Volume 631 Week 15 - Wednesday 17 May 2006 
Volume 631 Week 15 - Wednesday 17 May 2006 
[Volume:631;Page:3113] 
Wednesday 17 May 2006 
Madam Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Questions to Ministers 
Economy—OECD Rating 
1. Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Is it still the goal of her Government to have New Zealand “return to the top half of the OECD ratings by 2011”; if so will tomorrow’s Budget ensure that New Zealand achieves that goal? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 That statement was first raised by the previous Leader of the Opposition more than 3 years ago at which point it was made clear that that target date was not Government policy. If Dr Brash is going to keep asking Bill English’s questions perhaps he should move aside and give Bill English the job. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Has the Prime Minister forgotten that she made that commitment in the Speech from the Throne in 1999? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am certainly not aware that a 10-year date was set in the Speech from the Throne in 1999. Given that the member is so interested in the OECD perhaps he should accept what the OECD actually said which is that for New Zealand increases in real GDP per person have outpaced the OECD 10-year moving average since 2000. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Australian American and Canadian economies are all forecast to grow at over 3 percent annually for the foreseeable future; and can she tell the House with any confidence at all that New Zealand’s economy will grow as fast as any one of those economies as a result of tomorrow’s Budget? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It is fair to point out the New Zealand economy has been growing faster than all of those economies while Labour has been in Government. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that having promised that only 5 percent of New Zealanders would pay the top rate of personal tax when that was increased in 2000 11 percent of taxpayers and 20 percent of full-time earners are now paying the top rate of 39c in the dollar; and can she tell the House how poor incentives like that will help New Zealand to claw its way back into the top half of developed nations? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The incentives cannot be too poor; 300000 more Kiwis are in jobs today than there were under a National Government 6 years ago. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that skilled New Zealanders earning less than 1½ times the average wage are taxed at the highest personal tax rate and can she tell the House why if those New Zealanders are so rich they qualify for welfare payments under her Government? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: My understanding is that the family tax relief offered by the Labour Government is entirely in line with the kind of targeted family tax relief offered in many other Western countries. 
Peter Brown 
: Does the Prime Minister accept that to have a successful economy we need to minimise unemployment maximise productivity pay reasonable wages and develop first-class infrastructure in areas such as roading and transport and further does she accept that that is the exact reverse of what National achieved when it was last in Government? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I entirely agree with the member because I have a very clear recollection of the Employment Contracts Act and what it did to workers’ wages in New Zealand making us lag well behind Australian wages. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that average after-tax Australian incomes were 20 percent higher than those in New Zealand in 1999 and are now 33 percent higher than those in New Zealand and that the Australian economy will grow at more than 3 percent this year while the New Zealand economy has stalled; and will she explain to the House how on those trends New Zealand after-tax incomes will ever again equal those in Australia? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can confirm that after years of growing more slowly than New Zealand Australia may have a better year than we have this year. I can also confirm that 9 years of the Employment Contracts Act kicked the struts out from under Kiwi wages. That was accomplished by Don Brash and friends. 
Hon Jim Anderton 
: Can the Prime Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Will the member please be seated. Members know that when members are on their feet to ask a question they are heard in silence. If there is another interruption members will leave the Chamber. 
Hon Jim Anderton 
: Has the Prime Minister seen any reports that indicate that for the 30 years from 1970 to 2000 mainly under National Governments New Zealand underperformed against the Australian economy to the extent of 30 percent per capita GDP in that time and that since the year 2000 New Zealand has outperformed Australia in GDP per capita in those last 6 years? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can certainly confirm the trend—that under a Labour Government in recent years the performance has outranked Australia’s—and I further note that National having lurched from Muldoonism to “Ruthanasia” never found an answer for New Zealand. 
Police Numbers—Confidence and Supply Agreement New Zealand First 
2.  
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: What steps has the Government announced which implement the confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First in respect of police numbers? 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Police) 
: 
 This Government has committed around $387 million in operating costs and $114 million in capital costs over the next three Budgets to enable the New Zealand Police to recruit and train an additional 1000 front-line sworn police officers and 250 non-sworn police staff as negotiated with New Zealand First in the confidence and supply agreement. This funding was announced yesterday in Whangarei Wellsford and Wiri police stations and will allow the New Zealand Police to intensify the current recruiting programme and training schedule. 
Martin Gallagher 
: Does she stand by her statement yesterday that she does not underestimate the difficulties in recruiting extra police; if not why not? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes I stand by that statement. I have been saying publicly for about 6 months that the recruitment and training of 1000 extra front-line sworn police and 250 non-sworn staff which will be funded by this Government is a challenge but it is one that the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Government are prepared to rise to. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is very difficult to hear answers to questions so would members please just lower their contributions. 
Simon Power 
: How does she reconcile the fact that 50 of the 406 new recruits will be assigned to traffic patrol with the commitment to New Zealand First to consider separating traffic duties from police; and how did Ron Mark react when she told him given his statement before the election: “Our communities are not safe our children are not safe. And all for what? We’re chasing bloody traffic tickets.”? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: In relation to the second part of the member’s question a review of the separation of the police from traffic duties is being undertaken by the State Services Commission in line with our agreement with the New Zealand First Party. In relation to the first part of the question 50 of the 1000 police are going into road policing duties and that is because we know that crooks also drive. The police are likely to pick up crooks on the road when they stop them—drunk crooks—and they are likely to pick up those who have stolen goods and weapons in their cars. So we believe that it is good policing to also have some police out on the roads. 
Ron Mark 
: Can the Minister confirm to the House that the good news does not stop just with the introduction of 1250 extra police staff that under the supply and confidence agreement with the Labour Government New Zealand First has secured a commitment towards achieving ratios in police per capita in New Zealand equivalent to that of Australia by 2010 and that the only thing that might interdict that might be the election into Government of a party whose only track record is to cut police numbers? [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is not for members to comment on others’ questions when they are in fact asking the question. Everyone is on their final warning. Would the member like to repeat his question please. 
Ron Mark 
: Would the Minister like to confirm to the House that the good news does not stop just with the introduction into service of 1250 extra police staff that under the terms of the supply and confidence agreement with the Labour Government New Zealand First has secured a commitment to achieving ratios comparable—that is officers per citizen—with those of Australia by 2010 and that the only risk we can see to that occurring might be the election of a Government whose only track record in police numbers is that of cutting numbers? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes and yes. 
Telecom New Zealand—Communications Minister’s Statement on Dividends 
3.  
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
 to the  
Minister of Communications 
: Does he stand by his statement that Telecom shareholders “need to accept that in the short run there may be somewhat lower dividend flows or lower returns”; if not why not? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Communications) 
: 
 As I said in the article referred to and have clarified since Telecom’s dividends policy is a matter for the Telecom board. The issue has been referred to the Securities Commission and it is therefore not appropriate for me to comment further at this time. 
John Key 
: Does he acknowledge that as Minister of Communications he is the Minister with the most inside information about the future of Telecom including whether it will be forced by the Government to be physically separated at some stage in the future; if so does he consider comments about its future dividends policy to be the actions of a responsible Minister? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: As I have said the matter has been referred to the Securities Commission and should the commission ask it I will cooperate fully with it on this matter. 
John Key 
: Is he aware that his comments being posted on the Bloomberg News wire at 12.30 yesterday immediately led to 75 million trades in Telecom stock yesterday afternoon which was a massive increase in the volume of trade normally experienced with this stock; if so does he consider that all participants in the New Zealand sharemarket have been fairly and equally treated by the dissemination of this information? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I refer the member to my clarifying statement issued this morning and I repeat that the matter has been referred to the Securities Commission and if asked I will cooperate fully with it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think it was Dr Smith who just indicated that you had goofed. He has been around for a few years now and he knows that he should not address that sort of comment to you. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Madam Speaker may I make it absolutely plain to the House that the goofing remark referred to David Cunliffe and not you as Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the comment was directed not at the Speaker but at another member and if it was not made when a question was being asked it was perfectly in order. However I would just warn members that implications about the Chair are to be taken very seriously in the future as I have now counted up the number of statements that have been made as asides. 
John Key 
: Is he aware that Bloomberg News is a wholesale news service and is not accessed by retail investors and that he was making his comments to a wholesale news service and not to the entire market; that the bulk of the $200 million lost by investors yesterday afternoon was borne by retail investors—namely Kiwi mums and dads—and does he consider it fair that Kiwi mums and dads lost $200 million yesterday on the back of his statements? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: As I have previously answered the matter has been referred to the Securities Commission and I will cooperate fully with it. 
John Key 
: What impact does he think it has on the professional image of the New Zealand Exchange and on the confidence that investors have in our stock market when a Minister with not only a vested interest but also inside information makes at best a grossly irresponsible and inappropriate comment that sees one group of shareholders—namely Kiwi mums and dads—savaged by another group? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The member’s question contained a number of presuppositions that are by no means established. The matter has been referred to the Securities Commission and I will cooperate fully with it. 
John Key 
: What was the purpose of his comments about Telecom’s dividend policy if it was not to send a signal to the company when the Cabinet papers specifically state that the future separation of the company rests on the Government’s assessment of “Telecom’s cooperation in meeting the Government’s broadband objectives”? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Telecom’s dividend policy is as I have said a matter for the Telecom board to decide. The matter has been referred to the Securities Commission. 
John Key 
: Is he aware that the New Zealand Exchange has formally passed the matter to the Securities Commission for investigation and if as a result of that investigation he is found to have breached the law will he follow the lead of his bench mate David Parker and resign his warrants; if not why not? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I think it can be taken from my previous answers that I was aware of that referral. 
Rodney Hide 
: What sort of signal does it send to investors—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member will be heard in silence. 
Rodney Hide 
: Thank you Madam Speaker—they are excited to see me. What sort of signal does it send to investors both here and around the world when the Government pinches private property from Telecom the Prime Minister hints that the company will be broken in two and the Minister of Communications directs that the company’s dividend be reduced? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: However gratifying it is to have the member back in the House I suggest that he checks his facts first. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: There is no need for that comment. Would the Minister please address the question. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The assumptions in the member’s question may be the subject of possible action by the Securities Commission with which I will cooperate fully. 
Rodney Hide 
: In his first attempt at an answer the Minister said my facts were wrong; which facts were wrong? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: As I have said the matter may be the subject of discussion with the Securities Commission and I will cooperate fully with it. 
School Attendance—Policy 
4.  
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What is the Government doing to ensure that students stay at school? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The Government is committed to the goal of all students staying at school until they are 16 years of age and they gain a qualification. The programmes that work towards this goal include $20 million a year to fund 18020 student places in alternative education 14 activity centres and 16 team parenting units 782 specialist behaviour teachers and 109 specialist literacy teachers working nationwide $8.5 million over 3 years to fund the Student Engagement Initiative and the recently announced—just prior to this coming Budget—$9.5 million to help schools with disruptive students. 
Moana Mackey 
: How has the Student Engagement Initiative encouraged students to stay at school until 16 and attain qualifications so that they are ready to enter the workforce or go on to further study? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I am pleased to announce that results show that the Student Engagement Initiative is encouraging students to stay at school and to stay engaged with learning. The results show for example that truancy rates decreased in 11 out of 15 target regions early leaving exemption rates have decreased in targeted schools from 541 in 2002 to 350 in 2004 suspension rates have dropped by 30 percent between 2000 and 2005 and suspension for drug offences has decreased by 15 percent. Those excellent programmes mean that young New Zealanders are staying at school gaining qualifications and benefiting from the amazingly successful economy that this Government is creating. 
Judy Turner 
: What reassurances can the Minister give that New Zealand will meet the needs of new international secondary students in light of recent Chinese media reports of neglect of international students in New Zealand and the associated drop in Chinese student numbers and what steps will the Government take to ensure that New Zealand schools insist upon adequate support and age-appropriate supervision for all international students? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: As the member will know one of the initiatives taken by the Government has been to ensure that all providers of international education sign up to a pastoral care code. Unfortunately one of the problems we face is that there are people who run programmes outside registration and accreditation in this country and I think that that is one of the issues we do need to get on top of. 
Prime Minister and Cabinet Department—Document Handling 
5.  
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Is she satisfied with arrangements for the handling of sensitive Government documents by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; if not why not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 The systems in place for document handling have been in place for many years. I expect the system to be reviewed in the wake of this report but I also accept that the best system will not thwart blatant dishonesty. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister think it is acceptable for commercially sensitive documents to be left lying around an office and would she agree that if anyone was looking for a document worth pinching the best place to look may be the basket labelled “For confidential shredding.”? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Clearly documents are not left just lying around; they are put in a tray for shredding and they are removed for shredding by a person with the clearance to do so. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Can the Prime Minister explain to the House why a Cabinet paper that was so commercially sensitive that every copy was numbered and delivered in sealed envelopes was then tossed into a basket and was able to be read by anyone who walked into the office? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am advised that the processes followed are those that have been followed in the department for many years. Those processes are now being reviewed. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Is it common practice for Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet messengers to view the agenda for Cabinet committee meetings? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Again I am advised that this man who had the appropriate clearance was the person responsible for distributing the Cabinet committee agendas. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. That was not an answer to the question. We know what this man did. The question is whether it is common practice for people distributing agendas to have access to read them. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I think the Prime Minister did address the question but if she wanted to add any more she could. I think it was addressed. [ 
Interruption 
] It was addressed. I was thinking about the question and the answer that was given. As members know they cannot require a specific answer to their question. That is the point really. If members want to change those rules I would more than welcome an item being brought before the Standing Orders Committee to do so. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am happy with the rules. I am concerned about the fact that it is for you to adjudicate them not to check with the Prime Minister whether the answer to the question was in order. It is for you to decide Madam Speaker and you alone. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes and in fact I did make the ruling Mr Hide. I do not need you to make a comment on my ruling. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Has the Prime Minister seen the terms of reference for the Securities Commission investigation into the leak in particular its intention to consider if any Government and/or State sector policies and procedures for handling non-public market sensitive information related to securities were appropriate and properly applied in this case and will she assure the House that the Securities Commission investigations will have unimpeded access to the offices of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and any other Government or ministerial office they may wish to make inquiries of? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: No I have not seen those terms of reference but just as the Securities Commission is very anxious to see good process so are we. I am sure that all relevant departments will work very closely with the commission. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I seek leave to table the terms of reference for the Securities Commission investigation into the leak in which the commission makes it clear it wants to investigate the activities in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and it would appear other ministries. 
Document not tabled. 
Keith Locke 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It is usual for Ministers to table documents they refer to. Given that the leaked Cabinet paper is well known to Telecom to Mike Ryan the Onslow Tarbabies cycle club and who knows who else will the Prime Minister put MPs in the loop unbundle the Cabinet paper and table it in the House today? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No that is not a point of order; that is a supplementary question and if the member had wished to ask a supplementary question he was perfectly entitled to do so. [ 
Interruption 
] That member may wish to leave the Chamber if he makes one more comment like that. That is not Mr Brownlee; it is his colleague at the back. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I seek leave to table the Cabinet paper in question so that Mr Locke can catch up with the rest of us. 
Document not tabled. 
Rail Services Auckland—Finance Minister's Statement 
6.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: Does he stand by his reported statement to the Auckland mayors that “rail will never work”? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 No because I have never said that. As I said yesterday that would be a strange thing to say coming from a Minister who ensured that the Auckland rail line was bought for Auckland who is the shareholding Minister in ONTRACK and who not to mention this spent 18 years as the member of Parliament for the electorate representing those working at the Hillside railway workshops. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Is the Minister aware then that Auckland trains have double the capacity they had a year ago and are still completely full at peak times and that there has been a 33 percent increase in rail patronage in Auckland in just 1 year despite a fare increase; and is he supportive then of those Aucklanders who are filling up our trains in order to save money time or the environment or does he think they will soon be back on the road and sitting in traffic jams? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I am totally supportive of them. That is why the Government is subsidising the operating costs of Auckland rail to the tune of $26 million in this particular year and why it has approved the double tracking of the western line despite the fact that the cost-benefit ratio at the time the decision was made was only about one to one which is well below the cost-benefit ratio for roading projects that get approved. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Does the Minister accept Transit’s own figures that show that congestion in Auckland will be worse in 10 years even if billions of dollars are spent on motorways that fewer and fewer people can afford to use; and if he did not say that rail will not work then what exactly did he say about rail to the Auckland mayors that had them become so upset? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: From what I hear of the feedback a number of the Auckland mayors were not in the least upset by what I said at that meeting. 
Peter Brown 
: Does the Minister accept that rail alone will not solve the mass transportation of passengers that there has to be an alternative and that we have to have roads buses cars and taxis? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Maybe the member should have left that last bit out. I think it is fair to say that the bulk of public transport in Auckland will be provided by the bus services. I have suggested frequently to Aucklanders that the best slogan they can have in terms of public transport is “buses need roads too”. 
Keith Locke 
: Is the Minister aware that in Perth a city with the same sort of population density as Auckland rail patronage has increased from 7 million journeys annually in 1990 to around 40 million journeys today through electrification and other improvements; and does he think that the people and planners of Perth are wrong? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: No. Perth of course is a very different shape from Auckland and it has very different opportunities from Auckland in terms of rail transport. Auckland has two rail lines with no real prospect of any further rail lines being built other than the two that are there. Therefore Auckland cannot build a metro network to service the entire Auckland area that would also service the nature of movements within Auckland. What is more business traffic including service business traffic cannot travel on rail. Plumbers will not cart their pipes and their gear on the train. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Is the Minister concerned that while he has been assuring Auckland mayors and MPs in this House that the future lies with buses and roads Land Transport New Zealand is using a funding formula for Wellington’s electric trolley bus network that is putting the entire network at risk; and can he assure the people of Wellington that this Government will not stand by and allow Wellington’s trolley bus network to collapse under its watch? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The original question was about Auckland. As far as I am aware the southern spread of Auckland has not yet reached Wellington and we are not planning for that within the foreseeable future. The subsidies that apply to Wellington are the same as those that apply to the rest of the country and the Government certainly will not give guarantees of open-ended cheques for any supplier of any particular service in public transport. So far the proponents of electrification in Auckland which is a new proposal in terms of the cost for the Government to bear have not demonstrated that it actually bears any sensible cost-benefit ratio in terms of the outcomes. If it does then the Government will be prepared to support it. 
Police Numbers—Recruitment Issues 
7.  
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Does she stand by her statement yesterday that she does not underestimate the difficulties in recruiting extra police; if not why not? 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Police) 
: 
 Yes. I have been saying publicly for about 6 months that the recruitment and training of 1000 extra front-line sworn and 250 non-sworn police staff which will be funded by the Government in conjunction with our supply and confidence agreement with New Zealand First is a challenge but it is one that the New Zealand Police and the Government are prepared to rise to. 
Simon Power 
: How will she recruit extra police when even temporary constables are not up to the job according to a Christchurch police officer who claims that some decoy cops have abused their status as sworn officers to have their home phones connected quickly or to go through customs without being stopped and also that some have used their uniforms to pull over drivers or to give a talk at a primary school although their experience is limited to guarding crime scenes? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Because the 1000 police we will be recruiting will be full-time sworn police—they will not be temporary sworn police— 
Hon David Carter 
: It’ll be a cardboard cut-out. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I am glad David Carter just interjected about cardboard police because the only decoy cops I can remember were the cardboard cut-outs that National put into shopping malls when it was last in Government. Those were the last decoy cops we have seen. However National was prepared to have temporary sworn police when it was in Government. I said last week that we have had temporary sworn police for around 10 years. I was wrong: we have had them for more than 10 years. They were OK under the National Government but National is trying to make an issue out of them now. New Zealanders are laughing at those members. 
Simon Power 
: Is the Minister concerned about the competence of potential recruits when according to a Christchurch police officer decoy cops have fallen asleep while guarding a crime scene smoked and worn jandals while in uniform and driven police cars with lights flashing because they did not know how to turn them off which caused other traffic to pull over? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I remind the gigglers at the back of the Chamber that it is an interruption to giggle—and it is a member of their own party who is asking the question. I am trying to apply the rules evenly. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I do not have any doubt about the competence of the 1000 sworn police officers whom we are about to recruit. They will be competent because that will be a requirement. However I know that Labour questioned the competencies of the cardboard cut-outs put in place as decoy cops by the National Government—and we should have questioned them. But I certainly have a lot more confidence in the New Zealand Police and its recruitment campaign than the National Party does. 
Simon Power 
: Does she stand by her assurance in the House last week that these decoy cops surrender their uniforms once they cease duty given that their exploits reported in the Christchurch  
Press  
clearly show that they have been using their uniforms while off duty to masquerade as fully trained officers; and will she now admit that last week on this issue she misled the House? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: No I will not admit that I misled the House. The member asked whether they hand in their uniforms when they leave their positions as temporary sworn police and I answered that yes they do. That was the question; I answered it. I have no knowledge and I have not been advised that temporary sworn police are acting in an inappropriate manner other than the reported comment that one was seen smoking—I do not approve of that either; I do not approve of smoking. 
 However I have not got that information. What I do know is that that member has misled the House. Last week he took the answer to a supplementary question that Tony Ryall had asked about the number of temporary sworn police in 2004—he changed it to 2005 yesterday—during a muster crisis and used it to say that that was the number of temporary sworn police in New Zealand. He misled the House. 
Simon Power 
: Why has the number of decoy cops increased massively from just 17 in June last year as reported in the annual report to 330 now; and if they are counted by the Government as part of the total number of sworn officers what is the real number of fully trained sworn front-line police officers? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: They are not counted by the Government in our total number of fully sworn police officers. The member is incorrect. I can tell the House that throughout the time that New Zealand has had temporary sworn police they were never counted by the National Government. The New Zealand Police has no record of the number of temporary sworn police. However I can tell the House that in 2003 there were 200 temporary sworn police because we started to keep a record of the number we had. I do not know why the National Government did not do that but I suspect that it was counting them as front-line police. This Government is not. 
Simon Power 
: Can she give an assurance to the House that police recruitment staff are using objective criteria to identify which people might make the best recruits and that they are encouraging applications from a wide cross-section of society? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I have been advised by the police that they are using the criteria they have used for some time. Recruitment is the job of the police. I am not involved in recruitment itself but I have been told the police are using criteria that have been used for a number of years. I cannot add to that. 
Ron Mark 
: Does she recall an incident in Christchurch a number of years ago when a Government introduced the policy of employing Armourguard security officers to secure a crime scene which comprised a house and one of the Christchurch gangs implicated in the crime that had been committed in that house managed to sneak in behind the Armourguard security people and burn the house to the ground; if so does that suggest that problems associated with employing temporary officers or contract people such as Armourguard officers are not new and they are things that have to be worked through? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I was reminded of that incident very recently and that it had occurred under a National Government. 
Elective Surgery—Discharges 
8.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: How many elective surgery patient discharges were there in the financial year to March 2006 and how does this compare with the same period in 2000-01? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 There has been a 1 percent decrease in the two 9-month periods that the member has chosen. If however he had chosen the most recent financial year 12-month period he would have demonstrated an increase on the previous year or the year before that or an 8 percent increase since the change of Government or a 15.4 percent case-weighted increase since the change of Government—in other words to prove a decrease requires the member to be very selective with his electives. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: What does the Minister plan to do about the disconnect in Government policy where on the one hand the Government is encouraging more people to see their general practitioner and on the other hand if they are sick the Government does not want them anywhere near a hospital waiting list? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member continues to make it up. Clearly the member’s comments reveal that he is against prioritisation against ongoing care for patients and against the booking system created by his colleague the former Minister and former and future leader of the National Party the Hon Bill English. He would rather have people waiting and waiting without being seen by anyone. 
Sue Moroney 
: Does elective surgery discharge data include outpatient procedures; if not will he take steps to include this information in the future? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: No elective surgery data does not include the growing number of procedures that have shifted to outpatient settings since the change of Government. From 1 July this year a new national non-admitted patients database will start to give us a real picture of how many elective procedures are being performed in New Zealand. 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: Why is the Government’s relationship with the health sector so bad when it was under better control under Annette King but now having been under Pete Hodgson for 6 months we have fewer electives the Minister calling the surgeons unethical and general practitioners refusing to sign their contract—a contract that Annette King successfully negotiated on two previous occasions? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: In reply to the member’s three questions in respect of the first one the number of electives is going up not down. In respect of the— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You said it was going down just before! 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Oh well we will deal with just two of them then. In respect of the second one the member’s colleague the Hon Tony Ryall has been telling the media breathlessly that this is the first red letter that has ever been sent. The Hon Tony Ryall is wrong on that point as well—as he is wrong on most points. This is the third red letter to be sent. This is red-letter sending season. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: How does the Minister of Health explain putting out a press statement praising the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board for its surgical performance when answers to written questions show that he based that statement on data from a completely different district health board? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It is true that the Ministry of Health changes its data from time to time and it did manage to swap half of the data between Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay recently. However it does change its data less often than the National Party changes its leadership. 
Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: Why did we never have any of this sort of embarrassment being caused for the Government when Annette King was in charge of health yet under just 6 months of Mr Hodgson health is a permanent albatross around the Prime Minister’s neck? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member continues to make it up. What I ask the member to take into account is whether a party that 8 months ago went to the hustings and said: “We will have $11 billion worth of tax cuts over the next 4 years.” would then want to know how it is possible to also put more money into health. One has to make a choice around here. Either one is in favour of investing in health and education and the future of this country or one is in favour of giving it away in tax cuts. One can spend money once and I am glad we won that election. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I have been reflecting upon your comment earlier during this question time about your wish to enforce the rules even-handedly and it occurs to me that an appropriate way in which you could do that would be to enforce Mr Speaker Tapsell’s ruling 150/1 regarding there being no interjections during question time. I think you would have a majority of support amongst members in this House if you chose to do so. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member. I think it is a serious suggestion and I will take it under advisement. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I seek leave to table the Minister of Health’s press statement that praised the performance of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board and the figures he used to praise the board and a second document that shows those figures did not relate in any way to that board. How incompetent is that! 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I seek leave to table three documents: one showing an increase in the last financial year in elective surgery discharges compared with the previous financial year a second one showing an increase of 8 percent in elective surgery discharges since the change of Government and a third one showing a 15.4 percent increase in case-weighted discharges for elective surgery since the change of Government. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I want to check with you whether in fact it is necessary for the Minister to seek leave to table a document. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes I am advised it is. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I ask that the Minister table the documents he quoted from. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I am sorry but I do not understand that. Obviously if the Minister quoted from an official document then he can be asked to table it. Is that what the Minister was doing? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: These are documents that I am happy to table and I am happy not to table. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave was sought to table them and it was denied so that ends the matter. 
Aged Care—Residential Care Funding 
9.  
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: What steps is he taking to ensure that the significant funding boost to the aged residential care sector that is to feature in this year’s Budget is delivered to the aged-care sector in its entirety and in a timely fashion? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 The significant funding boost agreed between the Labour-led Government and the New Zealand First Party will be delivered to providers in a timely fashion. The aged residential care contract review process has already started and is nearly complete putting us months and months ahead of where we were this time last year. 
Barbara Stewart 
: How confident is the Minister that the funding reserved for aged care in this year’s Budget will be solely used for this purpose given that some district health boards in the past have diverted such funding elsewhere? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: There will be full flow-through and there is agreement as to the algorithm for calculating that flow-through. The flow-through will occur only if the contracts are signed in time but so far we are on track. 
Darien Fenton 
: What increases in investment has the Labour-led Government delivered for the aged-care sector; and how will the Minister assure the public that the Government will continue to invest in the health of older New Zealanders? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The Labour-led Government has delivered a 30 percent increase in aged residential care funding since the change of Government. Funding for home-based care funding has at least doubled since the change of Government. Tomorrow’s Budget will lever these figures even higher. I can assure the public that this Government will be able to invest in the health of older New Zealanders because it opposes the reckless tax cuts that are still being called for by National that would mean the slashing and burning of vital public health services. 
Jo Goodhew 
: Why does the Minister continue to blame district health boards aged-care providers and anyone but his Government’s lack of funding for the workforce and funding crises in this sector? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member clearly did not listen to my answer to the substantive question. I certainly do not blame anyone. Since the change of Government there has been a 30 percent increase in aged residential care funding and home-based care funding has more than doubled. These are the sorts of investments that can be undertaken if one does not have reckless tax cuts on one’s mind. 
Jo Goodhew 
: I seek leave to table a newspaper article from the  
Wanganui Chronicle  
for Saturday 23 April “Petrol costs relief—home support staff still waiting”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Jo Goodhew 
: I seek leave to table an article from the  
Timaru Herald 
 of 2 May headed: “Care workers still waiting”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Aged Care—Abuse or Neglect 
10.  
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
 to the  
Minister for Senior Citizens 
: Does she stand by her statement that “As far as the Government is concerned abuse or neglect of our older citizens in residential care—or anywhere else for that matter—is abhorrent. It is simply unacceptable.”; if so why? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for Senior Citizens 
: Yes because abuse or neglect of our older citizens in residential care—or anywhere for that matter—is abhorrent. It is simply unacceptable and that is why the Government in last year’s Budget committed an additional $3 million over 4 years for elder abuse and neglect prevention services details of which are contained in the speech from which the quote is taken. 
Nathan Guy 
: Does she consider acceptable the printing of photos of our vulnerable elderly people naked? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I believe that it is unhelpful to make public statements in response to allegations before the precise nature of a complaint is determined and the facts of the matter established. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It was impossible to hear the Minister’s response. I just remind members that I am taking under advisement what the Hon Peter Dunne said. So would members please keep interjections to a level where other members in the Chamber can hear. 
Nathan Guy 
: Is the reason the Minister has not spoken out publicly against this abuse that she is more interested in Labour’s relationship with the nurses’ union than in doing what is right for the elderly? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: No. It is because I believe it is unhelpful to make public statements in response to allegations before the precise nature of a complaint is determined and the facts of the matter established. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: Could the Minister inform us as to how the Elder Abuse and Neglect Prevention services respond to complaints received in relation to a rest home resident? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am advised that essentially the role of such coordinators is to assess the nature of the complaint first and then refer it to the appropriate agency as necessary. It is the nature of the complaint that will determine the nature of the referral. 
Sandra Goudie 
: How does she think that the publication of these photos and her dismissal of their gravity helps further her Government’s goal of the promotion of positive attitudes towards older people which is fundamental to preventing elder abuse? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: My reading of the statements in the newspaper about this matter would suggest that the issue is one of consent and that is something that an older person is entitled to give. 
Sandra Goudie 
: I seek leave to table the  
Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand  
magazine. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Sandra Goudie 
: I seek leave to table the  
New Zealand Herald 
 article of 16 May headed: “Row over pictures of naked patients”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Sandra Goudie 
: I seek leave to table an article in the  
Dominion Post 
 of Wednesday 17 May headed: “Family may sue over rest home photo”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Tobacco Consumption—Reduction 
11.  
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Health 
: What initiatives is the Government considering to reduce tobacco consumption? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 Last week I released a consultation document that proposes a series of warnings including graphic pictures like the one I am holding up and a text on both the front and back of cigarette packets which overseas experience shows can be a significant deterrent especially among young people. 
Steve Chadwick 
: What reports has he seen on other Government initiatives to reduce tobacco consumption? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I have seen two reports. One is a nationwide survey conducted recently which shows that 74 percent of New Zealanders support smoke-free pubs and bars. The second report is one on the voting record for the smoke-free environments legislation which both the Leader of the Opposition and their health spokespeople voted against. 
Te Puni Kokiri—Maori Affairs Minister's Statement 
12.  
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
 to the  
Minister of Maori Affairs 
: Does he stand by his translated statement in the House yesterday regarding Te Puni Kokiri that it is not right to say here whether his ministry is “a waste of time for Maori”; if so where does he believe Te Puni Kokiri should be held to account? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Minister of Maori Affairs) 
: 
 Yes I stand by the interpretation of my statement. It is not right to say here that Te Puni Kokiri is a waste of time for Maori. Te Puni Kokiri is held to account in a number of ways to this House through the parliamentary process which includes financial reviews. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Does he stand by his chief executive’s position that the laws of New Zealand passed by this very Parliament and enforced by the courts are not prescriptive but rather merely a set of guidelines one can follow if one wishes? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Part of that I agree with but certainly I believe that people in glasshouses should not throw stones; that certain members who should abide by the legislation that binds this House to good governance go out and leak documents from financial review committees. 
Dave Hereora 
: What will be the specific focus of Te Puni Kokiri over the next 12 months? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Te Puni Kokiri is on a roll. Certainly I remember—[ 
Interruption 
] Te Puni Kokiri’s Maori Business Facilitation Service—and I can tell that member that this Minister of Health is going to be here for a long time—won the Vero award for the best participation development between the private sector and the public sector and we are going to do a lot more about that. We are about keeping Maori out of prison about putting more Maori into jobs and about helping Maori achieve a higher level of education. That is what we will do. 
Tariana Turia 
: Tena koe Madam Speaker; tena tatou te Whare. Further to the Minister’s answer yesterday that monitoring reports were to be found in Te Puni Kokiri’s annual report to Parliament and in light of Te Puni Kokiri’s 2005 annual report which failed to provide any information on the output purchased monitoring of other State sector agency initiatives can he tell this Parliament what monitoring reports Te Puni Kokiri has produced and where they are? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Te Puni Kokiri takes its monitoring and liaising role very seriously. Te Puni Kokiri is meeting its responsibilities under its legislation and it is doing that well—and a whole lot more. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General found in its audit for the last financial year that there were no significant legislative breaches and it is noted that the office gave Te Puni Kokiri a “good” assessment. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Given the Minister’s answer to my supplementary question which asked: “Does he stand by his chief executive’s position that the laws of New Zealand passed by this very Parliament and enforced by the courts are not prescriptive but rather merely a set of guidelines one can follow if one wishes?” which part of that question does he agree with? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I agree with most of it. But I want to talk about that former Minister when National had its time in Government in the sense of the endless reports that that Government produced on negative statistics. We should look at what this Government is doing. It should not be about leaking and it should not be about members in this House who use it to ignore the rules. 
Tariana Turia 
: Will he direct Te Puni Kokiri to monitor the health of nearly 50 percent of Maori children some 93423 children who will benefit from the heavily promoted in-work payment because their parents are beneficiaries; or is the monitoring of the health and well-being of tangata whenua also a waste of time? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: It is a role that the Ministry of Health steered by this Government is managing very well. I assure the member that we have delivered reports and supports and those developments that we take very seriously. Working for Families is about that and making sure that those parents and those children are being looked after is something this Government takes very very seriously. 
Tariana Turia 
: I seek leave to table the annual report of Te Puni Kokiri which clearly shows that no monitoring of other State agencies was done. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Can the Minister confirm that during his time as Minister in charge of Te Puni Kokiri Maori unemployment has halved and that the real waste of time for Maori people was the Minister from 1996 to 1998 Tau Henare who promised to halve unemployment among Maori but instead increased it by 5 percent? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Maori unemployment has decreased by exactly 61 percent. Maori enjoy being in work and they enjoy being paid. That member set up three commissions wasted a lot of money and got nothing done for Maori. We have done plenty for Maori. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Is the Minister concerned that the recent financial review of his ministry found that it could not even answer questions about the delivery of its local level solutions programme; and when is he going to brief his ministry on what he is doing for his $180000 per year? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: It is actually $195000. I tell that member that we have moved on and the issue is that we are going to focus on Maori potential. We are going to use those good deeds out of local level solutions that my friend Tariana Turia was involved in and we are making better use of them—more Maori in jobs more Maori in high level education and more Maori getting into asset development. It is great stuff. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Did the Minister find in that financial review that one Tau Henare had yet paid back the $47 he owed the department as a beneficiary which he said he would not be paying back? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I am not too sure about that. But what did concern me is that that member flouted the laws and the rules of this great bastion of governance. He did that. He leeched us. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Does the Minister stand by his support of Mita Ririnui’s statement—support he gave in this House on 14 March this year—that advocacy of Maori is tiresome; if so what new career is he looking at now that he is tired of advocating for his people? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I do not believe that my colleague made such a statement. But if we are honest and we are in this party it is stressful at times—[ 
Interruption 
] Totally honest! Those members should ask Dr Sharples. They should ask Hone Harawira. It is very hard working with Maori. Tariana Turia will tell members that. So I do not know what people he is talking about because our people are trying at times. But Mita Ririnui and I love them and we will do our best while we are in Government to make sure they go forward not backwards. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I seek leave to table the speech of Mita Ririnui—the one where the Minister of Maori Affairs actually supported him. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I wish to make a personal statement relating to the accusations that the Hon Phil Goff just raised. I advise the House that some years ago when this issue was raised I did pay back the $47 to the then Minister of Social Welfare Roger Sowry. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I seek leave to table an extract from the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 of December 2000 in which Tau Henare said he would not be paying back a social welfare payment of $47 a debt he had incurred as a beneficiary 20 years ago. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Just a matter of clarification I actually said that when I was in the House. I was not in the House in 2000. 
Ron Mark 
: Does the Minister believe that the role played by Te Puni Kokiri in promoting the ahu whenua awards and promoting Maori excellence in farming such as that showcased in Rotorua last Friday evening is work of value and what feedback did Te Puni Kokiri receive from AgResearch Federated Farmers Dairy InSight and the other key players in the agricultural industry in respect of Maori farming and Maori development? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: It was all positive and Te Puni Kokiri has been involved in it. The big companies and the industry training organisations were there and they reaffirmed the 1375 Maori who are working in the agricultural industry training organisations and whom we will move on and up and into employment. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: This is not in the guise of a supplementary question I hope Mr Brownlee. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No it is not. I am extremely worried by the revelation in the House today that the Hon Parekura Horomia is getting a salary of $195000. I am wondering whether we can seek leave to have him explain whether perhaps that is his salary while other Ministers’ salaries are $216000? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order; nor was it a supplementary question. 
Urgent Debates 
Release of Report—Telecommunications Stocktake Review 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have received a letter from Gerry Brownlee seeking to debate under Standing Order 380 the release of a report on an investigation into the disclosure of a classified telecommunications stocktake review. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence and I accept that it does require the immediate attention of the House. I therefore call on Mr Brownlee to move the motion. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. If members have ever wondered where Jim Beryl John Hugh the boss Wally and the lovely Raewyn went—the characters from  
Gliding On 
—they are all alive and well on the eighth floor of the Beehive in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. This is an outfit that this report shows is extremely cobwebbed and burdened down by the dust of bureaucracy in a way that shows absolutely no respect for very big decisions being made by the Government and the consequences they can have on New Zealanders. It is the inefficiency of that outfit that has led to some $2 billion being written off the value of New Zealand’s largest public company. If people want to know what $2 billion can buy in Government well firstly it is 200 years’ worth of Saturday night’s Lotto prize. Secondly it is 20 percent of the annual increase in the health budget a 30 percent annual increase in an education budget more than 100 percent of what we could spend on defence and it would give students in New Zealand up to 5 years of totally free tertiary education. So no one should diminish the consequences of this leak. The only questions that remain to be answered now are what was the motivation behind Michael Ryan’s decision to steal and then pass on the document and who was the hapless official in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet who carelessly tossed the document into the “for shredding” basket for all who passed by to see and read. 
We need to know the answers to those questions because the Government spin out there is that this action was somehow a mistake and that Mr Ryan was just a lowly person working in the office who was not in any particularly important job but was only a messenger who happened upon a document sort of by mistake and thought that it might be of some interest to his friend. The question is how does a messenger inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet get to see a document like that? Copies of the document were delivered to all Ministers in envelopes which were sealed and marked “commercially sensitive” and numbered so that everyone knew who had them. But somehow one was carelessly tossed into a basket so that a messenger could come along have a bit of a look and think that his friend Mr Garty might be interested in reading it. 
I think that it is interesting to look at the sequence of events the investigator managed to uncover. He first said that on Monday 26 December Mr Ryan saw an agenda for either a Cabinet meeting that day or for a policy committee meeting to be held the following Wednesday. I want to know why the investigator does not know which agenda that man saw. I ask why Mr Wevers and all the other clever people in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet cannot tell the investigator which document the messenger saw—and how Mr Ryan was able to go out of the building meet with his friend Mr Garty that evening and indicate there was a possibility that Mr Garty might receive some secret Government document for his own use and mention to Mr Garty during the course of that conversation that Cabinet was to discuss a telecommunications stocktake at some point in the next couple of days. 
That is a very serious matter. It is no good for the Prime Minister just to say that that person has acted dishonestly. We all know that. He did sign those documents of confidentiality and he did agree to the various other requirements of someone who works in that position but the real question is why is it that if a Minister receives something in a sealed envelope and has to treat it with a great deal of sensitivity a messenger can just see it lying in a basket somewhere and decide to take it away? When Mr Ryan saw the telecommunications stocktake document he simply picked it up took it down to the messengers’ room stuffed it in his bag and took it out of the building. Well I would have thought that the Prime Minister’s department might have had better security than that. I would have thought that it would be almost impossible for someone to leave that building with a confidential document hidden in his or her bag so I want to know why there is some failure in the system. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I do it every day. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Mr Mallard says that he does it every day. Well I say to Mr Mallard that we know he is a messenger for the Government and therefore expendable but he is a Minister and we would expect a Minister to be able to do that. We do not expect messengers to be able to secretly take a document with enormous commercial sensitivity attached to it and quietly cart it home have a discussion with their mates about the possibility of getting a bit of free carpet and then hand over a document to their mates and say: “This is for your eyes only. Please do not photocopy it. Please do not spread it about.”—which raises the question as to why Mr Ryan gave the document to his friend in the first place. 
The issues around the way in which the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet operates are I think quite considerable. When I said before that there is a sort of  
Gliding On 
 attitude up there that attitude is all the way through this report. When we go further into the report we find that the investigator was interested to discuss a policy inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet about the handling of classified documentation. It states: “ ‘Policy and privacy’ information for which compromise does not threaten the security of the nation but rather the security or interests of individuals groups commercial entities government business and the community.” This was such a document. The question then is how was it to be handled? We find a little bit of an indication in the report to civil servants—which is why we want to know who the brains trust was who just tossed that document into the basket so that everybody could see it. We work to the “ ‘Need to retain” principle. Only retain classified documents especially circulated drafts while they are in use. Once a classified document or draft is no longer needed either return it to the originator or destroy it. ‘Need to retain’ principle should include: Keeping all holdings of loose classified material to a minimum; Annual reviews of holdings of loose classified material; How to return or dispose of unneeded classified material.” So the department has processes; it just does not follow them. 
 The messenger up there has certainly been dishonest but he is getting an overdue kicking when others up there have behaved in an equally sloppy manner. The department has a clear desk clear screen clear whiteboard policy. When a workstation is unattended the desk must be clear of any classified information and the computer must be accessible only through password entry. At the end of the business day all classified hard copies should be stored in locked storage. What we have now is a clear desk clear screen clear whiteboard but full shredding tray policy inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 
What is amazing is that it was Dr Prebble’s agent who undertook this particular inquiry. I will divert for a minute and acquaint everyone with who Dr Prebble is. He is the man who was head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time the Prime Minister got herself in the cart over “corngate”. Members may recall the various obfuscations that went on at that time and the months and months it took before we were able to find out the truth that related to that particular issue. Is it now surprising that we have the same Dr Prebble out there saying that we have got the little scrote who did it and it will not happen again? I do not think so. I cannot help thinking that there is something bigger afoot here. 
Members should imagine this messenger inside the department having the time to wander round and have a casual read of the agenda for Cabinet the following day and of the policy committee meeting the following night. He might have spotted a bit on Telecom so decided to keep an eye on that for a day or two then thought he could duck out of the office go to the cycle club meeting that night and ask his mate Pete what he thinks of this Telecom stocktake and what it might be about and if he is interested he will shoot back tomorrow and flog it and hand it over to him. It was quite easy and simple and no checks whatsoever were involved. 
Those claims by Mr Prebble and Mr Wevers and others that they are completely innocent and that it was nothing to do with them and their view that if someone is trying to be dishonest what can one do do not give us an acceptable answer. Where is the reasonable programme to tighten up security inside that department? 
Underlying all this of course is that Labour members just do not care about the business community. It does not bother them. Dr Cullen is laughing as he always laughs at the business community. It just does not bother them. Thousands of mum and dad investors in Telecom had their equity written off to a huge extent because of this leak. Dr Cullen said it would have happened anyway—as if that is some sort of an excuse. The reality is that if Dr Cullen had released this in his Budget he would not have had the other threatening material in there. I doubt very much that he would have stood up in this House and said that the Government was about to split New Zealand’s largest public company in two. I do not think he would have done that. When he tells us tomorrow that the energy companies will have the axe taken to them that is fair enough. If that is what Dr Cullen wants to tell the House tomorrow I think he now has an obligation to tell the House today. 
The reality is that Parliament has a right to expect that an executive will conduct his or her business in a professional and caring manner. But there is no care for those investors out there who put small amounts of money on a weekly basis into managed funds and various other superannuation vehicles. The Government’s answer is that those people should not worry about that but leave it all to the Government which will do it for them. Can members guess what one of the biggest sellers of Telecom shares has been in recent days? It is the Government’s superannuation fund. Members should tell me that there is not a bit of Chinese whispering going on between the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet the Minister of Finance’s office and the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation. If they are wrong Dr Cullen should stand up and say so. The evidence is very clear when we look at the trading that goes on in the stock market. 
So the question comes back to the guy who has so far not been named and has so far apparently been exonerated. Members should think about this man who receives a highly sensitive document in an envelope that has a number on it. He initials it opens the seal gets out the document does his high-powered analysis of it and then says: “OK fair enough I’ll get rid of that. I’ll biff it over here.” There are passers-by coming through as in a bus station having a quick flick through and seeing whether any of their mates want to see it. But the man is exonerated. The State Services Commission has stated: “I wish to make it clear that this recommendation should not be seen as in any way a criticism of the actions of the relevant Advisor…”. Who is the relevant advisor? The commission should just give us his name. The commission continues: “… in placing the document in his confidential ‘shredding tray’ for disposal without enveloping it. It was clear from the evidence” that the investigator received that this advisor “was perhaps more acutely aware than anyone as to the sensitivity of this document …”. So if this advisor is so acutely aware of the sensitivity of the document and still tossed it into a bin for all to see what the heck are the rest of them doing? The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet comes out of this situation looking very shaky and shoddy and we need some answers about how its security is being tidied up. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 A number of significant facts have emerged in this debate. The first is that the debate was not led by Dr Don T Brash who was missing in action again during the supposed big king-hit on the Government. Dr Brash knows that every time he comes into this House and gives a speech he dies a little. Of course every time he goes out of the House he dies a lot. We know that only too well. The real issue today is why Mr Brownlee was put up to mount the massive king-hit on the Government. I think he answered that question. Today with that speech Don Brash ensured that Gerry Brownlee killed his chances of becoming the Leader of the Opposition. One of my colleagues asked why Dr Brash did not give that speech. The answer is that even Dr Brash is not as stupid as that. 
The only significant thing that Mr Brownlee said in that speech was that he could not help thinking. We have to give him high marks for trying but not for thinking during that speech. I was waiting for the big king-hit question of whether the tray was plastic or metal and for the request for the Government to come clean and tell members the truth about that. The truth of course is that the Government has done much better at finding its leak than National has done at finding its leaks which are going on all over place—and I am told there are more to come in the very near future. 
Mr Brownlee’s speech did show that the Opposition has nothing to say on this issue. Mr Brownlee ran out of material in the first 4 minutes of his speech and kept going round and round in circles—a bit like Rodney Hide before he lost weight. The National members thought they should apply for a debate but having applied for it and got it they did not know what to say during the debate. Mr Brownlee had nothing to say in that speech. Mr Brownlee’s one and only suggestion related to how somebody could get out of the building with a document. He said that surely there should be security to stop people from getting out of the Beehive with potentially a document on their person. In other words every time somebody other than a Minister goes in and out of the Beehive he or she should be searched. Well that would include members of almost every minor party in the House because they go through the Beehive to get to this Chamber. It would include every ministerial staffer and it would include parliamentary messengers and members of the press gallery. I know that Mr Brownlee lusts after being able to search one or two members of the press gallery himself—and why not—but the fact is that we cannot search everybody who goes in and out of that building every time they go in and out. 
Goodness me that suggestion comes from the party that complains about compliance costs! Well what a compliance cost it would be on the Government if it had to search everybody who goes in and out of the building including Mr Brownlee. The truth is that we could not find anybody who would volunteer to do a body search on Mr Brownlee—or indeed anybody who is big enough to do a body search on Mr Brownlee should we have to do that. That is the reality. That is all that National members could suggest. 
What are the facts? The facts are actually simple. One employee who was in a position of trust committed despite having gone through psychological vetting and police vetting a breach of that trust. Mr Brownlee asked what the employee’s motivation was. His motivation is not terribly relevant. Apparently he was trying to help a friend and apparently the friend was rather embarrassed by the help as no doubt any of us would be in a similar situation. The friend on the evening had drunk rather too much wine to be able to read the document. Once he did read it he knew there was a problem and promptly took the appropriate action in respect of that problem. That is it. That is the story from start to finish. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: No! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Dr Lockwood Smith says: “No!”. He thinks there must be if I can use such a phrase a deep dark secret here that people have not yet learnt about. I tell Dr Smith that no that is it in this case. That is all there is to go on. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Lockwood wants the body search. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Lockwood wants the body search? No no no that is not true. That is not fair to Dr Lockwood Smith. 
What else do we have? The issue is that the procedures that were followed are those that have been followed for many many years. The alternative presumably is that we have big green waste bins in our offices that are locked and have little holes in the top so that we can stick everything in as some people do. The problem is that we still have to take the documents out at some point and put them in the shredder. Whoever does that job is the potential point of weakness. As Mr Brownlee ought to know it is not possible to completely stop somebody from leaking. Some people have been inclined to suggest that Mr Brownlee has been the source of some of the leaks within the National Party over recent months. The fact is that those leaks seem to incriminate Dr Brash and certainly seem to incriminate Mr Key—or some of the ones that will come out a bit later will—but do not incriminate Mr Brownlee. So one can perhaps see some support for that particular thesis. 
The fact is that one person in a position of trust who had worked for the Government for 30 years with no problems at all in all of that previous employment seems to have suffered a mad rush of blood to the head and dishonestly decided to help a mate—a mate who could not even have been helped in that case because as an employee of Telecom he was actually debarred from selling his shares at that point because Telecom’s annual report was due and this incident occurred during the time period when he could not take any action. That is the entire story. That is the urgent matter of public importance on which Mr Brownlee thinks he can pull down the Government. All he did was to pull down himself. The way is now clear for Mr Key and Mr English to have it out in the fight for life within the National Party. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 It appears in this particular case that the Opposition doth protest too much. One of the points that Opposition members have been making is that because of this leak $1.8 billion was wiped off Telecom’s share value. In fact the $1.8 billion would have been wiped off the moment that Dr Cullen announced on Thursday exactly the same Government policy. All that shows is that Telecom is overvalued by $1.8 billion. The question has to be asked as to why it is overvalued by $1.8 billion. It is because Telecom is—or has been up until this point in time—a monopoly. 
The real scandal in this whole saga surrounds in fact a certain Roderick Deane who was one of the architects of the so-called market economy which was to go through not only business but also State services and State delivery of services. That architect took over a State monopoly and turned it into a private monopoly and then that particular company behaved in a way purely and simply so as to retain its monopoly. The whole raison d’?tre of Telecom was to retain its monopoly. Someone described Telecom as a legal company with a telecommunications company attached to it. On the way Mr Deane picked up $2 million a year and received bonus shares etc. 
Let us have a look at the series of events because it is quite clear from the report that this leak came about as a result of misplaced friendship. I think we need to go through the series of events. Mr Ryan has admitted to the fact that he was carrying out his duties as a messenger with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. On Monday 1 May his role involved assisting in the Cabinet Office with the distribution of the necessary mail and papers and he happened to see an agenda which was either for the Cabinet meeting that day or for the policy committee meeting to be held on Wednesday. He noticed that on the agenda was a consideration of the telecommunications review. 
Obviously as the report shows that evening after Mr Ryan went back home he happened to go to his friend’s place to look at some carpet. His friend was not there when he first arrived. Mr Garty came later and Mr Ryan happened to mention to Mr Garty that he had seen that item on the agenda. The very next day Mr Ryan once again undertaking his normal duties was making deliveries of documentation. One of those duties included removing confidential documents intended for shredding from trays designated for that purpose. 
We want to follow through the course of events from here. Mr Ryan saw the telecommunications stocktake document in a tray in an office shared by three policy advisory group advisers on the eighth floor of the Beehive. He took the document to the messengers’ room. I think we need to reflect on this. In the messengers’ room is the shredder. In the very room where the messengers keep their bags there is also the shredder. The report does recommend that we need to look at the systems. We certainly would ask whether it makes any sense to put the shredder in the room where the messengers have all their bags and their gear. In this particular case of course Mr Ryan put the document into his bag and took it home and later that evening gave it to Mr Garty. 
 The report states: “The employee”—that is Mr Garty—“and ultimately Telecom were passive recipients of the document having taken no action to seek it or to encourage Mr Ryan to provide it.” That is true. Mr Garty made photocopies of the document at his own home then delivered the document back to Mr Ryan the next day so that it could be brought back into the Beehive. One might ask whether Mr Garty’s behaviour at that particular stage met the integrity test. In this particular case the report made the comment—I think accurately—that from the moment Mr Garty saw the document he was in fact compromised. The photocopying could be justified in the sense that he immediately took it to Telecom’s legal advisers and said: “Listen this is what I’ve been shown. What do you make of it?”. In fairness to Telecom it immediately made contact with Mr Cunliffe’s office and said—[ 
Interruption 
] I am actually saying in fairness to Telecom that it immediately made contact with the executive said it had the papers and asked what it was supposed to do about them. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: And what did they say? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: The executive probably said: “We’ve got some urgent messages. We’d better run across and see Winston Peters because we’ve got to make this announcement some time today.” 
I want to make a personal comment. As telecommunications spokesperson for New Zealand First I was rung the next day by someone who asked given that the confidence and supply agreement states everything should be shared whether we had seen the paper. Thank God I was able to say that I had never seen sight nor sign of that particular paper so it was not me who had leaked it. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: It was posted on the Internet that day. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: I did not get it until the next day—I did not have it. 
As I said the report recommends that some of the systems need to be looked at. One of the things that has not yet been spoken about is that during the whole review process people tried to gather up all the copies of that particular document. It is noted in the report: “on 11 May 2006 I was advised that a further copy of this paper had been located behind a photocopier located in Hon. Mr Cunliffe’s office.” The report goes on to state: “It is clear to me that this additional copy found fell behind the photocopier by accident during the rush to provide the media with copies on that date.”—on 3 May. But that remark raises some very serious questions about the security of vital documents if they can fall behind photocopiers in such a manner in a Minister’s office. Certainly there are some disturbing features of this particular matter and lessons have to be learnt from it. There is no doubt that it was a very serious leak and a very serious security breach. However I believe that the report has got it accurately—the leak stemmed from misplaced loyalty rather than from any criminal intent to try to beat the stock market. 
In terms of some of the other systems the report goes into for example the employment processes that are carried out by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Certainly there is absolutely thorough scrutiny of the employees there and that includes a psychological report. So that particular area is certainly tied up as are the requirements under employment law etc. to make sure employees’ contracts include the requirements to maintain the confidentiality of all the documents they see. As the report states at that level there is certainly robustness. Some systematic problems need to be looked at in order to ensure that there are not repeats of this particular leak. Everyone would recognise that the situation is very very serious but it is wrong to protest and say it demonstrates serious malfunctioning on the eighth and ninth floors; the report shows that the problem was one of misplaced friendship involving a person who had passed all the tests and jumped all the hurdles to get a job as a messenger in that particular department. In fact in this case the person himself knows he made an extremely foolish mistake by taking the action he did. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 This debate has focused so far on the matters that were investigated by the State Services Commission. But of course the debate has raised some much wider issues. I want to ask the Government today why Minister Cunliffe who is at the centre of these goings on—and of policy decisions—still holds his job. The measure for whether Mr Cunliffe should still be in his job is the way the Government dealt with David Parker—his bench mate. Why is David Cunliffe still sitting in his seat with his warrants when by this stage of a similar set of proceedings David Parker was not? 
Let us look at the circumstances that David Cunliffe has got himself into. He did an interview yesterday—a wide-ranging interview we are told and a long one—in which he made comments regarding Telecom’s dividend and investment policy. Those comments were broadcast on the Bloomberg News wire which is a subscriber-only wholesale news service for participants in the money market. As a result of those comments the volume of Telecom shares being traded went way up and the price went down. Members should ask themselves why that happened. It happened because David Cunliffe is the ultimate insider. He is the Minister who has held over Telecom the threat that he will break that business up into wholesale and retail components if it does not meet the Government’s objectives. So when the person who has that power says to the market that Telecom should change its dividend policy of course the market will take notice. The Securities Commission has taken that seriously and certainly market participants have because it said today that it had received a referral from the New Zealand Exchange—not from some mum and dad shareholder of no particular legal account—relating to comments reportedly made by the Minister of Communications David Cunliffe. The commission is considering the referral. 
Let us just remind ourselves what has happened here. Someone who was certainly an insider has made comments that may break the law. Those comments have been referred by one statutory body the New Zealand Exchange which has regulatory experience to another statutory body the Securities Commission. The Securities Commission is considering whether to investigate. In my view it has no choice. It investigated comments made by Helen Clark in 2001 regarding Air New Zealand shares. Of course it had to do so particularly because the case involved a Government Minister who was privy to all sorts of information that no other shareholder could get. As my colleague has pointed out this situation is much more serious than the comments that were made about Air New Zealand. There was a significant drop in Telecom’s share price and there is ongoing controversy about the bumbling way the Government has handled the whole debacle of the leak in the announcement of its unbundling policy. 
Let us line up that seriousness alongside David Parker’s case. David Parker was stood down because allegations had been made that he had committed minor breaches of the Companies Act. He stood down. He admitted at the time that he believed he might have breached the Companies Act—because no one else was sure— 
Simon Power 
: It was pretty honourable. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It was pretty honourable. He said he had done the deed that he was alleged to have done. In David Cunliffe’s case there is absolutely no doubt that he did the deed. He has confirmed he made the statements. In David Parker’s case it is unclear whether the Companies Office had announced an investigation before he resigned. I believe he resigned before the investigation was publicly announced. Here we have another Minister who has breached a much more serious law in a much more public and serious way and who has much greater responsibility. David Parker had a responsibility to his shareholders and as an individual to keep the law. But it was not his responsibility as a Minister that he breached. David Cunliffe has used his ministerial position knowledge power and influence and made a statement which may break the law—and he is still sitting in his seat. It will be subject to investigation by the Securities Commission. 
So Helen Clark needs to tell us why that is the case. If David Parker went for a less serious offence related to his behaviour as a private individual why is David Cunliffe keeping his job for a much more serious potential breach of the law which he committed in his capacity as a Minister? How can Parliament and Telecom shareholders be reassured that he will not go out tomorrow and do it again? He lost a copy of the paper behind the photocopier. And now he has made a statement that is being investigated by the Securities Commission. That is a serious matter. What protection does the financial market have against that man? 
Hon Members 
: None! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: None because he is still in his job still getting all the insider information of which he has shown himself to be an unreliable custodian. Yet the Government is still giving it to him. He may be getting information right now—before he came into the House for question time perhaps—that the Government is going to split Telecom up. 
Simon Power 
: Who knows? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Who knows? Well everyone may know because David Cunliffe might go and tell everyone. He cannot be trusted. His breach is as bad as the breach by the messenger. It is as bad. David Cunliffe is the custodian of confidential information and he has broken the trust put in him. Is that not what the messenger did and look what happened to him? David Parker was not a custodian of public or commercially sensitive information—not at all. Yet he stood down because the trust in him was seen to be broken and he could not be restored to his position until he had been investigated. 
Simon Power 
: He lost his position. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: In fact he did not go back to be Attorney-General. He never went back. That is the threshold Helen Clark set. David Parker was found to be not guilty but he was not put back into the position where he had to be trusted to keep the law. That is the standard and I might say to Mr Cunliffe that it is a high standard and you have breached that standard. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: We are asking Helen Clark to explain why she is not applying— 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That senior member opposite is getting carried away but he cannot accuse you of anything let alone what he just accused you of. He should withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. I had drawn that to his attention when I called “Order!”. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I withdraw and apologise. David Cunliffe is the custodian of some of the most commercially sensitive explosive information that the Government has. We know because regardless of the leak the decision made by him and Cabinet has wiped $2.5 billion off the Telecom share price. That is how sensitive the information is. And he has gone and used that position to give information and a point of view to the market which it has to take notice of because he is the Minister who is the primary decision maker. Now thousands of New Zealand mum and dad shareholders and hundreds of thousands of people who have their retirement savings in shares in Telecom have to wait and hope that that man will keep his mouth shut. Helen Clark says it is OK that we wait and hope that David Cunliffe can keep his mouth shut. Well he cannot. He has shown that and he should go. David Parker went. David Cunliffe must go. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 In the limited time I have available to me I want to cover three broad areas of the case—in ascending order of importance in my view. The first relates to Mr Ryan and his behaviour which can be described only as incalculably dishonest foolish and displaying an appalling lack of judgment. There is no way that his continued employment in those circumstances can be justified. The report of the State Services Commissioner states all it needs to on that matter. That is the easiest part of the case. 
The second issue I want to deal with relates to the practices and procedures within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the questions that in my mind remain unanswered as to how Mr Ryan had such free access to the documents and how he was able to act in the way he did. That matter in my judgment requires further investigation by both the State Services Commissioner and the chief executive of the department in the first instance and if need be at some point in the future it may well require the attention of the House. But due process has to be followed and then we can make that decision at a subsequent stage. 
Mr English has touched on what I regard as being the most important aspect of the case and that is the fact that nearly $2 billion of shareholders’ investments in Telecom was wiped by the premature release of the announcement and associated circumstances. Many many investors in this country are reeling from that shock. I might interpolate that those investors may well have faced a similar situation anyway had the original plan proceeded and the measures simply been announced on Budget night. But that interpolation is speculative at this stage. 
The question that requires the proper attention of the Securities Commission relates to the circumstances of the leak and the impact it had on the market and also the questions that have arisen in the last 24 hours. I appreciate the temptation to play politics with this issue and that is understandable in the circumstances. But given that the well-being and good judgment of many New Zealand shareholders have been seriously put at risk by this action I think it is time to set aside the political differences and concentrate on getting to the bottom of how it happened what actions caused it to happen and then where the accountability and responsibility must lie. 
So it seems to me that we have the following path ahead of us. Firstly in terms of Mr Ryan the future is clear—he does not have one. He is gone or is about to go. Secondly in terms of the practices and procedures that gave rise to the circumstances of his behaviour there is clearly further investigative work to be done by both the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the State Services Commission to ensure that procedures are put in place to make sure there can be no repetition of the action. Thirdly there needs to be some form of investigation by the Securities Commission of the wider issues involved to ensure that the shock to the New Zealand economy that this measure has induced can at least be mitigated and hopefully prevented from occurring again in the future. 
The suggestion that we should at this point embark upon a parliamentary inquiry is not one I am attracted to for the simple reason that it would cut across procedures that are already under way. It is a perfectly appropriate call for Parliament to determine that it wishes to inquire into the case if at the end of that procedure of inquiry it remains unsatisfied. But to step in arbitrarily at this point would be premature. I believe that pressure needs to be placed on the agencies I have identified to carry out their work in a timely manner and to report to Parliament accordingly. Then we can make considered and rational decisions that are in the interests of all New Zealanders. 
This case has been a most unfortunate development. I think it is without precedent in our modern history. It is not something we ought to encourage or laud and frankly there are some unanswered questions on both sides of the issue that further inquiry in the manner I have outlined would help to address. But to rush in now in the way that some members are suggesting simply reminds me of the old proverb about fools. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 A number of points need to be made on this issue. The first one which struck me as quite amazing was the comment by the Prime Minister that it has been like this for a long time. I point out to the Prime Minister that when she left office in 1990 and I became a Minister technologies did not exist that now exist that enable people to smuggle documents. For example people can now take a photo of a document with a cellphone as they walk down a corridor and email it off. So even if someone was searched for the physical document as he or she left the building—even if a full body cavity search was done—with today’s technology the document could already have been sent out. For the Prime Minister to say that it has always been like this is a nonsense. 
As those new technologies evolve—as cellphones come with cameras on board as wireless Bluetooth communications can fire it off to a computer in the building next door and so on or as Wi-Fi networks can image a document through a scanner then fire it off around a network—to say that it is the way it has always been with the paper envelope and the way one opens the envelope and leaves it in the in-tray is wrong. It is just a nonsense. The Prime Minister had better get up to date with the way the new world functions and put some proper mechanisms in place. 
In this case it was a very old-technology steal of some property. It was done by a dishonest messenger. But if it can sit around in a tray if it can go into a room for shredding where the messengers keep their bags let me tell the House that it could easily have gone out and been flying on the Internet within seconds with today’s technology. It will not do any more to say: “Oh but 15 years ago that’s how it used to be so that’s how it should still be.” 
We could take a leaf out of the book of a particular person—I refer to the Rt Hon Winston Peters. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Oh yes. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: My colleague Dr Lockwood Smith who served in Cabinet with Winston Peters will know that he had a mechanism for keeping Cabinet papers so confidential and secret that it worked a treat. I suggest Ministers take a leaf out of Mr Peters’ book. His mechanism was never to open his own Cabinet papers and read them. That is what he did. He used to come to Cabinet with the envelopes still sealed. He used to show up regular as clockwork with them still sealed. A lot of people would say: “What did he read them while he was at Cabinet?”. No he used to sleep while he was at Cabinet. On a regular basis Jim Bolger would have to give him a shake and wake him up. But Mr Peters had confidentiality absolutely nailed. 
The one thing I used to get in trouble for with my wife on a Sunday was when she would come into the living room at some stage and go berko about those little wee plastic tails that come off the zipper of little plastic envelopes. They form into a little pig’s tail curl when they are ripped off and I was untidy enough to drop a few around the living room. She would always go crook about them and say: “Can you please be a bit tidier when you do the zipper on your little plastic envelope.” But we never had that problem with Mr Winston Peters. The little pig’s tail curl was still in place even when the Cabinet meeting was over and declared finished. I suggest that is a very good precedent for other Ministers. David Cunliffe should take a note out of Winston Peters’ book on that. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: What about the fake emails? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: What about the fake emails he now has that he has created? However I want to get into another area in relation to the Prime Minister. 
Jill Pettis 
: Is that the best the member can do? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it’s not the best I can do. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: Is the member suggesting the email is fake? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No I am suggesting that some of the emails may be fake. We can soon get a forensic person to look at them if Mr Peters is prepared to expose their electronic image but he will not do that. 
I want to go back to the Prime Minister because she has said some really interesting things in recent months. When there was the David Benson-Pope issue about the tennis ball and the prima facie case and when there was the David Parker incident the Prime Minister came to this House and said publicly on a number of occasions that she was appalled at what politics had become. She said that it had become a personal attack a vendetta against people especially Ministers and that the dreadful Opposition was now dragging in the gutter and taking out people because of personal animosities or for cheap political point-scoring. Oh really? Is that how politics has become? 
I want to recount a particular example that happened to me. It was fully investigated by the State Services Commission and I want to give the answer to that. As a Minister I once flew back from the United States on a Boeing 747 and as we landed at Auckland the hostess tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Excuse me Mr Williamson we have had an electronic communication to the pilot. They want you to be at the Cabinet meeting in Wellington on time because you have got papers. So we would ask you to come to the door of the plane first and we will take you off the plane first and take you downstairs to a security car that will take you across the tarmac to a domestic flight and that will get you there.” The plane was late in; we were supposed to be in at 6 o’clock in the morning and it was getting towards 8 o’clock. I said: “Well is that OK?” and they said: “Yes that’s fine.” I asked about my immigration and passport and they said I needed to leave all that and my bags with my staff and that just I should go with them. This all came out in the inquiry and it is verbatim. 
So when the plane pulled up at the door I did exactly what I was asked. I stood up the hostess said: “Come this way.” they opened the door I went through the door downstairs with the men in their little bobby socks and their shorts we raced across the tarmac I jumped on the 8 o’clock Ansett flight on time flew to Wellington and I got to Cabinet. At 11 o’clock my press secretary was outside Cabinet saying: “You had better come out you are in huge trouble. Jim Sutton has called for your resignation and Helen Clark has done the same.” It was all on. If members do not believe me they should come up to my office right now and they will see a cartoon from the paper. It is of Helen Clark with a big spray can and me walking across the tarmac and she is going to get me. 
What was the accusation? It was that I had somehow refused to be sprayed while everyone else had to be and that I had demanded to be taken off the plane early. I said to my press secretary: “Well that’s just a nonsense they don’t spray the planes any more. So that is just ridiculous.” It turned out that there had been a problem but I was unaware of it. It turned out that when the little men in their bobby socks checked the documentation for the United Airlines plane I was on they found that the bombs that sit in the air conditioning had expired and they needed to close the door call some people up with some spray cans and walk up and down the aisle and spray it. I did not know that. They did not know that at the time. 
But what did Helen Clark do? Day after day she said that the Minister of Transport should be sacked it was an outrage and his behaviour was appalling. A State Services Commission inquiry was finally called for; Jim Bolger had no option but to call for it. The State Services Commission interviewed the people at the airport and they said: “No we made the decision to call the pilot and get Mr Williamson off early. No we asked him to come off. No he did what he said. Yes he came to Wellington.” 
Jill Pettis 
: What’s all this got to do with it? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am saying this because the Prime Minister says how ugly and how dreadful politics has become when the Opposition raises matters in relation to poor Ministers like David Benson-Pope—“Captain Tennis Ball” who shoves stuff in kids’ gobs—we are being grubby; we are in the gutter. When we raise stuff about breaches of the Companies Act by David Parker she says we are being grubby and awful. When we raise stuff about Mr Cunliffe knocking $200 million off the Telecom share price we are being grubby. But oh no members opposite can— 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I listened with care when the Speaker read out the letter that caused this debate. I even went to the Table to reread it to make sure I had heard it right. I have sat through one member opposite going on and on about things that have nothing to do with that letter and now we have another one. I really really invite you Mr Assistant Speaker to ask the member to say something vaguely related to the letter that caused the debate to happen. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank the member for his contribution. It is a rather robust debate and I have heard exchanges from both sides. But I ask the member to speak to the letter. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am happy to answer Mr Burton on that. This is about ministerial behaviour and accountability. I do not feel good about bringing up something from my past even though the State Services Commission completely exonerated me. The reason I bring it up is that as soon as we start raising anything about Ministers’ behaviour in this Government the Prime Minister is on the front foot saying: “This is the disgraceful Opposition. All they want to do is politicise these issues.” But she never hesitated. She tried to take people out. I have the newspaper clippings from that incident if Annette King does not remember it. Helen Clark said that the Minister of Transport should resign for leaving his plane early and refusing to be sprayed. She said that my behaviour was reprehensible. Actually it turned out that I had done nothing wrong and was completely cleared. 
But in this case David Cunliffe’s behaviour is reprehensible. It is appalling. His statement about trade-offs—the dividends versus capital expenditure of a private company—is absolutely beneath contempt yet he is still in his job. Helen Clark will not be calling for his resignation. I am listening—but I still cannot hear her doing it. Someone innocently gets off a plane when asked and has to resign. But when someone takes $2 billion off a company with his stupid Cabinet paper and the management of it and then decides that was not enough and takes another $200 million off the value by going out and making a reckless statement about dividends versus the capital expenditure programme I say this whole House should be listening for Helen Clark to call for his resignation. I cannot hear it. What I can hear is the fluttering of the wings as the chickens come home to roost for this Government; that is what I can hear. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of State Services) 
: 
 I recall last week that the National Party raised a point of order about Winston Peters being given a supplementary question by the Government. Gerry Brownlee got to his feet in his usual fashion and huffed and puffed about how terrible it was that Winston Peters had been given a supplementary question by Labour. I point out— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Following on from the comments made by the Hon Mark Burton the Deputy Leader of the House a few minutes ago about members’ speeches being relevant to the bill I seek leave to table the letter supplied to the Speaker today in order that the Hon Annette King may understand what the debate is about this afternoon. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is quite entitled to seek leave to table that. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is. I just say leeway is given in replying to a speech. I refer members to Speakers’ ruling 44/3. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a deliberate attempt to break up my speech. I would like to be given the opportunity and the time to start my speech again. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I say to the member that I will certainly take that into consideration but I have said to Mr Brownlee that you have leeway in replying to the speech. Frivolous interjections of course are out of order and can actually lead to disorder. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Of course Gerry Brownlee wanted to interrupt my speech because it showed a big dose of hypocrisy. He raised the issue of Winston Peters being given a speaking spot by Labour this week but did not own up to the fact that National had received a speaking spot from ACT this week. So it was OK for National to receive a speaking spot from ACT but it was not OK for Labour to give one to New Zealand First. 
I say it is quite all right to give speaking spots to whomever one wants to. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is not appropriate for members to refer to one another by the “h” word which we are not allowed to use. I want to make it clear that National has not done a deal with the ACT party; it simply took a spot that was going. If the Labour members assume that the National members have done a deal with ACT it is too bad for them. They should have more of their own speakers here in the Chamber. Debates are not something they want to participate in. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I do not consider that to be a point of order; it is a debatable issue. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Labour members are entitled to two speeches and we are taking our two speeches. What Gerry Brownlee did not like was the fact that last week there was an act of hypocrisy in this House when National members raised that issue. I want to point that out. I do not care a hoot whom they get their speaking spots from; that is called cooperation in Parliament. But when those sorts of issues are raised in Parliament and issues like this so-called urgent debate are raised it makes this place a laughing stock. The public are not stupid; they hear what is said one week and changed the next week. They hear about the urgency of this debate requested in the letter and then find the leak is not discussed at all in the debate. I think the public will be very disappointed with this debate today. 
Let us look at the contributions. I have a right to go through some of the points that have been made. First of all why was this urgent debate not led off by Don Brash? He is the leader of the National Party. When there is an issue that is very urgent and important one would normally put one’s leader up to lead off the urgent debate. That is certainly what Helen Clark did while in Opposition but Don Brash does not do that. I cannot remember many urgent debates that he has led off in this Parliament since National has been in Opposition. I know why Don Brash did not lead off the debate. First of all he is embarrassed to lead off a debate on a leak. He could not lead off a debate on a leak because the biggest leak in this Parliament came out of his office. When did that happen? It happened in about August last year. About 7 or 8 months ago there was a leak from the Leader of the Opposition’s office. Someone got into his emails and sent them around the country particularly to Winston Peters. He would not have solicited them but he did receive them and there was not one email but several of them. 
So about 8 months ago the biggest leak out of a member of Parliament’s office took place from the Leader of the Opposition’s office. Did we hear about that leak being resolved? It is not resolved today. National members still do not know who is responsible for that leak—or do they? Let us ask that question. One has to ask oneself whether the reason they have not pursued that leak out of the Leader of the Opposition’s office could well be that they know it was Gerry Brownlee Bill English or John Key who leaked those emails. Why do they want to cover that up? Because it means what everybody in New Zealand knows: there is a plan to get rid of their leader. So National would not want people to know about its inquiries into that leak. I do not blame National members for leaking the emails; I would want to get rid of Don Brash too. 
However let us be honest about why National wanted to have this debate today. It is not about the leak at all. The National members wanted to have this debate because they do not want to debate the real issue that this incident came out of. They do not want to debate this Government’s approach to telecommunications. They failed to address the issue of telecommunications in their 9 long years in Government; they did not have the internal fortitude to address that issue. So what did they do? They wanted to have a debate on the leak and then they did not talk about the leak. Gerry Brownlee got up. He was full of puffery and blatherskite. I agree with you Mr Speaker; this is a robust debate. It is a robust debate all right from the National members signifying absolutely nothing. 
Gerry Brownlee attacked Mark Prebble the State Services Commissioner. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No I didn’t. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Oh yes he did. He attacked Mark Prebble but forgot one important point: Mark Prebble was the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet under the National Government when the same rules that apply today applied to the messengers who worked for National. Of course the procedures and rules that applied when National members were in Government which apply today were all right then but suddenly this issue is all the Government’s fault and the Prime Minister’s fault. National spreads the blame wherever it can. It is very interesting that National has suddenly decided it does not like the rules. Why did National not search the messengers when it was in Government? Why did it not body-frisk people as they left the Beehive which is something Gerry Brownlee has just promoted? He said that everybody who leaves the Beehive ought to be checked. Well of course Gerry Brownlee would spend a fair bit of time being checked because he spends a lot of time in the Beehive in Bellamy’s. Bellamy’s is in the Beehive so if we are to check everybody who leaves there we ought to check the people who come in and out of the building or who pass through it or who go up or down it. 
Bill English’s contribution was really interesting. He has tried to turn the debate from the leak—which was so urgent that we needed to discuss it—to the impact of the regulatory package on Telecom’s potential future earnings. That is what he wanted to talk about. Then he wanted to blame David Cunliffe for somehow having inside knowledge that has affected Telecom’s share price. I can tell the Opposition members that David Cunliffe clarified his position before the market opened and Telecom clarified it yesterday. That is the truth although those members do not like it. The Minister had no inside information from Telecom. He had no idea about its future dividend policy and to say otherwise is nothing more than to tell large porkies in this Parliament. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No no. The member cannot say “porkies”. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I want to look at what the inquiry was all about. I think it would do the members of the Opposition good if they actually read the State Services Commission report on the leak. 
Let us look at some of the issues. These are the findings of the State Services Commissioner. First of all he stated the Cabinet document relating to the Telecom stocktake review was deliberately taken from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet by Mr Michael Ryan a messenger employed by that department and given to a Telecom employee. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: We knew that. It was pretty hard to work that out! 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Good—they knew that. Secondly the commissioner found Mr Ryan took the document from within a work area at the department on Tuesday 2 May and passed it to a Telecom employee who was a personal friend. He returned the paper on 3 May. [ 
Interruption 
] So we knew that. Mr Ryan had legitimate access to the document and was responsible for delivering it to the destruction bin where it was to go. The Telecom employee and ultimately Telecom were passive recipients of the document having taken no action to seek it from Mr Ryan. Mr Ryan was a very good friend of a Telecom employee and the commissioner decided that neither the employee nor Telecom was at fault regarding the acquisition of the document. 
The systems operated by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet were appropriate and were followed by every person other than Mr Ryan an individual within that organisation. He joined the organisation in October last year. He was fully informed of his responsibility and of the confidentiality of Cabinet documents just as every messenger had been under a Tory Government. Not even the great Tory party would have been able to stop an individual who took it upon himself to leak information to somebody else. Those were the major findings from the— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Stop making excuses. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: They are not excuses; they are the facts. Let us have the facts not the blatherskite not the puffery and not the useless debate on which we have just wasted 1 hour of taxpayers’ time because the National Party said the leak was so important. National members said we needed to debate the leak but they then debated absolutely everything else. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
General Debate 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is very very easy to see when a Government is in trouble. There are lots of tell-tale signs when a Government is in trouble. The first thing is that Ministers cannot coherently answer questions. They just speak more loudly with more rabble and less coherency through all their statements and if we want an example of that we need look no further than Pete Hodgson. He is a man so out of his depth in the health portfolio that nobody listens to him not even the former Minister of Health Annette King—and let us look at Annette King today. She was embarrassed by my colleague Simon Power who has made her look like a blithering fool. She does not know a decoy cop from an ordinary cop. Those are signs of a Government in trouble. 
But there is another way that a Government shows it is in trouble. The heads go down when questions are being asked. That is what we saw in the House this afternoon. When David Cunliffe was on his feet Helen Clark did not look up. She did not look up from her papers. It was the famous “David Benson-Pope look”—she looked at those papers; not a good sign. Anything would be better. She was filling in her Christmas cards for 2006. That was more important than looking up when David Cunliffe was on his feet. 
Another way we can tell the Government is in trouble is that Government members run when they see the first sign of trouble. This afternoon we saw the miraculous statement from this Government that it is now exempting Guinness Peat Group shareholders for 5 years from the “grey list”. Because the Government cannot stand the heat from Tony Gibbs’ advertising in the newspapers it is running for the hills. I say to Guinness Peat Group shareholders: “Good on you! Good on you for standing up for your rights and good on you Tony Gibbs for taking it to this Government.” But I say this—it shows what a crazy policy this is. We now have a “grey list” that includes 2 percent of the world’s markets. We have a “grey list” that includes only Australia and New Zealand—unless one is a Guinness Peat Group shareholder and one is in England. What is so special about Guinness Peat Group that does not apply everywhere else around the country? 
This is a Government in serious trouble because its Budget which comes out tomorrow is a botch-up from start to finish. Frankly I am not quite sure whether I should expect a Budget speech or a valedictory speech from Michael Cullen although I am pretty sure that one will lead to the other. Michael Cullen is like David Cunliffe. This is what they have in common: they are both dead men walking. That is the situation for different reasons. Helen Clark has cut Michael Cullen loose. He was the disaster that was Budget 2005 and I will tell members that privately Labour members never talk to me about Budget 2005. They never talk to me about the “chewing gum Budget”. When those Labour members walk around they call it “Michael’s Budget” because that is the way Helen talks about it—“Michael’s Budget” the Budget that delivered them within a whisker of losing the potentially unloseable election. What a shocking disgrace of a Budget it was! 
So Michael Cullen is a dead man walking. He is not allowed input into this Budget. That has been delegated to Heather Simpson. He is not allowed to write the policy for the Budget and this week he is not even allowed to characterise his own Budget. His own Budget is boring. He knows it but it is not his Budget any more. It is either David Cunliffe’s before he was a dead man walking or it is Heather Simpson’s. 
There was one interesting piece of the Budget. Well—at least it was meant to come out before it was leaked as we heard so eloquently this afternoon. That was the “shock and awe” piece of this Budget—the local loop unbundling. Well it has been shock and awe and it will turn into “shock and awe-ful” for David Cunliffe because this is a fiasco of monumental proportions. It has wiped off $2.6 billion of shareholders’ value—even bigger than David Cunliffe’s ego— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Oh I don’t know! 
JOHN KEY 
: Well it is a pretty close call. 
Simon Power 
: The most popular member in the Labour Party. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes. David Cunliffe is so popular I have already had emails from members of the Labour caucus leaking me things about David to use in next week’s question time. But this is the interesting thing. When $2.6 billion was being wiped off Telecom’s share price each and every one of us suffered at the hands of the clumsy David Cunliffe. We all own shares in Telecom through the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and yesterday afternoon we all shared in the $200 million loss that David Cunliffe delivered. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 We have just heard from the man who would be the leader of the National Party but he has just given a really good example of why he is not the leader of the National Party. He is sitting next to Bill English who must have been thinking to himself: “Well I can do better than that.”—and in his speech just half an hour ago he did do better than that. It is not clear when Don Brash will stop being the leader of the National Party. The ground is still shifting in that caucus. The long and short of it is that Bill English’s supporters are not yet ready to pull their support from Don Brash because they do not have the numbers to defeat John Key. That is the guts of it. That is the prisoner’s dilemma the National Party finds itself in. Bill English supporters are still supporting Don Brash—whom they voted against when he came into the leadership role—because they do not have the numbers to defeat John Key. That is the guts of it and it will not get resolved until those two gentlemen over there come to a deal come to some sort of arrangement or understanding—cut something—and then there will be a change. 
But I can tell members what we do know. We know what Don Brash said when he became sort of famous. He said in October 2003: “And I don’t want us to be afraid of the electorate by watering down our message.” Big brave Don said for National members not to water down their message just because they might scare the electorate. Has he kept that idea anywhere close to his actions ever since? No chance! 
 That is the man who was going to sell assets to pay for his tax cuts if he had won the last election but we did not hear a word of it. That is the man who was going to give us part charges for hospitals and get rid of universality in primary health care to pay for his tax cuts but we did not hear a bit of it. That is the man who was going to have swingeing cuts to social services to pay for his tax cuts but we did not hear a word of that. In fact he did not even tell his own caucus that bit because Bill English Katherine Rich or whoever would not have let him do so. So that is a man who does not tell the whole truth. That is a man who is afraid of the electorate who waters down his message and therefore who shows to be someone who does not tell the whole truth. 
An interesting question arises about Don Brash. Does Don Brash bungle or does he have a deeper problem—have difficulty in revealing the full truth? There are quite a lot of examples of bungling. Last week’s example was a good one. Don Brash called a press conference about an email. He was the guy who called the press conference and he rocked up to the press conference he had called but without the email. That seems to be a bungle. It was written up as a bungle but it does start to make one wonder whether a deeper thing is going on with Don Brash—whether somehow in his psyche he thinks: “If I don’t bring the email to the press conference maybe no one else will either. Maybe the email doesn’t exist.” So we have a guy whom we know can bungle. It is like the situation in the election when Mr Connell from Rakaia said: “We’re going to log the West Coast.” Nick Smith from the same party said: “Oh no we’re not.” And Don Brash said: “Ah ah ah …” quite a bit. We know that was a bungle. 
But there is also the two-truth syndrome. The two-truth syndrome is starting to come out in Dr Brash. The classic one from the campaign was when he said within the marae that he liked Maoris but said as soon as he got outside the marae that he was going to be nasty to them. Where that syndrome really came to light was in the Exclusive Brethren revelations during the course of the campaign. Don Brash in his opening bid started off by saying that he could not remember meeting with the Exclusive Brethren. Within a day he said that he might have met with them once. Within about a day after that he said that he might have met with them once but certainly came to no deal with them. Then it became clear that he had met with them more than once and discussed a few things and then he said that he had met with them several times and discussed their support for the party. That is a man whom we now know—from the last week or two because it has been revealed by the police—was talking about a $1.2 million level of support for the National Party campaign but he could not remember. 
That is the man who does not immediately see the need to tell the truth; he does not immediately see the need to do that. It is a most unusual situation—that he continues to get this far into his political scene without yet being shopped for it. He has been shopped only for being a bungler but the underlying problem this gentleman has is that he does not want to tell the truth. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 The Labour Minister can say what he likes about those issues but he needs to consider that this Budget will be overshadowed by the fracas around the Telecom leak and now David Cunliffe the Minister of Communications being subject to a Securities Commission investigation. In fact it prompted a thought—[ 
Interruption 
]—the Cunliffe Budget that is right; his first his best and I suspect his last. In a way though Dr Cullen deserves it I think. 
It did make me think about the inquiries that this Government has had to deal with this year. I will just run through a quick list for the benefit of Parliament and the public who are listening. This year there has been a police inquiry into David Benson-Pope; a Companies Act inquiry into David Parker; a police investigation into the Labour Party’s election expenses which concluded that Heather Simpson would be prosecuted if she went before a court; a State Services Commission inquiry into the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet which we have debated today; and on Friday the Securities Commission initiated an inquiry into Government processes for protecting confidential commercial information and in the next day or two it will almost certainly start to investigate David Cunliffe’s statements that as an insider affected the Telecom share price the other day. That is six inquiries by statutory agencies into potentially serious offences committed by people who are in or working for the current Labour Government. 
Simon Power 
: It’s one every 3 weeks. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I thought it was one a month but the member is right; it is one every 3 weeks. It is that kind of shadiness and growing untrustworthiness that will cloud the public’s view of the Budget. All of those things are elements and symptoms of their mistrust of Dr Cullen. The key public reaction to this Budget will be that they do not trust Dr Cullen’s statements that New Zealand cannot afford tax cuts. When he says it now they just do not believe him. What compounds that lack of belief is the growing understanding among the public that Labour operates in the shade says things that it knows are not true but says them anyway and is now getting caught regularly doing it by the statutory agencies of law and order. It is all part of a bigger picture. And Dr Cullen will be telling New Zealanders something that is not correct. He can afford tax cuts and by the time he gets up to give his speech tomorrow he will wish that he had been giving them because he does not have much else to say. 
The other problem he has is that the public now do not trust the Labour Government with spending public money. The public like Working for Families but almost everything else the Government initiates now they regard as wasting public money. So when Dr Cullen gets up tomorrow and announces 23 different initiatives that spread $3.2 million each over 4 years they will think it is a waste of time—just like the reception of Steve Maharey’s announcement about giving schools $9 million over 4 years to fix bullying. That will be enough to employ the bureaucrat who will organise the workshops and the PowerPoint presentation and write the strategy. That is the end of it; it is all gone and the public know that. 
What will underlie this Budget tomorrow is not so much its boredom although it will be boring not so much that it will do nothing for growth although it will not do anything for growth nor that it means we will fall further behind Australia because it certainly means we will but that the public just will not trust anything Dr Cullen says. That is why my colleague is right—Dr Cullen is now a dead man walking. The one person in the Labour caucus who knows that for sure is Helen Clark. That is why she has already said she does not know whether he will be there again. Of course the shame is that tomorrow Dr Cullen may not get to give a valedictory. He may get to pretend that it is a vigorous new visionary Budget transforming the economy and I think he will try that but it will probably be his last Budget. That would not be a bad thing for New Zealand. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure today to rise to speak in the general debate on behalf of New Zealand First because I have to say that tomorrow will be a blue-ribbon day for the New Zealand Police—that is for sure. We can compare the joy elation and satisfaction that exists on these cross benches with the scepticism pessimism moaning whingeing and bitching that we hear coming from Simon Power’s quarters. [ 
Interruption 
] I withdraw the word; I did not mean to call Simon Power a bitch. 
Simon Power 
: Point of order— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member has withdrawn. 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The member has just said it twice. He is quite entitled to call me any range of things within the Standing Orders but reference to that particular word twice in the course of his speech is not only outside the Standing Orders but I would think quite frankly is grossly offensive to most people present in the House. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member will withdraw. 
RON MARK 
: I withdraw if I have offended the member’s sensibility. “Bitch” I would assert Madam Speaker is a female dog. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. I warn the member. He knows that when he withdraws and apologises he is not to repeat the indiscretion for which he has been called to withdraw and apologise. I ask the member now to withdraw and apologise. 
RON MARK 
: I withdraw and apologise. Is it not interesting that the people who are complaining who are casting the most pessimism and doubt and who are trying their level best to undermine the morale of the police right now are National members who claim the National Party as the law and order party of this nation? 
 Let us talk about the facts of the matter. The fact is that National Governments slashed police numbers. The fact is that a National Government promised to increase the police strength by 900 officers and did that by merging the Ministry of Transport with the police force and calling those traffic officers crime fighters—which clearly was not the case. The fact is that a National Government gave the police a computer worth $200 million and then asked them to seek cost recovery through staffing reductions—and that cost about 400 police. The fact is that it was not until Jim Bolger that National leader with vision signed up to a coalition agreement with New Zealand First and pledged to reinstate 500 police officers in the force that that increase in staffing happened during the coalition period with New Zealand First and National. 
That pattern of support for the police has continued now with New Zealand First securing not 1000 but 1250 new staff. Do members remember the whining that came from the Opposition side when Mr Power said: “Oh no it’s not going to be 1000. It’s going to be fewer because there’s going to be non-sworn people.”? What did we find? He was right—the number was not 1000; it was 1250. 
But wait—there is more. Now we are bringing on stream about 30 specialist forensic people—people who are graduates from university who have seen  
CSI: 
Crime Scene Investigation 
 like it as a career option and like that sort of work. They are lining up to enlist in the police force to become New Zealand’s—I guess Auckland’s—CSI team. Is that not great? But Mr Power is not happy. He has to have something to denigrate the police with—to rubbish them. So he stands there saying that it is not going to happen. 
Well here is a challenge to Mr Power. If we do not achieve the target that is fine; he may well be vindicated in his criticisms. But if we do I ask the member whether he will resign from Parliament. Will he put his money where his mouth is? Will he accept responsibility by resigning for denigrating the police for denigrating the commissioner and for denigrating the fine men and women out there who are trying to do the job? I do not hear him say “Yes”. He simply laughs because he has aspirations of being a Cabinet Minister. Well the chances are that that might not happen. 
New Zealand First is encouraged by this Government’s commitment to supporting its supply and confidence agreement. That agreement goes one step further. We are not finished with only about 1250 police. We have an agreement to achieve ratios comparable with those in Australia by 2010 and our figures put that at around an extra 1640 police. So on one side of the House we have people who are moaning whingeing and whining—about not being in Government; that is the real crux of the matter—and on the other side of the House we have people who are getting on striking deals getting commitments getting funding implementing policies and making it happen. 
Who are the winners? The winners are the men and women who every day put themselves on the line to protect our communities. I tell National members to go and talk to police officers. One of the things coming through that gives me great confidence we will achieve those recruitment figures is the flow-on effect of officers knowing that stress levels and workloads will be reduced and that crime cases will get more scrutiny because more people are on stream. That in itself is giving an incentive to officers—who might well have thought of giving the job away—to stay on so that they can bring those new recruits through mentor them and make them good productive people. 
There are some issues that Labour and New Zealand First will continue to discuss and one of those will be the timed run for potential recruits. I do not think that it is sensible for a 37-year-old woman to be assessed on a standard stricter than that of the SAS or the Special Tactics Group. Mr Power is laughing. I challenge Mr Power to come and do the timed run with me. He should show everyone that as a law and order spokesperson who wants to lead by example he is capable of doing that run. I ask Mr Power to pass the run test with me despite the fact that he is probably half my age and then we will judge him by how he walks and not by how he talks. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 Members will be interested to know that it is 8 months to the day since New Zealand went to the polls and elected this current Labour-led Government for its historic third term. Since then the community is not unsurprised that the achievements of the Government could not be more starkly defined than by comparison with the failings of the Opposition. National is certainly muddled and we are used to that. We hear some pretty befuddled comments in the House and we are now quietly finding out how much Mr Key and Dr Brash have been cuddling up to their strange religious Exclusive Brethren friends. 
What has the Government been doing in the meantime? Well it has been getting on with business. For example our active approach to social assistance with case managers increasingly focused on supporting people into sustainable work rather than simply processing benefits has yielded results that speak for themselves. There are now 2.1 million New Zealanders in work—the highest level of employment ever recorded. According to last week’s household labour force survey 313000 more New Zealanders are in jobs since this Government took office. That is approximately 135 additional New Zealanders in jobs each day every day since Labour came to office. That is 50000 extra New Zealanders in work each year under Labour. 
But wait there is more. Our labour force participation rate is at its highest ever at 68.5 percent. And we have the second-lowest unemployment rate in the OECD at 3.9 percent. The current OECD average is almost double ours at 6.3 percent. By comparison I mention those countries to which Dr Brash and his friends so often look for direction. The United States ranks 9th in the OECD with an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent; the UK is 10th with unemployment at 4.9 percent; and Australia is 11th with unemployment at 5 percent. I tell Dr Brash that maybe the grass is not so green over there after all. 
But wait there is even more. The number of New Zealanders receiving an unemployment benefit has fallen by 72.4 percent since we took office in 1999. The total number of beneficiaries has fallen by nearly 30 percent over the same period. The impact of these kinds of results on the lives of ordinary Kiwis should never be underestimated. When Labour took office in 1999 over 17 percent of the working-age population were on some kind of benefit. Today that figure is down to 11 percent. Likewise nearly 7 percent of our working-age population was receiving an unemployment benefit in 1999. Today the figure is 1.8 percent. All this means that the number of children living in benefit-dependent households has dropped by 20 percent. These are significant changes—significant for individuals for communities and for our country. 
I am really proud that these changes are being delivered by a Labour-led Government. Pride is something that Labour has. We are not ashamed to celebrate New Zealand’s sporting and cultural successes our creativity our unique heritage our cosmopolitan lifestyle our great outdoors or our ability to live largely at peace with each other in a multicultural society. That is why it grows so tiresome that all those people on the other side of the Chamber can do is criticise. But that seems to be the National Party way. To those members every initiative is flawed and every achievement is derisory. To them it is all downside. The grass is always greener somewhere else and almost always in Australia. I do not think many New Zealanders can recall in recent years or in their lifetime a political party or at least a political party’s leadership so willing to bag and put down their own country and their own countrymen and women. They take delight in every study that does not place New Zealand first and greater delight if they can paint New Zealand and New Zealanders as failures. 
Over the Christmas break we saw the unsavoury situation of the Leader of the Opposition slathering in hope of a recession. In truly bizarre style we saw Dr Brash standing in a hydro lake praying for a drought so that National might inflict power outages on our population this winter. In the last week alone that shrill crescendo of “life across the Tasman is better” has grown again. I say that if that is the way the National Party sees it and if Don Brash John Key Bill English and Gerry Brownlee would rather live in Australia then let us help them go. Several travel agents have sales on at the moment. I know that one-way tickets to Australia are going for $180 and I think that is a steal. I am happy to buy every member of the National Party caucus—every member—a one-way ticket to Oz. The only proviso is of course that they stay there. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 I say to the Hon David Benson-Pope who has just resumed his seat that the only way Labour has any chance of winning the next election is by trying to get rid of this Opposition. That will not be very easy. I ask him what pride there is in someone who bullies children in his charge. That member stands up in this House and talks about pride and he has been shown to bully girls and boys in his charge which is a disgrace. 
 Tomorrow Dr Cullen will read his seventh Budget to this Parliament. We would think it should be one of the most important days of the year for the Government—the day of the Budget. This year it has been totally overshadowed by the bungling around a leak that has wiped over $2 billion off the equity owned by ordinary men and women in this country. It has been overshadowed by the fact that the Minister of Communications David Cunliffe has been referred to the Securities Commission for a possible insider knowledge leak through the wholesale news service to wholesalers in our stock market that wiped another $200 million off the equity owned by ordinary men and women in New Zealand. Those scandals will totally overshadow the reading of Dr Cullen’s seventh Budget tomorrow. 
Dr Michael Cullen may also explain why his New Zealand Superannuation Fund has been the biggest seller of Telecom shares in recent times. Something has a fairly bad odour about it there; we cannot help but wonder whether some of the people in this Labour Government might have said things either advertently or inadvertently to some of their mates involved with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund that led to a rather large sell-down of the shares in Telecom held by that fund. Dr Cullen may care to advise us what has gone on there. 
Only a few days ago the Australian Budget was read by the centre-right Liberal Government of Australia. It announced tax cuts and everyone said that would be great for Australia for the economy and for Australian people. They said that was a great way to attract more skilled people to Australia. Everyone said that Budget was great because it made Australia more competitive. And what will happen tomorrow here in New Zealand? Why do New Zealanders not deserve that kind of thing? Why do New Zealanders not deserve to have the chance to say it is great that their hard work has finally been recognised by their Government sharing some of the dividend with them and cutting their taxes? But oh no this Labour Government will not do that. It now collects 50 percent more tax in dollar of the day terms— 
Craig Foss 
: What? 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: —50 percent more tax than when it came into office just over 6 years ago. The Government is collecting half as much tax again as it collected then. 
Dr Cullen says we cannot reduce taxes and people earning $60000 a year should pay our top tax rate—despite the fact that that rate cuts in far earlier than in almost any other OECD country. But what is absurd about it is this: Dr Cullen says on the one hand people on $60000 a year are so wealthy that they should pay our top tax rate yet on the other hand this Labour Government says those people are so poor that if they have three children they should receive in benefits a year excluding the accommodation supplement $6752 of handouts. How can the Government say on the one hand that those people are so wealthy they should pay the top tax rate and on the other hand if they have three dependent children they are so poor that we have to give them back more than $100 a week in benefits? That is absurd! The Government says those people are so wealthy that they must pay the top tax rate yet it also says they are so poor that the Government is to give them over $6700 a year in handouts and benefits. That is just absurd! 
Do members know what one of the most disgusting things will be in tomorrow’s Budget? It is that the Working for Families package looks after New Zealanders who earn from about $40000 to $60000 or more of income a year and who have kids. But the people who have really missed out because Labour knew helping them would not buy it any more votes are the women on the domestic purposes benefit earning $10000 to $25000 of income a year. Those women are trying to get off the domestic purposes benefit—and this rapacious Labour Government takes 92 percent of every extra dollar they earn. It has crapped on its own supporters. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 Last weekend two significant events took place in this country. One took place at Upper Hutt; the other somewhere else in New Zealand. One was a conference on justice issues run by the Prison Fellowship; the other was a regional conference of the National Party where the leader Don Brash spoke on law and order. I will take the time to congratulate the organisers Kim Workman and the Prison Fellowship on their conference. They had a distinguished line-up of speakers speaking on the very difficult issue of prison muster numbers in this country. Don Brash on the other hand was speaking to the party faithful—well I guess they are at the moment; they soon may not be—and he was saying things like: “National supports the justice system.” it “advocates” it “supports” it “believes” it “knows” and it “proposes a focus”. There was not one thing on policy or what National would do. 
I have to go back to 2004 to look at National Party policy in this area. The policy at that time stated that National would abolish parole and would be prepared to accept 3000 more prisoners going to prison—at a cost of about $1.5 billion of capital; $500 million a year. That policy comes from the party that we just heard Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith say would give tax cuts to everyone. I cannot reconcile that contradiction; neither can the wise people of New Zealand—neither can the people who spoke at this restorative justice conference such as Dr Warren Young Professor Pratt Judge David Carruthers and Bonnie Robinson from the Salvation Army. They are all learned people with a genuine commitment to try to move New Zealand ahead in this difficult area of corrections management. 
I acknowledge that Simon Power came along to the conference for a day. He was honest enough to admit that he did learn some things. I hope he takes that wise judgment back to his caucus and speaks to his leader Dr Don Brash to try to change his view in this area although I do not hold out much hope—of course I do not hold out much hope for Don Brash either. 
We are moving ahead as a Government in this area. We have a number of things going on because it is embarrassing and shameful to have New Zealand locking people up at the second-highest rate in the Western World. This happens in a country where most of us know one another. We are 4 million people living in small communities caring and looking after one another—or we should be. 
There are some visionary people in the National Party. We do not hear from them often though. We could take for example one Tau Henare. He knows that there are a lot of people in prison who do not actually belong in prison. Their crimes do not actually require that they should be locked up like the other prisoners. Don Brash tried to paint a picture of us letting people out of jails. We are not doing that. What we are proposing and thinking and talking about is that the 30 percent of people who are in prison for fewer than 12 weeks may better serve their penalty and repay their debt to society and to victims in ways other than just being locked up in expensive prisons. That is what we are talking about—and Tau Henare agrees with us. 
Who else in the National Party agrees with us? Well we have a very learned new member who is not allowed to speak from Marlborough. He too thinks we should have a fresh approach—along with all the people who were at that conference at Upper Hutt—not at the regional National Party conference though because people attending that conference were fed a load of garbage. Colin King obviously cannot have been at that conference because he said: “I am not suggesting we go soft on crime but argue that there is a problem when as a nation we lock up criminals at a rate second only to the United States.” He went on to say: “We must look at a totally new way of dealing with crime while still insisting that if you do the crime you will do the time.” Well I agree. Colin King along with the Government thinks that there should be a fresh way of looking at this problem. 
Simon Power 
: It’s hardly a revelation. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: And I hope that Simon Power Don Brash and most of the people in the National Party who would like to see 3000 more people locked up in prisons will look at the lessons coming from the conference in Upper Hutt not from the National Party regional conference. 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 That was a public broadcast from Damien O’Connor the Minister who is currently overseeing the construction of the “Milton Hilton” just south of Dunedin which is the most expensive prison to be built in New Zealand’s history. 
Tomorrow will be known forever more as the day of the Cunliffe Budget—the one that got away. It is the Budget that was to have a flagship announcement but that was leaked 3 weeks earlier by someone from within the Beehive. I read the documents put out by the State Services Commissioner and frankly I say that the document actually begs more questions than it answers. The report requires one major question to be asked which is how it happened at all. If one reads the document one can see it is clear that although the State Services Commissioner wants to make this look like an extremely simple chain of events the reality is probably quite different. 
Some aspects of the report are very very strange indeed. My colleagues Bill English and Gerry Brownlee who have spoken before me covered some of the major issues but I would like to turn to an exchange between the Minister of State Services Annette King and Mark Prebble. On 3 May as a result of the leak Annette King got on the phone and said to Mark Prebble that she wanted an inquiry. But what is very strange is that the Minister did not confirm this by letter until some 6 days after that. Her letter to Mark Prebble is dated 9 May. Some 6 days after the phone call the Minister confirmed the terms of reference and the nature of that discussion. 
Members know that if Ministers want to turn round letters they can do so in a matter of minutes. That was not the case here so I think the Minister needs to explain. The letter was not complex; it is only a couple of hundred words long but attached to it are the terms of reference. What is strange is that Mark Prebble was quoting those terms of reference days earlier in correspondence with people on the subject. So obviously Mark Prebble has a photographic memory or can recite text from an oral submission. It seems odd that he was able to have the terms of reference and act upon them before the Minister had formally given them to him. Surely the Minister or the ministerial office cannot forget to write a letter that confirms a discussion. What this says to me is that there was some sneaky little arrangement behind the scenes to not confirm the actual terms of reference and what would go on. I think the Minister needs to explain what the strategy was here because it simply does not stack up that some 6 days later she chose to confirm the nature of that discussion. 
One of the other points that I think is quite hilarious though is that when this issue of a leaked document was a matter of concern David Cunliffe again put himself into the fray. At the time when all focus was on this one leaked document David Cunliffe is subject to another paragraph in Mark Prebble’s report. Mark Prebble notes that again—for a second time—the document went missing and was found somewhat haplessly behind a photocopier. This can only indicate that David Cunliffe’s office was somehow in a state of chaos. One can imagine the flurry of documents being copied left right and centre. I do not know how someone manages to drop one extra copy down behind the photocopier but that itself although it may seem a small issue is perhaps indicative of the way that office is being run. So while David Cunliffe is considering his new role as a market analyst/commentator he might like to think about how his office is being run. 
This week we are seeing another charm offensive blown to bits—that is the charm offensive that Trevor Mallard was trying to inflict on the business community. He was trying to look like a resurrected Minister who was interested in business issues. One speech actually had Trevor Mallard saying that we should celebrate wealth creators. If that is not a road to Damascus conversion I do not know what is. But yesterday in the House we saw all of that blown to bits. Under pressure from questions from the Opposition the Minister just blew to bits and decided that he would dish dirt which is basically reverting to type. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 The focus of our debate today is on leadership. After a week of Opposition bungling and botch-ups I want to talk about another little starlet who is lurking in the leader’s shadow and who the Opposition needs to be very mindful of. From dead man walking to Pakeha woman squawking—yes I am talking about the actions of Judith Collins on the Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice North visit on 15 May. I was there and I took deep offence at what I observed. I am talking about “Calamity Collins”. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member must always refer to all members by their correct name. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I withdraw and apologise. I am talking about Judith Collins. The incident was no surprise to any of us in Government. The overt deliberate and stage-managed actions of that member and her subsequent bathing in the media light show a member who is absolutely desperate for power at any price. 
We received an email on 4 May stating: “We agreed that the centres would be told we did not want a powhiri if women MPs were seated at the back. Has this been relayed to those organising the visit?”. Who agreed? It was not us. The issue never came to the select committee and I personally would have taken offence at that suggestion. Members should be real about this. I knew there would be a powhiri; it was on the programme. 
Since that member’s visit to Kelvin Road School her stance has provoked healthy debate and plenty of attention. I met Maria Tiini the Regional Director of Te Puni Kokiri on 2 December after that incident to seek assurance that I as a Pakeha woman MP in Rotorua had never offended Te Arawa. I was advised of the difference between kawa and policy and what happened at that Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice North visit was departmental policy. At that time we were not aware of the protocol on that marae. We were on a marae and Judith Collins does not seem to understand that. Her attempts to negotiate or arrange protocol went terribly wrong. She tried to dictate where members could sit. Maori will adjust protocol if it is negotiated in good favour. 
I ask members whether her actions were those of a role model for women. I think those in the National Party need to sit up and take notice. Mrs Collins is an example of everything that is wrong with the National Party. She shows two faces she is inconsistent and she is a reflection of the absolute lack of leadership and control in that caucus. Judith Collins was busting for a rumble that day. She was clumsily hiding behind the belief that she had organised the protocol. This was never going to be a no-surprises visit and I have not spoken out until now. If Judith Collins cannot take the heat she should get out of the kitchen. We stood outside the marae and she knew there would be a powhiri. Why did she not go away if she knew she was going to cause offence? 
This is the self-same member who overstepped the line of decency with her David Benson-Pope allegations. It is the same Judith Collins who said to the  
Sunday Star-Times 
: “I’d often be in tears saying goodbye to the bobby calves. I couldn’t do it—I’m just a big softy wimp.” Well her tears in our select committee were not those of a wimp; they were the tears of a woman with calamity all around her. That woman shed crocodile tears that day. Will the real woman express herself? Is this the woman who was relentless ruthless and determined in her exposure of David Benson-Pope and in her attempts to undermine Lianne Dalziel? We will not forget that. Bullies like to dish out dirt and abuse but cannot take a challenge. There was no wimp there. 
Referring back to the marae whether boots were on or off was irrelevant to us. That member’s gloves were on and when things turned to custard she went to the media and bleated. Judith Collins walked to the front and sat down absolutely deliberately and she stuck to the chair like a piece of Velcro. Brownie Rauwherohas already spoken out. He was not at all upset about where she sat; he was absolutely upset about the MPs’ actions during a haka performed by children at the event and that was what made him respond. He said that those children who came from troubled backgrounds were showing their mana and standing tall during that performance. Those women MPs let themselves and their colleagues down. It was a disgrace. 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 As we approach Budget day the Maori Party has been asking questions of anyone who will listen as to whether the Budget will make a difference. Will tomorrow’s Budget improve the cultural social and economic wealth of the nation? A boom for whom? The irony is of course that although United Future Progressive the Greens and New Zealand First have been asked for an input Labour has deliberately ignored the fact denied or just plain forgotten that tangata whenua may also have something worthy to contribute to the Budget. Why should we be surprised when the Government produced a Budget last year that failed even to include the word “Maori”? 
The Maori Party is committed to a true and accurate account of the economic picture of our nation for the connection of truth and accuracy is particularly important. Whose truth are we telling if we are counting only part of the picture? How accurate can predictions be if only a partial account of wealth is conveyed? The million-dollar question for all economists and analysts is why if GDP is up Aotearoa is so down. Why are we experiencing crippling rates of poverty escalating trends of convictions unprecedented growth in police numbers and the breaking of all international records in child abuse and youth suicides? Where is the pleasure in evaluating the impact of new technologies if they are accompanied by jobless growth—growth of economic activity without any subsequent impact on employment rates? 
Another riddle to stifle all laughter is that the more fossil fuels we burn and the more greenhouse gases we emit the greater GDP grows. The problem is not with GDP per se. GDP was only ever intended as a measure of activity—as a quantitative count of the goods and services used to make the economy grow. One would think that no politician in his or her right mind would argue that higher poverty rates dirty air increased stress or the loss of first language speakers are signs of a successful nation yet that is exactly what GDP does. It measures the quantity of the fishing haul without even stopping to count the cost of the destruction of the seabed. It counts the profit of felling logs without assessing the damage to the eco-environment and measuring what is left behind. The Maori Party knows that just because one does not count something that does not mean it does not count. The Maori Party also knows and believes that some of the things that are counted as happens with GDP do not count in making this society of ours a better place for all of us. 
For years New Zealanders have watched MPs turn up to give certificates to community workers talk about how much they value a safe neighbourhood and praise the volunteer workforce who care for the elderly the young the sick the poor the vulnerable and the lonely. Yet that volunteer work is never included in the national accounts. It is time to make a difference and to make it count. We need a dramatic shift in the political vocabulary to take account of all those who are locked out of the Budget sidelined from the discussions left behind and alienated. That includes the Maori Party which is the only independent Maori voice in this House. 
Maori know better than most the impact of measuring things right. Tangata whenua live by kaupapa that remind us that if we are not caring for Papatuanuku mother Earth and if we are not feeding the wairua and sustaining our spiritual growth then our mauri our life force will be compromised. We understand that the revival of te reo Maori te reo rangatira and the advancement of matauranga knowledge will not only ensure the survival of the people as Maori but also increase our nation’s prosperity and cultural capital. 
We know that indicators already exist as stated in a social report of the Te Hoe Nuku Roa study undertaken at Massey University. That study assesses a range of quality outcomes that provide a wider assessment than GDP. Currently these frameworks are seen only as interesting additions—add-ons—to conventional measures. While GDP is misused to represent far more than it was ever intended to these social indicators are reserved in separate asides that can be pushed away. The Maori Party wants to bring to the core a framework of indicators that account for our human social and cultural assets alongside our produced and manufactured wealth. At the centre of all our policy thinking is the genuine progress index as a measurement of our pathway to a truly healthy and prosperous society. 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 Tomorrow is Budget day. Tomorrow New Zealand’s Bledisloe Cup” for economic growth for well-being and for keeping our best and brightest in the country will be gifted to Australia. The first half of the game came last week: the score was 4-0 to Australia because Australia has had 4 years of tax cuts—$45 billion worth being the most recent announcement. But New Zealanders will get no personal tax cuts whatsoever tomorrow in the Budget. The “Bledisloe Cup” for competitiveness will again be gifted to Australia tomorrow. The World Competitiveness Index saw New Zealand fall in place from No. 16 to No. 22 and Australia move up from No. 9 to No. 6. We are losing to Australia again and again. The “Bledisloe Cup” for tax efficiency and GDP will again be gifted to Australia tomorrow. About 6 years ago Australian after-tax incomes were 20 percent higher than those in New Zealand. Come tomorrow they will be 33 percent higher—and that was before the recent Australian Budget. 
I would like to talk about some numbers. So far $2.6 billion worth of wealth and confidence has been lost since Cabinet started leaking and the Minister of Communications started speaking. For those who have invested in Telecom over the past few months $2.14 per share has been lost. Another number is $200 million which is the amount that was knocked off the wealth of New Zealanders with investments in Telecom because the Minister of Communications decided that he knew best how to run the dividend policy for New Zealand’s largest listed company. 
The Minister of Communications and the Prime Minister just could not help themselves. Every time they opened their mouths decided they knew best and decided to share their business acumen and wide-ranging commercial and real-world experience with the New Zealand public the share price of Telecom dropped another 20c or 30c. There is a great saying in the financial markets that “the trend is your friend”. If the Prime Minister and the Minister had just shut up perhaps New Zealanders would have been able to avoid some of those losses. 
The invoices for Cabinet’s leaks and for Labour’s incompetence and incredible commercial naivety are about to be sent out to New Zealanders. They will arrive over the next few days when broker share statements and valuations are sent to those people who have been trying to save for their retirement and build up nest eggs. Trusts and charities that had been doing the right thing will have to pay about 20 percent of what they thought their Telecom investments were worth because Cabinet started leaking and the Minister started speaking. 
Those numbers—$200 million $2.6 billion—are huge so for those listening on the radio let me bring it down to pretty simple numbers. For someone who had about $1000 worth of Telecom shares a few months ago before Cabinet started leaking and the Minister started speaking those shares are now worth about $800. That is a loss of about $200. For those who had started to build up a bit of a nest egg for retirement and who had about $10000 of Telecom shares a few months ago those shares—after Cabinet started leaking and the Minister started speaking—are now worth $8000 which is a loss of $2000. 
For goodness’ sake we in the Finance and Expenditure Committee have spent the last two meetings talking about KiwiSaver. Well what is the point when the Minister has recently shown such incompetence in absolutely annihilating what good Kiwis have tried to save? Kiwis were just trying to do the right thing; they were just trying to save. 
Let us have a little look at this hall of shame of incompetence and incredible commercial naivety. First of all the Minister apparently dropped a confidential very sensitive Cabinet paper behind a photocopier and it ended up in a smoko room. Well let us think that through for a moment. It also begs the question once we finally deal with this issue of what other confidential papers may be lurking behind unsuspecting photocopy machines around the Cabinet Office. Adding to our list after the Minister leaked he held a press conference and gave the press a statement that fessed up a little bit. But it showed his incredible naivety. He is totally oblivious of how the financial markets work. He said that the New Zealand market was closed—quite correct—but that the Australian market was still open. Australians were still trading Telecom shares! The list of shame gets longer by the day. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 For those listening who may be confused by the speeches they have heard this afternoon we can confirm that National will of course vote for the telecommunications package that it has spent the whole general debate opposing. 
I start by saying how nice it was to hear Katherine Rich speaking in the general debate. Katherine Rich who is so often muzzled by her own party—in the fear that she might say something liberal—often has very good things to say and I welcome her back to speaking in the House. 
It has not been a very good couple of weeks for the Opposition. It started with Judith Collins deciding that standing up for herself at a powhiri and sitting in the front row would win votes for the National Party. I was on the Social Services Committee in the last term and I visited youth justice facilities. It is not like going to the head office of the Inland Revenue Department. For the troubled young people who are there it is their home. The people who run those facilities do a lot of preparation and make quite an effort and I cannot imagine how difficult it is for them to organise those young people into doing a formal powhiri. They make a considerable effort to teach young people the values and traditions behind those customs. So when people go to such places they know they will not always do so on their terms. 
I cannot believe the arrogance of Judith Collins who thinks she can put up a challenge like that during a powhiri and not expect the challenge to be given back to her by the kaumatua. It was fine that she put up the challenge—that was her decision—but then she cried and huffed off with her handbag because the kaumatua stood up and challenged her straight back by saying that he was insulted. To describe her behaviour would be to use a word that we are not allowed to use in the House. I say to Judith Collins that she might want to explain why she is allowed to be offended by having to sit in the second row at a powhiri but a kaumatua is not allowed to be offended by the way in which she chooses to demonstrate her opposition to that. If Judith Collins was speaking up for Maori women everywhere then why was it that the Maori women at the powhiri were the most upset and offended by what she did? [ 
Interruption 
] Yes Judith Collins is a really good feminist—she is really big on that! 
Is it not interesting how Judith Collins was muzzled? During the first question time after that hearing of the Social Services Committee a question from Judith Collins to Georgina Beyer the chair of the Social Services Committee was pulled. Judith Collins was muzzled—and muddled. It just goes to show how divided the National caucus is. All its members are on their own paths and doing their own thing. 
Simon Power constantly goes on about New Zealanders needing to have confidence in the police force. I say to Mr Power that he should stop running it down. He is the biggest critic of the police force—often unfairly. He is always in the media running it down and then he complains about how people do not have confidence in it. I tell members that after Mr Ron Mark’s contribution we had a phone call from Mrs Cammell in Naenae who is listening to the debate. She said she is delighted with the announcement of $500 million for extra police. Her son is joining the police force this month and he is living his dream. That is what this Budget will be about: real issues facing real New Zealanders. 
Telecommunications is only one issue that National has backed down on. When the package was announced Maurice Williamson came up with the position that we all expected the National Party to take which was that it did not support it. Then all of a sudden it flip-flopped and now it does support the package. We have just heard a number of speeches that said how bad the package was but we have also heard that the National Party not only will vote for the bill going to the select committee but according to Mr Williamson probably will vote for it progressing all the way to completion. 
I turn to tax cuts. We finally have recognition of what Labour was saying all through the election campaign which was that the tax cuts that National was promising would not be affordable and that when it got to try to implement them it would have to cut social services. We have had a press release from Dr Brash saying that National would review its tax policy: “We probably can’t afford to do what we said before the election.” 
Regarding race relations who knows where the National Party stands on the issue of the Maori seats? Prior to the election it was all for getting rid of them. After the election Mr Brownlee said he was not really sure. Now National members are saying they are standing firm on that one. New Zealanders are no clearer on where National stands on race relations particularly following the muzzling of Judith Collins after the powhiri debacle. 
I turn to relations with the United States. The National Party now supports the nuclear-free policy that it is was so adamant it did not support—until it realised that the public supported it. It is no wonder that New Zealanders have no idea about not only what the National Party stands for but whether its members are rowing in the same direction. Don Brash’s days are numbered. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Tabling of Documents 
Telecom 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I seek leave to table a document that shows the collapse in Telecom’s share price since Cabinet started leaking and the Minister of Communications started speaking. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. 
Law Practitioners (Corporatisation) Amendment Bill 
Discharge 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I move  
That the order of the day for the second reading of the Law Practitioners (Corporatisation) Amendment Bill be discharged. 
Motion agreed to. 
Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 3 May. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 It is with real pleasure that I stand today to support the very effective member of Parliament for Invercargill Eric Roy on his Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. This Labour Government is making an absolute hash of marine reserve creation all over New Zealand. Whether in Kaka Point in Southland or Great Barrier Island in Auckland it is hard to find an area of New Zealand that the Government has not made a complete mess of in terms of consultation with its communities. Yet what we find with this Government is that for all Labour’s promises in 1999 about marine reserves it has made little progress. 
If members think back to 1999 they might remember that Labour said 10 percent of New Zealand’s marine environment would be set aside for protection. Yet 7 years later that has been achieved in less than 1 percent of New Zealand’s marine environment. I also draw to the House’s attention the abysmal progress that has been made in respect of the Marine Reserves Bill. Eric Roy is doing the hard yards for the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter. The Marine Reserves Bill was introduced and referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee in October 2002. That is more than 3½ years ago. Labour has a bill on which submissions were heard over 3 or 4 years ago that has still not been reported back by the select committee. What sort of mickey mouse Government do we have? 
Earlier this year last year and the year before that National attempted to move motions in the select committee in order to achieve some progress. It was Labour and—can members believe it—the Green Party that opposed our getting on with the business and reforming the Marine Reserves Act of 1971. There is consensus in this Parliament that that 1971 Act is out of date and needs to be updated substantially. Under the 1971 Act the sole purpose of a marine reserve is scientific. I think most of us today would say that marine reserves have a wider purpose than that. We want to have marine reserves so that people can simply enjoy the marine environment in its wild and natural state. We also want to have marine reserves because it is true that they strengthen the recreational fishing in adjacent waters. Yet again we are disappointed that Labour has made absolutely no progress on that legislation. Labour needs to be held to account for that. 
My colleague Eric Roy proposes that at the front end of the process for establishing marine reserves we inject consultation with the actual community. Has anyone ever heard of such a radical idea? Fancy having to talk to the local people! I know that for the Department of Conservation under Chris Carter talking with the minions the lowlife the people in communities is not something that Labour is used to. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Tell us about the long-term community communication plan. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I did not know there was such a thing as a long-term communication plan. 
Steve Chadwick 
: The principle of community communication. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Oh! The member for Rotorua has suddenly woken up and is in favour of long-term community communication plans. What Labour is proposing in the area of local government is the most bureaucratic expensive bull that I have heard of and my good friend Nathan Guy who is a new member of the House and a local councillor knows that it is a consultation farce. National will not back that sort of rubbish; we will back the sorts of sensible measures that Eric Roy put forward which reflect the fact that people actually care where marine reserves are situated. They want to have a say. That is where Labour is so misguided; it wants to see people buried in bureaucratic nonsense. 
Has anyone ever heard of anything as stupid as a long-term community communication plan? Does the member for Rotorua think we have the sorts of residents out there who want to be having meetings on long-term community communication plans for goodness’ sake? I tell that member who is so arrogant and so disconnected from her community that people want to be consulted about marine reserves. They want be engaged with that issue early on. So I say to the member that I hope she will be supporting Eric Roy’s bill. 
Steve Chadwick 
: We are! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I am very pleased about that. That gives me some hope but perhaps the member for Rotorua might explain why the Government has been stalling on the necessary reforms of the Marine Reserves Act for 4 long years. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 Madam Speaker— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I should have called the member previously so now she will need to seek the leave of the House to correct that. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I seek leave to speak on behalf of the Hon Chris Carter who had 8 minutes left to speak at the close of debate on the last members’ day. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker.  
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: It was my fault Dr Smith. I should have called the member previously. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Could you just clarify for the House that when a person has 8 minutes of speaking time left and is not available to be in the House that time can automatically be transferred to another member. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Yes it can be but I was not advised of that. I did not realise. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. Steve Chadwick has 8 minutes of speaking time. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I am pleased to notify the Opposition that the Government will be supporting the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. How could we not with that word “consultation” in the title? 
New Zealand has a biologically rich and complex marine environment. Our exclusive economic zone is the fourth-largest in the world—15 times larger than our land area and approximately the size of the continent of Australia. In effect we are a marine nation. More than 15000 marine species exist and are found in our waters including more marine mammal species and other marine species than anywhere else in the world. This Labour-led Government is committed to providing better protection to that vast marine landscape. I congratulate Eric Roy on his member’s bill because it seems to be committed to improving the way we seek to provide better mechanisms to do just that—to protect our marine environment. 
The Government has a Marine Reserves Bill before the Local Government and Environment Committee which I chair. The Marine Reserves Bill contains many of the provisions in Mr Roy’s bill. In addition the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter together with the Minister of Fisheries Jim Anderton launched a new Marine Protected Areas Policy last year. Perhaps that fact had escaped the member Nick Smith. The policy is designed to foster more consultation and collaboration between key stakeholders local government iwi recreational and commercial fishers conservationists and central government in determining which marine areas we should protect. Again that is a process that is remarkably similar in idea to this bill. Our committee may well decide to incorporate Mr Roy’s bill with the existing bill. That is an option well worth considering. 
Why are marine reserves so important to us? Well they provide the most comprehensive long-term legal protection of any protection tool for the marine environment. A wide range of human activities and impacts such as fishing discharges structures and pests can be prohibited or managed in an integrated way within marine reserves. Marine reserves aim to protect marine life within them in as natural a way as possible. There are now 28 marine reserves so I take exception to Nick Smith’s allegation that the Government has done nothing. We have 28 marine reserves established in New Zealand waters with a further three reserves having been approved and currently being surveyed prior to being declared marine reserves via Orders in Council. Collectively those reserves protect 7.6 percent of New Zealand’s territorial sea. However 99 percent of that is in two reserves around isolated offshore islands the Auckland Islands and the Kermadec Islands and very little—in fact even less of the area—is in New Zealand’s smallest national park the Abel Tasman National Park in our mainland territorial sea. Of New Zealand’s total marine environment just 0.3 percent is protected in marine reserves. Currently the highest level of protection outside our territorial sea—that is 12 nautical miles offshore—is through Ministry of Fisheries closures on trawling of 18 seamounts. Those closures bring the area of marine protection in New Zealand to just over 3 percent. 
We know that marine reserves work and as the Hon Nick Smith said there are far wider benefits such as educational benefits. Marine reserves are great places for school trips and projects. Marine education centres in Leigh Wellington Auckland Napier and Dunedin are testimony to children’s interest in their maritime heritage. There are research benefits that we are all learning about as we go along and there are also economic benefits. Marine reserves do not just bring back the fish and other marine life; they can also benefit local people. The 200000-plus visitors a year to the marine reserve near Leigh have contributed significantly to the local economy. Everything is connected. 
In conclusion we need marine reserves and other marine protected areas for good marine management but we also need to deal more effectively with land-based impacts such as sediment and pollution. We need to ensure that activities are managed sustainably over the whole of our coastal and marine environment. I will enjoy looking at aspects of Eric Roy’s bill in our select committee particularly that of consultation upfront prior to declaring marine reserves. I am pleased we are supporting the bill. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I want to make the point that New Zealand First has long believed that the opportunity to throw out a fishing line and catch a fish is part of every New Zealander’s birthright and must be protected for future generations. It is something that makes this country absolutely unique and special to live in and for young people to grow up in. But I have to say that recreational fishers—and I am one myself—are not silly. They recognise the benefits of reserves. They also recognise the benefits of the spillover and how it actually improves their own take. But the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society has an agenda to turn 20 percent of our coastal waters into reserves and the Government has obviously indicated that it wants to turn 10 percent. Naturally people are anxious and worried about that. Therefore we believe that New Zealanders should be consulted about plans for reserves at an early stage of the process. So we will be voting for the bill to go to the select committee. 
We congratulate the member who introduced the bill Eric Roy because one can see his obvious experience from many years in select committees reflected in the way it was drawn up. We will await the select committee’s scrutiny before we give a guarantee of continued support however. 
 I want to hark back to 1997 when I was a Minister and Dr Nick Smith was the Minister of Conservation. He invited me to a dinner in Ngunguru to meet with Dr Wade Doak and a number of other marine scientists to talk over the issue of the Poor Knights Islands which were a partial reserve at that time but not a full reserve. We discussed the matter and then he consulted with me. He asked me whether I believed they should be turned into a full reserve. I admit that the arguments were compelling and I said yes I did believe they should become a full reserve. There was opposition particularly from recreational fishers but also from charter boat companies and other groups. 
I went to see the Poor Knights Islands for the first time a couple of months ago when there were celebrations for 25 years of the initial reserve having been set up. I had never been there before. The reserve is an absolute gem. If people have not visited the Poor Knights Islands they have not seen New Zealand. They have the biggest marine cave in the world. Evidently a German submarine was put in there—the one that lay the mines that blew up the  
Niagara 
 during the war. But below the surface is just amazing. I have never seen snapper as big as that. I did not know they existed. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: Rikoriko Cave. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: Rikoriko Cave yes. I have never seen snapper the size I saw them there. [ 
Interruption 
] They were massive. And there was a whole range of species. Probably the fish at Goat Island— 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Is it a marine reserve or what? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: It is a reserve. It is a massive reserve. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Well why did you catch it? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: I did not catch it. I was under the water looking at them. I was just looking at them and it was a fantastic experience. [ 
Interruption 
] The member would not have been looking at them; he would have been under the water catching them. 
There are probably more fish around Goat Island but the range of species around the Poor Knights Islands is magnificent. By talking that night to the scientists and to Wade Doak himself I learnt they are flabbergasted at how quickly the whole area has been replenished and the water has been restocked with fish particularly stocks of snapper. So I say to Dr Nick Smith that people out there were full of praise. He made a courageous decision and it actually paid off. He made the right decision. 
However there is still some grumpiness left and it is not over whether he made the right decision—the charter boats just turned into diving charter boats—it is about the fact that people were not consulted. Nick Smith has said that this Government has made a complete mess of the consultation process and unfortunately it was not strong at that particular time either. In particular Ngati Wai who perceive themselves as the kaitiaki and Ngati Taka which is the hapu in Ngunguru itself believe that the National Government rolled straight over them and did not consult them. They agree that there should be a reserve there and they have argued for it but they also believe that they should have been part of the process. 
All that we in New Zealand First can say is that we believe that this bill by having consultation at an early stage of the whole process will overcome some of the grumpiness and leave it behind. The same outcomes will flow through because of the genuine benefits that such reserves provide to New Zealand. I also say that if people have not been to the Poor Knights Islands they should use the opportunity over the Christmas holidays to take a trip up to Northland. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Thirty percent of New Zealand land is in national parks. It is outrageous that one cannot shoot birds log trees or mine on that 30 percent of New Zealand land! But I do not hear a huge outcry among the New Zealand public to reduce that figure to 1 percent. Less than 1 percent of our coastal waters is in marine reserves yet there is a huge outcry every time there is a proposal to protect a tiny area of marine ecosystem so that it can regenerate to something like its original state. We have vast areas where there is no restriction on fishing. We have a few very small areas where we say nature has to have its place too and there has to be a place where all New Zealanders can see the marine ecosystem as it originally was. In places such as Leigh where the marine ecosystem can be seen as it originally was it is just astonishing to see how biodiversity has regenerated since fishing and other extractive abuses stopped. 
The Green Party is strongly in favour of consultation and of communities being involved in the location of marine reserves but better provisions for this are in the Government’s new Marine Reserves Bill which has been languishing in front of this Parliament—in fact in front of the select committee I used to chair—for years now. I can understand Eric Roy’s frustration that that bill does not seem to be going anywhere despite the select committee having heard all the submissions on it given it a lot of consideration and formed some pretty strong views across the House about changes we could make. Those changes would improve consultation improve the role of iwi and hapu and prevent the current perception that the Department of Conservation is playing the role of judge jury and executioner on the whole issue. But the Government simply will not progress the bill. It was a huge disappointment to me when I was chairing the Local Government and Environment Committee that Government members were not prepared to advance the bill and it seems they are still not prepared to do so. 
So I can understand Eric Roy’s frustration and his wanting to bring in a bill that deals with only the consultation side of the issue. But that is not the right way to do it. We need to review the whole marine reserves situation. The 1971 legislation is anachronistic it is out of date and it does not deal with the modern world. It does not for example provide a proper role for iwi and hapu in the decision making and management of marine reserves. The new bill can do that—it already does so to some extent and there are ways in which it can be amended to further do so. I do not believe we should put an amendment bill through the House that deals with only the question of consulting people who want to fish. We have a substantial bill sitting on the Order Paper that will deal with that question and many other things as well. That bill will give us the opportunity to protect biodiversity at the same time as providing plenty of areas where people can go fishing. 
The Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill is not the way to take the issue forward. I challenge the Government to let the Marine Reserves Bill be debated at the Local Government and Environment Committee and to let some of the work that that select committee did last year and the year before reach fruition. The Greens will not support this interim bill. 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Tena koe tena koutou te Whare. The Maori Party will support this bill in line with our principle that we believe in the right of people to have a say. In its purpose and intention the commitment to amend the Marine Reserves Act to ensure early consultation in the preparation of any application for the declaration of a marine reserve is positive. We encourage any opportunity for people to participate and for voices to be heard. 
Consultation is a key concept in honouring the Treaty relationship. I want to be clear that when we talk of consultation we do not mean the types of consultation exercises that may occur with interest groups such as fisher people surfers skiers tourism operators and so on. I want to say in this House that mana whenua are not an interest group. They are the Treaty partner and therefore consultation on the preparation of a marine reserve application must always be inclusive of any group that represents mana whenua interests. Te Tiriti o Waitangi provides for the exercise of kawanatanga while actively protecting the tino rangatiratanga of mana whenua in respect of their natural physical and spiritual resources. In order to exercise governance and protect and preserve the full authority of mana whenua consultation must be respected and an honourable process must be followed. 
A considerable body of case law has developed on the principles of consultation. The leading case is the Court of Appeal case  
Wellington International Airport 
 v  
Air New Zealand 
 and there is also the more recent  
Land Air Water Association 
 v  
Waikato Regional Council 
 decision. That case specifically discusses the principles of tangata whenua consultation. Although I am sure all members know those two foundation court decisions intimately I ask them to let me recap. In its essence consultation demands that the parties involved act reasonably and in good faith. In practice that means entering into the process without having first made up one’s mind about every aspect of one’s position. It means having respect for the issues and the people with whom one is consulting and not just doing the numbers. 
From the Maori Party’s point of view any proposal that stops politicians from running roughshod through communities has to be a good thing. This bill will put a process in place by which—through consultation—the applicant must explore ways in which the application may avoid or mitigate adverse effects on existing uses of the area of the proposed marine reserve. That may rectify or avoid such disasters as have occurred for mana whenua in the past such as in June 2005 when the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter announced the establishment of a marine reserve off Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf with scant regard for the interests of the mana whenua. 
The taking of Kaikoura Island and the Ngati Wai islands represented the very worst of processes possible in the setting up of marine reserves without consultation. Ngati Wai and Ngati Rehua exercise mana whenua over the north-east coastal area and Ngati Maru also has an interest in the north-east coast and marine areas. Those iwi were not uninterested parties. They were groups that had offered an alternative strategy that provided a partnership approach for marine protection. Ngati Wai was committed to working with the Government in the interests of marine protection and had also suggested a co-management approach. Instead the rug was literally pulled out from under its feet and it was forced subsequently to take action in the High Court to challenge the decisions from on high about offshore islands and marine reserves. 
We must not cut across mana whenua rights. We must hear the voices of those people and we must stop the relentless theft of property rights. If this bill can provide a stop to that process in time to really address Treaty-based rights we will all be doing well. The Maori Party will support this bill going to the select committee in order to ensure appropriate representation of and input from mana whenua in decision making and that their rohe is provided for. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating the member Eric Roy on having the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill drawn from the ballot. United Future is very delighted that this bill has been drawn from the ballot because it is extremely topical and—as Tariana Turia has also mentioned—very controversial from a number of points of view. United Future members will be supporting this bill going through its first reading and on to the select committee. 
I should say at the outset that the principal reason for that is that the bill fits in exactly with United Future’s political philosophy. Our political philosophy can be summed up in the principle of subsidiarity. Some people in this House may be very familiar with that term; other people may never have heard of it. It simply means that political power should be devolved to the most appropriate level at which a decision should be taken. In other words it means that decisions proper to a family should be taken by the family. I guess we can go even lower and say that decisions proper to an individual should be taken by that individual. So we have the family the local community the local town the city and—only then and finally—the nation. 
It is appropriate that in the situation considered in the bill we give much more regard to consultation with the people affected. When a decision is made about a marine reserve a group of people in that location will be primarily affected; therefore they must have a say. It is interesting too from the point of view of the remarks made by the Hon Tariana Turia that the first time I ever came across the word “subsidiarity” was when a group of Maori came to talk to me and used the word. I had to ask them what it meant and they pointed me back to a social encyclical given by a Catholic Pope about a hundred years ago. That principle has therefore been a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching to this day—for more than a hundred years. 
When that group of Catholic Maori discovered the principle in a papal document they were tremendously encouraged. They said to me that precisely the whole problem about the implementation of the Treaty was that the principle of subsidiarity had not been followed. It must mean of course as the previous speaker has mentioned that we bring iwi and hapu and those with mana whenua into the process—not just as some window dressing exercise and not just so that a Minister can stand up here and say that people have been spoken to or even consulted but so that those people have been involved in the decision-making process. 
The process is the one that Eric Roy is bringing before the House in this bill. He is saying that those decisions must be taken effectively with the support of local communities and that that process takes consultation to its logical conclusion. When members think about that position they will realise that it is obviously the right position to be in. It is much better for decisions about marine reserves to be taken with the support of local and affected people—all of those we have mentioned: fishers tourists recreational users sailors tourism operators and so on. All those people need to be involved in the process and ideally they should feel that the outcome is one they have had a part in. 
This philosophy is much to be preferred to the nanny State philosophy that I must confess I see exhibited constantly in this House by the Green Party. That philosophy pretends that some people in our society who claim to have a much greater reverence for the environment than others for example somehow have a superior wisdom and that their view should prevail against other people’s views. I do not believe that that is where wisdom lies; I believe that it lies at local community level. I believe that it lies with the people affected by the decisions and that they therefore should be consulted and be part of the process. So United Future has great pleasure in signalling its support for this bill on its first reading and we will vote accordingly. 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to endorse many of the sentiments in this Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill that was introduced by a fellow colleague from the deep south. While I am on my feet I will say that I hope he takes our aroha and our mihi back to the whanau of Rakiura and the deep south area given the tragedy that has befallen key families in that community. 
As someone who has had some experience in maritime and marine affairs what I like about this bill—which I along with my colleagues endorse going to the select committee—is that it enables interested individuals stakeholders and tangata whenua to contribute and participate. Marine reserves are a controversial development. Obviously we want to see an improvement in ecosystem outcomes and in people participating in using and recreating in their local areas. But at the same time none of us actually want to see the potential of the marine environment completely locked up or dedicated to a single purpose. It is inevitable that marine reserves are controversial but unless there is participation and exchange of ideas that aggravation and controversy leads to people digging a ditch and not finding a way out of it. Obviously there are some overlap areas with our marine protected areas policy that was released earlier in the year. Marine reserves provide microcosms that enable people to see the variety of sea life and our young people to learn. More important they can be a focal point so that we can reacquaint ourselves as to how important it is not only to understand but to participate in the development of marine resources and to take more responsibility in our localities for the health of the marine environment in those areas. 
Those of us in the fishing industry have developed over the years some rather dim views about how marine reserves have been pushed willy-nilly by the more strident advocates from the environmental movement. Naturally we share some concerns with them but at the end of the day the Maori view is not a preservationist view. If there is a Maori view it is a conservationist and sustainable use view because if everything is locked up and preserved then one does not live. If there is one thing that can be learnt about the history of Maori it is that they are very adaptable people. They have altered their customs and attitudes to suit the vicissitudes of the circumstances they find themselves in. 
The select committee when it deals with this proposed legislation should remain alive to the prospect that nothing stays the same and nothing is static. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in favour of the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. At present anybody can apply to create a marine reserve and once the process is struck the public becomes less and less involved in the process. This bill through legislation ensures not only the need to consult but also to do so thoroughly during the preparation of the application. The bill specifies that consultation must include groups that are actually representative of the community that lives by the sea people who use the sea for recreation and for earning a living through commercial fishing and/or tourism plus those who have an association culturally and through heritage such as the tangata whenua who we heard earlier this evening also claim the right through being a Treaty partner. 
The key to the need for this bill is that the present Marine Reserves Bill was referred to a select committee on 15 October 2002 and I understand that it has largely been neglected by the Government. It has not been reported back to the House. We heard from one of the previous Labour speakers about a maritime protection consultation process that was prepared last year by the present Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Fisheries. One of these new groups the West Coast Marine Protection Forum has in fact been established and has been working since I think last September. I attended one of its inaugural meetings at Hokitika. It has since been holding a number of other meetings throughout the Coast from Haast north. I spoke recently to the chairman of that group. 
Why then if that group is already in place do we need the new bill? The forum has representation from fishermen interest groups the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries. I guess the reason we need this bill though is that it establishes a group through legislation. Based on the experience of the forum to date this bill has two key elements that will give the public some confidence for sadly the public seem to be losing trust in the present Government and its agencies in a wide range of activities that affect them. They do indeed. As stated in a report in the  
Greymouth Evening Star 
 of 27 April we are dealing with people on the Coast who do not deal with cosmetic change. They understand real change. The meeting was packed out with angry people. The sorts of comments called out did not indicate a great sense of trust in the present Government and its agencies based on the past or even looking to the future. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Labour has abandoned the West Coast. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Labour has abandoned the West Coast indeed. A previous Labour voter told me: “Labour has left the Coast. The Greens want everybody else to leave the Coast. Thank God National’s coming back.” 
The forum is driven and established by the Department of Conservation which was very well-intentioned in doing so and the Ministry of Fisheries which was very well-intentioned in doing so but in fact it is not underpinned with the sort of legislation that looks after people in the way that Eric Roy’s bill will. I guess that the feeling is that the consultation could turn out to be cosmetic as so many other activities of this Government have turned out to be. People on the Coast are not happy with cosmetic consultation. They are not happy with being told they have been consulted when they have not but they will be happy with this bill and I congratulate Eric Roy on its introduction. 
That is the feeling that this Government and its agencies have generated in the minds of the public. There is a voiced concern that the Government has decided that 10 percent of the area will be put in reserve and there is a feeling of powerlessness to prevent the steamroller effect of an unfeeling Government having its own way regardless. We are not talking about a lack of public interest. Ninety people attended in Haast which is a big part of the local population. The meetings throughout have been well attended. There is a call for people to have a referendum. The interest is high; the process is weak. 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I am delighted that we have received a large degree of support for the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill at its first reading. I thank members for the generosity of their comments and I am looking forward to working on this bill in the select committee. 
Someone once said—I am not sure who the original person was because the comment has been plagiarised so frequently—that we do not inherit the environment the land or the sea from our forefathers; we borrow it from our children’s children. I think that is a sentiment that most of us have picked up on. I think that probably everybody here who has spoken today has concurred that marine reserves are important that they are an integral part as a tool in the management of our marine environment and that it is the degree to which we want to implement them that is the only difference. 
Can I just comment on one or two of the points that have been made in the course of the discussion on this bill. To Shane Jones who commented on the tragic loss in Foveaux Strait of those returning from the Titi Islands I say that yes I certainly will send the condolences of this House. In fact if it were not for this bill I would have attended the first funeral which was held this afternoon. The others are to be held this Saturday at 11 o’clock in Bluff and I will take the love and condolences of this House as Shane asked me to when I attend on that occasion. 
As far as the bill is concerned the point has been made that the process of marine reserves has largely stalled except for one stunning exception which is the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment and the establishment of eight marine reserves in Fiordland. That was done simply by a process of consultation. It is largely on that model as I said in my introductory remarks that I have based this bill. 
The Greens have chosen not to support this bill which I am a little bit disappointed about. Can I make a couple of comments with regard to that. Yes there is another bill at the select committee but it has been sitting there for some time and one of my intentions is to shake that with the passing of this resolution so I look forward to their support in progressing that. In terms of consultation this bill is somewhat more broad and requires a wider degree of consultation than does the 2002 bill as I read it. I think that is important. 
The other significant difference is that the bill I have introduced requires some elements of mitigation and I think certainly after speaking with members privately that there is a degree of discomfort with that among the Greens. Can I say that it is simply common sense and that if we take that out of the formula in setting marine reserves they stall and that is what has happened. Let me give members some examples. The Hon Brian Donnelly spoke of the establishment of a marine reserve at the Poor Knights Islands. The charter vessels did not want to buy into it but once it was established the mitigation was that they changed their modus operandi from catching fish to diving and looking and they did not miss out. 
 Probably a more significant example is in Fiordland where in this very hostile part of New Zealand anchorages are a key safety element. I began this part of the debate by talking about a tragedy in the Southern Ocean. What was required for those people who were opposing the marine reserves was anchorages. Every time an anchor is dropped down in some of these areas black and red corals that could be 1000 years old are being pulled up. In order to overcome that the mitigation was to create some permanent anchors. What a simple common-sense answer that is to the element of mitigation that this consultation actually requires. 
This is a common-sense bill. It requires consultation. With consultation comes success with consultation comes ownership and ownership will give the protection we need. I commend the House to vote for this legislation. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand National 48; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 4; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 6 
Green Party 6. 
Bill read a first time. 
Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.referred to Local Government and Environment Committee 
Dog Control (Cancellation of Microchipping Requirements) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Dog Control (Cancellation of Microchipping Requirements) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 When the time comes I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee. 
This bill is the first opportunity for Parliament to consider whether the compulsory microchipping of all dogs is either necessary or useful. It is also an opportunity for the public to be heard on this issue at a select committee. It is a totally common-sense amendment that is supported by most councils vets dog owners farmers and many others. I hope all members will vote for the bill to go to a select committee so that there can be democratic consideration on it. 
The current law is that menacing dangerous or unregistered impounded dogs can and should be microchipped and that is happening. This bill does not change that. The current law also requires that from 1 July this year all dogs that are newly registered must be microchipped. That is what my bill repeals. The public and Parliament were horrified a few years ago by a series of vicious attacks on children that left them seriously injured and maimed. The poster child was Carolina Anderson and I acknowledge the shocking nature of her injuries. The outcry over those attacks led to the passing of a package of measures to improve the powers of local authorities to control dogs. Those measures were well-thought-through. They have been working and councils already report a reduction in the number of incidents involving dogs although the provisions to microchip all dogs have not yet taken effect. 
The Greens argued in the House at the time that we did not see the microchipping of all dogs as useful or necessary but it was not possible to separate it from the rest of the package at that time. So with some misgivings we voted for the bill as a whole. We are pleased we did because there has been some improvement in the control of dangerous dogs. But since then the issue has raised its head again and in the calmer environment that prevails now it is easy to see that universal microchipping will not improve child safety but will impose costs and bureaucracy on hundreds of thousands of dog owners. So it is time to think again. I do not think Parliament should be ashamed of having another think about a decision it made in the heat of the moment when that decision has since been shown to be questionable. 
If I thought there was the remotest chance of children being protected from what happened to Carolina by the current microchipping law I would not be promoting this bill. But logic prevents anyone from drawing that conclusion. Let us look at the arguments. Will the existence of a microchip in a dog prevent it from attacking a child? Clearly not. Even the Government is not making that claim. Will a microchip help to determine which dog has attacked a child so that it can be caught and destroyed? Clearly not. A microchip is not a locator beacon it is not a Global Positioning System mechanism and it is not a miniature camera; it is just a record of ownership and age. So when a dog attack occurs and the dog cannot be found a chip will not help to find it. 
I remember the trouble we had on the farm when a neighbouring dog—a farm dog as it happens and I will come back to that later—savaged 15 of our prime lambs. Half of them were killed and the others were so horribly mutilated that we had to shoot them. We eventually identified the dog because it had wool between its teeth which is what one looks for when trying to find the dog that did the damage in that situation. A microchip would not have helped. 
What about when a dog attacks and is caught? The chippers argue that the chip will identify the owner who can then be held accountable. That is the one argument that does work but it will not help the child and it will not help any child in the future either. A dog that is found guilty of a savage attack such as the one on Carolina Anderson will be destroyed. A dog that is found guilty of a less serious offence will be microchipped under existing law before it is released or it will be destroyed if its owner will not agree to pay for the chip. A second offence will always be known to be a second offence. We do not need universal microchipping to achieve that. 
The chippers argue that if a dog that is classed as dangerous or menacing moves around the country it will be hard to track and recognise as a potentially dangerous dog. That is right and that is why we fully support the chipping of dogs after a first offence or menacing behaviour. My bill does not change the law in that respect. Then there is the argument that a chip will help to reunite a straying dog with its anxious owner. That is true. That is why all owners will retain the option of chipping their dog if they are worried about its safety and if it has a tendency to stray. That is a good idea. I think it is great that dog owners have that option but there is no point in making it compulsory. 
One problem that occurs now is that many of the worst-behaving dogs which have been trained to be badly behaved are not registered at all. Some figures suggest that half of the dogs that carry out attacks are not registered—they have no collars and the law does not know about them at all. Do we really think that people who will not register their dogs for a comparatively low fee will microchip them for an extra $70? I doubt it—not when it is going to cost extra and not when the owners know they have trained those dogs to be menacing. The remedy for those dogs when they are found to be menacing or dangerous is that they are either put down or microchipped compulsorily at that stage. 
There has been a very strong lobby for a special exemption to this law for farm dogs or working dogs. Why do the Greens not support that? Should we not support half a loaf instead of no bread? Not when it makes the other half taste really bad. How are we to decide what is a working dog and what is a farm dog? What about dogs for the blind? How will hunting dogs on farms which are sometimes the worst offenders be classified? Are they working dogs? In fact at the public meetings that Federated Farmers conducted around the Waikato the animal control officer from south Waikato described the amendment as unworkable and said that when trying to exempt farm dogs the line between working or farm dogs and other dogs cannot be defined. She ought to know. She is right there on the front line dealing with dogs now. 
Secondly what evidence has been put forward to show that farm dogs are less dangerous than other dogs? There is no evidence that I have seen. And if farm dogs are exempted the costs to owners of all other dogs would be increased. Those owners would then have to among themselves pay for the total costs of the national dog database. Why should farm dogs be exempted when farmers already have tax deductibility for their charges and grandma with her poodle in the city does not? 
Federated Farmers changed their position and they now support the Greens’ view. Federated Farmers said at the meetings in the Waikato that they had made a tactical mistake by seeking an exemption initially and that restricting microchipping to notifiable dogs was the better position morally politically and tactically. 
I thank the National Party members for coming round on this and supporting our bill as I understand they will do. I think they have adopted a good position. I thank the Maori Party and ACT for supporting the bill and I urge United Future to think about what it is really doing when it votes at the end of this debate. 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 I have looked forward for some time under an MMP Parliament to when the Greens could put forward a member’s bill that the National Party would agree was a very sensible initiative and could proudly support. I take this opportunity of congratulating Jeanette Fitzsimons on picking up the depth of concern in both rural and urban New Zealand against the stupidity of the legislation that had been advanced by the Labour Government. I further congratulate Jeanette Fitzsimons on drafting a bill by 10 o’clock in the morning and being able to secure it out of the ballot in the archaic system we still operate for members’ bills by about 12 o’clock the same day. 
The bill does give New Zealand a chance to debate the stupidity of the issue yet again. If we do not have success in Parliament tonight depending on the votes of United Future and New Zealand First this will not be the end of the matter. The legislation will still come back before Parliament with the local government amendment legislation that is currently before the select committee. Parliament has already accepted two further amendments in my name which will further debate this issue and give parliamentarians the chance to reconsider the stupid position that Labour has got itself into. 
The current legislation imposes a huge cost on all dog owners for absolutely no advantage. I have seen some costings recently that suggest rural New Zealand alone will face a cost of $3 million each and every year because of the legislation advanced by the Labour Government. Labour originally argued that a microchip in the neck of a dog would stop dog attacks. We now have about 40 or 50 people in New Zealand all Labour members of Parliament who are still stupid enough to believe that. But all other New Zealanders who have given thought to this issue know that a microchip in the neck of a dog will not stop one dog attack whatsoever. So the question needs to be asked as to why all dog owners will be saddled with a huge compliance cost when it will not achieve what Helen Clark said it was going to achieve. 
The other argument that I have heard from Helen Clark is that it will not really cost very much money because people will be able to insert the microchip themselves. Can members imagine people being able to put a huge needle into the neck of a dog themselves without seriously hurting that animal? But then if people were to do that the stupidity of the legislation that Helen Clark passed means that people then have to take the dog down to the vet anyway to get the vet to verify that the microchip is there in the first place. In other words Helen Clark should wake up. Her suggestion will not cut the compliance costs at all. 
But the next issue that worries me is that if the legislation remains as is it will be totally unenforceable. We have now had councils coming to Parliament over recent weeks saying that they will either completely ignore the law or give it low priority. I ask members of Parliament what the point is of persisting with a law that puts a compliance on to local councils when the local councils say themselves they simply will not enforce it. 
The third reason I support Jeanette Fitzsimon’s bill tonight is that in actual fact the legislation of the Labour Government will be counter-productive. I have been speaking to thousands of New Zealand farmers who now regularly register their dogs on an annual basis and get absolutely nothing for it. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: It’s for hydatids control. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Hydatids control went out years ago. Farmers get absolutely nothing for their registration fees. People pay $20 a year to register their dog with the Banks Peninsula District Council. They get a little plastic tag and I tell Brian Donnelly that that is it. There is no hydatids control at all. So those people are saying now they will not even register their dog if they are forced to microchip it. In other words we will see an increase in the number of unregistered dogs right throughout rural and urban New Zealand because of Labour’s legislation. 
Now let us look at the politics of this issue. New Zealand First members—absolute poodles to the Government—have lined themselves up and said that they will vote this legislation down and when my amendments are before the House they will vote with the Government. I spoke to Brian Donnelly an hour or so ago. He said they have been talking to the Government and have done a deal. They are going to see how the law works for the next 3 years and then they are going to demand a review of the legislation. Well I have news for Brian Donnelly: he will not even be in Parliament in 3 years’ time. Winston Peters has taken his bauble. He is a Minister of the Government. As soon as he has finished with that he is off to the High Commissioner’s job in London and New Zealand First will not even be in Parliament to demand a review of this legislation. 
But if one thinks New Zealand First’s position is stupid and illogical then let us think about where United Future has got itself. Gordon Copeland who has been in the rural media time after time arguing for an exemption for farm working dogs is going to table an amendment before Parliament. He has been saying that now for 8 weeks. He still does not have any amendment before Parliament and I do not think he will actually deliver one. He is all talk and that is what the rural media are saying. More important what they are really saying is that if Gordon Copeland thinks microchipping farm dogs is bad why is he going to vote to support the Government tonight and in actual fact force all dogs to be microchipped? I ask Gordon Copeland what the logic is in that. He is strangely quiet because he knows there is absolutely no logic at all to United Future’s position. 
This is a very sensible piece of legislation. There is an argument that dangerous dogs been identified they should be microchipped. Jeanette Fitzsimon’s bill allows that to happen. Why saddle a cost on all good dog owners—responsible and law-abiding people—for the sake of a few dogs that attack people? 
Hon Member:  
It’s a business expense. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Oh now those members over there argue that it is a business expense. That is what is wrong with them. They say that because it is a business expense it is not another compliance cost. They say it is deductible at the end of the year so it does not matter. I say to Ron Mark he should wake up while he still has 2 more years in this place. He should wake up and realise that the farmers of New Zealand are absolutely fed up to the back teeth with compliance costs. Whether or not it is tax deductible makes no difference at all. It is a cost that will not achieve a thing. [ 
Interruption 
] And now he says we should microchip cows. I asked Ron Mark to tell us when he takes a call in this debate where the legislation that forces any farmer to microchip a cow is. There is not any! That is how much that man knows about rural New Zealand. He knows nothing about rural New Zealand. 
What has happened is that Helen Clark and the Labour Government face a very embarrassing defeat over this issue. Helen Clark and Heather Simpson have been on the phone and they have this stupid position lined up with their two “poodle” parties which will support the Government. What New Zealand First and United Future do not realise is that the public of New Zealand is wholeheartedly opposed to microchipping and to the stupidity of that legislation. The public is brighter than those members over there. At the next election—members can mark my words—this little issue will be a big issue in the minds of dog owners and they will not forget which way United Future and New Zealand First voted tonight. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Local Government) 
: 
 Well there we have it. We have had two contributions to this debate so far. The first was from the member whose bill this is and although the Labour Government does not agree with Jeanette Fitzsimons on this issue I acknowledge that this bill is a genuine attempt to find a position that she believes is correct. I think that attempt is genuine; I acknowledge that. By absolute contrast with that we then had Mr David Carter’s speech. Mr David Carter is from the National Party. It may surprise many people to know—in fact it may surprise many members of the public to know—that we are not actually enacting legislation about dog microchipping in Parliament tonight. People would not know that from listening to some of the comments Mr Carter has been making around the countryside helpfully confusing people. In fact far from that being the case it may interest many members of this House to know that he was the spokesperson for one of the many parties in the House that voted for the current legislation. Even some of Mr Carter’s own colleagues—the new National members—may not know that. 
Hon David Carter 
: That’s what we said. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: That is right. I see some nervousness. There is some nervous twitching along the National Party benches. 
Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague but through the barrage of interjections I could not hear the Minister. I am pretty sure he just said the National Party had voted in favour of microchipping dogs in 2003 but I cannot hear him. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: Yes I can confirm to the member that that is what I said but I would be happy to repeat it if you would like me to Mr Deputy Speaker. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: That is not a point of order; that is a debating point. The junior whip is making accusations in order to cast aspersions on the National Party. The barrage of interjections was coming not only in a mild form from the Opposition benches but also from the Government benches so that claim is absolute nonsense. I know that the Minister Parekura Horomia who is all smiles was also interjecting in a raucous way the like of which I have not heard before. I could not hear what the Minister was saying. These are debating points not points of order and I would ask that you rule in that light. 
Hon David Carter 
: I also take the opportunity to correct the Minister. I can assure him that all National members and myself particularly voted against the microchipping provisions in the bill. I suggest that the Minister checks  
Hansard 
. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I thank all members for their contributions. None of them were points of order but we will continue. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: No nor are they debating points; it is a statement of fact. I see that a number of the outraged new National MPs—who were not here at the time so to be fair they cannot be held responsible—have walked out. They have left in absolute disgust. They feel betrayed by David Carter. 
The Labour Government cannot support Jeanette Fitzsimons’ bill because to take us down the track that this bill suggests would be to undermine the very intent of the original legislation. I think it is important to remind the House of that although I say again that I think Jeanette Fitzsimons made a measured and reasoned contribution. As I say I disagreed with some of it but it was measured and reasoned. 
Since then we have had the unfortunate interlude from Mr Carter which has thrown utter confusion on to the debate. So let us revisit why Parliament—by an overwhelming majority—passed the enabling legislation. We did so in the face of some horrific injuries particularly to children. Parliament considered legislation that put a number of measures in place to try to prevent such attacks. I emphasise that no one has ever suggested reasonably that microchipping per se will stop dog attacks on its own in isolation—nor is that the intent of the original legislation. There was never a belief that any single measure by itself including microchipping would reduce or would be expected of itself to reduce dog attacks. It is only when we put in such a measure in conjunction with other sensible measures such as better identification enhanced powers to seize dogs tougher penalties and the holding of irresponsible dog owners to account that the measure makes sense. But in that context it does make sense because it links the dog to an owner. If a dog is involved in an attack on a child or an attack on stock it can be identified. The owner and the animal can be held to account and that is the sensible point of the legislation. 
Frankly I am appalled at the impudence of members whose vote put that legislation in place because they saw the terrible photographs on television— 
Darren Hughes 
: Two of them are sitting over there. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
:—that is right—and in the newspapers. But when the opportunity came to jump on the bandwagon and the gratuitous opportunity to pull a few votes seemed to present itself those members jumped in behind those sloganeers who are misleading the rural community in particular for the sake of a few cheap votes. I say to those members that sometimes in this Parliament the past catches up with them and the truth comes home to roost. I say to those members who had the good sense and decency to support a sensible measure as part of a package that they should have the good conscience to continue to do so now. To undermine it for the sake of a few—they think—cheap votes does them a discredit and it does this House a discredit. 
This Parliament owes it to New Zealanders to ensure the sensible package of measures put in place by Parliament some 1½ years ago is followed through and to ensure we do everything we reasonably can to make New Zealand a safer place for our children and a safer place for farmers who do want to look after their stock. We need to use this measure alongside other measures to provide proper accountability and good safe practice. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am looking through the Standing Orders right now and I seek your guidance in respect of the rules or the Standing Order that prevent or prohibit a member of the House from calling another member a liar. I would like you to assist me with that because I have a question with regard to that rule. Although I acknowledge understand and would always comply with the Standing Orders the question is simply what redress there is to ensure that a member who has blatantly lied in this House is called to account. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry but I cannot assist you on that one because I do not give either a comment or a ruling on a hypothetical case. If you have a real case to raise you may do so by way of a point of order and I can hear it. But in the way you have put it there is nothing I can do. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We have just heard the National Party member of Parliament the Hon David Carter state to the House neither he nor National voted for the Dog Control Amendment Bill. I have in my hand  
Hansard  
Volume 613 dated 4 November to 20 November 2003. At page 10041 dated 13 November 2003 is the voting record that shows National voted for the Dog Control Amendment Bill. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. Indeed New Zealand First has the next call and that issue is something that should be raised and refuted in your speech in the debate. It is not a point of order to be raised in that way. 
LINDSAY TISCH (Senior Whip—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That member is trifling with the Chair. He knows that those are debating points and not points of order and he is trifling with the Chair. While he continues to challenge the ruling—because he is going for another call now—that is a challenge to your authority and to what you have deliberated on. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I seek leave to table  
Hansard 
 Volume 613 at page 10041 specifically dated 13 November 2003. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I will start by demonstrating just how political this debate has become. David Carter made a statement during his speech that dog owners have annual costs that they are getting nothing for. I actually agreed with him. Then I got a barrage of abuse from that side of the House when I had actually agreed with the statement David Carter had made. That demonstrates that National members are not even listening; they are just playing politics. I will make another statement to demonstrate how political this issue has become. David Carter said Brian Donnelly and New Zealand First members have stitched up a deal with Labour. He made that statement at 7.55. I tell members that at 6.55 I was in conversation with his leader Don Brash and Mr Carter was nowhere in the room. Mr Carter said: “an hour … ago” and 1 hour before 7.55 is 6.55. I was talking to Don Brash. 
I think we need to get back to what this issue is about. In 2002 the father of Carolina Anderson came to Parliament. Any politician who had any drop of care and concern in their blood met with him. We were shown photographs. They were horrific and horrendous and they galvanised this House to a resolve that it would do something about dog attacks on humans but in particular dog attacks on children. Never before have I seen this House so galvanised to a unified resolve as I saw at that particular time. The resolve was to prevent or reduce those dog attacks. We have a horrendous level of dog attacks and they are still continuing. 
A select committee worked together on a whole package of things. It was not just microchipping; it was a whole package of amendments to the Dog Control Act that this House saw fit to bring in to reduce dog attacks. The legislation went through and the resolve was cross-party. The legislation went through and this House put it in place. It was a package. We have here today an attempt to send the package back to the sender before it has even been opened up and looked at. New Zealand First does have some questions around microchipping but it seems absolutely stupid to take that package to bits before it has even been delivered. The legislation does not come into force until July; it is not until July this year that we start making any steps in this direction. 
Microchipping is part of the package. I think Mark Burton made a very very good point: National voted for that package. It voted against the amendment but it voted for that package at the third reading and Mr Carter has to tell the world he voted for that package. New Zealand First is saying we have to give the opportunity for the package to go forward. A mate who represents New Zealand in dog trials rang me the other day. He went to Ireland and the dogs all had to be microchipped. When they got to Ireland there were dogs whose microchips could not be read because they had been damaged. There are some problems—we are not denying that—but the point is that this House agreed to this package and it needs to be put into practice. The package then needs to be assessed as to whether it is achieving its objective. 
We should not forget that that objective is to minimise dog attacks on humans but especially—[ 
Interruption 
] It is a package; we are not just talking about one thing. It is especially about our children. I think at the moment we are more concerned about sheepdogs and chihuahuas than we are about the children of our nation. Anybody who can remember those photographs of Carolina Anderson should not be here voting for this legislation at this time. New Zealand First will insist on a review of the legislation. That is what I said because if it is not working we will need to re-look at it. We will insist on that but at this particular point in time we have to put in place the package that this House decided cross-party would meet its objectives as it determined it would do back in 2002. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 On behalf of the Maori Party I say that we would be happy to support any bill that will put a stop to this microchipping of dogs mania that is sweeping through the House. Unfortunately though I do not think this bill will achieve that. As Jane Clifton recently noted the debacle around microchipping has been a regular dog’s breakfast with National and United Future begging for scraps through their various amendments and exemptions Labour howling at the moon over the one law for all dogs and even the normally serene Greens seemingly being caught up in it as well. Indeed the frenzy and ferocity of the debate reminds me of the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”. That line is a Caribbean reference to disrespectful men who hit on women and it is now a Kiwi reference to disrespectful politicians who hit on poor defenceless dumb dogs. 
Well the Maori Party will not be party to this madness because Maori have been there before. I refer to the infamous dog registration legislation of the late 1800s. I am the member for Te Tai Tokerau and I know that the history of the dog tax and its forceful imposition in the Hokianga is etched on our tribal memory. The Hokianga County Council decided to impose a dog tax of 2s 6d per dog per owner. Back in those days that was big money. The people of Waima rightfully refused to pay. Their dogs were their own not the property of the Government or the council. The people were threatened with arrest and even with banishment from their homelands. And that was over a dog tax for Christ’s sake! The people eventually marched on the county headquarters in Rawene to make their case and the Government responded with its usual overdose of power by despatching 120 soldiers two field guns two Maxim guns and a gunboat to deal with the natives. 
That is a little like a politician in 2003 who misread the feeling of “natives” here tried to stop a hikoi of 40000 by calling everyone “haters and wreckers” and then when she realised she had failed closeted herself away with a daggy old sheep she called Shrek. She overdosed in her response by ramming through the Foreshore and Seabed Act from which the Maori Party was born—the members of which rise every day to remind her of the foolishness of her ways. 
In the midst of the “dog tax war” my whanaunga Hone Heke Ngapua left Parliament and headed home to help diffuse the situation. Yet it was all in vain. Some people were arrested and imprisoned in Mount Eden Prison for treason. The dog tax remained and the Government stopped Hone Heke’s parliamentary pay while he was away even though the Premier of the time Dick Seddon said he “could recognise the patriotic and pure motives that prompted him and the interest he had in his race.” 
I refer to that incident in Hokianga because I know that in another hundred years people will look back at this microchipping lunacy and wonder what on earth was going through our minds for us to spend so much time trying to keep tabs on dogs while hundreds and thousands of our own citizens are living below the poverty line. I can see Federated Farmers marching against this madness just as my tupuna did 100 years ago. I can see local councils doing everything they can not to comply with this stupidity just as the Waima police refused to collect the dog tax in 1898. Unless some sanity prevails in this House I can see some poor bugger ending up in jail in order to satisfy the cravings of some lunatic for whom the microchipping of dogs has a higher priority than the health of the nation’s humans. 
This proposed microchipping mess is like the movie  
Dumb and Dumber 
. Microchipping dogs is a dumb idea anyway and trying to identify dangerous and menacing dogs so that we microchip only them is even dumber. I can just see it now—and I know the Hon Parekura Horomia will understand this. Some poor weedy little dog control officer will knock on the gate of the local Mongrel Mob pad and say: “Excuse me sir but I’ve come to see whether your dogs are dangerous and menacing in line with the Government’s requirement that they be microchipped.” The reply will be: “Who do you think you are you little nerd? Get out of here before I microchip you!”. The dog controller of course will rush off to change his or her pants and will summon up the courage to get the local cop to come along as protection—as if the cops have time for that sort of silliness! The next day they will turn up to find one of two scenarios: the first is that no dogs are there because the mob members have moved them somewhere else and the other is that the whole chapter is there with every dog they can get their hands on and they are all spoiling for a fight. 
Yes the Maori Party wants a healthy society where the public are not threatened by dangerous and menacing dogs and yes we will support this bill’s first reading to try to generate some light on this sad affair. But out of respect to Hone Heke Ngahua and his whanaunga who stood against a similar madness in 1898 the Maori Party urges the House to oppose this madness in 2006. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I begin by informing the member Hone Harawira who has just resumed his seat that this bill is not about a tax on dogs. It is about repealing and overturning the decision taken by Parliament in 2003 with the support of all parties except ACT to introduce a microchipping regime. I have already signalled quite clearly to this House that when we come to the Local Government Law Reform Bill I will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to exempt working farm dogs from the microchipping regime. In that debate and at that time I will spell out to the House in great detail the very very good and numerous reasons why that class of dog should be exempt. 
But that is not to suggest United Future agrees with a total repeal of microchipping for all dogs—with the single exception of dangerous menacing and impounded dogs—which is what Jeanette Fitzsimons’ bill would bring in. In talking about dangerous menacing and impounded dogs I must say that when I was listening to the Hon David Carter’s speech in the House I thought to myself it was a pretty menacing kind of speech. It almost got to the stage of being a dangerous kind of speech and I would say to the member that if he keeps going down that line the day will arrive when he will probably be impounded. I think he should turn down the volume a bit and actually concentrate on some facts. 
Let us now look at some factual situations. As others particularly Brian Donnelly have pointed out this all came about because of the attack on little Carolina Anderson in Auckland in 2002. In July 2003 this House with the single exception of the ACT party agreed to bring in a microchipping regime for all dogs. Why? It was with the intention of reducing and rolling back the number of dog attacks on New Zealand children. Let me tell the House that that date is now almost 3 years ago. In that time the number of dog attacks on children in this country has increased by a further 38 percent. There has been a 38 percent increase in the number of dog attack claims since we agreed as a Parliament to bring in microchipping. I tell members that if microchipping actually reduces the number of dangerous attacks by dogs on children by even one attack then I think it is worth doing. Therefore I have no hesitation at all in saying United Future will not support the roll-back of that regime. 
Let me turn to the issue that has been raised by farmers and by many New Zealanders. They say microchipping will not stop a dog from attacking a child. Of course it will not and no one has ever said it will. I was with a group of farmers the other night in Hamilton and when they pressed me on that point I said that the impact of microchipping was simply the difference between a collar and a microchip. That is the difference. Those farmers all said to me they conceded that point. 
Let me read to the House what the state of New South Wales has said. That state has had a microchipping regime for 7 years. The legislation was introduced in 1999—incidentally it does exempt working farm dogs. The Government of New South Wales said to people about microchipping: “Collars can be lost or removed and tattoos can be changed but microchipping is a once-only form of identification which is designed to last for an animal’s lifetime. The introduction of compulsory microchipping ensures that all owned animals”—with the exception of working farm dogs—“have a means of permanent identification which cannot be lost or tampered with.” This matter is simply about adopting today’s technology which is microchipping instead of yesterday’s technology which is collars. Collars can be lost dislodged and so forth. They are not as good as microchips when it comes to dog control and that is why I believe microchipping will reduce the number of attacks on children. 
Let me make just a brief comment about the politics of the issue. The Hon David Carter tends to say United Future’s vote is critical to this debate and if we dare to vote against Jeanette Fitzsimons’ bill then we are being a poodle to Labour. However we are opposing Labour in its intention to bring in microchipping for farm dogs. Therefore Mr Carter’s logic is that if we roll over and adopt National’s position somehow that does not make us a poodle to National. Well United Future is a party that is a poodle to no one. We are our own party—we have brains we can think the facts through and we can make our own conclusions. We fundamentally disagree with the position advanced in this bill; therefore we will vote against it to ensure that it does not go any further in this House. 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I think the amendment to the original legislation in respect of the microchipping of dogs is like a case study of poor legislation. I am sure that if the microchipping of dogs amendment proceeds students in universities will study it as a classic case of where Parliament had a rush of blood to the head and came up with poorly drafted legislation. Carolina Anderson came along her case tugged on our heartstrings and for all the right reasons we passed the wrong legislation. 
The Greens have already explained that we voted for this amendment because it was slipped into a whole suite of amendments the rest of which we supported. I think it is now time after a bit of calm reflection in this House to admit we got it wrong. This has happened before in this House. We are hearing comments today that admit that. We heard from Minister Burton who said that this legislation will not stop a dog from biting a child. Gordon Copeland said that too. New Zealand First’s Brian Donnelly said he had reservations about the legislation and if it was not working we should look at it again in a few years. All that members are saying is that we are starting to admit we got it wrong. It would be a terrible cruel thing for New Zealand First if people had to go to all the expense and hassle of microchipping dogs all around New Zealand only for this Parliament to then say we got it wrong. That is what we will say at the end of the day—we got it wrong. 
When we get it wrong in this Parliament there tends to be a rising tide of opposition to the legislation. That is exactly what we are seeing now—a rising tide of opposition throughout New Zealand. Throughout New Zealand society—including sensible councils—people are telling us the legislation is unenforceable. When a large percentage of society is opposed to a law it will not work. We have seen it with cannabis legislation and we have seen it with many other laws. When we come up with legislation that is widely opposed and that society thinks is stupid it will not work. So why are we going to all this trouble and expense? Let us admit we got it wrong.  
 Another issue that has not been raised today in the debate was hinted at by Ron Mark. He yelled out a witty quip: “Let’s microchip the National Party members!”. It was said as a joke but it is absolutely true. We have to acknowledge that this is a surveillance technology—an Orwellian technology. As Tariana Turia said some time ago it is dogs today humans tomorrow. Actually it is not even a case of it being humans tomorrow. In Mexico the Attorney-General has ordered that all of his 160 employees be microwaved—I mean microchipped although microwaving might be next! He has ordered that his employees be fitted with a microchip that is the size of a grain of rice. Humans are also being microchipped in America. George Orwell warned about this. Let us realise that microchipping is a way of legitimising surveillance; it is Orwellian technology—dogs today humans tomorrow. 
But there is a wider issue we need to address. Whatever happened to the relaxed trusting friendly New Zealand society where we trusted each other and communities got on with each other? What has happened that makes us run around microchipping dogs even when we know it will not work? Someone already wants cats to be microchipped. Then it will be humans. Whatever happened to our relaxed trusting New Zealand society that we are fast turning into an authoritarian Orwellian society? 
The Minister has admitted that the Local Government Law Reform Bill will not stop a dog from attacking a child. Therefore it will not work. United Future has a policy of supporting members’ bills going to a select committee so that they can be debated there. Why will it not allow this issue to be re-debated? If we listen to the views of New Zealanders we will hear overwhelming opposition to the Government’s stupid legislation. It will not work; people will not microchip their dogs. All we are doing is creating a problem. If the bill is passed we will look back in a little bit of time and say we got it wrong. Why can we not admit that fact honestly now? We got it wrong. Let us pass the Dog Control (Cancellation of Microchipping Requirements) Amendment Bill today. All it requires is for New Zealand First and United Future which already admit that the microchipping of dogs will not work to be honest and say to the people of New Zealand that they are sorry they got it wrong and they are big enough and wise enough to admit that and change their minds. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I start by saying that bad cases create bad law. The case of Carolina Anderson galvanised this Parliament and I acknowledge the members’ comments to that effect. If I thought the proposal in the Local Government Law Reform Bill would in some way prevent a further attack such as the one on Carolina Anderson I would vote for it. In fact I would cross the floor of the House to do so—as would most members of Parliament. But the fact is that bill will not prevent further attacks. 
I congratulate Jeannette Fitzsimons. She chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee which listened to the submissions and looked at the facts around the issue. Jeanette has come to a very honourable position based on those facts. In fact submissions were made to the select committee—although I was not there throughout the whole process—that the legislation might hinder the prevention of dog attacks on children because it would add a cost of compliance to the registration of dogs and would therefore be likely to drive more dogs into an unregistered position. Therefore councils would not have a record of where dangerous dogs were. Of course if a dangerous dog were to attack a child such as in the case of Carolina Anderson once it was apprehended it would be destroyed. So in my view the argument that the dog would come back for a second dose and that therefore it would help in some way if it were microchipped is a very slim one. 
I ask Labour members why they do not just look at the facts instead of being driven by this brainless mindless ideological view that somehow that legislation would help. As I said bad cases make bad law. So I ask Labour to vote down that bill. The National Party supports the member’s bill of Jeanette Fitzsimons with some reservations about the exemptions in it—but we support it none the less. 
I say to the House tonight that people in rural New Zealand have looked at this issue and they are not generally unreasonable. It is an unusual circumstance when rural New Zealanders rise up and say they will protest to Parliament. That does not happen in the way that some members imply it does. In fact that group does not come here regularly; its last major protest on Parliament grounds before the “flatulence tax” protest took place in 1984 under the previous Labour Government. That protest was because of the major major changes Labour was making to the rural sector at that stage. Rural New Zealanders through their lobby group called Federated Farmers have estimated that the Local Government Law Reform Bill will cost up to $3 million a year. It will not prevent one single attack and it will potentially result in more dogs—not fewer—being unregistered in New Zealand. The legislation will not achieve a single thing. 
Further the microchipping technology itself was debated in the select committee. One submitter said a microchip could be inserted into a 6-month-old dog and by the time it is 12 months old the microchip might have disappeared. It would have gone into the body fat of the dog—depending on the breed of dog of course—and no transponder or reader of that microchip would work any more. I will explain to the House why that may be the case. Each and every member of this House I imagine has been to a supermarket—although I suspect that some Ministers with high salaries on the Government side of the House have not. Members will know that occasionally the reader at the checkout does not work so the shop assistants have to go back and check. Exactly the same thing applies with this technology. Therefore it is not even foolproof. So microchipping is faulty technology it is expensive it will not prevent dog attacks it will raise the cost of compliance substantially—particularly in rural New Zealand—and it will not prevent one attack on one child. If a member on the Government side of the House can take a call and explain to the House tonight the logic in proceeding with that legislation then we will be all ears. 
I tell the honourable Minister Mark Burton who spoke earlier that he should get up to speed with the facts around this issue for goodness’ sake! He should not be dragged along by the very junior Government whip—who clearly has no understanding of this issue—and be whipped into voting for something that ultimately as the member for Taupo he will regret. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I have listened very carefully in order to hear whether some evidence would be offered in rebuttal of the points I made in my speech and I have heard none. The arguments that have been put forward are that microchipping was part of a package of dog control measures and that if we remove it the package will somehow unravel. But the rest of the package has been in force for 3 years and it is working quite well without the bit that will come into force on 1 July. Nobody has offered any argument as to why that situation cannot just continue. 
Then of course we heard about the children who have been attacked. All of us feel deeply about that as any human being would. Gordon Copeland said that if the legislation prevented one attack on a child it would be worth passing. I agree but nobody in this House tonight has offered one shred of evidence that the legislation would do so. Nobody has come up with a single skerrick of evidence let alone proof—and I have been listening for it—that microchipping would make children any safer. I would be prepared to change my vote right now if someone could convince me microchipping would work but nobody has actually even tried to do so. 
Then of course New Zealand First negotiated that there would be a review. A review is what the Government always offers people to try to get them to support something for a while because who knows where those people will be in 3 years’ time anyway when it is time for a review. What do members think a review after 3 years would find given that the national dog database would be up and running the money would have been spent microchippers would be in all the council rooms and vet rooms and 3 years’ worth of young puppies would have been chipped? It would be very hard to overturn the practice at that stage. If members can vote for a bill tonight without a shred of evidence that it will work they can just as easily vote in a review in 3 years’ time to do nothing. 
This bill is about dogs and clearly it is about poodles because I can only conclude that the poodles are in the House tonight—three in one party and seven in another. Those parties are subjecting dog owners to this totally unnecessary fuss because they have promised the Prime Minister. I tell farmers dog owners and common-sense members of the public that United Future and New Zealand First have let them down tonight. 
But it is not the end. The Local Government and Environment Committee still has a Local Government Law Reform Bill before it. Metiria Turei has put up at the select committee an amendment that will do basically the same as this bill and so I understand has David Carter. There will be a majority in that committee for Ms Turei’s amendment. It will come back to the House. There is time for those members who have voted against the bill tonight to reconsider. I challenge them to come up with one shred of evidence that the microchipping of dogs will protect one child in any situation whatsoever because they have not done so tonight. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Dog Control (Cancellation of Microchipping Requirements) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 60 
New Zealand National 48; Green Party 6; Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Noes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Motion not agreed to. 
Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I move  
That the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Commerce Committee. 
Very shortly after becoming the member of Parliament for Otago I was approached by a group of Wanaka business people who asked whether I could help them. They felt they were in the middle of some kind of ghastly  
Groundhog Day 
 situation where nothing ever changed. They felt they were in a situation where year after year many of them were prosecuted for trading over Easter while just over the hill Queenstown had an exemption under the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 and businesses there could go about their business and trade over Easter quite legally. 
Wanaka is a busy tourist town with two peak seasons—one in summer and one in winter. It attracts visitors from around New Zealand and indeed from right around the world. Easter is an extremely busy time for Wanaka and in particular every second year when the Warbirds Over Wanaka International Air Show and the Race to the Sky events are held. They attract up to 100000 people to the Wanaka district. That influx of people creates a hugh demand for retail services. That demand which is met by Wanaka retailers would be more happily met if there were not an anomaly in the law that sees them prosecuted for trading but not Queenstown. 
Queenstown just over the Crown Range has a general exemption from the restrictions on trading at Easter. I quote the Mayor of Queenstown: “This reflects our position as an international destination and a place where visitors and residents alike can enjoy many activities and events which would otherwise be stifled by greater restrictions.” He added: “We receive no complaints about the flexibility that this offers businesses and the community and it is exercised responsibly by all of the parties involved.” It is worth noting that the Queenstown Lakes District Council supports the efforts of businesses in Wanaka to be granted a similar exemption. 
I seek to rectify this anomaly in the shop trading hours legislation not only on behalf of Wanaka but also for Tauranga Rotorua and other centres with a significant visitor industry. This bill is by no means the first attempt to bring about some change in the Easter shop trading hours legislation but I hope that now in 2006 we can put an end to a situation that is outdated inconsistent and unfair. New Zealand now has a 24-hour 7-day-a-week trading environment providing goods and services in shops in malls and on the Internet. Our overseas visitors expect to be able to shop and it is worth remembering that the tourism industry provides approximately $12 billion of New Zealand’s gross domestic product. 
Our very lifestyles are changing and as workday pressures grow people now need and like to shop on weekends and holidays. Change however is not always easy. I remember back to when Saturday trading first came in—I was just a child mind! There were fears that it was going to mean the end of family life and the end of Saturday kids’ sports. Well neither of those things has happened. People merely take advantage of the increased opportunity to shop at their leisure. They go and watch the kids rugby then go and warm up in the mall on the way home. 
There are many other inconsistencies in the legislation as it stands with some products being allowed to be sold yet others not. That gives rise to the silly situation where the photography shop in Wanaka which sells photo frames must close yet across the road the chemist shop which also sells photo frames is allowed to trade over Easter. When the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act was enacted garages which then sold only automotive products were exempt and allowed to trade. Now 16 years later a garage can sell books stationery magazines gift cards and chocolates—all the things that tourists and locals will buy. The trouble is that those are also the things that a bookshop sells yet bookshops do not have an exemption under the Act to trade over Easter. 
In the 16 years since the last amendment to the shop trading hours legislation I believe we have all moved on and I believe that the time has come to put right the anomalies that currently still exist. The Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill seeks to provide a level playing field for all retailers who may choose to trade over Easter. The bill is all about choice. The bill offers a real choice for retailers. If their district is included on the schedule they can if they choose trade on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Within the bill there is no compulsion to trade. It is a matter for the individual business owner to decide. Retailers will make the decision on whether to open based on whether they see a demand on the costs including costs in staffing and on whether the day’s business will be profitable to them. 
 The bill does not in any way override the provisions of the Employment Relations Act or the Holidays Act. If an employee does not wish to work on Good Friday and/or Easter Sunday that employee cannot be required to work unless he or she has agreed in an employment agreement to do so. Far from disadvantaging workers Wanaka retailers tell me that people are lining up to work over Easter and retailers have absolutely no trouble at all finding staff. It is good for us to remember that a lot of retail workers in tourist towns are young people who are there for the skiing or for the lifestyle and who are only too happy to make a few extra dollars over Easter. We should also remember that many retail workers work part-time and value the extra hours they may get. So we have willing sellers willing workers and we certainly have willing buyers. 
It was interesting to me to read the comments made recently by the spokesman for the Catholic Church in New Zealand that if businesses wanted to open during the weekend the Catholic Church has no particular issue with it. He added that in Rome itself Sunday is a day on which shops are open. To me it comes back to freedom of choice. If we want to trade we should be able to trade. If we want to shop or not that is our choice too. 
I named Wanaka in the schedule to this bill because it is the people of Wanaka whom I represent. Tauranga is also named as its local MP indicated Tauranga’s interest. I did not presume to add other towns to the schedule but I know that the Rotorua Kaikoura and Hastings business communities are keen to be added to the schedule and I am sure there will be others. Should the bill proceed to the Committee stage—and I hope it does—then those areas plus others can be added simply by way of an amendment. 
There are towns in New Zealand that want to trade over Easter; there are other towns that would not thank us for the opportunity. I do not imagine that most retailers in my home town of Oamaru would decide it was desirable to open on Good Friday or Easter Sunday unless there was a large special event in the town that drew thousands of people in because it simply would not be economically viable. But for those towns in New Zealand with a significant visitor industry like Wanaka Rotorua and others Easter trading provides a boost to the income of the town and a service to the thousands of visitors there for the full range of visitor experiences. 
I believe the time has come for us to put right the anomalies in the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act to recognise that tourism is a 365-day-a-year industry and to recognise that tourism is one of New Zealand’s largest contributors to gross domestic product and goods and services tax. Now is the time to let tourist towns with a significant visitor industry go about their business without unfair archaic and unnecessary regulation. I urge members to send this Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill to the select committee. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I started to listen to the member’s speech part-way through—I apologise to her for getting here a little too late to hear the earlier part—but I think it was along the lines of wanting to take complexity out of the legislation. So let us look at what schedule 2 in her bill actually does. It means that in Wanaka businesses could open on these days provided they were within a radius of 25 kilometres from the postshop situated at 39 Ardmore Street Wanaka. Now if the National Party ever happened to get back into Government and went back to closing post offices and postshops as it did in the past then what would happen under this “less complicated” legislation? Under this bill in the Tauranga district if a business were in the area within 30 kilometres from the chief post office—at least Tauranga has a chief post office—it could open on those days. What would happen if the chief post office shifted? Or what would happen if a business were 30 kilometres and 1 metre from the chief post office? 
Dr Don Brash 
: Read the bill. You’re wasting our time. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: I am reading the bill. What would happen if one’s business were 30 kilometres and 1 metre away from the post office in Tauranga? If this bill is about clarifying matters and making them simpler I think other members who follow me may have something to say about that—and those are the ones who agree with the bill! I do not agree with the bill. I have looked through— 
Colin King 
: For any other reason? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Yes I will give members the reasons. I have looked through the many debates that this House has engaged in on these issues since I came here in 1996. I have done a search of  
Hansard 
 on the computer and it shows that time after time we have had this kind of debate and time after time we have ditched such bills. I think this bill will go the same way as the others even if it gets to the select committee. 
One of the things I would like to ask the member is why if she has the courage of her convictions this bill does not include Anzac Day. All of the people who have promoted this kind of measure have talked about freedom—the freedom to shop. They say if tourists cannot come to New Zealand and buy a photo frame in Wanaka the world will come to an end. If a tourist comes to New Zealand to buy a photo frame in Wanaka we really have to wonder what sort of tourist he or she is. Tourists do not come here to buy a photo frame in Wanaka on Easter Sunday. They come here for much more enjoyable pleasures and a great many other things that attract people to this part of the world. So it is nonsense that our tourism industry will rise or fall on the ability of people to shop on the 3½ days that they cannot shop. 
What this bill actually threatens are the rights of those people who work in or own those businesses and who do not want to work. The member says that those rights have been protected in the bill but I tell her that her advice that Easter Sunday is a public holiday is incorrect. If she would like to move that amendment to the Holidays Act to make it a public holiday I would be in favour of it but I do not think the National Party would like a member’s bill from any of its members to make Easter Sunday a public holiday. It is not a public holiday. She should think about it again. 
I come back to Anzac Day. Why do the people who have such a courageous need to put up members’ bills to allow shopping on Easter Sunday and Good Friday not dare to do that in relation to Anzac Day? Why do they not dare to go into the RSA and tell the old diggers—whom those members like to drink with and get their photo taken with on Anzac Day and the members say how wonderful they are—why the freedom to shop should be allowed on Anzac Day and Christmas Day? I would like an answer to that. They do not have the political courage to bite that one off. Some members have tried to do so in the past but the outrage from the RSA made them all withdraw. Yet again those members do not have the courage of their convictions. 
I have the courage of my convictions to say I believe that for 3½ days a year our shops should be closed and our workers should be able to be at home with their families. That is what the law should be. There is nothing wrong with that. I have the courage of my convictions to say I respect the right of people to say a line has to be drawn. When I look at previous speeches I have made on bills of these sorts I see I stand here as someone who is proud of the family values this country is based on. Those family values were not built on 7-day-a-week 24-hour-a-day 365-day-a-year shopping. But the National Party thinks the world will come to an end if we cannot shop and buy a photo frame in Wanaka and the world will come to an end— 
Darren Hughes 
: Except on Anzac Day. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: One cannot buy anything on an Anzac Day morning if one is in the National Party. It is too politically unpopular with the people that National members have to front up to once a year at the RSA. 
Let us have a look at the other provisions in the bill. I want the member to tell us in her 5-minute reply what protection there is in her bill if it becomes law for those who do not want to work on those days. I want her to tell us where that provision is in her very meagre bill. I cannot find it. The bill is so unclear and badly worded that the way I read it it is a nonsense to say that those people are protected and will have a right not to work. It is similar to the businesses that are forced by mall owners to open even though they do not want to. I have rehearsed this argument in the House many many times. Workers in this country should have the right to enjoy time with their families. 
 This Parliament has Standing Orders that prohibit people in this place from working on a Sunday—not just Easter Sunday but every Sunday of the year. Dr Don Brash who barely ever shows any interest in this House and barely works at all would not know whether the Standing Orders require him to come to work on a Sunday. He would not have a clue about the Standing Orders that state this Parliament does not have the ability to work on a Sunday. MPs on the Opposition side of the House want to legislate to say to shop workers—some of the lowest-paid workers in this country—that they have to work but MPs will not work because our rules will not allow it. I have not seen any National member in the 2 years since this issue was last debated promote a change to the Standing Orders that would require Parliament to sit on a Sunday. How come it is good enough for shop workers but not for us? How come Parliament prohibits itself from working on a Sunday but the poor shop workers who are on the minimum wage in Wanaka and Tauranga have to go to work? They have to be at work so that the poor member over there can get a photo frame on Easter Sunday and put in a photo of herself sitting at home and doing nothing. That is the absolute nonsense of those people. It is as though they are saying other people should work but they will not. They will get photos of themselves sitting at home with their families because that is what good family people do—they spend time with their families. 
New Zealand society has changed dramatically. We have liberalised our labour laws and our shop trading hours— 
Bob Clarkson 
: It’s all gone downhill. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Bob Clarkson says it has all gone downhill. The member is absolutely right. We cannot hold family values when we are requiring whole heaps of people who have families to go out to work 24/7 and to be available to work flexibly at any time. In the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee Bob Clarkson has talked about flexible working hours; he is very much in favour of them but not for himself and his own mates. He will vote for this bill because he wants the shop workers of Tauranga to be made to work on Easter Sunday while he is lazing around at home. That is the thing that absolutely amazes me about people who promote these sorts of bills. It is all about somebody else having to do the penance having to go to work and having to be there to serve in a shop because those members might die if they could not buy something for another 24 hours. That is utter nonsense. If we have a society that absolutely requires shops to be open 24/7 365 days a year and if our economy absolutely depends on it we are in big trouble. 
Seriously this issue is about the right of workers to have time with their families. That is why I oppose this legislation have opposed it in the past and will continue to oppose it in the future. I have struck a line in the sand and said enough is enough. We have to have some decent working conditions for people who are expected to work 24/7 for all the other days of the year. This is a chance for members to actually put their money where their mouth is and to vote for real family values that say we respect the right of shop employees to stay at home on Easter Sunday and have a day off like the rest of us in this place. We always remember those who are serving food cleaning and nursing in hospitals. They do not get that day off but they will tell members they support the right of shop workers to have that time off. Those people know what sacrifices they have made to be away from their families. Hospital and rest home care is absolutely vital and urgent—it is about life and limb. Shopping is not about life or limb. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 That was a passionate speech. I respect Mark Gosche—he has his view—but he is wrong. This bill should go to a select committee and the New Zealand First members will support it going to a select committee. We have promoted similar bills as I recall on more than one occasion in the past. We supported Steve Chadwick’s bill when she wanted to do much the same thing. But Parliament in its wisdom turned those bills down time and time again—which New Zealand First believes is fundamentally wrong. Obviously we believe that people who work in shops should have some family time and time at home. But we do not believe that we should impose that on them and say “thou shalt not work” because we think it is good to have time at home or that nurses who are working should say shop people must not work. That is not right. 
We think the time has come at least to allow shops to open on Easter Sunday. We have stronger reservations about Good Friday—I want to be honest. We did a survey in Tauranga some time ago and the public clearly wanted shops to open on Easter Sunday but they were not as keen to have them open on Good Friday. One of the principal reasons why they wanted shops to open in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui is that the port there is becoming a significant port especially for cruise liners that often come in on a long weekend. The tourists get off get into taxis or minibuses and go for a long bus ride—past Rotorua because the shops are not open—to Taupo. They spend all their money—their US dollars and what have you—in Taupo. That brasses off Tauranga people. They do not think it is fair that shops are open hundreds of kilometres down the road but shops cannot be opened around the port area. That is not fair. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Life’s unfair. 
PETER BROWN 
: The member says that life is not fair but our job here is to make it fair or at least to make it fairer. I invite the Minister to listen and to say that is unfair and at least to be prepared to make it fairer. 
The view of the New Zealand First members is that each community is different. We would prefer this sort of legislation to be brought in but to leave it to the local community—the local bodies—to determine whether they would want shops to open. Clearly Tauranga Mount Maunganui and Rotorua would and I accept that Wanaka would as well. 
New Zealand First totally supports sending this bill to a select committee but we believe there is a bit of tidying up to do—none more so than in the schedule at the back of the bill. We think it does not really make sense to define Tauranga district as being “within 30 kilometres from the Chief Post office Tauranga.” The chief postshop in Tauranga has shifted at least once and at least more than 1 kilometre. Does that mean that shops that were within the 30 kilometre area before the postshop shifted are now out of it? That is a little bit “Monty Python-ish”. We believe it would be much more practical to define the area in the way we define a voting area. It is much more sensible. People understand that definition and they know that areas are changed only by sensible rational thought. 
We are hugely disappointed that this type of bill has not got through in the past. We hope that this bill will get to a select committee be modified and come back and that shops will have the ability—if they so desire—to open on Easter Sunday. As I say we regard Good Friday as being in the same vein as Christmas Day and we would not support shops opening on Christmas Day. New Zealand First tends to regard Good Friday as a day of special reverence but we think Easter Sunday makes for a long weekend. It is a holiday weekend for many New Zealanders—not all of them by any means—and it is a holiday weekend for people who come here on cruise ships or even in aircraft to experience New Zealand. We think it is wrong to close up shops simply because we believe there is some concern for the workers in shops. It is quite easy to roster shopkeepers staffing shops just as it is to roster any other activity. Many shops in New Zealand are operated by owner-operators. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all I would like to make it clear that the Green Party caucus is taking a unified position on the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill and will be voting against it tonight. I know I have spoken when similar bills have come before the House in the past and I reiterate those comments. We have in front of us a bill that adds yet another layer of exceptions to the original Act which is itself full of inconsistencies. To expand that ramshackle patchwork by adding two new districts only begs the question about the rest and the bill fails to address the underlying questions about workers’ rights the role of public holidays in family life and the nature of sacred days in a country of mixed-faith heritages. The Green Party believes that if we are to overhaul the legislation around shop trading hours we should do so comprehensively and fairly taking all points of view and all parts of the country into consideration and not go on attempting to change it at one or two localities at a time. 
I turn now to the other reasons we oppose the bill. First of all we see big problems for workers in that employees are protected only in so far as they are able to negotiate protection into their employment agreements. The reality is that few would be able to do that and independently negotiate exemptions. This bill does not recognise the unequal bargaining power employers have when negotiating working conditions with their staff who tend to be among the lowest-paid and least unionised people in the workforce. We strongly believe that no worker should have to work on Good Friday or Easter Sunday against his or her will. This bill does not provide any or adequate protection to stop that from happening. 
Secondly the bill makes assumptions about the place of family life in a culture that seems to value paid work and conspicuous consumption above most other things. Easter Christmas and the morning of Anzac Day remain the last days uninterrupted for most by the compulsion to work. They are a time when family life can be nurtured and when people can get together without the intrusion of work commitments. There is a lot of fine talk in this debating chamber about the importance of the family in holding together the very fabric of our society. If we are serious about protecting and nurturing families then we should all stand up against the powerful forces of commerce which quietly undermine the last few sanctuaries of family time. I look to United Future’s MPs particularly when I say that. Given all their beliefs about the family and in some cases about Christianity I hope they will join with us in opposing the bill. Indeed I am glad to hear that two of their members will be opposing it tonight. 
After all Easter Christmas and the morning of Anzac Day stand as the last significant symbols of resistance to a culture of unbridled consumption. We live as de facto consumers in nearly every aspect of our lives. We consume entertainment education health care sport politics and even religion. All of that pulls apart the spiritual fabric that binds us together as people both individually and collectively. In the words of American theologian Stanley Hauerwas the problem is not that we have become consumers but that we can conceive of no other alternative ways of living since we lack any practices that could make such alternatives possible. That is a crisis of the imagination and it possibly underpins the reasons why the death on the Cross of one of history’s greatest figures deserves no more reverence than a suburban shopping mall. 
Have we in this House lost any sense of the sacred? Easter is the most significant set of holy days in the Christian calendar. If the special and unique nature of the Easter period is no longer respected by society at large some may say we should not even celebrate the day as a statutory public holiday. But the reality is that more than half the population continues to affiliate with the Christian religion. The law should protect the sanctity and special character of those 2 days by allowing people to attend to their spiritual lives and attend worship without the imposition of work. 
So whether or not we are Christians and whether or not we have families we six Green MPs join together in voting against this bill and in support of a future that respects the importance of family life of traditional faith commitments of workers’ rights and of doing all we can to resist consumerism as the new but oh so hollow religion of our time. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 In September 1959  
Te Ao Hou 
 magazine included the following report of the Roman Catholic Hui Aranga that was held at Ranana along the Whanganui River: “The weather was dreadful and the road almost inaccessible yet there was an attendance of 900 and the programme religious and social was full and satisfying. Teams from Christchurch Wellington Otaki Levin Feilding Hawera Hastings Kaiwhaiki and Ranana competed in action songs Maori oratory choir events religious quiz haka poi Rugby tennis table tennis and basketball.” 
Every Easter all over the country that same kind of report appears in different newspapers as Maori return in their thousands to their home marae for a whole host of whanau activities. Anglican Catholic Ratana and the rest flock to their homelands to worship enjoy one another’s company catch up on the goss participate in sports feast and be with one another. Maori people plan their big occasions around Easter because they know it is a 4-day weekend. Those occasions include weddings reunions unveilings and cultural festivals—you name it and Maori are doing it at Easter time. 
The mokopuna are different of course. They will play anything perform anywhere and go hard till they drop—as long as they get the hot cross buns and chocolate Easter eggs. They are a lot easier to please but I know they enjoy having their cousins around bludging off their uncles and aunties and greasing around their grandparents for little goodies as well. But for all that to go off successfully Maori have to plan for months. Then they can enjoy some good-quality time with one another and still have time for the slow cruise home on Easter Monday. 
Then like Darth Vader swooping into shot dominating the screen and bumming out the good guys along comes the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill. Instead of cracking jokes unwinding and sharing time together whanau will be faced with subtle and obvious pressures to work. They will get comments from their bosses like: “Sorry Mita we’re opening tomorrow and you’re going to have to come in.” or “Hey Parekura didn’t you go to that hui last year? We need you at work tomorrow.” or “Look Nanaia we all have places we’d like to go to but being committed to your career means you have to make sacrifices.” or the big one: “No Mahara you don’t have to come in tomorrow. Your job’s safe.” Yeah right! 
Whanau are at the core of everything the Maori Party stands for and that philosophy guides our thinking on this bill. Although the bill is focused on two particular towns Wanaka and Tauranga we know that others will follow. Indeed MP Steve Chadwick wants to put Rotorua into the loop and it will not be long before the ripples are felt right throughout the land. 
The contribution the bill will make to our GDP is well recognised but the Maori Party would argue factors other than just tourist dollars need to be considered as part of this nation’s genuine progress indicator. What will be the effect of the increasing pressure on whanau to work when our workforce is already characterised by increasingly longer work days and less time to take the kids to sport look after the whanau and just have time to think? Certainly revenue will be increased but will society be enhanced by this bill? Will the rights of those who are expected to work on those days be properly protected? Increased GDP is important but no more so than those other factors. 
Last week the household labour force survey came out. It highlighted some very sobering statistics one of which showed that Maori are earning on average $4 an hour less than non-Maori. Instead of increasing the workload perhaps we should be looking to increase the pay rate. Working more hours for a pittance just to get by does not enhance society; it only embitters those whom we treat so badly. 
This House has the capacity to determine the times when we as a nation can honour whanau and when we can preserve and respect the responsibilities and importance of family—rather than continually eroding the precious scraps of time we have left. When Sitiveni Rabuka took over Fiji he shut down Sundays in order to improve the spiritual balance of his people. When I came to Parliament my wife told everyone I would be having Sundays off for the same reason—so we could relax enjoy the whanau and recharge the batteries. 
The Maori Party will not stand in the way of the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill going to the select committee but we raise again the need for this House to give due consideration to the importance of family as the heart of the nation and to protecting the little time we have to be with one another. 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I just want to say as I talk to the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill that United Future has decided to treat this issue as a conscience vote. So my comments today are just that—they are my comments my position—and I will be opposing this bill. 
I want to make it really clear from the beginning that although I am a Christian and Easter is an important festival for my faith that is not my reason for opposing this bill. My concern is that we have whittled away at public holidays—from when I was a child when I do not think we had any trading on Sunday at all—until they are down to 3½ measly days a year. I think if members had asked me a few years ago about this I would probably have been less concerned about that because during those days I had my three children at home and we had lots of time together. 
 But as our children grow up and become teenagers—even before they leave home—and they start to get weekend jobs and holiday jobs most of which are in retail facilities suddenly our chances of spending time together start to disappear. Once children leave home it gets harder and harder to spend time with them. As my family has grown older I have come to appreciate the 3½ days of commerce-free public holidays that we have left and I feel a sense of needing to protect them. 
Someone who has really influenced my thinking on this is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who is the Chief Rabbi in England. In his book  
The Politics of Hope 
 he devotes a whole chapter to what he calls “public places”. He uses the example of public parks. The point he makes is that public parks make no economic sense at all. We leave a whole lot of space unbuilt on and not capitalised in any way but that is not the reason we have them. We have parks because they do us good. That is how I feel about public holidays. They do not make economic sense but they do us good and we are in grave danger as we pass these kinds of amendment bills of losing them and losing sight of what they are all about. Let me read a portion from his book: 
“Every age has its characteristic preoccupations. For the past century and a half one of the leading concerns of thinkers in the West has been to preserve for individuals the space to be themselves without interference from others. When that case was first made in 1859 by John Stuart Mill it had a mild and limited objective. Mill felt himself surrounded by the suffocating proprieties of Victorian England and felt that human creativity—what he called ‘experiments in living’—needed more room in which to develop. A century later when Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper came to formulate their views the subject had become more grave. The enemy was now no longer Victorian busybodies peering into other people’s windows but the totalitarian state and its crushing sacrifice of liberty and lives. As the twentieth century drew to its close however it would be fairer to say that we stand in the opposite situation. In today’s liberal democracies it is not that we are too much together but that we are too much alone and seek to learn again how to connect with others in lasting and rewarding ways.” 
It is in this context that some of us in this House see value in protecting the remaining 3½ days of commerce-free public holidays so that getting together with friends and family is at least on 3½ days given a higher priority than commerce. The argument is that business folk have a right to conduct their activities when they please. Some of us however think that if we in this House are truly serious and sincere when we wax eloquent about crime rates family breakdown antisocial behaviour and the absence of consistent values as we all do at times then we will all need to acknowledge that nothing will be resolved if we all act alone as individuals. Sometimes just occasionally we need to agree to put down our own agenda for the common good. It is the reason that we have conservation estates and marine reserves. It is why we have road rules. They are designed for our collective good; so are our remaining few public holidays. 
The interesting fact about this proposal is that it pretends to be about creating exemptions for towns that have strong visitor and tourist components to their activities. However it is very unclear which towns this does not apply to. As New Zealand promotes itself more and more as a tourist industry—and the town I live in is desperate to attract tourism dollars—it is very easy to see that this will be just a very blanket provision. 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 I am delighted to stand in support of this first reading of the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill to allow trading in the Wanaka and Tauranga districts on Easter Sunday and Good Friday. The current laws are a dog’s breakfast. Under the existing laws certain shops are exempted from having to stay closed at Easter and Christmas. If they serve food or petrol they can stay open and if they sell souvenirs they can stay open. A pharmacy or a shop in a bus station can stay open and a garden centre can open on Easter Sunday but not otherwise. Furthermore if a shop chooses to open on any of those days it commits an offence and has to pay a fine of $1000. So shops do choose to stay open knowing that the trading figures more than justify the cost of the fine. 
As the chief executive of the Auckland chamber of commerce has stated: “There is no better example of stupid lawmaking and collective political failure to fix bad law than the annual Easter Shopping conundrum.” He continued: “It is stupid to have a law on when shops can open or not open. It is even more stupid to have a law that says some shops can open and others can’t—let the market decide.” We have a wonderful tourism industry in New Zealand yet Queenstown can stay open on Easter Sunday and Good Friday but Wanaka cannot. Taupo is exempt; Rotorua is not. Whilst the bill refers to Wanaka and Tauranga it also allows other towns to choose to tag along and join the schedule of exempted areas. 
This bill is about choice—the freedom to choose if one runs a business in Wanaka to stay open and the freedom to choose to remain closed. If we have personal religious or cultural reasons to keep Easter Day and Good Friday free from commercial activity and free from running our shops or businesses then we can so choose. If we choose not to shop and to have a family day away from shops then we do not have to shop. Nobody is forcing us to shop. Nothing in this bill is compulsory; nothing in this bill is mandatory. 
It has been stated by the Family First Lobby that: “Public holidays are traditions. They create rituals for families not based on shopping but on celebrating together reconnecting and making memories.” I do not disagree with that statement but as the  
Listener 
 reported on Christmas Day that may well be true but at Easter it is not. Family unity is not put at risk if the local supermarket opens on a public holiday. Because of the ridiculous current law 45000 visitors to Auckland last month attended the Rolling Stones concert yet they could not go shopping. They could go to the concert but they could not buy a new outfit to wear to the concert. 
If one objects to working on Easter Sunday or Good Friday so be it. But the irony is that because the current law is ludicrous many shop owners now flout the law. What does that mean? It means that labour inspectors are busy working on that “day of rest” catching all those who choose to remain open. That is the irony of it. Wholesalers can remain open; retailers cannot. Goods can be purchased on the Internet but not from physical shop premises. One can get a haircut on Good Friday but not buy shampoo. One can rent a video or a DVD from a video shop on Good Friday but not buy one. Newspapers are not sold on Good Friday but the newspaper staff are working on the Saturday edition. Shops in Taupo can open; shops in Rotorua cannot. Shops in Queenstown can open; shops in Wanaka cannot. 
Under this bill towns can choose to avail themselves of that exemption. Alternatively they can choose not to. Similarly shop owners can always choose to open. Alternatively they can choose not to open. Workers can choose to work on those days or they can refuse to work. But then who would not want to work with the current Holidays Act regime? 
This issue has been languishing. It is time it was resolved once and for all. It is not a sin to buy goods on Easter Day or Good Friday; neither is it a sin to sell goods on those days. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I have to say that members’ day brings out the diverse views in this House. I feel slightly uncomfortable here tonight with my colleagues on either side of me—but lucky Jacqui Dean. Her bill was pulled from the ballot; mine has lingered in the ballot since the day after the election. We thought we would be the first cab off the rank because we would get the bill in the ballot there would be no others our bill would be pulled out and away we would go. 
The Rotorua bill that I sponsor though I have to say is a much more robust bill than the approach in this bill. It is more inclusive I say to Jacqui. We are attempting to address the ridiculous geographic anomalies that exist in the schedule of exemptions. This schedule of exemptions I think was a pure issue of oversight in 1990. I am not blaming the members at the time; I do not know whether the legislation was rushed through. We were not here then but Rotorua was simply omitted and left off the list. We have suffered for that ever since and I must tell my colleagues here that we have suffered. The absurdity for us is that people can go right through our town and shop in Taupo. 
Of course Taupo voted against my last attempt to get shop trading legislation in the House because it had an economic advantage enshrined in the law in 1990 and we have been unable to unseat that ridiculous anomaly ever since. But in the approach that we took in my bill we were actually less parochial. We realised last time in the bill that I sponsored as a Rotorua local bill that people saw it was just a Rotorua issue that I was trying to resolve and every other area in New Zealand was not remotely interested and so we lost that bill in the House. 
This time working alongside the district council the chamber of commerce Retail Rotorua and the economic development unit we proposed a bill that uses the long-term community plan for territorial local authorities as the mechanism to go out and consult their communities. If they agree to Easter Sunday trading only then can that be addressed. So any territorial local authority across the country could do that rather than picking winners. That anomaly drives the country to absolute distraction. 
This bill is imperfect. It will allow only Wanaka and Tauranga to trade and it also includes Good Friday. I know we have subsequently had advice from the Clerk of the House that other districts can add an amendment. Members can be sure I will be ready with Rotorua. But also I think adding Good Friday into the legislation does weaken its chances. We actually did survey the whole country with the help of the retail sector and the chambers of commerce and there was no mood across the country when it last came to the House—and times change—for Good Friday. That is the argument I am hearing in the House tonight—do not erode it away too much. So we understood that Easter Sunday was about the only day that people would accept for change if there was any mood and that is all that I proposed in my bill. I hope that does not weaken the support for this bill tonight. 
I will support this bill to select committee. Why will I? I am the MP for a tourism icon city and electorate and we have been driven absolutely crazy ever since 1990. We supported Rodney Hide’s bill in the last term of Government and I had no problem with that. As we say one finds some strange bedfellows in an MMP environment and I found Rodney’s bill eminently sensible. 
I would also like to point out that there is no protection for workers in this bill. In my bill that is languishing in the ballot—and it will probably stay there—we have the protections for workers that were proposed by the Green Party when they got the amendment into the last Easter Shop Trading Amendment Act that covered garden centres. We were pleased that the Greens got that amendment in for worker protection. That is not in this bill and that does concern me. 
I will be launching a petition in the Bay of Plenty this Saturday. The petition will urge Parliament to consider legislation to fix the anomalous schedule of exemptions. The petition has the support of the economic development unit Retail Rotorua the chamber of commerce and the district council. It was also resolved at every zone meeting of Local Government New Zealand right through the country that it too would support this bill. Good luck. I hope we get there. I never want to debate this again in this House. 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I thank Steve Chadwick who is on the other side of the House. 
Hon Member 
: Steady! 
JACQUI DEAN 
: The member should not worry; it will not get too fulsome. Steve and I both have the same goal in mind; we just have a different way of getting there. We both want the Easter trading issue to be settled once and for all—I think we agree on that. But although Steve’s approach gets us bogged down in the local government process of endless expensive consultation my approach is elegantly simple. My approach is that should the bill get to the Committee stage which I really hope it does then other towns with a significant visitor industry can be added by way of a Supplementary Order Paper or an amendment. That was always my intention with this bill. I named Wanaka because the people of Wanaka came to me wanting me to help them fix once and for all the ongoing Groundhog Day - like problem of Easter trading. 
There has been a lot of interest from all around New Zealand in this Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill. I have had messages phone calls and inquiries from many people. I have had inquiries from Napier Hastings and Central Hawke’s Bay and I have had indications from Northland that it would like to be part of this bill. I have had messages from the Bay of Plenty Dunedin Wanganui Gisborne Nelson Greymouth Blenheim Invercargill and of course many from Wanaka. I remind those members of the House that this level of interest tells me that it is not just me and other MPs who want changes to this legislation; it is the retailers from around New Zealand. Business groups from around the country are looking to us to provide leadership on this issue effect change to this archaic legislation and in the first instance send this bill through to the select committee. 
I refer to a piece of paper that plopped onto my desk one day and being a new MP this tends to happen often—one gets landed with bits of paper that one does not quite know what they mean until one reads them. This one was quite interesting. 
Hon Member 
: We often call them leaks. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Yes thank you. This report from the Ministry of Justice provided some advice on whether the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill is consistent with the rights and freedoms set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I was really interested to read section 47 of the Holidays Act 2003 as advised. It states: “An employer may require an employee to work on a public holiday if—(a) the public holiday falls on a day on which but for it being a public holiday would otherwise be a working day for the employee; and (b) the employee is required to work on the public holiday under the employee’s employment agreement.” The Ministry of Justice report goes on to state that if employees do not wish to work on Good Friday and/or Easter Sunday they cannot be required to work unless they have agreed to in their employment agreement. So I was very interested to read that from the Ministry of Justice. 
I think the definition of Wanaka in the schedule works extremely well for Wanaka. There is a post shop in the middle of Wanaka and in consultation with the Wanaka Chamber of Commerce we worked out that a radius of I think 20 or 25 kilometres from the post shop brought in all those retail areas that wanted to be brought in and included in this bill. So too with Tauranga. In consultation with local business leaders in Tauranga they agreed that that was the area they wanted described in the schedule. I do not care how visitor districts are described in the schedule. It does not matter. What matters is that those areas that want to be included in the schedule are described in the way they would like to be described. 
I take issue with the idea that family life is threatened by a few shops being open over Easter. Family life may be threatened by many many things but I have never seen family life threatened by mum dad and a couple of kids going to the shops for a coffee and a spot of shopping over Easter. I think there is a tendency to get a little bit too serious about this issue. I think it is very important for all of us to remember that they are only shops. They are nothing threatening or awful; they are only shops. 
Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak to this bill and I hope that once and for all we can set this matter to rest. I would like to see this bill go to a select committee. 
A personal vote was called for on the question  
That the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 73 
Ardern  
Cullen(P) 
King C 
Swain(P) 
Auchinvole   
Dalziel(P) 
Mapp  
te Heuheu(P) 
Bennett D (P) 
Dean  
Mark  
Tisch  
Bennett P (P) 
Donnelly   
McCully(P) 
Tizard(P) 
Benson-Pope   
Dunne  
Okeroa(P) 
Tremain(P) 
Beyer(P) 
English  
Paraone (P) 
Turia  
Blue  
Finlayson   
Parker(P) 
Wagner  
Blumsky(P) 
Foss  
Peachey  
Wilkinson(P) 
Borrows(P) 
Goff(P) 
Peters(P) 
Williamson(P) 
Brash(P) 
Goodhew  
Power  
Wong(P) 
Brown  
Goudie(P) 
Rich(P) 
Woolerton(P) 
Brownlee(P) 
Guy  
Roy H 
Worth(P) 
Carter D (P) 
Hartley(P) 
Ryall  
Chadwick   
Hawkins  
Samuels(P) 
Choudhary(P) 
Hayes(P) 
Sharples   
Clark(P) 
Henare  
Simich  
Clarkson   
Hide  
Smith L 
Coleman(P) 
Hutchison   
Smith N 
Collins(P) 
Key(P) 
Stewart  
Teller: 
Connell(P) 
King A (P) 
Sutton(P) 
Roy E 
Noes 41 
Barker  
Fitzsimons(P) 
Mackey  
Turei(P) 
Barnett(P) 
Gallagher   
Maharey(P) 
Turner  
Bradford(P) 
Gosche  
Mahuta(P) 
Wilson(P) 
Burton(P) 
Heatley(P) 
Mallard(P) 
Yates 
Carter C (P) 
Hereora(P) 
Moroney  
Copeland   
Hobbs(P) 
O'Connor   
Cosgrove   
Hodgson(P) 
Pettis(P) 
Cunliffe(P) 
Horomia(P) 
Pillay  
Duynhoven   
Jones  
Ririnui(P) 
Dyson(P) 
Kedgley(P) 
Robertson(P) 
Fenton  
Laban(P) 
Street(P) 
Teller: 
Field(P) 
Locke  
Tanczos  
Hughes  
Abstentions 3 
Carter J (P) 
Groser(P) 
Tolley(P) 
Bill read a first time and referred to the Commerce Committee. 
The House adjourned at 9.54 p.m.