Thursday, 20 August 2026

Thursday, 20 August 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

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

Business of the House

Business Statement

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Leader of the House) (14:01): Next week, the House will consider more portfolios in the Estimates debate, and make progress on the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill.

GLEN BENNETT (Chief Whip—Labour) (14:01): On behalf of the shadow Leader of the House, just wondering if there will be a members’ day next week? Can we have confirmation of that, please?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Leader of the House) (14:01): The members’ days will be progressing as planned.

Presentation

Petitions

SPEAKER: Two petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK (14:01):

Petition of Blake Forbes requesting that the House urge the Government to restore the Total Mobility scheme subsidy to 75 percent

petition of Danny Tahau Jobe requesting that the House make Aotearoa New Zealand the official name of the country.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. No papers have been delivered.

Select Committee Reports

SPEAKER: Four select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK (14:01):

Reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Audit Office 2026/27 Annual plan

review briefing on the 2024/25 Annual review of Kiwi Group Capital Limited

report of the Governance and Administration Committee on the five reports of the Ombudsman

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the complaint about the Electricity (Prescribed Classes of Registration for Electrical Workers) Gazette Notice 2025.

SPEAKER: The reports are set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Commerce and Consumer Affairs

Question No. 1

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (14:02) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: Will he introduce legislation to prohibit the supermarket duopoly from charging excessive prices, like Australia has done; if not, why not?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (14:02): The Government agrees that New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. The question is what to do about it. Banning excessive pricing sounds attractive in theory, but working out what constitutes an excessive price is much harder in practice, as the Australians are discovering. Our focus is on the underlying problem: too little competition. We have taken significant steps to remove barriers to entry and to strengthen competition, and we have undertaken detailed analysis of structural reform. The analysis continues to inform the Government’s work to deliver greater competition.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Has this Government managed to attract a third competitor to significantly disrupt the market, by pleading to overseas investors, yet?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: This Government continues to work on removing those barriers to entry. The good news is, as the Annual Grocery Report released by the Commerce Commission detailed, there is competition in the market—not adequate, but it’s growing, when you look at the arrival of mid-sized supermarkets, when you look at the arrival of Costco, and when you look at the arrival of various online options.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does he think the excess profits made by the supermarket duopoly, as described by the Commerce Commission, are fair?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: We believe that New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. That’s what we’re focused on fixing; that’s why we’re looking at competition; that’s why we’re turning over every stone, right throughout the sector; and that is why the Minister for Economic Growth continues with her analysis and cost-benefit analysis work, which she expects to report back before the end of the parliamentary term.

Ricardo Menéndez March: How are supermarkets making excess profits, as reported by the Commerce Commission, if not at the expense of consumers, who are paying excessive prices?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: As I said previously, we as a Government believe New Zealanders are paying too much for their groceries, and that is why we are focused squarely on getting a better deal for New Zealanders. We’ve opened up fast track to supermarkets, we’ve created a nationwide building consent pathway, and we’ve made it easier to replicate supermarket designs. We will continue the work, and already we are seeing some good progress being made.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Supplementary.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary question. He’s had three.

SPEAKER: The Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you very much.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Sore loser!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Don’t be jealous, honey.

SPEAKER: Please, don’t refer to me in those endearing terms. That’s not going to—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Get out—get out!

SPEAKER: That’ll do; we’ll carry on.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Go home, honey.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: See, there he goes again. Does the Minister consider—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: One person speaking during a question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Minister consider it wise public policy to charge a fee for charging too much when that regime requires years of resolution in the courts before anybody might see any benefit at the checkout, if at all, and is the Minister aware that a serious political party has a full-scale policy to break up the supermarkets to fix excessive prices—namely, the policy of New Zealand First?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: I am aware of different policy propositions that have been put forward around excessive profits, particularly from the primary questioner, and many commentators have said their policy is simply unworkable.

Ricardo Menéndez March: How can he credibly claim that in areas like Auckland or densely populated areas across the country, new supermarkets will be able to spring up when there’s already a saturation of the duopoly in many neighbourhoods with little physical space for new competitors?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: As I’ve already articulated, and as was reported dutifully in the Annual Grocery Report released in the middle of the year by the Commerce Commission, there is a lot of work to do, which we are committed to doing. But, more importantly, we are seeing some positive signs—some positive signs—of competition, when you look at another Costco coming into South Auckland, when you look at mid-sized supermarkets competing, when you look at Chemist Warehouse and how that competes on certain categories, and when you look on increasing options around online offerings for New Zealand consumers.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. I seek leave of the House to table a letter of exchange between Chlöe Swarbrick and the leader of New Zealand First where the former asked the latter to adopt her supermarkets policy, and the latter said that while we have long advocated eating greens, on this occasion they should consider adopting a full-scale policy to break up the supermarkets and adopt our policy. These are the documents here; can I table them, please?

SPEAKER: Well, that’s up to the House. It’s unusual because they’re already in the public record.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, they’re not.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection to that course of action?

Hon Member: Yes.

SPEAKER: There is none.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: No, there was—there was.

SPEAKER: Well, speak up; I didn’t hear.

Hon Member: I was right here.

SPEAKER: Well, this would be one time in nearly three years that I haven’t been able to hear the member. My apologies, but we’re moving on.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Are supermarket profits more important than helping struggling families to put food on the table by urgently legislating to put a cap on excess prices?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: As I have articulated clearly enough, we think New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. That is why the Commerce Commission has consistently pointed to the lack of competition, and that is the area this Government is resolutely focused on. But the good news is we’re seeing some positive signs, and that is including grocery prices increasing just 1.9 percent in the year to 31 July. We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s a big improvement from where we were at three or four years ago.

Finance

Question No. 2

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth) (14:09) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on New Zealand’s capital intensity?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:10): Machinery, equipment, technology, and other capital assets are hugely important for economic performance, as more capital per worker means higher productivity, higher wages, and higher living standards. I have seen a recent report from the OECD confirming that New Zealand has a low rate of capital per worker compared to other advanced economies. That fact has long been known, but this Government decided to do something about it. In Budget 2025, we introduced a tax incentive for businesses to purchase new machinery, equipment, and other capital assets—that is the Investment Boost policy.

David MacLeod: What are the benefits of Investment Boost?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Treasury and Inland Revenue advised that Investment Boost would lower the cost of capital for businesses by around 5 percent, increase investment in business assets, and reduce the tax impost on domestic capital investment for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Over the next 20 years, it is expected to increase GDP and raise labour productivity and wages. Officials advise that Investment Boost was likely the most cost-effective tax policy available to support growth, productivity, and living standards. Robyn Walker, tax partner at Deloitte, said of Investment Boost that, “Overall, this is a really positive change for businesses.”; and Russell McVeagh said that Investment Boost is a credible demonstration of the Government’s focus on driving economic growth and investment in New Zealand infrastructure.

David MacLeod: How much is the reduction in tax for New Zealand businesses?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, Budget 2025 documents show that, in the current fiscal year, Investment Boost is expected to reduce taxes on New Zealand businesses by $1.6 billion. Next year, it is expected to reduce businesses’ taxes by $1.7 billion, and the following year by $1.3 billion. That means that any policy to scrap Investment Boost would be an increase in tax on New Zealand businesses. Worse, it would be an increase in tax for businesses who are doing exactly what the country needs them to be doing, which is investing in the machinery, tools, farm equipment, vehicles, industrial buildings, and other productive assets that will raise wages for New Zealand workers; workers that some parties in this House claim to represent.

David MacLeod: For how long has Investment Boost been running?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, Investment Boost began on 22 May last year, so it’s been running for just over a year, and the impacts are expected to build up overtime as firms make long-term investment decisions. But we will get an initial snapshot of how Investment Boost has been used after the 31 March next year when businesses will have filed their tax returns for the 2025-2026 tax year. I’ve seen a statement from Robyn Walker, who is a highly respected tax expert, saying, “The proposal to repeal Investment Boost before there has been time to properly evaluate its effectiveness is disappointing … The ongoing history of political flip-flopping on tax settings will continue to negatively affect New Zealand’s ability to be seen as a stable location for investment.”

Energy

Question No. 3

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:13) to the Minister for Energy: Is it still his intention that the Government signs a contract with a provider for an LNG import terminal before the election?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Climate Change) (14:13) on behalf of the Minister for Energy: Yes, it remains the Government’s intention to sign a contract with a provider before the election on the basis that the contract meets the Crown’s requirements and delivers value for money for New Zealanders. We are progressing this because in 2024 this country saw exactly what a dry year does when there is no backup: wholesale prices went up above $800 per megawatt hour, the aluminium smelter cut production, businesses closed permanently, and thousands of New Zealanders lost their jobs. You obviously cannot run an economy on a weather forecast. Since we announced in February that we were proceeding with liquefied natural gas (LNG), I am advised that the wholesale future electricity prices at the end of July for 2028 and 2029 have already fallen from $170 to $125 per megawatt hour, a nearly 30 percent reduction in wholesale electricity prices. This is the market responding to certainty. A dry year occurs every four years on average and they are difficult to predict. I am advised that LNG is the fastest, cheapest, and most flexible way to keep the lights on, protect jobs, and take pressure off power bills, and this Government is getting on and delivering it.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why is he pressing ahead with an LNG import terminal when advice the Ombudsman forced his Government to release showed it may not reduce power prices—indeed, could increase gas and electricity prices—and may not be needed to maintain security of supply?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, what I can infer to the member that will increase electricity prices in this country is banning oil and gas and stopping gas flowing to make electricity. The reason why we are in this position is we do not have sufficient gas to be able to make electricity in a dry year. This Government has taken the leadership to put in place the fastest and cheapest mechanism in order to produce electricity in a dry year, which is the importation of LNG, and that is what we’re doing. Why? Because we care about Kiwi households and businesses, and we are taking action for the failed mistakes of prior Governments.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: What specific evidence or advice has he received that counters Concept Consulting’s conclusion that LNG may not lower electricity prices, could raise gas and electricity prices, and may not be necessary for the security of supply?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, I answered the point around the necessity for having gas molecules to make electricity in the answer to my primary question. What is clear is that, without gas, we cannot make sufficient electricity to keep the lights on in this country and to keep businesses employing people, including manufacturers to produce goods we export. Without gas, we cannot do that, and that is because the banning of oil and gas has put us in that situation. As a result of that, we have taken the decision to allow importation of LNG, which will provide us the mechanism to make electricity, and that is the action that we’re undertaking as a Government.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a very straight question: I asked what specific evidence or advice the Minister had received to back up the opinions that he’s been giving in this House. He has said that they don’t need to follow the Concept Consulting official advice that was supressed by the Government, so what counter advice has he got? He failed to even address that in an answer.

SPEAKER: With all due respect, I don’t think he did. Firstly, he doesn’t have to respond to an outside organisation’s report.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why has he not published the all-in consumer and taxpayer cost of the terminal when his own modelling shows LNG does not consistently reduce average wholesale prices and can increase them in some scenarios?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Because the negotiations in regards to the importation terminal are obviously commercially sensitive. Those negotiations are currently under way, and that is why we’re not releasing that information.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: What exactly has National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Limited (NIFFCo) been directed to do: assessing financing, negotiating commercial terms, allocating risk, arranging Crown support, or preparing commitments for the Government?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, NIFFCo, alongside a range of other Government agencies, including the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, are providing support and advice to Government in regards to this very important issue. New Zealand is facing an energy crisis that was completely foreseeable because we do not have sufficient gas to be able to make electricity. As a result of that reality, we are taking action to solve that. That is appropriate because the lack of gas has had an implication on the New Zealand economy of a loss of economic growth in the region of $5 billion. That is completely unacceptable. That is what we inherited; we’re taking leadership to fix it, and we will get it fixed.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Will he commit to releasing NIFFCo’s advice before any contract is signed?

Hon SIMON WATTS: I answered that question in the context of what is—we’ve got commercial negotiations under way, and, obviously, we’re not going to release commercially sensitive information while negotiations are under way.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Will he take any proposed commercial arrangements back to Cabinet before any contract is signed, and, if not, why not?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Obviously, with the scale of investment involved in putting in place an importation terminal for LNG, I would expect, as would be sort of common knowledge, that Cabinet would be involved in that decision-making process. Look, again, I reinforce the point—and maybe this is the problem—that without gas molecules you can’t make electricity. We’re in this position because we banned oil and gas. As a result of that, Kiwi businesses paid the price in 2024.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why should New Zealanders trust him to sign an LNG deal only weeks out from a general election when the Ombudsman found his Government refused to release evidence that the public had a right to see and that modelling showed it could push up both gas and electricity prices for New Zealand households and businesses?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Quite simply because, on this side of the House, we are focused on protecting New Zealanders, to ensure we have economic growth and to ensure we have affordable, abundant, and reliable energy in this country. We are in this situation because of failures by prior Governments. We’re taking leadership to get this fixed. We will get it fixed, and that will benefit all New Zealanders.

SPEAKER: Just before I call question No. 4, it has been pointed out to me by the Clerk that, while leave was sought to table some documents earlier, the House does have to take the word of the member who said there was an objection. My proposal is to put that leave again. The Rt Hon Winston Peters wanted to table some documents that talked of an exchange between himself and Chlöe Swarbrick. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection?

Hon Members: Yes.

SPEAKER: Then it won’t be tabled. That’s fine. We move on to question No. 4—Tākuta Ferris. [Interruption]

Tākuta Ferris: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Tākuta Ferris—and no one else.

Housing

Question No. 4

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Tai Tonga) (14:21) to the Minister of Housing: Does he stand by his statement that “Social housing is a high-cost intervention and should be targeted to those who need it the most”?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (14:22) on behalf of the Minister of Housing: Yes, social housing is a relatively high-cost intervention compared to some other Government housing supports—for example, a new social housing place costs, on average, $45,000 per year, and an existing place, on average, around $22,500 per year; compared to the accommodation supplement, with average costs of around $6,000 per year. On top of this, once someone is in social housing, there has been very little follow-up to check whether the circumstances, socio-economic or whānau, have changed and whether or not they still need a social house. That’s why it’s imperative that we build the right house, in the right location, with the right support for those most in housing need. That’s what our work reviewing the social housing system is trying to achieve.

Tākuta Ferris: If social housing is to be targeted to those who need it most, how does he justify the sale of 403 homes and properties in Te Tai Tonga alone in the year to August, when 17,463 whānau nationally are assessed as being in priority A on the housing register?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: There have been disposals by Kāinga Ora of social housing over numerous Governments. Kāinga Ora—and previously, before that, Housing New Zealand—has both sold and bought land and housing in order to provide social housing for communities. That continues, because often, if you sell some land that is not suitable any more, you can actually reinvest that money and create more houses.

Tākuta Ferris: Does the Minister accept that it is about time Government devolved responsibility for identifying housing need and delivering solutions to iwi and Māori housing providers, considering there are 8,300 Māori on the housing register, the highest need of any community nationally?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: On behalf of the Minister of Housing, there has been considerable support—nigh on half a billion dollars over the last three years—to support Māori and iwi providers to build housing for people in housing need. Not only that, there have also been efforts over time to work with iwi, like Ngāti Toa Rangatira, who are currently managing nearly 1,000 social houses that have been previously under the management of Kāinga Ora out in Porirua—a great place, if anyone wants to go there one day. There has been collaboration, and I encourage that collaboration further. We just announced this week 823 places to be funded by the Flexi Fund, and many of those places were actually being built by iwi and Māori housing providers, whether or not it’s Waitomo Papakāinga up in the great northern capital of Kaitāia, or right through to the East Coast, where Tūranganui a Kiwi is going to be building more houses under the Flexi Fund, or indeed places like Hamilton, where Te Rūnanga o Kirikiriroa is building housing—a great place, city of the future.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: How does the Minister reconcile his position that social housing should be targeted to those who need it the most with the fact that in West Auckland, more than a thousand people are living in uninhabitable housing and more than 2,000 people are experiencing severe housing deprivation or homelessness?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: On behalf of the Minister of Housing, I acknowledge that there are some people who are doing it really tough in the housing space, and that’s why we’ve continued to invest over $400 million in very short-term reactive measures. For example, the Housing First 300, which we announced last September—Minister Bishop and I—that’s seen over 700 individuals go through the Housing First kaupapa, the Housing First delivery, and there continue to be places up and down the country, including in Auckland, where housing is being built, whether or not that’s affordable rentals, social housing through community housing providers and iwi housing providers, and others. We continue to focus on those areas with the greatest housing deprivation—for example, Northland, Te Tairāwhiti—Toi Rāwhiti—South Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, and other places.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Will the Minister commit to providing additional social housing that is needed for West Auckland whānau, or does his characterisation of social housing as a high-cost intervention mean that the 200 whānau in temporary accommodation and more than 500 sharing someone else’s dwellings will continue to go without?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: On behalf of the Minister of Housing, what we have seen over the last three years is a range of different supports that the Government has given to the building of housing across places like West Auckland. You only have to go and ask Lisa Woolley over at Visionwest, whose community housing provider—a very successful one—is building houses as a result of the community housing provider 1,500 homes that were endorsed in Budget 2024. We continue to support a range of providers, including people in urban Māori organisations who have been building social housing over the last three years, and we’ll continue to do that.

Media and Communications

Question No. 5

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) (14:27) to the Minister for Media and Communications: Is he considering implementing a streaming tax?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for Media and Communications) (14:27): No, we are not, and we think Zealanders pay enough tax already and we don’t need another tax.

Joseph Mooney: Has he seen any New Zealand films that required a streaming tax in order to succeed?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No, but I do recall seeing Tinā last year, a highly successful film, earning more than $10 million in the international box office, and one of New Zealand’s most successful films. It did draw on the extensive support of the New Zealand taxpayers, but it didn’t need an extra tax.

Joseph Mooney: Has he seen any other examples of investment that don’t involve a streaming tax?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, I did go to the opening night of the New Zealand International Film Festival which screened Big Girls Don’t Cry, a New Zealand film—excellent film, great film—which received a lot of support from New Zealand taxpayers, and collected through current taxation. The observation, as I was listening to and watching that film, was that we didn’t need another tax to go on top of all the other taxes that we already pay in order to enjoy great film and great TV series in this country.

Joseph Mooney: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Oh, right. OK.

Joseph Mooney: What commentary has he seen about a streaming tax?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Oh, well. Well, I have some interesting commentary. I saw one member say, “We will implement a streaming levy as early as possible after the election—

SPEAKER: Just recall—I just remind the member again about Speaker’s rulings 181/3 and 181/4, so it might help him with the progress of that—

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Would you like me to consult that?

SPEAKER: I would think that if he hasn’t consulted it after I recommended it the other day, then there’s no point in reading it now.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, Mr Speaker, that was an administrative oversight on my part and I apologise for it. But what I can say is that there’s been much to-ing and fro-ing, but on this side of the House, we’re absolutely clear: there’s enough taxes paid in New Zealand already, and we don’t need another tax.

Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti

Question No. 6

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (14:29) to the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti: Does he stand by his statement at the Iwi Chairs Forum that “we haven’t got it all right”; if so, what haven’t they got right?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti) (14:30): I recently attended the Iwi Chairs Forum in Tāhuna—Queenstown—alongside Minister Willis, as representatives of the National Party. However, I will respond to that in light of my other responsibilities. One area where I think we could have communicated better is the immense tax relief that the Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, offered all New Zealanders, including an estimated $400 million to whānau Māori in Budget 2024. Another area where I could have communicated it a bit better, and we could have communicated it a bit better, was the extraordinary work of the regional development Minister with the Regional Infrastructure Fund, and, indeed, collaborating together with these people—these honest, hard-working people—on this side of the House, in delivering more marae support funding than any Government in history, more Māori language broadcasting funding at the baseline than any Government in history, and more money into kapa haka than any Government in history, and also I could have articulated more transparently about the parlous state that a previous Government had left two-year-olds’ immunisation rates for Māori in this country. I take my hat off to Minister Brown for his good work to get those immunisation rates up, from 64 percent to over 70 percent—kia ora.

Hon Willie Jackson: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister is spinning stories. I don’t like to say it, but that’s not true, what he’s saying in terms of funding for marae. It’s not—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, wait—sorry. Don’t interrupt a point of order. Start again.

Hon Willie Jackson: The Minister is spinning stories in the House. He is saying that this Government has spent more money on marae, more so than any other Government. Minister Shane Jones and myself, and Labour, spent $100 million on marae, and that was more than any other Government—

SPEAKER: Yeah, look—good. So far, you are listing a series of debating points, but it’s not a point of order.

Hon Willie Jackson: But the point of order is that the Minister—I don’t like saying it, but—

SPEAKER: Well, if that’s the case, then—

Hon Willie Jackson: —he’s telling a lie.

SPEAKER: —you know there are other remedies.

Hon Willie Jackson: He’s telling a lie.

SPEAKER: There are other remedies open to the member. He’s been here for quite a long time and he knows what they are. Is there another supplementary?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Responding to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, I’ve just dealt with it.

Hon Willie Jackson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister believe that Nicola Willis got it right when, at the Iwi Chairs Forum, she said that “We are proud of our belief that iwi and communities deserve more power over their own resources.”; and if so, what example does he have where more power has been provided to Māori over this term?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: It gives me great pleasure to remind all members of this House that this Government has invested over $200 million into marae over the last three years. That is perhaps double the amount of money that the member has mentioned about a previous Government that he may have been part of, but it’s important to get our maths right—don’t be so fuzzy. In relation to devolving and collaborating with iwi and Māori over doing things at a localised level and a regional level, a great example is the half a billion dollars that this Government has co-invested and collaborated on with Māori and iwi housing providers. As a result of that, we expect nearly a thousand more houses to be deployed across various iwi and Māori organisations and the land that they own. I could rattle off a number of examples, but how much time do we have, Mr Speaker?

Hon Willie Jackson: Does he believe Minister Goldsmith got it right when he ordered officials to remove te reo Māori greetings and references to Aotearoa New Zealand in an official invitation to Matariki; if not, did he ask Minister Goldsmith why he chose to do that?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: As you know, Minister Goldsmith is a very hard-working and busy Minister with a variety of portfolios, but it is not my role, as the Minister for Māori Crown Relations, to get into the mind and the head of Minister Goldsmith. It’s my role to ensure that we deliver on the promises that we have made, particularly around the Nelson Tenths legislation, which went through its third reading this week—something that the previous Government was never intending to do.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister aware that the Iwi Chairs Forum have put their interviews online and that the Greens have had 1,000 views, Labour’s Willie Jackson has had 8,000 views, National have had 16,000 views, and Winston Peters has had 44,000 views, while Te Pāti Māori have two people waiting for their premiere tonight?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I understand that Minister Peters, the rangatira here in the parliamentary precincts, was very much appreciated and adored by many of the iwi chairs and the young people conducting those interviews.

Hon Willie Jackson: Did he think that Minister Upston got it right when she mucked up the winter energy payment for thousands of kaumātua when she was told about the problem 10 days before by Labour?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: There are things that we don’t get right, but the difference between ourselves and the member is that we get on and deal to them. We don’t leave them hanging—like the Ōrākau lands; like Kororipo; like, of course, the Nelson Tenths and 15 settlements that Mr Goldsmith has currently curated over the term of this House. I absolutely applaud Minister Goldsmith’s effort over in Wharekauri recently, where we reached the deed of settlement with Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri. Again, two ticks to his résumé, and I hope that they’re blue.

Hon Willie Jackson: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I was talking about Minister Upston, and the Minister wasn’t mentioned once. I was talking about the Minister mucking up payments to kaumātua although she was told 10 weeks beforehand by Labour about this. The Minister didn’t address the question at all.

SPEAKER: Yes, he did. He said she fixed it.

Hon Willie Jackson: I didn’t pick that up—I didn’t pick that up. You sure?

SPEAKER: Very sure.

Hon Willie Jackson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I didn’t pick that up, but I’ll take your word for it.

SPEAKER: Oh, thanks very much. Very generous of you.

Hon Willie Jackson: Why should iwi Māori have any trust in this Government when all iwi see is their settlements are being breached, te reo Māori is being removed, Treaty clauses are being removed, and the Māori-Crown relationship has gone backwards?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: There’s a degree of hyperbole in the member’s comments and the member’s questions, but he is clear and consistent. We are absolutely focused on doing things with Māori, not just dropping inconsistent and unclear aspirations and propositions and, sometimes, statutory provisions. That’s the role of Government: to make sure that we effectively deliver on the services that we have, and we ensure that legislation that is presented to this House is done in an appropriate manner. I absolutely applaud the mahi that the agencies have done, the mahi that the Ministers and the members of this Government have done, and the mahi that we all do to try and improve the oranga and the ōhanga of Māori communities and Māori societies. That’s why I’m so for the mahi around fast track, because when you look at some of the fast track—

SPEAKER: Yeah, yeah, that’s good. You’ve done well. Is there another question? Question No. 7—Mike Davidson.

ACC

Question No. 7

MIKE DAVIDSON (Green) (14:38) to the Minister for ACC: Has he read the report, The Legacy of PCP and its Dioxins in Aotearoa: An overview of human rights concerns; if so, does he have a response to it?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister for ACC) (14:38): Yes. My response is that the Government is committed to ensuring that the accident compensation scheme covers people who suffer from injuries, including work-related injuries. That’s why this Government recently updated the list of work-related diseases in the Accident Compensation Act after more than 15 years, and that’s why there is also a clear process for injured people to seek cover.

Mike Davidson: What does he say to Kereama Akuhata, who said, “Most of us who were poisoned at work do not get ACC, and ACC continues to refuse to acknowledge the varied range of illnesses which exposure to PCP and dioxins have caused”?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: I would say that ACC remains, as it always has done, available and open to receive claims from any New Zealander who seeks to apply for compensation. That process is open, ready, and available.

Mike Davidson: Does he stand by his statement that, “I acknowledge the experiences of former sawmill workers and their families.”, and does this include acknowledging the fact that they are sick and dying without access to ACC, despite being poisoned at work?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Like the member who’s just asked that question, I am not a medical expert and I do not seek to profess to be one. That’s why, as Minister, I rely on the professional advice of medical experts. As I’ve stated previously, ACC remains available and open to receive—

Hon Member: Applications.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —applications, yes—cases from people who feel that they may have been affected. That process continues and it’s available.

Mike Davidson: As the Minister said in a previous answer that the ACC schedule has just been re-looked at, did this include pentachlorophenol, which has been identified as hazardous to workers’ health almost 50 years ago?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: There were a range of matters considered by the panel. From memory, I think there were 12 new conditions that were added to Schedule 2. The process is now formalised that a further review will occur, commencing in five years’ time, and that process will actually, probably, start in the next Parliament, but that is a process that this Government set in place, and it had not been reviewed for 15 years.

Mike Davidson: Has he asked or does he intend to ask for any advice on extending Schedule 2 to cover pentachlorophenol exposure; if not, why not?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Upon reading the report that I received earlier this week, I have asked for further information and advice.

Mike Davidson: How many former sawmill workers exposed to pentachlorophenol have died while waiting for the Government to provide a practical pathway to compensation and redress, and how many more will die while no action is taken?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: That’s not information that I have access to or is available to me, but if the member would like to, perhaps, put a question in writing, I would seek to attempt to provide an answer.

Education

Question No. 8

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (14:42) to the Minister of Education: Does she agree with educators who described the draft curriculum as “potentially damaging to learners” and showing “a total lack of understanding of our disciplines”?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:42): No. As the member notes in the question she asked, this is draft material for the senior secondary curriculum that is currently out for consultation—not the final content currently being written by 350 New Zealand subject matter experts borrowed from schools around the country. I’m proud of the new curriculum. It represents work from across the sector with hundreds of submissions from teachers, school leaders, subject experts, education organisations, and New Zealanders across the country. I will note some comments around the fact that there is too much material in the drafts. We’ve always been very clear that it was our intention to start with more and settle on content that the sector tells us will set Kiwis up for success.

Hon Ginny Andersen: If climate change was never removed from the curriculum, why has she ordered officials to put it back?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, I’ve already answered this in the media. While the term “climate change” did not appear—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: And you don’t answer it.

SPEAKER: Yeah, and that’s what we’re getting here: an answer.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. While the term “climate change” didn’t appear in the curriculum content, students learn about how climate systems work, why climate change happens, and its impacts through the social sciences curriculum. I’ve already instructed the ministry to explicitly include and signpost the words “climate change” in the years 0 to 10 curriculum, and I would note that climate change science is included in the senior secondary curriculum.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that climate change remained in the curriculum when education professor Chris Eames says that in the curriculum, the causes are not connected coherently or even attributed to humans?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, I’ve already answered that question. This is the junior curriculum, levels 1 to 4. The content around climate change is included—how climate systems work, how climate change happens, and its impact—in the social sciences curriculum. As we move up into the senior secondary curriculum, a lot more of that content is included, as appropriate, because some of the science behind it is quite high-level and aimed at students who are in senior secondary.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Why is she now blaming unnamed curriculum writers for the omission when she personally reviewed and approved the final curriculum before its release?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Because I am not the final determinant and decision maker of the content—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Carry on.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker—I’ll start again. It is not the job of the Minister to go through the content as it is set out before it goes out. I do a final look through, but I’m not a teacher, I’m not an expert, and I don’t go through—[Interruption] I don’t go through, nor should I be expected to, nor is it my job to go through and make changes. I just have a final look at it before it goes out, and I trust the process, the officials, and all of the subject matter experts from around New Zealand who wrote and approved the content.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Can she confirm that climate change appeared explicitly in the draft curriculum, disappeared from the final version she signed off, and is now being reinstated only after public criticism?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: There were multiple drafts of the curriculum that came through. I didn’t see them all. I signed off the very final one. All I know is that the curriculum writers have now been instructed to go back and signpost exactly where climate change is mentioned in the curriculum. As I’ve already said, students learn how climate systems work, why climate change happens, and its impacts on humans through the social sciences curriculum. I’ve instructed us to make sure that we’ve signposted with the words “climate change” exactly where that happens.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does she accept that signing off a curriculum that removed climate change, denying it had been removed, blaming the writers, and then ordering officials to put it back just demonstrates to New Zealand parents exactly why curriculum decisions should be left to education experts and not politicians such as herself?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, I’ll say this really slowly and clearly for the member so she understands: writers write the curriculum; the Minister signs it out at the very end—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Some of that noise is coming from your own side. Please carry on.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: It is not the Minister’s job to write curriculum information or to change it. It is up to the curriculum experts and the writers employed by the Ministry of Education who make those decisions. They are the ones who put in the curriculum climate change; they are the ones who omitted the words “climate change”; I’ve just asked that it goes back in the curriculum to signpost the fact that it is included and always was included in the curriculum.

Transport

Question No. 9

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (14:47) to the Minister of Transport: Is the Government considering introducing a ute tax?

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (14:47) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: No.

Tom Rutherford: What impact would introducing a ute tax have on farmers, tradies, and other New Zealanders who need a vehicle for work?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Well, for farmers, tradies, contractors, and small businesses, a ute is a tool of the trade. Increasing the cost of those vehicles means increasing the cost of doing business. Whether that is getting tools to a worksite, towing gear, or working on farms and forestry roads, those costs do not disappear. They will be passed on to consumers through higher prices. The Government won’t be reintroducing a ute tax, because we don’t want to make it more expensive for New Zealanders to get on with the job.

Tom Rutherford: Who would bear the cost of introducing a ute tax?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Well, that’s the fundamental unfairness of a ute tax. It’s the people who bear the cost of it who are the very New Zealanders who have the least ability to avoid it: the farmers, the tradies, the lower-income New Zealanders who have limited practical alternatives, while it subsidises households that are already in a position to buy a new electric vehicle (EV) or hybrid. In rural New Zealand, there would be no practical alternatives, so they would be forced to pay the extra tax for wealthy EV owners in the cities. The Government does not believe it would be fair or sensible to do so.

Tom Rutherford: What policies are the Government pursuing to reduce transport emissions without imposing additional costs on motorists?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: We are focused on making lower-emissions choices easier and more practical rather than taxing people into changing their vehicles. That includes accelerating the roll-out of EV charging, backed by public and private sector co-investment. We have also removed unnecessary consenting barriers for EV chargers and are improving smart charging settings so people can charge at cheaper times. The Government’s approach is to expand choice, build the infrastructure people need, and let New Zealanders decide what vehicle works best for them.

Environment

Question No. 10

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (14:50) to the Associate Minister for the Environment: What recent announcements has he made?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Associate Minister for the Environment) (14:50): Yesterday, I announced the Government’s decisions on how we will reform the freshwater farm plan system to make it simpler and more practical for farmers. We will bring in regulations that are proportionate. They will ensure that the work that farmers put in their farm plan focuses on genuine risk and improves water quality but doesn’t bury the kitchen table underneath a mountain of paperwork. I announced the risk thresholds which will trigger the need for certification and auditing. This is a much more proportionate approach than everyone having to be certified and audited, as in the previous system.

Cameron Luxton: What other changes is the Government making to freshwater farm plans?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: We are cutting the waffle out of the system. We are removing unnecessary mapping requirements so that farmers are focused on what actually creates risk; simplifying catchment context documents so that they give farmers the information they need and no more; and simplifying the grading approach for those that undergo audit, by moving to a pass/fail assessment and away from letter grades. As part of developing this policy, I took the opportunity to have someone come and do a certified plan under the new system on my own farm. What I found, and what farmers will see, is that having to do a farm plan should not be onerous. Most farmers are already managing their farm in a way that deeply cares for the local environment, and farm plans will be a way to validate and demonstrate that.

Cameron Luxton: What announcements has the Government made about Waikato’s Plan Change 1?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Yesterday, Ministers Bishop, McClay, Jones, and myself announced that the Government will stop the restrictive elements of Plan Change (PC) 1 from applying during the transition to the new resource management system. Plan Change 1 is a feature of a law that is on the cusp of being replaced, and farmers would have faced consenting and farm-planning requirements that may not be required under the new framework, which cuts red tape and is based on property rights. I acknowledge the work put in by a range of players to get through the 14-year PC1 process, including the agricultural industry, and that work will be taken into account when the new natural environment plan for the relevant catchments is developed.

Cameron Luxton: What announcements has the Government made about Plan Change 2?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: The Government also announced yesterday that it would stop farmers and growers being caught between two sets of rules by making changes to the implementation of Plan Change 2 in the Horizons region. This is an issue I’m pretty familiar with as a Manawatū farmer. I’ve spent years dealing with Horizons’ One Plan. The Government will remove the harsh nitrogen reduction targets that farmers would have had to meet under Plan Change 2. Under these targets, it would have made it virtually impossible for Horowhenua’s vegetable growers to be able to carry on producing the fresh veggies this country requires. Farmers and growers want to keep doing right by the land, but they shouldn’t have to meet the requirements that are about to disappear and were poorly thought out to begin with.

Justice

Question No. 11

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (14:53) to the Minister of Justice: Does he stand by all his statements and actions in relation to the Electoral Amendment Act 2025; if so, why?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (14:53): Yes, in the context in which they were given and taken.

Camilla Belich: Why did he claim that the official count for the election could be up to five weeks when the Electoral Commission modelling shows that his changes will only save three days?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, as I recall, what I said was that the advice I got when I took over was that the elections always used to be able to be counted in two weeks and then Labour made a change to allow same-day voting and it went to three weeks. The advice I got was that if we did nothing, it would be longer, heading towards four weeks, and my guess was that if we did nothing over an extended period of time, it would just keep working its way up—the number after four is five, and so that was the logic of my explanation.

Camilla Belich: Does he have any evidence to support the contention that he just made that it would keep going up indefinitely?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The evidence that I had in mind was the primary driver of taking it longer to get a final count is the growth of special votes. Special votes occur when somebody hasn’t been enrolled by writ day, or is voting outside their particular area. Those special votes take 10 times as long to process as normal votes, and there’s been an exponential increase in special votes.

Now, the main driver of that was the previous Government’s decision to allow same-day enrolment—the problem there was it muddied the message, because the message that the Electoral Commission has is that everybody should get enrolled and it is the law to be enrolled. But if, at the same time, they’re saying get enrolled, but, in the mean time, don’t bother because you don’t have to because you can just rock up on election day and vote, well then that was a mixed message and so there were more and more people not enrolling, and that was leading to more and more special votes, and if you followed the graph, there’d be more and more special votes and it would take longer to count.

Camilla Belich: Was speeding up the election count, by an estimated three days, worth disenfranchising a projected 55,000 voters?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: We are not disenfranchising any voters. What we are doing is placing a perfectly reasonable requirement on them to be enrolled. I can tell you right here, right now, it is the law to be enrolled. The other thing I can say is that in Australia, they require people to be enrolled about 30 days before the elections. I am confident that New Zealanders are, if not more capable, certainly as capable as Australians, and I’m very confident that we can do it. My message to New Zealanders is: if you look, you will see the ads, the ads are out there everywhere you look. Get enrolled before 25 October so that you can have a vote.

Camilla Belich: Why has he made it harder for young people to enrol to vote, when only 54 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled, and the official count is likely to be no faster than the last election?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Unlike that member, I have confidence our younger New Zealanders, I’ve got every confidence that they can follow an instruction and get themselves enrolled.

Hon Nicola Willis: Does the Minister think it somewhat underestimates New Zealanders to suggest that they would find it too difficult to enrol to vote in advance of an election?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I certainly don’t like the implication that New Zealanders are somehow slower than Australians. On this side of the House, we think we can be equally as capable as Australians.

SPEAKER: Camilla Belich and no one else.

Camilla Belich: Did he ask the Electoral Commission to model a middle ground where enrolment closed on voting day but remained open during early opening period; and if not, why not?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The advice I got from the Electoral Commission was that if we changed it by one day, it would make insufficient difference in order to have a real impact. The advice I got was that if you’re going to do it, you should go to before voting starts in 12 days, and that will have a difference because it will allow more votes to be processed before election day, and then counted.

Camilla Belich: Will the almost 115,000 people currently on the dormant roll be able to cast both their electorate and their party votes on election day?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Like everybody else, you need to be enrolled before the date, the day before voting. So my message is just a simple one; I don’t want to complicate people with dormant rolls and other rolls. New Zealanders are out there and they need to be enrolled at a certain time so that they can have a vote. It’s not hard; it’s not complicated: get yourself enrolled by 25 October.

Camilla Belich: Point of order. Mr Speaker, that was a very specific question relating specifically to the changes that the Minister has brought in about the dormant roll, not about people being enrolled, and I don’t feel he addressed the dormant-roll element of that question.

SPEAKER: He can have another crack at it.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I said I didn’t want to go into all those details, and I have a simple message for all New Zealanders, which is: if you want to vote, get yourself enrolled.

Education

Question No. 12

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (14:59) to the Minister of Education: How is the Government improving student outcomes through investments in school infrastructure?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:59): Well, great news, the Government is investing a further $31.3 million to create calmer, less destructive learning spaces in more than 600 classrooms, at nearly 90 schools across the country. This includes Redoubt North School in that members electorate of Takanini. The latest funding builds on the $10 million allocated to 40 schools last year. We’ve already completed projects at six schools, with 32 further projects to be completed by the end of the year. It’s a practical, targeted investment that makes a real difference for students and teachers.

Rima Nakhle: Why is the Government putting walls back in open-plan classrooms?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: As I’ve said before, this is about closing the door on the failed experiment of open-plan classrooms over many decades, including the previous six years—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Yeah, but you required it; gave them no choice. Talk to the schools that didn’t want it.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: —under the Labour Government who failed to change it either. There is no convincing evidence that large open-plan classrooms support good learning outcomes.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Tell Hekia she was wrong.

SPEAKER: Sorry, hang on. Does the member need assistance or something? Because that constant noise is not acceptable.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Open-plan classrooms are often noisy and create stress and are distracting environments for students, particularly those with additional learning needs. Every child deserves a classroom where they can focus, take part, and succeed, and every teacher deserves a space that lets them do what they do best. We’re taking a staged approach so that simpler projects can move quickly, while design and planning get under way for the more complex works. This is a practical, targeted investment that makes a real difference.

Rima Nakhle: How has the Minister been able to deliver so much in the last three years? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, no, come on. I suspect that if we keep going down this track, the Electoral Commission are probably going to start charging political parties for the parliamentary time given that we’re in the three-month period. Make it a very brief answer. It is an opinion that you are able to give, but it should be brief—very brief.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: In education, we’ve done this by reducing average classroom construction costs by using standardised designs and off-site manufacturing, fast-tracked $413 million of investment for maintenance, and we’ve created a stand-alone school property agency. What we haven’t done is have to resort to more tax to do it.

Rima Nakhle: What other investments has the Government made—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Sorry—sorry.

Rima Nakhle: What other investments has the Government made to support students, teachers, and schools?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Putting walls back into classrooms is just one of the many things our Government has done to support schools. Just last week, the Minister for Energy and I announced that 500 schools have been selected for solar technology as the Government’s $30 million Solar on Schools programme rolls out, which will cut schools electricity use from the grid, reduce emissions, and lower their power bills at the same time. We’re also investing $21.7 million to expand the highly successful on-site school training programme. We’re delivering $750 million in learning support, the biggest investment in a generation, so that every single school, years 1 to 8, has a learning support coordinator by 2028. Again, all of this was delivered without increasing tax for education by a single cent.

SPEAKER: That concludes questions for oral answers. We’ll take 30 seconds while people who need to leave the House to do so quietly.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill.

Bills

Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill

Committee of the whole House—Estimates Debate

Debate resumed from 19 August.

Education

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Good afternoon, members. The House is in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill. The Government has indicated that the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice, the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, and the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will be available today to speak to their portfolios.

In leading off the debate, the chairperson of the relevant select committee should take care not to be overly political and should ensure that their call gives a fair reflection of the committee’s report on the Votes relevant to the portfolio. This debate expires after 11 hours, at which point questions will be put that the Votes stand part of the schedules and on the provisions of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill. All parties have time allocated proportionally. The Estimates debate should be relevant to the Government’s current spending plans as contained in the Estimates of Appropriation.

The question, again, is that the Votes contained in the Estimates of Appropriation for 2026/27 stand part of the schedules. Members, we start with the Minister of Education. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

CARL BATES (Deputy Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee) (15:05): Thank you, Madam Speaker. On behalf of the Education and Workforce Committee chair, Katie Nimon, I want to thank the committee for the work that they put into the Estimates on education. I also want to thank the Minister for the ongoing investment in education as detailed in the Estimates report—in particular, the school property component as detailed on page 12. As the MP for Whanganui, I want to use an example of that being the condition upgrade at Te Paepae o Aotea. I note that this property investment has extended to the recent announcement, as well, of the 500 schools turning solar into savings across the country and, on page 13, the investment into specialist schools, noting the new specialist school in Gisborne—the first in 50 years.

The investment in Vote Education in Budget 2026 also funds property projects like walls going up in classrooms across the country, enabling classrooms to calm down. In addition, I want to highlight the investment in industry-led subjects, as detailed on page 13, aimed at bringing industry and classrooms closer together.

Finally, learning support continues to receive focus and investment, as detailed on page 7, including an $844 million allocation for the three main learning support services. It would be appreciated if the Minister could further detail how Vote Education will continue to fix the basics and build the future.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:07): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to know, from the Minister, about the cost of the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART) from the Budget. I’d like to know: what has been the total cost to date of developing and rolling out the SMART tool, and also how much is forecast to be spent on the SMART tool over the remaining forecast period?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:08): Following on from that question—we just got the post-hearing questions back as well—in the summary of initiatives on page, I believe, 27, the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART) programme is supposed to be extended to year 11, which we’d heard, in the select committee, is going to go to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority instead. We are still puzzled, despite the post-hearing questions, at why, between the approval and the printing of the summary of initiatives to the select committee hearing, there has been a change of the use of SMART for year 11 students.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:08): In addition to understanding what the cost is of the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART), I’ve also got some questions in and around the intention of its use. In the initial papers that we got from Treasury, in the assessment, it’s very clear that there is language that shows that the Government intends to use this as a single tool for assessment—a “light touch”, all the language the Minister uses. But there’s been quite a change recently to say, in more recent documents, that there’ll always be a second tool, which is the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) there. I’d really like to understand, from the Minister, why there’s been a shift in language from documents that were issued earlier in the term, from when she took office to now, as to whether or not the SMART tool will be the only tool and, if it is not the only tool and if she is still intending to have PAT, which she has said, why did she spend approximately $170-odd million on the SMART tool? A lot of the rationale in the business case is that that’s the only tool.

I’m interested in the cost of the SMART tool, whether she can confirm it’s going to be, why the investment was justified if it’s not the only tool, and then confirm why she’s provided additional funding for the PAT testing run by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Why is that second lot of testing getting additional funding if the SMART tool has already had a substantial amount of funding?

Also, I’d be really interested to understand why she thinks there’s been an increase in schools using the PAT tests when they have to pay for them and when the SMART tool is available for free. That project cost—I’m guessing; I’ll wait to hear—approximately $170 million. There’s now another tool that’s being funded by the Government for approximately $300,000, and the schools are using the one that’s not the one that we’ve spent, as taxpayers, $170 million on. Why is there low use of the tool, given the fact there’s been substantial Government investment?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:11): The reason that we have invested—and I’ll come back to the member with the exact figures, because we want to get them exactly right, and we don’t have them right to hand at the moment around the exact amount invested into the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART), but we will come back with that.

The reason that we’ve done that is that we are one of the only countries we compare ourselves to that doesn’t have a Government-backed and paid for tool. The one that we do have currently is completely out of date; it is no longer useable—we’ve made that really clear. It has to be replaced, and we’ve chosen to do that with the new SMART tool. It is a freely available tool for schools to use. We’ve had incredible uptake—over 300,000 that were registered into it—more than we had expected in the first year.

It is important for us to be able to have choice in the system with a freely available tool, and if schools choose to use the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) and pay for that, like many of them have been doing for a long time, then that is a choice that they can make. But it was always very important to us to have a freely available tool. What we have noticed is that many schools are using both. They’ve continued to use PAT, and they’re using SMART as a trial as well—noting that it is going to take us until next year until we have that SMART tool completely fully computer adaptive while we’re building up the number of questions that sit in the data bank.

It is important to us to have a freely available tool, and I can confirm that there will continue to be choice in the system. Many schools like using PAT, and I’ve made it very clear that we want to continue having that choice. I don’t want schools to have to pay for something if they don’t have the money in their budget, and we are creating a tool that is a world-leading tool; it does all the things we need it to do, and we’ll continue to refine it as we get really good feedback from the sector.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:13): Can the Minister explain, then, why, in the initial business case and the reports issued by Treasury, the wording indicates that the justification for such a significant investment—whenever we find that figure—is on the basis that this is a movement towards the use of a single tool? Those words are used in the documents to justify such a significant investment. I’m really interested to understand from the Minister what has caused a change in direction, from her and her Government, away from the use of one single tool to now saying that not only are there two tools, but the Government is funding that second tool to the tune of approximately $300,000. I’m interested to understand that.

I’m also interested to understand, we know that there’s been a number of issues with the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool—whether it’s the artificial intelligence function, whether it’s been the data breach. I’m interested to understand from the Minister, is there a formal or a complaints system where schools are able to register their concerns when things aren’t working as they should be?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:14): We have already sent out our team to do meetings and webinars all across the country. The programme director has been busying racking up his air miles, because he has been out talking to schools—from small, rural, and isolated schools from the bottom of the South Island to the top of the North Island—to get feedback. We’ve already gone back to schools and said, “Hello, thank you very much for your feedback. You’ve told us this, and now here are the changes we’re making.”

I think you can reasonably expect that with any big, new technology tool, there will be improvements to be made. There was nothing in this that caused us concern other than small tweaks along the way that we were able to fix up, as in any big project. It’s the same with e-asTTle when it was very first launched as well; it went through a number of iterations after getting really good feedback from the sector. I’m looking forward to the tool next year, when it will be fully computer adaptive, and it will be one of the best tools available in the world.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:15): Madam Chair, thank you very much. I have an Official Information Act (OIA) request, actually, which is asking the Ministry of Education for how many complaints or concerns regarding the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART). The response to that OIA is that there is no formal system for that to happen. They say, in this response, we know that the Ministry has not formally tracked complaints, “and we further noted that sector inquiries have been received through many different communication channels”. They’ve got lots through lots of channels, but there’s no formal tracked complaints process for the SMART tool.

I’m just wondering—and I can give you the number of the report if she wishes; it’s GEMS-49441—does she think it’s acceptable to New Zealanders that for an investment of approximately $170 million that has had some significant concerns with data breaches and concerns with how many schools are actually using it, there is actually no formal complaints process available for those schools to lodge their concerns?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:16): No. Look, I’m not concerned because, as already said, we have a process where we’ve been going out to schools and reaching out. We also have a number of ways that schools can reach out to us, like they do with all of the issues and concerns that they have. They’ve got leadership advisers; they’ve got many staff in the regions all around New Zealand in order to raise their concerns with us.

I wouldn’t characterise some of the things the member has mentioned as being significant. There are some things that we can change and upgrade, as we did with e-asTTle—it was exactly the same—and we are doing those things. We’ve already gone back out to the sector and said, “Here are the changes we’re going to make”. In fact, I was at a school, and I was asking some of the children, what were some of the things that they wanted to see, and they gave me some great feedback as well.

There is a range of different ways that schools can get in touch with us—and they are—but the great thing is that we are responding to them. We are making changes to make sure that the tool is one that is fit for purpose and that is going to get us, for the first time in our country’s history, really good data all the way through from year 3 to 8—which we’ve not had before—so the Government knows whether or not we need to invest more in certain areas, and where to direct our investment and resource; so that teachers know what the next steps for learning are and can moderate their teacher judgments in the reports to parents; and also, importantly, so that parents can know by strand how their children are doing and how they can help at home, which is exactly why we’ve built the parent portal tool, so that parents can log in and use some of those resources to help the learning at home.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:18): Does the Minister have any intention to introduce a formal way of recording concerns or complaints? I appreciate she’s made the point that there are various different mechanisms for a parent or a school to make a formal complaint around data being used or the way the system isn’t working. But does she not think that it’s inappropriate for an investment of $170 million to say “We don’t know how many complaints we’re getting, and we have no formal mechanism for recording those complaints”—no risk register, no understanding of where they’re recorded? I don’t know if that’s fiscally responsible for such a significant investment in children’s data and when there’s already been a breach, that you have simply no system for recording and holding and responding to complaints.

Furthermore, I’d like to know from the Minister whether New Zealanders have a right, a transparency right, to understand the number of complaints that have been received about the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:19): Well, I’ve been advised that there is a risk register, and I will follow that up with the Ministry of Education.

I find it really rich from that member to talk about accountability for spending, because when I became the Minister of Education, I went through a Budget process—the very first Budget process—where I said to the Secretary of Education, “Can you please tell me, what are all the things you spend money on?” and they went away, and they dutifully came back with a list of things. Then I said to them, “Well, what do these things do?” and they dutifully went away and came back, and they described what those things do. Then I asked the killer question: “What are the outcomes for all of these things that we spend money on?” Do you know what the Secretary for Education said to me? “Minister, we don’t know”. For the previous six years, nobody from the previous Government had asked them, “What are the actual outcomes for the money that we are spending?” “We just get new money and we spend it.”—because that’s how the previous Government operated. We are bringing a level of transparency and accountability and outcomes for the money that we spend, so it’s very rich for that member to get up and say, “Oh, well, it’s very important to account for the spending.” Well, you know what happened in the last six years in Government, because we spent $20 billion in education and things went backwards under her watch.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:20): I’m still waiting to hear whether it is $170 million—we haven’t heard that yet. We would like to know, if she’s really big on transparency: how much has this Government spent to date on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART)? How much is it projected forward? I have documents showing it’s approximately $178 million. I’d like her to confirm how much has been spent to date and how much is yet to be spent to date. She can also tell us what the length of the contract is with Janison, if that would be helpful, but I’m also interested to understand why she has provided additional funding to progressive achievement tests (PAT) and changed the messaging to say there’ll be two when the very reason underpinning the significant investment in the business case outside of the usual Budget cycle was because we wanted a single tool, and this was the reason we had to. Why $170 million when there’s investment into something going on? It indicates that there’s something wrong with the SMART tool. If we’ve spent that much on it and we’re still investing in a backup system somewhere else, what’s happening for the fact that schools are picking up PATs faster than they are the tool that we’ve all paid $170 million for? Wouldn’t you think it would be nice to have a copy of the risk register—now I understand that exists—and shouldn’t there be transparency around the teething problems that’ve caused children’s data to be leaked?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can I just remind the member that the Minister of Education addressed the question of the cost and said that when the figures come through, she will let the House know.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:22): Point of order. Madam Chair, thank you so much. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the questions around the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool. I want to just seek clarity from you, Chair, before I go on. The Minister in the seat, the Hon Erica Stanford, is not the Minister who usually oversees areas like early childhood education and charter schools. Can I just check I’m able to still ask questions to that Minister, noting that officials are here and able to provide support? I just want to check that clarification first. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): My understanding is that that’s fine.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Great, thank you.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:23): Thank you, Madam Chair. Is the rate of use for the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) as expected, higher than expected, or lower than expected? So that one, just to recap: is the rate of use for the SMART tool as expected, higher than expected, or lower than expected—multi-choice. There have been some reports that some schools won’t use the SMART tool at all. What work has been done to understand why that is, and is that the case? Have any teachers or schools reported that the SMART tool doesn’t meet their needs, and, if so, why is that the case?

There was also, as we’ve already discussed and raised, a highly publicised incident regarding the SMART tool data and data leak. It has since been revealed that the SMART tool was only certified three days before being rolled out, and the ministry raised concerns and Treasury raised concerns. Interested to know: was the Minister of Education pressured to roll out the SMART tool before it was actually ready? Were the Government security checks ahead of the roll-out adequate, and, if so, did this breach occur if they were? The privacy impact assessment seems to indicate that there was still work to be done there. Is the Minister confident in all of that work in relation to the certification for privacy being in place early enough for those protections to be in place? I’d be also interested to understand how much was spent on cleaning up the data breach, and what assurances she can now give that it won’t occur again.

Finally, also interested to know: how many complaints have schools or teachers made about the SMART tool, and is that information collated in the risk register or is it not?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:24): Feels like some of those questions have been asked and answered already, which is good—that cuts down the time we have, to answer this one at least. We always wanted choice in the system. There were lots of discussions very early on about being able to keep e-asTTle up and running—turns out in the end we’re not able to do it, because the technology was just too old. We have invested in the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. We’ve given them some money to upgrade one of their assessments, because we want choice in the system, and it’s up to schools which ones they choose; I’m not going to predetermine or tell schools which tool they have to use.

We didn’t have an expected rate of people picking up the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) this year. We have three tools available this year, including the freely available e-asTTle tool as well. We expect over time that as we make improvements, especially next year when it becomes completely, fully computer adaptive, we will have more pick-up. I do know that schools are hedging their bets at the moment. Some of them are continuing to use progressive achievement tests (PAT) and are considering SMART, because it is free, and some schools are using both. But I would expect that all tools have had an uptick given that not all schools were using an assessment tool: not all schools were using PAT, not all were using e-asTTle, and certainly nobody was using SMART because it didn’t exist. But we have mandated, for good reason, twice-yearly assessments so we can track data, as has been brought up and requested by the Education Review Office for about 10 years. It is important that we have that data.

So, yes, we expected that there would be an uptick across all three tools, and there was. We didn’t have any particular expectations around SMART, but when we did see that 300,000 users had been registered, that was something that was really exciting for us. We’ve already discussed about the fact that there is a register, and I am confident and the ministry were confident that the SMART tool was ready to roll out.

In terms of the small data breach that occurred, we’ve already been through that process. It wasn’t, of course, ideal, and we’ve gone through those schools that were affected. It was a very small issue, it was solved almost immediately, and that particular issue can’t happen again.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:27): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just wondering, seeing that the Minister of Education has her Secretary for Education and deputy secretary: between the three of them, do you think she’ll be able to tell us how much the Government has spent on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) to date and how much is projected forward? I think between the three women there, they could clearly provide that information today—not in a week. I’m sure that information is available, and people would like to know that.

My next question is: why has there been an increase of schools doing progressive achievement testing (PAT) when the SMART tool has been available?

So two main questions: what’s the number, and why has there been an uptick in PAT when the SMART tool is available for free?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Look, before I give the Minister of Education the call, can I just remind the member that repetition is a problem. These questions have been asked many times already. The numbers are still being worked on. I’ve just checked with the Minister: the numbers are being worked on in the back office; they’ll be here as soon as they can collate them. But in terms of asking the same questions, I think it’s time we moved on to a new topic. Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:28): Sorry—point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Education was just about to stand up and answer what I asked, which was: I want to know how much money’s been spent on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool. This is the Estimates; we’re looking at the Budget. That’s a fair question—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Yes, it is.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —and she was just going to answer but you interrupted. So I’d really like her to answer that question.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:28): What I was going to say was that my officials behind me are working on getting the exact dollar amount as we speak, as has already been mentioned to that member. I was going to answer her question—again, the same question she asked already—about why there were upticks in usage of progressive achievement testing. It was exactly as we expected: there were upticks in usage of every tool, because we made it mandatory. Every school had to use it; every child had to use it. The great news is that, now, parents got mid-year reports that were so much more detailed, in many cases, within the strands of mathematics, for example, so that they knew exactly how their children were progressing and what they could do at home. It responded to the Education Review Office report, which said for the best part of 10 years that it’s really important we have consistent tools, or a tool, to make sure that we are measuring this. The Auditor-General said the same thing.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:29): Thank you. Just signalling to the Minister and also the officials, I’m going to ask some questions around the curriculum and I’m going to move on to learning support after that. Around the curriculum, I want to start with the science curriculum for year 0 to 10, which has just been announced. Now, the Minister has mentioned before in oral questions that climate change is going to be added in, but climate change or climate is in the curriculum. I did have a look at the science curriculum. The word “climate” is not in the year 0 to 10 curriculum at all. It’s mentioned sporadically and is to do with, essentially, the weather system but not when it comes to human-made climate changes or climate changes being exacerbated by human activities. Can I just check with the Minister that that whole complexity around exacerbation of climate change by human-made activities will be in the year 0 to 10 science curriculum?

And just also on the science curriculum, can the Minister please elucidate for the committee who is Theophrastus, and why should five-year-olds know who he is in the draft year 0 to 10 curriculum?

I could continue on and talk about the social science curriculum.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): You want another call?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Yep.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Thank you. When we’re looking at the social science curriculum, could the Minister help the committee understand why Te Tiriti o Waitangi isn’t taught until year 7 and 8? Other things are taught, but why is Te Tiriti o Waitangi specifically not taught until year 8 of the junior social sciences curriculum, while Pompeii is taught in year 2 and Egypt is taught in year 4?

With that, will the Minister please elucidate for the committee on what does AD stand for and what is the difference between hieroglyphs and hieroglyphics?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:32): I’d be interested to understand from the Minister if she’s budgeted for the increased teachers needed to implement year-by-year curriculum. As she’s no doubt aware, there are many classrooms around New Zealand that have more than one year in one classroom. This presents a clear problem for teachers if they’re having to deliver a year-by-year curriculum. So where is the allocation in the Budget that provides for additional teachers to implement her year-by-year curriculum and when will this be available?

My next question is in relation to that. Does she have a plan to increase staffing to all schools that have composite classes so that they are able to implement her year-by-year curriculum? Or is she going to build some more walls? No. Or is she going to redesign the curriculum to cater for year 1 to year 3 schools where single year groups are not possible? So recap: is there a budget for increased teachers and does she have a plan to increase staffing to all schools that have composite classes?

My next question is: does she know what proportion of the spend on maths workbooks was used for the books that teachers actually find useful and are using? Does she have any feedback from teachers? She’s indicated she gets feedback on the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool). Any formal feedback on the maths workbooks being used and that teachers are actually finding them useful?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:33): In terms of staffing, the staffing is driven by student numbers; it is demand driven. I appreciate the member may not know that, but importantly for the first time ever in secondary school this year, I’ve made sure that the ministry knows where the gaps are in secondary schools. So previously we’ve known where there are teacher shortages in primary and secondary. When we came in, we made it by region as well, and now we’ve also asked for really good data on where we are short of certain subjects. That’s not something that any Government previously has ever asked before until we got here, because we’re interested in data and being able to then make sure that we are directing resource to those particular areas.

I’ve made some announcements around the School Onsite Training Programme—upping those numbers to 705 teacher trainees every single year from 2028, and 650, I think it is, from next year. That has been a phenomenally successful programme. What we will be able to do in the future, when we get these numbers in which particular subjects we’re short of, we’ll be able to use that data alongside the School Onsite Training Programme to direct resource into getting more of those, for example, biology, physics, chemistry teachers that we might need.

Going back to the member’s question around the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool), I’m advised the whole-of-life cost for SMART over 10 years is expected to be $177 million.

Briefly around the member’s question earlier about a certain scientist mentioned in the science curriculum, what I would suggest that the member does is go and look at the final curriculum; it’s very different than the draft. We took quite a lot of feedback from the sector on content and exactly the thing that the member has just mentioned—whether or not certain things are required. When we put out a draft, you’ve got to remember, we put it out at about what I’d determined to sort of be 80 to 90 percent correct—well, not correct, but where it needs to be—because we want feedback from the sector. We took thousands of pieces of feedback from the sector. When you look at the new science curriculum that has now been put out—the final version—it is quite different than the one that you are mentioning in your questions today, and that is because of that great feedback. So if you just get the up-to-date document, that will clarify things for you.

In relation to some of the other questions that you mentioned, the climate change - related content is in the social sciences curriculum. I understand, since this has been mentioned when talking to my officials, that climate science is actually quite complicated and sits up in the senior secondary curriculum and it is there. But when you are doing junior science—and you’ve got to also remember that our primary school teachers have to teach everything; mathematics to science to music to English to art and everything—the science that we provide them, and for children as young as five, it is very basic science. Increasingly complex up to year 8, but we really hit that complex climate science in the senior secondary curriculum.

Look, in terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, you are conflating two things. There is world history, and I’m really proud of the fact that we are teaching children about the history of humanity and New Zealand’s place in the world, and, yes, we are teaching the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks and Romans. I’ll tell you why we’re teaching Pompeii, because for little five and six-year-olds, we’re saying to them, “What is it that Māori children play with? What did they play with? What did the settler children play with? What do you play with? Guess what? In Pompeii, we’ve seen buried in ash what children back then played with as well.” So we’re bringing in something that children understand, which is toys when they’re six years old, to understanding about the concept of time before, after, present, and drawing in Māori children, settler children, youth, and children who lived a really long time ago to give them that sense of history and our place in the world. We’re doing it in such a way that we’ve had really, really good feedback on that. I understand there’ll be some members in the House who think we should only do New Zealand history; we just have a different view. We think we should understand about where we came from and our place in the world as well as New Zealand history. Also, I do want to point out that we are introducing Waitangi Day and the origins of it really early—in fact, it’s as early as year 1 and it builds up over time.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Who’s going to call?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:38): I just had a follow up. Thank you so much for that figure of $177 million—I’m very appreciative. But could you tell me how much you’ve spent so far and also what’s left? So out of that $177 million allocated over a 10-year period, how much of that has been spent to date? I’d be really interested to know that. That’s in relation to the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool). I wanted to know also, has there been any calculation within the ministry when you add up things like the contract Learning First, the contract of SMART tool, the overseas curriculum development and curriculum materials such as the maths workbooks—so there’s been quite a shift into contracts going to providers that are not New Zealand providers. Has there been any kind of analysis of the total amount spent on outside contractors at the expense of New Zealand, and is that an exercise that the ministry does?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:39): One of the things that when I was in Opposition I spent a lot of time doing was learning about the education sector and going around and visiting schools and understanding what worked well for them. I was in a lot of schools that used resources that they were able to fund themselves through their operational grants or through board funding. I saw the inequity in the system and the fact that they were able to use resources where other schools couldn’t and they were getting really great results where other schools were not able to because they couldn’t afford those resources.

When we implemented the maths curriculum, we knew that the silver bullet to improving maths achievement was not just a curriculum. It had to sit alongside teacher learning and development—professional learning and development (PLD). It had to sit alongside assessment and making sure that we’re investing in those children who are falling behind through our maths intervention teachers, but we also needed to make sure that we were providing the resources consistently and equitably across the country, because it’s not fair that so many schools were able to access them and so many weren’t. We didn’t make it compulsory—they didn’t have to order them, if they didn’t want to—and we didn’t prescribe how they had to use them. But what we did know was that teachers were spending hours and hours and hours finding resources, creating resources, and going to Twinkl Box and going on Facebook, trying to find resources to teach mathematics. What we wanted to be able to do was say to them “Actually, here is a resource that’s aligned to the curriculum and that has all of the practice pages that you need, alongside a teacher guide that, should you require it, will help step you through, lesson by lesson.”, and we’ve funded that across the sector.

When we went out for the request for proposal (RFP), we opened it up to everybody—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: With te reo Māori funding?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Interestingly, we also did it in te reo Māori, as well. The pāngarau resources have been fantastic. I notice that the previous Government didn’t do that, but we have because we’re equitably resourcing a bilingual education system.

All of those things together are raising maths achievement. When we went out to the RFP, we opened it up to everybody, but we had criteria that meant that you needed to meet a certain number of things, which meant that the textbooks, the workbooks, and the teacher guides had to meet the new curriculum, and for changes that we made, they would need to be met again. The people that met that criteria were the ones that were selected.

We don’t make it compulsory, as I’ve already said, for schools to use them. Schools use them in all different manners. Some schools use them religiously every day and stick to the programme; others use it as a tool when they’re doing maths practice, and that’s exactly what we’d expect. It’s a flexible resource, but the key thing is that every single school across the country has access to these free resources, which are available in both English and te reo Māori, and the great thing is the fact that now we’re starting to see results. It is not only the hour a day for maths books, the PLD, the new curriculum, the assessments, and the intervention when children are starting to fall behind, but now we are starting to see an improvement in mathematics for the first time in a really long time. In fact, in every single year group, there was an increase in the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, but particularly at year 6, which is usually where we see a big drop-off.

While I understand where the member is coming from, this was all about creating consistency and equity across the sector to make sure that everyone has access to the same high-quality resources. New Zealand companies are equally able to vie for any of those.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:43): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to the Minister of Education, and continuing on the curriculum, with the new social science curriculum there is no budget in 2026 that’s specifically for additional funding for the junior curriculum for social sciences. Where will the funding for the implementation of the social science curriculum come from?

The senior science curriculum that was given was around $18 million a year, to 32,000 secondary school teachers. That’s, roughly, about $580 per teacher. Per teacher, what does the Minister intend the teacher to get out of that $580 per teacher for the secondary curriculum refresh?

Continuing on with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, I do like the idea that children should be exposed to different cultures, but we do also have an obligation in Aotearoa around upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. With that, what is the Minister’s response to the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 3553 memorandum-direction on pausing the changes to the curriculum and implementation of the curriculum, and, finally, if it is the case that the Minister is responsible for Māori-Crown relations, then how would the Minister respond to the disestablishment of Ngā Poutoko Aromatawai Māori from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:44): In terms of the junior curriculum resources for professional learning and development, we already have budget existing that we are using for that. We didn’t need to have anything in this Budget. We’ve got plenty already in existence.

In terms of the split, yes, I agree that we do have an obligation to teach New Zealand history and the foundations of our country. We also have an obligation to teach children about the history of the world. We are doing both and we’re doing it really well, and, actually, the feedback I’ve had back on this new curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, there are a couple of things in there around signposting the climate changes, but overall it’s been phenomenally successful.

In terms of the Waitangi Tribunal, I acknowledge the request that they have made. My obligation is to make sure that next year, teachers who are required to teach social science and science have the information that they need as quickly as they can possibly get it. That’s why those curriculum documents and others will be released to give teachers plenty of time to be able to get to grips with the new content and understand it, but when that ruling does come in, we will certainly consider it seriously.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (15:46): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve actually got the memorandum from the Waitangi Tribunal in front of me, which was dated 7 August, where they ask the Minister to specifically consider deferring the release of all updated New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa content until after the Waitangi Tribunal’s stage 2 report has been released. Now, the Minister has previously said in the House how important the Crown-Māori relationship is to her and how important Te Tiriti o Waitangi is and her obligations under Te Tiriti, and yet she is ignoring the request of the Waitangi Tribunal to defer the release of those documents. Whatever her answer just then, that overrides it, and that’s far more important.

I point out that in their memorandum, they actually said that they are concerned, along with the removal of school board’s Treaty obligations, that the Crown’s curriculum reforms may dilute prior emphasis on the importance of incorporating local content from te ao Māori into school teaching and learning. It also shares the concerns that the parties have with the flaws in the curriculum content, which may be symptomatic of insufficient engagement and input from Māori and the education sector. So the question about whether the Crown has satisfied its Treaty obligations of partnership and active protection of taonga Māori is a matter we are taking seriously.

Thirdly, they also said that they consider that the views that came up in that around overall feedback being received during consultation, that concern that there’s going to be insufficient time between the conclusion of the hearings, the proposed release of the report, and the curricula for any meaningful feedback to be incorporated in the curriculum documents. So, Minister, given that you’ve said you take your responsibilities under Te Tiriti so seriously, why are you just ignoring the Tribunal?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:48): Thank you. As I’ve already pointed out, of course I’ve said back to the Waitangi Tribunal that we will consider their findings when they come out. Also—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Oh, token.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: If you want to hear the answer, I suggest you just zip it for a bit, because this constant barrage is not helping you or anyone else, frankly.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Well, actually, it helps me completely.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: As I’ve already said, we will take any findings seriously, but it is important that I’ve got competing interests that I have to balance. I’ve got competing interests of thousands of teachers who are going to be required to teach the new curriculum, being able to teach the new curriculum, being able to see the content as early as possible—and I would note from that side of the House that they have made comments around the speed and we have to give teachers more time; that’s exactly what we are trying to do. In short, we are putting out the final documents so that teachers have plenty of time to be able to—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: But you didn’t properly consult on it or develop it.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Also, in relation to, again, the continuing barrage across the House, when we were developing the curriculum, we went out to hundreds of experts and teachers and academics, including Māori as well, who helped us to develop not only the New Zealand Curriculum but Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. I’d really make the point that we have written curriculum documents and Te Marautanga that never existed before. There are dozens of new curriculum areas that are now available that weren’t before, and we’ve done that in consultation with Māori.

I’d also make the point that the Waitangi Tribunal have made their initial findings based on old curriculum documents, not the up-to-date ones. So if we haven’t already, we will be providing them with the new curriculum documents so that they’ll be able to make their findings. I’ve already said that we will take those findings very seriously when they come in. I know that the tribunal knows our time frame, and they are working quickly to make sure they can get us their findings based on the new curriculum documents. I’ve already told them that we’ll take their feedback seriously, and I expect that their position may change a little bit, because the curriculum has changed so much since the drafts were put out.

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Tai Tonga) (15:50): I wanted to give my colleagues a good run at the guts of that, but the Minister of Education has intimated towards equitable funding across kura. I know that Budget 2026 allocates $310 million to the expansion of the school property portfolio. The Minister’s made a $62.5 million announcement for the same infrastructure investment into Te Waipounamu, which, of course, includes Te Tai Tonga, but there is really yet to be any clarity around how much investment the kaupapa Māori portfolio will get in terms of what’s required to bring its infrastructure just up to being on par with what I would call the bottom rung of the mainstream sets of infrastructure.

Of the $310 million - odd that are proposed for developing school property, what proportion of that is being committed to the kaupapa Māori field? I say kaupapa Māori field and its delivery modes to include kura kaupapa Māori, kura ā iwi, bilingual, and full-immersion delivery, and kura auraki in mainstream schools—not to silo them out. Also, of the $62.5 million that was invested into Te Waipounamu, none of that was directed towards any of those kaupapa Māori delivery models. What can Te Waipounamu and Te Tai Tonga expect in terms of investment into our kaupapa Māori education models that have languished behind for many, many decades now—what can they expect to see coming their way?

I think we’ll just leave it there for now, but this type of kōrero—and it slots straight in there with the kōrero about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and your bringing in the equity and distribution of funding type take [topic], Minister—at the core, really, of improving, growing, and expanding kaupapa Māori education. What we know in the South is that demand outstrips supply, and has done for a long time, and is increasing. If you take a look at the Te Tira Hou report, it states that only 2.9 percent of Māori students in Te Waipounamu are in either Māori medium education or kaupapa Māori education—so any one of those three delivery modes that I mentioned—yet the demand for that is much, much higher. If you can give some advice around that, that would be great.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:53): Thank you. As I said earlier, we have a commitment to equitable resourcing of a bilingual education system, and I mean that. Everything that we have done, we have made sure that we’re thinking about Māori resources, Māori property, Māori professional learning and development, Māori teachers exactly the same, at the same time. We are starting from very different standing points, though. We have a lot of ground to make up. I think you’ve already noted that so many of those kura kaupapa schools have been placed into schools that have been abandoned or sites that are not fit for purpose, and we have got a really big backlog.

In the last two Budgets, we ringfenced $50 million in funding. We are still using that funding. In this, while there was funding for Ngāringaomatariki, up North, which we are moving off the site that they’re on into a completely new site, which has already started, and they’re getting solar as well, we still have funding available to do all the projects that we’ve got in the pipeline. But, no doubt, in future Budgets there will be more that will be required.

The thing that I’m really proud of is the fact that we are the first Government ever to include kura kaupapa education, not just Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa (TRN) but also Ngā Kura ā Iwi o Aotearoa, in network planning. We’ve never considered that before, and here we are doing that now with a really good relationship with Tūmatakahuki, who are going to help us work out where the demand is, because what I’m afraid of is that we build places in, for example, primary school, yet we don’t have early childhood education provision to be able to feed up into it. That’s why I’ve asked them to work out where the need is, where we have lumpy provisions, so that we can create that kōhanga reo all the way through to wharekura and we can even it out. We’ve never done that before in a proper network planning way and involve Māori to help us do it, and that’s what Tūmatakahuki are helping us to do.

I am really proud of the work that we’ve done in Māori property. We moved Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Hawaiki Hou out of a bank vault. They were in a bank vault for, I think it was, 8 years—they were in a bank in town. We’ve moved them out to Cobham. We’ve re-done all of their classrooms. [Interruption] I don’t understand why the Opposition is sniping about this. This is an amazing thing. Actually, frankly, under your Government they were waiting for it, and you didn’t do it. I know it hurts, the fact that we’ve done it and you didn’t, but you know what? I actually care about tamariki Māori.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I wasn’t responsible, Minister.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Sorry. Not only that, yes, we’re moving Te Whānau Tahi into a new site in the South Island as well. Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna, just across here in Wellington—full school redevelopment. When I went there to tell the young students that they were getting a library for the first time, they were over the moon. Also, Ngāringaomatariki up North as well—the only kura kaupapa in between Auckland and Whangārei—moving them to a whole new site. I was in Whakatāne the other day—it wasn’t a kura kaupapa, but it was an immersion school that is a special character school who worked with us. They had a bespoke design, and we went back and said, “Actually, we can deliver something at half the price.”—well, a lot cheaper; it may not have been half the price but in half the time. We delivered them almost a whole school rebuild as well. They were absolutely over the moon about it.

Because we’ve been able to reduce the cost of building, we’ve been able to deliver more, and that $50 million each year that we’ve ringfenced into Māori education has been able to go further, and we are still using it. I am really, really proud of the relationship that I have with not only TRN and Ngā Kura ā Iwi but Tūmatakahuki as well, working towards making sure we’ve got really good network planning, so there is kōhanga reo all the way through to wharekura provision. That has not always been the case, and we do have a long way to go before we get there, but we are investing every single year into making sure that that happens.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:57): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I would really like to know, given this is the Estimates debate and we have the Ministry of Education in here and the Minister here, how much of the $177 million allocated has been spent to date. The purpose of this debate is to understand the Budget. I’ve asked a pretty clear question; you’ve given me $177 million for 10 years. We would like to know—I would like to know; New Zealand would like to know—how much of that $177 million on the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool) has been spent to date.

If the Minister and the ministry are unable to answer that question, that is a sad indictment upon the New Zealand democracy and even Public Service—if we’re unable to produce the figure of how much you’ve spent on a tool, while we’re in the committee of the whole House with the specific purpose of examining the Estimates. Before the time is up, I would love to hear how much of the $177 million allocated for the SMART tool over a 10-year period has been spent to date.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:58): I’m advised by my officials that we’ve budgeted to spend $25 million in 2025-26 and $13 million in 2026-27, and we can confirm actual spend in the annual review later this year.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We’ve got time for one quick question—Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:58): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just noting, in the Budget, that there’s been cuts to Positive Behaviour for Learning and there also hasn’t been any increase to Incredible Years. What is the Minister of Education and the Government doing to address the issue of racism in schools?

A final couple of questions: on charter schools, we see a boost to charter schools funding. Can the Minister elucidate for the committee what is the average class size of a charter school?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (15:59): Just in response to the member’s first question, around Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L), the core of PB4L still exists—it has not been removed. There are some pilot programmes that were around it that were still in pilot that we’ve removed. One of them was because the local iwi weren’t interested in working with us in that particular pilot any more, and others weren’t achieving the outcomes. We’ve taken that funding and put it into other initiatives, but the core of PB4L still exists in schools for the purposes that you mentioned.

Look, in terms of charter school enrolments, I don’t have that exact number to hand—the average class size—but what I do know is that numbers have risen by about 18 percent. There has been really strong demand, and there are some new schools that are going to be opening that I know there will be strong demand for. I know Dane from Autism New Zealand has had an application that has been accepted.

Those are the types of schools that are going to really change the landscape and change outcomes for some New Zealand students who need a different type of environment or different type of school to be able to thrive. That’s the whole purpose of charter schools: to offer choice and something different. I can tell the member—I’ve just been handed something—that number of charter schools currently open is 19, and the total enrolled students, the latest figure I have, at July 2026, is 1,732.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the Minister’s time in the chair has come to an end. We now have the Minister of Justice.

Committee of the whole House—Estimates Debate

Justice

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the Minister of Justice is available to speak to his portfolio from 4 o’clock to 5 o’clock.

TOM RUTHERFORD (Chairperson of the Justice Committee) (16:01): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak on Vote Justice as the chair of the Justice Committee. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge my predecessor, the Hon Andrew Bayly, who chaired the committee through the Estimates process and the hearings held on 18 June. I became the chair on 2 July, and I thank Andrew for his work leading the committee’s consideration of these Estimates—and James Meager for his prior chairing as well. It has only gotten better over time.

The Justice Committee has recommended that the appropriations for Vote Justice be accepted. In 2026-27, the total appropriation sought for Vote Justice is approximately $1.087 billion, an increase of 4.9 percent on the estimated actual expenditure for the year 2025-26. During our consideration of the Estimates, we heard from the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Nicole McKee, and the Hon Karen Chhour, along with officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence.

The committee explored a wide range of issues, including legal aid, Te Au Reka, the overall justice pipeline, firearms reform, adoption and surrogacy legislation, and efforts to prevent family and sexual violence. We heard that Budget 2026 includes additional funding to address demand pressures in legal aid, with legal aid continuing to be one of the largest components of Vote Justice expenditure. The committee also discussed the role of technology and improving efficiency across the justice system.

The Estimates also provided for substantial capital investment, including approximately $251.5 million in capital expenditure. Alongside that, Budget 2026 includes funding for significant justice sector infrastructure projects, including two new courthouses in Rotorua, as well as wider law and order investments such as new police stations in Greymouth, Madam Chair, and Whanganui, Mr Bates.

The committee also considered the implementation of the Arms Bill and noted the Budget provision of $44.9 million over four years to establish the new firearms regulator, modernise firearms ICT systems, and establish a firearms licensing review committee.

Overall, the committee’s examination highlighted ongoing investment in justice services, legal aid, community justice support, court modernisation, and justice infrastructure. These appropriations help ensure that New Zealand’s justice system remains accessible, effective, and capable of meeting future demand.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:04): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister of Justice for being here. I just wanted to first of all ask a procedural question: whether there would be any other Ministers attending—for example, the Attorney-General, as a result of the connection of that portfolio to the Justice portfolio?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:04): My understanding is that the Minister for Courts and Associate Minister of Justice is available right here, so any questions relating to her areas, she will be able to answer.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:04): Thank you, that’s very helpful—that was going to be my next question, but the Minister jumped up, so thank you very much, and we will just indicate, I suppose, if there’s a particular—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Yes, and the member will speak from their seat.

CAMILLA BELICH: Thank you so much. Well, my first question is to the Minister of Justice around the effects of the reductions in staffing at the Ministry of Justice. We heard during the Estimates programme that “great progress” had been made—that’s a quote, not an opinion—in relation to the reductions of staff at the Ministry of Justice. I wanted to ask the Minister what progress has been made in determining, since the Estimates hearing, and if he can give us more details on the roles that will be implemented; also, the timeline for this, whether there’s been consultation, and, if there has been consultation, whether this has concluded or not.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:05): Thank you. Well, since we came into Government, of course, right across the board, we’ve been having a real focus on restoring financial sustainability across Government. We’re borrowing, still, a huge amount of money in each Budget—including this Budget. This Budget is borrowing over $11 billion. We as a Government have set a path back to surplus in the next three or four years, which is very important, because we shouldn’t be sending the bill to future generations.

Justice has had to play its part in finding those savings and getting back to a reasonable level. We included a range of updating of fees and collections in Budget 2024, which brought in some extra revenue. This time, approximately $10 million per year in savings were delivered—in 2024, sorry—and I’m looking forward to a further $7 million in savings expected from reductions in back-office roles as part of the ministry’s reprioritisation to manage within baselines in this year ahead. How they do that, in terms of the exact numbers of fulltime-equivalents, is something for the chief executive to manage. I don’t have any exact figures to hand at this stage, because I think it’s still under discussion.

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (16:07): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got a number of questions for the Minister in Vote Justice particularly about the Electoral Commission, and particularly about youth enrolment. First of all, I just want to ask the Minister if he’s made it easier or harder for youth to enrol to vote?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:07): I’ll just seek advice from the Chair in terms of—is the Estimates debate supposed to be on the Estimates and what we’re spending on or has it got a full remit across any policy sort of element?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We’re just checking it is Vote Justice, but we’ll see.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Oh, it’s definitely Vote Justice. We fund the Electoral Commission through Vote Justice, and we continue to Vote it.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is in order.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ah, right—OK. Well, as I recall the question, it was about whether it makes it easier to vote or harder to vote. My response to that is that it is very easy to vote in New Zealand. If you look at our requirements and expectations, they are very light indeed. We don’t require people to bring ID or anything like that to vote. What we do have is a simple requirement that New Zealanders who want to vote should be enrolled. The Australians, of course, expect people to be enrolled 30 days before the election. We are expecting people to be enrolled by the day before voting starts, and that is two weeks before election day.

Election day, for people tuning in on their crystal sets to this debate, is 7 November, where we have a choice between going forward or going backwards as a country, and I’d encourage people to go forwards and give their party vote to National. That’s on 7 November.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Minister, can I just remind you this isn’t a party-political broadcast.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, thank you. I’m just giving people some advice on this matter. Early voting starts on 26 October, so people need to be enrolled the day before.

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (16:09): I actually asked whether he’d made it easier or harder, not whether it was absolutely easy or hard. I just would like some reflection on whether the Minister of Justice thinks a four-year allocation of $80.6 million—which is intended to improve and modernise election processes, it’s intended to improve enrolment and communications—is enough. Has he been chasing the Electoral Commission, when, actually, compared to 2023, we have got 5 percent fewer youth—18- to 24-year-olds—enrolled to vote, and the line is stagnant? And worse—as the Minister clearly explained the cutoff date, 14 days before—13 days before, depending on how you calculate the enrolment and the date—means that we will not get this 10 percent boost in the 18- to-24-year old age group. Would the Minister also agree that 18- to 24-year-olds have their life ahead of them, and will be hugely affected by the choice of Government in 2026?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:10): Yes, I do believe that young people will be greatly affected by the outcome of this election, and that’s why it’s so important that the current Government is returned so we can carry on the good work, have a strong, vibrant, growing economy, that we stay strong on law and order, and a host of other things—so I welcome that question. The only point I would say in relation to enrolments—the latest advice I’ve had on enrolments is that 89.5 percent of people entitled to vote have enrolled at this stage. That is slightly ahead of the previous election, at this stage of the cycle, so that’s good news. The member would have seen, like everyone else in New Zealand over the last couple of weeks, the advertising campaign that has kicked into gear, encouraging people to get enrolled.

I’ll remind people who are listening: it is the law to be enrolled. Citizens and people who are entitled to vote are required to be enrolled, and to update their details each election. So that is the process that we’re going through. Of course, the group that will lag behind is the youngest group, when people are voting for the first time—and that’s why there is a huge amount of effort being put into encouraging young people to get enrolled. I even heard, today, some reference to there are even adverts in some games that people play online in New Zealand—you can be playing a game and an ad will be coming up encouraging you to get enrolled. The Electoral Commission is being very thorough and very creative in their efforts to encourage people to enrol.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:13): Point of order. I just want to raise it as a point of order because I don’t want to lose questioning time, but you did warn the Minister of Justice about talking about who he believes that the electorate should vote for, and he didn’t adhere to your kind request. I just wondered if you could remind the Minister again that we do have some serious questions around the electoral changes, and we’d prefer not to hear his personal opinion on who people should vote for every time we pose one of those to the Minister.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): It wasn’t actually my advice to him, I was just pointing out this is not a party political broadcast, but I take your point. I will kick him under the table if he says it again!

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (16:13): Point of order, Madam Chair. I seek leave to table this graph, which has been compiled by our wonderful library staff. It is not publicly available, and I think it shows very clearly the gap between the election three years ago, and the election this year.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): You’re seeking leave for that?

CELIA WADE-BROWN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose—

CELIA WADE-BROWN: The gap in youth enrolment.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’m putting in the leave. Is there any objection?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (16:14): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on my colleague’s point about the Electoral Commission, and then I do have some other questions for the Minister of Justice. Of course, accepting the fact that every Budget allocation is a choice, I reflect back on the Minister’s comments during question time today when answering questions on this very issue, and he made the very good point that his understanding was that if we do nothing, then we hit a particular circumstance. The current Budget allocation under the heading “Integrity Improvement to Electoral Services” includes a package of things. One of them is the reduction of that enrolment period. There are other measures in there, including trying to facilitate automatic enrolment over a longer period—so not for this election, but, essentially, for the 2029 election. Arguably, the better choice, in terms of facilitating democracy and dollar spend, as opposed to putting money into the first function, would be to put a larger percentage of that financial bucket—or the entirety of it—into the second function: ensuring that there are automatic enrolments.

So just wondering, in terms of the Budget allocation, whether the Minister would comment on that financial choice, especially given the fact that the Electoral Commission themselves advised against putting funding into that first option. I’d be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation or otherwise of this: my understanding of their view is that the problem we hit is not for the 2026 election, in terms of the spend; the problem we hit is the 2029 election and being able to count the votes within the period of the writ.

Now, if the Budget allocation were to go towards automatic updates, as opposed to changing the registration day, we could then meet the problem identified by the Electoral Commission. It would be a sound spend of Budget finances over the coming three years—instead what it looks to me is that we have a very heavy, front-loaded Budget that’s focused on the registration issue, and then that peters down. The question for the Minister is: firstly, am I correct that that is the issue we face in terms of the count, which has justified this spend, and that the issue is 2029 not 2026; and if that’s the case, is the better spend not put into updating the roll?

The second question is in relation to something that’s not in the Budget, but I would ask the Minister whether he considered contingency funding for this—because he was aware that there would be a report coming out from the Law Commission on hate crimes and proposed changes that they made. The report was given to the Minister on 23 June, which is well after the Budget was announced, but, again, significant proposals—if the Government were to go ahead with the proposals, it would mean changes to the systems and processes in both the Police and the Ministry of Justice, in terms of their case management, so there would be budgetary allocations. It would have been possible for the Government to allocate contingency to ensure that they could respond to those proposals. Is it the Minister’s intention that the Government would take that work programme forward; and if so, because there isn’t a contingency, does that mean there wouldn’t be any action on this before the next Budget? Or has the Minister got any other views on that? I might leave those two there, but I do have a few others that I’ll stand to later.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:18): Just in response, the Budget did include extra resources for the Electoral Commission, and we fund it on a sort of a three-yearly basis, but we put some extra resources in following the feedback from the previous election, where there was a good deal of disquiet about some mistakes that were made. I recall some votes being lost and then found, and some mistakes had been made, and so there was a concern around the rigour. When we think about elections, there are three things in particular that we’re focused on. One is the integrity of the system, which is fundamental to our democratic consent; secondly—the integrity of it—the timeliness of the vote is relevant and important; and the accuracy of the vote is also important. That’s why we’ve put some extra resources into that. How exactly it is allocated and used is, obviously, the independent writ of the Electoral Commission, and we don’t interfere in that.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (16:19): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m interested in asking the hard-working Minister of Justice: there’s been a continuous intention described about putting victims first in both our budgeting and where this budgeting goes to. Minister, I’d like to ask you to please explain some of the ways that these intentions have materialised through the Budget so that the Government can continue to put victims at the heart of most of its spending with respect to justice and being forward-looking. How do you anticipate this will further help the number of victims of violent crime go down, as we have been seeing? Minister, I’d like to hear about that. Thank you.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:20): Thank you, Rima Nakhle, MP for Takanini—a great place in Auckland. A significant part of the justice budget is for policy advice. There are different elements of our justice system in terms of how we achieve our overall goal as a Government to restore law and order, and fix the basics in law and order, so we can build a future where New Zealanders feel safe in their community. The particular measure that we had in mind is to reduce the number of victims of crime. In other parts of the Government response, there’s the Police for example, so we’ve put extra resources and extra police on the beat.

In terms of justice, one of the most powerful tools that we have is our legislative framework, which is why the policy budget section of justice is so important. It is through our laws that we send messages. Our message is that we want to have fewer victims of crime, and to do that, we want to restore real consequences for crime, and we did that through changing our sentencing laws—when you have three strikes.

Then we also have the insights—and I would be interested in people’s observations on this—but a good place to start, if you want fewer victims of crime, is to focus on that very small group of New Zealanders who create multiple victims over and over and over again. A case in point of that, of course, is gangs, who are not just like Rotary or the Lions or some community group; they are less than a quarter of 1 percent of the adult population, and they are associated with 20 to 25 percent of the violent crime. That is why we’ve changed the law to give Police extra powers to deal more effectively with gangs, and we’ve worked our way through that as well.

We’ll focus on sexual violence: that’s why we brought in legislation around stalking, that’s why we’ve done away with permanent name suppression for convicted sex offenders—all these things were aided and abetted by the policy function of the justice ministry. That’s why we continue to fund that, and there is much, much more work to do in that space.

The good news is that the primary measure that we use on that is the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey, where 185,000 New Zealanders reported that they’d been a victim of serious violent or sexual offending in the 12 months before, which is a horrendous figure, when we came to power. We set a goal of reducing that by 20,000, down to 165,000. The good news is that the most recent figure available has it down by 46,000, and so that’s 46,000 families who have not had to go through the pain and trauma of being a victim of serious violent crime. Now, it’s still too many, but it feels like we’re making some good progress.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:23): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a follow-up question to the question around the restructuring at the Ministry of Justice, and I know that the Minister of Justice said he would try and get some answers on that. Specifically, we raised with him, during the Estimates process, the reason for those reductions, and he did state that there will be reduced staff due to technological advances that would be occurring in the financial year. I just wanted to see if there was an update from the Minister on that specifically.

Another question that I had related to the questions around the Electoral Commission, and they are being raised now. As the Minister said, in relation to the increases in funding that came about as a result of the changes to the Electoral Amendment Act 2025, the decisions around the spend in that were up to the discretion of the Electoral Commissioner. However, I wanted to know specifically: is he aware of the amount that the Electoral Commissioner has specifically utilised in order to advertise the change of electoral enrolment deadline that was put in place as a result of his changes to the Electoral Amendment Act? I would be grateful if that specific figure around additional spending as a result of that change by the Electoral Commission could be obtained.

I’ve got another question, just if the Minister is getting advice on that. He did speak to some of the legislation that the Government has passed. One of the pieces of legislation that the Government has passed is the Crimes Amendment Act, which has recently been passed and had policy work undertaken during the year that the Estimates relate to. The Crimes Amendment Act has some controversial elements, including citizen’s arrest powers. I wanted to ask the Minister—with those citizen’s arrest powers, there was a bit of confusion in one of his recent interviews around the age group that that would apply to, so I wanted to ask him: do those arrest powers apply to children of any age, and do those associated mechanical restraints also apply to children of any age?

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau) (16:26): Thank you, Madam Chair. Right, here we go—Vote Justice. Justice’s sector leadership and support appropriation, Minister, covering the ministry’s coordination role across the justice sector, rises only marginally from $16.653 million to $16.909 million for 2026-2027. Just a few figures here, Minister, for May. Community legal assistance falls from $66.414 million to $16.186 million in this Vote. Not one appropriation line in Vote Justice is identifiable as dedicated funding to reduce wāhine Māori disproportionality. Just more to that to that point: wāhine Māori make up 44 percent of police proceedings, 66 percent of women remanded in custody, and 71 percent of women sentenced to imprisonment.

As of April 2026, Minister, wāhine Māori are 65 percent of the total female prison population. Wāhine Māori are incarcerated at nearly 11 times the rate of non-Māori women. The Minister will know the Ombudsman warns that “without meaningful interventions, there is a risk the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for wāhine Māori will be embedded in the projected prison population growth.” The last point in this particular piece is that the Justice Committee has been told the woman’s prison population has almost doubled under this Government and is projected to rise 63 percent over the next decade.

The issue is there is a system response issue; it is not an offending severity issue. The majority of women in prison are not charged with violent offences. The Ministry of Justice’s own research, Minister, shows the system responds more seriously to wāhine Māori, with disproportionate amplifying at every single stage. The Ombudsman, again, identifies survival-driven offending, such as shoplifting—right, to provide for families—as a key driver of wāhine Māori imprisonment.

My questions, Minister—because these are concerns for Māori women, they’re concerns for their whānau, and they’re concerns for their hapū and their communities in which they reside—from me: what measurable reduction in the number and proportion of wāhine Māori in prison is the Government committed to achieving over this term of Parliament? If there is no such target, how can Parliament assess whether current spending is working—question one. Question two—I’ve got five, but I’ll go with the first two, because my minutes are going to be up shortly. The Ministry has told the Ombudsman it is establishing a Reducing Māori Disproportionality programme, with wāhine Māori as the initial focus. Minister, which appropriation in Vote Justice funds this programme and what dollar amount is allocated to it in ’26-’27?

These are real issues, Minister, and, sadly, in what we’ve listened to and what we note in the Vote, it seems that wāhine Māori are not thought about, cared about, and understood in this Vote, in any real and serious way. The numbers tell us—the numbers tell us how incarceration rates are rising, and that’s a systems issue; that’s how Māori woman are dealt with. And yet, the response to those, which should be a good and careful, considered response, is poor. I’d be interested—very interested—as many of our community in Te Tai Tokerau would be, to your response to those questions. Thank you.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:30): Well, I thank the member for the questions, and it is a real issue that she raises, and a long-standing issue in New Zealand where wāhine Māori—Māori women—are disproportionately represented throughout the justice system. They are over-represented as victims of crime as well as in the prison system.

In direct response to the question, we don’t have prison population targets. The previous administration did have a target to reduce the prison population by 30 percent across the board. We all want to see fewer New Zealanders in prison, but it’s our view that that needs to follow a reduction in crime. What we saw in the last Government was a fall in prison population, but at the same time an increase in violent crime. We don’t think that is an appropriate thing. We’re not prepared to risk public safety in an effort to reduce the prison population. Our focus is not necessarily on reducing the prison population but on reducing the number of victims of crime. Given that wāhine Māori are more likely to be victims of crime, they are more likely to benefit from that focus.

Nevertheless, there has been a lot of research done on the disproportionality of wāhine Māori being both sentenced and having longer sentences, and I have studied that information quite closely. A certain amount of that difference can be explained by the offending being a more serious offending leading to more serious outcomes, but it is true that the research shows that there is a gap there which is unexplained, and it continues to be a big challenge to the sector. I mean, obviously, I can’t comment as Minister of Justice on judicial decisions, because the judiciary are independent and accountable.

I would say that there are thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, many of them are Māori of course. I don’t agree with the proposition that it’s a very simple thing to say there is structural racism within the system, because I think that’s offensive to the people who are working in a system doing their very best to deliver for all New Zealanders. I back and support the many thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, as I say, many of whom are Māori, who are wanting the best outcome for all New Zealanders, including Māori, but there is still this gap there, and it has been there for a long time.

We do invest enormous sums in a range of programmes designed to reduce that gap. I can point to Te Ao Mārama court processes, which are designed to have much greater use of particular Māori tikanga and views of how to handle the situation. There’s been a big expansion of those Te Ao Mārama courts. The previous Government, of course, had a massive expansion planned, and we, quite rationally, said, actually, we’re going to do five or six, so let’s take stock to see if it’s working effectively or not before we keep on rolling out the expansion, and we’re in the middle of that process at the moment.

I would just draw attention to one thing that the member said where she referred to survival-driven crimes such as shoplifting. I’m sorry, I just don’t accept that. We need to send a clear message as legislators and people in this Parliament that there is no excuse for crime—people are accountable. We have in this country one of the more generous welfare systems in the world. New Zealanders do help those who are in need, and there are many ways that people can access help if they need them. There is never an excuse to steal food or to shoplift. That is our view, and we will stick with it.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (16:35): Madam Chair, tēnā koe. I also have questions relating to Māori in prisons, and especially wāhine Māori. However, I appreciate that answer, although subjective. What Budget initiatives, if any, are dedicated to ending the overrepresentation of Māori in prison, especially considering that Māori men are now more than six times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori men, and Māori women are now almost 11 times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori women and are 70 percent of the remand population? That is one of the many questions I have around this report by Ināia Tonu Nei.

Does the Minister of Justice dispute that over 50 percent of all prisoners reoffend within two years of their release because these institutions were never designed for rehabilitation? Have there been any unforeseen fiscal and social costs associated with the implementation of the three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Act? Does the Minister recognise that Māori are imprisoned at higher proportions and rates than others, and does he agree that this is a problem? What impacts have three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Acts had on the over-incarceration of Māori? And lastly, to put this to the Minister because, as we all know, Māori are unjustifiably overrepresented in the justice system, and this inequity is continuing to grow as a result of the socio-economic consequences of raupatu and this Government’s active decision to prosecute and imprison more people for low-level drug offences, crimes of poverty, homelessness, and even the clothes that they wear.

The final question for the Minister is this: does he agree that prisons fail to deter crime and to address its causes and other issues such as mental health and addiction and that, ultimately, they trap our people in lives of violence and poverty?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:37): Well, I thank the member for the questions. I can’t see her, because she’s hidden behind the Hansard—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): She’s moved.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you. I think it’s worth remembering that people are sent to prison in this country and it’s not easy to be sent to prison in this country. The long-term insights into the prison population in New Zealand did make the very clear and strong point that the vast majority of people who are in prison in New Zealand are there for serious, either sexual or violent, offences. That is the bulk of the prison population.

There’s a number of objectives that we have when we send people to prison. Yes, it may be that they may be rehabilitated to change their ways when they come out; yes, it may deter people from carrying out the act; but there are other very significant roles of imprisonment, and one is to keep the rest of the community safe, and I go back to the proposition that our Government has focused on reducing the number of victims of crime. As I said at the beginning, there’s a small group of New Zealanders who create fresh victims over and over and over again, and the extent to which they are taken out of circulation and held responsible for their actions for longer means that they are unable to create fresh victims for a period of time. Now, of course, eventually they will come out, and that is why we focus on rehabilitation.

The other purpose of sending people to prison is to denounce the act. It is society saying that we denounce that act, and that is why there’s been so much frustration, particularly in the sexual offences space, where cases are often difficult to prove. People go through the whole process, which is a traumatic process, through the court and a conviction has been attained, and then people have been concerned that there have been very light consequences sometimes passed through, and that is why we’ve toughened up the consequences. We’ve sent a message from Parliament that we don’t think that being sentenced to a period of time on PlayStation at home denounces a sexual violence act explicitly and clearly. That’s why we’re wanting to send a clearer message, and the hope is that that message will get through, particularly to young men in this country.

I find it interesting that we’ve had universal support for tougher sentences for stalking and tougher sentences for some things, but when it comes to the broader message around accountability and consequences, there seems to be a variety of views and opinions, but that is where we come from on this matter.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (16:40): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick couple of questions for Minister McKee around the Firearms Licensing Review Committee appointments. When we were at the hearing, advertisements were only just going out for the committee, with no confirmed date for that $4.7 million that was allocated. I was just wondering: what is the confirmed appointment date, and will the committee be operational before the enforcement of the new Arms Act regime begins?

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (16:41): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his question; that’s a good one. On 23 September, the Firearms Licensing Review Committee will be established. We are very close to announcing the appointment of eight members and the chair. They will be set up ready to go on implementation date, which, as I mentioned, is 23 September 2026.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:41): Thank you, Madam Chair. Picking up the couple of comments from the Minister of Justice with further questions—one of the things we saw from the sector insight around wāhine Māori is the fact that one of the most common reasons for wāhine Māori to be incarcerated is because of shoplifting. Reducing the incarceration rate for wāhine Māori is both the Ministry of Justice’s and this Government’s priority, yet we have seen legislation put in place that actively goes against that priority. I want to check with the Minister: how then would the Minister reconcile both making it worse for wāhine Māori but also, at the same time, wanting to address the issue—as we heard from other speakers—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): As related to the Estimates.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Yes, because there’s no budget in Budget 2026 that specifically addresses this. There’s no itemised, I guess, appropriation in Vote Justice that specifically addresses this.

What is also important to note, because the Minister mentioned the victims of crime survey quite a lot—I would like to put on record that that is a projection; that is not actual data. But at the same time, in that data, in terms of the victims for Māori, for disabled, for rainbow, they have increased significantly over the last few years. How would the Minister, in Budget 2026, address the increase in the victimisation particularly for those communities?

The Minister did mention Te Ao Mārama, and it’s also important to note that in Budget 2026, Te Ao Mārama’s funding has been continuously paused to expand the programme, despite the fact that we know Te Ao Mārama works. On top of that, we also saw in the Budget—if the Minister wouldn’t mind elucidating for this committee why there has been no additional funding for the Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, despite the fact we know that Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou works.

Those are our questions specifically around the victims figure around Māori that the Minister has mentioned before.

My question is: in Budget 2026, the Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime has been given additional budget, despite the fact that the ministerial advisory group (MAG) has wound up, as far as the Minister has reported. So why has that particular MAG been given an additional $450,000 in 2026-2027? In the Supplementary Estimates that were received at the same time as Budget 2026-2027, despite multiple resignations from the MAG over the last year, there has been no reduction in the funding or no drawdown of the funding of that particular MAG, so where has that money gone, despite the multiple resignations?

Finally, just around the ministerial advisory group, looking at that $450,000, is the Minister expecting that ministerial advisory group to continuously take on additional functions and/or seek additional advisers for that ministerial advisory group, and if that is the case, does the Minister know who those advisers for the ministerial advisory group would be or have been?

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts) (16:45): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just going to answer the member’s question around Te Ao Mārama. Te Ao Mārama is a pilot programme that’s been under way for a couple of years. It’s been in eight different sites. The reason why we have not apportioned any more money to it is because we need to await the evaluation. The member had said that it’s been successful; well, there’s actually been no evaluation to tell us of its success. On this side of the hall here, we actually want to make sure that we put money into successful programmes that have shown us that they are successful. We have to stop throwing money at different programmes that have not shown whether or not they have that success. Until we get the review on Te Ao Mārama, which is expected sometime in 2027-28—it’s not being undertaken by us; it will be undertaken by the courts themselves, and it will be a robust programme—then we can decide what works, what doesn’t work, what we can roll out, for instance.

What I will mention about the Te Ao Mārama programme is that there are some aspects of the programme that have worked well that do not have any cost implications at all and have actually been rolled out to other courts throughout the country, as well, as a result of showing that it did work fine. But for us to put money into a programme, we need to ensure that that programme is financially sustainable and does have good benefits for the people that are using it, for society, and for our community, because, quite frankly, we think the country has had enough of Government throwing money at schemes that don’t necessarily work.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (16:47): Thank you, Madam Chair. My question can be for both of our Ministers. You know, in this this role that we have, the mahi that we do on the Justice Committee, we often hear the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied”—

Tom Rutherford: Oh, yes.

RIMA NAKHLE: I hear that my chair, Tom Rutherford, the wonderful chair, is agreeing with me. There’s a lot of kōrero as well about how when “justice delayed is justice denied”, this is where victims are also suffering. So, Ministers, talk us through how this outlook, as well, is being addressed with the appropriations, please. Thank you.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:47): I’ll defer primarily to my colleague Nicole McKee, but I’ll just make the point that if we look at the broader justice priorities for the Government over the last three years, number one has been to reduce the number of victims of crime; number two has been to reduce the number of serious repeat youth offenders exemplified by the ram-raiders of old, which we have dealt with very effectively as a Government; but the third area has been this one, which the member has referred to, about speeding up the processes of the courts, because there have been huge delays to justice. That means that people can’t get on with their lives or can’t get their disputes resolved or, in the Family Court, can’t get their situations resolved in a timely fashion. We’ve had a huge focus as a Government on looking at the many, many things that we can do, through changes of legislation; changes of technology, such as greater use of audiovisual facilities; changing the rules within the courts; getting cooperation between the Police, Corrections, the courts, and the judiciary—all designed to speed up the process. The good news is we’ve made good progress on that, and Minister McKee might like to outline some of that.

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts) (16:49): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, there has been a lot of work that has been done over this term of Government to try and help speed up the courts and their timeliness. Minister Goldsmith referred to legislation. Some of the legislation includes Family Court Associates being progressed. There was a pilot that was under way when we came in. We’ve actually managed to get another eight Family Court Associates out around the country assisting judges and freeing up judges’ time. We have legislation coming through which will empower community magistrates to do more work, which will also free up judges’ time. We’ve made changes to the Coroners Act so that we can get them moving quicker as well.

One thing that the member has mentioned: “justice delayed is justice denied”. When families are waiting to hear outcomes about loved ones and how they’ve passed, waiting eight years can be absolutely over the top. The changes from the Coroners Court have also allowed us to speed up the justice process. Of course, we’ve put up the judges caps across various courts in order to ensure that those that are retiring—and, of course, there are a lot of boomers across the country, in all fields but especially in the courts, who are starting to retire. We’re putting the caps up to ensure that the process for those that are retiring and the new ones that are coming in is not stalling in any way; that there’s a smooth process there. Of course, the very last thing which is about to be implemented this year is Te Au Reka, the digitalisation of our courts, and this, indeed, will also speed up the process, once that’s under way.

When we came into Government, we were told that there was, on average, around 12 events that a person needed to attend when they were going through a court process. At the moment, I think we’ve got that down to around about nine events—I will be corrected if I’m wrong there, but I think it’s around nine events—and we expect to try and get it even lower. It should be sitting at around six events per person. To double it to 12; to get it down to nine—we’re halfway there.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I just want to note that we’ve only got about eight minutes left, so I’ll take Vanushi Walters.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (16:51): Thank you, Madam Chair. One question for the Minister of Justice, very briefly, on legal aid. We had the review recently, which identified the shrinking pool of legal aid practitioners, and remuneration or appropriate fee-setting as two of the key issues. The response thus far, and in the Budget, is the line under justice demand-driven cost pressures, with an initiative response which is explicitly a one-off allocation. My concern is that this isn’t addressing what we’ve heard in the report, because we now have a zero allocation in 2027-28 and 2028-29. I’m just curious as to the Minister’s plan in terms of his intentions with the one-off and what the intention is over the three-year budget forecast to address the issues that have now been very clearly identified as a result of the report.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:52): Yes, in terms of legal aid, we did a triennial review of legal aid, as the member notes; it had been a bit delayed from the previous Government, who I don’t think had done it in a timely fashion, but we got on to it. We came up with suggestions, and those suggestions weren’t met with great enthusiasm by the legal profession. We then went back and decided, “Well, how are we going to do this?”, because, as a country, we’re spending significantly more on legal aid. It has increased significantly over the last few years, but the demand is even higher.

We wanted to look at, “Well, what is it that’s driving this demand upwards?” Some of that is the fact that more people are electing jury trials, and they, of course, are much more intensive and expensive. What we’ve done is we’ve put some extra resources into this year, and we’re going away and having a more fundamental root-and-branch look at what we can do in the broader system, to make changes that may take pressure off legal aid and to focus those limited resources to where they’re most required.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (16:53): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a supplementary on that. Is the Minister of Justice considering bulk funding for legal aid, given his previous comments?

I just note that I’m still awaiting answers on my questions around spending from the Electoral Commission, the functionality of particular provisions in the Crimes Act, and also the number of roles being restructured and types of roles in the Ministry of Justice. It’s frustrating not to hear those by the end of this hearing, so I won’t speak too long, to ask the Minister whether he will be able to come back to me with answers to those questions.

I did want to ask, in relation to move-on orders, what resourcing has the Minister put in place—considering that I understand he is still intending to pass the move-on orders before the election—and what resourcing has been put in place to provide education to the community and the police about how move-on orders will be implemented? We understand there are concerns that facilitating move-on orders, especially in relation to some of the provisions that are preventative, may require additional resourcing from Police. What forethought has gone into that?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:54): Just quickly, in terms of the Electoral Commission, one of their core functions—for which they’ve always been funded—is to encourage people to enrol.

Their hands were kind of tied behind their back by the previous Labour Government when it introduced election day enrolment, because they had this big campaign to encourage people to get enrolled, but at the same time, they were saying, “Please get enrolled, but by the way, it doesn’t matter if you do or you don’t because you can just rock up on election day and get enrolled.”, and so fewer and fewer people were being enrolled in a timely fashion and there were more and more people not enrolled prior to writ day. That was the problem there, but I understand—my advice is—that there’s been an extra $2 million allocated on top of the normal allocation for enrolment advertising.

In terms of the Crimes Amendment Act, in terms of citizens arrest—she asked about that. There is no age specification, as there hasn’t been in the existing law, which has been in place for many decades. The difference was that it applied after 9 p.m., but it didn’t apply before 9 p.m.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (16:56): Madam Chair, I also have a couple of questions on the move-on orders, and am conscious of the time. What support—if anything—will the ministry provide to homeless whānau who have been moved on, and what support can these people expect to receive from the Government in these situations?

Final question: has the Government considered the implications of the Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, especially when it comes to whānau accessing kai and essentials in a situation where the main provider has been trespassed from the only supermarket in their area, especially for people living in rural and isolated communities?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (16:56): In terms of the move-on orders—what was the question? Oh, the question was around the support for people who are struggling with housing difficulties. Of course, the purpose of the move-on orders is not our response to housing issues. We have many tools with which to help those who are in need in terms of housing, and my fellow ministers, Ministers Potaka and Bishop, are responsible for the many, many millions—if not billions—of dollars we spend on housing support in this country. The move-on orders are focused, from a justice response, on dealing with and reclaiming our main centres, town squares, and CBDs for the enjoyment of people who live there, who work there, and who visit there, so that people can feel safe in those environments.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (16:57): Just a quick one for Minister McKee again, around Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. At the hearing, we heard about the Minister’s plans for the changeover between the current regulator and the new one, Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. I was just wondering if there has been a liaison team set up to transfer the work over between New Zealand Police and Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand?

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (16:57): My understanding is that the Ministry of Justice and New Zealand Police are working quite closely with each other and that they have been working on an information-sharing agreement as well, to make sure that that is up and ready to go on 23 September, when the transfer takes place. It is not so much a liaison team but rather those that have been working in both entities still working together to make sure that the implementation is sound.

I’ve been told by the teams on both sides that everything’s looking pretty good, that they’re on track, and that the agreements are actually coming around very, very quickly and very well. I look forward to further agreements being made with other agencies to implement what we call the red-flag system—if you recall during the Arms Act—where the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service will also get some information-sharing agreements with Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand and, of course, with New Zealand Police as well. That will come after—in fact, they may be working on it now—but it’s not needed to be implemented by 23 September.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the Minister’s time in the chair, in this portfolio, has come to an end. We now have the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio from 5 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. The Hon Jan Tinetti, chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee—sorry, you were just blocked from my vision there.

Committee of the whole House—Estimates Debate

Public Service and Digitising Government

Hon JAN TINETTI (Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee) (16:59): Oh yes, sorry, Madam Chair. I sat in the wrong place.

The Governance and Administration Committee met on 17 June to hear evidence on Vote Public Service. This is the first time that we’ve had the opportunity to scrutinise the evidence of the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government under the new portfolio area where the responsibility of digital leadership functions has been transferred on 1 April 2026 from the Department of Internal Affairs to the new Government Digital Delivery Agency.

A number of things were talked about at this particular meeting. Budget 2026 proposed to allocate $131.5 million for Vote Public Service. It’s a decrease from the estimated actual spending of $132.7 million in 2025-26, and it comprises, again, the new appropriation for Government Digital Delivery Agency and then other matters within the Public Service.

As I said, a variety of topics were covered at the hearing. We talked about changes in workforce and resourcing for the Public Service, the role of new technology, and, of course, the Government digital delivery agency. Some other subjects were covered briefly in that hearing as well. Record-keeping and the review of the advertising campaign were two such topics. I will leave it there because I know that we have a short time and spokespeople will be wanting to ask their questions. Thank you.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:01): Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome to the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government. I have some questions, and I know we’ve only got half an hour with the Minister, so I have two areas that I’m interested in looking at.

The first area is the biggest area. This year’s Budget was focused on a reduction in the Public Service headcount in order to balance the Government’s Budget. We’ve had very few details on the nature of those cuts to Public Service job roles. I did ask the Minister of Finance when she was in the chair around what progress had been made. I also asked her around the fact that subsequently, since the original cuts were announced in the Budget, there has also been a request to chief executives to produce by the end of August a report on the nature of the cuts within their particular agencies. The Minister of Finance told me that those are two separate processes, so I’d like the Minister, as the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, to explain both of those processes, if they are indeed separate, and if the Minister of Finance has said they are a separate process, what the overall reduction would be. The Budget announced $2.4 billion in money that would be saved due to these job cuts and around 9,000 fewer roles. Is that still the case?

Specifically for the Minister, in relation to these cuts, can the Minister name the public services that New Zealanders currently receive that they will no longer receive as a result of the cuts? A specific question as well: is the 55,000 reduction over the entire forecast period and the number of 1 percent of a growing population fixed, or will that rate of Public Service headcount fall or rise depending on the population? I think that’s important for understanding what the impact of this decision will be. Also, because this has progressed somewhat since the Budget, can he give us an updated forecast on the costs of redundancies and resulting change in contractor and consultant spend as a result of the decisions made in this Budget?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:03): Well, there were a lot of questions there and I’ll try to remember them as I go through. The first point was around the two sorts of areas of focus. One was the public sector transformation, which is set to save $2.4 billion, as the member said, and then alongside that, but not entirely the same thing, is a reduction in headcount.

It’s worth just reminding people that when Bill English left as Prime Minister and we were kicked out in 2017—although people might sort of question that—47,000 people were working in the public sector. Then we came back six years later and that 47,000 had grown to 63,000. It had been an increase of 34 percent, so 16,000 extra people were hired over six years. New Zealanders quite rightly sort of scratched their heads and thought, “Well, am I getting a 34 percent better service from the public sector?” Then they looked at school attendance and that had dropped. They looked at immunisation rates and those had dropped. They looked at the state of the public finances and it had gone badly into reverse. They looked at law and order and it was falling apart. They quite legitimately asked the question, “Well, we’ve hired all these extra people and the outcomes that we’re getting are worse.”

We have set a goal as a Government to restore the overall numbers of public servants to the historic kind of mean, which is roughly 1 percent of the population, which would take us back to 55,000 in three years. We have ourselves that goal, and in the interim, we’ve asked chief executives to come up with a stepping stone towards that in the next little while. We’re getting some advice coming back about how people will do it and how they’re going to achieve it. That is a work in progress, but we’re sending a very clear message that we want to get our house in order.

Why does this matter? This matters because, ultimately, in this Budget, the core figure of this Budget is that we are still borrowing over $11 billion this year. We’re spending that more than we are earning it as a Government. That bill is being passed to future generations. We have a determination, on this side of the House, to live within our means. We have set a goal to get back to surplus, and part of that is being disciplined in our spending.

Now, it’s much easier to go on a hiring spree and hire a whole lot of people. It’s more difficult to bring that back, and that’s what we have to do as a Government. It’s not about cutting; it’s about bringing the overall numbers back to a historic average. At the same time, of course, by being clear in our outcomes and targets and focus, we are determined and expecting to have better outcomes for New Zealanders as a result. We’ve managed to achieve that in things like truancy, in immunisation rates, in restoring law and order. There isn’t a perfect relationship between the number of people that a Government hires and the outcomes, and that’s what our focus is.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (17:07): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some further questions for the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, really around the artificial intelligence (AI) assumption. In the context of a large number of cuts across the Public Service, AI is often heralded as the kind of hero that’s going to step in and do that work for them. My questions here are really around what the Minister has factored in as the costings for AI. I had an opportunity to ask the Minister of Finance that question back in scrutiny week and was told, well, not much, really, other than that 970 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences had come in, at a cost of $423,289.50 in the 2025-26 year.

My question, really, for the Minister is: what is the forecast spend on AI for the Public Service? Of the jobs that are going and the cost saving that is assumed on that basis—some more detail around how many of those jobs are likely to be offset through the use of AI, and what is the cost attributed to that uptake and adoption of AI? Also, what work or examination has been put into the fact that there will be a lot of issues that result through the use of AI, where the Public Service process takes longer because members of the public can use AI in ways that tie up or complicate those interactions? I’m interested in some answers from the Minister on those questions.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:09): Well, I thank the member for his question. Towards the end of it, he was making a point which is most relevant, in the sense that New Zealanders are using AI and they’re adopting it vigorously. We’re living in the moment of a very significant technological change, which, like every significant technological change, will bring some benefits and it will also bring some problems. Our goal in Government—and every New Zealander out there will be thinking, “Well, how do I maximise the benefits and minimise the problems?” That’s what we’re doing there. We’re expecting the Public Service to be early adopters.

Wearing my Communications hat, if I speak to a chief executive of One New Zealand or one of the communications companies, and you ask them what they think about artificial intelligence (AI) and what are they worried about, they’re worried that their competitors will figure out how to make better use of AI faster than they do, and they’ll go out of business. That is the competitive tension that many businesses around the country are facing: how do I stay ahead of the technology? How do I figure out how to make use of it faster than my competitors in order to succeed?

Now, that sort of logic, of course, doesn’t apply if you’re the Inland Revenue or the Ministry of Justice; you don’t have a competitor out there trying to beat you. Our worry is: how do we motivate the leadership of the public sector to ensure that they are as agile and fast in looking for ways to make use of this technology and don’t just sort of cruise and coast for five years and let things pass them by. As is obvious to everybody, there is room for improvement in the delivery of services. If I take the example of Justice, where we’ve just been in the last half hour, there are still long delays in the court system, and that is because of very clunky old systems. The use of AI may be able to speed that up in a useful way, so of course we’d be expecting people to do that.

The overarching purpose of expecting ministries to make use of new technology is not to reduce headcount; it is to deliver better services. That’s what it’s fundamentally all about. We want to have better services that are more attuned to the needs of New Zealanders to make it easier for them to do things. One of the mantras that we’re trying to get through is “tell me once”. New Zealanders deal with the many elements of the Public Service and are constantly having to fill out the same information over and over again and are frustrated by that—finding ways whereby we can get that information in a more seamless and digitised fashion. Case in point on that is the Electoral Commission, where every three years, we’ve got to go through this laborious process and send letters out to every letterbox in the country getting people to enrol all over again, which should be a very simple digital task. Those are the sorts of basic things that New Zealanders would expect us to do.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (17:12): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to follow on from the line of questioning by my colleague Reuben Davidson around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies in the Public Service. My first question to the Minister is: is it the Minister’s expectation that when going out for procurement for artificial intelligence providers across the Public Service, departments go through an open tender process and follow the procurement rules for procuring technologies that will get rolled out for use in their departments?

My second question is: what safeguards, if any, is the Minister planning to take around tech procurement and issues around the deployment of artificial intelligence? We’ve seen some rather large-scale failures of technology procurement in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in Immigration, just over the past couple of years, so it would be good to get some assurance from the Minister that we are walking into this brave new world with eyes open, so to speak.

My third leg of the question around the use of AI is: will the Minister guarantee, as artificial intelligence gets rolled out through things like the Government Digital Delivery Agency, that the Minister will cement the right to see a human and the right that in all judgments, in whatever automated decision-making processes, and in whatever things an artificial intelligence might contribute to the decision making of, the human who is being judged by the AI has a right to have that decision reviewed by a human being? I’ve used exactly two minutes of my question; I’ll sit down now and let the Minister answer.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:14): Thank you, Madam Chair. I know I did ask a lot of questions in my first call—I wanted to make sure I got them all in—but I haven’t had an answer yet to the types of roles that will be cut; the types of public services that won’t be available to New Zealanders as a result of this Government’s cuts. We’ve heard the Minister’s justification for them, but what New Zealanders will experience—those who aren’t directly made redundant from their roles in the Public Service—is really the Public Service roles that will no longer exist.

I’d like the Minister to either provide an answer to that today or, if he can’t, please give an indication of whether prior to the election the Government will be able to clarify the nature of those cuts. I think it is quite imperative as to whether New Zealanders support the direction of travel in relation to the public sector cuts to know what public services will no longer be available. I think it’s a really basic question, and I’d like an answer to that. I’ll leave that there. I do have another area I want to cover if there’s time.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:15): Well, in answer to that question, obviously our focus has been to maintain and preserve, where possible, front-line workers. In fact, there’s been significant increases in front-line workers over the last few years in Corrections and in parts of the courts in terms of court security. Front-line numbers have not been reduced. But there were, over the past few years, big increases in middle-management, for example; some areas of policy, for example; and some areas of back-office support, for example, and those areas are being reduced back to somewhere towards historic norms. There had been, as I said, a hiring spree over the previous few years.

In terms of Mr Xu-Nan’s question—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, Mr Hernandez.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Oh, no, Mr Hernandez’s questions around tech procurement, yes, of course, I would be expecting the processes to be followed appropriately. We have a particular focus through the Government Digital Delivery Agency to get some coherency around that. We don’t necessarily want 39 different departments having individual contracts with the same people, and we do want to gather efficiencies of scale. That’s why we’ve got a central office that is guiding and directing in that space. That, I think, is very important.

Yes, he referred to various IT failures in the past, and so, again, we have a huge focus on reducing the likelihood of those. Of course, there will always be things that go awry, but it is important that we try to reduce the chances of that happening as much as we possibly can. We’re, again, getting some greater centralised direction and leadership from the general group there in order to reduce the Government Digital Delivery Agency, which has been relatively recently set up and put within the Public Service Commission.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:18): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do want to thank the Minister for giving some areas that may be impacted, but I do think it does ask New Zealanders to suspend disbelief somewhat to look at the scale of the cuts being proposed and believe that there will be no impact on the services New Zealanders receive. I would appreciate if there would be more detail on the actual nature of the cuts in terms of how they’ll impact New Zealanders.

I just want to move on to the Public Service Commission. That obviously plays an integral role within the Minister’s management of the Public Service. We did have, under the year in review, the Public Service Commission—we have, under the Minister, and actually the previous Minister’s tenure, had a difference in approach in relation to the Public Service Commission. One of those things was we had a Facebook campaign that was run by the commission, and I think around about $250 was spent on boosted posts. Then we had a review that cost $67,000 and came four months late. I wanted to ask the Minister if he’s reflected on that and whether he has instructed the Public Service Commissioner to make sure that decisions of that nature have more foresight in the future. One of the findings of the review was that there was the possibility of the political neutrality of the Public Service Commission being compromised. I wanted to ask the Minister: what has changed in the Public Service Commission since that review in order to prevent that happening again?

Related to that, I wanted to ask the Minister: there’s recently been decisions made by the Public Service Commissioner in relation to their role in bargaining. This has surfaced in relation to a number of different sectors—most recently in health—and just to understand what the Minister’s direction has been to the Public Service Commissioner, and for what reason he has decided that the commissioner is going to take a more active role in public sector bargaining—in fact being the instructing body on behalf of negotiating parties.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:20): My expectation of the Public Service Commission is that they operate in a politically neutral manner, and I think it is one of the strengths of our political system in New Zealand that we have a long tradition of a politically neutral Public Service. It will always be a point of commentating and observation; people will have their different opinions.

One important thing for the Public Service, generally, to consider is that they look to improve the level of overall trust that New Zealanders have in them. I think it’s a fair observation to make that institutions across the board, whether it’s politics, Public Service, the judiciary, the police, the media—many have suffered a reduction in public trust, particularly through the COVID period. There is a real focus on restoring those levels of trust. The good news is that all the surveys that have been done recently still indicate—I can’t remember the exact figure off the top of my head—reasonably high levels of trust in the New Zealand Public Service, but there’s always room for improvement. My message to the Public Service Commissioner is always to be mindful of that.

In terms of their engagement in pay negotiations, the tradition has been that the chief executives of the various departments are responsible for those negotiations, but they’re perfectly within their rights to ask the Public Service Commission to lead those negotiations, as well. In some instances, that has occurred that way, and we expect them to go about those in a good-faith way, mindful of the fact that these negotiations are always difficult and we’re trying to get the best value that we can for taxpayers and for citizens. We also want to have as much money available for investing in various programmes, and so those negotiations are carried out as best they can.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (17:23): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just really want to follow up on the line of questioning that my colleague Camilla Belich is asking, because the Minister of Justice has not answered the question around how many jobs are going to be lost as a result of the baseline savings reductions exercise.

It’s really interesting seeing the shift of messaging from the Government. When all this stuff was being announced earlier this year around Budget time, they were all gung-ho around how they were going to scrap thousands of Public Service jobs and they were going to cut so much waste from the bureaucracy, but now that it’s closer to election time, the Minister’s tone has become a little bit more restrained. I wonder if some polling has come through that has shown that actually New Zealanders around the country are realising that cuts to the Public Service—even in the so-called non-frontline roles—are harming the ability of the Public Service to carry on the work.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’d encourage the member to stick to the Estimates. You can put your view on why things might be happening, but please stick to the questions around the Estimates. Thank you.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: This is very related to the Estimates, because, if you actually look at the Budget documents, these baseline reduction savings targets are in the Estimate documents.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yeah, I get that part of the question, and I’m asking you to stay on that part of the question.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: And I am staying on this part, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Great—excellent.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: My question is: how many jobs at this stage, now that we’ve had the benefit of a few months to really nut down and actually estimate how many jobs are going to be lost from the Public Service reductions.

The second leg of my question to the Minister is: has the Minister read the newly released report by the Public Service Association (PSA) which showed that deliberate vacancies in non-clinical roles—also known as administrative roles, also known as backroom roles—have actually harmed people. For example, if there are not enough administrators, clinicians have to do administrative work, which reduces the time they can spend on patient care.

My first leg of the question—will the Minister answer the question—how many jobs in the Public Service will be lost as a result of the Government’s planned baseline savings reduction targets? The second leg of my question is: has the Minister read the report from the PSA, and does the Minister agree that the loss of Public Service capacity, even in so-called non-frontline roles, can lead to actual service cuts and actual degradation in the experience that the consumers of public services experience?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:25): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just trying to remember the first question—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The jobs—number of jobs.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The number of jobs? Well, the number of jobs—and the member is capable of maths, I’m sure—it was 47,000 when we left Government in 2017, it went up to 65,000 soon after we got back, and our goal is to get back to 55,000 in three years. I’ll leave the member to do the maths there. It had gone up a long way, and it’s going to come back down about half of the way that it went up, because there has been some population growth over that period, and we’ve also invested more in the front line, particularly in the corrections space. That’s the answer to that one. The second one—what was the second one?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): It was about the non-clinical roles.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ah, yes, thank you. I agree that everybody wants to ensure that we have the right people in the right job, and that’s what we’re setting out to do. In terms of saving some money, that’s about ensuring that our overall Budget is sustainable, but I can ensure New Zealanders listening in that our focus is delivering better public services. We do that by ensuring that we’ve got a clear focus. Notwithstanding all the extra public servants that were hired and the huge increase in spending we had during the six years when Jacinda Ardern was in charge, basic things like getting children immunised and getting kids to school went backwards. The number of people living in emergency accommodation went through the roof, so the outcomes—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We’re going forward now, and we’ve got two minutes left. I know we’ve got one more question, so could you round your question up, please?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, yes, I’m just answering his other question; he asked me if I’d read a Public Service Association (PSA) article, and I’m afraid—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): A report.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —I haven’t read that in great detail, and to be honest I’m a little cynical towards the PSA, because they’re out there in our public ministries outwardly campaigning against this Government. They’ve got little postcards saying, “Throw out the Government”, and it does worry me. In terms of overall perspective, when we have a very significant majority of public servants being members of the PSA and that PSA is actively campaigning to overthrow the Government, it is a bad look, I think overall. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:28): Thank you, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): In about approximately one minute.

CAMILLA BELICH: I’d just reflect that the Public Service Association (PSA) has been around for well over a hundred years, and I understand this is only the second time that they’ve had a campaign to change the Government, so you can make your own reflections on that—as it was raised, Madam Chair.

I do have a quick question: mergers. Is the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government planning further mergers within the Public Service?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government) (17:29): It will fall to the next Government to make such decisions, but we are certainly not making the assumption that the 39 or 38 departments and ministries that we have at the moment are the only way that things can be structured and arranged.

I would make this point: I haven’t had an opportunity to refer to the Prime Minister in this debate, but one of his greatest attributes is his ability to handle complex management challenges such as this, where we’re trying to organise the broad Public Service in the most efficient way to lead to the best outcomes and to hold our chief executives to account for that. I’m working very closely with the Prime Minister on potential different designs and structures, but no decisions have been made.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the Minister of Justice’s time in the chair has come to an end. We now have the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio until just before 6 p.m. I give the call to Dr Parmjeet Parmar as the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Committee of the whole House—Estimates Debate

Commerce and Consumer Affairs

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (Chairperson of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee) (17:30): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take this call to open this debate as the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. This is just to provide a very quick summary of the areas that the select committee members discussed with the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. I want to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Cameron Brewer, and his officials for answering questions that the committee members asked. The Commerce and Consumer Affairs appropriations fund has a range of work that is led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The portfolio covers financial markets competition, consumer and commercial matters, corporate governance, intellectual property, and standards and conformance.

The select committee noted that for 2026-2027, the Government is seeking $305.6 million for the Commerce and Consumer Affairs appropriations, which is $8.8 million less than the previous year’s estimated actual expenditure of $314.4 million. The select committee members were interested in discussing banking competition, especially how it’s working for small businesses. We also discussed beneficiaries of open banking, and the Minister suggested that increased competition among lenders has improved conditions for mortgage borrowers, including young people and first-home buyers.

The select committee was interested in financial crime as well, and we compared how it works in Australia versus New Zealand. The Minister told the select committee that he would seek advice on the level of financial loss for consumers as well as the amount of compensation banks are paying. We discussed recent and proposed legislative changes, and in that, we also discussed the surcharge ban bill—the short form of the Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill. The Minister told the select committee that he is still considering various options to see how that could be proceeded. We discussed reporting on fuel price data, because the select committee noted that the ministry had stopped its reporting on fuel price monitoring data when the international fuel crisis happened. But we also note that since our hearing, the ministry has resumed publication of its weekly fuel pricing monitoring.

Other than these issues, we also discussed extreme weather events and insurance claims, product standards, and safety. There was quite a lot that we squeezed in the time that was available with the Minister, and I look forward to the debate. Thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:33): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start, first, with the issues of the day. The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is responsible for the $86 million appropriation to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), so I want to ask him about what was reported today, which will be of concern to him, I know, and the finding of the FMA that consumers are being sold in New Zealand add-on insurances and extended warranties that are effectively of no value to them and that are entirely a waste of money. This will not surprise him. These also match the findings of the Commerce Commission in late 2022, which was when further changes to the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) regime were made—changes to the CoFI regime which his Government has reversed.

The FMA’s investigation and enforcement funding is what I want to start to ask him about first. It’s a good news story. It goes up from $17.4 million to $24.5 million. I want to ask him first: what enforcement action does he expect the FMA to be taking, particularly around junk insurances? He will also be familiar with what the Australian Federal Government are doing to ensure that junk insurances are not something that Australian consumers are burdened with. In the Australian Treasury’s advice to Government recently, they found in the scope of tens of millions of dollars to be the cost every year to Australian consumers in terms of insurances which are, frankly, a complete waste of time, energy, and money, and a predatory practice.

I want to ask the Minister what his expectations are of the FMA, given that it was his Government that put the enforcement function to that agency—an agency which is beleaguered by some troubles within it, and I would also offer him the opportunity to comment on that. But what I’m interested in here now is that if we have a regulator that has taken its eye off the ball, and a Minister who has too, how can we ensure that those consumers who are being lumped with these products which are of no value to them are going to get some regulatory relief, especially in the context where this Government has removed some of those key protections within the CoFI regime? I’ll start there.

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:35): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the member too for her interest in these matters. Just on the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), yes, it is going through challenging times, but we continue to have full confidence in the FMA, more so than ever before, with the appointment of a new chair and a new board member. As the member indicated, they have, since 1 July, picked up more responsibilities, as the member is well aware, in layman’s terms, by having oversight of consumer credit.

I hear what she’s saying as far as the insurance sector and what she described as junk insurance products. I know that the FMA, with consumer oversight now of credit, as you may have already seen in some of these reports, is going to hit pretty hard those that are basically loan sharking car sales all around the country. The FMA is going to be focused on those. The FMA is also going to have a focus on any attached insurance policies, too, that may add up. But for those that have pretty much only got the option, in their own eyes, to take the terms and conditions that that car salesperson is putting on them, normally at huge compounding interest rates, they need to be aware that the FMA—the tools that we have given them—have ratcheted up their ability to monitor this. They have responsibility now to have consumer credit from the Commerce Commission, and they have a big focus as they unleash across consumer credit, particularly on the car sector.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:37): I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for those answers, but the question was: what enforcement action does he expect his regulator to take with the increased appropriation which he has given them for enforcement? I look forward to his response to that. His comment earlier that the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has been given new tools for licensing and monitoring is not right. The licensing and monitoring regime has been transferred from two regulators to one—that’s true—but the compliance spend that FMA has access to has been cut by this Minister. Isn’t that the key to fixing this, Minister? I agree with you that licensing is a key component of that, so why is that not reflected in the appropriation?

A third question for the Minister. The FMA has given targeted feedback to insurers. Those are the insurers that the Minister himself categorises as loan sharking car sales. Those loan sharks have been slapped on the hand with a wet bus ticket by this regulator. Will the Minister name them now if he is not going to pursue regulatory action?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:38): As I said, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has oversight now of consumer credit. We had about 35 skilled people move from the Commerce Commission over to the FMA in that realm of consumer credit, and they are determined to get on top of many of the issues that the member has articulated, and that’s in and around the car sector, particularly the used car sector, and loaning and insurance products. If they are seen to be in breach of the law, the FMA has given me every assurance that these people will be in their sights and they will be coming down hard on them.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:39): The problem we have is that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs knows who these bad actors are and won’t even name them for the committee. Minister, is there any clearer breach of the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) than a 2 to 3 percent loss ratio insurance product? It’s effectively an insurance product which never pays out. These are insurance products which are not valuable to consumers, that they do not understand, and they are sold under push conditions to the most vulnerable consumers there are, to single mums who have gone into a car yard with a Work and Income New Zealand payment because they need a car to get to work. Why won’t this Minister take action, and why has this Minister spent time reversing some of those changes that CoFI requires insurers to act in good faith and actually put some of the practical implications in place? Is that because the commerce and consumer affairs policy advice appropriation has been cut to $14.564 million this year, and what were the fulltime-equivalent assumptions that sit behind that? How many policy staff did he get rid of, and is that why he doesn’t have useful advice about what impact this is having on the consumers?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:40): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I suppose it’s probably about now, when I’m being asked, potentially, for some comments as to operational priorities, that I remind the member that the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), as she well knows, is an autonomous, independent Crown entity, with a new chair and an independent board, that comes up with its own work programme. The FMA has given us every assurance that the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, which it has now taken over from the Commerce Commission, is going to be a big priority for it. Once upon a time, when the FMA replaced the Securities Commission, it was a capital markets regulator. Its remit is much wider, going across town, and it has plenty of tools to make sure that anyone in the consumer credit space, and any vulnerable New Zealanders that are getting ripped off when buying cars or insuring cars—those perpetrators will be prosecuted.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:41): I just want to clarify—that was a helpful answer from the Minister—will vulnerable consumers who are being ripped off by car loan sharks, as the Minister categorises them, be prosecuted in this coming year? Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Arena Williams.

ARENA WILLIAMS: I think that was a no from the Minister, so I’ll move on to the product safety standards and trading standards—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Minister actually clarified that people will be prosecuted. The Minister might like to comment—it’s not the Minister that decides that date, whether it will be this year or not—

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:42): No, no. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I articulated, this responsibility for the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, and those that fall outside the legal bounds of it, now falls to the autonomous independent Crown entity called the Financial Markets Authority, so I’m not going to stand up here and start putting forward dates of prosecutions, who should be prosecuted, and name and shame them—that’s not my role. Otherwise, I may as well push the FMA aside, take it out of the statute, and we can leave the House and go and create our own inspectorate and go and put our own enforcement upon them. We’re not doing that.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): So now that that’s clear, we’ll have the next question, thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:42): Yes. The problem is that the Minister’s regulator has done exactly that—has used a targeted feedback mechanism, which is pretty novel, to tell the insurers who are, as the Minister would categorise it, ripping off vulnerable consumers. They are doing that. We are none the wiser in this committee about who they are, yet the Minister does know who they are, and so whether this is having an impact in the market remains to be seen, because they’re not being publicly required to change the behaviour, nor are they even named.

Minister, product safety standards are important to me; you know this—no surprises there. Congratulations on taking action on the blind cords. But I want to ask you about the appropriation. As it stands, the money allocated to that falls, in real terms, and also doesn’t keep up with cost pressures. I’ll say the worry genuinely: I’m worried that this is something where Ministers have a lot on their plate, and this is the thing that comes second in the portfolio, but it is one of the most critical things. Button batteries and asbestos sand, for instance, is something that is deeply concerning for Kiwi parents, and these are being sold, still, on our shelves by some of the most widespread and well-respected retailers in our market. Why, Minister, have you not increased the appropriation for this? Are we asking the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to get more for less, when this is something that is already deeply underfunded? Ministers haven’t been able to take quicker action for those parents who are very, very concerned about this.

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:44): Thank you, Madam Chair. At the Estimates in June, I pretty much foreshadowed, after years of coroners’ reports, and after the loss of too many souls—young souls—that this Government was going to get on top of corded blinds. As you can see, we have begun that process. The regulations have been drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and I expect that they will be out for public consultation soon, and then the regulations around the corded blinds will come into effect 12 months after that.

Just on the corded blinds issue, because it was one that we discussed at length at the Estimates: we have taken a decision since then. But for those families that are concerned, and corded blinds are in their homes, there are ways to fix those and to make them safer, and that can be found out on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) website—sometimes that can be as easy as going down to the local hardware shop and buying a fastener, or shortening up the cords. There are ways of doing that, as I said, via the MBIE website. So corded blinds are something that I know the previous Government looked at, I know there have been a number of coroners’ reports, and we’re getting on top of it. Public consultation on the regulations are coming out soon.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:46): Following on from the Minister’s answer, what I really want to know is given that there is a cut to this appropriation, how many fewer compliance interventions does he expect the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to be able to take? The question is about button batteries, asbestos sand, and those consumer products which are particularly of concern for parents and children. Also, given that his Government has changed the rules for building products, in an attempt to create more competition in the market for building products—which is a good thing—this has allowed more products that are either lacking in certification because the certifications have been of dubious means, or they do not meet the New Zealand standards, but they can’t check everything. That’s the problem we have here: we have a system that is designed not to check everything but to be from trusted sources.

My question is: the asbestos doors, the warped windows that cause injury, the lead taps—these are all things which MBIE should be taking action on; they are causing real harm but they are also examples of products where information campaigns won’t change the game, because they get installed in a house and then a homeowner changes. The impact of these will be long-term. Is the Minister sufficiently focused, and has he resourced his department to be able to take action now, before these things become real problems in the decades to come?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:47): Thank you, Madam Chair. A fair enough question: is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment sufficiently funded to be able to have a sufficient oversight, particularly around product standards and product safety—and, I would argue, your emphasis there being on child safety? The answer is yes. We had that announcement, made by the Hon David Seymour and me in a Toyworld on Ballance Street a month or so ago.

Tim Costley: A very memorable occasion.

Hon CAMERON BREWER: There was much fanfare and wide acclaim by most people, because we are aligning ourselves with EU, US, and Australian and Canadian standards, from memory. Those standards will be out for consultation in due course, and then there’ll be a six-month transition period.

When it comes to the ongoing issue as to the work we’re doing in relation to, as the member described it, asbestos in sand, that was discovered by testing it at AUT. It’s important to remember that we’ve had 23 recalls and about 47,000 units of product recalled. We are now working through those issues to see where we can effectively tighten up the system, if it’s going to deliver a real result. In the meantime, those retailers need to be sure of themselves, when they’re selling this stuff, that it’s safe, and consumers need to take every precaution they can. The best precaution, of course, is not to buy any coloured children’s sand products; that’s the abundance of caution. MBIE has got—if they wanted to look at it and see if it was safe or not, or if they wanted to get rid of it—a lot of advice on their website. But we continue to work through these matters. A lot of product has been recalled, and we will be arriving at a decision as to what we can do to tighten up the system to make it more foolproof going forward.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:50): Thank you, Minister. I’ve run out of time on that, but I want to ask him now about liquidations. The official assignee appropriation falls, in real terms, by $2.4 million—that’s a big movement for that appropriation Why, when insolvency is up—in figures published today—by 74 percent in the retail sector, are we seeing double-digit insolvencies every day in New Zealand and a $3.7 billion tax cut owed by businesses to the IRD? Why is it that the IRD has more money to recover these funds, but under the Minister’s appropriations, the organisation charged with collecting that debt falls, in real terms? Is he expecting the caseload to fall; is that part of the strategy? Or is it the case that there will be no ability to collect that debt? If he could give us some insight into what his plan there is, when this will be an ongoing Government problem, when the economic hardship and financial hardship that people and businesses find them in will continue to increase.

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:51): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just on the broader issue of liquidations: yes, we know the numbers have been coming through, but as the Minister of Finance, I think, and others have pointed out, the number of new company registrations and the number of new businesses are significant as well. For example, there have been 62,000 new company registrations as of 30 June. As WellingtonNZ said to me just the other week—that economic development agency based on Taranaki Street, for the Wellington region—“Cameron, we know you hear a lot about closed restaurants in Wellington, but there have been more restaurants opened in Wellington in the last two years than there have been closed.”

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:52): That is wacky stuff from the Minister. Is his answer that they can foreclose with massive tax debt owing, wages owing, and creditors in debt, and the official assignee can get no funding from the Government to recover any of it because they can start a new business?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:52): We are very proud of the Inland Revenue’s more active debt collection approach. We all know what Inland Revenue’s balance sheet looked like when we walked in here at the end of 2023, when everyone who wanted one got an interest-free loan. Those businesses, many of those businesses, are why they may have got a stay of execution through COVID, and Inland Revenue may have been given the instruction to lay off and take the pressure off these businesses. None the less, for a lot of businesses, they got that stay of execution, they took those wage subsidies, they took those interest-free business loans, they survived for a couple of years, and then guess what happened? Inflation took over, interest rates took over, and they got cleaned out. They got cleaned out, and now we’re left with a lot of business debt on the IRD ledger, which the Minister is systematically working through and cleaning up.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Arena Williams. I think we’ve got time for about one more question.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:54): Customer and product data-sharing is part of the Minister’s appropriation. What is happening with the contract of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment with Payments NZ—why can’t Revolut get a licence, and why are fintechs and New Zealand’s market bleeding to death while waiting for accreditation and the ability to participate with open banking, which was promised to them?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): You can have another one, while the Minister’s thinking.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:54): Madam Chair, we don’t have any more time. So I can only think that the Minister does not intend to answer the question. I’ll watch him carefully, if he does wish to.

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:54): Oh, look, well, if we’re talking about the payment services regime, she knows that there’s two pieces of work that have been led, and discussion documents, both by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and, more latterly, by the Reserve Bank. We know that we’ve got a lot of work to do in the area of our payment services. We know that we were once a leader in EFTPOS in the late 1980s, and in many aspects—

Hon Matt Doocey: Oh, a good decade. Bring back the EFTPOS decade.

Hon CAMERON BREWER: Doocey still has his Post Office book. But we know that we were leaders and we’ve got a lot of work to do. Those two retail payments services discussion documents are out by both MBIE and the Reserve Bank, and we are looking forward to assessing that and making positive changes.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): This debate is interrupted. It is time for me to report progress. Just before I do, I’d like to pass on the House’s thanks to the security team. There was a wee incident up there this afternoon. Thank you very much; please pass that on to your team.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill and reports that it has made progress on the bill. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill is set down for further consideration in committee on the next sitting day. The House adjourns until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 August.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m.