Volume 624 Week 84 - Tuesday 29 March 2005 
Volume 624 Week 84 - Tuesday 29 March 2005 
[Volume:624;Page:19353] 
Tuesday 29 March 2005 
Madam Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2.35 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Visitors 
Canada—Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs House of Commons 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have much pleasure in informing the House that members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs from the House of Commons Canada are present in the gallery. I am sure that members would wish that the delegation be welcomed. 
Personal Explanations 
Parliamentary Privilege—Jim Peron 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Two weeks ago I raised the issue of an American bookseller Jim Peron in Parliament. I described him as a paedophile which according to the  
Concise Oxford Dictionary 
 is “a person who displays paedophilia.” paedophilia being “sexual desire directed towards children”. Today I tell the House that I stand by that description. My comments were intended to be a warning to the Government about an abuse of the immigration system by a person who should not have arrived here and who should not be allowed to stay in this country. Instead I have been personally attacked for using parliamentary privilege by apologists for Mr Peron. I described him as a paedophile because he is a sick individual who has promoted the cause of sexual relations between adult men and boys. Anyone who promotes sexual relations between adult men and boys should not be allowed citizenship residency or even a temporary visa. 
I support my earlier comments with the following evidence. First a copy of a publication called  
Unbound 
 which was published by Free Forum Books a store in San Francisco owned by Mr Peron in the late 1980s. Second the publication contains proof of his connection to it. Mr Peron was the editor of that publication and contributed articles to it. Third through the publication Mr Peron promoted paedophile activities paedophile writings and the use of young boys as sexual objects. Fourth he published pictures of naked boys. In my opinion that is the work of a paedophile. I will repeat this statement this afternoon outside Parliament. 
Points of Order 
Questions for Written Answer—Replies 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. My point of order concerns the handling of questions for written answer in this House and particularly the performance of the Minister of Police. I have had a question with the Minister of Police for some time. The answer was due on 17 March. Through constant emails and questions my office has been asking the Minister’s office for a reply. To date there has been no response to that request. I notice that on today’s Order Paper there is the publishing of some questions from Marc Alexander. He furnished those questions back on 21 February and the answers from the Minister of Police’s office are being published just today. I think members of this House have a right to expect the time frame that is set down for questions for written answer to be adhered to and I would ask that your office intervene. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the member will give me the details of his complaint about questions for written answer I will look into it and get back to him as quickly as I can. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Once again the issue that has been raised is one that I raised personally with the previous Speaker the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt about this very Minister. Following my correspondence in the subsequent correspondence that I received back from the previous Speaker we in New Zealand First were assured that all possible steps had been taken. Can you Madam Speaker on behalf of Parliament and in particular of the Opposition parties advise us as to what powers you have as the Speaker of this House and the protector of MPs to ensure that reluctant lazy Ministers who do not comply with the Standing Orders are brought to account. If there is a shortfall in the Standing Orders such that they do not assist you can you advise us of the amendments that would be necessary so we could progress the issue by making such amendments to the Standing Orders. Continued performances such as this make a mockery of the House the democratic system and the Minister himself—although he seems to be happy to live with that. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the member would like to put his complaint in writing to me I will look at it investigate it and get back to him as quickly as possible. 
Questions to Ministers 
Foreshore and Seabed—Public Access 
1. Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she stand by her statement of 7 April 2004 that the Government’s foreshore and seabed policy “guarantees access to the foreshore and seabed for all New Zealanders.” in light of reports that the Maori Land Court has decided to hear a claim for control of 50 kilometres of Eastern Bay of Plenty coastline; if so why? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
 on behalf of the 
 Prime Minister 
: Yes. The Foreshore and Seabed Act provides that the Maori Land Court can address only claims for customary rights orders. Under section 55 such orders cannot restrict access or navigation rights. It is indeed highly questionable that the claim the member refers to is one for control of the coastline referred to. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Maori Land Court has found that it has jurisdiction to consider a customary rights application for rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over 50 kilometres of Bay of Plenty foreshore and does she accept that a customary rights order over such a vast piece of coastline is totally at odds with assurances given by her Government about the impact of the Foreshore and Seabed Act? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The matter at this stage is one for the Maori Land Court to deal with. The Crown of course will make its representations within the court and if need be—depending on the nature of the conclusion of the Maori Land Court—may take that a further stage in the legal process. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is the Prime Minister aware of how the judge’s minute in this case was released into the public arena and does she have any concerns about how that confidential minute was leaked into the public arena and who did so? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: My understanding is that the minute was released by the Chief Judge of the Maori Land Court himself to Mr Jonathan Milne which I am advised is not the normal practice. 
Metiria Turei 
: Will the Government stand by a decision made by the Maori Land Court operating under the Foreshore and Seabed Act or given Dr Cullen’s reported fury at the Chief Judge’s stance on the application will the Government persist in its Muldoonist habit of changing the law whenever it does not like the Maori land decisions returned by the courts? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Both the Act and the legal system provide avenues for the Government to appeal any decision by the Maori Land Court should it wish to do so. It would be most unwise of the Government to forgo any right of appeal at this stage. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Does the Prime Minister have any reason to doubt the impartiality of the Maori Land Court on this issue; if so what are those reasons? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: This is the first application dealt with under the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Therefore I think it is wise for all people to breathe deeply and wait for the outcome of the hearing before rushing to judgment. 
Dr Don Brash 
: What assurances will the Prime Minister give New Zealanders that should a loophole in the legislation be exploited to give customary rights orders over vast swathes of New Zealand’s coastline she will work with the Opposition to ensure that amending legislation is passed to rectify this serious mistake? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The application as I said before is probably not one that can be considered as being one for control of the coastline but an application for a customary rights order of some description. The application does not make it entirely clear what is being sought. The evidence filed in support so far is largely about collection of shells washing in sea-water for ceremonial or traditional purposes and the fishing and collection of shellfish. Even over 50 kilometres of areas or parts within with rights of navigation access being guaranteed this does not present a great threat to that member’s rights. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that there is a significant divergence between the applicant’s application and the view of the Maori Land Court judge—in this case Mr Williams—which is not part of the application; and how can this man go on being a Maori Land Court judge if he is prepared to release and leak a confidential minute from the hearing of the court to the media of this country? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: My understanding as I said before is that this was not a usual practice of a judge in these kinds of circumstances. But as I also said let us wait for the hearing to proceed. The Crown will be taking a vigorous position within this hearing. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is the Prime Minister happy with the way her Government’s Foreshore and Seabed Act is written in light of Chief Judge Williams’ statement on an application for control over 50 kilometres of coastline: “The legislation appears to contemplate just this approach.”; if so how does this guarantee access to the foreshore and seabed for all New Zealanders? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Dealing with the second part of the question first any customary rights order under section 55 of the Act cannot infringe upon access or navigation rights. As to the other matters I think the member should read the judge’s minute a bit further. The judge in fact also states that there is a great way to go before Whakatohea can demonstrate what it is applying for. This is an application at this point. 
Dail Jones 
: Will the Prime Minister confirm that any application that is lodged for a customary order must relate to an activity or a use that has been continuing since 1840—was going on in 1900 2000 and 2005—and has never bothered any New Zealander in being carried out because the use of the foreshore and seabed has continued by all New Zealanders since that time so there should really be no concern on the part of anyone who actually understands the Foreshore and Seabed Act with regard to an application for a customary rights order? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is quite a long question. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Yes I think that that is so. As I said before the evidence filed in support is largely about the collection of shells—something that I suspect some of us in this House who are non-Maori have engaged in in the past—the washing in sea-water for ceremonial traditional purposes which some might care to use and the fishing and collection of shellfish. 
Metiria Turei 
: I seek leave to table a copy of an article printed on 27 March that clearly illustrates Dr Cullen’s reported fury at the Chief Judge’s stance. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. The document will not be tabled. 
Maui’s Dolphin—Protection 
2.  
TARIANA TURIA (Leader—Maori Party) 
 to the  
Minister of Conservation 
: What initiatives have been put in place along the west coast of the North Island to protect the Maui’s dolphin the world’s smallest and rarest marine dolphin given it has been classified as “critically endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ red list? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Conservation) 
: 
 In October 2003 the Minister of Fisheries closed areas to set-netting on the west coast of the North Island within the range of Maui’s dolphin as this fishing method had been identified as a major threat. Further work is being undertaken by my department and the Ministry of Fisheries to gain more information about other possible threats to Maui’s dolphin. 
Tariana Turia 
: What effect will the possible excavation and dredging of ironsands on the coastline between Taranaki and Kaipara Harbour have on the ongoing survival of Maui’s dolphin? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: As yet we do not know what the answer to that question will be but I can assure the member that the Department of Conservation will be watching those activities—should they take place because at the moment there is only an application to explore—very carefully to see that there is no negative impact on this critically endangered species. 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: Have the existing measures to protect Maui’s dolphin been successful? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Yes. The outlook for Maui’s dolphin has improved as there have been no recorded deaths from set-net entanglement since the closures were put in place. In the 3 years before that there were seven deaths from human-related causes. 
Tariana Turia 
: What assurance will the Minister give this House that he will advise the Associate Minister of Energy that any consultation on the Black Sand Exploration permit application must include an opportunity for environmental objections relative to Maui’s dolphin to be heard from mana whenua who are kaitiaki of these dolphins? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: My department is developing a code of conduct to minimise the impact of mining exploration on marine mammals. This code is still in draft form but most exploration companies over the past few months have been keen to work to it regardless. We are dialoguing closely with the Ministry of Economic Development. 
Tariana Turia 
: Is the Minister prepared to call in a mining licence in this area given that the World Wide Fund For Nature has indicated that Maui’s dolphin may become extinct in 25 years? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I can assure the member and the rest of the House that the Department of Conservation will be taking every measure possible to ensure the survival of this critically endangered species. 
Nanaia Mahuta 
: Could the Minister clarify whether any mana whenua group along the west coast has made an application to protect Maui’s dolphin? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: To my knowledge no. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Can the Minister confirm that if this application were for the total habitat of a similarly critically endangered species on conservation land the Minister would have the power to refuse consent to mine on the conservation estate but that with no similarly protected areas in the sea he does not have this power; and what opportunities if any does the Minister have to protect this unique animal from almost certain extinction if mining proceeds on that scale? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I will repeat the comment I made earlier in answer to a previous question: the department is developing a code of conduct to minimise the impact of mining activities. We will be working very closely with other Government departments to ensure that that takes place. It is also my understanding that the size of the activity determines whether in my role of Minister of Conservation I have an opportunity to be a decision maker. If it is a significant activity it then falls under a restricted coastal activity and I become decision maker. 
Immigration—Good Character Requirement 
3.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Immigration 
: Why does the New Zealand Immigration Service require before a New Zealand visa or permit can be granted an assurance that the applicant and any family included in an application are of good character? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 Character checks are in place to determine whether people wanting to enter or remain in New Zealand meet the requirements of section 7 of the Immigration Act and associated policy. The Act sets out the types of convictions that would preclude someone from entering New Zealand. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Does the Minister believe that a person with proven links to an organisation that promotes paedophilia and that publishes literature promoting sex between boys and men is a person of good character being the publisher and editor of the publication  
Unbound 
 that contains articles about men and boys having sex as well as pictures of naked boys and why was this not picked up by the New Zealand Immigration Service? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: As I said section 7 talks about the kinds of convictions and as I have said to this House before this person had police clearances in both South Africa and America. However the application form asks whether a person has been the subject of any investigation and also asks about the nature of the person’s previous immigration status. It is important that people fill out the form right. Investigations are under way to see whether in fact that form was filled out correctly. If it was not then a visa or a permit can be revoked. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is the Minister aware that the former owner of Free Forum Books before Jim Peron Mr Eric Garris has made the following statement with regard to Jim Peron’s involvement with North American Man/Boy Love Association: “I did not sell the NAMBLA bulletin. I did not sell the NAMBLA bulletin or allow NAMBLA meetings in the bookstore when I owned it. Jim was an ardent supporter of NAMBLA and gave it a home at the bookstore after I sold it to him. On several occasions I expressed my negative feelings toward associating the libertarian bookstore with NAMBLA. When I sold the bookstore to Jim the only condition of the sale was that he would allow the Libertarian Party to meet and distribute literature in the store. I would never have asked him to allow NAMBLA to meet there and would not have sold him the bookstore if I had known he would use it to promote NAMBLA.” and what comment does the Minister have today regarding Mr Peron’s character now who previously stated that to continue to hold North American Man/Boy Love Association meetings at the bookstore was a condition of the sale to him? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: I am aware of the comments that were made originally by this person saying that the condition of the sale was that that magazine or that information was to be held at the bookstore. My office has been contacted by someone who has told me that in fact he or she believes that not to be the case. I have asked for that information to come to me in written form and I would be very keen for the member to give me a copy of it so I can investigate it further. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I seek leave to table the following: a note from Eric Garris the previous bookstore owner; a note from Dr Frits Bernard as to who was the editor of  
Unbound 
; and also a volume of  
Unbound 
 which sets out page after page of evidence in respect of this man’s beliefs and proclivities. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Has the Minister received any evidence from Mr Peters that Mr Jim Peron has committed any crime in this country or any other country? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: I am aware of a number of allegations that have been made in the House but I have not had any evidence yet along the lines of what the member’s question was about. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Has the Minister received any information or reports that in this House there is a political party that seems to be a defender of paedophilia behaviour and paedophiles in New Zealand? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Minister has no responsibility for another party. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. My question asked whether the Minister has received any reports. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: The Minister of Immigration has no responsibility for that particular matter. If anybody has I suppose it might be the Leader of the House but even then I doubt that I have. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: The matter does not settle there. Mr Peters is making a serious slur on parliamentarians. That is most certainly out of order and if he was suggesting that I am defending paedophilia he is most certainly mistaken. I require him to withdraw and apologise for that very serious slur. It is all right for Mr Peters and we cannot stop him from slandering anyone outside this House but under our rules he cannot slander a member of this House. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: First of all the caucus of the ACT party is not a party—or anything like it apparently. Secondly I was prepared to allow that Rodney Hide had made a serious mistake in helping someone who walked into his office or had others walk into his office seeking an MP’s assistance and I am still prepared to. But when some member of Parliament rises knowing that the evidence that is out now clearly points to such a person then I resent in any way shape or form that it is I who is guilty of a breach of privilege or who has in any way offended the rules of Parliament. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: It is all very well for Mr Peters now to refer to some other MP. The person who asked the question was myself and I take very deep offence at Mr Peters’ statement. I was seeking clarification as to whether any crime had been committed and as far as I can tell no crime has been committed and no evidence has been given of it. So I am now being slurred as being a defender of paedophilia and I take very great exception to that. Mr Peters may make it his practice to slander people outside this House and may get popular support for doing so but he may not do it to MPs. I am asking you Madam Speaker now that I have been so slurred by Mr Peters to require him to withdraw and apologise even though he has great difficulty in admitting that he has made mistakes. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I think I have heard sufficient argument on this. Obviously the question when it was first asked was out of order. Members know that they should not imply infamous or damaging conduct on other members. If the member did imply such conduct then he should either deny he was making that allegation or he should withdraw and apologise. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I wish to raise a point of clarification for you to make on this judgment and it concerns an event. I referred to a political party that stood to a man and a woman and cheered Mr Jim Peron just 2 weeks ago at its annual conference. I referred to a political party. I did not refer to anybody in this House and  
Hansard  
will disclose that. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: However a member felt that the inference was to that particular member so is the member denying that there was any such inference to an individual member? 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I am saying that my reference was to a political party. The specific details are of a political party after the matter had been raised in this House cheering to a man and a woman at its last annual general meeting one Jim Peron. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is the member saying and I ask this for the last time—[ 
Interruption 
] The member has taken exception to what was a serious allegation from which a reasonable inference could have been taken even though reference was made generally. I am asking the member for the last time either to withdraw and apologise or to state that no such inference was applied to an individual member. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I wish to make it very clear to you that a political party—and a parliamentary party—[ 
Interruption 
] No I am not going to apologise. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Of course you are. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: No I am not. I am not going to apologise for accusing a political party—and I have given the House evidence for it—of being a defender of a paedophile. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member is not going to withdraw and apologise. Are you denying then that the implication was that individual members of that party were supporters of paedophiles? 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Well obviously. I referred to a political party. But no one in this House can demand that because I referred to his or her party I therefore referred to that member. 
Stephen Franks 
: Mr Peters said that the ACT party to a man and a woman stood and applauded Mr Peron. That is untrue for a start; I was there. He has included me in his inference and I demand that he withdraw and apologise to me for a start. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 47/4 for those who are interested in these matters and I know that those who are participating in this matter are interested: “It has traditionally been ruled that it is perfectly in order for members to say that the Government or a member has been influenced by somebody outside Parliament or has had advice from somebody outside Parliament. It is not in order to say that the Government or a member has been dominated by has received instructions from has received directions from or has been dictated to by somebody outside Parliament.” That was the implication. Would the member then please withdraw and apologise. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I will not because I have made it very clear where my allegation lay and with respect that Speaker’s ruling covers no such thing; there is no reference to this matter at all. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I refer the member then to Speaker’s ruling 47/1. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. We have here deliberate defiance of the Speakership. Just asking Mr Peters to withdraw so that he can make some TV stunt is not sufficient. I believe he should be named. I take very great exception to what Mr Peters is saying. I say to you that in my case—because I can speak only for myself—what he is saying is totally untrue. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: If Mr Prebble and Mr Franks are offended by what I have said then I apologise personally to those two members. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member has apologised. We will now move on to the next question. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I too am offended by the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ implication in what he said. I think you were right the first time you ruled—that he should withdraw and apologise totally. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member withdraw and apologise to all members of the ACT party in the House whom he was referring to in that statement. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I withdraw and apologise to all those members whether or not they stood in support of Jim Peron. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No; does the member withdraw and apologise? 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member withdraws and apologises. Would he please— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You happily allowed Mr Prebble to go on talking about me slandering people outside this House. Well the test of that is that I am prepared as I promised Rodney Hide to say what I have said in a public press conference in an hour’s time. I hope he turns up. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Working for Families Package—Benefits 
4.  
GEORGINA BEYER (Labour—Wairarapa) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: How have New Zealand families already benefited from the Working for Families package? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 More than 88000 New Zealand households already have increased entitlements as a result of the Working for Families changes that came into effect on 1 October 2004. Over 30000 families have had increased entitlements to childcare assistance and out-of-school care and recreation due to increased subsidy rates and widened eligibility. Around 60000 have had increased entitlements to accommodation supplements as a result of a more generous abatement provision brought in on 1 October. 
Georgina Beyer 
: How much do individual families benefit from those changes? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Let me give two examples. A two-income couple with two children that earns a little over $37000 gross a year before tax and pays $120 a week in rent and $69 in childcare costs will be $42 a week better off. A sole parent with a young child who works 30 hours a week earning $11 an hour in the hand while on the domestic purposes benefit and pays $225 in rent and $115 or so in childcare costs will be $56 better off. By April 2007 they will be $163 a week and $147 a week better off respectively. 
John Key 
: Is it not a fact that the Inland Revenue Department is woefully underprepared for what could be a huge number of recipients of Working for Families who will end up underestimating their income and becoming debtors of the Inland Revenue Department just like the 34747 who found themselves in that position in 2004 when a fraction of the number of New Zealanders was exposed to that package; and was he shocked to learn as I was that 747 of those New Zealanders ended up owing $5000 or more and 22 owed $10000 or more last year alone? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: No. 
Rod Donald 
: Is the Minister concerned at the front page report in today’s Christchurch  
Press 
 that desperate workers are visiting food banks for the first time and what is his response to a call from social service agencies the Council of Trade Unions and the Green Party to bring forward those parts of the Working for Families package that the Government has delayed until 2007? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I am always concerned when I read headlines of that nature. That is what the Working for Families package of course is for. This year around $600 million will be part of that package. Were we to move forward more parts of that package the pressure on things such as inflation would be obvious. The $600 million this year is about what I think we can give. 
Bill Gudgeon 
: Will the Minister confirm aside from rent relief how much senior citizens would benefit from the Working for Families package? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: As the member knows this package is targeted at households with families in them. If superannuitants have families in their households they will benefit directly from the package. 
Judy Turner 
: Why are families who provide foster care for extended family members such as grandparents caring for their grandchildren paid $30 less a week under the Working for Families package than Child Youth and Family Services foster carers who do an equivalent job and how does he reconcile that with the Government’s stated intention in the care and protection blueprint that “Wherever possible relationships between children young people and their family and whanau should be preserved and strengthened.”? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The member will know I am sure that the reason behind this is that when people have children placed into their care by Child Youth and Family Services they are in fact acting on the instructions of the State in looking after those children whereas most of the children who are being raised by grandparents or by any other relative in the same situation are not in that position. A major debate is going on right now on whether those two payments ought to be equalised. The member knows that. It is under active consideration. 
John Key 
: If the Minister stands by the answer he gave me before when he said that he was not concerned about the Inland Revenue Department and he did not think it was woefully unprepared will he stand up in the House now and tell New Zealanders who underestimate their income that they will not have to pay the debts they owe; and will he also tell the people of New Zealand why New Zealanders will be so much better at estimating their income than Australians under the same scheme 96 percent of whom could not get it right? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Mr Key is asking me to make comparisons between New Zealanders and Australians which I shall resist doing on this occasion. All I can say to Mr Key is that he knows—we have said it before—that both I and the Minister responsible for the Inland Revenue Department think the department has been well prepared for this and is in good shape to handle the job that it has had put in front of it. 
John Key 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I asked the Minister to stand up and give to the House and to the people of New Zealand the assurance that if he is wrong and if thousands and thousands of New Zealanders end up owing a lot of money to the Inland Revenue Department his Government will write it off. It is all very well for the Minister to stand up and smile about it and not care about it but the facts of life are that the answers given to me by the Minister of Finance were that the Inland Revenue Department is woefully underprepared. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Apart from the last bit being absolutely untrue and completely incorrect the Minister for Social Development and Employment has no responsibility for making promises about refunds from an Inland Revenue Department scheme. 
John Key 
: Can the Minister confirm that the Inland Revenue Department will use a system for contacting New Zealanders who underestimate their income that will involve the department sending two computer-generated letters and that the computer-generated letters will be months and months apart so there will be plenty of time to run up those debts; and can he tell the House why the Inland Revenue Department in New Zealand did not contact the inland revenue department in Australia to work out why it had so many problems with its system when it is using exactly the same system? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I am flattered that Mr Key thinks I am responsible for the Inland Revenue Department when the other Minister is actually in the House. But I can say to the member— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: This Minister is responsible for nothing—always ducking for cover. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Mr Smith is inviting something that he never wants to hear so if I were him I would be quiet— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What sort of threat is that? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I said that I would be quiet if I were him; he is always inviting things across the House that he does not want to hear so he should be quiet. What I can say to Mr Key on behalf of the Minister whom I have worked with closely on the implementation of this programme is that the Inland Revenue Department has a good tracking method in relation to ensuring that people understand what is happening so it is confident it can handle this issue. 
Question No. 3 to Minister 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am concerned that you look at Speaker’s ruling 47/1 which you used in an attempt to demand that I apologise. That of course is a Speaker’s ruling from 1914 and members of this House will remember the Speaker’s ruling made by the previous Speaker when the Alliance was collapsing where he ruled that the party led by Laila Harré and the party led by Jim Anderton were two different things and one could not by way of aspersion be sheeted against the other. That was a very clear recent ruling the most recent one I know of and in my view it overrides this view that you have expressed on this Speaker’s ruling—and surely it was one that was drafted by the present Clerk if you want continuity and consistency of rulings. But to go back and look at that it is as clear as daylight that you cannot imply that someone outside this House is inside this House or someone inside this House is necessarily outside this House and thereby say there is a blanket insinuation. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member is in fact relitigating the point of order. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I know that and for good purpose. I do not want an answer today but I would like to know how your ruling today— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I will look at it for the member. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Thank you very much. I am just pointing to the authority in the precincts. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You are absolutely right. The member is actually having later thoughts and under the Standing Orders that is totally out of order; members must raise the matter at the time. If you want to go into the merits of the points that the member has made you will find that in fact he is wrong there too. But the quick answer is that he is out of time so he is out of order. 
Police Minister—Confidence 
5.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she have confidence in the Minister of Police; if so why? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
 on behalf of the  
Prime Minister 
: Yes because he is a hard-working and conscientious Minister. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Why is the Prime Minister happy with Mr Hawkins’ leadership of New Zealand Police when in the Minister’s own Counties-Manukau Police District there are reports that rape complaints lie amongst hundreds and hundreds of uninvestigated police files? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I am advised first of all obviously that the leadership of the police for operational purposes rests with the Commissioner of Police and I am interested always that the National Party wants to adopt a policy whereby a politician can direct the Commissioner of Police on operational matters. There is a two-word term for that—one of which is “police” and the other “State” but I will not put them together for the purposes of this particular argument. 
Rodney Hide 
: How can the Prime Minister have confidence in George Hawkins as the Minister of Police when in his own backyard of south Auckland nine complaints of rape—one dating back to Christmas—are yet to be allocated to a police officer to investigate because of a lack of resources which that Minister of Police stands up in this House and denies? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The Government’s position is that the Commissioner of Police has the resources sufficient for such purposes and obviously the Minister will take up with the commissioner issues around rape complaints lying unanswered and uninvestigated for any considerable length of time. 
Marc Alexander 
: Why does the Prime Minister continue to have confidence in the Minister of Police when the high Easter weekend road toll strongly suggests that his emphasis on issuing speeding tickets is clearly misplaced in contrast to and at the expense of core crime concerns that by default are being relegated to being seen as a second-tier police function? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The high Easter road toll was in large part due to excessive speeding. The first multi-fatality accident was due to speeding. If the member is now saying the police should not have been trying to reduce the level of speeding on the open roads then I fail to follow the logic of the case that he is making. 
Ron Mark 
: Did the Prime Minister not hear the President of the Police Association Mr Greg O’Connor say on radio today that currently around 1000 cases in Auckland alone are not being investigated by the police because the police are grossly understaffed; and is that not proof of what New Zealand First said on 30 May 2003 when announcing its policy to double the size of the police force in order to bring New Zealand into line with other First World countries such as the United States England Wales and Australia with their police-citizen policing ratios? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What I can report is that we have the lowest crime rate for over 20 years and we have one of the highest crime clearance rates in our recorded history—[ 
Interruption 
]—and no amount of barracking from the Opposition will change the facts. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: How long can the Prime Minister keep telling the public that the police are adequately staffed when an ordinary citizen tailing a drunk driver can ring 111 five times pass a police car issuing traffic tickets and get no action whatsoever to take this dangerous menace off the roads? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I am pleased that at last the member considers that policing of road offences is an important part of police activity. It is the first time in some weeks that he has come to recognise that fact. An inquiry is under way into the 111 system. We shall see what the results of that inquiry are. 
Ron Mark 
: What are the public to think about this Government when on the one hand a dairy owner reports thefts and the names of the perpetrators but gets no action but on the other hand the Hon David Benson-Pope cries to the police and gets a patrol car sent immediately with an officer without having laid one formal charge in order to get $35 picked up yet at the same time interestingly enough the police against all advice seek to prosecute an Opposition MP for driving a tractor in Parliament grounds whilst ignoring the fact— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Does the member have a question? 
Ron Mark 
: —that the Prime Minister was involved in art fraud for which a charge was never laid— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Does the member have a question? I am not sure what the question was. There was a series of statements. The member should succinctly ask the question. 
Ron Mark 
: On the back of that evidence what are the public to think of this Government and its policing priorities? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What they are to think is firstly that we have the lowest crime rate in over 20 years and secondly that we have the highest crime clearance statistics for many many years. The member may not like that but it is in fact the situation in New Zealand. On his reference to facts perhaps he would like to get his facts right. In the one case where the person in south Auckland reported the names the offender was trespassed off the particular property. Efforts were made to locate the offender. He will be interviewed should he come to police attention again. That particular offender is not the one referred to in terms of the video evidence which Mr Hide gently tried to confuse—one with the other. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Why does the Prime Minister have confidence in Mr Hawkins when the Labour Party list ranking committee does not; and maybe it is more in touch with the country than this Prime Minister? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The Prime Minister has no ministerial responsibility for the Labour list. I think that members on the other side of the House would die to be No. 25 on our list rather than be Nos 6 or 7 on most of theirs. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek leave to table a statement made by Madeleine Flannagan of south Dunedin outlining the incident involving the dispatching of a police car to collect $35. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Is there any objection to the tabling of that document? There is objection. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek leave to table some documents including a letter from the police where they admit they failed to investigate a report of fraud signed by Mr A F Shearer. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek leave to table a letter from the police to a Miss Ria Whittam apologising for police failure to investigate properly a theft. 
Document not tabled. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek leave to table an email from a Mr Brendan Murphy about his reporting to the police a stolen car on the Auckland motorway—a report that the police failed to respond to. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. The document will not be tabled. 
Ron Mark 
: Then there is hardly any point in seeking leave to table the other 10 or 15 is there? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I would think not. 
Working New Zealanders—Government Assistance 
6.  
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
 to the  
Minister of Labour 
: What is the Government doing to assist working New Zealanders? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 The Government has done a great deal. It repealed the Employment Contracts Act and introduced the Employment Relations Act. It introduced paid parental leave and also 4 weeks’ annual leave and time and a half for those who work on public holidays. The Government has introduced more effective health and safety laws and has increased the minimum wage every year for the past 6 years. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: What improvements has the Government made to the minimum wage since 1999 and how does this compare with the previous decade? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: The Labour Government has increased the minimum wage from $7 to $9.50 in just 6 years—an increase of over 35 percent. By comparison between 1990 and 1994 under the previous National Government the minimum wage was not increased at all. 
Government Members 
: What! 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: Not at all! Between 1995 and 1999 the minimum wage was increased by less than one miserable dollar. Labour is very proud of its record on this issue. 
John Key 
: If this Government really cares about working families and working New Zealanders why are working New Zealanders facing higher taxes than before why does the in-work payment that is part of the Working for Families package not occur until 2006 and why are two-thirds of the people who will be beneficiaries of the Working for Families package on welfare? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: There are several questions there. The Minister must answer only one but if he wishes to answer two he may. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: The Working for Families package will see a great boost for a large number of working families in New Zealand and this Government is very very proud of that. 
Judy Turner 
: What is the Government going to do to help disabled people like Christchurch man Peter Bradley stay in the workforce when he has been told that the 4 hours a week of home help he needs will be axed unless he quits his job as a call-centre operator—which he enjoys—and that he will be required to go back on to a full invalids benefit? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: I presume that the member is speaking about the repeal of sections of the Employment Relations Act? 
Judy Turner 
: Yes. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: It is important to note that around 3000 clients are involved in 47 workshops and the repeal of this legislation applies to about 1000 of those clients. Under the repeal individuals themselves will be assessed as to whether they are exempt from minimum-wage provisions rather than what is currently the case which is that all those in sheltered workshops are exempt. That is a fair way to proceed. 
Judy Turner 
: I seek leave to table an article from the media: “Got a job lost home helper”. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Question No. 5 to Minister 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I am going to try one more time. I seek the leave of the House to table a letter from a constituent who visited the police on three occasions to lay charges against Mr Tame Iti long before the police actually decided to do so. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes there is. The document will not be tabled. 
Police Priorities—South Auckland Dairy Owner 
7.  
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: What is his response to the south Auckland dairy owner who has been tormented by thieves for over a year who has handed police the names and addresses of the thieves together with video evidence and who has been told by police that it is low priority and no action will be taken? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 The situation as reported in the media would be totally unsatisfactory and I have told the Commissioner of Police that I expect him to address those issues. 
Rodney Hide 
: On what date did the Minister learn that there were nine complaints of rape—one dating back to Christmas—in his patch of south Auckland yet to be assigned an investigating officer and up to 1500 criminal cases yet to be assigned an investigating officer; does he find that unsatisfactory too? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I find that unassigned cases are something that the commissioner must address and I will talk to him about that. 
Rodney Hide 
: Does the Minister agree with Prime Minister Helen Clark that Sergeant Fogarty was “ill-advised” to write to the south Auckland dairy owner and say that because of “the sheer volume of complaints and limited resources” the police could not investigate the case; if he does agree with her is the problem that the police officer just told the truth? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I agree with the Prime Minister. I must say that the reports in the media are not accurate. A year ago an offender was apprehended for stealing cigarettes. The case was taken to court and the person was prosecuted. The second case of shoplifting involved a pie a sausage and a drink. That person has been trespassed and the person’s name flagged. He will be picked up when he comes to the notice of the police. A third complaint referred to shoplifting and the registration number that was given for the vehicle does not exist. The most recent complaint in February of this year involved the theft of a single bottle of Coke and the police have been given video footage of that theft. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I question that. The Minister of Police just gave the answer to my first question. My question concerned the letter that Sergeant Fogarty wrote and whether it was “ill-advised”. I do ask that the Minister of Police—who I know is reading from a prepared script—actually addresses my question and tells me whether he agrees with the Prime Minister that that letter was “ill-advised”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The question asked whether the Minister agreed with the Prime Minister. He said he did and then he went on to make other statements. So the question was addressed. 
Rodney Hide 
: My point is therefore to ask whether the Minister of Police is saying that what— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member like to ask another supplementary question which may be a way to get his question addressed? 
Rodney Hide 
: No. We have a limited number of supplementary questions which is always my complaint. When a Minister does not address a question properly it means that we have to burn up Opposition questions. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Minister addressed the member’s question. The answer may not have been satisfactory but the question was addressed. 
Rodney Hide 
: What the Minister of Police has left unclear is this: when he said the letter was ill-advised and then went on to say that the facts were not correct is that the reason the letter was “ill-advised”? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: As I said that is not a point of order. The point of order was whether the Minister addressed the question. The Minister addressed the question though the member may not agree with the answer. 
Conservation Department—Focus 
8.  
DAVE HEREORA (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Conservation 
: Has he received any reports that indicate that the focus of the Department of Conservation should be to protect New Zealand’s unique flora and endangered species; if so what do they say? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Conservation) 
: 
 Yes I have seen a report promoting a major review of the Department of Conservation which states that the department should concentrate on the protection of endangered species. There was no mention of the department’s critical role in providing recreational opportunities including camping as one of the objectives of the proposed review. That appears to be in direct conflict with the policy released over the weekend that the Department of Conservation should create 25 new camping grounds. That flip-flop of ideas came from Dr Brash and the National Party. 
Dave Hereora 
: What steps have been taken to enable the Department of Conservation to carry out its key functions better? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: There was a major funding increase for the Department of Conservation in the 2000 Budget for biodiversity conservation. Again in 2002 a budget of $349 million was provided to maintain and upgrade recreational facilities on public conservation land. Those included huts tracks and the 235 camping grounds located on public conservation land. 
Simon Power 
: Does the Minister stand by his statement that Dr Brash’s plan for opening new camp grounds is “not a bad idea”; if so what does that say about this Minister’s priorities when he has allowed the Department of Conservation to close four camp sites while at the same time allowing it to acquire almost 350000 hectares of land through the tenure review process despite the fact that last year the department failed to meet 21 out of 35 of its self-imposed natural heritage targets and failed to protect over two-thirds of New Zealand’s chronically threatened species? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I would like to remind that member that the Department of Conservation manages almost 250 camping grounds. It did close four small camping grounds: one at Lake Waikaremoana which was flood prone; one in North Canterbury which had no people using it; one at Haast Pass where there was another one right next door; and one at Boyd Creek near Te Anau where there was also another one right next door. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member’s question will be heard in silence. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Has the Minister received any reports of proposals to legislate away his department’s power to advocate for conservation including in resource management plan and resource consent hearings and does he think that the Department of Conservation’s ability to protect New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna would be enhanced by that United Future policy? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Yes I have heard of proposals along those lines including National’s policies of doing much the same thing as that. There appear to be many contradictions in those policies which would go a long way towards undermining the fine work that the Department of Conservation does in managing not just biodiversity values but also recreational opportunities for all New Zealanders. 
Larry Baldock 
: Would the Department of Conservation’s statutory obligations to protect endangered species not be enhanced considerably if the department were to develop greater cooperative pest control strategies with members of the new possum recovery industry like Mr Bassett-Smith in Whakatane who cannot fill the orders for tonnes and tonnes of possum pet food from the US and Japan because the increasing use of 1080 poison is limiting the areas that he can recover possums from; or is this Minister opposed to valuable export dollars being earned instead of taxpayer-funded dollars being poured into a black hole to pay for poison in this country? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: As Minister of Conservation I am committed to the protection of our native biodiversity. As a consequence I will not encourage possum farming. 
Larry Baldock 
: How does the Department of Conservation reconcile its focus on protecting New Zealand’s endangered native species with the fact that the increasing widespread aerial application of 1080 poison kills a multitude of native wildlife each year including endangered native birds and how can it be that one individual citizen in New Zealand would be prosecuted by the department for killing one native bird yet the Minister can openly admit that his department kills many native birds with 1080 poison every year; does that sound like one law for all in this country? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: The member’s allegations about the impact of 1080 poison on native species are incorrect. What is quite clear from the scientific evidence is that there is a very rapid recovery in indigenous species when possums and other pest species are reduced. 
Weathertight Homes Resolution Service—Claims Resolution 
9.  
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
 to the  
Minister of Internal Affairs 
: Is the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service providing speedy and fair procedures for assessment and resolution of claims for leaky home owners? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 The rate at which assessments and resolutions are being achieved is improving. The service has been most flexible and its cost to homeowners is very low. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Is the Minister aware that after 2½ years only 10 percent of the 2714 claims to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service have been resolved; that claims are being lodged at 10 times the rate that they are being received; and that even if a single further claim is not lodged it will take 20 years to deal with the backlog; if so does he believe that this lives up to Labour’s promise of a speedy and quick resolution process? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I most certainly believe that the decision of the Government is helping homeowners who would normally have to fight these matters through the courts which would take even more time. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What use is the resolution service to Tony and Lara Cox of Whangarei whose leaky home was built after he was advised of the problem but when he did nothing; whose heavily mortgaged home is recommended for demolition meaning that they are bankrupt; and who cannot seek remedy from the resolution service because both the builder and the certifier are liquidated; and what exactly does the Minister think that this family should do? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: This matter is still before the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: No it’s not. They can’t do anything. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: It is still there and the assessed estimate of the cost of repairs is $34000 plus GST. Mr and Mrs Cox say that it is $160000 and they have raised the issue of demolition themselves. There is still the opportunity for them to take this further. 
Brent Catchpole 
: Are the proceedings of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service being deliberately frustrated by the Building Industry Authority’s failure to participate in mediation because firstly it is responsible for auditing the territorial and regional authorities’ inspection process and secondly it holds bond money on behalf of private certifiers for a run on insurance; if so what will the Minister and this Government do to make the Building Industry Authority accept its responsibility and provide a speedy process to help people who are in dire need due to rotting homes? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Matters concerning the Building Industry Authority should be addressed to the Minister for Building Issues not me. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why is the Government refusing to participate in any mediation with owners of leaky homes and is instead spending $6 million on lawyers fighting such claims of liability while at the same time it is encouraging builders certifiers and councils to participate in the resolution service process and is this not a case of the Government saying one thing but doing the exact opposite? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: No that member is confused. Building issues concerning the Building Industry Authority should be addressed to the Minister for Building Issues. That is absolutely correct and if the member does not understand it he should get up to date. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Surely you cannot accept that argument from the Minister. He is the Minister of Internal Affairs. This matter does come under his purview. He is also as far as we know still a Cabinet Minister and he should be able to answer on behalf of the Government in these matters. After all the Government regularly flicks questions about the police to other Ministers because they seem to know more about it than he does. He must know something to justify his place in Cabinet. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: The question was originally addressed to the Minister for Building Issues. It was transferred to this Minister because he is the Minister with responsibility for the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. That service will pass to the Minister for Building Issues in August but the Building Industry Authority is already the responsibility of the Minister for Building Issues. I think that the House has to accept that situation. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: This highlights the exact problem. I submitted my question to the Minister for Building Issues. The Government chose to refer it to the Minister of Internal Affairs. I then asked the question of the Minister of Internal Affairs and I was told that I had directed it to the wrong Minister. The Government needs to have some accountability. It is saying one thing to councils builders and certifiers yet it is spending $6 million fighting legally. I think that the people of New Zealand and I are entitled to an answer. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Ruling on the point of order I say that the original question was correctly addressed. It was the supplementary questions that then changed the focus and the ministerial responsibility changed accordingly. Therein lay the issue. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: My question referred to the process of the resolution service which is the responsibility until August of the Minister of Internal Affairs. My question asked why the Government—and I did not say the Building Industry Authority or the Department of Building and Housing—is refusing to participate in the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. For that to be ruled out of order and not within the purview of responsibility of the Minister I think is incorrect. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have ruled on the point of order. 
Brent Catchpole 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This Minister also dodged my question by referring to the Building Industry Authority as being none of his business—whereas the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service was his business and certainly at the time the Building Industry Authority was his business. He was the Minister at the time and therefore he should answer the question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I listened to the member’s question carefully. The member did refer to the Building Industry Authority which is not the responsibility of this Minister. He addressed the question. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Having ruled my question out of order can you give me a reassurance that if I lodge that exact supplementary question to the Minister for Building Issues I will get an answer and not this stupid game of passing the buck between Ministers? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I suggest that the member set down another question. 
Brent Catchpole 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I want to clarify that I was referring to the process of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service which was part of the original question. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The member should perhaps refer to his notes. The great bulk of his question was about the actions of the Building Industry Authority which is not the responsibility of this Minister. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I understand the problem you are in. The Minister can answer in the way he did but you have left the impression that the question itself was out of order— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes that was incorrect. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: —and with the greatest respect it is not. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No—I agree with that. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: This Minister is actually in charge of the process. It was perfectly open to the Minister to say that he regrets that the Government is not participating or that he supports the fact that the Government is not. But in fact he has invited the Opposition to use up more questions by putting in a question to another Minister. All I am saying is that it is open to Dr Nick Smith to put that question in exactly the same way for the Government to then refer it to Mr Hawkins for Mr Hawkins to again in effect say: “Well we’ve got a Minister for Building Issues—put it to him.” and we might never find out why the Government is recommending that everybody else participate in this process but will not itself participate. I myself am now curious to know what that reason is. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member. He is correct that the question was not out of order. 
Peter Brown 
: I do not want to drag on this issue any longer than need be but I point out that this is a very important issue in the minds of many New Zealanders. So I seek leave for my colleagues Brent Catchpole and the Hon Nick Smith to have their questions addressed by the Minister for Building Issues this very afternoon. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for those questions to be addressed by the Minister for Building Issues. Is there any objection? There is. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek the leave of the House to table the report from the building assessor stating that Mr and Mrs Cox’s home is so unfit that it should be demolished. 
Document not tabled. 
Benefits—Consistency 
10.  
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: Are married people bringing up children on the unemployment benefit treated equally to those bringing up children on the domestic purposes benefit? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 The rate for a couple on the unemployment benefit is higher to reflect that the overall costs of a two-adult household are greater than for a single-adult household. The single-parent rate reflects fixed household costs. That has been the case since the introduction of the domestic purposes benefit. Family support payments are additional to core benefit payments and are based upon the number of dependent children in the household not the make-up of the household. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Why then do married people on the unemployment benefit not receive any increase in their unemployment benefit if they have a second child when sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit get an extra $1113 in their benefit following the birth of a second child; and does that not constitute discrimination against married beneficiaries? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: That is a very good question and one that I know that both United Future and the Labour-Progressive coalition Government have been concerned about with the Working for Families package. There is a differential because of the way the benefit system is structured which means that between the first and second child a greater amount of money comes to those people as the member described. There is no need for that to be the case which is why the Working for Families changes on 1 April will without making anybody worse off abolish that differential. From 1 April the increase that a sole parent gets in relation to having a second or subsequent child is the same amount that a couple gets in the same circumstances. 
Nanaia Mahuta 
: What is the Government doing to help get all people receiving a benefit back into work? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Although the priority in relation to clients on the unemployment benefit is to get them into work clients receiving the domestic purposes benefit are also required to take steps that will make them ready to return to work as soon as their personal circumstances allow. At the end of November 2004 93 percent of all domestic purposes benefit clients had a personal development and employment plan. Those plans include steps focused on education training or employment. Other significant milestones that the Government has taken to help more New Zealanders into work include intensive case management very successful partnerships with industry and new services for sickness and invalid beneficiaries with a resulting reduction in the number of people who are on those benefits. 
Judith Collins 
: What is the total number of add-ons that the Minister plans to implement along with the single benefit and what are their titles? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The most likely list will be for accommodation disability and children and there will need to be some emergency assistance. 
Police Priorities—Public Reaction 
11.  
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Does he understand property owners’ frustration and desire to arm themselves to protect them and their property when the South Auckland dairy owner’s experience suggests the police clearly will not take action and what is his response? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 The public cannot arm themselves for that purpose. Law enforcement is the responsibility of the police and I expect the police to respond appropriately. 
Stephen Franks 
: Will the Minister then help all dairy owners lonely farm families and women alone by explaining who other than them have the right and the responsibility to protect them when the police have said that they do not even have enough officers to assign to rape cases and have admitted that they do not have the resources to deal with the sheer volume of complaints? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police have more resources than ever. On 25 February 2005 there were 9847 police staff compared with 8767 when Labour came into Government. Of course the police have the resources to deal with complaints. I will speak to the commissioner about those other cases that were raised in the question. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Why are New Zealand women not allowed to carry pepper spray or Mace to protect themselves when it is quite clear that women cannot rely on the police to guarantee their safety especially in light of the evidence we have heard today that rapists are roaming free in south Auckland as a result of nine cases of rape since Christmas that have not even been investigated? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Because it is against the law. 
Stephen Franks 
: Why not change the law? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: It is far better to make sure that people do not use arms of any kind to resolve differences and conflicts. 
Rodney Hide 
: I seek leave to table a letter from Sergeant Fogarty to the south Auckland dairy owner on 24 February 2005 saying that due to the sheer volume of complaints and limited resources the police cannot act. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. The document will not be tabled. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I seek leave to table a media release from the office of the commissioner about the dairy owner in south Auckland. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. The document will not be tabled. 
Oil—Prices 
12.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy 
: On what advice did he base his statement on  
Campbell Live 
 last week that the end of cheap oil will be “somewhere in the 2030s”? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 I think the first thing I would do would be to caution the member about taking out of context statements as necessarily for real. I have looked at the transcript and I think the question as put is not exactly the one that was put to me. We were talking about peak oil rather than cheap oil in my understanding. As the member is aware there are a lot of different opinions on this matter. The International Energy Agency foresees oil comfortably meeting demand to 2030. Analysis by the US Department of Energy has peak oil as early as 2021 or as late as 2067. So there is a median estimate of around 2037 but I must say that it is actually very hard to tell at this point. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: When the Minister made that statement had he seen the report the previous week that the US Department of Energy estimates that Saudi Arabia is pumping at 90 percent of full capacity now that the other OPEC countries say they are currently pumping at full capacity and that non-OPEC countries’ oil production has already peaked; if so how does he think that rapidly increasing demand for oil can be accommodated for another 30 years? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No because of the timing of the interview and the report. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Can the Minister inform the House and the country as to what steps the Government is taking to make New Zealand less reliant on oil as a source of energy? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The promotion and development of renewable energy sources and the uptake of energy efficiency measures are key priorities for the Government. This is reflected in the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy which sets out targets for energy efficiency and the uptake of renewables. The New Zealand Transport Strategy also promotes a focus on improved energy efficiency in transport including increased funding for passenger transport and the promotion of alternatives to vehicles such as cycling and walking. 
Opposition Member 
: What about cycling? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I do quite a lot of cycling and looking at the way the member is going he should too. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Is the Minister aware that when it comes to New Zealand the oil explorers are not satisfied with the existing royalties regime and in fact see it as a disincentive to drill new wells at a time when the nation desperately needs more oil? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I would be very happy for either me or the Minister of Finance to give the member a briefing on that. I think the complaints are around existing wells and people who want the royalties on those wells reduced rather than the arrangements for new wells which I think oil companies are well satisfied with. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: I thank the Minister for listing all the Green Party initiatives on energy efficiency and renewables that the Government has agreed to and nevertheless ask why given this commitment to energy efficiency and renewables New Zealand is still importing a lot of motor vehicles that take between 12 and 15 litres to travel 100 kilometres when many cars now available on the market will do that distance on 5 to 6 litres and those cars will be available for another 10 years and will be sitting in garages when families cannot afford to fuel them? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think we are not yet at the point of dictating to people the sorts of cars that they can import. But we are giving due notice to people that the running costs of gas guzzlers will over a period of time almost certainly continue to rise. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Can the Minister explain how he is giving that advice to the purchasers of vehicles given that not only do we have no fuel efficiency standards for vehicles at all the way we do for many household appliances but also we still do not even have fuel efficiency labelling for vehicles; so how are people supposed to know what their vehicle will do when they buy it? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: For the vast majority of cars that are imported their efficiency standards are widely publicly available. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Does the Minister agree with Treasury that the futures market is a good predictor of the future of oil prices; if so is he concerned that a New York futures trader this week purchased options for $100-a-barrel oil by June this year? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I sometimes agree with Treasury I sometimes do not agree with it and I have not had advice on the question of the futures price for oil this week. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Is the Minister aware of any other Green Party in the world—other than the New Zealand Green Party—that thinks that oil prices should be cheap? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have had no such reports. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the Minister for the succinctness of that answer. 
Urgent Debates Declined 
Tertiary Education Savings Scheme—Government Policy 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have received a letter from the Hon Peter Dunne seeking to debate a decision not to establish a scheme to assist parents to save for their children’s tertiary education. The application relates to a newspaper report that a scheme that was to have formed part of the next Budget is not to go ahead. Had such a scheme been announced in the Budget it would at that point of course have been a particular case of recent occurrence within the terms of Standing Order 373. But a Government deciding not to initiate a new policy if that is indeed the case is not a particular case of recent occurrence that can be raised for debate under the Standing Orders. The application is therefore declined. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I just make it clear that the report on which the member relies was grossly inaccurate. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Like the rest of the House I am obliged to the Minister but if he is going to make that much of a statement why does he not make a ministerial statement and tell us what the real situation is? I am sure the whole House is just waiting to hear. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member but that is not a point of order. 
Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 17 March. 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 On the Thursday prior to the Easter break we were debating the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill which after all should be called the “Building Act Amendment Bill”. The National Party will oppose this legislation as much as anything because of the disastrous process the legislation is being afforded. This debate will finish sometime this afternoon 29 March. 
The Government proposes then to send it to the Government Administration Committee which meets on the morning of Thursday 31 March. Yet the Minister has insisted that the bill be reported back to the House immediately after that one select committee hearing. 
Simon Power 
: That can’t be right. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: That is right. That is the sort of devious dodgy tactic this Government gets up to. It knows it has made a complete fiasco of the building industry over the last 5 years and is so embarrassed by this bill that it has dreamt up a name that does not even tell the public of New Zealand what it is about. It has dreamt up a process to send the bill to a select committee at which time I have no doubt that the officials will grovel before the select committee members to apologise for the mess they made with the Building Act which was passed only in November of last year. Immediately the bill will be rushed back before the House without anybody from the building industry being given the opportunity to comment on it. 
Parekura Horomia shakes his head in horror. He did not realise as he sat around the Cabinet table that this is the sort of dodgy process the Labour Government has come up with after getting the building industry into such a fiasco. We have only just finished question time where we had the disastrous situation of Nick Smith wanting to ask a question of the Minister for Building Issues the Hon Chris Carter. As a means of avoiding further embarrassment the Leader of the House Dr Cullen took the unusual step of switching the question to George Hawkins who is the Minister of Internal Affairs. Mr Hawkins got to his feet and clearly showed the House including Dr Cullen that he does not have a clue about this portfolio area. The answer given by Mr Hawkins was that the question should have gone to the Minister for Building Issues in the first place which is exactly what Nick Smith had tried to do. 
With the introduction of the Building Act the Government attempted to take the leaky homes debacle off the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald. 
 That was after Helen Clark had cynically referred to the issue of leaky homes as something that only the  
New Zealand Herald  
was beating up. I say to the House and particularly to Government members that the unfortunate owners of leaky homes are seeing their very equity erode before their eyes. Nick Smith brought to the attention of the House today the case of a couple who are effectively bankrupt because the Government has refused to address adequately this all-important issue. Talk about shifting chairs on the deck of the  
Titanic 
! We have now had nine Ministers in charge of building and construction. With people like George Hawkins Steve Maharey Margaret Wilson John Tamihere and even dear old Jim Anderton as a former Minister it is little wonder that this issue has not been resolved. 
But the thing I take exception to the most is the way this legislation was rushed into the House. It was not even taken to the Business Committee for the committee to learn what it was all about before it was tabled on the Thursday before the Easter break. The legislation was given the absolute guillotine to go to the select committee for no more than 3 hours which means that nobody in the building industry will have the chance to make any submission at all before it will be rushed back into the House and passed surreptitiously simply because the Government is totally embarrassed by the mess it made of the Building Act 5 months ago. The Government was warned at the time that the Building Act would not work. It was warned that there were mistakes peppered right throughout the legislation. The Government chose to ignore those warnings. All that the Government wanted to do was cynically remove the issue of leaky homes out of the headlines and leave the people with leaky homes to continue to suffer. 
The process that the Government is embarking on is an outrage. It is as bad a process as I have seen in 10 long years in this House. The Government should send the bill to a select committee open it up for submissions and let it be examined correctly. But most of all the public of New Zealand should be allowed to realise the embarrassing situation that the Government has created around the whole of the building industry and particularly the leaky homes issue. 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 Two sets of crocodile tears flowed from the National Party list MP David Carter. The first related to the number of Ministers who have been responsible for building issues over the term of this Government. He did not appear to like the fact that there has been a change of responsibility across several Ministers during this time. That would be fine on its own except for the huge irony that David Carter is the only Opposition spokesman in Parliament to have been sacked from the front bench twice. So David Carter who has gone forwards and backwards then forwards and backwards again has the audacity to get up in Parliament and complain about the number of Ministers who have been responsible for this area. 
We have taken building issues extraordinarily— 
Hon David Carter 
: I never got sacked for lying. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: The member says that he never got sacked from his area. He used to be the MP for Banks Peninsula but he got sacked from that job by the Hon Ruth Dyson. 
So that was the first set of crocodile tears. The second set of crocodile tears from the Hon David Carter came in this form: he said that the select committee would not get enough time to consider this legislation. Mr Carter was last on his pins in the sitting week before Parliament adjourned for Easter. If he had sat down just 30 seconds before the House rose this bill could have gone to the select committee for 10 days of submissions and consideration which is more than it will get now. So with two instances of crocodile tears David Carter has shown himself to be totally opposed to the very points that he tried to make in his speech. 
This is a very straightforward bill that makes three key amendments to three Acts— 
Hon David Carter 
: What’s the intent? 
DARREN HUGHES 
: I will tell the member what it means as he has not read the bill. The Building Act the Commerce Act and the Health Act all require those bits of information to be available free of charge on the Internet. Clearly that will not be appropriate from the point of view of intellectual property rights so the Government wants to seek the permission of Parliament to send the bill to the select committee to consider. 
I support the first reading of the bill and I am only sad that the National Party’s crocodile tears did not allow for proper consultation with the public. 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 After that very brief speech from the soon-to-be-disposed Darren Hughes from Otaki I will get to the heart of the issue. My colleague Mr Carter was very right to address the issue. Five working days ago—that is all it has been—this legislation was introduced to the House without any warning or justification and we were told it would be reported back by 31 March. That is 12 working days—that is all—for the first reading and the select committee process. 
We were asked to buy into that. Well the Opposition parties did not buy into it and when it became apparent that the junior Government whip had made a complete balls-up of the process he wandered over to the Opposition benches and said: “Look guys why don’t we lift the House so we can all go home early for Easter?” which would have ended the debate. We did not come down in the last shower like that junior member did. We said: “Go away sunshine you are making a noise. We are not buying into this. No way.” We would not allow that member and the Government to abuse the democratic process of this House in that way. We said: “No thanks.” to him—actually the response was a little more curt than that but he got the gist of what we were saying. 
When things are done in a hurry one gets an absolute mess. That is what this Government is trying to extricate itself from now and it is asking all the Opposition parties to be complicit in trying to help it get out of this mess. We are trying to fix up the Building Act because the Government is a slow learner. Not only is it rushing this piece of legislation through the House but it did exactly the same thing with the Building Bill and now here we are 2 days before it is due to become law and Government members have egg all over their faces. 
The other issue that I want to address now that Minister Horomia has brought it to my attention is the fact that there were nine Ministers who had this responsibility and now two of them—and Mr Hughes when he was on his feet did not acknowledge this or why it happened—do not have their jobs any more. 
Two of them have been fired by the Prime Minister for telling porkies. They got caught out. I tell the House that that is why he did not mention it—two of the Ministers have been fired for telling porkies and they were caught out. 
Hon David Carter 
: Pinocchio tales. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: That is too kind—she was a liar. She got caught in a lie and she has acknowledged it herself. 
The other matter I want to raise is the sycophantic press release that the Minister put out thanking the United Future party for helping the Government pass this legislation. Is it not a pity that the United Future party was not just a little bit more discerning when it helped the Government pass the legislation in the first place? The great irony of the press release was that it stated that United Future wanted to ensure that builders had ready access to the standards for design and construction in a way that did not impose additional costs on the building industry—and the answer to that is that these designs cannot be put on a website any more but the chief executive of the Department of Building and Housing says that they will be available in Wellington. Those members do not want to make it difficult for builders and they do not want additional compliance costs—but the designs are available only in Wellington. 
Builders in Whakatane or Leeston or Southbridge which is down my way have been told that they have to drop their tools jump in their trucks drive to the airport take out a $500 or $600 airfare go to Wellington forget about their clients and have a look at the design systems on the noticeboard at the Wellington head office of the Department of Building and Housing or whatever that department is called. I always thought it was a pretty strange name. 
National warned the Government at the time that if the legislation was rushed through the House compliance costs on compliance costs would be the result. This issue is now becoming so significant that compliance costs are starting to spiral out of control right across New Zealand. What do we get as a consequence? We have a 400-page piece of legislation with 380 knee-jerk clauses in reaction to what was essentially a leaky-home problem in a few houses in Auckland. It was a design problem. It was never a timber-treatment issue. But true to its colours this Government with the assistance of United Future in this instance is dumping on the timber industry and the industry is paying for it big time. 
Essentially by rushing this legislation through the House in the first instance the Government has ignored private property rights. It is making a science of ignoring private property rights. Probably the best example I can quote—and I know Mr Carter will identify with this—is the land access issue that it is trying to bully through the House and on to every farmer across New Zealand right at the moment. This is just another example of how this Government ignores private property rights. The Government completely ignored copyright law when it drafted this legislation. What is happening is that overseas builders are able to access the designs—the intellectual property—of some of our best and brightest builders and claim them as their own. 
I wonder whether the Minister would be prepared to take a call and tell the House whether there are any legal actions pending against this Government. I would not be surprised to hear that some builders have essentially said: “You are responsible for our intellectual property being used or stolen overseas and you should be held responsible.” The Government is now between a rock and a hard place. The legislation is about to become law in 2 days’ time but the very component of publishing this material on the Government’s website means that it simply cannot do that legally so it now has engaged in what is essentially smoke and mirrors. This industry has a turnover of $18 billion and the Government does not have a clue. It has searched around for Minister after Minister—are we sure there are only nine? I lost count after seven. 
Hon David Carter 
: Nine was last Thursday. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: There were nine at that point. Another one has probably been appointed since then. The Government is searching desperately to try to find a Minister who has some understanding of the building industry—but the trouble is that it does not have any Minister who has ever been in business so it cannot satisfy the concerns of the building industry. 
Members will remember the legislation which was a forerunner of this legislation that saw the end of the home handyman; the man who could build a house or fix his own house or build a shed in his own backyard. This Government has essentially put that icon of the New Zealand landscape behind us forever. What is more—and the United Future party can take some responsibility for this—the average cost of building a new house in New Zealand under the Building Act is approximately $7000. That is a disgrace in anyone’s language and it makes a real nonsense of the claim that United Future does not want to see any additional costs or compliance costs built into this type of legislation. 
I conclude by repeating that if we do things in a rush we end up in a mess. Here is a second piece of legislation which is essentially an amendment to the principal Act because the Government would not listen. It rushed legislation through the House in the first instance and now here we are trying to fix it. We are doing it in such a way that we are making an abuse of the democratic process. How can we put legislation before a select committee for 3 hours only expect to have widespread and public consultation and have quality legislation as a consequence? It will not flow. This bill is a disgrace. It is legislation that the Government has got itself in a mess over. The National Party simply will not help it extricate itself from this mess and accordingly our members do not support it. 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 We have just heard the member alleging concerns about the cost of building a house. The reason for this legislation is so that owners of copyright material such as building standards are not required to give that information free of charge. If we did not do it that way—if we were to fund it through central government or local government—then an increase in building consent fees would be required. 
Darren Hughes 
: That’s right. Yes and they would whinge about that. 
DAVID PARKER 
: In fact they would shout about that. Mr Connell loves shouting in this House. 
This is actually very simple legislation. It is a very small bill that makes it clear that copyright information is protected—and I say to Mr Connell that copyright is a property right. Most people in the National Party understand that copyright is a property right that ought not be taken away without fair compensation by central government. As a consequence of a small technical mistake in the original bill which was not picked up by National or by any other party in this House those copyright rights were inadvertently taken away from the copyright holder. This legislation restores that property right to the copyright holder yet we have the National Party ineffectually railing against it. 
This is good legislation. I recommend it to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 74 
New Zealand Labour 51; New Zealand First 13; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Noes 44 
New Zealand National 27; ACT New Zealand 7; Green Party 9; Maori Party 1. 
Bill read a first time. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
 on behalf of the  
Minister of Commerce 
: I move  
That the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill be referred to the Government Administration Committee for consideration 
referred to Government Administration Committee 
 
 that the committee present its final report on or before 31 March 2005 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time during a sitting of the House except during questions for oral answer during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c). 
LINDSAY TISCH (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I notice that the Minister’s motion states that the committee can meet on a Friday. The report-back date is Thursday 31 March and Friday is 1 April the following month so I would suggest that 
the Minister’s motion is out of order. 
DARREN HUGHES (Junior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 As the Standing Orders require the Minister on behalf of the Hon Pete Hodgson has moved the referral motion exactly as Mr Hodgson foreshadowed it in the middle of March when the first reading of this bill was first considered by the House. So the Government is continuing with the motion that was originally signalled to the House at the beginning of the first reading debate. The calendar as Mr Tisch quite rightly suggests will change this week but the motion must remain the same in order to comply with the Standing Orders. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member is correct as I have been advised by the Clerk. Before I put the motion I have an amendment in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith that all the words after the words “Government Administration Committee” be deleted. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 56 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7; Green Party 9. 
Noes 61 
New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the motion be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Noes 57 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 7; Maori Party 1. 
Motion agreed to. 
Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill 
Second Reading 
Debate resumed from 8 March. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This bill is long overdue. In fact I think it was in 1997 that the Hon Phil Goff moved legislation to deal with conveyancing and at that time it was referred to the select committee for consideration. What an enormous gestation this bill has had over a long number of years. I guess it says a great deal about the attitude and style of Mr Goff. Mr Goff is a Minister who is prone to making announcement after announcement announcements of announcements and announcements to confirm preceding announcements. As a consequence it takes years and years for his legislation ever to be passed. What for instance happened to the legislation on majority verdicts that was announced in about the year 2000? That is nearly 5 years ago and it is still not in law. What for instance happened about the Independent Police Complaints Authority Amendment Bill? I recall that I made comments about that some time ago—probably in the year 2000 also. It just disappeared into the ether. That is the style of this Minister. 
The extraordinary thing is this: the genesis of this bill was all about bringing competition into the legal sector. There is almost nothing in there now about it; it is almost irrelevant. In fact—and my colleague Richard Worth will be referring to this during the Committee stage—only eight people are even interested. So we have an enormous bill that has hundreds of pages and hundreds of clauses and that has come about all because eight people want to practise as conveyancers. Well if one really wanted to do that a very simple piece of legislation would suffice. I acknowledge that subsequently an opportunity arose to review the entire scope of the legal profession—allegedly a less prescriptive approach and allegedly a more flexible approach. The only comment I would make about that is that the Law Practitioners Act is only a short piece of legislation whereas this bill in the name of deregulation runs to hundreds of clauses and hundreds of pages. 
Stephen Franks 
: Why are you voting for it? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: That is an interesting question. In fact we are voting for it because the Law Society wants progress. The society has been trapped by the Minister’s delaying tactics literally for years. It simply wants to be able to make some degree of progress. 
Stephen Franks 
: They’ve got the Minister where they want him. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: I’m not sure I’d agree with that last comment. 
I refer to some of the bill’s important features amongst its numerous clauses. The first point—and I guess this is a form of deregulation—is that district law societies will become voluntary. It is fair to say that the Law Society did not actually seek that at the outset but it has acknowledged that that is the right way to deal with the regulation of modern professional bodies. The Law Society itself is retained primarily for disciplinary purposes although one would wonder why so many pages of legislation are needed for what is in fact a relatively straightforward and for what should be a primarily self-regulating affair. 
The bill has other important features many of which are driven by this Government’s ideology. I refer to one particular aspect. The bill creates the new office of Senior Counsel. I say “new office” because this is not just a renaming. The Government would have the nation pretend that it is simply modernising the terminology bringing it into the 21st century. That is completely false. Firstly it has fundamentally changed the institution. I know for a fact that the vast majority of the independent bar see it as a fundamental devaluing of the office of Queen’s Counsel—and I use the word “office” advisedly here—to allow Senior Counsel to be drawn from the ranks of firms of solicitors. The very essence of the role of Queen’s Counsel is to be independent to fiercely advocate the position of their clients in the knowledge that they are not beholden to any particular cause or purpose. That cannot possibly be said of people practising within firms. By and large firms will have dare I say it—and hopefully from their point of view—a secure client base which they service assiduously. That is how they retain their secure client base. By and large Senior Counsel practising within firms will be providing services to their captive client base. 
Nothing could be further distant from the role of Queen’s Counsel as we have understood it over a long number of years. I well know that people who instruct Queen’s Counsel—I have spoken to a large number of them—look to Queen’s Counsel for a special level of independent advice. Furthermore the bench also looks to them. Whether or not people like it judges give added respect to submissions made by Queen’s Counsel. There is a very good reason for that: those people are in a sense chosen by the profession—endorsed admittedly by the Attorney-General—as being the most able counsel in the land. So whilst they remain as an independent bar they are in fact available to everyone. Cases that not everyone would take—certainly cases that law firms would not readily take—are nevertheless undertaken by those very senior counsel and the courts appreciate and understand that their work and the submissions they make are a kind of gold standard and that they can be trusted and relied upon. To do otherwise would fundamentally devalue the institution. That is the first objection National has to that particular change—taking the role out of the independent bar and putting it into firms. 
Our second objection is the question of the title itself. I heard Mr Dail Jones say that the term “Senior Counsel” is easily confused that the barrister who has been in practice for a number of years is frequently and colloquially called in the courts “senior counsel”. What will judges do now? Will they call those with the formal title Senior Counsel “senior counsel”? I guess that if this legislation is passed that will be the case. What will they call other learned members who have been at the bar for a number of years? It will cause confusion. 
It is part of the secret agenda of the Government. The Prime Minister regularly says that she is a constitutional conservative. As a constitutional conservative this is what she has done so far: she has established the Supreme Court; she is abolishing the rank of Queen’s Counsel; she has her picture not the Queen’s in New Zealand embassies and high commissions; many of the monarchical references on the coats of arms of our armed forces have been removed so to speak; and we have the oath of allegiance of new citizens. In each and every way this Government is trying to shift New Zealand down the path towards republicanism except that it does not want to say that. 
It is simply false for the Prime Minister to say that she is a constitutional conservative. She is a constitutional radical. She has a clear sense of where she wants to take this country. She wants it to be a republic. She is doing every possible thing to force the pace of change towards that. This legislation is an example and I am sure that my colleague Lindsay Tisch will give further examples. The dropping of royal honours—the titular honours—is yet another example of republicanism by stealth. I can see that the Government is acknowledging that. It wants republicanism. It wants it by stealth. This bill is part of its secret agenda. 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 I will deal with the last issue which Dr Mapp said is so wrong and that is the abolition of Queen’s Counsel and their replacement with Senior Counsel. At the moment we have the absurd system whereby someone can be a good enough barrister in court to be appointed a judge of the High Court but cannot be accorded the title of Queen’s Counsel or as they are to become Senior Counsel. What a nonsense that Jock Hodder senior partner in Chapman Tripp cannot have a title that recognises the excellence of his advocacy. He is every bit as able as any Queen’s Counsel in New Zealand. There are plenty of other examples but I need not go into them. 
Despite what members have heard from Dr Mapp—they might think that he will vote against the bill—he actually supports the bill. This legislation reforms the law that relates to the control of lawyers. Lawyers do have a monopoly so it is important that the State regulates that monopoly. But it is also important that protections remain for people who use lawyers. We are introducing a new role for conveyancers so that they can compete for residential conveyancing and the like but it is important that we maintain some protections for people who use the services of conveyancers. After all the most important financial transaction that any or most of us ever embark upon is the sale or purchase of a house and it is important that there be some consumer protections in place for people who use either lawyers or conveyancers. I am happy to support this legislation as does I note the Law Society. 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 It is interesting that the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill which my colleague Dr Wayne Mapp mentioned had its genesis many many years ago is finally before the House today as we debate its second reading. It does go back a long long way. I note that the first reading occurred on 29 July 2003 which is nearly 2 years ago. We made some significant points during that first reading and subsequently at the select committee and those points are still valid today as they were back in 2003. 
Darren Hughes 
: What were they? 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: I shall mention some of those significant points to the member which National has highlighted on page 19 of the commentary if the member were to know our position and National did put a minority view into the commentary. 
First I want to look at the provisions of the fidelity fund. It is an arguable proposition when a number of professions and trades—that is an appropriate distinction to draw between the two of them—have done away with such funds. Yet we see here the need for lawyers to continue with a fidelity fund. 
In fact the first of the bullet points of the minority report makes a very strong point about the fidelity fund—that is: “No significant case has been shown for the continuation of the fidelity fund under Part 10 of the bill. The fund has been abolished for most other occupations including chartered accountants motor vehicle dealers and sharebrokers. The fidelity fund had a place when lawyers were actively involved in mortgage lending but the current range of banking products has meant that lending by lawyers is rare.” 
So the point we make here is that there is no need to retain the fidelity fund when similar requirements for other occupational groups be they professions or trades have ceased. That may have been important in those halcyon days when lawyers were involved in lending money and there are plenty of well-known cases that demonstrate when lawyers were involved in lending money mainly on contributory mortgages but there are other schemes. I was involved in earlier days with the Rural Bank and when we were lending money we often had to concede priority when lawyers wanted to rank their mortgage ahead of ours. They would lend on a first mortgage and we had to concede priority. However in those days when the Rural Bank had concessional lending it was a great opportunity for us to change the terms and conditions. In those days we were able to up the interest rate and to reduce the term because some other lender—lawyers or insurance companies—might have wanted to come in ahead of us and we were required to concede priority in that respect. It gave us some flexibility but I can understand that lawyers of that time thought a fidelity fund was certainly important. 
I now want to move to another area—that is the proposition in the context of engagement between a lawyer and the client. The basis of charging and the charges that will be related and applied during the course of the process need to be fairly well defined at the commencement of the engagement. The lawyer would inform the client of the client’s entitlement to such costs. It is important that that process be continued. It is very important and very necessary to provide an estimate of the time required to carry out whatever the engagement is and the probable time schedule for the main components within the engagement. So that is normal practice. Keeping the client informed as to the time frame and the costs involved very much forms a part of any occupational or professional grouping. 
The other area that I think is significant in the running of a professional legal services firm or for that matter any professional firm is the skill of the owners in managing the risk of the business. Risk management has become an integral part of doing business today. There are choices to be made in managing risk and that includes the transfer of risk. One of the core elements in transferring risk is the application of insurance. For a law firm and professional services firms judgments have to be made as to how much cover should be secured what the upper indemnity level should be and what should be deductible or the amount that the law firm in the first instance meets—what is popularly known as the excess. 
One of the issues here which we identified during the select committee process is that considerable costs will be involved. We want to make sure that those costs are clearly identified because there is nothing worse than cost overruns when it comes to the client. Those areas need to be clearly defined. We do not want to see any shortcomings and shortcuts because clients depend very much on the goodwill and professionalism of the legal fraternity. 
I want to refer to some of the other issues that have been canvassed by Dr Wayne Mapp and other speakers prior to the Easter break. They are important key concerns of National. Although we support this bill these concerns are mentioned in the minority report. I will summarise them very quickly because they form the basis of National’s position. They are not in any order. I have mentioned the fidelity fund and we do not believe there is any need to retain that. Another area is the decision to recognise the new group of non-lawyers to be called conveyancing practitioners. A Government member mentioned this group as being important. Conveyancing practitioners will have a separate regulatory body to be known as the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. We say that that is unnecessary. We do not believe that there needs to be a separate role for these people. A key point made at the time was that in the absence of a sufficient number of conveyancing practitioners the proposals in the bill are unworkable. We still subscribe to that view and we need to highlight that once again. If the concept of conveyancing practitioners is to be retained then the bill should be divided. That will not happen but it was another point that we articulated at the time. 
The proposed complaints and disciplinary regime is overly cumbersome and a more simple structure would protect consumers of legal services. National would implement a structure whereby a first-care complaints system would be funded and operated by the legal profession. The system would include mediation services to encourage the chance of resolution of disputes involving client service. There could also be the establishment of a legal services ombudsman patterned on the Courts and Legal Services Act of 1990 in the UK. The High Court would assume the responsibility of dealing with activity that amounts to professional misconduct. In circumstances falling short of misconduct claimants should be limited to pursuing negligence or a breach of duties. The assumption of such powers by the High Court would be consistent with responsibilities as officers of the court to the court. 
As I said earlier we believe that the workability of the indemnity rules relating to compulsory professional indemnity insurance as under clause 86 and which we mentioned are very cumbersome and whether they will work at the end of the day we do not know. Finally I refer to the proposal to abolish the rank of Queen’s Counsel and substitute the title “Senior Counsel” when there is no call for such a change. To summarise our position we will support this legislation. I have highlighted the salient points that we believe are important and we have a full minority report on page 19 of the commentary. 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 As chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee I am delighted to be I think the closing speaker in the second reading debate on the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. The select committee went through a fascinating process. If one looks at the statistics at the back of our report one will see that they give some indication of two particular elements of our consideration of this bill. One was that we heard 54 submissions over 25 hours which means an average of half an hour a submission which indicates that the submissions were often more in-depth more thoughtful and more lengthy than many that select committees look at. Following that we spent another 25 hours considering the bill. The effect of that is to point out that this is highly complex legislation and it was really born quite rightly in a situation of close cooperation between the New Zealand Law Society and Ministry of Justice officials. That is a very proper process as essentially this is the constitution of the legal profession in our nation. 
I must admit that the select committee talked long and hard about the particular shape of the legislation. When we look at other regulatory devices passed by this Parliament with broad cross-party support in recent years I think we could say that this is a lot more complex and prescriptive than many other models. Indeed there were those on the select committee who I suspect would have preferred a much simpler piece of legislation that left a whole lot of the detail to be decided by the Law Society. But having said that I note that the New Zealand Law Society made the clear decision to go for something that was detailed and complex. Therefore the role of the select committee was not so much to deal with the fundamentals of the legislation but instead to make sure that in the course of ministry staff and the Law Society doing a lot of the detailed work the interests of others were also considered. For example the accountancy profession made some very powerful points about the extent to which the legislation would impact on them and as a result of some of the changes they proposed—which will be further refined in the Committee of the whole House—better legislation will emerge without unintended negative consequences on accountants in New Zealand. 
Community law centres were concerned that the legislation could impact negatively on them. They are in my view a treasured network of agencies in our nation that look to legislation and Government arrangements to make sure that they provide help to large numbers of people who otherwise lack effective access to justice. 
At the same time we were trying to make sure in the legislation that the policy intent—for example the avoidance of multidisciplinary practices—was actually delivered by the wording of the legislation and that led to a whole range of changes which are laid out in the report back. We looked for example at the concerns of patent attorneys. In the process of the legislation being produced patent attorneys had had their interests maybe rather neglected so we wrote them back in. We looked at the use of law libraries and decided to make some changes that will make sure that law libraries can take some time to transition to the new environment. On the basis of those changes and others made by the select committee I am delighted to commend the legislation to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments recommended by the Justice and Electoral Committee by majority be agreed to. 
Ayes 111 
New Zealand Labour 51; New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2; Maori Party 1. 
Noes 7 
ACT New Zealand 7. 
Question agreed to. 
Bill read a second time. 
Financial Review Debate 
In Committee 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The House is in Committee on the Appropriation (2003/04 Financial Review) Bill. The Standing Orders provide for the financial review debate to be the Committee stage of an Appropriation (Financial Review) Bill. The debate is organised in three distinct parts. It commences with a debate on the Crown’s financial statements as reported on by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Once that debate is disposed of the Committee debates the individual financial reviews of departments and Offices of Parliament as reported on by select committees. There is a list of financial reviews available for debate on the Table. The debate on the Crown’s financial position may be fairly wide ranging but the debates on the individual financial reviews of departments and Offices of Parliament should be relevant to their performance in the 2003-04 financial year and their current operations. 
A member may have no more than two calls on each financial review. Four hours is allowed for these two segments of the financial review debate. At the conclusion of the 4 hours a single question is to be put on the provisions of the bill. There is to be no amendment or debate on that question. The Chairperson will report the bill to the House and it will be set down for third reading forthwith. There is no debate on the third reading. With regard to the schedule of proposed questions I invite members to turn to page 445 of the compendium volume of select committee reports on the 2003-04 financial reviews of departments and Offices of Parliament. The question now is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Crown for the year ended 30 June 2004 be noted. 
Treasury Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year ended 30 June 2004  
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 On behalf of the Opposition I look forward to engaging in what I think will be a robust debate about a Government that just simply likes to spend money and that is driving up interest rates for New Zealanders with its wasteful spending. It is a wasted opportunity that this Government has failed to deliver on for the people of New Zealand and I think the Government will be harshly treated for that in the months ahead. 
This Government inherited some economic conditions that it had very little to do with. Indeed it inherited some wonderful reforms that took place in the 1980s and 1990s which really unlocked a country that had a closed economy—an economy that did not trade with the outside world in any great form in a country that had all the wrong economic settings in place. Those were the policies that this Prime Minister likes to refer to as the “failed policies of the 1990s”. But those “failed policies of the 1990s” have delivered record surpluses to this Government—record surpluses that this Government has wasted. This Government inherited an exchange rate that was at an all-time low in the early part of its first term and it had fortunate conditions in inheriting very high commodity prices from a very strong Chinese economy. All those conditions led to the Government having a very large and burgeoning tax take—in the order of $35 billion to $40 billion of additional taxes in the last 5 years. The way that it has chosen to spend that money is one of the key elements of this debate. 
Before we go too much further we should look at the record of spending undertaken by this Government because when the Minister of Finance took office in 1999 he set a self-imposed spending cap of $6 billion. For any Labour Government we know that sticking within a spending cap can be difficult and Dr Cullen has proved to be no different from any other Labour finance Minister who has gone before him. He broke his self-imposed spending cap in his first term even if it was just by a fraction—at $6.1 billion. Having got the taste of that increased spending having got the taste of blood in his mouth he went on to undertake $12.7 billion worth of new spending in his second term and if this Government—and we hope it does not—gets a third term I project that spending will rise to somewhere in the order of $14 billion to $15 billion if not more. 
The finance Minister knows that that is a major problem for the country because he told the  
Dominion Post  
as reported on 
24 March that there was a bit of a hiccup with the numbers. There is I might add for the benefit of anyone who may be listening to this debate a lot more than meets the eye with regard to that comment. We will come back to it in due course. Dr Cullen said and I quote from the  
Dominion Post  
of 24 March: “I can’t confirm any numbers but I can confirm the initial run of the Budget numbers didn’t play out to a sufficiently credible long-term debt track. Steps are being taken to address that.” That is Treasury-speak for a major bust-up with Treasury and with the numbers it was crunching in an out-of-control spending ministry that was just spending money left right and centre. But members should not take my word for that. It may be worth referring to another article that appeared in the  
Dominion Post  
in the weekend by Gareth Morgan who stated in the last paragraph of his column: “Meanwhile the Government is spending like mad just adding to the inflationary pressures and in so doing increasing pressure on the Reserve Bank to tighten further and substantially.” The message from economic commentators around the country is that you have a Government that is spending so much money— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No no—not me. 
JOHN KEY 
: Oh OK. The Government is spending so much money that it is putting pressure on interest rates and New Zealanders are paying for that with higher mortgage rates. 
This Government was faced with a couple of opportunities. One was to set in place a platform of future economic growth for New Zealand. This Government could have chosen to build capacity in our economy and to invest in infrastructure and quality education. It could have chosen to invest in things that would make New Zealand sustain higher levels of long-term growth. But it failed in that and it failed rather miserably. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 After 2½ years in Parliament Mr Key has finally become a true member of the National Party. In other words he cannot remember what he said 2 weeks ago in terms of what he is saying today. And that is the National Party all over. Its members have spent the 2½ years since the last election saying that “Uncle Scrooge Cullen” is running huge surpluses—massive surpluses—and is dragging resources out of the economy. Mr Key is nodding again; he remembers saying that. He was saying only a couple of weeks ago that we were dragging economic resources out of the economy unnecessarily and that there was plenty of room for big tax cuts and for all the spending promises on law and order and everything else that his colleagues keep making all over the place. They have a big doozy one coming up on Friday of this week of half a billion dollars - plus a year. That will come out from the National Party as its next promise. We are just a bit shocked about that—the National caucus leaks so badly that we know when announcements are coming out on key matters. 
But suddenly this week Mr Key has understood what I have been trying to say for the last 2 or 3 months: that in fact we do not have a large amount of fiscal headroom at all. There is no room for large tax cuts unless—and this was the hidden message of Mr Key’s speech—there is a major slashing of Government expenditure. Unless we cut back— 
Hon Member 
: Which one? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh it has to be the biggies! There is no point in fiddling around with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs; that will not address the need for tax cuts. The cuts have to be in health education superannuation law and order or defence—all the big items of Government. But what have National Party spokespeople said in terms of all those areas? The Government should have agreed to anything that nurses asked for in pay increases according to the National Party’s health spokesperson at the time. National says we should increase the number of police all over the show. In fact there should be more police than non-police in our society if one listened to the National Party on occasions. National also says we should double the amount of money we spend on defence and buy everything we possibly can for it. We should increase our overseas aid of course. We should spend more on this that and everything else— 
Darren Hughes 
: And cut taxes too. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
:—and have big cuts in taxes at the same time. But Mr Key now says this Government is feeding too much demand into the economy. Well we just cannot have it both ways. That is exactly what putting a Budget together is all about. It is not a series of exercises in wishful thinking. It is not a matter of going around all one’s caucus colleagues and asking them to say exactly what they would like of doubling it and of then seeing whether it adds up. 
I will issue this challenge to the National Party time after time over the next few months: when that party produces an alternative Budget based upon the Government’s own tax model and based upon the same economic assumptions—as Labour did when in Opposition— 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Costed properly. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
:—and when it is all costed properly and it all adds up then we may believe a word the National members say. But in 2002 National flunked that basic test; it refused to issue an alternative Budget. I ask Mr Key whether after this year’s Budget when he has all the economic data he will put up an alternative Budget. Oh yes he nods. Right—we have that on record. We will need to see then where the cuts will be made in order to pay for his programme in terms of tax cuts and the diversion of expenditure out of excise duty and to pay for all the other things the National Party will promise over the next few months. 
Of course 25 new camping grounds on Department of Conservation land may pay for all of that—I do not know. Who knows what National may have in train for that department when it comes to those sorts of proposals? That just will not do as a programme for an alternative Government. But it tells us that the National Party is not an alternative Government. National is just a party that hopes to claw back some ground in this election so that it may win a position by 2008 in order to look like an alternative Government. The danger of course is that it may just fluke it if it does that—just as Muldoon did in 1975 when he was lumbered with the superannuation promise that was part of why we had to do the things in the 1980s that we did in terms of restructuring. 
So I say that this debate needs to be about the true realities. I can tell the Committee that on the present projections around net debt and gross debt for the out-years we are looking at a relatively flat percentage of GDP. There will not be a big decline at all in net debt or gross debt as a percentage of GDP. There will not be room in this year’s Budget for the big-spending promises that nearly every other party in this Parliament wants to engage in on both the revenue side and the expenditure side. There will have to be some doses of cold realism amongst all kinds of other parties in order for them to make any sense at all. 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I am sure that the Government would like to be congratulated on its healthy financial statements but I have to point out that while it is sitting on record surpluses hard-working Kiwi families farmers and business owners are paying a high price for Labour’s mismanagement of this country’s economy. That is because every family with a mortgage every business owner with a bank overdraft and every farmer with a loan is paying 1 to 2 percent more in interest because Dr Cullen refuses to take action on New Zealand’s record current account deficit and overvalued dollar. The Minister is shaking his head but the Governor of the Reserve Bank confirmed when he appeared before the Finance and Expenditure Committee that because of our high and growing international debt New Zealanders pay— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: And private debt. 
ROD DONALD 
: Private debt; it does not matter—the fact is that Kiwis are paying a risk premium because of that debt. 
I would like to know what the Labour Government is doing about that. I would maintain that it is doing less than nothing because despite net foreign debt now exceeding $120 billion the Government wants it to be even easier for foreign investors to buy up our land our farms our forests our buildings and our businesses. Despite the trade deficit being at record levels—$4.1 billion for the year to February it was announced today—and imports climbing by 9.7 percent in the last year Labour wants to fuel even more imports by removing New Zealand’s last remaining tariffs. Despite Dr Cullen claiming during the 2002-03 financial review that he had tools available to get the dollar down to realistic levels he refuses to relieve the pressure on our exporters and domestic manufacturers. I believe that that is because the Minister of Finance has a conflict of interest. He would rather sacrifice some businesses than face public outrage as the result of the inevitable rising cost of imports if the exchange rate of the New Zealand dollar was restored to realistic levels. 
In particular I believe that the Minister is rightly concerned about the impact that the rapidly rising price of oil will have on the New Zealand economy when the dollar rediscovers gravity. Despite the high exchange rate of the New Zealand dollar insulating New Zealand from the full force of escalating oil prices the cost of oil imports rose by 29.9 percent in the year to February according to today’s statistics report. The impact of oil prices will only get worse if the Government does not take action to reduce our dependence on imported fuel. The Finance and Expenditure Committee report on the financial review highlights that the Government has been caught napping on the oil issue. It was and still is totally unprepared for one of the greatest threats to the New Zealand economy and to our way of life. 
We have only to look at page 4 of the report to see that it states: “Treasury conceded that previous projections”—that is oil price projections—“were based largely on historical prices. This has proved a reasonable basis for predictions in the past as the real price of petrol has stayed relatively constant for the past 30 years.” However Treasury concedes “historical prices may no longer offer an accurate reflection of future prices”. Well tell us about it! But Treasury went on to state that it believed that: “current high prices will be temporary”—this was in October last year—“and in about 7 years oil prices will fall to around US$35 per barrel.” Well clearly the futures trader who put in a bid for oil costing $100 a barrel this June had not read what the New Zealand Treasury had to say about oil prices and the New Zealand Treasury claims that it now relies on futures traders to tell it what the price should be. I think it is time that Treasury revised its $35 per barrel figure upwards because oil at the moment is trading at more than $50 a barrel even though the price has settled slightly and that is almost three times what Dr Cullen stated it would cost in last year’s Budget. He said that oil would reduce to an equilibrium of $19 a barrel. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I didn’t; Treasury did. 
ROD DONALD 
: I am sorry to slight Dr Cullen. Dr Cullen’s advisers in Treasury said that. 
We have a small window of opportunity to tackle that problem. At the very least and to begin with the Government needs to recognise that the problem is real and urgent and that change is inevitable. It needs to bring in vehicle fuel-efficiency standards right now. It needs to invest more in public transport in rail for freight and passengers and on walking and cycling. It needs to encourage more local production and to become less dependent on long-term trade. I acknowledge that the Government has taken some small steps towards that in cooperation with the Greens but those steps simply are not enough. We need to rapidly transform our economy; otherwise we will not cope. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I think Dr Cullen made some very interesting points. We need to get a bit of reality about the National Party back into this debate. Here is the reality and here are the facts which I think set a wonderful framework and platform for an argument and a debate at the next election. For 6 years we have had the highest growth rate in the OECD. For 5 years we have been ahead of Australia. For those in the National Party who always see Australia as the panacea I point to those figures. We have the lowest rate of unemployment in 20 years—3.6 percent. Since December it has tightened to 3.1 percent in my own province in Canterbury. They are facts. They are credible facts; they are verified by overseas agencies. 
After the 2004 Budget when Bill English was the leader of the National Party I recall getting up and being astounded at the fact that for the first time the Labour Government was being attacked for being too tight. I recall that throughout our history the National Party and the conservatives have always taken pot shots at the Labour Party as being the tax-and-spend party; but here was a leader of the National Party—for the first time in my short living memory—who had got up broken the mould and accused the Minister of Finance and the Labour Government of being too tight. 
Of course when that did not work and it has been proved that we are being fiscally responsible we now have Dr Brash on the one hand saying that we are still too tight and on the other is the softer face of National’s economic and finance policies John Key saying that we are leaving people out in the cold because we are not spending as much as we should. Then there is the Green member and others who are also saying that. Dr Brash is complaining about high interest rates and is then promoting policies like spending millions of dollars on law and order—hundreds of millions of dollars probably; we wait for the dollar signs to come out—and massive tax cuts which would promote inflation. They would be inflationary and would provide again another pointer for Dr Bollard to raise interest rates on Kiwis. 
Of course as Dr Cullen has said we cannot really have it both ways. In the last couple of weeks we have seen the softening of the National Party on every particular point at issue that the people have rejected the National Party on in the last couple of elections. With regard to superannuation there was a very interesting pamphlet—a bit of National Party propaganda—that said National would keep the age of entitlement right and it would not alter or tinker with the mechanics. But it left out a little bit in terms of the rate: whether the rate would actually stay the same under a National Government. That is the little piece of information that is probably the most sought after by our elderly folk—the rate of superannuation. It was just left out in the ether somewhere and was fudged. There was no mention of it. 
National members have had a turn around on asset sales. They say they will not sell assets except maybe for one or two such as some of our best-performing State-owned enterprises like Landcorp Farming. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Three or four. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Or three or four Dr Cullen says. Then there would be massive spending on health; massive spending that will outdo us—they say—on law and order but not one dollar figure has been put beside the promises. 
I look forward to the next election because I will stand up on the stump and say: “This is what I said I would do. This is what the Labour Government said it would do. Don’t trust us by our words trust us by our actions.” I will lay that side by side against the only legacy that the National Party has on financial matters health matters social security matters and social welfare matters. The only legacy those members have was 6 years ago. 
Unlike some members opposite who pray that voters are stupid and have short memories I believe that voters will come home because they can remember the triple cut in superannuation. They can remember the selling out of State-owned enterprises. They can remember all the hospitals being underfunded. They will remember that and it will become an issue of credibility. 
I want to also address for a moment the issue of tax cuts and the argument that we are not doing enough. Well there is an argument—tax cuts versus Working for Families. That is a spending package I am proud of because of what Working for Families will do for a family of mum dad and four kids on $55000 which was not a bad income 10 years ago. That family is looking at an increase of $150 a week extra in the hand. Maybe we should not use the term but we could call it a targeted tax cut because it is taking money—the wealth of our economy—and redistributing it to the working families at the bottom of the heap who need it the most. To get anywhere near that amount the same family would require a 9.5 percent tax rate which National would not even deliver and that is where the credibility starts and finishes. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Well we have heard the Minister of Finance and the chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who is also a Government member and we have heard very very little about what the Government stands for and what it intends to do. We have heard everything about what the National Party is doing wrong or is supposedly doing wrong but we have heard very very little about what the Government will do. I will give the member a little credit. He spoke about Working for Families and he recognised that it was a targeted tax cut which it is. But there was not one mention—not one single mention—about the current account deficit. If I am correct it stands currently at $9.3 billion. That is up $4 billion from last year. There was not one mention of that. That was all fudged over. 
Put simply we are living too much on credit in this country. There is too much profit being made by overseas organisations based here that is being shipped back to wherever those organisations came from and there are too few savings being made by the average New Zealander. The average New Zealander likes imports and buys imports that maximise the value-added content; whilst going in the reverse direction our exports contain little value-added content. The average New Zealander is hurting. 
John Tamihere 
: Yes listening to you! Ha ha! 
PETER BROWN 
: The members laugh. Their own colleague has just said that a family on $55000 a year needs to have financial assistance. If people are hurting at that level how are they hurting when they get down to $18000 $19000 or $20000 a year? They are hurting. And what is the Government doing? Come April Fool’s Day it will put another 5c a litre on petrol. We have heard the Greens talk about the price of oil. When people talk about the price of oil they basically think of petrol prices. What will the good Minister of Finance do? He will make the price over $1.30 a litre for 91 petrol come April Fool’s Day. I say to the Minister that it is appropriate that he is doing it on April Fool’s Day because he is making fools of all New Zealanders. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Have you seen the price in Britain? 
PETER BROWN 
: I think the Minister said to look at the price in Britain—but we should also look at the wages in Britain. We should look at the price in the USA and in Australia and look at what the Government here is taking in terms of tax on a litre of petrol. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Five cents a litre in Venezuela. 
PETER BROWN 
: I do not believe that the Minister who is shouting out really believes what he is shouting out. I believe he shares my view that it is outrageous that in this day and age we are taking 18.5c per litre and putting it in the Government’s coffers at the expense of roading. 
Let us look at what is happening in the electricity industry. Let me read to the Committee a quote from Genesis Energy’s annual report: “Genesis Energy has been concerned at the lack of available information regarding New Zealand energy demand and implications for the industry.” That is a very telling statement. In other words Genesis Energy does not believe that anybody has a clue what is going on—so much so that it further states: “Genesis Energy commissioned a research report prepared by the Centre for Advanced Engineering to obtain accurate supply and demand information for future planning.” [ 
Interruption 
] I am telling the member that he should go to his own electorate particularly in the winter and ask his constituents whether they are happy with power prices and whether they are happy that prices will go up and up. 
He should ask his constituents whether they are happy that their wages are keeping pace with their electricity bill. I can tell members that I have had more photocopies of electricity bills sent to me in the last few weeks than I have ever seen in my life. [ 
Interruption 
] Those are the members who think Labour people will look after them. I can tell members that the average New Zealander is exceedingly concerned about the price of electricity. I am referring to the low paid and to people on fixed incomes and I have a great deal of personal sympathy for them but I am also talking about business people who are finding that the price of energy in this country is going through the roof. If this country wants and needs to be competitive—and New Zealand First supports all that—then we must stabilise the price of electricity at a reasonable level. Equally we must target roading in this country and use the money the Government takes from petrol motorists for roading. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: That’s what we do. 
PETER BROWN 
: The member is full of talk. If he took only 1 hour to read the Allen report he would be much more educated on the importance of roading in this country. 
Reports noted. 
Office of the Auditor-General  
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to discuss the financial review of the Auditor-General. I realise it is a report that Parliament does not often comment on because the Auditor-General is a sort of independent officer and one would like to think the office is not party political. But we as parliamentarians also have to ask who guards the guardian and ask whether the Auditor-General is serving us well. The Government may decide that this review is in some way a defence of its position. But if we look at one piece of financial expenditure for the wananga which has managed to spend a quarter of a billion dollars this year—that is more than any other university—we have to ask how that came about and whether the Auditor-General drew it to the attention of Ministers. As far as I can tell the Auditor-General did not do that but if we are to accept and of course we must the words of Ministers we can see that they drew it to the attention of the Auditor-General some time ago—at least last year and possibly earlier. 
I am concerned because I have been told by the Hon Ken Shirley who has been following this matter very seriously that when he took documents to the Auditor-General he got the impression from that office that it was not very interested. We now find that the office is doing a report and that it is not due until next year. The wananga has received $232 million and the Auditor-General thinks it is satisfactory to give a report next year. 
In fairness to Ministers they are waiting for the Auditor-General. A huge amount of money will be spent before we know whether that is good or bad. Further than that the Auditor-General has set out some terms of reference. One matter that I understand he is not prepared to look at is whether enrolments are genuine. To give the Committee a simple example I was told by Ken Shirley who is now associated with the matter that he was at the Easter show on the weekend and that people—not one person but a number of people—came up to him and said they thought that what he was raising about the wananga was very interesting and that they had received in the mail a certificate from the wananga for a course they never attended. 
The Auditor-General has told Mr Shirley that he will not look at that. If more than one person at just one show came up to Mr Shirley that indicates that there have been a large number of bogus enrolments. 
I then read in the Sunday newspaper that that organisation even though it is supposed to be under investigation is now starting an English language course. People might think that perhaps that is a good thing but after one has done it it will be discovered that the course is not certified and that no Government authority states that the course meets any standards at all. When we examine it further we discover that those students will somehow learn to speak English without having contact time with a person who can speak English. I would love to see how that can be done. But we will never know that because apparently nobody is auditing the course. The Government’s education certifiers are not certifying it and again the Auditor-General is apparently not looking into the matter. That is not satisfactory. I would like to know from the Speaker whether she will take the matter up with the Auditor-General. 
Let us imagine the situation if it were a private company that one had a problem with. The Office of the Auditor-General has said that it will not look at the question of fraud even though it is obvious that there have been hundreds of fraudulent enrolments. It is not going to look at the fact that there is now a course that is apparently valueless but is still costing millions of dollars to the taxpayer. And by the way we will not have a result until after the election. Perhaps and this may be a bit unfair of me the Government may think that that is rather good because between now and when the Auditor-General’s report comes out there will be an election. 
I think it would be extremely unfortunate if we now had an Auditor-General who took that sort of matter on board. That would be a very serious criticism and I am not prepared to make that but I am prepared to say that this situation is not satisfactory. The funding for the wananga has gone from $4 million to $230 million in 4 years. The Auditor-General has asked for and been given the power to look at these sorts of matters and we would like to know what progress he is making. 
Report noted. 
Office of the Ombudsmen 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I would like to raise a very serious matter concerning the Office of the Ombudsmen: the failure of that office to ensure the effective scrutiny of the Government through the Official Information Act. That Act is policed by the Ombudsman. It is a very important Act for members of Opposition parties and for others in the community who want to hold the Government to account. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: And the news media. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: Yes and for the news media as well. Holding the Government to account is becoming more and more difficult not only because Labour has expanded the public service by some 20000 additional workers since being in power which means that government is even bigger and more intrusive but also because Ministers are becoming more obstructive are misleading more often and in fact are just becoming slippery. The Office of the Ombudsmen is failing in its duty to hold those Ministers to account to Opposition members who are asking for information. 
More and more often Ministers and their departments simply refuse to provide information under the Official Information Act—not just to members of Parliament but also in particular to the media. The challenges to those decisions are taking many many months. The Ombudsman used to be our advocate in asking for such information. The Ombudsman used to work for the little guy—because we are actually working for ordinary New Zealanders so that they can find out what their Government is up to. But I understand that 60 percent of some of the Ombudsman’s responsibility is now taken up with complaints from prisoners which is absolutely ridiculous. The Ombudsman is also becoming an apologist for the Government protecting obstructive Ministers who want to keep matters of government—the real facts—secret from the public. 
Through the Official Information Act we have exposed scandals. The hip-hop tour is one that springs to mind. It was funded by the Community Employment Group in the Department of Labour with the Minister Steve Maharey. It was a huge scandal—thousands of dollars wasted—and a huge embarrassment to the Government. Under the Official Information Act I have put in requests for information from the Community Employment Group. Not long ago I received a letter from the Minister Steve Maharey stating that my request would cost me $15197.50. He is trying to charge me a member of Parliament $15000 to get the information I have requested. 
That information must include some pretty big secrets that the Minister is trying to hide because there is no way an Opposition member or a member of the media can afford to spend $15000 on getting such information. When we go to the Ombudsman to ask for help what happens? The Office of the Ombudsmen ends up upholding the Minister’s complaints against us upholding costs and members of the Opposition cannot get the information they requested. 
The Official Information Act states that Ministers can charge for the supply of information but that the charge must be reasonable. I see that Mr Maharey is sitting in the House. I ask Mr Maharey how he would have felt when he was a member of the Opposition if a Minister had said: “OK I’ll give you the information but it’s going to cost you $15000.” I can tell the House that he would have been absolutely up in arms. Now here he is colluding with his department to prevent information that is clearly scandalous getting out into the public arena. 
The Office of the Ombudsmen needs to have a serious look at the way it deals with issues like this. It needs to reassess where its time is going in particular the growing amount of time spent on prisoners’ demands. It needs to be spending 60 70 or 80 percent on New Zealanders who want to hold the Government to account. That is what the office was set up for. I suggest that the Ombudsman needs to reflect on that and needs to come down extremely heavily on Ministers who are trying to avoid giving out proper information to the public by charging exorbitant fees. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Economic Development 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on this particular report because I believe that the Government has been letting down the small-business community and has also been restricting this country’s ability even to reduce our current account deficit by using the abilities of the small-business sector. It is interesting to note that the 2004 Ministry of Economic Development report states that only 27.4 percent of small to medium sized enterprises make it to the seventh year of operation while a little more than half move into the third year. I believe that this Government has basically run a policy of taking from the small-business community and loading it up with unrealistic rules and regulations that it cannot handle. 
Let me put one thing forward in this debate taking our forestry industry as an example. At the moment the forestry industry is exporting logs. What if the Government brought in a plan to give tax-free status to any business that instead of exporting logs exported them in a— 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Tax-free? 
PAUL ADAMS 
: Yes tax-free; that is correct. Businesses would get tax-free company status if they were processing those logs into an item for export—if that company instead of solely exporting logs were making them within New Zealand into products for export. What would that do? That would provide a fantastic incentive to develop an export company in this country. Such a company would pay GST on everything it bought and sold PAYE tax on its executives and other staff wages and salaries and everything else. But instead of having a “take” mentality we would be adopting a “give” mentality on something that would benefit the country as a whole. 
United Future would like to see this country start to appreciate the abilities of small businesses in relation to economic growth rather than being restrictive. Small and medium sized companies are made to battle with red tape which is wasting time and energy rather than encouraged and given focus by incentives to achieve what we want as a nation. 
Eighty-five percent of our businesses employ five people or fewer yet they are being slowly strangled by increasing red tape new compliance costs and a threat of more intervention by central government. I believe that this country and the Government have a fantastic opportunity to look at this area of economic development and begin to refocus. Instead of being takers from these businesses or loading them up with obligations we should start to work out a plan whereby we can encourage them to move in a direction that will be good for them and good for the country. 
The Government needs to look at risk management for many small to medium sized enterprises as they start up because—as shown by the statistics I opened with on the danger of them closing—they really need help in the risk management area. The Government needs to provide more advice to small to medium sized enterprises on risk management. Often without easy access to skilled lawyers and accountants and lacking human resources departments small businesses can find the cost of complying with Government rules and regulations significantly harder than their larger cousins. 
New Zealand is a country that has many entrepreneurs and many people who have a tremendous ability to be risk takers and to design innovative products to export. But I believe that our current rules and regulations are stifling this rather than being an incentive to achieve. If we were bold enough to do something radical—like saying that New Zealand companies that took a local component such as forestry and turned it into a product that we could export could have a tax-free status—I can guarantee that we would receive more tax and a greater reduction in overseas debt. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Social Development 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 The financial review of the Ministry of Social Development takes some reading because most of it is pretty depressing. In particular a large amount of the review is taken up by the sickness and invalids benefits and the so-called strategy surrounding them. What we know is that under this Government sickness and invalids beneficiary numbers have gone through the roof. We know that at the end of January this year 120000 people were in receipt of the sickness or invalids benefits. For a country of this size that is an awful lot of people to be sick. It indicates a 38 percent increase in numbers since 1999. We know from that that the Labour Government under Helen Clark clearly makes people sick despite the huge amount of extra taxpayer dollars that goes into the health budget every year. Clearly that strategy is not working. When we have asked the ministry why those numbers have gone up so much its response has been that it does not know why that has occurred but that apparently it is halfway towards finding that out. How does the ministry know it is halfway towards finding that out if it does not know what the answer is? The ministry has gone on to say that it thinks that a recent cause of the rise has to do with the reclassification of beneficiaries. In other words the ministry is taking people off the unemployment benefit and putting them on the sickness benefit. That is acknowledged by the ministry. The Minister never acknowledges it but the ministry staff have. 
We know that there are 547 unemployed beneficiaries who have been unemployed for over 10 years. That is 10 years of those people’s lives wasted on the unemployment benefit and 10 years of taxpayer dollars wasted on keeping them and their families when they should be doing that themselves. That is 10 years of wasted life. We know that some people who are currently receiving benefits should not be receiving them because they are not available for work. They are working in their family dairies or on little schemes that they have arranged with local collective organisations. People have those sorts of rorts going on and we know that is happening because the people at the coalface of the Work and Income offices tell us so. They have a Minister who does not care enough to go in to bat for them and help them to do their job better. Their job is to be the gatekeepers of taxpayer dollars not to dole out money time and time again and ask no questions. 
The Minister has talked about a universal benefit and that is referred to in the financial review. The universal benefit as we found out today in the House will have a multitude of add-ons. So far there are four that the Minister can remember but we know there are more to come. The universal benefit will not do a scrap of good. This comes from the same Minister who took away the work test for people on the domestic purposes benefit whose children had gone to school. It is the same Minister yet here he is talking about the universal benefit. It is supposed to fix the problem but it will not do so. 
We know that there is a huge amount of benefit fraud in this country. Again we know that from the Work and Income staff who tell us that they are seeing it. We know it from the doctors who tell us that they are being approached with demands for sickness benefit forms. If they do not comply with those demands the people will simply up and go to another doctor who will. The doctors know that if patients do that they will lose the income from those patients’ families. The doctors know that their own kids can get attacked at school and also that they themselves can be blacklisted. We have seen it happen. We have heard on the Social Services Committee about what happens to doctors who stand up and do the right thing. 
Recently I trotted around the country and visited various doctors listening to them and asking them what they were finding. What I heard came as a shock. I heard of one particular town that had 19 doctors. Eighteen said no to one particular sickness benefit applicant and the nineteenth said yes. The signal that sends out to those doctors is that they should not bother to try to do the right thing because someone else will not and the doctor who tries to do the right thing is the poor mug who will not get paid and who will have to wear it next time. 
Hon Steve Maharey 
: Tell us who it is then. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: It is all very well for Government members to ask who the doctor is. We know what happened last year when doctors came out and said that was happening. It was on the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald.  
The first thing that the Minister said was that those doctors were complicit in fraud. That is just not good enough because doctors are not actually trained to be the gatekeepers of taxpayer dollars; they are trained to be patients’ advocates and medical doctors. 
The Minister said that he would fix the problem. But the first thing that he did when he came in was to get rid of the designated doctor scheme which did fix it. Under the previous National Government sickness and invalids beneficiary numbers were going down but under this Government they have skyrocketed. We have found that that is not because suddenly everyone has become old which is what the Minister has told us. It is not because suddenly everyone has a bad back. We have looked at the numbers and seen that we are talking about people in their 30s and 40s who are suddenly sick. We in this party do not believe for a moment that suddenly 38 percent more people than 5 years ago are so sick that they cannot work. We do not believe that for a moment. We taxpayers are being told to believe that this country is suddenly sick. As I have said before it clearly must be either the Government or the conditions that it has brought in that has caused that situation. 
We have also been hearing about the amount of staff fraud that goes on. With regard to that issue I say that the culture comes from the top. When we have a Government that goes around spending other people’s money willy-nilly with absolutely no understanding of accountability we can expect that sort of culture to come on down. The culture is not set by the person in the lowest-paid job in an organisation; it is set at the top. The top happens to be the Prime Minister and the Minister. Their every word causes one to wonder what it is that they are saying because one is never quite sure whether they are telling one exactly what they are supposed to. 
There is also the issue of seasonal work which has to be one of the biggest jokes around. The Department of Labour has told us that it will sort out the issue of seasonal work by bringing Thai fruit pickers into the Northland area so that they can pick the fruit that all the unemployed people who are on the dole in Northland cannot pick. The department told us that Thai fruit pickers would come in and do the job and that it would be a great thing. It is a great thing if one happens to be an orchard owner with whom many people in the Opposition sympathise. But when I ask orchard owners whether the Thai workers can speak and read English so that they can comply with the occupational safety and health requirements the answer I receive is that they cannot but that they are supervised. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I would like to come back to the issue of seasonal work and the difficulty that orchardists and market gardeners have found in getting anyone to pick fruit and asparagus over the last year. The ministry’s view is that the problem does not happen in Nelson or Hawke’s Bay. That will be news to orchardists who happen to be located in Nelson or Hawke’s Bay! The ministry says that it does happen and is a problem in Northland. Before the dinner break I was advising the Committee that the ministry felt that what it was able to do was to bring in Thai fruit pickers to work in Northland. But when I look again at the reasons given by the ministry as to why it is a problem in Northland I see the reason is not that people have no encouragement to get off their bottoms and go to work nor is it that people cannot be bothered. It is not for any of those sorts of reasons which most of us would probably think were the reasons. The reason is that fruit pickers do not have good pay and employment conditions such as—members should listen to this—the provision of toilets which may cause difficulties. Apparently that is not a difficulty for the Thai workers. We are also told that transport is a difficulty. Well it is obviously not a difficulty for the Thai workers who come all the way from Thailand to pick fruit in Northland. It is obviously not in fact a difficulty that those workers do not speak or write English very well. Of course the occupational safety and health requirements clearly cannot be met if people cannot speak or read the language. But we were then told in the select committee that that is not an issue because the Thai workers are supervised. 
What that means of course is that we are supposed to expect that New Zealanders who have spent all their lives in this country and who have spent huge amounts of their time on benefits are not to be supervised but that the Thai workers are. We say that that is not one law for all; it depends on where one comes from. 
Jill Pettis 
: They work in sweatshops. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Is the Labour member who was interjecting about sweatshops saying that it is OK to have sweatshops in New Zealand? We are not talking about that at all. What we are saying is that people can come all the way from Thailand to work here under New Zealand conditions yet we cannot find anyone in New Zealand to do the job. 
BILL GUDGEON (NZ First) 
: 
 We are witnessing the commodification of our seniors within the elder-care sector due to a stand-off between the Minister and those providing services in the sector. Many of those currently working in the sector are exiting particularly the religious providers; namely Presbyterian Support the Salvation Army and the Methodist Mission. These are charitable service providers but they cannot sustain large losses. They are being replaced by large overseas corporates that are in this business only to make profits. They are not interested in the quality of life of our seniors but only in the profits their overseas shareholders can make. 
If this Government would simply pay those already in the sector more per patient than the current $88 a day then these committed groups would stay. They would also be able to pay their elder-care nurses more—these same nurses who are watching their pay fall way behind that of other nurses. Our seniors are missing out in our hospitals. As well waiting lists get longer and longer and the time before receiving treatment grows along with them. 
Prior to Christmas 2004 the Government offered a 3 percent increase in funding. This was welcomed by the sector; however it should be noted that additional funding is still urgently required to maintain services for the elderly to provide staff with a realistic wage and to attend to such necessities as maintenance which has for many operators been deferred for some time. Power prices fuel and rates all go up faster than inflation but superannuation stays stagnant with a meagre inflation adjustment. Our seniors are forced to stay in bed because they cannot afford heating. This is not dignity. This is survival which this Government has forced on them. 
When we look at how much it has cost the Government to get four people into work—in excess of $400000—could that not have been put to a more worthy cause like taking care of our elderly who have contributed enormously to the tax take of this country and deserve better? 
Aged-care facilities throughout the country are watching anxiously as rest homes have been forced to close because of inadequate funding over the past 10 years. The Government promised a 3 percent increase unconditionally but the funding has not been passed on to providers. If too many providers exited the sector then the choice would become limited. Although we fully support a person’s right to be cared for at home if he or she so chooses we believe that there will always be a place for residential care services for those no longer willing or able to remain at home. 
In Auckland those who have withdrawn or who have publicly stated that they are pulling out are Presbyterian Support the Salvation Army the Methodist Mission and the Northern Masonic Association Trust Board. These organisations are charitable service providers that are focused on quality without commercial interest. However they cannot sustain large and continuing losses. Funding has reached the point where these services are being lost. 
I hearken back to the 1999 general election when I said in Hastings: “We are breeding a nation of people who have lost the work ethic.” Five years later in 2005 this has been confirmed by a report from officials who reported to the select committee that it was difficult to get the unemployed into seasonal work and that immigrant workers were being employed instead who have little if any grasp of the English language. This quote surely is applicable to our situation: “Give a person a fish; he or she will eat for a day. Teach people how to fish and they will eat for the rest of their lives.” 
Daniel Webster on 1 June 1837 said: “I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. … Our destruction should it come at all will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government from their carelessness and negligence I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.” 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I rise at this point because most of the notified speeches in relation to this particular financial review have been given so it is a good time perhaps to provide a few words from the Government’s point of view. I thank Mr Gudgeon for what I thought was a careful and reasoned speech around the issues he was raising; certainly they are concerns that the Government wants to explore. 
I return to the address given by Mrs Judith Collins who is the National Party spokesperson on social welfare issues. I always thought that one of the responsibilities a member has when coming into this Chamber in order to spend at least 5 minutes of taxpayers’ time talking about an issue he or she is supposed to be an expert on—Mrs Collins is the expert on this issue from the National Party’s point of view—is at least to be informed. That is what scrutiny is for. That is why we have these financial reviews. That is why we have people sitting in the chair. That is why people are listening on the radio—I imagine that not a lot were listening after Mrs Collins’ intervention but perhaps there were more after Mr Gudgeon’s. 
I just want to come back to what I guess is the job. I point members to an example of what I think was simply a waste of time if that is what happens in a financial review debate. Mrs Collins raised the issue of seasonal workers. As far as I can tell Mrs Collins knows nothing about seasonal workers. For example she said that there was no issue in the Hawke’s Bay. I tell Mrs Collins that my associate Rick Barker comes from the Hawke’s Bay and that he has campaigned for many a year to try to ensure—as the number of people who are unemployed has decreased to almost nothing in the Hawke’s Bay and as growers have found that they no longer have a pool of labour that come harvesting time they can turn to—that people work together within the industry in order to do a lot better at getting labour prepared trained and available to clear crops. 
I was in the Hawke’s Bay last week talking with people from the industry. They sat in a room together and talked about how they appreciated the work that people such as Rick Barker had done and that the Government had done. They were keen to address issues such as toilets accommodation transport and wages and to not have people in the industry who simply hoped that labour would turn up at the door when they were trying to pick their Braeburn apples in the very near future. 
That has been going on for many years and it is a direct result of a shift in the environment of people involved in seasonal cropping. They relied a lot on the persistently high number of people who were unemployed. They would turn at cropping time and harvesting time to organisations such as Work and Income to ask whether they could have some people. There were thousands of people unemployed in the Hawke’s Bay. There are around 900 in the industry now; in the whole of the Hawke’s Bay region there are about 1600 unemployed people now. Clearly they are not all suited to work on orchards so the number of people available is quite small. 
Therefore there is only one way forward for the seasonal industry. Rick Barker has worked with the seasonal industry on that and the industry agrees with him: it must prepare itself like any industry does to try to make sure that it has its share of the labour market. The industry is moving to such exciting ideas as trying to create a harvest trail. So instead of perhaps people picking Braeburn apples and having a few months’ work—or even a few weeks’ work—at most they move from one crop to another crop; they move around the region and maybe find themselves 12 months’ work. 
All that work is going on. It has been going on for years. People whether they are in Northland Otago the Hawke’s Bay or wherever they might be compliment Work and Income because it is working with the industry and doing an outstanding job. Yes the situation will to some degree be augmented by bringing people into the country to help do that kind of work. Of course the work is very difficult to predict—if we get a different kind of climate one year then the Braeburn will come on during a different week from the week they came on last year. It is all a little bit in the lap of the gods to that extent so one has to have some flexibility. That is also what we have been working on—to ensure that we have access to immigrant labour. Immigrants can come in do that work and go back home again. It is good for them and good for this country. The working holiday programme is also part of the whole process of trying to have Italians Germans Swedes and so on who can easily access the work when they come here. 
If a financial review speech from the National Opposition spokesperson on this issue is going to have as its dominant theme an exposé—as she likes I imagine to think about it—of what is happening in seasonal work then what is the point of having this kind of debate? The Government would welcome—in fact we want to have—a debate about how to improve the way we get those crops in each year. But I sat here and waited for one single glimmer of a policy idea. All I got was some debate about whether Thai people need to go to the toilet versus whether New Zealand people need to go to the toilet. That seems to be the sum of the insight offered by Judith Collins on behalf of the National Party. 
I know that perhaps when members come to the Chamber at half past seven at night they are reliant on the fact that no one is listening to the radio. Maybe that is what they are doing. They may feel that if they pop down and say some drivel into the radio— 
Rodney Hide 
: They are not listening now! 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: That is no wonder after Mrs Collins’ speech. As I said before that has probably killed the listeners off. Listeners are not getting a debate. Mr Gudgeon gave a carefully prepared speech about the issues of concern to New Zealand First and the Government takes those on board. But really I just ask members in the Chamber tonight whether they learnt a single thing from the National Party about what it said was essentially its biggest issue—seasonal workers—in the debate on this particular financial review. Not one single policy was put forward. There was no glimmer of insight into the issues faced by the seasonal worker industry. Yet people from this industry listening at home know that they produce a huge amount of apples kiwifruit or whatever it might be across this country. They produce an enormous amount of wealth for this country. They have a serious problem in a low-unemployment environment—we have a 3.6 percent unemployment rate and potentially it will go down further—because they have to be able to pick those crops. I would have thought it was the job of a person given the task of being the National Party spokesperson on these issues at least to sit with some people from the seasonal industries in this country and at least to find out what the issues are and not to come here and waste people’s time in a financial review of this nature with the kind of speech we just heard. 
So I just want to reassure the Committee that although National Party members have nothing to say of any value at all about people who do seasonal work and who pick all those crops around the country Government members do. We have been working on that issue for 5 years. I began doing work on it when I first became the Minister for Social Development and Employment. Rick Barker now has that portfolio as a delegation. He travels all over this country and talks to people about those issues. He has done a fantastic job. I say to Mrs Collins that when I asked people in the industry in the Hawke’s Bay the other day what they thought of the work Mr Barker was doing the answer was that it was fantastic. They said that he understands their issues talks to them face to face is out there on the farms knows what they are up against and is coming up with policies that help. 
The last thing I will say as an indication of that—Mrs Collins might like to know—is that one of the major changes Mr Barker has fought for for a long time has been to get people who are in seasonal work such as in the meat industry support when they are out of season so that they can sustain their households and come back into the industry later on. It is a great issue that we will address in the near future because Mr Barker has fought for that. I imagine that people in the seasonal work industries will therefore see his work as good concrete helpful work by a member who understands exactly what they are on about. 
I thank the New Zealand First folk for their serious work this evening. They have taken this review properly. But I do despair at what I hear all the time from National Party members now. I guess we know that they have written off the next election and are merely going through the motions as they wait for the inevitable defeat later on this year. As a result they do not feel that they need to do any work. Well I say that they do. They still get a wage. They still get paid. They are still expected to come down and do the job in this Chamber. I am here because I want to be scrutinised and my department wants to be scrutinised. We want to hear about the ideas people have and if they have a good idea it will be in action tomorrow. That is how we work. We do not care where the ideas come from; they just have to be good ideas and we will carry them out. I will now sit down and hope that Mrs Collins will take a further call and give one single good idea that we can use to go forward and spend taxpayers’ money on in order to make a real difference to this country. 
GEORGINA BEYER (Labour—Wairarapa) 
: 
 It is a privilege to follow on from the Minister for Social Development and Employment as we consider this financial review of the Ministry of Social Development. I have to echo the disappointment from National Party member Judith Collins. In answer to the Minister’s question I guess that perhaps the best idea that could be put forward to the National Party is to “bring back Katherine Rich.” At least that woman had some vision—we might not have liked quite what the vision was but she did have a policy to put out. But what happened? The policy was slapped into the corner and she was packed off to the back bench for having vision in that party. 
I take the point the Minister made previously—that we did not hear any policy from National Party members. What utterances we have heard in recent weeks have been calls to cut the domestic purposes benefit to get rid of this and that and generally to take us back to the era of the 1990s when of course there were terrible benefit cuts. Perhaps National Party members have forgotten what a social service is in this nation and how many people have benefited from such a service and have therefore become great contributors to our country in helping at least to provide taxes through working. 
We have the lowest unemployment rate in recent history at the moment. This Government has delivered on its promises. This Minister and his ministry have worked extraordinarily hard not only over the last year that we are reviewing but certainly in the time since this Government came in during 1999. 
The Working for Families package which will be rolled out extremely shortly will be fantastic news for New Zealanders. There are New Zealanders who will get somewhere in the region of up to $100 extra a week in their pay packets—in their hot little hands—to help build and strengthen families so they can continue to make their valuable contributions to this country. Those people will be beneficiaries. Those who are in need in this country will benefit from that particular policy package which of course comes to light on 1 April. That will be very good news for New Zealand and for many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. 
But we are not only introducing that; we have worked on strengthening families. That has been a tremendous help to many New Zealanders around the country. I have to mention that within my own electorate some of the strengthening family initiatives have gone on there in order to combat our not-too-proud history of domestic violent crime child abuse etc. that has occurred in recent history in the Wairarapa. We have not heard many of those stories coming out of the Wairarapa in the last year or so. That is because community members along with local government and certainly with a major contribution and effort from central government—namely the Ministry of Social Development Child Youth and Family Services and numerous other services—are working extraordinarily well together now to try to get on top of those problems we experienced. 
The problems are not only in our own area of course but also in other areas of the country. As we run out pilots in order to battle some of those issues we are seeing ever-increasing positive results around the country. We are trying to turn round those negative trends but that relies on our supporting families strengthening families and providing expertise where the problems are. 
There is a need for getting in together and working much more closely with non-government organisations—those that at times are often able to pick up the challenges facing communities and with the assistance given by Government agencies to roll out their particular plans and pilots for addressing specific needs. One size does not always fit all around the country in dealing with those particular matters. Generally we are able to tailor services advice and actual help at the coalface to suit those communities and their particular vision of how they would like to develop. They have to have that buy-in and we have to have them on board in that sense. 
This Government with this Minister Maharey with his Ministry of Social Development and with all the other agencies attached to that has done an extraordinary job. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to speak on the financial review of the Ministry of Social Development. I am glad the Minister mentioned the inordinate time that Judith Collins spent talking about seasonal work although it mirrors the inordinate time she spent talking about seasonal work during the select committee’s financial review of this ministry. Mrs Collins seems to think that putting people into seasonal work is one way of solving unemployment. But anyone who has done seasonal work—for example anyone who was a university student in the 1990s and found that seasonal work was all there was and had to take it—knows that it is extremely difficult work and not everybody will be capable of doing it. Now at a time of low unemployment many able-bodied workers are working so seasonal work might not be the solution that it once was in a time of high unemployment. 
But the real low point in the select committee arose when we were discussing Thai workers and Mrs Collins took to calling anyone who did not speak English illiterate. She asked whether it was true that illiterate people who came to our country could not speak English and therefore follow instructions. It had to be pointed out to her that not only do people from other countries often speak English but they are not illiterate just because they do not speak the same language as we do. 
The most striking aspect about this report from the Social Services Committee is what is missing from it. In reading through it one cannot find any reference to or section on the domestic purposes benefit. That omission really needs to be pointed out because after all the domestic purposes benefit has been targeted by the National Party as one to be attacked during this election. National says that we need to get people off the domestic purposes benefit but there is no mention of that benefit in this review of the Ministry of Social Development. In fact in the select committee not one question was asked by an Opposition member during the entire financial review. It came down to a Government member to talk about the sterling efforts of the ministry and the changes it had made in getting women—and men too because men are on the domestic purposes benefit—back into work when it suited them and more important when it was appropriate for their families. 
The policy of getting those people back into work has to be one of the most important ever implemented by that Minister and his ministry. With the casework approach these people are not treated as though they are a burden on society. There is an appreciation that raising children is difficult and carries with it financial costs but that it is even more difficult for a sole parent. There is acknowledgment that the State has a role to ensure that every child including a child from a sole-parent family has financial support to ensure that he or she has the same opportunities as children who are fortunate enough to have two parents supporting them. 
Although National members seem quite happy to talk to the media about the domestic purposes benefit and what National would do when they had an opportunity at the select committee to ask questions of the people who deal with these issues every day they had nothing to say. They know that the number of people on the domestic purposes benefit is going down. 
I take this opportunity to recognise the excellent work done by Mr Peter Hughes and all his staff at the Ministry of Social Development. He is an extremely capable chief executive in charge of a very capable ministry. There needs to be recognition by the House of their hard work over the last few years. 
Another policy that will make a big difference is the Sickness and Invalids Benefit Strategy whereby the focus is on what people can do rather than on what they cannot do. We want to ensure that people are on the correct benefit. If they need to be on a sickness benefit or an invalids benefit they will be put on that benefit and not on the unemployment benefit. If they are on a sickness benefit or invalids benefit they can get the tailored help they need. Too often in the past the focus was on what the person could not do. If a person’s job involved a lot of physical activity and the person suffered an injury and could not continue in that job he or she might go on to a sickness benefit or invalids benefit. But we should have thought of what else the person could do and maybe not in that area of work. 
It might be interesting to know how many of those on a sickness benefit or invalids benefit today are in this position because during the 1990s they did not go to a doctor when they should have or did not seek medical help because they could not afford it or because it was not accessible and then reached the point of no return. That is why primary health is so important. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Government has been under a lot of pressure in the last couple of months over the pitiful level of overseas aid. The report of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade stated that New Zealand’s ratio of official development assistance to gross national income is currently 0.24 percent compared with the target of 0.7 percent set by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The 0.24 percent level has been present throughout the 5 years of the Labour Government. 
Last March aid organisations in New Zealand were so upset that they joined with the Council for International Development in what they called a Point Seven campaign. They want to invest in a better world by getting our level of aid up to 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI) by the year 2015. 
This month the Government has had two further embarrassments. Firstly the Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik visited New Zealand. As he spoke around the country he said that Norway had a level of 0.96 percent of GNI which is exactly four times our 0.24 percent and that the level would shortly go up to 1.0 percent of GNI. 
The Government had a further embarrassment about a week ago when Kofi Annan the UN Secretary-General made a big speech on the Millennium Development Goals. He said that nations had to get up to that 0.7 level very quickly if those development goals were to be met—goals such as halving the number of people in the world who live on less than US$1 a day. There are 1.2 billion such people in the world today. It is a disgraceful figure. 
We have to do something towards getting to 0.7 percent. Kofi Annan said that every country must have a timetable to get to that level by 2015. New Zealand does not have a timetable. A year ago the Government talked about getting to an interim target of 0.35 percent of GNI by 2006-07 but nothing was done on that. There is no timetable. 
I would like the Minister to explain why there is no timetable—because there is no reason. New Zealanders support overseas aid. We saw that in the money given to the tsunami victims. Virtually 100 percent of the New Zealand population said it was great when the Government came out with a special package of $52 million plus $16 mission over the next four years. All the Government needs to do in order to get to that 0.7 target by 2015 is to give about that same amount extra each year—roughly $60 million a year—up to 2015. The Government should have the courage to do that. People would buy into it. 
One-third of the aid that Norway gives goes through non-government organisations. It has a huge number of people on the ground in overseas countries and when those people return they help build a consensus in the country for a high level of overseas development assistance. The Norwegian Prime Minister said—and he is a Christian Democrat conservative Prime Minister: “There is a national consensus. We’re giving a high level of overseas aid and we need to give it.” 
Those Millennium Development Goals are very laudable. For instance beyond reducing the number of people who live on US$1 a day or less the goals aim to halve the proportion of people in the world who do not have access to safe drinking water and there are 1 billion of those people. Another goal is to halve the number of people who do not have basic sanitation and there are 2.4 billion of such people. A further goal is to get universal primary education for all boys and girls in the world. There are 900 million people in the world today who are illiterate—two thirds of them are women. We need decent conditions for the 1 million slum dwellers in the world. We need to reduce child mortality by two-thirds; 10 million children a year die because of preventable disease. 
So we need to put the effort in to do our part in the world but we are not doing that. New Zealand is way down the bottom of the OECD table at the moment. It is a disgrace. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: I take great pleasure in responding to that particular speech. From 1999 to 2002—the first term of this Government—most work in the aid area related to the restructuring of NZAID. I will talk more about that in a minute. That was a very important thing to do—to set up a semi-autonomous agency that had a very clear goal of poverty elimination and that focused on the Pacific. In some countries—and I could name them—aid is something that is used in order to promote one’s foreign affairs ideas and to win friends and influence. New Zealand is very pure about aid. Aid is about poverty elimination and the Pacific. That was quite a change and quite a lot of work had to go into growing a New Zealand aid agency. 
Since 2002 at the beginning of the Government’s second term when I was given the particular role of Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade with responsibility for NZAID we have increased aid money by $30 million plus the $58 million—as was mentioned by my colleague Keith Locke—that went this year toward the tsunami. That is a substantial increase. The difficulty is that had we allocated that money and not had a growing economy I imagine that aid would constitute 0.3 percent of gross national income (GNI). The difficulty is that we have a growing economy and although we are giving more as a country we are sort of paddling to stay up at the same percentage of GNI. That is a problem we have. 
The previous speaker made a comment about the Norwegian Prime Minister coming here. There is an extraordinary difference between the Norwegian economy and ours. As a member of Cabinet I could only salivate when he spoke about I think $35 billion in cash reserves—not a surplus done by accrual accounting but real money. I think he said there was $35 billion in real money stowed away. Heavens above! I would be able to give some away too! It is a very different situation from that in New Zealand. 
For all that in the 2003 survey announced at the OECD meeting—and because we were seated in alphabetical order I was sitting beside the Minister responsible for aid in Norway—New Zealand scored higher than Norway. Why did we score higher? Because the survey was about trade equity. It was about refugees taken into a country as a percentage of the population. It was about the peacekeeping work we did as well as the money we spent on aid. That survey saw us in holistic terms in terms of aid—aid not necessarily being cash. The Norwegian aid agency actually came to New Zealand following the tsunami and asked how it is that we do it so well. We may be small in terms of the amount of money but I have utter pride in terms of how we deliver out there. I will stand by that and fight that corner for many a long time. 
An aid budget of 0.7 percent of today’s GNI in today’s currency would require an extra $600 million. So if the previous speaker is really saying that that is what he wants to spend then he has to play the game of priorities. Where would he take that $600 million from? The member cannot be in a party that is calling for universal support for students—at a cost of $400 million—then ask for an extra $600 million for aid. This is a game of priorities—well it is not a game but it is a serious decision about taking us forward. 
I think that New Zealanders really want to be involved in a good aid agency. So good are we as an aid agency that we should think about whether we are working to meet the millennium development goals. One of the millennium development goals relates to core education. For a long time in the Pacific—and also back to the Colombo Plan—we spent something like 80 percent of the aid education budget on scholarships to bring students to New Zealand. That is now down to 50 percent. In the Solomon Islands people who operate in a non-cash economy still have to find SI$600 per term to get a child into primary school. Our aid commitment is I think between NZ$12 million and NZ$14 million per year which means that within 3 years we can ensure that in the Solomon Islands we meet the millennium development goal of having every child—male and female—able to receive core education. That relates not only to the classroom the teachers or the books but also to water. 
That sounds funny. It relates to sanitation because girls do not go to school unless there are decent lavatories that provide them with privacy. That may sound strange but there are no lavatories in many of the schools I saw in the Solomons; the bush is used. That means that young girls do not go to school at certain times of the month. 
We are extending that effort into Tonga where a huge amount of work has been done. I think of Vince Catherwood a marvellous leader in our own Ministry of Education for several years who has retired from there and taken on a wonderful role in Tonga working to redesign and again to ensure that we meet core educational objectives. We are moving on to Vanuatu in the same area; again there is the same great need as in the Solomons. I have huge pride for what we are doing in NZAID. 
I will tell just one story from the tsunami. The tsunami happened just as I started a trip down the Whanganui River. I said that we could spend whatever money was needed because we have an emergency fund. I thought there would not be very many dead. When I finished the trip 2½ days later I found that there were a lot. I arrived at the office and what did I see but a magnificent whiteboard. All this consular work was going on in order to care for New Zealanders. On the whiteboard was a note stating that a man involved in the water and waste-water industry had rung up and said that he was a water engineer and that he would like to go over and help. His name was put up on the board. The next thing in rang one of the agencies—Oxfam—which said it needed some water and sanitation engineers. Gotcha! NZAID lined them up. The board was full of brokerage deals done by NZAID because it was trusted by the agencies and by people and it delivered. 
New Zealanders have such a fabulous reputation overseas. Right now an earthquake has hit again in that same area. We have a New Zealand doctor over there. He was chasing the perfect wave 5 years ago and decided to stay there. He said that it is so easy to clean up malaria but that no one does it very well. He is in there again today because we are supporting him in his continuing work not just to do with the tsunami but to do with the wiping out of malaria. He made contact with us immediately. He said that he had the doctors but he needed money for a helicopter. Done! The helicopter was out there instantly within hours so that we could check on the health of people in outlying villages. That is concrete work. That is work that achieves a goodness. 
Yes I would love—I dream of—aid spending of 0.7 percent of GNI but I am aware of what my colleague the Minister of Health has to do to get meningococcal vaccines. I know what she has to do when members of Opposition parties say that we need vaccines for this and vaccines for that. Members will remember the whole bird flu thing and everything else that went through. I know the costs of that and I know that I have to juggle and move us forward. I acknowledge that we will move forward in absolute definition—that we will move forward to meet those millennium development goals in our own backyard and do it in such a way that we partner people and respect them. We will not be there to use people and to plaster a kiwi over everything to show that New Zealand did it. No it is about facilitating and strengthening the people who are there. 
That is not the only area that I am particularly proud of in terms of foreign affairs. I am here today because the Hon Phil Goff is in the Pacific and because I am very proud of the leadership that New Zealand has taken inside the Pacific Islands Forum and with the Pacific plan. Again it is our manner of working. I am also extremely proud of the trade work done by the other member of the triumvirate the Hon Jim Sutton. Members should think of the trade work that New Zealand has been involved in in foreign affairs since Labour has been in Government and of the relationships that we have developed. Members should just think of how many overseas visitors in the last 3 weeks have wanted to come to this country and talk with us. We are no longer an island at the bottom of the world just north of the Antarctic. We are somebody that people want to engage with. I am proud of New Zealand’s work in foreign affairs. 
Finally I am well aware that in 3 weeks’ time I leave for New York and for our work on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Health 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to these very important appropriations. I note that the appropriations sought for Vote Health for this year were $9.6 billion—a huge amount of money and an increase of 11.3 percent on the year before. In 1999 the amount sought was $6.6 billion. So under a Labour Government we have seen an increase of $3 billion in 4 years yet all the problems in health are still there—many of them much worse. I have diligently asked all the district health boards in the country whether there are any measurable improvements in health outcomes that they can tell me about and they have unanimously said “No”. Despite $3 billion of extra money going into health they said there have been no improvements in health outcomes. 
A little earlier we heard Moana Mackey talk about Labour’s welfare strategy. What we know about that strategy is that it has in the last 5 years resulted in a 39 percent increase in the number of people on the invalids benefit and the sickness benefit. That is what has happened to health under Labour over the last 4 years. Just recently two top academic surgeons—one from the North Island and one from the South Island—told me that the surgical waiting lists are worse than ever before despite all the money that has been thrown at them. 
There is no doubt that in health there is infinite demand and finite resources and each scarce health dollar must be put to the best possible use. Yet what did this Labour Government do? Firstly in 2000 it developed the biggest health bureaucracy ever conceived in New Zealand. I want to repeat what Helen Clark said in 1994 when she was Leader of the Opposition: “Why does he not tackle the costly inefficient bureaucratic top-heavy health structure that his Government has put in place? Why for example does he not tackle a Ministry of Health in which never have so many people been employed to do so little?”. Well in the chair today we have a Minister of Health who said that Labour would decrease the number of people in the ministry by 25 percent and they would go to the district health boards. What happened? The number increased by 25 percent. There were 900 people in the ministry in 1999; now there are over 1100. The Minister said that the number would decrease by 25 percent. Instead we got 21 district health boards with all their plethora of committees not to mention the 76 primary health organisations. 
There is no doubt that Prime Minister Helen Clark and Minister of Health Annette King have been determined to create one of the most complicated and inefficient health bureaucracies in the history of New Zealand if not mankind. This is what Helen Clark said in 1997 in a speech to the Respiratory Health Services conference: “I know all the arguments about getting better value for money in health spending. I do believe that effectiveness and efficiency in health services is of the utmost importance.” Let us see what the reality was—and it comes from the  
Health and Independence Report 2003 
. A table in the report shows that the total number of surgical acute and elective discharges in 1999 was 160000 and that by 2003 the number had reduced to 157000. What is worse when we go to the  
Health and Independence Report 2004 
 we do not see any such table. It is just not there. It is too embarrassing. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 As a report card the financial review of the Ministry of Health from the Health Committee is very positive. One would not think so if one listened only to the previous speaker. He made a highly political speech but failed to tell the listening public a single thing that a National Government would change. I will tell the listening public why that is so. Don Brash has already told New Zealanders that National will not change the “highly complicated bureaucratic system” that this Government has set up. He said there are no votes in it. Mr Don Brash said that the public have no appetite to change the health system. Why does he believe that? He believes that because New Zealand saw a decade of “health reforms” under the previous National Government. They want to talk about bureaucracy! We had CHEs four RHAs and one THA. Then we had an HFA 23 HHSs and a plethora of organisations—business units etc. 
The changes that have been made by this Government have been overwhelmingly supported by the health sector of New Zealand. Its representatives tell me—and they tell Dr Hutchison—that they do not want another round of changes. They do not want to throw out 21 district health boards. They do not want to change what we are doing. They want to consolidate what we have in New Zealand; they want to get on with the job. 
So Dr Hutchison owes it to the Committee tonight to tell New Zealanders what National would change. Will it get rid of the 21 district health boards? He talked about bureaucracy but do members see that he forgets that there were 23 hospital and health service providers—not 21 district health boards but 23 hospital and health service providers—not to mention the huge bureaucracy that was in the Health Funding Authority. Let us remember that the chief executive of that authority earned $27000 a month as his pay and worked three days a week. We can talk about the waste and bureaucracy we had in the past; New Zealanders are not keen to see such changes. So I say to Dr Hutchison that he can wail all he likes and make the political points but then he should tell the people of New Zealand what a National Government would do. 
Let us talk about the Health Committee. I have heard a report from the select committee that is totally different from the one Dr Hutchison heard. I am sure my colleague the chair of that committee will talk about it in a moment. I know that boards appeared before the select committee to speak to their financial reviews and they told Dr Hutchison—although he may not have wanted to hear it—of the very very good things they were doing in primary health care. They are reaching out to those people who have diabetes or cardiac conditions. However that member who was a health professional asks where the health outcomes are. Anybody who understands health knows that if people want to track health outcomes they track them through morbidity and mortality. Dr Hutchison will see the improvement—even in the short time we have been in Government—in morbidity and mortality. Now that is interesting because that is how it is measured—not by asking the question: “How many people do you think you have saved today?”. I do not know what questions Dr Hutchison asked but he was told of the projects and programmes that have been put in place. We measure health in the same way that other countries do—that is around morbidity and mortality. 
It is interesting that we have seen for the first time an improvement in the health—mortality and morbidity—of Maori. That is one area where we have had a huge discrepancy in New Zealand. We know that Maori people in New Zealand do not live as long as other New Zealanders. We know that the difference in life expectancy can be as much as 10 years compared with other New Zealanders. We know they get sicker than other New Zealanders but we have started to see improvement. Is that not good? Is that not what we should be measuring in the way we run our health systems? That improvement certainly did not come out of the policies of the 1990s. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I do note any absence of rebuttal of the facts contained in the  
Health and Independence Report 2003 
 which showed that 160000 operations were carried out in 1999 and 157000 in 2003. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: How many people are healthier then? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Very few. But we have just heard the Minister talking about how we measure health outcomes and she talked about morbidity and mortality. Well if the Minister really wants to know I can tell her that morbidity and mortality have been decreasing in New Zealand over the last 120 years—and so they should be. What we have not seen in the last 5 years is a sudden measurable decrease under the Labour Government. Any improvements are probably the lag from the benefits of the last 10 years under National in actual fact. There is always a lag with morbidity and mortality and the Minister certainly has a very large lacuna when it comes to knowing that. 
I turn now to the question of Ms Clark and the point she made in saying she knew all the arguments about getting better value for money in health spending. After all she indeed was the Minister of Health in 1989 when the Auckland Area Health Board was so dysfunctional that she had to fire her own husband as well as the entire board. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Stop raving on. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: They say I am raving on but I see almost a déjà vu situation. We have an Auckland District Health Board with a deficit of $44 million this year and next year the board is due to have a deficit of $84 million. So let us have a look at what Ms Clark said in 1997: “The deficit funding of the public sector has to stop. A Labour Government will be looking to negotiate with our public health sector what we need to provide and the cost of providing it. We should fund a balanced budget for our public health services not a deficit budget.” Well I ask the Minister how it is that the Auckland District Health Board this year has a deficit of $44 million and is projected next year to have one of $84 million. The Minister should be embarrassed about it and I hope she will do something about it in this Budget because the legacy that she has left in the Auckland District Health Board over the last 4 years is a disgrace. It is very much like the disaster we all know about that was left by Helen Clark in 1989. We have a health board crippled by problems that have occurred during the time of this Government. 
But let us get back to the scandal of waiting lists under Labour. That party’s members ranted and raved during the 1990s about waiting lists yet under Labour we saw one of the biggest deceptions in the history of health when it said it would fix the waiting list but took 25000 people off that list and sent them back to their general practitioners. As a constituency MP I know that the most frequent visitors I have in my electorate office are people who say they cannot even be seen in order to be put on the waiting list. 
Under this Government if one happens to have common things like varicose veins hernias haemorrhoids or gallstones one cannot be seen unless the condition is very severe. Again I have asked every district health board I have seen at the Health Committee whether they will do those common operations. They say no unless the condition is very severe. That means that those patients come into hospital the operations are complicated the recovery is complicated and those individuals often take a long time off work because they just cannot get to work because of those common difficulties. It is a disgrace that under this Labour Government which has put so much into primary health care and is planning to put in another $1.7 billion in total although one might be able to get to the doctor nothing can be done about it when one actually gets there in terms of some of the common problems. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 This review definitely makes interesting reading and one of the issues discussed is the urgent need to address aged-care funding for our senior citizens. One of the true measures of success for any Government is the care that is provided for the most vulnerable in our society. 
We had the Prime Minister telling Parliament that Labour would look into funding pressures in the aged-care sector and I know that it has done so. But the bottom line is that one cannot build a reputation on what one intends to do. That sector is still waiting to receive the increase in funding it was promised. The Government promised a 3 percent increase unconditionally but the funding has not yet been passed on to rest home providers. Most of those who enter rest homes do so because they can no longer live at home and they need to be looked after. But these rest homes are not hospitals even though the majority of funding for them comes from the Government’s health budget. We must ask when that additional funding will be passed on and how much longer those rest homes will have to wait. 
The fact is that there is simply not enough money going into elder care. There has been no increase in fees for many years and that issue needs to be addressed. Many rest homes are operating at a loss and no one can afford to sustain a loss for a long period. Then what do we see? We see that providers are literally forced out of the sector and the resultant care they had provided vanishes with them. Chronic underfunding has already forced the closure or sale of dozens of rest homes and private hospitals right through the country and we regularly hear of more instances of that happening. 
There are between 850 and 900 residential care facilities and geriatric hospitals throughout the country and they cater for a minimum of 42000 people. We know that the number is far greater than 42000 as that is the number on the Ministry of Health database is for subsidised residents. We need to be very aware that we have an ageing population and that we will require the services of those residential care facilities. 
I heard the very same pleas for funding when I attended the launch of HealthCare Providers New Zealand a new organisation formed to represent the rest home industry. Aged-care facilities are watching very anxiously as rest homes are being forced to close. To date more than 2000 rest home beds operated by religious and welfare organisations have been lost or are up for sale. If too many providers exit from this sector the choices will become extremely limited. 
We also have a second crisis within the aged-care industry: those who work within the sector are seeing their wages turn into dust. The pay for those who provide the service must be addressed. We cannot continue to rely on the goodwill of those working within the aged-care sector to accept substandard pay because rest home carers are among the lowest paid in New Zealand. In today’s  
Dominion Post 
 we also read that: “The Government has been accused of forcing care providers to employ staff as ‘slave labour’ and of crippling services for those in need with chronic underfunding.” So the Government needs to be very aware that if more is not done in this particular industry the fall-out will be totally devastating. 
It is a sad fact that growing older is becoming very difficult in this country. For many elderly New Zealanders the future looks bleak. At the end of a productive life it is not too much to expect to receive care when it is needed. Although we acknowledge that some responsibility for that care does initially lie with the family we must also acknowledge that sometimes it is just not possible to cope with a needy parent and that is where the Government can help. This is an area that needs urgent attention. Funding must be sufficient to ensure quality care in the aged sector and we definitely owe our elderly that. It is an area that we do not want to see fall over. We have seen the demise of many rest homes such as those run by the Salvation Army the Methodist Mission and some of the smaller private rest-home providers. Last December the Salvation Army announced that it would close rest homes. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a turn in the debate on the financial review of the Ministry of Health especially following the Minister of Health to address some inaccuracies from the Opposition spokesperson on health. I want to remind him that in 1995 85000 people were on the elective waiting list—and it was a waiting list not a booking system—and 50000 people were taken off it. We do not forget that. 
It was very interesting to find the Opposition spokesperson on health talking from a slash-and-burn perspective. Of course the member is a surgeon and can look at health only from a surgical perspective whereas this Government and this financial review of the Ministry of Health started to turn the tide to look at addressing the decade of disparities that we saw throughout the 1990s. We heard about the availability and the roll-out ahead of time of the primary health organisations which are starting to look at some very very exciting health disparities and that report affirms those disparities. The primary health organisation roll-out is ahead of schedule. It has already targeted the under-18s and the over-65s. We are now targeting the 18 to 24-year-olds. This year one of the interesting perspectives we heard from the Ministry of Health was about looking at some complex patterns of care Care Plus that are emerging from primary health organisations now that those organisations are getting on with doing the business. 
This financial review of the Ministry of Health was a very positive one. I have been at four such reviews previously and this is the first time the ministry has had an absolutely clear understanding of where it is coming from and where it is going to. That was absolutely clear in its presentation to the Health Committee because we actually got on to some rather small and insignificant points that were of interest to individual members without even worrying about or spending a lot of time on the big issues. We heard about aged care being devolved out to the district health board sector. The funding has been devolved; the issue is not about how it is being devolved. When we have gone to the district health boards they have said: “Good job. We’re glad it has come to us.” This is the last bit of the puzzle that they want to get right and why do they want to do it? It is because they have democratically elected boards. They know their communities. They go out and consult with our communities through some of the committees they have set up. 
I point out that the perception that there are burgeoning costs in the health sector in administration and management is simply turning out to be not true. In my own district health board Lakes District Health Board management costs in 2000 under the old Crown health enterprises were at 11 percent but now those management and administrative costs have dropped to 6 percent. I hope that the member opposite is listening. The drop in management and administrative costs in the district health board sector has been absolutely astonishing. Mark my word those facts are real. Management and administrative costs in the Lakes District Health Board went from 11 percent to 6 percent. It is a mean machine that is focused on keeping people well and not on obsessing on waiting times for surgery. 
In fact we heard from the Ministry of Health that it had started to look at the wonderful roll-out of orthopaedic surgery. Over the next 3 years $130 million will meet the demands we face in the electorate. No one at all has come into my electorate office concerned about the orthopaedic waiting time and I have a very busy electorate office. There is some degree of satisfaction too to see that after measuring transparent waiting times for surgery the Ministry of Health along with the Minister has agreed that the next chunk of work will focus on cataracts. That is something I am sure all of us will be very pleased to see. We want to keep people well and to reduce the disparities in health—the decade of disparities we inherited. 
I want to talk about the widening gap between health wellness and disease management and about the disparities in health under the previous administration which brought about bottom-line financial fatigue in Crown health enterprises. Now that district health boards are not focused on debt management alone—by being accountable as companies and by attempting to make a profit in the health sector which was what we faced for a decade—they are starting to say that they are getting out there with their annual district plans working with their communities and targeting the reduction of inequalities and disparities in health. We heard about targeted programmes for diabetes and cardiac disease. That was incredibly exciting. Morbidity and mortality are our indicators of effectiveness. 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the financial review of the Ministry of Health. It is great to be involved with a party that commits itself to positive politics. I thank the Minister of Health Annette King for having a very wide open door towards our party whereby we can approach her with solutions and suggestions and receive a welcome from her. She listens to what we say and she considers it seriously. We are very proud for instance that in the last Budget we had a hand in securing the extra $250 million over the next 4 years to ensure that the Government can follow through on its commitment to the Mental Health Commission’s blueprint. However I would be remiss as a member of a party separate from the Minister’s if I did not express to the Minister some concerns that we want her and the ministry to consider as a way forward in this area. 
We signal that we have some concerns about the underspending of blueprint money in some regions. We understand that the Minister’s priorities for spending in the primary health services have been to layer into primary health organisations firstly inexpensive or free GP visits for the under-18s and secondly funding for GP visits for the over-65s. We expect that the Minister’s third priority will be the funding of a community level of primary mental health service. We welcome the opportunity for that to be funded through primary health organisations. However the concern remains that if we are under-delivering now on current levels of funding for mental health services we need some assurances that the services offered in terms of desperately needed primary interventions for those suffering from ill health will reflect the money allocated. United Future is keen to see clear provisions for psychological therapies to be funded with as much enthusiasm as pharmaceutical treatments currently receive. 
The real crisis facing our health system is threefold: workforce workforce workforce. Shortages plague us in both high-level tertiary specialist services and the vital aged-care sector with caregivers who deal with New Zealand’s most vulnerable citizens—who are in the most vulnerable season of their life and where dignity is absolutely essential—being paid the most appalling wages and working under the most appalling conditions. That problem will not go away; it will only get bigger and some long-term planning in that area is absolutely essential. 
Another concern we have relates to core child health services. We believe that there is a huge need to overhaul and review what we are presently offering. The eight Well Child health checks need to be monitored more closely. We need the ministry to provide us with the data to assure us that the coverage of those Well Child checks is as complete as possible. We are hugely concerned for instance about child dental services. I say to the Minister that we face an extremely Third World condition in the Hutt at present in that the Sisters of Compassion are funding a dental service on a Saturday morning to make up for the shortfall in that area. I think that the problem is more widespread. Bay of Plenty schools have reported that they have children who have not been seen by a dental therapist for 2 years. We really think that child health is a huge area. 
The Vision Hearing Screening Programme is particularly dear to United Future’s heart. We are deeply concerned that that is a flawed screening programme that is giving false information to parents and teachers and that large numbers of children are slipping through the cracks going undetected and failing in our education system purely because they cannot see the work in front of them or have a hearing impairment that has gone undetected. We urge the ministry to do a serious review of that screening programme. 
We are also concerned about child mental health services. We agree that again workforce development will be needed. We are concerned as others are about the overprescription to children of Ritalin. We encourage the ministry to make sure that it monitors that and we encourage the Minister to keep an eye on that core child health service. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I thank members for their contributions to and comments on the financial review which as I said in my opening remarks was a very positive one for the Ministry of Health. In fact the ministry received a very good report card from the Audit Office. Those who take the time to read the review will know that there are very many good things outlined in that report. I thank the members of the Health Committee for the report they have given to the Committee of the Whole House. 
I will deal with some of the issues raised by Judy Turner. In the first instance she raised the issue of child health. I share her concerns about child health particularly in the area of dental health and about our ability to provide a network of dental health services to children and adolescents in New Zealand. Members will be aware that two major reviews of the way we will provide it have been done. In the next 3 months I will announce the total repackaging of the way in which we provide those services including the capital investment that is needed. One of the great tragedies however is in our ability to provide that service because we have such a shortage of dental therapists. 
Darren Hughes 
: And why is that? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: My colleague may well ask why we are unable to provide that service. For over 80 years Governments provided training for school dental nurses followed latterly by dental therapists. They were trained in three places in New Zealand: Christchurch Wellington and Auckland. In my day about 80 people were trained in each of those schools per year. In the 1990s every school was closed—no school was left open by the end of the 1990s. How did we think we would train a workforce to do dental and oral health in New Zealand if we did not have a workforce to do it? I have no idea what went behind that thinking. 
The first new training course was opened in 2001 in Dunedin. It is a degree course for dental therapy. The second course opened in 2002 at the Auckland University of Technology and it also is a 3-year degree course in dental therapy. It takes 3 years to train people. We got our first graduates from Otago last year. We got our first graduates from Auckland 2 weeks ago. We need 40 graduates per year just to replace what we have now. 
When I hear National Opposition members making comments about the Government’s inability to provide dental health services to children it makes me sick because we cannot provide the service without the workforce. We will have 40 graduates per year by next year. It has taken determination by this Government to put that in place. Otherwise we would not have had that workforce and we would continue to be unable to provide it. I know the concerns of both Barbara Stewart and Judy Turner. They have raised them many times and I know they are genuine in their concerns. This is a good opportunity for me to set out once again why we have the problem. That is not an excuse; it is the problem. We will overcome it and I believe that we will overcome it by next year when we will see children once again being recalled after no more than a year. 
Over the last 5 years we have seen a huge investment in mental health. We undertook to implement the Mental Health Commission’s blueprint for services and we have seen almost a doubling of funding in that area. Judy Turner raised the issue of a drop in access. I need to inform her—I do not know whether the select committee was told this—of one of the problems. From July 2004 we required service providers to provide us with data on diagnosis but in fact we did not collect all the data. The data is incomplete which is one of the reasons why we do not have full data on access. Organisations are required to provide the data by March this year so we will see the genuine level of access then. One of the problems is that we do not record what services are provided by non-governmental organisations and as members will know non-governmental organisations are increasingly becoming the providers of services outside the acute care services provided within hospitals. So being able to capture the data as to what is being provided by those organisations is really important. 
I am pleased—and I know that Judy Turner will be—to see the huge improvements that have been made in child mental health. It is not good enough but I invite members to look at what we started from. If members go back and look at the figures provided on page 7 of the report they will see that in June 1998 we were funding 24 inpatient beds for children. Now we are funding 56. We had 322 fulltime-equivalent clinical staff. We now have 739. In 1998 we had no day residential or respite care packages for children. We now have 113. So there has been improvement. We still need more. 
Barbara Stewart raised the issue of aged care. The Government shares many of the concerns she raised. I am pleased to tell her that my Associate Minister Pete Hodgson is involved with a working group on long-term sustainability for aged care because it is an issue we will face into the future. Most of us here are baby boomers. We are going to live a long time and want a lot of services particularly services for older New Zealanders. Ensuring that we have that long-term sustainability is really important. That work will I think be very significant. Also the member asked when the 3 percent will be passed on to aged-care providers. It will be passed on as soon as they sign their contract. The Government has approved the money. It is there for the providers. They have to sign the contract. I hope that that happens soon. 
Finally the National member Paul Hutchison took a second call and raised a number of issues including the issue of deficits. It is interesting that we rarely hear about deficits today. That is because we no longer run what is called the “second chequebook” which was a hallmark of the 1990s. Boards were able to run up deficits and then the Minister of Health with the Minister of Finance would sign off a cheque to cover the deficit. Now there is only one funding stream. Boards are required to live within the funding they receive. When we look at the deficits across this $10 billion sector—most of which goes to the district health boards—we see that the deficit for the last financial year was around $80 million. I remember that around 1997-98 it was over $200 million on much less money. Paul Hutchison said that the sector was worth around $6 billion. It was probably worth about $5.5 billion at that stage and the deficit was over $200 million. 
He also asked about Auckland. Most of his speech went back to the 1980s. He did not talk about what a National Government would do but he went back to Helen Clark and the 1980s. He talked about the Auckland District Health Board and its deficit. I would like the member to reflect on why it has a deficit. If he had asked the chairman of the board I am sure he would have been told that the major reason why Auckland has a deficit is the shoddy decision made prior to the 1999 election to build the Auckland Hospital. The deficit almost reflects the underfunding of that project because there was no business case. The project was signed off in Jenny Shipley’s office just before the election. 
Steve Chadwick 
: They were told that. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I am told that the select committee was told that. There was no business case there were no real costings and when the building was done the project was well over the proposed cost. [ 
Interruption 
] That is the absolute truth. I say to Bill English who is very ashamed of this that he should speak to the chair and the members of the Auckland District Health Board who will tell him never again to build a hospital with that shoddy approach. National did the same thing in Wellington. It promised a new hospital for Wellington a few minutes before the election at $150 million. There were no real costings it was never able to be built for that sum and once again we have had to fix up the health mistakes of the past. We are prepared to do it whether or not it is the workforce or buildings. Those are just a few of National’s mistakes. It failed then and it would fail if it ever got another chance. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 We can see from the financial review that by and large agriculture is doing pretty well in this country despite the high dollar. In this environment it is easy to be complacent but I think we have to be aware that there are some worrying signs on the horizon. It is clear that milk solids are still very competitive internationally but that is virtually the only commodity that is so. It also will face some serious crises in the future and we need to be thinking about them now. 
Let us look at our niche markets in agriculture that are doing exceptionally well. Let us look at wine. Internationally there is a wine glut. In many places one can get only about $2 a litre for wine. Has that had the remotest impact on New Zealand wine? The answer is no. New Zealand wine is doing very well. The reason for that is quality. We produce the best wine in the world. Let us look at kiwifruit. Zespri has marketed itself extremely well. It has gone for low chemical inputs and high-quality products. It is doing very well. Let us look at Saxon wool. The bottom has fallen out of the merino market. Saxon is at the top end of the range. It is doing exceptionally well. We do quality well. 
We need also to be aware that consumers are becoming very aware of things other than appearance and taste in food. They are concerned about pollution animal welfare chemical residues and “food miles” which is a major problem for us as a little island in the South Pacific. Clean green food products are what New Zealand does well. We have been doing them for many years and that is the way we have marketed ourselves for many years. 
I urge members to look at the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment entitled  
Growing for Good 
 because it has highlighted a number of difficulties that New Zealand farmers will face in the future. We can see those problems as barriers to growth and development or we can see them as opportunities. I think we need to look at them as opportunities. For dairy farmers effluent runoff and fertiliser runoff have become significant social and environmental negatives. But we can turn to balancing fertiliser inputs. We can fence off riparian margins and plant them with trees. Those may be expensive things in the short term but they are a great medium-term investment. 
We also need to look at natural events. The storms in the Manawatu and Whanganui last year caused enormous slips in the high country at the headwaters of streams. There were huge sediment dumps in the lower reaches of many of the rivers. We need to identify those marginal lands—and almost all of them have been identified—and retire them from grazing because grass simply cannot hold the soil together. The areas need to be replanted. If those areas along with riparian margins are reforested it will slow down the amount and velocity of runoff. 
But fundamental to farming in this country is economics. That is what it is all about. As a country we earn 65 percent of our export income from primary production. As farmers we have to be aware that the focus is moving away from productivity and on to quality. No longer do we have to say that every blade of grass counts. We need to farm smarter. The people who are doing very well are the people who emphasise quality. Again we should look at what is happening with producers of wine kiwifruit and Saxon wool. They are smart operators who are striving for quality. They leave no stone unturned and they are doing exceptionally well. 
Dairying cannot be complacent. Farmers are doing well at the moment but there are big problems ahead. Consumers are increasingly concerned about pollution runoff effluent and the way farmers treat their animals. As a farmer I am aware that it is often not popular to consider doing things differently. There is a lot of peer pressure in farming to continue doing the things we have always done. But we have to think about the pressure that consumers can bring to bear on us. Let us look at what happened to the Australian meat industry when it was discovered by consumers overseas that farmers were mulesing their sheep. I will not go into what mulesing is all about but it became a huge issue in terms of the pressure on Australian farmers. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Agriculture) 
: 
 I take the opportunity to speak on the review of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The report back from the Primary Production Committee is testament to the lack of issues the select committee exposed when going through the review. I compliment all the staff at the ministry on the brilliant work they are doing. Those main industries agriculture and forestry are of course the core of export generation in this country. As a Government we acknowledge that and I think it is important for us to acknowledge it as a Parliament at this particular point. 
I will run through a few of the operational issues that the ministry has been confronted with. Biosecurity which was raised very briefly by the Green member Ian Ewen-Street is a very important issue on which the ministry focuses. The ministry has been party to Exercise Taurus which the Green member as a member of the select committee has observed. It is very important that we have structures in place so that the ministry can react to any breach of biosecurity in this country. I think that it has done a lot of excellent work; that is supported by the fact that the select committee did not identify any problems in that regard. 
The issue of genetic modification was not raised by the Green member—I was quite surprised. He was very focused on the “clean and green” issue. The ministry and this Government is very focused on clean green food production. We are cautiously approaching the issue of genetic modification. Officials are working through all those issues and in spite of the Green member’s cynicism we will not have widespread production of genetically modified organisms. We will look at that science and investigate it very carefully as officials are doing before we move ahead in that area—we must do. 
The officials are involved heavily with trade negotiations. They are providing advice to the Minister Jim Sutton. It is very important that we break down the barriers to trading our clean green food products in the world markets. It is a very big part of the focus of the ministry and it will continue in that area. 
The Sustainable Farming Fund has to be one of the highlights of the Government’s initiative in terms of agriculture and forestry. It has committed another $10 million on an annual basis to that fund which is assisting hundreds of projects up and down the country to look at better ways of utilising land labour and technology in order to give us sustainable production into the future. Those are projects that would not otherwise get under way. They needed seed funding and the support of officials from the ministry and we have seen some brilliant outcomes from those projects. Again I compliment ministry staff the Minister Jim Sutton on his initiative in initially putting that programme in place when Labour came into Government and the Government on continuing to fund it. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: Why didn’t the Nats speak on this? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I would just like to highlight those things for the member. He quite rightly pointed out some of the positive things that are happening and I thought I would follow on from his good initiative. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: Why didn’t the Nats speak on this? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I am not sure why the National Party is not speaking about this. It has traditionally seen itself as the so-called champion of the agricultural sector. I know and farmers know that we as a Government have done more to focus on sustainable production into the future than the National Party has. We have not been bogged down by ideology about producer board reform. We have worked with every industry to put in place better law to assist development into the future. There are some challenges ahead of us for a number of those sectors—particularly the apple industry and horticulture—but industries are getting on with it in the knowledge that this Government will assist them. It will not tie them down or tie them back to an ideology as the National Government did. 
The issue of water its allocation its utilisation and the protection of its values is very very important. It is one of the big areas that the ministry has focused on. The ministry is doing a lot of work on that. It is in the early stages of working through consultation. As part of the Water Programme of Action it has undertaken consultation with communities in 27 centres in New Zealand. That programme of action is vital for all New Zealand—for the production of our exports and the protection of our waterways and our way of life. The ministry is also focusing on the area of access in order to assist in attaining the appropriate balance between access to waterways and the protection of farmers’ rights. 
I have every confidence that the good work the ministry did in the previous year will continue on into the future under this Government. I take the opportunity to thank each and every member of the ministry staff for the good work they have done and the select committee for being astute enough to realise that the ministry has done that good work. We look forward to working with the ministry for many years to come. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Education 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 Like the health portfolio the education portfolio is littered with lost opportunity in a fiscal fool’s paradise. I just want to take members over some of the numbers so they can understand what has actually happened to education under the stewardship of apparently the most competent Minister in the Government Mr Trevor Mallard. 
Darren Hughes 
: The Hon Trevor Mallard. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Hon Trevor Mallard and then there is the other education Minister who has taken up his job recently and cannot stay awake in the House. When I get letters from parents about the fact that their children with special needs cannot get teacher-aides and that they are getting semi-abusive letters back from the Minister then I know there is a problem. 
I will tell members where the money has gone because it has not gone to the people who need it. Sneering arrogance from the Government will not change that one bit—not one bit. The member from Otaki can listen to these numbers: in tertiary education Government spending has gone up between 2002 and 2005 by $1 billion—from $2 billion to $3 billion—and over the next couple of years it is forecast to go up another $500 million so the rate of increase is picking up. This is when the Government has said that it recognises there is a problem with the Te Wananga O Aotearoa and it is going to do something. Well it is actually not doing something at all—it is doing nothing. 
Tertiary spending has got completely out of control with homeopathy for pets the “art of health” which includes learning about the effect of colour on the human soul and $20 million phantom computer courses that no student ever did. The member for Otaki is going to sit there and giggle at the parents of special needs children who cannot walk cannot talk and cannot change their own nappies at school and who cannot get a teacher’s aide. That is the reality. That is the cost of the fiscal fool’s paradise that this Government has overseen. 
A bunch of half-successful lecturers and middle management out of universities have got hold of the Government’s honeypot and spent it all on their mates—in the polytechs mainly—not on the students. The proportion spent on students has dropped by 20 percent so we have had a multi-billion dollar blowout in tertiary education which has not gone on the students. They have not got their fair share. Let us compare the increase in—[ 
Interruption 
] Well that member’s local polytech campus is in real trouble because when Trevor Mallard comes with his cuts—which are inevitable—it will be the first to go. Members heard it here; that member will regret ever raising the topic of the Wanganui campus of the Universal College of Learning because it will cost her the seat of Whanganui. She just has to wait. 
Expenditure on tertiary education in the two terms of this Government has gone up 50 percent. That is before the coming salary negotiations which are going to certainly boost that expenditure because university staff are looking for a collective contract with big increases. 
In schools Government expenditure has gone up 16 percent over that time but of course parents’ expenditure has gone up much faster. Parents now contribute almost $500 million per year to the operating costs of schools. That has gone up 34 percent in just 3 years from 2000 to 2003. So what will the member for Otaki tell parents in Levin about that—that in 2003 parent donations and fees for Labour’s free State education were $199863111? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 As they say a week is a long time in politics. I will read a statement from the financial review of the Ministry of Education which was tabled on 3 February 2005 which includes a statement on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA): “According to the ministry the recent NCEA examinations went relatively well. Scholarship examinations were introduced this year and feedback from schools indicates that students found them challenging.” Well I think that the results from the scholarship exams were more challenging to the Ministers than they were to the students. But that is not the issue that I want to talk about this evening. 
The issue I want to talk about is one I first ran across in January when I met a deputy principal of a relatively large secondary school. We got chatting about a variety of different things and I happened to ask about how they were coping with the non-contact policy issue. He said that they had no problem at all—they just sent the kids home. I asked what he was doing and he said that once a term his school sends the kids home and they have a teacher-only day and that is when the teachers can do their preparation and planning. I made some muttering noises about compliance with the law and he just grinned at me and said that it was the only way they could do it and that the staff were happy. 
During the adjournment week it was reported in the  
Northern Advocate 
 that two secondary schools in Whangarei are doing this in order to comply with the conditions of the secondary collective contract. Students are being asked to stay at home. Why is this of concern? There are two reasons. Firstly educationists know that one of the most critical factors in determining learning is what is known as engaged academic learning time which is the amount of time the learner is actually actively engaged in activities related to his or her learning. One can certainly guarantee that if secondary students are back at home they will not be engaged academically in learning as they would be if they were at school. But there is a second little problem and that is that schools are required by law to be open for instruction for 380 half-days per annum. When schools are asking students to stay at home how can they possibly be open for instruction? 
New Zealand already has a very low number of days that students are required to attend relative to our international counterparts. I also tell the Associate Minister of Education David Benson-Pope that there was a report in 1997 by the Education Review Office that showed that there was already considerable slippage within our secondary system of the days open for instruction or of the interpretation of the days open for instruction. What is actually happening as a result of the terms of the collective contract plus the lack of provision of additional teaching resources to the schools is that students are being robbed of academic learning time. It is the only way in which schools are able to meet the commitments that the Government has entered into with the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA). 
How did this situation come about? It came about in 2002 when the Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard got himself into a bit of a problem with the PPTA. There was a looming election so his way out of it was to give it to an independent body. The independent body came up with a solution that in fact neither New Zealand First nor the Minister agreed with. New Zealand First said: “Yes we do need additional staff and we have lobbied the Government for 2 years to put in more staffing particularly with NCEA coming up. Put them into the secondary schools. It has to be done otherwise you will have a real problem on your hands.” The Minister said no. The reason why we did not go along with the guaranteed non-contact time on a weekly basis was that it took away all the flexibility that secondary schools need to be able to determine how to best use the staff resource they have. The Minister agreed with that—but when it came to the crunch he bowed to the pressure and gave in. But he did not come up with the resources. 
I have been hearing for a number of years now that we do not have the resources to provide the non-contact time that we have to provide under the collective contract. So how is it being done? There are only two ways that it can be done. The first is to reduce the number of subjects and the second is to increase class sizes in order to get the commitment there. Schools quite naturally are not planning to do that. Instead they have taken away learning time from the students. Who will suffer from students being asked to stay at home for another 3 or 4 days of the year? Of course the schools are still supposed to be open for instruction so there is a breach of the law there and I will be asking the Associate Minister what he is planning to do with the schools in this particular regard. 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 I feel I have to rise to speak after listening to that outrageous contribution from Bill English. I thank Brian Donnelly for his contribution which was as always well researched and well considered. But Bill English’s speech was just an absolute rave. He is losing the plot. The ranting speech he has just given was not in his usual style so I do not know what pressure he is under at the moment. 
I want to remind the member of some recent history. When Labour came into power in 1999 one of the first things it had to do was to put $40 million into Special Education just to help that sector keep its head above water. That money has been well invested. We know that more is required. We know that Special Education is an area that requires serious funding. In no way at all do we think that that is all we have to do. We know that more needs to be done. 
One of our first expenditure items was to put $40 million into Special Education. We are now spending $40 million a year on numeracy and literacy initiatives. That is money well spent. It is investing in the future of young people in this country. We also spent $40 million on rescuing the polytechnic sector in Wanganui Palmerston North Otaki and Wairarapa. In fact more than that was spent but I know that $40 million went into ensuring that Wanganui had provision for tertiary education. It was amazing because there was not one peep from our closest geographical member of Parliament from the National Party. The reason was that Maurice Williamson wisely took him aside and said: “Don’t open your mouth. You can’t win on this one. Let them get on and do it.” and we did. Mr Power can confirm that he did not once open his mouth when we were rescuing the polytechnic sector in and around the Wanganui district and surrounding districts. 
I want to say that although our polytechnic will face some difficulties with student numbers—I tell Mr English that that is what happens in regional polytechnics—there is nothing new about that at all. This Government recognises the value of the provision of tertiary education and training in provincial New Zealand. We will continue to recognise that and we will continue to support it with funding. 
This Government has increased education funding substantially since it has been in office and the member knows that only too well. Since we have been the Government we have increased school operational funding by over 15 percent in real terms and we have delivered 2700 extra teachers over and above roll growth. We acknowledge that we have had to rationalise some schools in the smaller rural areas but National closed 360 schools when it was in Government—even though my unfortunate National opponent said on the wireless the other day that the schools closed themselves. I recommend that National keeps that man hidden. We have funded schools at a level at which they have never been funded before. 
One area where I am particularly pleased with the additional funding—and it is huge—is in the tertiary sector. We are continuing to work to make education more and more affordable for young people in New Zealand. I have had the experience of being a parent of two children both of whom went to university—one under a Labour Government and the other under a National Government. There was a vast difference in their debt levels at the end of their tertiary education. The reason was that tertiary education was more affordable for our oldest child who did the greater part of his tertiary education under a Labour Government as opposed to our daughter who did hers under a Tory Government. This Government is increasing the spending in tertiary education because it knows how important it is to make tertiary education more affordable. 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I want to talk about the student loan scheme referred to on pages 5 and 6 of the report and make some suggestions. It is very clear that in the year under review nearly 10 percent of the population had taken out a student loan. But more startling in 8 years’ time that figure will have increased from nearly 10 percent to just over 25 percent. In the year under review it appears the total amount of student loan debt was just over $5.3 billion. By 2010 it will explode; it will double to $10.6 billion. That is a huge increase. It is like a steam engine rolling down the line towards us. 
I would like to make some suggestions on behalf of United Future. We have to keep that end in mind and find a way to solve this ever-explosive situation. We urge the Government to press ahead with the hard work in designing a loan scheme that will amount to a tertiary savings programme. In the long term we will have whittled down this debt load and eventually there will be no need for any student to borrow because savings would have been built up over time. 
An article on the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald  
stated the Government had ditched the savings plan but I understand that is not the case. United Future says it is unacceptable that young men and women have so much student debt they will never contribute fully to the workforce and will delay the purchase of their first home and starting a family. That is not the basis on which to build a society and we do not want to see that carry on. 
We need an education policy that encourages parents to save voluntarily for their children’s tertiary education—from birth. For example they could save contributions from relatives and from the children themselves as they grow up from charitable organisations and other donations iwi trusts and all sorts of things as well as some incentives from the Government to help along the way. The Government is aware of this need. It sought responses to a letter it sent out to the nation last year about a savings programme asking what people thought was the most important thing the Government could do. The most popular suggestion from 59 percent of submitters was for some sort of pre-education savings scheme. That is a huge endorsement of a concept that can be developed and worked through. 
We have the examples of Canada Sweden and Britain where Governments put in a lump sum on the birth of a child varying according to parental income thus the child receives some sort of minimum endowment. That money can be carried forward for the rest of the child’s years and built up with contributions from the parents and so on.  
United Future thinks that maybe parents could be given the option of diverting part of their family assistance payment into such a savings scheme. It would incentivise people towards a savings culture. The Government has flagged that as one of its prime issues and we give that support. If we change the culture and New Zealanders learn how to save that will produce assets for our nation. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I have a series of questions the Minister in the chair the Hon David Benson-Pope might like to answer. One picks up on the issue raised by my colleague who has just sat down. Is the Government doing a savings scheme for tertiary education or not? I suspect that yesterday it was not but since the  
New Zealand Herald 
 ran it on its front page today that something the Prime Minister said would happen could not happen today the policy is back. So the Minister can tell us about that. I also want the Minister to answer some questions about the exploding bureaucracy that he is overseeing. 
Can the Minister tell the Committee why the amount of money spent by the Ministry of Education on policy advice has doubled under his Government? Are they the people who gave advice about how to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on tertiary education? Are they the people who advise the Government to ignore the needs of children with special education needs? Why has spending on policy advice doubled from $25 million to $47 million? Why has the amount of money spent on ownership advice doubled? Twenty million dollars a year is now spent in the Ministry of Education on ownership advice. That figure is twice what it was 5 years ago. Why has the amount of money spent on administration of regulation trebled on the Minister’s watch? Why has that amount trebled? Can the Minister tell us? 
Spending on policy advice has increased by 200 percent spending on ownership advice has increased by 200 percent and spending on the administration of regulation has increased by 300 percent but the operations grant increase for schools in 2005 is just 2 percent. That shows us the Minister’s sense of priority. Why has the bureaucracy the number of civil servants employed in the Ministry of Education—putting aside the intake of special education needs into the ministry—gone up by 24 percent? Why does he need 24 percent more bureaucrats to give bad advice on how to run the education system? Can he tell us that? 
Another thing I want to ask the Minister is this. Why is the Government so wrong in its forecast about tertiary education expenditure? I have looked back at the forecasts for the 2005-06 year. That is the next one coming up. To go back to 2002 it forecast $2.8 billion. The latest forecast is $3.26 billion. Why is the Government’s forecast half a billion dollars out? Why has that forecast changed by half a billion dollars? How many special-needs kids’ nappies would that change? That shows that Government expenditure on tertiary education is completely out of control. Suddenly $500 million has appeared in the forecast which means that parents are selling raffle tickets to pay for teachers and doing sausage sizzles outside the The Warehouse to buy some decent computers. They are using the leftover money from the computers to pay for the teacher-aide to change the nappies of the child who cannot walk or talk but suddenly the Government can find $500 million extra for tertiary education. It just appears in its forecast. Where does that $500 million come from? It would have been more except that the Government doubled the amount of money spent on policy advice. 
Why does the Government not cut back the spending on policy advice and spend some of that on special education? Why not cut back the ownership advice funding—$20 million? All that does is pay officials to go around polytechs telling them how to break the rules so that they can get enough money to be financially viable without fixing their basic financial problems. [ 
Interruption 
] That is what they tell me. The officials from the Ministry of Education turned up and said: “Why don’t you run one of these phantom computer courses? That’ll fix up your financial problems.” Is that not great! The Government is paying one official millions to tell the other officials how to blow out the Government’s budget by hundreds of millions. That is some kind of perpetual motion machine that just keeps spewing money out week after week and year after year. Would the Minister please give us the answers. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call and I begin by thanking Mr Donnelly who spoke a little earlier for the rational contribution he made to this debate and equally Mr Ogilvy. Unfortunately the previous speaker in his second contribution went into the extraordinary hyperbole we have become accustomed to in this House most of it without any connection with reality. I guess that one of the two things Mr English has to face up to is the fact that members of this House and the general public have completely lost faith in the extraordinary statements he makes mostly without foundation. The second thing he has to face up to is the short period he will have in his job when Mr Peachey arrives in this place because as Mr English knows Mr Peachey is a friend of Dr Brash and Dr Brash will make sure that Mr Peachey sits in Mr English’s place quick smart. 
We have heard the most extraordinary diatribe from the Opposition which has been criticising the Government for huge increases in education spending. I shall detail those. We have had the extraordinary position of Mr English criticising the Government for a 50 percent increase in tertiary funding and for—although he never mentioned this figure—a 30 percent increase in Special Education funding. I tell Mr English that that will never be reversed because when National was in Government it did not fund education—in fact it gutted our educational institutions—and that is not lost on members of this community. It is certainly not lost on members of this House. In many years’ time when those on the Government benches sit in Opposition there will be absolutely no chance that they will be criticising that person in Government or any of his successors—Mr Peachey no doubt—for the sort of commitment to education this Government has made. 
It is no surprise that the Labour Party and a Labour-Progressive coalition Government would be focused on health and education. Those areas have always been our traditional focus and they will remain so. That is why I am pleased to tell the House that although we are talking of increases in education expenditure the increases in my particular area of responsibility for schools since 1999 have been a massive $1 billion. In the area of schools expenditure has been lifted from $3.5 billion in 1999 to $4.5 billion in 2005. What an extraordinary contribution and commitment that is to the future of the young people in this country. 
I shall also talk briefly about the comments Mr English made about the shortage of teacher-aides. We are aware of the pressure on teacher-aides. We are aware of the invaluable work they do alongside their trained teacher colleagues. One of the reasons we have such problems with providing enough teacher-aides in the community is the employment situation. It is a problem and we acknowledge that—but what a fantastic problem to have. It is a result of unemployment being at record lows—3.8 percent unemployment. Is it any surprise that people who are not sufficiently remunerated and who need to renegotiate their collective contract—as they are doing this year—are difficult to staff because of better remunerated positions in so many parts of the economy? How different is that from what we inherited in 1999 when the failed National Government with its failed policies of the past had done nothing to provide any workplace continuity? 
My predecessor who spoke earlier about Vote Health alluded to this in terms of the health workforce supply. It is no different in education. One of the greatest challenges for us and one of the reasons for redeveloping and rebuilding the ministry that had been so gutted by our predecessors is that we have to provide the continuity of workforce supply. That has never been done by the Opposition. 
I refer to the operations grant. If one looks at what I think is a quite rational review by the Education and Science Committee—and again I compliment the chair of that committee Mr Donnelly and its membership—one can see that one of the first issues talked about is operational funding. Let me say to members of the Opposition particularly Mr English that since 1999 operational funding has increased by 13 percent—that is if we do not include the $111 million that this Government has spent on software licences on software programmes and on all sorts of things that were never provided for schools previously. Including that expenditure since 1999 the operations grant for schools has increased in current inflation-adjusted dollars by 18 percent. So members of the Opposition should not tell me that we have not kept up with inflation because the consumer price index certainly has not moved in that degree. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Transport 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 Although the Finance and Expenditure Committee carried out a pro forma investigation of the Ministry of Transport a number of issues need to be debated. The Greens enjoy a close relationship with the Government on the transport portfolio. It is also a portfolio that has probably the greatest environmental impact of any portfolio. The Ministry of Transport is also the ministry that has the greatest energy footprint of any ministry. Transport is also the portfolio that has the greatest impact on New Zealanders’ lifestyle and health. I am pleased to note that the Secretary for Transport mentions the whole-of-Government approach in his report. There is certainly no area where we require a whole-of-Government approach more than in transport. It is an area rich with opportunities for savings and for making a substantial contribution to New Zealand’s Kyoto commitments while at the same time we prepare ourselves for a future where energy prices are likely to escalate dramatically. 
I want to focus on a couple of issues from the overview by the Secretary for Transport. The Secretary for Transport states that he wishes to reduce transport-related deaths and injuries—300 fatalities is the target and 4500 hospitalisations by 2010. Those are admirable targets. He also wants to enforce tougher enforcement measures for targeting speeding drivers—again that is admirable. But I suggest that probably the simplest thing that the Minister and ministry could do would be to reduce the number of vehicles on our roads. It is interesting that in spite of the call for more roads and more infrastructure there is probably more spare capacity on our roads and more spare capacity in this ministry than in any other sector. I did the sums the other day when Joel Cayford announced that $3.7 billion was to be spent on public transport and well in excess of $10 billion in total on transport infrastructure in Auckland over the next 10 years or so. I did the sums and I worked out that there were 700000 cars on the roads in Auckland with an average occupancy rate of 1.1 people per car. The roads in Auckland are currently cluttered with something like 2.5 million empty seats. If one has that kind of money to spend then it ought to be possible to get a few bums on a few more of those seats—700000 cars 1.1 people per car. 
Peter Brown 
: Pass a law! 
MIKE WARD 
: I do not think we need to pass a law. With that sort of money we ought to be able to give a few incentives. I remember the word Bernie Ogilvy used before was “incentivise”. We could do some incentivising and encourage and persuade people to hop into somebody else’s car maybe to travel to work with the wife or the husband occasionally maybe to catch the bus or maybe to move into town. 
Since the Secretary for Transport’s report was published peak oil and climate change have gone from being issues that the Greens were scoffed at for raising to become headline issues in most newspapers in New Zealand. Last week there was a full-page article on climate change on the front page of the  
Dominion Post. 
 It is no longer a laughing matter; it is already happening. We are seeing the consequences here in New Zealand it is happening all over the world and it will get worse. If something like 16 of the hottest years on record since records began to be kept have happened since 1980 and if that is the result of an increase of just 90 parts per million in carbon dioxide levels what will happen when we have a doubling of carbon dioxide levels this century? If that does not worry members it ought to. With the kind of money we are targeting at transport I believe there are measures we can take to change behaviour. I am pleased the Government is taking measures to change the culture. It is evident from the report that there are good intentions there. We hope that those good intentions can be turned into measures that will actually clean up vehicle emissions not just investigate methods of cleaning up vehicle emissions that will increase vehicle occupancy rates not just talk about it that will reduce vehicle volumes and that will implement comprehensive land-use reforms. 
So far successive Governments have spent a great deal of time on perpetuating certain bizarre transport behaviour. It is the kind of behaviour that the planet cannot handle and we deserve better than that. Why would people move into a house knowing that it is located much too far from all the places they need to be at spend half their life paying it off much of the rest of their life actually going to and fro and a fair bit of their life earning the money to do that? There are better things to do with one’s time than to sit in traffic jams and put up with road rage. I think the measures set out in the report may just achieve something. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 If ever there was a reason for the public to be very afraid it was that speech from the Greens because the member’s opening line was all about their wonderful working relationship with the Government in the field of transport. But that is where the problem lies. That is why there has been so little progress on solving transport problems. The Greens had so much control over Labour policy that we ended up with a Land Transport Management Act that it was claimed would deliver all sorts of things but it has not. No I am wrong. It has delivered some things. It has delivered major delays to major projects to the point that Transfund could not even spend its money last year—the year under review. Transfund ended up with nearly $230 million of unspent money. 
Ask any New Zealander whether he or she thinks there were a range of roading projects that were not ready to go but could have been started. The answer is they were not ready to go because the Land Transport Management Act—the greatest sop this Government has ever given to the Greens way over what it should have given—required all these projects to be reviewed. So we end up with a set of motorway arteries in Auckland. I say to members that if the arteries in their body did not join up at either end they would not be of any use to them. 
When one arrives at Mangere Airport and crosses the Mangere Bridge on State Highway 20 suddenly bang one hits Hillsborough Road. From then on it becomes a nightmare an absolute dog’s breakfast trying to navigate into the city centre. That is not true of Sydney and Melbourne. They used to have a problem as bad as ours but decided to fix their connectedness issue. Those cities rolled out massive infrastructure to the point where traffic congestion and delays are now lower than what we are experiencing in Auckland. They brought in major investment from the private sector because they recognised that the Government could not do it. 
When I first proposed private sector funding I certainly got some reaction. I have some wonderful quotes that I will be using come the election campaign. I am really going to enjoy that. I have some from the Rt Hon Helen Clark who said that allowing the private sector to build roads in this country was selling our soul; it was actually selling our roads to foreign investors. But then the Labour Government had a change of heart and when the Land Transport Management Act came along there was a part in there that would allow for private sector participation. I thought that was interesting. It was totally against Labour’s philosophy totally against its core beliefs because it thinks the private sector is evil and should not be involved. But it was interesting. So the Ministry of Transport must have had some impact on the Minister and his thinking to have achieved that legislation. The transport bill went through and in this very Chamber tonight I want members to tell me how many private sector - funded roading projects there are in New Zealand today. Mr Hide knows the answer; he just shook his head and went numb. He is right. 
Rod Donald 
: I hope none. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Mr Donald has played into my hands by saying that he hopes it is none. The Green Party is the absolutely right coalition partner for a Government that said it understood the private sector and would enter into public-private partnerships because it understood those. Yet here is Mr Donald happily saying in this Parliament that he hopes there are none. 
I ask members in this Chamber to think of any comparable jurisdiction they can name and tell me whether they have any private-sector participation in the building of roads. No I mean in the funding of roads because the Minister will get up and give some smart alec answer and say that the private sector is already involved in their building—well that is the contractors laying asphalt and tar. But there is not any private-sector funding of roads in this country. There is in New South Wales there is in Victoria and there is in Queensland. The Millau bridge in France was built in 3 years across a huge valley by the private sector—fully funded and tolled. 
How many have we here? None! How many are we likely to see with a Government that has the Greens for a coalition partner dragging it back? None! That is how many private-sector projects we will see. But in the State sector element what did we see? Did we not see Transfund knocking at the Minister’s door and saying it was sorry but it had spent all the money it had? And there are just so many projects back-logged for a couple of decades. I admit that it is a long-term backlog—I openly admit it— 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: Why is that? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No no—I admit it goes way back. If Mr Gosche wants to get smart let me tell members where the big drop occurred. Up until 1985 historically this country spent around 1.3 percent of its GDP on roading. That figure today is still the OECD average. But in 1985 and members can guess which party was in Government— 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 That was an amazing speech—absolutely amazing! That speech was from the National Party spokesperson on transport who from memory was the Minister of Transport two or three times during the 1990s but who could not find a motorway in Auckland that he opened in his time as Minister. Could any member find a plaque anywhere in Auckland with Maurice Williamson’s name on it—or Jenny Shipley’s name on it? They were only in Government for 9 years so we should give them a break! There is not one piece of motorway in Auckland with Maurice Williamson’s name unless he might have scribbled his name with chalk under a motorway bridge—not a thing. 
And did that party support the Government’s legislation that allowed the private sector to build roads? Did that party over there support the Government legislation that allowed tolling? Let us go and look at the  
Hansard 
 to see who voted for that legislation. I think the Greens did. I think the Labour Party did. But I know damn well that the National Party opposed it. What a bizarre speech! It opposed it. He is now lamenting the fact that he opposed it. He was over there somewhere at the time. He was out of the party in some sort of netherworld. He has now come back to be No. 27 or something. That is how highly rated the National Party spokesperson is. But in poor old Maurice Williamson’s time in the Minister’s chair not one bit of motorway was built in the Auckland region. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Not true. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: There was a bit—there was half a bit. But I opened that. Poor old Maurice Williamson! It slumped in the middle when they were building it because it took so long to build. And it was to get people out of Auckland not around Auckland. It took a Labour Minister to get it fixed and opened. That party is just absolutely without ideas and without policies. 
On the TV tonight I saw motorway construction all through Auckland. Public transport infrastructure is going flat out as fast as it can to catch up on years of neglect. There were more people riding on public transport in 1955 when I was born than there are right now thanks to Maurice Williamson’s party. It absolutely wrecked public transport; we are having to put it back together again. We are working with the private sector and the public sector to make sure that we have a balanced approach to transport in Auckland. 
Progress reported. 
Report adopted. 
The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.