Volume 698 Week 72 - Thursday 15 May 2014(continued on Friday 16 May 2014)Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 698 Week 72 - Thursday 15 May 2014(continued on Friday 16 May 2014)[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17983. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Thursday 15 May 2014(continued on Friday 16 May 2014)Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed.Part 2 Amendments to Income Tax Act 2007 (continued)The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): When the Committee was suspended last night Jacinda Ardern had the call. She has about 2¾ minutes.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Is that all—2¾ minutes remaining? Oh right so technically I have up to an extra 5 minutes if I am lucky. I thought it might—Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s another 15 minutes actually.JACINDA ARDERN: Well I think I managed to clock up 40 minutes last night so I am still waiting for the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour to match me call for call in this debate.I thought it might be helpful to recap on where we were in this debate last. We are in the Committee stage obviously and last night we debated Part 1 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which talked about the extension of paid parental leave. The extension from 14 weeks to 18 weeks was basically all that Part 1 did despite the Minister talking about the extension to eligibility. That is not what this bill is doing.Hon Simon Bridges: It’s coming.JACINDA ARDERN: He says it is coming. That is interesting. Last night the Minister went to great lengths to make a claim about Labour’s comprehensive paid parental leave policy and Best Start policy which is quite a significant package fully costed fully stepped out and based on consultation with the sector. He claimed that the policy work had not been done yet here we are debating a little bit of a change to paid parental leave—just one simple change from 14 to 18 weeks; it is just a little bit of what the Government announced—because I suspect the policy work has not been done. That is my very big suspicion. Why would I expect that that might be the case? From what I was reading of the regulatory impact statements last night some of the briefing papers were not actually being churned out by the Government until last month. So my strong strong suspicion in responding to what the Minister has said is that perhaps some of it was done in a bit of a rush.That brings me to Part 2 which we have only just begun debating and I am sure it will be a comprehensive discussion this morning. Part 2 contains the changes to the parental tax credit. Very simple changes are made in that part. They are changes that the Minister—again I am astounded by the statement—said are extending support to people who got nothing from Labour. That is an absolutely unbelievable statement made by the Minister in the chair because there have always been losers in the system that we currently have. Labour’s policy was clearly focused on trying to plug those gaps. So let us look at who those losers are and how that has changed because the parental tax credit was always about supposedly plugging that gap.We have roughly give or take 60000 births in New Zealand per annum. Of those births we know that roughly 40 percent tend to be eligible for paid parental leave. Why is that? Under the existing criteria which have not changed yet you have to be in a job for a particular length of time you have to be working for a certain number of hours—there are a number of criteria that often preclude people’s eligibility. The Minister haschanged those criteria a bit and I applaud him for that; it is good to see. But out of that change what did the Minister say? Was it roughly 1200 or 1400 people affected by that change give or take? Again that is not a massive extension of the eligibility then for paid parental leave. It is good but not too significant.Jenny Shipley in the 1990s recognised that that gap existed and she brought in the parental tax credit. It is not for everyone. Not everyone who does not get paid parental leave automatically then receives the short-term parental tax credit. Let us be really clear about what the parental tax credit is. It is not the family tax credit; that is part of Working for Families which Labour brought in cuts across the life of a child and is income tested. It is not the in-work tax credit which is meant to be a payment to cover the extra costs of being in work when you have a family. It is the parental tax credit. At the moment after these changes it will be for 10 weeks. It used to be at a rate of $150. Under these changes in Part 2 it will be $220 for that 10-week period. So it is roughly $2000 for a family.It sounds like everyone who does not get paid parental leave is going to get that—not so. In fact the eligibility criteria are going to narrow—not yet in this bill; I believe that is yet to come is it Minister? I imagine that might be a revenue bill perhaps. The criteria are going to narrow. So who misses out? Students miss out. The reality is some people might say “Well if you are studying why are you having kids?”. There are people in many varying circumstances who might be in study at any age at the time that they may fall pregnant. Life happens. The fact is that in New Zealand 50 percent of our pregnancies are unplanned—life happens. It is about making sure that when it does parents are well supported to give their child that best start in life. When people are unemployed it might be the most temporary of unemployment. They might be transitioning between jobs and be temporarily on jobseeker support. They are not eligible for this extra support. They might be in a situation where their relationship has split up. As dire as it sounds there are relationships that fall apart when people find out they are pregnant. It is a major stressor in relationships and it happens. If they happen to then have to seek sole parent support they are not eligible either. You could say that these are individuals who actually are probably in the most precarious of situations—potentially our most vulnerable families—and they are excluded from the parental tax credit.I think this is a really important point to make because the extension that the Government has made is in the length of time of the parental tax credit and to the amount but not to who receives it. That has always been one of the biggest downsides of the parental tax credit. It was a little bitsy thing that Jenny Shipley came up with that predominantly tends to go to families where for instance parents are staying at home to raise existing children but are under a certain income rate. Those tend to be the families who are receiving the parental tax credit and families who already have children when another one is on the way if members would like the longer-form explanation of that. Those tend to be the ones who are falling into those eligibility criteria.The Minister has also said though that the criteria are going to change. At the moment yes the parental tax credit is not universal outside of people on benefits. It is abated. It is income-tested. The income testing is going to narrow now; that is what we have been told. It is not what we are debating yet but it is going to narrow. That basically means that if you are currently eligible for the family tax credit—you are roughly on that kind of income range—then you are going to qualify for the parental tax credit. That is the rough guide that we have been given by the Government. That means that there are some families who often miss out on any kind of support from the Government. They do not feel particularly wealthy but they are not going to get anything now.SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is great to have an opportunity to speak on Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. It is a bit of a mouthful and it does not necessarily indicate how little support there is for newborn children but still it is a step in the right direction—a small step but a step in the right direction none the less. This part is the part that deals with the parental tax credit. I note that this morning the Prime Minister was having breakfast with the Child Poverty Action Group up in Auckland. Well I hope that he is honest and I hope that he is upfront with the group because it will not be fooled by the way; it is a very smart organisation. I hope that he is clear with the group that he has failed to give financial support for newborn children and the most vulnerable and the poorest of families because that is in fact what has happened.In fact the Child Poverty Action Group issued a press statement this morning pointing exactly that out. It says: “Unfortunately the 2014 budget offers little else to assist the 205000 poorest and most vulnerable children in NZ who fall below the very low 50% poverty line.”That was a press statement issued this morning from the Child Poverty Action Group. It is absolutely right that Part 2 bears this out. It is interesting that the vehicle that National has chosen is the parental tax credit because that parental tax credit is very targeted but interestingly does not target the lowest income people. It excludes the children of beneficiaries from having any support in this way. It excludes the children of students from having support in any way. It excludes the children of people who are on ACC payments from having any financial support at all. So I think it is quite misleading that the bill title says “Financial Support for Newborn Children” as if it is for all children.It of course is not and National with its Cabinet club mates has moved to specifically exclude the people who are the poorest. [Interruption] It is kind of interesting because every time we talk about financial support for children and parents National gets really rowdy. It gets very rowdy and angry actually. It is really surprising that this continues to happen.Mike Sabin: I’m always angry.SUE MORONEY: I could understand it—well Mike Sabin says he is always angry but in fact he is at his most angry when we talk about financial support for children. National members find it very difficult to understand this concept.I do want to support the amendment to this part in the name of Jacinda Ardern because it shows a huge gulf and a huge difference between the approaches of Labour and National when it comes to financial support for newborn children. Under Labour’s Best Start policy every child will benefit.Simon O’Connor: No no no.SUE MORONEY: Every single child will benefit. Well Simon O’Connor says: “No no no.” He is a little bit right. The people who earn more than $150000 will not benefit from the $60-a-week Best Start payment under Labour but they do get the early childhood education component and they will get paid parental leave. They will get extended paid parental leave—a much more extended parental leave—under a Labour Government by the way. But every single child will benefit from Labour’s Best Start package.Simon O’Connor: Oh!SUE MORONEY: It is true Simon. I know that National does not like that. It does not like the idea that all children will benefit but that is a fact of Labour’s Best Start package. Jacinda Ardern’s amendment would mean that all the children who miss out under what National is doing in Part 2—Hon Anne Tolley: All means all.SUE MORONEY: Well if Mrs Tolley would you know stop yelling and screaming—Hon Anne Tolley: Tell the truth.SUE MORONEY: She is saying “Tell the truth.” and I am—all of the children who miss out under National’s package will get $60 a week under Labour’s. It is not only $60 a week for the first year for those children who are missing out under what National is proposing—and they are from the poorest families by the way—but that goes on until the child’s third birthday under Labour’s Best Start policy. That is for the poorest families in New Zealand. Is that not the issue that really needs addressing? Well finally there is silence from National’s benches. Finally while I am on my feet there is a little bit of silence because National members do not want to answer that question.Labour’s Best Start policy—and I challenge Simon O’Connor to say this is not true—gives at least $60 a week for the first year to all families earning $150000 because those families who are entitled to paid parental leave get even more than $60 a year for that period. So it is at least $60 a year. And then the very poorest families—for those low-income families earning less than $50000 per year—will get $60 a week until that child’s third birthday. Those families earning up to $70000 a year will get a proportion of that $60. I really do want the Minister to take a call and explain—Mike Sabin: What does it all cost Sue?SUE MORONEY: Look all they can see is the cost. They cannot see that it is an investment in children. Is that not National through and through? They just see children as being a cost. This Government cannot see that that is the real way to a brighter future in this country. It is always in deficit mode—it is always in deficit mode. From the time that National got into Government it has increased the country’s debt. It has delivered deficits. It has got the slimmest of surpluses this year and you would think it had never happened before. Well there were 9 years of surplus under a Labour Government and that is what there will be from next year on when Labour returns to Government as well because it is Labour that knows how to deal with the issues that the Government is trying to deal with here—the parental tax credit.Clearly under a Labour Government there are many more opportunities for jobs. Unemployment was at the lowest levels in the OECD under the previous Labour Government. Under this Government we have slumped to about 15th or 16th place in the OECD rankings for unemployment. So these are the real issues that need addressing.In Part 2 the Government is instead just trying to pick and choose some winners amongst children. By using the parental tax credit it is casting the sorts of judgments that we see time and time again from National. Those members are very very good at judging other people’s families. They are casting the judgment that the children of those less fortunate than themselves are not worthy—they are not worthy of this financial support for newborn children. That is what they have called this bill yet they are using Part 2 to deliberately exclude the neediest of those newborn children—the most needy.I am looking forward to hearing the vote on the amendment put forward by Jacinda Ardern. It does reflect the very comprehensive policy and I do want to take issue with what Minister Bridges said albeit last night because I did not get an opportunity to respond at the time. He said that his Government has done all the policy work in this area. Well I can see that what it has done is look at the very comprehensive work done at the Social Services Committee through the very good Labour Party bill that extends paid parental leave to 26 weeks and it has cherry-picked a bit of it. And then with regard to the part that it does need to do some more policy development on it clearly has been lazy and has not done the work because if it had its proposed—proposed—extension to eligibility for paid parental leave would be in this urgency motion today and it is not. It is not being debated. So clearly the Minister has not done the policywork that he claims to have done—he has not done it—and it will be interesting to see whether that bill gets introduced before the House rises in July. I am not sure that we will see it this side of the election and then I think the New Zealand public would have cause to ask themselves why that is not happening before the election.Part 2 will be supported by Labour because it is a little bit of improvement but it is not a lot of improvement and it does make some really worrying judgment calls about National judging which children are worthy of the support and which children are not. Under a Labour-led Government that will change. There will be $60 a week made available as financial support for newborn children—all newborn children—and that will be coming in next year. So the New Zealand public would be wise to look in detail at this. I know that the New Zealand public understands which side of the House it is that really understands the needs of children.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak to the Budget Measure (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill again and follow on from some of our discussion last night. First I do need to note how disappointed I was last night to see the proposal to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks voted down. It was I think a real shame for all the families in New Zealand who have access to paid parental leave. So to talk specifically to Part 2 of this bill the Green Party really supports the vision of having every single child thriving in this country and we believe in making an investment in our children and our families. We believe that that investment would pay off manyfold for many years for this country. We along with many in this country are deeply concerned about the levels of inequality that we are now living with in New Zealand. Those 285000 children could be living in poverty—Hon Anne Tolley: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I know that we have had a wide-ranging debate but I do think that we are on Part 2 and this speaker should really attempt to talk to the bill.Hon Trevor Mallard: I actually listened to the last sentence that the member spoke before she was so rudely interrupted and it was directly on this part of the bill. If the Deputy Leader of the House listened to the debate—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! The member should not use a point of order to attack another member. I think the point is well made. I have been listening very carefully and we are on the amendments to the Income Tax Act—that is Part 2. Some discretion is given to draw an analogy and example. I have listened very carefully. I am kind of reluctant to interrupt members but if members do not want to debate Part 2 then that is inviting the Committee to determine whether or not it wants a closure. That is the kind of discipline around how this stuff works all right?JAN LOGIE: Actually to carry on exactly from what I was saying about our concern around the levels of inequality in this country the parental tax credit which we are debating in Part 2 of this bill will directly feed into that inequality in this country which for us is just a shame. It is symbolic of the ideology of this Government whereby it will offer token lollies to people. That will make a difference to some families and I am not underestimating that. Seventy dollars a week for middle-income families in this country will make a difference and that is why we are supporting this provision. However by purposefully denying this parental tax credit to beneficiaries to people receiving ACC and to those receiving student allowances or pensions it will actually also increase inequality. The group that is in the most need is getting nothing from this provision in the bill which is why we are putting forward an amendment to this bill which I hope others in this Parliament will support to ensure that this extension to the parental tax credit will be available to every single family in New Zealand because we care deeply about inequality.I would also like to note that in some of the discussions around this provision in Part 2 of the bill the Child Poverty Action Group’s analysis of this issue has noted that the Government appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the needs of children and beneficiary families and we agree with that. We have heard that quite clearly from some of the interjections from the Government side of the Chamber last night and again today. I do want to remind this Committee of some of the drivers in the need for people to require income support. The primary driver for it is either a loss of employment which is something people have no control over or it may be disability and we have not brought down the barriers to employment for people with disabilities or it can be domestic violence which is something that we are supposedly all together on in this Parliament in fighting. So to discriminate against those families and to deny them this extra money to be able to help cope in those early days after the birth of a child does not seem consistent to us with the values of an inclusive society.I would also note that the Child Poverty Action Group has looked at this analysis and it has also said that although it looks as though families are going to be getting extra money and it will increase on annual terms for those families who are able to get it so that they will now get basically about $2200 from this provision up from $1200—so it is an extra $1000 in total for those families to cope with those extra financial costs of a new baby—it is urging the Government as are we to extend those payments to families who are currently excluded. In the words of Susan St John it is unfair that the new mothers and their newborns who are most in need will get no help from these measures which are funded by the taxpayer.For me that is one of the things to remember. Our tax money is our collective expression of our values as a country. Together we have so much more resource and we can make a huge difference in the lives of these families at virtually no individual cost to us actually. When it all comes together it is a tiny amount from me and a tiny amount from you that will make such a huge difference. I really believe that New Zealanders do want children and babies in beneficiary families—those who are leaving violent relationships those with disabilities those who have lost their jobs—to have as good a start as anyone else. That is what is in front of this Committee today: the opportunity either to give kids the best chance in every family or to entrench inequality. I am really hoping that this Committee will reflect on its values reflect on the foundations of this country and come up with a solution that says “Yes we believe every child deserves to thrive and no we do not support entrenching and building inequality in this country.”I would also like to just note that this provision of the bill has been specifically noted by the Government as part of its families package of $500 million which sounds like quite a lot and is a significant investment. But it is worth noting for the country that this is over 4 years so that is actually only $125 million a year and this provision is actually an increase of only $15 million a year I have been told. So when we are thinking about the relative value—Hon Trevor Mallard: 13.JAN LOGIE: —$13 million; thank you Mr Mallard—and how much this Government is really valuing families and children and wanting to support them I also remind them that $1 billion is now being spent on servicing the interest on the debt that this Government got us into because it chose to cut taxes for the wealthiest in this country. To me that needs to be said. I want to support and give affirmation to the Government for good initiatives and we will do that at every opportunity but this does need to be put in context. The question needs to be asked as to whether this fundamentally reflects our values. Will this deliver on a country where every single child has the ability to thrive? We are giving all our weight to that vision.Sadly although we will be supporting this because it is something unless this Committee extends it to every single family and particularly to beneficiary families I do not believe that this initiative will deliver what our children deserve.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): I will take just a short call on Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. I actually just need to ask the Minister of Labour directly whether he could explain part of the regulatory impact statement. If we were not under urgency for this bill—and I am not quite sure why we are under urgency for the bill because nothing happens from tomorrow when we pass it for quite some time—it would go to a select committee and I would be able to ask the officials for clarification. I am absolutely happy for any member of National to jump up and explain this if they can please. I am absolutely happy for anybody over there on that side to explain this for myself and therefore for the parents who are receiving Working for Families. I would be grateful.Point 5 of the regulatory impact statement says that to receive the Working for Families payments “a person must be at least 16 years of age and also meet residency requirements. The amount of payments depends on the number of dependent children aged 18 or younger that are being cared for; the age of the child being cared for; the total family income; where the family income comes from; and any shared care arrangements.” I would pick up the note that this is a parental tax credit. If it is a parental tax credit it does seem strange as to why the circumstances of the parent matter. If there is a philosophical statement there that we support parents through a parental tax credit why does it matter what the financial circumstances of that parent are? So it would be great if you could just explain that first part.Point 7 however says—and I read it last night and I really would like somebody from National to explain it—“The FTC and IWTC are currently abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar when annual family income exceeds $36350. The PTC is also abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar; however the amount of the abatement is calculated against 56 days of annualised income rather than a full year’s worth of incomes; this creates an effective PTC abatement rate of 3.26 cents. The MFTC is abated dollar for dollar until a family’s income reaches $21216 after tax.” If the Minister would like to jump up and just clarify that paragraph that would be great. Mike Sabin have a go at it—no problem. But then we shift to the departmental disclosure statement and this part on page 3 under the statement “Parental Tax Credit” which reads—David Bennett: Tell us about your man Denny.TRACEY MARTIN: You will not be able to answer it if you do not listen Mr Bennett. The statement reads: “The Bill increases the maximum amount of Parental Tax Credit (PTC) payable”—[Interruption] Can you hear me Minister? I am sure it is a little bit loud. You might not be able to hear the question.Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am not that far from the speaker. I am really struggling to hear her over the rabble of the National Party benches and I would like you to call them to order. They have been doing this throughout this whole debate and I think it is time that they actually let the speakers be heard.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Yes well having been present for a few debates across this urgency I would have to say that it has been a fairly energetic debate from both sides and I am not sure it is any more appropriate now than it has been at any stage. If you want the Chair to intervene every time on either side well we are happy to do that—Hon Trevor Mallard: No.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am on my feet. Look this is the highest court in the land. There is a standard of decorum that I would like to see us embrace and members just ought to be conscious of that.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Mr Chair. So just for the Minister I will start that paragraph again. It is on page 3. The Minister has officials behind him who might be able to provide him with an answer. It is in the departmental disclosure statement on page 3 under “Parental Tax Credit”: “The Bill increases the maximum amount of Parental Tax Credit (PTC) payable on the birth of a newborn to $220 per week”—so it is for newborn children—“for the first 10 weeks following birth. This takes the total maximum payment to $2200 per newborn. The higher payments apply to babies born on or after 1 April 2015.” Let us be clear: it is 2015. But it is the following paragraph that I have concerns about. It is this paragraph that I know I would like clarification on: “The Bill also changes the abatement formula for the PTC so that is”—the English is a little bit off—“abated against each dollar of family income over the abatement threshold earned over the year rather than over the parental entitlement period.”Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The first thing I would like to do is to refer the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour to paragraph 44 on page 9 of the regulatory impact statement where it says that there is no ability to consult after the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill has been put through because the legislation needs to be in place before November 2014 in order to have sufficient time for the Inland Revenue Department’s “systems processes and guidance to be finalised.” I am not saying we should keep this urgency going until November but what I would like to ask the Minister is why we are considering this under such shortened time frames. Why has this particular part of the bill—not the whole bill but this particular part of the bill—not been sent to a select committee for a proper examination?The paper that he has supplied to us tells us that this particular part of the bill is not urgent. It is not urgent; it could wait until November. Being realistic about elections and things it could wait until July to go through Parliament. What I want to know from any National speaker who is prepared to get on their hind legs is why the Government is pushing this through when its own officials have told it—when its own officials have told it—that this is not urgent legislation.The next point I would like to make is to jump way further into the regulatory impact statement and ask the Minister about the relative options that are set out in paragraph 45 under “Conclusions and recommendations”. I do not know whether the Minister knows but what we know is that Cabinet and the officials worked their way through a set of options in this particular area and the reason this option was chosen—I just want to check my logic with the Minister because it appears to be written down here—was that it would keep people in work and off paid parental leave. Is that the objective? That is why on the weighted choices that are set out in paragraph 45 this option won by one point—by one point—and that point came from the fact that it would keep people at work and discourage people from taking paid parental leave.I just want to ask the Government whether that is really its objective. Is that the objective of the Key Government? Is it to say especially to women: “We don’t want you to take up your paid parental leave and this is a way to stop you from doing it. This is a way to save us money on paid parental leave. We will encourage you to stay at work. We will give you a pittance for a short period of time in order to not do what’s right for your baby.”? I just want to ask what sort of ethical basis we are working on. Whom do we care about? First of all we will make a tiny—not that I am going back to it Mr Chairperson—change in one area but then we will work really hard to ensure that you do not take it up. We will work really hard to make sure that parents do not take it up. What the document tabled in the House says is that the defining difference—the thing that made this option the weighted average winner—is the fact that it would stop people from leaving their jobs to take up paid parental leave.I just ask members opposite whether they read this stuff. Do they read it? Do they care? Do the backbenchers ever hold their Ministers to account for the ethics of the Government? The Government is prepared to go out and pretend that it cares about paid parental leave but then they choose the option in this particular part of the legislation that is designed to minimise people taking up paid parental leave. That option won out of those presented to Cabinet only because it was the option that most kept people away from paid parental leave. So it is designed to save the Government some money in the longer term. It is designed to reduce the options for some people to take paid parental leave and that is the reason it was chosen. I just want to say that that is something that is absolutely disgraceful.Moving back to the paragraph that I referred to before we now know why the Government did not want to send this part to a select committee. Under paragraph 44 it says that it does not need to go through Parliament until November. We now know why the Government is putting it through now. It is because it was trying to sneak it through under the radar. It was trying to put it through this Parliament without us realising what it was actually doing. I just say that in New Zealand which has a long-term tradition of being transparent in its legislation and being clear and open and obvious about the reasons why we are doing things to take this sort of sneaky approach in the hope that all members of Parliament are like National Party backbenchers and do not read the documentation that is tabled in the House—it was hoping that we would not read it as well. And what we do know is that we do look at it.I do not often disagree with officials in their regulatory impact statements but the next thing that I would like to refer to in paragraph 45 is the targeting criteria that targets “lower and middle income families”. This option comes up top in that particular area. Well it does not—it is not the best option for targeting lower and middle income families. The reason it comes top here is that the option of targeting those who are really low-income families was excluded earlier in the paper. It was excluded earlier in the paper. I just want to say to the officials—not those in the Chamber of course; I would not address them—who were responsible for this regulatory impact statement that giving this option a rating of four which is at the top of the targeting of lower and middle income families is just bollocks. It is wrong. It is not the case.When you take out those families who are the most in poverty and do not allow them to be part of the ranking system in the regulatory impact statement on this part of the bill then what you are doing is denying the facts of poverty in this country. It might be fashionable and it might be—I do not think it is acceptable for John Key to mess around with the facts when he is answering questions in this House but it is absolutely unacceptable for the Public Service of New Zealand to become so politicised that the regulatory impact statements do not tell the truth. It must not pick up the standards of the Prime Minister in the denial of poverty in the way that it has here. It is the role of the Public Service to be full and frank in their advice to Ministers and this House. Although I welcome officials’ frankness as to their timing and I welcome their frankness as to the fact that this is designed to stop people taking paid parental leave I regret the fact that they were not prepared within this statement to point out that the people who are most affected by poverty in New Zealand will miss out entirely on this measure. It is their job—it is the job of the policy advisers of that ministry—to do it.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. I really start from the position where the Hon Trevor Mallard was because these provisions actually take out the most vulnerable. What Jacinda Ardern’s amendment does is put them back in because thosereceiving a benefit are the most vulnerable the most in poverty and it really says that that group should be included. By the process that Trevor Mallard has just identified they have been excluded.This is a good amendment and I think if the Government was sincere about addressing the most vulnerable it would agree to this particular amendment because those on benefits at this time require this assistance. I have not heard an argument from the Minister of Labour. Maybe he would like to take a call to explain to us why those receiving a benefit are excluded. If that provision was put in I think that would satisfy this side of the Chamber.Then I want to speak also to the other amendment that Jacinda Ardern has proposed and this is to increase the parental tax credit to $3120 from $2200 because that actually does begin to put it within striking distance of the Best Start programme. This actually does relate to the Best Start programme that Labour proposed. It is quite interesting. When Labour proposed Best Start and tried to address this there were howls from the Government benches that this was the baby bonus this was a bribe and they pilloried it. They did not have anything positive to say about it. I believe that this was when the Government started to think: “Oops we have made a mistake.”When Sue Moroney’s bill was before the Government Administration Committee a very large number of submitters came forward to say that these are the kinds of things we need to think about. When the Government saw support for these kinds of provisions—which Sue Moroney’s bill was talking about—that is when it started to think about paid parental leave and the changes it is making here.Prior to that the Government had no idea. The Minister of Labour earlier when he took the only call he has taken so far said that this was a very carefully thought out series of policies. That is unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. This Government has been absolutely driven to consider paid parental leave and the tax credits that we are talking about in Part 2 of this particular bill. The Government did not think about it before and it had no idea.The Government realises that there is a demand from the public and it is Sue Moroney’s bill that has forced the Government to look at this. What the Government is doing now is not doing the job well enough. The first part increases paid parental leave by only 2 weeks next year and by 2 weeks the year after. It is a pittance—60000 children this year and 60000 children next year will miss out.So where is the sincerity of this Minister and this Government in trying to address this problem properly? They are not sincere about this. This is simply something the Government has been forced to do something it has put in the Budget and it is now trying under urgency to pass this bill. The bill has got lots of faults.This side of the Chamber supports families. This side of the Chamber supports mothers particularly at the time when children arrive. This is why the 26 weeks’ paid parental leave was so important. It gets us towards a minimum standard. The reports are legendary. The Families Commission report recommending about 13 months was a very well-thought-out piece of work. It brought every piece of knowledge that was available around the world in this particular area and all the assistance available thought it through and put in place a 7-year programme. New Zealand could have transitioned very very systematically and programmatically to have a decent paid parental leave system to give our children the best start possible.But what this particular bill has done and what Part 2 is doing here is just only playing at the edges of it. This questions the sincerity of this Government. This questions the extent to which it really is interested in paid parental leave. I think of all of the quotes that were read out by earlier speakers around what National Cabinet Ministers and National members said about paid parental leave. I think an honourablemember said that it was a travesty. I think this is where their real heart is. For them this is a—MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): I moveThat the question be now put.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a short call in the Committee stage on Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. We have put forward an amendment to attempt to extend the parental tax credit to not just the extensions that are included in the bill but to all families particularly those who are on low incomes—the lowest incomes—those who are on benefits those who are students and those who are currently excluded from this scheme.Every family suffers the financial burden of a newborn child. There are costs associated with it. They include things like the equipment—cots prams and nappies. Each of these stresses is felt by every family that has a newborn. So those tax credits for the first 8 weeks or in this case now 10 weeks makes a significant difference. But it makes more of a difference for those families who are the poorest because they are less resilient.In respect of this part of the bill and these provisions around the tax credit this Government by excluding the poorest of our families those who are on benefits is punishing the babies of the poor. It is basically saying: “We will start your life out by discriminating against you.” This is unacceptable.This morning I attended with several of my colleagues in this House the post-Budget breakfast that was put on for us by the Public Health Association and the Child Poverty Action Group. They had done an assessment of the Budget. One of the things they said was that this Budget does nothing to raise those 285000 children out of poverty. What they said was that “The real value of Working for Families continues to decline because of failure to properly index payments rising abatement rates and a reducing threshold so fewer people are being able to access it. It is worth less because the cost of living is rising.” I was alarmed to find out from one of the speakers this morning that New Zealand has the second lowest wages in the OECD countries just above Iceland’s. That is shocking. How can people rise out of poverty when this is the situation and this Budget does nothing to alleviate that?This Government is picking the winners and the losers. This Government is spending in this Budget around about 50 percent of its income—50.1 percent I think—on superannuation and it is a clear indication of where this Government is directing its policies. Is it if I am going to be cynical because people who are receiving superannuation are voters whereas the babies of the poorest families may not vote for the National Government? I would suggest that this Government has directed these policies towards those who will vote for it and that is why this tax credit the parental tax credit applies to low and middle income families not to those who are the worst off in Aotearoa New Zealand.I believe that we should be supporting our children out of poverty because if we do not we all pay the costs. Those costs are things like poor education outcomes and poor health outcomes. We know that the health budget is one of the biggest that we have to deal with. It is a bottomless pit as my colleague Kevin Hague who is the spokesperson on health for the Greens would say. Unless we do something to alleviate the costs associated with poverty by raising people out of those dire circumstances then we are going to continue to keep paying for them.It is the short-term thinking that gets me the most I think—the fact that we are not thinking in terms of how our families will grow and how our communities will benefit if we invest now. It is a cynical Budget. It focuses mainly on those who do not need it the most.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I moveThat the question be now put.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I want to pick up on a point that the Hon Trevor Mallard made around the policy development regarding the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. He talked about the kind of baseline information that the officials had in order to develop the policy. Well Trevor Mallard what I have to say about that is that when you are coming from the point of view that actually there are not 285000 children living in poverty when you are coming from the point of view of denying the real situation that exists in this country and when your Government is telling you to write a report that actually misses out all of that information of course you are going to come up with the option that the officials did as being the most useful option. Like you I do not want to blame the officials. They are coming from a position where the Government is saying really clearly that there are not 285000 children living in poverty and that there is nothing to see here—move along. That is the fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation.We are looking at the parental tax credit which is supposed to be extending the eligibility to people who were not previously eligible but really when you boil it down when you look at the actual components of that parental tax credit we start to exclude those people who are most in need. Why is that? Because people on the other side of the Chamber have got blinkers on when it comes to recognising the reality that many of our families live in.I do want to just comment on Tracey Martin’s point. Reading through the abatement discussion is totally confusing. I have no idea what that is about. I like you Tracey would welcome the Minister to stand and explain those particular parts of it.Hon Trevor Mallard: That wouldn’t help.POTO WILLIAMS: No possibly it would not. We probably have a better idea of what is going on with our families than he does. I have to say that where this really misses the point is that we are not looking at children as a whole and what will benefit them unlike our Best Start package which looks at 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. All the good science says that staying home with baby for 26 weeks is the way to go. It is the bare minimum that we should be supporting our families through. When we are looking at free antenatal care when we are looking at increasing early childhood education hours and when we are looking at providing money to every single family who has a newborn child up to the earning level of $150000 we are starting to address the real areas of need. We are saying that most of our families need that not just a select few. Most of our families need that.The Child Poverty Action Group breakfast this morning was called “The Loaves and the Fishes”. We all know the parable of the loaves and fishes where a certain man spoke to a crowd and he had nothing to feed them. There was a basket of—was it five loaves and two fish? And he had to feed the crowd on five loaves and two fish. Every time he went to the basket the basket would miraculously replenish itself. Unfortunately the reality for our families is that they go to their basket and look to replenish that basket but they find it empty.Dr Rajen Prasad: And this Minister doesn’t walk on water.POTO WILLIAMS: No he probably does not walk on water Dr Prasad. These families are required to produce miracles for their children every single day. They are required to produce miracles out of the barest of supplies.I also want to talk about the name of this bill. What is it? Let us see. It is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. I would like to call it the “Baby Steps When Actually Bold Steps Are Required Bill”. It is definitely not enough in terms of supporting our most vulnerable families or even those families who just find it really tough when newborns come along. Let us face it. When you have a new babythere are lots of stresses and pressures on you as a new mum. So maybe we could call it the “We Could Have Done What Was Asked For But We Did Not Bill” or maybe we could have called it the “We Gave Lollipops to Some”—CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes56New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Jan Logie to clause 35 be agreed to:in subclause (1) replace MD 11(1) with:(1)This section applies when a person qualifies under section MC 2 (Who qualifies for entitlements under family scheme?) in relation to a dependent child but excluding the disqualifying situations described in MC 6.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes56New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Jacinda Ardern’s amendment to clause 35 is out of order as it is substantially the same as Jan Logie’s amendment which has just been defeated.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to clause 36 be agreed to:in subclause (2)(a)(ii) replace “$2200” with “$3120”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes56New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.Part 2 agreed to.Schedule 1agreed to.Schedule 2agreed to.Schedule 3agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to speak on the title and commencement clauses of this Budget Measures (Financial Support for NewbornChildren) Bill in the Committee stage. For the large number of viewers at home that is when we have the opportunity to say if we agree with this bill whether it is coming in at the right time and secondly whether we agree with the title that the bill is given. It always seems like a rather bizarre thing to be debating but it does allow us to get to some of the core objectives of a bill and whether or not we agree with them.Before I begin though at the beginning of my earlier contribution in the Committee stage I did raise an issue about the availability of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet for this bill. I will admit I have not had a chance in the last moments to look at whether or not that has yet been tabled. It was not available online when I looked last night. I just wondered whether or not the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour could make a contribution during this title and commencement part of the debate to just advise the Committee whether the vet has indeed been made available to the public for this debate—acknowledging of course that the Opposition always does have a challenge during speeches on Budget-related legislation because we are given the bill literally at the moment that we begin debating it. That is basically when we get the information.For viewers at home who are unable to see them there are a large number of papers available on the Table. Trevor Mallard has been speaking about some of them recently. Regulatory impact assessments from different departments are provided. It gives us an insight into the process that has gone into this bill’s development or it gives a bit of a clue as to where the Government tried to guide the options very early on. But the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet which is provided by the Ministry of Justice gives us an indication as to whether or not from its perspective people are unfairly discriminated against in the policy that the Government has put forward. It is a very important check and balance that enables us to see whether or not discrimination was justifiable. In some cases a case will be made in a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet to say “Look on balance this discrimination has been made for x y and z reasons and we think it is justifiable.” versus those that are deemed to be not justifiable.It does not mean that a bill will not go ahead but it does provide an Opposition with legal advice based on the Bill of Rights Act. It is the way that we enforce the Bill of Rights Act in this Parliament so it is very important. The vet was not available last night—that I could find. We were of course given just a typewritten link to look up not specifically for that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet but for where they vaguely might be on the Ministry of Justice website. The reason I am interested in that is I am interested to see whether or not the fact that not all children are covered by some of the changes raised any issues from the perspective of the Ministry of Justice.I move now to the commencement clause because I think it is interesting. We are in urgency and that usually suggests that there is a matter—obviously as the word implies—of urgency in passing a piece of legislation. For instance if it is during Budget time it might be that there is going to be an extra tax or levy. The best example I can think of is when we raise it for alcohol and for cigarettes. The reason we do that is so people do not go out and rush to purchase before we have had a chance to make these changes. As for these commencement clauses obviously no one is going to rush out and procreate in order to get these minimal changes that the Government has put in. So from their perspective they might perceive that there is no particular urgency. But here we are in urgency for elements of the bill that actually do not commence for quite some time.For instance for clauses 6 to 18 of the bill—and clauses 6 to 18 basically set out the transition from 14 to 16 weeks; that is where we get up to with clause 18—that comes into force on 1 April 2015 which is quite some time away. The transition is something that probably could have been included in a non-urgency motion. The difference that would have made is that it would enable people to make submissions. Why is it that theGovernment may perceive that it is not necessary for people to submit on this element of the bill? Well it is because not that long ago the public already gave their views. They did it through Sue Moroney’s member’s bill on paid parental leave. It came back rather conclusively that actually submitters were overwhelmingly in support of an extension to paid parental leave—not from 14 to 16 weeks as the first phase in this bill does but from 14 to 26 weeks. So that is a major disappointment and it is probably why the Government thought it could put it through an urgency motion because it already had a Committee stage for another bill that it had got the public view on but just unfortunately chose to ignore.The commencement date for clauses 19 to 31 of the bill which is the extension primarily from 16 weeks to 18 weeks then comes in on 1 April 2016. That is interesting. Obviously the Government is making a decision here that the paid parental leave extension is not something that it sees any particular urgency around phasing in. It clearly does not think that people are going to go out and have babies to get paid parental leave or the parental tax credit in fact because let us be honest the extension of the parental tax credit—if I have read this correctly—comes in at the point of Royal assent. Am I correct Minister? So the extension of the parental tax credit from $150 to $220 for a period of 10 weeks rather than 8 weeks comes in at the point of Royal assent because if I am reading correctly from the commencement clause it basically says as we have already said that “Sections 6 to 18 … come into force on … 2015” “Sections 19 to 31 … come into force on … 2016” and the “rest of this Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.”So Government members are not concerned that raising the parental tax credit by $70 a week and then locking an extra 2 weeks on the end of that mean that people are going to go out and have babies. Yet somehow miraculously they had that concern about Labour’s policy. I do not quite understand the difference there. Oh there is one difference. Our tax credit went to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Ours went to individuals who are currently left out of the parental tax credit.So that is again the same old tired rhetoric from the Government around the deserving and the undeserving poor. That is exactly what we see from this. Actually the commencement dates starkly highlight that that is exactly what this Government thinks. It also highlights that the Government is happy for there to be an extension of a parental tax credit straightaway but not of paid parental leave. I do not think the Government’s argument around phasing it in because of cost savings really stands because it has said that it is fine to phase in one element of the bill which from memory I think comes in at around $16 million but the other bit can just simply wait.The problem I have generally around the argument that Government members have been making about fiscal costs—and every argument they make around why they are not doing something or why they are taking longer to do it—is that they say it is because they are fiscally prudent. No actually it is just about priorities because there is not any light any more between when Labour says it will be in surplus—we have demonstrated this—and when National says it will be in surplus. There is no difference. We have budgeted in the same way that National has. The difference is that we have prioritised things differently on this side of the Chamber. We have said “Yes we need more revenue. We’ll bring in a capital gains tax. We won’t sell assets. This is the way that we’re going to do it.”Also the Budget surplus that that Government has actually marked up in this Budget where has that come from? Let us be really honest about it. Where has it come from? It has come from a significant cut out of proposed spending on the Canterbury rebuild first of all. It has come from holding on to ACC levies for longer than it needs to because that is what we need in order to nudge ourselves into surplus. And it has comefrom no-interest loans through the New Zealand Transport Agency. That is basically how we have got to this surplus—this overwhelming surplus.So let us be really honest about it. Yes—yes—the Government has governed during a global financial crisis which we are well beyond now. Yes it has done that. Yes there have been earthquakes during National’s time in Government. And yes in comparison Labour when it had its nine surpluses across 9 years did have some relatively good economic times. So why not do a little bit of comparison across Governments across the decades? If you compare National Governments with Labour Governments through history Labour has always had stronger periods of economic growth than National has.Mike Sabin: Ha ha!JACINDA ARDERN: Mike Sabin laughs because it is an uncomfortable truth.Mike Sabin: You can’t be serious.JACINDA ARDERN: I am absolutely serious. I challenge Mr Sabin to go away and do the calculation because I am not using the rubbish rhetoric that he is throwing across the Chamber. I have actually based it on some numbers and analysis which is uncomfortable for that member.Finally because I do not want my time to run out before I make this point—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! There is too much barracking and this is not a football field. It is the people’s House and members will conduct themselves with respect for the traditions of the House as enshrined in the Standing Orders. That is why I am standing. I represent those Standing Orders and I crave your respect for them and your understanding. I am sorry Ms Ardern. Your time has finished.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. During the time that you were making your ruling—which I think was a good ruling and could well make it into theSpeakers’ Rulings given time—Mike Sabin was calling out. We cannot have the Chairperson asking for the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings to be followed while through the time that you were making your very good and well-reasoned ruling a junior Government member was speaking loudly.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. [Interruption] No I do not need any help Mr Sabin. Can I just say that when I am giving a ruling it is unparliamentary and it is discourteous to continue to interject or carry on a conversation during that period. That is totally out of order and I ask the member to desist.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. He mihi nui ki te whānauwhānuio tePāremata. I want to talk about the title and commencement clauses of this Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. Although the Greens are supporting it we have to go on the record with our deep concerns about the underlying discrimination that is being perpetrated by this bill. The title is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill but really it is for newborn children of good parents. You can forget about getting any help for bad babies because this is all about the good babies not the bad babies. It is about the babies who are allowed to have financial support from the collective taxpayer contribution and the babies who can go without because they are not OK.What is interesting when you are thinking about this title is that poverty is referred to very clearly in the regulatory impact statement. It says that “poverty is one of the greatest risks to children’s health and development” so it would be logical given the title of the bill to make sure that all of the smallest children—and particularly the poorest children who are at the greatest risk—get some relief. So it is very confusing to those of us who thought that the parental tax credit for example meant that all parentsand all babies would get it that some babies get it and some babies do not. I do not think that the public of this country actually want us to discriminate against babies.If one wants to listen to talkback and hear the hate speech against beneficiaries although that is an occupation that will not do us any good psychologically it is a way in which people vent their own frustration about low wages in this country by scapegoating beneficiary families. But that is not what Parliament should be doing. In the title of this bill we should be saying that this is support for all newborn children. That is what is missing from the title of this bill. It should be the “Budget Measures (Financial Support for All Newborn Children Without Discrimination) Bill” but we do not say that in the title. What we are doing is saying “Hey welcome to Victorian England. We will provide charity for the good people who are grateful or who are lucky enough to have a job but we will forget about everyone else who has got newborns. They can lie in the gutter.” which is what happened to many of the babies in Victorian England actually.But we would presume that in the 21st century there would be more courage and there is actually a failure of courage in the title. It should be clear that we support all our children and all our babies. It is completely perverse to create inequality and poverty while claiming as it does in the title to be a bill for the financial support of newborn children. It is discrimination and it is actually disturbing and perverse to see this happening because we believe that this was a wasted opportunity to actually support the people who are most in need and their babies.This week I have been touring decile 1 schools and talking to principals about families and their newborns. During the families and newborns discussion they have said that the most important thing is for those newborn children to get what they need when they are at their most vulnerable because if they do not get what is needed then by the time they reach school they are already at a disadvantage. So why would a Budget bill called the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill create disadvantage which is going to be manifest very soon in those small people’s lives? It is simply not acceptable it is not a fairer society and it is not what most people expect us to do in this House. It is disturbing.Further to the commencement date well this is being put through under urgency. I will tell you what is urgent: child poverty is urgent. Newborn babies of beneficiary families urgently need support. There is no margin of error for those people. For some of those mothers it is the most urgent experience that they have ever had and they urgently need our support. For those who are less in need but who will benefit from this bill—and that is good—they are not going to get it until 2015 so this is not urgency is it? This is not. This is an election year but it ain’t urgency. Why do we not sent this bill to a select committee and have the conversation about why the bad babies of the poor are not going to get anything? That is what I would like to have a discussion about. I think there are many many people and organisations that would like to hold the Government to account through the select committee process on this very issue.I am proud to be a member of the Green Party because we have never discriminated. We have always supported through our support for the court case that the Child Poverty Action Group took extending in-work tax credits to beneficiary families and their babies.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): There are two issues that we are currently debating. The first is whether the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is appropriately titled. I think we are beginning to develop a consensus—in fact I think it has been unanimous amongst all the speakers in the Chamber on this particular phase of the bill—that this bill is not appropriately titled. I think it could have been titled “An Election Attempt to Steal a Wee Bit of LabourGreen and New Zealand First Policy Water it Down and Pretend it is Appropriate and to Mis-phase It - Type Bill” or there are a number of other points. I think that certainly the implication that the newborn children who most need support are getting anything at all from this bill is wrong.I want to refer to the question of timing and commencement. This bill is coming in across quite a wide range of time. There are parts of it that come in from April next year—not very much; about $3 million worth I think—there are parts of it that come in from July next year and there are parts of it that come in from July the year after. I think that there are bits that come in from April next year and April the year after depending on which particular part it is. The question I have got—and it is a technical question on which the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour might need to get advice—is why it cannot all be brought into force tomorrow. Even if we are sticking with the dates that were previously agreed as to when the payments are to be made why is the bill being brought into force with some parts coming in as it is approved by Royal assent and others not coming in until dates that are much later? I just do not see the need for it.Within the bill there is very clear phasing and very clear very well-set-out transitional provisions. They are wrong because of course things should have been brought in much much more quickly and they should have been much better but even if one accepts as the Committee appears to be accepting the timing of the actual provisions the question I have got for the Minister is this. Why has an unusual format been used in the drafting in order to bring some of these provisions into force on the legislation getting its Royal assent and some do not come into force until a long time later?I just want to be a little bit cynical. Is there some ulterior motive here? Is there a motive in the provisions that bring these measures into force to reverse this out at some stage after 20 September? I am just feeling a certain lack of love and a certain lack of trust with the Minister. If the Minister had been upfront and defended Part 2 and even if he had defended Part 1 then I might have been slightly more inclined to go along with these provisions. Normally of course you do not argue with them but it is a genuine question. I have been around this place for a little while and normally when there is a delay in the bringing into force of provisions there is a reason for it. The fact that a bill does not come into effect until later—and that is clearly set out in the clauses of the bill—is not a reason for the bill to be broken into different parts for the commencement clause. There does not appear to be a good reason for it.We know that for example with the parental tax credit measures that are sitting in the bill the Inland Revenue Department has to be prepared to do some things in April next year and in April the year after. There is no reason why given what is in the bill it cannot actually do that. You do not need to phase in the bringing into force of provisions which on the face of them cannot be brought into force anyway—CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I actually feel slightly sad having come to the Committee stage that we have seen attempts to make this a better piece of legislation but they have just been rejected out of hand. Here we are dealing with something that really should be a cause for celebration. This bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill should be a cause for celebration because finally National has got it. Finally it accepts that paid parental leave is something worth supporting. It has taken a while.This bill is quite a small measure but National voted against paid parental leave when it was introduced in 2002. It voted against extending it in 2004 and I think National members might have abstained in 2007. Then you know National has been playing all sorts of silly silly games with Sue Moroney’s very excellent piece oflegislation—well supported by many members in this House—which tries to really make a difference and extends paid parental leave. We have had all sorts of requests by Mr Auchinvole to extend the time for reporting back with a view to reach some decision and then reneging on that and we have had filibustering basically for weeks and weeks and weeks to try to stop a vote from happening on that bill. Then of course finally we have had the Government putting something forward in the Budget.I assume that the Government’s intention is still to veto Ms Moroney’s bill if it ever lets it get back into the House to be voted on but what we have got here something that should be a cause for celebration is somewhat tempered by the fact that the changes are minor. Next year there will be 2 extra weeks of paid parental leave and 2 more weeks the year after. Of course in the parental tax credit provision we have seen that despite its being described as supporting “lower and middle income families” and I think that somewhere else it talks about low and middle income families it quite clearly excludes 14000 of the most struggling families. Those who are really struggling to make ends meet and those whose children are living in poverty are being excluded. So the changes are minor and they exclude the people who really need it.Of course we saw last night and this morning the Government vote against opportunities to fix those things and to stand up in this Chamber and say: “We all support families and we all understand that newborn children need the best start in life. Let us give them and primarily their mothers”—not always their mothers but primarily their mothers—“the best possible start in life.” We need to give them the opportunity to have bonding to have good breastfeeding established and to make sure that children have a very healthy and exceptional start to their life. We want all of our children to do well not just some of our children—Mike Sabin: Title and commencement.CAROL BEAUMONT: —and not just the wealthy or as Mr Sabin keeps referring to them the hard-working ones. We want that for every person and every child in the country. Children are not workers. Last night we had Mr Sabin talking about hard-working babies it seemed. But anyway this is something that we wanted to make real progress on.I have to say that this bill is deeply cynical—deeply cynical. This Government has done this only because there is an election in 4 months. It has done it only because it knows that it is so strongly supported. The campaign around Ms Moroney’s bill—the 26 for Babies people—has struck a real chord. There is a genuine need out there in the community. The Government’s measure is deeply cynical very small excludes many and is effectively an election bribe but at least it is some progress. As I said it should be a cause for celebration that National has finally understood that paid parental leave is worthwhile.What is also deeply cynical is that the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges stood there last night and started talking about how this measure is extending paid parental leave to lots of other people who are not currently covered by it. Well what the Minister was talking about was announcements about measures that were made in the Budget but are not being enacted in this bill and I understand will not be coming into effect until 2016. There were very good announcements about casual workers and seasonal workers and so on.I want to say that this bill should perhaps be called “Support for Some Newborn Children Bill”—JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes53New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Motion agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): I moveThat the Committee divide the bill into the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Billpursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 448.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I just rise to support the Minister of Labour in this particular decision to divide the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. It is absolutely clear that this bill is one that it is very very necessary to divide. If it was not divided then we would have a separate Act that contained changes to the Income Tax Act and changes to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act that were together. Although of course they would stand as the law of the country it would make it almost impossible to reference those particular sections because they would not sit within the relevant legislation; they would be sitting outside it. It would be quite a problem—quite a problem—for people who were attempting to refer to particular sections. It would be a problem for people who were looking for these changes. They would go to the Act and they would find for example in their particular law libraries the 2004 or 2006 changes sitting within the Act but they would not be able to find these relevant changes because the cross-referencing would not be done at all.I find it slightly extraordinary that we are having a debate in this area. I think it might be described as unprecedented. I am not absolutely certain within the Standing Orders whether it is allowed. But I think it is an interesting test. I wonder whether in fact I should raise a point of order against myself because certainly if I was on the other side I would have raised a point of order to say that a speech on the division of a bill is not consistent with the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings. But it appears Mr Chairperson Robertson that in the dying days of your role in the Chair you are setting precedents and this is an interesting precedent. I think it is fair to say that it is a precedent that a future Chairperson will no doubt overrule—will no doubt overrule.But it is not often that I can be 100 percent supportive of a Minister. In most of the stuff we have spoken on previously I have said he should have gone further or he did not go far enough even though we were voting for the particular clause. But the motion that he has moved that the bill be divided is something that we are totally supportive of. It is a wonderful thing to do. It is necessary for the law of the land to be properly interpreted and for this particular bill which refers to a number of Acts to be properly placed within that legislation. If we did not do this then of course that would not occur. But the idea that it gets debated is certainly novel.Motion agreed to.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2)Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) BillThird ReadingsHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): I moveThat the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill be now read a third time.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am just checking whether these are separate bills.Mr SPEAKER: Yes the bills are separate bills.Hon Trevor Mallard: And are we having separate debates on them?Mr SPEAKER: No we are not having separate debates.Hon Trevor Mallard: Are we going to vote separately on them?Mr SPEAKER: If the member seeks leave to do so I guess we can.Hon Trevor Mallard: Do we need leave or will you put them separately?Mr SPEAKER: I was proposing not to put them separately. I was proposing to put them together.Hon Trevor Mallard: Well they are quite separate issues.Mr SPEAKER: I accept that they are quite separate issues but I understand they can still be put together.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It gives me great satisfaction to support these bills at their third readings. I would like to thank the whole House for supporting the passage of these bills. These bills help provide financial and employment certainty to working families with newborn children in New Zealand. In the first year of a child’s life particularly the first 6 months it is important for the development of newborn children that they receive full-time personal care. Parents and caregivers need support to manage budgetary and other pressures over this time support that the current paid parental leave and parental tax credit entitlements do not provide as well as they could. Encouraging working mothers and caregivers to remain attached to the labour market has broad economic and social benefits and can support a stable family environment for children to grow up in.These bills support the aims of allowing working families with newborns the time to bond while maintaining workforce attachment and employment security. They recognise that improved financial support is needed for some of these families. The bills also recognise that we have to manage our purse strings carefully. By supporting working families with newborn children these bills are in the best interests of New Zealand families and businesses enhancing economic and social outcomes in a fiscally responsible manner. I commend these bills to the House.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It seems surprisingly that the previous speaker the Minister of Labour has run out of things to say in the third reading of his Budget legislation arising from the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. We have still got plenty on this side of the House to add to the discussion on these bills the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. The Labour Party does support the legislation that we are debating now. Of course it would be crazy if we did not. It in part goes some way to acknowledging what Best Start was trying to do but as we have debated at great length it certainly does not go all the way in some critical areas. Even though there is a stark contrast between the two packages in terms of scale and in terms of length probably our biggest disappointment is still the exclusions that exist for families. We traversed in quite a lot of detail the fact that those who are our most vulnerable areexcluded but actually there is a group of middle New Zealanders for want of a better word who are also excluded.In this Budget the Government used quite a bit of rhetoric around vulnerable children in the speech that Mr English gave yesterday. In particular the Government announced some extra funding to basically implement the Vulnerable Children Bill. That did actually need to happen. We have an agenda by Paula Bennett that was going fairly underfunded in the way that it was being rolled out. Two Children’s Teams are already in existence. Just to give some context Children’s Teams are collaborative cross-sectoral teams that are meant to work with our most vulnerable children in areas where there is that extra need. We have two pilot sites in Rotorua and in Whangarei and as of November last year the teams were working with a total of 32 children—32 children were being assisted by the Government’s Children’s Teams. We always agreed that they are a good idea. What we disagreed with was the fact that they were having to operate out of a department’s baselines. That was just untenable and so it is good to see that there is some extra funding going in there. It needed to happen if we are going to make some inroads.But also the Government did make a bit of a statement around the fact that it was supporting vulnerable children not just through this package we are discussing today but through $349 million going into child protection. That is up from 2008-09. Child protection services then were getting roughly $317 million but if you inflation-adjust it actually what Child Youth and Family needs to be awarded just to keep pace with inflation is more like $360 million. It is still falling shy and that is taking into account that over that period of time we have gone from 49000 notifications where further actions were required by Child Youth and Family up to 61800—a big jump in the number of cases that need Child Youth and Family’s attention and a big jump in the number that are substantiated. So yes the Government has put social workers in specific places—in hospitals and in our schools—but on the frontline they still really are an ambulance. It was always intended actually that Child Youth and Family would have a preventative role but that is long gone—that is long gone.I want to compare that then with what Labour has proposed with Best Start. What was clear in the debate where there was comparison between the package of what the Government has put forward here in this legislation in income measures and what Labour has put forward was that Best Start was never just about income. Yes that was a big part of it. We had as part of it 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. We had a Best Start payment that reached 95 percent of families. The only families excluded from our Best Start payment were those earning over $150000. That was where we were happier to put our exclusion zone. The Government put its on people earning less than roughly $20000—a stark contrast in the way we address those packages. We have roughly 95 percent of families being covered by our package so there was a big difference there. But the Government when it was talking about its payment package which is in this legislation did talk about wanting to balance the issue of giving options to families with also maintaining a parent’s attachment to the workplace. We can sit and try to play around with what that might look like using tables spreadsheets and options or we can actually use the evidence.Some of the best evidence we have is now coming through from the Growing Up in New Zealand study which uses a diverse cohort of approximately 7000 families in New Zealand and is covering their experiences in raising their children. The last time we did this was with the Dunedin longitudinal study. Yes they are expensive studies to do but they provide us with such rich data and they provide policy makers with a bit of a sense of the choices parents are making sometimes even when they are up against strong financial pressure. What we do know from the Growing Up in New Zealandstudy of children who were born in 2009—so we are some way down the track now with those families—is that 11 percent of the children in the study live in households with an income of less than $30000 per annum—11 percent are in extreme poverty then—John Hayes: Rubbish!JACINDA ARDERN: —in that regard or could be considered to be in quite significant deprivation. John Hayes just said “Rubbish!”. I cannot quite tell which element of what I just said was rubbish. Does he maybe think that you are not struggling if you are raising a family on $30000? Is that the point he is trying to make or does he not acknowledge that 11 percent are growing up in those circumstances?Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Oh he’s silent now.JACINDA ARDERN: He has nothing further to add. So that is what we know about those families. There are a significant number who really are in quite significant deprivation. Then if we continue to look over the study it also found that 40 percent of families had received paid parental leave over the last year and a smaller percentage had received family tax credit. That is interesting. That sits with what we talked about today—that a large number of people are not eligible for paid parental leave which is being extended in this legislation by 4 weeks. People do tend to miss out on things like the parental tax credit which we have also been debating. Eighteen percent of the families had at some point during that period been reliant on a Government benefit—18 percent. Those families get nothing from this legislation. Those 18 percent of families get absolutely nothing from this legislation today and that is a point we have tried to make very very strongly.But here is another interesting fact. All of the families were reliant on a great number of income sources during the first 9 months of their children’s lives. Only—and this is incredible—14 percent received income from only one source. So this traditional idea that one parent goes out and keeps working and the other stays home and cares for the child is not so. That is just a luxury for families now. Only 14 percent received income from only one source. Thirty-eight percent received income from two sources 31 percent from three sources 13 percent from four sources or more and 5 percent were having to try to cobble together an income from five sources. They are families working multiple jobs trying to bring in enough income to be able to survive with their new children. That is over the first 9 months of a child’s life. Keep that in mind. What kind of situation does that create for those families? The Government said that what it wanted to do with paid parental leave was maintain attachment to the workforce. I am afraid that it simplifies the situation down to say that actually a mother’s only choice is whether she holds on to a slightly lesser income for a longer period. Actually some of these parents are having to make the choice to go back to work in order to keep the income high enough to keep going. We see that from that data.There is one final point from this study. The type of leave taken during the first 9 months was made up of paid parental leave unpaid leave and annual leave. Families are cobbling together what they can to stay home longer and I think that that is really telling. But as I said at the beginning Best Start—and there have been a lot of comparisons between Labour’s package and National’s—was never just about income. It was also about doing things like putting a boost into early childhood education. We want to move from 20 free hours for families to 25 free hours. We want to fund early childhood education centres so that all of their staff can be 100 percent qualified and so that they are funded to do that. We want to put a boost into Plunket so that Plunket nurses can be not only a universal service but a targeted one where we are putting them into the homes of our most vulnerable families earlier and keeping them there longer. That is what we want to do to create that extra support which is not just financialsupport but support in raising a child for families who sometimes have very little outside support themselves.In health we listened to the excellent work that was led by Paul Hutchison and the Health Committee. We want there to be 10-week gestational checks. We want free scans for mums and we want free antenatal classes. All of that is how you give a child the best start in life and that is what Labour would do.SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise to speak to the third readings of these two bills—the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill—which were originally the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill but have now been split. It is of deep concern that if National members were truly proud of this package they would be taking their calls on this legislation but they appear to have stopped. They appear to have given up doing even that. Maybe they are ashamed. Maybe they are ashamed of how little this package actually does deliver. I am not sure why they have stopped giving their speeches on this legislation. None the less the Labour Party has got plenty to say about financial support for newborn children. As I said at the outset when we stood not that long ago actually and spoke on the first reading of the original bill which we had put in front of us maybe 5 minutes earlier if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then I feel only a little flattered by the measures that are being debated here today in these third readings.The Government has missed a huge opportunity. It has missed an opportunity to ensure a good level of financial support for all newborn children—for all newborn children. And it has particularly missed an opportunity to have read and understood all of the brilliant research and evidence that have been put before the Government Administration Committee in its debating and consideration of my bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. Because if the Government had taken the time to read that information it would have recognised that actually getting to 6 months’ paid parental leave is incredibly important for a number of reasons such as child development.Child development experts tell us that because of the way in which a newborn baby’s brain develops getting that attachment and bonding going well in particularly the first 6 months but also the first 12 months of a baby’s life really sets the pattern for how well they will cope with the rest of their lives. It sets the pattern for how well they will be able to adapt to change and how they will be able to work with the challenges in their lives and for matters like whether they will end up in the youth justice system at all issues like whether they are going to need remedial education and problems like whether they are going to need a lot of taxpayer support in our health system. All the evidence said that if we get that first 6 months right—well 12 months but importantly the first 6 months—we can make a big dent in child development and health issues but also ease the financial stress on families at a time when their income goes down and their expenses go up.I just remind people about that again because I think that people sometimes just gloss over that. They think that people have babies and live happily ever after. Well actually what happens for people who are in need of paid parental leave is that their income goes down at the very time when their expenses go up. All the expenses associated with having a newborn child cannot be glossed over. They are very real. And having access to paid parental leave and decent access to paid parental leave is important in taking the financial stress off families so that they can actually focus on the thing we would all want them to focus on which is nurturing this new young life—nurturing this newyoung life—so that all of us can have the best well-rounded fellow citizen to live alongside.I think the thing that really warmed my heart when there was an overwhelmingly positive response to my bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks was that I felt proud of my country actually. There are moments when I sometimes do not but on this occasion I really did because people got it.John Hayes: What about the grandmothers?SUE MORONEY: People really got it—even the grandmothers Mr Hayes. Even the grandmothers got it. I know that you think that maybe they might not have a vested interest in this but most people—not everyone but most people—said “OK. I’m past my childbearing years or I don’t plan to have children” or whatever it is “but I can understand the merit in ensuring that all of our children are raised in a stable and decent environment because we all get to live in a society alongside them.” And would we not all want the best well-rounded citizens who have had that nurturing and support from those early months to live alongside? Even employers came along to the select committee and said: “Yeah we get it. We get it as well because we want our employees when they return after paid parental leave to have their family well settled so that they can focus and be the most productive at work. We like our employees. We want them to be happy and we want their families to be supported.”People also understood that extending paid parental leave was a big boost to employers because it meant that they got to retain their valuable staff whom they had invested in whom they had spent time training and whom they want to come back into the workforce so that they can continue reaping the benefits of that skills development. So even employers understood it. Some of them must have been really disheartened to see National continually vote against that measure to extend paid parental leave. They must have been absolutely devastated when they heard National say not only that the Government would use its democratic right to vote against it but that it would stop democracy in its tracks by threatening a financial veto against the bill should it have majority support in Parliament which it does.In reflecting on the debate in the last however many hours—12 hours or 24 hours or so—some aspects of it have not been terribly pleasant but the thing that again warms my heart is that I think looking at the way that party has voted on various amendments that were put forward there will still likely be majority support for my bill for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave when it gets debated some time in the next few weeks in this House. I welcome that because I think there is still a really important debate to be had on behalf of the New Zealand public on behalf of the 3809 people who submitted on the bill—overwhelmingly in favour of it—and that we owe them the right to have the bill they support thoroughly debated in this House. I think it will pass. I think it will pass and I encourage all of those parties that have supported it to date to continue to do so because I think what that places on record is the parties that are prepared to prioritise families that are prepared to prioritise children and that do understand that this is not a cost to our society but an investment. It is an investment in the future of our society.That is what I think ignited the public imagination. When the Labour Party came out even in fiscally challenged times to say that actually families need support—families need support—and the rest of us will benefit from it the public responded and went: “There’s a party who’s talking about the real interests of the future of this country. There’s a party who really understands and is listening to and knows the pressures that are placed on families.” And the country responded and that makes me feel so proud of the sort of country that I really do love being a citizen of the sort of country where people do not necessarily think of their own self-interest but they understand the importance of society and community.This legislation is a step in the right direction and I want to acknowledge how much of a big step it is for National because it has never ever before supported extending paid parental leave despite some of the rewriting of history that has gone on in the debate. I want to acknowledge that but I also want to say to the National Party: “Don’t sell our families short. Don’t sell our families short.” The National Party and all the parties in this Parliament have another opportunity to actually do the right thing by families. Do the right thing which the research and evidence tell us will make the big difference in children’s lives and support my bill when it comes up for debate to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks—extend it to the families whom the Government says it will make newly eligible for paid parental leave which Labour also supports.I do want to say in closing that it is Labour’s view that we want to see that piece of legislation tabled in this House and debated before Parliament rises for the election because we want to see the detail of it. We think that is the right way to proceed. I commend this legislation to the House.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): Perhaps in the debate on the title and commencement clauses of this legislation arising from the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill we should have actually been trying to thread in the words “Sue Moroney” because that is pretty much all the previous speaker Sue Moroney talked about in her contribution. I picked up on the point—and I think it is an insight into Sue Moroney’s mind-set—that she is not always proud of her country.Grant Robertson: At least she put a bill up.MIKE SABIN: But when she puts a bill up that she thinks a few people think is OK suddenly she is proud of her country again. Interesting.It is not all about Sue Moroney though. We have heard much about her take on what National should be doing in Government. We have heard that any sort of variation other than her non-targeted bill—which essentially goes far too far and actually provides support for people who I would argue do not need it. I would not need it. On my income there is no way that that support should be available to me.That is what this Government has done. It has ensured that the bill that we have been debating is actually targeted at those who need it is responsible and actually meets the need. It is not just a blanket mechanism. If we look at the situation out there and the support that members of the New Zealand community are provided with someone on an income of $50000 or so with two children is actually tax-neutral. They are actually tax-neutral under this Government. There are actually many people who do not need the sort of support that Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill would have proffered.When we look at these particular bills the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill they are encompassed in a Budget that actually distributes $500 million across the community to New Zealand families. It is actually a very generous package when looked at in totality. The reality is that although we are debating this legislation it cannot be looked at in isolation. This is a Government that has continued to support those who are struggling and those who have been vulnerable for a significant period of time. Much has been said about the people who are left out as a consequence of this legislation the most vulnerable. Well those most vulnerable will be getting $33 million more in terms of our support. The Children’s Team initiative and the free doctors visits for under 13-year-olds are two very good examples of what this Budget has been about and where this legislation fits in a total package.I have no problem in supporting this legislation because I think it helps meet the need in a way that is sensible and prudent and I actually think that the New Zealand publicget that. They get that this is not about lolly scrambles. They get that it is about targeted support. That is what it is about.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call in this third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill which the Greens will be supporting.The Green Party believes passionately in supporting our children. We believe in the value of good lives for everyone and a fair future for everyone. We believe that every single child in this country deserves to thrive not just survive or have their lives cut short or harmed by illness from diseases of poverty as is all too often the case in this country at the moment.This Government has presented us with a Budget where it has told us that it is giving $500 million to families to support families in need. New Zealand needs to know that that $500 million which sounds so significant is actually only $125 million a year over the next 4 years and that this Government the same Government is spending $1 billion a year in servicing the interest on the debt that it has got this country into by spending on things like American-style expressways. Do those values express an honest desire to support the families of this country? I do not believe they do. This Government has told us that this is a fiscally responsible response to the challenges yet it does nothing to address child poverty—the 285000 children in this country who are living in poverty.I do want to draw members’ attention to the sound of a baby that we heard earlier in the gallery and how that sound cannot but touch our hearts. I would like to ask members to reflect for a minute on one of the provisions in this bill that relates to the parental tax credit and the thought that the family of that baby may be a working family not receiving ACC not on a student allowance not on a benefit and that family would be getting extra support from this Government. If there was another baby making that same sound sitting on its parents’ knees right next to it who was from a beneficiary family struggling on just over $200 a week—and I would like to remind the members in this House that that is not so different from what we get as a nightly accommodation rate when we travel and that amount is expected to support that family for an entire week—they are getting nothing in this Budget from this Government.I ask whether that is delivering on what we want for our children in this country. Is that degree of discrimination delivering the best that we have to offer? I cannot believe that it is. When we have a surplus when we are choosing to spend money on other things when we are paying off debt that we do not need to be paying off because we could have had a temporary earthquake levy that would not have required us to borrow for that when we could have not had those tax cuts for the richest New Zealanders and if we had lived within our means we could have provided for our most vulnerable children.I think this House needs to reflect on the values that are being delivered by this Government. We absolutely support the extension to paid parental leave but I note though—and I think it is part of an important debate—that the Child Poverty Action Group has criticised this as a priority because it is not reaching the most vulnerable families. I think that is an important debate and it is a shame that we have not been able to go through a select committee process to enable that political public discussion.When we first got paid parental leave I was the executive director for the national Young Women’s Christian Association of Aotearoa - New Zealand. We were really involved in that campaign to first get the 12 weeks. I have got to say that it was a tough campaign. We had to do a lot of work to convince the then Labour-Alliance Government the Labour Party in particular to support introducing paid parental leave. It was a tough campaign and I think it is heartening for the community to see that now the Labour Party is in a position where it is bringing forward 26 weeks and it is right onboard with this issue and the recognition that paid parental leave makes a huge difference to every measure in our society. It is also now encouraging to see the National Party coming on board and getting that.So to all of you thousands of submitters all of the many people who sent in postcards know that you are making a difference that this House is starting to get it—that paid parental leave will deliver. The National Party admittedly has gone only part way and I was so disappointed last night to see the amendment for 26 weeks get voted down when we had heard from 3795 submitters who desperately and so eloquently supported the need for 26 weeks because of the health benefits in terms of breastfeeding and attachment and the long-term benefits to us as a society from supporting that early time in life.It is undeniable the benefit of that time frame. There was such good debate about it. Employers were very clear that 6 months was actually easier for them because at the moment with the 14 weeks they are typically just covering rather than getting somebody in to replace the person for those 6 months. It is too short a time period. It is actually increasing the costs for them and the burden on their staff.I do ask the National Party members who supposedly support business and those interests whether 16 weeks and then later 18 weeks will address the need that has been identified by those businesses. I am not sure that it does. They were quite clear from my hearing of the submissions that 6 months was a good starting period for being able to manage that transition from their perspective as well as for delivering the social good.Finally I do want to just go back to the fundamentals and what we are valuing as a society. This legislation is bringing in 16 weeks’ paid parental leave next year and then 18 weeks the year after. It is an acknowledgment and I thank the National Party for that acknowledgment. It is an important thing for all the people in New Zealand to understand that you will listen even if you will not go as far as they would like.I would like also to just finish on the core point for us. The major disappointment for us with this legislation is around the parental tax credit. Although it offers some money to middle-income families really it is just an adjustment to recognise the decreased value of Working for Families because the Government has not been adjusting it to the level that it should have been so it has decreased in value. That $13 million that is going in there is pretty much a token effort but I am not underestimating the power of $70 in the hand for 10 weeks for those families. It is just gutting that it is not going to the families that absolutely need it and that it will in effect entrench the inequality and the gap between those who for reasons of disability or violence or just not being able to be in a job at that time are locked out of the workforce at this time. The children of those families deserve our best effort.This legislation offers breadcrumbs and we are happy to take them for now but boy do we look forward to the time when we are in a position to be able to offer everyone a fair share of the cake.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): It is indeed a privilege and a pleasure to speak on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. Indeed it signals a great day of celebration in New Zealand. It is part of a $500 million package directed towards families and children by this excellent National Government. What a shame it was to hear those pious words from Jan Logie. How can she reconcile such pious and sanctimonious words with the awful tweet that she has just sent regarding the finance Minister and his family? It is quite shocking and I hope the media will indeed dissect it further because it is undermining to this very very important legislation.In fact $171 million towards extending paid parental leave in such a reasonably short time after a major financial crisis is absolutely appropriate. National has targeted its spending very carefully and absolutely differently from how the Greens and Labour would have done when they were prepared to splurge $500 million—half a billion dollars—absolutely undirected on every baby born in New Zealand. That was not going to help. We have got no idea how that money was going to be spent whereas in this legislation which has arisen from the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill and has been split into the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and then the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill we have a realistic approach firstly to paid parental leave and then to helping families who are not receiving paid parental leave but are on lower and medium incomes. So this is very targeted. It is very appropriate. It is indeed realistic in terms of the money available that New Zealand has to spend. It is very generous towards families and children.The legislation extends in two tranches paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 16 weeks and then from 16 weeks to 18 weeks which is a total of $172 million with a further $42 million in the parental tax credit bill. This is a very very impressive change. The tax credit is going from its current maximum of $150 a week to $220 a week and is also extended from 8 weeks to 10 weeks. The tax credit is currently being paid to low and middle income working families who are not on a benefit or receiving paid parental leave.That is exactly as I was saying Dr Prasad. This is appropriately targeted and that is the difference between Labour the Greens and the National Government. As we heard Jan Logie say she thought this offered crumbs. That is the sentiment. Labour and the Greens would spend more they would tax more and indeed they would borrow more absolutely irrespective of prudential financial management. Here we have a National Government highly responsible putting the country back into the black and at the same time investing a very significant $500 million towards families and children.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of New Zealand First on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. A very wise man whom I highly respect—and in this case it was not the Rt Hon Winston Peters—once said to me that if you truly want to have influence you need to become a Minister. As I do not usually do with people whom I highly respect I disagreed at that time and said I believe that as Opposition members we can have influence every single day by taking the argument to the Government.I think this legislation has shown that that can be true. This Budget has shown that that can be true. Sue Moroney through the pressure of her member’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill has put enough pressure on through the campaigns she has run to show this Government that it must take some steps particularly in an election year to move towards supporting newborn children just as Barbara Stewart’s proposed member’s bill the Teen Health Check Bill—which would give free medical care to all children under the age of 13—has been picked up by this Government. That has been New Zealand First policy for a long time. Although I appreciate the advice that learned gentleman has given me and I am grateful for it in this instance I think I have proven my point. We have had influence and we are grateful that the pressure from the Opposition and the pressure from the public behind it has made the National Party move on this issue.I want to compliment Dr Paul Hutchison on the work that his Health Committee did around this issue of supporting our unborn and our newborn children. I can only imagine that inside caucus he was one of those who lobbied hard for this to take place because he understands how important it is. I believe that when he leaves thisParliament he will be sorely missed. I believe that Dr Hutchison probably fought hard for this to go to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. I believe that he would have done that. But because of whatever it is that is inside the National Party psyche its members could not bring themselves to push that far and they will justify that on the grounds of finance. They will justify it. We have just heard unfortunately Dr Hutchison falling back on that argument. We all know there is not much else on which they can argue against it unfortunately.There is so much evidence that has been produced about the savings from 26 weeks’ leave. Dr Hutchison mentioned $172 million. Unfortunately due to the urgency of this legislation we have not had a select committee process where we could actually have gone through those numbers to make sure that we know what it costs. But we do know what 26 weeks would have saved. We know what 26 weeks would have saved because we have the report from the Government Administration Committee about 26 weeks’ leave. So we know that with 26 weeks’ leave there is a reduction of $13 million in childcare subsidy. There would be an additional $8 million in tax from recipients of paid parental leave and an additional $5 million in tax from temporary employees filling those paid jobs. Benefit payments would reduce by $2.4 million and as I mentioned in an earlier reading of this legislation we have not even factored yet what the downstream health savings will be. A study published by theJournal of the American Medical Association found that obesity rates among 2 to 5-year olds in America had dropped by an impressive 43 percent over the last decade and that was partly contributed to by mothers breastfeeding for longer. We have not factored all those savings in.Mike Sabin mentioned that if you had an income around $50000—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Who?TRACEY MARTIN: I know he is not well known but Mike Sabin made the comment that if you had an income of around $50000 or below—this is the spin that they spin—you do not actually pay tax. I am not sure those people feel like that every day of the week but National members say those people do not actually pay tax. They use another word for it. They like to spin it. They say it is tax-neutral. In a way they are saying that those people should not complain because they do not pay tax. But what we know is that there is $50 million worth of savings—$50 million worth of savings with 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and that is even without the health benefits downstream.Again New Zealand First will support this legislation but it is a bit of Hansel and Gretel legislation. It is spreading crumbs along the way towards 20 September so it is very much Hansel and Gretel legislation—a trail of crumbs up until 20 September. But there is not even a guarantee at this stage. There is a date for 2015—1 April—and there is a date in 2016. New Zealand First would like to make sure that the New Zealand public understands that although the National Government may steal our policies it will not steal our commitment to making sure that as soon as we have influence we will put in place these supports for newborn babies and other supports for families and children and for businesses in New Zealand to truly bring us back to the standard of living that we deserve and that we expect. Although the National Party might have lost its aspiration for this country New Zealand First has not. Kia ora.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Just in response to the last speaker Tracey Martin I say that this legislation arising from the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is good legislation that the Government has used to boost parental leave provisions. It is all part of the programme of that $500 million that is going to families in this Budget. It is action taken by a political party when there is the opportunity to do so unlike the Opposition which is all talk and no action. When we got the chance we have done it and we have delivered the things thatthe Opposition were not even talking about like free doctors visits to under-13s. This is good legislation.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): Well it is great to see the depth of David Bennett’s passion for the issue of families. That speech was all of 1 minute. I intend to take my full call on this matter. It is an important question—the question of how we support our newborn children.I want to start by acknowledging that we have this legislation arising from the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill before the House and that there is a small improvement being made in the areas of both paid parental leave—2 weeks next year; 2 weeks the year after—and parental tax credits for some by lifting the amount and length of time. We should always acknowledge where there is some progress being made. There is the progress of course in those two areas and as I said in the Committee stage the progress in fact in the National Party’s thinking because it has obviously finally got it that paid parental leave is actually important and that we need to do more in this space. But we need to do a great deal better I would say.As for the last member who has just resumed his seat—to say that Labour has not taken this question seriously is just absolutely incorrect and the member well knows it. Labour introduced paid parental leave in 2002. Labour extended paid parental leave in 2004. Labour further extended paid parental leave in 2007. And my colleague Sue Moroney fully supported by this caucus and others members in this House—the Greens New Zealand First the Māori Party and others—has been seeking to extend paid parental leave to a much more meaningful level 26 weeks.I am going to come back to why 26 weeks is a really important next step but let us get the facts on the record here. Labour is very strongly supportive of measures like paid parental leave that support our families and give our children the best start in life. It is obviously a truism to say that supporting families and children is vital for our future. Sadly at the moment too many of our children are not getting supported adequately too many of our children are living in poverty and that is wrong on so many levels. There are 285000 children in poverty living in poor housing suffering from Third World diseases not getting the best start struggling at school as a consequence going hungry and going without basic needs.This is not what we should have in a rich country a comparatively rich country like New Zealand. It is shameful. It is shameful that that is still the case and this Budget does not do enough to support families. Labour’s Best Start package is far more comprehensive and along with our economic development policies provides real hope for a better standard of living for all New Zealanders.I want to talk more about this issue of supporting families when they have babies because paid parental leave is a very significant part of that support. Again just to remind people what this legislation does it extends paid parental leave by 2 weeks next year and by 2 weeks the year after. Unlike what a number of members opposite are saying whom it goes to is not changing. Dr Hutchison and others have got up and said this is more targeted legislation. Well actually the paid parental leave provisions do not change in this legislation. What the Government has flagged up is an extension to who receives them in the future—not in this legislation. But I have to congratulate the Government on that. If we can extend paid parental leave to seasonal workers and casual workers—these are groups often of very low-paid workers—that would be a very positive step forward. But as I understand it that will not be until 2016. The Minister of Labour last night tried to imply that it was part of this legislation. For the sake of the record let us be clear: it is not. But it is a good announcement and we welcome it.The legislation does—in National Party terms possibly—target the parental tax credit. What that means is that it is effectively excluding the poorest New Zealandersthe poorest New Zealand families. Beneficiary families and families of students will not receive the parental tax credit. I think it is something like 14000 families who are excluded from that so when people are listening and they hear about this being targeted that is what this means—that the people who need it the most do not get it.Let us talk about why we need to do more and how we actually thankfully as a Parliament have an opportunity still to do more. We need to move to get to something like 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. Why is that? Well it is because that will mean that babies do get the opportunity to have hopefully the mother—or it could be the father but generally at that young age it will be the mother—at home with the baby for a longer period of time giving the family support to make that decision. We all know that the bonding that happens with a newborn baby in those first months is vitally important to that child’s future. It is vitally important. What could be more important to all of us than making sure we get that right? So we want babies to be looked after by their families and we want to build that bonding in relationships. When the mother is at home with the baby it enables breastfeeding to be well established before she may well go back into the workforce.But paid parental leave also has benefits for women. Now more than ever women are juggling paid working responsibilities and family responsibilities. For many families that is a vital contribution to family income. That is what they need to do. It means that women can retain their connection to their work have that leave and go back into the job they had. As my colleague Sue Moroney noted paid parental leave of 6 months or 26 weeks is something that employers can see is better because it is easier to be able to work out alternative arrangements for that longer period of time. This provides the opportunity for women to have that balance to maintain contact with their paid work and move more effectively in and out of the paid workforce.As I have already said paid parental leave is important for families for both of those reasons because it is good for babies and because it is good for their mothers. Also it helps the family income when for many families things are very tight. It is fair to say that the only reason that the Government has got this as part of the Budget is that there has been a campaign that has really struck a chord. Families are saying that yes they need this. They need this support when they have a baby.It was very cynically announced in this Budget and it was a relatively small announcement close to an election. Judith Collins would not be commenting I guess as she did when Labour announced it that this is an election bribe as she indicated she thought it was when Labour announced it.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: She’s having a wee lie down.CAROL BEAUMONT: Oh! It is a very cynical move but it is in response to what is needed out there and it is well understood. It is well understood in other countries and I want to make sure that we understand that we are outliers in this regard. We are outliers among the developed countries in the world. We have the second-lowest level of paid parental leave in the OECD. This legislation is not going to substantially change that. I do not even imagine it will change our position. I think we probably will stay there. We need to move to something larger; 26 weeks is the next step.As I said the good news is for all those listening do not stop campaigning because there is still a chance on this. Sue Moroney’s bill if the National Government would stop filibustering will get back into this Parliament and it does have the numbers to be supported. That is for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. The work on that bill has been done very well in the Government Administration Committee—the policy work and the financial work. And it is affordable.There has been significant work done by the select committee to look at the costs to look at the savings that offset those costs and to work out that actually it is not a hugecost for the benefit that is given by moving to 26 weeks. So keep the pressure on. Make sure that the Hon Peter Dunne does the right thing as he has committed to doing. Last night of course he voted against a Supplementary Order Paper that would have moved to 26 weeks. Well he will still have a chance to do what he said he would do and vote for the bill if we can get it back on to the floor of this Parliament.So it is important and it is not too expensive. It is about what you prioritise. Investing in our children and families is the most important thing we can do as politicians.Dr CAM CALDER (National): It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on the third readings of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. This Government is a compassionate Government. We have put strengthening families at the core of our policy ever since we have been on the Treasury benches. We are strengthening families and providing them with the means to be cushioned from the worst effects of the recession—the worst recession in fact in the last 70 years.I am very happy on behalf of the hard-working men and women of Manurewa the vibrant and diverse community where I have the pleasure of having my office to know they will be able to take their children to a general practitioner for free visits until they turn 13. There will be even more money and this Government has spent $1.5 billion—even more money—to engage with our Pasifika and Māori communities and low socio-economic groups to help them access early childhood education which as we know is transformational. I commend these bills to the House.Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): This is a split call. You get the feeling that members of the Government do not really want to debate deeply the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. I really get the impression that they just want to get out of here and not talk about this particular legislation. Of course there is very good reason why they do not want to and that is that it is not their idea and they have been forced into this. They know very well that they have been forced into adopting Labour’s policies—not just in this area but in others as well. They know that Labour’s Best Start policy was very popular and is very popular. So first they try to ridicule it. Then they had to accept that no New Zealanders were interested in this and they wanted change.Then of course the issue came into sharp focus with Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill to move to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave now. It was very popular. When submitters began to say that not just the 26 weeks but the other aspects were part of a well-developed paid parental leave policy those members opposite began to get the shivers.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What?Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The shivers. Whatever else they get with the shivers I do not know but they certainly got the shivers. They knew there was something wrong. They knew they had to fix this up. So they delayed that particular bill and they started very quickly to do some thinking around this but the thinking has been done only to a very small extent.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: The top half of the brain or the bottom half?Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well I do not know—the very very top half maybe. Look at what they have done. It is not very generous at all. They are extending it by 2 weeks in 2015 and 2 weeks in 2016. I would expect Paul Hutchison as an obstetrician to have greater awareness of this particular area but I do not think he does. He has forgotten that part of his professional life. He has come in here and he is really interested only in Labour Party and National Party ideology. That is all it is. I still have a lot of respect for you though Mr Hutchison as a gentleman in the House but on this point I think the member has got it wrong.Some of the National members’ positioning is unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. Listen to what the Minister of Labour said. He took only one call in the chair. He did accept Jacinda Ardern’s challenge to match us call for call but then he went to sleep. He realised that it was unsustainable. The process that National has got with this bill is unsustainable. So here we have it. We know that National members have got it wrong for such a long time. The proof is in the eating. Anne Tolley called this a travesty. Nick Smith said it was a bad model. One Paul Hutchison said this was cementing State dependency. I expect the member to withdraw that. He said that when we introduced paid parental leave it was State dependency. It is not. Those members have been caught. They have had to come to this party. It is still pretty mean. I hope that before long they will begin to really right the wrongs and go to a fully developed paid parental leave policy. This does not go far enough.They have engineered a surplus. They are trying to be political about this. They really do not have a well-developed policy around this. They have tried under the brand of vulnerable children to bring a few things in but there is no developmental approach to this at all. So there is a lot of politics in this Mr Hutchison which is what his party is playing at. There is very little policy in this—very little policy in this. If there was a lot of policy it would have been well-thought-out and well signalled. It would have gone to a select committee and we would not be doing this under urgency. They have been caught—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Slapped together.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well they have at least thought about it together I say to my colleague. It is not well-thought-out. It is very mean. It is only a minimalist approach. It is some time into the future. I know they will crow about this in the election campaign but this does not cut it. I am glad they have agreed to go a little bit further but they have been forced into this and they should apologise for some of the statements that they have made in the past about paid parental leave. Thank you.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take the final call for the Greens on the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which I note has been divided up into two bills: the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. The Greens will be supporting these bills. We have stated very vocally through the course of yesterday and last night and also this morning that we have some concerns about that and we do. However these steps forward are steps forward not back and we do need to congratulate the Government on actually taking these steps.However we do have some concerns as well around the use of urgency which I would like noted for the record. There is nothing in either of these bills that deems that we should be doing this process under urgency. In terms of the paid parental leave extensions the extension to 16 weeks does not kick in until 2015 and the extension to 18 weeks up from the current 14 weeks does not kick in until 2016. Extending the parental tax credit for some babies—not for all babies but for some babies—applies only for babies who are born after 1 April 2015. So we could have had a process where we had submissions on these items. We could have heard from the Child Poverty Action Group because some of us went to the post-Budget breakfast this morning and we did hear from the group there. What it is saying is that this Budget is not delivering much at all for vulnerable families and our poorest children. I remind the House that there are 285000 children living in poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. This bill does not address anything to do with them.So although we do support the bills going through—we will be voting in favour—we do have some beef with them. The parental tax credit for example discriminates against children of people who are on benefits and it says that those children can stay inpoverty. This Government has directed that tax credit only to those who are working. With paid parental leave yes we will support the extension to 16 weeks from next year and 18 weeks the year after. However we recognise that the National Government is surfing a wave of the popularity that was generated by Sue Moroney’s member’s bill for 26 weeks paid parental leave. The Government has made some tiny steps towards that in order to undermine her bill. We support 26 paid weeks off work in order to spend time with your baby. However our policy goes further than that. We suggest that it should be 13 months but we will support the National Government’s bill because it is a miniscule step in the right direction.I am just going to quote from the Human Rights Commission’s submission on Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill which advocates 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. It said that there were some issues around accessibility to paid parental leave. It is good that this Government has picked up the idea that we should be extending it to seasonal and part-time workers but again I note that is not going to happen with this bill. It is potentially not going to happen until 2016. So these carrots are there but we have not got there yet. The Human Rights Commission said that “The issue was also picked up by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women … [where it said we have to] ‘introduce appropriate legal measures to ensure parental leave … as well as paid leave for seasonal or fixed-term workers with multiple employment relationships...’ ”. We will support this bill because it is better than nothing but you can be sure that nothing is what the poor get from it.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): I am delighted to take the final call in the third reading on these very important measures the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill which are such a significant part of a very good Budget. Yesterday it was a real thrill to be able to be in the House hearing that the Government has delivered on its promise of returning the books to surplus and is also focusing on things that matter. The fact that families are absolutely at the heart of this Budget is as it should be. Times have been difficult and now we are starting to be able to put in place some of the things that members on this side of the House have always wanted to be able to do. But unlike those on the other side of the House we have known that you cannot spend money that you do not have. I commend the Minister of Labour for the excellent work that he has done. I am delighted that this support for newborn children is such an integral part of the Budget. I commend all members of the Government for the hard work that has gone on. I am sure that these are measures that will be warmly welcomed around the country.Bills read a third time.Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) BillFirst ReadingHon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Commerce) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: I moveThat the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill be now read a first time. The bill is an omnibus bill covering fiscal measures. Part 1 of this bill will repeal cheque duty from 1 July 2014. Cheque duty applies at the rate of 5c per cheque. It is an outmoded tax and is New Zealand’s last remaining transaction duty. Since no equivalent duty applies to alternative methods of payment such as cash eftpos internet banking and credit card transactions cheque duty is a distortionary and easily avoided tax. Although the popularity of cheques has declined they are still common enough for cheque duty to be a cost for a significant number of people and businesses. Removing this cost by repealing cheque duty will benefit those who use cheques. Abolishingcheque duty will also reduce compliance costs particularly for banks and printers of cheques. Reducing compliance costs wherever possible is an ongoing focus of this Government.Part 2 of this bill corrects an unintended consequence in the operation of the New Zealand emissions trading scheme. It stops reregistration arbitrage which arises from the price difference between international Kyoto units and New Zealand Units. Urgent intervention is required to prevent the significant reputational and integrity risks and fiscal cost to the Crown that this may create. Post-1989 foresters are voluntary participants in New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme which means they are able to register and deregister the same area of land multiple times. These participants receive New Zealand Units for forest carbon growth while registered and then are able to surrender cheaper international units to meet their emissions liability. This bill limits participants to surrendering only New Zealand Units when they are deregistering an area of forest from the emissions trading scheme.Part 3 of the bill suspends for 3 years the application of anti-dumping duties to residential construction materials. This includes the anti-dumping duties currently in place on standard plasterboard from Thailand reinforcing steel bar and coil from Thailand and wire nails from China. Removing these duties will increase competition for building materials and reduce the cost of constructing new houses. The suspension of anti-dumping duties follows a market study that found they are having a chilling effect on competition in the building materials market. Anti-dumping duties are a legitimate form of protection for a domestic industry and are provided for under World Trade Organization rules.However contrary to some misconceptions dumping does not mean flooding the market with large quantities of low-quality goods at low prices. Dumping simply refers to a situation where goods are imported at a lower price than if they were sold in their country of origin. This is not necessarily unfair trade. It is normal to charge different prices in different markets.Bearing this in mind the Government has decided that in the case of residential construction materials there should be a temporary suspension of these duties to provide an immediate benefit to the Christchurch rebuild and also to the increased residential construction in other areas of the country particularly Auckland. The decision to suspend these anti-dumping duties was not made lightly and comes from the work of the Productivity Commission into housing affordability and from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’sResidential Construction Market Study. It has been made in conjunction with the Government’s decision to suspend tariffs on a broad range of residential building materials. Reducing the cost of building materials is an important although only one part of the Government’s ongoing programme to increase and improve housing affordability.The removal of import barriers is expected to reduce the cost of building a standard New Zealand house by around $3500. The cost savings from the suspension of anti-dumping duties are expected to make up the bulk of this amount at around $2600 per house. The total savings from suspending these anti-dumping duties could be over $55 million per year. Taken together with the savings from introducing the tariff concession scheme direct savings are in the order of $75 million per annum nationwide. I expect that these measures will result in a more competitive market for residential building materials resulting in further reductions in the costs of constructing homes.As part of this package of measures to improve import barriers the Government has also directed officials to develop a bounded public interest test to be applied to all decisions to impose or extend the duration of anti-dumping and countervailing duties. At the moment there is no ability to consider the wider public interest in decisions toimpose or extend the duration of anti-dumping and countervailing duties or to consider significant events that affect an industry or the public such as an earthquake or other natural disasters. The details of a bounded public interest test will be developed through a public consultation process with a view to considering amending the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Act at a later date. It is the Government’s intention that any public interest test is to be put in place before the end of the 3-year suspension period so that building materials will be subject to a public interest assessment when the suspension ends. It will allow the wider public interest test to be considered not only in relation to duties on building materials but also in relation to other types of goods.The Government appreciates that the suspension of current duties on plasterboard reinforcing bar and nails will have some impact on those New Zealand manufacturers that these duties are designed to protect. However I do not consider it likely that the suspension of these duties will threaten the viability of those businesses given the strong domestic residential construction market which is likely to remain strong over the 3 years that the duties will be suspended. I am confident that our building product manufacturers can adapt and innovate to match up to the international competition.The suspension of anti-dumping duties on residential building materials is implemented by this bill as part of the Government’s wider programme to improve housing affordability. This includes work being done on standards and regulations to increase competition to reduce the price of New Zealand building materials and to free up new land for development improving sector productivity and reducing compliance costs. In conclusion the combined effect of these measures will make a lasting difference to housing affordability and will see more New Zealanders realise the dream of owning their own home. I commend the bill to the House and move that it now be read a first time.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Well here we are under urgency debating the Government’s Budget the critical measures to turbocharge the economy to take the step up to lift wages and to get better jobs and the Government comes to the House to remove cheque duty. That is right. Stop the marches in the street. Call off the hunger strikes. Cheque duty is gone. Around the country New Zealanders celebrate the fact that they will save on average 35c a year—35c a year—from the removal of cheque duty. I have got advice for New Zealanders around the country: do not spend it all in one shop. That is my advice—35c a year. This is the Government’s big idea that holds us here in urgency on a Friday: the removal of cheque duty. We are looking in the Budget for the comparable measures: the rebate on cassette players fondue sets and lava lamps because they are about as relevant as cheque duty is to the economy today.Hon Trevor Mallard: What! What are you saying?GRANT ROBERTSON: Trevor Mallard may also have a rebate placed on him by the end of the day. This is as good as it gets from the Government. This is the thing that the Government has lifted out from the Budget to say “Here’s our economic plan: the removal of cheque duty.” Well that is not enough. It is hard to believe that the Government thought that that was important enough. In the middle of all the many initiatives Bill English could have talked about in his Budget speech he chose to talk about the removal of cheque duty. So on this side of the House we welcome the scourge of cheque duty being taken away from the lives of New Zealanders but we ask ourselves whether or not a timid scattered backward-looking fragmented Budget like this deserves to have cheque duty—that 35c a year—lifted out as the biggie.By the way those figures do come from the Bankers’ Association—that an average of seven cheques a year are written out by bank consumers around New Zealand. Goodness only knows some people must be writing a lot of cheques to get that averageup. But seven cheques a year at 5c a cheque is delivering 35c a year to New Zealanders. This is the social dividend from the National Government—35c a year. Amazing stuff! Do they still have 35c mixtures? They probably did in the 1980s when people were paying by cheque but they do not any more. It is 35c a year from the Government to turbocharge the economy. I was seeking advice from Mr Mallard on the future of 35c mixtures—Hon Trevor Mallard: You eat more lollies than I do.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ah yes—not any more. That is the first part of this bill so there is the turbocharging of the economy.Then we come to the measures to relieve the housing crisis. The Government has decided that it recognises the depth of the housing crisis and the fact that in Auckland particularly housing is becoming unaffordable. Last month $6000 was added to the cost of an average house in Auckland so the Government has come along today with a package of measures to sort out the devil of the cost of plasterboard varnish and nails in the construction of houses. It guessed that it will save $3500. The Minister basically just said that—that it is just a guess of approximately $3500. Well that might touch the conveyancing fee for somebody trying to buy a house. While we are at it first-home buyers and building houses do not always go together. Just a hint for the Government that if it wants to actually do something that will improve the lot for first-home buyers it needs to have a programme like KiwiBuild where we are actually going to build 100000 affordable homes across New Zealand. My colleague Phil Twyford will certainly be speaking at some length in this debate around Part 3 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and its woefully inadequate response to the housing crisis.I do note that within the Budget and within housing a number of interesting facts have come to light. At the moment many people are struggling to buy a house and struggling to service a mortgage. At the moment in New Zealand you need to spend 49 percent of the average gross full-time wage to service a standard mortgage. That is tough work for people—49 percent. Well what the Budget shows us is that by 2018-19 people will need to spend 63 percent of the average gross full-time wage to service a standard mortgage—63 percent. But it gets worse. If you are in Auckland it is 49 percent now but when it is 63 percent across New Zealand if you are in Auckland then 83 percent of the average gross full-time wage will be needed to service a standard mortgage. That is why housing is unaffordable for New Zealanders. That is the Kiwi dream being taken away from the next generation of New Zealanders.We have a housing crisis in New Zealand. We all have a responsibility to do something about it and in this legislation the National Government is taking the tariff off nails and varnish and plasterboard. It is not enough it is insufficient it is hopeless and it will not do anything to greatly improve the chances of people getting into their first homes and that is it for housing in this Budget—that is it.The third part of the bill is around the Climate Change Response Act and my colleague Moana Mackey will have more to say about that. What we can say there though is that although it has been described by the Minister as an “unintended consequence” that is not how it is viewed out in the sector. The question we on this side of the House have is: why does the Government hate the forestry sector so much? Why has the Government got it in for the forestry sector and want to take it on? I can tell the Government this having looked at the regulatory impact statement. The section where it says “There has been no consultation with stakeholders on this.”—that was a mistake. Can I just say that that was a mistake. Right around the country iwi forest owners are not going to be happy with this. They are not going to be happy with this response.Quite clearly this is not the climate change legislation that the Government should be putting before the House.So that is it. That is what the Government has come to us today as its big Budget bill to bring in front of the House under urgency. It is woefully inadequate. We look to this Budget for some ambition for the New Zealand economy and it is not there. It is politics as usual. It is an election-year Budget where National has come in and stolen a few policies from Labour but it leaves ambition for the economy at the door. If we want to have good jobs and higher wages it does not come from tweaks to the cheque duty; it comes from actually adopting an approach where we bring New Zealanders together. It is a partnership between the Government and business and communities that is about creating jobs and making sure that there is industry and regional development and that there is an economic upgrade that will actually add value. We are not going to get higher wages in New Zealand through politics as usual—by investing in the same things we have always have done at the same rate.We need to upgrade the economy in manufacturing in forestry and in information and communications technology. We need to make sure that the skills are being gained by people to take on those jobs. We need to get the settings of the economy right by changing monetary policy so that people are back at the centre of the economy—not the speculators not the bankers but the people who actually drive productivity in our economy. And that is the other thing that is missing from this Budget. Where is the dividend to reduce inequality? If we really want to do something in our economy and our society then we have to harness the talents of all New Zealanders and this Budget leaves behind those who live in poverty. There is very little in this Budget that reaches those people and the last bill that we debated missed them out entirely.This is not a Budget for future generations; this is a Budget for this election year. If this was a Budget for future generations we would not be allowing superannuation spending to outstrip education spending this year and that is what is happening. There is no policy in here for future generations to know that they will have universal superannuation. There is nothing here that looks ahead to that. There is nothing here that looks ahead to safeguarding the Kiwi dream of homeownership or of giving people a fair chance to get on the property ladder. There is nothing in here to address the inequality that means that if you are lucky enough to live in Mission Bay in Auckland your median income will have gone up by $6000 over the last few years but if you are in Māngere or Ōtāhuhu you will have ended up with only a $200 increase. That kind of inequality cannot be sustained in our economy. This is a woefully inadequate piece of legislation that the Government thinks somehow trumpets its Budget. It actually shows that its Budget is a failure.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): Granted that Mr Robertson could not purchase enough wine gums for his calorific out-take of that speech from the cost of a sole cheque in cheque duty nevertheless this bill is a useful discrete measure. As the Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues I would like to build on what my colleague Mr Foss has said. In relation to Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill entitled “Climate change response: unit restriction amendment” I would like to emphasise the following points to the House. This bill will act to maintain the integrity of the emissions trading scheme which is the Government’s primary policy tool to address climate change.An unintended consequence has occurred in the operation of the emissions trading scheme. It allows particular participants the opportunity to arbitrage New Zealand’s units against cheaper international units. This is referred to as re-reregistration arbitrage. Post-1989 foresters are voluntary participants in the emissions trading scheme. They are able to participate in the scheme at their discretion. Reregistration arbitrage occurs whenthese foresters register and then deregister from the emissions trading scheme multiple times. At registration a post-1989 forestry participant receives New Zealand Units and they may surrender any emission unit when they deregister. This allows foresters to use the registration process to profit from the price difference between domestic units and cheaper international units. It was never Parliament’s intention for this to occur. If this unintended consequence is left unchecked it could create significant reputational and integrity risks for the emissions trading scheme. This arbitrage activity also creates fiscal costs for the Crown.The bill ensures that these risks are prevented. The bill improves the integrity of the scheme by removing the opportunity to gain from the interplay of the price difference between domestic and international units and certain design features of forestry participation. To do this the bill will ensure that post-1989 foresters surrender New Zealand Units when deregistering from the emissions trading scheme. This will stop this arbitrage activity as there is no longer an opportunity to use the deregistration process to gain from the unit price difference. It will bring forestry into line with other emissions trading scheme participants.This bill of course will also permanently remove cheque duty which has become an inefficient and distortionary mode of tax and will temporarily remove anti-dumping duties on imported residential building materials in order to increase competition lift sector productivity and reduce the cost of residential construction. I commend the bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Why does the National Government hate the forestry sector? Why does it hate forestry so much? The one sector that got it out of a hole in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol was forestry. This was the sector that put us in the black. Why does the National Government continue this sustained attack on the forestry sector? When I picked up the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and saw the brief description of it I thought: “OK well that looks fairly reasonable.” until I read the bill and until I read the regulatory impact statement and realised that this is not about what the Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues was talking about at all. This is not an “unintended consequence” of the emissions trading scheme; this is the very deliberate result of a Government that has failed to restrict the cheap international units that have flooded into this country and collapsed the carbon price. This arbitrage issue is a problem only because there is such a differential between the New Zealand Unit price and the cheap Kyoto Protocol unit prices which the National Government has done nothing about and continues to do nothing about. That is the problem. Fix that and this all goes away. I will put forward an amendment in the Committee stage in my name to do just that—fix the actual problem instead of just taking another whack at the forestry industry.I really do not understand why National hates forestry as much as it does given the benefits of forestry to this country. The good news is that a Labour Government is coming. It has a plan for the forestry sector that includes restricting these cheap international units and assisting this export industry which has huge job potential. What the Minister would have us believe is that this is purely about reregistration. So in the mandatory emissions reporting period of 5 years a forester can go in collect New Zealand Units and then deregister from the scheme and pay that liability with these cheap Kyoto units. They can then the next day reregister to enter the scheme get New Zealand Units and deregister. We do not want that to happen but that is a symptom of the current failure of this Government to have an adequate price on carbon and to reduce the gap in price differential between New Zealand Units and foreign units. That is the actual problem.What the Government is saying now though is that it is actually not just going to stop the reregistration because you could just do that by saying that a forester can register only once in any reporting period. That fixes the problem and the problem goes away. What the Government has chosen to do is to say that if you are in forestry you do not have any access to these Kyoto units at all. So even if you are deregistering with no intention to reregister and even if you are deregistering because the economics are not working or for whatever genuine reason you do not get access to those units whereas everyone else in the scheme does. So this is not about reregistration at all because if it was we could simply fix that problem by saying that you cannot reregister. This is about whacking forestry once again. When you look at the regulatory impact statement on this bill it makes it quite clear that this is not actually about reregistration at all. One of the points that the regulatory impact statement makes is that it will be seen as unfair to post-1989 forest land participants because it imposes a restriction on their use of Kyoto units whereas other sectors continue to have unrestricted use.Let us talk about those other sectors. There is one other sector that is full of National Party mates who got free allocation of New Zealand Units and that is the heavy industrial emitters—so Rio Tinto. Remember the $80 million the Government gave Rio Tinto? Well Rio Tinto also got a free allocation of New Zealand Units and Labour absolutely supports that. Rio Tinto can engage in arbitrage by taking those New Zealand Units and paying its pollution liability with these cheap international units. Is the Government stopping that? No. And why? Because the Government likes those guys because they are its mates but it does not like forestry. So it is going to allow arbitrage to continue amongst the heavy industrial emitters who got free New Zealand Units allocations. They can continue to engage in arbitrage but forestry cannot—forestry cannot.One of the reasons for that that the Government talks about is fiscal risk. So it says that it needs to do this because the fiscal risk to the Crown is so great. Well if we take the Climate Change Response Act 2002 report from the Environmental Protection Agency and if we use the methodology that it uses for its calculations what we find is that in the year to June 2013 there were 36 million New Zealand Units allocated to industry—to the Government’s mates—which at today’s prices represent $111 million in value. Of that 36 million only 24000 were surrendered by that group to meet its obligations. So it was practically nothing at all. The balance was met through these cheap Kyoto units that we are now telling forestry they cannot have access to. So if we use the same logic as used in the Environmental Protection Agency’s own report what we find is that the fiscal risk to the Crown from the heavy industrial emitters’ arbitrage is $107 million. There is $107 million in fiscal risk.So what is the fiscal risk that we are dealing with here in this bill caused by post-1989 foresters? It is $11 million to $66 million. It is $11 million to $66 million in fiscal risk from forestry. There is $107 million in fiscal risk from heavy industrial emitters. And which is the group that we are targeting in this legislation? Forestry. Why? Because the Government hates forestry. Why are we not targeting heavy industrial emitters? Because they are the Government’s mates—they are the Government’s mates. So if this was about fiscal risk then we would actually be applying this across the board and we would have no issue with that—with it applying this across the board with the same rules applying to everyone and not one rule for National’s mates and another rule for the forestry sector which was the only sector doing the heavy lifting in the first commitment period of Kyoto in terms of emissions reductions.The Government has allowed the carbon price to collapse. There are practically no complementary measures going on at all. An analysis of the Government’s own figures shows that by 2030 if we compare doing absolutely nothing at all in terms of climatechange policy with the Government’s current plan on climate change policy the difference in emissions reductions is 0.4 percent—0.4 percent. We effectively have business as usual when it comes to climate change policy under this Government. So when I hear Minister Simon Bridges talking about needing to uphold the reputation of our emissions trading scheme—are you kidding me? Are you seriously kidding me? That thing lost its reputation the minute that this Government was elected and completely gutted it and allowed the carbon price to collapse overnight. Our emissions trading scheme has not had a good reputation since this Government was elected. It is nothing more than a fig leaf.I am sorry but the biggest risk to our reputation in terms of climate change is this National Government—Simon Bridges Tim Groser John Key—and Gerry Brownlee who is a climate change denier who just wants to build more of his carbon-sequestering motorways. When I hear the Government talk about the reputation and risk of our emissions trading scheme I am sorry—I am sorry—but that is just galling.The other angle on this of course is that there are people who are currently going through the process of deregistering and reregistering and who are going to be caught out by this. An email went out today to Ministers—because of course there was no consultation on this bill; no one knew this was coming—which said: “We have no problem with what we understand the legislation is trying to achieve but currently we have 25 clients who have sold some or all of their New Zealand Units to purchase emission reduction units. They have purchased these emission reduction units to surrender as the legislation allows once we had completed and submitted the deregistration applications to the Ministry for Primary Industries. We can complete these submissions by the end of next week but do not want to progress at the moment if we do as I understand our clients will be required to surrender New Zealand Units that they no longer hold. These are mum and dad - type forest owners and although the amounts involved may seem small to you they are substantial to them.” So do not fool yourselves National Government members that that is not going to have a very real impact on people today.What makes it even worse is that I have here theSustainable Forestry Bulletin from the Ministry for Primary Industries. What this does—and this is from August 2013 January 2014 and February 2014—is tell people how to deregister and reregister their forests. So the Ministry for Primary Industries has been providing guidelines and advice to post-1989 foresters on how to do this. They may be forgiven for thinking that the Government was OK with it. I think they could be forgiven for being extremely surprised that the Government has now pulled the rug out from under them when theSustainable Forestry Bulletin from August 2013 says: “Things to consider when removing and reregistering post-1989 forests in the ETS.”The Government has been promoting this bulletin as a legitimate tool for foresters to use. It has given absolutely no warning that this was going to happen. It has allowed price-gauging to continue under the emissions trading scheme by fuel and energy companies which are buying these cheap international units at 35c then charging through power bills and at the petrol pump around $20 a tonne. The Government has no problem with that; that is OK. It has no problem with the heavy emitters being able to engage in arbitrage. That is OK because they are their mates. But when it comes to forestry the one sector that has been doing the heavy lifting for it in terms of our net emissions—the one sector that has done this—the Government is whacking them once again. It did it the first time by allowing the carbon price to collapse. It has continued to oppose Labour’s attempts to restrict these cheap international units and now that it is doing some restrictions—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Her time has expired.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): This bill before us the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill is a composite bill so the various policy considerations that attend to it in its entirely separate pieces make for a contaminated democratic process. But that is the nature of this Government.In the first reading I want to address only Part 2 on climate policy. Part 2 is described as removing an unintended consequence in the emissions trading scheme that has the potential to expose the Crown to significant fiscal risk. This bill is a testament to past folly. It is an acknowledgment by this Government that its emissions trading scheme has failed. This bill seeks to prevent after the fact the practice of arbitrage. Arbitrage is a rort. It is defined as the purchase of currencies securities or commodities in one market for immediate resale in order to profit from unequal prices.How did New Zealand get to this state in its climate policy? The primary purpose of the basic Climate Change Response Act is to enable New Zealand to meet its obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Act aims to reduce New Zealand’s emissions. That is a binding obligation. To achieve this the Act sets up the emissions trading scheme. The scheme is described as a scheme that reduces net emissions to below business-as-usual levels. To achieve that the local carbon currency the New Zealand Unit has been introduced as the mainstay of the scheme but foreign units the Kyoto units are allowed into New Zealand as extra currencies. Since the scheme has come into force New Zealand’s gross and net emissions have continued to soar. The purpose of the Act has not been met. In fact New Zealand is in breach of its international obligations.There are two ways by which New Zealand Units are initially acquired: an emissions trading scheme participant can earn them through forestry sequestration or they can be gifted by the Government to cover any liability as a polluter. But the scheme also allows people to purchase foreign units at a cheaper rate than the New Zealand Units and surrender those to the Government instead. They then hold on to their New Zealand Units to sell them later at a higher price. They have therefore made a financial profit off a scheme that is designed to bring down emissions. In the case of forestry they may be harvesting their forests thereby increasing emissions or they may not. They may simply be deregistering from the emissions trading scheme and reregistering the next day. Either way they make a financial profit off a scheme that is designed to change society’s economic behaviour towards the goal the imperative of emissions reduction.There are some 2400 post-1989 foresters in the emissions trading scheme covering 330000 hectares of forest. In the second half of 2013 550—almost a quarter—applied to deregister. About 40 percent have applied to reregister. In making carbon a commodity for trade as opposed to a pollutant to be reduced the designers of this scheme have thwarted the purpose. In allowing windfall profit from a scheme that is intended to protect the planet from dangerous climate change the champions of the free market have excelled themselves in the art of political cynicism. In doing so they condemn their own children to a dangerous future.Eliminating this form of arbitrage will result in the price of the domestic New Zealand Unit rising. How much it will rise by is hard to estimate but it will rise. This will have the effect of reducing emissions or curbing growing emissions. The Green Party therefore intends to support Part 2 of this legislation for that fundamental reason.But the question has to be asked why this Government is confining the halt to arbitrage to the post-1989 forestry sector. The forestry sector has been asking for a unit restriction on international units for years so this is in line with that. But why make thischange yet allow other kinds of emitters—industry pre-1990 forestry energy—to continue to use international units for surrender?The same principle is exploited by industry—aluminium and steel by way of example—under industrial allocation plans. They get given volumes of New Zealand Units each year for nothing. They too bank them and surrender cheap international units instead. Why single out one sector forestry which is reducing emissions which has a break-even carbon price of $15 but is getting $3 under National’s failed emissions trading scheme?Does National believe in the free market or not? This move shows it believes in the free market for some emitters but not others. How many New Zealand Units were allocated to the three other sectors in the last year on record ended June 2013? How many were issued to industry fishing and pre-1990 forestry? The answer is 36.5 million. This involves aluminium smelters being allocated 90 percent of their annual emissions as New Zealand Units yet they too can hand back 100 percent as international units. Is that arbitrage or is it not?What about the steel mills the wood processors the methanol producers the pulp and paper mills? They are all allocated between 60 and 90 percent of emissions as New Zealand Units yet they can hand in any kind of unit. Those 36 million New Zealand Units allocated last year have a current market value of $110 million yet any of these sectors can replace the same level of emissions with emission reduction units worth $7 million.Why did it take 6 years for the modestly self-proclaimed brilliant economic stewards currently on the Treasury benches to trip over the blatant rorting of their emissions trading scheme? Was it by chance a blind ideological devotion to the free market—the free market of global carbon credit distortion? If so the invisible hand was inside the pocket of every New Zealand taxpayer. Where was ACT when we needed it? Where was the compassionate conservatism of Bill English? The Minister of Finance Minister of profit by arbitrage was asleep at the wheel. Where was the insightful judgment of John Key the Prime Minister of everything including degradation of the planet? He was awake but unable to recognise a problem whose characteristics have defined his life experience. It is no wonder they do not act.Or was it by chance a determination to ensure that greenhouse gas polluters of this country are not constrained in their freedom to respond to the mercantilist policies of the John Key - Government—the mercantilism of a 21st century milk and log colony? If so the invisible hand is passing the taxpayers’ money across to selected corporations. Bravo—a better brighter New Zealand.The underlying basis of New Zealand in terms of Treasury climate policy is global least-cost abatement. But global least cost is not the dubious emissions reduction units of track 2 type. There is no global carbon price as yet and there will not be for a decade. The international price ranges from NZ50c to NZ$30. Do we really believe that NZ50c is a true global least cost to save the planet? Allowing the cheapest of these units to come in undermining the integrity of our emissions trading scheme is cynicism of the highest level. Emissions reduction units remain valid in New Zealand until 31 May 2015 so their purchase and trading and surrender can continue until then even though most people who have a commercial interest will have already done the purchasing but any further arbitrage will undermine the emissions trading scheme.My own member’s bill the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill has been in the ballot for 2 years now. It would have prevented the import of all these cheap foreign units so that the New Zealand price could float up. That would have applied across all sectors of our economy which is how the policy should be. We shallbe looking forward to the Minister’s explanation as to why this bill does not allow restrictions on emission reduction units across all sectors.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to speak on this Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. The tenor of Mr Robertson’s speech seemed to be that rather than the steady sensible predictable Budget carrying on in the right direction that this Government has delivered we should somehow be turning things on their head and having big changes in the economy—putting in a capital gains tax nationalising the electricity sector overturning monetary policy with an experiment that no other country in the world has tried. He said it was time for an absolute upheaval in our economic policy which makes no sense whatsoever when we look at the results that have been delivered in this Budget the sixth Budget from Bill English.After 6 years of hard work by this Government and by businesses and New Zealanders generally from one end of the country to the other we have the economy growing at nearly 4 percent wages rising faster than inflation more money in the Budget for families and the most vulnerable and business confidence at the highest level in years. That seems to me and I think to most New Zealanders to indicate that this Government is taking the economy in the right direction.I was appalled to hear a whopper from Mr Cunliffe in his Budget debate speech saying that Labour had previously delivered nine surpluses. Well Mr Cullen said he had a surplus in his last Budget but the reality was that the final Budget in the final year that Labour was responsible delivered a $3.9 billion deficit. The 2008 year saw Government spending increase by an astonishing 12 percent in 1 year leaving a Budget deficit of $3.9 billion and forecasts of never-ending deficits. This Government has had to pick up the cudgels and get this economy back into shape. It was a great day yesterday being able to celebrate a restoration of fiscal responsibility and prudence and I am very pleased to be part of a Government that has done such a thing.I do want to mention in relation to this bill the housing affordability aspects of it in the temporary suspension of dumping duties provisions. Probably the single biggest issue that I hear about in Epsom is a concern about the steadily rising house prices in Auckland. This Government has been very very active in this sector because we realise that the biggest issue we have is the constraint of land and a small supply of new houses and so Nick Smith has been indefatigable in his efforts around the city to increase the supply of land and of new housing.The other area is the cost of building. I do not like to be unkind about any members on the other side of the House but for Mr Robertson to suggest that the cost of building has no impact on the price that first-home buyers pay is economically illiterate because the cost of building a new house does flow through to the overall cost of houses in the city. So this bill will in a small way make a difference to house costs across Auckland by making it cheaper to build new houses. On that basis I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the omnibus Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill covering cheque duty climate change and building supplies. Firstly cheque duty—it is too late to really comment on this. This should have been done years ago. Again it is a little trifling matter that the Government has pulled out in this particular Budget. It is just another way of it padding the Budget out to make it look better than it actually is. Cheque duty should have been done away with years ago not 6 years into this Government given the number of cheques that are issued. I was told this morning that the largest issuer of cheques in this country is the Inland Revenue Department and it is exempt from paying cheque duty. So is it not ironic that the Government the single biggest writer of cheques does not have to pay duty on them? That was a bit of nonsense. The fact thatNew Zealanders have not been paying duty on electronic transactions and other forms of transactions has made it quite an anomaly and it is time that that went.However moving on to climate change New Zealand First wants the New Zealand Government to have a serious response to climate change and this provision is not it. What is now apparent is that a great majority of countries see climate change as a result of increasing greenhouse gases and as a major global challenge. New Zealand First does not argue with that. Climate change is a reality. New Zealand First is opposed to New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme the ETS. We consider it far too complex and far too impractical. It was concocted by financial theorists for the benefit it would seem of the financial sector—a Merrill Lynch solution or really a non-solution from the likes of Merrill Lynch.As a serious response to climate change the emissions trading scheme has been as we foresaw a dismal failure—window dressing. It has failed to deliver significant emissions reductions. In addition there is little evidence that it is actually helping industry to change to a lower-carbon world. The emissions trading scheme has been systematically rorted. We have seen the unit values go from something like $23 or $24 down to a couple of dollars internationally. What an absolute embarrassment in terms of that scheme. A vast industry has grown around the emissions trading scheme but it has delivered few real results and this bill is part of the mess that has ensued from the emissions trading scheme. The bill is a consequence of the mess confusion and financial game-playing that has come from the emissions trading scheme. The emissions trading scheme was a half-baked scheme and the need for this bill demonstrates that.It is time that New Zealand had a serious policy and plan to address climate change. Climate change is possibly the greatest challenge to our future. Yesterday’s Budget pretended it was not happening at all. That exposes the total lack of vision of the National Government. This Budget fails to deliver any meaningful policy on climate change and for that and other reasons it is a manifest failure.On to the building supplies part of this bill—we have great difficulties with this. New Zealand First really does question this as well. New Zealand First anticipates that there will be all sorts of unintended consequences from this building supplies part of the bill. Removing anti-dumping duties could adversely impact the New Zealand economy. There is a reason for anti-dumping duties being in place. It was to protect local manufacturers. We have seen no evidence that the negative impacts on New Zealand jobs and businesses have been fully considered or taken into account in devising this bill. It smacks of being another of National’s knee-jerk responses to the housing crisis a crisis of its own making. But instead of taking meaningful measures—specifically curbing immigration and foreign buying of New Zealand housing stock—it decided to throw to the wolves the local manufacturers of construction products.In this bill there is no actual mechanism for ensuring that the claimed cost reductions will in fact be translated into lower house prices. It is a hope and a dream that by getting cheaper imported goods into this country for construction the price of houses will go down. It will simply mean that the margins will go up for many of those constructing the houses and putting them up.There may be cost reductions but that remains to be seen and quite frankly we are very sceptical. It is also questionable. Today Elephant Plasterboard a New Zealand manufacturer of plasterboard said that we also need to be very mindful of the products coming in—whether they will have full warranties guarantees and longevity. There will be increased supplies from the likes of China Thailand Korea and Indonesia and questionable quality standards.Many of us have witnessed the leaky homes of the 1990s which came about from the National Government changing the building code and allowing building products and kiln-dried timber to be used during the 1990s. Now in the 2000s we have ended up spending at least an additional $11 billion heading towards $20 billion on leaky homes because of inferior products being used in the construction of our residential houses. We have the potential here by knocking local good-quality manufacturing on the head and allowing increased imports from questionable sources to go through another period where—what will the plasterboard standards be? What will the standard of the nails be? I can assure you that I have built a number of properties and I have used nails. Nails are deteriorating in quality year on year. So what will be the quality of the nails?Recently I was told of trailers being sold in New Zealand that are coming in complete from Asia and they are now being given only 2 years’ warranty when New Zealand manufacturers of similar trailers give you virtually a lifetime guarantee. They will go on and on and on. A good decent trailer will last for ever but the ones that are being brought in now out of China and being sold considerably cheaper are given only 2 years’ warranty.The Government has plucked a figure out of thin air as the cost reduction on a standard house—a nice round figure of $3500 which sounds good but is totally unquantifiable. Where did this figure come from? Answer: the back of some envelope in Treasury. We predict there will be business closures in the building supplies sector. There will be job losses. The cost of building supplies is an important issue but ill-considered legislation is not the answer. Reducing GST on building supplies was another and better option. There is no evidence that that option was considered.It is critically important that we protect the manufacturing base—not just expose it at short notice to unfair competition. But once again the fate of the New Zealand manufacturing base appears not to matter to this Government. This Government has spent much of this year pooh-poohing the Opposition which raised concerns about the state of our manufacturing. Sure our agricultural manufacturing is doing very well and some sectors of manufacturing are surviving in terms of IT and smart manufacture but there are areas of what you would call manufacturing for home products consumer products and building products—products used in everyday life in New Zealand that are produced in this country—that are under real pressure. Those manufacturers which in many cases are also exporters under a very high New Zealand dollar heading towards 90c are in dire straits in many cases.This is yet another nail in the coffin for local manufacturers. Taking away the last of those anti-dumping duties will allow greater imports from many many Asian countries in particular where their cost of production is so much less where their cost of labour is so much less and where their quality of materials is perhaps more questionable. Therefore New Zealand First has great reservations about aspects of this total bill.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to rise to speak to the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill the second of the Government’s Budget legislation. I am going to take a short call because this week is really all about checks. Think about it. National has balanced the Budget. Check. We have returned the country to surplus. Check. We have cleaned up years of Labour’s reckless overspending. Check. We have got a great plan to extend paid parental leave. Check. We are extending free doctors visits to under-13-year-olds. Check. We have invested almost $200 million more into the education system. Check. And we are getting rid of cheque duty. You had better believe that that is a check. I commend this bill to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): On Budget morning an opinion poll in one of the daily newspapers said that 76 percent of New Zealanders wanted to see theBudget prioritising tackling the housing crisis and doing something for first-home buyers. Oh how New Zealanders have been let down and disappointed by this Budget. How badly the National Government has got it wrong after talking up the housing crisis for months and leaking suggestions that it was going to do something about the supply of housing in Auckland. Well it has left New Zealanders feeling badly let down.How bad is this housing crisis? Well bear this in mind: the median house price in Auckland has now gone over $700000. We have seen a 40 percent increase in house prices in Auckland since National took office in 2008. Foreign speculators are driving up the price of houses in Auckland outbidding Kiwi first-home buyers from the end of the telephone. We have got people living in garages and sleepouts around the country. And because this Government has utterly failed to get a grip on the housing crisis the Reserve Bank has imposed lending restrictions and loan-to-value ratios requiring 20 percent minimum deposits which have shut first-home buyers and low-income Kiwi families out of the housing market handing the advantage to speculators both foreign and domestic.The best this Government could do was to announce the temporary suspension of anti-dumping duties and tariffs on some building materials. That is the best it could do and that is a very inadequate response to the housing crisis. There is nothing in the Budget—nothing—for first-home buyers. There is nothing to put a stop to foreign speculators bidding up the price of houses in Auckland. There is nothing to guarantee that the 285000 children growing up in this country below the poverty line who live in rental properties will have a warm dry home. The best that National is willing to offer the country is to lift the anti-dumping duties and tariffs on some building materials. It has estimated on the back of a cigarette packet that this might save $3500 off the cost of a new home but we have heard nothing from the Ministers or from members in the House today about why they think that saving would be passed on to first-home buyers. What is to say that in an overheated housing market the builders and the developers will not just pocket that $3500? That is even if we give any credibility to the estimate that it would save $3500.What else alongside this measure did the Government announce in the Budget? It announced $30 million for social housing organisations. That is $30 million over 3 years—$10 million a year—for social housing organisations. The supposed centrepiece of Nick Smith’s housing policy is to resource the community housing sector to provide more affordable housing. Alongside lifting the anti-dumping duties and the tariffs on varnish and nails and wall board the Government has put $10 million a year into social housing organisations. I calculate that on the basis of a house costing $350000 it will take Nick Smith 455 years to meet his target of transferring 13000 houses to the community housing sector—455 years. The NGOs having heard Nick Smith announcing with great fanfare in last year’s Budget the expansion of the community housing sector—just like this year’s great announcement of lifting the anti-dumping duties on Gib board—have been left waiting for the last 12 months to hear what kind of resource the Government would put into this initiative. But all they got was a measly $10 million a year—utterly pathetic.The other initiative alongside the lifting of tariffs and anti-dumping duties is $80 million to the Ministry of Social Development for the purposes of implementing the eligibility assessment for people to get into State housing. So the Government’s single biggest announcement alongside the lifting of anti-dumping duties and tariffs is $80 million to pay the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Social Development to do the job that Housing New Zealand has been doing within its baseline funding. This is unbelievable stuff.But look there is more—there is more. There is $7 million in the Budget to pay the Ministry of Social Development to kick pensioners and disabled people out of State housing. Alongside lifting anti-dumping duties and tariffs which has been talked up as this Government’s huge contribution to solving the crisis in affordable housing this is all it has got. After Nick Smith has been the Minister of Housing for a year and a half this is all the Government has got—to pay the Ministry of Social Development $7 million to kick people out of State housing. Paula Bennett announced it in a press release entitled “Helping more families into rental housing”. Actually it is $7 million to kick people out of their State houses—unbelievable.I want to say that the public have been left open mouthed and astonished that the Government would talk up the housing crisis for the last few months dropping generous hints that it was going to do something for first-home buyers. This temporary suspension of tariffs and anti-dumping duties is estimated by someone in Treasury to save $3500 off the cost of a new house. Even if that is true it is still a tiny pathetic amount. It is less than 1 percent of the median cost of a house—less than 1 percent. Get this—it is 2 to 3 weeks of house price inflation in Auckland. It is 2 to 3 weeks of house price inflation. That is all it is going to save.The Productivity Commission which Nick Smith loves to quote in this House as his bible the font of all wisdom heard a lot of submissions on the question of building costs. Its report indicated that building supply costs in Australia are 76 percent of those for a standard home in New Zealand. So New Zealand is paying a lot more. In fact based on that data and adjusted for inflation and for the exchange rate New Zealand is paying more than $20000 more for the building materials for a standard home than consumers in Australia are paying. And the best this Government can do after an extensive working group exercise to look at building costs—Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials did a market study on residential constructions we had extensive public consultation and a whole range of options were foreshadowed—is come up with the temporary suspension of anti-dumping duties and tariffs on varnish nails and Gib board. It is unbelievable.I just want to say in the context of this being the Government’s showpiece announcement on affordable housing that it is worth noting that the Budget’s own figures tell us that under the current policy settings of this National Government the housing crisis is going to get much much worse. The Budget figures themselves the interest rate track and the projections on wage growth tell us that in 5 years’ time by 2018-19 it will take 63 percent of the average full-time wage to service an 80 percent mortgage on a standard home—63 percent of the average full-time wage. It is currently bad enough. It is currently 49 percent and everybody but the National caucus and Nick Smith would agree that that constitutes a housing crisis. In 5 years under this Government’s policies it is going to go from 49 percent to 63 percent. And if you live in Auckland that figure is 86 percent. So under this Government’s policies hard-working Kiwi families paying off a mortgage in Auckland in 2018-19 will have to spend 86 percent of an average full-time wage just to service a mortgage. That is if they can afford to get into their own home.What is the upshot of this? The Government with this Budget has basically run up the white flag. It has admitted defeat. It is telling New Zealanders that the dream of Kiwi homeownership is over. It is finished. The Government has given up and it has surrendered.Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri): It is a privilege and a pleasure to speak at the first reading of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Measures) Bill this morning. What a great Budget we had and this is a good bill. This is but one component of the Budget and the Budget actually is one component of ourfantastic management of the economy. The speaker who just resumed his seat Phil Twyford I think demonstrated fairly well actually the politics of envy. Labour members are envious of our Budget. They are envious of our economic management. A wee bit of hyperbole he said—Phil Twyford: Nothing could be further from the truth.Hon KATE WILKINSON: —nothing. He said we have done nothing to give families warm dry homes. Well we have. There are now over 280000 homes that are warmer and healthier through our successful insulation schemes. If he thinks that is nothing I would hate to think what he thinks is something. I have great pleasure in supporting this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand that the next call is a split call—5 minutes. Dr David Clark.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I think the short call by the member opposite is indicative of the vision of this Government. Not only was it limited but it was also late. The member Kate Wilkinson stood and said that it was a real pleasure to take a call on this bill the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill this morning. I hate to inform the member that it is indeed nearly 1 o’clock. The member is of course behind the times. She is from that party opposite that is always following always playing catch-up and always trying to catch up with where Labour is at in terms of policies that have vision for New Zealanders—for those New Zealanders who want to get ahead. We are working with New Zealanders. We are determined to work with New Zealanders to deliver policies that have vision that have purpose rather than the scattergun backward-looking approaches that we see this Government pushing.This bill removes cheque duty. That is one of the things that it does. I have to say that all those years of waiting for a surplus just to splash out on removing cheque duty is rather a delicious irony. It really does speak to the backward-looking view of this Government. It is still obsessed with the old cheques. I know that I do not own a cheque book. I look around this House and there will be members who do and members who do not but really it is a small and diminishing part of the Budget.Iain Lees-Galloway: John Banks gets them.Dr DAVID CLARK: John Banks takes a lot of cheques says a member in front of me and he is probably right but I do not know whether he will be doing that much longer though for reasons that we cannot discuss in this House. Cheque duty is being canned but unfortunately New Zealanders are left with a credit card bill of about $58 billion from this Government’s borrowing—$58 billion—and we know that credit cards attract greater interest than cheques. So here we are with a Government opposite that has borrowed more money than Robert Muldoon did presenting its vision to the world: cancelling the fee on cheques. That sums it up aside from the belated catch-up of the member discovering that the afternoon has arrived and the yardarm has moved on.Dr Cam Calder: Don’t mention it.Dr DAVID CLARK: We will not mention the yardarm too much in respect of those members opposite. They were busy last night. This Budget is unfortunately as I have said backward-looking and scattergun but we think that it is a lost opportunity more than anything else because it lacks aspiration and because the Government is facing higher unemployment numbers than when it took office at the height of the global financial crisis—and unemployment is still higher in New Zealand. It is a lost opportunity because real median wages are lower than when it took office because this Government has overseen the highest gap between rich and poor in recorded history in New Zealand and because middle New Zealand struggles and continues to struggle under this Government. It is a Government that has failed to raise those real median wages. It is a Government that has overseen interest rates rising but has no plan—noplan—to help New Zealanders into their first homes. There is nothing in this Budget for them. The $3500 estimated to be saved from the housing tariff is insignificant in the context of the $200000 increase in house prices in Auckland over the last few years. It is a fraction of 1 percent as my colleague Phil Twyford pointed out earlier.This is a visionless Budget. We know that the Government has got to surplus of course through a series of fudging attempts: first through keeping artificially high ACC levies—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Dr DAVID CLARK: Another is through transport spending—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Dr DAVID CLARK: —being couched as a loan and so on but that has been all to produce cheque duty reductions. This is the big vision from the Government that we are being told right now. It is not interested in housing it is not interested in jobs and it is not interested in wages; instead we are here under urgency passing legislation to remove cheque duty. So ladies and gentlemen at home I am informed that this might save you up to a dollar a year.Iain Lees-Galloway: No 35c.Dr DAVID CLARK: Oh 35c a year. My apologies—35c per year this may save you at home.Moana Mackey: Don’t oversell it.Dr DAVID CLARK: I should not oversell this policy. And there will be some people for whom that 35c does make a difference but it is not the same kind of difference that would be made from having the kinds of policies that Labour is proposing to bring in when in Government such as universal KiwiSaver and the ability to use monetary policy to make sure that interest rates are kept low whilst having the money that is used to do that going into savings rather than into offshore banks.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. There are a number of concerns but I will be focusing primarily on the building and wood products part of the bill. I will note what Kennedy Graham said when speaking before on the emissions trading scheme aspects that it is about time there was some catch-up on the rorts that have been done by predominantly overseas interests in the forestry area but that it is absolutely unfair that forestry cops it when other major industry are not being dealt with in the same way. So I support his statements on that.I want to move through to the removal of duties and tariffs on building products. I spent a lot of the morning trying to work out how broad that goes and what things will be affected. I think we all need to reflect on the processes; the tradesmen in our towns and in our cities who are working on everything from kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets to trusses doors window frames and things like that the people with skills; and the businesses that are feeding into the local economy. These are going to be knocked heavily by this allowance of dumping of materials into the New Zealand market.Hon Craig Foss: No they’re not.STEFFAN BROWNING: You say that. I look at the tariffs and I see 5 percent on some countries. If that is not going to impact when we have industries that actually need boosting—you are talking of savings here going on to $30 million. Not savings; costs to the Government of $30 million. Why do you not put that into boosting those local industries instead of hitting them with the costs here?Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.STEFFAN BROWNING: I was able to use the lunch break to look a little bit further at the bill and I had a good discussion with the Minister. I certainly appreciate and the Green Party appreciates some of the intention of the part of the bill that I was debating which was to deal with some of the monopolistic behaviour of some of the suppliers in terms of plasterboard in particular. However my concern in the earlier part of my speech and also now is with what I would call the collateral damage of that. I think that the bill needs some fine-tuning to look out for the New Zealand businesses that are involved in the construction of joinery for example and some of the timber products.We would like to see a Christchurch rebuild in wood. We would like to see it done with New Zealand producers New Zealand manufacturers and New Zealand tradespeople for New Zealand people. I checked with some suppliers manufacturers and joiners and I talked with a kitchen manufacturer from another town nearby. I was checking as to how much they were using that was imported and it was very little. But I also talked to a Christchurch door manufacturer business down there. They are New Zealanders doing New Zealand stuff and they have tooled up in anticipation of the growth that is expected with the rebuild. I am concerned that this bill will impact very negatively on them on timber products and on New Zealand businesses and that. So it is collateral damage. I realise that my time is nearly up so we will talk more on this later. Thank you.JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa): I have been listening to the debate from across this House today and yesterday afternoon—I think we have had something like 9 hours of debate—and you can come to two conclusions. The first is that our country is really lucky to be so well governed by John Key Bill English and their team. Secondly the Opposition members judging by the quality of their debate over the last 9 hours are clearly not up to running this country. We have just seen it with the last speaker Steffan Browning. He was concerned that by removing protection you are going to cause damage for some New Zealand companies. But he loses sight of the goal that we have to secure which is to build the cheapest possible houses to get as many people into homeownership as possible. If he thinks he can do that by maintaining artificial duties and not reducing the cost of a house by $3000 then he is in a space that he should not be.I would also like to draw attention to some of the debate that came up this morning from the Labour deputy finance spokesperson David Clark the wizard from Treasury. He spent all of his debate—Phil Twyford: The Reverend.JOHN HAYES: The Reverend. Yes the “Red Reverend” from Dunedin.Grant Robertson: The Rev. Dr David Clark to you.JOHN HAYES: Dr David Clark the “Red Reverend” from Dunedin. He focused on removing cheque duty. He overlooked telling the people of this country that one it is an outmoded tax and two the cheque duty does not raise substantial money at all—$4 million a year. It is distortionary it is easily avoided and it does not apply to eftpos internet or credit card transactions. That is why we want to get rid of that duty. It costs more to administer than the revenue it collects. The Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill is a very good bill and I support it entirely.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill be now read a first time.Ayes109New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 11; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Abstentions7New Zealand First 7.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Commerce) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: I moveThat the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill be now read a second time. Part 1 of this bill repeals cheque duty from 1 July 2014. Cheque duty no longer raises substantial revenue largely due to the decline in popularity of cheques as a method of payment. Cheque duty raised about $17 million in 1991-92 and about $10 million in 2001-02 but now raises only about $4 million per annum. Cheque duty is a relic of a previous age and the bill proposes to consign it to history.Part 2 of the bill corrects an unintended consequence in the operation of the New Zealand emissions trading scheme. The bill limits participants to surrendering New Zealand Units only when they are deregistering an area of forest from the emissions trading scheme. Participants can still use Kyoto units for emissions from deforesting or harvesting to repay overallocation and they can still sell Kyoto units on either domestic or international markets. The bill will come into force on 16 May 2014 and the amendments will not affect deregistration applications received by the Ministry for Primary Industries on or before 15 May 2014.Part 3 of this bill suspends for 3 years the application of anti-dumping duties to residential building materials. This means that the anti-dumping duties currently in place on standard plasterboard from Thailand on reinforcing steel bar and coil from Thailand and on wire nails from China will be suspended for 3 years from 1 June 2014. It also means that no new anti-dumping duties can be imposed on a wide range of residential materials over the 3-year suspension period.The purpose of suspending anti-dumping duties is to reduce the cost of constructing houses and is intended particularly to benefit the Christchurch rebuild but also increased house construction in Auckland and other parts of the country. For the purpose of determining the types of residential building materials covered by the suspension the bill broadly defines building material and residential building material. It also includes a range of specific building materials that fall within these definitions.For clarity the bill lists some items that do not fall within the core market for residential construction material and are therefore excluded from the scope of the suspension. The 3-year period over which the anti-dumping duties are suspended is defined as the period from 1 June 2014 to 31 May 2017.The bill also provides that any decision by the responsible Minister to impose an anti-dumping duty on residential building material or to reassess the rate of anti-dumping duties on a residential building material will not take effect until 1 June 2017. This means that New Zealand manufacturers can still apply for a dumping investigation into residential building material. Any decision to impose a new anti-dumping duty on a residential building material would however not take effect until the end of the suspension period on 31 May 2017 and would apply only after that date.New Zealand manufacturers also retain the right to apply for a review of a suspended duty to determine whether it should remain in place for a further 5 years. If a review finds that the duty should remain in place it would continue to be suspended until the end of the suspension period on 31 May 2017 and would be reapplied only after that date.The bill also contains some minor technical provisions relating to the definitions of “ministry” “Minister” and “secretary” to bring these definitions into conformity with current drafting practice. I believe that the combined effect of these measures will in the longer term have a significant impact on housing affordability and allow more New Zealanders to own their own home. Although the combined effect of these measures will have a significant impact on housing affordability in the longer term the suspension of anti-dumping duties as proposed in this bill will provide an immediate benefit by reducing the cost of building materials which will particularly benefit the Christchurch rebuild. I commend the bill to the House and move that it now be read a second time.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): The second reading is the stage of the bill at which we would normally be reflecting upon what people might have said when the bill went to the select committee. That is when members of the public have their opportunity to assess a bill in terms of its value to the country. And what might those members of the public have said had they had the chance to have a look at this legislation the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill? I suspect we would have heard words like “piecemeal” “fragmented” “timid” and “hopeless” because that is actually what this bill is. This is meant to be under urgency the big moment of the National Government’s Budget revealing the transformational changes to our economy that will drive higher wages and better jobs—and it is not here.What is here is cheque duty. The 1980s have been caught up with by the National Government. It has worked out that people are not writing out as many cheques although I am a little confused I have to confess about what the Government is trying to achieve with the repeal of cheque duty. Is it meant to be the return of the cheque? Is it the idea that we take the duty off and we will all be out there writing out our cheques? Perhaps that is what it is. Or is it saving New Zealanders that massive 35c a year? Is that what it is? Is it about the dividend? Finally after all these years of austerity New Zealanders get the dividend the 35c mixture at the dairy. That is it. That is what they are going to get. If people were making submissions on this bill I suspect what they would say is: “Where is the vision? Where’s the plan?”. New Zealand is facing some serious economic and social problems and the Government’s response is removing cheque duty. That is the brighter future ladies and gentlemen that you were promised by the National Government.What we do not see in here is the way that we will lift wages and get better jobs. We have to diversify our economy. We have to add value. It is not just about volume any longer. It has to be about adding value to products in New Zealand to help create those jobs and that is absent from this bill. Perhaps submitters might have gone looking in the bill for how to reduce inequality and how to see that New Zealand becomes a fairer place. Surely that is the goal of any Budget but people come looking to the Budget legislation passed under urgency and they find nothing. The reason for that is that there is nothing in the Budget that will truly do that. The lowest-income New Zealanders the most vulnerable New Zealanders have been left out of the Budget in the measures that are there so those hoping to make submissions on that will not be able to find that either.John Hayes: Stop telling porkies.GRANT ROBERTSON: I say to Mr Hayes a man who spent his life in the Foreign Service before he came here that maybe New Zealanders would go looking for how the export sector was going to be supported and how regional economies were going to be able to drive products that would be exported. They might have wanted to submit on that in the Budget legislation and they would find nothing. They would actually find a cut to the Regional and Industry Development Fund in the Budget so they would find none of that.What they would find when they were submitting on this legislation would be a confused response to a problem created by the Government within climate change legislation designed it would appear to annoy the forestry sector and iwi and not respond in fact to the major challenges that are there in climate change. They would also find a very odd bill on removing some tariffs and changing some anti-dumping legislation. I do note and we will come to this in the Committee stage that the Government’s belief that the housing crisis will be solved by plasterboard varnish and nails being a little bit more affordable is somewhat remarkable from this Government.So in this second reading debate really on this side of the House we are deeply underwhelmed by what the Government has brought before us. We strongly believe that as a country New Zealand needs to address the economic and social difficulties that we have: the housing crisis the inequality crisis the absence of a plan to lift wages and the absence of a plan to create better jobs. None of that is solved by pieces of threadbare piecemeal fragmented legislation that the Government has brought before the House. It is a deeply disappointing piece of legislation.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): That was a somewhat underwhelming speech from the other side here for the second reading of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. Mr Robinson asked—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It’s Robertson not Robinson.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry. Mr Robertson said: “Where is the plan?”. Again I think the problem is that members opposite do not like steady sensible predictable Government policy that everybody can understand in terms of where the Government is coming from and that is built up in lots of little steps that together bring the economy in the right direction. Theirs is the politics of the grand gesture where somehow you are going to wave your wand in a transformational way.If you overturn monetary policy and start changing the very foundations of what has been part of the successful New Zealand economy if you suddenly upturn the tax system and bring in a capital gains tax or if you overturn the electricity sector and start nationalising it—all those radical things Labour members are opposing but I do not quite understand what basis there is for this when we have a strong successful economy that is so much stronger than so many other parts of the developing world today.We are looking at the books being back in surplus well ahead of many other countries we are seeing growth at 4 percent and we are seeing wages rising faster than inflation and more money being made available in this Budget for families for businesses and for the most vulnerable. That seems to me to be a plan that is working a plan that is working very well and a plan that we are all proud of on this side of the House.Again I do want to remind the House of the whopper by David Cunliffe in his Budget debate speech. He said that Labour produced nine surpluses in a row. Well that is rubbish. The final one ended up being a deficit of $3.9 billion because Labour had increased spending by 12 percent in 1 year and it was 50 percent over the last 5 years of Government. That is how a Labour Government works.Yes it is true. To give Labour its merit it was reasonably disciplined in the first two terms of the Labour Government under Clark but the third term was a runaway train.Spending went out of control and it left us with an economy pregnant with a decade of deficits.This Government has had the fortitude to get us back to where we are today after 6 hard years and the hard work of New Zealanders—New Zealand businesses and New Zealand people all around the country from the top to the bottom bringing us back to surplus today. And that is something we can celebrate. This bill is about some specific details but we should not lose sight of the broader picture and the broader picture is the very successful one.I do want to talk just briefly about what we mentioned on the temporary suspension of dumping duties. Again that was mocked on the other side by Mr Robertson who said that it was just a small thing and that having cheaper nails is a terrible thing. But this is all about a plan that brings together a whole number of issues that help bring about affordability of housing.Who would have thought—I did not think it was imaginable—that we would be able to work so successfully with the Auckland Council in terms of bringing the special housing accords together and seeing upwards of 30000 houses planned to be built in Auckland over the next little while which will produce so much more supply which is what we need. It will have a much better result than any sudden introduction of a capital gains tax. All the small businesses in the country all the farmers and everybody you can name who has risked their money in an entrepreneurial venture is suddenly going to be hit by a capital gains tax. Somehow that is going to make housing in Auckland more affordable just as it has in Australia and elsewhere in the world. It seems it is a hard one to follow.Our policy of focusing on a whole range of issues on housing affordability starting with getting greater access to land and more supply in housing and then working our way through the specific issues is hard and detailed work but the cost of building is an important part of what makes housing expensive in New Zealand. When the Productivity Commission did its thorough review of housing it pointed out that New Zealand materials were more expensive than those in Australia so we are doing what every good Government should do by drilling down into the details. This legislation removing duties and tariffs on building products will increase competition and reduce costs in the industry saving Kiwis around $3500—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Wow!PAUL GOLDSMITH: —to build a standard New Zealand home. The member opposite mocks. I do not know about you but I would prefer to have $3500 in my pockets than not.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Do you know how much a house costs to build?PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes I am very familiar with the general costs of housing but I will not go into that detail. On that basis—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It wouldn’t even cover the heat pump.PAUL GOLDSMITH: —heat pumps are a lot cheaper than that actually; you just have to shop around—what we will find is that this Government has made a great contribution to housing affordability with this temporary suspension of dumping duties. On that basis I commend this bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Let us just be clear what the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill actually does. We had a very grandiose speech from Mr Goldsmith but very little of it was based in reality. This bill will save people 35c a year on cheque duty.Sue Moroney: How much?MOANA MACKEY: That is the first thing—35c a year savings by abolishing cheque duty.Sue Moroney: That will fix inequality!MOANA MACKEY: That is what this bill does. That will fix inequality; that is quite right! When it comes to affordable housing there will be $3500 that the Government cannot even guarantee that will be passed on to the people who are building houses. There is no guarantee that the ticket will not be clipped on the way through and that homeowners will actually see the benefit of that but my colleague Phil Twyford will talk more about that in his speech.Let us just put the facts on the table about the last Labour Government. There were nine surpluses in 9 years—nine surpluses in 9 years—and zero net debt. We paid the debt off while National was screaming at us to give tax cuts and we did not. We paid the debt down because we knew that when a rainy day like the global financial crisis came we would need to be prepared. We were incredibly exposed and the only reason we have come through the global financial crisis as well as we have has been the last Labour Government’s economic management. There was the lowest unemployment in the OECD. Labour has committed to getting us back to below 4 percent unemployment; National says that it cannot be done. Guess what? Over 5 years Labour averaged below 4 percent. It can be done if you want to do it if you care enough to do it and if you take economic development and unemployment seriously.But I want to talk about Part 2 of this bill because as my colleague Grant Robertson has said this bill should have gone to a select committee. Had it gone to a select committee it would have given the forestry sector the opportunity to appear before the committee to say: “Why do you hate us so much? Why do you continue the sustained attack on our industry?”. What looks like a very innocuous piece of legislation is actually a vicious attack once again on the forestry sector. It is the only sector in this country that has been doing the heavy lifting on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The whole reason that we came out of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in the black was not because of Government policy. In fact as we know Government policy will result in only a 0.4 percent reduction of emissions compared with doing absolutely nothing at all. So we are basically doing absolutely nothing at all. We are doing 0.4 percent better than absolutely nothing. The only reason we came out net positive was forestry so why does the Government keep attacking and undermining the forestry sector?The forestry sector earns New Zealand Units when it plants trees but the Government is stopping the sector from using cheap international units in place of New Zealand Units and then basically pocketing the difference when it deregisters or harvests the trees. Of course we do not want that to happen but the reason it is happening is that there is such a big price differential between the Kyoto unit and the New Zealand Unit. That is the actual problem here and this Government has done absolutely nothing about it for 5 years. It voted against amendments that Labour put up to stop that by restricting cheap international units across the board to everyone which would have helped fix the problem. The Government opposed that but when it comes to the forestry sector it is going to say that that sector does not get access to those cheap units.But guess who does get access to them: National’s big heavy-emitting industry mates. Its mates get access to those cheap units to meet their obligations. They are given a free allocation of New Zealand Units to help transition them into the emissions trading scheme—90 percent. They get New Zealand Units and they can then use these cheap units to meet their pollution obligations and pocket the difference. So it OK for the mates of National to engage in what is called arbitrage but God forbid that forestry should do it the one sector that is actually doing something about reducing emissions.The Minister for the Environment is in the House. I would like to know why this does not apply to everyone. She is desperately pretending to be reading something. Why does this not apply to all people in the emissions trading scheme? Why pick on forestry Minister?Sue Moroney: She doesn’t know.MOANA MACKEY: She does not know. She does not care. We know why: it is because the Government hates forestry and it loves big industry. These are its mates. It is Rio Tinto. It has already given them a big taxpayer subsidy. We should not be at all surprised that the Government is also prepared to let big industry continue to speculate on these emissions units when it is clamping down on forestry.The Minister of Commerce said that this is an unintended consequence of the emissions trading scheme. What a load of garbage. This is not unintended; this is deliberate. It has deliberately let the carbon price collapse it has deliberately let these cheap Kyoto units flood into the country and it has deliberately not stopped that from happening so to say that it is an unintended consequence is deeply deeply misleading and I am being polite when I say that.One of the reasons talked about by members opposite is the fiscal risk to the Crown in not clamping down on this arbitrage and that is true. The Government estimates it as being from about $11 million to $66 million. But when you look at the arbitrage that is being carried out by the other sectors that hold New Zealand Units what is the fiscal risk for that? The fiscal risk for that is $107 million. That is $107 million of fiscal risk from the New Zealand Units held by the Government’s mates versus between $11 million to $66 million of fiscal risk from forestry. Which one of those are we clamping down on today? Is it the $107 million or the $11 million? No we are clamping down on the $11 million so that the Government’s cronies can continue to engage in arbitrage and it will not do anything about it although it is quite happy to once again take a whack at the forestry industry which is crucial to our battle in avoiding the worst—Sue Moroney: Are they not in the Cabinet club?MOANA MACKEY: Apparently the forestry industry is not in the Cabinet club—clearly—because if it was we would not be passing this legislation.Another reason we are doing this is the reputation risk to the emissions trading scheme—that is the risk of the reputation of our emissions trading scheme being defiled by the forestry sector engaging in speculation on New Zealand Units. The biggest reputation risk to the emissions trading scheme is that lot sitting over there. Our emissions trading scheme has no reputation now. It has no credibility it has been completely undermined and it is nothing more than a fig leaf. The emissions trading scheme’s reputation went out the door long ago when this National Government was elected. For the Government to say that it is going to clamp down on one small industry—an industry that is doing very very positive things in terms of climate change—and think that that will somehow restore the reputation of the emissions trading scheme is laughable. It is absolutely laughable.Our emissions trading scheme is designed to put a price on carbon. If it is not going to do that then quite frankly why have it? I bet you that it is costing us more to run than it is actually achieving. The thing is that when the emissions trading scheme was first introduced by the last Labour Government it had a price on carbon of around $20 to $25. That was what sparked off the wind industry in New Zealand. The price on carbon gave it the advantage it needed to really take off. That is entirely what the emissions trading scheme was designed to do. It is not doing that now because this Government has allowed the price of carbon to be completely suppressed. The reason the Government says that it is not prepared to act on that is that it wants to reduce costs to struggling businesses and households. It says that if you have a proper price oncarbon that is going to feed through to electricity and fuel bills. What it does not tell you is that consumers are being charged carbon prices well in excess of the actual carbon price by fuel companies and energy companies.And the Government has done nothing about that. It is quite happy to let the fuel companies and energy companies price gouge consumers. What we know is that the price of carbon is currently about 35c but from what we have heard—and this all comes from anecdotal evidence that we have heard from people—consumers are currently being charged between $15 and $25 for a tonne of carbon at the petrol pump and through their power bills despite the fact that the emissions that they surrendering are 35c. So in fact any benefits from a collapsed price on carbon are not being passed on to struggling businesses and households at all. Again what has it done about that? Absolutely nothing. So what looked like an innocuous piece of legislation is actually the exact opposite. What makes it even worse is here is a sustainable forestry bulletin from the Ministry for Primary Industries telling people how to register and deregister their forests. So the very thing that we are clamping down on today is the same thing that the Ministry for Primary Industries has been promoting as early as February this year.I can understand why the foresters are angry. I can understand why they might have had reason to believe that the Government was OK with them doing this given that Government literature tells them how to do it and gives them tips on things to consider when removing and reregistering. I understand why they are probably a little bit shocked that under urgency this is going through with no select committee process and with no consideration about what the impact might be on the very sector that we are still hugely reliant on to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions because this Government is doing absolutely nothing else.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): In this second reading I want to pick up on the concern expressed by Grant Robertson about the lack of due democratic process in the passage of this bill the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill particularly as it relates as Moana Mackey has said to something as important as Part 2 of the bill and the proposal to eliminate the arbitrage against post-1989 foresters.Given that the public of New Zealand are not going to have any possible input into the passage of this legislation let us speak on their behalf as faithfully as we can. Rather than presume to input their views let us ask some questions that simply hang in the air because of the import of this draft legislation. The questions have to be asked. I think there would be five questions the people of New Zealand would wish to have answered. Given that neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Finance are here but the Minister for the Environment Amy Adams is here let us ask Minister Adams or her colleague who happens to wander into the Chamber and sit down in the chair to address these questions in Committee. Let us see what the answers are to these five questions.The first question to the Minister the Hon Amy Adams is: do you think that climate change is just another economic problem or is it a qualitatively new unprecedented threat to human society? If it is (a) just another problem where can we find it in your four Budget priorities which are: responsibly managing the Government’s finances; building a more productive and competitive economy—it cannot be either delivering better public services or rebuilding Christchurch so it has to be one of the first two. Do we find climate change in the responsible financial management of New Zealand’s economy or do we find it in a better productive and competitive economy? Actually the 195 states that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change competing among themselves and punching above their weight will fail Minister to solve the global problem. If it is the other—if it is an unprecedented threat to human society which 99 percent of humanity thinks it is—why are you and yourGovernment not calling attention to this and calling for a national debate in the forthcoming election? That is question one.Question two is: the United Nations has concluded that to prevent dangerous climate change the developed countries must reduce emissions below 1990 levels within the range of 25 to 40 percent by 2020. If the Minister continues to look down she can pretend the questions are not here possibly. That 25 to 40 percent is designed to meet a threshold of a 2-degree temperature rise or 450 parts per million volume of carbon atmospheric concentration. That 450 parts per million was actually signed off by your Government Minister in—I think it was—August 2009.Given that there is a range of 25 to 40 percent how can you justify any of the developed countries including New Zealand being outside that range and below the 25 percent? Can you explain the Treasury paper to Cabinet that says that it does not follow that every country has to be within this range when the scientists make it clear that they have taken into account all the common but differentiated responsibilities—all the differences in national circumstances—when they give a range of 25 to 40 percent? If in fact you insist on being below 25 percent which you do with your 5 percent unconditional target Minister will you wish to nominate another developed country to make up the shortfall? And will you or your Prime Minister address that issue to that developed country explain the reasons apologise for New Zealand and then nominate the country and help them perhaps to make up the shortfall?Question three—are you confident that New Zealand is doing its fair share when we set a 5 percent reduction? Are you aware Minister that global emissions at the moment are projected to produce an increase of anything between 2.6 degrees and 4 degrees Celsius? Are you equally aware Minister that New Zealand’s projected increases go above that range of 2.6 to 4 degrees Celsius and are more on track if emulated by every other country to go closer to a temperature increase of 5 to 6 degrees Celsius which in the case the World Bank has described is not dangerous but catastrophic climate change for your children and mine?Question four: are you—or perhaps your colleague the Minister of Finance—able to name and identify the global least cost of carbon as of mid-May 2014? And is it sufficient to avert dangerous climate change of a 2-degree threshold?Finally question five which has been asked repeatedly in this House today and no doubt you or your colleagues will have a chance to answer it in the Committee: why is this Government discriminating against post-1989 foresters in eliminating the arbitrage which in itself is a good thing but is iniquitous in relative terms of equity compared with the other sectors that you and your Government are deliberately and somewhat cynically protecting? They are the five questions Minister. We are waiting for those answers.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Although I might not be the Minister for the Environment I think the answer to those five supposed questions is that we do not believe in the politics of fear. We do not believe in the politics of fear wrapped in sanctimony and we do not believe in them wrapped in pseudo science.John Hayes: Or pomposity.SIMON O’CONNOR: Or pomposity—that is a very good word. I find it is very interesting with the Greens because of course there is a lot of science around climate change but what I find fascinating with the Greens of course is that when it comes to the science of drug use they are not interested in that. The science around fluoride—they are not really interested in that. The copious amounts of science around genetic engineering—oh the Greens do not want that but they are happy to pick elements around climate change which is quite real but then turn it into the politics of fear. Counterbalance that with National which is moving forward in a balanced and prudent way that embraces of course the environment—and we are seeing that through one partof this Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill as it approaches arbitrage in our forests—but also the economy as a whole.We look at something like cheque duties—about $4 million of revenue to the Crown a year. That is being removed because it is an unbalanced tax now. We use eftpos and other mechanisms and they are not taxed per transaction. So the Government looks at this and asks: “How do we make things more efficient? How do we reduce regulation? How do we reduce those things that get in the way of us as human beings being able to live a balanced prudent life without fear?” We want to be able to run our businesses love our families walk in the bush swim in the lakes engage with the world in a multicultural society and be pleased with that. That is what this bill is ultimately about.This is a Budget measures bill. It is the second one of such bills we are putting forward here. I look forward to discussing this more in the Committee stage and of course in the third reading. It is as I said a prudent balanced approach to four important areas for the Government.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on this omnibus bill the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which covers the cheque duty climate change and the building supplies bills. It was very interesting to hear Mr Paul Goldsmith of National giving his checklist of all the positive things in this Budget and what people were getting out of it. He could have equally put up a checklist of what was coming out of the Budget as well on the counter-side which he did not do. He seemed to show only the glossy side.He could have said that $18.5 million is coming out of output expenses for the Department of Corrections. He could have said that $22.5 million is coming out of the courts. He could have said that $2.2 million is coming out of the Customs Service. He could have said that $1 million is coming out of economic development. He could have said that $53 million is coming out of education outputs. Further with his checklist that he was so proud to show us he could have gone on to say that internal affairs is being chopped by $25 million that justice is being chopped by $14 million that labour is being chopped by $31 million and that the Police is being chopped by $42 million. In total when you add up what is being chopped out of the Budget Mr Goldsmith the checklist shows that $284 million is being chopped out of operating output expenses of Government departments this year. That is nothing to be proud of. In a population that is expanding and we have heard that 42000 more people are going to come into this country—the size of Wanganui or Whanganui depending on whether you put an “h” in it—in the coming year $284 million is chopped out of the operating expenses of Government departments to come up with the contrived figure of a $372 million surplus. That is not anything to be proud of.At the same time today we hear about the building supplies bill and how this is going to save $3500 per house built at a time when in Auckland house prices have gone up by 51.9 percent in the last 3 years. That has been the increase in house prices. We are talking many many tens of thousands of dollars if not hundreds of thousands of dollars not just an average over the whole country of $3500. And that $3500 is coming about not because of the cost of building itself but because of the cost of competition to buy houses.Today I received from one of our constituents this real estate paper from Auckland and lo and behold it is all in Chinese. I guess the members from—John Hayes: Are you racist?ANDREW WILLIAMS: No no not at all. I guess the member from Wairarapa or the member fromWaimakariri or the member from Taupō would be quite surprised if in their own town there was a 50-page newspaper all in a foreign language selling properties in your home town. I think Mr Hayes you would be surprised. You would—I am sure you would—because it does not happen anywhere else in New Zealand apart from in Auckland.John Hayes: You’re a xenophobe.ANDREW WILLIAMS: No I am not.Melissa Lee: You’re a xenophobe.ANDREW WILLIAMS: No not at all Ms Lee. I have three children aged 20 25 and 28 who are saying they will struggle to get a home in Auckland because the people their age in their 20s Ms Lee are unable to afford even a deposit on a home in Auckland any more because they have been driven out of the market. I have many real estate people in Auckland say to me that people are walking in the door and offering up to $200000 or $300000 more than what a property is estimated to be worth—offering cash. It has nothing to do with loan-to-value ratios or with going to the bank and lending or anything else. They have got the cash they are walking in and they are paying serious money over the odds. So Ms Lee do not give me a lecture about that. I know what is happening—I know what is happening.We are seeing auctions for houses on the North Shore that are sold to cash buyers who are literally on the other ends of agents’ mobile phones back in foreign parts and they are buying properties left right and centre pushing up the prices. So the problem here is not tinkering around the edges cutting out the costs of a few nails cutting down the cost of a bit of plasterboard and cutting out a few of the costs of materials. The problem we have here which is the big elephant in the room is that the Auckland market—and the Auckland market drives the rest of New Zealand—is currently seeing a huge amount of property being bought from interests abroad and that is pushing up the price of the market.Ms Lee next to my property in Auckland there recently was a 550 square metre piece of land carved off the next-door neighbour’s back lawn. What would a 550 square metre piece of land go for in the Wairarapa Mr Hayes? Probably—I do not know—$50000 $60000 $70000 or $80000. At that particular auction that small pocket of land the size of a handkerchief in Auckland went for $1 million—$1 million—and it did not go to a New Zealand buyer. It did not go to a New Zealand buyer. It did not.Melissa Lee: How do you know they’re not New Zealanders for God’s sake?ANDREW WILLIAMS: It did not go to a New Zealand buyer. Furthermore the second and the third bidders on the property were not New Zealand buyers either. They were not. And all the people in our neighbourhood asked “How on earth will our own children and our own families ever be able to stay in our own suburb?”. We have lived there for 30 years Ms Lee and our friends in the neighbourhood who have lived there for 30 years all asked how our families are going to be able to afford to stay living in our own suburb. How are they going to stay living in our own suburbs? The answer Ms Lee—Melissa Lee: Xenophobic racist.ANDREW WILLIAMS: No I am not. The answer is to stop selling our houses and our land to foreigners. Put a stop on it. New Zealand First is going to do it. New Zealand First is going to bring a halt to selling land if you are not a resident here or you are not a citizen here. We do not want you coming here and buying our houses. We do not want you coming and buying our houses because what that is doing is making New Zealanders tenants in their own country.At the same time it is interesting that this building supplies bill is going to have an effect on local manufacturers. It is going to cause concern for some of our manufacturers of goods. It is also going to have questions about whether inferior products building materials of inferior quality will start to replace New Zealand - manufactured products. Questions are already being asked by some manufacturers aboutwhether those products will come with the same level of warranties guarantees and longevity of product and the source of those materials. Today on the stock exchange Fletcher Building the largest company in this area in New Zealand dropped 11c. Its shares are down 11c today. It has gone down 1.2 percent in capitalisation. That is about $75 million knocked off the Fletcher Building capitalisation. That is the first effect of this—Fletcher Building. If that is one indication then I am sure that many of the other businesses involved in construction and that sort of thing in New Zealand will equally be going down.So the effect of this is a trifling $3500. It is a fictitious contrived figure on a saving on a house that cannot be quantified. It is probably another one of the back-of-the-cigarette-packet formulas that the Government has worked out—$3500. The Government should really get stuck in and say: “We’re going to have a land register in this country. We’re going to work out who owns the property who owns the land. We’re going to work out how we can control it. We’re going to take the heat out of the housing market and we’re going to help good Kiwi New Zealanders get back into houses.” The Government has done nothing absolutely nothing in this Budget for first-home buyers. It has done nothing for young working families—nothing at all—in terms of helping them get into houses and the Government’s answer to it is to try to knock off the price of a few nails and a bit of gib board. Well New Zealand First will not be going along with that.Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri): It gives me great pleasure to rise and support this non - race-based piece of legislation the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. It is an omnibus bill that amends four other pieces of legislation. I support it at its second reading and look forward to its Committee of the whole House stage.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am glad to have the opportunity to make a few more comments about the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which is the most insignificant contribution that could possibly have been designed. If the Government had set out to trivialise the issue of housing affordability in this country—if it had set out to disappoint New Zealanders who were looking for the Budget to actually make some meaningful contribution—it could not have designed a measure better designed to let people down and disappoint them.I want to respond to some of the comments that were made by the member Andrew Williams about the issue of offshore speculators and how they are bidding up the price of houses in Auckland and I want to respond also to a number of the comments and interjections that were made from the National benches. The National Government refuses to acknowledge that offshore speculators are bidding up the price of houses in Auckland and it is denying young Kiwi first-home buyers the opportunity to buy their own home.I do not know why it is in denial. It refuses to recognise that this is going on. Everybody in Auckland knows that this is a reality. It is happening every day in real estate auction rooms all around Auckland. Young Kiwi first-home buyers are being outbid by offshore speculators bidding on the end of a phone. It is a reality it is happening but the National Government for some reason is in denial. We had Nick Smith in the House earlier this week trumpeting Inland Revenue Department figures that he purported to claim said that only 1 percent of properties were owned by foreign buyers. Well he was misrepresenting the data. He was being far too cute as Nick Smith is wont to be. Although the data is limited and not comprehensive I think it is pretty clear to most observers that at least several percent of the houses that are being bought in the real estate market are going to offshore speculators.Every time we raise this issue in the House members on the National Party benches accuse members of this House of being racist and xenophobic. Well I ask members of this House when it has been racist or xenophobic for a Government to stand up for its own citizens. That is all we are asking but National is in such denial that it refuses to even collect the data. Nick Smith on the one hand says: “This is not a problem”—and that offshore speculators are not bidding up the price of houses in Auckland—“but the data is rubbish and I refuse to even collect the data.” That is complete intellectual dishonesty and it shows that this Government is running scared because it knows that New Zealanders care about this problem. In fact all of the polls on this issue indicate that by a ratio of 2:1 New Zealanders want restrictions on offshore speculators.Nick Smith has also been going around saying that it would cost a packet—in fact he said that it would cost mega-millions—to even collect the data on offshore speculators.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: They’ve got a department of statistics.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes the Government does have Statistics New Zealand but even so there are cost-effective and reasonable ways to go about solving this problem. It would be as simple as requiring the conveyancing solicitor to certify on the sale and purchase agreement whether or not the purchaser was a New Zealand citizen or a New Zealand resident. In the case of companies and trusts you simply apply the Overseas Investment Act criterion which means that if there is a beneficial interest or a foreign shareholding of 25 percent or more then you regard the entity as a foreign entity. It is as simple as that. It would cost hardly a thing. The Government could have done this months ago and it could have settled this debate once and for all.JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa): I think this is a great Budget. The Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill is a superb piece of legislation. I support it. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Clayton Cosgrove—a 5-minute call.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): That was an outstanding contribution from the member for Wairarapa. I think the shorter his speeches the more outstanding they get. The Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill is an interesting bill in that it is sort of one of the big hits one of the big platforms for the National Government. I will leave it to my learned colleague Moana Mackey to deal with the climate change issues but I am intrigued by the two other propositions contained within this bill.These include namely the cheque duty which in some sort of spin the National Government promoted as a big sort of tax saving and cost saving hit for the populace. I am assuming that Mr Foss the Minister of Commerce being as he is a Minister who covers all the details and knows everything that is happening in his portfolio would have canvassed the Bankers’ Association and it told him that people now write out on average seven cheques per year and that this would give an absolute net saving of 35c a year—35c a year. I know that Mr Hayes would be astounded by this. You know he would be going back to the people of Wairarapa and going around every outlet that he could. He would be standing outside every bank branch handing out his business card and saying: “I have delivered to you the people of Wairarapa 35c per year. You should be grateful.” If he was standing again they should vote for him again—that is what he would be saying. He will be telling the new candidate to go around and do that. I am sure that he will produce a pamphlet and the pamphlet may well cost more than 35c to produce but he will hand it out saying: “Be grateful. The National Government has provided you with a huge benefit.”—that is 35c a year.Then we come to the great sort of housing policy. I did note that when Mr Foss talked in his address about this wonderful $3500 that he would save New Zealanders onthe construction of their new homes he used the words “might” “could’ and “maybe save it”. He did not tell us how he actually calculated the $3500 saving that would be made in construction costs. He did not tell us that because I suspect there is no analysis. He did not tell us that at all. He said: “It might save three and a half grand. It could save three and a half grand. Maybe if we are lucky and people believe us they might get a few shekels back.” I note that the measures are temporary. They are for only 3 years. It begs the question: has any work been done as to the impact positive or negative in respect of the industry? I suspect not and that is why the Government has put it in for 3 years. If it was sure of itself it would be a permanent disposal.But then you look at the list. You look at things like varnish. I am a bit old-fashioned and I call it shellac and there is plenty of political shellac in this legislation. If you look at the conveyancing cost and perhaps the consenting cost of a new home the $3500 would not cover even that expense. So somehow New Zealanders are going to be so grateful to the National Government for the fact that allegedly they are going to save in building cost $3500 when we know that last month alone the cost of construction in Auckland in 1 month went up in excess of $6000. So this will give people a couple of weeks’ break—temporarily—and then it will be superseded by probably 200 percent or more if those figures are consistent increases month to month and people will save absolutely nothing. So it is smoke and mirrors. It is worse than smoke and mirrors—it is political shellac.So on the one hand if you are out there in cheque-writing land brace yourself because you are going to get 35c a year back and according to the National Government you should be damned well grateful for it—Phil Twyford: Happy days.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —happy days are here again—and if you are a homeowner in Auckland or in other places you might have sat back last night read the paper and said: “This is not too bad. Maybe it is a heat pump or half a heat pump.” You know mum and dad might have sat back and said: “This is not a bad start.” until they realised that a 200 percent increase last month would have left them in negative territory. So I say to Mr Foss that it is not good work; not good detail. I will look forward to the Committee stage when you tell us how you get to $3.5k and what the impact will be in that detailed analysis that you and your department have embarked upon so that you can actually tell New Zealanders and they can be confident that you are telling the absolute detailed truth and you are guaranteeing them $3500 a year in savings.Bill read a second time.In CommitteeTIM MACINDOE (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the Committee to debate the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill as one question with the votes to be taken separately.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action? There appears to be none. Then that will be the case.Parts 1 to 3 and clauses 1 and 2PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am glad you did not mistake me for Grant Robertson!The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Certainly not!PHIL TWYFORD: I want to talk briefly about Part 3 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which deals with the suspension of anti-dumping duties. This is the centrepiece of National’s housing policies in the Budget and a sadsad underwhelming policy it is. I want to talk about the whole question of housing costs because I think everyone would accept that we have a housing crisis. The evidence is plain to see. House prices in Auckland have increased by 40 percent since National came to office.Currently it costs someone on the average wage 49 percent of their income just to service an average mortgage. That is unsustainable and very very unaffordable. Under the numbers contained in this Budget the projections are that that will go to 63 percent so 63 percent of the average wage will go to service a mortgage. So things are not looking good first-home buyers are locked out of the market under this Government and Government agencies like Housing New Zealand are routinely referring people to live in camping grounds. We heard the Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett say the other day that people who live in camping grounds are not regarded as high priority for eligibility for a State house. That is how bad things have got.Why are houses so expensive? There are clearly a number of factors. The question of building materials and the high price of those materials is just one of those factors but I want to touch on the other factors in the course of these comments. Land particularly in Auckland is a major factor that is driving up the cost of new homes and residential developments. This Government thinks that the answer to the land supply shortage in Auckland and the high price of land is these special housing areas that it is splattering all over suburban Auckland at the moment. I want to say that Labour’s policy KiwiBuild will drive down the cost of land in new residential developments by the Government taking a much more hands-on role in the development process and foregoing the developer’s margin. A capital gains tax under Labour will also put the frighteners on the land-bankers and the speculators who are making a killing at the moment at the expense of first-home buyers.One of the other major factors is construction costs. About half the costs of a new build are the construction costs excluding materials. This Government has no answers to that. It has been wittering on about the construction industry’s productivity for the last 5 years. It has not done a thing about it. Under Labour the building of 10000 new homes a year for a decade at scale will open the door for off-site manufacturing and modern prefabrication that an industry working group recently estimated would slice $32000 off the cost of a new standard home—$32000. I hope the members opposite are listening to this because compared with the paltry $3500 that they have put on the table in this Budget $32000 amounts to a real and substantial saving. Add to that the possibilities which are unprecedented in New Zealand for bulk purchasing of building supplies. That would enable us to strike deals the likes of which have never been seen in New Zealand. By being able to bulk-purchase the components of 100000 homes we will be able to strike deals that are better than we have seen the likes of in New Zealand.Tony Sewell the head of the Ngāi Tahu Holdings Corporation has been very active in talking about the high cost of building materials in New Zealand and was recently pointing out that we are paying 25 to 30 percent more than Australian consumers for many of the new components of a new build. I think he is quite right. There is clearly something wrong with the industry and I think that most observers would agree that it is fundamentally a lack of competition. We essentially have a duopoly in the building materials industry. It is not the scale of the country; it is fundamentally a lack of competition.I invite the Minister in the chair Craig Foss to take a call and tell us what he and his colleague Nick Smith are going to do about this. What they have done is that they have chosen the low-hanging fruit from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’s residential construction industry market study. By suspending or lifting tariffs and anti-dumping duties they have chosen the low-hanging fruit. They do notappear to have any political will to do anything about the core problem in relation to the high cost of construction materials and that is to address the lack of competition in the industry. So those are some of the factors.But we all know that if you are going to think about the cost of new housing it is not just about the cost of the component parts of a new house. The price of a new house is set by supply and demand. It is inexplicable to me that this National Government refuses to consider the demand side of the equation. It refuses to do anything about speculators who are bidding up prices in Auckland. Auckland is a speculator’s paradise. People are farming Kiwi houses for a capital gain. The collateral damage is to first-home buyers who cannot keep up with median house prices that are now in excess of $700000 in Auckland. But this Government refuses to consider what almost everybody else now thinks is a no-brainer and that is a capital gains tax. As we have said earlier in this debate offshore speculators are contributing to this problem. Cashed-up speculators—whether they are in New York London or Shanghai—are bidding on the end of a phone and driving prices beyond the reach of ordinary Kiwi first-home buyers.National refuses to do anything about the demand side of the equation and on the supply side all it has is this lame Auckland Housing Accord which on its own figures will deliver only 5500 new dwellings in the next 3 years in the special housing areas. Auckland needs 13000 houses every year for the next 3 years to catch up on the shortfall and keep up with growing demand. We know from the Budget figures yesterday that surging net migration is going to add 40000-odd new residents to Auckland which will make it almost impossible under the current policy settings for this Government to make a dent in the housing crisis.We know that if you walk into Home Depot in California you can buy treated four-by-two framing timber for a quarter of the price that we pay in New Zealand. It is 25 percent of the price in New Zealand if you walk into Home Depot in California. Why is that? Is it that the Americans are much more efficient at growing pinus radiata than we are? I do not think so. There is a problem in the building supplies industry. It is fundamentally a lack of competition but this Government has no will to address that problem.All that the Government has brought to Parliament in this Budget and offered the people of New Zealand in relation to the housing crisis is this pathetic measure to lift the tariffs and anti-dumping duties on nails varnish and wallboard. It may if we are lucky take $3500 off the cost of a new house but there is no reason to believe on the evidence that we have heard so far that this Government has even thought about how you would ensure that that saving is passed on to first-home buyers. It will undoubtedly be pocketed by builders and developers taking advantage of an overheated seller’s market. The $3500 that the Government has promised will be saved off the cost of a new build is less than 1 percent of the cost of an ordinary house—less than 1 percent. It is 2 to 3 weeks’ house price inflation in Auckland. It is pitiful it is pathetic and the people of New Zealand expected a lot more.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to speak to Part 2 of this Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which amends the Climate Change Response Act. I have a number of questions for the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce which I hope he will respond to. This is an incredibly damaging piece of legislation for the post-1989 forestry sector. My first question would be: why does the Minister hate forestry so much? Why does this Government hate forestry? Time and time again we have seen Government policies undermining the very sector that is doing all the heavy lifting in terms of climate change response. I would like to know from the Minister in the chair why this applies only to post-1989 foresters.This is not actually about foresters not being able to reregister once they have deregistered and double-dip because we could have stopped that if that were the case. We could have just said that within any single mandatory emissions reporting period you cannot reregister; you can only register once. That would have fixed it. We could also have limited these international units across the board—treated everyone the same—to try to narrow that differential in price between the New Zealand Unit and the Kyoto units. That would have fixed it. If we had a proper price on carbon and that differential was not there then we would not have this issue at all. I want to know why the Minister is applying this only to post-1989 forestry. And the Minister should really be listening because we are talking serious money jobs and investment for a very important sector.The National Party likes to say that it is all about business—well here we go passing a piece of legislation that is unfair retrospective and inequitable and the Minister is not even doing me the courtesy of listening to or acknowledging any of these concerns. Maybe we should just put the officials in the chair because I do not actually think Minister Foss understands the emissions trading scheme or this bill at all but I would not want to do that because I would not want to have to put them in the horrible position of having to defend what is being done here. All I can say is that help is on the way. Come 20 September you will have a Labour Government that will take climate change seriously and that will support not undermine and attack the forestry sector.Jami-Lee Ross: The arrogance.MOANA MACKEY: Jami-Lee Ross here we go—climate change denier No. 1. Oh no sorry—that is Gerry Brownlee. Jami-Lee Ross is climate change denier No. 2. Simon O’Connor is climate change denier No. 3. He called it pseudo-science in his contribution—pseudo-science. The science of climate change is pseudo-science! Well I can say to New Zealanders and to our long-suffering officials who do wonderful work on behalf of this anti-environment Government that come 20 September you will have a Government that takes climate change and environmental matters seriously so hang on in there—hang on in there.I want to know from the Minister in the chair why this does not apply to the heavy industrial emitters who are engaging in arbitrage. Minister? Hello? No no answer.Hon Phil Goff: The lights are on but no one’s at home.MOANA MACKEY: That is right—the lights are on but no one is home. Why does this not apply to your mates in the heavy industry sector like Rio Tinto? Why are they allowed to engage in arbitrage but the post-1989 foresters are not Minister? Nope no one is there. The wheel is spinning but the hamster is long gone. Why does it not apply to your mates in the heavy-polluting industry sector? There is no answer to that.The other question I have for the Minister is if this is such a dreadful awful thing why was the Ministry for Primary Industries as late as the beginning of this year promoting it in itsSustainable Forestry Bulletin? Why was the ministry providing hints on things to consider when removing and reregistering post-1989 forests in the emissions trading scheme? I think it is fair to say that from this you could probably assume that the ministry thought the Government was OK with it so this has probably come as quite a nasty surprise to it which is why this bill should have gone to a select committee.My next question for the Minister is if this is about reducing the fiscal risk to the Crown—and we all accept that that is a good thing to do—why when the fiscal risk to the Crown of arbitrage being carried out by the post-1989 forestry sector is estimated to be between $11 million and $66 million are we not applying the same restriction to the industrial sector engaging in arbitrage? If we use the same methodology the fiscal riskto the Crown from that sector is $107 million. Why is $11 million of fiscal risk not OK but $107 million of fiscal risk is just fine?This is the most appalling thing. This is a serious piece of legislation. It was presented to us as being something minor and technical. On further investigation it absolutely was not. The Minister in the chair is refusing to even acknowledge these concerns. I would welcome him to stop sitting there like a dried arrangement get up on his pins and answer some of the questions that have not been answered. This bill has not been consulted on. No one in the forestry sector knew this was coming. The Government has not consulted with anyone. There was no select committee process. So these are very very simple questions and I hope that the Minister is going to respond to them.The next question I would put to the Minister is that if this is about reputational risk to the emissions trading scheme then should he not be more concerned about the fact that in his Government’s plan for addressing climate change the difference between the results for that and doing nothing at all is a 0.4 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? So the difference between the Government’s great climate change strategy on the one hand and absolutely nothing at all on the other hand is 0.4 percent. So basically we are doing nothing. If the Minister is concerned about reputational risk then I suspect he need only look in the mirror to see who is responsible for reputational risk to the emissions trading scheme and to New Zealand for our complete lack of action in this area.I have an amendment in my name and we will be voting against this part of the bill unless my amendment is agreed to. That amendment would restrict international units across the board for everyone. That is actually what the post-1989 forestry industry has been calling for for years. So this is not about the industry saying it wants these cheap units and it thinks they should be able to stay in our scheme. For years industry has been saying: “Please restrict them. We want to see them restricted. We want the New Zealand Unit to be the prime unit used in New Zealand but apply that to everyone.” So for the Government to turn round and say it is going to restrict them but only to that industry so it will be the only sector in the emissions trading scheme that cannot get access to these units is highly inequitable. It is also retrospective.This is I think one of the worst things about this particular change to the Climate Change Response Act. There are people out there right now who are holding Kyoto units that when this bill passes they will not be able to use. They purchased those units in good faith. They purchased those units because legally they were entitled to surrender them to meet their obligations. They purchased those units in accordance with the law in accordance with Government policy—the Government had been promoting this activity—and they are now left hanging. If they have not started the deregistration process with the Ministry for Primary Industries by today then they are stuck with those European allowance units. If they have not got New Zealand Units—if they have sold their New Zealand Units because they did not think that they were going to need them—then that makes it even worse.I have another question for the Minister which he will obviously choose to ignore because he does not understand it or appreciate how damaging this actually is. Why did he not allow the European allowance units that have already landed in the country from today to still be allowed to be used? Why is he retrospectively hurting people who have purchased these units in good faith and in accordance with the law but who have not started the deregistration process? Does he care? Do you care Minister that people are actually seriously out of pocket because of something that you refuse to even stand up and take a call on while you sit there and pretend that you are not listening to me and pretend to be reading the papers in front of you? It is just embarrassing. Seriously aquarter of a million dollars for this—that is what we pay this guy for no answers for a complete lack of understanding and for no sympathy at all no remorse for the business people who are out of pocket or the foresters who are going to be hurt by this change. So the amendment in my name will equitably apply that restriction across the board to everyone. That is the way we should be dealing with it.But the primary question that I want to ask this Minister is: why is he giving his mates a free pass and whacking forestry? Minister you should be thanking forestry. It is the only reason we came through the first commitment period of Kyoto in the black—the only reason. This Government has no plan to deal with climate change at all. Forestry saved us. You should be thanking the industry not taking yet another whack at it. So I ask again: why are your mates getting a free pass and forestry is being disadvantaged? Minister? It is cronyism plain and simple. It is what we have seen right through the Budget. It is what we have seen right through the 5 years of this National Government—cronyism. It is unfair it is inequitable it is damaging and it is embarrassing.For the Minister to say that this is about our reputation—give me a break. This damages our reputation. This is a massive breach of faith with people who made investment and business decisions based on what they understood the law to be based on what the ministry was actually promoting.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I am grateful that you allowed me to take the next call because it follows immediately on from what the previous speaker Moana Mackey was saying which was about the iniquity of discriminating against a particular subsector of New Zealand’s economy the post-1989 foresters and in the broader context the sheer inadequacy of this Government’s climate policy. I think to pick up on her point we could call this Government the 0.4 percent Government. What does that mean? It means that as I said in the second reading this Government’s policies will result in our emissions projections which if they were emulated by every other country in the world would result in something like a 5 to 6 degrees Celsius increase.During the second reading I asked a number of questions. Because of the truncated democratic process it was necessary to speak on behalf of the New Zealand people who will not have an opportunity to have input into the passage of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. We simply wish to ask questions. There were five questions that I asked the Hon Amy Adams who was in the Chamber at the time. I know she took careful consideration of those five questions. She will presumably have passed those on with the suggested answers on behalf of the Government to Minister Foss who will be able to get up having answered Moana Mackey’s questions and answer the five questions that I lodged as well.Just in case his colleague Minister Adams omitted to convey them to him the first one was whether they think climate change is just another economic problem or is it a qualitatively new unprecedented threat to human society? The United Nations says that to stay within the 2-degree temperature rise and 450 parts per million volume of carbon atmospheric concentration—which Cabinet has signed off on—developed countries have to stay below 1990 levels within a 25 to 40 percent range of reductions by 2020. The second question was why does the Government then respond that not every developed country has to stay within that range when that range is very clearly calculated to account for every different national circumstance of those countries? Question No. 3 was did he think that New Zealand was doing a fair share when global projections are on course for a 2.6 to 4 degree temperature increase whereas New Zealand’s projections as I said earlier are on course if emulated elsewhere to 5 to 6 degrees?The fourth question—and Minister Foss can answer this one effortlessly because he knows about these issues—is what is the global least cost of carbon in mid-May 2014 is it sufficient to begin the challenging task of bringing down global emissions and is it the right criterion to bring to bear on New Zealand’s climate policy when we are trying to bring our own national emissions down? The fifth question which both Moana Mackey and I have touched on is why discriminate among subsectors when you profess equity in your climate policy inter-sectorally in New Zealand? Those five questions are now lodged with Minister Adams and Minister Foss and we will look forward to those answers so that the democratic passage of this bill can be honoured as we go through the course of the next 60 minutes.I am also encouraged by my colleague Moana Mackey’s creativity in terms of responding to Part 2 of the bill with an amendment. I have just put forward an amendment in the last few minutes as well. It comes from the bill titled Climate Change Response (National Emissions Reduction) Amendment Bill which is in the ballot and has been in the ballot for 2 years. The reason “National Emissions Reduction” is in the title of the bill is that it is necessary to highlight the fact that the Climate Change Response Act does not specify emissions reductions as the primary goal—certainly not in the title. The title is about trading not about emissions reduction so the important thing was to have an amendment to the Climate Change Response Act that has in its title “National Emissions Reduction” to emphasise the point that we are not in the business of trading carbon; we are in the business of reducing it. That is the critical thing. That is the distinguishing thing between this Government and the Opposition.So within that bill there were a number of purposes stated—there were about six—and they were very briefly: introduce a carbon floor price and terminate the price cap; phase out the one-for-two surrender obligation; terminate the issuance of free allocations to participants; restrict international units that can be traded and surrendered in New Zealand; introduce agriculture into the scheme; and put an obligation on the Minister to prohibit the entry of any international carbon credit. The further measure in the bill was an obligation on the Minister to prohibit the entry of any international carbon credits that may in his or her judgment depress the price in New Zealand below the carbon floor price.Updating that to put it into an amendment in response to the particular nature of this piece of legislation before us Part 2 of this bill my proposed amendment is headed as addressing the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. The proposed amendment would be a new clause 8A which would alter the Climate Change Response Act to insert new section 222I which would have the Minister regulate trading and international carbon credits. It would simply say: “The Minister must by notice in theGazette prohibit the entry into New Zealand of any international carbon credits that he or she considers may depress the price of carbon credits below the level required to commence a reduction in gross emissions.” That is designed explicitly to ensure that the status of New Zealand Units in the domestic currency and their relationship to any international foreign carbon credits is such that if the latter are going to depress the price of the former down below whatever level—in the judgment of the Minister and the Government—is required to begin the process of curbing our emissions growth and introducing omissions reductions then those units are not allowed in. They are prohibited.That is a response to the necessary but minor component of Part 2 which is to halt arbitrage on the part of post-1989 foresters. This goes considerably further. Halting arbitrage on the post-1989 foresters will halt arbitrage on the subsector. It will not in itself bring down New Zealand’s emissions level. It will not curb the growth in NewZealand’s emissions. This amendment will meet the challenge of bringing down New Zealand’s emissions and I commend the amendment to the Committee.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I am going to speak just a little bit on the area of the building supplies part of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill in relation to the regulatory impact statement that was prepared in relation to residential construction materials. It is very interesting when you analyse this—the impact that it will potentially have on New Zealand manufacturers. It says in the regulatory impact statement: “One of the preferred options—to temporarily suspend the anti-dumping regime in relation to key construction materials—was not explicitly consulted on. It emerged as an option through the latest round of consultation which highlighted the potential for unforeseen effects on other sectors (beyond residential construction). The new option minimises this risk. MBIE”—the department of everything—“is comfortable that the consultation provided sufficient information to assess the risks costs and benefits of the additional option notwithstanding that it was not explicitly consulted on. Consultation on the final suite of proposed options has not occurred due to Budget sensitivity.”So here we have a Government policy that has had minimal consultation and that has a potential effect on other sectors beyond the residential construction industry. It has not been widely consulted on but the Government is hanging its hat on it saying that it is going to save $3500 per house.If you look further into the regulatory impact statement it then says: “Cost of residential construction—As indicated above our preferred options package would reduce the cost of a newly built 202m2 house by around $900.” I am seeing the figure $900 not $3500 Minister. Could the Minister please explain or is $3500 another figure that has popped out of the air? It says here “by around $900”. Then it says: “21300 new dwellings were consented throughout New Zealand in 2013. If a similar number of consents are issued in 2014 and each saved $900 the total savings would be $19170000.” Well that is interesting because today Fletcher Building has already had $75 million knocked off its capitalisation. So the Government is doing a good job here. It is saving $19 million over the industry but it has managed to knock $75 million off Fletcher’s in one day.Further in the regulatory impact statement it says: “Dumping can be remedied by the imposition of anti-dumping duties at the border to ‘level the playing field’. Since 1990 anti-dumping duties have not been applicable to imports from Australia.” which is fair enough. Under CER you would not expect so. “Anti-dumping duties are currently applied to three construction materials: reinforced steel bar from Thailand; plasterboard from Thailand; and nails from China.”It is interesting that the regulatory impact statement refers to those three particular materials. It also refers to Winstone Wallboards bringing a case in 2011 in terms of plasterboard coming out of Thailand: “The investigation found that Thai plasterboard was being dumped that this was likely to continue and this would likely cause a recurrence of material injury to Winstone.” Secondly duties on wire nails from China were put in place. Again it was found that three New Zealand companies particularly were potentially being affected by this particularly the largest one Wireplus which had the largest market share. It says that Wireplus “had suffered material injury caused by dumped imports [of nails] from China.” So there are another three companies in New Zealand that are obviously now going to be feeling the heat of cheap questionable-quality materials from China.The third one was reinforcing steel bars and coils from Thailand. That was New Zealand’s Pacific Steel Group. Again in the case of Pacific Steel there was dumped steel coming out of Thailand which caused “material injury” to Pacific Steel. PacificSteel as many of us know is the biggest recycler of New Zealand metals in New Zealand. It takes a large amount of the recycled steel and cans and all sorts of aluminium—all sorts of stuff—in New Zealand that you put out in your recycling bins. A huge amount of that ends up at Pacific Steel it is melted down and put back into steel. Some of it does end up going into reinforcing and that sort of thing to go back into our construction industry. But this Government is quite happy to basically set Pacific Steel adrift in a leaky boat and say to it and the likes of—[Bell rung] Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The honourable member Andrew Williams.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Thank you very much Mr Chair. Mr Goff you can have your call in a minute.It is interesting. These companies are iconic companies like Pacific Steel in New Zealand like Winstone Wallboards and like the other companies making plasterboard. It is interesting that this Government which is so close with the Chinese—well it is because it has got Ministers going up to China every second week having lovely private dinners and having all sorts of things in China. It is so close with China and obviously with some of these other places that it is very happy to sell our New Zealand companies our iconic New Zealand companies down the river leave them out in the cold for the next 3 years and watch cheap nasty nails coming in from China and perhaps wallboard coming in from Thailand which might look good on the wall for the first 6 to 12 months but a year later when it is all cracking and with no warranties and guarantees—Paul Goldsmith: Oh!ANDREW WILLIAMS: —what is it going to be like then Mr Goldsmith? And when the shoddy steel reinforcing goes into the concrete floors and in 5 to 10 years we see it all rusting and bowing and concrete floors cracking in New Zealand—a bit like the leaky homes that the National Government gave us—what are we going to say then? “Oh well we saved $900 per house and we saved $19.7 million but boy we’ve got a bit of a problem in our construction industry because we’ve got a lot of shonky unwarranted products in the market that also possibly put a lot of our good hard workers in some of these industries in New Zealand down the road because the sales of their products went downhill.”Well I am sorry but New Zealand First does not support that. We do not think it stacks up. New Zealand First stands for putting New Zealanders first and we will continue to put New Zealanders first. We will certainly not abandon the manufacturers in New Zealand.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): We are meeting here as the House of Representatives at 3.36 on a Friday afternoon under urgency. A member of the public might assume we had matters before us of great consequence requiring our urgent attention—legislation that perhaps reflects the vision and the big ideas of a Government determined to tackle the major challenges of our time. But what are we doing? We are looking at a bill that is called the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. And what are the big issues that require us to be here under urgency on a Friday afternoon? Well the first one is the repeal of cheque duties—the repeal of cheque duties.Grant Robertson: Transformational.Hon PHIL GOFF: You know that is going to be so transformational that it is estimated it will save New Zealanders on average 35c a year. The big challenge in this is how to pay them the 5c because we do not have them any more. And then we have two other areas that are major challenges facing this country—one is climate change and the other is the housing crisis which dominates much of the discussion particularlyin Auckland and in Christchurch. But neither of the other two measures the other two parts of this bill does anything that has any meaningful consequence in tackling those crises.I want to focus on Part 3 of the bill which deals with housing. You know I am a free trader. That is my record as a Cabinet Minister as a Minister of Trade. I do not mind the removal of tariffs. This bill does not actually do the removal of tariffs; that is apparently done in some other measure. It will not have much effect. We do not have tariffs against Australia. We do not have them against China. They are our two biggest trading partners. We do not even have them against the ASEAN members including Thailand. But we do have something called anti-dumping levies.Anti-dumping levies are not against free trade. What they are against is allowing a country to subsidise its exports below the cost it would sell those products at in its own country maybe even below the cost of manufacturing them and send them to another country. The reason we have anti-dumping levies is to stop other countries unfairly dumping their materials in our country in a way that is not about competition and is about not having a level playing field. I wonder where the Government’s principles are in removing anti-dumping levies because surely as a country that believes in free trade we also believe in fair trade that should set a level playing field. This bill undermines the concept of a level playing field and I do not think that is an appropriate measure.The big claim made on this is that it will save $3500 in the cost of building a new home. Where are the figures to substantiate that Minister Foss? There are no figures to substantiate that. You have plucked that figure from the air. How do you even know whether a building company is going to pass on to the consumer any savings that might be made? There is no guarantee of that.What is so bad about this legislation is that it pretends to find a solution to a serious problem when that solution does nothing at all to help the average New Zealander the first-home buyer or the lower-income household to achieve that dream of owning their own home. If it were $3500 being saved that would be half the amount of house price rises in my city and your city of Auckland last month. That is what the saving would be—half the $6000 inflation in house prices Minister that occurred in Auckland last month. Is it any wonder that our first-home buyers have given up hope of being able to save to get into their first home? Does this bill help those people? Not at all. Most first-home buyers as you know actually buy existing homes not new homes so it would not have any impact anyway. If the saving was what the Government claims it would be less than the cost the people would be paying on conveyancing and a fraction of the amount they would be paying to the real estate agent in commission.You see the problem in my electorate is that median house prices since this National Government has been in office have gone up by 40 percent to $700000. Paul Goldsmith came from my electorate. He knows that it is a working-class electorate—a working-class electorate where the median house price is now $700000. My kids could not afford to buy in that area even though they are tradesmen on good incomes. That is a problem. Does this bill solve that problem? Not at all.What does this bill do about the problem of speculation on house prices? Every young first-home buyer who is out there in the market trying to buy a home on the savings they can make by working hard is faced with competition from speculators. Some of them are New Zealand speculators who can claim the costs of the mortgage off their profits. That is tax deductible. It is not for the home buyer; not for the first home - buying couple who desperately want to own a home of their own. Then there are the speculators from overseas. I want those people on the other side of the Chamber who say that it is all about racism to explain to this Committee why it is that first-home buyers in New Zealand should be competing with people who are not New Zealandcitizens are not New Zealand residents and do not intend to ever come and live here but want to make a profit in a country that has no capital gains tax.John Hayes was with me and others when we were in China. China is one of the countries that are interested in buying. It is not the only one and it does not matter whether they are Chinese or Americans or British or whatever. What we discovered in China was this phenomenon where speculators were buying up apartments relying on an income from the capital gain and not even tenanting their apartments. There were hundreds of thousands of empty apartments because the attitude there is to buy the apartment not worry about renting it out wait to farm the capital gain and leave the house empty.How does that solve our housing crisis? Why is it that we do not do things to stop the foreign speculator on the other end of the telephone outbidding the young couple desperate to own their own home? Why is there nothing about that in this Budget? I would not mind being here on a Friday afternoon if we were doing something worthwhile to help those hundreds of thousands of young New Zealanders who will never realise the Kiwi dream of being home owners and are bound to remain tenants in their own country because this Government will not act.Then we have got a Treasury warning in this Budget document that says we are getting so much immigration at the moment—38000 well above what was predicted. They are all coming to Auckland and that also will push up the price of houses. I am not anti-immigration at all. I have an electorate full of people who are migrants. Many of the people who are migrants in my electorate are also desperate to buy their own homes but what they do not want is a level of migration coming through that is well in excess of our ability to supply the houses. Where are the measures in this legislation that will help those New Zealanders—my Indian constituents my Chinese constituents my Pasifika constituents and my European constituents—to get homeownership? There is nothing there.What else does Treasury tell us? It tells us that at the moment a person will spend 49 percent of the average full-time wage on an 80 percent mortgage on the average home. It is 49 percent at the moment. It sounds pretty grim does it not? But what does Treasury say also? In 5 years’ time they will be paying 63 percent of their wage and if they are in Auckland it will be 86 percent of their wage. No wonder more than half of all Aucklanders are caught in a trap of paying high rents and never being able to get their own homes.What does this Government do? It says it will remove anti-dumping on plasterboard and nails. What a Government of vision this is! What a Government that understands the needs of the people! Why do these Government members not understand it? Half of them have their own investment properties. They do not understand what it is like for the people trying to buy. They are not even interested in the people trying to buy. Well I am standing up here speaking out for those young New Zealanders to whom I want to give a chance to do the same thing that I did when I was in my early 20s—buy my own home work on my own home live in my own home and have that chance for the future.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I want to principally talk to Part 3 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. Again I am speaking up for the owners of small and medium sized businesses who will be impacted. Some will go out of business because of this bill. These are the ones who are not the big companies like Winstone Aggregates or Fletcher Building or others which the paperwork around the bill suggests will be able to adjust. Yes they will adjust because they have got the sheer bulk and size. In fact instead of being manufacturers they will end up being theimporters that will knock out some of the small businesses that I am particularly concerned about.We have had a discussion around the forestry sector but we need to be doing value adding for our forestry sector too. The logs that I see out my window on the wharf of Wellington heading off could be being processed and value added in New Zealand. This bill in part puts even more pressure on those who would do that value adding. It actually puts more pressure on them to the point that they will go out of existence. New Zealanders will lose jobs because of this bill. They will not be losing jobs just at businesses like Winstone Aggregates; they will be losing jobs out of unique businesses doing very skilled work—cabinet makers door makers window frame makers.There is another aspect too and that is around insulation. Being here with a primary production focus I am interested in fibre as well. More and more we are seeing a move towards wool and natural fibres rather than fibreglass batts. This bill does nothing to support the natural products that our sheep producers can be part of producing. It pushes back against that initiative too. Wool is a healthier better product but it will be priced out of existence for most New Zealanders. For $3500 for a new home I do not think that the bill is worth it. It is not worth it.What the Government could be doing is supporting those New Zealand businesses to innovate and to tool up to be able to compete in the areas that they want to. There are businesses in Christchurch—and I spoke to one as I said earlier—that have actually tooled up to help with this need that the Government has at last recognised in Christchurch. New Zealand businesses can come to the party and they can be helped to come to the party.But what has this Government done? It has just opened up the borders and said: “Come on in it doesn’t matter.” There is no recognition of a border here. There is no recognition of fairness. If something comes in from one of these other countries will we be looking to see the wage structure and the conditions of the workers where it was produced? Will we be looking to see the environmental impacts where it was being manufactured? No we will not. We will just be looking at that bare-bone price and saying “That’s great. We’ve got competition and we’ve got cheap commodity products coming into this country.” We will be worse off for this because of the nature of this bill.I do recognise the need to look at big businesses when they are rorting the system and ripping off New Zealanders big time but there are other ways of doing it than this which actually costs us throughout. The Greens support aspects of the initiatives in here for sure but we do not support anything that is going to go against a fair trade and reasonable conditions for our businesses and our workers. So on this part of the bill or the third bill when it is divided we will be opposing it. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 10; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Abstentions7New Zealand First 7.Part 1 agreed to.The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 87 Abstentions 7.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 7 be agreed to:add the following subclause:(4) Despite anything in this Act where a participant is liable to surrender units under this Act a minimum of 50% of those units transferred under section 18C must be New Zealand units.add new clause 7A:7A Section 134 amended (Penalty for failing to surrender or repay units)In section 134 replace subsection (1) with:(1) This section applies if—(a)a person fails to surrender units by the due date when required to do so under section 65(4) 118(5) 189 191 or 193; or(b)a person fails to surrender sufficient units to meet their obligation under section 63(3) by the due date when required to do so under section 65(4) 118(5) 189 191 or 193; or(c)an amendment to an emissions return under section 120 or an assessment made under section 121 results in a liability for a person—(i) to surrender units or additional units under section 123(3); or(ii) to repay units in accordance with section 123(6);(d)a person is required under section 125 to repay units transferred in error.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 10; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dr Kennedy Graham to clause 8 be agreed to:add new clause 8A8ANew section 222I inserted (Minister to regulate trading in international carbon credits)After section 222H insert:222IMinister to regulate trading in international carbon creditsThe Minister must by notice in theGazette prohibit the entry into New Zealand of any international carbon credits that he or she considers may depress the price of carbon credits below the level required to commence a reduction in gross emissions.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes44New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 10; Mana 1.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Abstentions7New Zealand First 7.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 be agreed to.Ayes74New Zealand National 59; Green Party 10; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Noes33New Zealand Labour 33.Abstentions7New Zealand First 7.Part 2 agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 3 be agreed to.Ayes96New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 33; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes18Green Party 10; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Part 3 agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 451.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I report this bill there is a correction to the voting on the question that Part 1 stand part. It was recorded as 87 for and 7 abstentions. It should have been 107 for and 7 abstentions. So the record is therefore corrected.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Cheque Duty Repeal BillClimate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment BillDumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2)Third ReadingsHon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Commerce)on behalf of theMinister of Finance: I moveThat the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. The Cheque Duty Repeal Bill repeals cheque duty from 1 July 2014. The Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill prevents reregistration arbitrage by post-1989 forest land participants from 16 May 2014. The Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) temporarily suspends dumping duties on building and construction materials from the day after the bill receives the Royal assent.The Government’s decision to suspend anti-dumping duties arises from a market study that found that anti-dumping duties are having a chilling effect on competition inbuilding materials markets. So suspending these duties will increase competition and reduce the cost of constructing new houses. The bill is intended to provide an immediate benefit to the Christchurch rebuild and to increase residential construction elsewhere particularly in Auckland by reducing the cost of building materials. As well as preventing the imposition of any new anti-dumping duty on a broad range of building materials it suspends the anti-dumping duty currently in place on standard plasterboard from Thailand reinforcing steel bar and coil from Thailand and wire nails from China.The Government’s decision to suspend anti-dumping duties was made together with a decision to temporarily introduce tariff concessions on a wide range of building materials. I expect these decisions to reduce the cost of building materials both through a direct reduction in duties and tariffs and through increased competition in the residential construction sector. Reducing the cost of building materials is part of the Government’s wider approach to improving housing affordability which includes work being done on standards and regulations to increase competition and reduce the price of New Zealand building materials freeing up new land for development improving sector productivity and reducing compliance costs.To sum up Part 3 of this bill aims to reduce the cost of building materials used in residential construction by temporarily suspending the application of anti-dumping duties to those materials. This will provide an immediate benefit to the Christchurch rebuild and allow sufficient time for the development of a bounded public interest test so that consideration can be given to amending the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Act to provide for the wider public interest to be taken into account before anti-dumping and countervailing duties are imposed or extended. I commend these bills to the House and move that they now be read for a third time.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Here we are at the end of the Government’s turbocharge of the economy—through the removal of cheque duty. I want to make sure that we get this right. The Cheque Duty Repeal Bill will go down in the annals of Parliament as one of the Government’s finest measures. Not only will it transform the economy but it will also give New Zealanders the social dividend from the 5 years of austerity in the Budgets—the social dividend of 35c a year. It is 35c a year which Moana Mackey tells me will not buy you even a K-Bar at the dairy any more. It will not even do that. This is a pathetic bill. It is a pathetic piece of legislation to have us here in urgency on a Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock.The legislation is emblematic of a Budget that contains some good things. And let us be honest that everybody in this House would agree that reducing the cost of going to the doctor is a good thing building on the Labour Government’s achievements over 9 years in reducing the costs of seeing a general practitioner. We had an extensive debate on the importance of paid parental leave and I acknowledge the shift in the National Government’s policy to support paid parental leave and now to see it increase. It is a timid increase. It could go much further. It is not responsive to the evidence that says that 26 weeks is the minimum that would be appropriate for paid parental leave but it is a step in the right direction so we acknowledge the Government for that. But these small steps in the right direction pale alongside a Budget that has no vision or ambition for the New Zealand economy. There is almost nothing in this Budget about economic development about job creation and about actually creating the economy that will deliver better jobs with higher wages. We cannot go on with politics as usual delivering policies as usual and outcomes as usual. We cannot go on pretending that commodities will get us there pretending that unprocessed dairy and logs are all we need. We have to be adding value to the economy and we have to be training and educating people to do those jobs to lift those wages and this Government and this Budget simply fail to do that. It is a step in the right direction but to where. It is totally absent.These bills before us show that the Government does not know where it is going. It has prioritised putting Parliament and all the costs associated with Parliament through the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill. It has put up the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill. If this is the response we are in trouble as a country. Climate change is a serious issue and the response to it requires all New Zealanders to be involved. It requires a partnership between Government business and the community. Instead this climate change response bill here targets one sector the forestry sector and leaves alone the big polluters with which the National Government is friends—the members of the Cabinet club. So it is not a climate change response bill that as New Zealanders we should be proud about.Then we have the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) which is the response of the National Government to the housing crisis. Let us set the problem here. The problem in the last month in Auckland is that the cost of a home went up by $6000. We see in the Budget that in the future if you are going to be servicing a standard mortgage and you live in Auckland you will need 83 percent of your wages to do that—83 percent. At the moment it is 49 percent and that is tough enough for someone who wants to get into the housing market. In Auckland by 2018 it will be 83 percent. This is a crisis. It is a major problem and the Government’s response is to make varnish nails plasterboard and things like that a little bit cheaper. The Government does not know how much cheaper. The Minister of Commerce was totally unable to respond to questions asked of him about where the $3500 figure came from. It was plucked out of the air and in reality it might pay for a little bit of the conveyancing fee. That is what it might do. But it certainly is not going to address the housing crisis. This Budget is woefully inadequate in terms of housing with absolutely no hope for first-home buyers from this Budget. They are the three bits of legislation that the Government has decided it wants to show off and showcase as being what this Budget is about. Well it is probably right. This is a Budget that is about a fragmented ill-conceived inadequate response to the needs of New Zealanders.What Labour has been saying from day one is that it believes that what New Zealanders wanted in this Budget was something that gave them confidence that there would be jobs for them and their children in the future that there would be a quality of life that means the Kiwi dream of homeownership is still there for New Zealanders that there would be some hope for the future and that there would be opportunities for New Zealanders and their families. That opportunity has been completely missed and completely lost by this Government. This Budget is a massive missed opportunity for New Zealanders to build for future generations a sustainable economy. These three bills sad and pathetic as they are are the best the National Government has to offer.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I speak on behalf of the Government on the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2). I think what disappoints me is that the member opposite Grant Robertson does not seem to understand that is it not Governments that create jobs; it is businesses that create jobs. The role of the Government is to create an environment in which businesses feel confident to invest confident to employ people and confident to grow their businesses.This is a Budget that has carried on in the right direction for the last 6 years and we have arrived at a place where we are back in surplus. It is a Budget that is a confident Budget for a confident nation a nation that is overwhelmingly heading in the right direction. It is a Budget that sees the books back in surplus growth at 4 percent wages rising faster than inflation and more money available for families businesses and the most vulnerable. That I think is something to celebrate.That is why we are growing so well in contrast to our friends across the Tasman who have suffered the blight of 6 years of a Labour-Greens Government and runaway spending and debt. We see ourselves back in a position of great optimism. On that basis I commend these bills to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): It is a bit rich for Paul Goldsmith to talk about business confidence after he has just completely pulled the carpet out from under the post-1989 forestry sector. I am guessing that it is not feeling particularly confident right now Mr Goldsmith and it has every reason to be absolutely irate with this Government for the nasty surprise it has dropped on the industry in this urgency motion. As my colleague Grant Robertson said it is astounding that this legislation has been done under urgency. If you look at the 35c saving that families are going to make from the abolition of the fees on cheques as seen in the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill that is kind of up there with the tax on paper boys that the Government brought in in a previous Budget. This is just pathetic it really is and it does not need to be progressed under urgency. Although I am sure that every little bit helps I do not think getting that 35c a year to families is going to be what makes or breaks the Budget.The second bill the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill which amends the Climate Change Response Act definitely should not be in an urgency motion because of the wide-ranging implications it has for the post-1989 forestry sector. This is a sector that was not consulted on about these changes. This is a sector that did not have the ability to come to a select committee to ask the National Government why it hates the forestry sector so much. The Minister responsible for forestry the Associate Minister for Primary Industries is in the House. Go and talk to some of the sector Minister Goodhew. You have? Yes it loves you. Here we go: someone is actually responding. Why was it not consulted?Hon Jo Goodhew: Actually if you understood—MOANA MACKEY: Oh! Actually if I understood—right OK I do understand. I understand that you are not applying this to your corporate mates in the heavy-emitting industries. They still get to engage in arbitrage between New Zealand Units and Kyoto units. The Cabinet club still gets access to these cheap units so why are we not limiting access to those cheap units for the Cabinet club heavy-polluting industries and instead applying that only to forestry? The Minister responsible for forestry is now ignoring me just as the Minister in the chair did during the Committee stage of this legislation because there is no good reason why you would not apply this across the board. The great irony of course is that iwi are also going to be disproportionately impacted by this and I am very disappointed that the Māori Party voted for Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and voted down my and Kennedy Graham’s amendments given that iwi are going to be disproportionately affected by this. I am very very disappointed.Ironically iwi and the post-1989 forestry sector have been calling for a restriction on these units for years and that has fallen on deaf ears. The sector has called for a restriction on these units across the board in a more equitable way that applies to everyone fairly not with one rule for it and another rule for National’s mates who are heavy polluters who got a free allocation of New Zealand Units but are perfectly entitled—according to the National Government—to go out and engage in arbitrage and speculate on those units playing off the differential price between the New Zealand Units and the Kyoto units. But now we are saying that the forestry sector the one sector actually doing anything to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions is not allowed to do it. We did not tell the sector about it. We did not consult with it. We did not check what the impact would be. We are not allowing any kind of—Iain Lees-Galloway: The Government didn’t.MOANA MACKEY: —the Government did not sorry. There is no transition period and no select committee process. This is an absolute outrage and the Minister responsible for forestry should absolutely hang her head in shame.There are going to be a lot of people out there—and a lot of these are mum and dad foresters—who have bought emission reduction units these cheap Kyoto units and they know that they are going to deregister or harvest and that they need to meet that obligation and they now cannot do anything with those emission reduction units. Those units are worthless and those people have paid good money for them. They have made investment decisions based on having those units and being able to surrender them to meet any deregistration obligations. How is it fair to completely remove retrospectively the value of those units? And then they are going to have to go out and buy New Zealand Units to replace them. We could have simply said that from today no more emission reduction units can land in the register for post-1989 forestry and that would have taken away the completely unfair retrospective element of this bill.What we should have done is what the forestry sector and iwi for years have been calling for which is to apply this provision across the board to everyone. I look forward to the next National speaker explaining how they can justify allowing these cheap units to be accessed by their mates in the Cabinet club—the heavy emitters—whilst they are removing access to the one sector that got them out of a hole when it came to the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. We would have ended up with a financial liability at the end of the first commitment period at Kyoto had it not been for forestry offsetting our ever-increasing gross greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions kept going up and we were just lucky that there was enough forestry to mitigate it.So how does a National Government say thank you? By yet another attack on the forestry sector. It is absolutely outrageous. This is not about fiscal risk because the fiscal risk to the Government of foresters sitting on New Zealand Units is estimated to be between $11 million to $66 million. The fiscal risk to the Government of all the other New Zealand Units that are being sat on by the other sectors is $107 million. So why are we attacking the $11 million fiscal risk and leaving the $107 million fiscal risk? The answer is that the Government hates forestry and it likes heavy-emitting industries. That is the simple answer.The Minister referred to this as an unintended consequence. I want to point out that this is absolutely not unintended; it is absolutely deliberate. For years we have been putting up Supplementary Order Papers in the House bills in the ballot and calling on the Government to restrict these cheap international units across the board and those amendments have been voted down. The calls from the forestry sector and from iwi have been ignored. The Government has allowed the carbon price to collapse. It has allowed a differential in price to open up between the New Zealand Units and the Kyoto units and so it is about $3.20 for a New Zealand unit at the moment and about 35c for a Kyoto unit. That is the problem. That is what we should have a bill fixing. There should be a bill to fix the carbon price and to reduce the differential between the international units and the New Zealand Units and this will all go away. We will not end up hurting the one industry that we are hugely reliant on in terms of our climate change response.This bill is not about reregistration at all as the Government has claimed. This is not about the fact that foresters can go in and register and deregister and then reregister again and get more New Zealand Units and continue to speculate on the differential in that price. We could have fixed that by simply saying that in any 5-year reporting period you can register only once. That would have fixed it without all the down sides of this piece of legislation. That was one of the options that officials actually put up to the Government in the regulatory impact statement. That option was simply saying that you get to register only once in a reporting period and the problem would have gone away.Instead the Government went with the most brutal over the top unfair retrospective option. So for the Government members to sit there and talk about business and being friendly in terms of business investment—give me a break. Give me a break.Tell that to the foresters out there who have suddenly had the carpet whipped out from underneath them with absolutely no warning and absolutely no ability to submit on that piece of legislation to let us know how damaging it would be. They found out about it only when we sent an email to a few of them saying: “Have you seen this? Have you been consulted?”. Suddenly it went around the industry and the reaction has been incredible. They have every right to be furious because this is an absolute betrayal of good faith. Minister Goodhew the forestry Minister thinks it is funny. Well we will be taking that out on the road Minister Goodhew because whatever the forestry industry thought of you before I have to say that this is an absolute indictment on your Government. As forestry Minister you should be ashamed of yourself—absolutely ashamed of yourself—because this bill is yet another attack on forestry by an anti-forestry anti-environment Government.That is why we need a change of Government on 20 September—so we can have a Government that takes climate change seriously that takes the environment seriously that supports regional development in sectors like manufacturing and forestry and that does not continue to whip the carpet out from underneath them so that it can snuggle up to its cronies its Cabinet club mates giving them favours protecting them and shielding them whilst all the time hurting one of the most important industries in this country the forestry sector.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to vote in favour of the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill and the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill but to oppose the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2).This is my first Budget call in this patch of urgency. From listening to the debate in my office and in the House over the last 2 days I think what you can see in the two bills we have seen in front of us in urgency is the Budget actually summed up in the legislation. Obviously we heard the Budget in the Hon Bill English’s speech and we heard it in the leaders’ debate but I believe you can see it in the bills this Government decides to put through in urgency. The fact that these bills which do not require urgency are being put through in urgency also sums up the Government very well.We see a Government that has repeatedly used urgency with no need and a Government that has not given New Zealanders true accessible democracy and the right to a fair hearing and parliamentary scrutiny of legislation which we have seen over and over. We have seen the likes of democracy being taken away in Canterbury. You can see it in the likes of this Government choosing to breach New Zealanders’ human rights by putting on our law books the ability for the Government to terminate people’s internet accounts for copyright infringement. This is a Government that did that in urgency—a Government that made the unlawful lawful with the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill.You can also see the nature of the Government and of its Budget in 2014 in the substance of the legislation. With the paid parental leave bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support For Newborn Children) Bill that we previously debated you can see a Government that is moving only slightly in the right direction a Government that is extending the inequality we see in New Zealand and a Government that votes against extending the right to the most vulnerable New Zealanders—those on a benefit who are raising kids.You can see it in the housing legislation we are debating right now where the Government is focusing on the 0.7 percent of housing affordability yet ignoring the realissues facing us like how our young Kiwi families can get into homeownership and how we can see cheaper house-building materials greater competition and the State taking a more active role in building more State houses. We are seeing a Government that is throwing the wood industry under the trucks.On the climate aspect of the legislation in front of us you can see a Government that is singling out the forestry industry and a Government that says: “We’ve got one rule for the big emitters and the big polluters if they are a smelter or a factory or a steel mill but if you’re a forestry company you’re out of luck.”You have got to wonder—did they somehow forget to pay their Cabinet club dues and that is why they are missing out? In all the reviews of the Budget and in the actions of this Government what we are seeing is this sector missing out. They are the losers. This is a Government that is quite willing to pick winners sadly in the polluting industries but throw them under the truck.As I am a bit of a greenie who used to work for Greenpeace I am often accused of hugging trees. I am proud to say that I have hugged a few trees in my time. This Government however cuts down the trees pours petrol on the roots and sets them on fire. That is its approach to forestry in New Zealand.I have described some of the legislation we are seeing passed in urgency today but what is the big issue that we see in front of us? Well it is the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill—the 35c that Kiwis are going to be saving the 35c tax cut Kiwis got this election year. That sums up the lack of vision the lack of direction in an economy that sure is doing slightly better than Australia temporarily at this point in time—an economy that has the stimulus of the Christchurch earthquake—but an economy that has no long-term direction. What we need is to embrace the entrepreneurialism embrace the innovation and actually go into the future with confidence with a national strategy so that we can deliver a richer New Zealand and so we can build a more prosperous country for our kids.What we are seeing in New Zealand is Kiwis working hard—we work some of the longest hours in the OECD for some of the lowest wages in the developed world and we pay some of the highest costs of living. Yet this country on the economic rankings is losing the race. Every year we slip a little bit more down those OECD rankings.When we are dealing with wood which is a major part of the legislation we have in front of us it reminds me of my home town of Gisborne. You can actually see our country’s economic story graphically laid out on the waterfront. When we are looking at wood what you see is the beautiful old freezing works. They were demolished and now all you see is literally almost a mile or more of raw logs piled up for export. What you can see is a good example where 100-plus years ago our country embraced the future new technologies looked to the future trends and invested in technologies like refrigerated shipping. That is how we built our wealth. That is how we raised our kids in a prosperous country. Yet what we are also seeing now is the short-sighted nature of our modern economy—the simplification and the reliance on simply exporting raw logs and milk powder around the world. That is not a recipe for a prosperous country or for lifting those 290000 Kiwi kids out of poverty.So when we look at the wood aspects of the countervailing measures part of the separated bills—the bill that removes the dumping tariffs or suspends them temporarily—you have really got to question the reason for urgency. I have not heard a compelling reason from the Government benches. This should have gone through a due process. We should have seen a select committee. We should have been able to hear from the companies that are being affected by this legislation because when you look through the Government documents it describes the impacts on the companies but this is what you see: black marks—the redacted parts of the regulatory impact assessments.We should have been able to hear from these companies being affected. Every New Zealand company just like every New Zealander deserves a fair go.We should have had the chance to debate the pros and cons because I admit that there are pros and cons. But on something as let us say arcane I think many New Zealanders would not be aware that we have tariffs on dumping provisions overseas. We have not had a chance for a national discussion because there are I acknowledge pros and cons. But at a time when we are seeing our sawmills close like Southern Cross Forest Products sawmill recently and at a time when we have recently seen 4000 Kiwis laid off in the timber and forestry sector we should not be risking further job losses and contraction in that sector with bills under urgency when we cannot even hear from the sectors involved. We cannot keep going on as we are at the moment just hoping countries will continue to buy our raw logs.The cost of this suspension of the tariffs is estimated at $27.8 million. We should have been able to have a conversation nationally involving the sector involving experts economists academics the public and our Parliament. Gee could that $27.8 million have been better spent on supporting the New Zealand home-building supplies industry to become more competitive to ramp up with the challenge of scale in the Christchurch rebuild? We should have had that conversation.Both the Labour Party and the Green Party have put out comprehensive well-thought-out strategies for our timber and building sectors in New Zealand. A few weeks ago Dr Russel Norman announced a structural timber award. In the rebuild of Christchurch we should be using timber products and supporting them. What we need to see is a comprehensive plan for cheaper housing. Focusing on the 0.7 percent as this legislation does is no panacea for the chronic crisis we see. With the new data showing we can expect up to 41000 immigrants to New Zealand the challenge or the crisis as it already is is going to get a lot lot worse.What we see in this Budget legislation is a lack of action for first-home buyers a lack of action to drive down the costs of housing for Kiwis. Too many of our Kiwis are living in housing poverty. They are spending too much of their income on it and that is increasing every year over those historical trends.When it comes to climate change—and I am running out of time—what we see is that the arbitrage rule is changing. Sadly it is changing for only one sector. Very briefly what is happening is that the Government over the last 6 years has gifted New Zealand emission units to polluters but also to foresters who do the right thing by sequestering carbon. But it has also said you can bring in any number of cheap offshore credits from Ukraine or Russia where they did not actually see real emissions reductions.What you saw in the last year and I think this most graphically demonstrates it was that the Government handed out on a platter $110 million of New Zealand Units but all the companies had to do in reply was purchase $7 million equivalent of offshore junk units making a $93 million windfall profit. That is not good for the New Zealand economy that is not good for New Zealand competitiveness and it is not good for us building a smart economy which takes the gravest challenge of our time climate change into effect.What we need to do is do what the amendment and the member’s bill by Dr Kennedy Graham would do which is stop these junk hot air credits coming in offshore and to actually focus on building an economy that is a low carbon one that grows jobs that has people planting forests people using timber products in their buildings people insulating under people’s roofs and other people installing solar panels on the top and investing in public transport. That is the smarter greener economy that we are going to be building and taking to the public on 20 September this year. Kia ora.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to stand to speak to the third reading of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill which has now of course been split into several bills. I think we are hearing a strong contrast here between the Government’s approach and the approach of the Opposition. We are a Government that believes in the market. At its most basic it is that we produce what other people want.We have heard a lot of talk about logs raw logs and added value. The thing is that if there was a demand and drive for value-added wood products there would be a market for it not an arbitrary decision by Moana Mackey and friends to just back it. You have got to study the contradiction that has been going on here today as well about how the Government is supposedly backing winners and losers. Yet if you listened to members on the other side they are choosing who they want to back as winners and losers. We know from their supposed policy announcement that they effectively want to nationalise the electricity industry too. They do not believe that you can choose in areas of insulation say whether or not to put wool insulation into your home—no the Government must be involved.It is a very very different approach. You see too with this particular legislation an understanding of the importance of removing regulation and you see it around things like tax duty. Yes it is a small amount—even in total it is only about $4 million a year—but this is a Government committed to removing stumbling blocks be they large or small to make it more efficient for New Zealanders to do business in order to ultimately look after their families. That is another element that we looked at in the first bill around this Budget debate. I commend this legislation to the House.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the legislation arising from the omnibus bill the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill: the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2).Just to cover them briefly in terms of removing cheque duty in the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill New Zealand First supports that change. We feel it is very late it is overdue it should have been done a long time ago and we cannot understand why it has taken this Government 6 years to get around to it. I pulled out a cheque book a few weeks ago to write out a cheque. I do not think I have used it for more than about 2 years. I noticed that that particular cheque book was first issued in about 2007 or 2008 so I paid that $2.50 some 6 years ago. Cheque duty is a bit of a nonsense and really it should have been done away with a long time ago. Again it was a little fiddle around the edges in the Budget—another little lollipop—to try to make things look good but at the end of the day it was immaterial.The second thing in terms of climate change in the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill again we think it is just fiddling around the edges. New Zealand First has no time for the emissions trading scheme. We think it is just another money-laundering scheme for bankers financiers and people from the likes of Merrill Lynch to take and extort money from the New Zealand economy and put it into places like New York London Frankfurt and other financial markets trading on the emissions trading scheme and basically New Zealanders the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand economy will pay dearly. We again will be the guinea pigs the suckers. We will pay out around the world to these people and probably in years to come we will all look back in hindsight and say: “How on earth did we get dragged into that? Why did we bother?”. Well New Zealand First says we should not have a bar of it. We should get on with our own problems here in New Zealand in terms of our emissions and we should sort out our own emissions here in New Zealand. We should workconstructively in New Zealand in terms of what is polluting our own environment and what is happening around our own country in terms of emissions levy the polluters here in New Zealand and make sure the money goes back constructively into sorting out the issues with pollution here in New Zealand and not send it off to some money-making scheme administered by the likes of Merrill Lynch in New York.The third part of the bill which is the main part in our view in terms of issue to New Zealand is the building supplies bill the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2). We have huge opposition to this bill. New Zealand First believes that this is another attempt by the National Government to undermine New Zealand manufacturers. Again New Zealand manufacturers bear the brunt of this. We sat on the manufacturing inquiry in the last year and we were prepared—the Government was not prepared—alongside other Opposition parties to listen to our manufacturers. Those who are in the manufacturing sector—not in the agricultural manufacturing sector not in sectors that are exporting our primary produce and other things but those that are in basic everyday manufacturing—are finding it pretty tough. With our dollar up around US86c and heading towards US90c they are finding it very tough. Therefore they do need some assistance to stay viable here in New Zealand when they are up against very very cheap sources of materials such as those in the building industry coming out of the likes of China Indonesia Thailand and other places which have already been identified in the last 2 or 3 years as being dumped in this market and seriously undercutting our own manufacturers of wallboards steel coil steel reinforcing nails and other such construction materials. It has already been proven that that has gone on and it is having a very serious detrimental effect on our manufacturers in New Zealand.We in New Zealand First say we will stand up and support our manufacturers. We will go into battle for them. We will make sure that they do have that level of protection because they are up against other economies that have got huge scale much lower wage rates much lower standards of production in terms of quality and warranty that come with it and therefore it is not a level playing field. So the whole idea of these anti-dumping tariffs is to try to create a level playing field to ensure that those New Zealand manufacturers are not disadvantaged. The Minister of Commerce refused to answer some of the questions I put to him in the Committee stage. In the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—the “Ministry of Everything”—it said that it was going to be something that would give us a $900 saving per house in this. We have heard from the Minister that it is going to be a saving of $3500. It is very interesting that there are contradictory pieces of information being provided and yet the Minister has not stood up throughout this whole debate today and given an explanation as to why those figures are different. There might be a reasonable explanation. It might be justifiable. But when I read a regulatory impact statement that says that the saving is only $900 per residential household that is the figure I take—when I see it in writing from the officials.We have also heard from the Minister that this will help reduce house prices in Auckland. I held this document up earlier in the day and said that the problem in Auckland is that houses are being bought by people from all over the world—not just by people from Asia but by all sorts of people from all over the world. These people are buying them because the Auckland housing market is hot and it is going up and it is going up at a rapid rate. They are bidding via telephones to auction floors in Takapuna—rooms full of people in Takapuna. And those people are on phones overseas—John Hayes: Where?ANDREW WILLIAMS: They are Mr Hayes I can assure you. I have a daughter who has been in the real estate market and she gives me information as to what is happening. I have got other friends in the real estate market who have told me as well. They are bidding and half the time these people are sitting back overseas and bidding blindly on properties and buying them in Auckland. There are properties on the North Shore that are bought closed up left empty and nothing is done with them. They are sitting there on the basis of a speculative purchase knowing how fast property prices are going up in the Auckland market. Those houses are sitting empty—million-dollar homes sitting empty. Three houses in a row in a street are being bought they are taken off that land and six dwellings are being built in their place for speculative purposes. And it is all being done in a large cash market. Then there is a paper in Auckland like this one—a huge paper huge paper—and it is not in English selling properties all over Auckland but a New Zealander would struggle to read it. They would struggle to read it. So this is of concern. I stand as a fifth-generation New Zealander whose family on both my mother’s and my father’s side came here in the 1840s and I stand up for the young people of New Zealand who ask us as politicians and they ask us all the time: “How on earth are we ever going to afford to buy a house in the likes of Auckland when the properties are being bought from many offshore sources?”. It is incredible.At the same time through this whole thing the Government has said through the Budget that it is going to try to massage things—it is doing so well we heard from Mr Goldsmith. He gave his checklist of how wonderful the Government was and he was checking off all these things and saying how it is saving all these various things. Then you hold up this piece of paper from the Budget documents which shows contributions to superannuation from the Government in the next 5 years. For 2015 it is zero; for 2016 it is zero; for 2017 it is zero; and for 2018 it is zero. Mr Goldsmith you cannot claim a $372 million surplus and say how wonderfully you have done while New Zealanders and future New Zealanders—and with the baby-boom bubble coming before us—will be retiring in years to come with a superannuation scheme that your Government will not have contributed 1c to in the decade between 2008-09 and 2018-19. That is a whole decade of no contributions to the future of this country while at the same time the young people of this country are up against this sort of thing when trying to buy a house in Auckland.This Government is really disappointing. Then it comes to this House under urgency puts forward these pathetic little things like the removal of cheque duty on cheque books and a little bit about climate change and it thinks that that is the urgent business of the Government under urgency. Well it is not. New Zealand First says otherwise. We think that there is a much bigger picture here—a much bigger picture in terms of what is happening in our economy—and New Zealand First will address that on 20 September.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am conscious that I am standing between the House and the end of the sitting week but I feel that I should put on record at the conclusion of this debate the view of the Labour Opposition on the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) which was Part 3 of what was the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and which contains the centrepiece of this Government’s offering to the public of New Zealand in its rather haphazard and inadequate response to the housing crisis.If you were a Government that wanted to do something about the housing crisis there are a number of options open to you. You could do something about taxing speculators for example with for instance a capital gains tax. You could as Andrew Williams was just saying put a stop to foreign speculators bidding up the price of houses in Auckland. You might like to consider building large numbers of affordablehomes and selling them to first-home buyers. That would address the supply shortage that really lies at the heart of the sky-rocketing house prices. You might like to build more State houses because people right at the bottom end are struggling under this housing crisis. You could master-plan ambitious new urban development projects revitalise town centres and invest in transport infrastructure. You could do all of those things which would make a huge difference to the housing crisis that we have now.But if you are a Government that does not care for those kinds of bold gestures or if you were a Government that prefers to tinker round the edges and you prefer the photo opportunity and the insignificant gesture then there are a number of other options that are open to you. One of those might be trying to do something about building and construction costs. If you were serious about tackling construction costs you might for example hold a Commerce Commission inquiry into the lack of competition in the building supplies industry. You might for instance use a Government-backed building programme to build at scale thereby allowing off-site manufacturing and prefabricated construction to drive down the cost of housing. As a recent industry group estimated doing that could knock $32000 off the cost of a new house.But if you were determined to look at building and construction materials and at what they add to the cost of a new home and you had read the Productivity Commission report that said that New Zealanders are paying an extra $20000 per newly constructed house because of higher prices in this country then what would you do about that? Well if you were serious you would address the anti-competitive practices and the lack of competition in the building and construction industry. But if you wanted to just tinker round the edges and look as if you were doing something then you might look at a measure contained in the third part of this legislation which is to temporarily suspend anti-dumping duties and tariffs for certain building materials.This is the Government of the insignificant gesture. Nick Smith is the “Minister of the Photo Op”. The credibility of the housing initiatives in this Budget really sum up how pathetic this Government’s record has been on housing. It has got nothing. After a year of running around doing photo opportunities talking up the problem blaming councils blaming the banks and blaming the construction industry it has run out of scapegoats and other people to blame. All it has really got is a lame housing accord with the Auckland Council which on its own numbers will deliver only 5500 new houses in the special housing areas over 3 years. That is all it has got and this pathetic little gesture in this legislation which it claims after doing some calculation on the back of a cigarette packet might save $3500 on the cost of a new house—with no evidence brought to this House to justify those calculations and with no assurance that that saving would not be swallowed up by builders and developers. This is all that the Government has got and it is a very sad thing for New Zealand.Cheque Duty Repeal Bill read a third time.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Ayes72New Zealand National 59; Green Party 8; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Noes37New Zealand Labour 30; New Zealand First 7.Bill read a third time.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.Ayes93New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 30; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes15Green Party 7; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.Bill read a third time.The House adjourned at 4.49 p.m. (Friday)