Volume 701 Week 3 - Tuesday 4 November 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 701 Week 3 - Tuesday 4 November 2014[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:475. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 4 November 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Questions to MinistersIslamic State Conflict—Government Response1.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First)to the Prime Minister: Is he committed to an open and transparent Government on issues where New Zealand may soon be involved in conflict in the Middle East?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):As I have previously said the Government is looking at a range of options to contribute to the international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL is a brutal organisation that deserves the strongest of condemnation. It is my intention to be as open and transparent with New Zealanders as I can responsibly be about the issue of such a potential contribution.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why then has he delayed including the public in to use his words “a mature conversation” about the Islamic State threat until after the election and indeed until this week?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: During the course of the election campaign there were questions raised about ISIL and I clearly remember making quite a number of comments. One of the problems was that I was about the only person in the entire Parliament who wanted to talk about policy and issues of that matter—certainly I do not remember that member being in that position.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that in June he was giving the public of this country his personal assurance that the Government would not be involved why has the Government been selectively releasing information about the Islamic State threat rather than keeping the public fully informed on the nature of the threat it poses to New Zealand?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly the situation in Iraq is evolving and I think all members of the international community would acknowledge that. Secondly tomorrow as the member is probably aware it is my intention to give a major speech on the issue that I think will actually spell out for New Zealanders both the range of options available and a sense of the risk domestically regionally and internationally. Finally my understanding is that with the agreement of the Business Committee there is going to be a ministerial statement in the House tomorrow by myself. There will be a wide-ranging debate. We have ensured that all political parties even those that have fewer than 6 members will be able to be part of that debate. It is my expectation that New Zealanders from their lounge rooms to this Parliament will want to debate what contribution if any that New Zealand might make.Rt Hon Winston Peters: What assurances can the Prime Minister give that New Zealand will not commit military forces to meeting the Islamic State threat unless there is the United Nations’ sanction for military action?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The first thing I would say is that the member really will need to wait until he sees the speech tomorrow and then he can draw his own conclusions on that question. But secondly in terms of the United Nations one area we are following is the United Nations resolution in relation to foreign fighters. That is something we have been closely following and that is the very reason why the Government is putting up some proposals which will be included in the speech tomorrow to address that issue. I will take a moment to thank the Labour Party which I understand is supporting it and I hope that New Zealand First will support it because it has had the same briefings from officials that the Labour Party has.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that answer why would the New Zealand public not regard the Prime Minister’s so-called mature conversation on the Islamic State issue as a smokescreen and window-dressing when critical decisions have already been made by the Government?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No decisions have actually been made by the Government yet except for the ones in relation to humanitarian aid where we have previously made contributions I think of up to $13.5 million. So no decisions have actually been made. Some decisions may well be made in the future and when people get a chance to see my speech tomorrow they will decide that. I simply say to the member that the issue here is not about whether we are trying to withhold information from the New Zealand public; the issue here is about protecting the New Zealand public from a threat that is credible internationally regionally and domestically.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not true that Cabinet has already made a decision on this matter; if it is true what confidence can the public have that all the material decisions about New Zealand’s role in relation to the international response to the Islamic State threat have not already been made by the Government?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Unless the member is the 21st member of the National Cabinet then he knows something I do not. But outside that no decisions have been made by Cabinet.David Shearer: Given that he has stated that any New Zealand deployment would be “there for a reasonably significant period of time” what would he define as the exit point or the point at which it had finished its job?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly I would urge the member to closely look at the speech tomorrow; he will have a better understanding when he sees that. Secondly the point I was making is simply that if you look at something like Afghanistan in reality when the Labour Government committed New Zealand’s resources and forces to Afghanistan I am not sure people would have thought it would be for the 11 or 12 years that we ultimately stayed but that was the length of time required. I think realistically whatever takes place in a country like Iraq is not something that is going to be very short term. Whether that is 2 3 4 or 5 years I do not know but if the member is asking me whether something was of the order of 6 months then I would say that if that decision was made then it would be no.Economic Programme—Budget 2015 and Better Public Services2.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany)to the Minister of Finance: What Budget approach is the Government taking to ensure that New Zealanders in genuine need receive targeted and effective support through public services?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):The Government is building on its approach of the past 6 years which has focused on delivering for people better results from public services and targeting spending on its services where we can get a return from effective delivery. During our first term we capped the public sector head count reprioritised spending towards front-line services and extracted an efficiency dividend from the public sector. In our second term the Better Public Services programme started to deliver measurable results in meeting some of New Zealand’s most challenging issues. The introduction of the investment approach to welfare has demonstrated a marked improvement in Government decision-making and policy delivery and reduced welfare dependency. We intend to build further on this and other programmes.Jami-Lee Ross: How will the Government’s approach to delivering better public services be reflected in its preparation of Budget 2015?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Budget 2015 will involve continued restraint in Government spending and the Government is bringing in a set of tools that demonstrate that what works for our communities—what makes them safer and better educated for instance—also works for the Government’s books. As the Prime Minister has confirmed one of the Government’s priorities for this term will be helping children and families in material deprivation and hardship. In particular the Government will focus on children and their families at risk of poor education; criminal justice; and employment results. Many of these families are not well served by current public service arrangements. This will require extra resources for initiatives that focus on children and their families in need and achieving results for them. The Government expects this will require a combination of some new investment but also significant reprioritising of money from existing spending that does not work.Jami-Lee Ross: What specific steps will the Government take in preparing Budget 2015 to ensure initiatives focus on delivering better results for New Zealanders in need?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Social sector agencies will work to extend and further evolve the investment approach that the Government has developed over recent years. This will include identifying solutions for the most at-risk groups who need individualised assistance based on their local and family circumstances; recognising and challenging the effectiveness of existing spending and policy delivery involving children and families communities and providers and developing these solutions; and expanding ideas based on data across public agencies which tell us where these families are when they need help and which ones need investment in them. We plan to have an open working relationship with external providers academics community groups and others who use public services.Jami-Lee Ross: What will be the next steps in the Government’s focus on delivering better services and support for the most at-risk children and their families?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Through the Government tender system the Government is issuing a request for information to help target spending on social services and get better results for children and their families who are most at risk. This is the next step in a process that will see ongoing involvement of social service providers front-line staff and communities. In particular we want to help those most at risk and the hardest-to-reach New Zealanders. So Treasury will go out to a range of groups seeking feedback on how existing services work how they can be improved and how they can be better targeted.Marama Fox: Does the Minister agree with the chief economic adviser for Allianz that unless developed nations hike minimum wage rates income inequality will continue to engulf those economies; if so what initiatives will he take to lift the minimum wage and ensure outcomes are improved for New Zealanders in genuine need?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have not seen the advice from the Allianz economic adviser but I can inform the member that the Government has consistently lifted the minimum wage each year. In fact New Zealand’s minimum wage is I think second-highest in the OECD as a proportion of the average wage. So the Government will continue to weigh up the balance of lifting incomes for those on the minimum wage by increasing the minimum wage but not at the expense of putting them out of work.State and Social Housing—Housing Stock3.Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour)to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “Well if we were selling Housing New Zealand the corporation or 25 percent or 49 percent yes that would be an asset sale”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes.Hon Annette King: Why does he think that selling House New Zealand bureaucracy would be an asset sale but selling up to 22000 of its houses worth around $5 billion would not be an asset sale?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly the member is making it up. I have never said that we are going to sell that many houses; I am simply making the point that if Housing New Zealand sells some homes as it did under the previous Labour Government—about a thousand of them—then I do not class that to be an asset sale.Hon Annette King: In light of that answer will there be more houses built or bought by the Government to replace the number of State houses sold under the great State house sell-off?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: What I can guarantee is that there will be more people accommodated under income-related rents and therefore having accessibility to affordable homes. In the end the real point here is that we want to see more New Zealanders getting access to that very low-cost level of housing and it is much more sensible to ask community housing providers and others with access to income-related rents to do that than simply for Housing New Zealand to buy them.Hon Annette King: In light of that answer does he stand by his statement that the fastest way of moving people out of poverty is to deliver more income-related rents; if so how is he going to get the houses to apply those subsidies without simply subsidising private landlords?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly the only people who can get income-related rents are community housing providers or Housing New Zealand. The Labour Party fundamentally knows so little about rents that it cannot even work out what a capital gains tax is going to do and therefore it cannot even work out who gets an income-related rent.Hon Annette King: What discussions have taken place with social housing providers in light of the Monte Cecilia Housing Trust an important provider saying yesterday: “The Government seems to be able to make announcements one day and then tell us ‘well we’ve not really done the detail’” the next day. Is that not what you would call a shambles for it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I cannot tell you exactly what discussions have been held because I am not responsible for that but there are a wide range of community housing providers—I think there are about 30 in total actually. My understanding is that there have been—[Interruption] Thirty-two thank you. My understanding is that there have been quite wide-ranging discussions. But what is clear is that the Government’s intent in this area has been foreshadowed for quite some time. What we are endeavouring to do is to make sure that the social housing sector in New Zealand grows.Hon David Cunliffe: This is the worst ramble of the year.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well the worst ramble of the year is from the four wannabe leaders who cannot even turn up to Parliament.Hon Annette King: Does he agree with the Auckland Community Housing Providers Network that “Selling housing at a time of shortage makes no sense unless the funds from the sales are invested back so that there is a net increase in new social and affordable housing.”; if not why will he not commit to this?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Certainly if one was just solely selling a Housing New Zealand house and there was no other replacement in the form of a community housing provider or somebody else who could provide a house of course that would make no sense because the amount of houses available to low-income people would be by definition reducing. The Government’s whole plan here is to increase it. But just before the members opposite—Sue Moroney: No that doesn’t increase it. They’re just shuffled from one place to another.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well Sue Moroney should just be quiet for a second and listen to this important point. If members opposite want to get all excited about selling things then maybe the member should remember that she was part of a Government that sold Southern Hydro—Hon Phil Goff: Come on!Rt Hon JOHN KEY: —that is right Phil—for $1.6 billion. It was 16 percent of the assets of Meridian Energy.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer has now moved well past the question that was asked.Hon Annette King: When the Prime Minister said a moment ago that their policy was very clear why did he not make it clear during the election campaign that they intended to sell—Hon Members: We did.Hon Annette King: No no. The Prime Minister said yesterday that he could not make it clear because no one wanted to talk about housing. So why did he not tell the public that he intended to sell a significant chunk of State houses some of them to property speculators?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: A few things. Firstly as I pointed out yesterday the Labour Party was fixated with talking about everything other than policy and we know where that took them. Secondly interestingly enough this is a story from 26 February 2014 and it is titled “English talks up big state housing reform”. That was by the way quite a few months before the election. Thirdly I have had a flick through the Labour Party election manifesto and I never saw any part of its manifesto talking about selling 16 percent of the assets of Meridian—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I thank the Prime Minister but that is not his responsibility.Hon Annette King: Is the Prime Minister saying that in the numerous public meetings he held the four leaders’ debates the whistle-stop tours and the hundreds of opportunities for selfies he never had even a nanosecond to tell those he met that he intended to flog off billions of dollars of State houses because he thought that the Labour Party was busy talking about something else?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The point I was making was first it was in our policy; second the Minister of Finance had given a speech at the start of the year on it; and third my main point was that the Leader of the Opposition did not want to talk about it and neither did anyone else. They wanted to talk about every other little trumped-up scandal but they did not want to talk about policy. That is why by the way Labour polled the worst result in living history of the Labour Party for 92 years. So if you want to go and have a re-run of the election campaign and talk about policy you might do better—but oops you do not have a leader to do that.Hon Annette King: I seek leave—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have not called the member yet.Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table the 2002 election result when the National Party got—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have heard enough and there is no need to do it.Kevin Hague: Does the Prime Minister guarantee that all proceeds from the sale of State houses will be used for social housing purposes?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No decisions have been made yet on what the proceeds will go to but what I can guarantee the member is that as a result of this policy more poor and vulnerable New Zealanders will have an affordable roof over their heads. I would have thought that if the member wanted to stop playing politics and start caring about the poor people he would come over and support the National Government.Kevin Hague: Well if it is not resolved what the proceeds will be used for what else might they be used for besides social housing purposes?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I said that decision has not been made. In the fullness of time it will be and we will be happy to stand on the policy and the record of this Government. But what I do know is that as a result of this policy more New Zealand families more vulnerable families will have an affordable roof over their heads. I define that as a success.Science and Research—Marsden Fund 2014 Grants4.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National)to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What recent investment has the Government made in high-quality investigator-led research?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation):Earlier today I announced the results of the latest round of the Marsden Fund. A total of 101 projects from many of New Zealand’s top researchers have been approved and will receive between them $56 million in funding from Marsden Fund grants over the next 3 years. The Marsden Fund which is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment aims to enhance the quality of research and support the advancement of scientific knowledge in New Zealand. Since we came into Government we have increased our support for this fund by 38 percent despite the global financial crisis from just under $38 million annually in 2008 to $52.4 million annually this year.Paul Foster-Bell: What sorts of programmes will receive Marsden Fund grants?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Interest in the Marsden Fund continues to grow with 1222 applications received for this round. The level of competition has resulted in a high degree of quality amongst the 101 successful applicants in diverse areas such as investigating the behaviour of atoms and molecules under extreme pressure and temperature exploring the higher incidence of heart failure in diabetics fine-scale imaging of the Alpine Fault and probing the origins of high-energy cosmic rays. Through our support for the Marsden Fund we are investing in high-quality investigator-led research to generate new knowledge which creates long-term benefits for this country.Paul Foster-Bell: Why is investigator-led research so important?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Excellence in research is key to New Zealand becoming a more innovative nation. Encouraging investigator-led research through the Marsden Fund and other programmes is instrumental in further developing advanced research skills and helping attract and retain top research talent for New Zealand. Although the value of a project might not always be clear at the outset investigator-led research generates ideas expands the knowledge base and contributes to the development of our skill base. It is part of the balanced approach that this Government is taking to science and innovation funding.Economy—Export Sector Performance and Government Financial Position5.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North)to the Minister of Finance: Based on Treasury’s PREFU forecasts how much faster will exports have to grow relative to the rest of the economy from the March 2016 year to 2025 to achieve the Government’s 40 percent export target?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):If the member does not mind I will just explain the basis of the numbers so that we do not have endless questioning on this using different numbers. The target the Government set is for real exports of goods and services as a percentage of real GDP. On that basis Statistics New Zealand reports that the real exports of goods and services have increased from 31.9 percent of the real economy in 2009 to 33.3 percent in 2013 despite the headwinds of a recession the global financial crisis and the high dollar. The member of course uses the nominal value of exports of goods and services which includes for instance increases and decreases in the prices of them. We do not think that it is an adequate measure of the degree of export intensification in the economy. The Business Growth Agenda update earlier this year said that the ambitious 40 percent target will not be easy. It will require New Zealand to roughly double total exports by 2025. In terms of the question real exports would have to grow by just over twice the rate of the real economy to reach the Government’s export target of 40 percent of GDP.Dr David Clark: Is the fact that exports have fallen from close to 33 percent as a proportion of the economy when he took office to now under 30 percent a sign of the success or failure of his goal of rebalancing the economy towards exports?Hon BILL ENGLISH: My having indulged the member with an explanation of the basis of the target he then proceeded to completely ignore the explanation. The target is real exports of goods and services as a percentage of real GDP. In the most common terms it is the volume of goods and services as a proportion of the volume of the economy. The member is using the nominal measure and the nominal measure includes changes in price. So for instance the drop in the dairy prices would mean a drop under his calculations in exports as a proportion of the economy. We do not think that is the best measure. It is a measure but it is not the best measure. So I simply disagree with the member’s assertion. Whatever numbers he is using are not related to our target.Dr David Clark: Is the fact that even with terms of trade at a 40-year high the OECD says we will have the second worst current account deficit in the developed world this year and the IMF says we will have the worst a sign of the success or failure of his goal of rebalancing the economy?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member should be a bit careful about asking that question because at the peak of the last economic cycle under the previous Government the current account deficit was minus 8 percent of GDP—minus 8 percent—and I think currently it is at less than half of that. So yes that is some success.Dr David Clark: Does he really think his aim of rebalancing the economy is achievable given that even with New Zealand’s terms of trade at their highest in a generation because of the good fortune of historically high dairy prices under his own economic settings we still have a current account deficit and exports as a proportion of the economy are declining?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I simply disagree with the member’s assertion that exports are declining. The price of some of them has declined—there is no doubt about that—but the measure of the real volume as a proportion of the total volume of the economy has grown. I mean this is one difference between the Government and the Opposition. We believe New Zealand exporters have done very well over the last 4 or 5 years despite difficult circumstances; the Opposition thinks they are hopeless. Well most of them I think supported this Government in the election and back our policy mix which is encouraging them to become more competitive and the numbers I have quoted show some progress but certainly not enough. The target is 2025 and we believe that if we continue to pick up the pace under sensible policies the export sector may be able to get there.Dr David Clark: Why does he think getting further and further away from his own target is a sign of success?Hon BILL ENGLISH: We are not getting further and further away from our own target. We are getting a bit closer despite the fact that circumstances have been pretty difficult. And if you are looking at the rate of progress over the next 4 or 5 years as the high level of construction runs through and in Christchurch and Auckland we catch up then there will be more resources—for instance more people available to go to the export sector. So I would expect some progress over the next few years and then a faster rate of progress from about 2018-19 onwards.Climate Change Policy—Renewable Energy6.GARETH HUGHES (Green)on behalf ofDr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green)to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes.Gareth Hughes: Does he stand by his statement made yesterday that “There hasn’t been a single fossil fuel electricity power plant established in the 6 years we’ve been in Government”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Gareth Hughes: Does he remember personally opening the McKee 100 megawatt gas-fired power plant which contributes to climate change from releasing fossil fuels on 21 March last year and perhaps this photo of the Prime Minister opening it will jog his memory?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes and a lovely photo.Gareth Hughes: Is the Prime Minister now saying that apart from the McKee plant which he personally opened his Government still though has not opened a single fossil fuel electricity power plant in the 6 years he has been in Government?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The correct term should be coal-fired power plant.Gareth Hughes: Well does the Prime Minister remember personally opening the Stratford 200 megawatt gas fossil fuel - powered plant in Taranaki on 31 May and perhaps this photo of him opening it—and in fact commemorating the plaque—will jog his memory?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes and I am touched that the member has so many photos of me. If he wants I will sign them and he can take them back after playtime.Gareth Hughes: Well when the Prime Minister—[Interruption] Let us get back to the important issues eh? When the Prime Minister said—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I did not catch the interjection but can the member just stand and ask his question.Gareth Hughes: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I took offence at the ageist remark from the Prime Minister—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I did not hear the interjection but it is probably a time for all members to just settle and toughen up a bit. I invite the member to ask a supplementary question otherwise we can move on.Gareth Hughes: Well when the Prime Minister of New Zealand stated that the country was on the right track was the Prime Minister aware of this briefing to his Minister for Climate Change Issues released under the Official Information Act which clearly states: “The gap is growing wider between our climate change targets and the reality.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Gareth Hughes: Is New Zealand on the right track regarding climate change when it is ranked in the top 10 countries according to the Fraser Institute for policies that support fossil fuels and the oil and gas industry yet has dropped below Saudi Arabia in the rankings of support mechanisms for renewables?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes the country is on the right track. The member can play games with all sorts of silly little numbers if wants to but the reality is that this is one of the few countries in the world that actually have an emissions trading scheme. This is a country investing very heavily in science and research in relation to the biggest area of greenhouse gas emissions we have which is agriculture. This is a country that is working hard to make sure that we reach our 90 percent renewable target. What that member is really saying to New Zealanders is that he wants to put them out of work by closing down their factory or whatever it might be or he wants to charge consumers a lot more. That is again why when we went to the polls and he explained that to the public they firmly rejected his policies.Broadband—Usage7.MELISSA LEE (National)to the Minister for Communications: What recent reports has she received on the use of broadband internet by New Zealanders?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Communications):Last month Statistics New Zealand released its annual internet service provider survey. This report shows the rapid change occurring. In just the last year New Zealand has tripled the number of fibre connections. Internet speeds are increasing with twice the number of New Zealanders now able to access speeds over 24 megabits per second. We are using twice as much data. Businesses have also grabbed the opportunity that greater connectivity provides with a tenfold increase in connections with large data plans. These results reiterate the importance of this Government’s $2 billion commitment to faster broadband.Hon David Cunliffe: How’s the update going?Hon AMY ADAMS: Very well thank you Mr Cunliffe.Melissa Lee: What further steps is the Government taking to ensure a greater number of New Zealanders have access to faster internet and improved connectivity?Hon AMY ADAMS: Although the statistics are improving we think that more can be done to ensure as many New Zealanders as possible have access to improved broadband services. Our ultra-fast broadband and Rural Broadband Initiative programmes are ahead of schedule and within budget and during the election National promised to extend the successful ultra-fast broadband programme to reach at least 80 percent of New Zealanders an extra 200000 people. We also promised to invest an additional $150 million in rural connectivity covering improved rural connectivity and a $50 million investment for mobile blackspots. This new investment will build on the already strong increase in connectivity that this Government is delivering.State and Social Housing Porirua—Housing Stock8.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana)to the Minister responsible for HNZC: How many Housing New Zealand properties along Esk Place and Hazard Grove in Porirua will be demolished and sold; and is he aware of any other planned Housing New Zealand sales in the Porirua area?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister responsible for HNZC):Firstly can I tell the member that decisions on the day-to-day management of these homes are an operational matter for Housing New Zealand and the Minister does not make decisions. No decision has been made yet by Housing New Zealand regarding the use of land on these locations but Housing New Zealand does advise that three vacant multi-unit blocks containing 15 units at Esk Place and Hazard Grove will be demolished. Housing New Zealand advises that a total 23 vacant properties are for sale in Porirua—around 1 percent of the New Zealand housing properties which number 2681. I am pleased the member asked the question because it highlights a number of aspects of what needs to change. Twenty of the 23 for sale are three-bedroom houses. The majority of the 63 people on the waiting list in Porirua want one-bedroom homes not three-bedroom houses. So Housing New Zealand cannot really use those homes effectively for people off the waiting list. It needs to change its stock so it has one-bedroom homes for single-person households not three-bedroom homes which were appropriate 50 years ago. Housing New Zealand advises that it will reinvest according to need in Wellington and that may be in the Porirua area or it may be where demands for social housing are high.Kris Faafoi: Has the fact that these properties have been damaged while awaiting earthquake strengthening led to the decision to demolish and sell the land?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I simply cannot answer that question.Kris Faafoi: Will all funds raised from the sale of Housing New Zealand properties along Esk Place and Hazard Grove be earmarked for the construction of new Housing New Zealand properties in the same community or will it simply go into the consolidated account?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think almost certainly these funds will be recirculated in Housing New Zealand Corporation. As I said part of the reason there are 23 properties for sale in Porirua is because 20 of them are three-bedroom houses and the people on the waiting list in that area are a majority of single-person households so Housing New Zealand Corporation will be changing the nature of its stock across Wellington to accommodate the changing needs of the tenants. After all I know it sometimes seems odd to the Labour Party but we care more about the tenants and meeting their needs than about the Government owning houses that are no longer efficient or effective in meeting the housing needs in Porirua. What is the point in keeping all the three-bedroom houses when we do not have people who need them?Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would like you to reflect on the answer the Minister just gave—not the first part of the answer but the second part of the answer. That was a very straight factual question from Kris Faafoi which did not contain any attack on the Government. Instead what we got from Bill English was a long dissertation on what he thought the Labour Party’s position is. That is going to lead to a very lopsided question time if that sort of thing is going to continue.Mr SPEAKER: I will certainly reflect on the answer that was given. The initial part of the Minister’s answer was actually a very very genuine attempt in my opinion to answer the question that was raised. I accept there was some political connotation in the latter half of the answer. I will have a look at it for the member.Kris Faafoi: What is the profile of potential buyers of the land left vacant by demolitions on Esk Place and Hazard Grove?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not the local real estate agent so I cannot help but I imagine there are many young New Zealand families who may find a three-bedroom house at reasonable value in Porirua quite an attractive option compared with others. We certainly do not agree with the Labour Party policy that the Government must continue to own those three-bedroom houses when there are not significant numbers of people on the waiting list who can use them. If the Labour Party thinks we should be putting single people into three-bedroom houses then it does not understand what the tenants want. The tenants who live on their own want single or double-bedroom houses not large cold three-bedroom houses on big sections or in multiple blocks that they find hard to maintain. We are just trying to respond to tenant need. Labour is obsessed with owning all the State houses.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is long enough.Kris Faafoi: Why does the Government think that there will be interest from private investors in social housing on land left vacant by his planned demolitions at Esk Place and Hazard Grove given there has been no interest from private investors in social housing for the nearby plot of barren land on Calliope Crescent owned by Housing New Zealand?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Those are all matters for Housing New Zealand but I do not see any reason why New Zealand families trying to get their feet on the bottom rung of the homeownership ladder possibly with the assistance of the Government’s Homestart package would not be interested in three-bedroom units in Porirua or if those units are demolished and something else is built why they would not be interested in shifting there. I have great confidence in that community. It is a stable community-orientated kind of place which is attractive for families to move to.Kris Faafoi: I seek leave to table two documents the first one being a photo of some vacant houses that will be soon demolished on Esk Grove—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That information will not help the House. [Interruption] Order! What is the second document the member wants to table?Kris Faafoi: This is a picture of the vacant land—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. The member needs to have a look at the Standing Orders and the reason for tabling documents—[Interruption] Order! When I am speaking to the member I do not expect him to continue interjecting. The purpose of tabling documents is if it is something that is informative to the House and something that is difficult for members to obtain. The purpose of tabling documents is not to further make a political point.Better Public Services Targets—Reduction in Reoffending9.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National)to the Minister of Corrections: How is the Department of Corrections working to meet the Government’s Better Public Services target of reducing re-offending by 25 percent by 2017?Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Corrections):The Department of Corrections is working hard through a targeted and innovative programme of initiatives to meet our Better Public Services target of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017. This will mean 4600 fewer offenders returning to the corrections system and 18500 fewer victims of crime by 2017. We are doing that by investing in programmes such as increased alcohol and drug abuse treatment greater access to education skills training employment programmes expanded reintegration services and innovative rehabilitation programmes for prisoners. We are committed to working with our partners in the community and across the justice public and private sectors to move people away from a life of crime and ultimately away from a life in prison.Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: Why is alcohol and drug abuse treatment so important in helping to reduce reoffending?Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Good question. Drug and alcohol abuse is a major driver of crime. More than half of New Zealand prisoners have substance abuse problems and more than 50 percent of crime is committed by people under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We have made remarkable progress to date on tackling this issue. In 2013-14 alone there were 24678 alcohol and other drug interventions delivered to prisoners and community-based offenders. This is a 95 percent increase on the previous year and a 105-fold increase on interventions delivered in 2008 under the Labour Government. As the new Minister I will be putting a special focus on these particular programmes by tackling this issue and breaking the cycle of dependence. We can help people lead a life free of crime once they leave prison.Accident Compensation—Fraud10.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First)to the Minister for ACC: What is ACC’s latest estimate of fraud occurring within the scheme and what percentage of this fraud is being detected?Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister for ACC):I am advised that ACC estimates fraud by a measure that looks at projected savings made as a result of fraud investigations. For the 2013-14 financial year ACC identified projected savings to the scheme due to fraud investigations of $23.6 million. If the member was to compare this in terms of total claims paid $23 million would represent about 0.8 percent.Barbara Stewart: How many staff does ACC have to counter fraud within the scheme?Hon NIKKI KAYE: Forty.Barbara Stewart: What confidence can the public have in ACC estimates of fraud given the recent New Zealand Herald revelation of a draft Serious Fraud Office report indicating fraud on a massive scale with the ACC scheme and the poor performance in this area of the former Minister for ACC?Hon NIKKI KAYE: I believe that the public can actually have huge confidence. As I said before in the House that was a survey of about 2000 files and what was very clear was that that was not 8 to 10 percent in terms of fraudulent files; that was 8 to 10 percent of files that needed another look. Just to give the member an explanation on that it might be that they saw an increase in billing hours for example but when they looked behind that they saw a range of reasons—perhaps more people were employed. So I think people can have a lot of confidence that that was a ropey report and that ACC is doing a huge amount in this area.Prime Minister—Separation of Roles11.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram)to the Prime Minister: When he said “someone told me” in an answer to Oral Question 12 on 29 October 2014 regarding the transfer of information from himself in his capacity as party leader to himself as Prime Minister who was that person?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):You have got me—it was me. I did it.Dr Megan Woods: Given the Ombudsman has previously ruled in relation to the divide between party leader and Prime Minister that distinguishing between information generated in one capacity or another is primarily a matter of fact and can be established in the circumstances of a case what are the facts and circumstances that distinguish his communications with Cameron Slater as being undertaken as party leader rather than as Prime Minister?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is pretty clear if you want to go and have a look at Jonathan Hunt’s ruling that he makes it quite clear that the Prime Minister is answerable for any statements made as Prime Minister but the Prime Minister is not answerable for actions taken in a non-ministerial capacity whether as Leader of the Opposition or leader of a political party. I fondly remember Helen Clark making that distinction to this House for a very long period of time in relation to taxpayer money that was used for a Labour Party pledge card.Dr Megan Woods: What were the facts and circumstances that meant he decided that the Hon Maurice Williamson was acting as a Minister when he called the police regarding Donghua Liu even though the former Minister claimed he was acting in his capacity as a National Party MP?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is a determination that I make in relation to someone’s capacity to hold a ministerial warrant. A ministerial warrant is held by a member at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. It has got nothing to do with the demarcation line.Dr Megan Woods: When Judith Collins talked with Cameron Slater while she was a Minister was she acting in her role as a Minister?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: You will have to ask her. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I want to assist the colleague to my left.Dr Megan Woods: Given that he has implied that he has discussed with Ministers their interactions with Cameron Slater as stated in written question No. 7441 how did he have discussions with Ministers not in his capacity as Prime Minister?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have that particular question in front of me so I cannot repeat the question because I do not have it in front of me but it is quite clear that it is possible—in fact it happens all the time—for a person in my position to hold a variety of different authorities. One is as Prime Minister one is as leader of the National Party one is as MP for Helensville and one is as an individual citizen. That is exactly what Helen Clark said. The reason that Megan Woods has been put up to ask these questions is that no person who was around when Helen Clark was—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order!Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just assisting the member to get some silence before I hear the point of order.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave in regard to the Prime Minister’s answer to table the Sigmund Freud 1921 thesis on the mental condition of people who talk to themselves.Mr SPEAKER: And we are not about to waste time by putting that leave.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Speaking to the point of order—Mr SPEAKER: I have dealt with that matter. If the member wants to raise—[Interruption] Order! I have dealt with that matter. Question No. 12 Todd Barclay. [Interruption] Order! Can the House please settle so we can get—[Interruption] Order!Renewable Energy—Wood Energy South12.TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland)to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What update can he give on Government-funded renewable energy initiatives?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources):Last week I was pleased to welcome and support the launch of New Zealand’s first region-wide wood energy heat hub in Southland. The Wood Energy South hub is a joint venture between the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and Venture Southland that will see them partner with local businesses schools and health care facilities to help them convert to cleaner renewable wood energy. The hub will also work with forestry companies and fuel suppliers to establish a sustainable supply chain using some of the 300000 tonnes of wood waste generated in Southland each year. This is a unique opportunity for Southland to be a leader in the use of the renewable energy.Todd Barclay: What savings are expected as a result of the Wood Energy South hub initiative in Southland?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: From a modest investment by the Government of $1.5 million with private investment expected to at least match this funding we expect up to 8000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year could be saved. This is equivalent to taking 2500 cars off the road. The renewable heat hub initiative is just one of four programmes the Government has committed $5 million to to encourage businesses to become more energy efficient and reduce their carbon footprints.Standards and Accreditation BillFirst ReadingHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs):I move That the Standards and Accreditation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Commerce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 31 March 2015. This bill puts in place new arrangements for the development and approval of standards in New Zealand and makes minor amendments to the institutional arrangements for the Testing Laboratory Registration Council.A review of New Zealand’s standards regime was triggered in 2012 by the Standards Council’s not being financially sustainable in the medium to long term. The review found that there is a need to improve the responsiveness of the current arrangements for delivering standards in New Zealand to better meet the needs of business consumers and regulators and to increase the contribution to the Government’s objectives such as economic growth international trade innovation and health and safety—for example feedback from users included a desire to speed up the development of standards to maintain the currency of the Standards Catalogue and to keep pace with changes in technology and best practice. There was also an expectation for the standards to be more readily accessible online.Without the bill standards developed in New Zealand are not likely to remain fit for purpose over time—for example standards that are cited in a regulation could be out of date which would result in poor health and safety outcomes. This legislation will ensure New Zealand’s standards and conformance system is viable and well-functioning and meets the needs of business regulators and consumers into the foreseeable future.Under the new arrangements approval of standards and standards development committees will be undertaken by a new independent statutory board called the New Zealand Standards Approval Board. A new independent statutory officer the NZ Standards Executive will be responsible for standards development including the formation of balanced development committees. The bill also explicitly preserves and strengthens some key aspects of the current arrangements—for example balanced independent committees consisting of experts from across the relevant sector will continue to develop and revise standards.To protect the robust reputation of New Zealand standards and ensure that they remain internationally authoritative and credible independence from industry regulators and the Government has been built into every part of the system. The board will make decisions on standards and committee membership with regard to clear criteria in the legislation. Neither the board nor the NZ Standards Executive will be subject to the direction of the responsible Minister. The board will advise the Minister on standards the standards work programme and current and emerging trends in standards.The NZ Standards Executive will be an independent statutory officer located within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and will be subject to public accountability requirements and the scrutiny of the Ombudsman. The Standards Executive will have functions to establish and maintain a work programme for the development maintenance and review of standards as well as to make arrangements for public access to standards.Locating the standards development function within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is expected to help ensure that standards contribute more effectively to innovation economic growth international trade and health and safety. Further this move should facilitate more effective coordination with regulators who are key commissioners and users of standards and enhance the visibility and credibility of standards within other parts of Government.It is vital for New Zealand to maintain its linkages with the international standards community including the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission. The functions of the NZ Standards Executive include assuming responsibility for New Zealand’s membership of these international organisations and cooperating with international standards organisations to develop draft standards. Standards development and approval will continue to be undertaken in accordance with guidance from the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission and will continue to meet New Zealand’s obligations in relation to the World Trade Organization Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. These international obligations are integrated into the statutory criteria that will guide the board’s decisions.Finally the bill strengthens the current cost-recovery model for standards. It provides a framework to enable the NZ Standards Executive to set fees for access to standards and to recover the costs associated with developing approving maintaining and providing access to New Zealand standards. The framework provides a balance between the initial development cost and ongoing access costs for particular standards to be negotiated and agreed between the NZ Standards Executive and those commissioning New Zealand standards.The bill also specifies principles that the NZ Standards Executive must have regard to in setting the fees or charges for cost recovery—namely equity efficiency transparency and flexibility. Collectively these measures are intended to ensure the standards system is financially sustainable with flexibility in the recovery of costs available through a negotiated combination of development and access costs with those who commission standards.The bill makes minor amendments to the Copyright Act 1994 to maintain existing copyright protection for standards. This is important to protect the intellectual property of third parties including that of international parties used in New Zealand standards.In relation to accreditation the bill renames the Testing Laboratory Registration Council as the Accreditation Council to better reflect the nature of its functions. It also changes the composition and appointment process for the council in accordance with good governance principles.In conclusion standards and accreditation of conformity assessment facilitate trade promote innovation and enable firms to leverage competitive advantage. As noted standards are also often cited in legislation and thereby support the Government’s regulatory outcomes. The new arrangements will ensure that the value and contribution of standards and conformity assessment to New Zealand’s trade and overall well-being continues and is maximised. These arrangements for standards and accreditation will contribute to the Business Growth Agenda in two ways: first a well-managed standards system builds innovation by facilitating the creation and diffusion of technology by codifying technical excellence; and second the new arrangements support exports by preserving New Zealand’s connections to international standards organisations and ensuring international expectations are met. The new arrangements will also provide a high-quality service to business reflecting the Government’s priority for efficient business-facing services.I look forward to progressing this bill through the House. Thank you.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):I am pleased to see that down at the back the new members were not chloroformed by that speech by Paul Goldsmith because it was a cracker.I commend the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. Unlike Mr Foss he has grabbed his second piece of legislation and introduced it in the House. But I do make this point to the Minister. This bill is an interesting one because of course it was introduced in a different form by the Labour Government in 2008 to modernise and simplify the Government’s arrangements of the Standards Council and Testing Laboratory Registration Council and to separate their governance and technical advisory functions. So it was introduced in 2008. This crew comes into power—I think it was Mr Foss or maybe Mr Power; I am not sure—and the bill languished and was canned by the Government in 2012. And then after 6 years of reviews discussions interactions reports and a whole lot of other hot air we come back now to a piece of legislation that establishes a so-called independent statutory board to approve New Zealand standards. And finally this is being read in the House.Well I have got to say to the new Minister that he is better than the last guy because we know that the last Minister’s legislation was sort of like trying to pull barbed wire off a fence as his legislation sort of trundled through and was delayed and delayed. So I do commend the Minister not so much for the esprit de corps the zing and the vibrancy of his speech on such a colourful topic as New Zealand standards but for bringing it into the House with some swiftness. But I need to ask him—and I am sure he or other speakers will advise us of this—why after such a long gestation period 6 long years of almost total inaction except for a lot of hot air there is an expedited reporting date of 31 March. It could be that the Minister has decided: “Hey this has sat around long enough. My predecessor let it gather dust mould and other biological bits of matter and we’re going to punch it through.” Or could it be that he has adopted a model—and I think this is true judging by some of the commentary—that is out of step with what those outside the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment those in the standards industry would want?We will support this bill’s referral to a select committee because we want to allow those outside entities and those individuals who are experts and are not in the bureaucracy but in the real world to have their say on this piece of legislation. But it is a worry that a piece of legislation or the entity contained within it the standards authority is on the one hand called independent but on the other hand according to the option the Government has gone for it is embedded inside the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which I am advised—looking at some of the independent commentary—is exactly what many of the external experts did not want. They wanted total independence because it is important on a more serious note that we take standards seriously.We note from the evidence from the tragedy of Pike River that where poor standards of operational practice are implemented you can get you do get and you have got sadly the tragedy that is Pike River. One could make the same argument in respect of some aspects of building practice—perhaps in respect of the Canterbury earthquake. Those are some issues that are yet to be tested I think in other places. But I just wonder why the Minister has adopted this model.Why did he not move to have a standards entity and agency that was totally independent from the Government bureaucracy? Yes that may well indeed come with a cost and yes I note from the legislation that it establishes a new independent statutory board to approve New Zealand standards. I grant him that. But one would have assumed that the board and all the tentacles that will hang off it in terms of its committee its authorities its approval etc. would have had more credibility had it been completely independent and outside the bureaucracy. This is now the embedded model and as I say to the Minister this is the feedback that we have had from those outside who are deeply concerned that we get this right—and I think this is not a particularly political bill.I think we all agree there should be high standards when it comes to operational performance and many of the examples of where we have been let down give evidence to this. However I think there will be some colourful debate about the particular model the Government has chosen. I would have thought that when standards are being put in place you would want not just statutory independence but also to be seen to have total independence from the bureaucracy whose authority is derived from the Crown. Then when those standards are approved declined or put in place it means that they are done independently and they have huge credibility and weight.I simply say to the Minister that I would be grateful if at some point—and I am sure it will come through the select committee process via the officials—he or his department could give some justification for this. It may be there is a good reason. I hope the reason is not just simply a bit of cost saving a bit of efficiency and moving a few chairs around in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. I think the objective here cross-party is to ensure we get a robust agency to approve decline and police standards across the board in all the areas that the Minister has mentioned and especially in respect of safety—especially in respect of safety. Sadly through Pike River tragically through aspects of the earthquake and in other places like forestry the ports—you name it—all these issues derive from standards of operational performance. I would have thought we would want not only to achieve the highest possible standards but to achieve them in a way that they would have total independence and that they would be free from any sort of implied or direct influence from Government or the bureaucracy and therefore they would have huge credibility.I say to the Minister that we would like an explanation on this because we want to get it right. I say again that poor standards implemented well can lead to disaster and they have done. I think as we have moved through the Pike River tragedy and as the commission has reported through the earthquake and as we have moved through those sorts of graphic examples where there have been systems failures—one derived from mother Nature obviously—where buildings for instance did not live up to what we perceived they would do then surely that is the appropriate motivation to ensure that we get this thing right. Having an expedited reporting period I cannot quite understand—31 March. Given that this issue has hung around in various forms that it has almost sort of rotted in terms of stagnation I cannot understand why the Minister would want to somehow snap his fingers and punch something through. The point of going through the legislative process and especially the select committee process in respect of a bill like this is to get all those experts in to get them to have a very very close look at this legislation and to get it right. There is even greater emphasis on a bill like this because it is about standards in various guises but particularly safety standards.I would have thought we would want to take the appropriate time to go through the legislation and to ensure that we get it right. Or are we you know—excuse the pun—dropping our own standards of performance in terms of processing legislation because the Government has made up its mind that this is the model we are going to enact? “We have got it right. We will go through the motions of listening to the so-called independent experts. But we are going to do it anyway so let us not mess around. Let us punch through it.”I have always been of the belief that independent contestable advice put up against the bureaucracy has a massively high value—massively high value. Our courts are independent for a very good reason. But this is about an agency setting and approving standards which can be extremely controversial depending on what industry you are dealing with and a heck of a lot of lobbying goes on. But I would have thought you would want to give this agency almost the stature if you like of an Ombudsman or the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment so that they are totally removed from the bureaucracy and therefore by definition the Government thereby raising the standard and raising the credibility of that authority as they go through and impose or decline the highest possible standards—for instance to keep our citizenry safe.I do not like the fact that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is going to be so close. I do not like the fact that it is going to have certain powers as mentioned in this legislation. There should be I think total independence. But I welcome the Minister’s input. I welcome the department’s justification during the select committee process. My appeal to the Minister is that he take on board those experts who will come before the Commerce Committee that he will take on board their views and that he will not rush this process. If we do need more time then my plea to him is that he give us that time in order to get it right.MELISSA LEE (National):This is my first opportunity to speak as the newly appointed chair of the Commerce Committee so I would like to start by acknowledging the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the Hon Paul Goldsmith for bringing this bill to the House. I would like to start off by commending the member who just sat down Clayton Cosgrove. I will be working closely with him in the Commerce Committee and I look forward to having discussions.We hold high standards in this Parliament. When I got this bill and I was told I had to actually speak on it I started thinking about standards. I thought I could start off with comments about keeping standards in the Labour Party but I thought that would be overly political. I thought I had better not comment about the Labour leadership. I thought I had better not start off with the Labour leadership and thought that I should actually speak about the bill.The aim of the bill is to amend and consolidate the law relating to standards and conformity assessment bodies and to repeal and replace the Standards Act 1988 and also the Testing Laboratory Registration Act 1972 among others. The reason we are doing this is to make sure that the New Zealand standards systems are actually viable well functioning and meet the needs of the businesses regulators and consumers—I guess pretty much futureproofing.When Mr Cosgrove talked about having standards to make sure that New Zealanders are kept safe I agreed with him. We have had some disasters in this country where good standards might have actually prevented some of those disasters. I look forward to the submissions during the select committee process when we will hear from experts and from communities as to what kinds of standards we actually need to have in this country.I think the importance of bringing this bill is that the National-led Government has always been focused on boosting growth and creating jobs. This has been said over and over again but I reiterate that a strong economy can provide financial security for families opportunities for our young people safer communities higher qualifications for our children and better education and health services which are required by all New Zealanders. A more productive and competitive economy actually needs standards—from product standards to building standards energy safety environmental management and information technology standards as well.I know that Mr Cosgrove talked about wanting an independent standards authority but there is also another view. We deal with a lot of overseas nations. We trade with them. Sometimes with regard to standards a Government entity is better recognised than an independent one. There will be different views from the different organisations that will actually submit so I look forward to those discussions that we will have in the select committee process.Generally standards are voluntary but standards can be mandatory when it is actually cited in Acts and regulations that there are agreed specifications for products processes services and performances. For example if an electrical product is marked as meeting a particular standard it actually means that it is meeting the minimum safety standard requirements. This bill will establish a new independent statutory board to approve New Zealand standards with a new independent statutory officer from within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment as has been said. The bill will also ensure that an independent standard development committee will continue to comprise industry and technical experts consumer representatives and regulators. This is a good bill. I commend it to the House.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):I would like to offer my congratulations to Melissa Lee as the new chair of the Commerce Committee. Let us hope that the standards on the Commerce Committee remain high. I think that Clayton Cosgrove’s contribution in the House today has set the standard for discussion on bills that go before that committee—that august committee where there is much intelligent conversation.Kris Faafoi: August.CLARE CURRAN: August—and I do hope that that continues. I just want to quickly give the House a little bit of a history lesson around the Standards and Accreditation Bill because it appears in the way it has been couched today by the Government that it somehow miraculously came out of a review that happened in 2012 initiated by the Government. Well that is not the case. This is actually legislation that stems back to the previous Labour Government and a review that was undertaken then by the then Minister of Commerce the Hon Lianne Dalziel. If I recall having sat on the Commerce Committee with her for the first 3 years in Opposition she was extremely passionate about standards about the importance of standards and about the lack of action that was happening in this Government around the modernisation of standards and the governance of standards.Thankfully we are now at the point of having gone through a review. That review in 2012 just by the way actually attracted 115 submissions. I can say they were quite intense submissions having had a chance to go through them all and if that is any indication of the importance that this issue is given by the community then I think that what we are going to see in the select committee is a replication of that.I would like to echo my colleague Clayton Cosgrove’s view that pushing this bill through without the proper scrutiny would be a big mistake. The standards underpinning any industry activity in our country need to be standards that are robust. Therefore the body that creates those standards maintains them and keeps a watchful eye on them needs to be a body that has the respect trust integrity and also resources required to ensure that it actually does the job.That brings me to my questions. It pretty much appears that the option that is being pushed by the Government to move the standards body function to within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is actually driven by cost cutting—a desire to actually reduce the costs of running a standards body. If that is the case then I have got a problem with that. We are supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee but that will be one of the issues we will be keeping a very close eye on. We will be listening to what the industry says because of those 115 submissions on that review the vast majority were very concerned about moving the standards function to within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and creating a standards officer or whatever the term being used is—a standards statutory officer role within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. My question is whether that is adequate. Is that actually going to do the job and is there going to be the strength and the weight behind that function within the ministry to actually maintain that job?These are some of the things the submitters said. They did not think that pushing the function within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment would achieve the necessary independence. They said that independence could not be achieved under this model that there was the possibility of capture by well-resourced and influential stakeholders that the New Zealand Standards Approval Board could not be fully impartial when both assessing standards and approving standards development organisations to develop standards and that statutory independence is not possible if members of the standards board are appointed by the Government. I think that there has been some taking account of those views in the response by the ministry and in the legislation we see before us but I am not sure that that is enough.The second point is linked to that. It is around cost. Even the regulatory impact statement itself says on its first page: “The advice we have received suggested that overall costs of Standards development can be reduced by moving the function into a larger organisation.” What that suggests and what I fear is that that is the main reason for doing it—that it is actually being driven not by common sense or by wanting to improve the service but by the desire to cut costs. If that is the case and if we are talking about environmental standards and building standards these things are pretty important because they underpin the way that we operate and they underpin the trust we have in our industries in the way they are carried out.The third point that I would like to make—the third issue—is in regard to the amendment of the Copyright Act which is a pretty significant part. It is not covered very greatly in the legislation that is before us or by the words of the Minister today but it is obviously of enough significance to have its own regulatory impact statement produced by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which I have to say does give me some concern because the proposed new organisation’s home is going to be within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. So I will put that on the record as a concern in the first place. It would seem to me that the regulatory impact statement could have been produced independently through an audit by Treasury or something in order to actually provide some true independence.An issue that was raised around what is proposed is that the bill is amending section 27 of the Copyright Act 1994 as stated in the explanatory note “to maintain existing copyright protections for standards. This amendment is important to protect intellectual property owned by third parties (including international parties) and … to remove uncertainty in the application of copyright or Crown copyright in New Zealand Standards … as a result of moving the standards development function into a Ministry.”That all sounds on the surface perfectly reasonable. The concerns that were raised by the Standards Council around this potential move were that copyright in standards is a key issue and that discussions have focused on international intellectual property and royalty arrangements and the need to honour obligations and enforcement in copyright. It does appear as if the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has gone to some lengths to try to work out what those issues are and how they can be addressed and to propose an option that provides copyright protection similar to the current standards and legislative certainty to eliminate risk of standards becoming freely available.My concern though—and it is what I will be raising in the committee and I will be hoping and am pretty sure that there will submitters on this—is whether it is not time that we looked at this a bit differently. Is it not time that we stopped looking at this from within a prism of solely protection and looked at the availability and opening up of copyright and open standards? It was Labour’s policy going into the election to take standards seriously and to take a modern approach to this with the aim of moving towards genuine openness and transparency in Government—which this Government says it is doing but in practice I have got grave concerns it is not—where thoroughly documented open standards are made publicly available at no cost.This is not new. It follows the UK Government’s definition of open standards. I think it is something that we need to have a conversation about in the select committee. If we are to be a truly modern Government and if we are doing a lot of stuff electronically online there are questions about how open these standards should be and we need to go back to some parts of the first-principles discussion around copyright protection.So I think there are some significant issues that we need to put on the table for the select committee. Some of these issues around copyright were raised in the submissions to the review that led to this legislation. I just hope that the Minister and the officials are listening. Thank you.BRETT HUDSON (National):It is a privilege to be able to stand and speak in favour of this bill at its first reading. This National Government is focused on boosting growth and on creating more and higher-paying jobs. Standards contribute to a more productive and more competitive economy. They improve the safety and reliability of many goods and services used by consumers and businesses every day.This Standards and Accreditation Bill is part of our Business Growth Agenda and it strengthens the development and delivery of New Zealand standards. A well-managed standards system builds innovation by facilitating the creation and diffusion of technology by codifying technical excellence and by protecting that which New Zealand businesses create. Secondly the arrangements that are proposed support exports by preserving New Zealand’s connections to international standards organisations and ensuring that the expectations of the international community are met.I would like to commend the pragmatism and insight of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs in proposing under this bill the independence that matters the most: statutory independence of the board and of the executive officer. Granting them that statutory independence will mean that both can operate with neither fear nor favour of any undue influence—or any influence at all in fact—from the responsible Minister from officials or indeed from the department they might share quarters with.But I tell you what: that is a very pragmatic decision because the alternative of course would simply be to squander taxpayer money on duplicate systems duplicate real estate and duplicate facilities for no good purpose. It would give nothing greater to the powers or to the actions and outcomes of either that board or that individual if they happened to be housed in their own building. But what I would say is that by locating the function within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment it is anticipated that it will ensure that the standards that they are working on reviewing proposing and approving are linked more effectively to the innovation the economic growth and the international trade that this country is seeking to expand upon. So I do congratulate the Minister on a very pragmatic approach to very important issues.I would also like to comment very briefly on the cost recovery measure that has been proposed. That is going to strengthen the ability of the NZ Standards Executive to set fees that have regard to equity efficiency transparency and flexibility. It will also make sure that the standards that we develop and need to maintain are in fact adequately catered for and that both his role and the board’s role can be discharged effectively. So I would just like to conclude by saying that I think this is a sound and pragmatic bill. I commend it to the House. Thank you.JAMES SHAW (Green):I rise to offer the Green Party’s support for the Standards and Accreditation Bill being read a first time and referred to the Commerce Committee for the consideration of submissions.I was lucky some years ago to do a piece of work for the British Standards Institution exploring the development of a new standard for ethical fashion—in other words items of clothing that conformed to fair trade organic cotton non-chemical dyes etc. This is only one of several tens of thousands of standards that the British Standards Institution had developed and maintained over time. The British Standards Institution is probably the world’s leading institution in this field and I am sure that it will be an example that will be examined by those who are working on this bill.There comes a time when any piece of legislation should be reviewed to ensure that it is still fit for purpose and both the Standards Act and the Testing Laboratory Registration Act have been on the statute book for almost as long as I have been alive—since 1988 and 1972 respectively—so it is pleasing that in 2012 the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment took the initiative to undertake a review of those legislative provisions and during the review process undertook extensive consultation with stakeholders. It did find that the current provisions were no longer fit for purpose and that change was required to the national standards body because in particular it was not financially sustainable within its current business model given its operating environment. This is hardly surprising given for example that a Testing Laboratory Registration Council - accredited laboratory is now a requirement for over $20 billion of New Zealand’s exports which was something that probably was not foreseen in 1972 when its Act was passed.The Green Party acknowledges that a well-functioning standards system must have sufficient flexibility to align with Government priorities such as innovation and trade facilitation. However we also would like to stress the point that is contained in this draft bill of keeping the actual process of developing standards independent and free from interference by Ministers or ministries. That is essential in order to maintain the integrity of our standards and to maintain public confidence in them both in New Zealand and among our trading partners. In that regard I think that the Government has got the balance just about right with this bill by maintaining the statutory independence of the new New Zealand Standards Approval Board the NZ Standards Executive and the Accreditation Council from the Minister and the ministry.One aspect that I would question is whether it is appropriate for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to appoint the entirety of the membership of the New Zealand Standards Approval Board as the bill currently provides. Although the board will be required to be statutorily independent having the Minister appoint all of its members including the chairperson could be seen to be giving rise to cronyism and to the perception of undue ministerial influence through ministerial appointments over the decisions and recommendations of the board. So perhaps some consideration should be given to having the sectors that contribute to the standards appointing at least some of the membership of the board directly rather than having all of the appointments being made by the Minister. That is an issue that I hope the select committee will address.The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment reported back largely positive feedback from stakeholders in the development of the policy upon which the bill is based. The select committee process will provide a further opportunity for stakeholders and for the wider public to have input into a piece of legislation that is necessary but that could be seen to be quite complex. The Green Party is supporting this bill being referred to the select committee.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First):I commend the member Melissa Lee—although she is not here—for her appointment as the Commerce Committee chair. She was part of training us as new MPs over the 2-week programme and I say to her may her professionalism reign.Simon O’Connor: In martial arts or—FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yes. This bill arises from a review that was undertaken by the former Ministry of Economic Development in May 2007. It is important to note that the findings suggested that the infrastructure relating to standards and accreditation was actually basically sound and specifically that a discussion document also released by the Ministry of Economic Development had no actual submissions regarding the governance arrangements of these Crown entities. This bill sets out to ensure that the New Zealand standards and conformance system is viable and functioning well. It has been noted that in order to do this the Standards Act 1988 and the Testing Laboratory Registration Act 1972 will both be repealed.Just because I question the timing of this bill does not mean that New Zealand First is against what it sets out to achieve. New Zealand First in fact stands in support of this bill because we are a party that always supports New Zealand consumers and ensures they are well looked after. Beyond this the stated intent of the bill is to ensure that the New Zealand standards being developed align with priorities such as innovation and trade facilitation to develop a more productive economy. As stated last week in speaking to the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill New Zealand First will always support legislation that seeks to improve the frameworks within which New Zealand business operates.To frame New Zealand First’s stance on this bill we need to ask the following questions: will it meet the needs of business and—importantly—consumers moving into the foreseeable future; and will our regulators be able to work effectively and efficiently within the frameworks being provided for here? I quote: “The purpose of this Act is to—(a) make provision for standards and conformity assessment systems in New Zealand that—(i) are consistent with international practice; and (ii) facilitate trade; and (iii) protect the health safety and well-being of the public:”. There are questions to be asked with regard to all parts of this purpose statement. Does consistency compromise safety to New Zealand consumers if the current international standard is less than what we would ourselves accept? Access to consumer goods from around the world exposes New Zealand consumers to a plethora of experiences and useful and admittedly sometimes completely redundant gadgets but related to the first part trade is good so long as our New Zealand standards are maintained. Both of these questions I have asked always come back to the safety of the New Zealand public. New Zealand First believes that this should always be our first concern.The bill sets out to establish the independent New Zealand Standards Approval Board. Alongside this there will be an official position created—namely the NZ Standards Executive. This person will be responsible for the oversight of New Zealand’s standards and will be employed directly by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.I earlier asked the question of whether this bill supports our local businesses. My interpretation at this stage would suggest that the intent is there. It is fair to say that internationally aligned standards will facilitate trade. Those same standards will allow for innovative businesses to understand what is required of them before they even begin their development and what is required with regard to standards across a large international cohort of trade partners. Understanding these requirements and what the international competition is able to take advantage of in their own home countries will allow New Zealand innovators and entrepreneurs to take advantage of our own competitive advantages available at home.To continue it is noted that this bill will ensure that we are able to maintain confidence and credibility in the standards development and approval process and in the process of accreditation. This credibility is so very important for New Zealand businesses looking to export their goods. New Zealand First would like to see a high level of assurance that the standards and conformance system is responsive to demands from industry and of course our consumers.Although I commend the bill its stated intent to operate on a financially sustainable footing and its being undertaken in a cost-effective manner we must be wary again of so-called cost savings compromising the delivery of what is clearly an essential service. I make reference to our border security as an example of so-called cost savings where an entire industry in several regions across our country lost billions of dollars. I also use a more recent example of the so-called cost savings in the tertiary sector which are now leading to the dismissal of staff and the shutting down of core departments within large institutions. Cost savings are now compromising the delivery of what I would deem to be core services. It is on record that this bill and the standards committee in particular will have oversight of $20 billion worth of goods. This is an essential service and must be adequately funded.With regard to the function of the board I commend the intent to clarify the role of the board. Governance and operational issues can blur the lines of what exactly the role of the board members is. It is of some concern that the board is embedded within the ministry and also that the board would be appointed by the Minister. I understand that the preliminary feedback from industry players suggests that this model is not ideal.As with many international issues New Zealand business seems to bear the burden of harsher requirements. We need to be confident that as stated import businesses can be more assured that the products they are importing are much more likely to be up to standard. If we can be assured that international standards do conform to and match our own high levels then this kind of regulation implemented fairly around the world does work both ways. That is to the advantage of New Zealand businesses. When we can assume that other countries and manufacturers are working to the same standards as we are then we can be sure that the playing field is an even one. I appreciate that we cannot legislate for other countries but our committee can be advised to keep this kind of standard in mind in its considerations.Conversely in order to support our export market international markets should feel comfortable with New Zealand’s standards. Currently our standards are well regarded internationally and these cannot be compromised. I acknowledge the level of complexity that many markets and industries involve. They involve incredibly rapidly developing technologies and so a smaller committee for standards should be more responsive in an evermore rapidly changing world.There are many questions around the margin questions about the detail. As stated New Zealand First supports this bill. However given some preliminary conversations with industry that spoke against some of the detail provided it is essential that the public of New Zealand be given their chance to speak to this bill. Thank you.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the first reading of the Standards and Accreditation Bill. As consumers we have minimum expectations of a product or a service. These expectations are what we have come to know as standards. Standards ensure that consumers can buy a product or service with confidence and businesses can market and sell their products and services with confidence knowing that these products meet the customers’ expectations as well as health and safety requirements. The Standards and Accreditation Bill follows a comprehensive review to ensure that our standards system is independent and sustainable. With these words I commend this bill to the House.MOJO MATHERS (Green):I rise to speak in support of the Standards and Accreditation Bill. As my colleague James Shaw has indicated we will support this bill’s referral to a select committee. As our spokesperson for consumer affairs I am very aware that this bill has the potential to impact on all areas of New Zealand society. It may have a dry name but it is absolutely critical law.At the moment we have over 3000 New Zealand standards and we are looking at over 50000 more from overseas. These standards play a critical role because they are clear and confident. They set health and safety standards they ensure that products are reliable and that they are safe to use they can minimise risk in a disaster and so on. It is incredibly important that we can have faith in the regulatory body that oversees the setting and implementation of these standards because we rely on these standards to keep us safe as consumers. They set the standards for playgrounds for electrical equipment for banking—for all areas of our lives. To do that we need to have trust that the relevant expertise has been drawn upon in the setting of the standards and that the people involved have high standards of integrity and are trusted by all of society.It is also incredibly important that the ability to set and maintain the standards is flexible enough to take into account modern innovation and that it updates to reflect the changing needs of different consumers. One area in particular that I have been involved in around standards of course has been standard 4121 in the building industry which sets the standards around accessibility. That standard has stagnated and has not been updated to reflect the changes in wheelchair sizes scooters and so on and also modern innovation. So people have been very very frustrated with the slow pace to update that standard and I am sure that as with the other standards people have been really frustrated that the necessary updating of the standard has not appeared in a timely fashion. We hope that the restructure will allow for a more rapid response to changing consumer needs.It is also incredibly important that we hear from the people who are involved with the setting and maintenance of these standards including people like health and safety representatives councils the regulatory body and consumers themselves as well as people from the industry as to how they perceive the current system is working and how this bill will make things better for them. It is an incredibly important bill and it is incredibly important that we get this restructuring right. So we support the bill’s referral to a select committee but we will be listening very carefully to the feedback from submitters. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I am happy to take a fairly brief call on this standards legislation. I want to say that the Labour Party will be supporting the bill’s referral to the select committee and we look forward to the debate. We do have some further things that we will be looking for clarification on at such time as we get to have those hearings.The Standards and Accreditation Bill is long overdue. I think there are many elements of it that the New Zealand public should be very supportive of. I think that when we talk about standards though we should be clear what we are talking about. Standards impact on every part of our day-to-day lives whether they are building standards the standards for appliances we purchase or standards related to workplaces.One of the reasons that standards are important from an employee perspective is that there is a significant health and safety factor. One of things that the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has quite rightly raised with regard to this review is its desire to see union and worker representation in the development process for standards. I actually think this is very very important. If you look at health and safety in the workplace for example take an industry that I have become familiar with in the last few months—the forestry sector. I think we do need to have workers much more involved in the development of standards within the forestry sector because we need to get that wider buy-in to what has been going on there. If we are going to address health and safety in the forestry sector then it will need to involve all the players in the forestry sector. I think that is a good example of why making sure that the standards that get set have good buy-in and are well supported. So that is the first point I would like to make. I am going to be looking as this bill progresses to ensure that there is adequate worker representation throughout the process. You will have to forgive me Mr Deputy Speaker. I have somewhat of a rusty throat today.I do want to also then talk about—Kris Faafoi: Rusty?CHRIS HIPKINS: —rusty very rusty—the importance of the independence from Government. When it comes to setting standards we know that if this was left up to the current Government the standards would be moved every day. One of the critical things about standards is that you set standards so that there is a reliable benchmark so that people know where they stand and yet we do not seem to have that with the Government. For example a classic case in point—Simon O’Connor: A national standard.CHRIS HIPKINS: Well national standards are a great example. National standards would not survive the scrutiny that this bill proposes. National standards are neither national nor standard so they would fail at the first hurdle. But then John Key’s standards for Ministers would also fail at the first hurdle because they change depending on who the Minister is. For example we know that there was a certain level of standard for Judith Collins. She seemed to manage to get away with a lot of stuff then suddenly the standards changed and she was out. It was the same with Maurice Williamson—suddenly he was out. We had examples today where John Key fails to meet his own standards but apparently that is OK because when he did not meet his own standards he was not acting as Prime Minister; he was acting as leader of the National Party so therefore the standard really depends on which hat he is wearing at the time. I think that having independence from Government when it comes to setting standards is very important because we know where we stand so to speak when standards are set by an independent body. We certainly do not know where we stand when they are set by this current National Government.So we will be looking forward to seeing this bill progress through. There are some very positive aspects to it. When I started at the beginning I mentioned that this bill was very long overdue. There was of course a bill drafted in 2008 by the previous Labour Government. It was all ready to go and that of course was stalled by the current National Government for 6 years. It is now finally getting around to progressing this legislation and I think that that will be a welcome thing. There were 6 years of reviews discussions submissions and inaction overall but that seems to be the case with this Government. It is quite often very lost in what it is trying to do. It just has another review—another consultation process another review and nothing ever gets done. We are pleased to see that this bill is now finally progressing. I think that we will be following the debate very closely. Thank you very much.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am pleased to rise to speak briefly to this bill. I need to respond to Chris Hipkins my colleague across the House. I think the standards of this Government have been incredibly high and have been well recognised—accredited if you would like—with an almost 50 percent vote to return us here to the House. So you could not get a higher accreditation. I will not though make a contrast with the other side.This is an important bill. I am very pleased to see that there is a range of support across the House and I commend it to the House.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):I would like to begin by agreeing with the Green Party member Mojo Mathers that although this piece of legislation has a relatively mundane title it is a very important piece of legislation for the everyday lives of Kiwis. We are talking about standards. A lot of things happen—and we expect them to happen—out there in the community because there are standards out there. So this is a very important piece of legislation and we on this side of the House have said that we will be supporting its referral to the Commerce Committee where I look forward as a member of that committee to being able to ask a few questions of the Government and to hearing submissions from the public. I know there were a lot of submissions to the standards and infrastructure review that was run by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment earlier this year and I will refer to some of those later on in my contribution. As I say as a member of the august Commerce Committee—and I would like to congratulate Melissa Lee who made a contribution—we are looking forward to hearing about this piece of legislation.As I mentioned before in everyday life there are standards everywhere from members of the public expecting their cellphones to work to their expecting to be on the right frequency to ensure their phone calls come through through to—as Chris Hipkins mentioned—standards surrounding health and safety. It has already been noted in this debate that a very similar piece of legislation introduced by the previous Labour Government in 2008 unfortunately sat dormant until this piece of legislation was introduced.I think there have been plenty of missed opportunities since then especially in the area of health and safety. A number of examples have been brought up already. I think the Hon Clayton Cosgrove talked about the health and safety standards surrounding Pike River one of the worst industrial disasters or tragedies of our lifetime. Also there are issues around the forestry industry where we have had—and I am looking at our spokesperson on that industry Chris Hipkins—around 10 deaths in the last year. So there are some serious questions that need to be asked around health and safety and standards and we have a duty as a Parliament to make sure that we get some of those small technical things around frequencies right but also some of the really important things around health and safety right as well.I would like to point out that in the 115 submissions to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment review there was one significant submission from the Council of Trade Unions. I would like to thank the council for its submission and to reiterate the point that Chris Hipkins made which is that although we are going to hear from the likes of industry and experts we do not want to forget the voice of the workers out there especially when we have brought up two of those instances of mining disasters and tragedies and serious fatal accidents in the forestry industry. It is really important that this Parliament encourage the voice of workers to be heard at the select committee deliberation on this bill.There are a number of other things that have been mentioned already on this side of the House that concern us which I think will be raised at the select committee and those are around the motivation for the changes and why they are happening now. There is a suspicion that this bill is motivated by cost cutting and that the motivation is not necessarily there to make sure that we have a robust standards infrastructure here because all of a sudden this piece of legislation has arrived on the Table. It could be the fact that the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has taken very little time to take the razor to his department and is looking for cost savings and we are very concerned about that being the driving motivation behind this legislation. You have only to look at the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to understand that there could be significant cost savings if the Government’s intention to change the way that the standards come about is seen through.There were three options before Cabinet. The first was to keep the status quo. The second option in the regulatory impact statement was to have the standards development function that we are looking at in this bill undertaken by International Accreditation New Zealand. The third option was that the function of standards development be undertaken by the statutory officer located in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and that is the preferred option that is within this legislation. On page 10 of the regulatory impact statement there is quite a helpful table that shows significant cost savings by moving as the Government intends towards having this standards function within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. That is somewhere along the lines I believe of nearly $2.5 million or $3 million which might not sound a lot in the bigger scheme of things but when you think that this Government may have a bit of an agenda to try to cut costs this is one way that it is looking at doing that.We do not oppose efficiency if it is effective but if this is a case of efficiency and cost cutting being done for the sake of cost cutting then we do have some reservations as to why the Government may have structured this particular piece of legislation in the way it has. So I think that will certainly be one of the questions asked in the Commerce Committee—as to what is the driver of this piece of legislation. Is it the fact that we want to strengthen our standards bodies or is it the fact that we want to take a bit of a razor to this department and restructure it to make some significant cost savings? I guess we will also get the chance to ask the Minister in the chair this question when we get to the Committee stage here in the House.As I said at the beginning this does sound by title a mundane piece of legislation but there are a number of areas in everyday life where standards are important. As the broadcasting spokesperson one of those areas is something simple like TV volume. You would be surprised at the number of people usually elderly people who come to me as the broadcasting spokesperson to ask me why there is not a standard for TV volume especially for advertising. They may choose to use their own power when they are watching Parliament TV to push the mute button—and that is their right—but they certainly have come to me to ask why there is not a standard TV volume for advertising. There is always one particular company they are upset with and that is Harvey Norman. When they watch an episode of perhaps Coronation Street on Television One a staple show for many elderly people—Hon Members: Oh!KRIS FAAFOI: —oh OK! I take that back; I realise it has a broad audience—all of a sudden a Harvey Norman ad will come on booming out of their televisions and this obviously upsets the young and old. These are the kinds of standards that we are talking about here which have a huge impact on us in our everyday lives.I do not think we should just pooh-pooh this piece of legislation because it has a mundane title—the Standards and Accreditation Bill. This piece of legislation is important. We will refer it to the select committee but not without reservations. I do want to reiterate that we are very concerned about the Government’s motivation around the cutting of costs and the placement of this new position within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. It has already been noted in an earlier contribution by Clare Curran that it is very interesting that the regulatory impact statement was done by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment when this new position is going to be located within the ministry. You would think that because there would be a perceived—and actually a real—conflict of interest there maybe the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment could have removed itself from the process and there should have been an independent regulatory impact statement done on this piece of legislation.In regard to our support we will give the bill support to a select committee. We do have some reservations about the structure within the bill. Because it has probably come about from a piece of legislation that was introduced by the last Labour Government we will at this stage support it but we will be asking serious questions during the select committee deliberation. Thank you very much.JOANNE HAYES (National):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I stand for a very short call on this bill. I want to support this bill. This is a great achievement for our new Minister Paul Goldsmith. I have no doubt that it will be one of many bills that will come through this House. So without any further ado I support this bill. Thank you.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Commerce Committee.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment)on behalf of theMinister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move That the Standards and Accreditation Bill be reported back to the House by 31 March 2015.Motion agreed to.Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation BillFirst ReadingHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice):I move That the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider this bill. Organised crime is a global problem. It undermines public safety economic development good governance and national security. Unfortunately New Zealand is not immune to the threat posed by both international and domestic criminal networks which operate on many fronts—for example criminals use money-laundering to disguise their illegal activities and to profit from crime. Money-laundering involves transforming money from illegal activity often referred to as “dirty money” into funds that appear to come from a legitimate source. Other organised criminal activities include identity theft people-trafficking and a range of acts that fall under the umbrella of bribery and corruption. This bill tackles all of these.If we are to combat a global problem we need a global solution and New Zealand is committed to playing its part. This bill benefits New Zealand in three main ways: it improves our ability to combat crime domestically it improves our ability to coordinate with other countries to combat crime internationally and it improves our international reputation by ensuring compliance with international obligations. This bill gives law enforcement agencies greater powers to deal with organised crime and corruption and to cooperate with our international counterparts in the fight against transnational crime. It also enhances New Zealand’s compliance with a number of international agreements and allows for the ratification of others. This will help maintain and enhance New Zealand’s reputation as a trustworthy trading partner with a strong reliable financial sector.This bill demonstrates the Government’s ongoing commitment to tackling organised crime and corrupt practices in a number of ways. The 2011 all-of-Government response Strengthening New Zealand’s resistance to organised crime outlined a number of initiatives and new laws that this Government had introduced to target and disrupt organised crime. However we recognised that we could not afford to rest on our laurels. The report also indicated areas where we could further enhance how we are tackling organised crime and this bill addresses many of those areas that require legislation. It also responds to calls for reform to New Zealand law made by intergovernmental bodies that we play an important role in such as the Financial Action Task Force and the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and it enables ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.I will now briefly outline some of the key reforms in the bill which is an omnibus bill amending 12 Acts. The bill amends the money-laundering offences under the Crimes Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. The changes address practical law enforcement difficulties and corrects deficiencies in our laws required by international agreements. One of the changes clarifies that the intent to conceal is not necessary in order to prove a money-laundering offence. This requirement was never specified in the legislation but over the years New Zealand courts have read it into the law. The bill also removes the requirement that laundered proceeds stem from an offence carrying at least 5 years’ imprisonment. This will address a practical enforcement difficulty for police in establishing the specific criminal act from which the laundered proceeds are derived. These two changes will ensure that criminals can be more readily prosecuted for money-laundering and will help deter those who exploit the current limitations.In addition the bill amends the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act to improve our ability to detect and investigate money-laundering. Reporting requirements are introduced for two high-risk classes of transactions. Financial institutions will need to report to police all international wire transactions of over $1000 and physical cash transactions of $10000 or more. We know that criminals use such transactions to launder money. Better reporting will enhance the effectiveness of our efforts to detect money-laundering. Banks already collect identity information from their customers so they should not notice any difference from these changes. The amendments I have just outlined align New Zealand law with the laws of other countries and with best-practice recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force. This task force is the intergovernmental body that guides international efforts to combat money-laundering.The bill also adds new identity offences to the Crimes Act and the Customs and Excise Act. A range of offences currently cover situations where criminals use false identity documents to commit dishonest or deceptive acts. However currently there are no specific offences that prohibit criminals from selling or distributing unlawfully obtained identification information nor is there any offence of making or possessing goods intended to facilitate identity crimes such as credit card skimming devices. This bill closes those gaps in the criminal law. It also adds these goods to the list of prohibited items under the Customs and Excise Act.Other important amendments in the bill expressly provide police with the power to share appropriate personal information including fingerprint information with international counterparts. These provisions will enable the implementation of the agreement with the United States on preventing and combating crime. These amendments are subject to strict restrictions and a Cabinet directive for police to consult with the Privacy Commissioner.It is also worth noting that this bill includes several safeguards to protect the privacy of New Zealanders. The main safeguard is that the personal information may be disclosed by New Zealand Police only when two conditions are met. The first is where the information is being disclosed to a corresponding overseas agency that performs one of the functions that the New Zealand Police performs and the second is that the disclosure is reasonably necessary to enable the corresponding overseas agency to perform that function. It is only after these two requirements are met and subject to any other enactment that the information can be disclosed in one of four circumstances. In the event that these conditions are breached individuals may of course complain to the Privacy Commissioner.The Office of the Privacy Commissioner was consulted on the proposals of this bill and will be closely involved in its implementation including keeping a watching brief to ensure the statutory criteria for information sharing are being adhered to. These safeguards are important in balancing the privacy of New Zealanders.In addition the bill makes amendments to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act and the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act to allow DNA data bank information to be provided to assist criminal investigations and prosecutions overseas. The Attorney-General’s approval will be required on a case by case basis before any DNA information can be provided. Both sets of amendments will enhance international law enforcement cooperation and capability. The sharing of information with our counterparts is critical if we are to combat a global problem. However concerns around open data-sharing are also important. Although the bill outlines key restrictions around what information can be shared and with which overseas agencies I am certainly keen to hear from the select committee in this regard.A range of other amendments fall under the bribery and corruption umbrella. This Government remains committed to ratifying the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. New Zealand has already implemented several of the convention’s obligations by enacting the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act and the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. Further amendments are required to the Crimes Act the Secret Commissions Act and the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act to bring New Zealand into full compliance with the convention. All those necessary changes are included in this bill. Other amendments in the bill will enhance compliance with the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Collectively these bribery and corruption amendments will ensure that New Zealand has a robust legislative framework that complies with international best practice in deterring and holding offenders to account.Let me conclude by briefly mentioning two other sets of reforms in the bill. The bill amends the Crimes Act offence of people-trafficking. It extends the offence so that it applies to people-trafficking within New Zealand not just when the victims are moved in or out of this country. It also introduces an exploitative purpose—for example prostitution or slavery—for trafficking of persons. Again the amendments bring the legislation into line with international best practice in fighting this very serious offence.Finally I will address amendments to the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. The changes will extend the time frames for foreign restraining orders and will allow those orders to be registered without notice. The proposed amendments will ensure that criminals cannot conceal or dispose of assets before the relevant court proceedings conclude.The wide range of amendments in the bill will ensure that New Zealand has a robust fit for purpose legislative framework to combat organised crime bribery and corruption. The bill will further enhance this country’s compliance with international instruments and our ability to implement or ratify others including as I have said the Agreement on Enhancing Cooperation in Preventing and Combating Crime which was signed with the US and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. This will ensure that New Zealand maintains and improves its already high reputation as a trustworthy trading partner with a robust financial sector. The bill signals this Government’s commitment to combat organised crime and corruption everywhere and on every level. I commend it to the House.Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour):Labour will support the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. It is good to see the bill has finally made its way to a first reading. We will support this bill. It is an omnibus bill that will enact 12 different Acts and it will strengthen the law to combat organised crime and corruption.The bill as you heard from the Minister of Justice will allow New Zealand to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption it will allow the implementation of the Agreement on Enhancing Cooperation in Preventing and Combatting Crime which was signed between the Governments of the United States and New Zealand and it will also improve New Zealand’s compliance with a number of other international conventions: the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations anti-trafficking protocol. These are all important amendments.This bill was first looked at by the Government in 2011. In 2011 the Government agreed to an all-of-Government response to organised crime. It has taken some time for it to get to Parliament for its first reading—in fact the then Minister of Justice Judith Collins promised that the bill would be introduced in 2013. That did not happen. But it has been longer in its gestation than that. In fact way back in July 2008 the previous Labour Government announced the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand—which as people will know is a discrete agency hosted within the New Zealand Police—which was to take a whole-of-Government approach. That work started right back in 2008. I suppose you could say that it has taken almost 6 years for the Government to move on some very serious issues.It is well acknowledged—and I agree with the Minister—that New Zealand has a strong legislative framework to obstruct organised crime. We do have robust domestic laws and law enforcement and we have strong partnerships internationally. But as the Minister also said that does not mean that we are not perceived as an easy target. I want to mention a little later on a growing area of concern and that is domestic human-trafficking. So we are a target and we should not think that because we are at the bottom of the world and nobody really knows about us we would not be an easy target for organised crime networks.We do have a strong and very proud tradition of being an honest nation. We take a strong stance against organised crime. We are consistently ranked amongst the least corrupt countries in the world. Of course every year we look forward to Transparency International bringing out its report. For those who are not aware of what Transparency International is it is a global civil society organisation. It is there to lead the fight against corruption. We eagerly look forward to its annual report ranking countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be. It does this on a scale of zero to 100 with zero meaning a country is highly corrupt and 100 meaning it is perceived to be very clean.New Zealand has consistently been in the top two countries with scores in the 90s. That tradition I believe comes from our being the first country in the world to have legislation promoting human rights. It is also down to legislation such as our Public Service Act 1912 and our Official Information Act of 1982. In Transparency International’s latest report New Zealand came first equal with Denmark for being the least corrupt country in the world. Australia came 9th the United Kingdom came 14th the United States came 19th South Africa came 72nd China came 80th India came 94th and at the very bottom Somalia came 175th. So we are very proud that we have maintained our position in Transparency International’s rankings over many many years and we are determined we will keep that status. It is good for this country and good for the Public Service of New Zealand to know that we are seen to be the least corrupt in the world.We also have a branch of Transparency International here Transparency International New Zealand. It is our representative in Transparency International. In 2013 it released a report called the Integrity Plus 2013 New Zealand National Integrity System Assessment. In December 2013 when it was released it was called a landmark report and it revealed that “serious and urgent action is needed to protect and extend integrity in New Zealand.” It also said: “Recent incidents and investigations of corruption and increasing public concern provide a compelling case for a more pro-active approach to these issues.” We have our own branch here in New Zealand of an international organisation saying there is a compelling case so we cannot rest on our laurels and our reputation going back many years. There is a case to have a more proactive approach on these issues.It is almost a year since that report and finally we are getting a first reading of this bill. I think it is time because there have been more incidents—one that I will talk about later—that mean we need to be more proactive.I want to mention just some of the things that make us very transparent and open and support our good reputation. These include the Official Information Act and the ability to tell the public of New Zealand what is happening in terms of our Public Service—to release information provided by our Public Service to a Government. But we have seen a decline in that Act being used in the most appropriate way. I believe that these issues are important to us as a country and as a Parliament. We cannot allow any Government—I do not care what colour it comes from—to use delays obstructions and tactics to stop official information being released.It was very concerning when the leader of the Government in New Zealand the Prime Minister said only a couple of weeks ago that the Government often uses the delay in releasing information for political purposes. It is unheard of for that to be said by a leader of the Government of New Zealand—the use of delaying tactics for political purposes in terms of the Official Information Act.There are a number of issues I want to raise but one of them in particular has to be around the disclosures that have come out of Dirty Politics. I think we as a Parliament need to take them very seriously because although—Hon Dr Nick Smith: What about Nicky Hager?Hon ANNETTE KING: —it may not be of interest to the National Party—and we immediately hear from Nick Smith that he does not want to hear this—we are watched internationally. We are watched internationally as to how well we work. And when we have people working in Government departments and Ministers’ offices providing information that undermines professionals academics and leaders in New Zealand then we need to be very worried about what the public and the international community says about that. I am disgusted that there has been denigration of people who are health professionals working in our public health sector who are being worked against by officials working in Ministers’ offices. That will be known internationally that will be seen internationally and the question will be asked: “Just how clean is the New Zealand Public Service—those who work in the highest offices of this Parliament in Ministers’ offices?”. We need to be very vigilant when it comes to matters that go to the heart of our openness and transparency.In conclusion I want to mention the amendments in respect of the trafficking of domestic persons in New Zealand. I am pleased to see this because we had had no experience of human trafficking. But you need to know that only a few weeks ago we had the first prosecution of human trafficking in New Zealand. If we think we can avoid these sorts of issues then we are very much mistaken. We are part of the global community and we need to strengthen these laws to ensure that we have the best in place.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard and I will take this as my first opportunity to officially acknowledge your promotion to the position of Assistant Speaker. I hope that goes very well for you. The Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill is an omnibus bill that seeks to amend 12 Acts. I will pick up on the points that the Hon Annette King has just made about the fact that New Zealand is not immune to some of the most abhorrent organised crimes that we see going on around the world. As the member has rightly pointed out people-trafficking is one of them. Globally organised crime obviously knows no boundaries. As the world moves forward and we become technologically advanced so too do criminal activities organised crime and corruption.This bill really is an important part of New Zealand’s obligations to meet international and United Nations conventions in terms of strengthening our ability as a nation to ensure that organised crime—organised criminal entities corruption money-laundering people-trafficking and so forth—can be fought on the many levels that it needs to be. More and more often New Zealand is being called upon to cooperate and participate in international inquiries and investigations. One of the opportunities that globally organised criminal entities look for in terms of their enterprises is the gap between different jurisdictions. They exploit those gaps. They exploit the fact that some countries do not talk or share information well with one another and where those gaps exist is where there are opportunities. Clearly this is something that this bill and the international conventions that the bill seeks to address will go to the heart of.Organised crime and corruption is increasingly more sophisticated and it is fair to say I think that New Zealand enjoys a reputation for being—as Annette King pointed out—one of the least corrupt countries in the world but that is not going to stop people trying. Certainly we have seen that with drug trafficking where over the course of the last 10 or 15 years New Zealand has become an end-user destination. It has become quite a significant part of drug trafficking in say methamphetamine. There are methamphetamine transactions on a large scale—in multiple millions and billions of dollars in fact—and we also see a lot of money-laundering and so forth going on underneath that. These criminal entities and networks are able to overlap and work with one another in a very very sophisticated way. That is something that I think New Zealand enforcement agencies have to work very very hard to combat and it is very hard to do that without the appropriate legislative framework.I will just run over a couple of the key points in the time that I have left. A couple of the key measures in this bill include requiring banks to report all international wire transactions over $1000 and all physical cash transactions of $10000 or more to the financial intelligence unit within the police. There is the redrafting of the money-laundering offence to specify that the intent to conceal is not required. The bill is introducing new offences to address identity crime including the selling or passing-on of unlawfully obtained identity information something that is certainly increasingly more sophisticated and in common use. There is the amending of people-trafficking offences so that they apply to such activity in New Zealand not just to when victims are moved in or out of this country. It is amending the Policing Act 2008 to expressly provide police with the power to share information with their international counterparts. As I mentioned this is one of the areas that these more sophisticated organised criminal entities absolutely exploit—the gaps that exist between jurisdictions their inability to share information or the lack of the capability to do so and certainly the lack of a sound legal nexus between jurisdictions. There is the revising of the foreign bribery offence including clarifying the circumstances in which a corporation is liable for foreign bribery and the increasing of penalties for bribery and corruption in the private sector to bring them into line with public sector bribery offences.That runs over just a couple of the key points. It is an important piece of legislation I think. It is a big chunk of work that amends 12 Acts as I said. I look forward to hearing submissions as this process proceeds. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I rise to speak in support of the first reading of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. Labour will support this bill going through to the select committee and is looking forward to the ongoing debate around these matters.New Zealanders should rightly be proud of the fact that we regularly rank very very well in international studies and surveys when it comes to transparency lack of corruption and so forth but there is no room for complacency as those who have spoken before me have already mentioned. We are consistently among the least corrupt countries in the world. However there are certain warning signs to suggest that we should take this matter very seriously—for example we are seeing a lessening of transparency from this Government. My colleague Annette King mentioned in her speech before the open admission by the Prime Minister that the current Government does not take the Official Information Act seriously—that it will wilfully break the law when it comes to the Official Information Act. That Act is one of the most important instruments we have in our constitutional arrangements to ensure transparency and basically a governing process that is free from corruption. This Government willingly breaks that law and the Prime Minister himself has admitted it.We have the Official Information Act because of the old adage that sunlight is the best disinfectant. When all of the workings of Government are public then people will be forced to act in a way that is honest that is open and that is decent. That is a very good thing. It is not a good thing when the Government does not lead by example and when it willingly flouts the law in the way that it has been doing with the Official Information Act.I went and looked in preparation for this debate at the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word “corruption”. It is defined as “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power typically involving bribery”—dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. There are many many examples where some of the behaviour that we have been seeing is if not fraudulent certainly dishonest. Take for example the conduct of the Minister who introduced this legislation to the House the Hon—oh no she is not honourable any more. Judith Collins introduced this legislation to Parliament. The irony of that is that Judith Collins introduced this legislation around the time that she took a trip to China to talk about reducing corruption and yet she was surreptitiously visiting Oravida to promote her husband’s business interests. Of course we know that Oravida then gave money to the National Party. I know that people at home will be able to draw their own conclusions about whether or not any of that kind of conduct might fit within the definition that I just mentioned from the Oxford Dictionary.We know that there has been a corruption of the political process in New Zealand because it has been spelt out in great detail in the Dirty Politics book. It is simply a disgrace. For example the cadre of people—and that is the only way you could describe them—with links to the National Party have been engaged in what can only be described as destructive and offensive behaviour that most New Zealanders including New Zealanders who support the National Party and possibly even those who are members of the National Party would find simply disgraceful and yet that is all spelt out here. That is exactly what has been going on within John Key’s National Government.These are the same people who referred to the Christchurch earthquake victims as scum. They referred to the victims of the Pike River mining disaster as feral. These are the people whom John Key and his Government Ministers personally like to associate themselves with and I think those members should hang their heads in shame about that. They have targeted public figures non-governmental organisations political opponents and anybody who gets in their way. They have been targeting them denigrating them smearing their private lives and trying to dissuade them from speaking out publicly. Those are not the actions of a Government that is committed to openness transparency and fighting corruption. Those are not the actions that New Zealanders should be expecting from their current Government. It has been revealed that not only have the Prime Minister’s staff been involved directly in supporting that kind of behaviour but in fact Ministers themselves have been involved directly in supporting those kinds of activities.It should be very concerning to all New Zealanders when we are debating measures to fight corruption that those kinds of smear campaigns were used to undermine regulators like the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority. If we are really serious about being an open transparent country that is free from corruption the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority should be able to go about their business without having the Government or its surrogates smearing the activities of those who are doing their jobs and yet we have seen spelt out in black and white clear examples of where that has happened.Ultimately it cost Judith Collins her ministerial position and that is right and proper. But have we ever seen any concrete action from the Prime Minister to put an end to the activities that underpinned her resignation? No we have not. Let us be clear what this was. This was the Minister of Justice being involved in a smear campaign against senior officials in the Serious Fraud Office. That is simply—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I would just like to ask the member to come back to the bill and to warn him about going too far into the facts of something that is currently being investigated by the police. I think the member could narrow himself back.CHRIS HIPKINS: I am happy to do that. To return to the bill I want to turn to Transparency International’s definitions and descriptions of what corruption involves. This is from Transparency International: “Corruption generally comprises illegal activities which are deliberately hidden and only come to light through scandals investigations or prosecutions.” One of the reasons that scandals arise in New Zealand and investigations and prosecutions can take place is that we have a very open system of Government now. We have an Official Information Act that allows New Zealanders to get access to information. Many of the scandals that have been unearthed have used those mechanisms of Government like the Official Information Act to unearth the very behaviour that this bill seeks not just to limit but basically to stop from happening.Therefore it is incumbent upon the Government of the day to lead by example when it comes to making sure that there is transparency around its activities. Yes some scandals are bigger than others but scandals will typically be unearthed only when somebody either seeks out the information—digs for the information and puts all of the pieces of the puzzle together—or blows the whistle. They are not going to be doing that if their access to information is shut down because people willingly do not follow the law when it comes to things like the Official Information Act or if the people whose job it is to enforce those laws and regulations are smeared or actively undermined whether it be from within or from without the Government. So it is very important that we continue to be vigilant when it comes to those things. I think we have seen some very clear examples just recently of where the current Government has not lived up to the type of behaviour that New Zealanders should rightly be able to expect from their Government.I want to say that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill going through to the select committee. It is going to be an interesting debate and I think that we will be getting into this in much greater detail as it progresses. We should feel fortunate in New Zealand that we are a country that is relatively free from corruption and that we regularly rate very highly in the international surveys and studies that are done. That is something to be proud of but it is not something to be complacent about. New Zealand should continue to rank highly in those surveys. We will do that only if we continue to maintain our vigilance. That is one of the many reasons that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):Thank you for the opportunity to speak during the first reading of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. This legislation will further strengthen our reputation as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Our law enforcement institutions are dealing with regular requests from counterparts across the globe to provide or contribute to information. We have come to learn that the people who want to funnel money illegally look for loopholes in the system to do so. For New Zealand this National Government is working tirelessly to maintain our corruption-free brand name. National recognises however that there is a still a risk of organised crime therefore we take it very seriously and understand we must remain vigilant. However despite our best efforts we will need to continuously be vigilant towards preventing organised crime.The current legislation will ensure we will comply with international legislation in this area. The bill also brings New Zealand domestic law into line with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Further this legislation provides us with the instruments to deal with international as well as domestic crime circuits. Regardless of how much we do criminals will always try to cheat the system. Therefore we must constantly keep ourselves a step ahead of our competition in dealing with such matters operationally and legislatively.There are two points that I would like to bring your attention to. This bill will be amending the people-trafficking offence so that it applies to such activities in New Zealand and not just when victims are moved in or out of the country. This bill will be amending the Policing Act 2008 to expressly provide police with the power to share information with their international counterparts. This is very important because sometimes the timely passing of the information may stop a crime. With these words I commend this bill to the House.JAMES SHAW (Green):I rise to support this bill’s referral to the select committee as well. I would like to start by associating myself with the comments made previously by the Hon Annette King and Chris Hipkins on the possibility of creeping corruption in New Zealand politics and the need to remain vigilant. New Zealand has an excellent reputation and has great standards in this area but that is no reason for us not to continue to raise our standards to modernise them and to keep our eye on the ball.I particularly want to reinforce the comments that the Hon Annette King made in reference to Transparency International. I just want to acknowledge that it has an incredibly important role to play in keeping an eye on corruption around the world and in New Zealand. Many years ago when I was working at PricewaterhouseCoopers looking at what kind of role the assurance industry had in this field I was delighted to be able to interview the late Jeremy Pope who was at that time the executive director of Transparency International based in London. He was a very fine New Zealander.There are three things that I just want to make some brief comments on. I will keep this a fairly short call because many of the comments I was going to make have already been made. I do want to reinforce the point about people-trafficking. It is an absolutely extraordinarily terrible offence and overseas many thousands and tens of thousands of women are trafficked and find themselves at the mercy of gangsters and the mafia. It is vital that New Zealand does all that it can to stamp out this scourge. It is slavery by another name. It is simply a modern form of slavery. We need to do everything we can to play our part in eradicating it.The comment has also been made that the perception of being corruption-free is important for business and it is incredibly important for that. Again—based on my experience internationally—knowing that I came from New Zealand people often remarked that it was a great place to do business because the people were straight up and they were fair you could rely on that kind of a deal and your money was going to be put to the purposes for which it was intended. It is incredibly important that we maintain that.This bill also brings us up to a modern standard and this is a good thing. We originally signed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in 2003 so it has taken more than 10 years to get us to this point where passing this legislation will enable us to ratify that convention along with many of the other conventions that Annette King referred to. As we do so we have to recognise that the ground is moving underneath us. As we pass this bill through the House we just need to be very mindful that the things we are up against are also continuing to move enabled by technology in a globalising world and that we will need to not stop with this piece of legislation but keep our eye on further developments.The Green Party supports this bill through to the select committee. We do have some things we want to keep an eye on. We have got some practical concerns that we would like to be addressed—notably the requirement under the anti - money-laundering rules to report transactions of $1000 or more. That has to be an absolutely enormous number of transactions. Again through my own business I know being based in New Zealand but having a company based in London and clients based in other parts of the world we are doing transactions all the time. I am a very very small-business man. If you multiply that out across the number of businesses in New Zealand that are trading internationally we just need to keep one eye on the practicalities of how we are going to manage that.Another one is around information sharing. This is an ongoing developing concern in New Zealand that has had some publicity over the course of the last 12 months. I would like to refer to another bill here which is one that was passed last year the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill. It enabled the United States to look into the bank accounts of New Zealand citizens living in New Zealand if they also happened to be US citizens and were liable to pay US tax. That was an information-sharing agreement that we had with the United States but it is a huge invasion of the privacy of people who are doing absolutely nothing wrong other than living in this country. We are giving a foreign Government the ability to look into the bank accounts of New Zealand citizens in this country and into New Zealand bank accounts as well. We want to keep an eye on that. We understand that information sharing is absolutely critical to being able to stamp out crime but it is one thing we wanted to keep an eye on.We support this bill and will be doing everything we can to ensure that the legislation does not infringe on New Zealanders’ rights. We will be looking forward to seeing how this legislation meshes with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and any other concerns on how it will impinge on civil liberties. Having said that we are very supportive of the aims of this bill.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):New Zealand First is supporting this bill’s referral to the Law and Order Committee. Any bill aimed at strengthening the law to combat organised crime and corruption is very welcome. The aim is to improve New Zealand’s ability to collaborate with international efforts to disrupt organised crime and that is also very welcome.New Zealand has an enviable reputation for being a corruption-free society and international indexes commonly place us first or first equal among the least corrupt nations. That reputation has of course been hard-won but it is much more easily lost. The effort to keep New Zealand corruption-free requires I think at least three things: first a culture in which the people themselves reject and suppress corrupt practices and embrace honest and fair dealings; second a robust legal system to outlaw corrupt practices backed up by effective policing; and third good leadership from the top down.We have a superb legacy that has bequeathed us a largely corruption-free society for which we can thank our forebears. We have good legislation especially the Crimes Act which is soon to be enhanced by this bill. The worrying element of course is in the quality of our leadership. I and many others have been deeply concerned about the revelations in Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics. It shows that the likes of Cameron Slater conduct smear campaigns tell the filthiest of lies and conduct other guttersnipe activities against politicians civil servants and others whom the current Government does not like. Not only that but he is paid for it—paid by companies with vested interests to pursue and paid by others with a political agenda.It is perfectly obvious that the Prime Minister’s office and in my assessment the Prime Minister himself are involved in these activities. John Key makes no secret about his regular conversations with Slater and he says that he does so not in his prime ministerial capacity but few would be so gullible as to believe that. It is unfortunate that Mr Key is now able to claim a mandate to continue his dirty politics ways. He will now live for ever in our nation’s history not only as Prime Minister but also as the “Minister of Dirty Politics”. On that issue the buck certainly stops with him. His obfuscation about his dealings with Slater only confirms his utter lack of leadership when it comes to good practice. He is indisputably the leader of just the opposite.Despite that failing and the risk to New Zealand’s reputation resulting from the Prime Minister’s dirty politics activities and those of former Ministers especially Judith Collins the bill does have some very useful provisions. It allows New Zealand to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption it enables implementation of the agreement between the United States and New Zealand and it facilitates compliance with a number of other international conventions.Particularly welcome are the changes made to the human-trafficking offence in the Crimes Act. The transnational element of the offence has been removed to ensure trafficking can be prosecuted regardless of whether the crime crosses a border. There are also amendments to address gaps in New Zealand’s identity offence framework to ensure that the selling transferring distributing importing exporting or otherwise making available of unlawfully obtained or manufactured identity information is a criminal offence. Similarly the making possessing selling exporting and disposing of goods intended to facilitate the commission of identity-related crime are also criminalised. It is so easy with today’s technology to steal information so we need very strong laws to combat it. I now use a special envelope especially when overseas to carry my credit cards because criminals now have the technology to read them just by walking beside you.Money-laundering is also a booming criminal activity needing the strongest possible deterrent. This bill clarifies that intent to conceal is not a necessary element of the offence and it removes the requirement that the property laundered must be the proceeds of an offence punishable by at least 5 years’ imprisonment. The ability to detect and investigate money-laundering is also improved through amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. Financial institutions will be required to routinely report inherently high-risk transactions to the financial intelligence unit of the New Zealand Police.The bill also amends the Policing Act to expressly provide the police with the power to share personal information with their international counterparts. The Law and Order Committee will need to ensure that the safeguards are included to ensure that any information sharing is appropriate and will not infringe on the right to privacy of New Zealanders. We in New Zealand First will take a special interest in this part of the bill.The bill also contains amendments to enhance New Zealand’s anti-corruption legislative frameworks and brings New Zealand into line with international best practice as set out by the United Nations conventions. It will update the definition of “crime involving dishonesty” in the Crimes Act to ensure that those convicted of corrupt offences cannot hold positions of trust in the community. That has been something of a gap in our law that certainly does need to be plugged.The foreign bribery offence in the Crimes Act is to be amended to remove the dual criminality requirement to ensure that New Zealand can effectively prosecute foreign bribery regardless of whether it was an offence in the country in which the conduct occurred. There is a new offence too to criminalise the acceptance of a bribe by a foreign public official and the acceptance of a bribe in return for using one’s influence over an official. The offence of foreign bribery is also to be amended to clarify the circumstances in which a legal person is liable for foreign bribery.Lastly it is very heartening to me that the bill substantially increases the penalties for bribery and corruption in the private sector. Some offences will be punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment and there are fines of up to $500000 for some offences. I look forward to examining the bill further and welcome its introduction with a view to supporting it if that should prove possible after it has been examined through the select committee process.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth):Good afternoon Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard. This is my first occasion to congratulate you on your very elevated position.I am very happy to stand in support of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. It is a bill that is going to continue to enhance New Zealand’s reputation as being a country in the world that has a very strong and good reputation regarding law and order issues and also a country that protects its integrity around issues concerning organised crime and anti-corruption legislation. It is important to have pieces of legislation like this which harmonise us with our key trading partners and nations overseas because increasingly organised crime is becoming a borderless global issue.New Zealand law enforcement agencies are regularly being asked to contribute to overseas investigations of organised criminal activity and therefore we need to be up with the play in terms of not only our legislation law enforcement but also the technologies that protect our societies. It is very important that we do this because we know that organised criminal networks and operations are opportunistic and highly adaptable moving rapidly to any perceived vulnerabilities in legal frameworks or in technology trade or financial systems. It is important to have that level of integrity in order that we are not seen as a vulnerable place or an easy place for crime to make its home.Our comprehensive approach to fighting all forms of organised crime will help safeguard New Zealand’s economy now and into the future our international reputation and also public safety. We have a zero-tolerance approach to domestic corruption. New Zealand and its institutions are consistently perceived as the least corrupt in the world. We are highly ranked on several integrity measures including first equal out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index and first out of 132 countries in the 2014 Social Progress Index. So we can be proud as a nation of those achievements and those standings. We must however continue this work that we do in order to protect our country from corruption organised crime and money-laundering. I commend this bill to the House.DAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to take a short call on this Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. Just to reiterate what my colleague has said earlier the Greens will be supporting this bill through to the select committee because we see that it does achieve some important and necessary things. A number of speakers have made the point that we do have a very very good international reputation as being a country that if not entirely free of corruption at least rates very highly in international comparisons around corruption. But one must never sit resting on laurels assuming that we are immune to these sorts of intrusions into our society and into our legal practice in either the public or the private sector. There are provisions around trafficking of people. On the face of it we think that trafficking of people is something that happens in other countries. But in quite recent times we have seen examples at the lower end of the scale where people have been exploited. People have come into New Zealand found themselves in very unhelpful employment situations and some of the teeth that this bill will carry will have an influence on managing—or discouraging should I say—people from going down that road to deliberately exploit people and their labour in ways that New Zealanders simply will not find acceptable in any way.I am pleased that the provisions particularly around organised crime do reflect a somewhat more sophisticated debate than we have had in recent years about organised crime because for far too long reference to organised crime has immediately brought out references to gang problems in New Zealand. I am under no illusion that yes some of the organised criminality in New Zealand is carried out by gangs and gang members—members of some gangs I should say. But I think that for too long we have simply dismissed the whole business of organised crime and gangs as being conflated. We had this entirely unhelpful notion of suppressing gangs and a misapprehension that by doing so we would suppress organised crime. In fact more recently we have seen a much more enlightened attitude and I just quote the former Minister of Police Ms Tolley who said earlier this year that we need to accept that you are never going to arrest your way out of the gang culture. She noted in passing after an overseas trip that dealing with gangs as a community problem as a multifaceted complex set of issues—not simply as a matter to try to suppress—was much more likely to generate more positive outcomes and more useful solutions. So in that sense we do welcome the legislation and it will introduce a much more helpful sophisticated debate around the nature the appearance and the reality of organised crime in New Zealand.There are one or two minor and not so minor concerns we have about the bill. Clearly there are privacy issues incorporated into some of the provisions which are always matters that we take seriously as I am sure other parties do. New Zealanders rate their right to privacy very highly as indeed we have seen in this very House in relatively recent times. Again we must never be complacent or assume that privacy measures are adequate to the moment particularly with the speed and accessibility of electronic communication of all sorts. So although I think in general we can offer significant support for this bill we do look forward to the select committee process and to encouraging and hearing from people with a level of expertise across quite a whole range of matters and issues that are contained in it given this is an omnibus bill and we will actively participate in that and we look forward to further debates.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Carmel Sepuloni a 5-minute call.CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I just stand in support of this Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill because Labour does support this bill and it is good to see this bill finally come before the House. It was introduced by the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins but it was never put forward for debate despite her saying she would do so by the end of 2013. Reflecting on the purpose of the bill I note that the aim of this bill is to strengthen the law to combat organised crime and corruption. We on this side of the House certainly are in support of that. The bill allows New Zealand to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and enables implementation of the agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of New Zealand on enhancing cooperation and preventing and combating crime.Earlier we heard some of our speakers talk about the importance of the ranking that we get internationally from Transparency International. In the past New Zealand has always ranked very high in terms of having a transparent and accountable Government. We are concerned that given recent events that ranking may be negatively affected particularly given some of the recent scandals that the National Government has been involved in and some of the allegations that have been made against the National Government including some of its Ministers and that also implicated the Prime Minister with regard to some behaviour that may not be deemed appropriate for any Government internationally. When the upcoming rankings from Transparency International come out we will be watching very carefully to see whether or not the National Government’s antics the National Government’s unhealthy engagement with—what shall we call them? What types of characters are they?Iain Lees-Galloway: Unseemly.CARMEL SEPULONI: Unseemly characters. We will be watching to see whether or not those relationships and those connections have an impact on our own ranking internationally in terms of transparency. This is very important in terms of how other countries look at us in terms of how we are perceived on the world stage and we have always taken great pride in the fact that we are seen as a country that is not affected by any level of corruption at the Government level. So we will be watching very carefully.We have a proud tradition of being an honest nation that takes a strong stance against organised crime and corruption. For this we have been rewarded with a consistent ranking of being amongst the least corrupt countries in the world. However as I said in recent years this has changed substantially with a lessening of transparency from this Government and multiple flagrant examples of corruption including to name one of many Judith Collins’ own trip to China to promote her husband’s company Oravida which I am sure we in this House are all aware of the media is aware of and the general public are only too aware of. The irony is that Collins was actually on a trip to China to speak about reducing corruption yet she was visiting Oravida to further her husband’s business ties. National continues to look after itself and the privileged few at the expense of Kiwis. I think we have seen that. There is concern generally across the public about that. That type of behaviour can have an impact on the perception around how transparent we are whether our Government is living up to expectations and just whether or not it is living up to the expectations in terms of accountability that you would expect from any First World country.Nowhere was the concern that the country has around corruption shown more clearly than in recent revelations in the Dirty Politics book. It was a real eye-opener for the whole country I think in respect of for instance the fact that some friends of the National Party could access Official Information Act requests much faster than the media or other politicians seeking to hold the Government to account. There was concern about the corrupt nature of that. The circumstances surrounding the resignation of Judith Collins are actually a national disgrace and I think we need to really take that into consideration and touch on that when we are looking at this particular bill which ironically was supposed to be introduced in the House by the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins but she never got to that point. Thank you.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):It is a great pleasure to be able to stand in this House and address you as the Assistant Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I welcome that and I am slightly surprised that the member for Rangitīkei is speaking during the Melbourne Cup but we will just keep going.IAN McKELVIE: Well I have got to go on to that. Thank you for reminding me of it. I have to say that I am absolutely distraught to think that I am speaking on a bill called the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill right at the very moment the 156th Melbourne Cup is being run down in my office. Unfortunately the race is not on the screens up here in the gallery and I do not understand it. Imagine being in Australia if they did not have the Melbourne Cup up on the screens particularly during a bill named the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill.I am very pleased to support this bill on behalf of the Government. I guess I was a little disappointed at the last speech by Carmel Sepuloni. I thought it really emphasised the tragedy that the modern Labour Party is. Obviously the key message from this bill is that New Zealand prides itself on its place in the world in respect of anti-corruption and I guess on the transparent nature of business and order in this country. I think we do very well as a country. This bill will help to reinforce that and will certainly strengthen our position in respect of international respect for our business and transparency in the way we do business. It will also enable us to get control of a whole lot of issues that we are at risk of running into problems with particularly with money-laundering international crime and the way they are treated in New Zealand. I have got a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill and with that I will go and watch the Melbourne Cup.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Megan Woods with a better sense of timing.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill for Labour which is supporting it. I wish the member for Rangitīkei good wishes. He is going back to his office where apparently the Melbourne Cup is being run. It is all in the use of a comma which I think could have made quite a difference. So enjoy the race and I hope your horse comes in.It is a pleasure to speak on this bill and to outline Labour’s support for it because I think there are some very serious elements to what is a reasonably comprehensive piece of legislation an omnibus bill that seeks to address a number of measures and has its genesis a long way back. In fact its genesis was in the previous Labour Government.If we have a look at this Government’s work on this in August 2011 Cabinet agreed to an all-of-Government response to organised crime in New Zealand. What we can actually see if we have a look at the legislation that has been put in place around organised crime and anti-corruption in New Zealand is a flurry of this legislation in the relatively recent past. We have seen the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act in 2009 the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 and the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. This is a piece of legislation that very much fits in with these bills in making its contribution to controlling this matter.So what this legislation seeks to do is to establish an effective tool box for targeting organised crime in New Zealand and enabling the law enforcement that our agencies need to be agile and able to quickly and effectively respond to new challenges as they emerge and I think one of the things that we can see is that new challenges are something that constantly present themselves.Previous speakers in this debate have spoken about New Zealand’s great reputation. The fact is that we consistently rank really highly in Transparency International’s findings and that we are first equal out of 102 countries. We do as a country take a great source of pride—and so we should—about having an open society. But we do have to realise—and this legislation does acknowledge this—that we are not immune to domestic and transnationally generated organised crime.The police’s 2010 assessment Organised Crime in New Zealand documents a wide array of organised criminal markets and activities ranging from drug-use crime to fraud to intellectual property theft to cyber-crime and to environmental crime and these activities significantly impact on our communities our international reputation and our international reputation in international markets. If we take for example New Zealand’s methamphetamine market it is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion per year and contains organised criminal group involvement from production right through to consumption. So these are real issues in our communities that we do need to address.Although I have outlined some of the legislative measures that we have in this country to combat organised crime there is a well-accepted acceptance—if I could say such a phrase—that we have many non-legislative mechanisms as well to target organised crime. But what the regulatory impact statement of this bill really does is identify seven key areas where this needs to be addressed. In her address opening this debate for Labour the Hon Annette King talked about the first case in this country when we had a person on trial for human trafficking.If we look at the regulatory impact statement for this bill which was produced in only 2013 we can see that it says that “While this is not considered to be a considerable risk in New Zealand in recent years New Zealand has come under criticism for perceived gaps in the trafficking in persons offence from the United Nations Human Rights Committee and from the United States in their Trafficking in Persons Report.” So we can see how swiftly we do have to move.As previous speakers have noted we do need to be vigilant. Our excellent international reputation has not occurred by accident. It has occurred because we see a great deal of merit and we have taken a great deal of pride in the mechanisms and the transparency that we have at all levels in our country and that needs to start with our Government. That is where we have to have the utmost levels of transparency and it is fair to say that in recent months and weeks questions have arisen around the level of transparency that this Government is operating in and many of my colleagues have gone through some of those matters.But if we look at some of the mechanisms where we need to have transparency one of the key mechanisms that we have is the Official Information Act and that is there to allow individuals and private citizens to find out what is going on with their Government—to be able to find out what it is that the people who wield power are doing.If we look at the abuse of the Official Information Act system that has been happening under this Government it is something that is cause for alarm. We have the Prime Minister’s office telling blogger Cameron Slater to “OIA” classified SIS documents then have the SIS declassify those documents and quickly release them to this blogger. This is not something that we can tolerate from our Government. We have the Prime Minister’s office and other ministerial offices tipping off bloggers when an Official Information Act request is about to be released to an Opposition party or a media outlet and telling them to put in a request for the information in the Official Information Act request which is then provided.We have this as a means of quelling criticism of a Government and that is one of my major concerns here—that if we are going to have a country where we value transparency where we value anti-corruption and where we value the fact that we can have people who can speak out and be a critic of the Government we cannot have an organised ring in which the Government is implicated in stopping that informed debate and stopping that debate by the denigration of people’s reputations and by seeking to destroy people not by arguing on the merits and the facts.We see this when we have 33 of the top health academics and professionals in this country writing an open letter to the Prime Minister to tell him that they are uncomfortable about the perceived conflict of interest around Katherine Rich’s appointment to the Health Promotion Agency because that very person had been part of an organised attack on nutritional scientists at the University of Otago who had put out information that was counter to what her agency wanted to see.I enjoy debate. I have no problem with any organisation entering into a very robust debate around what is happening and arguing about the facts but is that what happened? No that is not what happened. We had the person putting out the information—the person whose research this was—being attacked. We had her reputation called into question not her science not her finding and not even the quality of the writing in her paper which sometimes academics could be held to account for. No it was her as a person. This is what we simply cannot tolerate in this country and we certainly cannot tolerate it when we have our Government and our Prime Minister’s office implicated in it.So we are very happy to support this legislation going to a select committee. We think there are some really serious issues in here that this legislation will cover off. I agree with a previous speaker who said that at the select committee there do need to be some serious questions and some probing done from all sides of the House around where civil liberties fit in and what protections can be put in place to protect those. But as a House we cannot simply pass legislation around protecting ourselves against corruption and putting in place mechanisms for transparency and think that we are immune from those issues as well because transparency and having an open Government that lives up to the reputation that we as New Zealanders hold dear starts with us in this House. It starts with everybody on both sides of this House and it is not something that we can afford to let go of.We have had it said by this organised racket that the people in the city where I live are scum. We have had the family of people killed on the West Coast called feral. We have had academics attacked. We have had teachers attacked. We have had people who dared to criticise attacked. The question for me is who is next and that is not something that we can tolerate. Thank you very much.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill):In summary this bill is designed to combat organised crime and corruption. It will aid and strengthen New Zealand’s reputation as a fair and transparent country and enhance the robustness of our legal system not only for growth for business but on a human rights level. In particular it ratifies the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and seals our place internationally against corruption.I am delighted at the cross-party support despite some of the Opposition’s most colourful examples used to illustrate corruption. But as such I am pleased to support this bill’s referral to a select committee.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Law and Order Committee.Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development)on behalf of theMinister of Police: I move That the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider the bill. This bill amends the Policing Act 2008 to enable cost recovery for certain police services.The New Zealand Police provides a wide range of services to the general public and to public and private sector agencies and organisations in a variety of locations and settings. Most of the services that police provide are core statutory functions and are for the benefit of the general public. Examples of such services include responding to calls for assistance and conducting criminal investigations and prosecutions. These services are provided for society’s general benefit. The provision of such core policing services will not be affected by this bill. However some services delivered by police although still important and highly valued by the public provide a significant degree of private benefit to individuals or particular groups and it is appropriate to shift the cost of funding at least some of these services from the general taxpayer to the specific beneficiaries of these services.In many overseas jurisdictions such demand services already attract a fee to cover the cost of providing this service. For example all police services in all Australian jurisdictions currently apply a cost recovery regime for certain policing services. The New Zealand Police is one of the few police services that do not have legislation that explicitly allows for some degree of cost recovery. Cost recovery will enable police to meet the cost of increases in demand for certain services thereby avoiding placing additional strain on the public purse or shifting resources towards those services at the expense of core front-line police activities. It will also safeguard the delivery of these services by ensuring their future sustainability.The public clearly understands this strategy and during the initial public consultation undertaken by police in 2013 two-thirds of submitters agreed that it is appropriate for police to have the ability to recover costs in some instances. This response is consistent with the public feedback that the previous Labour-led Government received during its consultation in 2006-07 during its review of the Police Act. At that time 75 percent of respondents from the general public supported cost recovery being applied in some situations.This bill firstly sets out the types of police services that may be the subject of cost recovery. These are demand services as defined in the bill. Secondly the bill sets out the criteria on which cost recovery is to be based. These broadly relate to justifiability equity efficiency and transparency. Thirdly the bill sets out consultation provisions; fourthly methods of cost recovery; fifthly the provision of exemptions and waivers of any prescribed fees or charges; and finally amendments to the Act to provide that regulations may be made by Order in Council on the recommendation of the Minister of Police prescribing fees and charges for demand services.As set out in the bill a “demand service” is defined as a service that is requested by and is of direct benefit to an individual or organisation although there may also be an indirect benefit to the public as a whole. Police vetting is listed as an example of a demand service. For avoidance of doubt certain core police functions are excluded from the definition. Prior to recommending regulations to prescribe a fee for any particular service the Minister of Police must be satisfied that the service is a demand service that the service and principles are consistent with the specified criteria that have been drawn from Treasury’s and the Auditor-General’s guidelines for setting charges in the public sector and that due consultation has been undertaken with the affected parties.Following the passage of this bill it is intended to introduce policing regulations to enable cost recovery for the police vetting service along with a charging regime for that service. At present the police vetting service is the only demand service being proposed for cost recovery. Police undertake the vetting of employees and volunteers for approved public sector and private sector agencies involved in a variety of public interaction activities such as education community services caregiving and other health services. The vetting service provides employers with relevant background information on potential employees that may have a bearing on the suitability of an individual to work in a particular environment interact with potentially vulnerable people or handle sensitive information. In 2013 there were around 457700 requests to use the police vetting service and the demand is steadily rising.A number of recent national and international developments have put increasing pressure on the police vetting service. For example the introduction of mandatory safety checks for paid members of the children’s workforce as set out in the Vulnerable Children Act 2014; the proposed agreement with Australia for the sharing of criminal history information on individuals for employment vetting purposes; and the potential vetting of individuals from New Zealand who are seeking employment in the United Kingdom Canada or the United States. So the proposed regulations would allow police to charge for these individual vets so as to recoup the costs involved. This will help safeguard the delivery of the vetting service and ensure its future sustainability in the face of that increasing demand and it will also incentivise efficiencies by both police and the users of the service.So users of the police vetting service will be asked to pay a small fee for something they have previously received for free. The vetting service fee will be around $7 per check. The equivalent fees in the Australian jurisdictions are considerably higher. For example it costs A$52 for a national police check from the New South Wales Police Force and in South Australia the fee is A$56.50 for a national police certificate which details an individual’s offending history. It is expected that most organisations will be able to absorb the vetting service costs with little impact on the volume or quality of their services. Many organisations could pass these costs on to the individuals who derive a private benefit from the end result. However for those organisations that cannot meet the costs incurred provision has been made in the bill for fees to be waived in some cases. We are anticipating that this would be done in accordance with publicly available guidelines and that for example fees could be waived for some volunteers in specific situations. The guidelines would be reviewed after 18 months of operation.I am proposing that the bill not be enacted before June 2015 and that regulations setting out fees for police vetting would not come into force before July 2015. I am also signalling that there will need to be an amendment to the land transport regulations when the policing regulations are made. This is so the vetting fee for the checks that police undertake for the New Zealand Transport Agency currently set at $28.20 is aligned with other vetting fees.In summary enabling police to recover the costs of certain police services will improve the way police resources are used enhance service delivery and provide better value for money. I believe there is a strong case for cost recovery for services where the benefit primarily accrues to individuals and private organisations rather than to the public as a whole. I commend this bill to the House.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):The Labour Party will vote for the first reading of this bill with some rather strong reservations. We believe it should go to a select committee. It should be subject at the select committee to public submissions and very close analysis of what it involves.When I first picked up this bill I thought I would probably be quite supportive of its content because I thought that there are clearly things where police services are required and cost recovery might be justifiable. If Mick Jagger is coming to sing at Westpac Stadium and they are making millions of dollars out of it and we are providing police services it is profit making—yes I have no problem with that. They should meet some of the cost of policing a commercial and profit-making arrangement. When I read the Police Association’s submission it used that same example or it could have used a professional sporting event because that is also about making money. But when I pick up this bill I find that it is not about that at all.This bill sets out in its explanatory note that at present—at present—the only service being proposed for cost recovery is the police vetting service. As I read that out I looked at Kelvin Davis because he is a teacher. Do you know what the largest organisation is that uses the services of police vetting? It is the Teachers Council. There was that experiment back in the 1990s when the National Government decided that actually teachers and people who work at schools did not need to be vetted. It was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster and the Government had to bring vetting back.What is really important about this is that the Minister of Police is telling us that this is not a core function of the police. You know I picked up the Policing Act 2008 and what are the functions of the police? They include maintaining public safety crime prevention and community support and reassurance. I would have thought that the police role—and it is mandatory under a 2001 piece of legislation—of vetting people for their suitability for looking after our most vulnerable citizens our kids in the classroom at schools and at preschool met the primary functions of the police which is maintaining public safety ensuring crime prevention and community support and reassurance.Another of the organisations that this is going to relate to is Child Youth and Family. I would have thought that vetting people working in Child Youth and Family—for the benefit not only of children but in particular vulnerable children—was a core function. I would have thought that our many charities and all of those groups that take on volunteers to work for the public good who are not paid but who are subject to mandatory vetting would be excluded.Mike Sabin: The benefit is right across; that’s right.Hon PHIL GOFF: But I find from reading the papers Mr Sabin that that is not intended. Maybe some of the volunteer groups are but certainly not the largest groups that might use it—the Teachers Council and Child Youth and Family. And who are the beneficiaries of those services? Are the beneficiaries people who make money out of it? No the beneficiaries are our kids. So whom is the Government intending to charge for that vetting service? Will it charge the teachers? Will it charge the social workers? Will it charge the schools? Will it come down to the parents of those kids who are being protected having to pay? Does this not look like simply another form of hidden taxation? Lower the tax rates on the very wealthy cut the top tax rates and sneak in taxes where they can be hidden away.You know I have great respect for the role of the police I want the police to carry out their functions and I do not want them as a rule to be a cost recovery organisation. The police are there for the public good and where the goal is the public good there should be no charging. What we expected was a bill that said that we will charge the entertainment industry and we will charge the big professional sporting organisations but we get a bill that is going to charge our kids our teachers our schools and our social workers. I am not in favour of that. Keeping our kids safe preventing crime and assuring the public that those who work with our children are fit and proper people to do so are core functions of the police that should not be about cost recovery. It is not profit making; it is public good and that is the way that it should be.I have given some more thought as to why we have got this bill before us. Yes this was something that was considered in the review leading up to the Policing Act 2008. It was something that the Labour Government decided not to do and with very good reason. Why is the Government trying to do it now?Mike Sabin: What was it? What was the reason?Hon PHIL GOFF: The reason is set out actually in the public consultation document that was about the cost recovery of policing services. This is what it says: “The allocation of resources across competing services is finely balanced. The future sustainability of Police services depends on there being room for improvements or investment in new areas requiring additional Police resources; … Ultimately cost recovery provides an opportunity to free up some Police resources and better ensure funding is focussed on [other] areas”.We have this bill before the House because for 6 years this National Government has cut the funding for our police force in real terms—in real terms. I went to the Parliamentary Library and asked it whether it could give me the real level of funding in 2010 and the real level of funding this year and to tell me how much extra the Government has invested in policing. Do you know what the answer was? It was not anything extra; the Government had cut the police budget in real terms by $114 million—a $114 million cut to the police budget.So what has that forced the police to do? Well they have closed community police stations have they not? Let us list them around my area—St Lukes Mount Albert and Blockhouse Bay. They did not have the courage to say that they were cutting the Mount Roskill police station but they did cut it. It was temporarily closed for 2½ years before they had the courage to admit that it was closed to the public. They have delayed recruiting police officers so the actual number of serving police officers fell last year—it fell. We had a smaller number of police officers than the minimum level of police officers that should be out there on the front line.Of course in this Budget we saw cuts in core operating expenditure. What were those cuts? They were for $40 million in the Budget this year—$40 million this year alone. What were the areas cut? Crime prevention—$3.5 million was taken out of that. For investigations $7 million was taken from that. And for primary response—and you would think that was really important. How many of us have had constituents complain that when they were burgled they rang up the police and the police said: “Yeah we’ll get to it eventually. Don’t touch anything because we’ll eventually fingerprint it. Don’t replace the broken sliding door—I know it’s the middle of winter but we’ll get there eventually.”? Well do we blame the police officer? No we do not blame the police officer because $7 million was cut out of primary response for the police this year. Road policing—and we are meant to really put that on a pedestal—was cut by $10 million.This has had a dramatic impact. The police have been placed in the position now where they are being told by this Government that there will be no increase in real terms to forget the fact that policing is a fundamental responsibility of the New Zealand Government and that the Government wants them to go out and get money from the people they provide services to. And where will they start? They will start with schoolkids. Yes that is the sort of Government we really want is it not?Carmel Sepuloni: And the social workers.Hon PHIL GOFF: And the social workers. If we are going to have cost recovery let us put it in the right place. Let us put it on the commercial profit-making organisations. Let us not put it on those core functions that we expect as of right the police to provide the public with.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):I agree with the Hon Phil Goff on the last points that he made. It is certainly very explicit from what I can see that the cost recovery that is under discussion and relates specifically to this bill deals with a direct benefit to a particular individual or organisation. If Mr Goff is seriously suggesting that $7 per police vetting for the narrow field of people who would fit the definition of the private individual getting a greater benefit than the public good—the $7 for clipping that ticket—is somehow the police’s only way to recover this massive hole in the budget that he seems to think there is then I think that is slightly delusional.The reality is that this is about cost recovery; it is not about profit making. It is about recovering costs where the police are providing a service to an individual or organisation that goes above and beyond the interests of the wider public. I am sure that a very important part of the focus of the select committee process and the submissions will be to see exactly where it is that various stakeholders see that that line sits.I think it is very clear certainly from this National Government’s perspective. It is very important that the police provide the services they do. Once upon a time it was called a police force was it not? Now it is a police service or what have you. The world moves on; it is a different place.This is not about changing the way the police go about doing business; it is about saying that where there are individuals who will accrue a personal benefit or where there is an individual who will essentially benefit without the public enjoying that wider benefit in terms of police time and police resources then possibly there should be some recovery of that cost—at a very very minimal cost. It is important to note that we are one of the very few—I have not dug far enough to find out whether there are any other jurisdictions that do not actually have any form of cost recovery but it is actually very commonplace. It goes a lot further than what has just been suggested here in terms of cost recovery for police vetting.So it is important I think to understand that there is a greater use of police resources and a greater use of police time and that there are constraints therefore on other services that the police can provide to the wider public as a result of doing police vetting. It is about getting a balance that ensures that if there are costs associated with that and the individual or the organisation gets a private benefit that is over and above or usurps the greater public good then there is an opportunity for the police to recover some of those costs and arguably to put those funds back into more effective public services and into the better delivery of better public services.As the Minister mentioned the Policing Act currently does not specifically enable this to happen. Obviously it has been looked at some time before. It is very much about recovering costs. I would suggest that it is about only just recovering costs. You will get no complaints from me about the fact that it has been a very very tough time for public sector organisations such as the New Zealand Police to work through a global financial crisis and the problems that we have had financially as a nation with the Canterbury earthquakes. Everyone has had to cut their cloth to fit and it has been a very challenging time. One thing I will say is that we can dish out a huge bouquet to the police in the sense that what they have done is entirely change their focus far more so to a prevention focus. They have been far better resourced in terms of their equipment and tools of the job if you like to be able to get out there and actually put more effective man hours on the street.The way we are policing today is not the same way we were doing it 10 15 or 20 years ago. I anticipate that that will continue to evolve for a number of reasons. It is not a case that there is just a blank cheque that can be written out. The balance of course is always ensuring that the public are protected and that we have a sinking lid on the amount of crime. The reality is that we are in a position where we have a 35-year low in crime rates. We can get a little bit cynical about statistics from time to time but the reality is that if you look at the morale of the police and you look at the public satisfaction they are both good. They are both saying that the police in very very tough times are doing a very very good job. Sure in a perfect world we would have resourced them with more we would do more and be able to achieve more and there would not be any crime but the reality is that that is not the world we live in and it is important that we are always looking to strike the appropriate balance that does not compromise the greater good for the public. I believe that this bill provides an opportunity for us to ask that question and get that balance right when it comes to police vetting. I commend the bill to the House.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau):I will start on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill at the conclusion of the regulatory impact statement which says: “Currently Police is unable to charge for most of the functions designated under the Policing Act 2008.” except in certain circumstances such as the recovery of licensing fees for firearms. This means that the New Zealand Police has limited or no control over demand-driven services and is unable to expand its resources to meet expanding demand. Well it just seems strange to me—if there is expanding demand then there should be an expanding budget to go with that expanding demand. As my colleague Phil Goff has said the police budget has actually been cut. In fact in Budget 2014 the police received significant cuts. The output expenses for police were reduced from $1.503 billion to $1.461 billion—that is over $40 million in cuts this year. These cuts are putting real strain on the police force.I have just heard Mike Sabin say that morale in the police force is up there. The reality is that under National the average number of police resignations per month has skyrocketed compared with under Labour increasing from 14.2 resignations a month in 2009 to 50.7—50.7—police resignations a month in 2013. To claim that morale in the police force is actually on the rise is a misnomer. Up in the north I have family in the police I have friends in the police—in fact I have been contacted by policemen who are concerned about their jobs and in fact their stations will be closed as Phil Goff mentioned. They have rung me—obviously they do not want to be named—to say that they are really concerned about small police stations such as the one in Kawakawa where I was born and bred and are worried about their jobs.The budget cuts are one of the big drivers of the strain on police. Those cuts as Phil Goff has said reduce their core operating expenditure—for example $3.5 million was cut from general crime prevention $7 million was cut from investigations and $7 million was cut from primary responses. As Phil Goff said the old ranchslider has been broken into but because the police are under strain and so many officers are resigning every month there are fewer of them to go out and do those investigations in a timely manner. There is also another cut of $10 million to road policing. These are the core functions of the police that are being put at risk as a result of those cuts.But the Minister was right—there is some public appetite for the recouping of some costs. I will just go through a few of them. Of the 102 submitters who responded to the question of whether the police should be able to recover the costs of certain services 66 percent broadly supported the proposal. A large number of these submitters commented that cost recovery would be appropriate in certain or limited situations where the services are not core police functions and where the benefit is to only an individual user or private organisation. So of the 35 submitters who were mostly opposed to the police introducing cost recovery for certain services some were concerned that it could set a precedent for a range of police services being user-pays and that the charging could not be applied appropriately to public policing.One of the things we are a bit concerned about is this thin end of the wedge towards privatising our police force. Another issue raised by some of those opposed to the police recovering costs was the possibility of a cost recovery regime leading to inequitable treatment of paying customers versus non-paying customers. We would hate to see the situation in New Zealand where the protection of the police came at a price and where the level of police service received by people such as my constituents in Te Tai Tokerau who do not have a lot of money would be different from those who do have a bit of money behind them.As has already been raised today the New Zealand Teachers Council was one organisation that did not support this proposal. It said: “A vital part of the education safety path for children is the mandatory requirement in the Act that the council carry out Police vets for those applying to be registered as teachers … to assist in determining whether an applicant ‘is of good character and fit to be a teacher’ …”.As a former principal myself we police-vetted all staff not just teachers—librarians caretakers office people—because we wanted to make sure that everybody was fit to work with children. The Teachers Council says there should be no charge for police vetting for teachers because “Police vetting has a significant public benefit in accordance with the principles for exemption in the original consultation document; Police vetting is part of the primary functions of the police and in no way an ‘additional service’; The Council is not a profit-generating company or organisation and the cost of vets would fall directly on teachers or schools;” or on the council itself.There was an equation somewhere in the notes that said there are about 450000 police vets carried out in any given year. Basically $7.70 would be the cost per police vet. That is fine to say now that it is $7.70 but who is to say that in years to come it will not become $27.70 or $50.70 and that it will not start to cost about the same as what we hear it does over in Australia? The Teachers Council said there are “few if any further efficiencies to be generated in the Police vetting system for teachers and charging will not reduce demand or costs incurred;”. That is a great point—just because we charge to recover costs for police vetting it does not mean we are going to reduce the number of police vets needed.The Teachers Council is opposed to any proposal that would make the council subject to cost recovery for a process that a statute requires it to undertake. So here is the statute that says it must vet all teachers—it is the statute that says that—and now they are saying that the council has to pay for it. Again as has been mentioned today where are those costs going to fall? Are they going to fall on schools? We know that schools are underfunded as they are. We know that schools struggle with money as it is and here we are placing another cost on them. So there are 40000 police vets a year through the Teachers Council. That is an average of more than 3300 per month—about 13 percent of the number of vets made each year. So 13 percent of any police vetting comes through the Teachers Council and schools wanting to have staff police vetted.I agree with the Teachers Council that this is actually part of the core function of the police in terms of maintaining public safety. Under section 9 of the Policing Act 2008 one of the core functions is maintaining public safety. This is actually about maintaining the safety of the most vulnerable in our society—that is our young people who are in schools. It is about crime prevention as well because if we can stop people with dubious histories of offending against children then we are actually preventing crime as well.We support this bill going to the select committee. I think there is a lot of debate that needs to be had around the bill there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and organisations need to submit and have their voices heard but the Labour Party does support this bill going to the select committee. Kia ora.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker Kelvin Davis mentioned policemen resigning. I know two policemen who resigned from the police force but who are still contributing to society and they are part of the National Party caucus: Mike Sabin and Mark Mitchell. They are representing their constituencies very well. They are very good electorate MPs and are contributing to this Parliament.The police want to ensure that their resources are carefully prioritised to focus more on victims preventing crime and delivering a sustainable efficient and high-quality service to all New Zealanders. This bill will help the police recover some costs and prioritise that. With this I commend this bill to the House.DAVID CLENDON (Green):This Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill purports to enable cost recovery for certain police services. Most of those services of course are currently provided through baseline funding—essentially Vote Police each year funds the activities of the police force throughout New Zealand with one or two well-known and historically stable exceptions such as firearms licensing and the like. The Greens absolutely believe that we need to retain that model—that we fund the police adequately to do their job which is a difficult job and a complex set of tasks. We think there is no place for user-pays in funding policing in New Zealand.This bill absolutely sets the police force on the road to user-pays. It establishes a model where at any point by Order in Council the Minister of Police can make regulations to extend the range of services for which a charge will be applied. Inevitably those charges will broaden. Although they have suggested that the initial charge—$7 as I think has been mentioned—would be relatively low nevertheless that will inevitably increase over time. In any case we think that is too much to impose on organisations particularly those that are charged with the care of children—schools early childhood centres. This sort of charge will have an impact on those organisations. Although we are told that there will be opportunities for exemptions for those organisations to apply to be excused from the charge that in itself imposes charges on small community-based organisations. We see no place for user-pays by stealth because that is what we believe this bill is. It is as in the phrase already used by my Labour colleague Kelvin Davis thin end of the wedge stuff. It is very much the first little step on the way towards charging people for policing services and we want no part of that.The point has been made that the police have suffered budget cuts to the extent that their budgets have either been stable or slightly diminished over the years. Their costs have gone up. The police have responded very well. They have responded positively heroically to the cuts to their budgets. They have found efficiencies they have invested in new technologies and they have invested in new tactics and very good strategies to reduce their costs and to get maximum productivity out of their officers out of their force and out of their equipment. But there is a point beyond which there is nothing left to be cut. There is no fat left in the system. I believe the police are actually past that point where they are actually suffering from the fact that they are being funded inadequately. This idea of charging for some services is not a satisfactory or an acceptable solution to that.The proposition in the general policy statement is interesting. Some of the sort of tortured convoluted logic that is offered to us in the explanatory note almost reads like a Neo-liberal Economics 101 tutorial desperately trying to justify the imposition of these charges on the basis of private good versus public good. It does not stand up to even the least scrutiny like the idea that somehow a person must pay for a form of a licence to operate if they want to work with children for example by paying this fee to have them vetted by police to ensure they are right and proper people to be working in an environment where there are children. The proposition we are told is that that moves the cost away from general taxation to specific users or beneficiaries. I would argue that we are all beneficiaries when we ensure that our children are not exposed to people who may behave inappropriately who may not be safe with those children. To suggest that the private good overrides the public good in that simply is not a sustainable argument.We are told there will be efficiency in consumption—quoting from the explanatory note: “demand that is not strictly necessary but which occurs due to a zero nominal price should be eliminated.” The proposition embedded in that is that people are going along to get individuals vetted just for a bit of fun just because they can and it does not cost anything. That is nonsense. People do not go and get police vetting of individuals lightly.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.DAVID CLENDON: Before the break I was making the point that this is simply user-pays by stealth. This is an attempt to introduce the mechanism that will enable charging of core public services—in this case policing—in a way that starts off looking quite minimal quite benign but in fact inevitably it will increase it will expand and it is simply the wrong model to be funding our police force. The proposition in the explanatory note as I was mentioning before the break is the notion of efficiency in consumption—the proposition that demand is not strictly necessary but occurs because there is no charge effectively. It is proposing that people are getting these vettings done for reasons that are not significant or real—that they are simply doing it because it is free. I simply do not accept that proposition.Regarding efficiency in production we are told that “… users facing a nominal price will demand high-quality services from Police. This … will drive Police to be innovative and seek production efficiencies:”. I believe that every one of our hard-working diligent police officers from the newest recruit up to the commissioner should be offended by that comment. It suggests that our police will work a little bit harder a little bit more efficiently because they are clipping the ticket because there is an actual fee involved. I absolutely reject that and I do believe that it is almost a slur. Police officers could quite rightly be offended by that proposition that they will work harder and smarter and more effectively because there is going to be a $7 invoice attached to their action. That is nonsense. I have great confidence in our police force. There are occasional falls from grace and that is unfortunate but for the most part they do their job very well and they work very hard. The idea that they will do a little bit better because they can hand somebody a $7 invoice is simply offensive.Similarly the notion that charging for these services which allegedly benefit individuals—but as I have already made the point in fact there is significantly more public benefit in for example vetting people before they work with children than there is individual benefit. We are told nevertheless that this will free up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services. I cannot see where vetting is not a preventative service. It is in the nature of vetting that you ensure that these people who are going to work with children are appropriate people to be trusted with the care and custody of children. How is that anything but a preventative service? I think this justification we are offered has tried so hard to justify something that ought not to happen that they have had to go to these extreme lengths and offer this very convoluted logic as I have said.In May when the press release came out from the then Minister of Police we were told that a fee of around $5 to $7 had been proposed. Already before it is even in place we have gone to the top of that range—$7. I think there is an indication there that charging will only increase. More significantly we are told that this is about cost recovery. The changes we are told will allow the police to recover about $2.2 million a year. That is not an insignificant amount of money but put it against the overall police budget—and I am relying on my memory here—I believe it is about $1.5 billion a year that we spend on policing. To suggest that this relative drop in the bucket that this whole piece of legislation enabling charging is about clawing back $2.2 million out of a $1.5 billion budget is I think nonsense. It is simply user-pays by stealth. It is just the opening up—the softening up in a sense—of the New Zealand public to accept that “Oh yes if you want a service from the police force you are obliged to pay for it.” That is a road that the Greens are certainly not interested in going down.The point was made earlier that some organisations will be exempt from vetting charges. I guess if they plead hardship or some other concern they will be heard and the volunteers working for them will be excused this charge. What about the transaction costs that involves? Again what is the actual net benefit to the police out of this claimed $2.2 million? Take away the costs involved in gathering that money in the day-to-day management of transactions and that $2.2 million will disappear very quickly or a large chunk of it will. The cost that it imposes on NGOs which typically are supported by philanthropic funding often by Government grants creates this money-go-round where these organisations simply will be put at cost. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark to take a call on this Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill going to the Law and Order Committee but that should not be taken as an indication that our support will be continued beyond the select committee process. New Zealand First holds a number of reasonably serious concerns regarding the potential repercussions of this bill. We are keen to see these examined by the select committee and to hear public submissions because we believe that the public in general and those associated with the police in particular will share many of those same concerns.The bill’s general policy statement notes that “most services are funded out of Police’s baseline funding and no fee or charge is attached to their provision.” This is as we believe things should generally be in a free and fair society where the rule of law is upheld by the police force in cooperation with the people who are taxed most handsomely in exchange for the provision of such services. The immediate issue of course is that as we all know the police budget—their baseline funding as the general policy statement puts it—has been flat for 5 consecutive years now. In the last Budget the police suffered an actual cut in baseline funding of some $40 million. So when inflation and increased operating costs are taken into account police have been being squeezed harder and harder over the past 5 years and many officers both in the ranks and up into quite senior levels of management have commented with increasing frequency and indeed stridency that the thin blue line is now stretched about as thin as it can go before something breaks.So although New Zealand First welcomes the proposition that police may be enabled to access something in the way of quite desperately needed additional resourcing the obvious question is why the Government does not simply increase the funding available to police in line with calls being made by the Police Association community groups NGOs justice advocates Opposition parties and indeed it would appear everyone apart from the Government itself rather than formulate yet another user-pays law such as this bill. Notwithstanding that vetting services are the first to be included because they are only the first it is our belief and concern that such a regime may have some unintended and potentially quite serious consequences as far as the policing of law and order issues in New Zealand is concerned.The general policy statement states that this amendment to the Policing Act 2008 will “help Police achieve … efficiency in production: users facing a nominal price will demand high-quality services from Police. This transparency around costs will drive Police to be innovative and seek production efficiencies:”. What does “innovative” mean in this context? Does it mean that police will be driven to seek new ways in which to enforce the law? Will they as several previous Governments have in the past be driven to make up the law as they go along? The general policy statement goes on to say: “resources directed to priority areas: cost recovery for services that benefit individuals frees up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community.”This proposition like altogether too much of this Government’s legislation through the term of the 50th Parliament is simply back to front. Police numbers are too low as it is. We have too few front-line cops in this country. Per capita relative to other comparable nations New Zealand is under-policed. Back-office staff numbers have been reduced. Front-line cops are doing paperwork that should be someone else’s responsibility and here we are proposing to contract them out for paid private policing work as well. This bill will not free up resources for the delivery of front-line and preventative services across the whole community. It will stretch resources even further and make them all the more scant and all the more scarce and all the more sought after.Too few police will be required to do even more under this bill. I ask whether it will lead senior police management knowing the force is strapped for cash to prioritise paying jobs over non-paying ones. The demand service which this bill empowers the police to carry out and to charge for is defined in new section 79B(2): “For the purposes of this section demand service means a service that—(a) constitutes policing; and (b) is provided only on the request of an individual or organisation; and (c) is provided to the individual or organisation requesting it for the direct benefit of a particular person or organisation (even though there may be indirect benefit to the public as a whole).” To my mind that defines an activity that may quite legitimately be regarded by police as a function that may be afforded a degree of priority especially when operational reality being what it is means there is very genuinely needed cash flow to be had.New Zealand First has no fundamental issue with the police being allowed to recover excess or additional costs incurred through providing necessary law enforcement and public safety services required as a predictable result of social activities that have been organised by commercial interests for profit but we do not want to see the police become a de facto private security company offering and supplying services for money to paying customers at the expense of ordinary necessary public safety and security police activities for the purposes of maintaining public order and the rule of law. There is a threat that this very situation may be an unintended consequence of this bill becoming law. We do not want to see that. We very much do want to see this matter thrashed out in the select committee and in the light of public submissions.There are some other concerns. New Zealand First has some other concerns relating to the methods of cost recovery that the police may employ with regard to charges levied under this bill and the matter of exemptions waivers and refunds. Who will be charged with administering this new user-pays service? Will the police be employing additional clerical staff in order to facilitate this new function? Will those associated costs be able to be recovered as well or will they come from that already overstretched police budget? If a service is able to be determined as a demand service for which fees are payable under what circumstances would it be necessary to provide exemptions waivers or refunds of those fees for which the taxpayer will then presumably pick up the tab?In closing New Zealand First believes that increasing the police baseline budget to somewhere nearer what it should be and to what is actually necessary and recruiting more front-line officers would prove a far more effective and elegant solution than this proposed new user-pays service with all its failed neo-liberal economic connotations. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee but not necessarily beyond it at this stage. We look forward to the concerns we have raised being addressed.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth):I am very happy to stand and speak in support of the Policing (Cost Recovery Amendment Bill) which is in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I think this is a fairly straightforward bill so therefore I will make just a couple of very short points. There is a difference between an activity that is for public service and a commercial activity that is for private profit and therefore should be a private cost. For instance an entity may own an early childhood education centre that does have a statutory requirement for police vetting of employees. Though that centre may provide a service to families in their particular area it is also a business that is there to earn a private profit. Therefore should not the business cost around that entity be met by the business as a cost to them and a service that is provided to them by the police be met in such a manner? So I believe that this is a very sensible bill. I think that such an example like that illustrates the rationality of it so I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise to take a short call in this the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. The Green Party opposes this bill. We have been told that the core police services are there to benefit society and therefore should be provided by baseline funding and the example the Minister gave was front-line services. But this bill is proposing that where benefit primarily accrues to individuals or private organisations rather than society as a whole police should be able to recover costs yet as has already been pointed out in the debate this bill does not consider cost recovery in all situations that could be described in that way—for example commercial use of police say for large concerts or sports events where there may I suggest be massive profits to be made. This bill applies primarily to police vetting. Police undertake vetting mostly in situations relating to education community services health services and public services. The Teachers Council is the biggest organisation using police vetting. The regulatory impact statement has recognised that there has been increased demand on these services and indeed the Minister noted that in 2013 457000 requests were put into the police for police vetting. That demand is still rising yet there has been no increase in the police budget to allow them to do this work. In fact the Government has cut the police budget by $114 million in real terms since 2009.We have heard from the Government side of the House tonight that this is not about raising money for the police; it is just about cost recovery. Well I think that is playing with words really. This job was up till this point considered a core function of the police and a service to the public so that we could all have a feeling of safety when we accessed services where we might be vulnerable or our children might be vulnerable. In fact the core reason that there has been increased demand for this service is the Vulnerable Children Act imposing mandatory vetting. I would like to just read out the purpose of the section that applies to the safety checks from the Vulnerable Children Act which says: “The purpose of this Part is to reduce the risk of harm to children by requiring people employed or engaged in work that involves regular or overnight contact with children to be safety checked.” How—how—is that more a private good than a public good? The Government on one hand through the most significant piece of legislation that went through Parliament last term said that this is mandatory because this is essential to public safety. Now here we are only a few months later in this House and the Government is saying this is not a public good; this is a private benefit and let us charge for it. It does not make sense.The Minister has characterised the plan as charging a small fee for something that previously had been free. The Government is saying it is around $7 per check and that most organisations would be easily able to absorb that. Well the Teachers Council does about 40000 vets a year so that is a cost of around $300000 a year—$300000 a year being transferred from our schools to the police. Has the Government not heard of the old adage “A stitch in time”? Our children would be better off if we invested in these mechanisms to protect them before something goes wrong. Although crime is supposedly going down—except for domestic violence and sexual violence which are crimes quite relevant to this topic—the Government is moving funding from community services that provide protection and from our schools into policing. It makes no sense and the Greens are proud to oppose this bill.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I felt compelled to make a brief contribution to this debate after hearing Jonathan Young’s contribution. In the 30 seconds or so that he spoke he could not have been wrong in more ways. The entire 30 seconds were just completely wrong.Kris Faafoi: Concentrated.CHRIS HIPKINS: It was concentrated wrongness. The issue that Jonathan Young spoke about was cost recovery in the case of early childhood teachers. The first thing that he was wrong about is that not all early childhood centres—in fact the minority—are profit-making businesses. The vast bulk of early childhood services are community-based. They are run by kindergartens or they are run by community organisations and they do not make any money so he was wrong in that regard.The second and more important thing is that the organisations do not pay teacher registration fees; individual teachers pay the registration fees. So if the police are going to start cost recovery for police vetting for the purposes of teacher registration that is not a transfer of cost on to an early childhood centre or even a school; it is a transfer of cost to every individual teacher in the country. Every individual teacher in the country will now have to pay more money to get police vetting in order to keep their registration up to date.Teachers are not the only ones. In any profession where police vetting is required and where the employer does not pay the cost of it this will be a transfer of cost on to ordinary everyday New Zealanders. There are a multitude of voluntary organisations that require police vetting because there might be children or vulnerable people involved in that organisation. It is right that we ask those community organisations to have that system in place because it ensures the safety of children and young people and that is what the police are there for. It is absolutely legitimate for us to say to the people working in those environments: “You should be police-vetted.” It is for their safety as well as for the safety of the people who are in their care or in their charge. Transferring that cost in the case of voluntary organisations will probably result in some people just saying: “This is too difficult. I’ve got other ways that I can spend my time.”In the case of teachers and the other professions where police vetting is required it is a direct increase in costs. I have to say to the Government members that if they do not think they are going to end up paying for this one way or the other they have got another think coming. The teachers quite rightly will come back to the Government in their next round of collective employment agreement negotiations and say: “Actually the cost of us maintaining our teacher registration has gone up and we want the Crown to cover that by way of a salary increase.” That would be a perfectly legitimate thing for them to ask for. Otherwise they are going to be going backwards. They are going to be getting less money cash in hand for doing the same work. It would be a pay cut. It would be perfectly legitimate for them to say: “We want the Crown to cover this.” So the Crown is going to cover it one way or the other. This is actually very short-sighted.Labour is supporting the bill’s referral to the Law and Order Committee because there are some instances where we think cost recovery might be justified. In the case of major events for example where there are significant policing implications where there is a cost to the police for what is primarily a profit-making event or function there might be some legitimate reasons for going to those organisers and saying: “We want you to contribute to the cost of doing that.” That is legitimate.The part where people have to be police-vetted for the purposes of their job or for community involvement or whatever is simply unfair. That is a step too far. If that is not addressed through the select committee process I think it is very unlikely that Labour would continue to support this bill through because it is the beginning of introducing user-pays policing. I do not see how that can possibly be justifiable or sustainable in the long term for this country.I certainly will not be supporting right the way through the process a bill that transfers the cost of police vetting for something like teaching from the police where it exists at the moment—and therefore the Crown by extension—to the individual teachers. I think that would be manifestly unjust. I think it would inevitably result in teachers—I am using teachers as an example but there is a multitude of other professions that would be covered by this as well—very legitimately seeking to come back to the Government to ask for that cost to be covered in other ways. Otherwise what the Government is doing is it is increasing the cost to hard-working New Zealanders and it is basically taking the cost away from the Government. That is not sustainable and it is just not fair.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):This is an interesting opportunity to speak on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill for reasons I shall go into shortly. Before doing so I must mention the fact that before dinner we were speaking on the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill which I guess has got something to do with the police as well but at that time of course the great race was on. You will be pleased to know Mr Deputy Speaker that a horse from our very own district ran third in that race. It was a pretty good effort by the Rangitīkei-Wanganui contingent. Anyway that is my piece on the Melbourne Cup. It was very locally trained in the Turakina valley.Kris Faafoi: Did you get a collect?IAN McKELVIE: No but I did win the sweep.I move back to the bill. I am I guess in the position of almost having some kind of an interest in this. I am chairman of the New Zealand Special Olympics which will be one of the bigger users of this service in New Zealand. We like many other voluntary organisations vet check all of our volunteers coaches drivers and everyone else—a significant number of people. This proposal has been around for quite some time and I guess for voluntary organisations it is going to be an interesting debate. Contrary to what the previous speaker said we do not do what the Government tells us to do; we do what is right and I think that most voluntary organisations do what is right in this respect. Their policies are designed to ask for these kinds of checks whether they are police checks or whatever kinds of checks they are. Their policies are designed to ask for those types of checks. They do it for exactly the reason that Chris Hipkins mentioned—that is to protect the people who are in need of protection. In the Special Olympics’ case of course it is our athletes who are seriously in need of protection.The debate for us and for this House is: what is the best way to deal with this? There is clearly a lot of commercial interest in this very same issue. There are going to be some conflicting submissions as we go through this process. There are the voluntary organisations which make their own choice to ask for these vet checks and then there are all those other organisations that use it commercially. So it is an interesting debate and I think that on that point it will be interesting to see where it gets to. I certainly have no problem recommending that this bill go to the next stage in the process. Thank you.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):It is a pleasure to speak to the first reading of the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. I am drawing on a couple of documents that have been helpfully supplied to us by the police to try to make sense of what is actually going on here. The first one is a helpful document from the police website entitled: “Cost Recovery—Frequently asked questions”. It asks a pretty simple question in terms of this bill: “What is cost recovery and why is Police considering it?”. The first two bullet points that it lists in terms of its four key objectives are: “To reduce demandfor ‘over and above’ Police services …” and: “To self-fund any increase in demand for any ‘over and above’ Police services;”.I would like to concentrate on that phrase “over and above”. The question that we on this side of the House have been consistently asking is: when has it become “over and above” police services to check the backgrounds of people whom we are going to put in positions of trust in our communities? Many instances have been raised around teachers and also people who are working in our early childhood centres. Mr McKelvie just mentioned an organisation the Special Olympics which police-vets its volunteers the people who help it with its activities. I think he mentioned drivers. There was an organisation that I met with locally this morning a women’s refuge which I also understand would police-vet its volunteers and its staff. To think that the police vetting and the checking of the background of the people who work in these high-trust situations in our communities is “over and above” what the police are expected to do is a bit of a concern in this House. This is why we do support this bill going to the select committee to get some more scrutiny as to what it considers the police consider “over and above” and reasonable to charge for.I think Kelvin Davis and Chris Hipkins have made a good point about the Teachers Council which is concerned about not just the number of people who will now face increased costs in order to get their police vet checks but also the fact that this may have a negative effect on checking out the backgrounds of people who work in our communities. We are concerned about that.We are also concerned at what might really be the motivation behind this introduction of cost recovery. Helpfully the third bullet point in this “Frequently asked questions” document supplied by the police is: “To offset increasing financial pressures on Vote Police;”. We know that over the last 4 years the Government has talked tough in terms of what it will do on law and order but it has not necessarily backed that up with the resourcing that it has given the police. We are concerned that this may be a move that may creep out further than just simple police vetting to try to take more pressure off what the Government has done in taking money and resources away from our police force.We do realise that it is probably fair enough to debate whether we have some events or some functions of the police charged for because some companies and some individuals are making a lot of money out of some of the activities where our police are keeping the peace or where we know there are potentially going to be big problems—whether they be things like music concerts or the Sevens here in Wellington—and where we know there is going to be a big police presence. Someone is making a hell of a lot of money out of it. There may be an argument in those terms that getting some cost recovery could be something that we could look into.But as I look into one of the documents on the table here the departmental disclosure statement I see that on page 6 or 7 there are a couple of Government departments that have been consulted which gives me concern around the likes of some cultural events and which I think we need to think about in terms of what added costs it may bring on to the organisers of such events. In box 3.2 it says that Te Puni Kōkiri was consulted on the draft Cabinet paper and policy approvals for the bill and the draft bill was sought from it. Then if we flick over the page to page 8 of the departmental disclosure in box 3.6 it also says that the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs was also consulted.We will support this bill at the first reading. I think that the select committee will be a really good opportunity to have people from the community from different ethnic communities who may face increased charges when they are looking at holding major cultural events. I am thinking in my own patch maybe something like Creekfest but also in Auckland where the bulk of the Pacific community is something like the Pasifika Festival would be something where there would be quite a large police presence. It is a community event but would that event fall into the category where in the future it may get asked for a charge to have a police presence? It is a great opportunity to showcase some of our Pasifika police officers. I know that they have used it as an opportunity to do that—to put a positive message with policing. But I think that if the organisers of that event were looking at facing increased charges for having that police presence then that would be of concern to them because it would be a sizable increased cost.The other thing that I think has been raised in this House is that we do not want to get to the stage where we are opening up charging or cost recovery by the police to have them chasing events. The nightmare scenario I could think of is where we have authorised police officers doing the event control and maybe having a sprinkling of sworn officers there to supervise it and therefore the police would see that as an opportunity to go out and cost recover and charge the organisers of events a fee to make sure that there is a police presence there. That would be a step too far and I think the select committee will be the opportunity for us to ask those kinds of questions and hopefully get some assurances from the Government that that is not—we hope—the road that it is intending to go down.I must say—and it is a serious point I am trying to make—when I am hearing that the likes of Te Puni Kōkiri and also the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs have been consulted on that I think that is a concern that I certainly do have in terms of those cultural events getting charged a fee for having a police presence.Again a major concern on this side of the House does come back to what is driving this. Is this another cost-cutting measure or “pushing of costs to others” measure by the Government that is happening? We have seen I think around about $40 million taken out of the police budget at the last Budget—Hon Ruth Dyson: How much?KRIS FAAFOI: $40 million. That is having obviously serious front-line effects at a time when although I praise the job that the police are doing—they are doing a very good job under very difficult circumstances—over time over the last 5 5½ 6 years since this Government took over they have been asked to do much more with much much less. We have seen the strain that that is putting on front-line officers. I believe that resignations from the police in terms of sworn officers have gone from an average of about 14 per month to somewhere close to 50 per month in recent times.I think we have to start asking some serious questions about what is going on with the police and the budgets as we are at the point now where we are getting quite a lot of resignations. There may be something else behind that and not just simply budgetary pressures. Maybe it is that some officers who have served for a long time have been asked to move on but I would hate that it would just be cost-cutting measures right across the board that are putting a huge strain on police resources.As we have said many times this bill does have Labour’s support to the select committee. We will be asking some serious questions around the kinds of functions that the police think are over and above. We have some concerns obviously around some of these sensitive positions in our community where there will be increased costs. We do think there is an argument for events where there could be some charging but again that does come with some caveats. So we will support this and look forward to seeing more out of the submissions from the select committee.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany):I commend the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill to the House.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.Ayes105New Zealand National 60; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 11; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes16Green Party 14; Māori Party 2.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Law and Order Committee.Trade (Safeguard Measures) BillThird ReadingDebate resumed from 15 April.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First):I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to support this bill this evening. This bill gives a certain level of protection to our industries to our manufacturers and to our local producers. This bill seeks to stop dumping from international competitors and as New Zealand First is a party that proudly stands in support of local business and our local business people we will stand in support of this bill. However it is very disappointing to note the length of time this bill has taken to get to this stage in the House.This bill was originally introduced to the House in 2008 by the Hon Lianne Dalziel. It is I hope not a reflection of the value the Government currently places on our local businessmen and women. It was pleasing to note last week that the Government has finally levelled the playing field for our New Zealand businesses with regard to their ability to bid on international Government contracts. But this would appear to have been more about the process of the World Trade Organization rather than any proactive action on our Government’s part. It would appear to be more about an international compliance rather than any true concern for the close to 440000 small businesses in New Zealand employing well over half a million New Zealanders.Here is a bill and a piece of news that is great for our local businesses but where is the urgency? Where is this Government’s commitment to our local businesses? It would seem that it is OK to prioritise the selling-off of key assets to international interests but ask this Government to be efficient or effective in providing a level playing field for our small businesses and this seems to be too much of an ask.New Zealand First has always been vocally adamant that the Government should do all that it can to protect our locally owned organisations. Our businesses owned and operated by hard-working New Zealanders are only now being afforded some level of protection with this bill and have only recently been afforded a level playing field when competing for Government contracts around the world. This has taken many many years to achieve.New Zealand First and the public of New Zealand have seen year after year locally owned businesses losing out to international firms while at the same time this Government prioritises free-trade agreements that mean that New Zealand businesses have to fight off overseas firms for business in their own country. New Zealand has always had a wide open-door policy for international firms and now hopefully some of our own businesses can leverage on this new-found international Government market and take on some of the large players from around the world in providing to that Government sector because you can be sure that they are given no quarter by their own Government when it comes to contracts—Novopay being a perfect example of that.But we are concerned about the current standing of the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. We give the Minister his dues. He has taken the bill a relatively good bill introduced by a member of the then Labour Government—another good idea gained from an Opposition party that this Government will seek to claim as its own but at least the Minister has been able to recognise its merits. However it does seem that New Zealand First will have to continue to struggle to advocate to push this Government to truly take small business seriously.Specifically to the bill New Zealand First is pleased to note the inclusion of the following major points. The bill itself sets out four legislative changes to the Temporary Safeguard Authorities Act 1987 which are changes relating to the body responsible for undertaking safeguard investigations the time frame for completing investigations the imposition of provisional and final safeguard duty and the introduction of guidelines to establish whether safeguard action is in the public interest.As intimated earlier this work is in accordance with the World Trade Organization rules and meets World Trade Organization recommendations and standards. It is still commonplace around the world for large internationals in particular to dump goods on foreign markets. It would be interesting—and I am sure the results would be disappointing—to investigate the actual and real costs to local manufacturers and other small to medium sized enterprises of the sense of apathy of the lax timetable around the implementation of this the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill. This Government has had 6 years in which to bring this issue to the fore; 6 years and this bill now finally makes it to its third reading.As I was saying it is still commonplace for large internationals to dump goods on to foreign markets. Dumping is the practice of firms selling products abroad at below cost or significantly below prices as compared with their home market. The former implies predatory pricing or pricing that by its nature is seeking to undermine the foreign markets into which it is entering. The latter implies that the procedure has disadvantaged the firm’s home market and that they perhaps overpriced their goods for their own home consumers. Dumping in New Zealand is certainly a practice that is invasive and compromises the fair and reasonable operation of our own industries whatever they may be. But I suggest that this affects our manufacturing industry in the main.This has been true with regard to many pieces of legislation. The New Zealand economy is one of the most open markets in the world. As an economist I commend the theory behind this open market practice. However it is very harsh and a severe way of creating efficiencies especially when many of our industries look to their foreign counterparts that are still being afforded some measure of protection by even our biggest competitors’ Governments—those that are or would be our trading partners and convincingly argue the need for open market regulation but fail to come through themselves.I suggest that the role of Government is to flatten out the peaks and troughs of this country’s economic cycle. Backing our manufacturers and saving tens of thousands of jobs is not a nasty or inefficient Government intervention. It is good practice which is evidenced I am sure by the upturn in manufacturing in response to the decline in the New Zealand dollar recently. We would have been in a much better position as a country as employers and as employees if the Government had done more to protect our manufacturing industries over the recent economic downturn.As I stated earlier New Zealand First will always stand in support of legislation that supports the businesses of New Zealand. This bill goes a small way towards doing this. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei):Tenā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. I am standing in support of the Trade (Safeguards Measures) Bill the purpose of which is twofold: to protect New Zealand businesses and to ensure our compliance with the World Trade Organization (WTO). I would like to acknowledge the many Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee members who have got the bill to this stage. I do accept that there has been some time frame. We are a look-forward Government but I take your point. There are several trade remedies that we can bring to foreign imports that may cause harm to New Zealand businesses. We have legislation already for countervailing measures and we have legislation for anti-dumping. This is another tool in the tool kit. This is a tool that talks about safeguard measures. The bill quite clearly talks about how a safeguard measure comes to be. There is a safeguard application. There is a safeguard investigation. During that investigation in fact you may have a provisional safeguard duty apply while it is being investigated. Then a determination is made.I think there are many things to like in this bill and I want to talk about four of them. The first is that I think this bill is business supportive. I say so for several reasons. First of all anyone can make an application. Secondly the criterion for determination is well spelt out. It is very clear. And thirdly if an eventual determination a safeguard duty is made and that determination is higher than the provisional duty that was allocated during the investigation then the applicant gets a refund. If it is lower then there is nothing more to pay and I think that is a good indication of business support. The second point is that it is administratively real. What I mean by that is this legislation pushes out the investigation period to 75 days; it was 30 days. The purpose for that is you get a more diligent and a more thorough investigation when you give it more time. This is likely to decrease the risk that we have of facing disputes resolution at the World Trade Organization which would likely be expensive and time-consuming. So it is administratively real.I think the third thing that it does is it capacity builds the Public Service. By that I mean the safeguard investigations will now be undertaken by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment where previously they were undertaken by the temporary safeguard authorities. While we are talking of the temporary safeguard authorities I would like to acknowledge the two people who have worked with that Messrs Plimmer and Gilbert. They have been the temporary safeguard authorities and they have done good work. This bill brings that capacity building that investigation inside the ministry which is efficient as well and that is what we want to do with public services. The fourth and last point I want to make is that it makes us World Trade Organization - compliant. As already mentioned by my colleague over here it is no coincidence that last week Minister Groser progressed the accession to the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement which gives us access to $1.7 trillion of Government contracts around the world. It is no small feat at all. I think really that this bill further supports New Zealand’s compliance with World Trade Organization regulations which in turn supports the Government’s Business Growth Agenda so I stand to support this bill. Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):As mentioned we support this bill. It is interesting when we talk about this bill being introduced in 2008. It was an interrupted reading and the last two National MPs to speak on this were actually Tau Henare and—who was that other bloke who was in trade? I cannot even remember his name. It is shocking is it not? It was a National MP who is not here anymore. It has taken a long time for this bill to get here but not only that this bill actually ratifies a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement that was established in 1994. It has taken a long time for New Zealand to recognise its WTO obligations and I actually think that both parties are probably to blame for not getting it to the third reading a lot earlier. In fact there have been three Governments. There has been a National Government there has been a Labour Government and there has been another National Government since the time that this was actually ratified in Marrakesh by the WTO in 1994.As has been mentioned this bill is about anti-dumping. It is a temporary protection that talks about temporary protection from serious injury. “Serious injury” is not particularly well defined but it basically says in the bill that “serious injury” is an injury that is imminent. As mentioned by the last speaker there are 75 days for an investigation period. This may be drawn out if the chief executive or the applicant provides further information but I would hope from a business perspective and a trade perspective that it would all be done and dusted within 75 days.Some things that the chief executive must investigate when a safeguard application has been brought forward are things about whether the increased imports—this is about increased imports—have actually caused serious injury or a threat of serious injury. So there must be a very real threat of injury. So for example we cannot have just a dumping of material that does not cause serious injury even if it is dumped but there is no injury that has been caused. It is also about whether the increased imports were due to unforeseen developments and whether the safeguard measures were necessary to prevent or remedy serious injury and to facilitate adjustment by the domestic injury of the increased imports.We are a very open economy and that has served us well over the last 20 years but because of that it has brought risks. We have seen our local manufacturing industry become decimated over the last 6 to 9 years and in fact the number of excuses that have been used are things like the high exchange rate. But every now and then we do get a dumping issue here and I think I remember one—Fisher and Paykel Appliances actually. I think there was Haier a Chinese company that dumped washing machines or whiteware into the country and so an anti-dumping action was brought against us. But you know when we talk about this Labour has always been the party that has supported free trade. We signed the free-trade agreement with China. One of our own Prime Ministers Mike Moore was Director-General of the WTO. He is now our Ambassador to the United States working very hard on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So Labour has had a very very active role.We had Phil Goff who I think ended up signing more free-trade agreements than any previous trade Minister for and against. But the thing about free trade—you know I am not skiting or anything like that—is that we have basically taken a bipartisan approach. In fact I think if I am right the only party in this Parliament that really has not supported free-trade agreements certainly in my time has been the Greens. They may have their reasons but I think that in the 21st century free trade is just an economic necessity. In this day and age as countries become more and more specialised it is not just companies but countries that are seeking global competitive advantages. But also with an opening economy what we are finding is that we do need to ensure that the industries we do have in this country are protected because they are open to abuse. You know around the world there are instances where either feast or famine in one area—and I am not talking just about foodstuffs—creates an opportunity for dumping. We were one of the most liberalised economies very early on and we have seen this so we do need to protect these.The existing Act which is the Temporary Safeguard Authorities Act 1987 was subject to review under the Labour-led Government and that did include wide public consultation because it has pretty serious consequences. The last thing we wanted to see and the last thing we need to see in this country are companies and industries closing down simply because of dumped goods by a large major global competitor from another country.So we do support this bill. We think it adds just further strength to our already enviable reputation but as mentioned it brings us into line with WTO regulations which in the end is most important. Thank you.JAMES SHAW (Green):I rise in support of this bill. It is a trade bill that the Greens can vote for. I thought that I would just start by referencing some of the comments from Mr Stuart Nash about the Greens’ position on trade. We are not opposed to all trade. Our emphasis has always been on fair trade over free trade and a lot of people of course would say that free trade is fair trade. But we have to recognise that there are huge power imbalances between nations both politically and economically and so the idea that two parties can be in a free-trade agreement it will be mutually beneficial and one of those will not be harmed by that is a fallacy. We are still learning about what it takes to survive and to thrive in an increasingly globally connected and interdependent world economy. Globalisation obviously is not a static state either. It is a moving feast. It is an ongoing process. As we respond to one set of developments another set of developments is already on the horizon. Moving closer together to our trading partners has brought great benefits to New Zealand and it has also come at some cost. New Zealand is not the egalitarian nation that it once was. Our environment is no longer in the near-pristine condition that it once was in. Our economy has undergone enormous and in some sectors catastrophic adjustments over the last three decades.The Greens are in favour of the kinds of safeguard measures that are laid out in this bill—and we would suggest that these kinds of measures are late—to soften the blows and to defend against dumping practices or unfair subsidies by our trading partners. It does start to even the playing field. We support the objective of ensuring that New Zealand is consistent with the World Trade Organization’s rules and the objective of reducing the risk of a successful World Trade Organization dispute settlement or a judicial review should such a safeguard measure be applied and we support the overall aim of ensuring that New Zealand is able to use measures consistent with the World Trade Organization framework of being able to defend against the unfair practices of other nations. But for the record we would like to note once more that the Green Party would like to see more of an emphasis on fair trade and on green trade as opposed to the single-minded drive for free trade and on the inclusion of measures to safeguard the environment alongside our domestic industry. We will be voting for this bill.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East):Well it is good to hear from that new member that the Greens are voting for this bill. I guess that when you hear the Greens talking of fair trade and free trade really what that member was saying is that they would prefer equal trade—that is there is no inequality in trade imbalance between countries. Well that is just not realistic in a modern world that is based on trading. Is it OK for us to trade with countries like China where we trade more or is it better that we trade with countries that we trade less with? That is something that the Greens will have to come and search their consciences about.Chris Hipkins: How does this guy get elected?DAVID BENNETT: Very easily mate; a lot more easily than you will ever get elected by. So that is the first thing. The Labour Party talked about Labour always having supported free trade and that is just simply not the case. Mr Nash over there said that. I would like to see the Labour Party support the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement if that is the true intent of the Labour Party but it simply is not.Today is a day when the horse that won the Melbourne Cup was named after the New Zealand First Party. Protectionist was the name of the horse that won and we are debating a trade bill. It is important to note that this is a country that is built on trade and—Sue Moroney: It won the race David. What do you take from that?DAVID BENNETT: Oh not much—not much at all Sue. We are a country that is based on trade and we are a trading people. We live in the Pacific the greatest trading region in the world and the people who have lived in this part of the world for many many years throughout our history have always been traders. So bills like this are important for our country going forward—important so that we have the base to enable us to be that strong trading country that we need to be.The bill makes five main changes which some of our previous speakers have gone through and dictated to the House so I will not repeat them. But I just wanted to thank those parties that are supporting it and I wish this bill all the best through the House. Thank you.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):That member David Bennett was obviously a little bit nervous because when you look back at the people who helped shepherd this bill through the House it started with Lianne Dalziel back in 2008. It has taken 6 long years—Hon Todd McClay: Who?DAVID SHEARER: Exactly—exactly. Lianne Dalziel is now the Mayor of Christchurch. She has gone on to bigger and better things. Then there was Tau Henare. I do not know what happened to him.Hon Todd McClay: Who?DAVID SHEARER: Exactly—who? I do not know what he is doing either. John Banks—remember him? He was here as well. He was involved with this bill. And then there was John Hayes also an extinct MP as well. So when David Bennett talks about the time it has taken to get this bill through the House he must be sitting there kind of worried that he is going to be the next on the list of the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill speakers to hit the dust down there in the Waikato.We have waited 6 long years for this bill to come through. This bill was put forward by the Labour Government back in 2008 and it has taken this long to be pushed through by this Government even though it is a pretty simple piece of legislation and it is agreed upon by just about everybody in this House. It promotes fairness and we are all into fairness—well this side of the House is into fairness; the other side I certainly cannot speak for—and it does bring us as some speakers have said into line with the World Trade Organization. It means that after nearly 20 years we are fulfilling our obligations there and of course it removes some of the problems with the temporary safeguard authority that has been set up—a big piece of bureaucracy within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which has had to deal with that.Really what this bill deals with is the possibility that there could be serious injury caused to some of our businesses by unscrupulous countries dumping their produce in New Zealand and obviously we do not want to see that. We have entered into a number of free-trade agreements with a number of countries and although we put down as part of those agreements that we should not have dumping unfortunately that is a risk. This bill will protect our companies that might be vulnerable to that dumping.We are as many speakers have pointed out this evening a free-trade country. If we do not trade we will certainly die as a country. We have done very well in terms of the free-trade agreements we have been able to sign. The unfortunate way that the World Trade Organization and the free-trade agreements have gone on a global basis has not transpired here and what we have instead is a number of regional and bilateral free-trade agreements.For New Zealand the most important of those to date is the one with China—China’s only free-trade agreement and the first free-trade agreement that was signed with that country. In the time since we signed that in 2008 until today our exports have increased from about $3 billion to nearly $10 billion and $3 billion of that $10 billion is actually not in the agricultural sector; it is actually in many of the higher-value commodities that we have been able to trade with China.It is important to take some lessons from what happened when we went into that China free-trade agreement negotiation. First of all there was not unanimous agreement across Parliament that we should have an agreement with China. Certainly the Green Party and the New Zealand First Party did not agree with that. But what we also did—and I want to raise this point because it is something that this Government has blatantly not been able to do—was engage with many of the stakeholders around the country. We had discussions with Greenpeace with Business New Zealand with the Council of Trade Unions. That was part of what we did in order to give people some comfort that what we were doing was in the best interests of the country.But this Government has blatantly been unable to do that with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So what we have is a level of fear and uncertainty about the unknown around the free-trade agreements that might be signed off. We simply do not know what the Government’s bottom line really is. We have got worries about Pharmac. We have got worries about whether we will sign away our environmental issues our public health issues. All of those questions have not been answered satisfactorily for the public of New Zealand. We understand what the benefits will be and they could be considerable. But we do not know what we are giving up as a result.I just want to make the point that exports are extraordinarily important to us and today in question time it was absolutely and categorically shown that exports as a percentage of GDP have actually gone down under this Government. There is a goal that has been set by this Government—it is laughable when you think about what is actually happening at the moment—of 40 percent; that exports as a percentage of GDP will be 40 percent. In 2009 they were 32 percent. Today they are just a little over 29 percent.There is a little bit of a disagreement here amongst some of the Government Ministers. Steven Joyce came out and said just a couple of weeks ago that that percentage was actually around 30 percent. Well it is a little bit under 30 percent but of course Steven Joyce likes to round it up as he does. But Bill English today was talking about it being 33 percent which is quite blatantly incorrect and clearly out of step with his counterpart Mr Joyce.So what do we see? What we are seeing at the moment is exports as a percentage of GDP going down and Mr English talking not about value which we all want to see—we want to see the value of these exports going up—but quantity. For heaven’s sake! Have we not left this behind? Quantity was what we did in the 1960s.We want to be looking at value added and value when we look at these exports because value is what creates the jobs helps those businesses profit and enriches New Zealand. That is what we want to see not some waffle about quantity and not value or whatever the excuse was that Mr English decided to dream up when he was answering questions today. He probably needs to have a bit of a conversation with Steven Joyce so that they can at least get their numbers correct. It is embarrassing sitting on this side of the House and knowing that they are both talking about completely different things.We are an exporting country. We need to export. We need to make sure that those exports are able to get out there and into those markets but we want to see clarity around what we are getting into in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We want to see a Government that really is committed to exports and not trying to fudge it and talk about the construction industry as Mr English did in question time today which depends so heavily on an earthquake. That is some great planning by the National Government where economic development is based on an earthquake!What we want to see is value-added exports being shipped out of New Zealand which can create jobs profit our businesses give people higher incomes and drive up the value of our education system.So in the spirit of that and giving our businesses and our industries a fair go we support this bill as we supported it in 2008—through every permutation and the comings and goings of party members as they came and went especially in the National Party the ACT Party and wherever as they trundled through as this legislation passed through history. It is great to be sitting here and saying: “Thank God we have actually been able to put a line under this rule it off and put it into law before Christmas 6 years after the date it was first introduced.” Thank you.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany):I commend the bill to the House.Bill read a third time.Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) BillFirst ReadingHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development):I move That the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. This bill seeks to provide greater pension flexibility for people who wish to retire in the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. This Government wants to ensure that New Zealanders have as many options as possible as to where they spend their retirement and we also want to make sure that those countries and territories that have close constitutional ties with New Zealand are recognised and that their ongoing economic and social viability is supported.Current pension portability arrangements allow people to take their New Zealand superannuation to one of 22 Pacific countries and territories including the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. The arrangement also applies to the veterans pension which is an alternative to New Zealand superannuation for eligible veterans. The provision that makes this possible is called the Special Portability Arrangement. Under the arrangement New Zealand superannuation is paid at a minimum of 50 percent after 10 years’ residence in New Zealand rising to 100 percent after 20 years’ residence. There are also general portability provisions that cover all other countries with which New Zealand does not have a social security agreement. The payment formula for the Special Portability Arrangement is more generous than the payment formula for the general portability provisions. This is because the Special Portability Arrangement is designed to recognise the contribution Pacific peoples make to New Zealand and the inability of Pacific countries and territories to fulfil the reciprocal obligations necessary to conclude social security arrangements with New Zealand. There are currently nearly 650 people receiving their New Zealand superannuation in the Pacific and nearly 300 of those people live in the Cook Islands.To be eligible under the Special Portability Arrangement at the present time a person must be resident and present in New Zealand on the date of his or her application. Consequently people who wish to retire and receive New Zealand superannuation in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau are not able to leave New Zealand until they are 65 which is the age of eligibility for New Zealand superannuation. Should they choose to return permanently to the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau prior to age 65 they lose their ability to apply for New Zealand superannuation. This bill will remedy that situation by eliminating the resident and present in New Zealand requirement for the Special Portability Arrangement in respect of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. The bill will allow persons to retire to those islands after reaching the age of 55 and to apply for New Zealand superannuation or the veterans pension from these Pacific islands at age 65.Why are they able to retire to only the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau after reaching the age of 55? This is because there is a residence requirement for New Zealand superannuation and the veterans pension that will still apply to these people. In order to be eligible for New Zealand superannuation or the veterans pension a person must have lived in New Zealand for 10 years since the age of 20 5 of which must be after the age of 50. This provision applies to all applicants for New Zealand superannuation and therefore it would not be right to remove it only for people who wish to move to the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau. The change is restricted to those three countries because this bill is about recognising New Zealand’s close constitutional relationships with these Pacific islands which enjoy shared citizenship with New Zealand and unique legal arrangements. Both the Cook Islands and Niue have adopted constitutions enabling self-government in free association with New Zealand. Free association is a status distinct from that of full independence in that it allows the Cook Islands and Niue to maintain New Zealand citizenship while administering their own affairs. Tokelau is a non-selfgoverning territory of New Zealand.As I said earlier this bill is also about trying to assist the economic and social viability of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. Depopulation and its related social and economic consequences is a longstanding issue for these island countries. The current resident and present requirement has been described as a disincentive for Cook Islanders Niueans and Tokelauans established in New Zealand to return home before retirement age. Removing this disincentive has the potential to boost economic development and human resource capacity in these islands through an increased return of experienced persons able to apply skills effectively in their home communities. People returning at age 55 would have the capacity to contribute to the workforce 10 years in advance of the standard retirement age. As pension payments are paid in gross it is expected that local income tax and value-added tax will be paid by returning migrants to contribute to services received.The idea that otherwise eligible persons should be able to apply for their New Zealand superannuation or the veterans pension from the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau has been around for some time. Pacific Island leaders view greater flexibility around pension portability as a driver for increased economic activity and have sought changes to the New Zealand scheme for many years. The issue continues to be raised in particular by the Cook Islands at senior Government levels.The issue of pension portability was also highlighted in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee inquiry into New Zealand’s relationships with South Pacific countries which was presented to the House in December 2010. The committee noted the potential impact of experienced people with some capital on consumption business development and job creation in an island economy. The committee suggested that citizens of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau as New Zealand citizens should be eligible for a New Zealand pension in the same way as New Zealanders living in the Chatham Islands.Niue and Tokelau are facing particular depopulation problems and very limited options for development of a private sector economy. The committee favoured options involving the promotion of Niue as an attractive location for retirees noting that they would bring steady cash flow and contribute to stable employment options. Most important they could contribute to the viability of businesses providing goods and services to residents and visitors. It is important to note that this change will not be restricted just to citizens of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. All New Zealanders who qualify for New Zealand superannuation will be able to make use of the provision should they choose to live in those islands.The economic implications of the bill for New Zealand are mixed. On the one hand there are fiscal costs to the Crown associated with payments to newly eligible superannuitants who have moved permanently from New Zealand before turning 65. In addition in the future those people who choose to leave New Zealand at age 55 will create a likely loss of economic input to New Zealand due to that earlier emigration. There will also be ongoing administration costs. On the other hand a range of indirect economic benefits and savings may be derived by New Zealand from the proposal. The potential benefits include increased economic activity in the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau leading to a reduction in remittance payments and private transfers from New Zealand. Savings could also be accrued as a result of a lower burden on some New Zealand Government - funded services including reduced expenditure on health care. These benefits are difficult to quantify however and would depend on the response to the new arrangements.Officials have tried to estimate how many people might benefit from the new arrangements. Immigration data suggests that 245 people who emigrated from New Zealand to the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau after the age of 55 would become newly eligible for New Zealand superannuation when the legislation is passed. The estimates also show that this is likely to increase by an additional 16 people in each subsequent year. This sounds like a relatively small number but taken in the context of small populations the implications of this are quite significant. I commend this bill to the House.SUE MORONEY (Labour):It is my pleasure to rise to speak on behalf of the Labour Party on the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill which we will be supporting at first reading and to the select committee. Before I address the content of this bill I would like to take the opportunity to dedicate my first reading speech to some recently departed leaders of high standing from the Hamilton community in both the Cook Islands and the Niuean communities. George Ford and Terry Chapman—both taonga and leaders in the Hamilton community for their respective Cook Islands and Niuean communities—actually interestingly died within a few days of each other about a year ago. It was a time of great loss and great grief for not only their communities in Hamilton but for the broader community in Hamilton because of the leadership roles that those two men had displayed in terms of the integration of their communities with the broader Hamilton community and in ensuring that people who were coming to Hamilton from the Cook Islands and Niue had a community to settle into and were well looked after. That benefited the rest of the community.I raise this because it is interesting that when you know people in your community sometimes you do not always know what a contribution they have made. It was not until I attended Terry Chapman’s funeral that I learnt and understood the amazing contribution he had made to Niue. He had been the primary public servant involved in drafting the Niuean constitution. He had come to live and work in New Zealand after making that incredible commitment to and having that impact on his own country. It was not until I was at his funeral and saw that the Premier of Niue had travelled to Hamilton to farewell Terry Chapman that I truly understood what this man’s contribution had been. Of course that contribution because of the connection between Niue and New Zealand as the Minister has just said is considerable for our own community because of the way in which that constitution was brought about. I do want to dedicate my first reading speech to those two very fine gentlemen who have made such a contribution to their own nations but also to the nation-building in New Zealand and to our Hamilton community in particular.This bill is supported by the Labour Party because it actually helps people. As people know about the Labour Party our view is that people matter most. This bill gives effect to the portability of the New Zealand superannuation and the veterans pension to people who may wish to retire in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau and it seems like a very correct and fitting thing to do. What a nice place to retire in—any of those places. Would that not be fabulous? If in our older age we were perhaps fit enough and we did not feel that we needed to be near a tertiary hospital or major health care services any of those places would be a fabulous place to retire in and this bill allows people to have that option. So it allows that portability. The aim of it is to allow eligible people who live in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau to be able to apply from any of those countries for New Zealand superannuation or a veterans pension and to be paid those benefits in any of those countries or in other specified Pacific countries.This policy from the Government was announced on 9 August 2013 by the Hon Murray McCully and it has taken some time to get to a first reading but I am pleased that it has made it on to the Order Paper at this point in time. So under the current rules I think as the Minister outlined people wishing to retire to the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau have to be resident and president—that is present in New Zealand at age 65.Poto Williams: President would be fine.SUE MORONEY: Well they could be the president as well. But no they are not required to be the president; they are only required to be present so it is not so cumbersome. As we know these are our Pacific neighbours. The people who are most likely to be using this probably are not people like me who think it would be a wonderful dream to retire in such a location. It is very likely to be people who are returning home—people who have come to our country come to New Zealand to contribute to our society to further their own education perhaps or to further the opportunities afforded to their own families. They have worked. They have made a huge commitment like the sort of contribution I outlined just before from the two gentlemen I spoke of Terry Chapman and George Ford. They brought a huge commitment and skills to our country. Then after having earned money here and earned the right to be paid New Zealand superannuation they have earned the right to be able to retire in their homeland. I think that it is right and proper that we afford them the ability to do so.Residents of those countries or that territory—as the Minister outlined before Tokelau is regarded as a territory—would still need to qualify for New Zealand superannuation in the first instance. So they must have been resident and present in New Zealand for more than 10 years since the age of 20 including 5 years since the age of 50 for this new provision to apply to them. This means that people who are entitled to New Zealand superannuation regardless of whether they are of Cook Islands Niuean or Tokelauan ethnicity will be able to depart New Zealand to live in one of these three countries after the age of 55 and apply without returning to New Zealand for their superannuation once they turn 65.One thing that I do notice—and I suppose it is more noticeable now because we have this tool that we use called Facebook where we can see what people are up to—is that people from the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau in the Hamilton area are actually going back and rediscovering their roots. Some of these families—I guess it is the children of the people who first travelled here—are going back and reconnecting with their parents’ and sometimes their grandparents’ villages and discovering those roots for the first time. I guess I have had a little bit of experience in this myself but what I notice when people go back and discover their roots is how much confidence it gives them in who they are and where they have come from. You absolutely notice that when people return they have got that new-found sense of confidence.I had a little bit of an experience like that myself. When I did my overseas experience—I think I was at the tender age of 18 or 19 at the time—I went to this foreign land called Ireland. It was a place I had never been to before and a place I did not know a lot about but I have Irish ancestry on both sides of my family. That probably explains a little bit to my colleagues about me. I have Irish ancestry on both sides so there is no escaping it. What I really was not prepared for was landing in this foreign land I had never been to before and feeling completely and utterly at home from day one. I imagine that that is something of the experience that people who are going back and discovering their roots in these three localities have as well—that somehow through DNA I think it actually is transmitted that this is home; this is where you belong. So the calling will be strong for people from those three locations to retire there. This bill allows them to do that without losing the financial support that they have earned and gained from their time in New Zealand. It is a bill that is worthy of our support. I am very proud to have stood and supported this bill on behalf of the Labour Party and particularly in memory of those two fine men—George Ford and Terry Chapman. Thank you.ALFRED NGARO (National):Back in the year of 1952 my father came over here from the beautiful Cook Islands. He came from Aitutaki. His older brothers were already residing here; they were down in Tokoroa in the Waikato. He went down to places such as Mangakino and worked in the forestry industry down there. He stayed there for about 3 years and then made his way back up to Auckland where he resided in Ponsonby.My mother came to New Zealand in the year of 1953. She began to work as a cleaner. My parents met at the Orange Hall which was one of the dancehalls that was open back in those days—and there were other places such as the Rising Sun and the Reefcomber which they used to visit. They then fell in love and I was the result—the second of their five children who were born here. I remember growing up in Ponsonby initially and then heading out to west Auckland. The aspirations and dreams behind their emigrating from the Cook Islands to New Zealand were for the hope of a better future and a better life and more particularly for their children—so that they would do well both in education and employment opportunities and also that they would be the beginning of another generation.I am proud to be able to speak on the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. It is an important bill that acknowledges the journey and the stories of people such as my parents and other parents from the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau who came here for a better life but who at the same time wish to return in their older age—as Sue Moroney said to go back not only to rediscover but to spend their final years resting back in their homeland. I must say Sue Moroney that the best place you could reside is probably the Cook Islands. I am not being biased here. I know there is a representative here from Samoa and one from Tonga. My wife is Samoan and Niuean as well. But the Cook Islands were voted the eighth best place in the world to have a holiday. It is a beautiful place. Besides being a beautiful place it is a place that has history and heritage. That absolutely is important and we see that as being important for people such as my parents when it is time to return.This bill has come out of a long period of inquiry into the importance of New Zealand’s relationship with these protectorate nations and into how we can give something back to them. I think it is also important to acknowledge the fact that there has been a huge contribution by these communities to both the citizenship and the establishment of nationhood in New Zealand. Poto Williams and I have been working with the Cook Islands community as we enter the centenary commemorations for World War I. We know that during World War I Sir Māui Pōmare went out into the Pacific and because of the protectorate relationship with New Zealand conscripted 500 soldiers into the Rarotongan battalion—which came across in three contingents—as well as 147 from Niue. They fought in World War I. Their contribution is significant and as important. So the payment formula for the Special Portability Arrangement is more generous than the general portability provisions recognising the contribution our Pacific people have made to New Zealand and the inability of Pacific countries and territories to fulfil the reciprocal obligations necessary for social security agreements.I think it is important too to acknowledge the fact that in the regulatory impact report it talks about the aspect of depopulation. As a result of depopulation we see youth we see skill and we see experience moving out of the islands. This legislation provides a great opportunity because at the age of 55 you are still able to make a contribution to the Pacific Islands and these islands need this. We know there are only an estimated 245 people—increasing by 16 per year—who will be impacted by this so it is not a lot but for those small Pacific nations it is quite significant as is their contribution.I think this bill will be important to those island nations. I was over at the South Pacific leaders forum where this conversation was had with the Premier of Niue Mr Toke Talagi. He talked about the importance of this reciprocal arrangement with the portability of the pension. The Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna also acknowledged this as well. So I think this is good for our relationships with the Pacific. I think it acknowledges their contribution as well. I think these things are important. I also just want to acknowledge my colleague in the House the Hon Todd McClay who was the ambassador for the Cook Islands and Niue from 2000 to 2007 and served them in a way that really made a difference. So I think that is absolutely important. We have a strong relationship a long-lasting relationship.I think this bill will be a good bill. I look forward to chairing this in the Social Services Committee. It could be the beginning. I know there will be some conversations in terms of how we broaden that aspect of the relationship. There are other Pacific nations that made a contribution. I think this is a start. We need to start here. We need to acknowledge that contribution. In the future there could be the possibility that it could be extended. We look forward to that ongoing conversation. I look forward to seeing this bill in the select committee to hearing submissions and to returning it back to the House. I commend this bill to the House.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere):I rise to support the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill and to congratulate the Government on this particular bill. I recognise that this is something that the Pacific communities have asked for.I recall that in the 1970s Albert Wendt wrote a book called Sons for the Return Home. That book captures the essence of the dreams and aspirations of our Pacific communities in that day and age. When the wave of Pacific people first landed on the shores of Aotearoa there were jobs. In fact my uncles used to joke about how they could quit one job in the morning and find another job in the afternoon. Unions were strong. They were well paid. They had State housing and after a year or so in State housing they were able to save some money of their own to buy their own house. At the time there was a child benefit on which you could capitalise and which you could use as a deposit. In fact the loan was guaranteed by the State at that time—a 3 percent loan for 30 years. That was how my parents got to own their own house. With dad working mum stayed at home and looked after the kids. When we came home there was a cooked meal prepared. Those were the days when that was available. There was full employment even—I think one Prime Minister said during that period that he could count the number of people who were without jobs. How times have changed—how times have changed.Although I welcome the Government’s move in terms of this bill I think our communities are not going to easily forget the things that have happened in the last 6 years. I will say a little bit more about that later on. But this bill is welcome. It is something the communities of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau have asked for. It is also something that other Pacific peoples are agitating for and more recently so. There is a phrase in Samoan that I would use: O Tangata ua galo. It means: “These are the people who have been forgotten.” The reason for this is that we call the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau realm countries. They are New Zealand citizens. For some reason or other we tend to forget that quite easily. So I welcome this move.I often ask myself why it is that a person living in the Cook Islands Tokelau or Niue has to come here to New Zealand to apply for the pension. When you think that the people of these countries in addition to the many other Pacific people who came to this country and worked during the manufacturing boom are also those who came and served in the initial New Zealand Expeditionary Force that went to Europe and fought in the wars on behalf of this country and on behalf of England. In fact it was Māui Pōmare who travelled to Niue and the Cook Islands explicitly to try to recruit people to fill the Māori Battalion numbers that were asked of Māori at that particular time. Since Māori themselves were still up against the wall in terms of how the Government of the day was treating them at that time Māui Pōmare decided to travel directly to the Cook Islands and Niue.Many of these people who fought on behalf of New Zealand died and are still buried overseas. There are other markers here in Aotearoa New Zealand of where some of these people are buried. The point I am making is that this move towards allowing people to leave New Zealand at the age of 55 to go back and reside in the islands and to then be eligible for the pension at 65 is a good move. It will be widely received by the Pasifika communities. But I think that as part of the work that the Social Services Committee needs to do it needs to be asking whether these are still the forgotten people. Are there other things that Aotearoa New Zealand needs to do in terms of ensuring there is consistency? After all these are people of the Realm of New Zealand. They are New Zealand citizens. They are not foreigners. Why do we then continue to treat them as if they are on foreign soil when they are indeed part of the Realm of New Zealand?In fact Sir Anand Satyanand made a point at every speech he made of always greeting and acknowledging the languages of the Realm of New Zealand which are Māori English Cook Island Niuean Tokelauan—and I might add that because Samoan is the second-most spoken language it could also be argued that Samoan and Tongan are languages of the Realm of New Zealand.Carmel Sepuloni: And sign language.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: And sign language—that is right. Sir Anand never failed to use his sign language.The select committee will probably need to ask about these issues and make sure that there is wide publication of the opportunity to make submissions on this. I suspect that when the public makes submissions they will go beyond what this bill may entail. I would hope that the select committee does not just throw away the input from the wider community but that it puts it aside and perhaps makes further inquiries as to the further work this Parliament must do in order to address those issues I would regard as O Tangata ua galo—the people whom New Zealand has forgotten. These are the people of the Realm of Aotearoa New Zealand.It says in the papers that are available that they are still required to meet the criterion that is currently in place—the criterion being that they must be resident in New Zealand for 10 years after the age of 20 and 5 of those years must be after the age of 50. Yet the point I was making earlier is that if they are resident in the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau is that not still part of the Realm of New Zealand? Are they still required to be resident here for the sake of meeting the old criterion which does not change at all? What about those who are serving in the public sector in these realm countries? Are they not also entitled to the same treatment that public servants receive here in Aotearoa New Zealand given that they are part of the realm? I would hope that the select committee continues to look at those particular areas.I note that it is not the first time that this has been asked. In a recent meeting during the campaign both the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands and the Premier of Niue made the point—and I think they were feeling a little bit frustrated because I suspect there may have been promises made but I am glad that if this is what they were looking for then certainly they should be proud of the way that this Government is moving. But as I said earlier in my opening statements the fact that this is being done the fact that I suspect the Pacific community would welcome this does not release this Government from the poor standard of response that it has given the Pacific community of late because in the last 6 years unemployment has continued to rise and unemployment is at 11.4 percent.In the last 6 years the income for Pacific people has been declining. The median income for Pacific people has been declining and for Auckland I can say it was $455 per week at the end of 2008; at the beginning of this year it was $379. Child poverty is a significant issue that hovers over our community not just the Pasifika community but communities right throughout Auckland. I would say that currently the single biggest issue that will have a rippling effect on the future of this country is the fact that we have unaffordable housing—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of the bill.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: —with people in situations of homelessness. The point I am making is that times have changed. When I told you about Sons for the Return Home—the book that Albert Wendt wrote—those times have changed. Today it seems as if one cannot help but wonder whether this Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill has been timed strategically to counter some of the negative impact of this Government’s policy on the Pasifika community today not just what I have outlined but also the outsourcing of Pasifika programmes from Television New Zealand. That too is a strong signal that this Government does not care about Pacific people so despite what it does with this bill—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member’s time has expired.JONO NAYLOR (National):I rise to support this bill and want to say a couple of things about it. Firstly can I just address a couple of things that were raised by the previous speaker Su’a William Sio who talked about sort of broadening out the eligibility to all sorts of things for people who are residing in those particular islands that we are talking about tonight. I am just a little concerned that if we look to impose New Zealand laws right across those places that I would actually have to start wearing a helmet or something when I am riding around on the Rarotongan island. I quite like the fact that you do not have to so I would hate to see that we actually imposed all of the New Zealand laws that go along with the rights that go with those sorts of responsibilities as well.I think it is critically important that we do continue to support these particular islands. They have a special constitutional arrangement with New Zealand and I think it is appropriate that we do bring in this regime. I have not been to Tokelau or to Niue but I am aware of the depopulation issues that they are suffering and if there are some things that we can do to help support these nations then we must continue to do this.I think it is great that people who are wanting to go back there to retire if they are wanting to go back home to the islands to be able to participate in society back home they will not have to wait until they are 65 any more. They will be able to go back a little earlier so that they can actually go back and make some useful contribution which I am sure will be gratefully received back in those islands. I think it is a great move that we are moving forward on this. I am glad to see it happening and happy to give it my support.DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to take a call for the Greens on this bill. We will be supporting this bill because we see it as quite a sensible and positive step forward for the people of Niue Tokelau and the Cook Islands. It is really one of those bills where it is all in the title basically. It is about the portability of social assistance for the people of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau.Some people who have contributed to New Zealand’s economy throughout their adult lives are originally from these islands. These islands are nations of the Realm of New Zealand which means that these people who have been working in our country in New Zealand are our citizens—they are New Zealand citizens as well. So what happens now is that they cannot return to their home countries and access a New Zealand superannuation benefit unless they are 65 and are already receiving it. They cannot do that. But the changes in this bill are very positive although it does not go as far as some people would want—in fact there are some problems around that. The changes are that a person who has worked in New Zealand from one of those nations who has worked here after the age of 20 for 10 years—and 5 of those years have been after the age of 5—will be able to access the New Zealand superannuation from their home country if that is what they want to do. It means that they can basically move back to their home country as long as they have been “resident and present” which are the exact words that are in the legislation for the requirements as I have outlined—10 years after the age of 20 and at least 5 of those years after the age of 50.My understanding is that this is not going to impact on a lot of people. In the regulatory impact statement—and the Minister for Social Development in her introduction referred to it as well—it suggests that there are around 245 over-55-year-olds who when this bill is passed would be eligible to access New Zealand superannuation from Niue Tokelau or the Cook Islands and that only a further 16 or so per year subsequently from that would actually be able to do the same. But it does mean that these citizens—citizens of New Zealand citizens of these island nations as well—will be able to go back to their home countries earlier than what they have done previously.It has been suggested that this bill might go some way towards addressing some of the concerns that those small island nations have had around a shrinking population. That is particularly of concern for Niue and the Cook Islands. In the existing situation there has been a disincentive for older citizens from there to go home after they have worked all their lives here for example. It has been difficult for them to return home at a younger age. This bill will actually be more beneficial to them because they will be able to go home earlier. Let us face it: why would you not want to retire to a lovely beautiful Pacific island? It is one of the problems we have on Waiheke actually. It explains why we have a high number of retirees where I live as well.It also makes sense to me that as you get older there is more of a compelling desire to return to your home nations to go and spend that time your last years with the people whom you have grown up with. That was certainly the reasoning that I heard from a man whom I know who lives on Waiheke. He is in his early 60s so he has not been eligible. He is from the Cook Islands originally and he moved to New Zealand as a young man and raised his family here. He has had a hard life of hard physical labour. He described to me his yearning of wanting to go back to his ancestral lands. When this bill comes through he will be able to do that. I can understand that kind of attachment—the call of your whakapapa the call of your whenua to come back home—so it is going to be great that he will be able to do that. It is a shame that he was not able to do it when he was a more active man. However he will get there before 65 if this bill goes through and I am sure it will as it seems to have cross-party support across the House.I guess the point that the Governments of these countries have been very aware of is that bringing those people back to their small island nations will help the economy. There was something that was written in the regulatory impact statement that really resonated with me which was New Zealand’s commitment to those countries to help support them economically. I will quote from the general policy statement and it says: “The changes take into account New Zealand’s close constitutional ties with the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau and are part of New Zealand’s commitment to support their ongoing economic and social viability.” So basically it is hoped that this bill will enable those islands to attract capital and skills from people who are able to contribute to these island nations’ economies and potentially from other New Zealanders who if they fit the citizenship requirements there would be able to retire there too.We will be supporting this bill. It is good to see the Government actually wanting to assist our smaller island nations. We could be doing a lot more of course especially in the area of climate change impact because it is these smaller island nations that are most affected by the impacts of climate change—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!DENISE ROCHE: I am coming back to it Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just giving examples of other things that this Government could be doing to assist island nations that fits with our nation’s requirement to honour our special relationships with these island nations. They are the ones that are most affected by climate change and that have contributed the least emissions to the global carbon emissions so I think maybe we have a duty for that. In the meantime we support this bill. We acknowledge that it is a very tight and finely nuanced amendment to the legislation that is being called for here and we recognise that there may be submissions that are wider than what is in in the bill so that it could apply to a few more people. I hope the Social Services Committee will actually take those submissions on board when they come in and that we may see further amendments to assist more people. Thank you.DARROCH BALL (NZ First):I rise to discuss a bill on behalf of New Zealand First for the first time in this House. I am very happy to do so with this bill the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. New Zealand First will support this bill to go through the first reading but we are not confident that it actually addresses or goes far enough to address all of the real issues that have been raised with us by these communities. New Zealand First already has a strong policy which we have in our manifesto that stems from the same intent that this bill suggests it has. We want to be assured of the promise that is made in the bill: “The amendments in the Bill have been the subject of a long-standing request from the leaders of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau who view greater flexibility around pension portability as a driver for increased economic activity in those countries and that territory.” We are hoping that that promise is actually delivered because that is what New Zealand First policy would do.We also note that the bill’s explanatory note neglects to point out that the residents of those countries and the territory would still need to qualify for New Zealand superannuation and they must have been resident and present in New Zealand for more than 10 years since the age of 20 including 5 years since the age of 50. This information is pivotal to the understanding of the bill. As this bill identifies we have a unique and very special affiliation and relationship with these islands. In fact Tokelau as we have heard is a territory of New Zealand. We have a free association with these island nations where we act on behalf of these nations on defence and foreign affairs issues. It is one of these pillars of this special relationship that we hope this bill goes some way to address. Again I will quote the bill: “The changes take into account New Zealand’s close constitutional ties with the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau and are part of New Zealand’s commitment to support their ongoing economic and social viability. The changes will allow the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau to attract capital and skills from their citizens who have moved to New Zealand as well as other New Zealanders who may choose to spend their retirement years in either of those countries or that territory.”It appears the intent of the bill is to ensure that the people in these islands do not have to relocate when they are 65 and be here in New Zealand living as a resident in order to apply for and claim New Zealand superannuation. However we hope that during the submission period the effect on New Zealand residents and citizens who wish to retire to these islands will become clearer. Do the people of these islands still need to relocate? Will they still need to be resident in New Zealand during that time? And does it solve the real issue at all? When these people need to be in New Zealand or are required to return to New Zealand the islands lose much of the needed skill knowledge and momentum that these people bring to and invest in their nation. These nations can ill afford to lose these skills and ultimately it could still cost them. In our view this bill still hampers the need to have these skills and these professional people cemented and working in their nations. We need the flexibility with policy that will allow the value and history of our responsibility for and relationship with these nations to be rightly acknowledged.Compare this with our current situation where people from other countries that have no affiliation special history or relationship can come into our country not pay any tax for 10 years and still receive the full New Zealand superannuation. We still have current legislation that affects some of the closest Pacific nations and New Zealand territories. We put restrictions on them that do not promote success in their own economies social pathways or foreign affairs. Nor do current policies support positive progressive pathways that the Government could take in relation to the planning and retention of these essential people. In the end we are talking about a very small number of people who reside in these nations and identify these islands as their retirement choice and whom we actually need to do the right thing to look after as part of our nation’s responsibility. In fact we have a situation where 95 percent of Niuean people live in New Zealand. We are talking of a very small number compared with nearly 70000 immigrants from other countries who are in line for our full superannuation scheme.We do agree with the bill’s intent. It details and addresses the issues that mean the people who will be applying for New Zealand superannuation from these Pacific islands will not have to be in New Zealand as a resident in order to be eligible. We also support the fact that the changes go some way to take into account New Zealand’s close constitutional ties with the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau and are part of New Zealand’s commitment to support their ongoing economic and social viability. The bill also mentions the need for the individual who applies—being someone who makes an application to be paid superannuation in a specified Pacific country—to be resident in one of those three islands on the date of the application; to meet the residential qualifications for New Zealand superannuation; and to be resident in one of those countries when each payment of the superannuation is due to be paid.We note that the purpose of this bill is stated as to allow eligible persons who reside in those nations to be able to apply from either of those nations or from a territory for New Zealand superannuation or veterans pension and be paid these benefits in either of those countries or that territory or in other specified Pacific countries. As I have stated New Zealand First supports this. It is the detail and the level to which it goes that New Zealand First hopes to be fleshed out at the select committee stage. New Zealand First will support the bill through its first reading but we will be noting through the select committee process whether it truly meets the needs of those Cooks Islanders Niueans and Tokelauans who have worked hard for New Zealand and deserve their pension.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty):I am delighted to stand here in support of the introduction of the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. It is a great to be talking to a bill that has got such cross-party support and clearly it is going to deliver significant value to the communities of Tokelau Niue the Cook Islands and of course the community of broader Aotearoa.I strongly support the fact that it actually gives portability to New Zealand superannuation and war pensions. I think that has been well covered. It is great to hear that this has been a longstanding debate and discussion which finally this Government is giving effect to. We are obviously very supportive of that. It reflects our longstanding and close constitutional ties with those three countries. It acknowledges their contribution to New Zealand. I think that has already been well canvassed on both sides of the House this evening. But it also reflects this Government’s commitment to ongoing economic and social development.I think this will be a popular bill particularly across those three communities. It is something they have wanted for a while and we are now giving effect to that. I think the opportunity to be able to return home for those communities from the age of 55 and be able to then of course call on superannuation at 65 and in the meantime be able to contribute their skills and expertise is going to be of real benefit to those three countries. Of course it has to be noted that for those communities who currently live in the Bay of Plenty electorate it is highly unlikely they will take up this opportunity because when given the opportunity of Tokelau Niue and Cook Island beaches versus the beaches of Papamoa and Mount Maunganui I do expect that ultimately upon consideration they will stay in the Bay of Plenty.Kris Faafoi: Oh I don’t know about that.TODD MULLER: I am very sure about that. You need to come to Mount Maunganui and see it for yourself.But in all seriousness I do have a good friend of mine who is an educator and teacher from Niue who has been over here for a number of years. He is Niuean born. He tends to go back to his home community every 2 or 3 years. I know specifically in respect of this the opportunity for him when he gets to the age of 55 to be able to go back to his home community and contribute in a more meaningful way with the potential of that portability from the age of 65 onwards I know will be attractive to him. Hopefully many others like him will see the opportunity to potentially move home but do so at a time when they have still got the opportunity to contribute significantly to the economic development and community development of their home countries.It is great to be able to support a bill like this. I look forward to supporting it and to the further discussions that will occur in the Social Services Committee. Thank you.JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise to take a short call in support of the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. I want to frame most of my speech around an example that was reported in the New Zealand Herald in 2012 of a Cook Islands - born man Bill Framhein who is now in his early 70s. He had paid tax for 34 years in New Zealand while never being out of work while he was in this country. He had served in the New Zealand Army in Malaya and Borneo and served four tours of duty in Viet Nam as a scout who is the person who goes up front and finds explosives and mines. This man after all of that commitment to New Zealand is not eligible for a war pension or superannuation because he does not meet the criteria on two bases: firstly that he was not living in New Zealand—that he has already returned to the Cook Islands; and secondly that he has not lived in New Zealand for 5 full years since the age of 50. Even with the passing of this bill Bill who had served four tours of duty in Viet Nam served in Malay and Borneo and paid tax for 34 years still will not be eligible for New Zealand superannuation.Alfred Ngaro: He’s already got it. He actually got it in 2013.JAN LOGIE: He got it in 2013 I hear. So how was that despite not meeting the criteria? [Interruption] I welcome hearing about that. I look forward to that discussion in the select committee. I found his example really moving—the media reporting of it around how it was not possible to break the rules for one person and how he had been coming back to New Zealand for 6 months in every year just to be able to try to meet the criteria despite having deep-vein thrombosis and it being quite risky for his life to be doing all that travel. He made the point in that situation and this does apply to everyone to whom this legislation will apply that he was not angry just a bit sad. It hurt him to realise that he was no longer treated like a New Zealander because he thought a Cook Islander was a New Zealander and for him to now be treated as a refugee when he had signed up for national service accepting the fact that he owed that duty as a New Zealander was hard.That does seem to hold quite a deep truth in terms of the relationship New Zealand has had with the realm countries over the last successive decades or generations. Those people from the Cooks and Niue and Tokelau who felt and feel as New Zealanders were called upon as New Zealanders to act and yet so many conditions were put on the basic entitlements that we all consider do come with our citizenship that it meant they were not able to access them despite the commitments they had made to this country.I do just want to touch on some of the benefits of this scheme being able to encourage people to get back home at the age of 55 when they still have plenty of life and skill to contribute to countries. I think that will really help stimulate the economies. Niue is an example where the population is estimated to be now down to about 1500 people and where most of the economy is reliant on remittances and aid from New Zealand. So to be able to enable people to go home and actually participate in the economy will be of benefit. I just hope it does not result in a reduction in aid from New Zealand. We support this bill.CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I stand to support the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. Labour supports this bill particularly because it does intend to honour the constitutional relationship that we in New Zealand have with our New Zealand territories those being Niue the Cook Islands and Tokelau. What is proposed in this bill makes sense. At the moment we do have the Special Portability Arrangement; however what we see at the moment and what this bill addresses is the fact that Cook Island Niuean and Tokelauan residents need to be present in New Zealand on the date of application to be able to access those benefits.We do have a commitment to the three realm nations to ensure that we support their economic and social viability. In order to do this we need to be supportive of the idea that their people may decide to go back and invest in their own home countries. We have seen it many times across those three countries and actually across some of the non-realm countries as well but particularly the realm countries where we hear over and over again that the biggest problem facing those three countries—the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau—is depopulation. If we can encourage some of our Cook Island Niuean and Tokelauan residents in their senior years to go back and invest—in some cases set up businesses—in order to support their families there and to look for ways that their families can be self-sustainable then we have an obligation to support that and this bill does do that. It does support those who wish to go back live there in their latter years and undertake whatever initiatives they are interested in doing when they do move back there.While we are talking about honouring the relationship between New Zealand and the realm countries though we cannot help but reflect on this side of the House on some of the ways we have not honoured that relationship recently. This legislation is one way we can do that—by supporting those who are retiring to be able to go back to their Pacific countries and invest. However we need to think much more widely about how we as a country and our Government here invests and supports our realm countries so that we are honouring that relationship. At the moment we have situations such as with Television New Zealand (TVNZ) for example where we are not honouring that relationship. We have TVNZ which felt comfortable with the Government of the time a National Government and felt comfortable that it was the right environment to be able to cut funding to Māori and Pacific programming to reduce the content and to outsource anything other than Te Karere that had Māori and Pacific content.Given the special relationship that we have with the Pacific region we feel on this side of the House that as a country not only do we have an obligation to make sure that we honour the Treaty of Waitangi and honour our tangata whenua but also that we honour the Pacific region and all the indigenous knowledge and all the indigenous people who are part of it. And at the moment we are failing under this National Government to do this.As I said earlier depopulation is the issue that was brought up the most by the three countries I have been to particularly during the time when New Zealand undertook its inquiry into New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific. Depopulation was mentioned over and over again by the Niuean Cook Island and Tokelauan Governments. It was really interesting because here we are at the moment with a high rate of Pacific unemployment with high levels of underachievement for Pacific peoples in our schools and very little being done by the National Government to address those things. But what we have been told by our Niuean Cook Island and Tokelauan people is that they have lost their biggest resource to New Zealand—their biggest resource being their people.I just want to end my speech by saying that this is recognition of the special relationship that we have with our Pacific countries particularly our realm countries but on this side of the House we would like the National Government to think more broadly about that special relationship that we have with those Pacific countries and look at ways in which they can honour that relationship. Thank you.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National):I rise to support the bill. This bill takes into account New Zealand’s close constitutional ties with the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. These Pacific Islands share unique legal arrangements with New Zealand and as the Minister for Social Development said it is part of New Zealand’s commitment to support their ongoing economic and social viability.This bill will help these island nations to attract capital and skills from citizens who have moved to New Zealand as well as other New Zealanders who may choose to spend their retirement years in these countries. As covered by my colleagues it is about greater pension flexibility and about recognising hard work. It is also about recognising the contribution these communities are making to New Zealand. In Mount Roskill the communities from these Pacific Islands definitely view greater flexibility around pension portability as a positive step in support of the economy in those countries.The proposed amendments are clearly beneficial for people wishing to move back to these island countries and they acknowledge New Zealand’s special relationship with them. So I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Kia orana Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a real pleasure to take a call this evening on the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. In this regard I will be speaking about the experiences that I know of within the Cook Island community.I do want to refer to a meeting that a member on the other side of the House Alfred Ngaro talked about—the work that we are doing with the wider Cook Island community to honour those soldiers from the Cook Islands who fought for and on behalf of New Zealand in World War I. I raise this in the context of this particular bill because 500 young men were recruited from the Cook Islands to fight for New Zealand in World War I and they gave the ultimate sacrifice to this country. So the relationship that we as Cook Islanders have with New Zealand was forged through the blood of our young men nearly 100 years ago. I feel it is a significant point to make and I will be referring to this a little bit later in my discussion around this because it does mean a lot to us as Cook Islanders that our relationship with New Zealand is honoured in this way.Cook Islanders have played a significant role in building this nation. My parents came out here in the 1950s as did yours Alfred Ngaro and like many people from the Pacific and also like Māori who came into the cities from the rural areas they came to take advantage of the work opportunities that were here. We from the Pacific and from the Cook Islands in particular became the grafters I guess. Wherever there were primary industries wherever there was horticulture wherever there was agriculture wherever there was fruit to be picked Cook Islanders were there. Wherever there was manufacturing wherever there were aluminium smelters steel mills and other huge industries Cook Islanders were there. Wherever there are service roles supporting communities supporting elderly people looking after the ill and the infirm Cook Islanders are there. We have a relationship with this country that goes beyond being just members of the realm. Our relationship is one of service of hard work and of sacrifice.My father was here in the early 1950s and he worked for at least 30 years until he retired in the 1980s or thereabouts. My father and my parents were true-blue Kiwis. They supported the All Blacks—Tim Macindoe: Oh true-blue voters.POTO WILLIAMS: True blue in that regard.Tracey Martin: You don’t own the phrase—come on.POTO WILLIAMS: Yes. My parents brought us up to be decent and hard-working New Zealanders. They paid their taxes. We bought a home. They raised their children and all of us in our family strive to serve this country well as I hope we have done.This Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill talks about the close constitutional relationship that the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau have with New Zealand. Next year for the Cook Islands it will be 50 years of that close constitutional relationship—50 years of self-governing. It is a significant event for us and I know that many in this House will be celebrating with us next year.I refer back to the Cook Island soldiers of World War I—and of course next April we are going to commemorate 100 years of their service. They fought alongside New Zealand Māori. As Su’a William Sio has already described when New Zealand could not recruit any more of its own Māui Pōmare was dispatched to the Pacific to find young men to fight for New Zealand. We fought largely alongside Māori. We fought together with Māori because Cook Islanders have a very special kin relationship with tangata whenua. We have a relationship that we refer to as tuakana teina. I often talk about this when I am discussing this relationship with Māori people—that perhaps we are the elder auntie or the elder uncle in the relationship. I often joke that we have seniority in those terms. But we have a relationship that is forged through a common migration history as well as sharing lots of kin relationships.There are proposed changes to the way that current eligibility rules apply. It used to be that you had to be present and resident in New Zealand at the age of 65 or when normal eligibility occurred. Those changes now mean that it is possible for you to have lived and been a resident in New Zealand for 10 years from the age of 20 with 5 of those years being from the age of 50. So it is possible to be resident within the Cook Islands and be eligible for the pension—or the war pension as well—at the age of 65 and to apply from those home islands.I refer also to some of the discussion that has happened during this debate—when members have referred to what is in the regulatory impact statement—about depopulation and about how that has had an impact on the home islands. What has occurred of course with our being able to enjoy New Zealand citizenship and the benefits of being New Zealand citizens and our having the ability to travel on New Zealand passports is that we have travelled from the Cook Islands from Tokelau and from Niue to take up residence here in New Zealand. We have taken full opportunity of the opportunities that this country presents to us and we have not had the ability to return home and be able to have the type of income to live well in our home islands. So this legislation we hope will actually address some of those issues of depopulation returning senior citizens of some note—people who have had opportunities here for education—who can take their skills and their experience back to their home countries.However the legislation actually presents opportunities for all New Zealanders as well. It has been several years since I was back in the Cook Islands but when I was last there it was the first time I actually felt I could live there. I actually felt I could live in the Cook Islands. You know I may God willing if I actually get to the age when I can retire actually take advantage of that myself.But I want to get back to the issue of relationships. My colleague Carmel Sepuloni raised a very salient point about the relationship between New Zealand and these realm countries and that is that our contribution to New Zealand actually has to count for something. I know that having the ability to get your superannuation back in your home island is great—it is fantastic. I am very supportive of this bill but there is an awful lot more that this country can do to support those people—my people—who not only have given of their industry and their hard work but in the case of our soldiers have given of their lives and their sacrifice.The relationship actually needs to be one of mutual support and when as my colleague so aptly discussed we do not see ourselves fully represented in this country—when we know that our programmes on television are going to have their production outsourced—it actually flies in the face of the sacrifice that we have made for the benefit of this country.New Zealand does provide aid back to our home countries it provides work opportunities and our home countries have provided labour. They have provided their culture—the Pasifika Festival is one of the most celebrated festivals around the world—but not only that we have also provided our blood and our lives on the battlefield and I would hope that this country would acknowledge our special relationship into the future. But I do commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.CARMEL SEPULONI (Junior Whip—Labour):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I just bring up that while my colleague Poto Williams was speaking the level of chat on that side of the House was—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the one who determines that.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura):It is with pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Members this debate is concluded. The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye to the contrary No. The Ayes have it. The question is that the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill be considered by the Social Services Committee—[Interruption] Order! When I am announcing the provisions there is silence.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3)First ReadingHon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs):I move That the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. I nominate the Government Administration Committee to consider the bill. Last week when we were debating the Committee stage of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) I made the point that this No. 3 bill was one more in a series of reforms to make the Gambling Act 2003 fit for purpose in an environment where a whole range of external changes are occurring at a rate that often makes it very difficult for us to keep up. If I go back to the main Act the Gambling Act 2003 it makes it very clear that one of its primary purposes is to permit gambling other than in casinos to raise funds for the community which means in turn that the whole system is expected to be operated on a not-for-profit basis.The changes that are contained in this bill tidy up a number of areas of administration. They are not particularly exciting any or all of them in themselves but they are an important set of reforms that make sure as I said earlier that our gambling laws remain fit for purpose in this country. These changes in this bill relate mainly to the class 4 sector which is the gambling operations that rely on electronic gaming machines in pubs and clubs. We have a very complicated regulatory system for these. The tensions between commercial and non-commercial players in this sector over a period of time have been quite high. There is a constant flow of restructuring taking place within the sector as some operators exit and others enter and as some agglomerate and others separate. It is important therefore that our gambling regime tries as best it can to keep reasonable tabs on this situation.What this bill does—it is comparatively short—is introduce five key sets of amendments. The first set of amendments is around reducing red tape because that has been one of the great banes of the operators. A number of the complaints that we have received from people who seek to gain funding from the proceeds are about the amounts available because of the high operational costs which is also important. So these changes will specify venue operators’ payments and they will also lift the prohibition that is currently in place for payments to venue operators for the commission that is paid to them. So there will be a more flexible arrangement in that regard and that is designed to remove a lot of the rigidity and the red tape within the system.One of the other very big cries that comes through any talk about gambling reform is the need to give communities better information on grant-making decisions and to make sure that they can see the greatest level of transparency possible and that is the second of the five changes. The reporting requirements for class 4 operators are being changed so that standardised information about individual recipients will be available. We will also introduce provisions in this bill where grant committee members will have to declare any direct or indirect interests that they may have in successful grants to societies. The publication of class 4 operators’ financial information and key indicators around that can also be prescribed so that the community will get a better sense of the way in which these organisations are operating. They will be able to see more directly the benefit they are likely to derive from the funding that is made available and they can reach the conclusion as to whether or not that funding is a reasonable proportion of the amount being raised by those particular machines.The third set of changes relates to conflict of interest provisions. These changes largely strengthen the current provisions. They ensure that the conflict of interest provisions in the Gambling Act that apply to gambling societies venue operators and grant recipients are pretty much standardised.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from10 p.mto9 a.m. (Wednesday)