Volume 712 Week 41 - Wednesday 16 March 2016Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 712 Week 41 - Wednesday 16 March 2016[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9787. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 16 March 2016Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Questions to MinistersDairy Industry—Farm Receiverships1.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: What were the estimates given to him in his conversations with banks about the number of dairy farmers that are likely to go into receivership and leave the land?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I was not given a precise estimate but the sense I was left with was that it would be modest.Andrew Little: From the advice he has received how many dairy farmers does he think will be forced off the land?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not know but what I do know is that the Reserve Bank has released its stress testing. What the stress testing actually shows is that even under a very dire scenario where land prices fell 40 percent the banks would be very strong and they would be in a position to continue lending to their existing borrowers—in other words finance those farmers through a difficult downturn.David Seymour: Has the Prime Minister thought of just making Fonterra put up the payout?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Sadly that is not within my control. But I am sure the Labour Party will have that as a policy by tomorrow afternoon.Andrew Little: Does he agree with the Reserve Bank that up to 25 percent of dairy debt or almost $10 billion will be written off which means hundreds of dairy farmers will be forced off the land?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well I have not seen those comments by the Reserve Bank. You want to make sure that you are quoting them correctly.Hon Member: It’s quoted in the report.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well that is not in the press release from the Reserve Bank.Andrew Little: Is he at all concerned about the Reserve Bank’s projection that dairy land values will crash by between 25 and 40 percent which will undermine the livelihoods of thousands of Kiwis?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is the problem with the Leader of the Opposition—it is that you cannot take him seriously when he actually misrepresents the Reserve Bank Governor. The Reserve Bank Governor is not saying there is a projection that land prices will drop by 25 to 40 percent; he is doing a stress test to say what would happen if land prices went down. There is quite a—Grant Robertson: And that’s the scenario we’re in now.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well banks—reserve bankers do that all the time because their prudential requirements require them to make sure the banking system is strong. And what he is saying is even under a worst scenario like this the banking system is very strong.Andrew Little: Has the Prime Minister actually received the Reserve Bank’s report released at 2 p.m. today; if so has he read it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No what I have read is the release—the press release—because it came out at 2 o’clock today and I got this only 1 minute before I came here. But what the release says quite clearly is (a) the banking system is very strong (b) under its worst-case scenarios—to quote—“The test results suggested that in the shorter term banks would increase their dairy lending in order to support existing borrowers …” and it is saying that even in the worst scenario the losses could be between 3 percent and 8 percent of their total dairy exposure. Banks have considerably more exposure than just this and as the member was pointing out yesterday banks have been making pretty good money. They can afford if they have to—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the answer to a conclusionRt Hon JOHN KEY: —to take some losses in that sector.Andrew Little: Does he agree with Mind Your Own Business that “approximately 100000 businesses employing upwards of one million New Zealanders are facing reducing revenue because of the dairy downturn.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have anything to back that up—I would need to see the analysis. But it could be as small as a business that is affectedfrom someone who sells sandwiches to someone who works in that area. There is a very large range of businesses in that sector.Andrew Little: Is it fair that our dairy farmers go bankrupt and 100000 small businesses face reduced revenue while overseas-owned banks continue to make $90 million a week and speculators circle over our farmland?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is I think terribly confused about what is happening. What you have got is a scenario where dairy prices are lower and what we should be doing is supporting dairy farmers with the things that we can control. We cannot control the exchange rate and we cannot control commodity prices and we cannot control the weather. We can control free-trade agreements planning laws health and safety Resource Management Act reform and a variety of other things and on this side of the House we support helping those farmers actually in good times and in bad.Irrigation—Farm Debt and Spending2.JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.James Shaw: Does he stand by his statement made in the House yesterday that Government irrigation schemes are helping farmers to stay viable?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: When there are droughts yes.James Shaw: Does he accept that many farmers are heavily in debt right now because they are having to pay for expensive irrigation schemes?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Primarily no. That will not be the thing that is driving up their debt. In the case of dairy farmers it is a lower payout and in some cases it could be because they have done substantial conversions. Irrigation affects some farmers but for the vast bulk of them the bulk of their debt on the farm will not be for that reason.James Shaw: Is it wise that the Government continues to subsidise irrigation for further dairy intensification at a time when milk prices are at record lows?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It may come as a shock to the member but the water will not be used just by dairy farmers. It will be used by a great range of different farmers and horticulturalists—for everything from apples to kiwifruit to wine. So actually yes irrigation is a positive thing and I go back to the point I made earlier: rather than people coming to the House with crocodile tears they should come to the House with practical solutions to help our rural sector. That does actually include irrigation schemes which helps them.James Shaw: Should irrigation schemes not stand or fall on their own merits rather than require Government subsidies?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: If I remember question time yesterday the member was telling me we were not doing enough for farmers. Today he is telling me we are doing too much for them.James Shaw: What Government subsidies currently exist for other industries such as tourism that rival the $400 million he has set aside for Crown Irrigation Investments?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Every single year the Government puts in well in excess of $100 million to pay for the promotion of New Zealand in the form of tourism advertising. We do not do that for any other sector other than tourism.James Shaw: Will he consider putting the $280 million remaining in Crown Irrigation Investments to better use than massive irrigation projects which are putting some farmers in debt degrading the environment and risking tourism?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No the basis of the irrigation schemes—where the Government would be a shareholder but looking to exit those schemes over time when more and more farmers join them—is actually to give those farmers greater production and greater yield and greater comfort and assurance when the weather conditions do not otherwise support that. If we want to have a dairy and by the way agricultural sector that is robust enough to handle conditions some of which will be drought then actually they need better access to water.Economic Programme—Interest Rates3.NUK KORAKO (National) to the Minister of Finance: What steps is the Government taking to help keep interest rates lower for longer?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): One contribution the Government does make to keeping interest rates lower for longer is ongoing fiscal discipline. Over the last seven Budgets the annual new cost of initiatives has averaged around $600 million per year compared with almost $3 billion of new spending in each of the seven Budgets before this Government came to office. Around a third of new spending is being financed through careful reprioritisation and savings. This means the Government has less pressure to borrow money and this helps to provide one influence on lower interest rates. Combined with an outlook for ongoing moderate economic growth low interest rates are supporting business investment and employment.Nuk Korako: How are lower interest rates rising wages and low inflation putting more money and more spending power in the pockets of New Zealand families?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Just by way of example the latest data from the Reserve Bank shows that the average interest rate on first home mortgages at the end of February was 5.8 percent. This compares with nearly 11 percent at the top of the cycle in 2008. The difference between the two means that households are saving around $370 per week in interest costs so it is not surprising that they are slightly more willing to pay more for houses. Of course the actual interest rates paid by households vary widely and many will be saving more than $370 a week. At the same time wages are rising at just over 3 percent per annum while the cost of living is increasing at 0.1 percent meaning that wages are keeping ahead of the cost of living.Nuk Korako: How does an independent monetary policy support investment employment and growth?Hon BILL ENGLISH: New Zealand has an independent monetary policy built on the idea that politicians cannot be relied on to sensibly set interest rates. The value of independent monetary policy is widely recognised all around the world. That independence gives households and businesses relative certainty about what will influence future interest rates economic output and prices. This of course creates a more certain environment for investment and employment. New Zealand’s monetary policy framework was put in place 30 years ago precisely to deal with the problem of politicians setting interest rates.Nuk Korako: What reports has he seen on alternative approaches to economic management?Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the Minister I do not want this question to then lead to be an attack on an Opposition party. But I will allow—[Interruption] Order! I will allow the Minister to at least start his answer.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Without naming the source of any of these reports there has been a flurry recently: legislating retail interest rates taxpayer bailouts for farmers stiff-arming banks overriding Pharmac and opposing free trade. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! A number of front-bench members continue to speak when I am on my feet. I reminded one in particular yesterday not to do it and I issue the same warning again.Grant Robertson: What responsibility does he take for throwing fat on the fire when it comes to dairy debt given that it has grown $11 billion since the global financial crisis on the back of his policies to encourage that kind of thing?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government of course takes responsibility for things like the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement—for which Labour deserves credit for signing—which was a boost to our dairy industry. But I would have to say in considering the decision of dairy farmers to borrow that member should show them a bit more respect. These are people running complex businesses and dealing with all sorts of risk including commodity-price risk and they made their decisions with their eyes open. And now they will be working with their banks to ensure they can get through a tight spot.Small Businesses—Confidence and Diversification4.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) to the Minister for Small Business: Does he believe that the statement by the Prime Minister yesterday that New Zealand “is a highly diversified economy” and “business confidence is strong” applies to small businesses?Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business): Yes. New Zealand has a highly diversified economy and business confidence continues to be strong. Small businesses directly and indirectly benefit from growth and increase in revenues from exports and diverse industries such as meat wool education forestry seafood horticulture tourism and ICT. I know that member herself believes that we have a diversified economy when she stated that the Rotorua economy was better placed than many as its diversification meant that it was not solely reliant on one sector and that “If dairy falters at least you won’t have such a huge hit to your economy”.Jacinda Ardern: If the New Zealand economy is highly diversified why did the Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) survey released yesterday find that the dairy prices had affected consumer spending for more than a third of retail and hospitality businesses and caused a decline in revenue for even more businesses still in the manufacturing and wholesale sector?Hon CRAIG FOSS: Either that member’s earlier statement was wrong about diversification in an area such as Rotorua which has tourism which has hospitality—you name it—and a very diversified economy.Jacinda Ardern: Does he accept the findings of the MYOB survey which found approximately 100000 businesses employing more than a million people are facing falling revenues because of the dairy downturn?Hon CRAIG FOSS: It comes as no surprise when the decrease in the dairy industry’s revenue has a flow-on effect on the rest of the economy. There is no surprise about that. But the dairy industry other industries small businesses and farmers have been here before and will no doubt be here again. But the strength of the economy and the changes that this Government has put in place to enable them to have sustainable ongoing growing export businesses will serve them very well.Jacinda Ardern: What will the future hold for small businesses if dairy prices remain where they are for the next 18 months?Hon CRAIG FOSS: I know what the future will hold for people involved in the dairy industry and beyond if this Government continues its policies: their industries will continue the solid growth they have had over many years. If in fact there was nationalisation of banks and trade unions effectively setting interest rates that would be devastating for all New Zealand businesses.Jacinda Ardern: What action is he taking as Minister for Small Business to support small businesses that are feeling the effect of reduced business confidence as measured by ANZ and falling dairy and farm spending?Hon CRAIG FOSS: Business confidence comes from positive growth in the economy and certainty of application of Government policies and adherence to agreements such as free-trade agreements. Confidence and certainty in such an economy would be smashed if in fact a future Government made laws without regard to the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership as that member says her party would.Trans-Pacific Partnership—Dairy Industry5.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his answers in relation to Oral Question No. 2 in the House yesterday?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Fletcher Tabuteau: If he stands by his statement that New Zealand dairy farmers pay tariffs is he not aware that foreign importers will be the ones to directly benefit from not having to pay those tiny tariff reductions in 20 years not our farmers?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Dairy farmers are exporters and they pay those tariffseffectively because they are charged on the product that they sell. In the case of dairy farmers he might think $96 million is tiny but I dare him to go out to an A and P show and tell them that.Fletcher Tabuteau: I seek leave to table under Speaker’s ruling 164/2 a US Department of Agriculture document detailing benefits to US agriculture published 30 November 2015—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just need to check: is it freely available on the internet?Fletcher Tabuteau: It is published on the internet but—Mr SPEAKER: Then members will search for it if they want it.Ron Mark: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I draw your attention to a very astute ruling by Speaker Carter Speaker’s ruling 164/2 which in brief highlights the fact that although a document may be available on the internet given the weight of documents and the specificity a particular document may not be readily available. In light of your ruling could you review that decision please.Mr SPEAKER: I will immediately review the decision and say I am still not prepared to put leave. The purpose of that ruling is that there will be occasions when the information is hard to find. If it is on a US Department of Agriculture website I assume it is in the capability of every member here if they want it to search for it.Fletcher Tabuteau: If Waikato University’s Professor Jacqueline Rowarth said this morning that new European subsidies will exacerbate the current global oversupply of dairy what is this Government doing to combat them and the other $166 billion worth of subsidies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement countries?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: For one thing we made strong representations for decades to the Europeans and in Nairobi last year they actually agreed to get rid of subsidies when it came to exporting. Secondly we are doing all the things that we can do to help the dairy farmers and other farmers of New Zealand but we cannot physically stop the European Union paying subsidies even if we believe it is wrong.Fletcher Tabuteau: How can the Prime Minister expect New Zealand farmers to be resilient and adaptive when they are competing against European and TPP farmers who receive over $250 billion in subsidies every year?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member might want to use his time after question time to go back and have a little study of the New Zealand economy in 1982 and 1983 and 1981 and have a look at how big agriculture actually was and how successful they were because they got supplementary minimum payments back then. I tell you what it did not do them a hell of a lot of good—unsubsidised New Zealand farmers are far more robust and far more successful than they were back in the days when politicians were giving them money.Fletcher Tabuteau: Did the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence agree that one of the best ways to undermine any reasonable opposition to the TPP was to farcically deploy New Zealand armed forces at the Christchurch TPP evening given that the only criterion for their deployment is if there is a threat of loss of life and property?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Minister of Defence advises me that it did not happen.Trans-Pacific Partnership—Dairy Industry6.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “The single-biggest gainers out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are dairy farmers”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes. As I said in the House yesterday the biggest area of tariff reduction under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dairy. This is supported by the estimates in the Trans-Pacific Partnership National Interest Analysis published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. For the member’s edification if he looked at Table 1.2 the estimated benefits under the national interest analysis is $274 million in tariff savings. By far the biggest is dairy at $96 million.Dr Kennedy Graham: In full knowledge on all our parts of those facts how will the TPP help dairy farmers now when New Zealand’s Expert paper No. 5 shows that even when the TPP is fully implemented the tariff reductions are more likely to benefit processors and retailers rather than the farmers themselves?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The TPP over time like all of the free-trade agreements that New Zealand has signed will help our exporters. A substantial part of our exports still come from the agricultural sector so it will help them. But equally there are many things that we can do to continue to help them: better planning laws—we welcome the Green Party if they want to support us on Resource Management Act reform; better irrigation for farmers—we welcome the Green Party if they want to support us in that area; and free-trade agreements including TPP—we welcome the Green Party’s support if they want to do that.James Shaw: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Dr Graham’s question was in relation to how the TPP would help farmers now not about what Green Party policy would do in the future.Mr SPEAKER: It was not only that question. If it had been just that I could help but he then went on and incorporated a reference to how it would help processors and—from memory—retailers more than it would help dairy farmers. If questions are short and sharp it is easier for me to assist.Dr Kennedy Graham: How will the TPP help farmers now when the expected benefit from dairy would be $40 per New Zealander per year in 1947 when all of the tariff reductions are finally in place?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The TPP will not help things that happened just after World War II.Dr Kennedy Graham: How will the 2.2 percent tariff saving according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s own figures in 30 years’ time do anything to help farmers today?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Free-trade agreements are about the future ultimately and that has to be ratified. It has not been ratified today by the parties but if one goes and has a look at the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement where the estimates on tariff reductions were in the order of about $150 million and the benefits were roughly $1 billion—actually that was the best modelling we saw; it turned out to be about 11 times more successful than they thought. In the case of the TPP the numbers are much greater than that. They are $274 million and about $3 billion worth of benefits. Secondly we are already seeing quite a number of countries considering joining the TPP in addition to this. But in the end actually even if it just does what the national interest analysis says it will save dairy farmers $100 million. If the Green Party does not think that matters that is fair enough. Again they should join New Zealand First and go out and tell people.Economic Growth—Government Initiatives7.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Economic Development: What is the Government doing to encourage economic growth?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): The Government’s comprehensive Business Growth Agenda includes more than 350 initiatives and is assisting businesses with the six things they need to be internationally competitive: access to innovation to capital to skilled workers and to the necessary resources the supporting public infrastructure and of course markets in which to sell their products. It is things like rolling out ultra-fast and rural broadband to connect our cities and regions to the world it is equipping our kids with the skills they need to succeed lifting research and development with things like the Primary Growth Partnership and it is signing free-trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to give New Zealand businesses the best shot at competing on the world stage. These things coupled with stable and sensible macroeconomic and fiscal settings and keeping interest rates lower are providing businesses the opportunity and confidence to invest and grow and to employ more Kiwis.Ian McKelvie: How has the New Zealand economy performed with these settings and initiatives in place?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That is a very good question. Despite the twin challenges of the Canterbury earthquake and the global financial crisis along with the more recent slump in dairy prices the New Zealand economy is showing its resilience and strength. Even with dairy exports down $3 billion last year our total exports were up by nearly $2 billion or $69.3 billion and that is a $4.9 billion increase in non-dairy exports. Our meat sector is growing beer exports are up around 10 percent wine seafood fruit and wool are all growing the ICT sector ICT services exports and also tourism where the numbers of visitors are up by around 11 percent. So we are seeing growth across the country. The average growth rate that the Reserve Bank is predicting for the next 2 years is 3 percent a year and unemployment has fallen to its lowest level in 7 years.David Seymour: What contribution did the Government’s 2010 tax cuts make to this growth?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government believes that is an important contribution because the tax changes in 2010 did the exercise of rewarding hard work and actually taxing consumption a little bit more which shifted the balance in favour of work and investment. Those are good outcomes and along with all the other initiatives that the Government is doing we think the record is strong that New Zealand is growing at one of the fastest rates in the OECD right now.David Seymour: In light of that has the Minister made any representations to his ministerial colleagues that the Government should cut taxes again?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member raises a fair question and of course if we had the fiscal room we have been clear that we would like to reduce the tax burden on New Zealanders over time because that does provide the incentives for people to work hard and get ahead. But of course the Government has a range of needs to address and of course the Budget comes up every year and that is the opportunity we get to assess those things.Ian McKelvie: Has the Government rejected any alternative approaches to running the New Zealand economy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Yes we have rejected a number of potential alternative approaches often short-term fixes made-on-the-hoof suggestions that would have no regard to the wider impacts of the economy. For example policies like a single-buyer model for the power industry—that was one we rejected. Regulating food prices by dictating what is healthy and what is not we rejected. Hitting farmers with a punitive emissions trading scheme and a capital gains tax we rejected that one. Just yesterday we saw a proposal for the Government to set interest rates removing banks’ ability to compete with one another and presumably meaning compulsory interest rate hikes. Those are the sorts of knee-jerk reactions we reject.Schools—Funding Changes8.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Why did she say yesterday that “we will not be interested in how we stigmatise children” as part of the school funding review when she said less than a minute earlier that the current decile system was unhelpful because it stigmatised low-decile schools?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. The full quote from which that excerpt is selectively taken was: “we will not be interested in how we stigmatise children rather what we are trying to do is get the right resource to the right kid at the right time in the right places …”. I have been consistent in stating that I do not believe that stigmatising children based on the community they live in the decile of the school they go to or individually would lead to good educational outcomes and I am surprised the member is promoting that.Chris Hipkins: If she does not want to stigmatise children in the same way that low-decile schools are currently stigmatised will she rule out attaching school funding to children with parents who have criminal convictions no qualifications or who rely on a benefit?Hon HEKIA PARATA: We are at an early stage in the process. At no point have I suggested that we will be individualising funding to follow a child on any basis. We are simply at the stage of exploring the options of how we identify what resourcing needs to go where in order for the size of that education challenge to be better met.Chris Hipkins: Will she give an assurance that socio-economic factors will continue to be taken into consideration in any change to school funding given that Treasury’s proposed approach excludes socio-economic disadvantage as a funding criteria; if not why not?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yes.Chris Hipkins: Do any of the options currently being considered by the Government link school funding to student achievement data such as national standards or the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA)?Hon HEKIA PARATA: We have a number of reports. They are ones that I am going to be sharing with the teacher unions with the professional associations and with the sector as a whole. We will work our way through and then I will be delighted to share the outcome of those discussions with the House.Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: No listen—I will just invite the member to repeat that question.Chris Hipkins: Do any of the options currently being considered by the Government link school funding to student achievement data such as national standards or NCEA?Hon HEKIA PARATA: There are no specific options currently under consideration.Chris Hipkins: Has she read the Ministry of Education’s report from July 2013 which states that the performance-based funding model for charter schools “tests a possible incentive model” and will she rule out that model being rolled out to State schools?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I think it is a long bow—a suggestion in a report in 2013 that related to a particular category of schools and whether the suggestion was considered in that context. To extrapolate it into the wider mainstream system—Hon Member: Then rule it out.Hon HEKIA PARATA: Again I am not ruling in or out any option at this stage because it would be disrespectful to the process and the discussion yet to occur with the sector.Jenny Salesa: How does she believe her approach to decile funding—in her words “we will not be interested in how we stigmatise children …”—will benefit Pacific children given the fact that 65 percent of Pacific students attend a decile 1 school and that her approach is likely to stigmatise many of those students?Hon HEKIA PARATA: In the primary answer I gave a response that made it clear I was not interested in stigmatising any children whether they came from a particular community went to a school with a particular decile or individually. How do I think Pasifika kids can be helped? The way we are doing it now. We have more Pasifika kids in early childhood education than ever before and we have more Pasifika young people getting our minimum qualification than ever before.Superannuation and Benefits—Rates9.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister for Social Development: How is low inflation supporting a real increase in superannuation?Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Thanks to the strong financial management of this Government superannuation has increased by over 34 percent since 2008 which is double the rate of inflation of 15.5 percent in that same time. As this Government has committed to keeping superannuation and veterans pension rates at 66 percent of average income both rates will increase by 2.73 percent on 1 April. This means that in addition to lower living costs our superannuitants are better off with an extra $15.74 a week for a married couple $10.23 a week for a single person living alone and $9.44 for a single person sharing accommodation.Matt Doocey: In addition to superannuation what other supports are set to increase on 1 April?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: On 1 April changes introduced as part of the child hardship package will come into effect. That means benefit rates for families with children will rise by $25 a week after tax—the first real increase in 43 years. Given the falling cost of living this is a significant increase for these families on a benefit. Working for Families rates will also increase by $12.50 for low-income working families and $24.50 for very low-income working families. The child hardship package reaches over half a million children and will help ease the depth of hardship experienced by families in New Zealand’s lowest-income households.David Seymour: How long after the current Prime Minister’s retirement will the Government raise the age of entitlement to New Zealand superannuation?Mr SPEAKER: No. Oh I will let the Minister address it. It is a marginal question I have to accept.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: That is so far in the future I could not even contemplate it.Carmel Sepuloni: How many applications for superannuation were unable to be processed in the last 2 weeks due to the issues of the client management IT system and is the new system still struggling to process these applications?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I am not aware that there were—I do not have any figures on how many superannuation applications were delayed but what I can say to the House is that the system by Friday was at a hundred percent capacity which is fantastic—Chris Hipkins: That’s not true!Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I beg your pardon. It is true they are at hundred percent capacity and they are catching up on the backlog and they are to be congratulated on implementing a very complex system in a very short period of time.Carmel Sepuloni: Not true.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Migrant Workers—Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme10.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Immigration: Is the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme working for New Zealand and for the temporary migrants who work under the scheme?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Yes to both. The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme has been held up by the World Bank as a model scheme because of its benefits to both New Zealand and the Pacific. For example in a report released last year four out of five recognised seasonal employers said they had employed more New Zealand workers as a result of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme because they could expand their business.Iain Lees-Galloway: Does he agree with Kaikōura MP Stuart Smith that the answer to the labour shortage on Marlborough vineyards is to increase the number of temporary migrants who work in New Zealand each year under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme despite the fact that the Government has nearly doubled that number already?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The member may be aware that actually the largest increase in the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme numbers was by the Labour Government 4 days—4 days—before being thrown out of office in November 2008. It increased the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme numbers by—Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was: does he agree with Stuart Smith about increasing the numbers now despite the increase that this Government has made—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! In framing the question the member then went on and talked about a recent doubling of the numbers and the Minister has chosen to respond to that part of the question.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: In contrast to that this Government takes a much more discerning view about where those increases in Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme numbers go including into Nelson-Marlborough when the last increase of 500 last year targeted specific regions with the lowest unemployment. That was western Bay of Plenty and Nelson-Marlborough.Iain Lees-Galloway: If he cannot bring himself to agree with Stuart Smith does he agree—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. Do not start the question that way; simply start the question in line with the Standing Orders.Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Which part of the beginning of his question was not in line with the Standing Orders?Mr SPEAKER: When the member stood up there and said “If he cannot agree with his colleague” and I said: “Don’t start the question that way. Start it in line with the Standing Orders.”Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: I have ruled Mr Hipkins. Is it a fresh point of order?Chris Hipkins: It is a fresh point of order.Mr SPEAKER: And it is not relitigating a decision I have just made? I just want to check on that.Chris Hipkins: Yes it is a fresh point of order.Mr SPEAKER: I will hear it.Chris Hipkins: Are you now ruling that a question beginning with the word “If” cannot then contain a statement relating to the answer that has just been given?Mr SPEAKER: No that is not a fresh point of order. The member is now only attempting to relitigate. It was the reference to the fact that according to Mr Lees-Galloway the Minister was not prepared to agree with the statement of Stuart Smith. That is the part I took objection to. Does the member have further supplementary questions? I am happy to move on.Iain Lees-Galloway: Does he agree with Wine Marlborough general manager Marcus Pickens who says that “for New Zealanders who want to get on board the opportunities are endless there are jobs for life.”; if so should he and Stuart Smith not focus on how to get more New Zealanders working in vineyards and orchards?Mr SPEAKER: Either of those two supplementary questions the Hon Michael Woodhouse.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Speaking to the second part of that question that is exactly what the Government is doing and the best evidence of that is that although there has been a 10 percent increase in growth in the horticulture and viticulture industry in the last couple of years only 1 percent of the extra labour costs has come from the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. This Government has been very very stern with the employers to ensure that they are diligent in employing Kiwis first.Iain Lees-Galloway: Does he believe in free markets; if so will he encourage employers to meet the market by ensuring that pay conditions and accommodation are sufficient to attract New Zealand citizens to work in horticulture and agriculture?Mr SPEAKER: Again either of those two supplementary questions—the Hon Michael Woodhouse.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I am very sure that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has a strong framework for ensuring that fair flexible and safe workplaces in New Zealand are maintained including increasing the minimum wage by about 3.4 percent only a couple of weeks ago. I think he is doing a very good job.Hon Paula Bennett: Has the Minister seen any reports on the economic benefits to the Pacific Islands that actually come from the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. Can he say actually what past Governments have done to support that and how ironic—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I allowed the member to ask a supplementary question. It was not a chance to ask three.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Indeed I have seen a plethora of reports about how beneficial this is to Pacific nations. The remittances that are sent back the skills that are developed and the work ethics identified are extraordinarily positive. I have had successive Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Ministers of Immigration coming to my office saying how valuable this scheme is to them and to New Zealand.Iain Lees-Galloway: Supplementary question—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! Mr Brownlee I am giving you your last warning for this week. If you are going to continue to interject when I call for order you leave me no choice but to ask you to leave the Chamber. That is your final warning for this week.Iain Lees-Galloway: Why should temporary migrants have to work for pay and conditions that New Zealanders will not tolerate and is it not in the long-term interests of the New Zealand wine industry to build a sustainable workforce rather than looking for short-term fixes that are designed to keep wages down and discourage investment and providing better conditions?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I simply do not accept the prefacing statement in that question. I am satisfied that overseas workers are being treated fairly and in accordance with New Zealand wage rates. Indeed I have direct experience of vineyards right around the country where those Pacific workers are enjoying very much the benefits of their productivity and taking significant remittances back to their home countries.Small Businesses—Low Interest Rates and Growth11.MAUREEN PUGH (National) to the Minister for Small Business: How are small businesses benefiting from Government policies that are contributing to lower interest rates?Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business): Small businesses continue to benefit from the Government’s policies of prudent and stable fiscal management which contribute to low inflation and low interest rates. Many small-business owners mortgage or borrow against their family home to create grow and fund working capital for their businesses. Current low interest rates and mortgage rates of under 5 percent make it easier for those small-business owners to operate grow and create jobs for Kiwis. Interest rates have not been this low since records began in 1964. This is in stark contrast to just 8 years ago when those interest rates started at 10 percent.Maureen Pugh: How are Government policies contributing to certainty for small businesses?Hon CRAIG FOSS: This Government has pursued stable macroeconomic policy that has contributed to low inflation and low interest rates. This is contributing to ongoing confidence and certainty for small businesses. What small businesses do not need are policies where the Government is meddling tinkering tampering and putting macroeconomic settings at risk. Policies such as controlling interest rates—who knows what could be next? Carless days controlling the exchange rate wage and price freezes? What other policies from the 1970s—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have heard enough of the answer.Maureen Pugh: What other policies have contributed to small-business growth?Hon CRAIG FOSS: There are a number of policies from this Government that have contributed and continue to contribute to small-business growth including reducing company and personal tax rates introducing the 90-day trial to make it easier for small businesses to employ and for many to gain employment continuing to pursue and sign free-trade agreements and adhering to such agreements. These are just some of the policies of this Government that have helped small businesses across New Zealand. It is unfortunate that the Opposition has opposed all of these policies.Trade Agreements—Forestry Industry12.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First) to the Minister of Trade: What trade benefits has the Government negotiated for New Zealand’s forestry industry?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of theMinister of Trade: New Zealand’s forestry industry has benefited significantly under our free-trade agreements and I thank the member for his question. For example under the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement our forestry exports now have tariff-free access to the markets of Brunei Indonesia Malaysia Singapore and Thailand. Thanks to the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement 97 percent of our exports enter China tariff-free. At 1 January 2017 all of our exports will be tariff-free into the Philippines. Under the New Zealand - Korea free-trade agreement 90 percent of our forestry exports are now tariff-free with the remainder being scheduled to be eliminated within the next 10 years and through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) we have negotiated the elimination of all tariffs on New Zealand forestry and forestry products. This notably will include Japan New Zealand’s fourth-largest export market; the US our sixth-largest market; and Viet Nam our eleventh-largest market. The TPP would result in an estimated $11 million in annual tariff savings for the sector when it is fully implemented.Richard Prosser: Why after nearly 8 years in Government has it not got rid of the 17 percent value-added tax imposed by the Chinese Government on New Zealand sawn timber and value-added timber products under the China free-trade agreement?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Every country reserves the right to put sales taxes VAT and GST on their products and that is not likely to change. The member would be very upset if for example one of our trade partners told us we had to take GST off one of their products that was sold in the country. So it is China’s right to do that and I understand that every imported product going into China is subject to the same VAT.Richard Prosser: Will he ensure that the renegotiated free-trade agreement with China supports New Zealand’s regional timber processes by removing China’s 17 percent VAT on our manufactured wood products; if not will his Government ask the World Trade Organization to challenge China on its use of many non-tariff barriers which include building codes that do not allow Pinus radiata?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member asks a number of questions there. Firstly in relation to VAT I have already answered that in answer to a previous supplementary question. It is not something that New Zealand can demand of our trade partners in terms of their taxation systems. But in relation to non-tariff barriers the member raises a reasonable point. The Wood Council as we know has put out a report today which officials are already looking into in terms of the things that can be achieved there. But it probably does not need to be done under the free-trade agreement upgrade. There are ways of resolving the non-tariff barrier issues in individual industries.Dr David Clark: Why is the Government sitting on its hands?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member is simply wrong and he is continuing to be the worst Opposition MP in 50 years.Dr David Clark: What is the Government doing?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The non-tariff barriers work that the Government is doing is actually comprehensive. Dr Clark needs to find a job.Richard Prosser: Given that China’s imports of softwood logs fell by 16 percent by volume and 20 percent by value in 2014-15 is he concerned that the bulk log trade may be at risk of a dairy commodity - style price correction?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not sure the member’s figures are exactly correct. The most current figures suggest as I recall—I am doing this from memory—that those numbers of exports from New Zealand are up. But every commodity has risk attached to the cycle; it does not matter which commodity we are talking about. But I am confident that industries are actually able to manage those risks and in the case of the forestry industry the member will be pleased to know that the level of processed timber that goes offshore through the New Zealand export sector is actually as high as or in fact slightly higher than it was 7 or 8 years ago.Richard Prosser: Does his Government understand that supporting timber processing in the regions not only creates jobs for New Zealanders but also provides New Zealand with higher-value products to export and trade and therefore increased export receipts higher per capita GDP and an improved balance of payments; if so why is he not doing it?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government agrees that processing is good and I would note for the member a number of investments that have made in recent times that indicate the settings are positive. For example in Taupō Pacific T&R is building a new high-tech processing plant; in Rotorua Red Stag Timber is constructing a new super-mill there which is to be the largest in the southern hemisphere and the first-stage investment is $60 million; Lumbercube has invested tens of millions of dollars in a world-first square log processing plant in Rotorua; and recently the Pan Pac Forests Products owner Oij from Japan has made a very big vote of confidence in the New Zealand processing industry by buying the Carter Holt Harvey processing assets and it has significant plans to further invest in processing in this country through those plants. So for the member’s benefit the settings are delivering continued investment in forestry processing in New Zealand.General DebateHon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I never thought I would say this but I am missing Russel Norman. Russel Norman not long gone to run Greenpeace was a moderate sane predictable economic voice in this House—and does everyone not wish he was back because look what is happening to the voice of the Opposition without the moderate thoughtful and considered views of Russel Norman.What is happening? We are seeing that the Labour Party’s traditional reputation—which has been crafted with real effort by some admirably smart people over the last 20 or 30 years as a moderate predictable political party that in Government might have some concern for the incomes and assets of middle New Zealand and might behave in a way that was kind of predictable—is all unravelling. The obvious example is free trade—that is obvious. It is dispensing with 30 years of multi-party support for free-trade agreements and arguably it was the party in Government that negotiated the biggest and best free-trade agreement the free-trade agreement with China which it is no longer proud of—either the agreement or the Chinese for that matter.So that is free trade and you could kind of accept that—but interest rates; politicians stiff-arming banks and setting interest rates? New Zealand has tried this before. In fact not only has it tried it before but it was the world leader in making sure it did not keep happening. Here is a simple question for the Leader of the Opposition: if the Reserve Bank increases the official cash rate—which might happen one day—would the Labour Party legislate for banks to pass that on to mortgage holders? You know much as we all try to be rational politicians who take into account the longer view and all the facts we know the answer to that question. Of course he would not. Politicians will only ever stiff-arm and legislate to get interest rates down. We tried that before. It almost wrecked the New Zealand economy.So what is going on in the Labour Party? Have its members forgotten New Zealand’s economic history? Maybe they should consult Russel Norman. They seem to be consulting the Twittersphere that follows Bernie Sanders and Mr Corbyn. They seem to think that they are in economies that are stuffed. They seem to think they are in economies where there is mass disillusionment where middle-class incomes have been dropping where unemployment is high and where public debt is huge. You could argue that is the case in some economies where there is now rampant left-wing populism but it is not New Zealand—it is not New Zealand.Whereas Russel at least was trying to save the planet Labour members are on another planet and it is not the same one. They are following policies that are coming from rampant left-wing populists and economies with characteristics that are nothing like ours. But the worst of it of course is that they think the New Zealand public do not know it is cheap short-term politics. If the problem for Labour members was a lack of trust in their ability to run an economy 2 weeks ago it has got a lot worse because we have in the House a major party that wants to relive the nightmares of the 1980s and early 1990s where all this was tried. It all failed the pain was dreadful and Grant Robertson wants to go there again.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): That was the speech from the ostrich pit. This is a Minister of Finance who has wilfully and obediently turned his eye away from what is happening in New Zealand. He is an appalling Minister of Finance who has no answer to the reality of what is happening in New Zealand today. National members have hyped up the bubble. They have blown up the bubble as big as it can go. They have given all the signals to the farmers and the banks to throw money at the dairy sector. They give concessions on water they give subsidies for water and there is no involvement in managing the environment. They take credit for the low interest rate in spite of the fact that apparently the orthodoxy is that the Government has nothing to do with it. They have blown this bubble. This Government is responsible for more bubbles than the clown troupe of the Ringling Brothers Circus. If it is not the Auckland property bubble it is the dairy farm price bubble. That is how this Government manages.OK so Audrey Young says we are the enemy of orthodoxy. Let me tell you about orthodoxy. Let me tell the Minister of Finance about orthodoxy. Here is the way it is meant to work. The reason we have a central bank called the Reserve Bank the reason we have a thing called the official cash rate is that when economic conditions demand it the bank tweaks interest rates. It puts them up if it wants to dampen the economy; it puts them down if it wants a bit of stimulus.Right now the Reserve Bank is telling the world and us that our economy is faltering and needs a bit of stimulus. It sent that signal last week way ahead of expectations. It took it down a little bit because the economy needs a bit of help the farmers are in trouble working New Zealanders are in trouble and the small business sector is in trouble.But of course the Reserve Bank is not the one making the loans. It is the trading banks. It so happens that the overseas trading banks are the ones who get to make the decisions. So then what do you expect? The Reserve Bank puts the official cash rate down. The trading banks are expected to do their bit to help the economy. They have not done it. So the question then is: who runs the joint? Who runs the joint? Is it the overseas corporates that this Government has now surrendered us to or it is this Government?Here is the next question. When the trading banks do not do as the Reserve Bank has asked to help stimulate the economy and help those in trouble then the question goes on the Government: what are you going to do about it and most important whose side are you on? Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the overseas-owned corporates who are here to milk the New Zealand economy and get the maximum number of profits out of it or are you on the side of the hard-working New Zealanders—those working in the factories who cannot get a decent pay rise those working on the land the farm owners the sharemilkers and the farm labourers who are the first to lose their jobs when the dairy sector goes down.What about the contractors who ran out of work last season and now are desperate to find work this season? What about all those who are put out of work and whose livelihoods are under threat because of what is happening in the dairy sector? What about the hundred thousand small businesses that as Mind Your Own Business has found lose out as a consequence? What does the Government do? It stands on the sidelines. That is not orthodoxy. [Bell rung]Mr SPEAKER: I am sorry. I pushed the button by mistake. The member has another—Hon Members: More! More!ANDREW LITTLE: And there is more. But wait there is more. National stands on the sidelines. Well not a Labour Government. We stand on the side of those who are doing the work—those who are out there each day on the front line; the people at work. We stand on the side of the people doing the work on the land in the factories and in the shops; the people who deserve a better chance; the people who are getting nothing from this Government—not a single ounce of leadership when it is needed most.Why do you not call together the banks Fonterra and the farmers and broker a deal and give people certainty confidence and a future? You cannot do it. You will not do it. You are too scared to do it because you are not on the side of New Zealanders.Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): Well the pressure is showing. The pressure is showing on Andrew Little. There is only so long you can deal with very very low leadership ratings before you do wacky stuff. We saw it with Phil Goff. We saw it with David Shearer. We probably saw it quicker than we expected with David Cunliffe to be fair. He sort of went straight to wacky from the word go. But here we are now dealing with Andrew Little. Yesterday he was ripping up 30 or 40 years of monetary policy that has encouraged investment and growth in this country saying that he would be the one to set interest rates because he is the one who would make sure that they would be passed on to New Zealanders. Today he is away again. Today he has got his person out bagging the New Zealand wine industry. So not content with being negative about some parts of the economy the wine industry is the new one in his sights.We have also had the bagging of the immigration sector generally. Andrew Little was out in Lower Hutt last week saying he was not convinced that it was a good idea having Chinese and Indians working and actually cooking food in Chinese and Indian restaurants. That would seem to be an outrage and he thinks we should stop that because under his economy we should not have immigration. We are looking here I have to say at possibly the angriest leader since one that we knew and loved in his day who was Rob Muldoon—Hon David Parker: Crosby/Textor.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: There is no such thing as Crosby/Textor. I would be worried about the Corbyn-Sanders consultancy which you guys are actually subscribing to at the moment. You used to wind us up about Crosby/Textor. Well I will tell you what: we never went to Corbyn-Sanders for our advice. And if I were you I would stop paying because it is not working for them and it sure as heck is not going to work for you over in the Labour Party.The problem for the Labour Party is it has completely lost its way—completely lost its way—and over the last 7 years it has declared a huge range of crises in New Zealand and has presented panicky solutions that New Zealanders have looked at and said: “No that’s just silly and panicky and that actually the settings are broadly right. Yes we have challenges—countries always have challenges—but you take sensible long-term approaches. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” We all look overseas at countries where they pretend there are simple solutions where the Government just moves the levers around—countries like Venezuela and Argentina where they actually go out there and they declare they know better than the world and they know that they can hold the world up and hold the sky up even though things are changing around them. And that is the sort of policy that Andrew Little is now promoting. That is the level of desperation in the modern Labour Party. It has said: “We’re in trouble we’re stuck on 30 percent so we’re going to do wacky things that everybody knows don’t work but we’re desperately going to try to peel some votes off the Russel-less Green Party and the New Zealand First Party.” Well if that is the way the Labour Party is looking middle New Zealand will turn their backs on it because middle New Zealand knows that you cannot do crazy silly economic things that do not actually solve any problems.Yes it is tough for the dairy industry right now. This Government knows it because we have dairy farmers and processors in our ranks; we talk to them every day. They know it is tough; we know it is tough. We are working with them to do the things that can be sensibly done but actually mucking up New Zealand’s banking sector right at the time when you want it to have confidence in the dairy farmers would be the silliest answer—the silliest answer—that you could come up with. That is the sort of rubbish that you expect from the New Zealand First Party but you do not expect it from the largest Opposition party in Parliament—until you look across and you see that one of its most talented MPs is David Clark and then you realise what you are dealing with and that is the challenge for the Labour Party.The reality is that sensible conservative fiscal and macroeconomic policies have got this country delivering at a rate in terms of growth and employment. Employment growth is in the top three in the OECD which is actually the envy of most OECD countries since the global financial crisis. That does not mean that everything is perfect—challenges have to be dealt with—but tipping up the New Zealand economic framework to get a headline in the newspaper will be seen for the desperate desperate act that it is.JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I hope that I am able—after having heard the last three speakers—to turn to matters of more substance than of volume as we have heard from the last few speakers.The Prime Minister said yesterday that he had no idea about the number of farms the number of rural retailers and the number of small businesses that are at risk of going under during the current dairy downturn. He also said that he had no idea about the scale of the risk faced by either Fonterra or the financial sector in terms of their exposure. This is against a background in which farm economist Peter Fraser has said that up to 25 percent of farms are at risk. The Reserve Bank has said that up to 44 percent of loans could become non-performing. Accounting software company Mind Your Own Business has said that 100000 small businesses are looking at facing some real hardship as a result of this.And so the question is: is the Government in denial here? Is it in dairy denial? What is its strategy in the face of this given the scale of what everybody except the Government benches seems to be saying represents a real threat to the New Zealand economy—and not just the dairy economy but the entire New Zealand economy? It does seem that the strategy is more of the same—to keep on doing more of the same in the hope that it produces some kind of different result. Everything that the Government is doing appears to be continuing to contribute to increasing supply at a time of record low prices. And to me that is absolutely bonkers.The Government is in denial and the denial is becoming dangerous to New Zealand. It is actually dangerous for farmers. It is also dangerous to our rivers and it is dangerous to the New Zealand economy. You have to ask how low the dairy commodity price can fall before the Government decides that maybe a change of tack a change of strategy is somehow desirable.At the heart of this are the irrigation projects that I referred to in oral questions today. The Government has made a number of assertions about these which I would like to contest. It has said that these irrigation projects with $400 million worth of Government funding available—there is actually more than that if you take into account the Irrigation Acceleration Fund. There is another $25 million there and possibly even the use of some of the $100 million Fresh Start for Fresh Water Clean-up Fund also for irrigation projects to the tune of essentially nearly half a billion dollars of public money devoted to or directed at increasing large-scale irrigation projects.So the Government has said a number of things about these irrigation projects: first that they are public infrastructure—that they are somehow like roads. Well roads are things that pretty much everybody can use and irrigation schemes are not. Irrigation schemes are able to be used pretty much only by the user so the idea that they should be publicly subsidised rather than having a user-pays principle is somewhat ropey.I do want to just reinforce the point that there are actually three different available funds here for irrigation. One is the $25 million Irrigation Acceleration Fund. There is the $400 million that has been tasked for Crown Irrigation Investments and there is the Fresh Start for Fresh Water Clean-up Fund—$100 million there as well. The Government has also said that in an effort to clean up our filthy rivers it is going to allow irrigation schemes to bid for some of that clean-up fund. Like I said before I just think it is absolutely bonkers that you have got that level of public subsidy available for these incredibly risky schemes. If these projects are that good—if they are that economically powerful—then they should be able to stand on their own two feet.The other thing the Government has said is that somehow these large-scale irrigation schemes are good for the environment—that they are good for our rivers. The only cases where that is true are for rivers that have been so damaged by the clear-felling of trees and by massive irrigation in the past that there are huge amounts of sediment and nutrients in those rivers. The rest of the time all these schemes do is massive terraforming that converts land that is otherwise completely unsuitable to yet more dairy intensification. Of course we know that that increases runoff into our rivers and contributes to the growing problem that we have there.The assertion that the Government makes that these schemes are somehow economically viable that they are somehow environmentally good is actually completely preposterous. They are bad for the environment they are bad for the economy and they are also as it turns out bad for farmers because you have got farmers there some of whom are on multigenerational lands who are leveraged up to the hilt to pay these things back. So the Government’s argument is completely fallacious. Thank you.Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): Buildings has been called; the hammers and the nails are out as the building experts now move into Labour MPs’ offices to remove the photos of Michael Joseph Savage and put up large photos of Robert Muldoon. That is actually what we have seen in the last 24 hours as far as policies are concerned. For the Labour Party and its policy ideas it is most certainly back to the 1970s. The Labour Party as Rob Hosking said “is positioning itself less like an alternative government and more like a protest movement.” which is hardly surprising—and this is my own bit—when it is of course run by the unions. Banking experts are saying that Andrew Little has a “lack of understanding of how banks and the system works” and this is the man who wants to tell us that he should actually be the one who is in control of this stuff.Hon David Parker: Why did the bubble get so big Paula?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Even the Greens think it is silly David Parker even the Greens.As the Greens—I think it quite interesting—try to be taken a bit more seriously and try to become a bit more mainstream so that they can move into that kind of centre vote area it seems that Labour is actually heading in the opposite direction. It is trying to jump on the “take any issue and come up with something nutty to go alongside it”—and I guess it does think this is what New Zealand wants: its own version of Jeremy Corbyn. But it sounds more like Jerry Springer with the nutty stuff that is currently coming out of a party that had and was underpinned by values that it held true to.Those members should be actually pretty shocked with themselves and what they have been coming out with more recently. They stand on one side of it and say that they want us to support dairy and farmers more—and I heard a point of order yesterday from David Clark telling us that they are pro - free trade—when actually their actions are the complete opposite. They will not constructively work with one of the biggest agreements that will make the biggest difference to our economy and real people in real jobs and how they can actually make a bit more money and take on some extra people and see those actual workers get higher wages due to businesses being more profitable. Those members speak out of one side of their mouths but in their hearts and actually even in their heads they know it is not true. They are going for the Jerry Springer shock jock to try to get a bit of publicity and I say to them in this debate that they are making utter fools of themselves in how they are doing it.Shall we move to the latest: that they should be now legislating for the banks to pass on interest rates? Like we hear all the time it will of course be “We want to legislate for when they are going down and make sure that they are.” but they will be the first to cry wolf when actually they reverse and rates are going up. They will not then want banks to be passing those costs on to good businesses and to see that level of competitiveness that gives us a banking system that stood up in the world’s biggest global financial crisis for decades. Our banking system actually stood up to that because of the robustness and because of its independence from politicians sticking their noses in and threatening to legislate. There has never been a clearer message to businesses to dairy farmers and to others that that—Mr Opposition over there—is not ready for Government or anywhere close to it.At the end of the day it is the values that underpin us and how we stick by them that dictate what our policies should be and there is a real mismatch amongst the Labour caucus and its leadership at the moment—and may it forever reign as far as I am concerned on this side of the House. We do not for one moment underestimate some of the effects that we are seeing of prices on our dairy farmers at the moment. We are putting more into supporting them. You are seeing $500000 going to supporting the trusts and the counselling that needs to go on trying to make sure that we see the things that are happening there. We also understand what it means to stand beside those dairy farmers and make sure that we have the right policies in place. If we have seen anything this year it is the truth about what underpins the Labour Party and when you dig deep it is nothing.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I cannot help but smile. The stress test from the Reserve Bank has come out with the statement that “the banks could be left managing large amounts of land for years and have most of their profitability wiped out.” The image of bankers in a herringbone pit trying to get their money from the cow’s tits instead of the farmers’ bank accounts is just too good to be true.How have we how have the farmers and how have the bankers got into this situation? Indeed the stress test said that the banks could lose $3 billion. That seems like a lot of money when you say it slowly but that is actually 9 months of the banks’ profits. When you look at it that way the question is “Why not?” because the farmers are losing years of profits in a situation that is dire for many of them. How did they get there is the question. Well some might have been called greedy but mostly they were ambitious and naive hard-working Kiwis who wanted to get on and grow their business and grow the benefits for New Zealand.They were told by Dairy New Zealand that they could increase productivity that things are all good—Dairy New Zealand subsidised by taxpayer funding was pushing money down their throats to push more productivity. They were told by Fonterra that they had a triple “V” strategy: volume value and velocity. No one knows what it means but it has got a great future they were told. Then we had people saying things like “and in my view that is going to bottom out pretty soon and start going back the other way.” and “This is not based on hope. It was fundamentally based on a massive consumer demand.” That was in November 2014 from the Prime Minister. His constituents those hard-working but naive farmers believed him—they believed him. And the banks were happy to throw money down their throats and the Prime Minister went around the world getting photos of Fonterra and its growth.Now the farmers are asking: “How have we got here?”. The Prime Minister’s instincts are pretty simple having been a trader: when things get bad sell sell sell.Hon David Parker: Who to?Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well the question is: whom to? Indeed what I picked up today in the Farmers Weekly—indeed it is in the property pull-out. Fancy that! This is the real-estate part of the farming magazines that is growing in size every single week as more and more properties come on to the market for a smaller pool of people who want to pay the money. There is however hope—from the Prime Minister I am sure—that overseas investors will walk in step in prop up property prices and buy a huge portfolio of our farmland.That is not something that Labour will stand by and let happen. We have said that we will put a line in the sand so that in the dire situations that the farmers face now they must not be forced to sell out to foreign investors who are taking opportunities that should not be there. How have they got here? Where to now for our dairy industry? These stories have been out there around the wider arena. That was 2015—in August last year. Yet we had the Prime Minister and the Government completely in denial and continuing to fund irrigation and growth in dairy and the Primary Growth Partnership for Dairy New Zealand. They were continually in denial of the reality that the world is awash with milk. You do not have to be a genius to work out that that was going to happen.So what is National doing? The Prime Minister says: “Oh support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement—that is going to be the solution.” I quote John Wilson: “I am very disappointed that the deal falls far short of TPP’s original ambition”. It does very little for the dairy industry. The Prime Minister says: “Support the Resource Management Act reforms.” These are the reforms that will effectively turn good productive land into house sites around Auckland. That is not good news for our dairy farming sector.This Government aided and abetted by the banks has thrown money at naive well-meaning well-intended and ambitious dairy farmers and the debt levels are up to—I would guess—about $40 billion as of this day. The last calculation was $38 billion. I put it to the banks that it is time for them to take their losses. If it is $3 billion then that is only 9 months’ profit. It is incumbent upon every one of us to support the good hard-working people who have gone into dairy farming who continue to create wealth for this country. We need to look after them and give them a fair go.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East):Over the last few days we have heard from the leader of the Labour Party that he intends to actually manage interest rates by setting interest rates in New Zealand. Today he did not resile from that position. He came into this House and defended it in the general debate. Even if he knew he was wrong yesterday he had his chance to move away from it today but he did not because the Labour Party genuinely believes that it can charge and determine what interest rates would be in New Zealand. That is economic lunacy. That is the Labour Party gone wild.The Labour Party is a party that has no understanding of economics. It has no understanding of how interest rates are set and it is a party that looks for pure political hits and has no compassion and understanding of what it is talking about. Let us look at other countries that do such things. Look at the incidence of where there is no independence in this area: Bahamas Barbados Jamaica and Turkmenistan are the countries that the Labour Party would want to be in with. That is the kind of economic plan that the Labour Party intends to follow.It is not only the Labour Party withsetting interest rates. We know that the New Zealand First Party wants to control exchange rates as well. Align that with the Labour Party and its interest rate controls and we go back to a situation many decades ago that has been seen to fail in the economic history of this country and any other country.The Opposition will say that there is dairy bubble that has suddenly arisen on this Government. That is simply not true. If anyone looks back they will find that the greatest percentage in increase in dairy farm debt occurred under the Labour Government. That was when the conversions happened in the South Island; that was when the greatest increase in dairy debt came. It was under Labour not under National. So do not blame the Government for the individual choices that farmers have made and are dealing with at this stage.What we do need is a Government that delivers a strong economic base; a Government that delivers an economy that is open free and can deliver low interest rates and a strong base for our financial sector to be secure so that people can actually get money lent to them. We do not need a Government that goes out and makes rash promises around education policy that would add billions of dollars on to the Government expenditure therefore increasing Government debt and therefore increasing interest rates that farmers would have to deal with. We do not need a Government that would not support farmers in the areas of policy that we can help them with such as trade such as the Resource Management Act such as water such as immigration and things like that that they actually need.Farmers listening to this need to think what Labour would deliver. Labour would deliver an economy where it controls interest rates. How is it going to set those interest rates? What is going to be the appropriate interest rate? How is it going to make sure banks actually do those interest rates? What would it do as its sanctions if banks did not follow those interest rates? What would be the consequences for farmers if they had secured long-term debt under other interest rates? All those questions can never be answered by the Labour Party members because they do not understand fundamental economics and how interest rates are set and how the money markets work.The second thing Labour would do other than setting your interest rates is that it would be trying to set your exchange rate in conjunction with the New Zealand First Party. How would it set the exchange rate where would it set it and how is it going to make sure that that happens? The Labour Party members cannot answer those questions even though that is its policy effectively. The next thing Labour would do would be to deliver a very poor economic situation for New Zealanders where banks would not want to invest in this country. The biggest dilemma for New Zealand dairy farmers would actually be the supply of capital coming into this country. Those banks would not supply capital to the New Zealand market because they would fear what a Labour Government would do to the rules and regulations around the use of money in this country. That would dictate that there would be less capital there and that would be a big hindrance on New Zealand farmers and all New Zealand businesses.We know what Labour would do to farmers: it would destroy farming in New Zealand it would create an economic environment that would be against farmers and it would have dire consequences on an industry that is battling with international prices. Do not listen to the Labour Party members’ rhetoric do not listen to those far-out promises of setting interest rates that are not realistic. Look at the equation: you have got the equation of the Bernie Sanders Labour Party you add that with the Trump New Zealand First Party and you come up with a reasonable Green Party in the end. That is what the Opposition looks like to New Zealand farmers. Thank you.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The environment under this Government is a nice-to-have: something for the privateers and the corporates to sponsor to make them look good. The environment under this Government is a contradiction. We have polluted the rivers—they are not swimmable—but the Government insists that its collaboration strategy is working. If commodity prices had not collapsed the Government’s treacherous strategy of “drill it mine it frack it and milk it” might have succeeded for some people. But actually what it has done is polluted 62 percent of our rivers.The environment is a space where 6 million cows and half a billion dollars’ worth of subsidised irrigation gets to make use of rivers justified by the faux arguments that river flows do not need to vary. Whatever Mr Key—the man who thinks that rivers are just wasted if they flow out to sea. A bit of fencing around the nitrate-contaminated waters will be seen as the solution and the window dressing when that 62 percent of rivers remain unswimmable under this Government. But not to worry the children of the wealthy can be taken on recreational visits to clean rivers while the children of the poor sit by dirty drains listening to the stories of their grandparents about what a swimmable river used to be like. Fish in our rivers—ever heard of them? Anyone seen a native fish in a river lately? Not likely. What we have instead is rivers choked with cow urine seasonal algae blooms human waste and invisible chemicals many of which have yet to be identified.No one owns water says the Government. Meanwhile while it parrots this bottled water is being sold to countries like China and being exported from the Hawke’s Bay. People spend $3 on this bottle of water while these companies export free water and pay nothing except a few bucks for a resource consent. The catchments of sacred and iconic springs at Porotī and Waikoropupū are now up for grabs for export—tangata whenua kaitiakitangarights ignored and trampled on.The environment is a nice-to-have. The emergency aid ships are ploughing their way to drowning Pacific atolls and cyclone terror descends on the Pacific but how about some real action and commitment on issues such as water and climate change? The environment in a Government with strong green progressive leadership will not be a nice-to-have because it is the economy it is the community and it is the future. It is the source of everything we need as well as everything we produce. It is the only stability in this crazy world of greed: good soil clean water clean air and clean energy.We have the chance in this country to pull back from the brink of our self-sabotage. We can have a leadership role by committing to clean and swimmable rivers. It is what everyone wants for their kids except apparently this Government: rivers not drains. We can have great farming models that sustain farming communities not boom-and-bust monocultures of milk powder export to lactose-intolerant populations who now have the technology that we taught them to make their own milk powder.A strong Green voice in Government would value Te Tiriti o Waitangi and put quality water at the heart of all negotiations for allocation as well as use. We would believe the freshwater scientists—actually believe what they tell us—when they say it is a crisis of multiple stressors on lakes and rivers including nitrate pollution at unprecedented levels and temperatures of 30 degrees which have never been recorded before in some of our waterways and lakes. We would stop the dairy conversions because it makes sense. Landcorp Farming Ltd gets it; Tourism New Zealand gets it.Rivers can be swimmable for our mokopuna. I do not know about you but I have had enough of this sign: the sign that says “this river is too sick to swim in” is all over this country. It is in media alerts every single day. Rivers are there for our mokopuna. We can have swimmable rivers; we can have clean water—we just have to commit to a goal and work towards it. But this Government has walked away from that responsibility. Swimmable rivers are our future not this disgrace. Kia ora tātou katoa.CHRIS BISHOP (National): It has been a sad 7 years for the Labour Party but yesterday marked the nadir of its trashing of its proud economic record—forgetting the lessons of history and trashing a once-proud economic legacy. Yesterday was the day that the Labour Party jumped the shark. Yesterday was the day that marked the absolute culmination of its return to the politics of nostalgia a return to the halcyon days of the 1970s. Well actually the 1970s were not a great time in New Zealand and it took the Labour Party and a Labour Government to sort it out.I want to briefly canvass the three areas in which Labour is trashing its legacy. Firstly let us talk about trade and openness to the world. It was the Labour Government of the 1980s that slashed tariffs and that courageously ended all State support for our farming sector. It was a Labour Government—the fifth Labour Government—that signed the China free-trade agreement. Why? Because it knew then as it does not know now that New Zealand’s competitiveness and New Zealand’s future prosperity depend on our engagement with the outside world of selling more to the world and being connected to the global economy.Now what do we find? We find a Labour Party that is fundamentally opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement which it started when it was in Government which Phil Goff and Helen Clark kick-started on the eve of the 2008 election campaign and trumpeted during the campaign as one of their signal economic achievements. Well now we find the Labour Party—with the honourable exception of Phil Goff who because he is running for the Auckland mayoralty is somehow allowed to support the TPP agreement. Even though we know that David Shearer and other MPs inside the Labour caucus also support it now we find the party position is that it is opposed to the TPP agreement. There is not a Labour Party leader still alive who does not back TPP: Helen Clark Phil Goff Mike Moore—all these leaders who knew that New Zealand’s future depended on being connected to the world backed the TPP agreement apart from the modern-day Labour caucus.Recently we find Labour descending into gutter politics. Firstly we had Phil Twyford’s disgraceful smear campaign last year against people with Chinese-sounding names using Rob Salmond’s Bayesian analysis to somehow justify it. And today we have Andrew Little going out to the Hutt and criticising ethnic restaurants talking about how: “I’m not sure if we should have Indian and Chinese restaurants. Perhaps we could source the domestic labour from New Zealand to make Chinese and Indian food.” This is as Phil Quin the Labour activist said on Twitter a regressive and depressing view of New Zealand.Let us talk about monetary policy. In the 1980s the Labour Government established an independent Reserve Bank one of Labour’s proudest achievements. Why? To take interest rate decisions and monetary policy out of the hands of politicians. Now what do we have? We have Andrew Little brain-farting his way to Parliament talking about how we have to put the control of interest rates back into the hands of politicians. Pressured into it by the media he suddenly decided to announce that the Labour Party will if necessary legislate for interest rates to be decided by politicians.This is a recipe for disaster. It was a recipe for disaster in the 1970s and it will be in 2016 or 2027 or whenever the Labour Party happens to get back into Government. This is something that the Labour Party is going to come to regret. We know that Labour is nervous about this because all the Labour Party MPs got sent an email from their leader’s office saying to them: “Don’t meet with any banks or the Bankers’ Association without running it past us first.” So we know that they are pretty embarrassed about this and they are leaking like a sieve.Thirdly let us talk about tertiary policy. Phil Goff sits over there. Phil Goff was the Labour Party leader who introduced student fees. The other day I went back and looked up the education amendment legislation of 1988. Why was Phil Goff and the fourth Labour Government introducing student fees which were the precursor to the student loan scheme? Why? Because he wanted to broaden access to tertiary education. He wanted to increase participation. He wanted more people to go to university. Great policy and the student loan scheme is one of the most progressive forward-thinking and equitable public policy schemes ever devised by any New Zealand Government.But now what do we have? We have Andrew Little Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson returning to their roots and doing what they do best which is going back to student unionism and pumping up more money for student support. It is ineffective it will be inequitable and it will not work. This is a Labour Party that is stuck in the politics of nostalgia and wants to take New Zealand back to the 1970s not forward.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): It is really interesting is it not? I want to start by acknowledging the passing last week of one Helen Skurr from Oxford in the Waimakariri electorate. Helen Skurr supported myself and Winston Peters and New Zealand First for 22 years as a founding member. But Helen Skurr was also a lady of the land a farming wife a farmer herself; someone who operated with her husband and managed Mt White Station many many years ago back in the hard times and later on ran their farm in Oxford.She would be appalled as a long-term National Party voter for many many years to hear the answers to questions in respect of the plight of the dairy industry and farmers who are facing the wall right now. It just astonishes me. I can accept that the Green Party has had this thing about dairy farmers for a long time and it is hard to ignore their reasoning. I can accept that the Labour Party does not particularly like farmers because most tended to vote National. But that is changing—changing big time.David Bennett: Oh!RON MARK: I know—because of the reception that Minister Nathan Guy got when he turned up to the rural and provincial local government conference just recently. He was told bluntly by former card-carrying members of the National Party that farmers believe this Government is totally out of touch. I have to say—what does it take? There are 100000 businesses a million people in New Zealand who depend on the farming sector for their income.We have a farmer in the Wairarapa right now—and there are more cases lined up. We are trying to work on this and the Prime Minister says: “Don’t come in crying crocodile tears. Give us some solutions.” Well New Zealand First has offered a solution to assist with the plight of the dairy farmers—of all farmers. It is our farming debt remediation bill and what is the Government’s answer? It will not support it—does not require it. Well let me tell you that we are working on a case right now and we will be working on more because they are coming down the line. Farmers are being liquidated being wound up and evicted from their properties. We know that for every farmer who goes out the back door for every bank that recovers its money there is a raft of unsecured creditors: silage contractors fencers people who do the irrigation people who put in the water reticulation people who drill the wells and trucking companies. These people are unsecured creditors throughout rural New Zealand and they will be hit and they will lay off staff.What has National said? That the wine industry is doing well—Mr Scott may say that being an investor in the wine industry himself—and the kiwifruit industry is doing well. That is fine but what about the dairy farmers who were the champions of this Government’s economic recovery? I call National now—and people are calling National this out in the rural communities—fair-weather friends. They are there to trumpet the gains and the successes and the employment when it is all going well but when it turns to custard and goes down to $3.90 and further what do Government members say? They say: “It’s not a concern. We’ve stress tested and it’s going to be fine.”Well we heard a story of a milk tanker driver who pulled up at a dairy unit just recently—a week ago. He pulled up outside to load up the milk and spray painted on it were some words that I will not put in here. I will abbreviate them and say that this farmer had had a gutsful of Fonterra. When the driver went inside the dairy shed he found this farmer hanging from the rafters. That is not the first suicide that tanker driver has come across and there is more coming.What is this Government doing? Nothing. We have offered a solution—a farm debt remediation bill. Let us put it though the House. Let us help these people in need. Let us stop the banks ripping them off at 9 percent interest and then hitting them again at 22 percent on their credit cards when they try to buy their groceries and buy clothes for their kids because their farms are running at a loss. Let us do something other than sit on our hands National and do nothing while more and more farmers commit suicide and while their families are torn apart. But I guess you just do not want to do you.ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Yesterday Mr Little once again demonstrated that he thinks New Zealanders are idiots that Kiwis do not know how to manage their affairs that we all need his superior wisdom and knowledge. The sanctimonious attitude of the Labour Party is alive and well. He thinks that he knows how to determine interest rates and he will strong arm and legislate to ensure that. Apparently he has more knowledge of interest rates and markets than the collective wisdom of the banks the lenders the borrowers the businessmen and businesswomen and the farmers. Clearly he has no understanding of how the interest rate markets work. He obviously did not consult Grant Robertson or Mr Parker or his commodity-trading colleague Stuart Nash who have some familiarity with the market place.I have worked and traded in the interest rate markets for more than 10 years in Wellington London and Tokyo. Interest rate cuts by a central bank can have a number of consequences. They can drop by the same amount as the cut as Mr Little is advocating. They can drop by more than the interest rate cut because the interest rate cut is seen as bad news and so people begin to flatten the yield curve. Interest rate cuts can kick off a whole series of expectations of lower rates. Thirdly interest rates can actually rise on the back of an interest rate cut and that is because the cut is seen as a stimulant to the economy. So people build in further interest rate rises as the economy is expected to improve and the currency of course will also appreciate if the expectation is there that that interest rate cut is a good thing for the economy. Or the rates may not move at all after an interest rate cut in the official cash rate and that is because the markets fully expect and have built in that inevitable and fully expected interest rate cut. So there may not be any consequential movement in rates post an official cash rate cut.Mr Little’s policy of strong arming the banks demonstrates first of all that he thinks he knows best and that we the general public including farmers small-business people are just idiots. Secondly it demonstrates his lack of understanding of the economy and how it works. He has no understanding of the interaction between official cash rate cuts interest rate curves and foreign exchange levels. Thirdly it has demonstrated that he has not communicated with his own caucus because I know that in that caucus there is some knowledge of markets interest rates and foreign exchange.His plan to interfere with interest rates which is a global market is a very poorly thought-out piece of policy. Telling banks business people farmers and homeowners that he knows best demonstrates once again the sanctimonious attitude that pervades throughout the Labour Party. Next thing you know they are going to tell us what sorts of lightbulbs to put in our sockets or maybe what sized shower heads to put in our showers. [Interruption] Well that is the attitude that comes from that side of the House and as we know that is exactly what has come before.We need to let New Zealanders decide for themselves which bank to borrow from for what term and for what amount. Consumer power is far more important and far more effective to achieving competitive and efficient market place prices. If Mr Little really wants to support farmers exporters and small-business people instead of interfering with international markets which he has no understanding of I suggest he supports irrigation projects to increase economic benefit environmental benefit and social benefit. I suggest he votes in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to allow greater access to our markets for those farmers and our exporters and I suggest he supports the Resource Management Act reforms to minimise bureaucracy which are on the table. Does Mr Little really support New Zealanders as he claims? No he does not.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I have got a question to pose to the member who has just resumed his seat Alistair Scott and his colleagues: is it acceptable to them that overseas-owned banks take about $90 million a week profit from New Zealand and take it overseas at the same time that it is estimated that 25 percent of our dairy farmers could go under? Is that an acceptable situation? Is it acceptable that the livelihoods of about 100000 small businesses that are dependent on the flow-on income that they receive from dairy farmers and other farmers are at risk? Is that all right? Again no answer from the National Party. Because that is what New Zealanders are currently being told is happening in our economy. When the official cash rate is lowered and the banks do not pass it on questions should be asked about the flow-on effect of that on those 100000 small businesses and the estimated 25 percent of dairy farmers whose livelihoods are at risk.That is what Andrew Little and Labour were asking for—for the National Party for John Key and the Government to stand up for New Zealanders. To stand up for New Zealanders and say: “These are good hard-working people. Their livelihoods are at risk because of circumstances outside their control.” But the Government said nothing—they should do nothing and say nothing. It is not good enough for the Government of our country. We are a nation that is dependent on small businesses. We have become increasingly and foolishly in my view dependent on dairy farming—that was too big a risk and now that is coming back to bite us.The Government’s response is that we should support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—which clearly is doing nothing for dairy farming anyway—and that we should support changes to the Resource Management Act so that further damage can be done to our environment.Where are the brains of Government members? That is a question I have often asked when I have listened to them during question time and even more so during their speeches. They have completely lost touch with New Zealanders and lost any aspiration for New Zealanders for the future. I actually do not think that New Zealanders have aspirations that we should discard. I think our aspirations have always been pretty consistent: to have a home to have a job to have a fair society to have safety to have something to look forward to. Remember Norman Kirk’s words? Those words are as true now as they ever were. Those aspirations form the value of New Zealand society and it is those aspirations that are being taken away from good hard-working New Zealanders while the National Government stands by and says: “Do nothing.”I want a society where we do care about each other where we do think that it is a credible aspiration—and one that the Government should support—to have a home to have a job with a fair income to have a safe community and to have something to look forward to. Those are the aspirations that I was brought up on and I think I had a good family who raised my siblings and me. We always knew that we would have a secure home that we would have an income through my father’s job and that we would have something to look forward to in the future. Work hard get ahead—those are the aspirations that a Labour-led Government will support New Zealanders to have again. Those are the values that have formed the basis of our society. Those are the values and aspirations that have been thrown away by an arrogant and out-of-touch Government led by John Key.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering BillIn CommitteePreamble agreed to.Part 1 Preliminary provisionsALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I stand here on behalf of the Minister the Hon Nick Smith who is not able to be here unfortunately. He sends his apologies. He is actually at a conference on fresh water working with different iwi in consultation. I stand on his behalf in the chair during this Committee stage just to bring the remarks in.This bill has gone through the select committee deliberations. The Government Administration Committee was unanimous in its support. We can see that it is a bill that really just makes some minor technical changes and in particular I suppose in a sense there is the responsibility of perpetuity for Christian Churches New Zealand which is a body of 30 different congregations throughout New Zealand that has been in existence since 1929. Its role in particular for this bill is the investiture of assets from the association into the new trust board which in effect will still allow it to fulfil its role of stewardship in this regard. Although each of the congregations is autonomous they do have conferences that allow them to come together to discuss things in common things of interest that are important to them and especially their roles of responsibility in this regard.When we think about the roles in clause 3 where it talks about the “new board” the bill will allow the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Inc. to take on this role from the “old board” which means the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board. These properties are important. They are important because it does allow for these autonomous Churches to be able to meet some of the needs both spiritual and practical.I have previously been a pastor of a Church a small local Church that operated in that way. It was important to have a facility that could allow for the congregation to meet to exercise its principled values of faith on a Sunday. But then also on the other days Monday through to Friday and even on a Saturday Churches like this will have things such as budgeting services held on their properties. They will have kindergartens held on their properties. This is all to do with the properties at hand and the use of those properties which enable them to be able to exercise their roles of responsibility.Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s the weakest filibuster I’ve ever heard.ALFRED NGARO: Although the member over there may be talking about the weakness of this exercise having actually been a pastor of a Church I know the importance of having such a facility and the roles of that facility that allow it to be able to do that.The bill is simple in its intent. However it is important in its roles of responsibility. So we believe that this bill is important. It will allow the boards to be able to have those roles of responsibility in meeting those needs. I know that—Hon Ruth Dyson: Sit down now. You’ve proved you’ve never read the bill.ALFRED NGARO: —there have been times in which there may have been common and small things—maybe to the member who is interjecting over there they may not mean much but I have to say to the members of those congregations it means a lot. It means a lot because they can exercise some of those responsibilities. There may be small knitting groups. I know that there were groups that used to knit for young mothers whether it be little booties or little jackets and so forth. So those things are really important because the property provided a facility for them to be able to exercise this role of responsibility. So I think it is important that we acknowledge the role that the board is playing which again will still allow for the stewardship of these Churches and their congregations in the exercise of this for their properties as well.There is also a sense in the bill in Part 1 where it talks about the purpose—and the purpose is the transfer of all the existing property interests powers and obligations of the old board into the new board. That technically becomes important. I know that there are times when there are conflicts.Hon Ruth Dyson: You’re scared of members’ bills.ALFRED NGARO: People talk about politics in the House like the politicking that is happening at the moment but politics even happens in Churches where there is a disagreement about the property the roles of the property or who should be in charge. So opportunities like this become important—Hon Ruth Dyson: Mr Chairman we’re in Committee.ALFRED NGARO: Oh thank you to the member for correcting us. That was probably the most positive statement that the member has made during the speech and I appreciate that from that member. So I believe it is important that this bill takes its role of responsibility.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I want to say that this is a very narrow bill. I have it in front of me. It is not a wide-ranging debate and I will ask members in future calls—we are on clauses 3 and 4—to just concentrate specifically on clauses 3 and 4 otherwise I will terminate the speeches.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is a pleasure for me to rise and take this short call on Part 1 of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. In some ways this is my swansong for the Government Administration Committee which this bill came to. It was referred to our committee for submissions to be heard and we had two submitters. I really do enjoy the camaraderie actually of the Government Administration Committee. It is a hung committee. It is bipartisan and it was a very very good process that we ran in respect of this bill and it is now a pleasure to have a say in the Committee of the whole House.In respect of Part 1 obviously clauses 3 and 4 cover the interpretation and the purpose of the bill. I will start with the purpose of the bill which is that it repeals the Associated Churches of Christ Church Property Act 1929 an Act that came into force in 1929 and established a board a congregation of Churches that came together for the purposes of holding real property. What they found over time with the evolution of the ministry was that they needed more powers to deal with the property that they held. When they looked at the Act they found that it did not properly set out the powers that allowed them to do that—which was their obligation—and therefore they needed to change that situation in order to sell their property take the proceeds and use those proceeds appropriately in their ministry. So this bill repeals the 1929 Act and establishes a new board that allows them to do that. The new trust board is established under a charitable trust deed—which is comprehensive—under existing trust laws and gives them those wide-ranging powers to enable them to deal with their property.I want to talk about the 30 congregations across the country that belong to the Christian Churches New Zealand group. There is one in Invercargill which I am very pleased about and it too carries out different ministry programmes in Invercargill that have a good social benefit for my constituents. Whether you are religious Christian—spiritual or not—the values that they teach are very good in life and that should be acknowledged and celebrated.I myself am an Anglican. I do not belong to the specific Church that I am talking about here the Christian Churches group but certainly if you look throughout time from the 1929 Act at what these groups of Churches were doing compared with what Church groups do now you can see that the ministry has evolved. I myself have certainly enjoyed learning about theology and the faith and the values that are taught throughout biblical study and learning on an academic level almost about that faith and how you can apply it to your life and work it into your values as you walk through life.Moving back to Part 1 clause 3 “Interpretation” is a very clear interpretation clause which narrows down the definition of the “new board”. It means the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board. The “old board” refers to the board established under the 1929 Act which is the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board. Then it goes on to define the property. So the property that we are talking is real property money and also any land registered under the old board’s name.BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. In Part 1 as my colleague has mentioned under clause 3 “Interpretation” we see here that a core part if you will of this bill is the definition of “property”. What we are doing here is we are simply defining it as meaning every type of property and that will include as set out in 3(b)(i) “every type of estate and interest in property; and … (ii) money; and (iii) all land registered in the name of the old board under the Land Transfer Act 1952:”. That really comes to the heart of why we are having this legislation.Chris Bishop: Why is that?BRETT HUDSON: Well the challenge that we now are faced with in a world that is so many decades after the initial trust and powers were put in place is that originally the value and assets of the trust were all in property and it was thought that was the only real value of those assets that could be used—that it was all about providing property and facilities for the works the Christian Churches New Zealand does. The trust now finds itself some many decades later having to face challenges in today’s world where if it has got some property—some building or some facilities somewhere—that may be all well and good in that they have a monetary value but if it cannot actually realise that monetary value that monetary asset in some way it can find itself constrained from actually delivering the services to the constituents that the trust actually existed for in the first place. So with this interpretation we will make it clear that property for the purposes of this legislation is any form of property in the name of the trust. By doing so—as the other provisions which we will get to will permit—it will mean that no longer will property have to be physical real estate or buildings and therefore the trust will have the power to change one asset to another form of asset.For instance the trust could sell property and gain a cash asset. As we know on this side of the Chamber that is a very powerful ability. This Government in its forward-thinking views took the same approach into the last election through the mixed-ownership model and said that it is better for New Zealand in some instances to convert a physical property asset into a cash asset and then use that cash for things that are more meaningful for New Zealanders today and into the future through the Future Investment Fund. It is one that is seeing schools built hospitals built and ultra-fast broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative.What we saw was that if you simply limited property to physical property and plant and machinery in the case of those particular mixed-ownership models then you constrain choices—you can constrain the services you provide and the good you can do. By taking such a broad definition of “property” what we are permitting and enabling in this legislation is that the new trust will be in a position to make decisions today and into the future that will permit it to deliver the best-possible outcomes and services to its constituents. We are actually empowering a new trust to be relevant today and into the future.Along with this in clause 4 we are also making it clear to help give effect to this that the purpose of this enabling legislation is to “transfer all of the existing property interests powers and obligations of the old board;” dissolve that board and repeal the old property Act. What we are basically saying is that anything that was held by that trust will now come under the auspices and authority and power of the new trust along with any associated obligations and we will dissolve the old legislation.One point I would make because I think it is relevant to the idea of repealing the old Act and indeed of dissolving the old board is that the Government Administration Committee questioned the officials as we went through the consideration of this bill. We asked: if we have come to a point where old legislation is no longer valid how do we ensure that the new legislation doesn’t suffer the same fate at some point in the future? Why do we not just use general law general trust law to manage this new trust and incorporate it in? Why do we not have a sunset clause so that this particular empowering bill would just cease after a period of time and the new trust the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board would just be completely under the auspices of the Charitable Trusts Act? Unfortunately we did not really get the answers we were seeking but I think it was a very valid question for the committee to ask. It shows that we are taking a forward look—PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare. In this Committee stage debate on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill I just want to start by saying that clause 3 is a very very sensible clause.This bill updates the framework that the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board will operate in to make it far more relevant to the 21st century environment. Clause 3 “Interpretation” clarifies the meaning and the difference between the new board and the old board. This is important because there have been changes in the real world that make some of the previous legislationmeaningless. For instance the Associated Churches of Christ no longer exists and this is laid out very clearly. The old board the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board no longer exists. That institution changed its name some time ago. It is now the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board and it will be regularised as my colleague Brett Hudson referred to bringing the arrangements for governing the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957 like what the vast majority of other Church-held property would be registered under. In fact the vast majority of charitable trusts—full stop—are regularised under that general law rather than requiring their own particular individual legislation. That does to some extent futureproof the organisation against the changes that it will face in the coming years.The very practical example of how this will play out was given by my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith when he spoke about this bill in its first reading in the House. In his own area of Nelson he is now the proud owner or I suppose the landlord of property that was once part of the Church of Christ Property Trust Board—the Annesbrook Church which now forms his electorate office—and in fact it was outgrown by its congregation. So that was a positive sign for the Church of Christ. It actually managed to outgrow the buildings in which it was based allowing them to be disposed of to Dr Nick Smith so that he could put his home and his electorate office into that property. It moved to a new complex in Saxton Road.This particular clause of the legislation does clarify that every type of property and real estate in particular that is held by the Churches is able to be transferred—to be disposed of. Their existing powers remain. But there is another important word here that I want to refer to. In clause 4 “Purpose” it also talks about the “obligations”. My colleagues have focused primarily on the property rights and interests of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board but actually there are obligations. So for instance where debts may be owing on properties where there are other conditions that need to be abided by by the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board those obligations will continue to remain. By defining that very clearly and outlining that those obligations of the old board are transferred to the new board we will not end up with the problematic situation where the assets are moved across but the liabilities are kept with the old board once it is dissolved.The powers of the board—this is also important. The board must be able to conduct its business. It must remain the master of its own destiny. So it is retaining the existing powers—not adding any additional powers and not removing powers but retaining the existing powers of the board—along with the obligations and along with the interests in the property whilst it does. transfer to the new board which I think is particularly important. Just on a technical level that land will be registered in the name of the new board under the Land Transfer Act 1952. So effectively the name on the title will transfer across—that is in clause 3(b)(iii) of this particular part of the legislation. It is very well drafted. It is very clear. It is short and crisp but excellent.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I am very happy too to take a call on Part 1 of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I am disappointed. I would have expected the chair of our Government Administration Committee Ruth Dyson to take a call and speak about this because I noticed that when the member in the chair Alfred Ngaro was standing and giving an introduction on the bill there was some strong interjection. There appeared to be a lot of emotion. It appears that she is upset about something. I would encourage her to stand up and take a call. I think that is important.I would like to acknowledge the member in the chair. I think it is very appropriate that he is in the chair covering for the Hon Nick Smith. I want to acknowledge the Hon Nick Smith. He brought this bill to the House in support of his constituents. Of course it has a far-reaching effect because we have Churches from the far north to the far south including the member’s own electorate that are affected by this bill. So it is a very good one. I also want to acknowledge the member in the chair because he has got personal experience of having run his own Church and ministry inside both west Auckland and South Auckland. So he has got real-life experience of the work that these Churches do—the important work that these Churches do—in their communities.Thank you Mr Chair if you will bear with me I will come back to Part 1—you are right. I just wanted to very quickly talk about the effect that this bill has from the far north—and I have said in earlier speeches and have referred to the Mairangi Bay Community Church. The reason why this one is special for me is that I was born and raised in Mairangi Bay. I have personal knowledge of the Church and I have personal knowledge of the work that it does in its community.Actually to have a bill like this that is—and my colleague Brett Hudson made a very good point. To be able to enact legislation like this will allow the board to be able to manage its assets much better and it is actually very very important to allow it to be able to actually deliver the important projects that it sponsors and that it works on in our communities.Hon Member: It will make a real difference.MARK MITCHELL Actually it will make a real difference. Being able to manage those assets properly is very very important. He referred to the mixed-ownership model. That is actually a really good example where this Government was able to convert assets that we felt that we did not need to have—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! No clauses 3 and 4.MARK MITCHELL: Oh you are right—you are right. So if we come back to Part 1 the interpretation in this bill is the context that “ ‘new board’ means the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board”—as I have said—“incorporated as a board under Part 2 of the Charitable Trusts Act 1957”.Chris Bishop: What part?MARK MITCHELL: That was the Charitable Trusts Act of 1957. That is where it was originally incorporated. The “ ‘old board’ means the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board” and “ ‘property—(a) means every type of property and (b) includes—(i) every type of estate and interest in property; and (ii) money;”. That is actually very important. What I was alluding to and what I was trying to get to is the point that Mr Hudson made around the use of assets and that is the fact that sometimes it is actually prudent to liquidate assets that are maybe not achieving the return that the Church may want and it might be better to actually liquidate them and realise that in cash and be able to manage the asset as cash instead.So that is a very very important part of Part 1 in the preliminary provisions. It also includes “all land registered in the name of the old board under the Land Transfer Act” and that is actually under the Land Transfer Act of 1952 Mr Bishop in case you were wondering.Chris Bishop: We’re reforming that Act as well.MARK MITCHELL: That is right—that is right. We are reforming that Act—very good point. We are going to modernise the Land Transfer Act 1952. The purpose of this bill is to transfer all of the existing property interests powers and obligations of the old board to the new board and dissolve the old board and remove it from the register of charitable trust boards under—ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call—and I know that there has been a little bit of goading from the other side there. I actually want to acknowledge the Rev. David Clark whom I hope will take a call on this bill. Having been a minister of the Church and having actually served a congregation he knows everything about the property and the purpose of the Church and its roles of responsibility and I look forward to the member being able to stand up to talk about this.But we are talking about Part 1 of the bill and we are talking about the purpose. I know Mr Chair that your wise counsel would be for me to look at new things that we maybe can add to this debate in the Committee stage and what I would like to add is in clause 4 “Purpose”. The submission that was brought forward by what was the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board—and I want to acknowledge its chairperson who is Mr Steve Baigent and also its secretary Mr Viesturs Altments. In their submission they talked clearly about the purpose of this bill and I want to acknowledge them. They are probably at home in Nelson now and may be looking at this debate with a sense of anticipation—Hon Phil Goff: Wondering why they’re spending money on your salary.ALFRED NGARO: But what they—well no they did not pay for my sermons Mr Goff. No no—not at all. The people came willingly as volunteers to hear the good news—to hear the good news. So hopefully this bill is good news. It is not the gospel—I will not say that—but it is good news for the Church in this regard.But what the board members put forward in their submission was quite clear which was that the old Act of 1929 meant that it had inhibited the trust board. What it did was it meant that when we talked about the transfer of funds they could be used only for property use. When we talk about the purpose of this bill that is the real intent.What the association wanted to do by renewing this trust at its conference in 2013 was try to give itself the ability to have greater flexibility—and those were the key words that were used.So the purpose of this bill is actually not just about the transfer of the asset as a property; it also enables the trust board to be able to use the funds to have a flexibility in particular and what it calls a wider outreach of ministries which it could use to then actually engage with and serve its local communities.In their words—Mr Chair if you will allow me the indulgence to just quote a very small part of their submission. It states on page 2 paragraph 3 of the submission under “Background”: “In particularthe 1929 Act limits the ability to apply any of the funds held by the Trust Board to other than property purposes”—and here is the aspect of this particular clause clause 4—“except by way of loan. In the view of the Boardthe limitations in that Act are an obstacle to the effective use of part of the significant funds the Board holds for the wider outreach community and kingdombuilding purposes of the Christian Churches of New Zealand movement.”I would have to say that that actually is the heart and purpose of this bill. It is to ensure that it is a fact that the board has the flexibility to be able to ensure that it can use those funds not just for the use and the procurement of property and maybe its repairs and renovation but in particular so that the board can now utilise those funds to be able to engage in other forms for the purposes and wider forms of outreach. That again goes to the heart of clause 4 of the bill which is the reason for the change in this form of legislation for the trust board.I will not say too much more about that but I will just say that I think it is quite clear that the association has established this purpose so that it allows it to be able to minister in various ways. I will not go through the 30 different churches in the 30 different areas; one of them probably will be down in Dunedin. I am sure that Mr Clark there—I can see him getting his notes ready. He is ready to take a call. I look forward to that. I hope it is not the brief call that may call for the end of the debate.But I do want to acknowledge the board for coming and making its submission and for its commitment to seeing this through. There were not a lot of submissions—there were only two. In this part in particular the purpose of the transfer of this board is not just for the issues of property but also for the extension of—I will not say “the extension of the kingdom” although in the association’s eyes it is the extension of the kingdom.It is for the extension of its services—its ministry—of outreach into the wider parts of the community. So I acknowledge the submitters; I thank them for that. And I acknowledge the opportunity to be able to speak on this part of the bill about the property and purposes at present. Thank you.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I move That the question be now put.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Thank you for allowing me to take this brief call and it will be a brief call because we have kicked Part 1 around the Committee quite significantly. There is a particular word in clause 4 that I want to perhaps bring into the debate and add some clarity to because for those of us from different religious traditions from the Church of Christ it is a loaded word. It is a significant word to us. We have here in this Chamber members of the Roman Catholic tradition. Some of my ancestors were Catholics and the word “dissolve”—“dissolution”—is a loaded word.I am talking about clause 4(b). The first words in clause 4(b) are “dissolve the old board”. I just think it needs to be clarified that we are not carrying out a dissolution in the sense of Henry VIII dissolving the monasteries. We are not talking about assets being broken up and carried off. We are not talking about gargoyles being removed statuary being taken down or walls and windows being misappropriated. We are not talking about beautiful artwork being painted over. When we are talking about dissolving the old board we are actually meaning that we are making it a legal nullity although its assets its property its moneys its powers and its obligations are transferred over to the new board.I think this is an important point because for those of us from different traditions—my own family are a mixture of Anglicans Catholics Presbyterians and Open Brethren actually—the word “dissolve” will mean different things to all of us. You know the word “dissolve” is quite loaded and we are talking about simply a legal dissolution so that those existing properties interests powers and obligations are dissolved in the old board and are transferred through to the new board under the new name the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board rather than the Churches of Christ—Dr David Clark: This speech is dissolving into the ridiculous.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Well I would be interested in hearing a call from the minister of religion on the other side of the Chamber Dr David Clark. I know that this is not the tradition that he comes from. This is a very different tradition because this is a laity-based ministry rather than ordained ministers conducting services in their church halls. I appreciate that Dr Clark may have a different set of experiences that he wants to bring in when he is reflecting on the wording of Part 1 of the bill and I would be interested in hearing from him. I just thought it was important to rise and to take a brief call around that particularly loaded word at the start of clause 4(b).Part 1 agreed to.Part 2 Transfer of property rights and obligations from old board to new boardSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): As I said before this is a swansong for me. Let us go over that one more time and pay homage to the Government Administration Committee which I am leaving. Last night I referred to the Government Administration Committee which heard this bill as the heavy lifters of this Parliament. I think that that is still true and certainly members on this side of the Chamber are putting in some effort in respect of the debate on this bill—and very admirably I might say.Grant Robertson: I’m losing the will to live.SARAH DOWIE: It is very pleasing to move on to Part 2 of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I know that Mr Grant Robertson is very sad that we have had to move on at this stage as are the other members but alas we do and we will continue to debate this.This part is the meat and bones of the bill.Mark Mitchell: Totally.SARAH DOWIE: It is totally the meat of the bill.Brett Hudson: It’s an important bill.SARAH DOWIE: It is a very important bill because as we alluded to prior the trust board does a lot of very good work in the community and the congregation of 30 churches that unite different religions range from the top of the North Island in Whangarei right through to Invercargill in the deep south which is my electorate.You know it is important that we hear the Christian Churches when they say that the old Act did not empower them to deal with their property appropriately and that we need to repeal that Act allow them to re-establish under existing charitable trust law and give them wide-ranging powers—and obligations—to deal with their property appropriately so that not only can they hold real property but sell that property take the proceeds and put those into different ministry projects which are so valuable to the community. So Part 2 is entitled “Transfer of property rights and obligations from old board to new board” and that is quite clear setting out exactly what clauses 5 6 7 8 and 9 do.I think it is important to note what my colleague Mr Brett Hudson raised which is that the committee did consider a sunset clause. We asked officials for advice on having a sunset clause. It was raised in one of the submissions that we should be considering a sunset clause to get the Act once the transfer of property had occurred off our books. But the advice came back that this was a risk to the savings provisions because although we are giving the new board the powers to deal with property and invest in their ministry it does have obligations and it will have contracts that it has entered into and it needs to be able to continue with those contracts. Third parties other parties to those contracts need to feel secure in the fact that because the new trust board is coming into play those contracts will see the test of time and will see the test of the obligations and service to whatever is set out in that agreement.So as I said before we did consider having a savings provision. It was thought inappropriate to use it. The other side of that too—not just in respect of obligations—is that obviously the Christian Churches do receive bequests and wills and it was thought that that could be somewhat of a risk. If somebody had died and left a bequest in their will to the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board that bequest could in fact fail if the sunset clause was in the Act and reference from the old board to the new board was not in place. So although we considered having a sunset clause it was felt inappropriate to put that in the new bill and therefore the bill from the first reading has been reported back to the House unchanged.It was a pleasure to hear from the two submitters on this bill. Even though it is a small bill it is a very—[Bell rung]Alfred Ngaro: Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): If you go for the call you get the call first because you are in the chair. You must call out louder than you did. So it is Alfred Ngaro.ALFRED NGARO (National): I did hear a comment from Mr Robertson that he is losing the will to live and it is appropriate that this bill is actually talking about the Christian Churches. Mr Robertson help is on its way and if you do need a defibrillator the power of prayer from these Christian Churches may be of some help to you in your time of need so do not lose the will to live. Listen on and I am sure that these speeches will help.Returning back to Part 2 of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill which deals with “Transfer of property rights and obligations from old board to new board” I refer back to the submission that was brought by the board by Mr Baigent and Viesturs Altments who is the secretary of the old board. In its wisdom what the board has also seen fit to do in anticipation of the change in this legislation is ensure that a new trust deed has already been formed. A trust deed has already been prepared and agreed to by all the churches as to the purpose powers objectives and other key clauses. So when we talk about clause 5 “Transfer of property rights and obligations” it has been foreseen—the hope is—that there will be unanimous support for this bill and with that there has been some preparation for that as well. In sight of that this trust deed has also been registered under the Charities Act 2005. So when the transfer in clause 5 happens then it will be in line with the Charities Act 2005 and with the Charities Commission on 9 September 2014 under number CC51021 as the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board.One of the things that has also been important which was on page 4 of the submission was the key points which clause 5 and clause 6 talk about in a sense—the rights of obligation. It has got a transfer process. So in the succession of development from the old board into the new board page 4 of the submission talks about the key points in relation to the transitional provisions of that trust deed which are: “first that the Trust Deed appoints initial Trustees whose sole purpose is to manage the transition from the old legislative regime to the new charitable Trust regime.” Clause 5(1) also talks about this: “On and from the commencement of this Act the property rights and obligations of the old board are vested in the new board.” So it is important that in anticipation they have started to prepare that too.The submission also goes on to talk about the fact that it involves the appointment of the trustees in accordance with the provisions of the trust deed: “The preferred option was for the existing Trust Board to be the first Trustees and then continue on until new appointments are needed in terms of the Trust Deed.” That is provided for in the bill. What that means is that as was spoken about in Part 1 previously regarding using the word “flexibility” this will then allow them to engage with that new trust board which will give them rights and responsibilities to fulfil the obligations around the flexibility for wider forms of outreach of the Church into their selected communities as well.Clause 7 talks about the dissolution of the old board and on the commencement of this bill the old board will be dissolved. As I have talked about in part (b) of the submission page 4 it declares that “At this point in time pending the passage of this legislation the new Trust is a legal entity able to exercise all the powers provided for in the Trust Deed but does not own any assets. These assets are still to be held by the old Trust Board in its role under the Associated Churches of Act until this Bill is passed and the 1929 Act is repealed.” So this provision here is important. The trust itself has prepared for the transactional change that will happen and the transfer of property rights and obligations from the old board into the new board. So that preparation is important.Finalising my contribution to Part 2 part (c) of the submission where it talks about the reconstitution of the trust board as a charitable trust says that “would the new Act legislate the existing Trust Board out of existence and it would then transfer all the property and assets from the old Trust Board to the new Charitable Trust. There is still a process to be undertaken once this Bill is passed in relation to the transfer of the properties and titles to the properties held by the Board. The specific provisions in the Bill provide for that” and will be referred to on presentation of the submission to the Committee. So we see that those provisions in the legislation are important to the transfer of property rights and obligations.CHRIS BISHOP (National): This is my first opportunity to speak on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill and I want to pay tribute to the Government Administration Committee because my good friend and colleague Sarah Dowie has up until I think today—is that right Ms Dowie?Sarah Dowie: Today.CHRIS BISHOP: She has been the deputy chair—Brett Hudson: Yeah she was rolled today. She was rolled.CHRIS BISHOP: Ha ha! My colleague Brett Hudson says she was rolled today. It is a real shame for Sarah Dowie but for the last 18 months she has been a very good deputy chair of that committee. I think as other colleagues have noted it is a reasonably robust environment on the Government Administration Committee—I have sat on it once or twice—Carmel Sepuloni: Talk about the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: —but she has done a good job. Well I am talking about the good job that the Government Administration Committee did on the bill and I want to talk about Part 2. I was interested in Ms Dowie’s comments about how the select committee considered potentially introducing a savings provision and also a sunset clause into the bill. They are funny old things sunset clauses because of course sunset clauses are clauses in bills that provide that after an expiration of a particular period of time the legislation will cease to be on the statute book. Parliament does not like to legislate for sunset clauses it is fair to say so it was very interesting to hear from Ms Dowie that the Parliament—or at least the committee in this instance—had considered putting a sunset clause into the bill. [Interruption] Thank you Mr Mark Mitchell.I was also intrigued about the savings provision and I was going through the bill—it is only a short bill it has two parts and this is the chunky part as somebody has mentioned—and I was trying to think about what particular savings provisions you would include in the bill and whether you would actually need them because savings provisions of course are parts of bills that protect and carry forward pieces of legislation that you may be repealing. It is just a simple way of keeping I guess the best bits of legislation and making sure you throw out the bad bits.Of course in this particular instance what we are doing is—the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill is a long bill title but this is certainly a short bill. So this is repealing a particular piece of legislation and dissolving a particular board but it is simultaneously transferring all the property and the powers and the obligations from one particular body—that is the Associated Churches of Christ Extension and Property Trust Board—to a new charitable trust the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board. That happens simultaneously upon the commencement of this legislation and that comes into force the day after it receives the Royal assent.So I was sitting there as Ms Dowie was speaking just pondering in my mind what particular savings provisions you might need in this bill and of course Ms Dowie rightly pointed out to the Committee in the forthright manner with which she has become known in her time in Parliament that no savings provisions were required. That is why in Part 2 the chunky part of the bill we do not have any savings provisions.So what do we have in Part 2? Well we have the transfer of property rights and obligations. So from the commencement of this legislation the property rights and obligations of the old board are vested in the new board. That just harks back to what I mentioned a few moments ago which is that simultaneous transfer from one body to the new body.I particularly want to pick up on clause 5(2) of the bill which is about how the proceedings that could have been commenced or continued against the old board before the commencement of this legislation can be commenced against the new board. That is particularly important because what that means is that anyone with standing who is taking suit against the old Associated Churches of Christ Extension and Property Trust Board can take action against this new body. That is really important because we would not want to deprive people with standing of their rights under the law just because Parliament was passing a private bill.They are funny old things private bills. In the second reading I was considering how many had actually been passed over the years and it turns out that in the last decade—since the modern-day parliamentary website has gone live—there were actually nine. So you know on average we pass about 1.15 or 1.2 a year. They are odd things private bills and they tend to deal with very very small private obligations for people. It would be fair to say they are more historical quirks—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: —but they are funny old things.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Interesting history lesson but back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: Clause 7 of this part is very important. This is the important point that the old board is dissolved and that of course is part of the purpose of the bill. It is very important. I just want to also refer to—MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Mr Chair I noticed that you looked over at Grant Robertson. He has been following this debate intently throughout and I am surprised that he has not taken a call on this bill. I am very happy and pleased to take another call on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I was referring to some of the Churches that are actually involved in this group and are going to be affected by and empowered by this very important change that we are debating in the Committee tonight. I said that there are churches from the far north to the far south. I spoke about Mairangi Bay Community Church which I know personally and I want to acknowledge it. I want to acknowledge the work that it does in our communities and I also want to acknowledge its member of Parliament the Hon Murray McCully.Carmel Sepuloni: Acknowledge Part 2 of the bill.MARK MITCHELL: No I think it is important actually that I go through some of the Churches that are part of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. We have got the Freedom Community Centre in Invercargill which I am sure the outgoing deputy chair of the Government Administration Committee Sarah Dowie who is the very good member of Parliament for Invercargill would know very well. And of course her predecessor Mr Eric Roy was also heavily involved in the community as a Christian leader as well. The Reach Christian Centre in Rimutaka and the Church of Christ community in Dunedin North—I want to mention them and of course I want to mention the very good list MP for Dunedin North the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I want to mention the Unite Church in Nelson because this is really important—Brett Hudson: Can you tell us about that church please?MARK MITCHELL: Well the thing is this bill of course was brought to the House by the Hon Dr Nick Smith and the Unite Church—Brett Hudson: The local member.MARK MITCHELL: —that is right—is in Nelson. I do not know why the Opposition has got a problem with me actually highlighting some of the Churches and the areas that they operate in. Like I said I would be very keen to hear from Mr Robertson because he appears to be very engaged in the debate but he does not want to take a call. I would also like to hear some more thoughts from the member in the chair Alfred Ngaro because I do not think there is another member in the Chamber who has got more experience and more background than him. And actually—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to intervene now. It is all very well talking about where the churches are located and that is fine—that is within scope of the bill. But accolades about every member who happens to be associated with the Church within that region is really stretching it I would have to say. I am happy that you include Churches because that forms the basis—they are the Churches involved. That is fine but then to have the accolades about how your colleagues are actually associated with that region is really stretching it too far. So I ask the member to come back and be more focused on where the churches are but not then give a précis of the member who happens to be representing that particular area.MARK MITCHELL: That is a good point Mr Chair. I guess I did get a bit carried away in wanting to highlight the great work—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes that is right. I have made a ruling now and if the member just concentrates—you cannot comment on a ruling I have made. So just focus on what I have suggested you do on Part 2 and the clauses associated with that.MARK MITCHELL: Thank you Mr Chair. Like I said I am very happy to have another call on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I have got a list of about 30 churches here. I might come back to them in one of my future calls. I think it is important to name them but I am going to come back to Part 2 and the transfer of property—Carmel Sepuloni: The member was never at Part 2. What do you mean “come back” to it?MARK MITCHELL: Well I would like to if you give me a chance. I would love the member to take a call. Please take a call because I can see how engaged you are on the bill.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come on. Let us start on Part 2.MARK MITCHELL: Yes. Sorry Mr Chair—you are right. Back to Part 2 “Transfer of property rights and obligations from old board to new board”. I want to acknowledge my colleague Chris Bishop who had some insightful comments to make around this. Clause 5 is headed “Transfer of property rights and obligations” and subclause (1) states: “On and from the commencement of this Act the property rights and obligations of the old board are vested in the new board.” Mr Bishop made a very good point: this is going to be a seamless transition. That is important because obviously the new board cannot begin operating making decisions and managing its assets until the bill has the Royal assent and the new board is vested and has the authority to do that. So that was a very important point that he highlighted and raised in his contribution on this bill.CARMEL SEPULONI (Junior Whip—Labour): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I will hear from Brett Hudson. He spoke on Part 1.BRETT HUDSON (National): We move on to Part 2 and I will absolutely focus on this part of the bill. Just to recap as I did say in Part 1 when we were on that the purpose of the bill is to transfer all the existing property interests powers and obligations from the old board to the new. Here we are under Part 2 which talks specifically of that transfer—the rights the property and the obligations—from the old to the new. I think when we are making this change we can appreciate that it is about a seamless transition.Actually the bill is about giving the board—which is a new board—greater flexibility to do the right things for its constituent members by removing some of the constraints that exist under the existing legislation. It is very important in doing that that we do not abrogate any rights and that we do not actually leave someone in a worse position than they would be or remove rights particularly rights of challenge by creating new legislation that may remove an ability for a party to take action against the old board because of course the old board will no longer exist.So if I draw your attention to clause 5(2) it notes very clearly that “Proceedings that could have been commenced or continued by or against the old board before the commencement of this Act may be commenced or continued by or against the new board on and from the commencement of this Act.” This one subclause will ensure that the transition to the new board will ensure that that board retains any of the obligations that existed with the previous board under the legislation that shall be repealed and will also not prevent any parties—so a party may have a contract with the old board. It may maintain property. It may provide a service to the board—maybe a cleaning service. There are any number of services for which individuals or companies or sole trading businesses may have some form of express or implied contract with the old board.So it is very very important that in making this change that we do not suddenly wipe out the rights that those parties have to enforce their own contract provisions and to ensure that they have a means of redress a means of having issues heard with the new board. It would be quite frankly an injustice I think in terms of the intention of this bill if we have created a situation where old legislation was repealed and a new board constituted and all of a sudden people did not have rights to take action for historical issues or services. So I think it is very very important that we are taking that action and I think it is something that can give a great deal of confidence to existing service providers to the board the trust as it exists today.Along with that we have to make sure that in doing so we do not create issues that were not there to begin with. We have clause 6 with matters that are not affected by the transfer of those rights obligations and those properties. The very clear and express provision there in clause 6 for instance notes “The dissolution of the old board and the transfer of its property rights and obligations to the new board—(a) are not to be treated as placing a person in breach of or default under any contract or in breach of trust or in breach of confidence or as otherwise making the person guilty of a civil wrong;”.It goes on to say that the dissolution and transfer “are not to be treated as entitling a person” to terminate a contract to “enforce or accelerate the performance of an obligation;” or to “require the performance of an obligation …”. Those areas together are saying that if the first subclause of clause 5 was making sure that no one had their rights quashed by the creation of a new board then in the process of constituting this new board people could not use that as some sort of clever leverage to create an issue where none existed previously. The new board cannot be made to suddenly provide a different level of performance or to face an unsubstantiated allegation of an issue that did not exist—or in fact someone could not use the switch the transition as a vehicle or as an opportunity to terminate an agreement.We are protecting rights and obligations on both sides if you will—the trusts and the members of the board but also the providers of services to those trusts. I think there is still a lot more to be said on Part 2 but if we look at Part 2 the part that is giving effect to these transfers and creating the sort of necessary protections that we like to see—PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Part 2 of this bill the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill is where the real meat and substance of this measure lies.Grant Robertson: Hang up I thought you said that earlier.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: There is a local example that I want to bring into this which brings some relevance in particular to what clause 6 sets out—the positive aspects that are outlined in clause 6. There is a relevant local example that I am sure the local member Grant Robertson will be aware of. Here in Wellington Central we have a Union parish church.Grant Robertson: A couple of them actually.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: It is St Anselm’s Union Church at 30 Mākara Road and I am sure Grant is very familiar with that. So its property its assets and the services that it provides using those assets to the community from that base in Karori will be safeguarded through this legislation. This is an important point.Just to give you the background of St Anselm’s Union Church it is a small Christian community in Karori West. That is a beautiful part of town yet it is one of the less affluent areas of Wellington if you were to look at the Habitation Index for instance. It is important that the Church maintains a strong property basis so that it can continue to offer a ministry and a community service to its flock in that area. That is also a liberal community—a liberal Christian community—and I say so because in 2014 it expressed concern that the General Assembly of the New Zealand Presbyterian Church had voted to disallow members of a partnership that was not a traditional marriage to act as ministers. This comes back to the Church’s tradition of having a focus on laity ministry rather than ordained priests but that tells me that this is not only a valuable community asset but also a liberally minded one that it sent that signal to the Presbyterian Church.In terms of the assets that will be safeguarded under clause 6 it has a hall that is available to the community to rent for not-for-profit-style functions and community events. It has something called the Bell Room and I can assure you that there is no familial connection there with the Bell Room—it is so-named because there is a bell involved. But it is a nice room with tables and chairs. It is a small room that can host meetings of maybe eight to 12 people. There is a coffee room and a kitchen for those sorts of social gatherings where the grandmothers of the community might like to get together and sit around a coffee to discuss the issues of the day. And there is of course the chapel.These are the sorts of properties that clause 6 does give some very clear advice around how they are going to be transferred to the new board and also says that there will be protections there. It will protect the board from becoming guilty of a civil wrong because it has undertaken actions despite the fact that its legislation is so significantly out of date. It does not entitle a person to terminate cancel or modify contracts or arrangements pertaining to properties such as the one that I have talked about that are valuable community assets.Just to give you another example of the sorts of things that the Union parishes offer recently they had Professor Lloyd Geering member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and also of course one of the very few people to be convicted in a blasphemy trial by the Church—in a canonical church court actually not by the State of course. Professor Geering gave a series of lectures on what we owe to ancient Iraq and what we owe to ancient Iran giving the historical and archaeological background to how the modern Christian faith has been influenced by those ancient cultures in the Holy Land.Those useful community events and services and opportunities that are offered out of the properties controlled by this property trust board do need to be safeguarded—they do need to be protected. So I think it is a very positive thing that clause 6(b)(iii) very clearly states that the legislation will not entitle a person to “require the performance of an obligation not otherwise arising for performance;”. Essentially it modernises the arrangements that are in place protecting those properties without introducing a new or onerous obligation or even in some cases impossible obligations upon the trust board. That will give great assurance to members of the St Anselm’s church community—that small but very positive liberally minded church community at Mākara Road in west Karori. For that reason I think it is highly positive.ALFRED NGARO (National):My colleague Paul Foster-Bell talked about Part 2 being the meat and bones. I heard Mr PeeniHenare say: “Is it not pork bones?”. I am not sure Mr Henare but you could say that this here could be pork bones. This is the substance of the bill here in Part 2. Mr Chair I do thank you for your wise guidance in saying that in a sense all speeches especially in the Committee stage should add some relevance some new information and so I do stand with some new information that I can add to Part 2. Maybe this can be the pork and the bones for Mr Henare in this regard.We are talking about Part 2 “Transfer of property rights and obligationsfrom old board to new board”. When we talk about the old board the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board it was set up to unite Churches and to bring together the various denominations under one banner. That was the intent. So that is the sense of the old. It is an evangelical missions-based Church which is the reason why having all funds tied up in property runs counter to its reason. We talked about the flexibility of that—so that is the old sense of what it was.The laity-based tradition means that people in the pews take the lead in the service—so there are a lot of lay preachers who are actually the ones who deliver the services and preach the sermons and distribute the ordinances that are there. In other words they take communion for people as well. Each Church is an individual being and the collective is known as an association because the various congregations span the divide of the Christian expression from the Pentecostal to the conservative. My colleague Mr Mark Mitchell talked about the 30 congregations. We will not name all 30 congregations as that could take up some time but their history in New Zealand saw them seed many congregations starting in Nelson but now extending to Invercargill and Whangarei.Here is a bit of information that many may not know—again talking about Part 2 and transferring the old into the new. The forebears their ancestors the tūpuna of Minister Finlayson the Hon Annette King and also the Deputy Speaker the Hon Chester Borrows were the founders of congregations in Richmond and Spring Grove in Nelson. This included the Rev. Roger Russ who ministered in Dunedin Whanganui Onehunga and Matamata and Mr Cliff Russ—Carmel Sepuloni: How is this relevant to Part 2?ALFRED NGARO: —who was the minister in Newton St Albans in Christchurch and in Ōāmaru. In fact since I know that Ms Sepuloni would like to know the 30 churches in the 30 areas—I will not name them all but I will name a couple of churches in particular. I want to acknowledge Annesbrook in Nelson. That is where the Hon Chester Borrows was actually married. This is one those churches.Carmel Sepuloni: Is that in Part 2 of the bill?ALFRED NGARO: That is Part 2 of the bill because this is in a sense transferring the old moving into the new.In Part 2 the bill is talking about the transfer of property and the rightsobligations but we are talking about transferring the old into the new. As I have said before this is to allow the flexibility. The intent of the old legislation was that it would establish an umbrella association that would bring all the denominations from Pentecostal to those that were more conservative together but still focus on what they had in common. What they had in common was to be able to outreach into their communities. But since 1929 until where we are now it is obviously agreed that the fact is that this transfer—not just of property but of rights and obligations—is to ensure that they are then able to administer their roles of responsibilities of ministering into those communities in particular.I think it is important in the rounding up of my speech and in my contribution to this part to acknowledge the Hon Nick Smith who has brought this bill forward. I want to acknowledge the board which came and made its submission to the Government Administration Committee. There were only two submissions but I want to acknowledge Mr Altman who was the secretary and also Mr Steven Baigent who is the chair. I think they will look forward to the eventual outcome the Royal assent and the gazetting of this bill which will allow them to fulfil to perpetuity their stewardship of the Christian ministry in those churches right throughout the whole of New Zealand.I want to acknowledge that in the area of west Auckland in Te Atatū there is one of those Union churches there the Te AtatūUnion Parish but it meets at the old Te Atatū tennis club. It meets there for prayer and for services which is really important. I round off my speech and I acknowledge the role and responsibilities of the Government Administration Committee and thank it for its work.Part 2 agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.House resumed.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Sittings of the HouseJAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the end of the night at the conclusion of the members’ order of the day No. 2 or at 10 p.m. whichever is earlier.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? It appears not.Wellington Town Belt BillSecond ReadingGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I move That the Wellington Town Belt Bill be now read a second time. It is a pleasure to be returning to the House with this piece of legislation which will protect and enhance the green space that surrounds the wonderful city of Wellington known as the town belt. To remind colleagues—who I am sure continue to recall this information but it is perhaps helpful—the three main purposes of this legislation are to provide a transparent statutory basis for Wellington City Council’s trusteeship and management of the town belt on behalf of the residents of Wellington.There is a trust deed that has governed the town belt for the best part of 170 years; that trust deed continues in this legislation but we now have the statutory back-up to that to ensure that the town belt continues to fulfil the role that it has had for Wellingtonians for many many generations as a public recreation ground and green space. In addition to the trust deed there are already a number of pieces of legislation that govern the town belt including the Reserves Act the Wellington City Exhibition Grounds Act and the Wellington (City) Town Belt Reserves Act. This legislation brings the powers of all of those instruments together into one piece of legislation which I think all of us would agree is a good thing.The second purpose of the bill is to impose on the council responsibilities and powers to protect manage and enhance the town belt. The trust deed continues to be the founding and lasting form of guidance for how the town belt should be managed. However over the last 140-odd years there has been a lack of clarity of core aspects of the role given to the council under the deed and how that should be interpreted. This legislation puts to rest those doubts with a series of very clear definitions including in clause 8 of the bill providing a clear description of the legal status of the town belt. The other great virtue that this purpose of the town belt bill has is that it allows us to add land to the town belt because up until now time has been frozen back at the original creation of the town belt in 1873. Although land has been taken away from the town belt for various purposes during that time the idea of adding land has not been possible. So what this bill does is create the opportunity for us to add land to the bill and on commencement of the legislation somewhere around an extra 120 hectares of land will be added to the town belt on top of the nearly 400 hectares that we currently have and that will be a great advance for Wellington to have that land given the same protections as the town belt itself.I also want to note the third purpose of the bill around recognising the history of the town belt and its significance to mana whenua and to the inhabitants of Wellington in general. I have already noted earlier in debates on this that the history of the town belt is an interesting one and is covered in the preamble of the legislation. I think that is a very important point—it is certainly an important point for Wellingtonians that that history will now be part of the bill itself. I think that will give assurance to a lot of people that where we have come from in terms of the protection of this land is now part of the law itself. So they are the main purposes of the legislation. We had a very interesting select committee process. I want to thank all the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee for their work. I particularly want to thank the chair Scott Simpson who ran the committee well. We did have some—Hon Member: Hear hear!GRANT ROBERTSON: Perhaps I should say that again because I am not sure how often I will say that statement: I would like to thank Scott Simpson the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee for his work.We did have a number of submissions; we had around 30 written submissions on the bill and a number of those people asked to speak to the committee. In general they were very positive and very supportive of the legislation. There was a high level of agreement that it was a good idea to provide a clearer legal framework and greater certainty and clarity about the meanings of important concepts that surround the management of the town belt including the concept of public recreation. There was a desire to protect the current town belt and to be able to add land to it. There were—and it does need to be recognised—some submitters who did not support the bill; only two who outright did not support the bill and they believe that the intent of the protection of the town belt would not be enhanced by this legislation. Clearly the Wellington City Council as the organisation behind this bill does not agree or accept that.Then there were a number of submissions that proposed a variety of minor amendments to the bill some of which have been accepted and picked up. I just want to mention the two areas of concern that were raised by submitters. One of them has led to an amendment which I want to focus on a little bit in my contribution. The first area of concern was that by removing the town belt from the Reserves Act and putting those powers into this bill we would undermine the protection of the town belt as a reserve. We got very clear guidance from officials that that was not a concern; that in fact in some ways we were strengthening the powers under the Reserves Act in this legislation because we were taking on the new powers of the Reserves Act amendment that had been slowly winding its way through Parliament. I want to reassure those submitters who were concerned that there would be an undermining of the reserve status of the Wellington town belt that we have been assured that is not the case.The other area that was of some concern for submitters was the application of the Public Works Act to the town belt. This is dealt with largely under clause 23 of the bill. In the course of the select committee considering the bill the Wellington City Council and Land Information New Zealand had some discussions and an alternative clause 23 now appears in the bill. I find myself in an interesting position as the member in whose name this bill is in that it would be my preference that the original wording of clause 23 around the application of the Public Works Act to the town belt were still in the bill. But this is a local bill and it is a bill that the Wellington City Council has put forward to us; it is the language that has been agreed between the council and the Government agencies that now appears as clause 23. Clause 23 as it now is is the status quo—it reflects how things are today in terms of the ability of a Government to use the Public Works Act to take aspects of the Wellington Town Belt as it could for virtually all other land in New Zealand with some exceptions.What is now missing from clause 23 are two important points: one of those is a reference to the inhabitants of Wellington being interested parties essentially and having the right of objection. The original clause 23 reflects the trust deed for the Wellington town belt which mentions the inhabitants of Wellington as being an interested party. That clause has been removed. The other was an important process clause about the need to agree on compensation for land taken before further parts of the acquisition of land would take place. That is different from a normal Public Works Act process but it was included in the original bill by the Wellington City Council to recognise the unique status of the town belt. It would be my preference and the Labour Party’s preference if the original clause 23 was in the bill but that is not the process that has happened and I just think it is important that I outline that today.I want to mention clauses 16 and 17 where I believe there has been an inadvertent change made in the select committee that we will need to look at again in the Committee of the whole House. This is around the question of leases and licences and the granting of those. In the original drafting of the bill no more than 8 hectares in total of the town belt was to be taken under leases. That clause has now been replicated under the licences section and it is certainly not the intention of the Wellington City Council having checked with them for there to be 16 hectares i.e. 8 hectares of leases and 8 hectares of licences. So having spoken to the council we will be able to rectify that relatively easily in the Committee of the whole House stage because nobody involved in this process wants any more than 8 hectares. In fact the submitter who suggested making sure that the licences section did not contain more than 8 hectares was in fact arguing for no more than 8 hectares across both leases and licences. It is a minor point but I wanted to make sure I put it on the record in the second reading so that we can clarify that when we get to the Committee of the whole House stage.I remain very supportive of this piece of legislation. I think the Wellington City Council has undertaken good work to ensure that concerns raised by submitters have been dealt with throughout a very long period of time over a number of years. The select committee process was simply the latest in a series of consultations. We have refined the bill. There has been a very small adjustment made in terms of what the town belt is because we have removed a very small parcel of land that is still subject to a Treaty claim. We had an extensive discussion about that at the select committee. It is a small parcel of land and because it is still subject to a Treaty claim it has been taken out of the town belt. But the good news is that subject to that Treaty claim being dealt with it can be added back into the town belt because we now have a process to do that. I strongly commend this bill to the House.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee it is a great pleasure for me to rise in the second reading debate on the Wellington Town Belt Bill and report back to the House on the very good and constructive work that I think was done at the select committee. At the outset I would like to place on record my grateful thanks for the cooperation and the collegial approach taken by all members across the committee and for their work on this very special piece of legislation which will effectively modernise the trust deed that was set in place such a long time ago. In fact it was back in 1908 that the first piece of legislation around the Wellington town belt came into force. It needed modernising for a number of reasons. Those trustees who in fact established the Wellington town belt all those years ago had remarkable foresight and wisdom to have created for the good people of Wellington then now and in the future a remarkable piece of green space that is a true treasure for all Wellingtonians and indeed all New Zealanders who have the good fortune to visit Wellington and share in this space.The bill is a local bill and it is being promoted by the Wellington City Council. As the committee worked through our deliberations on the bill we were very cognisant of the fact that the Wellington City Council has put an enormous amount of effort time and energy in getting to where the bill was when presented to the House for its first reading and to the select committee as we worked through that process. I want to also acknowledge the work of the sponsor the local member of Parliament Grant Robertson for his work because he has in fact over a long number of years been very committed to progressing this through the House into its current form. It is somewhat ironic that as someone who has clearly been committed to updating this piece of legislation he found himself in the somewhat unusual situation of having to prepare a minority view report that was attached to the committee’s report. Albeit that that minority view was small and on a pretty small piece of the bill I found that slightly ironic but it was one of the vague quirks of the parliamentary system I guess—that something like that could occur and be allowed to happen.I want to acknowledge also at this stage the very significant and helpful submissions by those people and organisations that took an opportunity to provide both written and oral submissions to the committee. We received in total 31 submissions from interested groups and individuals and we heard from a total of 21. I was struck by the passion by the vigour and by the enthusiasm of those groups which were not all in agreement with each other but which all had a common passion for the Wellington town belt. It became very obvious to me as a non-Wellingtonian very early on in the submission process that in fact the green belt is held in enormously high regard by such a wide cross-section of the Wellington community and people you could not help as a non-Wellingtonian but be impressed by their passion and their enthusiasm for this remarkable space that is a green belt literally within—now—a thriving urban metropolis that is our capital city. Again thinking back to the foresight of those people who created it all that time ago you cannot help but be humbled by that.There were a variety of really interesting submissions. We went through them and gave them all consideration. There were submissions about licences and about land that was subject to Treaty settlement claims. There was concern about the bill’s potential conflict with the Public Works Act and there were a range of other issues that were raised. I would like to think that as a select committee we have gone through and we have been able to address pretty much all those concerns and I think that we have done so in a full and complete way.But Grant Robertson in his address just a few moments ago did make a point that it appears that we have been a little bit remiss in terms of the designation of this 8 hectares in terms of what is available or is going to be available for leases and licence. The intention absolutely is that only 8 hectares be available in total and that it is not a double-up or a double-down on that piece of land—that in fact it is not going to be 8 hectares of lease plus 8 hectares of licence which would be in total 16 hectares. So I think that the member need not worry. I am sure that the Committee of the whole House will find it not beyond its wit or imagination to satisfactorily conclude that matter when it comes to address this piece of legislation.So on that note I am looking forward to hearing further contributions in this second reading debate. I am looking forward to seeing this bill be discussed by the Committee of the whole House and ultimately come to third reading as promptly as is possible so that the good people of Wellington can be assured that the Wellington green belt is in good governance for the next 100 or more years and that as a Parliament we will have updated this long overdue piece of legislation but we will have done it in a way that is meaningful and positive for generations yet to come. I commend the bill to the House.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill and I mean that genuinely this time. I think that most members actually enjoy—one of the enjoyable moments of taking a call in this House is on local bills. Usually they are bills that local people have worked tirelessly for and are about what a community wants and you know that there is a great deal of individual and community effort behind a local bill actually making its way to the floor of the House. So I would like to commend the people who have worked tirelessly to bring this bill to the floor of this House the Wellington City Council for being the sponsor of this bill and I could not not commend my colleague Grant Robertson the MP for Wellington Central who has proved Rachel Hunter right—that it will not happen overnight but it will happen. As a candidate in 2008 he tirelessly campaigned on this issue and indeed mentioned it in his maiden speech that he gave to this House when he first became an MP. So I would like to commend Grant’s work and the fact that he has seen this through and that after 8 years of battling away we are actually seeing those protections given to what is an important piece of legislation.I think that what we are seeing here is the importance that people in cities place on areas such as the Wellington town belt within their city and what important spaces they are. We are also seeing the complexities because many of these spaces are in fact governed by their own trustees and indeed in some cases Acts of Parliament which do require this House to get involved—I can see you are enthralled Mr Deputy Speaker—in any changes. And there are some very technical changes that have needed to be made but fundamentally what the deeds and the legislation are all about is making sure that we ensure that these spaces endure for future generations that they do not get eroded as our cities spread and grow and intensify and that we do ensure that we keep these spaces dear.This is very much keeping to the spirit of how and why it was that throughout New Zealand we have a number of spaces like the Wellington town belt in those cities that were part of the New Zealand Company’s plan for settlement—and given Edward Wakefield’s dream of the utopia that he was going to create in New Zealand these spaces were very important. In the 1840s when Edward Gibbon Wakefield was drawing up his plans for the New Zealand settlement he was dreaming about a place where public space would be just that: public space where the park lands would not just be the preserve of the rich and the elite as they were in mid - 19th century Britain. In the colonies—in the new world—we would have these open to a number of people. This was driven by a lot of the health concerns that were rampant in 19th century Britain of course; that overcrowding was what was happening to populations in cities in Britain and that the new world would offer something different. They were called the “lungs of the city” by Edward Gibbon Wakefield who imagined that is what these reserves that would be established in the colonies would be.But you have to say he did have his eye on the main chance. It was not just health and the desire to open the lands for the people; he did also recognise that reserve lands were a good way of maintaining property values within a settlement and keeping prices up. I guess he saw externalities in providing good protections and good recreational space to people who were moving into the cities of the new lands. But I think in many ways the vision remains that lay behind why we have these reserves throughout New Zealand—in my own city Hagley Park is one of these reserves—and the protections that this bill gives to ensure and to modernise this reserve will maintain very much what is needed.If we go through these they are to “provide a transparent statutory basis for the Council’s trusteeship and management of the Wellington Town Belt” on behalf of the inhabitants of Wellington. I think we are seeing this emerge with the number of trust deeds—that there does need to be some clarification and some updating of exactly what that trusteeship and management looks like in the 21st century and to maintain those original 19th century ideals that lay behind why it was that these spaces were created. But it is also to “impose on the Council responsibilities and powers to protect manage and enhance the Wellington Town Belt.”I think one of the anomalies that other members have mentioned and I am sure that many others in their speeches after me will also mention is that in the desire to protect the town belt and to make sure that there was not an erosion of this space it was as Grant Robertson said “frozen in time”; the ability to add to this major asset for the city did not exist nor to increase the space. I think that is something that we all in this House can look on and sensibly see that if there is a desire to add to the town belt in Wellington that this is a positive thing and that we should not have a trust deed that stands in the way of doing it. That is something that needs to be tidied up.One of the other things if we look at clause 8 of the bill that provides a clear description of its legal status—the key element of this is: “The Council holds the Wellington Town Belt on behalf of the inhabitants of the city of Wellington as trustee of the trust created by the Town Belt Deed.” All this sounds incredibly dry and in many ways it is. But in many ways it is about the preservation for future generations. This is not dry; this is important. This is about our responsibility to ensure that it is not only people who have gone before us and ourselves who can enjoy these spaces but also that we do indeed ensure that they remain.For a local bill there were a number of submissions to the select committee. To have 30 submissions on a local bill I think probably shows the political engagement of this particular area of New Zealand and the fact that the chance to submit will never be lost on a Wellingtonian. I think that is probably one of the things that it shows—to receive 30 submissions on this and only two of them against the bill in its entirety. But it being a bill about central Wellington the submissions did offer some very useful suggestions along the way and some tidy-ups were made. Mr Simpson mentioned it in his speech—one of the things that struck me as a non-Wellington member of the select committee was the passion of the people who did come and speak to the committee; the people for whom this is a very special part of their city showed that this was something that they were more than willing to give up their time to make a submission on and come to the committee and have their voices heard in their desire to ensure that this space is preserved for future generations. So I would like to commend those people and to thank them for their work.Grant Robertson has talked about some of the changes that were made at select committee; he spoke specifically about clause 23 and about how some of the changes that were made to clause 23 now reflect the status quo rather than an improvement that could have been made. That was in many ways an opportunity lost. None the less because our member for Wellington Central says so Labour is very happy to commend this bill to the House.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua. Tēnā koutoukatoa e ngā mema o Te Whare. In rising to take a brief call on the Wellington Town Belt Bill in the second reading debate I think I need to be gracious and congratulate the local member Grant Robertson on getting this bill into the House and for progressing this piece of local legislation. I used to think Grant and I agreed on one thingonly and that is that we both wanted David Cunliffe to lose the last election. But now we have found a second thing which is that the Wellington town belt is an important asset and amenity for the people of this city and it does need to be protected within a modernised regime.I wonder whether the ordinary person in the street will go through the details of the bill. In fact I am almost certain that the vast majority of Wellington’s citizens will not. But as other members have pointed out it is exceptional that over 30 submitters—20 of whom asked to submit in person—took the time to make their views known on what is a fairly technical piece of legislation. I do think we need to ask the question in this House about what the ordinary person the average person would make of the provisions and how sensible they are. I am not going to use Lord Denning’s “the ordinary man on the Clapham omnibus”; I think we can find a more modern version of this test. Let us call this the ordinary person—let us use the name “Alistair” for instance. So Alistair is an enlightened person. He enjoys walking through the greenery of the town belt. He is a fit person—a lot of Wellingtonians are getting themselves a bit fitter. I try to walk up the hills a little bit to work off some of that weight. Alistair is a fit person but he is an enlightened man. He values the environment but he is also pragmatic and sensible.He will want to ensure that for instance the provisions of the Public Works Act 1981 do continue to apply so that if the transport situation becomes untenable—as it has become in the Basin Reserve where we have now over 100 percent close to 110 percent capacity on that particular crucial arterial route out of our capital city to the airport. If that becomes such a major issue that the Government is obligated to act under the Public Works Act to put through a transport corridor I think Alistair—the enlightened man the ordinary man in the street—would look at that and say that is something that is sensible. The amendment that was put through in the Local Government and Environment Committee and agreed to by the majority is that the Public Works Act 1981 continues to apply in full force to this precious area that we do want to protect. I think that is a sensible and pragmatic move. We heard evidence in the committee including from the local lines company that this was important. It is important in a city that is prone to earthquakes that we maintain for instance the ability to rig temporary emergency power lines through the town belt to plug in the hospital in Newtown and to keep a critical emergency service operating in the event of a catastrophe of the sort that we have seen recently in Christchurch. That was a pragmatic sensible measure that I am sure Alistair would approve of.One part of the bill that I think is of particular interest is actually the preamble which contains whakatauki—a Māori saying: tumutumu parea rākau parea whānui te ara ki a Tāne [ward off post and weapon so that the expansive path of mankind is opened up]. This is unusual I think in the vast majority of non - Treaty settlement-related legislation that we have that kind of whakatauki containedin the bill. We also acknowledge the mana whenua of this area—those who inhabited it before the colonial settlers arrived.I noted that the member who resumed her seat before I stood up Megan Woods referred to the 19th century principles and policies that prevailed in the formation of the town belt. Some might argue that those 19th century policies are still evident in the Labour Party’s trade position for instance and other economic development policies that it has been promulgating. But this is a bill where it is not appropriate to take political pot shots. I mean I come back to welcoming it to congratulating the local member and to adding my voice to those of others who have welcomed a piece of legislation that will continue to safeguard such a precious amenity going forward for the next 150 years and more. I commend this bill to the House.JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is a delight to stand in support of the Wellington Town Belt Bill. I would just like to start by commenting on some of the things that I have previously heard so far in this second reading debate. One can usually rely on Paul Foster-Bell to politicise what is usually a completely non-political and non-controversial bill. But then it is generally Paul’s self-bestowed role to defend indefensible causes and in so doing on this occasion preserve the ability of Government to knock a seven-lane highway through the town belt which of course it has managed to do.In referring to “Alastair” I am presuming he was referring to his colleague Alastair Scott a Wellington Central resident and the MP for Wairarapa and a keen follower of National Party orthodoxy along with Mr Foster-Bell himself.The Green Party does support this bill. I will refer to some of the clauses that have been referred to by previous speakers as well particularly clause 23. But I would like to start by just acknowledging the effort that has gone into shepherding this bill through particularly on behalf of the member of Parliament for Wellington Central Grant Robertson who as has been mentioned has done a sterling job of this over a number of years. This bill has been in development in its current form since 2010. As was mentioned previously Mr Robertson did start work on this in 2008 but he has told me a story in which he actually first met some of the key stakeholders and shall I say objectors to this legislation as far back as 2001—well before he became a member of Parliament and when the seat for Wellington Central was merely a glint in his eye. I think this has been a bill that has had a very long gestation period and I do want to acknowledge Mr Robertson for his leadership on this. I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the Wellington City Council and the many people around the Wellington City Council who have been part of the process up to this point.I would like to acknowledge that this bill actually came to the House complete and having already received 250 submissions. Before the bill even got to its first reading 250 people had submitted on it it had been through a full process it was beautifully drafted it had already passed parliamentary counsel and I would have thought actually that at that point it was pretty much ready to pass through virtually all stages of the House.But of course we know that the Government did object to the idea that the bill might provide a barrier to its ability to complete its roads of national significance programme particularly its intention of putting up to seven lanes of motorway on the Hātaitai side of the Mount Victoria Tunnel and it was not going to allow that to happen. That is where the changes to the bill that have been made subsequent to its initial drafting have come from. There I am referring of course to clause 23 “Application of Public Works Act 1981”.As the bill is not in my name I may have a little more latitude to speak around clause 23. One of the things that Mr Robertson mentioned is that the bill as amended removes the clause that said that Wellingtonians were interested persons in this bill. As a number of speakers have already mentioned Wellingtonians are actually very interested persons in their town belt and so it is a great shame that that clause has been changed the way that it has and that Wellingtonians do not have the rights to act as interested persons under the law which they did have in the initial draft of the bill.As I mentioned the main objection from the Government side here which had to be accounted for in order to get the bill passed at all was really the ability to apply the Public Works Act so that the Government could complete the roads of national significance programme through to the airport.I do think that we did manage to shift that at least a wee bit so that it was not just in reference to specific roads because making a law that is supposed to last for perhaps another 100 years or longer to apply with a single project in mind is actually quite bad law. Even though there was that objection that change in that clause I feel that it actually made it through the select committee process and was improved with that in mind.I do also want to acknowledge that there were a number of submitters—and actually there have been people all the way through this process—who have been concerned about whether this bill undermines the town belt in terms of its reserve status. I want to say that I and the Green Party are also satisfied based on the best advice that we received—and there was a lot of very high quality advice received—that not only does it not weaken the status of the town belt it actually does enhance it. So the Green Party does support the bill despite our reservations around the changes to clause 23. It is a great thing that what has been a multiplicity of law gets cleaned up that the future governance arrangements have been dealt with and that the town belt’s legal status is much clearer now—or that once the bill passes and becomes law it will be a lot clearer.Also I am very pleased to note that this legislation actually does increase the size of the town belt and so it does restore to some extent the original vision. One of the most fascinating parts of the process for me as we have been examining the bill was looking at the original maps of the original town belt reservation. If only we had managed to preserve that original intention it would be an even more glorious space for Wellington even more of an actual belt—you can actually see it as a belt when you see those original maps and get some idea of the vision of the people who originally put this together.The third thing that I would like to say about it—and a number of other Green Party members who have spoken on this bill previously have also mentioned it—is that this bill does recognise mana whenua and does provide a pathway to recognition of the original rights and ownership of Māori here in the Wellington region. We think that goes some way towards the post-colonial nature because of course the original town belt was a deeply colonial construct. This does move us forward into the future and we are really satisfied with that.As a Wellingtonian as someone who has lived inside the town belt in the times that I have lived in Wellington as I was growing up—Grant Robertson: In houses as opposed to—JAMES SHAW: —in houses in the town belt; not on leased land and so on but shall I say within the confines of the town belt. I grew up here and explored it many times as I grew up. It is a real source of pride to me that we are now moving this bill through the House. Thank you.JOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take a short call on the Wellington Town Belt Bill sponsored by the member Grant Robertson.“Tumutumu parea rākau parea whānui te ara ki a Tāne” a whakataukī by Te Wharepōuri Te Kakapi-o-Te-Rangi a man who had foresight. The whakataukī says: “Ward off post and weapons”. He had foresight when he saw those colonial ships come into Wellington Harbour and he thought: “Down with the weapons here comes some opportunity for us the iwi of Pōneke.” He also saw that on those ships would be a number of colonial settlers and he thought this was an opportunity for Māori in the Wellington Harbour.The New Zealand Company was formed in 1839 in London. Its job was to help people from England I suppose to come and settle here. Around about that time the iwi groups had a take raupatu of all the lands within the Wellington Harbour. They were Te Atiawa at Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara and parts of the south-west coast Taranaki and Ngāti Ruanui at Te Aro Ngāti Tama at Kaiwharawhara and its environs and parts of the south-west coast and Ngāti Toa Rangatira at parts of the south-west coast as well. We have heard from the member Grant Robertson that these matters to do with Treaty of Waitangi claims are well in hand and it is very pleasing to hear that.As members in the House have already said in their contributions this bill has been amended to replace clause 23 to clarify that the Public Works Act 1981 applies to the town belt. This is important for Wellington. I have lived here off and on excluding my time as a parliamentarian. I have worked here for the seafood industry and lived here. I think it is time Wellington’s development really boomed along and I think this is what this bill is going to enable Wellington to do. It is a good bill. From what I have heard from the many contributions in the House today it is one of those bills that has been a long time coming so to that end I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Well looking at the clock I do not think we have much more time in this session. I know that most of the aspects of this bill have been well traversed by people. I do actually want to make a couple of comments. I do know that there was I think one objection—Grant Robertson: A couple of them.RON MARK: —a couple of objections—to the passage of this bill. I guess without naming people I will try to speak a little bit to some of those concerns. I have to compliment the Parliamentary Library too for the work it has done in the background on these wonderful debate packs and the Bills Digests and everything. It gives anyone who really wants to understand what has happened with this bill—the passage of this bill and how it made it here—the background behind the Wellington City Council’s decision to have MP Grant Robertson bring this bill to the House. I just recommend to the people who wish to know a little bit more that they enter that space and have a quiet read.I do find and I think I have said it earlier that there is a similarity between this bill and the way in which Wellingtonians feel about their green belt and that which I experienced when I first went down to Christchurch back in the 1970s and when I was there in the 1990s at a time when actually I stood for Labour as a member of Parliament against Ruth Richardson. I stood against Ruth Richardson in 1993. One of the issues—Todd Muller: The madness of youth.RON MARK: Oh we had a ball down there Mr Muller. We ran Ruth Richardson hot to the wire. She almost lost her seat did she not? She did lose her appointment but I digress. And then she resigned spat the dummy and we had a by-election.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the bill.RON MARK: Back to the bill. At that time there was a very strong voice in Canterbury within Christchurch in particular for the preservation of the green belt that existed around Christchurch. It is interesting when I read some of the commentary—and particularly the words of Helene Ritchie as quoted in this document. She described the green belt of Wellington as being “the lungs of our city. It fosters growth health public recreation and the natural heritage in the coolest little capital in the world.”Those words are very very similar to the thoughts and the views expressed by Cantabrians when they fought unsuccessfully as it turned out to retain the green belt in Christchurch. We saw a lot of things happening down in Christchurch as a result of that breakdown of their green belt that the people who submitted on this bill said they did not want to see here in Wellington. Whether or not they were in tune with what had happened down in Christchurch I have no knowledge of but what is clear is that their thinking their thoughts their aspirations and their hopes were very much the same.There are people who have objected to this bill and have made their objections very clear. I guess from the New Zealand First perspective one amendment to clause 23 that we are very pleased about and it has been mentioned here this evening on numerous occasions by various speakers is that the Local Government and Environment Committee recommended changes to the bill to clarify that the Public Works Act 1981 applies to this town belt. The recommended new clause would mean that the council could not sell the town belt land for public works but would not change powers under the Public Works Act. This was agreed by the Wellington City Council.I actually deliberately read that out for the benefit of Government members who might think that we are stupid. They might think that we on the Opposition benches are dumb. I am not saying that because the Government members on the Local Government and Environment Committee did not agree. They did. But I am actually referring to recent changes that this Government has rammed through the House and recent things that it has done. When you look at this bill and you look at the concerns raised by people who still email me—I have got an email sitting right beside me from a person saying: “This bill does not protect the town belt. This bill does not prevent the Crown coming in and taking the town belt or pieces of it under the Public Works Act.” What it does do is it stops the city council. What it does do is send a clear indication from Parliament that that should not be allowed to happen. I do not need to discuss some things that this Government has done recently because we will talk about them more in another forum at another time when we expose that to the public of New Zealand. But the changes to the legislation have cemented in and have we believe taken care of some of those concerns held by those few people who did object to this bill going through.We take satisfaction from the fact that the bill does give greater protection to the integrity of the Wellington town belt. It does give a clear and legal definition of the extent of the town belt—something that never existed before. It does modernise the legislation which dates back to 1871—a lot of things have happened since then. Paul Foster-Bell was born.Brett Hudson: In 1871?RON MARK: So was that gentleman over there. The deed had become contentious in the fact that it was difficult to interpret and therefore able to be misinterpreted and therefore able to be misapplied. This bill tidies up the legal definition. This bill brings modern legislation into play. It makes it possible to administer the town belt protect it enhance it and grow it within the context of modern law. It gives a clear expression of the entitlement of the inhabitants to freedom of entry and access to the town belt—unequivocal.There are significant restrictions and controls on new buildings but the bill recognises that there are roads and infrastructural assets running through what was the green belt and therefore these provisions should not apply to those—otherwise how would you ever maintain those roads? How would you ever be able to dig up those parts that actually have infrastructure buried within them? It takes care of those issues that might arise from modern technology and the need to be able to move power lines and such across. The bill gives greater powers to the inhabitants to have the standing to be able to object to any compulsory acquisition of land by the Crown were that ever to be again proposed. We have already heard from speakers how that was proposed by the Government which wanted to slap a motorway through it and expand its roads of national significance.To conclude New Zealand First is very happy to support this bill. We congratulate Grant Robertson on bringing this bill to the House. We thank the select committee for its diligence and thank Scott Simpson and the members of his team for working with everybody. I think the Local Government and Environment Committee should once again take a pat on the back for being able to work in a very collegial manner towards achieving something very worthwhile and something that the inhabitants and the governors of Wellington City will be very pleased to see when the bill is finally passed at its third reading. Thank you very much.BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of this the Wellington Town Belt Bill. I think this is going to be a speech of two halves as I watch the clock tick over another notch. I would like to start by acknowledging the diligence and efforts of the local MP Grant Robertson—a man who as has been noted mentioned this town belt in his maiden speech and has been working for some time to get to this point. I am sure we are all going to support him in seeing this bill successfully enacted.I did state some criticism of the state of the bill as it was originally introduced to the House. I do note that Mr Robertson was not thrilled with that criticism at the time of the first reading but I am very pleased to see the state of the bill as it has come back from the Local Government and Environment Committee particularly around the area of clause 23 and the Public Works Act and I will come to that I suspect probably when speaking on Part 2.I first note that the Wellington town belt is important to all Wellingtonians. It stretches about 400 hectares and stretches in a bit of a horseshoe.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.BRETT HUDSON: Time for part two of the thrilling instalment in the Wellington Town Belt Bill. Before we went to satiate our hunger I was talking about the nature of the Wellington town belt and its shape extending in a bit of a horseshoe from Mount Victoria around to its greatest point at the northern edge of Te Ahumairangi Hill—Simon O’Connor: Where sorry?BRETT HUDSON: —which is the border with the greatest electorate in all of New Zealand Ōhariu. That is a fact that bears repeating time and time again—so almost 400 hectares of town belt. Actually there are no Ginsu steak knives but we are going to get an extra 130-odd hectares in this deal because there is about that much that the town council treats as town belt as if it is actually parks and reserves. In the end we will end up with about 520 hectares of town belt under this bill once it is enacted.Something that I was saying is that the town belt is something that all Wellingtonians can appreciate. I think we come together in a consensus in the House that this is a very good measure to protect that land into the future particularly to make it easy for the council to manage under a single piece of legislation. But there was one area that I had concerns about when the bill was introduced into the House and that was around clause 23 or the potential carve-outs to the Public Works Act which I felt were both unnecessary and unwise. In a sense if they had progressed forward it would have created almost two tiers of acquisition under the notional auspices of public works—the actual Public Works Act itself which will be used for everything else and then this Wellington Town Belt Bill which would give a special provision to the Wellington town belt and the Wellington town belt only.One would ask oneself: why on earth would you do that? I looked into it. I could not see any real reason why the Public Works Act would not apply as well to the Wellington town belt particularly the road reserve that exists along part of it today. I could not see that it would apply any less well to that environment than it applies in any other. In my own personal circumstances in the past I have had a property that was looking to be subject to compulsory acquisition under the Public Works Act. So having a personal interest I took some effort to look into what that actually meant. I discovered that it meant that there are several valuations taken and that the valuation of the land is made on the basis that the works are not going ahead or in other words were assured under that Act the provisions of the Public Works Act to get a very fair and reasonable compensation for the land that is acquired. So I could not see any reason why you would say there would be a need to have a carve-out from a perfectly good Act and provisions in the Wellington Town Belt Bill.So I am very pleased that the Wellington City Council agreed to amending clause 23 and that the carve-out has been removed. I think that with that change what we are left with is precisely the sort of bill we want to see—one that will provide protection for the town belt that will make it a much easier thing to manage and that does not create multiple tiers as I said in the area of compulsory acquisition of land. So on that note I would simply like to say that I commend this bill to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Jan Logie—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on the Wellington Town Belt Bill which is a local bill that has been introduced by Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson. I commend him for what I understand has been a very long journey possibly starting in 2010 working with the council and interested Wellingtonians to get this bill to this second reading this evening. I also offer my commiserations that it is not in the form that any of those parties would have ideally chosen.In the words of one submitter the extensive crescent shaped landscape of trees and tracks is an essential part of the character of our capital city. It provides for recreation. It acts as the lungs for an urban environment of otherwise high carbon emissions. Its presence across the whole inner city has allowed for the return of otherwise rare and endangered native birds within the urban landscape a unique situation in New Zealand. Seeking to protect and grow this town belt this beautiful place that provides so much to this city is undeniably important.I would also like to again specifically acknowledge the mana whenua of Wellington and the fact that this bill provides recognition of their historical loss and grievance and sets up a co-governance structure in recognition of that. I would like to specifically acknowledge Te Ātiawa Ngāti Ruanui Taranaki Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Toa Rangatira who all had land taken from them for the town belt in the original settlement of Wellington.I would also like to note that an amendment has been made in the select committee process removing an area of land from this bill that may be subject to future Treaty claims and a settlement or may be subject to the right of first refusal under previously enacted settlement legislation. It is appropriate that that has happened through the select committee process. So these things are all good. We are protecting a good for this city and for the country as a whole indeed. But I do need to acknowledge my disappointment that the intent of Wellingtonians and I can only assume mana whenua as well to protect the town belt from acquisition under the Public Works Act has not been delivered by this bill as returned to the House. In fact the provisions as initially tabled in this House which we felt were a major compromise have indeed sadly been further weakened through the select committee process.A major driver for this bill was the desire to see the town belt exempt from pressures of the Public Works Act as Hagley Park in Christchurch is protected from incursions and as my colleague Catherine Delahunty is seeking to protect Māori land from acquisitions in the future—that not one more acre be taken. But things when they were moving that way in the public consultations with the Wellington City Council—and there were over 200 submissions I hear that were heard at that stage of the process before it came to this House—the New Zealand Transport Agency intervened and managed to persuade the Government that the compromise that the council had reached was not supportable. The Government then said that it would vote this bill down at its first reading unless the council agreed to some changes that had been put forward by the New Zealand Transport Agency. So at the first reading we were given a bill that did not actually reflect the desires of the community and that had been undermined by central government.It is sad to have to say that those provisions that we were concerned about at the first reading have been further eroded through the select committee process to the extent that I understand there is now essentially no difference between how the Public Works Act might apply to non - green belt land in Wellington and green-belt land. That is a real shame because that was the major driver for many people to have this bill come forward. It was to actually just put a line in the sand and say that this is a precious resource that cannot be taken and our roads are not worth the sacrificing of more of this land. Green spaces in our land are precious. We will support this bill. It is a shame it is as compromised as it is.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Rino Tirikatene—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Labour Party.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to speak at the second reading of the Wellington Town Belt Bill and I am also very proud to include the whole of the Wellington town belt within my electorate.Hon Member: That’s true. That’s the one member who can say that.RINO TIRIKATENE: I can. I can say that and all of it is wonderful. It is all wonderful. In fact I do have memories at Wellington College running up Mount Alfred. We had this track which we called the “gutbuster”. We had to run up that track so I definitely know all the tracks and the routes and the trails through certain parts of the town belt very well.I do support this bill. I acknowledge my colleague Grant Robertson the outstanding local member who has been working with the Wellington City Council to promote this bill.Carmel Sepuloni: The other outstanding local member.RINO TIRIKATENE: The other one—absolutely. I will give him No. 1. I will give him No. 1. But I do acknowledge the work that has gone into this bill up to this point.I do regret that clause 23 was amended. It is a shame that the Local Government and Environment Committee was not able to be unanimous in its consideration and deliberations on the bill because that was what was originally drafted and put into the bill through a lot of work and consultation that the council had undertaken. So that is regrettable but—be that as it may—we do support the bill.I just want to add some remarks. Today in the House we have had Treaty settlements with Te Atiawa in Taranaki and also Taranaki Iwi and it is good to see that there is recognition of the mana whenua in this Wellington town belt legislation because from 1839 to the 1860s the town belt was Māori land. We have heard different stories about one Edward Gibbon Wakefield. There are different views of that gentleman and the New Zealand Company depending on whom you talk to.We have heard that he was a great visionary and that he had foresight in terms of the creation of the town belt but we also know that he hatched a cunning plan he set up a company and basically he said: “Invest in me guys and I can go to the farthest end of the world and sell you somebody else’s land.” So there are two sides to the history of our country and all I would say is that it is great that that is recognised in the preamble albeit in just a very short paragraph.To go into it a bit further I would encourage people to read Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara report of the Waitangi Tribunal and also the Port Nicholson Block claims settlement and the Taranaki Whānui legislation of 2009 where you can get a more full picture of the history of the dealings of the New Zealand Company and of the Whānau Wakapiri or the Wakefield whānau.Be that as it may as Wellingtonians as citizens of this city and as representative members for this city we are very proud of the town belt. It is part and parcel of Wellington you know and it is great that we are able to strengthen and grow the town belt under the provisions of this bill. We are updating a trust deed that is like over 140 years old. So it is very sensible that we bring it up to date we modernise it and we give it some standing by putting it in legislation and giving it the weight of a statute in Parliament. I commend this bill at its second reading. Kia ora tātou.CHRIS BISHOP (National): Mr Tirikatene just said that the Wellington town belt is part and parcel of Wellington. Well I would actually go further than that. He is right of course; it is part and parcel of Wellington. But actually it is hard to imagine Wellington—the great city of Wellington—without the town belt. It is hard to envisage this fantastic city with all of the things that make it so great. It is hard to imagine Wellington without that town belt which has been so eloquently described by my colleagues across the House not only on my side of the House but also across the House in the debate this evening. It is a taonga of Wellington. It is a treasure of Wellington. It is something to be admired and to be retained and to treasure in this great city. So it is part and parcel of Wellington but actually as I say it is hard to imagine Wellington without the town belt.I take a great deal of interest in the town belt. I have walked there I have tramped in it and I have experienced the outdoors in it. Actually most Wellingtonians probably when they think about it over the years that they have been Wellingtonians will have experienced the town belt and probably have not ever turned their mind to its legal status. They will not have turned their mind to how it exists in a legal form—who manages it who operates it. They probably have not even thought about that. They just take it for granted because the forefathers of Wellington had the vision and the foresight to set aside green spaces for Wellington—Catherine Delahunty: Foremothers.CHRIS BISHOP: —and foremothers as well. Thank you Miss Delahunty. I do just want to pick up on a comment that Jan Logie made. She said that green places are important. It was a classic Green Party speech. The Greens have this odd idea that they have a monopoly on ecological wisdom that they have a monopoly on environmental protection that the Green Party is the only party in Parliament that can stand up for the environment that only they care about fresh water that only they care about clean rivers and lakes and that only they care about climate emissions and things like that. So we hear this sanctimonious drivel often. But actually all parties in Parliament care about green spaces. The National Party certainly cares about setting aside particular parts of our land mass and our country that cannot be developed.Actually it has been a great week for that concept because this was the week that the Government introduced the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill and put it through its first reading. So this is a great week for the environment a great week for conservation and a great week for the idea and the concept that there are some things so sacred that they should be set aside for future generations to enjoy later on—that concept of preserving things for future generations that highly conservative concept. Indeed we are a conservative party along with being a liberal party. So it has been a great week for that. I want to pay tribute to the Local Government and Environment Committee for the important work that it has done on this bill at the select committee chaired by Scott Simpson. He has done a great job. I also want to say that Grant Robertson has done a good job of shepherding this bill through to its second reading stage in the House.I want to make just two points about the importance of this bill. Firstly it actually strengthens the protection for the Wellington town belt because interestingly its current status is that it is recognised or is managed by the Wellington City Council under a trust deed. It is an odd legal quirk I guess you could say but that is the way it has been and that is what happened back in 1873. So actually putting this into legislation as a local Act will strengthen it in some ways or at least give the Wellington town belt the imprimatur of greater legitimacy and greater legislative protection—I think that is important. The second thing is as my good colleague Brett Hudson has pointed out that we do not get any Ginsu steak knives out of this bill but we do get another 130 hectares of reserve and open-space land added to the Wellington town belt.Just finally in terms of the Public Works Act we have heard some discussion and we have just heard some comments from Jan Logie about the Public Works Act. I agree with the amendments that have been made to the bill by the Local Government and Environment Committee. I think they are sensible amendments. I have got to say that I have read the Labour Party minority view in the select committee report; I think it makes a plausible case. I think I can sort of see where it is coming from but I actually think that where the majority got to on the committee was the right approach which was to bring what will become a local Act into line with the provisions of the Public Works Act. I think that seems sensible and so I do not really see the Labour case. I can understand where Labour is coming from in its minority report but I think really the majority of the select committee members came to the right judgment.The Wellington town belt is something that is very important that we recognise in Wellington. It is something that as I said earlier many Wellingtonians would not even realise is called the town belt because it is just inherent in what makes Wellington this fantastic city and region that it is. It is I think a good bill and I think one that will receive widespread support in the House. With that I commend the bill to the House.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti):Tēnā koe MrDeputy Speaker e ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātou katoa. Ko Kahunāraki Te Maunga ko Tukituki Te Awa ko Kahumoko Te Manga ko Ngāti Papatuamaro ko Ngāti Tamaterā ko Ngāti Te Rehunga ko Ngāti Ngaherengarengare ngā hapū ko Pūhara Te Tangata ko Houngarea Te Whare ko Rākaihikuroa Te Tekoteko ko Tāwirirangi Te Whare Kai ko Houngarea Te Marae ko te ihu ko te rae tīkina houhia te rongo.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker and acknowledgments to you all members of the House. Kahunāraki is the mountain Tukituki is the river Kahumoko is the stream. The hapū are Ngāti Papatuamaro Ngāti Tamaterā Ngāti Te Rehunga and Ngāti Ngaherengarengare. Pūhara is the man Houngarea is the meeting house Rākaihikuroa is the carved figure on its gable Tāwirirangi is the dining room Houngarea is the marae. From the nose to the forehead fetch the peace and instil it.]At 4 o’clock this morning I rose with my family to join hundreds of my kinspeople to celebrate the 100-year celebration of the whare tīpuna at Houngarea in Pakipaki a small settlement just south of Hastings. On the return of the 28th Māori Battalion this was the marae where the Ngāti Kahungunu contingent returned to its people. I know that the last commanding chief was the grandfather of my colleague Peeni Henare Sir James Hēnare. I mention that because our 28th Māori Battalion soldiers left from the wharf in Wellington. So it gives me great pleasure to stand and rise in support of the Wellington Town Belt Bill.The bill strengthens the protection of and modernises the governance arrangements for the Wellington town belt to ensure it is there to benefit all current generations and all future generations. For over 170 years the town belt has been a reserve for the public to enjoy providing a scenic backdrop to the city and recreational opportunities. Over time there have been some I guess challenges around the legal status of the town belt and some land has been taken from it for other purposes.I do want to acknowledge the work of the Wellington City Council and we have got Helene Ritchie in the gallery. I want to mihi to you for the work that you have done in bringing this bill to the House. I also acknowledge my colleague Grant Robertson for his tenacity and perseverance to get us to this point and of course the work of the Local Government and Environment Committee of which I am a proud member.The main purpose of the bill—everybody has described it and I support it wholeheartedly—is about providing more protection through the city council around the Wellington town belt. It will also bring clarity in terms of bringing all the respective pieces of legislation—namely the Wellington City Reserves Act the Wellington City Exhibition Grounds Act and the Wellington (City) Town Belt Reserves Act—under one Act so that has to be a good thing. The bill also aims to impose on the council responsibilities and powers to protect manage and enhance the town belt. In clause 8 there is obviously an explanation of the town belt as a public recreation ground and it goes into defining what a public recreation ground is. Clearly it is an area provided for recreation and sporting activities and the enjoyment of the public.I consider myself pretty much a Wellingtonian having spent 7 months short of 25 years both working in Wellington and living in the Wellington region. In my younger days I represented this province in netball and represented the Hutt in softball. A lot of these areas that we mention as being part of the town belt are grounds that I have played on and was able to achieve on in sport. So from a very personal point of view my early days here in Wellington in the mid-1980s allowed me that opportunity. Today in 2016 although the body is not as fit as it used to be I do enjoy the walks through the Botanic Gardens and the occasional mountain bike ride up Polhill to—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Come to Les Mills with Stuart and me.MEKA WHAITIRI: —the viaduct at the top. Ha ha! Maybe. But this is a great celebration. It is great to hear all the contributions from all sides of the House in support of this bill.Of course the issue around the public works legislation change has been mentioned. I am sure that the council is happy with that and it will look at addressing any particular concerns through another mechanism.But my contribution in support of this bill is really—and others have touched on it—about the preamble. I do not want to reread it out but I want to acknowledge that our history as New Zealanders in the country does stem from land issues that go back historically and my colleague Mr Tirikatene mentioned Wakefield’s New Zealand Company. We all have shared and different histories and for me the preamble should be used as an exemplar as a starting point for our telling our stories through legislation. That preamble for me talks about the acknowledgment of the tīpuna and the iwi who were here and the vision of the early settlers. I think that this is a good piece of legislation like I said to be used when we are modernising legislation that goes back into the last century.There have been calls that if people want a more in-depth understanding of our history they should read some of the settlement documentation but I would like to go a step further and suggest that a lot of that history should actually be taught in our schools. I really believe that our future generations are going to be the conduits of our history warts and all. That is why I say that we should go a step further and encourage our education system to take the time to read about the history of this great nation and the struggles that we have had between the two races. But we are in a time of reconciliation and that is why I am saying you know that I put the challenge out there to all members of the House that we should be doing this more as a matter of course as opposed to it being an exception.Back to the bill—I am happy to join with all members in this House. It meets the requirement of having the protections. It makes it very clear in terms of the respective legislation. I think it is a good piece of legislation well researched and well submitted on from those who came in front of the select committee. I do not have anything more to add other than to support the call to put this bill to the House and support it at its second reading. Kia ora tātou.NUK KORAKO (National): Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. Like many visitors to Wellington I have long admired the town belt. When seeing Wellington from above what stands out is that this compact and crowded city has such a great green expanse running through it. Of course as an MP from Christchurch I am proud of the green spaces that our city has—as its name says it is the Garden City. The beautiful Port Hills where I am based is a beautiful beautiful place. But like these areas in Christchurch it is clear that the town belt is a treasure to the residents of Wellington a taoka.In preparing for this speech I was fascinated to read the preamble of the bill which lays out some of the history of our capital city and the town belt. It may be said that the New Zealand Company displayed great foresight in setting aside large tracts of land to form reserves that would never be built on.But I would like to point out something that was highlighted today in the extended sitting this morning around the three Treaty settlement bills and that is that subsequent acquisition by the Crown was done with no consultation or compensation of the iwi groups with interests in this area. This has been highlighted quite a lot in the speeches tonight. There is something and I covered it then during the extended sitting—both the New Zealand Company and the Crown worked hard to establish a new city and an environment for the benefit of European settlers but the well-being of Māori and the property rights of mana whenua actually went out the window. This injustice was addressed though when the historical claims of Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika and Ngāti Toa Rangatira were settled in 2008 and 2012 respectively. Some of the cultural redress provided to these iwi concerned the town belt such as renaming the hill that rises behind Parliament to Te Ahumairangi Hill. Parts of the Wellington town belt are of particular significance to mana whenua and in addition the town belt itself has come to carry great importance to the residents of Wellington.This bill provides a statutory basis for the Wellington City Council to continue managing the town belt on behalf of all Wellingtonians. It also seeks to impose responsibilities on the council and to provide it with the appropriate powers to protect manage and enhance the town belt. The third purpose of the bill is less practical but of distinct significance; in particular it is of importance to mana whenua with a historic connection to areas of the town belt. That purpose is to recognise the history of the town belt and the significance it carries for mana whenua and Wellington residents.The relationship of mana whenua to the town belt has been recognised in the deeds of settlement as has the fact that breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi occurred in these areas. The affected mana whenua have now had full and final settlements but it is important and appropriate that the significance of mana whenua to the land be recognised on an ongoing basis. If we move into Part 1 of the bill itself we find that the role of mana whenua is further recognised. In clause 4 the principles of the bill require that in performing its role the council has regard to the principle that “the Wellington Town Belt should be managed in partnership”—in partnership—“with mana whenua”.I would like to cover as my colleagues have done some of the changes that the Local Government and Environment Committee has recommended be made to this bill. One of the major changes is an amendment to bring the bill into line with the Public Works Act 1981. This came about due to concerns raised by the New Zealand Transport Agency and Land Information New Zealand about the application of the Public Works Act to the town belt. This could have negatively impacted upcoming highway developments particularly the second tunnel that is proposed through Mount Victoria. By introducing uncertainty to the whole process the bill as originally drafted could have delayed these projects and thereby delayed the benefits of reduced congestion and an improved public transport system that they are expected to deliver to Wellingtonians.The recommended amendment replaces clause 23 of the bill with a new clause clarifying the application of the Public Works Act 1981 to the town belt. Under this amendment the council cannot sell town belt land for public works but otherwise the normal provisions of the Public Works Act apply. We believe that this is an appropriate balance between allowing important developments to proceed without undue delay ensuring a proper process is followed if the town belt is to be affected by any such developments and protecting the special nature of the town belt itself.The Local Government and Environment Committee has also recommended removing a parcel of land—and this is really to us and to mana whenua one of the most important parts of this bill. This is because that parcel of land may be subject to future Treaty settlement claims or be subject to a right of first refusal provision under the settlement legislation. That is I think a major part of this bill. It is also important that it protects the town belt and contains provisions to allow additions to the town belt. We also need to recognise the rights of mana whenua under their Treaty settlement and this amendment will do that.I would like to end by acknowledging the sponsoring member Grant Robertson and the work he has done to bring this bill to the House on behalf of the city council in this electorate. Kia ora. I would also like to acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell. Paul is a particularly diligent member of the Local Government and Environment Committee and always works hard on the legislation before our committee. As an MP with a strong connection to the Wellington Central electorate Paul has taken a strong interest in this process and he has supported it along the way including through the select committee process.In my final summary of this bill I want to acknowledge all of the Wellingtonians who are here this evening who have contributed and also that the fact is that we have it seems a cross-party kotahitanga together on this bill. On that note I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.Amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority agreed to.Bill read a second time.Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 2 March.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): In rising to speak to the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill I just acknowledge the member Meka Whaitiri who is bringing this bill to the House in its second reading—a bill that I will not be supporting. You will have to bear with me; it is not often I suppose as a Government MP that I get to oppose a bill so I am going to have to brush up on the negativity and cynicism that the Opposition does so well. So you will have to bear with me.When I look at this bill there is not much to it. Basically it is about inserting the word “protection” for protecting the environment but in the general policy statement it does say: “When the Act was passed the stated objective of the Environmental Protection Authority contained an important oversight in that it did not actually require the protection of the environment as part of the Authority’s role. This Bill corrects that defect.” I will be arguing today in my call that there was no omission; there was no defect. Very much like a family saloon—you see the detail and realise that it has got the grunt that you need to drive forward when you actually pop the hood—it is very much like that when you look at things like the Environmental Protection Authority and understand its statement of intent and mission statement.It clearly states if I read from the departmental report: “The Ministry notes that the EPA’s Statement of Intent 2014-18 includes the mission ‘To protect people and the environment’. Protection is also present in the [mission statement]: ‘We deliver robust objective decisions and ensure compliance with rules to protect people and the environment’.” So there in the statement of intent in the mission statement there is the reference to protecting the environment. I will not argue about the intent of this bill—of course we should be looking to protect the environment. What I would argue is actually that it is intrinsic to being a New Zealander. New Zealanders are passionate about the environment and—unlike a party to my right which thinks only it protects the environment—I would argue that every New Zealander believes in the environment and actively pursues ways of protecting it because our clean green image of New Zealand is something that makes us a country that sticks out in the world.When you look at the Bluegreen movement in the National Party it is about managing the economy sustainably and managing the environment. There will be many young Kiwis this year who will take off to do their OE. I was one of them several years ago. And when they go out and expand their world view they will understand the connection between countries that have developed their economies—which are the ones that go and seek to protect their environment the most—and the very strong link between open vibrant economies and ones that protect their environment. That is what we need to support.It is interesting: when we look at one of the submitters around this legislation Federated Farmers they outlined how this bill would be in conflict with the Resource Management Act. “When acting under the RMA the EPA needs to appropriately balance social economic and cultural well-being with environmental protection as required by Section 5 of the RMA. Requiring the EPA to protect maintain or enhance the environment will be prejudicial to this balancing of wellbeings.” I suppose we need to focus on that because it is balancing those competing objectives: social environmental and economic as well. When we introduce a bill we need to understand what some of its possibly unintended consequences are.We know through some of those submissions and from what we heard from the advisers that this bill if it is passed into legislation would result in an increase in costs and in time around decision making as well as an increase in the likelihood of litigation with the ambiguity of inserting the word “protection”. So we need to make sure that a bill is fit for purpose and unfortunately I do not agree that this bill is fit for purpose.One thing that stuck out when we went through the select committee process—because this bill did receive 206 submissions which granted is a fair number a range of views; but when you have a bill kind of this size there is not much to it—was that people were not submitting clause by clause. They were just submitting broadly about the overall effect. Of course when it says “protect the environment” that says what is on the tin and I can see why people made the submissions that they did. But actually when you scratch the surface or you lift that bonnet to look at what is actually in the Environmental Protection Authority Act it is actually interesting. The Local Government and Environment Committee clearly states: “the Act notes that the authority must observe the environmental purposes and objectives in the other Acts it fully or partly administers. These Acts are the Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Act 1988 Resource Management Act 1991 Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 Ozone Layer Protection Act 1996 Climate Change Response Act 2002 Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects Act) 2012.” Clearly by looking at all those Acts that the Environmental Protection Authority Act already partly or fully administers it does protect the environment already.Coming back to that claim that this bill unfortunately had no mission and was not correct by not putting the word “protect” in—I think we need to refute that. The committee clearly states that “the environmental purposes and objectives set out in these Acts make it clear that the authority must strive to protect the environment.” So overall we clearly support the intent of this bill around protecting the environment but when we look at the detail we understand that the Environmental Protection Authority is already set up—through its mission statement its statement of intent and the Acts that it partially or fully administers—to protect the environment. Unfortunately if this bill was to pass all it is going to cause is an increase in costs to the Environmental Protection Authority and to submitters an increase in the time it takes for consenting and a lot of ambiguity in litigation. That is why I do not support this bill. Thank you.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise to speak in favour of this eminently sensible bill which simply seeks to do the absolute obvious and empower the Environmental Protection Authority to “protect maintain and enhance New Zealand’s environment”. People watching at home could be forgiven for assuming that the Environmental Protection Authority would already have that mandate to protect our environment—it is a very misleading title actually. I would like to congratulate my Labour colleague Meka Whaitiri on bringing this bill to the House. It is simple it is short and it makes perfect sense.We have heard a lot of seemingly reasonable arguments against the bill from National Party members tonight but I have to say that if you really believe in protecting the environment then your actions speak louder than words. It is entirely fitting and very predictable that this National Government’s members on the Local Government and Environment Committee would vote by majority to ignore the 97 percent of public submissions in support of this very sensible bill. I do not say that lightly. I do not say that because I am biased against the National Party. I say that because after 8 years of the National Party being in Government it is obvious that it will not step up and protect the environment. It simply focuses on rhetoric and “greenwashing”. I completely understand that there are members in the National Party who genuinely care about the environment and want to protect it but the reality of this Government’s policies is that it does not protect the environment—it does not protect the environment.Here is a good example of the National Government trying to talk up its green credibility recently. I am sure that the transport Minister Simon Bridges actually wants to support electric vehicles in this country and I am sure there are members sitting over there right now who would like to see more electric vehicles on our roads. But very soon we are going to have more photos of Simon Bridges with electric charging stations—which have not been funded by this Government; they have been funded by private industry—than we will have electric vehicles on our roads. This is because the Government has not implemented any policies to support electric vehicles in New Zealand to make them more affordable and attractive for businesses and households. It has not supported a single policy. Nissan has now pulled the most affordable electric vehicle on the market the Leaf from New Zealand because there is not a sufficient market for it because there is not sufficient Government policy.Matt Doocey just said in his speech—I think; this is what I understood him to be saying—that we need to not protect our environment in order to grow the economy so that we can protect the environment. It makes perfect sense does it not? No actually it does not make any sense whatsoever.We in the Green Party know that our competitive advantage in the world is our pristine natural environment. We love our pristine natural environment—we want to protect it. Protecting it is not bad for the economy. It does not cost businesses unnecessarily; it is actually something that we can do to build our brand and sell our goods overseas. Another good example of how the National Party has missed this opportunity was in its bet on high-volume low-value commodities that we were going to sell to the rest of the world and we were thus going to somehow increase the value of our exports. That was its economic strategy and it is now in tatters as we see commodity prices have crashed—in particular dairy prices.It is such a shame because if the National Party had taken advantage of our environmental brand in the world and said that New Zealand’s competitive advantage is not going to be producing tonnes and tonnes of cheap milk powder but is going to be selling high-value clean green and safe dairy products to the world—if we had done that we would not be in the hole that we are in right now because the price for organic milk is 5 to 6 times higher than the price for milk powder. We could have protected our waterways protected our soil and protected our people and we would be better off economically for doing so. That is the green economic vision that the Green Party stands for—a real economic vision not just talk from the National Government.MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā anei te mihi atu ki a koe otirā ki Te Whare. Kai te pīrangi au ki te whakanuia i tēnei o ngā tuahine i haria mai tēnei pire ki Te Whare. I a mātau i te pānuitanga tuatahi i a mātau e noho nei e whakaaro ana anā ko ēnei te take ka taea e mātau te tautoko i tētahi pire nui ki a tātau. Koirā tā mātāu whakaaro tuatahi! Hoi anō rā kua tae ki tēnei wā e ai ki Te Pāti Māori kua āta tirohia te pire kua āta tirohia ngā pire kai tōna taha kua āta whakarongo ki ngā kōrero o ngā iwi me ngā rōia i tēnei wā koinei te take kāre e taea te whakaae kai te whakamārama au ki a tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker; I acknowledge you but also at the same time the House. I want to commend this one of the sister colleagues for bringing this bill to the House. At the first reading and as we sat here thinking and listening we concluded that there are the reasons why we are able to support a bill that is important to us. That is what we thought at first. However we have come to this moment and according to the Māori Party viewpoint having now examined the bill and associated bills sitting alongside it carefully and having listened to advice from the tribes and lawyers this is the reason why we are not able agree to it now. I am explaining to all of us.]I want to assure Meka Whaitiri e te tuahine that the decision that we have come to has been a decision that we have made and have had great debate about within the Māori Party and it is in no way influenced by the Government in this instance. The reason that we have come to this decision is that we feel there are a number of issues with the Environmental Protection Authority and this legislation in and of itself is not going to fix and address those issues. We have been focusing on how we can protect the environment through the Resource Management Act decisions and the negotiations that are ongoing right now with the Minister involved.Kaitiakitanga is a fundamental policy and kaupapa of the party. As Māori—and the reason I think that my colleague has brought this bill to the House—we have a fundamental belief in looking after our environment which is what we would expect that the Environmental Protection Authority would be doing. However for this bill in and of itself to change some wording I do not believe—and we are of the opinion—will go far enough to ensure that that happens. So we look to the other bills that surround it which have some effect in this area. For us the concentration is on the Resource Management Act.We normally support the introduction of bills to first reading so that submitters can come and I have carefully read the submissions and the Local Government and Environment Committee’s report. I have taken note of the minority views of both the Greens and the Labour Party in the determination that they have come to. I want to assure you that this is not a decision that we make easily though we have been to the Minister to find other ways in which we can support the intent of what my colleague has brought to the House through things like the statement of intent the regulations and the directions being given to the Environmental Protection Authority. I think that actually the whole area needs some more stringent review and that is something that we will be advocating for to expand on the intent of what is happening here.Let us have a look at it. The Environmental Protection Authority among other functions regulates six other pieces of legislation—and those are the other pieces that we have looked into—that all have their own objectives. One of its functions is to manage the processing of proposals determined as nationally significant under the Resource Management Act and that is what we have chosen to put our efforts into. In this instance the Resource Management Act has clearly stated purposes and principles under Part 2 of the Act.Some of the unintended consequences that we feel this bill may have with each of the other six Acts having their own principles and objectives are in what the amendment will do to the Environmental Protection Authority Act and how all that legislation fits together. There is not time in the short call that I have to expand on this more though I am happy to work with the member and with the Minister to see how we can grow the protection aspect of the Environmental Protection Authority with those other six pieces of legislation including the Resource Management Act to ensure that on balance environment is not left to suffer while economic development flourishes. Kia ora.NUK KORAKO (National): Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill. The Local Government and Environment Committee which I am privileged to be a member of recommended by majority that this bill not be passed. Members on this side of the House took the view during the first reading of this bill that the bill was unnecessary and should not proceed to the select committee. This House decided though that it would in fact proceed to the select committee and I believe that was an unfortunate decision because participating in this select committee process only made it clearer that this bill was unnecessary.I do want to acknowledge the member who put this bill forward. As far as I can tell Meka Whaitiri had the best of intentions in putting this bill into the ballot. She appears to have genuinely thought that these seven extra words would somehow enable the Environmental Protection Authority to more effectively carry out its role of protecting the environment but unfortunately they do not—the evidence we received in the select committee clearly told us that.When Meka Whaitiri introduced this bill in the first reading she suggested that there had been some sort of mistake when the Environmental Protection Authority Act 2011 was passed and that the original legislation was supposed to contain the words “protects maintains and enhances New Zealand’s environment” but somehow someone had forgotten to put them in. In fact the preamble of this bill also includes this claim that leaving these words out was somehow an important oversight. I would have expected that for an assertion like that to be included in the preamble of the member’s bill the member would have done her research and actually been sure that it was valid.Neither I nor Meka Whaitiri were in this House when the Environmental Protection Authority legislation was passed but I have done my research and it is clear that the clause she has suggested was never needed in the bill and it is really at odds with the reason we have an arm’s-length environmental regulator like the Environmental Protection Authority. The Environmental Protection Authority was set up to carry out functions that are set out in a number of the other Acts. The primary Act does set out some broad functions and objectives but I would suggest that the most important objective is the one that states that the Environmental Protection Authority must act in a way that furthers the objectives or purposes stated in the Act which sets out the particular functions it is carrying out. In this way the Environmental Protection Authority derives its objectives from a number of different Acts rather than just the Environmental Protection Authority Act.So what are these Acts? My colleague Marama Fox actually highlighted some of them. I want to go through and highlight them because I think these are a very important part of why this side of the House disagrees with this bill. First of all we have the Resource Management Act 1991 and when we look at the purpose clause—this is also reflected in the legislation protecting the exclusive economic zone—one of the purposes in that Act refers to the “protection of natural and physical resources”. It is the protection of natural and physical resources. It goes on to talk about safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of certain resources and avoiding remedying or mitigating any adverse effects on the environment. It sounds to me like it is about the protection of the environment.Then we have the Climate Change Response Act 2002. This Act is focused on one particular aspect of environmental management. It is about the prevention of climate change through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose statement of the Act is comprehensive but it could be summed up as enabling New Zealand to meet its international obligations to combat climate change. If combating climate change is not protecting the environment then I am not sure what the members opposite think it is. Is the addition of another seven words requiring the protection of the environment going to somehow change how the Environmental Protection Authority administers its duties under the Climate Change Response Act 2002? I do not think so—I do not think so.The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 states that the purpose of this Act is to protect the environment and its health and safety. It is about the health and safety of the people and the communities by preventing or managing the adverse effects of hazardous substances and new organisms. Maybe the problem here is that the words “maintains and enhances” are missing. When the Environmental Protection Authority carries out its duties under the Act is Meka Whaitiri concerned that it might attempt only to protect the environment rather than also enhancing and maintaining it? Or is the purpose set out in the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 exactly fit for purpose already? It is to protect the environment from dangers posed by these substances and organisms.There is the Ozone Layer Protection Act 1996 which gives its purpose as being to help protect human health and the environment. Once more what is missing here? Nothing. The purpose of the Environmental Protection Authority is clear. It is in its name but it is also in the legislation that the authority derives its powers from. If the purpose statements in these pieces of legislation are not sufficient to ensure that the authority protects the environment why has Labour only just discovered this deficiency?The Environmental Protection Authority was established by the National Government to be an arm’s length regulator of environmental standards. By the very nature of the functions it carries out the protection of the environment is at the core of what the authority does. Adding seven words that supposedly make the difference between the authority protecting the environment or not sounds noble. It sounds noble and at first glance it might make sense. I am not surprised that a number of people submitted saying that actually they thought it made sense for the authority to protect the environment but having looked into the purpose of the authority and the legislation from which it draws its functions it is clear to me that the protection of the environment is already clearly spelt out in each of the authority’s functions.This bill is definitely unnecessary and could potentially undermine the authority’s role as an arm’s length regulator. I once again acknowledge tuahine Meka Whaitiri in bringing this bill to the House. I wish I could acknowledge the work of the member and her colleagues on the select committee but it is hard to be complimentary about a party that is so determined to ignore the advice of officials that its members will sit in the select committee listen to the experts’ advice but still push ahead with a bill the experts have advised is unnecessary.E mea atu ki a koe kia ora. [I say to you thank you.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is a pleasure to take a call. I too would like to acknowledge the work of Meka Whaitiri in bringing this bill to the House. I would also like to address some of the comments that the last speaker Nuk Korako has made those being lastly about members who sit there and ignore the advice of officials. I would like to have a little bit of a conversation about members who sit there and ignore time and time again submitters who come with a great deal of expertise. Their words simply fall on deaf ears. We had a large number of submissions and they were ignored they were ridiculed and they were not taken seriously. I think that that is far more shameful in terms of the conduct of members at the select committee.Never before have seven words produced such hysteria within the Government in its reaction to this bill. Simply trying to insert into the Environmental Protection Authority’s legislation the fact that it should protect the environment—you would think that Meka had introduced a bill saying we should do something really bad something really out there rather than put a purpose clause in legislation saying that the entire Environmental Protection Authority should have as its purpose the protection of the environment.The members of the Government have been all over the place in terms of why it is they are going to oppose this bill. The last speaker’s logic seemed to be that we do not need to put it in there because other Acts say that the Environmental Protection Authority should protect the environment and therefore we should not put the purpose clause into the Environmental Protection Authority Act. Actually that just makes absolutely no sense.Mr Doocey in his contribution said that what we should do is lift the hood on the Environmental Protection Authority and have a look at what is happening under the hood. Well I would like to lift the hood and I would like to expose the burnt-out engine that this Government has neglected. When the Environmental Protection Authority came to the Local Government and Environment Committee in February of this year its chair Kerry Prendergast very clearly said that it was underfunded not getting the resources it needed and that it could not fulfil its functions. That is the state of the engine that Mr Doocey is talking about. So when the Government members cry crocodile tears and talk about the Bluegreens and their care for the environment the National Government is consistently underfunding the agency that is charged with being an environmental watchdog in this country. Their words have no basis in belief.One of the key arms of the authority came and said that it simply does not have enough money to do its job. What we had was Ms Prendergast telling the Local Government and Environment Committee that the Environmental Protection Authority had never received permanent funding for its exclusive economic zone functions which range from approving and monitoring offshore exploration wells through to approving burials at sea. So in terms of the very function that those members opposite are arguing is about balancing the environment and the economy they are underfunding the agency charged with doing that job not giving the resources to that agency that it needs. The authority’s chair fronted up to the select committee and made it clear that it is strapped for cash and unable to do the job. She went on to say that 3 years of discussion have not changed the situation and the resulting uncertainty over funding raises questions about the long-term sustainability of the exclusive economic zone function and the exclusive economic zone more generally.These are very worrying words and for the Government to claim that it does have the interests of the environment at heart is absolutely alarming. When the Government talks about the range of agencies that the Environmental Protection Authority has some authority over and why it does not need to put the fact that it needs to have the environment as one of its considerations—let us consider some of those other responsibilities it has under other pieces of principal legislation. Ms Prendergast went on to say that because of the funding shortfall some activities such as public education about environmental risk had to be cut back. The Environmental Protection Authority simply was not able to fulfil them.Other people who came from the Environmental Protection Authority and came before the select committee said that the huge cost of considering the safety of potentially hazardous chemicals had seen the agency prune the list of chemicals it needed to investigate to 30. The agency that is put in charge of investigating the hazards that various chemicals pose to us in this country is being underfunded and that agency is telling the parliamentary select committee that it is unable to fulfil that function.This is serious; this is not something that we take lightly. This Government has allocated enough money to the Environmental Protection Authority that it can budget $300000 a year for investigating hazardous chemicals. I would like to think when I am living my life that actually a bit more resource was being put into the fact that we were not all being poisoned. I would have thought that was a reasonably core function of Government. Let us compare that with the recent organic phosphate reassessment which cost $1.2 million. That is for one chemical to be investigated—$1.2 million was needed to do that. Yet this Government sees fit within its Budget allocations to give the Environmental Protection Authority only enough to allocate $300000.For that Government to then say that it has the interests of the environment at heart and that you do not need to putthe fact that we need to protect the environment in the purpose clause simply rings hollow. If you compare New Zealand with a country such as Canada which spends several hundred million dollars on the assessment of 14000 chemicals our Government is putting us at risk by the fact that it is not allowing our agency which wants to do this job and which comes before the select committee and says that it needs to do this job for the safety of the environment and for the health of New Zealanders more generally—but this Government will not do it.It is putting not only our people and our environment at risk but also our economy. For agriculture knowing about hazardous chemicals and various biochemicals is incredibly important. The Government members may scoff but this is what the Environmental Protection Authority came to the select committee and said. It said this in the same breath as it said that for 3 years it had been asking this Government for additional funding but it has yet to get it and it is not able to fulfil its function. What was entirely clear throughout the whole examination of the Environmental Protection Authority at the select committee was that it was underfunded at the very time when the need for New Zealand to step up its environmental work was taking hold.When this Government says that we do not need to put the environment into the purpose clause of the Environmental Protection Authority legislation because “Trust us we’ve got the best interests of the environment at heart.” there is very clear evidence that no it does not. When it comes to funding the agencies that need to do that it simply is not there. Its commitment to the environment is nothing more than hollow words. If it really is committed then it can stump up and show that with evidence rather than making pretty little speeches in the House. Thank you.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I rise in opposition obviously to the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill. In doing so I acknowledge Ms Whaitiri. I acknowledge her conservation ethic; it is of good intention—how she brought this bill to the House—but obviously from this side we believe it to be misguided.It is with some pleasure that I rise and take this call to round off this debate. I have already taken a call on the previous committee on which I sat—the Government Administration Committee. I leave that with sadness I leave my peers there. But I now join the Local Government and Environment Committee team. I am very much looking forward to some robust debate under the chairmanship of Mr Scott Simpson although he did scare me with stories of baking rosters. I do not really think that my baking is a way to career advancement. But nevertheless I am on that committee and I am very pleased to be on the Local Government and Environment Committee because of course I have a strong interest in the environment.That was the pathway to how I entered into politics—it was through the blue-green movement of the National Party that I came to be where I am today. The Bluegreens—the blue-green caucus the blue-green policy advisory group of the National Party—believe in a balance between the use of environment and the protection of environment. That balance is needed to advance not only an environmental cause but also an economic cause to create jobs and create wealth for our people.This bill in particular is in respect of the Environmental Protection Authority and the bill’s sponsor believes that we need to insert the words “to protect and maintain and enhance New Zealand’s environment” into the legislation that governs the Environmental Protection Authority. This is not needed because the authority’s mission statement is clearly set out and it is already doing that job. But primarily the Environmental Protection Authority is at arm’s length from the Government and was set up on purpose to oversee large infrastructure projects of national significance. It was put in place because the Resource Management Act had gone too far.The Resource Management Act in 1991 was revolutionary. It was effects-driven and that is where assessment of different activities in our communities should take place—on an effects-based principle. But it has gone too far it has ballooned outand hence through our phases of reforms the Environmental Protection Authority was put in place to oversee projects of national significance because they were getting bottlenecked. These projects were bottlenecking at the local government level and it was just stifling economic development. We on this side of the House are not interested in raping and pillaging our environment. We know that our environment is a key to providing jobs and wealth but we also need to rely on that environment and protect it.Let us put that into context with say the other pieces of legislation that are in place that create that all-round environmental protection in New Zealand. If you look at Acts on the other side—the more protectionism-type Acts like the Conservation Act—then we are talking about different styles of management; recreational opportunities spectrum is what we use. Then we have designated areas such as wilderness areas where there is no development allowed. That allows us to look at New Zealand as a whole and manage different areas in a way that creates a hierarchy of levels of protectionism and in respect of the Resource Management Act that balance must be afforded. So to add these words into the Environmental Protection Authority’s mandate is not a good idea and we need to maintain that balance.A party vote was called for on the question That the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 59New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; United Future 1.Noes 62New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1.Motion not agreed to.Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3)Second ReadingALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) in its second reading. As the sponsor of this private member’s bill it is an honour to be able to speak tonight to its second reading in the House. Can I acknowledge the Local Government and Environment Committee chairperson Scott Simpson—I was about to say the “Hon” Scott Simpson; he is an honourable member—and also his deputy chair Todd Muller who was there as well. Thank you to all the other members of the select committee—Kris Faafoi: Anyone else?ALFRED NGARO: Sorry no you are right there Mr Faafoi. I should read out those members. Yes there was Paul Foster-Bell Matt Doocey Joanne Hayes Nuk Korako Ron Mark Todd Muller. Mr Faafoi you are not on there; I thought you were calling out your name.Kris Faafoi: I’m on the Government Administration Committee.ALFRED NGARO: Ha ha! I do want to acknowledge and thank them for that.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! And we will have a bit less from the other side. We have a slight problem. The member has a duty at the beginning of a speech and that is to move the motion. I suggest the member does it.ALFRED NGARO: Apologies. I move That the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3)be now read a second time.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Thank you.Hon Ruth Dyson: But don’t start again.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No he does not get extra time for fouling up.ALFRED NGARO: Ha ha! I just want to acknowledge that when it came into the select committee there were 17 written submissions on the bill. One of those submissions was actually acknowledged in two parts. Out of that there were 10 submissions that were positively in favour five that were in support with the appeal to make some amendments and only three that were opposed. Those three that were opposed were from those who were currently members of more than one local board.This bill in its intent aims to address a loophole in the current legislation that allows local board members in Auckland to serve on two or more local boards. When a person serves on more than one local board there is a real potential for conflicts of interest. Local boards are important to the democratic process and this bill protects their integrity.In support of that intent I would like to read from the Auckland Council’s submission. In its submission I think it actually addresses this issue quite succinctly. On page 3 of its submission in section 7 paragraph 11 it declares this: “Membership of more than one local board at a time has the potential to create the perception of conflicts of interest as local boards are required to represent local interests in their area. Experience has shown that board members have heavy workloads particularly the full time chairperson role. It is currently possible for a successful candidate to chair one local board and sit as a member of another. Membership of multiple boards potentially reduces the ability of the person concerned to effectively represent the views and preferences of their different local communities.”In that regard we believe that this is important. I do know that the member who is not here the member Phil Twyford also talked about—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!ALFRED NGARO: Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker. There is a member who did talk about the intent in support of that. He too would like to put forward a bill that addresses this very loophole. I know that he has also been in support of this.Paragraph 12 of the Auckland Council submission—I think that is important too. I just want to quickly summarise the point here: “We suggest that the elected members should be able to sit on one local board only at a time and support the proposed amendments to the LGACA to reflect this. This would ensure full representation in all local boards and areas.”We believe it is important that full representation be available to all communities. I know that currently we have now had two terms of the Auckland Council and those on local boards. What has been encouraging to see is the widespread representation. I want to acknowledge that in the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki ward—in fact we have the councillor Denise Krum who was down here but we also had two friends of mine—Josephine Bartley and also Chris Makoare who had the opportunity to gain representation as elected members of their local boards. I believe that is a good example—that when we ensure that there is an opportunity for others to represent their local communities this becomes important as well.I just want to talk about some of the key provisions that are in the bill. The bill provides that candidates standing for multiple local boards must provide a written notice to the electoral officer specifying the local boards they are seeking election to and the ranking in order of priority that would apply if the candidate was elected to more than one local board. And I think that is important because then that gives a clear indication to voters that though they may be seeking election to different local boards actually their priority would be for a specific area as well. Candidates must also identify their priority in rankings in their candidate profile statements.I believe also that one thing that did come up in discussion on the clause was that we wanted to ensure that once this bill was gazetted and given the assent—we think it is important and it has come up through submissions—there was not a retrospective element to the bill. So those who are currently serving on two or more local boards are not impacted by this. The bill provides that nothing new affects the current membership of any person who is a member of more than one local board as well.My comments are brief at this moment. I think that we have covered a number of the key issues that are inside this. I just want to finish off my comments by talking about the importance of the local boards and the roles that they play in local government. They can negotiate local service standards manage local facilities—parks and local events—draw up local board plans promote local leadership identify and propose local bylaws input into the council-controlled organisations and economic development plans. They have a budget with autonomous decision-making and authority over $1 in every $4 of council’s core budget spent in their local area. So that delegation of authority becomes important to be able to ensure that they spend procure and allocate in the appropriate areas. Certainly I know that in the local boards in our area we have seen that happen.I do commend this bill in its second reading to the House. I look forward to the other comments of other members. My sense is that there is widespread support. It is not a big bill. It is not a controversial bill but it is one that we think is important to at the heart of it allow for greater representation throughout the Auckland area in particular for those in our communities who represent the interests of our local communities as well. I commend this bill to the House.PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you for this opportunity. I rise to make a relatively brief contribution to the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I congratulate the member Alfred Ngaro on bringing this particular amendment bill into the House. I was not on the Local Government and Environment Committee but just from the general comments around the previous bill and the robust debate about that and of course this one now—I congratulate the select committee on the hard work that it has done on this particular bill and on the one that we have just heard. Mr Ngaro talked about the 17 submissions and how there is a general consensus in fact quite a majority consensus for this particular amendment bill.Although the bill might be small I think that in the big scheme of things in a place such as the great electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau it is actually a very relevant thing. It reminds me of a whakataukī. Given that the National Party is really keen on whakataukī this evening I thought I would put in one of my own: ka pū te ruha ka hao te rangatahi [the worn-out net is cast aside and the new one goes fishing]. The great thing about that particular whakataukī is that it allows for new leadership to come through. It does not allow people to monopolise such key positions within our communities.I do want to acknowledge the speech given by Mr Ngaro about the importance of the role of local boards and no more so than in Tāmaki-makau-rau given it is such a big city and quite often a lot of people can find themselves lost in the urban milieu. But it is important that particular areas in Tāmaki-makau-rau find a voice one that is relevant to their community and it is even better if they can find leadership within their own community. I take the point made by the member about how important it is that those seeking election at local body level actually live in and serve their communities. That is an important point to make and there are challenges within Tāmaki-makau-rau about that. Quite often you can serve a particular local board but live just slightly outside of the area. But the main thing is that your heart and the intentions goals and aspirations you have for your community are best served by those who are local.New section 11AA inserted by clause 6 talks about what the exact intention of this bill is which is to prohibit members from standing as elected members on multiple boards. I do wonder though—and I put this to the debate in the House this evening—when I consider Māori and Pacific Island representation on local bodies there seems to be a lack of fair representation or equitable representation on those bodies. I wonder whether this particular amendment might have an unintended consequence. It might—what is the word—stop or discourage those of Māori or Pacific Island descent from representing their communities. I say that because—although Mr Assistant Speaker I see that you are frowning at my comment—if there is one thing that I do know about Māori representation on boards whether they be Māori boards or non-Māori boards it is that it is really really hard to find the correct skills and expertise to bring to those leadership roles. What you quite often find is one person wearing multiple hats. I would hate to see that particular set of skills or talents lost as an unintended consequence of this particular bill. But the bill is relatively technical.I once again in conclusion just want to congratulate the member on bringing this bill into the House and also on his acknowledgment of the member from this side of the House who is passionate about local body politics. In conclusion can I just say to those who are intending to stand in the upcoming elections in Tāmaki-makau-rau: “All the best.” because we all across the House here understand just how hard it is to put your hand up to seek representation of your community. So I wish them all good luck—in particular one member—and I will end there. Tēnā tātou katoa.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to stand to take a call in the second reading of this Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) in the name of my friend and colleague Alfred Ngaro. It is a member’s bill. When I was chairing the Local Government and Environment Committee which considered this matter I was very conscious of the hard work and dedication that Mr Ngaro has put into this bill notwithstanding in fact that originally this bill was entered into the ballot in the name of the Hon Maggie Barry who upon her ascension to Cabinet was able to ensure that Mr Ngaro was able to pick up the bill. He has done a very good job of stewarding it through the select committee process to the second reading here this evening. I want to congratulate him on that.It was fortuitous that this bill through the vagaries of the members’ ballot should have been drawn at a time that enabled it to come to the House prior to the local government elections which are to be held later this year. It was very fortuitous in fact because Auckland as members will be very well aware is the only jurisdiction in which we have these bodies that are known as local boards. For instance in my electorate where we have a number of district councils we have community boards. But in Auckland as a result of the amalgamation and the creation of the Auckland Council we now have these creatures called local boards.As I think an oversight in the original legislation it was possible for people to be elected to multiple local boards at the same time. The real difficulty there is not so much that those people may not have been physically able or indeed had the capacity to attend diligently to their duties and responsibilities as elected members of more than one local board it was the perception and perhaps also the potential for there to be a conflict of interest in those two roles that was really at the nub of this bill being promulgated. So as we know as members of Parliament often in politics it is the perception that is more important sometimes than the reality. This bill seeks to identify and clarify a situation that was relatively rare but had occurred and to resolve that so that the perception of a potential or a real conflict of interest could not arise again should a single individual be elected to more than one local board.This bill received careful consideration by the Local Government and Environment Committee. Members gave it diligent attention. We received 17 written submissions and we heard four of those as a committee. I thought the submissions were all thoughtful. They were well considered. They were useful in terms of us considering the bill and they aided us in our deliberations. The bill is one that I think is small in its detail but it has quite a significant and wide impact. It is a bill that I think needs to be passed by this House. It is a bill that after careful consideration by the Local Government and Environment Committee I am very happy to support and commend to the House.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātou katoa. I am pleased to take a short call on this Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3). Labour will support the second reading of this bill. The bill will amend the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 to prevent candidates from serving on multiple local boards at the same time. Labour supported this bill to the select committee. The issue was brought up by a colleague of ours as early as 2011 and it is just simply hard to believe that someone can do justice to the people whom they serve while being on multiple boards. Although this bill covers the Auckland region there was obviously some interest to hear evidence of how widespread this situation is of having one person holding more than one local authority or district health board position at the same time around New Zealand.I just thought it would be useful as a contribution to go through the submitters where they surmise both the supporters for this bill and those who were opposed to it. The chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee Scott Simpson mentioned we had 17 written submissions. Those who appeared before the committee who supported the bill raised issues around the bill promoting fair local representation. A person can only effectively represent the community of the local board area that they reside in. They also raised the issue about the bill reducing the potential for conflicts of interest. They went on to describe that conflicts may arise where a member must divide their attention between the interests of two or more separate communities. If meetings clash the member must make a choice about the attendance and this could be to the advantage of one local board and to the disadvantage of another. Another submitter talked about local boards each competing for a share of the same budget. Another reason to support the bill was that it avoids and mitigates a range of possible negative outcomes associated with the workload of local board members with the ability of voters to make informed choices.For those who opposed the bill it is important to get a balance. There were some very good submissions that said why they would oppose the bill. It has been raised by previous speakers on this bill. They talked about the actual potential conflicts of interest and the problems that need to be resolved. Members of multiple local boards are well connected and can facilitate the sharing of information resources and insight across local boards. So there is an argument around continuity at the governance level between boards. Many of the local board members are currently serving on more than one local board and the bill interferes with the will of voters and their ability to make informed decisions. I guess the last point around those who oppose the bill was the potential for the discouraging of quality candidates from standing for local boards.If I may I will just make some reference to the fact that this is an Auckland-focused bill. Auckland is the largest city in our country. Clearly there are enough people I believe in the great city of Auckland who have the skills and who could put their hands up to stand for local boards. But if you take a place—for example my electorate of Wairoa—where the population is not as great then you start seeing that there will be challenges in ensuring that you have got good candidates standing up for the smaller towns versus a large metropolis like Auckland. We do need to tread carefully. Preserving the rule that you cannot serve on multiple boards needs to be balanced with the reality that in some catchment areas you just do not have the candidacy there.I support the comment that my colleague Peeni Henare made—succession and that one of the unintended consequences is that you prohibit or disadvantage particularly Māori and Pacific candidates from putting their hands up and standing on these important boards because of this perspective that they bring to any governance board. I stand in support of the bill. It would be good if there was a particular mechanism that applied a “horses for courses” lens over it to ensure that in big cities you have that clarity about standing on multiple boards but that smaller towns—like the ones in my electorate that I have mentioned to you like Wairoa and Central Hawke’s Bay where we do not have the population to attract good-quality candidates—are not put at a disadvantage through the passage of this bill. I know we are talking about only Auckland but there is a potential that it could go further. It would have been nice to hear some submitters who talked broadly outside the boundaries of the wider Auckland area. But I just think it is something that as members of this House we need to consider when we are passing legislation—that it does not have a wider effect and disadvantages certain members of our communities out there. I commend this bill to the House.JAN LOGIE (Green): I too rise to take a reasonably short call on this the second reading of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) and of course to congratulate the member Alfred Ngaro on having a bill drawn from the ballot and making it through to the second stage with what seems like a high level of support in the House for it. The Greens too do support this bill. It is not a world-changing bill; what it does is it will prohibit membership of more than one local board. Out of the 149 elected members in the Auckland area five are currently on two boards. This bill will not change that for those elected members. This is for going forward and in the future to ensure that that practice does not continue and certainly does not extend. That is an idea that the Greens support and the arguments that were made by the submitters in favour of this bill on the grounds that if you are on two boards there is a really high chance that you are going to come into conflict with the needs of those two different communities when you are putting a case for a budget bid when you may be competing for shared resources.Also there is just the point that we know that local boards are that level of governance that is most connected to the people. What a difference it is when you are in your local community you run into your local board member and you get to have that conversation with them about the traffic lights that are down the street that are causing a problem the footpath outside the school or any number of the issues that are a concern to our local communities. If you are on two boards chances are you are not going to be as present in one of those communities; you will be more present in one than you are in the other. This helps to simplify that problem and make it clear that we ideally want our local representatives to be clearly committed to one community and not put into a situation of being in conflict.I do note that the Orākei Local Board made in its submission the recommendation that the candidates standing in local elections not be required to state on their candidate profile statement whether or not they live in the area for which they are seeking election. I think the board members were making the point that they saw the skills as more important than the embeddedness in the community. I think the reference was made to this House and the fact that there are members in this House who are electoral representatives who do not live in the electorate that they are representing. There was a question where they thought that maybe the intention of this bill and the fact that central government or this House was going to be making these decisions for a local community when it could be said that there is not the same degree of consistency at this level.I think it is worth canvassing some of the other points that they had which were that Auckland Council undertakes multi roles and for example two full-time councillors are also members of the Auckland Transport board and there are full-time councillors and full-time local board chairs who are also members of district health boards licensing trusts district licensing committees and a wide range of other sports community and business organisations. So they were arguing that that concept of the job being too big was not valid when people were serving on multiple boards as it is. I think though my understanding in the committee in discussions and for the Green Party is that there is a difference because if you are on the district health board that covers one area that your board sits within you are going to be arguing for that same community and you are not going to be in a situation of conflicting community needs where you may be pushed into representing one community over another in a particular process. Though the Orākei Local Board did also argue against what I am saying on the basis that they see in Auckland that there is an issue around the local boards not having a mechanism to connect them and actually quite often they saw that there would be value in having people sitting on multiple boards to be able to improve the discussion and sense of coherence between boards and communities.I think that is an interesting argument but not one that we believe is best solved by allowing members to represent multiple communities but rather by looking at the mechanisms of overall governance in Auckland and providing possibly some better bridging mechanisms between councils and continually reviewing the processes for input into Auckland Council itself. It does seem as if there certainly is still more work to be done in that area to get our democracy in Auckland functioning in the way that we would ideally like to see it happen.The committee has worked through some of the logistics of how this would happen. I think people may possibly be wondering how this would work. The idea that has been presented is that people can run for multiple boards but that they would be required to submit a form and say: “OK I am going to run for these boards and this is my order of preference for what board I would like to be on.” So if they got elected to all three boards that they were running for the one they chose as their preferred board would be the one they would take up the seat for. The other boards would then go to the next person. The candidate would be required to identify this priority ranking in any candidate profile so that the communities knew that they were running on multiple boards and what their listed preferences were. It does bring in I think a sensible degree of transparency. I do imagine that that would have an impact on how people voted in the communities if they saw that their community was the third preference for the board that you were going to be on. I cannot imagine it is much of an incentive to run in those three places but that I guess is part of the intent as well.One other small aspect of this is that it will prevent existing local board members from running in by-elections for another council—to prevent that possibility of people leaving one place going to another one and another position opening up and you have this cascading by-election situation as people move from one to another. It seems unlikely but is a good thing to guard against and that has been taken care of in this bill. So in summary the Green Party is happy to support this technical bill. It is not earth-shattering but something that we hope will help strengthen those principles of community embeddedness and good representation in Auckland. Thank you.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Well I guess there has to be one so New Zealand First will signal right at this point now that we intend voting against this legislation. New Zealand First has listened to the arguments and looked closely at the realities of those arguments. We would start by saying that the loophole the perceived loophole that is seen by the architects of this bill is a matter of opinion—it is a matter of opinion—and New Zealand First does not share that opinion. The explanatory note of the bill states: “The current law allows for local board power to be concentrated in the hands of a few people which undermines the efficacy and fairness of the local electoral system.” Really? Is that right? Well in actual fact we would have liked to see some evidence that that was the truth but it is so often in all the debate this evening that people have referred to the word “perception”. Well we could talk about perception in respect of a whole raft of legislation that goes through this House that this Government has not supported. So we do not see consistency. We see that the perceived loophole is a matter of opinion which is distinctly not matched by evidence and certainly not matched by convincing evidence.The argument that three people opposed the legislation could well be countered by the thousands of people who voted to elect these people whom the National Party has a problem with in terms of their holding two positions on two boards. That these people were elected by the people of those two boards says that there are thousands of people in Auckland who are quite comfortable with the legislation as it currently sits. We might argue that in actual fact it is the right of those electorates—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I would just ask the member to sit for a second. I would like to address the Minister of Education. For some reason the member’s voice is bouncing across and going into the mike so if she could just talk a little bit more quietly. We are getting her voice back here and the member might prefer that that is not the case.RON MARK: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate that. We might argue that in actual fact if the good people of those boards so affected by this problem saw a problem they would not elect these people to multiple boards. If they seriously objected to the fact that person A was standing in Papakura and standing in the neighbouring ward they would not vote for them. There is a propensity of some political parties in this House to want to give preference to other people to aid them and assist them to get elected. That has been clearly indicated by the local bill that Mita Ririnui brought before the House in respect of the Bay of Plenty which created reserved council positions on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. It is a position that ironically the National Party members voted against.So on the one hand we in New Zealand First sit here rather confused by the fact that National would vote against Labour’s local bill which reserves seats to give all of those things that Labour has argued for today: a greater opportunity for Māori and Pacific Islanders to get elected. National members voted against that and now they are sitting here bleating on that allowing a person who shows the aptitude the gumption the work ethic and the support of two wide communities to be so democratically elected to hold two appointments should be kneecapped. I find this astonishing in respect of the ACT Party and we will be watching with curiosity to see how the ACT Party votes on this issue. We would share we would think a view that it is the right of people to stand where they wish and let the voting public decide. That is the core fundamental issue that confronts a true democracy. Democracy may not be perfect. Who said that? Winston Churchill? But it is the best form of governance we know.How often have we been told by our parents our grandparents that if you want a job done give it to a busy person. Give it to someone who cracks on not to someone who needs a little leg-up to get elected because they are Māori or because they are a Pacific Islander or because they are in some way disadvantaged and they cannot make it on their own. If you want to look at an example of people who get elected despite the odds despite all the rhetoric that they are disadvantaged look no further than Georgina Beyer. Georgina Beyer gets elected as Mayor of Carterton as a transsexual New Zealander and goes on against the odds in a highly conservative blue-ribbon seat called the Wairarapa to win the Wairarapa. Did she need a leg-up? Did she need a hand? Did she need preferential treatment some people to mollycoddle her and look after her every little poor failing whim? No she did not. She got it because she had the skills and the confidence of the people that she could do the job. Here we sit and National is advocating that highly competent highly respected people with high work ethic should be denied the opportunity to be elected to represent multiple communities by those communities that so wish them to do so.This little piece of legislation which has been described here in the House tonight as nothing of real importance might well come back to bite a few people on the podiums at candidatures in the next general election quite severely because this little piece of legislation interdicts the very fundamentals of democracy. If someone has the support of their community if those two communities so affected see no conflict of interest—and I have yet to see in anything that was put before the committee or hear anything that was said tonight that evidences this supposed perception of conflict.Do you want a perception of conflict that National could deal with? Here is one. The Policing Act used to deny police officers the right to be on a council and be a member of Parliament—same as the Defence Force. It denies also members of Parliament from serving in the police force at the same time that they are a member of Parliament—not the Policing Act but other legislation does. Why? It is because the three pillars that underpin our democracy that separate the judiciary from the lawmakers to the law enforcers were always considered sacrosanct. Yet what did National do? It overturned Labour-passed legislation in the Policing Act to stop police officers being councillors at the same time that they were police officers. It was argued when it was put through by the police commissioner by two or three police commissioners and by the Police Officers Guild that allowing police officers to continue to do that actually created a perception of conflict of interest that the person who was enforcing the law had become a lawmaker. And here we are sitting in the House saying: “Oh there’s a perception of a conflict of interest.” Where is the evidence?All I hear is envy. All I hear is grizzling and moaning that someone whipped someone else’s butt and got elected—not on one board but on two. Well here is the message from New Zealand First: if you cannot handle the heat get out of the kitchen. If you cannot match it in the community and convince the people of your community that you are worth electing do not put your name up. If you cannot stand the fact that you get beaten by someone who is highly respected not just in their ward that they live in but in another ward then do not compete. If National truly believes what it is saying here tonight it will cease its practice of parachuting into rural New Zealand people like John Hayes who did not live there people like Alastair Scott who does not live there and gerrymandering the party selection process to ensure that these people are elected in safe seats.There is a word that I am not allowed to use so I will not sum up with that word. All I will say is that this bill smacks of being anti-democratic and New Zealand First will not have a bar of it. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the question That the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time.Ayes 109New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 12New Zealand First 12.Bill read a second time.The House adjourned at 9.27 p.m.