entrenched homogeneity at the top and a decisive step away from a system that actively works to level the playing field”. That is not merit; that is privilege dressed up in a suit.

Now, on the issue of undermining independence, this Government is expanding ministerial influence over chief executive appointments by removing the ability to appoint chief executives, so that every term it becomes contestable and politically charged. Our Public Service is one that should be politically neutral, to be able to serve whichever Government comes in, of whatever stripes. We totally reject this bill.

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier) (20:27): It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill in the House. Look, there’s nothing that niggles me more than mission creep, so it’s great to see a tightening up of the Public Service and what it is there to do for the public in serving it. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (20:27): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is an incredibly regressive piece of legislation, and it’s very disappointing to see that the other side can’t even give it what it deserves and speak to what they believe is going to strengthen the Public Service through this bill.

One of the reasons they can’t do that this evening is because it doesn’t strengthen the Public Service. It absolutely weakens what has always been such a pride of our political system in this country. The Public Service has always had the premise that they are required to serve the long-term public interest. Unfortunately, that has been taken away and weakened within this. In fact, we’re seeing, rather, a politicisation of the Public Service through what is happening here.

My colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa talked about some of the real attacks this bill has that make it an absolutely shocking piece of legislation when you really look at the nub of what it’s trying to achieve here. One of those is the absolute attack this bill has on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Removing those explicit duties to promote those areas that has made the Public Service in the past look like and feel like the community it serves is simply really upsetting, and ensuring that the community that it serves is not going to see themselves represented is, what I’ve said already, a completely regressive step.

It is important that those communities who need the Public Service to better their lives and need to see policies being enacted by those Public Service people see those people that represent and look like them.

In the past—and my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa, as I said, has explained that really well—biases do exist in appointments. Unless you shine a light on what should happen in the appointment process, biases will be there, whether they’re conscious or unconscious—I’m not going to deliberately call them “unconscious”, because I do sometimes think there are conscious biases that exist as well—and unless you legislate that that is going to be addressed, they will continue to happen and we will go backwards. We will see a Public Service that will look more like the people that are making those appointments, and that is really worrying.

The other area that I find incredibly disappointing—incredibly disappointing—is the undermining of pay equity. The Public Service has long held pay equity up as a value, even, I’m going to say, a value that is incredibly important. When they had targets put upon them and a light was shone on the pay gaps that existed within the Public Service, those started to change for the better. In fact, when we as a country started to really look at pay equity and pay gaps and started to work on pay gap reporting, it was important that the Government got its own house in order first, which is why the first emphasis was put on the Public Service for having targets to reduce those pay gaps. Wow, what a difference they made. By shining a light, those pay gaps reduced dramatically, and that led the way for what was happening in the private sector.

Taking that away and undermining that is going to see a difference the other way. We’re going to see a negative difference happening here because, again, those areas have not been fully addressed. We haven’t got to zero. We have not seen the pay gaps completely being taken away, and while they exist, while even a small pay gap exists, there is more work to do. Unfortunately, this bill does not address that more work that is needed. It’s painful. It is incredibly painful, because it is another act—

Grant McCallum: Are you talking about your speech?

Hon JAN TINETTI: —that this Government—and here we go. We’ve got them going on the other side without even listening to the argument or the debate. We have this Government once again hitting women. That is just about almost a year after they took a successful pay equity system away from women in this country. They are now doing it through this bill, the Public Service Amendment Bill. Women see this. Women are seeing that this Government is not having their backs, is not sticking up for them, is not sticking up for pay equity within the whole of the system within the country. They will tell the Government that. They will absolutely tell the Government that.

One of the areas that Ministers and the executive rely on very much is the long-term insights briefings. They make a big difference across what is happening in Government. They enable Ministers to make decisions about whether aspects of their programmes are working, whether the other areas of Government are influencing those areas. This bill is minimising those long-term insights briefings, and I think that is incredibly disappointing for what is happening in our evaluations of our programmes in this country.

I fail to see how the politicisations of the Public Service and the taking away of the long-term insights briefings, in the way that this bill does this, is going to improve ministerial and executive decision-making, because it won’t. It means that the executive have more of an excessive influence without that neutrality of the Public Service and without that neutrality of evaluation that the Public Service provides. That is something that I think New Zealanders should be really concerned about. They should absolutely be incredibly concerned that we’re losing that neutrality through this particular amendment bill, and we are losing the valid and valuable information that the Public Service provides in a very neutral way to ensure that Ministers and the executive can be really confident in the decisions that they are making for the betterment of this country.

I’ve only just come on to the Governance and Administration Committee in the last few months, but when I looked into this bill and saw that, as the bill was being put together by this Government, there had been a lack of consultation with the people who really make a difference and work within the Public Service and the people that support the Public Service, I found that was also of real concern. It would not be a normal position for that to happen. Normally, we would see that, when the Government was putting a bill together like this, there would be an opportunity to look at how we can improve and strengthen the Public Service, with those people at the table to be able to help form that policy. Well, that didn’t happen in this case. That means that we’ve had a missed opportunity for positive reform.

This is not positive reform. This is a regressive step in the history of the Public Service of our country. There is a potential overreach in the performance management. We have an erosion of stewardship. We’ve got an attack on diversity and equity and inclusion. We’re undermining pay equity. There is a risk to independence of appointments. There are merit-based appointment concerns, and the values of the public trust are hugely at stake with this piece of legislation. We on this side of the House value our Public Service. We don’t see that this bill does that, and therefore, we do not agree with this bill.

Hon MELISSA LEE (National) (20:37): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. When 30 percent of public servants don’t actually believe that the people who are appointed in their organisations are appointed on merit, you have a problem in the Public Service. You can’t have a high-performing Public Service without the right people, so merit-based appointments are essential and crucial. That is one of the things that I really love about this bill. I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Oriini Kaipara—five minutes.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (20:38): Mr Speaker, tēnā koe. Look, this bill is ridiculous. I mean, this Government is trying to modernise the Public Service by removing the public from it. The first clue is in clause 10 of this bill. The Government wants to remove the phrase “facilitates active citizenship” from the purpose of the Public Service Act.

A Public Service Act that no longer thinks about helping the public participate in democracy as part of the Public Service—that’s extraordinary arrogance. Apparently, New Zealanders are now expected to sit quietly while Ministers and consultants decide what is best for everybody else. Consultation is inconvenient when communities disagree with Ministers. Active citizenship becomes inconvenient when people challenge those powers, and Māori voices are inconvenient when they refuse to quietly disappear into the background of somebody else’s version of New Zealand’s history.

Then we hear all this talk about merit-based appointments, as if Māori, as if wāhine, as if Pasifika, and our diverse communities somehow wandered into senior roles by accident. Please—there is no evidence that the Public Service stopped appointing capable people. What changed was that the Public Service finally started recognising that competence in Aotearoa includes understanding the people you serve. Apparently, that became too woke for this coalition Government, and now they want to strip diversity obligations while pretending that this is all about neutrality.

But there is nothing neutral about removing the very tools designed to make the Public Service reflect the public. That is not neutrality. That there is ideological landscaping, with a Crown logo slapped on it, and the hypocrisy gets even worse when we look at the honourable Minister David Seymour. This man is constantly lecturing the whole country about cutting bureaucracy and about reducing Wellington bloat and trimming Government spending, and yet, according to Rachel Pannett from BusinessDesk, Mr Seymour was calling for “less Wellington bloat, fewer government departments, and less government spending” in the very same week—the very same week—that his Ministry for Regulation grew to more than four times the size of the agency that it replaced.

Steve Abel: Hypocrites.

ORIINI KAIPARA: Four staff became 18. At this rate, the “Ministry for Reducing Bureaucracy” is going to need its own bureaucracy just to explain the bureaucracy. You cannot—

Cameron Luxton: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I believe that a word starting with “h” which is well and truly out of bounds for use in this House was used from that side of the House. I’d ask you to take note of that and perhaps ask who may have done that and then ask for an apology.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): I did hear that. It was actually not directed at the individual; it wasn’t directly enough for me to intervene. What I will say, though, is that when the member is reading her speech, there’s less provision, because it means you’ve had time to think about it, rather than if it’s coming from the heart, and so the member might just like to get a little bit further away from the notes—but bearing that in mind. Thank you.

Steve Abel: Mr Speaker, can I just seek clarification?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Yes. Are you speaking to the point of order?

Steve Abel: Well, if you’ve already ruled on that, then perhaps I need to make another point of order. I would like to speak to the point of order, if I may.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Be very direct towards it.

Steve Abel: I believe that Mr Luxton was referring to my interjection—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): No, he was referring to the content of the speech.

Steve Abel: Oh, apologies.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Certainly, I was ruling on the content of the speech.

Cameron Luxton: I think—thank you, Mr Speaker. Just continuing that point of order, if I may. Yes, it was towards the interjection by the member who has stood up and laid it up—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Oh, OK. Right, can I just say—

Cameron Luxton: —but there are words that we can’t use in this House, which I heard used.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): —enough “he said, I said”.

Cameron Luxton: Yeah, sure.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): What I’ll say is: did the member directly accuse David Seymour of being a hypocrite?

Steve Abel: Mr Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Did you—yes or no?

Steve Abel: I said “hypocrites”, meaning the Government—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): No, no, I’m asking you a question. Have you accused—

Steve Abel: No, I did not—no.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): OK, if you say you didn’t, as an honourable member, I’ll take your word for it.

Steve Abel: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Carry on with the speech, please.

ORIINI KAIPARA: Tēnā koe. While this Government preaches efficiency, communities like ours know exactly what those words usually mean, and that means cuts: cuts to services, cuts to community voices, cuts to Māori providers, cuts dressed up in accountant language and sold back to struggling whānau as fiscal responsibility.

Then we arrive at the long-term insights briefing. The Government says that consultation takes too long and costs too much money—well, yes: democracy is slower than dictatorship. Listening to people will always take longer than ignoring them, but what an astonishing message it is to send to Aotearoa that hearing from communities about the future of their own country is now considered administrative waste—especially our Māori communities, who have spent generations fighting just to be heard in the first place.

Despite all the spin, New Zealanders saw through this bill immediately—immediately. Seventy-two percent of submissions opposed it—72 percent. It’s not a made-up figure. Most Governments would treat that as a warning sign, but this coalition has treated it like a minor inconvenience, because this bill is not really about modernising the Public Service; it’s about reshaping it in the ideological image of this Government, which is less participation, less diversity, less Treaty responsibility, and more centralised control.

A truly modern Public Service would strengthen democracy, I agree. It would deepen Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the partnerships that are promised, and it would reflect the people that it serves. Instead, this Government is trying to whitewash both history and legislation while calling it reform. We oppose this.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Service Amendment Bill be now read a third 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 third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call on the next bill, I am just reflecting on that last interchange around the word “hypocrite”. Members, please avoid using it. It is a well-defined word that is a no-no in the House, and trying to work out where it is directed is not always the easiest, especially when it’s hard to hear it from the Chair. So can I just, again, reiterate to members: avoid the use of that word. It’s a big, wide language—the English one—and I’m sure, with a little work, you can find a better one.

Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (20:46): on behalf of the Minister for Building and Construction: I present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Third Reading

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (20:47): on behalf of the Minister for Building and Construction: I move, That the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is a key part of the Government’s reform programme to make building in New Zealand easier, faster, and more affordable. It reflects a deliberate shift away from unnecessary processes towards a smarter and more proportionate regulatory system that focuses effort where it is genuinely needed. For too long, inefficiencies in the building consenting system have contributed to higher costs, delays on building sites, and frustration for homeowners, councils, and the construction sector alike.

This bill responds directly to those issues by cutting red tape, easing pressure on building consent authorities, and placing responsibility where it can be exercised most effectively: on qualified and experienced construction professionals. The bill makes targeted but substantive changes across two Acts to streamline the consenting system and ensure regulatory resources are used where they add the greatest value. It is about improving outcomes rather than expanding regulation and about ensuring the system works in practise as well as it does on paper.

The current consenting system has often been characterised by delays, inconsistent practices, and risk-averse behaviour that slows projects and drives up costs. Capacity constraints within building consent authorities, combined with a framework that discourages professional accountability, have created unnecessary friction through the building process. This bill tackles those inefficiencies head on by shifting parts of the assurance system away from building consent authorities and enabling trusted professionals to self-certify certain work. It removes red tape, shortens time frames, and supports a construction sector that can deliver more homes at lower costs.

Importantly, this reform does not diminish the role of building consent authorities. Instead, it allows them to use their somewhat limited resources more efficiently by focusing attention on more complex work that warrants greater oversight. Taking a targeted approach strengthens the system as a whole while removing burdens where they are unnecessary. This is a pragmatic reform that recognises the expertise that already exists in the sector and makes better use of it.

The purpose of the bill is to introduce an optional self-certification scheme for approved plumbers and drainlayers.

Under the scheme, endorsed professionals will be able to take responsibility for their own work, while maintaining strong consumer confidence that the work will be consistent with both the building consent and the building code requirements. Removing the need for building consent authority assurance for certain plumbing and drainlaying work addresses one of the most common causes of delay on construction sites. It delivers immediate time and cost savings for certain plumbing and drainlaying work, without compromising on quality or safety.

The scheme itself will be fully integrated into the existing consenting framework. Plumbing and drainlaying work will still require a building consent, and building consent authorities will continue to play a critical role at the front end of the process. Councils will still assess the overall building design, including the plumbing and drainlaying design, to ensure that it meets building code requirements before granting consent. What does change is how compliance for certain categories of plumbing and drainlaying work is assured during construction.

Consent applications will be required to state whether plumbing or drainlaying work will be self-certified. This provides early clarity for building consent authorities, allowing the authority to issue a suitable inspection schedule, and allows parties to be clear on responsibilities throughout the build process, ensuring improved transparency from the outset. Once the work is complete, the endorsed professional will issue a certificate of compliance confirming that the work complies with the building consent. Building consent authorities must accept that certificate as evidence of compliance when issuing the final code compliance certificate for the project. All very important and technical work, I’m sure.

In doing so, councils are protected from liability for self-certified work, and responsibility and accountability are placed clearly and appropriately on the professionals who have carried out or supervised that work, Mr Foster. This clarity reduces administrative burden and supports faster decision-making, while encouraging a strong culture of professional ownership in the work.

Excuse me, I’ve got a frog in my throat.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Your pipes are clogged up there, Mr Meager.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: The scheme is expected to apply to the majority of plumbing and drainlaying work in buildings of three stories or less. This presents a significant opportunity to remove inefficiencies from the consenting process, reduce delays on construction sites, and lower the overall cost of building. It will be particularly beneficial in rural and provincial communities—where travel times and inspector availability can significantly delay inspection—and in high-growth areas where council capacity is under pressure.

The effectiveness of the scheme will depend on clear and well-designed regulations. Gosh, there’s a lot to this bill, isn’t there! Officials have been working closely with the board, industry groups, insurance providers, and building consent authorities to ensure definitions setting out the scope of the scheme are broad enough to add real practical value to the sector. Regulations will set out clear and simple criteria, making it easy to tell whether work is self-certifiable, while managing risks by excluding complex work.

There will be robust standards for self-certifying professionals, as well as transparency, oversight, and enforcement. That is central to maintaining confidence in the scheme. Certificates of compliance issued by self-certifiers must be lodged with the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board and recorded on a register, parts of which will be publicly accessible. Territorial authorities will also retain copies of certificates as well as part of property files.

The board itself is given expanded monitoring and audit powers enabling it to audit both self-certifiers and the certificates they issue. Where issues are identified, the board will have a graduated range of disciplinary tools available, including imposing fines, suspending or cancelling endorsements, or taking other appropriate action, and failure to lodge a certificate of compliance will itself be a disciplinary offence, with penalties of up to—wait for it—$10,000.

The Minister for Building and Construction is also progressing a bill to strengthen occupational licensing regimes for licensed building practitioners—that’s something I’m sure is of much interest to Mr Luxton—electrical workers, plumbers, and drainlayers. The bill will support self-certification by plumbers and drainlayers, giving the relevant board registrars additional powers to initiate investigations more easily and introducing codes of ethics to promote professional standards. This means even further accountability for practitioners and more redress options for the consumer.

This bill has benefited from careful consideration through the parliamentary and select committee process, and I want to acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for its diligent work. What a hard-working committee it is. The committee of the whole House also made several targeted recommendations that have improved the clarity, workability, and implementation of the bill without changing its fundamental policy direction. One key change was the removal of restrictions under the previous clause 45A to enable a broader and simpler scope for self-certifiable work. Allowing for a simpler scope of work makes the declaration that the work meets the technical definition of “self-certifiable” unnecessary. Requiring a declaration added complexity to the consent process, and removing this requirement will simplify consent applications for those using this scheme.

This bill strikes the right balance. It removes unnecessary red tape, improves efficiency across the construction sector, and makes it faster and cheaper to build, while maintaining strong safeguards and strong consumer protections. It encourages professional accountability, allows councils to focus on the more complex work, and delivers practical real-world improvements that will be felt on building sites across the country, and, for those reasons, I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (20:55): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a bill which Labour supports, and supports with the knowledge that the select committee has worked through very diligently, under the chairmanship of Andy Foster from New Zealand First, in a cross-partisan way that has brought together the submissions of the industry, of homeowners, and of others within the building and construction sector and, as the Minister says, has drawn the right balance between putting part of the plumbing industry on speed rails and also ensuring that there are appropriate consumer protections.

I will come back to those consumer protections. They are the part that this Parliament must be focused on in future. We must ensure that work on the appropriate insurance arrangements throughout the sector are a core part of this set of building reforms.

This is a set of building reforms that the Government has embarked on, some of it continued on from the occupational licensing changes that a Labour Government undertook. But when you look at the state of the industry now, something has to improve for the plumbers. There are 4,900 plumbing businesses around New Zealand; 98 percent of them are small businesses, and an average of 2.6 employees is what you’ll see in these businesses. These are businesses that some MPs around the House will not have been able to meet with, even if you wanted to, because they are not set up to host MPs to talk about regulations. They are not the kind of people who can come to us with a well-equipped lobby group or lawyers to represent them. They are often mum and dad business owners who have employed maybe one or two people. They are hard-working small-business owners, and they want to have a regime which works for them.

I was struck, working through this bill, by just how expert many of these people who were one- and two-man bands were about the regulations. There’s something in that that we need to tease out. When we look at the productivity of a sector like plumbing in New Zealand, it is incredibly important. Construction represents one in five jobs in New Zealand when the economy is performing well. And so plumbers and drainlayers and gasfitters represent a large proportion of that. Some Motu research that was done quite recently compared the productivity in the sector to that of the 1970s and found that not only had their not been growth in the productivity of the sector since then—through things like adoption of new tools, although there has been that, and new ways of working and more efficiencies—in fact, productivity in the sector has stayed at about the same rate. What can we learn from that? There are a couple of things. One of the things that the research pointed to was this domination in New Zealand by such small firms—as something we need to learn from.

These plumbers who I spoke to—I got to get on the roof with one, to really understand how solar water systems were being installed. I definitely was the one who asked to get on the roof. He did not offer to get me on the roof, but I wanted to get up there and have a look. In another case, I met with a plumber who had installed grey-water systems in the Kāpiti District, and he was an absolute expert on not only the council’s rules but the central government’s rules on this.

I raise this with you, Mr Speaker, because when we are talking about people who generally work with their hands—they are experts in their trade—they are also needing to become experts in complexity, because they have to negotiate through not only the regulations at the central government level but the local government level—and the interest groups who have different views to them and to their sector—in ways that choke off their ability to grow and scale—

Cameron Luxton: Oh, this is brilliant.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —in a way that you would expect other organisations to. And Cameron Luxton enjoys this abundance agenda from the Labour Party. I invite him to discuss it with me.

What I’m getting to here, Mr Speaker, is that talking to these small-business owners is instructive and MPs around the country should do it, even though these plumbers will not be able to give them their time in the way that larger businesses and larger players in the industry will. And you’ll learn exactly how much these guys have to be experts in these rules. Complex societies, like the one we have created for ourselves, begin to reward those who can best navigate complexity. The challenge for us regulators who create within that complex zone is to make sure we’re also rewarding the people who can do the work to keep costs low and to ensure the work is getting done to a high standard. I think this bill goes some way towards doing that.

What we have not addressed at the appropriate time is the way that protections will operate for small—the little guy in the situation, in this case, the homeowners who are left needing to apply to the council, needing to meet the costs of repairs, needing to be able to inspect things which are actually out of sight—they’re under the ground or they’re in the walls—and the appropriate protections that go along with an agenda of speeding things up is making sure that the appropriate person is bearing the costs that are being sacrificed in the quest for efficiency.

The council has been taken out of this. The speed rails that the Government has created go straight from central government, to the professional, to the homeowner, and they have chosen the professional as the person in the chain of responsibility that their rhetoric has focused on. But, when you actually delve deeply into the legislation, and we got a chance to canvass this with the Minister last night, in fact, the protections that are meant to exist at the decision gates for the professional—that’s the plumber—are very quickly passed on to the homeowner. Actually, in the system that we have designed for ourselves, there are big liabilities that are associated with being the homeowner who is using the self-certification process.

What does that mean? It means that we needed an insurance solution at the get-go that could be held by professionals who were in the situation of being able to offer these products. It also means that, if we don’t have that, who’s in the gun? It’s not the professional who has passed those on, in the legislation, largely. When the homeowner cannot repair or when there is a systematic failure across our housing system which compromises the whole housing market, we get a situation like 2011, but we have taken out the local authority in the middle.

This is a bill that creates further future liability for central government. We must be clear-eyed about that. That is what we are sacrificing and trading off when we create a system where we shift parts of the assurance system on to professionals who can further shift it on to homeowners; that then becomes, in a system failure, a larger burden that we must meet collectively. This is the later part of the story. You’ve got to make sure that the little guy and central government are sharing that risk appropriately. It is not appropriate to, essentially, privatise the good things about the system and make sure that it is a profitable business for plumbers if you also socialise the risk.

I don’t think most of the plumbers that I met with—the chap who got me his ladder out and showed me the hot water system—would expect the New Zealanders who he is transacting with, the little old ladies, to be bearing all of the risk in the system. It is not an industry that is set up for that. These are the people that we know; that we see at the school gate when we pick up our kids at the school. These are the people who we pass at the library getting books out on Sunday. These are people who also want what’s best for their community. They are community-minded people. Many of the successful ones sponsor not only industry awards but also things that are positive about their communities and that they can celebrate for a long time. These are people who also want to make sure that they are doing the right thing by New Zealanders, but we have created a system here which has left out a critical factor which is the appropriate spreading of that risk.

Now, Mr Speaker, maybe I should get to my notes: the thing I want to very clearly say around this is that Labour has called for the appropriate safeguards. We have negotiated those with the committee. Many of those have been included at the select committee stage, and I am proud of the work that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee has done to be able to accommodate some of those things which make this both quick and efficient and also better for consumers, and to have more safeguards.

There are things which we tried to include that have not been included, and so they remain outstanding concerns. The insurance product is not yet confirmed. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has advised us that it expects an insurance product to be available and the board is expected to set standards; the Minister was very clear on that. There will be a product required, but there is nothing in primary legislation which ensures that is ready to go when we know the Government is pressing forward on its change to proportionate liability, from joint and several liability. That is a critical piece of these reforms that should happen at the same time.

We also advocated for scope expansion around some of the regulation that was intended to be moved at the committee stage. That was not something that we were able to see and work through. The House should keep checks on that because, when we move away from a model where local authorities are in the middle and one where central government is ultimately the insurer of last resort, we need to be responsible that the appropriate scope of work is included.

There was also a call from Labour members and Green members to ensure that environmentally sustainable plumbing work was included in the scope of work. I was very glad to hear that the Minister included that, but we should push out on that. It’s unclear what the next thing will be, but there should always be a system incentive for those systems to be included in work, which is quicker, cheaper, and more efficient. What’s good for the planet is also going to help the economy. We should incentivise more training and more learning around these systems so that they are faster and easier to build. That is a good thing; that is something everyone in this House should be able to agree to, and so it is something we should press out on.

I’m very happy to support this bill. Thank you to all plumbers who I bothered during the course of it.

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (21:06): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to speak to the third reading of the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers self-certification bill. Before this House considers the merits and the risks—and they are, you know; it’s in the balance—I want to take a moment to acknowledge the people the legislation is primarily about.

Aotearoa New Zealand has nearly 28,000 registered plumbers and drainlayers. They’re not unskilled workers; entry to the trade requires formal apprenticeship of three to four years, on-the-job training, and technical study. That registration is mandatory and regulated under the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act. Many other practitioners hold a wide range of skills and a breadth of technical knowledge but they don’t exercise that knowledge in the comfort of an air-conditioned, well-watered Parliament. They are under our houses, they are on the roofs, and I do like to acknowledge my—

Arena Williams: Get on the roof!

CELIA WADE-BROWN: —colleague for going on the roof. I’ve maybe spent more time with plumbers under the house checking things out, and I actually have friends who are plumbers. Let us make no mistake that I might have a university education, but that doesn’t stop one having a range of friends. Every time something goes wrong with burst pipes, sewers, flooding—often outside business hours—those are our first responders. We rely on them being able to stop that leak before it goes through the ceiling to the next floor, to stop the bubbling up of the unmentionables, and to make sure that our baths, our showers, are hot but do not scald the babies.

I would also like—as my colleagues have said—to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and its chair, Mr Foster, and also the submitters. There was a really wide range of submitters: there were councils; there were individuals. I’m going to shortly make a number of quotes from one in particular, but what I see as a fundamental flaw is the argument that the consequences of errors are confined to the property on which the work is done, and they are not. No property is an island. A failed drain, an incorrect cross-connection between sewage and stormwater, a poorly installed septic tank, or an undersized stormwater detention system—those failures flow on to neighbouring land, into the streams, into the harbour, into the sea. Of course, public organisations are not immune from mistakes and lack of monitoring. If a large organisation can fail, so can small businesses.

When I was a councillor on the Wellington City Council, we had smoke testing to try and reduce the pollution into our streams. Now, smoke testing means that you have a coloured smoke that goes up the pipes and it should come out from the stormwater up through the drainpipes. Unfortunately, it does not always work that way. We found, for example, in the Ōwhiro Bay catchment, a huge number of cross connection. Now, some of those might have been naughty homeowners, but some of them might have been poorly trained apprentices, or some of it might have been bad inspections by councils, but some of those mistakes are not as rare as we would like.

The thing about plumbing and drainlaying is it’s not something that’s very easily inspected once a building is complete. It might be under a concrete floor, it might be in lined walls, or it might be under a planting bed, so it’s very difficult to check until it fails, and then that’s too late to find out. It might be 15 years—we don’t know how long it could be until those things fail. The risks are increasing because with more and more climate-charged rainfall events, the margin for error in drainage is decreasing. It’s not acceptable to say, as my colleague from the ACT Party might, that people should be able to do what they like on their own land or under their houses. That argument only holds if the effects stop at the boundary. In plumbing and drainlaying, they rarely do.

I’m going to move to this particular submission that, for me, carried particular weight. The person has been a certifying plumber and drainlayer, a former building consent authority plumbing and drainage inspector, and a former central government regulator, and their assessment is pretty direct. They say the proposal appeared to be driven more by political considerations than by a practical response to an identified problem within the building regulatory system. They remind us that plumbing and drainage systems are complex and largely inaccessible once construction is complete, and the consequences are health-related, environmental, and financial. Now, their submission also suggests that the current cost of a building consent authority inspection for a simple home is modest and proportionate.

There is a question of whether self-certification is actually going to save much in the way of costs and time. I hope it’s not a mirage, but that promised insurance product, it’s got to be quite comprehensive. Supposing the plumber retires the year that he or she has done the work. That insurance product actually needs to continue for the life of the works, or for at least a reasonable time after they have retired. We don’t have that magic product yet, and that’s one of the reasons that we don’t feel convinced to vote for this bill.

The submitter also noted that comparable jurisdictions—and it’s always challenging to see who we should compare ourselves with. Sadly, we almost only compare ourselves with anglophone countries. I suspect that if we had better Google Translate, we might be able to compare ourselves to a rather wider range of countries. But Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada do not permit plumbers or drainlayers to self-certify plumbing and drainage work for new residential buildings. I think that should give us pause for thought. Not that those countries always get everything right, but why are we different in this case?

Cameron Luxton: Because we’ve got a different inspection regime.

Carl Bates: Ah, he’s answered it.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: I look forward to listening in turn. I do want to acknowledge the Minister for Building and Construction’s genuine engagement with submitters, with members through the committee of the whole House. There have been some changes, but we are just unclear what is going to be coming in the regulations, how extensive they’re going to be, how sustainable the methodology that’s preferred will be, and that very, very big question of insurance. We remain unconvinced that the benefits outweigh the risks to public health and to private homeowners. We will vote against the bill despite recognising some improvements.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (21:16): Well, thank you Mr Speaker. I acknowledge the members of the House who have been on roofs and under houses with our erstwhile colleagues, the plumbers and drainlayers. I’ve worked with these professionals, and I have managed sites where I’ve had to organise subbies, including plumbers and drainlayers, and I can attest to this House that it’s not just the plumbers and drainlayers that get peeved with council inspections taking forever to look at just a simple joint at some low-risk standard plumbing work. It’s everybody up the chain and down the chain who’s being delayed because a council can’t get there and look at something so simple. Often the inspectors turn up from the council and say, “Yeah, it really isn’t worth my time coming out.” They’ll say that off the record, but I’ve heard many times that this is something that’s worthwhile.

I congratulate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which I wasn’t able to take part of on this particular round, having a great go at it and bringing the bill to the House in the state it is, the Minister for Building and Construction for his engagement. But I have to say, it’s another one of the innovations that’s come out of this Government. We’ve got product substitution. Another thing that, oh my God, can it delay a site when you’re trying to just swap a brand name on the piece of stamped consented plans. Remote inspections, another great thing that’s come about in this term of Government. This is another thing—a majority of plumbing work on a building site simply needs to be allowed, to allow building professionals and licensed plumbers and drainlayers to be able to self-certify makes perfect sense. Can I just also have a shout-out to my fellow bush lawyers out there who learnt their trade on the tools, but also had to navigate the morass of rules and regulations and become self-certified bush lawyers to try and build a house in New Zealand in these heady days; in the complicated society we seem to have built, in the words of Arena Williams.

There are other licensed building practitioners (LBPs) out there. Roofers, the foundation guys and girls, the bricklayers, the plasterers, site LBPs—I mean, design, I don’t know how much self-certifying you can do there, but maybe a little bit. There’s a lot to be done, and to my fellow LBP carpentry out there, one day we will be able to make sure that you’re seen as the trusted building professionals that you are as well. I commend this bill to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (21:18): Thanks, Mr Speaker. Look, I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and also as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you to the select committee for your always diligent and collaborative work on this bill, as on so many others.

We often talk about a housing crisis, and let’s reflect on what that means. We have not enough houses, maybe we have too expensive houses, maybe they’re not of good enough quality, but it’s a combination of those three things. This Government has done a lot, and this is one of those elements of this, to try and reduce the cost of actually building houses. Because you can’t just get say, “Well, what we’re going to do is try and jaw bone down the value of houses,” because if you do that, all you’re going to do is make it less attractive for people to actually build houses. Because the reality is if you can’t make money out of building houses, you’re not going to do it. The way in which we actually tackle this is by actually reducing the cost of building, and this is one of those initiatives to do exactly that.

I do note that there are parties in this House who would actually like to increase the costs of building houses. They want to add capital gains taxes to them, they want to tax landlords, and they want to increase standards, all of which will make building housing less attractive. It will make it less attractive. It will make it less—

Tangi Utikere: Long bow.

ANDY FOSTER: No, it will make it less attractive, colleagues. What we need to do is reduce the cost of housing and actually deliver housing, and building consents are part of that. It’s not just the cost of the building consent, the dollars you sign off on the cheque; it’s also the delay, and that’s the thing that Cam Luxton was talking about. He will be more experienced about that than anybody else. I’m glad that Mr Speaker is not in the Chair, because he’d probably tell me off for saying that, but I’m sure that Cam Luxton would be the most experienced of us in seeing the delay and cost, and that delay is money. That delay really is money, so that’s what this bill is about.

This bill allows self-certification by endorsed plumbers—not all plumbers; it’s endorsed plumbers and drainlayers. We already have the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act, and one of them is already able to do the self-certification; the other two are not. This is bringing them all into line with each other.

What we heard during the submissions process—and we didn’t have many submitters; we only had 25 submitters, and we only heard from four of them, but we had quality submitters. What we heard from them is that they had to have at least seven years of training and experience, and I think we should respect that. That is what the message that we got was.

Only some plumbers and drainlayers will be self-certifying. They have to be approved and endorsed by the board, and we also have many others who will be qualified plumbers but they will not be self-certifying, and then, of course—and there is one issue, the issue I raised with the Minister during the committee of the whole House—there will be others who will pass themselves off as plumbers but who are not. In conversation with the Minister, what became apparent is that we actually do have a gap in the legislation and, more possibly, the ability to be able to something about it when somebody fraudulently misrepresents themselves as something they’re not. That is something that I think we do need to pursue, but it is not relevant to this legislation per se.

I note that what was said by Celia Wade-Brown in her speech is that there is an issue here about liability. That liability at the moment, of course—it doesn’t mean the people in the council, the building inspectors, are any better. In fact, they’re probably less qualified than the certifying plumbers. They’re certainly less current than the certifying plumbers, but what it does mean is that the ratepayer is the one who stands behind the product. This takes the ratepayer out of that and puts, essentially, the self-certification, the insurance that sits behind that self-certification, and there is an issue there—she is quite right about that. There does need to be a good, solid, robust insurance process, and also the board’s overview of both the plumber and of the certificates that are issued.

The last couple of things I wanted to say are that we did have an excellent, collaborative process. We actually went through several conversations between Master Plumbers and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, the Minister, the officials, and the select committee to try and get the right outcome. Where we started was that the board and Master Plumbers said, “Actually, this is far too narrow. You’ve limited it to really, really simple stuff, and we think we should be able to do more.”, and we’ve reached a balance there that, we think, was the right balance. It was about trying to make sure that the scheme worked.

Just to finish off, there are some risks. The key in this is to minimise, to mitigate, those risks. As I said, the self-certifying plumbers are really, really highly experienced. They are backed by the board process, the certification endorsement process. They have to lodge certificates with the board. The board can take disciplinary action if it decides that it needs to. Of course, if you’re a master plumber, you’ve also got Master Plumbers sitting there behind it as well. There is an insurance process, and that’s going to be one that I think we will need to keep a very close eye on. As I said, there is an identified gap around the potential for fraudulent misrepresentation—people who actually aren’t plumbers at all.

There are always risks. I think the issue here is that the risks at the moment are covered by the ratepayer, and I have to say I think it’s really important that we take the ratepayer out of that. We have just got to make sure that there is a process there, and, as Arena Williams said, maybe the Crown needs to consider its role in supporting those so that it doesn’t just fall on the person who buys the product—the end consumer. I think we’ve done a lot of good work on this, and I think we’re going to need to pay some close attention to it going forward. It is about trying to reduce the costs of building for New Zealanders to help deal with the housing crisis. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (21:24): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. The kind of tragedy of this whole Government is that, yes, we could be doing things to reduce the cost of building, but mostly they’re not doing them. The things that New Zealand could be doing, which the Green Party would love to see happen, are having the Government more involved in procuring homes, as they were with Kāinga Ora, and through that large purchasing power and procurement, we could be driving down the cost of sourcing materials, of using much more advanced building techniques that deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders, like warmer homes, less energy use, and less water wasted. It’s entirely possible. I’ve been to many countries that do that, but that’s not what this Government is doing.

This Government did the exact opposite, and now they’re sort of fiddling around the edges, trying to reduce oversight and saying that’s going to reduce costs, when in reality we know it’s not really going to reduce that much cost, sadly. I totally agree that councils, which are mainly funded by rates, should not be on the hook for problems with substandard building work, and it would be better if we had a more centralised system with a Crown guarantee, and if there was more uniformity so it’s more predictable for builders and what the inspectors would be looking for. We still probably want a little bit more oversight than what is being proposed here.

Critical details are being left to future regulations rather than being in the bill itself. We’re seeing that pattern with a lot of bills going through select committee at the moment, and it does make it difficult for us to support them. Interestingly, I’ve spoken with builders who don’t support the move to self-certification. They didn’t support removing building-consent requirements for small stand-alone dwellings, either. They’re builders who build to a really high standard, and they’re concerned that we’re not going to have the—I’m not saying the current system is delivering great quality of building all the time. But it would be good to focus on ways that would actually address that rather than—this is almost like deregulation signalling, to try and pretend. I know, it does seem very annoying, but, on the other hand, when things go wrong, people get very upset, so that’s why it’s useful to have systems in place to improve quality control.

What I really want to speak about in this speech is the shocking over-regulation of bidets. This is a serious problem that the Minister for Regulation should really look into, because bidets, which are very common in other countries—other countries use a more civilised form of cleaning themselves after using the toilet, instead of buying packages of toilet paper made from trees, wrapped up in plastic, and then kind of, like, hoping they’re getting themselves clean. I have a constituent who recently raised this issue with me. The off-the-shelf bidet toilet seats that you can get are common in Japan. In South-east Asia, they have the separate hose option, which could be practical. All of these require, in New Zealand, high-hazard back-flow prevention devices, which cost thousands of dollars to install. You have a product that might cost $200 but to install it legally in New Zealand and be compliant, you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. It’s outrageous. And it’s not about self-certification. Even if there’s self-certification, it’s the requirement for the high-hazard back-flow prevention device. Yet that’s not required for your garden hose. The same problem is just as likely to happen, which is very, very unlikely to happen. It’s very, very rare that there would be some sort of syphoning effect from a garden hose left in the garden and maybe there was some animal waste there that got trapped and got syphoned into the drinking-water system. Like, that could happen, but it’s not—

Cameron Luxton: Red tape.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Maybe Mr Luxton could take that to his party leader, who happens to be the Minister for Regulation, and try to deal with this issue of the over-regulation of bidets, which is preventing better hygiene in toilets in New Zealand. I think that would be a real win.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (21:29): This is a common-sense bill. This side of the House, this Government, has trust and confidence in our plumbers and drainlayers. This bill will save time, it will save construction costs, and it has strong support across the sector. I commend this bill to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (21:29): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill, and I’m surprised that the newly minted deputy chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee took what was less than 30 seconds, effectively, to outline the position of the Government around this, which seems to be a consistent approach. I want to acknowledge the work of the hard-working Transport and Infrastructure Committee. On this particular bill, the committee did receive, according to the report, 22 submissions, largely from industry participants and industry bodies, which meant that the committee was able to work through a number of issues that were traversed in the committee of the whole House stage last night.

This will, as some members have said, change two pieces of legislation. One is the Building Act and one is the legislation that’s in front of us as it relates to plumbers and drainlayers. The Labour Party, as has been indicated by my colleague Arena Williams, our spokesperson for this area, will support this bill. There were a number of issues that were raised throughout this process, some of which have been identified in the bill that’s currently before the Parliament as a result of changes that were progressed by the Labour Party and supported by other parties as well, but there are still some elements that Ms Williams herself has indicated we’d like to see a little bit more strength in. There has been an assurance from the Minister for Building and Construction and from the Government that, as regulations are worked through, those issues will be sorted.

It is important with any changes that might be promoted through this process that, yes, they are efficient where possible, but they’re also effective and they cannot compromise safety. That is a fundamental bottom line: that any changes to any regime, when it relates to building and construction, absolutely must not compromise safety. At the same time, it must not leave consumers or homeowners in a sticky or prickly situation as a result of that. Ms Williams has talked about the fact that many small businesses—around 96 to 97 percent of businesses in New Zealand are small businesses—and many for whom this law change will apply will fall within that particular definition. On the one hand, it might make it slightly easier to go about their business; but on the other hand, it’s important that that safety is not compromised and that the consumer, the homeowners, those that are residing in properties, are not left short.

The process is simply that someone—and this is something, actually, the select committee did hear about and did change as a result of submissions—who is wanting to avail themselves of this particular process, in terms of an application that’s been made, the person—in this instance, the plumber or the drainlayer that is seeking to undertake the self-endorsed certification line of work—would be required to identify themselves at the time of application. Now, that is because it is possible that there might be changes in the person who is undertaking that work once the application is actually lodged and that this bill does provide for some change through that process.

There also needs to be a declaration that is made—and it’s not a statutory declaration; this is something that we did talk to the Minister about last night. Is the threshold at the right level? This is really important because, if we’re having individuals that are professionals who have all the years of training that other members have already touched on, we need to make sure that when they make a declaration—just as anyone else would—there are consequences if that declaration is found to be false. Part of the issue that we sort of covered last night was whether—because it used to be a statutory declaration, now it’s just a declaration. The Minister has indicated that, no, that threshold is still met and that’s still sufficient.

One of the changes that the select committee did promote was not just having a plumber or a drainlayer but broadening that to include a registered architect, a chartered professional engineer, or a specified licensed building practitioner, to ensure that that was capturing the range of options that might exist there. That broadening of that aspect of this bill is something that the select committee did in response to the submissions that it heard to also acknowledge the fact that, when some of this work is being done, they are specified professionals who should be able to be held to account as part of that process.

Now, one of the interesting things that we learnt last night was that the select committee had an expectation from the Minister that Cabinet was going to undertake some approval process around broadening the scope of work that might be captured here. What we learnt last night from the Minister—and in the absence of any Amendment Papers—was that that suite of work had not been done at this point, but that it was to come. It’s a little bit difficult where the select committee has reported back to the House on the understanding that some work’s going to be done and then we get to this point and that’s not the case. Do we take the Minister at his word? That is a very high threshold and a lot of goodwill there. The preference would be that, actually, it is specified in the legislation to provide that there’s a level of protection for industry participants, whether they be those that are undertaking the work or indeed the people that own these homes and are having this work undertaken.

One of the aspects that we’ve talked about previously is the introduction of a civil liability clause, and this was a change—this was not something that was in the bill when it was first sent off after first reading, but this is an important provision that will protect those who find themselves in a tricky situation. It is an aspect that the Labour Party, in earlier contributions in this House, had indicated that it wanted to see; we wanted to see the provision of liability so that homeowners, those who are having this work undertaken on their properties, would not be caught short. That is not an unrealistic or unreasonable expectation to hold, and it’s something that was put into the bill and something that we are quite keen obviously to see within that.

One of the aspects that I’m really quite pleased with in this bill is in relation to the professional duties that the professional bodies would undertake. In any circumstance—whether someone is a medical professional, whether they are an engineer, whether they are a teacher—there are always professional bodies that, yes, have a discipline arm to it but that also have an obligation to ensure that professional standards and conduct are at a level that is appropriate to meet the needs of those within that particular sector. What we now see in this bill are some changes that reflect the fact that the professional body and organisation do have some tools to be able to go out and to initiate some sort of inquiry or audit—actually, “audit” is the word that is used—to ensure that there is a level of professionalism amongst practitioners that folk can expect they live up to. That is a particular change, in terms of the audits, that is a pleasing thing to see.

One of the aspects around the endorsement process that I’m still not entirely convinced around is where a self-certification endorsement is authorised by the board. As the bill currently stands, if there is a term or condition that is imposed on a professional in this space, they could simply sort of time that out after a three-year period, not seek a renewal process but instead seek to have a new application. There’s nothing in the bill that would require the board to turn their mind to the fact that there were terms and conditions that were imposed previously. I do think that is somewhat of a gap. The preference, I think, would have been to have something in the legislation that required some form of reporting clause or something that would capture that fact and not rely on a kind of catch-all opportunity that the professional board could basically turn its mind to a range of things.

Now, that is the view of the Minister; I hold a different view around that. It’s not in the bill, but hopefully if there are circumstances where someone who is subject to having previous terms or conditions imposed upon their licence or their ability to practise in a self-certified way—there needs to be a mechanism that that information is not lost and that that information finds its way to the professional board when they’re considering future applications. We hope that those numbers would be light, that they wouldn’t be right up there, but what we’re really need to ensure, from the Labour Party perspective, is that those safeguards are in place to ensure that there are protections that are available to those who might need to utilise them when they do it.

Yes, this is seen as something that’s effective, it’s seen as something that’s efficient, but the bottom line from our perspective is that these changes need to be safe, they need to protect the consumer, they need to protect those whose properties this work would be done under, and that’s what we’d like to see.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie) (21:39): As the previous member, Tangi Utikere, said, these are effective changes; they are efficient changes. They are changes that have been dreamed of for some time by the by plumbers and drainlayers of Maungakiekie. I thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for its assiduous work on this. I’m excited for that dream to be granted, and I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour) (21:39): Mr Speaker, thank you very much. Look, I was sitting in my office watching this debate—I hadn’t heard the debate last night; I was at other meetings—and I was somewhat alarmed. I’ve seen some faith-based legislation in this House before, but not recently. This is a faith-based piece of legislation, and I know that my colleagues, through the select committee, have done their very best to try and improve it, and, on balance, we need to try and reduce the cost of building, but this is of concern to me.

There’s no one in this House who was around when this Parliament was trying to deal with leaky homes. I was around. In fact, I came in just after the Occupational Safety and Health legislation and the Building Act in 1991 came in. The Government of the day—National Government—came in wanting to lower the cost and deregulate. They deregulated health and safety and they deregulated building. I just want to put that on record, because I know my colleagues have done a great job in trying to improve this Government’s piece of legislation.

There’s also the Associate Minister of Health responsible for plumbers and drainlayers. They said, “Why is it in health?” Well, people should be reminded that the basis of public health was actually plumbing. It started in London when you had open drains and people realised that disease was widespread and there needed to be a system of looking after water and waste water; so, plumbing is still at the heart of public health. We support the lowering of costs, wherever possible, but this is a bit of faith-based legislation, trusting that people will do the right thing.

Now, for the most part, over the decades, Kiwis have been really good people, but for whatever reason, and through all, there have been people who cut corners. The pressure that has come, post the 1980s or thereabouts, on individual small to medium enterprises and individual tradespeople has been so intense, through competition. Usually competition drives efficiency—lowers cost, we’re told—but the temptation to cut corners has been such that we’ve had more people killed in workplaces and injured in workplaces because we trusted that the employer and the employee would work out what was safe and what wasn’t. People are dead because of the naive trust that systems can be developed through self-regulation. Leaky homes—the estimate is anything from $11 billion through to $47 billion of costs, where honest Kiwis thought they were getting a proper home built.

Can I just say that, in spite of the improvements that have been made through this piece of legislation at the select committee—and I acknowledge my colleagues—if you have plumbing done that is not up to standard or is faulty, not only will you not be able to see it but you won’t be able to go back to a plumber or a business person who’s gone broke, who doesn’t have any bond or any proper insurance in place. The $47 billion that it cost honest Kiwis up and down this country through leaky homes could be repeated again because of this piece of legislation.

The members over there who think that deregulation and lowering costs is great for everyone: go back and read a little bit of history. Go and talk to the widows of people who’ve been killed unnecessarily on work sites. Go and talk to the people who have spent millions of dollars doing up their buildings. When this piece of Government legislation is passed, it must come with a guarantee, in some way, that plumbers and drainlayers under pressure from either their businesses or the contracts or their employer don’t cut corners and leave people with buildings and homes that are deficient, defective, and, ultimately, cost them a fortune.

This, for most people, seems like a piece of progress. It comes with a huge warning, and I say, and put in this House here, that, unfortunately, we will see, through human nature and commercial pressure and naivety, that means people cutting corners.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (21:45): I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. For those people at home who just heard the last speaker, the Hon Damien O’Connor, you wouldn’t believe it but he’s actually supporting this bill, as I do, and I’ll commit it to the House.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour) (21:45): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity. I’m going to take a call on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. I think there are a few more things that need to be said on this. I would like to reiterate the comments of my colleague Tangi Utikere, who was a little bit dismayed that some of the members across the Chamber haven’t really made contributions. The chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Andy Foster, made a bit more of a fuller contribution, as I would expect from him. It’s kind of a bit of a loss, because it’s at this stage where it’s the opportunity to sum up everything that we heard.

It was a really interesting bill to be part of the select committee process on, for those of us who don’t have that lived experience like my colleague Cameron Luxton and who haven’t been, you know, under the house and done all the things they do under there—the experience of knowing the reality of the types of skills and the way in which not only are those skills applied but those businesses are run with those skills in mind. Being part of the select committee process was interesting. I felt like I learnt a lot of things, particularly from those industry experts who came in and were able to point out nuance, were able to point out that, while something might have sounded good on the surface, there was always potential for unintended consequences, and it was an interesting process. It would have been nice to have heard some fuller contributions from the people who were also there.

One thing I think we can agree on—and yes, we will be supporting this bill. There is plenty in it to support. There could have been some things that were done differently. I also acknowledge the fact that it’s quite an unusual situation to be at this stage, now, having assumed or thought that the Minister was going to do some additional work on some of those points in relation to expanding the scope. Certainly, some of the submissions that we heard—you know, there was real rationale for some of that, not in so far as just expanding for the sake of it, but the way in which it fitted in with the overall picture. We are a little bit surprised, at this late stage, as of last night, to hear that work hasn’t, in fact, been done. I mean cutting costs is good, and I think we can all agree on that; cutting corners, however, is a whole other thing, and that is not good.

Whilst there were some comments made from the other side of the House in relation to the previous speaker on this side of the House, I think it is worth noting that we should learn lessons from the past. Nothing ever works in a linear direction. There are always advances and lessons and all sorts of good things that progress, but that can go backwards really quickly if you don’t keep your eye on the types of rules and regulations and the types of contexts that afford for those opportunities to work well. The leaky homes saga—a catastrophe; trauma for a huge number of people—is one of those issues. I think that was a perfectly reasonable thing to bring up, because everyone wants faster, cheaper building, but when the Government pushes speed over safeguards—whether it’s public sector cuts, infrastructure shortcuts, deregulation without enough security—it’s no wonder that you have to keep your ears pricked and look out for things that could go wrong.

We have supported this bill throughout this whole process, but we were very clear at the beginning stages that, whilst we supported it, we were super keen on some additional safeguards. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee did add some stronger audit powers, which is good. It did also add a public register and tighter standards after those concerns were raised. That just shows that scrutiny matters. Good legislation is often improved, I think, through a select committee process and through the work that is done by the select committee, and the opportunity and the affordance that select committees have to garner and be recipients of those submissions and the advice from other experts—so bear that in mind as we head into another round of urgency.

If councils step back, homeowners still need protection. I think one of the things that has been somewhat left—not unsaid and not under-investigated, but there hasn’t been as much meeting of the minds as we would have hoped, to have been able to influence through the select committee process. That’s the fact that, sure, councils may no longer be inspecting some plumbing and drainlaying work, but homeowners themselves still need clear ways to get defects fixed if they do emerge. I think everybody could relate to the fact that—if we’re talking about a residential property and a family who have discovered some defective plumbing after the walls have been closed up—it becomes incredibly expensive and stressful to go about doing that.

It’s all very well for the Government wanting to shift that responsibility away from the State and councils, but it is incumbent upon us to make sure that there are still protections—and also for those tradespeople. They shouldn’t be carrying all of that risk alone themselves. Plumbers and drainlayers, whilst they hold major professional responsibility, if the liability is expanded, there has also got to be proper insurance products and proper insurance support available so that they can protect themselves. Many of them are small-business owners—small tradies running family-owned businesses—and one dispute or a defect claim too many and, all of a sudden, they could get themselves into difficulty as well.

The insurance products still aren’t locked in. A workable insurance product was identified by the committee itself as a kind of critical, cross-party—something that we could have all agreed on. There’s still some unanswered question in that regard, and I think that was a little bit of a missed opportunity. The Minister for Building and Construction wants, so we understand, to expand the scheme and had certainly signalled that that was going to happen. I don’t know—maybe we’ve still got one more call from the National Party before the conclusion of this bill, and maybe we might hear some more details about what happened there.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Really? Very optimistic.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Efficiency matters, and accountability matters as well—it is optimistic, but there is still one call, and a little bit more time left as well.

We do agree that efficiency matters, and we do agree that people want to have building costs reduced. That’s the ideal, but we do need to find a way to do that that is safe and workable for everybody so that homeowners don’t bear the brunt of that if things go wrong, and so that tradies themselves aren’t the ones in the firing line, so to speak, if that doesn’t go well. We do think, whilst we support this, that it would have been nice for (a) the Minister to have completed that work and (b) for some of those suggestions that were made during the select committee process—and that were also reiterated at the committee of the whole House stage—to have happened.

Tangi Utikere: It’s a very collegial committee.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: It was a very collegial committee. Finally, I would like to thank all those people who did make submissions. It was really informative. I would like to acknowledge the work of the select committee, as we often say, my colleague Tangi Utikere and I, and commend the select committee—very well chaired by Andy Foster, who’s over there and keeps us on our toes—

Tangi Utikere: Got a new deputy chair.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: —and keeps things moving—there’s a new deputy chair, of course.

Tangi Utikere: He didn’t say much tonight.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: He didn’t say much tonight, but we welcome his appointment as the deputy chair of the hard-working Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and we commend this bill to the House.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (21:55): Oh, a little bit of criticism there from the last member for members on this side not saying enough, and yet she managed to talk for almost 10 minutes and say nothing at all. We had Arena Williams, who was on a roof; we had Celia Wade-Brown, who was under the floor with the plumber; we had Julie Anne Genter, who was sitting on a bidet and wanted everyone else to be sitting on a bidet, in one of the most out-of-touch speeches I’ve heard; and then we had Damien O’Connor, who seemed to be sitting on the fence. I’m not. I like this. I commend it to the House.

GEORGIE DANSEY (Labour) (21:55): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’m glad that I got to take a call on this important bill, because—just to elaborate on the previous speaker, Tim Costley’s run through of what everyone talked about—I wanted to talk about my plumber. The reason I want to talk about my plumber is because my plumber is a very good example of how hard plumbers work in New Zealand.

His name is Dave. I won’t tell you which company he works for, because I don’t want to embarrass him too much, but he came to my house to do some work in my bathroom. I walked into the hallway and found that the bathroom door was shut and that one of our chickens had escaped and was in the hallway of the house, and he was hiding behind the door because he was scared of birds, and I had to get rid of the chicken so he could come out. That’s the commitment—that is the commitment—that our plumbers have to ensuring they can do their job properly. Even though he was afraid, he was still there, brave, doing the plumbing work.

Every year, I get an invite to the Waikato Master Plumbers Awards evening. Mike Wilson is a great Waikato plumber who hosts the event, and it’s a real honour to go and hear more about the incredible work our plumbers do. In particular, the Apprentice of the Year award is amazing. To see young plumbers coming through, doing the mahi, and getting recognised for that is really lovely.

As previous speakers have spoken to, Labour supports this bill with reservations. One of the things that I appreciate about this bill is the fact that it’s going to, hopefully, make things more efficient for plumbers working in the sector. For those young apprentices who are coming into their career, it can make life a little bit easier for them as they flow through—excuse the pun! I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be now read a third 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 third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. Good night to everyone, especially Dave the plumber. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.59 p.m.