Volume 624 Week 84 - Wednesday 30 March 2005 
Volume 624 Week 84 - Wednesday 30 March 2005 
[Volume:624;Page:19427] 
Wednesday 30 March 2005 
Madam Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Questions to Ministers 
United Future—Confidence and Supply Agreement 
1. Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Is she satisfied that her Government has fulfilled the goal of the confidence and supply agreement with United Future to provide “stable Government over the next term of Parliament”; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 The answer is yes because today the Government celebrates 965 days since the signing of the confidence and supply agreement with United Future. That represents the longest period of stable Government under MMP. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Does the Prime Minister recall that United Future has voted against her Government on 20 major pieces of legislation and with the National Party Opposition 65 percent of the time while still supporting her Government on matters of confidence and supply; if so what conclusions does she draw from that regarding the operation of our MMP system of Government? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I draw two main conclusions. The first is that National can never get the numbers together and the second is that it is possible to have disagreements while maintaining strong stable Government. I thank United Future for that. 
Gordon Copeland 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You are some distance from this end of the House but during the question asked by my colleague Peter Dunne there was a considerable amount of noise and interjection. Since I have been in Parliament Speakers have ruled that questions should be heard in silence and I would like to see that upheld during this question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I agree with the member. There will be silence in future when questions are asked. When questions are answered the odd interjection is understandable but barracking is not. Members are entitled to hear the questions and the answers. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister believe her Government has lived up to all its agreements in its confidence and supply arrangements with United Future including “improving the economic well-being of all New Zealanders” given the fact that disposable after-tax real household annual income has remained static over the last 5 years? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I certainly do. What an extraordinary statement that was for the member to make in the very week that most families currently receiving family support are getting another $25 a week for the first child and $15 a week for each subsequent child. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. That was an interesting response from the Prime Minister. It told the House that the best her Government can do for hard-working New Zealanders is to turn them into beneficiaries but it in no way answered the question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The question was addressed. 
Peter Brown 
: Does the Prime Minister recognise that the United Future party has sacrificed its beliefs on prostitution law reform GST on rates smoke-free legislation and tax cuts and that the Government even watered down the definition of a family in the Families Commission Bill; if she does recognise that does she not think the very least that she owes the party is the knowledge of exactly when the election will occur and will she confirm it will occur in late September? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I know that United Future has adhered to its conscience on the conscience issues and to its party policy on the other issues and all those things. I think that what has been distinctive about the arrangements in this particular term of Government is that United Future has found a way of working with our Government that protects its brand differentiation. That stands in marked contrast to the National Party choosing to collapse a coalition because it wanted to privatise Wellington International Airport shares. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. If a Minister is to give an answer consistent with the public good the Prime Minister should surely have recognised in that answer that it was she and her management that caused the collapse of the last coalition Government when the Alliance was blitzed in much the same manner as will happen to United Future beyond the next election. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is probably a point of information rather than a point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that despite the United Party’s vehement opposition the Civil Union Act was passed the Prostitution Reform Act was passed and in fact the entire 20 pieces of legislation that the United Future party members opposed because of their consciences were passed and that the United Future party would make a good doormat for any political party in Government in this country? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can confirm that those pieces of legislation passed because members of Parliament from parties that very seldom support the Labour Government did on a conscience basis support those measures. And as one who did support them I thank those members of ACT who did support them. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Does the Prime Minister agree with the assessment of the OECD that political stability has contributed to economic growth in New Zealand; if so does she think she had other options available when forming a Government in 2002 to achieve or improve on current economic growth levels? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I do agree with the OECD that political stability is very important in getting sustained and good economic performance as this Government has got. I am very happy with the arrangement entered into after the last election. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I seek leave for Mr Dunne to have 10 more questions so he may outline one thing he has done in the last 3 years. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. Is leave seriously sought? I am sorry; the member cannot seek leave on somebody else’s behalf. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: What was the Prime Minister referring to when she said in 2002: “I do not believe that it is acceptable to New Zealanders to see small parties exercise the balance of power irresponsibly.” and have the concerns that led to those remarks been quelled during the term of this Parliament? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: When I made that comment it was in reaction to what I perceived as a threat to bring—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I know there is a temptation to interrupt and intervene. As I said the occasional comment is acceptable. But I cannot hear the answer and if in fact that barracking continues I will not be able to rule when someone says that the question has not been answered. Can we please have silence. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: In making that comment I was reacting to what I perceived as a threat to bring the Government down over a single issue. I note that a great success of this term of Government has been the relationship with United Future which has enabled us to disagree from time to time but still to have strong stable Government. 
Rod Donald 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that during this term of Parliament more Government bills have been passed solely as a result of Green Party support rather than the support of any other party and that the passage of 16 pieces of legislation on issues such as occupational safety and health accident compensation climate change civil union and the Supreme Court have helped to fulfil the goals of the cooperation agreement between the Labour-Progressive Government and the Green Party? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: For the record I wish to confirm that the support of the Greens on many critical pieces of legislation has been part of achieving strong stable Government. 
Police Minister—Confidence 
2.  
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she have confidence in the Minister of Police; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because he is a hard-working and conscientious Minister. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is she aware that the Commissioner of Police commented this morning on television that the police “do the very best that we can with the resources we have.”; if so what does she intend to tell the nine rape victims whose files have not yet been allocated by the police for proper investigation what she will do to address their appalling situation? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Personally I am rather too busy to be watching television in bed in the morning so I did not see the interview referred to. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would members allow the Prime Minister to complete her answer and perhaps she could get directly to the answer. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: If I am to take at face value what the member heard when he had the time to watch television this morning what I would say is that the commissioner knows well that the budget for the police is up around 20 percent over the last 4 to 5 years and that there are a lot of resources there to deploy. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to the fact that the Prime Minister has not answered the question. She commented about what she was or was not aware of but she did not answer the very serious point made by Dr Brash about what she intends to do in respect of the nine rape victims who find themselves in a position where their cases have not been investigated. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Prime Minister addressed the question. She may not have answered it to the satisfaction of all members but she addressed it in her reference to resources. 
Gordon Copeland 
: How can she continue to have confidence in a Minister who has failed to secure enough resources for police leading to such a loss of public confidence in the police force in Counties-Manukau Police District and other places that there is a grave danger that it may not recover? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The assumption in the member’s question cannot be sustained. The figures I have show that already by July 2004 when the Minister had been Minister of Police for 3½ years total police numbers were up about 12.3 percent and the budget increase numbers I have are 19.7 percent. So I do believe that this Government has given a great priority to police resourcing. 
Rodney Hide 
: What is left of ministerial responsibility in this country when the Prime Minister herself attacks a hard-working front-line police sergeant for telling the truth about the lack of resources to a crime victim then declares her full confidence in a Minister of Police who does not even know what is happening in his own backyard? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As the member will know from the statement issued by the Commissioner of Police the police intend to have further contact with the dairy owner but they have also set out the specifics around each of those complaints where they have acted according to the evidence they had. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It is very interesting to hear about what the police are doing about the dairy owner; my question was about ministerial responsibility. The Prime Minister addressed that question in no way whatsoever. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As I and the Deputy Prime Minister have been at pains to point out over a long period of time there are clear distinctions between what the Minister takes responsibility for and the commissioner’s operational responsibilities. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: If the Prime Minister has so much confidence in the Minister of Police why is that confidence not shared by the people in the Labour Party who ordered the listings and took Mr Hawkins down to the magnificent position of No. 25 even though he is a member of Cabinet; why is that confidence not shared by her own party? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I do not have any ministerial responsibility for a list process. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Can the Prime Minister tell the House whether it is her view that the police are short of resources as indicated by the commissioner’s comments this morning or that the commissioner has deployed resources so poorly that serious sexual offences are not being investigated? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It is not a question of the police not investigating. Before cases are assigned a considerable amount of work is often done. I can advise the member that in respect of a number of the cases forensic evidence is being awaited before cases are assigned and inquiries are being carried out by the crime squad. The fact that a case is not assigned to an individual officer does not mean that no action has been taken. 
Dr Don Brash 
: If allegations of serious sexual assaults remaining uninvestigated are not sufficient to have the Prime Minister question the stewardship of the Minister of Police what exactly will it take to convince her of his inadequacy? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Had the member listened to my answer he would have heard that cases are being investigated. The fact that a case is not assigned to an individual officer does not mean inquiries are not being made. 
Dr Don Brash 
: I seek leave to table for the Prime Minister’s benefit and for the benefit of the House the transcript of the interview with the Commissioner of Police on the  
Breakfast 
 programme this morning. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection; it will not be tabled. 
Rodney Hide 
: I seek the leave of the House to table the letter written by Sergeant Forgarty that the Prime Minister called “ill-advised”. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection; it will not be tabled. 
Working for Families Package—Family Support 
3.  
GEORGINA BEYER (Labour—Wairarapa) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: What changes to family support will come into effect on 1 April 2005 as part of the Working for Families package? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 This Friday family support rates will increase by $25 a week for the first child and $15 a week for each additional child. This means for instance that a three-child family could be up to $55 a week better off in the hand. The foster care allowance the unsupported child’s benefit and the orphans benefit will all increase by $15 per child. Taken in total Friday’s changes will see some 260000 families—more than half of all New Zealand families—entitled to extra money. 
Georgina Beyer 
: Would these families be better off with a tax cut? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: No they would not. A two-parent family with two children earning $37440 will gain $40 a week from Friday and $160 per week by the time the Working for Families package is fully implemented. That is more than the amount of total tax that that family pays; so even if we had a fantasy scenario of zero tax that family could not get as much money as they will get from Working for Families. If we take the well-known example of a single-income earner on $55000 a year with four young children that family would gain $149.77 a week from the time the package is fully rolled out. To receive that through tax cuts would mean a flat tax of 9.5 percent. That is what National is promising; that is why it is so ridiculous. 
John Key 
: What does the Minister think about the following statement: “The accommodation supplement or voucher for housing has harmed not helped housing provision for poor New Zealanders including many Maori and Pacific Islanders.”; and is he surprised to learn that that statement was made by the Rt Hon Helen Clark in June 1994? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I think it is commonly understood that the introduction of the accommodation supplement was in company with the reduction of State housing the reduction of investment in housing. Thirteen thousand houses were sold off. As the Prime Minister has said it would be much better for this country to be building State houses and having people safely in them than to have an accommodation supplement. But as we have one we are using it to help people. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Can the Minister confirm that those on the special benefit who are often in dire financial straits will see no gains as a result of increases in family support because their benefit will be abated dollar for dollar; and does not “no worse off” in this case just mean “still in dire poverty”? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: No one will be worse off financially as a result of the changes introduced. Everybody who is involved in these changes will gain. The changes to the special benefit mean that people who are on it will be grandparented so that they retain their income; and people who come on to emergency assistance in the future will come on to the temporary assistance programme. And of course all of those people who have children in their household will gain from 1 April. 
Police—Resources Counties-Manukau 
4.  
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: How many criminal cases in Counties-Manukau are not yet allocated to an investigating officer and how many of these cases are rape cases? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I am advised that there are 1167 cases where initial inquiries indicate the need for further investigation. Eleven files are of a sexual nature including five cases that are rapes. I am further advised that three of the rape cases are awaiting the results of forensic analysis; one case is likely to be reclassified; and the other case is currently unable to proceed as the victim is in hospital on an unrelated matter and cannot be spoken to at this time. 
Rodney Hide 
: Can the Minister confirm that the Commissioner of Police Rob Robinson was told of these difficulties by Counties-Manukau Police District managers 3 weeks ago and when did the Minister himself first learn of these difficulties? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The audit of the Manukau police took place some 3 weeks ago and the commissioner had that information. I was made aware of it yesterday. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: How many cases awaiting allocation is he aware of at any other police district and how many involve sexual offending? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: If the member puts down a question I will get him the answer. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Can the Minister confirm though that the situation in Counties-Manukau may by no means be unique to that police district because other districts also suffer from chronic under-resourcing and that the only difference between this district and others is that Counties-Manukau has decided to be honest and straightforward about the situation? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I want to tell the member that the police have never been better resourced. We have increased the vote from $816 million up to over $1 billion and of course the police continue to get better deals out of this Government than members opposite were ever prepared to give. 
Ron Mark 
: Can the Minister tell the House how many detectives there are in Counties-Manukau and how many of them have been required to perform traffic duties issuing traffic tickets at the expense of their investigative work that they should be doing? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I think the families who lost four youngsters at Pukekohe in the Counties-Manukau area will be somewhat surprised at that sort of question. If detectives see the law being broken whether they are on the roads or in other places they investigate and follow up. I have to say that Counties-Manukau saw an 11.3 percent reduction in the crime rate over the last 12 months. I think the police there are doing a good job and I am not going to bag their detectives. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You will no doubt have observed from that answer that no attempt at all was made to address the question of numbers that my colleague Ron Mark raised. Could the Minister please do that. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the Minister like to comment on whether he has the information on how many detectives there are. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I do not have that information. However I can say in relation to the files that are awaiting allocation that the Auckland police board of management is putting in a team to attend to that. That will have good results. 
Rodney Hide 
: Is it true that there is a suspect’s name on the file of one of the rape complaints and that this file is unallocated and is lying dormant while a rapist wanders free through Counties-Manukau; or does this Minister of Police simply not know that? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: As I said earlier three of the cases are awaiting the results of forensic analysis. One case is likely to be reclassified and the victim in the other case is in hospital on an unrelated matter. That is the information I have and that is the situation as of today. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I have had two supplementary questions thus far and they were two different questions. Unfortunately I got the same answer to both of them. I know that the Minister is not as hard-working as the Prime Minister alleges but surely to goodness— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: I think it is because the Minister never addressed my question about— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is a point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: —whether it was true that the rapist’s name is on one of these files yet that file is lying dormant. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Minister responded to your question. If he wants to add anything to it I invite him to do so. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The fact is that the Minister was asked a question as to whether he had knowledge. He cannot just sit there and give no answer at all. Even if he got up and said “rhubarb” it might not pass Speakers’ rulings and the Standing Orders but it would at least be an answer and thus far he has refused even to rise to make any attempt to answer the question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: In response the Minister did advise that he had responded with all the information he had. That was a response to the question. It may not in fact be satisfactory but he did address the question by doing that. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. With respect that was not an answer to the question. For him to say he has responded with all the information he had is some sort of answer but he was asked whether he was aware of a case. Surely he can say yes or no rather than treat this House and the public with contempt. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Minister did address the question as it was asked. He did not answer it to the satisfaction of members—that is obvious—but he did address it. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Warily I ask this. After my point of order you politely endorsed I think my point by going back to the Minister and saying that he might like to add a comment. Past Speakers have done that as a polite reminder to the Minister that he or she actually has to address the question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Ministers do not have to address the question. I made a request. The Minister did not have to respond. 
Rodney Hide 
: Well I am sorry Madam Speaker; in my time in the House I have never seen a Minister invited by the Speaker to comment on a question just sit there. I have seen Ministers get up and not give very satisfactory answers but they have always risen to their feet and said something. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I listened carefully. As I recall what the Speaker said to the Minister was that if he wished to add a comment he might do so—if he wished. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Exactly. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Clearly the Minister did not wish to do so. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This is related to the series of questions dealt with by Mr Hawkins. My colleague Tony Ryall asked a very simple question about whether the number of unanswered complaints in the Minister of Police’s own home district was any different from that in other districts—in other words whether it stood out. The Minister’s response was that if the member would like to set that down for him as a written question he would give the member an answer. I would have thought that after this issue being on television and being the subject of numerous newspaper reports and given the fact that it was on the Order Paper yesterday and is on it again today with the Minister having had 4 hours to answer he might be able to give the House a better answer to a simple question like that. Most Ministers would say whether it was unusual—or are we to simply assume that every district across the country has the same sort of poor performance under this Minister as his own home district? I do not think it would be unreasonable to ask the Minister whether he can expand on that answer. Simply saying during question time that the member should write him a letter— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Thank you Mr Brownlee; I understand your point. It is a longstanding practice in this House that if a Minister is asked a very specific question an acceptable reply is to say that he or she will find the answer when he or she has an opportunity to do so. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Based on the experience I went through yesterday I cannot let that stand. The Minister did not say that he would find that out and make it available; the Minister said it should be put down as another question. Our problem is that we have a very limited number of oral questions and as you experienced for yourself yesterday this Minister simply does not answer written questions. Some answers are delayed by up to 3 4 and even 5 weeks as we saw yesterday in the case of Marc Alexander’s question. It has been a tradition in this House that if specific questions about numbers are asked of Ministers—and Ministers often do not have that information—they will say that they are sorry but they do not have the information; they will make it available to the member once they have it. Instead of more oral questions being wasted at question time or your forcing us to ask written questions that simply do not get answered by the Minister I ask you to direct the Minister to say that he will get the answer to that question and furnish it to the member. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member but it is a longstanding parliamentary practice to reply in the way the Minister did—that he requires notice of that question. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No it is not. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. What you are saying is correct but that is not what the Minister said. Maybe it is what he meant to say but I am left to wonder—and I think the House is wondering—whether the Minister was ducking the answer by saying that the member should put down another question in which case he should have said that he did not know the answer. The House is a bit incredulous about that because one would have expected a Minister having learnt that there are unallocated rape cases in one police district immediately to ask the Commissioner of Police whether there are others. So we are incredulous. But maybe this Minister has not asked that question. If he has not he should have told us that. We are now gratified to learn he will find that out but only after he was asked a question by the Opposition. That is his position; I guess that is OK. But it is not acceptable for a Minister who receives a question whose answer could be highly embarrassing to say that he will answer that question only if the member puts it down as another question. So I guess we really want to know from the Minister whether he is saying to the House that he has no idea what is happening in other police districts around the country and that he will not know until a question to him is put down. If that is the situation I guess the House will just have to accept it. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I will make that information available as soon as I get it all.  
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You were commenting earlier on that you would require notification of that question. Can I say that it is my intention to ask that question tomorrow which gives the Minister and his officials at least 24 hours to answer it if they do not have the information beforehand. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is your decision. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Does the Minister know whether there is the name of a rape suspect contained in one of Counties-Manukau’s unallocated files? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police have not made that information available to me. 
Stephen Franks 
: Exactly what does the Minister recommend south Auckland crime victims do to keep themselves and their property safe when the police tell them that they are too busy to investigate thefts or even bullet holes in shop windows? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The people of Counties-Manukau are pleased that the police have been able to reduce crime for the last couple of years. Of course there will always be some criminal activity; we do not live in a paradise. 
Stephen Franks 
: Madam Speaker I seek leave for your authority to ask a further supplementary question without it coming from our allocation. That was a very specific question. It followed from similar questions yesterday asking what people should do when the police tell them that their crime is too low in the priority list for a police response or that it has been filed. The Minister has had time to think about it. I have had no response whatsoever on the question which was about how much self-help is required or what people should do when the police are obviously overwhelmed. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the Minister like to add to his answer. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The people cannot take the law into their own hands. That is very clear. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Quiet please. Members wanted the Minister to answer so would they please listen to him. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I advise those people who are not having satisfactory outcomes to write to me or to the Police Complaints Authority. These processes are set up so that these problems can be dealt with. 
Finance Minister—Confidence 
5.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she despite New Zealand’s growing net debtor position rising current account deficit and the continuing sales of New Zealand assets to foreign buyers still have confidence in her Minister of Finance; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because he is a hard-working and conscientious Minister who has presided over an economy with strong growth and the lowest unemployment in the Western World. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is that the same economy that has seen a $5 billion blowout in our current account deficit that has our net debtor position at $123 billion—about $32 million for every man woman and child in this country—and that also has interest rates heading to 9 percent 10 percent and more; if that is the case what has the Minister of Finance been doing for the last 5 years when I read in the latest special feature of the OECD report that 23 of the 30 countries in the OECD have a lower rate of income tax as a percentage of gross wages than New Zealand has? In fact we are just going backwards are we not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It is the same economy with the same current account deficit as was recorded when that member was the Treasurer in September 1997. It is the same economy where net public sector debt is steadily reducing towards zero at the end of this decade. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Does the Prime Minister believe that the sale of almost half Carter Holt Harvey’s forest estate—150000 hectares—to the highest international bidder is consistent with the national interest and with the commitments entered into by the company at the time the forestry was sold to it; and has she any concerns that compared with Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board our Overseas Investment Commission looks like a doormat of United Future proportions? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As a former Treasurer the member knows that eventually the Overseas Investment Commission and the Minister of Finance will make a judgment on that. I do note that the highest-ever number of net land sales by hectare occurred when Mr Peters was in charge of the overseas investment legislation. 
John Key 
: Why does the Prime Minister have confidence in the Minister of Finance when he does not have a clue what is going on with regard to education savings accounts—when on Sunday he was quoted as telling the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 that education savings accounts were a negative on Tuesday he was quoted in the  
Herald 
 as stating that they had been dropped because they had significant design faults and when only after a ticking-off from her office did he go scurrying to tell the media that those accounts are alive and well and will be out before the Budget? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I know that the member will be very disappointed to hear that several days before the quite wrong report in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 the Minister of Finance and I were discussing the next stage in developing that scheme. 
Rod Donald 
: Does the Prime Minister agree with the Governor of the Reserve Bank that hard-working Kiwi families farmers and business people are paying a 1 to 2 percent interest rate risk premium on their mortgages and bank debts because of New Zealand’s worsening current account deficit and record net foreign debt; and when will her Government take steps to improve our economic self-reliance and sustainability? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There are a number of reasons for current account deficits being high. This Government clearly intends over time to increase the level of savings. We are looking at productivity issues so that we can help to increase the value of the economy. What we do not have is a high interest rate policy unlike the former Governor of the Reserve Bank who said in 1998: “Part of the problem in recent years may have been the less-than-ideal mix of monetary conditions with interest rates too low to encourage saving or discourage borrowing …”. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Further to her earlier answer that said the highest level of net foreign land sales occurred in 1997 when Mr Peters was Treasurer can she confirm that the lowest level—in fact a net transfer of land sales into New Zealand ownership—has occurred in the last year while I have been Minister of Finance? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: It so happens that I have a graph that demonstrates precisely that. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Prime Minister does not have such a graph. I ask her to produce it right now. [ 
Interruption 
] No she does not. I ask her to produce it over here. My point of order is that the Prime Minister knows full well the process of approvals. She is saying not 1998 but 1997 because the process of approvals occurred before I became the Treasurer. That is a fact. More important I declined more overseas applications than any Minister of Finance before or since then. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member is not making a point of order. He is debating the issue. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Under Standing Order 361 I require the Prime Minister to table that official document now. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Exactly. I thank the member. I was going to suggest the same thing be done at the end of the question if the Prime Minister has quoted from that document. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The whole House has heard Mr Winston Peters accuse the Prime Minister of not having the graph that she clearly did have. He effectively called her— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No he did not. This is not a point of order. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Is the Prime Minister aware that in contrast to the Minister of Finance his counterpart in the UK Gordon Brown allows people to save £7000 each year which goes up to £8000 then to £9000 and then to £10000 over the next 3 years; may we see her Minister follow that sensible lead given the very worrying statistics set out in the primary question? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As the member knows the Government will be addressing the issue of savings in the Budget and does have plans to increase the level of national savings unlike the former Governor of the Reserve Bank who when he posed the question to himself of the key challenge of how to increase national savings said: “I am frankly not sure how this culture of low household sector saving can be changed.” 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Why will the Prime Minister not table the chart now seeing that the question is being asked now and is it not a fact that until I became the Minister in charge of the Overseas Investment Commission no application had been declined for a full 7 years and that more applications were declined during my time as the Minister than under any Minister in charge of the commission before or since then; is that the truth or not? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Does the Prime Minister seek leave to table her document? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The convention is to table documents at the end of the question so that Ministers can continue to refer to the information in them. I have to say with regard to what the member has just said to the House that it is quite untrue that the level of approvals under Mr Peters was lower than it has been since then. My graph shows that for the years 2001 2002 2003 and 2004 the net freehold land area sold to overseas persons was substantially lower than during the time when Mr Peters was Treasurer. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I asked the Prime Minister to confirm that more applications were declined during my time than during the time of any Minister before or since then. That was the question—not what the number of net sales were or any other convoluted figure. I want that answer and can I please have it. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The significance is in the net hectares sold offshore and that is where that member excelled in selling New Zealand out. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am taking the lead from the Rt Hon Winston Peters and from your running of the House. Since it is now possible to seek confirmation by way of a point of order can the Prime Minister confirm that she has said that the Government will address New Zealand’s household savings issue by introducing tax cuts in the next Budget? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The Budget is to be delivered on a date well known to the member and he will just have to wait for it. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I seek leave to table a table of Overseas Investment Commission approvals which shows that in my time in charge of them they had a dramatic drop from the number under Mr Birch and were dramatically fewer than Mr Cullen has approved. This is the chart now properly interpreted. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
New Zealand Qualifications Authority—Confidence 
6.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Education 
: Does he have confidence in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority; if so why? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 Generally yes. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Associate Minister now confirm that with regard to the scholarship exam he has adopted a policy whereby scholarship students will be assessed to ensure that ranking of candidates is produced by marks or grades and that a fixed percentage of students will receive awards; and can he confirm that this is a major back-down on his purist theories about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and standards-based assessment? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Yes no no and no. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Has he received any reports about student and teacher attitudes towards the NCEA? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Yes I have had two reports recently. The first of them was from the  
Horowhenua-Kapiti Chronicle 
 referring to a public meeting at which the Opposition spokesperson on education announced that the National Party wished to return to a scaling system that was described by Waiopehu College principal Steve Browne as a system that had treated students unfairly in the past. Equally at the same meeting one parent Carol Smith said to the member referred to that her son who was in year 13 at Horowhenua College had had no problems with the system and that the first 2 years had been fine. Also comments were made by a distinguished teacher colleague of the questioner Mr Allan Peachey who stated recently in his publication: “I believe history will judge them”—principals who have tried to keep norm-referencing alive—“to have failed a critical test of leadership to the long-term disadvantage of students.” I think the Opposition spokesperson on education is equally failing that critical test of leadership. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That answer was too long. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Does the Associate Minister not think it strange that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority can retain a demeanour of sublime innocence over NCEA and a raft of other issues while all around it all hell is breaking loose; and is there not just the slightest possibility that something is indeed rotten in New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s “state of Denmark”? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I know that the member is aware that the Government has instigated a State Services Commission inquiry into how the Qualifications Authority handled the 2004 scholarship exams and that that review will also look into other aspects of our school qualifications system. The Government is seeking some assurance in this area. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Supplementary question Metiria Turei. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This is the third time you have called the Green Party in preference to ACT. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I apologise for that. You will be called next and it will not happen again. 
Metiria Turei 
: Does the Associate Minister stand by his response to question for written answer No. 1745 that: “Currently Cambridge International Examinations have no school qualifications registered with any Government agency”; and is he surprised to learn that New Zealand schools spent $2 million last year buying Cambridge International Examinations foreign examinations—examinations that are not registered with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Yes that is the advice I have received. I stand by that answer. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Is it normal for an education provider to fail a New Zealand Qualifications Authority audit on 32 counts in 1 year as Te Wananga o Aotearoa did in 2001; if it is not normal why did his Government increase funding to this education provider from $3 million per year to $239 million per year in spite of the massive failed New Zealand Qualifications Authority performance audits? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: My delegations do not extend any responsibility into the tertiary sector. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The question referred to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. My supplementary question related directly to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority audits. Could I ask the Associate Minister to say whether it was normal for that to happen and if it was not why was there a massive increase in funding in the way that there was under his Government in spite of the failed audits? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: No I would not regard that as a normal circumstance. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Can the Associate Minister confirm that the person who heads the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has a physical education degree and who is her political sponsor for that position? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I can confirm that it is my understanding that Ms Van Rooyen is a graduate in physical education. I have no knowledge of the appointment procedure that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority board followed to appoint her. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: Has the Associate Minister given any consideration to merging the New Zealand Qualifications Authority the Education Review Office and the Teachers Council into some sort of educational standards authority to cut red tape and improve the kind of coordination that was missing in the Cambridge High School case as all those agencies are concerned with educational standards of some sort; if not why not? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I think it would be more logical to wait for the outcome of the reviews in train before any such considerations are given. 
Hon Bill English 
: Now that the Associate Minister has backed down on his purist stance on standards-based assessment for scholarship how long will it take for him to change NCEA levels 1 to 3 so that thousands of students who are not among our top academic students can also get a fair go when it comes to assessment? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: There is no back down or change in relation to the scholarship exam. I can confirm that the examination for New Zealand Scholarship will remain standards based. 
Hon Bill English 
: Is the Associate Minister aware that the work of the Scholarship Reference Group shows that the scholarship exam in 2004 did not rank students; if that is the case how will the New Zealand Qualifications Authority decide who gets 140 school scholarship awards which have not yet been given out and which require the authority to rank several students who gain scholarships at one school or are those 140 students going to end up with some half-baked Cabinet certificate? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: The reference group is confident that procedures can be put in place in the exam under a standards-based regime to receive exactly that goal. In terms of the historical results I am not aware of the difficulty the member is talking about. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I asked a question directed quite precisely at the 2004 New Zealand Scholarship and at the 140 school scholarship awards which have yet to be given out—something the Associate Minister would be completely familiar with. I did not ask him about difficulties; I asked him how the New Zealand Qualifications Authority was going to allocate those scholarships and he did not answer that question at all. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I listened to the answer. The Associate Minister did address the question. He may not have answered it to the member’s satisfaction but he did address the question. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I seek leave to table documents obtained under the Official Information Act showing that Te Wananga o Aotearoa failed 32 audits in 2001 the year immediately prior to the massive escalation in Government funding to that education provider. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Education Export—Innovation 
7.  
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What steps is he taking if any to promote innovation within the export education industry? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Targeted innovation funding will provide leverage in developing New Zealand’s offshore education presence. Our projects include a joint project with a Chinese university development for teachers of English in China a foundation studies programme in Viet Nam and a virtual field trip to New Zealand for years 8 to 10 students in Asia. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Has the Minister received any advice on the value of the international education industry to the New Zealand economy? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Yes. The Education New Zealand Trust estimates that the direct revenue from international education amounts to approximately $2.2 billion annually. But of course it also exposes New Zealanders to a wide range of cultural and intellectual exchanges increases diversity and develops networks that will be a huge long-term boost to New Zealand. 
Question No. 8 to Minister 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Quite obviously the Prime Minister has popped out for a minute perhaps into the lobby to sort out a problem or two. I seek leave for this question to be deferred until the Prime Minister steps back into the Chamber. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for the question to be deferred. Is there any objection? There is. The question will be asked. 
Maori Land Court—Release of Minute 
8.  
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she stand by the statement made on her behalf in the House yesterday regarding the release of a minute from the Maori Land Court that: “My understanding is that the minute was released by the Chief Judge of the Maori Land Court himself to Mr Jonathan Milne which I am advised is not the normal practice.”; if not why not? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
 on behalf of the 
 Prime Minister 
: I answer on behalf of the Prime Minister who is meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister. The statement made yesterday was based on comments made by Mr Jonathan Milne to my parliamentary private secretary Russell Fairbrother when he stated that the judge gave him the paper. I am now advised that Mr Milne now states that he obtained the document by applying to the registrar of the Maori Land Court in Wellington. That of course is in conformity with the normal practice under rule 167 of that court. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does she support the statement made by her Attorney-General Dr Michael Cullen to the  
New Zealand Herald 
 that: “Parliamentarians have to be extremely careful about criticism of judges.”; if so will she now apologise to the Chief Judge of the Maori Land Court whom she has falsely accused of leaking what is in fact a publicly available document? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The word “leaking” was not used at all in the parliamentary answer given yesterday. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. While that may be the sort of desperate clinging to a word in a question that gets a Minister off the hook surely the essence of the question does have to be addressed. There is no way that a Minister can simply say he or she did not use a particular word even though that may have been the inference of what was said. The Minister must address the question in its substance. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the Minister like to expand on his answer. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I will expand by repeating what I said yesterday: that the document was released according to Mr Milne by the judge to him. Mr Milne was clearly less than careful in his use of words and I certainly regret any imputation that might have been contained therein. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister stand by her indication to the House yesterday that the Government is prepared to appeal the Maori Land Court decision if need be in the case of the 50-kilometre stretch of the Bay of Plenty coastline; if so why does she not just save New Zealand taxpayers time and expense by fixing up the foreshore and seabed legislation which seems to have allowed customary rights to be claimed on the basis of kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: It would be worth perhaps quoting somewhat further from the minute of the Chief Judge: “Of course whether there is sufficient evidence to make another claim to customary rights in the nature of rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over the stretch of coastline in question is another matter.” 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I asked whether she stuck by her statement that the Government will appeal the decision of the Maori Land Court if it does not like it. To just simply quote another part of the judge’s minute does not answer that question in any way whatsoever. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I was clearly indicating that the judge certainly has not made up his mind about what the outcome will be. The Crown will make up its mind what its subsequent action will be depending on the nature of the judgment that is made. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Surely that then should become an answer. It should be given as an answer rather than as a response to a point of order. The question simply derived from the fact that the Minister was prepared to stand in the House when acting as the Prime Minister yesterday and to say that if the judgment went too far the Crown would appeal it. Today he is on the back foot having embarrassed himself by attacking the judge and is not prepared to stick by a decision that clearly was made yesterday. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have taken the point of order. It has been addressed. Both the point of order and the answer to the question have been addressed. Can we now move on please. 
Dail Jones 
: Is it not also correct—I am asking the Prime Minister this—that when one reads the minutes one sees that the judge makes the point and draws the conclusion that the applicants—and they are the 15 people in Opotiki who have not said whether they belong to hapu or iwi—must redraft paragraph 9 of their application to provide greater particularity in relation to the scale extent and frequency of the activities uses or practices that are the subject of the application which is the key to a customary use application and that the judge is thereby saying that the basis of the application must be reconsidered because the current application does not seem to establish one? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I think it is fair to say that the Chief Judge has accepted an application and indicated that a great deal more work is required on the application and a great deal more evidence is needed. That suggests therefore that people should not over-react against matters at this point. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Does the Prime Minister accept that the Chief Judge has said that a claim on the basis of kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga certainly supported by a little more particularity would be enough for the court to hear the claim; if so why does the Government not move to amend the foreshore and seabed legislation in order to prevent kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga being a basis for customary rights claims? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: This is the first claim taken under the Foreshore and Seabed Act. The judge has determined that the matters in front of him so far are sufficient to proceed further subject to further evidence being provided. It is in many ways a test case. That is why I indicated that if the outcome is such that the Government believes there are grounds for appeal then the Government will certainly appeal against the judgment. It seems highly premature at this point to rush in and start legislating against a judgment in a case that has not even begun to be heard at this particular point. 
Question No. 5 to Minister 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 In the interests of accuracy I seek leave to table a chart that shows that in 1996 the consents granted by the Overseas Investment Commission were 339 that then they dropped to 289 and 281 in the next 2 years and that then there was a massive jump to 416 in 1999 and to 314 in 2000. I table this so that the Prime Minister can have her figures put right. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
New Zealand Packaging Accord 2004—Effectiveness 
9.  
MIKE WARD (Green) 
 to the  
Minister for the Environment 
: Is she satisfied that the New Zealand Packaging Accord 2004 has been effective in reducing the use of non-recyclable packaging; if so why? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister for the Environment) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for the Environment 
: The accord was signed 7 months ago to run for 5 years. It is in its early days. Baseline measures will be established over the accord’s first 2 years and measurable improvements including reducing the use of non-recyclable packaging are expected in years 3 4 and 5. I am satisfied the accord will be effective in this regard. 
Mike Ward 
: Is the Minister disappointed by Meadowfresh’s recently introduced non-recyclable plastic and cardboard composite milk carton and does the Packaging Accord have measures for persuading manufacturers to withdraw packaging that is so clearly contrary to the spirit of the accord? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I am aware of the issue in terms of the non-separability or the difficulty of separability of the cardboard from the plastic which also does not carry the required identification. I encourage the member to make use of the appeals procedure which is part of the accord to raise that concern with Fonterra. 
David Parker 
: Why is the Minister confident the accord will work? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Over 80 percent of the supermarket business—Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises—and more than 200 organisations including 85 percent of packaging manufacturing and a number of significant brand owners have signed up to the Packaging Accord and intend to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. The accord clearly states that the Government will consider regulation if such voluntary measures do not work. 
Mike Ward 
: In view of the fact that the Minister clearly knows about this package can we not expect the Minister to make use of the provisions to do something about it? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I will certainly consider that possibility in discussion with my colleague. 
Mike Ward 
: Does the Minister believe that the Meadowfresh package has been designed in cooperation with the resource recovery sector or that it has been reviewed against the packaging codes of practice provided for in the Packaging Accord; if so does the Minister for the Environment not think that this package represents a failure of the accord to prevent the production of unsustainable packaging? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I do not have the information with me that would enable me to usefully answer that question. 
Mike Ward 
: What does the Minister suggest that community groups in Central Otago like Central Otago Wastebusters that already has mountains of non-recyclable packaging do with these latest non-recyclable packages? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I have no useful suggestion for them other than to avail themselves of the complaint process that is part of the accord. 
Building Act—Changes to Section 363 
10.  
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
 to the  
Minister for Building Issues 
: What changes is the Department of Building and Housing recommending to section 363 of the Building Act 2004 following reports that if the letter of the law was applied it would force the closure of Auckland airport and that new building consent laws have delayed the opening of the accident and medical centre at Porirua’s Kenepuru Hospital by 3 months? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister for Building Issues) 
: 
 I have asked the department to investigate amendments to section 363 to remove any uncertainty that may arise from an overly literal interpretation of its provisions. However I can say the section is not bringing about the extreme consequences attributed to it by the member. Auckland airport will not be closing and the delay at Kenepuru appears to have been the result of a number of factors. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Can the Minister explain what public purpose has been served by Transit New Zealand having to withdraw its consent for the State Highway 20 extension and instead replacing it with 39 individual consents to comply with the new Building Act and how will this additional bureaucracy help us to resolve the huge transport problems facing Auckland? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: The new Building Act is designed to improve consumer protection. It is a bit rich for that member to suggest that the Government has botched up with the Act when the whole reason we had to introduce it was to clean up the leaky buildings mess that that party put into place. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. My question was quite simple. My point of order is in respect of the answer given by the Minister and yes we did get some abuse as we normally do. But it was a question about what public purpose is served by a new Building Act that requires a single consent for the extension of State Highway 20 to be withdrawn and replaced by 39 separate consents. The Minister made no attempt whatsoever to answer that constructive question. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I was unable to hear the Minister’s answer. This is the last warning for those members who barrack while others are speaking. Maybe the Minister would like to repeat the answer. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: The answer to the question that the member asked is actually of a more general nature than the specific transport issue that he brought up which I have no responsibility for. However I do have responsibility for the new Building Act that is designed to protect the consumer from the very mess that that member’s party created when it changed the regulations in 1991. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You invited the Minister to repeat his answer and he did that but his answer was unsatisfactory in the first place. It did not address the question. The question was quite a simple one. The Minister has repeatedly said that the Building Act is there to make life better for New Zealanders effectively. How does changing from a one-consent process for a stretch of road to a 39-consent process for a stretch of road benefit New Zealanders? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I remind the member that members cannot prescribe how Ministers answer—for example “Yes” or “No”. In this case the Minister addressed the question although the answer may not be satisfactory to the member. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: In view of the fact that section 363 of the Building Act becomes operative on 31 March 2005—that is tomorrow—and provides that no part of a public building can be used if building work is being undertaken can the Minister give an assurance that both the Beehive and Bowen House will be vacated from midnight tonight and remain so until the required completion certificate is issued? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I am confident that members of Parliament can rest assured that they will not have to vacate their offices. 
Mark Peck 
: Why was section 363 included in the Building Act? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Section 363 is a public safety measure that gives legislative effect to a key recommendation of the Cave Creek inquiry. It seeks to ensure the safety of the public by placing limits on the use of buildings affected by building work that have yet to be inspected and approved. My department has issued guidance to territorial authorities on the practical implication of the section. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Can the Minister confirm that this Government will comply with this law in the sense that the Beehive from floor 3 to floor 9 can be occupied legally only as a consequence of interim code compliance certificates and that those interim compliance certificates as confirmed by his department this morning become null and void tomorrow; and what sort of example does it set when this Government is not even prepared to comply with its own stupid laws? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: The question the member has just posed is typical of the alarmist and extremist nature of misinformation—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: —that the member is promoting and propagating about section 363. 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. For the third time now members on this side of the House have been brought to order for interjecting. On all of those occasions the interjections have followed abusive or derogatory remarks made by the Minister during the course of answering a question. I would like to make it clear that if Ministers when answering questions are going to use that opportunity to hurl abuse at members of the Opposition then those interjections will continue. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I think a very fair point was raised there but also I remind the member that when the question contains abusive comments then it does invite abusive comments in return. I think that sometimes members opposite who raise those points of order should listen more carefully to the questions they ask. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the Minister like to repeat his answer please. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Earlier today my officials including my chief executive briefed the member on the nature of the issues around section 363. He already knows that the question he has just asked me is simply untrue. It is easily understandable then why I become very impatient with the question. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: As I have been accused by the Minister of misleading the House I seek the leave of the House to make a personal explanation as to exactly what was said to me by the chief executive of the Department of Building and Housing in respect of section 363. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is objection. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Members opposite have an appalling inability to understand the English language. The Minister said that the statement was untrue. That is not the same thing as accusing a member of misleading the House. If he had said that it was deliberately untrue that would be different. I wish the member would just follow what is actually said. 
Stephen Franks 
: The statement made was “which that member well knows is untrue” which is an entirely different claim. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I accept what the member says. In that case the appropriate point of order to raise is to require the Minister to withdraw and apologise not to seek to make a personal explanation which would be a political one. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I again seek leave under the Standing Orders to make a personal explanation in respect of the comments made by the Minister for Building Issues that I deliberately misled the House about a briefing I received from the Department of Building and Housing this morning. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Surely you are required now to ask the Minister to withdraw and apologise. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I was about to do so thank you. Because the member has taken offence at the implication would the Minister please withdraw and apologise. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek the leave of the House to table the interim code compliance certificates that allow floors 3 to 9 of the Beehive to be temporarily occupied and the provisions of the Building Act that abolish those and make it unlawful for them to be occupied. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought is there any objection? There is objection. The document shall not be tabled. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think the issues raised by Dr Smith place a certain number of duties on you in fact. I think it is only fair that you are able to tell the House whether the Parliamentary Service Ministerial Services and those responsible for the building construction in both Bowen House and the Beehive will be complying with the law. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I understand that written questions have been lodged. I have not seen the answers but as soon as I have they will be conveyed to the member. So at this stage I am not in a position— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am a little confused by that process. This is a responsibility that lies directly with you as Speaker. Your responsibility is— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member please sit down. This is a Parliamentary Service matter. It is not a point of order but for the information of the House as this is a matter of some concern obviously I have given members the information that my understanding was that written questions had been lodged by the Hon Dr Nick Smith and answers will in fact be given to him in the course of time. [ 
Interruption 
] It is a Parliamentary Service matter. I was merely giving this information for the information of the House. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes I know and that is what I am saying that the questions have been lodged. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This morning I had discussions with the building enforcement division of the Wellington City Council and also with the building service development manager of Parliamentary Service on this very issue. The advice I received from the Wellington City Council was that if there was a literal enforcement of the law then that would be the case with regard to the Beehive and its continued occupation would be unlawful. I seek— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: This is not a point of order. It is matter of debate. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It is a very important point of order. You as Speaker of the House of Representatives— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member please sit down. This is not a point of order. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I think you do owe me Madam Speaker the right— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member please sit down or he will leave the Chamber. This is not a point of order. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You have not heard it. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have heard the point of order. You were talking to the same point of order. Can we please move on. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Are you ruling that members of this House cannot consider it a point of order to ask whether they are behaving in a lawful manner or complying with the law? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No I did not say that at all as the member knows well. I gave a response to his question. That was the end of the matter. There is no more to be said on that matter. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. My original point of order on this matter was to indicate that the occupation of Parliament’s buildings and the activities that occur in those buildings are your direct responsibility not the responsibility of Parliamentary Service which is a vehicle for giving effect to your responsibilities. I ask simply whether you as the person responsible for the buildings are satisfied that the buildings are being lawfully occupied from midnight tonight when it is very clear that throughout the country other New Zealanders will not be able to occupy buildings that are being altered. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: As I have said to the member I will be looking into the matter. Can we now move on. The member will be informed of what the position is. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I would appreciate your clearing up for us the process by which you propose to go about resolving this issue. It is an issue of significance. If I heard you correctly you said that written questions had been lodged and that you would advise us of the answers to those written questions. Are you suggesting that the conduct of your legal responsibilities is to be carried out in a manner whereby— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: No I am not and the member knows that. He is confusing two matters. Please sit down. Firstly written questions were lodged. I acknowledged that. Looking into the answers—Parliamentary Service is giving advice on that. I accept that responsibility. Secondly I said I would advise on any matter apart from that that related to this building that affected members. Those are two issues and they may well be related I do not know. I said I would consider the matter. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Make it brief please. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I will be brief. I just want to be absolutely clear that you have now told us there is no connection between— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I did not say that Dr Smith. I said there may be a connection. I simply will not know until I have had an opportunity to look at it. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I believe I am entitled to complete my point of order and not have it interrupted by the Speaker. You do not know what I was about to say. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I apologise. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: The point is very important in the conduct of your legal duties. We must have it clear that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between written questions lodged by a member of the Opposition and your carrying out of your legal duties. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: One of the issues here of course is what you are responsible for. If members care to read Standing Order 363(2) they will find of course that the means of obtaining information from the Speaker in the exercise of her administrative responsibilities is done by way of written questions. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is right. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: That is why the answers to written questions are the means by which the Speaker can communicate back to members about those matters. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Exactly. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This is an entirely new point of order and it goes back some time. You have just seen a repetition of it and it is a gentle reminder that you are Parliament’s lady now. When the original point of order was raised by Nick Smith Michael Cullen rose and while he was speaking to the point of order you clearly spoke into the microphone and said: “Yes that’s right yes that’s right.” encouraging Michael Cullen in speaking to the point of order. In fact the same thing has just happened now. When Michael Cullen was on his feet speaking to the point or order you were concurring with him and eventually egging him on. I am not being critical of the Speaker. What I suggest is that you hear the points of order in silence and rule at the end rather than egging on your old team. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank the member for his contribution to the debate. I call question No. 11. Oh I am sorry there is still a supplementary question from the Hon Dr Nick Smith. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You asked me to begin question No 11. You cannot revert now to giving the member a supplementary question without having the courtesy of asking me whether I would like to yield to him. I am happy to do so but I would like some manners on the member’s part. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The member has one more supplementary question. Would Mr Peters be gracious enough to enable him to ask his supplementary question? Then that will be it for the day. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I thank Mr Peters. I am indebted to him. Noting that the Minister said in his answer to a previous question that a literal interpretation of section 363 would require public buildings that do not have a code compliance certificate to be vacated why would that not apply to the public building of the Beehive? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: The member has used the wrong word. It is not “would” but “could”. My officials have urged local government to use a sensible approach to this and all local government organisations have been following that very well. There is an ambiguity in the legislation as the member knows from the briefing he received earlier. In that briefing he was given an assurance that this was not actually creating a problem anywhere in New Zealand but the Government is taking steps to give greater guidance by means of our amendment to the legislation. There is no problem. We will make sure it does not become one. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek leave to table a report of the Manukau City Council stating that section 363 would require the closure of Auckland International Airport on Friday. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I also seek the leave of the House to table a document concerning the advice of the Department of Building and Housing to councils with regard to section 363 suggesting that they do not enforce it. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to Speaker’s ruling 117/1 given by Mr Speaker Jack in 1977 and I refer to the Hon Nick Smith’s seeking leave of the House to give a personal explanation. When we follow that Speaker’s ruling it is quite clear that the House would normally and invariably give such leave. Indeed the Leader of the House Dr Cullen objected due to a misunderstanding on his part. On reflection I think that leave should have been granted and I flag it now and raise it. I do not think there is any point in the House going back to it but I do think it sets a bad precedent for the future particularly if the Government is to deny members leave to make a personal explanation when their reputation and honour have been impugned as the Minister for Building Issues did in this instance. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I’d like to be quite clear about my reason for refusing leave. I had every reason to believe—and subsequent questions confirmed it in terms of my own view—that the explanation would be a political statement about the interpretation of legislation not a matter of personal honour. We have had one or two rather recent cases—too many of them—where personal statements have not been personal statements. If members continue to abuse the personal statement process then leave will be declined more often. 
Stephen Franks 
: We can understand the Deputy Prime Minister’s view on the abuse of the personal explanation process but in this case it was quite clear that someone had been accused of consciously making an untrue statement to this House. Mr Speaker Hunt’s ruling 117/2 immediately below the ruling that my colleague referred to is stated in quite firm words and we do not want to see that derogated from simply because there are some members abusing the personal statement mechanisms and going unpunished. That ruling states: “A personal explanation can be used about an answer a Minister has given. That is always the way in which a misleading reply is cleared up.” It seems that if we allow this to be a precedent for discouraging personal statements where a member was accused of consciously misleading or of making an untrue statement we would be circumscribing our own privileges. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Whether leave is given as the member knows is really for the House to determine not the Speaker. But I thank you for the contribution. 
Police Officer Altercation—Investigation 
11.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Was a police officer involved in a physical altercation with a Michael Famodun on 12 November 2004 and is he satisfied that a full and thorough investigation was conducted into the outcome of that altercation? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I am advised by the police that a complaint has been made to the Police Complaints Authority following an incident in a car-park in Auckland on 12 November 2004 involving Mr Famodun and an off-duty police officer. A Police Complaints Authority investigation is currently being conducted into the allegations made by members of his family. I am advised that he died some 3 months after this incident. A separate police investigation is also being conducted. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Can the Minister explain why the family of Mr Michael Famodun cannot bring the police officer known as RC1W249 before a court of law when on 12 November 2004 Mr Famodun who suffered from sickle-cell anaemia and who was half an hour out of hospital was assaulted by this officer in a car-park and who died apparently from that assault on 22 February being aged 33 years and having on the death certificate as cause of death “a massive intercranial haemorrhage such as occurs from a forceful assault or blow to the head” as appears was the case on 12 November 2004 inflicted by police officer RC1W249? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: As I said there are two investigations going on into the matter: one by the Police Complaints Authority and a separate one conducted by the police. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Has the Minister not been able to determine thus far that the man’s life was taken needlessly at the hands of an obviously seriously stressed non-duty police officer who thwarted attempts to get police to the scene saying that “no police personnel would be attending the scene they were too busy to waste their time” and who even delayed an ambulance getting to the scene to this extremely sick unfortunate and now damaged man? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: That is precisely why there are two investigations going on at the moment to try to establish the facts. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I seek to table a letter in which Mr Famodun sets out what happened which was written before he died; a further letter from his sister who is a trained medical doctor; and the death certificate which sets out his cause of death. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents? Is there any objection? Yes there is objection. They will not be tabled. 
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
12.  
HELEN DUNCAN (Labour) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Education 
: What decisions has the Government made regarding New Zealand Scholarship in 2005? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 Cabinet yesterday considered the report of the Scholarship Reference Group a group of noted education leaders asked to provide advice and recommendations on this year’s scholarship examinations. The Government has endorsed their key recommendations and would like to acknowledge the work of that group in this forum. One key recommendation is that scholarships should be awarded to an agreed target percentage of students in every subject set within a range of 2 to 3 percent of the number of students taking that subject at National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 thus giving certainty as to the number of students receiving scholarships. 
Helen Duncan 
: How will New Zealand Scholarship be assessed in 2005? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: It is the Government’s intention to continue with standards-based assessment for New Zealand Scholarship. The Scholarship Reference Group did not recommend for or against the standards-based examination. What it requested was an examination that is designed in such a way that “student performance can be assessed against an assessment schedule that ensures a ranking of candidates is produced by marks or grades”. This provides the certainty that the Government required for there to be no repetition of the difficulties with this year’s scholarship examination. 
Urgent Debates 
New Zealand Scholarship Examination—Future 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have received a letter from the Hon Bill English seeking to debate under Standing Order 373 an announcement by the Associate Minister of Education about the future of the New Zealand Scholarship exams. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. Given that it relates to a matter of considerable public importance and that it sets out the Government’s acceptance of most of the recommendations of an expert panel set up a month or so ago following controversy over the National Certificate of Educational Achievement I consider that the House should have an early opportunity to consider the matter. I am therefore prepared to accept the application and I call upon Mr English to move the motion. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. It is good to see that the Government has backed down on its purist ideological model it has been imposing on the students of secondary schools in New Zealand. 
Opposition Member 
: Step one. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: As my colleague has said that is only step one because the big question hanging over the education of 100000 students who will be entering for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) this year is this: how long will it take the Minister to back down and change the way he operates the NCEA? 
Today the Government continued the tactic of stonewalling and obfuscation that it has followed all this year. But members in the House know that as these issues are raised and that as public concern increases the Government will be forced to move in order to make some pragmatic changes to the NCEA. 
I want to remind the House of the series of events that have led to this decision announced today by the Government. In late January I became aware of the fact that there were some odd results in the scholarship exam. They were much talked about around the education sector. The Government apparently did not know anything about those matters so I put them into the public arena. Public concern about the scholarship results was quite substantial. 
The Government was then forced to defend the scholarship exam and it defended it by saying that it would not release the information—that there was nothing wrong with it and that variability such as there was with those results was to be expected. I think that the matter might have rested there if it were not for the fact that many schools and their teachers and students felt cheated. When they saw the results of the scholarship exam they expressed their views very strongly. Many of them went to the media and many of them came to me. 
The Government then tried to cover up what had happened with scholarship. Through questions in the House Opposition members were able to establish that the Minister of Education Trevor Mallard had known for several weeks that there were problems with the scholarship exam results. But even though he knew there were problems he made public statements announcing changes to the scholarship awards without any reference to those problems at all. 
I take this opportunity to lay the blame for the scholarship debacle very clearly where it should lie which is at the feet of Trevor Mallard the Minister of Education. He is the man who right through last year brushed aside every critic labelling them as idiots. He is the man who gave total backing to an incompetent New Zealand Qualifications Authority as it went about the process of implementing the scholarship system which the authority had been told would not work. In fact some of the people from whom the Government took advice for this announcement are the people who told the Government 2 years ago that the path it was going down would not work. 
Trevor Mallard decided to continue anyway. He continued in a way that was reckless of the aims and aspirations of the thousands of young New Zealanders who are our best students. I believe that he knew it would not work very well but he had the arrogance to believe that that would not matter. That is what I believe happened. 
Then a couple of thousand young students in New Zealand ended up with the most bizarre exam results they could get—results where the Cabinet said: “You passed it.” Imagine that! It is like Zimbabwe. The authority did not get the right results; the matter got in the paper because of the authority’s incompetence; and Cabinet stepped in and said: “We will give you a certificate of distinction and you a certificate of distinction.” 
The young people of New Zealand were confronted with the awful spectacle of the Hon David Benson-Pope as chief examiner. Well when he fell asleep in the House people really got to see the Government in action—because that is what the Government did about it; it tried to sleep right through the debate. In the end the Minister succumbed to the pressure and set up the Scholarship Reference Group. 
I have said all along that what those students need in scholarship is a ranking exam because scholarship could not work in the way it was set up. It was set up as if everyone who passed the standard would receive a scholarship but of the students who passed the standard only some would receive money. So they have to be ranked; it is obvious. Last year I asked some of our leading educationalists how that ranking would happen. Well none of them knew how it would happen and that is why we ended up with such a debacle. 
But I have to say that the debacle is not over. There are still 140 school awards to be made under the scholarship system—140 school awards have not yet been made. So this is the situation that confronts students: if three or four students in a school all receive one scholarship all in different subjects only one of them will receive $1500 a year for the next 3 years—$4500. One of them will receive money—but no one knows who it will be or how it will be decided. 
Even now schools are confused. I was rung by a school official today who said: “We have just been asked by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to rank our students so that we decide the top scholar in our school who will get $4500 over 3 years.” I rang another school which told me: “Oh no. The school doesn’t do it; the authority will do it.” So I asked: “How will the authority rank your students to determine the top scholar?”. Well the school had no idea and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has no idea. I have looked through the Scholarship Reference Group report and the Cabinet paper and no one there has any idea. 
So 140 of our top students are now pitched into another lottery. The first lottery concerned whether they would receive a scholarship at all—those ones were the lucky ones; they got it—and the next lottery means that the 140 have to sit around and wait for someone to decide somehow who will receive those top scholarships. The scholarship is worth $4500. That is 450 hours of part-time work at $10 an hour if one is lucky. So it matters. 
Phil Heatley 
: Cabinet will decide! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Maybe my colleague is right. Why do we not get the Hon David Benson-Pope to decide? Why does he not decide? 
Pansy Wong 
: Is he awake enough for it? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well if he is awake—if he can stay awake long enough can he decide? Well I would say no because the Hon David Benson-Pope has shown no interest in students’ welfare or in fairness for students all the way through this whole debacle. 
So when the Minister gets to his feet I want him to explain how those scholarships will be allocated. I want him to tell us how a system that the Scholarship Reference Group says cannot rank students will actually rank them. The House deserves to know today how that will happen because hundreds of students out there are still waiting to find out whether they get the top Scholarship Award for their school. Well that is scholarship! 
The Government will pretend that it has made no changes to its lovely standards-based theology when in fact it has. It has changed the system by doing three things. Firstly it has ranked students. Secondly it has provided gradings or marks as the recommendation here says. Thirdly it has predetermined how many students will get scholarships which is in the range of 2 or 3 percent. I agree with those changes; I welcome the back-down. 
But now we come to the serious issue: how long will the Government try to hold out on the NCEA being unchanged—remaining as it is? Every time Government members get up in the House and say that the Opposition spokesman is talking nonsense and that everything is fine we find within about 2 months that the policy has changed. 
My colleague from New Zealand First Brian Donnelly has had exactly the same experience. He gets up and says certain things. The Government is nice to him for some reason—it always abuses me—but it ends up changing the policy. [ 
Interruption 
] Well the Minister thinks that it is only backward retrograde conservative people who want the change. 
I have a letter from Shirley Boys High School—a very reasonable moderate letter which the Minister was sent—that sets out the strengths of the NCEA but then that essentially says the assessment does not provide fairness for the school’s students. That school is a pretty straightforward middle-of-the-road non-political school. I want to tell the Minister—who is a new Minister a junior Minister and usually a sleeping Minister—that when he gets a letter like that he should take notice. That school is not some den of National voters or some arm of the Business Roundtable; that is a middle-of-the-road mainstream school suggesting that he change the NCEA to provide fairness for students. 
I believe that the Minister should do that and I believe that in the end he will be forced to do that—or the next Government certainly will. He simply needs to change the assessment for our students. 
I have looked at the national results for 2004. The essential problem is that a student’s success in the NCEA depends on picking the right subjects in the right year. 
Stephen Franks 
: And the right school. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Actually it is worse than that. Public confidence in this qualification is now so low that the qualification is now rated according to the school someone went to. I have to tell this House with regret that someone who went to Catlins Area School Menzies College or Blue Mountain College in my electorate will not be rated in the same way as someone who went to Tawa College Avondale College or Massey High School because those are schools people have heard of. They have never heard of Catlins Area School or of Northern Southland College which has only 90 students in its secondary department. 
That is the worst possible outcome for a State education system and that is the irony of this whole issue. Labour which prides itself on its wonderful morality about State education has done more to destroy the NCEA and more to destroy the credibility of our secondary State education and our tertiary State education than any other Government this country has had. Labour has done that through arrogance complacency extremism and a deep ideological attachment to a system that does not deliver fairness and credibility for our students. 
The system keeps the bureaucrats happy. It means that they can go to conferences and say they are the only people in the world doing this. But that does not mean it works. The bureaucrats can go to conferences and say that New Zealand is the only Western country where Cabinet has to decide who passes the exams— 
Phil Heatley 
: And Zimbabwe. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: And Zimbabwe—no in Zimbabwe it never got that bad! They fixed it in Zimbabwe before Mugabe decided on giving out the certificates. 
The system does not work for students and this qualification has no purpose other than to work for students so I welcome the Government’s announcement today. It is a substantial back-down. It is a substantial response to the practical concerns of so many leading educators and that is good. 
The Minister will now try to sound as if nothing has changed as if he listened to nobody as if he were always right and as if none of it ever happened. But I say to the Minister that he should consider his obligation to the public good consider his obligation to the secondary school students of New Zealand and start heeding the advice he is getting about the NCEA so that we can make the qualification work for students. The system needs some practical incorporation of norm reference - type testing and assessment which would underpin the NCEA and make it work in the way many of us want it to work. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to correct some of the misinformation around this issue that is constantly being peddled by the National Party spokesman in the short term for education. Clearly—and it has become clearer as the days have gone by including through the newspaper article I quoted at question time—Mr English has demonstrated that he is out of step not only with the mainstream of New Zealand educational thinking but also with the educational philosophy of his own party. Equally clearly as I said in this Chamber last night that will be a short-term situation because Mr Allan Peachey Mr English’s soon-to-be colleague in the Parliament holds a view that is diametrically opposed to the one Mr English has been peddling around the community. 
It is really important to acknowledge first of all that the introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) took place in the time of this Government’s predecessor the former National Government. And it is sad given that fact that the current National Party spokesman has been so grossly irresponsible in his negative contributions about the issue. No one could find in any of Mr English’s advocacies statements or comments to date anything positive about NCEA or any positive suggestion for improving issues that everyone in the country would acknowledge need addressing—issues around scholarship and lesser but nonetheless important issues around the whole qualifications system—so that everyone is confident that the system is as robust as we have reason to require it to be. 
The ultimate sadness for me and for a lot of education professionals is that Mr English while being out of step with the majority mainstream view in his own party on this matter has now painted himself into a sad corner as the public voice of the anti-NCEA lobby. 
Hon Bill English 
: Oh! 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Well the covers are off now because of Mr English’s statements up at the Kapiti coast the other day about scaling. One of the most heinous things the previous assessment system did was manipulate the results of our young people to ensure that 50 percent of every cohort failed. That is what it did and that is why education professionals in this country demanded year after year—as did responsible business leaders—a more useful educational qualification that was not designed to disadvantage 50 percent of our community. That is why listening to reason the former National Government in 1998 introduced the NCEA the system we have now. 
Given the pressures put on the Qualifications Authority by the simultaneous introduction of the scholarship exam and the level 3 qualification I am delighted that we have had such a positive response from the working party I nominated and invited to consider these matters. Just so that there is no confusion on the part of Mr English on this matter—because one of Mr English’s constant problems is getting it wrong as the community again and again acknowledges—let me affirm that looking at the issues around 2004 issues such as the allocation of any current scholarships outstanding was not part of the terms of reference of that working party. The terms of reference of that working party referred to the responsibility that it took on to make sure that we could have no repetition at the end of this year and in early 2006 of what happened in 2004. 
The first thing I said when welcoming the first meeting of that working party was that Cabinet could not allow or in any way entertain a repetition of a clearly unsatisfactory state of events at the beginning of this year. I am very proud to be part of a Government that responded extraordinarily quickly and totally appropriately to the potential disadvantage that came from what had always happened in the scholarship exams once scaling was removed. The saddest thing in all of this is that after that demonstration of how negative scaling is the education spokesperson for the National Party Bill English made it so clear that he now advocates—unlike his party presumably—a return to scaling. 
I will spend a little bit of time setting out exactly what the outcome of those considerations is. It is an outcome that was approved by Cabinet yesterday. First of all I will dwell on the essential difference between the New Zealand Scholarship 2004 and what is being proposed for students sitting exams this year. The key recommendation of the review group is that the scholarship will now be awarded to a set percentage of students in each subject. That will not vary from subject to subject in general although I will make a qualification to that shortly. Depending on further Cabinet work on the quantum of scholarships—the number and amount to be awarded—there will be a decision made by the review panel that has been set up by the group on where that percentage is set. 
Because that figure will be based on the cohort—the number of students—studying that subject at level 3 of the NCEA it will be necessary to depart from the target percentage from time to time; otherwise it would be impossible to preserve the integrity of the exam. For example with small scholarship entries in a large cohort and so on every member in the House could see the potential for everyone who entered a scholarship exam on a raw percentage situation to be a successful candidate. Clearly that would not be acceptable. 
Equally because the exam remains standards-based it is absolutely essential that the review panel has the capacity to check that standards are being met. So a second level of intervention will also be possible to ensure as the top candidates are ranked that all people being awarded scholarships in whatever subject have met a satisfactory scholarship standard. 
So is this a fair way of allocating scholarship money? The review panel of very distinguished educators from both sides of the NCEA fence believed so and Cabinet agreed. The recommended solution ensures there is a similar proportion of scholarship awards in each scholarship subject relative to the number of students studying at level 3. This means that students performing at the top of their subject all have an equivalent chance of receiving a scholarship. Furthermore there will also be top scholar awards retained as recommended by the review group. 
The key question that seems to trouble Mr English is whether this is still standards-based assessment. Yes it is. Given that NCEA is based on standards-based assessment it seems to me that that is not only entirely desirable but consistent and logical. 
It is true that the Scholarship Reference Group recommended neither for nor against standards-based examination. Given that its recommendations were by consensus given that it did not vote on these issues and given that there were representatives of both sides of the NCEA argument on that panel that is hardly surprising. That is one of the reasons why I think the panel members are to be most highly complimented on their performance because they did not allow their particular partisan views which they are entitled to hold and hold very strongly to influence unreasonably the deliberations of the panel. I think what they produced is a bit of a beacon for how we can ensure good relationships in education and sensible decision-making. I am sure that that is one of the reasons Cabinet so welcomed the panel’s recommendations. 
I turn now to what will happen beyond 2005. Following the interest and public focus on this most important matter the House can be assured that the Government will continue to closely monitor the developments in this examination the performance as the years go by and the implementation this year. The ministry will report to Cabinet on awards criteria for the next 3 years on a regular basis to ensure that the recommendations of the group are being properly followed. 
Furthermore the scholarship review group also recommended the establishment of a national scholarship monitoring panel. The exact detail of its interrelationship with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is being worked out now. That group will have the responsibility of monitoring the consistency and cohesion of the scholarship awards and giving assurance to and confidence in the authority’s and the ministry’s processes to the community to students to teachers and to the Government as a whole. 
That panel has two arms. First of all the monitoring and implementation group will do the detailed work in respect of the examination. Secondly an independent advisory group will have a wider policy development role. 
I think this is a very good outcome. Like most people we would have preferred the events at the start of this year not to have happened. Like most people we are assuming that they may well have occurred because of the simultaneous pressure of level 3 being introduced at the same time as the scholarship exam. Whatever the cause which will be revealed by the State Services Commission inquiry that is also in train I am confident that there is no likelihood or possibility of a repetition of the unfortunate events of the start of this year. I am sure that most members of the community are very pleased that the Government has acted as quickly as it has and with as much consultation as it has in an appropriate time frame to fix up the problem. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 In his speech Mr English queried why it is that when both he and I are saying the same things the Government is nice to me and not very nice to him. I think the answer is pretty obvious but I will say just so he knows this that probably the manner in which the message is being delivered is the difference between us. Having had something to do with the Rt Hon Wyatt Creech during the establishment of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and the initial work that was done on it I will make a number of comments around the issue of New Zealand Scholarship and the larger issue of the NCEA. Mr Benson-Pope is not correct in saying that the NCEA was devised to get rid of scaling. Scaling had already been got rid of prior to that—and well and truly got rid of. We also had a standards-based system that was getting in the way of everything. The unit-standard system was threatening to smother everything. We had the anachronistic School Certificate system which was really a bit of a lottery. We also had Sixth Form Certificate which was based upon the results that came from School Certificate. If people think that in the past before the NCEA was developed we had examinations where 50 percent of students passed and 50 percent failed I say that is absolutely untrue. 
The NCEA was designed to overcome some of the problems that had developed since Sixth Form Certificate had become the sole qualification in the sixth form and university entrance had been abolished. However in the decision making it was decided that there would be an examination called a scholarship examination to rank out our top students—to recognise excellence in academia. That was the whole purpose behind it. It was always understood although it was never written in black and white at that particular point in time that it would be a form of ranking examination—a competitive examination. I sat scholarship over 2 years in my secondary career with 10 3-hour exams spread over the course of 2 weeks each year. It was a bit rugged. It was decided that for our very top students there would be a series of examinations that would discriminate the very very best from the very very good. That is why NCEA level 3 was developed and why New Zealand Scholarship was to be sat in the same year. Scholarship was not for all and sundry but for the cream of our students. The only way to discriminate between the top students is to have a ranking scaling-type system. There is no other possible way to do that. We cannot do it on the basis of standards-based assessment. 
Unfortunately all that the October 1998 Cabinet minute stated when it came to scholarship was: “There will be a scholarship examination”. It did not state that it would be standards-based. It just stated that it would exist and it assumed that further policy work would take place. I have questioned whether policy work was done around the issue and have learnt that in fact it was not. What actually happened was that a gap was left and the bureaucrats were left to make the decisions. Unfortunately the bureaucrats particularly those in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority were absolutely committed almost to the point of irrationality to standards-based assessment to the extent that they could not see the inherent weaknesses in standards-based assessment. Those weaknesses do exist and the problem we have at the moment is that even to this day the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Government are not admitting to the fact that there are inherent weaknesses in standards-based assessment. 
I will give an example of that to the House. It comes from the information we received from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority about level 1 of the NCEA and is to do with the problem of why there was such a big range in the number of “excellents” given in 2003 and 2004. Here is the standard: “Find unknowns in word or 3-D problems”. The thing is that there were about 5000 “excellents” in one year and about 90 in the next. We have to ask whether there was such a big difference in teaching from one year to the next or whether the difference was in the standard between one year and the next. The problem is actually that there are two standards in the standard as stated not one but it is wrapped up as if it were one standard. I will give the House the answer. In the first year of NCEA assessment the examiner chose to assess a word problem whereby a situation was presented in context and candidates had to translate the practical situation into a mathematical situation. In the second year the examiner assessed the candidates’ ability to solve a 3-D problem and stated: “This is an aspect of mathematics which students have always struggled with. The candidates performed very badly in this question in 2003”—that is the second year—“which was not unexpected as it is conceptually more difficult for them.” Now if members are hearing what I am saying they will realise we have within one standard two separate standards that are conceptually different and one is more difficult than the other. 
If we can have that kind of difference within a standard surely we will be presented with huge differences between different standards even within one subject area and across different subject areas so how can we then use the results to compare students? That is exactly what occurred in New Zealand Scholarship. There was no moderation process or scaling process—and I am sorry but I still believe that we need to assume that the populations in every subject particularly in the ones that attract the larger numbers are equivalent populations if we are going to work this issue out. I believe that the moves that have been made are a step in the right direction but that they still do not resolve the fundamental problems and tensions that exist as a result of the decisions that have been made. 
However I have to go on and ask who is to blame for the situation. Is it because National did not make the right decisions at the time? Well National made only one decision and that was to have a scholarship examination. The problem has to be pointed at the present administration. These decisions should have been made when it took office. Let us face it some critical decisions about the timing of the NCEA were made by Government members and I applaud them for that. They got that one right. They could have made decisions in here. They could have faced up to the fact that if one is to have a ranking-comparing examination or test then one has to have some sort of moderation or scaling process. The Government did not face up to that. It did not make those decisions and therefore what came out at the end was pretty predictable—in fact very predictable. Therein lay the problem. I kept on asking why even after the results came out in January this year and huge problems were noticed in the variability between different subjects decisions could not have been made to overcome the problems. The issue was that the exams were not marked in such a way that that could be done. There were no marks that could be manipulated. It was not a matter of the scripts going back. The scripts had already been sent back; that was not the problem. The problem was that the grades were marked in a manner that could not then be manipulated statistically in order to get a fair outcome. So we have a situation where people have got scholarships based upon the subjects they have taken not necessarily on their abilities and that is unfair on the students. It is unfair both on the students who gained them justifiably and on the students who missed out as a result of picking subjects that had hard standards. 
What this decision now will mean is that in each particular subject area a given number of students will most definitely get scholarships. However that will not overcome some of that variability between the cohorts themselves and there will be variability within those cohorts. So I suggest to the Government that this measure will be only a very temporary solution and that there will still be some problems to overcome arising from the decision made today which will face us at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. Further modifications will have to be made to this particular examination particularly in terms of the awards to the top students because that cannot be done by the present suggestions. I have to go along with what the Hon Bill English said which is that the problem it leads us to now is not confidence that the examination will yield the results but the issue of the presumed quality of the school. I am the ex-principal of an area school—Tauraroa Area School—and because it did not have a town or anything else attached to it no one would know where it was. If one of my students had got a scholarship people would have just said they were sorry but he or she came from a tinpot country school. But if a student who received a scholarship came from Auckland Grammar they would have said that because the student was from Auckland Grammar he or she was deserving of it. That is unfair and that is something that has always been a challenge to our education system. Our education system has always fronted up to ensure that there was equity within the results that our assessment systems produced. That is so that anybody who gets an A a B or a C award is judged to be equivalent. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 Today will be remembered as the day that Bill English won a major victory over David Benson-Pope and that that Minister tried to duck and dive the very serious matters that were raised under his rule as Associate Minister of Education. David Benson-Pope was caught yet again asleep on the job and he made a complete shambles of the New Zealand Scholarship system. It is fair to say that Mr Benson-Pope probably had thrown to him the biggest hospital pass we have seen in a long long time. With that hospital pass came the opportunity for him to stand up and be counted and to take notice of what parents students and educators all around New Zealand were saying about the scholarship examination. But that Associate Minister chose to take the easy route and simply back the lines put in place by Trevor Mallard as Minister of Education. When a new Minister arrives in the office of the Ministry of Education he or she has an opportunity to rethink things to put a different face to the problem and to take time to reconsider issues in a way that might make him look considered and—heaven forbid—in touch with what the education system is going through. But the Associate Minister did not do that and only today has he finally admitted that the Government got it badly wrong. 
The changes talked about today require students to be ranked within subjects. However the point Bill English made in his contribution to this snap debate about the 140 school awards that are still up in the air is an important one. I believe that somewhere in the dark depths of the Ministry of Education is a document that ranks subjects against each other. To me it seems impossible for schools to make decisions about who their top scholar is if more than one student has passed New Zealand Scholarship in more than one subject. In other words if a school has two or three students who have all attained two scholarship examination subjects then who becomes the top scholar for that school? That problem for those in 2004 who did get scholarships has still not been solved. 
 I am highly suspicious about the fact that somewhere in the Ministry of Education someone has made a decision about ranking subject against subject. In other words when it comes to choosing the top scholar from each school the most academic of subjects sat will count for more than less-academic subjects sat. I challenge the Minister to stand in this House and say that no such ranking between subjects exists. I cannot for the life of me work out how it could not possibly be hidden away in there. 
But we should remember what has happened. The Associate Minister has now admitted that standards-based assessment is not an untouchable Holy Grail. For the first 8 weeks that the House has been sitting this year up until 12 o’clock today that is not what he has been saying. He has said that ranks and marks could now be introduced but only after political embarrassment—the hard work of Bill English forcing his hand and 6 weeks of questioning in this House supported by other political parties that shared similar concerns over the way the system had been operating. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: You’re allowed to mention it! 
SIMON POWER 
: I thought it was quite nifty actually. We should remember that on previous occasions the Associate Minister said that standards-based assessment results could not be used to compare results. On 15 February he said: “I would have hoped by now that the member”—no doubt referring to Bill English—“would understand that in a standards-based assessment regime … with lots of variable factors such comparisons between years and cohorts are absolutely meaningless.” That is what he said. Well he has completely changed his mind after considerable political pressure has been placed on him. 
We should go back as my colleague the Hon Brian Donnelly did and remember the intensity of pressure around this issue for the first 10 to 12 weeks of this year because now as we sit on the cusp of April it is easy to forget the intensity of feeling that came from parents and students from all over New Zealand and who went in absolute despair to the offices of members of Parliament scattered throughout the country. I had secondary school personnel from all over my electorate phoning to say: “This is a shambles.” Parents wanted to meet to discuss how they could sort out the mess of the results that were coming through—results that stated “Absent from exam.” when the students had sat the exam and that gave students grades for exams they had never sat. It was a complete shambles. 
I have to say that the class of 2004 were guinea pigs for a shambles of an arrangement that David Benson-Pope had the opportunity to fix when he became the Associate Minister of Education. But he would not do it. He took the word of Trevor Mallard—mistake No.1—and carried on implementing and standing by a system that was doomed to fail. It was only the reports of the lop-sided results and the intensifying pressure from Bill English and others in this Chamber that saw the new Associate Minister of Education David Benson-Pope finally announce a review of New Zealand Scholarship—but not before the Government had moved into a major spin mode and announced that it would intervene to arbitrarily offer a new class of award the distinction award. Well if I were a 17-year-old student sitting scholarship exams in physics history or English the thought of Marian Hobbs David Benson-Pope and Michael Cullen sitting around the Cabinet table deciding whether I was to get a distinction award would fill me with no confidence at all. Neither would it fill any parents in New Zealand with confidence. 
We should remember that during the first two sittings of Parliament this year the galleries were packed with students who had sat New Zealand Scholarship in 2004 and the Associate Minister stood in this House and continued to deny there was a problem. Well I tell him that there was a problem. He was badly wrong. He had an opportunity to correct those matters when he became the Associate Minister of Education. He did not do it. 
There was a major back-down today—a major back-down by David Benson-Pope a major back-down by the Ministry of Education and a major back-down by the Labour Government. There was a victory for common sense and a victory for Bill English. At long last students sitting scholarship exams in 2005 will have some certainty. It is just a shame that the students of 2004 were treated so appalling and with such utter disdain by this Government and by that Associate Minister. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party as an associate education spokesperson in the absence of Deborah Coddington. But I also rise as a parent and as a former pupil of Taihape Playcentre Taihape School and Taihape College. When I came to Wellington at age 18 from Taihape College having had no exposure to any of the students from the so-called “great name schools” I had one thing that allowed me to think I ought to set my sights high at university. It was the fact that I had actually sat university entrance and bursary exam and I could tell where I ranked. I could tell what I should aim for or what I could reasonably aim for against students from the name schools which to me in those days were Palmerston North Boys High School and the Collegiate guys—the ones in our neighbourhood—and of course the Auckland Grammars and the Wellington Colleges of this country. 
I was able to go along despite feeling that I was so much less tested and so much less sophisticated than they would be coming as I did from a school with only six kids in the entire seventh form. Our kids cannot do that. Our kids now have the opposite. Our kids now are only too conscious that they will be judged by the school they went to. They have no way of going out there until they hit the employment world or until they hit university being able to say: “I know that where I went to school doesn’t really matter.” Every message they get says the opposite. So we have the ideologues in a Labour Government re-establishing a class structure in this country built around school—the old school tie network which our generation thought we had managed to kill. We thought that meritocracy was an inevitable product of the way this country was going. Instead we see Trevor Mallard and the Associate Minister David Benson-Pope and all their schoolteacher colleagues in that party recreating a class structure built around where one went to school. 
This is not the full story of what is happening in this country. We also see New Zealand condemning many of its best young people to a New Zealand education ghetto because they will no longer have an internationally recognised qualification to stack up alongside those of other countries and get into scholarships of North America the scholarships in Australia and the best universities around the world. Their success is enough of a signal of our standards. In comparative terms we can all feel confident about our local universities. We now have kids who will spend their first year of university completely wasting their time. There are about 1600 or 1700 kids who do the health science intermediate year at Otago University. From that they get selected to do physiotherapy dentistry or medicine depending on how well they perform. This year for the first time an entire class of kids will have no idea how they might rate against each other. There will be kids there who will go all year thinking that they might be able to hack it for medicine when in fact only 8 percent of them will get there. That is because they have been denied any comparative ranking. Previous generations had School Certificate university entrance if they sat bursary exams and scholarship. Now they will not know whether they are wasting their time aiming at dentistry or at physiotherapy or at medicine. That is just a microcosm of what is happening across this country. 
This system—so-called fairer—is in fact deeply unfair to the kids caught in it and they know it. Members should ask kids how they feel about their qualifications. There is no pride for kids when they go home and show their parents something their parents cannot understand. Their parents know that a whole lot of background knowledge is needed to be able to even compare it with the preceding sibling. My kids have come home and handed me the stuff together and we cannot compare it because this Government is so set against comparisons. It is not just employers tertiary educators or parents; it is the kids who matter most in this and it is the teachers. 
We now know from the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) survey in December which was before this debacle emerged that teachers have lost confidence. Even those who think that the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) model is right do not believe that the moderation can work. They are being worked to the bone they have not been getting the assistance they need from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and they have had an arrogant Minister or arrogant Ministers telling them to lump it. The top students have lost the exam system. It was hated by the teaching profession or some parts of it. Now they have lost that motivation that competitive urge which so appeals to boys in particular that turns academic achievement into something they can honour as much as sport is honoured in this country. 
We honour people who win. We honour them because they are directly scaled against each other not against some abstract standard of the speed of a ball or the distance from which a goal can be kicked or any of the other nonsense achievement standards. They get honoured because they are in the top team or because they are the top 1 percent or 5 percent or 40 percent or 60 percent—because they are not losers. What the exam system gave to kids who were studying was the same kind of buzz. It was particularly important for boys. They have lost that excitement that spur and that reward. The replacement that this team of apologists has cobbled together does not restore that excitement. It is open to gaming. I can look at it as a lawyer right now and say: “If you want to get one of those top scholarships do two tough subjects and take one of the easy ones that not many people take. Take one of the dozy ones.” Geography looks as if it was a dozy one this year. Someone who had not even studied it could get scholarship. But they should take one because the way the system is set up now it will not be able to inter-scale between subjects. The top students will be able to get their three scholarships by doing two respectable subjects and one knitting subject and they will clean up the knitting subjects so that even there kids who might otherwise have achieved something will be denied it because of gamesmanship. This Government will not acknowledge that it has set itself up for permanent failure. 
Kids need to trust assessment. S or N as a mark does not do that. A grading does not do that unless we know that it is competitive and that we are not apologising for competition. Mr Mallard scoffed as he so often does at Cambridge A levels—a Third World qualification he called it. Why would people put themselves through the extra fees and the extra work and why would teachers go through the extra work of a so-called Third World qualification if we had not become a Third World country where people no longer trust the Government’s grading and assessment system They do not trust it. Expats do not want to bring their kids home because they are afraid that they will end up with qualifications that are not recognised around the world. People are sending their kids to Australian universities because they think that the New Zealand universities will be seen as second rate. 
We are ripe for takeover by Cambridge A levels. We are Third World. We have demoralised teachers confused and angry parents schools offered opportunity for competitive marketing based on class universities put to extra trouble employers baffled and a whole generation of kids sacrificed because this Government is so politically correct so ideological so dominated by the teacher unions so afraid to admit failure and go back that it will not do the simple thing that is necessary—and that is straightforward intensively moderated competitive exams designed to scale so that we know who are the top who are the winners who are not and so that we can trust the exams as we did only 10 years ago. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 When the issue about scholarships first arose the Green Party was very clear on its position that no young person should suffer as a result of the mistakes of the ministry of the Minister and of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. We said just a few weeks ago that where any young person has suffered by not receiving the grade he or she ought to have received in the scholarship exam there should be a provision to provide the student with a scholarship so that the student is able to acquire the benefits of his or her extraordinary hard work and level of achievement. We said then—and we still think this—that even if that means that more scholarships are awarded and even if it means that young people who might have only barely got through end up getting a scholarship it is better to make sure that no young person suffers for the stupid mistakes made through a complete failure of planning on behalf of the ministry the Minister and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. That is the only way the Government can restore to families and to the young people whom the Government talks rhetorically about all the time as being the future of this country any faith that the institutions actually care about the education that young people are working so hard to achieve. That is particularly the case given that many of them are about to enter university and will have to pay through the nose for the privilege of continuing their education which the Government apparently thinks is very important. We urge the Government to pursue those ideas—not to award secondary-level scholarships as it has proposed to do but to ensure that all children and young people who are entitled to a scholarship receive one. 
I want to bring the House’s attention to a report that has recently come out from the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). It is titled 
 Teachers Talk About NCEA 
. It is a research report from a number of focus groups of secondary school teachers—the focus groups were run at the end of last year before the scholarship issue came to light—where teachers gave their very clear precise and very good-quality experiential perspective on the NCEA on how it has been progressing and on the things that need to be done to ensure that it is a successful qualification for our kids in the future. A number of recommendations have come out of that report and firstly I shall refer to two of them. 
The first recommendation is that an external review of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s processes in relation to external assessment is an urgent requirement in order to ensure that all NCEA exams whether they be the general exams or those at scholarship level are of high quality and do deliver acceptable comparability of results from year to year standard to standard and subject to subject. The report recommended that that review should be completed by the end of term 2 of this year in order to ensure that those mistakes do not happen again—that we do not end up with another year’s worth of children and young people sitting their scholarship exams expecting to get the marks they have worked so hard for and then failing to do so because of the failure of the authority to prepare properly. 
The second recommendation that comes out of the report is that the change management processes of the authority and of the Ministry of Education require an urgent review.That would ensure the reports states that in future any changes in standards or other assessment requirements or processes are signalled in a reasonable time frame that allows teachers to adapt their practice without undue pressure. The review would also involve the communication systems in both those agencies to ensure that teachers students parents and the wider community are kept well informed in a timely manner. That would have been very useful if it had happened last year at the time when level 3 of the NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship were being introduced. That required the authority to properly develop good quality processes for that change management but the authority failed to do so. 
We could have reasonably expected that there would be problems with the implementation of level 3 and of scholarship. When any new assessment system is introduced mistakes are made but we did not expect the ministry and the authority to completely fail to have any process in place to deal with those mistakes effectively. At the beginning of this year we heard from the authority it told the Minister about the mistakes but it did nothing about them. The Minister did not do anything about them either. That is not acceptable from a Government agency that is responsible for the scholarships the examinations and the quality of education provided to our young people. The Government’s position on providing quality public education to our young people is nothing but rhetoric if it does not make sure that the agencies responsible for it plan properly for the processes that they know will need to happen. Mistakes will always be made but addressing them needs to be prepared for and planned for. We did not expect the authority to fail so dismally to do anything about it when it discovered that there was a problem. 
Other recommendations have come out of the report on the NCEA. However before I describe any of those I also want to bring to the attention of the House further problems with the NCEA and the failure of the authority of other agencies and of the ministry to deal with the full scope of the difficulties faced by our young people. I have received a letter from Amy Boyce a home-school student from Temuka. She wrote that she is 15 and wants to go university. She knows she will have to get NCEA qualifications in six subjects if she wants to go to university which she most certainly does. However because she is a home-school student she will have to pay over $1000 per course in order to get the NCEA qualifications that will enable her to go to university when she finishes her studies. It is completely unreasonable that young people who for whatever reason find themselves in the situation of being home schooled then discover that they have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to get a public education that enables them to go on to further education—to become members of our society who can make the contribution they want to make to our future. 
That case is just one example of the further problems with the NCEA and of the failure of the ministry to make sure that processes are in place to enable every young person to have access to our education system to get the education that he or she is entitled to and deserves and to be able to progress his or her education into the tertiary sector. That young person Amy Boyce will not be able to get her NCEA if she has to pay $6000 per year to do that. That is not reasonable. It is a way of excluding children from public education and that is not acceptable. 
The Post Primary Teachers Association report goes on to deal with a number of further problems and makes other recommendations. Probably from a school’s perspective the most critical one is the fact that operations grant funding urgently needs to be increased to cover and to manage better the responsibilities that schools and teachers face in trying to implement the NCEA practically—so that schools can teach their students well and the students can sit the scholarship examinations. Schools receive only $5 per child per year as a means of funding to deal with the workload requirements of the NCEA. Five dollars per child per year to deal with the massive amount of implementation that teachers need to do is simply disgusting. This Government needs to make sure that the implementation measures are properly funded so that teachers can do the work that they are now required to do under the curriculum and can provide the quality of education to our children that our children deserve. 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to address this matter from probably a different perspective but to note that although we have had a lot of Opposition politicians quick to publicise or to promote what the problems might be solutions have been very slow to emerge. That is one observation that we have been able to note. United Future has been more focused on how to fix the problems. The committee that examined this has come forth with a solution today and it has been published. I will come back to that to refer to one or two points that the Associate Minister touched on today. 
United Future has had a track record of trying to improve the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) programme through the system. Right from the beginning since we were elected I remember that we—and myself in particular—initiated a select committee inquiry into the implementation of the NCEA qualifications system. It was not so much dealing with it as a system but addressing the total inadequacies of the support and everything that went through for that—the funding the personnel the skills and everything else. From year one it was obvious that the system was struggling even to exist. We were successful in helping with the Government in the 2003 Budget to add at least I think it was something like $66 million over the next 4 years to help with operations grants in implementing NCEA. We want to offer specific constructive and common-sense solutions to the problems that have and will still beset the NCEA. 
But I think it would be good if we could just refer to what we are looking at here. We are probably looking at a clash of two world views in educational philosophies. Nobody really has got on to how we synchronise these two which actually cannot truly be synchronised. That is where everyone is trying to harmonise one with the other. 
I would like to refer to where these matters began. They began with Socrates and Plato. Plato and Socrates had two different views on how to allow education to take place and it is from there that we still have two different views in operation. That is why we talk about norm-based or standards-based. They are two entirely different views. When they come together they clash. 
I remind the House that Socrates had the concept that children were inherently bad and the system called education and educators were there to help and to correct them. That was his view. Plato had the concept that children were inherently good in terms of education and the systems that were there made them worse. So what we are looking at today is very similar—the knowledge or norm-based systems that we have had up until now with exams were really where Plato was coming from. We had good children; they needed to be filled up with more information and therefore be accounted for and assessed in that manner through examinations. 
On the other hand Socrates had what we would call a standards-based system—children were bad they need to be corrected in all their assessments life skills and everything else and hence the standards-based concept is as old as that. 
 Today we arrive at a clash of these two ideas and I do not believe that we have fully solved it. It is important that the House comment on the report the Government has produced today. Other speakers have addressed these comments but if we are going to have a scholarship system where a percentage is allocated to every subject—if I recall what the Associate Minister said today—it is not then based on scholarship. The Minister stated: “We will allocate a percent of the top people”—and they do not define how we get to the top people—“and then we will allocate a percent.” 
Let us say it is 3 percent for argument’s sake of all of those who did the level 3 programme. They cannot be called scholarships; they are basically just selected. It has nothing to do scholarship. I think this is where the clash of ideas still exists in our vocabulary. We call it a scholarship exam when it is not. It is a delusion. 
Another thing that I believe the Associate Minister spoke about by way of conclusion was that it was based on level 3. Level 3 is not scholarship as we used to know it. It should be and it is what we tried and experimented with this year with the 2004 exams a level 4. There should be a level 4 that is quite separate and it should not only just meet as the Associate Minister proclaimed today a satisfactory level. I am not sure what that means and I am sure the students of 2005 will never know what it means. In fact it will be hidden from them until somebody selects a certain percent on every subject. 
It is a terrifying experience not to know whether there are any standards that can be achieved. If everybody went to the lowest possible satisfactory level the top percent would still be chosen whatever it was and I do not think that that is really what it is all about. I applaud the Government for at least having a top scholar award programme built into the whole issue but I believe that we are not adequately looking at the two philosophies as they clash. 
The standards-based programme should finish at level 3 and the norm-based programme should kick in at level 4. I say that because when one goes to university in particular it is a norm-based system. So to integrate the two systems the clash between them needs to take place before the students get to university so that they can understand. 
United Future asks for a return to real scholarship exams in their previous format. I do not believe there is any problem with that. A separate scholarship exam system is to find out who are the top students in every subject. Their results can then be compared they can be ranked and they can have an order about them. People want to know where they stood as students and so do the universities and others who are taking them on. It is very difficult to go away from that. Scholarship exams should revert back to the norm-referenced systems and therefore enable results to be ranked or even scaled if necessary. This should not jeopardise the NCEA assessment because the scholarship exams are kept separate. 
I believe that what the Associate Minister has to do now is engage in a strong and vigorous public education campaign to ensure that parents students employers and certainly the universities can understand what is going on through the promotion of a scholarship exam. We should not call them scholarship exams fraudulently unless they are scholarship exams. If that were achieved we would see a better more relieved public in terms of present students and certainly forthcoming students in New Zealand. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 I thank Bernie Ogilvy for his thoughtful contribution but I must say that I disagree with him on two quite important points in that speech. The more important point is that I do not think it is possible to run the scholarship exam as a norm-based system while simultaneously having a reference-based examination for National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 3 because in effect that would be requiring both teachers and students to be approaching a curriculum simultaneously from a norm-based and a reference-based system during the year. 
Stephen Franks 
: The Cambridge A students do it—thousands of them. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: A few Cambridge A students do it. The Cambridge A student examination reflects very little on the nature of New Zealand society and New Zealand content. 
The old scholarship examination of course ran alongside the old bursary examination. The old bursary examination was a norm-based system in exactly the same way as the scholarship examination was a norm-based system. So it is actually relatively easy to run the two side by side. 
However I also think what many people have lost sight of in this debate and have never really understood was that part of the mess in last year’s scholarship examination revealed what had been an ongoing series of problems for scholarship in previous years that had not been fully revealed and in particular that pass marks amongst a number of science subjects were extremely low in scholarship. For example in biology for one year there were no passes at all. Everybody failed that year. That is an absurdity because clearly if an examination has been set to a proper standard we know that of the number of students sitting biology in a year in New Zealand some of them ought to be passing. What in fact happened was that heavy scaling—not moderate scaling to take account of variability between markers and variability between standards of examinations from year to year—was occurring to lift people who got under 50 percent up to a mark of 88 or 96. I cannot remember now whether 88 was the top scholarship mark or whether 96 was the top scholarship mark; one was bursary and one was scholarship. However everything was scaled to the position of either 88 or 96 for many many years. That is a level of scaling that does an injustice to the notion of scaling as an academic assessment tool. 
I think that the report from the reference group—which was an extraordinarily good reference group—is very very sensible. In particular I think the proposal that between 2 and 3 percent of students should get a scholarship is appropriate. That is why I disagree with the member saying that this is not a scholarship examination. An examination that leads to somebody getting money at the end of the day seems to me to be exactly what a scholarship examination is. I suspect that unlike many people in the House I am one of the few who has had one in the past. Also I think that I am the only person in the House who has ever been a chief examiner for scholarship in a subject. So I do speak with some knowledge about these particular matters although I have to admit it is from an awfully long time ago. 
I think those problems also showed up the difficulty of having examinations being set and marked by university-based examiners setting according to university stage I standards which are not the same thing as seventh form at all. In particular that can lead to for example excessive pass rates in subjects like Maori where stage I Maori is an introductory subject but seventh form Maori includes both people who are native Maori speakers and many who have been learning Maori for 13 14 and 15 years previously. Not unnaturally therefore there was very high pass mark. Stage I in some subjects is quite different from the seventh form curriculum and the skills being looked for in stage I science subjects are often quite different from what is being taught in seventh form science subjects which is why we ended up with some very very strange pass marks indeed. 
Clearly the situation last year was highly unsatisfactory and clearly there was not a good performance on the part of the relevant authorities. Young people in New Zealand do deserve an assurance that the examinations they sit are fairly set fairly moderated and fairly marked and that the marking itself is being fairly moderated. 
Finally for those who still have some starry eyes about these things let me say that—building on my experience in these matters—to some extent one is still marking the teacher as much as one is marking the student at times. I remember receiving a set of scripts in the seventh form history examination for scholarship from one particular school—not a million miles from here I might say—in the Wellington region where they all had it completely wrong. It was clear that this school was the examination centre so all the students had had the same teacher and they had all got it completely wrong. The interpretation they gave while it might have been valid about 60 years before the examination was well out of date by the late 1970s. 
What the marker has to do in that situation is to try to allow for the fact that students have been taught this interpretation and that they are then trying to reproduce as best they can the knowledge that they have acquired. It is a very inexact art trying to mark subjects such as history or English. In subjects such as mathematics very small changes in the standard of the examination can lead to very large changes in the number of people achieving certain levels of pass from year to year. So some degree of comparison and moderation is absolutely essential if we are to do justice to young people. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
General Debate 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. The House meets at this time after the urgent debate to have the general debate as the wheels are well and truly falling off this Labour Government. The Government is falling to bits as Ministers take every opportunity to avoid any of the responsibility or accountability that the public should expect from them. What we are seeing day after day in this country with the New Zealand Police is a symptom of a wider crumbling of trust in the Government of New Zealand. This is a Government in which no Minister takes any responsibility. The formula has been set by the Prime Minister: never take responsibility blame the officials hold an inquiry or two—or three or four—and wait for the spin to take over. Ministers are never responsible for their failures. 
The Minister of Police the Hon George Hawkins is the Minister who gave us “dial 111 for a taxi”; he is the Minister who delivered us “dial 111 and scream”. He is now the Minister who gives us a police force that is not investigating serious sexual complaints in south Auckland. The police released a statement not 2 hours ago in which they confirmed that there were 11 unassigned sex cases in south Auckland. But we saw the real contradiction in the House earlier today when the Prime Minister said that these cases are under investigation but the Minister of Police said that they are a such a problem that the police are putting a team together to go in and investigate them. How is it that in one of the largest police districts in New Zealand 1100 files are sitting on a desk gathering dust? These files include 11 sex crimes five of which involve alleged rapes of New Zealand women. 
How seriously does the Government take this issue? In question time today the Prime Minister laughed and giggled as Don Brash asked her how she would deal with the rape complaints of those women who have been put in the situation where not one police officer has been allocated to deal with their complaints. What did New Zealand’s second woman Prime Minister do when Don Brash asked how the Prime Minister would explain to these nine women the way their sexual complaints were being dealt with? What did the Prime Minister do? She laughed and chuckled about who watches  
Breakfast 
 TV. Did the Prime Minister say that she considers it an absolute disgrace that when a woman makes a rape complaint in this country George Hawkins’ police force can put it in a file on a table? What did the Prime Minister of New Zealand say? Absolutely nothing! She just giggled laughed and tried to dismiss the whole case. What did the Prime Minister of New Zealand say to the people of Counties-Manukau who cannot get a cop to turn up when their shop has been ripped off or who cannot get a cop to turn up when their car has been burgled? What did she say to those people? Absolutely nothing! 
We have in this country today a Minister of Police who is completely out of his depth and is unable to deliver the resources that the police need. The pressure has got too great for the Commissioner of Police. On television today for the first time he shifted the blame to the Government. He had been a loyal little public servant agreeing with the Minister and saying that the Minister was doing everything he could but today it got too much. The commissioner said on television today: “Yes I would like more police. Yes I have asked Government for more police. Yes I will wait …”. The reason why we have seen the never-ending series of crises associated with 111 calls is that this Minister has ignored the call for additional staff. The Minister must take responsibility but of course we will just have another inquiry. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I want to talk about the allegations made against John Tamihere in respect of the Waipareira Trust. I said in the House that the people of New Zealand and members of this House had witnessed a hatchet job of awesome proportions. It was a hatchet job based on the collusion of the “gang of three”—the chief executive officer of the Waipareira Trust Reg Ratahi the treasurer Ricky Houghton and the chief financial officer Bruce Silver Bryant. Then of course the “gang of three” became the “gang of four” as Rodney Philip Hide salivated at the chance to destroy Mr Tamihere’s good name. Why did he and why did the gang want to do that? Put simply Mr Tamihere was the one who was asking questions about $6 million of losses in the trust after he departed. It was Mr Tamihere who demanded an audit of the trust and the “gang of three” based on that wanted to destroy him aided and abetted by a member of this House. There is evidence of that. 
I quote from the statement of evidence of the White inquiry of 29 November 2004 by one Mere Tunks a former trust member who in answer to the question: “Have Reg Ratahi and Bruce Bryant recently made statements at those [trust board] meetings which have indicated to you that they are conducting a campaign against Mr Tamihere?” stated: “Yes they have expressed statements at the meetings: Reg … I’m going to bury John Tamihere; Bruce … ‘He won’t get away with this. I have my reputation in the Accounting world and I will respond and have him out.” Reg Ratahi swore black and blue that the payments from the trust to Mr Tamihere were unauthorised. Ratahi said hand on heart that he was sure he would remember if they had been authorised. Ratahi denied there was any documentation. The White inquiry showed him to be a liar. It seems to me that Mr Ratahi destroyed the key document. Luckily the trust’s former auditor had kept a copy. Not only was it found but the document was in Ratahi’s own handwriting and the direct-credit payment was physically signed off by Ratahi himself. The man is obviously a liar and had the intent of fabricating a story to bury Mr Tamihere so as to protect himself.” The reference is the White inquiry pages 24 to 27. 
The dodginess perpetrated by the leaders within the trust continues today. These are the people of course that Rodney Philip Hide relied upon in his relentless campaign against Mr Tamihere. Let us look at the dodginess. The trust chief executive officer Ratahi formed and is a director of a company called Rescare Services 2001 Ltd. This company is contracted to the Waitemata District Health Board—to the tune of $120000 a year to provide a respite residential care facility on an as-required basis. The contract is personal and is in direct competition with the trust that Ratahi is the chief executive officer of. Furthermore accounts for this company have run through the trust accounting operations at no cost. A $10000 amount from the trust was used to finance GST and PAYE for this personal company. 
Did the trust’s treasurer Ricky Houghton and the trust’s chief financial officer Bruce Silver Bryant know of this? Of course they did. In their executive positions within the trust they knew the lot. In fact Mr Bryant is paid $15000 a month for 1 day’s work a week to be the guardian of the trust’s guardian money. I have significant documentation on Mr Bryant. For instance in relation to Te Wananga o Aotearoa he was on the ruling wananga council when $7 million was being approved to purchase a company owned by his son and daughter-in-law. He incorporated Oma Investments Ltd which has received $12 million from the wananga. Why did Rodney Hide not identify the chief financial architect of the wananga when the ACT party was attacking the Wetere family? 
Mr Bryant is not only the financial controller at Waipareira Trust he is also the sole executive director of a call centre that has lost in excess of $3.5 million and overseen the sale of property to cover up his mistakes of $3 million. There is a company called Stand and Deliver Contracting Ltd. A company search revealed that it was a company incorporated again through the Waipareira Trust but owned by Reg Ratahi and managed by his daughter Rachael Morris. The trust’s offices are being used again without the trust’s authority this time for immigration consultancy advice. I am further advised that the Henderson Criminal Investigation Bureau is investigating allegations of immigration rorts. 
 I will make available letters dated 2 and 4 August 2004 that advise the Waipareira Trust Board that Rodney Philip Hide had been called into the trust and that a number of allegations would be made against Mr Tamihere. We also know that $410000 was spent by the trust—wasted by the trust—on lawyers accountants and private investigators to “fit up” John Tamihere. What is the result? We still do not know why the $6 million that Mr Tamihere sought to bring to the trust’s attention was lost. We do now know though that two high-level inquiries cleared Mr Tamihere and we now know that the “gang of four” will be seen by the people of New Zealand for what they are. What are they so desperate to cover up? Why did the nasty self-confessed scam-buster Rodney Hide not uncover what I uncovered? Maybe it was because it did not suit his purpose. Those people should be made accountable for their actions and I look forward to them reaping the whirlwind from the New Zealand people. 
I lay this final statement before the House: Mr Hide has never apologised for assassinating the character of Dover Samuels and his family; he has never apologised to the people of New Zealand for the Investors International scandal even though he had been advised it was dodgy; and he has never apologised to Mr Tamihere and his family since Mr Tamihere was cleared. There is a nasty nasty pattern of behaviour and the people of New Zealand will hold the member Rodney Hide accountable for it. 
Madam Speaker I ask for your indulgence as I have a number of documents I would like to table. I seek leave to table a statement of evidence to the White inquiry evidencing that there was a process of bonus payments and that Ratahi and Bryant indicated they would bury Mr Tamihere. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table my second document which is a Bell Gully letter indicating to the Serious Fraud Office that Mr Ratahi’s evidence to them must be treated with suspicion given the way he endeavoured to frame John Tamihere for taking unauthorised bonuses. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table two letters dated 2 and 4 August 2004 advising the Waipareira Trust that Mr Hide had been called into the trust and that a number of allegations would be made against Mr Tamihere. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table a statement of evidence taken from Mr Dave Peppiatt a real estate agent indicating that Mr Ratahi was not into social conscience and that he wanted 25 percent of any deal the gentleman put to the Waipareira Trust. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table Companies Office documents in relation to Rescare Services 2001 Ltd whose director is one Reg Ratahi a shareholder. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table an email from the chairperson of the Waitemata District Health Board indicating that Rescare Services was contracted for $120000 per year. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table a Companies Office series of documents with regard to the Stand and Deliver Contracting Ltd demonstrating that the company was incorporated through the Waipareira Trust but owned by Mr Ratahi. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I seek leave to table a Companies Office document noting that Mr Bryant incorporated Oma Investments which received $12 million from Te Wananga. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Finally I seek leave to table notes from the trust board in respect of accounting problems of the trust provided by chartered accountants and summarising that trustees were hopelessly misinformed on the true position of the trust. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 What a difference a couple of years makes! I remember when those members opposite used to spend all their energy in trying to defend the Waipareira Trust. 
Let me talk about something that is of concern to all New Zealanders—the protection of the citizens of New Zealand. How is it that Helen Clark expresses her confidence in George Hawkins when her own party the Labour Party clearly does not? Let us just read the list of who was put above George Hawkins when the Labour Party came to its selection. That outstanding Minister Parekura Horomia is at No. 5. Dover Samuels is at No. 10. That outstanding performer in the House Taito Phillip Field is at No. 13. That great man over there Mita Ririnui well known to New Zealanders for his sterling works is at No. 15. Judith Tizard the “Minister of Knitting” is at No. 18 and Luamanuvao Winnie Laban is at No. 20. That great campaigner for New Zealanders’ rights Mahara Okeroa is at No. 22—way up at No. 22. Then of course we have that well-known MP for all good things Jill Pettis at No. 24. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: What number are you on the ACT party list? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Oh thank God I am not on the Labour Party list! Then we have the great parliamentarian for the Labour Party Mr Ashraf Choudhary at No. 25. 
What is the No. 1 issue confronting New Zealanders? It is police resourcing: the fact that when we ring 111 we cannot get help and that when a person’s dairy gets robbed that person cannot get help. There is a Minister of Police who cannot perform and Labour Party officials had originally put him down at No. 25 on the list—below all those MPs below all those Ministers—and George Hawkins has too much dignity to take that role. I can see why they put him at No. 25. 
Simon Power 
: Why is that? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well just around from his electorate office there is a dairy and that dairy gets robbed once twice or three times a month. People just walk in. The police know where they live they know their names. Those people could be caught in 5 minutes. They are on video and I can confirm that to this House. I have seen the video and the perpetrators can be recognised perfectly. [ 
Interruption 
] Dover Samuels thinks that that is funny. Those people walk in off the street take their bread take their Coke and take a bag of chips. They might also take a pie or some cigarettes—and then they walk out. 
The dairy owner rings the police but the police write a letter saying they are too busy and George Hawkins whose office is along the road does not know about it. What is Helen Clark’s response? Her response is to bag the sergeant—the hard-working Sergeant Fogarty a front-line police officer—for writing the letter. Is that not the classic response of Helen Clark—to bag the messenger? She did not say that what he said was wrong. She said that his letter was ill-advised—because it ran counter to the spin she wants in order to say that crime rates are down. 
I will tell members why the crime rate is down. Just down the road from the dairy—whose owner has reported robbery only four times but who has been robbed maybe two dozen times in a year—is a bakery. That gets robbed more regularly. Not once has the baker complained to the police—not once. I asked the baker why not. He said: “Why would you bother?”. Why would anyone bother complaining to the police when they do not come but just file the complaint? That is what is happening under this Government and Dover Samuels thinks it is funny. Dover Samuels thinks it can be denied but he—like George Hawkins—does not know what is happening along the road. 
We learned today that in south Auckland—the Counties-Manukau Police District—there are 1167 unallocated cases. Those are cases under investigation that do not have a police officer investigating them. 
JOHN TAMIHERE (Labour—Tamaki Makaurau) 
: 
 This is the first opportunity I have had to address the House since making a substantive personal statement on 3 November 2004 and since resigning my ministerial warrants. That personal statement pre-empted the findings of the White inquiry and my clearance by the Serious Fraud Office and it has proven to be true. Firstly I thank the rank-and-file Kiwis in the heartland who reserved their judgment and who were extraordinarily kind and fair to me but particularly to Awerangi and the family. Secondly I acknowledge the support and commitment of my caucus colleagues in this House over this period. It is important in our democracy that politicians are placed under significant scrutiny and that the media ask the hard questions about politicians’ conduct. The media has a right to ask searching questions to opine on illegality or wrongdoing and to enter the grey zone where they can actually make news on values and issues of standards ethics and morality. That is important and I have withstood that intense scrutiny. A new level of accountability has been set for MPs and I welcome that. 
I now want to pose questions of my own to the media particularly concentrating on the very cosy and close relationship between Duncan Garner at TV3 and his soulmate Rodney Philip Hide. I do that as a messenger so I say to my dear media colleagues they should not shoot the messenger but should listen to the message. There is no doubt that Rodney Philip Hide and Duncan Garner were called into the Waipareira Trust as early as August 2004 to help shape frame and put together the architecture for the hatchet job that was released in the House on 14 October or thereabouts of 2004. The main architect in bringing them together at the Waipareira Trust was Duncan Garner’s uncle known as Bruce Silver Bryant the chief financial adviser at the Waipareira Trust. Now to be fair to Duncan Garner Mr Bryant is actually the uncle of his de facto wife Mihingarangi Forbes. She works for TV3 on  
20/20 
. Mr Bryant contacted Duncan Garner to provide him with the exclusive scoop. Duncan Garner did not investigate it; he did not do anything. 
My questions are these: did Duncan Garner and Rodney Hide know that Bruce Silver Bryant was investigated for taking backhanders and inducements in an insurance scam? Did they know that the same Bruce Silver Bryant was investigated for wrongfully signing off financial audits in a multimillion-dollar insurance collapse? That has all been reported in the  
Independent  
business newspaper. Did they know when the ACT party was attacking Te Whare Wananga o Aotearoa that Bruce Silver Bryant was the main financial adviser and architect to Rongo Wetere in the wananga? Did they know that “uncle” Bruce Bryant designed the scheme to move $7 million from the wananga to a company owned by his son who was married to Rongo Wetere’s daughter? Did they know that Bruce Bryant designed the company known as Oma Investments which the ACT party attacked? And did they know that Bruce Bryant resigned from Oma Investments only this month—March 2005? Why did Duncan Garner and Rodney Hide protect “uncle” Bruce Bryant but attack Mr Wetere? 
It is one thing for the media to report the news but it is another thing when Duncan Garner his uncle Bruce Silver Bryant and Rodney Hide get together to manufacture the news solely for rating purposes. The toll that others have had to pay for that behaviour is significant. The human carnage is devastating. The questions are: did Duncan Garner and Rodney Hide know that Reg Ratahi was an Inland Revenue Department tax inspector for 18 years did they know that Bruce Bryant holds himself out to be a tax specialist and did they know that Mr Bryant and Mr Ratahi oversaw payments that they knew they were responsible for the tax on? Well we know that a decent journalist called Audrey Young from the  
New Zealand Herald 
 7 days into the hatchet job produced an account dated 21 October 2004 entitled “The case for and against John Tamihere”. A journalist who was just asking some simple questions received the right answers and the White inquiry reached the same conclusions. The question now is: did Duncan Garner and Rodney Hide accept and know that information? No they continued on day after day making it up. 
Now TV3 obviously does not pay very well because—here is the question—I ask whether Duncan Garner has an independent media consultancy business. If so who are its clients and are they associated with Rodney Hide? The Parliamentary Library will provide evidence that Duncan Garner has Rodney Hide rating at 2 percent to 3 percent in the polls and that he has an 80 percent disapproval rating amongst Kiwis yet he gets the lion’s share of television time on TV3. That is a very cosy relationship. It is not the business of the press to manufacture make up frame or put together the architecture. It is not the business of Duncan Garner and TV3 to collude and conspire with Rodney Philip Hide. 
A lot of people would say that one should not have a go at the media because they have thousands and thousands of tonnes of ink. Rodney Hide knows all about Oscar Wilde so he will know all about that. But the reality is that members on the Government side of the House want to be given a fair go. They do not want the manufacturing of the news and the conspiracy that has occurred with Bruce Bryant and Rodney Philip Hide. So I would say to Duncan Garner that he should give them a fair go or get a real job. 
I seek leave to table the article that Audrey Young penned 7 days after the hatchet job began. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. 
JOHN TAMIHERE 
: I seek leave to table a large range of articles printed in the  
Independent 
 business newspaper authored by Jenni McManus and Gareth Vaughan indicating that Bruce Silver Bryant is quite a dodgy bloke. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 It is nice to have so many turn up for a general debate speech at this early hour of the evening. 
Hon Member 
: We are looking forward to it. 
MIKE WARD 
: Thank you. During question time today I asked the Minister for the Environment about the effectiveness of the packaging accord. I asked not because I think that non-recyclable milk containers are the greatest problem or even on their own a significant problem but they certainly are a problem for many of the groups and individuals around the country who spend their time trying to combat the amount of stuff we throw away. 
Non-recyclable containers on their own are part of a much bigger much more insidious and much more threatening problem. Our throwaway practices do not end with milk cartons—there is little that we make or use that is not made to be thrown away. Although it may be encouraging to think that it is OK to use something if we recycle it it is not possible to reclaim all the energy that goes into producing and transporting all the stuff we throw into the ground at the rate of something like 10 million kilograms every day in this country. The packaging accord is one mechanism for dealing with an important element in the waste stream. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Will members please be seated and give the speaker a fair go. 
MIKE WARD 
: Thank you Madam Speaker. 
It is no secret that we have had our misgivings about the accord but this latest package is an opportunity for the signatories to the accord to say that we can make it work by telling Meadow Fresh to get its act together. I would not be discouraged by that; in fact we are mightily encouraged by that. If they cannot do so then we will have to say to the Minister and her accord partners that it is time to look seriously at container deposit legislation. 
As I said earlier non-recyclable milk containers are part of a much bigger and much more threatening problem. As important as recycling is it is important that we move beyond the mindset that says that providing we recycle the products we take home and throw away all will be well. It will not. On a seriously overheating finite planet it is not possible to recover the energy that goes into producing products let alone packaging them. If we add all the other products from appliances to furnishings and even motor vehicles and buildings that are deliberately designed with a limited shelf life—indeed they are deliberately designed to fall apart—then it is clear that the throwaway mindset is a major contributor to both peak oil and climate change. 
Although the environmental implications of waste are significant the social implications are I believe much worse. It is not possible to spend our lives shopping every waking hour taking stuff home and throwing it away and then doing it again the next day without working seriously long hours. There is not a party in this House that does not express concern for families. I would suggest that what families need is time not stuff. We cannot spend our time shopping until we are silly and still have time to spend talking with our kids talking with our families and actually being families. It takes time and energy to be a family and a friend and that energy currently is going into shopping. When families are constantly bombarded by messages to consume we inevitably wind up with mum dad and the children all working to participate in the feeding frenzy that is today’s shopping culture. When this stuff threatens to make our planet uninhabitable at the same time it is doubly tragic. So my plea is that we get our act together stop taking home stuff that is likely to degrade the planet seriously and take time out to enjoy life and that the next time we get a long weekend do not spend it shopping. 
Debate interrupted. 
Valedictory Statement 
Rt Hon JONATHAN HUNT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to give my valedictory speech. When I first rose in Parliament to deliver my maiden speech on 11 May 1967 I said: “As the member of Parliament for New Lynn and as a member of the Labour Party I believe that every child has the right to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the full extent of his natural ability. No accident of colour or creed must stand in his way. Our cultural progress our living standards and our democracy itself depend upon a sound educational system. In particular I would stress our living standards. A nation which wishes to foster a rapid rate of economic growth cannot afford to neglect education. As Professor F. W. Holmes said to the Commission on Education in 1962 ‘Expenditures on developing the capacities of human beings are at least as important from a purely economic point of view as those expenditures on building plant and equipment which are classed as investment or capital formation in the official statistics of income and expenditure.’ ” In fact Professor Holmes was saying what many of us tend to overlook—namely that all the machinery in the world is no substitute for know-how. 
When I reflect on that first statement that I made to the House I should perhaps have said “his or her”—one probably would have to say that these days—but apart from that I like to stand by those remarks that I made then. I have all my life had a passionate belief in the need to promote the highest standards of education in our community and I have thought that that is one of the things I would like to have done over the years I have been in Parliament. 
When I reflect on 38½ years—and it is difficult not to be slightly nervous at this occasion and not to be moved by the occasion—and thank all those people who have come to listen to me I reflect on some of the changes since 1966. On the whole they are for the better. First the hours we sit have changed. I remember when October and November were terrible months to be a member of Parliament because the House would sit from 2 o’clock on a Tuesday sometimes right through until 5 o’clock on a Friday without any break at all. When we changed the hours of Parliament to ensure that at least we got a 9-hour break we actually led the world in doing that. A lot of advanced democracies still have all-night sittings which I think are crazy. So Parliament has improved in terms of its hours. 
Second I am very pleased that there are now so many more women in Parliament. When I first came into Parliament there were just four or five. At the back of the gallery there was a Speaker’s gallery before the House expanded. Women could not even sit there. I can remember raising a point of order at the time in 1967 about why Mrs Esme Tombleson could not bring one of her guests on to the floor and shortly afterwards the rules were changed. I think it is essential in a country where 50 percent of our population are women that we have strong representation from women and we certainly have had that. This Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister are both women. A large number of our positions in Parliament are filled by very talented women and we have a lot of younger women as well. I think of Katherine Rich who had the great sense to call her son Jonathan. She has had two children while she has been in Parliament. I can remember when the Hon Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan—I was Deputy Speaker at the time and she was Minister of Tourism—said: “Jonathan I think I’m going to have to go because the baby’s arriving.” She was probably one of the first women who ever gave birth while serving as a Minister. It was just one of those unique things that happened at the time. 
There is now very little smoking in Parliament except outside the buildings and that is a good thing. I am one of those who have never smoked. I had a very intelligent father who never told me not to smoke but who never smoked himself. I can say that when I attended my first two or three Labour Party caucus meetings one could cut the air with a knife. I remember taking a point of order when Norman Kirk was there and saying: “Point of order Mr Kirk. Couldn’t we have just a little less smoking?”. At the morning tea break that followed Bob Macfarlane a former Mayor of Christchurch and former Speaker who had had a very tough war in Europe came up to me and said: “Now listen here young Jon Hunt. I fought to make the world safe for people like you and I’ll bloody well smoke if I want to.” So I never raised that subject again but since that time we have had an amazing change in people’s views. 
I like to see that there are a lot more younger people in Parliament. When I first became an MP there were just three of us under 40: myself aged 28; Brian MacDonell aged 33; and Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan in her late 30s. Now a large number of younger people are in Parliament and I think that better reflects New Zealand as a whole. 
That leads me to my last point which is about MMP. I was one of those who opposed MMP and I certainly voted against it. I was wrong and I admit that fact because I believe that MMP has made Parliament more accurately reflect New Zealand as a whole. Fifteen percent of our population are Maori and 15 percent of our members are Maori—the largest number of course being in New Zealand First. We have three Pacific Islanders. We have two members of Chinese extraction. We have a Muslim. We are I think people who have improved in that regard. Our Parliament is now very much more representative of New Zealand than it used to be. I often reflect on the fact and tell people that Sue Bradford whom I have a great admiration for was arrested many times outside Parliament Buildings. She became a member of Parliament and my goodness she has been a very good member of Parliament in her time in this House. 
I look back on my successes. My major success in this Parliament was fighting for and finally getting the Adult Adoption Information Act passed in 1985. I had about eight or nine goes at it. Sometimes that is not a bad thing because I finally got the bill right and very little amendment to the Act has been needed since that time. All I wanted was a vote on the bill. The then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon said one night out in the lobbies: “You’ll never get a vote while I’m Prime Minister.” He was right because in those days the Government could move halfway through the session that Government business take precedence and private members’ day would disappear. So when we became the Government in 1984—I was Deputy Leader of the House—I said to Geoffrey Palmer: “Right my bill’s first. I’ve tried the largest number of times.” I had to get another member Fran Wilde to introduce it on my behalf because by then I was a Minister. Eventually when we got to the final vote on the third reading a division was not even called so I did not even have to have the necessary vote. It was a very proud moment to get that bill passed. I have had thousands of people from all over New Zealand write to me about that Act which I think enabled two things to happen: first adult adoptees to find out a bit about their birth parents and second birth mothers to find out about their adult adoptees. We deliberately called it the Adult Adoption Information Act because we were not disturbing the family. I must say my friend the Hon Koro Wetere who is sitting on the floor today was one of the strongest supporters of my bill. 
I introduced a private member’s bill between 1973 and 1974 to liberalise film censorship and when the Hon Allan Highet had the legislation passed in 1976 it contained a large number of the measures that I had championed. As Minister of Broadcasting I like to think that I helped to save the National and Concert Programmes. I have always thought the National Programme and the Concert Programme are as good as any programme of their type in the world and that includes quite a few countries—even the United States has National Public Radio. I think that what we have in our system are two very fine stations indeed. We also have some other very good stations as well. 
My other success that I like to talk about broadly is New Zealand Parliament. I have tried very hard to contribute as a member of every Standing Orders Committee and of the Parliamentary Service Commission since it had its first meeting and I just like to think that the New Zealand Parliament today is a very much better place than it was. First of all its surroundings are very much better. When the old Parliament building was here and the workers started to pull it down they discovered they had never finished part of it right at the back wing. In fact after a couple of earthquakes here it was really only held together with Telecom wire. 
 The present building is something that we can be very proud of. I remember when I put the proposal up to Cabinet with the Hon Stan Rodger that there were all sorts of comments about how it would be a waste of money and all that type of thing. The very people who were strongest in their opposition were those who were able to highlight its success. I think the changes that have been made to this Parliament building make it one of the finest buildings of its type in the world. I see our historian sitting in the gallery today. The book that we produced last year was a very very fine book indeed. I must say that to John Martin that his book is a great source of material for everybody. 
What regrets do I have? First I regret not being able to pass a bill to protect the Waitakere Range and foothills. I tried in 1973. I could not even get the bill introduced because it did not have the support of the local authority. I am hopeful that that will be able to be done. I am unashamedly a “westie” who lived out there for 30 years and I think the Waitakere Range is amongst the finest of its type in the world. I would have liked to see a law passed to prohibit the Minister of Finance also being the Prime Minister. I hope that the people who are looking at proposing changes to our Constitution Act can think that one through. I do not think that so much power should rest in one person’s hands. I think that the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister should be separate and by and large in our history they have been. I would like to pass a bill that would make it compulsory for every citizen on election day to go to a ballot box and collect a ballot paper. What people do with that ballot paper is their own business but I believe that when we have something as precious as democracy—and let us remember we are the world’s oldest democracy—that should be something that we have and accept. 
I regret the decline of various areas of the media in New Zealand. One of the biggest disappointments for me is the fact that there is now only one newspaper in Auckland and one in Wellington. When there was the  
New Zealand Herald  
and the  
Auckland Star 
 and the  
Dominion 
 and the  
Evening Post 
 we had genuine competition. We could get our stories in either newspaper and we chose. I think a city the size of Auckland that only has one daily newspaper has one newspaper too few. However I do not want to denigrate the  
New Zealand Herald 
 which has some reporters who are as good as anyone we have. 
I want to mention quite a few friends of mine. First I will pay a tribute to my mother who is 94 my sisters Judy and Philippa and my brother Bob. They have been a tower of strength to me all the time that I have been in Parliament. I am very proud to have a mother who is also a twin sister. Her twin sister lives in Whakatane. Their real aim is to make sure they get the telegram from the Queen and I am sure they will. I mention my very good friends Gael and Bill Warren who have been looking after my place in Auckland and my next-door neighbours Karel and Caroline Witten-Hannah and their family. Their children have been part of my family throughout the time that I have seen them grow up. Now one of them has a PhD one has an honours degree in engineering and the other is a very fine teacher. I have loved having them as a family so close at hand. There are so many people to thank including my lawyer Jock Irvine. We started at Auckland Grammar on the same day when we were both in the sixth form. He has been a very good friend of mine. There is Bob Jones for whom I have a great admiration. He is a person I disagree with a lot but at least he speaks his mind and writes some books. Brian and Lindsay Corban have been very close personal friends of mine. I would like to acknowledge their friendship and support and that of Hylton and Angela LeGrice also. 
My first mentors were the late Norman Douglas and the late Arthur Faulkner. I had a room in Parliament Buildings in 1966 where I could put my hands out and touch both sides. In it I had a desk two chairs a bookcase a telephone and that was about it. I used to go over to Norman Douglas’ room at 10.30 p.m. after the House rose and we would have a spot together. He and Arthur Faulkner really did help me in my early years and I have to pay tribute to them for being such very good mentors to me. I like to think that I was able to help some people bearing on the experience that they gave me in that regard. I pay tribute to Roger Douglas who is also a very good friend. We stayed at the same place up in Brooklyn. We would walk down to Parliament between 1969 and 1972 and solve the problems of the world. I always regarded him as a person who had an outstanding mind. Koro Wetere was my very good friend indeed and was on the Committee of Supply. He will tell members what that means some other time but he was a very good organiser of it. He used to get the fish on the bus down to Wellington and it was a great thing to have. Helen Clark and Michael Cullen have been two special friends of mine. I have known Helen for many years and I have known Michael for just about as long. I think they are very fine parliamentarians and they are very fine personal friends of mine. 
I cannot pick out everybody but I note special friends whom I have had in Parliament: Mark and Carol Burton George and Jan Hawkins David Benson-Pope Chris Carter and Peter Kaiser. Charles Chauvel and Dave Hollander have been very kind to me. Of course the artist Peter Siddell and his wife Sylvia who is also an artist are people I have had a great deal of occasion to benefit from. They are very good sound people. They invite one to their place and then they will have opinions—which is good—and put on a very nice dinner party. 
I would also like to mention all my other parliamentary colleagues on all sides of the House. Margaret Wilson as Speaker has taken over from me and I must congratulate her on the job she is doing now. In Ann Hartley Clem Simich and Ross Robertson I had three very loyal supporters while I was Speaker. The best three members in the House at asking questions are the Hon Peter Dunne the Hon Richard Prebble and the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The best two at giving answers are Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. The best-behaved party in Parliament is the Green Party—there is no doubt about that—with United Future very close behind it. I want to pay a special tribute to my friend the Hon Peter Dunne because we have been friends ever since I was his buddy MP before 1984. I predicted he would win and he can tell an interesting story about that. I have to look at the best Government whips—Jill Pettis and Darren Hughes—from whom I am hoping to get leave tonight. I would have to say that the best Opposition whip I ever worked with is John Carter. He has been a good friend and we could tell a lot of stories—none of which we will. I think a reunion of the whips would be at hand. 
Dave McGee Mary Harris Joel George and John O’Sullivan are executives whom I am very proud to have worked with. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Dave. He is the most thoroughly professional person I have ever known in a position in the public service. I was the person who signed his appointment when I was Deputy Speaker when Stan Whitehead was ill. I signed his appointment to this building in 1974. I pay tribute to the research units and there are people here who go right back to Norrey Simmons’ time. They include James Bews-Hair and his wife Jodi Sifa Taumoepeau Moerangi Vercoe Keri Iti Trish Donnelly Sarah Clark Polly Schaverien Antony Rhodes Don Badman Ashley Edge Jeremy Land and Margaret Dagg among others. From within Parliament itself I have to mention Beverley Cathcart for all the help and support she has been to me and her husband Robin. I would also say to Michelle Janse that she really does do a great job by doing all the things that sometimes other people do not do. I ask her to put four or five paintings somewhere and she somehow does. If Alison Gravenor is listening I give her my special wishes. 
I started off in the Princes Street branch of the Labour Party and there are too many people to mention by name from there. They range from my old friend Harold Moores the founder of that branch and his wife Brenda Hartill who is a fine printer and with whom I hope to have dinner next week in London right down to the two most recent people Conor Roberts and Xavier. 
I pay tribute to the secretaries I had in Parliament. Before 1984 there were Sybil Heine Iris Highet Kerry White and Shona Robb. As Minister I was lucky to have for all my 6¼ years Marion Grey Marie Cabrey Trevor Cudby Roman Herbst Rosemary Pool Robin Brooks and Alison Preston. I have managed to stay friends with most of them since that time. I thank them very much for all the help they gave me. 
I turn my attention to the whips’ office and I have to mention Pam Reader. Pam is one of those people who is a real institution in Parliament. I do not like cats and she does yet she has managed to tolerate me. She has been a wonderful person to have. Sandra Cody and Carolyn Gould worked with me in the time that I was in the Opposition whips’ office and Margaret McDonald. 
Then I look to my electorate and my first and great supporters although some of these people have passed away: Annie Schuler Joyce and Allan Grieve Eddie and Eileen Mansfield and their family and Pat and Dot Eyre. It is not known that Pat Eyre who was my organiser in 1966 has a brother who is still alive. That is Dean Eyre a former National Minister. So there is a lot of interchange.Pat was one of those proud people who had the 151-day certificate of the waterfront dispute of 1951. I thank Noel and Doreen Murray Mike and Lorraine Daly Lorraine Wilson Suzanne Sinclair Elayne Tennent Ailsa and Edwina Leech Algar O’Brien Cath McCarthy Bill Guy Jens Hansen and Tim. I had my first electorate office in 1985 and what a great forward step that was. I was able to have the services of Chris McKain for some considerable time and now I find that she is in London in one of the departmental offices that I will be visiting when I go there. I also thank Margaret Sutton and Christine Schuster. 
In the Speaker’s Office I thank Ipi Cross who is known to just about everybody in New Zealand. Ipi did a wonderful job. I thank Sean Rota who is a great person for the promotion of parliamentary rugby. Sean supports the Hurricanes which is unfortunate because I am sure the Blues will do better. Nevertheless I just want to thank him for his help. One could not have a better person than Roland Todd to sit on one’s right hand. When I could not remember the name of a person or it had just slipped my memory he would always tell me and he would also say: “Oh no. They have had all their questions.” I thank Nury Olivares Shirley Stout Debbie Hannan Bethney McLennan Helen Kennelly and I had an intern last year Jason Knauf who was exceptional. 
Ladies and gentlemen there is so much more I could say but I am not going to take my full time because I reflect on the wonderful times that I have spent in this Parliament. It has been a great privilege to be a member of Parliament. The average length of time a parliamentarian serves is about 6¼ years and I have extended that out to about 38 and a bit years. My predecessor the Hon Rex Mason was the longest-serving member of the New Zealand Parliament. He sat for 40 years and I never thought when I succeeded him in 1966 that I would come anywhere near close to that. But I leave to take up a post in London as our High Commissioner and as our Ambassador to Ireland and also as High Commissioner to Nigeria—I did not know about that until a relatively late stage. I have had my 37 or 38 briefings from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and I must say that its officials are very thorough. I hope I will get to see in Great Britain a large number of people from this Parliament. They will be very welcome to come and see me. I want to promote “New Zealand incorporated” and I think it is essential to do that. 
I see the Rt Hon Paul East is here who was a predecessor of mine. He has given me some very very valuable advice and help as has Russell Marshall who I think left today. I would also like to acknowledge the presence of a former Speaker the Hon Doug Kidd. We have had many good discussions. 
Ladies and gentlemen I thank you very much indeed for giving me the opportunity to make a valedictory speech. I leave this place as an optimist. I leave this place as a person who is convinced of the strength of our democracy. I leave this place as a place that we can be proud to show to anyone in the world as an example of one of the finest and the most open democracies in the world. I wish you all the very best. [ 
Applause 
] 
Sitting suspended from 5.55 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
General Debate 
Debate resumed. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 In this morning’s  
Dominion Post 
 the deputy leader of the once-great National Party Gerry Brownlee—not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree said Catherine Judd the president of ACT—said that the National Party was going to announce its list in August. It was not going to do it beforehand; it was going to do it in August when a September election seems scheduled. Now what does that mean? Is that a party that is confident about its ability to put a list together and weather the disappointment of many folk? I do not think so. 
It seems to me that the idea behind the National Party’s plan of putting its list together just weeks before that list is put to the people is that it wants to manage problems. It does not want a situation to arise where those people who might not do too well on the list—for example Katherine Rich Georgina te Heuheu or Pansy Wong—would want to kick up a stir. National would not want to have people who were ranked lower than they should be—people like Lockwood Smith Maurice Williamson Clem Simich or Wayne Mapp—getting upset and it would not want them joining the forces who are already pretty unimpressed with the current leader of the National Party; people like Bill English Tony Ryall Nick Smith Lynda Scott or Roger Sowry—and on it goes actually. There is a majority against Dr Brash there now; they just do not want to trigger it so it is never going to be happening before August. 
What is really interesting is that the National Party has never taken that long over announcing its list before. We read in black letter print this morning that it will be August and that tells me that the National Party is still in trouble and is still without any particular leadership. That is not a surprise. Its members are not happy campers because they cannot stop flip-flopping. Here is a list of the flip-flops. Without any sort of explanation of them they go like this. Do members remember the nuclear policy flip-flop the superannuation policy flip-flop the tax cuts flip-flop the primary healthcare flip-flop and the Kiwibank flip-flop—do members remember that one?—the TVNZ flip-flop the school zoning flip-flop the Employment Relations Act flip-flop the Holidays Act flip-flop and the tangi leave flip-flop? Do members remember the flip-flop on apprenticeships? Do members remember the flip-flop on prisons? Do members remember the flip-flop on the prostitution law reform legislation? But we have another one. It is the Department of Conservation flip-flop and it is a dinger. It is a cracker because it is a double flip-flop—a flip-flop flip-flop. The logic of the double flip-flop goes like this. A couple of weeks ago Dr Brash arrived at Molesworth Station by helicopter. He was late was he not? 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: He was late. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: He was late. He came clattering down on top of the existing speakers and rushed out of his helicopter. Then he hid behind a truck so that he could read his notes and have somewhere to put them and then he slavishly read them out. He insulted the Department of Conservation and the Landcorp workers which was a bit of a shame because they were hosting— 
Simon Power 
: Not the Landcorp workers; just the Department of Conservation. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: No—the Department of Conservation and the Landcorp workers. It was a bit of a shame because they were the hosts of the event. But that did not matter to him. Then he was unable to stay for a cup of tea and spend a bit of time mixing and mingling. He was back into his helicopter—clatter clatter clatter—back up into the skies disrupting yet another speaker and pretty much making a nuisance of himself. He said in his speech that tenure review was a deliberate land grab and the following morning he had to acknowledge that one cannot grab back land that one already owns. But it did not matter that he got his facts wrong it did not matter that he got all his areas wrong and it did not matter that he got all his numerical facts wrong and then blamed the runholders for giving him dodgy data. What was really interesting was that the main theme of his speech was that he was going to constrain the Department of Conservation. He was going to keep them doing only stuff that was important for— 
Simon Power 
: Core functions people. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: —core functions. He was going to have them with a core task of protecting unique flora and fauna and endangered species and cut out all the other stuff. How long did that last? 
Simon Power 
: A long time. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Until Easter. Then what happened was that a motor camp got shut down up near the Whangarei Heads and in rushed the good Dr Brash. All hell brook loose. “We need more camping grounds.” he breathlessly advised a startled nation. “We need more camping grounds. DOC must provide them.” he said. To hell with the core principles of the Department of Conservation—so much so that he decided that we are going to have 25 of them even though we already have 235 Department of Conservation camping grounds. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 What a different atmosphere it is in here having the general debate after dinner. It compares in atmosphere favourably to the normal 3 o’clock to 4 o’clock slot on a Wednesday afternoon. Although Government members might have smiles on their faces for various reasons at 25 to 8 on a Wednesday night one member most certainly does not have a smile on his face and that is poor old George Hawkins. 
Poor old George Hawkins—that man is really in trouble. He is in serious serious strife. On  
Breakfast 
 for the first time in 6½ years the Commissioner of Police broke ranks. He just put up his hands and said that enough was enough—that he could not take this any more and just could not defend this Minister for one moment longer. What did he say? He said: “I think certainly we do the very best that we can with the resources that we have.” He landed the Minister of Police right in it. 
But of course it is not the first time that the Minister of Police has been landed in it during 2005. In fact one of the best quotes of the year came from the  
Dominion Post 
 this week which stated: “Even senior party figures previously well-disposed toward him are now privately calling him ‘a serial dummy-spitter’ ”. Those are the people who used to protect George Hawkins; the people who used to stand beside him in times of strife and need. What do they say now? They say that he is just a serious dummy-spitter. Why? Because in 2002 George Hawkins was No. 15 on the Labour Party list. This time around he was offered No. 25. 
Actually I just happen to note that that is the spot Labour has given Ashraf Choudhary. I bet that David Cunliffe who works hard into the early hours of the morning is thrilled with the fact that Ashraf Choudhary has been made No. 25 while he is No. 31. Poor old David Cunliffe—No. 31! What did Ashraf Choudhary do to get the No. 25 slot? 
Rodney Hide 
: A vacant IQ! 
SIMON POWER 
: I tell Mr Hide that Mr Choudhary did more than nothing—he abstained. He abstained at the crucial time. When the pressure from the ninth floor came on during the prostitution law reform legislation where was he to be seen? He said: “I dunno I’ll abstain. What do I get in return?”. Well Mr Choudhary gets the No. 25 slot in return. 
Rodney Hide 
: How did David Cunliffe do? 
SIMON POWER 
: David Cunliffe is No. 31. Poor old David Cunliffe. What is surprising about that though is that Helen Clark Mike Williams or Michael Cullen did not have the courage to ring George Hawkins to tell him that he was No. 25; the media helpfully tells us that Annette King had to phone him. “Oh George it’s Annette here. A spot of bad news old chap. You’re going to be No. 25. I’ve been asked to ring you because I’m a mate of yours. So I said to the Prime Minister ‘No problem Prime Minister I’ll phone him I’ll tell him.’ ” The serial dummy-spitter spat the dummy and the whole thing went to custard. 
Now Mike Moore’s rump is left—it is not on the list. Outside of the feminist cabal is Mike Moore’s rump: John Tamihere Clayton Cosgrove Ross Robertson Harry Duynhoven Damien O’Connor and Tim Barnett—actually I should not put Tim Barnett in that category. All of them are there—Mike Moore’s rump. What is going on with those guys? They have just been left out. Marian Hobbs has come in at No. 9 because she knows she is gone. She knows that she cannot win Wellington Central. The insurance policy is locked into place. 
Russell Fairbrother the man who got the hospital pass of the year to chair the select committee considering the foreshore and seabed legislation is a guy who carried the weight of a nation on his shoulders for the best part of 6 months and he is No. 38. He is pleased that Ashraf Choudhary is No. 25. He is pleased that Ashraf Choudhary who did nothing—who abstained—is No. 25 while he carried the most important piece of legislation in this Parliament. What did he get? “Cheers thanks for coming Russell you’re No. 38. Thanks for your help we appreciate it. By the way we’ll make Choudhary No. 25.” That is a very good signal to the Labour Party caucus. It is unbelievable. 
Steve Chadwick the chairperson of the Health Committee is No. 33. Darren Hughes the junior whip like him or not beavers away here into the early hours of the night and he came in at No. 34. He is pleased that Ashraf Choudhary is No. 25 though. He is absolutely delighted that Ashraf Choudhary is No. 25. What does it tell people? It says that the Labour Party is in trouble is divided and will be conquered. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 I point out for those listening at home on their crystal sets that that was Simon Power. One thing we know is that he will see none of it because after the next election when the National Party goes through the bloodletting that will happen after a defeat Simon Power will be reshuffled and he will be sitting out in the lobby. He has been such a disappointment. He came in with such high hopes. The general story is that when the media writes a member up that member should be very very scared because what usually happens is that he or she will be on a very slippery slope. 
The real problem with the National Party now is the fact that most people can see that it is hopeless and will not make it in the next election. Commentator after commentator says this. John Armstrong said that the impression of the National Party now is that it does not think that it can win and its MPs are instead jostling in readiness for the bloody aftermath. That is what the story is. Even Don Brash himself has made that comment. He said: “National MPs backed me not just because they thought I could win but because they thought I could lose less badly and then take the fall.” What kind of leader says that? It is like running out on to the field to play a footy game aiming to get second and hoping that one does not lose by too much. That is the kind of inspiration he shows. 
Pete Hodgson has talked about the “helicopter Leader of the Opposition”. It was not just the fact that he helicoptered into a meeting. The problem here is that he is hardly ever here. He says that he is out shaking hands around the country. Of course what happened was that he helicoptered to that Federated Farmers meeting did not have time to shake hands with anybody read his speech hopped in the helicopter and went again. That is his idea of meeting the people. 
Of course there were many flip-flops and some of them were on the youth justice area. There was a big plan to try to get National up in the polls again. National had the idea that parents of delinquents could be ordered to attend parent courses and fined up to $2500 if they did not comply as part of National’s plan to clamp down on youth offending. So Don Brash the day after decided he would go on the radio to explain that. The presenter said: “All right Mr Brash so give me a typical kind of situation under which you think this policy would apply; a parenting order.” Mr Brash said: “Well I haven’t myself read in detail the stuff in the UK.” The presenter said: “Presumably the youth justice system was dealing with them in some other way anyway.” Dr Brash: “I can’t answer that question. I simply don’t know.” The problem is that if one is to try to sell a policy it is really important to know something about it before one goes on national radio and makes a fool of oneself. 
There has been enough talk about Dr Brash the corned beef the peas and the home-made pyjamas so let us have a look at the rest of it. Dr Brash said this: “I’ve got some very good people in my top two rows.” Well let us look at some of them. Of course the most able was Katherine Rich and she has gone. That shows that the National Party cannot work with independent strong-willed women. I did not agree with everything she said but one had to say that she was capable and she is now gone. Then of course there was the resurrection of old Gerry Brownlee. I thought it was a bit unfair on Gerry Brownlee when they said that he was not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Given the dimness over there he is quite a bright bulb in their Christmas tree. 
What about Bill English? He was being so hopeless that he was dumped as the National Party leader. People forget that. Most people would say that he was quite a good reasonable provincial player but no captain of the All Blacks. I think that would be the thing that goes on his tomb. What about Nick Smith? He now wants to set up 25 “National Party holiday parks” around New Zealand. Can members imagine anything so frightening as a National Party camping ground? It would be like  
Hi-de-Hi! 
 on Valium. All the kids would be frightened. They would be running into the sea saying: “All these National Party people they’re out trying to organise us. They want us to do things and play games. My God why don’t they just leave us alone!” and that is what the rest of the country would say. Most people would be bored with it. Imagine having 25 National Party camping grounds around the country! The most important thing that that would ensure is that those grounds are never ever used. What about Tony Ryall? We call him Oscar over here because he looks like he is trying to earn one every time he talks in Parliament. The rest of them are completely hopeless. They will not be around after the next election. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 That member is keen to get involved in personal derogatory politics and does not give a hoot about the real issues that face the people of New Zealand. The reason George Hawkins needs to go is that he is letting down the real people of New Zealand. Members opposite think it is funny that there are seven rape cases in south Auckland— 
Rodney Hide 
: Nine. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: —nine Rodney Hide confirms—that have not been investigated. The junior whip would have seen the Prime Minister laughing about it in the House today rather than showing some care and compassion for the people who have been subjected to serious crime. 
I raise with the House the incompetence of George Hawkins and his dealings concerning leaky homes. Thousands of New Zealanders are being confronted with bankruptcy because of what has happened to their homes. George Hawkins was the Minister in charge. When he was notified there was a problem he did nothing for 18 months and that ensured that another 1500 families ended up with substandard homes. But George Hawkins had the answer. He set up the weathertight leaky homes resolution service. He promised that that would be a speedy and quick resolution process. Well it has been going for 2½ years. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: For George that is speedy. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: My colleague Maurice Williamson says that 2½ years might be speedy. Do members know that only 10 percent of the 2700 cases have been resolved? At the current rate that George Hawkins’ resolution service for owners of leaky homes is going—there are no more claims—it will take 20 years to resolve their problems and this Government calls that a speedy quick resolution service! Well I would hate to see a slow one. 
Then we had the awful plight of the Cox family which was typical of those families affected by leaky homes. The builder has gone into liquidation so too has his certifier. So what did George Hawkins say to the Cox family in Whangarei who look like they will go bankrupt whose home is so shonky that it is recommended for demolition and whose home was built after George Hawkins was told of the problem but did nothing? He said that they should go to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. They have. Do members know who went to the mediation? The family went. There was no certifier no builder and no representative from the council. When I asked the Minister yesterday what advice he had for the Cox family in Whangarei he said that he did not have any and that they should go back to the resolution service. That is great. They will go back to adjudication and nobody else will be there. 
This is a disgrace. The good reputation of the New Zealand Police has been dragged into the gutter by George Hawkins Minister of Police. The largest and most important asset of thousands of New Zealanders has been completely eroded and ruined families are destitute and we have had totally inadequate answers from George Hawkins as the Minister in charge of housing It is very simple: George Hawkins should go. If George Hawkins does not go a whole lot of Labour members will go with him because New Zealanders will not put up with that sort of incompetence—incompetence with regard to the police and incompetence with regard to his administration as Minister of Internal Affairs of those important issues concerning New Zealand homes. 
George Hawkins is an embarrassment and the Labour Party knows it. That is why it gave him such an appalling list ranking. Why is it that members opposite defend the indefensible? Why is it that they laugh when they hear that nine rape cases have been sitting around since Christmas uninvestigated? Why is it that they laugh when they see that the police are totally under-resourced to be able to do their jobs and provide for law and order? Those issues matter. If George Hawkins will not go Labour should go. 
Hon DOVER SAMUELS (Minister of State) 
: 
 I am usually quite enthusiastic when I stand to make a contribution in the House. I am usually inspired and look forward to a very intelligent and inspiring debate. Tonight I am sad irrespective of the wailings of the Opposition and the contributions made tonight. This is one of the first times in the long time I have been in this House that I am actually saddened to stand to make a contribution. I feel that I am looking at a tangi. I feel that there is a climate of death. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Rigor mortis! 
Hon DOVER SAMUELS 
: Rigor mortis is yet to set in. I feel saddened because there is a lot of custom associated with death. Sometimes it is celebrated as a wake and sometimes there is celebrating before the death. Tonight I am sad and do members know why? It is because I look across to the other side of the House and I see members who should be in the mortuary. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Get the body bags! 
Hon DOVER SAMUELS 
: I have listened to what they said and they are not on this planet. I look at Maurice Williamson who was once an honourable Minister—he is still an honourable member—and I know that behind all the speeches his colleagues have made he is actually thinking. One of the things he is thinking is: “Where are my friends? Have we got any friends?”. 
The National members used to have friends—they were actually appropriately named ACT party friends. When I get up in the morning and listen to Radio Pacific I hear that the best friend the National Party has ever had has jumped the waka and is teaming up with Rodney Hide. When we heard the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt talking about the benefits of MMP one has to wonder how lonely can it be to have no friends in this House. Yet we have members of the Opposition talking away about my friend George Hawkins. 
Maurice Williamson knows very well that when he was Minister he was never accountable for the operations of Transit New Zealand or Transfund and the actions and the implementation of the practical aspect of his responsibilities. He knew the lines of demarcation between being a Minister and trying to get out there and fill the potholes with metal. He knows all about that. It is exactly the same with my friend George Hawkins. The responsibility for operational matters is known in this House and if there was ever a suggestion that a member of Parliament or a Minister should in some de facto way be a chief executive and responsible for operations this House would be in an uproar. Every member of this House knows that yet my colleague George Hawkins has been asked some of the most outrageous questions. They expect him to put on a uniform and do the beat. Come on! The Commissioner of Police has made his statement in terms of his responsibilities and some of the inadequacies in terms of the police performance but at least let us tell it straight. 
That is why I feel very sad tonight. As I look across the House I see people in a state of rigor mortis. As my friend said some of them should be in body bags and some of them should be defrosted but I am saddened because there are no friends there. There is nobody. When we come to the election this year members will need friends. If they do not have any friends then “Po Kare Kare Ana”—now is the hour. They should make up their minds. Will the National Party be friends—whanaungatanga kaitiakitanga—of the ACT party? Why do they not get together and have a hui—a bit of a korero? I see the face on Maurice Williamson and that tells the story. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 The previous Labour speaker said how sad he was about things but from a New Zealand First point of view the people who are really sad in New Zealand today are the exporters and those people who are suffering as a result of Labour Party policies that are making it almost impossible for New Zealand to export. They are the really sad people. I have heard nothing from this Labour Party this afternoon or this evening that offers them any help whatsoever. There is no point in slagging off at the National Party all the time. Let us have some policies. 
The member who preceded me in this debate who represents the Northland area will surely be concerned about the closure of Tanner Group sawmills which means the loss of about 160 jobs in Northland Waikato and the Coromandel. What has the Northland member said about that? He has not uttered a word or a whisper. He has been sad but I am sure he is not as sad as those people in Northland who have lost their jobs many of whom are Maori and that Maori member who represents Northland Maori does not show any sign of caring for them at all. The company blamed the high New Zealand dollar and increased infrastructure costs for the losses in recent years. The Tanner Group’s problems represent the tip of the iceberg and major exporters will be facing serious problems by the end of this year. 
New Zealand is an exporting nation and an export-dependent economy. We simply cannot function properly with high interest rates and an overvalued currency. It makes it too hard for exporters to compete on world markets and at the same time makes it easy for importers say The Warehouse to flood local markets. The Labour member for Northland has not said a word about the problems of the Tanner Group. New Zealand First has policies to remedy our exporters’ problems. 
Of course despite the fact that New Zealand has been doing so well in exporting and getting a lot of money into New Zealand for our exports we still have this incredibly high current account deficit which is blowing out of all proportions. Our current account deficit has gone up by almost $4 billion in the space of 12 months. This is despite record returns from exports. In the space of 12 months it has gone up to $9.3 billion—and that is just another warning about the real state of our economy. I ask the Labour Party how big a deficit does it have to be before the Labour Party starts to worry about it. It was $5 billion; 12 months later it is $9 billion. What if it is $15 billion in another 12 months and $20 billion in another 2 years? Will the Labour Party ever start to worry about it and the debt that it is giving to future New Zealanders? There is not a single sign of it whatsoever. 
Our exporters’ international competitiveness is seriously diminishing. The adverse effects of foreign ownership in New Zealand are increasing while the Government can only offer excuses. Alongside the worst-ever current account deficit we have an appalling net debtor position. 
Government Members 
: Ha ha! 
DAIL JONES 
: Labour Party members can laugh. They do not care about what is happening in New Zealand. Dover Samuels can laugh along with the best of them in this House tonight. He does not care about the Tanner Group. The measurement of our net international debt and net overseas equity is now up $5 billion to a staggering $123 billion and members of the Labour Party can only laugh. 
Of course some good news for New Zealanders is that the Labour Party has stolen yet another New Zealand First policy. I refer to the Government’s belated recognition of the need to make better use of its superannuation fund currently valued at $5.7 billion. At its annual conference last year New Zealand First said that we should be investing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in New Zealand. The Labour Party laughed at us when we said that last year—as it always does at our good ideas. But now what is it doing? It is carrying out our good ideas. We are getting a double flip-flop flip-flop in this House—flip-flops from the National Party supporting our policy and now the Labour Party is supporting our policy as well. 
If one ever wanted an example of an Opposition party leading from the Opposition it is New Zealand First. New Zealand First has supported the New Zealand Superannuation Fund from day one not from just the other day as in the case of another party. We have always said that it should be used for strategic asset allocations increasing the weighting to alternative assets such as infrastructure roading private equity commodities forestry property and reducing the funds weighting to global listed equities. Thanks to us not Labour it is happening now. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. When we look across the House we see no National members except for Maurice Williamson who is sitting in the leader’s chair. I wonder whether there is some news that we need to know. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order and the member knows it. 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 The expansion of trade within and across the vast Asia and Pacific region is currently propelling the most significant rise in living standards ever experienced by so many people in the history of human civilisation. The race to promote economic development is one that everyone can be excited about because it is a race to eradicate the evil that is poverty and it is also a race to raise environmental standards. Ministers from 52 Asia-Pacific nations yesterday pledged to alter current patterns of production consumption and distribution to promote cleaner environmentally sustainable growth. China has adopted car emission standards that put Western democracies to shame. 
Our minority coalition Government has since 1999 been able to advance its progressive agenda only with the cooperation and support of other responsible parties in this Parliament—United Future since 2002 and the Green Party since 1999. Labour Progressive United Future and the Greens are making the MMP system work for people. I am not here to be unfair on the Greens who have been our natural allies but I say to the Green Party that when it comes to expanding our economy’s international connections our objective going forward must be to get other nations from the United States to China and from the European Union to Canada to give us a fair go. We want them to lower their unfair barriers on our exports. We want global barriers to trade to come tumbling down just as the Berlin Wall came down just as the Sahara wall that Morocco’s kingdom has built through the Western Sahara will come down and just as Israel’s apartheid wall through the Palestinian West Bank will crumble. 
The Government of China has given us a privileged position at the head of a very long international queue seeking a fair trade deal with China. China is emerging very quickly as the world’s most important manufacturing hub and the Labour-Progressive Government precisely because it is forward-looking is embracing this opportunity for all New Zealanders. It disappoints us in the Progressives that the Green Party is not here with us on this vital issue. 
Last year a suggestion was made by the Greens that if the Green Party were ever to join in our coalition Government it might yet call for trade sanctions against China. That is like saying that New Zealand should consider trade sanctions on the United States because we disagree with its Federal Government’s inhumane opposition to needle and syringe exchange programmes. That is about as futile as having a non-negotiable stance on GE in the 2002 election. Unless the Greens reverse this position on China they are shutting the door to joining in Government and are inviting other parties to take their rightful place within our centre-left coalition. 
I believe that the Greens’ position is intellectually and morally flawed. The Greens say that New Zealand is in a race to the bottom in trading with Asian economies but in reality New Zealand’s minimum wages have been increasing every year of progressive government. Our unemployment rate is at its lowest level in a whole generation. Our relative living standards have at last stopped falling which they did from 1970 until 1999. 
Of course democrats everywhere must speak up in support of overseas democracy movements and bitterly condemn any attack on human rights in any society be it Tonga the US or China. Leon Trotsky writing in 1927 described the working proletariat of Shanghai as the most advanced vanguard in the world—the most socially conscious and committed to social justice and democracy of any urban area in the world. I believe that the Chinese working people will uphold that tradition and be seen as that most advanced vanguard for democracy in the world in the years to come. As China becomes more prosperous its democracy will grow. The Chinese will do it themselves. 
China is a Third World society pulling itself up to lift the living standards of its people so that they may enjoy the liberties freedoms and lifestyles we take for granted here. This Third World nation has recently issued landmark regulations banning cars with poor ecological performance. China’s new rules are strict. Motor vehicles that fail to meet the standards will not be registered by traffic administration departments across China. The World Resources Institute calculates that 42 percent of the cars that the manufacturing giant General Motors sold in 2004 can no longer be sold in the China of 2005. From 2008 China’s regulations will get stricter still. 
I urge the Greens to join with the Labour-Progressive Government in opening our doors with China to work for a global economy that is socially just and environmentally sustainable. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Financial Review Debate 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 29 March on the Appropriation (2003/04 Financial Review) Bill. 
Ministry of Transport ( 
continued) 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I am delighted to be able to take a second call on the issue of transport and to focus specifically on the issue of roading. 
Last night I was disappointed to be up so late then I suddenly realised that it was only getting on towards 10 o’clock and there would still be a good drive time audience listening to me in Auckland because people would still be on their way home from work. They will just be getting out of the central business district right now at 8.05 p.m. so to the loving and adoring audience that I have in the drive time I will tell some really good facts about things. 
The question I asked of the Hon Pete Hodgson who was in the chair last night—to which we did not get any satisfactory answers—was how it could be possible for Transfund the funding agency to finish the financial year in question with $230 million surplus unspent when no one can deny that there is an enormous list of roading projects that are desperately needed. The Minister did not answer so I answered the question for him. 
The answer lay across the Chamber in the form of the Greens. The way in which the Land Transport Management Act and Transfund have to work has been in the total control of the Greens. The worst of the Greens now is a man called Joel Cayford who is running the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee. He was one down the Alliance list from Keith Locke and members of this Parliament can make their own judgment as to what a person is like when that person is one down on the list from Keith Locke. 
He is now saying that State Highway 20 which is the connection that takes the main artery from the Mangere Bridge through to the Mangere airport—when it is supposed to carry on through Roskill into Avondale and join the north-western motorway—is off the schedule that it is gone. It is not in the 10-year schedule. I found that fascinating because the Minister had said the week before on 18 March in reply to a question for written answer: “I am advised by Transit that State Highway 20 project through Avondale is scheduled to begin in 2010.” I am quite good at numbers and I worked it out. It is 2005 now and 2010 is in 5 years’ time. [ 
Interruption 
] Dover Samuels is good with numbers. He has agreed with me. He is No. 10 on the list. I thought how can it not be in the 10-year plan. I suddenly looked at the regional land transport committee’s announcement as to why it has been taken out because it was there originally. Do members know what Mr Joel Cayford said? He said they were advised by Transit that there was not a hope in hell of doing this within the 10 years getting it started within 10 years even though the written answers in the House 5 days before said it was going to start in 5 years. So we have to start asking what is going on here. I want the drive time audience in Auckland to know that we are talking of waiting at least 10 years before that road—which is desperately needed—is started. I want to hear from any of the Auckland members in this debate if they do not think the road is desperately needed. I tell the members that it is desperately needed. The human body would not function if it had arteries that did not join up. Vehicles come zooming out of the airport down the big State Highway 20 spur join on to it hit the Mangere Bridge and suddenly there is chaos and the traffic has stopped because there is a set of traffic lights up ahead at Hillsborough Road because State Highway 20 is all finished. The Minister was unable to answer but the answer was very clear. 
Then the next thing I thought about the Land Transport Management Act which had so much promise when it came through the House was that the one thing it promised was private-sector participation. So I asked the Minister about that. OK it was a great idea. I think it was a neat idea. How many private sector roads have been built or even started to be built or for which the contract has even been let—even one Build Own Operate and Transfer operation? Let us see. Were there any? Again the answer is no. So we have the Minister and his funding agency with a $230 million surplus unspent and the answer was really that they could not spend it because the Land Transport Management Act had made it so inflexible. Auckland is grinding to an absolute halt as are many other parts of the country: the Bay of Plenty the Waikato. Certainly Centennial Highway into Wellington is killing people at an unrealistic rate. State Highway 2 through Maramarua is now known as “Death Alley”. 
I want to know why we are going to have another 5c increase now but in the last financial year the year in question—the review we are reviewing—the Government could not spend even $230 million. Let me tell Dover Samuels—because he probably does not know—how much money is normally spent on new roading each year. The answer is about $400 million. Of the $1.4 billion in the National Land Transport Programme about $400 million is for new roads. The rest is for maintenance and subsidising public transport. There is about $400 million for new roads. Here was $230 million well over half of what should be spent on new roads each year unspent. I want to know from the Minister in the chair David Cunliffe why that occurred in that financial year. 
Report noted. 
New Zealand Police 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 While Parliament sits tonight the police face the most major crisis of public confidence that they have faced certainly in the last 5 years. These matters were raised this year under financial review and the Government ignored them. Since the beginning of October we have seen a never-ending series of scandals and bad administration within the New Zealand Police 111 service which this Minister of Police has overseen. 
These very basic questions need to be answered by the Minister. How many extra staff did the police ask for for the 111 control centres? We do not want to know how many the Minister thinks they asked for; we want to know how many they did ask for. We want to know why this Minister has never asked what happened to the staff numbers in the three 111 emergency call centres throughout this country. Since the month before Iraena Asher disappeared the number of call takers in the 111 centres dropped and it has dropped every month since. That is appalling. Can this Minister take a call and explain why under his stewardship of the police portfolio we have the outrageous situation where members of the public think they dial 111 for a taxi and think they need to dial 111 and scream to get some action? Why do they now have to dial 111 five times to report a drunken driver? The Government and the 111 system are unable to cope. 
This Minister’s stewardship is a failure. It is a failure because he is charged with being Minister of Police to secure the resources necessary for the police to provide the service that the people of New Zealand expect. It is clear that he has failed to do that. Day after day we see him stand in Parliament and tell the country that he has secured the resources and that the police are adequately staffed. Yet television has now shown the Commissioner of Police finally abandoning the Minister’s mantra and saying that yes he has asked for more police and yes he needs more police. It is quite clear that the Government has ignored the commissioner’s requests and the consequences are being visited upon ordinary New Zealanders. 
This Minister of Police has stood in the House and said that women are more concerned about traffic tickets than they are about violent crime. This Minister says that New Zealand women are more concerned about speeding than they are about violent crime and being bashed in their homes. This man does not deserve to have the stewardship that the financial review would indicate. Right to the heart of this debate is the resourcing of the communication centres which this House has raised time and time again. We have raised concerns not only about the police management of the 111 calls and the resourcing of the communication centres but also about simple issues like the training and supervision of call takers and the response times not meeting their targets. 
What people do not realise—or maybe they do—is that in most regions of New Zealand it is taking longer and longer for the police to respond to 111 crises. In fact the television news today reported that the police are chronically understaffed. That is asserting in people’s minds— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: What happened to the 540 police you were going to cut? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: This is the Minister of Corrections whose appalling maladministration of expenditure of his department will be shown in the next few days. Mr Mark nods because he knows exactly what we will be talking about next week. I reckon that instead of talking about the scandals in the police they will be talking about what that Minister knew about spending in his department and the consequences that that has had. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 It is such a shame that the Committee sees fit to allocate only 5 minutes of debate per speaker to this issue because never before in the history of this country can we look to a time when the law enforcement officers the men and women of our police force have been under such intense pressure. Why is that? The answers are all here in this report. It is an unprecedented report—and this is a committee report not an Opposition report—because it highlights the failings of the police under the administration of this Minister. 
Let us remind ourselves of who this Minister of Police is. This Minister the Hon George Hawkins is the man who stood up and criticised people like John Banks when he was the Minister of Police. This Minister criticised Jack Elder when he was the Minister of Police.He promised the nation for 9 years that under his stewardship things would be better. With Mike Moore he promised a national crime commission yet this month he categorically ruled out any such commission. Why? Because he knows that this Government will not commit the resources that the police need. Right now the great tragedy is that law enforcement officers up and down this country are being tarred with Labour’s brush. 
Labour’s policy of not resourcing the police commensurate with the levels of real crime—not recorded crime but real crime—is now going to be legendary. Labour has failed to commit and its assurances to the public that never before have the police had more resources and more men fall on deaf ears when sane thinking common-sense New Zealanders point out the following facts to this Minister. Never before have we had a greater population. Never before have we had a greater influx of immigrants who bring with them their own peculiarities in terms of language barriers which the police have to deal with and never before have we seen such a historic focus on revenue-gathering by concentrating on roads and on the quota ticketing of nanas trying to go to church on High Street Rangiora on a Sunday morning. But of course it is this Minister’s focus to ticket High Street Rangiora because there are lots of recidivist boy racers on that street—not! What it is all about is money. 
The real problem lies in the fact that when reports such as this—the report from the Commissioner of Police to the Minister of Police on issues relating to policing in the Auckland area dated 21 November 2002—tell this Minister that the 111 system is about to fall over and tell this Minister that 100 extra police are needed at the coalface to respond to 111 calls and tell this Minister that it is all going to fail he does nothing—or does he? Is not the real unspoken story here that this Minister does talk to his Prime Minister. Is not the real unspoken story here that this Minister does talk to his Prime Minister and does talk to the Deputy Prime Minister—but is not part of that other little clique of Labour the Cosgrove-Tamihere clique that the sisterhood does not listen to? 
Dr Richard Worth 
: And Dover. 
RON MARK 
: And Dover Samuels. Now he is smiling because he knows I have hit the real point. The sisterhood does not listen to him and that explains a comment that he made at a meeting in Auckland to a group of people. I will not quote what he said but he made it very clear to that group of his very close friends that his own Prime Minister does not listen to him that the sisterhood closes ranks and that when he goes forward to ask for resources he gets kicked into touch because he is not one of the favoured few. Well the downstream consequences of that—[ 
Interruption 
]; I tell Mr Darren what’s-his-name that young fellow from somewhere—are that the public are paying for the price of this Minister’s inability to get the resources needed and highlighted in this report. 
Darren Hughes 
: He got a million dollars. 
RON MARK 
: I tell Mr Darren Hughes that he should not talk to the public; he should talk to Iraena Asher’s parents. We know we have hit a sore point when the junior Government whip has to chip in and rebut. He knows—and he will hear about it on the hustings during the coming election—that in this report and even in the second report the Commissioner of Police and the deputy commissioner both say in their own language—not in the language of New Zealand First or the National Party—that they are under-resourced understaffed and underfunded. This Government is responsible personally for the Iraena Asher disaster. This Government is responsible personally for the failure of the 111 system because it was told in 2001 that the system would fall over—and it has. 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 These are the words of the Hon George Hawkins on 2 March 2005: “The Labour-led Government has focused on creating safer communities so that people can live without fear of being a victim of crime.” That is the spin. On the same day he continued: “Police Commissioner Rob Robinson has been given the resources to do the job.” That is what the Minister of Police said but what do we find out? We find that we could throw a stone from his electorate office and hit a block of stores which actually are not untypical in New Zealand right now where neighbours just walk in off the street get what they want for the week and walk out. 
Ron Mark 
: Don’t pay. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: They do not pay; they steal it. The neighbours of George Hawkins’ electorate office have given up ringing the police—and that is why the crime rate is down. Those who do ring the police receive this letter. I want to read it for members. It is from Sergeant Fogarty a hard-working frontline police officer. He wrote to the dairy owner in that block of shops and said: “Due to the sheer volume of complaints and limited resources I am left with no alternative other than to record and file this matter.” That letter was about a perpetrator of multiple crimes. The police have identified him they know where he lives and they know what he looks like. The crime happened within a stone’s throw of George Hawkins’ office. The questions for George Hawkins are these: how come he did not know and how come he is feeding the public this horse manure? When this issue first arose George Hawkins said it was an operational matter and he would not comment. He hid behind Michael Cullen when going into Cabinet. Helen Clark’s response which was typical of her—and is why this country under her has been nicknamed “Helengrad”—was that the sergeant’s letter was “ill-advised”. Why? Because the hard-working sergeant was telling the truth. 
Ron Mark 
: The truth! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Yes the truth. George Hawkins did not stand up for the police. Why? Because he holds his tenuous position because of the grace of Helen Clark. So the Minister of Police—he shakes his head and agrees—turned round and said he agreed with Helen Clark that Sergeant Fogarty’s letter was ill-advised leaving us in no doubt that he considers the police to be incompetent and that they have the resources. Well the police fight back against rubbish like that and so they should. They came out and told us that in George Hawkins’ patch there are 1167 unallocated cases a fact that George Hawkins found out only yesterday. 
I want to tell people what those unallocated cases are. The dairy owner’s case is not unallocated; it is just filed. An unallocated case is one where someone makes a complaint and it is a serious offence or there is a good chance of catching the person—and that is why the police want to allocate an officer to it. In the dairy owner’s case an officer was not even allocated—the case was just filed. So these are cases the police want to chase up because they know they will catch a perpetrator. 
I will tell George Hawkins and New Zealand the policy that will get the crime rate down. The policy is zero tolerance. There should be a policy of zero tolerance for crime and if that Minister wants to fight crime he should not allow the lawlessness that is occurring in his own backyard. And if the police need more resources he should supply them. The streets of New Zealand should be actively policed; the homes of New Zealand should be actively policed; and the places of work should be actively policed. Perpetrators of crime should be pulled up no matter how small the crime. If someone steals a bottle of Coke the police should be there. They should not be saying that that does not matter because it is just a bottle of Coke because the next week or the week after the criminal learns to take a gun. What we have found is that on George Hawkins’ patch nine rape cases did not have an investigating officer assigned to them. But George Hawkins says speeding is more important. I say this to Mr Hawkins: there were 5000 tickets issued 4 years ago in the Counties-Manukau Police District; there are now 17000. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I notice the increasing tendency of members to carry on talking after the bell has been rung. Mr Ryall had the call and he had the courtesy perhaps to hold back but he had the right to start his speech at that point. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Would the member please take note that when the bell goes he is to sit down. 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 Part of this financial review process involves various select committees hearing evidence from Government departments and the Audit Office in respect of the performance of Government departments. As a result of those select committee considerations reports are prepared that are tabled in the House. I would like the Minister of Police to take a call and tell us whether he actually read the 2003-04 financial review of the New Zealand Police. 
I ask that question because there are some very important features of this report that the Minister needs to be aware of as the comments that are of concern in those reports were unanimous comments. Even the Government members of the Law and Order Committee endorsed the comments that the committee made about the Minister’s department and the handling of the 111 system. 
I would like the Minister to take a call. It is important because those members are the people in the Labour Party who influenced those who ranked the Minister in the list-ranking procedure. [ 
Interruption 
] I do not think that is a laughing matter. The Minister may think it is a laughing matter but I did not think his ranking was suitable. I thought No. 25 was a completely unwarranted position for the Minister of Police—completely unwarranted. No. 35 might have been better. 
But I wonder whether the Minister did read this report which was agreed to by Labour members of the committee. It states: “We are concerned that these statistics show that the communication centres may not be sufficiently resourced or may not be deploying resources appropriately to manage within target performance times the volume of calls being directed to them.” Another comment was also agreed to by the Labour members: “We have previously raised concerns with the police about staffing pressures at the Southern Communication Centre in particular but were assured that the number of staff at the time was adequate.” I paraphrase the next statement: On the basis of past experience some of us remain unconvinced that the Southern Communication Centre is adequately staffed. The report states further that: “Some of us are also concerned about the alleged difficulty encountered by some 111 callers in convincing communication staff that they are in genuine need of urgent help.” Those comments were all made in a report that members of the Minister’s party agreed to. Georgina Beyer Martin Gallagher Ann Hartley— 
Ron Mark 
: Mahara Okeroa. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
:—and Mahara Okeroa were all members of the select committee that agreed to those comments. They also made the point that they were disappointed with the various response times. 
So I ask the Minister of Police to take a call and say whether he read that report because the report—if he had read it—could have saved him a lot of grief. If he had read it he would have seen that his own colleagues were saying that real alarm bells were ringing about his performance in securing resources for the 111 system in order to provide decent public safety. 
It is a major issue. I know that it must be an embarrassment to the Minister to have to come to this Chamber day in and day out and make excuses for his non-performance and for the fact that he never asks the basic questions—questions like: “Well if there are these many unallocated files in this district how many are there in other areas of New Zealand?”. Was that question asked? It does not appear to have been. We have never heard basic questions like: “Are we maintaining the number of staff that we need in the 111 centres?” and “Are we maintaining the number of staff that we had before Iraena Asher disappeared?”. They are basic questions that a Minister of Police should ask but we have never heard them from this Minister of Police. 
Therefore we end up with a report a financial review that I can directly refer to in this debate which states that: “… statistics show that the communication centres may not be sufficiently resourced …”. We know that the outcome of the review must be that the Commissioner of Police is brought in. We know that that must be the outcome because we know that the Minister was told by the commissioner that there were insufficient resources in the 111 centre to maintain the sort of standard that the public expect from the New Zealand Police. 
I ask then that the Minister take a call to explain his stewardship of this portfolio and his handling of the police request for additional 111 resources. Those requests will see the light of day in the course of this debate. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 It is very funny that National Party members have forgotten what it was like when they were in power—when Tony Ryall was a member of a Cabinet that aimed to take out $45 million and up to 540 jobs from the police. That is what he was on about. He voted in that way. He went for the Martin report and now he wants to forget that. Well we will not let him forget. In the end Tony Ryall was a part of that and now he tries to pretend that it is all different. 
I remind Tony Ryall and I remind Greg O’Connor from the Police Association of what police cars were like under the previous National Government when the police up north had trouble in getting a warrant of fitness. They could not get a warrant of fitness for their cars but they had to drive them around. We had police cars that had coat-hangers for aerials under National. That is what National supplied. In the end National really let the country down. In one year it spent only $4.5 million on police cars whereas we are spending around $30 million per year. National used to spend around $720000 per year on new buildings. Over the last 3 or 4 years of the previous National Government $720000 to $740000 a year was spent on new buildings. This Government is spending over $70 million in 5 years. Greg O’Connor and Tony Ryall forget about that and Rodney Hide never knew about it. 
Darren Hughes 
: Rodney Hide’s a joke. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Well some people call him a joke. I think that he needs to be reminded of exactly what things were like. 
The police used to receive just over $800 million from the National Government; they now receive over $1 billion a year. This Government has made sure that the police are resourced far better than they were before. National was going to take away 540 jobs. How many new jobs have we put in? We have put in over 1000 new police jobs and that has made a huge difference to policing. How many files would be unallocated in Counties-Manukau if National had had its way and got rid of 540 jobs? 
Rodney Hide 
: How would the member know? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: There he is—Rodney Hide who thinks that the dairy owner is right next to my electorate office. I am sorry but it was the wrong electorate. Rodney Hide got it wrong. Rodney Hide and Mr Garner from TV3 are so close together but what Mr Garner forgets is that Rodney Hide will not be here after the next election. Rodney Hide will be gone. He will be one of those people who will be living in a safer community because the Labour Government has made it safer. And it does not matter how much National Party members squawk. When National was in power there were 96000 burglaries a year; now the rate is under 60000. This is a good Government. It has resourced the police and there are fewer burglaries. Then those members grizzle that the roads are being properly policed for the first time. We are making sure that the police are out on the roads and that they are seen there. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: And the traffic cars! 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Yes we have traffic cars out there. National members should go and tell the parents of the four kids who lost their lives on the weekend that we have enough traffic cars. 
I have to say that we have moved more for the police than any other party has in recent years—far more. Everyone else but National knows that. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Enjoy the last couple of months. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Well I will enjoy it because I know that we are doing a good job and that that member will enjoy sitting on the Opposition benches for a long long while. Mr Ryall will be over there sitting on the Opposition benches because people will remember what it was like under him—a former Minister of Justice who wanted police jobs to be cut. He wanted to lose police jobs and in the end people knew that he was not up to it. 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 This debate on the New Zealand Police has been very interesting and also very sad. The sad part about this debate is the lengths that a number of Opposition MPs will go to in order to attack the credibility and standing of the New Zealand police force simply for their own political gain. The police regularly publish statistics. No one has ever doubted them before until the statistics showed a very promising story that everybody should have celebrated. We all should have celebrated the fall in crime in New Zealand. We all should have said that it was good news. Instead what we heard from the Opposition parties was that the statistics were a lie—that the police had somehow fiddled the books to make things look good. What the Opposition parties were in actual fact saying was that the New Zealand police were telling lies to the public. Those parties were saying that for their own political ends. They were prepared to sacrifice the reputation of the New Zealand police force for their own political ends. 
I say that the facts stack up for the police for the truth and for the good work that this Government has done. It is a simple fact that burglary is now down to about 57500 offences a year a drop of almost 40000. The Opposition claims that that is not true. But the point is that if one is to claim insurance—as most people who are burgled do—one has to report the crime to the police. The insurance company will not pay out unless one does. So there is a very compelling reason for people to front up and say that they have been burgled. The fact is that 40000 fewer burglaries a year have occurred. There is a good reason for part of that decline which is that this Government has put an enormous amount of effort into reducing the level of unemployment. When people have jobs and are working and getting an income they will be less inclined to get involved in crime. The only person who does not believe that there is a connection between crime and unemployment is the former leader of the National Party. Everybody else says that unemployment and poverty lead to crime. We have reduced poverty reduced unemployment and put a huge amount of resources into the police. 
It is a fact that when I was an Opposition MP the police cars at Hastings had all done over 250000 kilometres. They were all clapped out; there was not a decent one amongst them. George Hawkins as the Minister of Police has upgraded the fleet. It is a fact that when I was an Opposition MP the local police did not have enough radio telephones and did not have good batteries—they were all failing. It is now a fact that the local police all have good equipment. There is no question about that. It is a fact that the local police station had torn carpet—it was a shambles. It is now a fact that the station is well equipped. It is also a fact that the number of people on the police payroll has gone from 8767 to 9847. That is over 1000 extra staff. Ron Mark says that there is a growing population and that is true. But the rate of increase in the New Zealand police force has been vastly greater than any population growth—over 1000 extra staff. The Opposition does not want to hear that. The fact is that the number of cases being cleared by the police—successfully prosecuted—has gone up dramatically. So crime is down the resolution rate is up and everybody in New Zealand should celebrate that. The only people who do not want to celebrate the good news are members of the Opposition parties. 
The fact is that we have invested more in forensic technology DNA testing etc. We now have some of the best equipment and best profiles in the world. We are doing an outstanding job. The Opposition should say that that is good that the Minister of Police has done an outstanding job that they support him for doing that and that they support the police force. But of course it will not. The Opposition wants to wreck the reputation of the New Zealand police force for its own venal political ends. That is the truth of it. The other fact is—[ 
Interruption 
] Mr Jones can say “Ooh” all he likes as if he has seen a ghost but he should go to the books and look at the financial records. He will see that in the last 4 years of the previous National Government it spent under $1 million a year on capital works for the police whereas in the last 5 years this Government has spent $73 million. There is no question about it; the police force was undercapitalised. George Hawkins has gone to the Cabinet table and argued for more money for the police and he has won the argument every time. The police have more resources better equipment better police stations more staff more technology and more of everything. Anything that the police wanted they got more of—there was no question about it. Over 1000 more staff have been taken on in 5 years. That is an increase in staff numbers of 200 per annum. No other organisation has gone up in that way. 
Report noted. 
Ministry of Defence 
New Zealand Defence Force 
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) 
: 
 As a member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee it gives me enormous pleasure and pride to say that I have visited Waiouru in the last year on a special field visit by the committee seen the wonderful men and women there and witnessed the wonderful way they work. It was very clear to me that in terms of the New Zealand Defence Force and our armed services under this Government it is all good news. I compliment the men and women of the armed services for the tremendous work they do for this country. If ever a force a group of men and women should unite this Parliament in giving praise it is the wonderful men and women of our defence forces. I want to compliment and again say how impressed I was with the leadership—with the heads of the armed forces but also with the Minister leading them. Under this Government we have seen some real gains in defence. 
Here are just some of the achievements this term. We are building a modern defence force that has appropriate structures to best fit New Zealand’s needs that ensures accountability and that is open to new technological and conceptual advances cultural changes and modern ideas. What a contrast that is to what we inherited at the end of the 1990s. 
Darren Hughes 
: Tragic years. 
MARTIN GALLAGHER 
: Yes we had 9 tragic years frankly and with due respect in their hearts members of the Opposition know it. They allowed the defence forces in this country to run down. Members of New Zealand First will certainly not disagree with that. I know that in their hearts they totally agree with the point I have made on that. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but the time for this debate has expired. 
Reports noted. 
Clauses 1 to 11 and schedule agreed to.  
Bill reported without amendment. 
Report adopted. 
Appropriation (2003/04 Financial Review) Bill 
Third Reading 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Appropriation (2003/04 Financial Review) Bill be now read a third time 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the 
 Appropriation (2003/04 Financial Review) Bill 
 be now read a third time 
. 
Ayes 70 
New Zealand Labour 51; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7; Maori Party 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill 
Instruction to Committee 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill that it take the bill part by part 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the motion be agreed to 
. 
Ayes 71 
New Zealand Labour 51; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2; Maori Party 1. 
Noes 47 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7. 
Motion agreed to. 
In Committee 
Part 1 Preliminary provisions 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 This is the start of a marathon debate that will involve an exhaustive examination of a number of key provisions. It involves issues of significance not only for the legal profession but also for the people of New Zealand. It is an unhelpful start when the MP for Whanganui in her typical way catcalls across the Chamber. But I am hoping that this may be one of those very rare debates in which she is prepared to make some substantial contribution. [ 
Interruption 
] I doubt it; she laughs. I think we probably all doubt it. It is important as we look at this legislation that it be a topic of exacting review if for no other reason than the fact that there are multiple last-minute amendments from the Minister of Justice. I hope the newly appointed Attorney-General—and we have not had a non - legally qualified Attorney-General since 1933—will himself participate in this debate. 
In dealing with the first part of this bill I would like very briefly to sketch an outline of the New Zealand Law Society. I will not be doing that for the benefit of the member for Whanganui because I think that her ability to absorb information is well and truly past. I will be doing it for those who take a genuine interest in the rule of law in New Zealand because it is a critical aspect of this legislation that lawyers stand as a bulwark against the infringement of human rights and stand for the advancement of society in a careful and constructed way. The New Zealand Law Society was established by statute in 1869 so it is a long-running organisation. 
Simon Power 
: It seems more recent than that. 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: Mr Power says that it seems more recent than that but no it was established in 1869. We are looking at a review of the Law Practitioners Act. That statute did a number of things. It set out the society’s name membership structure and general functions and also the society’s powers and duties. It made provision for a number of district law societies. So the existing structure which is now not to be is made up of the New Zealand Law Society and a number of district law societies: Auckland Canterbury Gisborne Hawke’s Bay Manawatu Marlborough Nelson Otago Southland Taranaki Waikato - Bay of Plenty Wanganui Wellington and Westland. These are not branches of the New Zealand Law Society; they are independent bodies with their own statutory powers. So we have a situation where the district law societies and the New Zealand Law Society operate in a federal structure. 
To flesh out the comments that I hope will be the subject of multiple calls on Part 1 I will say that the New Zealand Law Society is governed by a council of 29 or 30 members. The council has a president four vice-presidents a treasurer elected by the council 23 members elected by the district law societies—up to four each depending on the number of members—and a president-elect if any. The council meets at least once a year. There is a board which acts as the executive body managing the affairs of the society exercising all the functions and powers of the council except those that are specifically reserved. These issues are of interest to me—I say this as Mr Barker goes back to the chair to provide a semblance of constitutionality to the Committee stage of this bill—because I was the treasurer of the New Zealand Law Society for a number of years and I was also on the board. 
There is much in this bill that can be commended. There are some aspects as will emerge in the course of this debate that can be subject to criticism. The New Zealand Law Society board comprises 13 or 14 members: the president the four vice-presidents and eight members of the society elected by the council. The term of office of the elected board members is 2 years with a two-term maximum. As members in the Chamber will know the New Zealand Law Society has a number of special committees and also numerous ad hoc committees. My understanding is that at the moment there are three specialist sections: the Corporate Lawyers Association of New Zealand the property law section and the family law section. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I follow in the wake of a member of the Bar in New Zealand who has had a long and distinguished career as a solicitor. In the final years of the time before Richard Worth arrived in Parliament he was the chairperson of Simpson Grierson New Zealand’s largest law firm. So he comes to this debate with a unique perspective on these matters not only as a practising lawyer but also as somebody who rose through the hierarchy of district law societies and the New Zealand Law Society to become the treasurer of the New Zealand Law Society for some time. I served merely as a humble member of the social committee for the Manawatu District Law Society. I look forward to working our way through the 11 parts plus the schedules title and commencement clauses of this bill. 
It is worth recognising one issue right upfront. It relates to clause 3 “Purposes”. Clause 3(1)(c) states that one of the purposes of the bill is: “(c) to recognise the status of the legal profession …” but more important clause 4 sets out the fundamental obligations of lawyers. Clause 4(b) states that a lawyer has: “(b) the obligation to be independent in providing regulated services to his or her clients:”. During the second reading of this bill I indicated that I have grave reservations—as do many members in this Chamber—about the removal of Queen’s Counsel from the legal profession. I have them for this reason: Queen’s Counsel have a job to do in maintaining the independence referred to in clause 4(b) particularly at a level that involves taking on the State or the establishment as it were on behalf of a client. I would have thought that members of the Labour Government would think that that was a noble cause for a lawyer to undertake.  
 The thing that worries me about that particular aspect of the purposes clause and its effect on QCs is that if we are now to have the designation of Senior Counsel bestowed upon lawyers in large law firms that act for corporate clients or more particularly large Government departments Crown entities and the like one has to question—at least in a superficial way—the independence of those lawyers and the overall context of their relationship with the Government where the Government provides a number of larger clients to those law firms. The whole point of having Queen’s Counsel was that a senior member of the Bar could stand aside from any of those perceived conflicts that may have arisen by him or her being in a big firm that acted for big Government departments Crown entities and the like. By removing QCs this bill actually undermines the obligations contained in clause 4(c). That worries me because Queen’s Counsel have always had a special role in maintaining the independence of their advice and representation on behalf of clients who do not have the backing of the powerful State—which is becoming more powerful these days I must say—and they do not have the backing of big law firms that act for those types of clients. I think it will be a grave loss if this part of the legislation passes through this House. Having said that there are aspects of this bill that the National Party strongly agrees with and we will work our way through those aspects. 
I must say that I am concerned about the number of late amendments particularly around the definition of incorporated conveyancing firms—a controversial area that is part of this legislation. When we glance at the Table we can see 16 different amendments and Supplementary Order Papers that have been placed on it at the last minute. One would have thought that after the length of time that this bill has been in the Justice and Electoral Committee and the length of time that Phil Goff has put his heart and soul into getting this legislation through the House the select committee might have got it right and that we would not need these last-minute amendments and Supplementary Order Papers filed on the Table. For an issue like the regulation and statutory framework of the legal profession those people who access it—whether that be accessing Queen’s Counsel large legal firms or community law centres—deserve better from lawmakers than these scrappy last-minute attempts by way of amendments and Supplementary Order Papers laid on the Table. Some of them like those tabled by Dail Jones and Richard Worth will no doubt have their merits but the Government has had this legislation in its hands for a long period of time. It should do better by the users of legal services in New Zealand than to table amendments and Supplementary Order Papers at the last minute. So we will look closely at those definitions as we work our way through this legislation. 
I will finish my first of four contributions on Part 1 by saying that members should remember that the point of regulating the legal profession is to protect the client. For that reason the removal of silks from the legal profession—in my view and in the view of many members of this House—undermines the clients’ ability to access quality independent legal advice that is not in any way tarnished by the relationship a large firm may have in acting for clients that may be Government departments ministries Crown businesses or the like. That is a fault in this legislation and I am determined to see that point put on the record under my name. 
I look forward to contributing in a small way to the contributions that have been made by my far more learned colleagues Dr Wayne Mapp Dr Richard Worth and Georgina te Heuheu all of whom have legal experience in one forum or another—whether it be the Waitangi Tribunal a major law firm or a university in Dr Mapp’s case—that far outweighs my own. All I offer to the debate is a humble 5½ years of practice in criminal courts and some commercial and property work. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed that short period of time. But that does not undermine in any way the weight or seriousness that I place on the amendments coming before the profession or more important what it will mean for their clients. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 As the preceding speaker mentioned I have lodged a couple of amendments on behalf of New Zealand First. One is to do with the retention of Queen’s Counsel and the other is to do with the attack this bill imposes on banks and the extra charges that the clients of law firms will face as a result of the reduction in the interest made available to the banks. The preceding speaker Mr Simon Power from the National Party made a good point about clause 4. In subclause (b) of that clause there is a fundamental obligation on lawyers to be independent in providing regulated services to their clients. With regard to lawyers being independent I say that speaking broadly there is nothing more independent than the independent Bar which consists of the Queen’s Counsel. This Government is proposing to remove that independent Bar and bring it to an end. That is a contradiction in this legislation. Clearly this Government has something against Queen’s Counsel and I will be going into that in greater detail later. 
I will look in terms of Part 1 at the role that a conveyancer will have to play as a result of this legislation. Let us remember that this legislation was brought about by the Hon Mr Goff in around 1997 when he was an Opposition member of Parliament. He came up with a brilliant idea and I am sure that Mr Goff will take many calls tonight because obviously he is extremely interested in this legislation. It was brought about by his wishes and I look forward to hearing about his support for this bill. I oppose the bill in certain part although generally New Zealand First will be giving it support. I look forward to hearing Mr Goff’s comments on it as I am sure do all conveyancers and members of the New Zealand Law Society. This bill is 346 pages long. The part we are considering is some 30 pages long and is mainly to do with interpretation. We are creating a lawyers’ and conveyancers’ way of looking at legal work—in particular in so far as conveyancers are concerned with regard to property matters. That is speaking very broadly for the benefit of members of the public. 
First of all in this bill we come up with a definition of a conveyancer who is then given a conveyancers society inspectorate by this legislation. I am sure that when conveyancers thought of having their own legislation one of the things that would not have occurred to them was the need for a conveyancers society inspectorate to be established by the New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. I look at that from the point of view of a conveyancer and at the administration costs that this legislation will impose on a conveyancer. Then we have the Conveyancing Practitioners’ Fidelity Fund something else that conveyancers will have to face. One wonders whether they can possibly afford one. Again this bill sets up conveyancing practitioners standards committees to be established pursuant to clause 114 of the bill. That is another cost on conveyancers that this legislation will require. Then there is also a disciplinary tribunal the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal. If I were a conveyancer—and I understand there may be only about eight of them—I would be shuddering in my shoes already to think that the eight conveyancers will have to pay for an inspectorate to have a fidelity fund to have standards committees and to have a disciplinary tribunal for all eight of them. I wonder whether conveyancers had expected this legislation to affect them in that way when they wanted a separate freedom to carry on their conveyancing work. 
 The other type of definition is that of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal which is referred to in clause 206. There is also going to be a New Zealand Society of Conveyancers. The conveyancers will probably have to get a lawyer to set up all those things for them. I just wonder how many thousands of dollars they will have to pay lawyers as a result of all the various things they will be required to do before they can even get under way. 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
: 
 The Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill is relatively unique in that the organisation—the Law Society—is seeking the change. The impetus for the change has come from the profession itself. There is general agreement on the bill. I am very interested to read despite the comments made by some members that National supports the bill but has a number of reservations. So on the general points the majority of this Committee is in agreement on the bill. We heard some comments made by Simon Power in the first humble speech that I have heard from him in this Chamber—and I look forward to more of them. 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That type of comment is unnecessary. It is well known that my maiden speech was also humble. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank the member for reminding us of that. 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I apologise to the member. His maiden speech must have been forgettable although I did remember the second one. But there is general agreement on this bill. 
The essence of the legislation for the benefit of those who are not very familiar with it and who may be listening to this debate is the separation of the regulatory and advocacy powers of the Law Society. Currently the structure is such that the society has to be both a regulator and an advocate and it seems that that is not a particularly good structure. But the bill maintains that the obligations of lawyers to their clients are to be exactly the same as they are at present. We are just looking at changing the structure. The major issue is going to be the addition of conveyancers. That is a significant step and Mr Dail Jones is correct when he says that it comes from the 1997 Conveyancers Bill initiated by Phil Goff. It is true that there are other jurisdictions around the world where conveyancers are treated in the same way as lawyers. New Zealand is different in that regard. I accept that there will be a difference of opinion about that as there will be a difference of opinion—and this is clear from reading the Justice and Electoral Committee’s report—on the status of Queen’s Counsel. People have made their views known on that. Those are the issues but in general terms I would expect to see a high degree of unanimity as we go through the bill although we will disagree over some of the points. 
I take issue with Simon Power in that I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing to see a number of amendments on the Table. I think that is in fact a positive thing that people are clearly thinking about the legislation are going through it piece by piece and are making sure that we do work assiduously in order to get it as correct as we can. That is the duty of the Committee today and it is the only time that a number of people will have the option to do that. I think this will be an interesting debate. I do not think it will be particularly protracted because there is general agreement about the reform. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 As I was saying before conveyancers are going to have some great difficulties in complying with the requirements of this legislation. If I were a conveyancer I would be having second thoughts about what it was I had let myself in for because conveyancers are going to have to compete with lawyers on a relatively even playing field. That was one of the requirements that New Zealand First would have wanted if there was to be a situation where lawyers lost their so-called monopoly on conveyancing. So many lawyers are doing conveyancing today at such small rates that one would wonder how anyone could possibly say there was a monopoly. But that is fair enough. As a lawyer who did a lot of conveyancing I have no problems with conveyancers coming in and doing conveyancing provided it is done on a level playing field and provided that they are largely separated from lawyers. The last thing a lawyer would want would be to be subjected to any losses resulting from the way in which conveyancers might try to interpret a complicated agreement for sale and purchase. Bearing in mind the way land agents prepare agreements for sale and purchase which are often totally unintelligible even to the land agents and to the clients somehow the two lawyers involved on both sides have to bring some sense to it and bring a reasonably quick and efficient and cheap resolution to the problems created by agents—problems that never go before the courts because lawyers are interested in just acting in the best interests of their clients. So that will be interesting. 
One other thing I am pleased with in looking at Part 1 is the creation of and the reference to the incorporated law firm. It will be of considerable interest to lawyers and the Law Society to see how they work out. Of course there will be incorporated conveyancing firms as well so when we talk about the costs associated with setting up a conveyancing firm that is another cost that they will have to think about and there will be another bonus for a lawyer probably in setting up the incorporated conveyancing firm for a conveyancer. 
But I tell the public too generally that they will now have to be a lot more careful in who they instruct to do their conveyancing. Because an incorporated conveyancing firm and an incorporated law firm being incorporated will have a different form of liability in many ways than the ordinary law firm whether it is a single lawyer on his or her own—virtually a sole trader as we would say—or lawyers in partnership whose personal assets are up for grabs if any partner does something wrong. 
One of the problems that might be experienced is that if there are too many claims on a lawyer they may lose their legal negligence protection. Then if they do something wrong and they are an incorporated law firm for example what will be the amount that any client could ever get out of that incorporated law firm? The same goes for an incorporated conveyancing firm as well considering the question of legal negligence liability policies with which Dr Worth is very familiar. 
The bill is an interesting piece of legislation. New Zealand First will support the aspects of the bill that say it can proceed in its present form as far as lawyers and conveyancers are concerned. But for the future I would be looking at another piece of legislation that would split lawyers from conveyancers. But for the time being we will go along with this bill as it is. It is the best of a bad job at the moment. The Law Society has said that it wants it and I emphasise in this first call that the main reason we are supporting this bill is that the Law Society says it wants this bill in this form. I think every lawyer knows that this is not the best form of the legislation and lawyers do not want to be associated with conveyancers. It is like midwives and general practitioners being forced into the same relationship. Midwives and general practitioners in past times did not get on very well at all and in a similar way lawyers and conveyancers have not got on very well. But I suspect that once this legislation is passed and conveyancers can go their own way and lawyers can go their own way and do their conveyancing that situation might improve. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to line up with my caucus legal colleagues tonight. They are all honourable members: Richard Worth Wayne Mapp Judith Collins and Simon Power. Phil Heatley is sitting here encouraging us supporting his legal colleagues in the caucus. As I say I am very pleased to line up tonight and to make a contribution—one of many that I will make as this bill proceeds through the Committee stage. 
I want to make a comment about my colleague Simon Power who was so complimentary of the rest of us here tonight. He characterised himself as having come most recently to the law with only 5 years’ practice. I can say about Simon Power however that he has been more recently in the law certainly in the practice of the law than I have. That will count for a lot and we shall all see that as this debate proceeds. 
Of course Mr Chairperson the Hon Clem Simich is also a lawyer and from the National Party as well so I think this is a really fine evening when we are in the Chamber debating a bill that as the Minister quite rightly says the legal profession has wanted and has wanted for a very long time. I do not know that the Minister necessarily had to comment on that as being unique because with the legal profession having sought those changes it shows its members’ professionalism. It is a noble profession that we are part of. As I say the Law Society and the profession itself have by and large been waiting for these changes and it is very good that we are finally here tonight to wend our way through this rather large piece of legislation. 
Those who are listening can take heart from the purposes of the bill. As one of my colleagues rightly said they are largely for the protection of clients and users of legal services. The opening paragraph under the purposes clause clause 3 states: “(1) the purposes of this Act are—(a) to maintain public confidence in the provision of legal services and conveyancing services:”. That is why of course the legal profession would have sought that provision because there is a need to ensure that the profession is viewed as having value of being worthy and of being the protector of rights of New Zealanders when they need to resort to the law. So it is a very worthy purpose and that is why the National Party is pleased to support this bill. 
As the Minister has already recognised we will have various issues which we will raise as the debate goes on. We will have some reservations about those but we also welcome this stage of the bill and look forward to its passing in due course. 
I do implore the Minister to think very seriously about the comments that my colleague Simon Power made about the removal of the independent bar—the removal of Queen’s Counsel—which is to be replaced by Senior Counsel. That action does fly in the face of the second obligation that the bill points out is attributable to lawyers—the obligation to be independent. The public has a right and certainly an expectation when accessing services from the legal profession to expect that those services will be exercised in a fully independent manner. 
Simon Power outlined the purpose behind the institution of the Queen’s Counsel. I hope that this Government is not getting rid of that as another of its actions in line with the move to republicanism—an action to get rid of concepts and things of tradition that have worked well for centuries and that have served the practice of law well not only in this country but in England and other places as well. 
So far I have not heard of any good reason why the Government should move in that manner. I hope that before we leave Part 1 or indeed before we complete the Committee stage of this bill the Minister will tell us why the Government is moving in that way. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I fear that it must be nauseating for the few who are listening to this debate tonight to hear the lawyers all chummily congratulating each other and apologising mildly for being willing to go along with a disgraceful piece of so-called reform. In the previous stages of this bill some National Party members made quite strong speeches pointing out the reasons why the bill should not go through. We have had the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker say in effect that he did not see any reason why we are doing this except that the Law Society asked us to. That is effectively what Mr Barker said. 
For ACT I can say that we will not go along with legislation that is an embarrassment to everyone. We are not like Phil Goff who came here in 1997 or 1998 and introduced a bill that said: “Let’s increase competition. Let’s deregulate this little cosy conveyancing area.” and who 6 years later has ended up saying limply—with 330 pages of deregulation—“We’ll hand over what the Law Society wants.” 
We are now on Part 1 which alone I think is longer than the entire bill regulating the accounting profession. I am not certain but I think that Part 1 probably has more prescription in its definitions than in the definitions of the last four professional regulation bills that have gone through this House. That is a disgrace. It is a throwback to the days of the two cosy fat old parties deciding that it did not really matter what the quality of the law was but if it was convenient to an interest group they wanted to suck up to or if it was convenient to the Law Society they would push it through even though they thought it was pretty disgraceful—and this bill is. 
I shall read for the Committee a simple summary that relates to Part 1 from a very entrepreneurial and I understand efficient law firm which says it is being inhibited in its operations in New Zealand compared with its operations in Australia. This is Sanderson Weir: “I believe this bill has been drafted as a cop-out to the profession that does not want competition. Many in the profession including all of the law societies have fearlessly engaged in a bit of patch protection. So far they’ve been successful. In Australia that practice was disparagingly called the ‘dingo fence syndrome’. In those days it was to keep the nasty southerners from New South Wales and Victoria from entering the Queensland market. What competition does is force lawyers to look critically at their business processes and the value of what they really deliver to their clients.” 
That firm is saying that the incorporation model set up under Part 1 is a crock of rubbish. That firm came before the Justice and Electoral Committee and asked us to consider that in New South Wales law firms have incorporated for years now without any of the pages of nonsense that go along with incorporation in this bill. In New South Wales apparently without difficulty a law firm was acquired by a public listed company. Attorneys-General in all the Australian states and territories have agreed that the New South Wales model will be adopted and permitted uniformly across Australia in due course. 
I have also had another of the major New Zealand law firms draw to my attention something that I believe the Minister should have drawn to the attention of this Committee which is the UK report on the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales dated 15 September 2004. It has very similar proposals to those we see in Australia. 
Accordingly amongst the many amendments I have proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 339 I have put forward some very simple ones to simplify incorporation. I propose simply to delete subclauses (3) (4) and (5) of clause 7 which state that it is misconduct for one’s lawyer to share with any person other than another lawyer or incorporated law firm the income from a business involving the provision of regulated services to the public. In other words that relates to the multi-disciplinary practice panic and the incorporated law firm panic. 
 Clauses 10A and 10B can be omitted. Those regulate in pages of detail who can be the directors and shareholders of incorporated firms. There is a very simple formula: it is simply that regulation of lawyers should apply to lawyers. Regulating who they work for is the most cumbersome and foolish way of regulating we could conceive. 
The regulations should apply to lawyers in the same way they apply to doctors whether employed by a hospital board a pharmaceutical company a chemist or another practice of doctors or working on their own in their own practice. The ethical obligations and the obligations to protect the public should apply to the lawyer not to the firm. 
So what we have in this piece of nonsense that is Part 1 is an elaborate patch-protection anti-competitive success by the Law Society. And we have had that acknowledged. We have had speaker after speaker from the National Party say: “I don’t like this bill very much but the Law Society wants it so I’ll go along with it.” Dail Jones for New Zealand First said precisely the same thing: “I think it’s grubby; I don’t like it; but it’s the best thing that is there. The Law Society wants it and we’ll go along.” The Labour Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker said: “It is very very long and very complicated. There are some things one could have different views on but we will go along with it because the Law Society wants it.” 
I see Mr Robson waving. Do I take it that at least one other lawyer in the Committee is prepared to stand up and say that this should have been a deregulation in the interests of consumers—or a regulation in the interests of consumers—and that this should have been a bill with enough quality in it so that members did not have to get up and excuse themselves by saying that whatever the Law Society wanted they went along with? That is exactly the situation of this bill. 
Let us also look at clause 4 a set of fundamental obligations that are oriented specifically to lawyers in private firms in private practice. What does it mean to impose a legal duty on lawyers for a Government department a company a trade union or Federated Farmers to be independent in providing services to their clients—independent of what? Should they be independent of the interests of the body that employs them? Who is the client? They are employees for goodness’ sake! Those lawyers working for those companies are there to serve the trade union or the company—so they are independent of whom? 
We asked at the select committee what that independence meant. I think the drafters had in mind being without prejudicial conflict of interest. But because the Law Society asked for it they got something else. Because the Law Society Council is pursuing a vision of practice as being practice in private law firms we still have this legislated nonsense of a set of mandatory duties we do not know the meaning of. 
What about the obligation to facilitate the administration of justice in New Zealand? Does that mean that a lawyer should not facilitate pleading not guilty when all that will do is slow things down? Does that mean it is not appropriate to act in the interests of the client in offering tactical obstacles to the other side? No one knows. This set of obligations is aspiration written into law and it can create only problems. 
Under clause 4(c) does “the obligation to act in accordance with all fiduciary duties and duties of care owed by lawyers …”—it begs the question what they are—mean that no one can contract out? When someone rings and says: “I just want a top-of-the-head view; I don’t want a book; I don’t want you to send me a bill for $400 for 2½ hours’ work. Just give me an impression of what you think the law is likely to be even if you’re not an expert.” does clause 4(c) mean that the lawyer is prohibited from doing that and that the lawyer must say: “No I’m sorry; I have to act in accordance with all fiduciary duties and duties of care?” “Duties of care” would suggest an objective standard. 
Does that mean we cannot contract out? No one knows because this legislation was drafted by the dinosaurs of the legal profession in an attempt to hold back the tide. It was drafted by a Government that had given up for a Minister who to his shame had not trusted officials for so long that he had had to let it go ahead despite misgivings. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I know the previous speaker is forthright in his views as to why this is bad legislation and he has moved numerous amendments. One of the interesting things about this legislation is that there are rather a large number of amendments on the table covering a wide variety of issues. 
I want to refer to two in particular that have been moved by my colleagues in particular I would like to acknowledge Dr Worth who was a managing partner of one of New Zealand’s largest firms. I would also like to acknowledge my colleague Judith Collins who is the vice-president of the New Zealand Law Society. I know that Mr Franks might feel it is rather excessive that I do but I do so for quite a deliberate reason. We are voting for this legislation and we are doing so because frankly it is the right thing to do. It may not be a perfect bill and I acknowledge that but it is the bill we are actually confronted with and have to deal with. It has been in gestation—as has been well acknowledged—for many many years. I know the select committee worked long and hard to improve it in many particular ways. The two issues I wish to refer to are noted in clause 3 in particular and in clause 6 in relation to conveyancing. 
I know that the genesis of this legislation by Mr Goff was actually to get the conveyancing profession regulated to be permissible. But as time has gone on and a lot of time has gone on now—nearly a decade—the reality is that there is actually no real demand. I think that is acknowledged not just by my colleagues but by the Government itself. It is passing legislation for conveyancers notwithstanding there being no realistic demand any more. There might have been a few years ago but there is not now. The field is fundamentally more competitive and it has reduced any potential demand for the roll. So that is why it is now fundamentally misplaced to pass legislation about conveyancers when what we are really trying to do is to deal with the legal profession and to make sure that the rules around the legal profession are correct. If there is a need for legislation around conveyancers then I would have to acknowledge that the correct way to do that now would be the way suggested by Mr Dale Jones which was essentially to have a separate piece of legislation. I suspect there would be no real demand or expectation for that. What seemed a worthy motive nearly a decade ago simply does not stack up now as a realistic approach for the future. 
I noted with interest the very knowledgable comments made by Mr Franks around incorporation. I think those issues do have merit and I would advise the Government to think seriously about incorporating those amendments into the legislation. The Law Society wants the opportunity of incorporation. This is surely an opportunity to harmonise our law with that of Australia. One of the goals of legislation under CER—and it was just the 20th anniversary of that last year—is in fact to harmonise legislation. If it is the case—and I know Mr Franks has done a great deal of study on this—that all Australian states are adopting a simplified approach then now is the opportunity to do the same here in our own legislation. 
I know that Mr Franks is going to say that even if that happens we should still be voting against the bill. I think that would be unrealistic—totally unrealistic. 
I acknowledge to Mr Franks that the legislation is not ideal. It has significant deficiencies. My colleague Dr Worth has moved many many amendments because of that. I know that Mr Franks has also moved many many amendments because of that. Many of them do have merit and I suggest we pass this bill for the benefit of the profession. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is with great pleasure that I speak on this bill and in referring to Part 1 I would like to deal with some of the issues so well put by my colleagues Dr Richard Worth Dr Wayne Mapp and the Hon Georgina te Heuheu and also with the comments made by Dail Jones and Stephen Franks. One of the concerns of the legal profession when it was first being mooted that it should be deregulated or that it should have conveyancers as part of the profession at least in a pseudo way was the fact that conveyancers as a profession would not necessarily come under the same rules and conditions and therefore terms of business as lawyers do. That related in particular to the fidelity fund and to the fact that lawyers who had practices were all personally responsible for not only their own actions—because they could not have limited liability companies—but also the actions of their business partners and staff. That was not only in terms of mistakes—and most lawyers would take out insurance for that—but in relation to dishonesty for which lawyers often could not get any insurance. The dishonesty was in relation to the fidelity fund a fund that the legal profession has paid into for years and years ever since the 1930s to cover the cost of theft by lawyers or their staff. 
The conveyancers who were at that stage being championed by the current Minister of Justice the Hon Phil Goff were not expected to have any of the same impediments to business as lawyers did. They were going to set up under completely different rules and of course they did. They were absolutely allowed to act in a manner contrary to the Law Practitioners Act of 1982 which was the law at the time. They were encouraged to do so by the person who is now the Minister of Justice the Hon Phil Goff. They were championed and held up as the little Daniel in the lion’s den or as David fighting against Goliath. What we saw in the legal profession was two sets of rules. Conveyancers were able to undercut the legal profession based on the fact that they did not have to pay into the fidelity fund and on the fact that they did not have to have certain standards about who could work in their offices. In fact they were undercutting lawyers in a very unfair way. So when it was proposed at that stage that conveyancers be allowed a de jure right to practice it was very important to the legal profession that they be able to do so under the same rules as or similar rules to lawyers working in the same sort of practice. 
That is actually one of the good things about Part 1. The good thing is that we can actually get some form of the same rules for the same sort of work. I think that is something we should be positive about because to my way of thinking not everything in the bill is positive. Certainly when we look at some of the structures that are set up we see one of the problems is that the legal profession has spent a huge amount of money over the years through the Law Society on restructuring itself. I remember well the consternation of the legal profession—particularly of the board of the New Zealand Law Society which I think I was on at that stage—when the E-DEC report came out. It was a report written by a bunch of economists who had clearly worked in Treasury and who therefore wanted to slim the regulations down. They thought we could have the same sort of situation as accountants but the legal profession could not cope with the thought of that.In many ways I think that was a shame. In many ways I think that accountants are people who have taken the bull by the horns and done very very well for themselves whereas unfortunately the legal profession has often become somewhat tied by its own need to regulate everything. But that having been said we certainly need to have a modification within the legal profession. One of the areas as I have said that needs to be dealt with is that of conveyancing. 
We in the legal profession thought when the change was being mooted back in the 1990s that there would be conveyancers coming out of our ears. What has happened of course is that with the thought of being sued—lawyers have always been able to be sued certainly in the conveyancing area—and with the thought of having to pay for a fidelity fund for their colleague conveyancers and of having to front up for that it now appears that there is a miniscule number of conveyancers practising. I think the number would be fewer than the fingers on my left hand. One of the things we have seen in the conveyancing area is that once people realised there was not a lot of money to be made in it then of course the interest fell off. 
One of the interesting things was watching the way some of the banks reacted to conveyancers. I remember the ASB at one stage had a problem. The bank was very concerned about being forced into taking on a conveyancer as the bank’s legal adviser on documents. What I mean by that is that nowadays quite often with regard to mortgage documents the bank that is lending the money instructs the lawyer who is acting for the borrower to act on behalf of the bank as well. So there is an inherent conflict of interest although the banks can rely very much on the facts that firstly the lawyer is normally insured—and most of the banks require the lawyer to be insured—and secondly the lawyer is covered by the Law Society’s rules so that if the lawyer does anything wrong he or she will end up losing his or her practising certificate. I can certainly remember the ASB being very concerned that it had one particular conveyancer whom I shall not name hassling it because the bank did not think it should give the same benefits to the client of a conveyancer as it gave to the client of a lawyer. And that was fair enough too. But the bank was being threatened that it would be sued. Of course we do not need that sort of thing. 
One of the interesting things with regard to conveyancing is that we used to have a scale of fees for it; certainly when I first started to practise law we used to have that. Mr Jones remembers that well does he not? 
Dail Jones 
: Those were the days. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: As Mr Jones says those were the days. That was when the fees made it worthwhile to do conveyancing work. What people forget—and it is quite good to remind the Committee of this—is that those conveyancing fees paid for what is now legal aid. 
Dail Jones 
: That’s right. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Mr Jones confirms that. In those days before we had a State-funded legal aid system law firms cross-subsidised legal aid work—pro bono work we used to call it—with that sort of money. That happened all the time. It is an amazing thing that matters were still dealt with in the courts because that is what lawyers did. In those days to be a litigator in a law firm was to be very much a poor cousin because the litigators of criminal matters and family matters within a law firm were seen as handling the charitable cases that did not bring in the fees that the conveyancers working in commercial practice and the commercial litigators brought in. 
Since the freeing up of the conveyancing market and the massive reduction in fees who now picks up the tab for legal aid? The taxpayer does. That is actually what has happened. Instead of lawyers keeping the costs down within their own firms and acting as the gatekeeper towards the fees and the work that is done we now have a very open-ended legal aid system. One of the things that people around the country are concerned about is the complete blowout in legal aid almost every year.That is not to say that we need to return to a fee-scale system but it is good occasionally—Mr Jones says ugh I am being tough but no I do not think we need to do that—to remember that in fact there was justice before there was a legal aid system. 
There was an ability for people to have their time in court. In fact many lawyers and former lawyers would say that in those days there was far more of a professional attitude towards the practice of law than some of us have seen in the not so distant past. 
One of the things we need to be aware of and one of the good things in this part however is the ability of law firms of people who practise law¸ and of conveyancers to set up in a limited liability company. One of the reasons for that is that the practice of law has changed so significantly. We now have very very large law firms. We also have very small law firms and the vast majority of lawyers in this country practise in one or two-partner firms—in other words in sole practice or in two-partner firms. I guess most people in New Zealand would have no idea about that fact. Most people think lawyers are in big firms but they are not. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 The problem we are facing in this Committee tonight as the Government finally tries to take some action on this legislation is the enormous number of amendments referred to earlier on by Dr Worth of the National Party. The time one is taking to try to go through some of those amendments will obviously delay the vote on Part I because as I look at the most recent one that has come to hand dated Tuesday 29 March 2005 I think that the bill has been out of the Justice and Electoral Committee for about 6 months. Yet the Government is still producing Supplementary Order Papers— 
Dr Richard Worth 
: More to come. 
DAIL JONES 
:—with more to come probably. Yes for sure. We are even looking at an amendment to clause 13 in a Supplementary Order Paper which is an amendment to a provision in an earlier Supplementary Order Paper. So as this bill hangs around we are getting amendments in Supplementary Order Papers to provisions in earlier Supplementary Order Papers and I ask how many more of those amendments to amendments we will get during the course of this debate on the legislation. [ 
Interruption 
] Well the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker would not know. As I said earlier I still look forward to Mr Goff making a contribution because this legislation is all his fault. 
Judith Collins 
: Don’t hold your breath. 
DAIL JONES 
: I will not hold my breath at least not today but no doubt he is thinking about this bill from where he is at the present time and he is very happy to be where he is rather than being in the Chamber at the moment. But this legislation is Mr Goff’s fault and it is the reason why lawyers and conveyancers have been thrown together. We also have an amendment to clause 6. Do I have to give my civil union speech all over again? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Just go for it! 
DAIL JONES 
: I will just go for it because clause 6 is really a civil union amendment is it not? That is the only reason we have clause 6. Once again Helen Clark passed that earlier legislation just for the benefit of the coterie of lesbians and homosexuals who are behind it. But this is a special reference for Sue Bradford of the Greens: the last time I made my speech about Helen Clark and her coterie of lesbians and homosexuals Sue Bradford said to me in high dudgeon: “Oh but we’ve got a lot of lesbians and homosexuals. Why don’t you accuse us of having them too?”. So by special request of the Greens this amendment—and I am looking at the amendment to clause 6 in Supplementary Order Paper 338—is being passed not only for Helen Clark and her coterie of homosexuals and lesbians but also for the Greens and their coterie of homosexuals and lesbians. That is by special request. 
Hon Member 
: Don’t pass it for us. 
DAIL JONES 
: No it is just by the special request of Sue Bradford that I make that point tonight. I am sure she will be very very happy that I have put her in the same basket and those members are in the same sort of basket that applies there. So that is the particular point that I had to raise. 
Now we will have to decide how we will vote on this. At some stage Mr Chairman you may have to rule on whether there will be a personal vote on this particular issue and on whether that will delay it. 
Progress reported. 
Report adopted. 
The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.