Volume 699 Week 75 - Wednesday 18 June 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 699 Week 75 - Wednesday 18 June 2014[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18607. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 18 June 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Questions to MinistersGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Just before we begin question time I want to refer you to the wording of question No. 7 which was put down by—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order.Hon Steven Joyce: I hope it is.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I hope it is too but there will not be any—[Interruption] Does the member still wish to raise his point of order?GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes I do Mr Speaker—very much. Question No. 7 when it was originally lodged and accepted by the Clerk’s Office read: “What concerns if any has he expressed regarding the progress Health Benefits Ltd has made towards obtaining the $700 million of “savings” which”—and it now says—he “required”. Originally it said “had threatened”. That was an authenticated document that your office accepted and then it was changed after the Minister objected to that. I wonder when we provide authentication what the course of action is.Mr SPEAKER: I need no further assistance. The matter was raised with me. The wording of questions is a discussion that occurs between the member who lodges the question and the Minister’s office. With regard to your suggestion of authentication I understand that was from a media report which the Clerk did not accept as valid authentication. Questions ultimately are a matter of discussion and then they are finally accepted and put on this Order Paper.Savings and Wage Growth—Impact of Government PoliciesHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition):Does he stand by his statement that “if New Zealanders saved more the money could go—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to start his question again. [Interruption] Order! It would be with reluctance that I ask a member from the Government side of the House to leave the Chamber but if we are not going to get a reasonable level of interjection and certainly not the barrage I have just listened to that is exactly the course of action that I will undertake.1.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition)to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his reported statement that “if New Zealanders saved more the money could go into the productive sector and fund new companies and investments”?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Acting Prime Minister): Yes. I find it a lot easier to stand by my statements than that member does to stand by his.Hon David Cunliffe: Will he stand by his position that New Zealand needs to increase its national savings and that he is not ruling out a move to a compulsory savings system?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has ruled out a move to a compulsory savings system because most of the people who can save effectively through KiwiSaver are already in it and most of the people who are out of it have opted out because they are unable to save.Hon David Cunliffe: Why did the Prime Minister earlier say that he was not ruling out a move to compulsory savings and has now told the House that he has?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There has been quite a bit of discussion about that issue and the Prime Minister has been remarkably consistent which is quite different from the discussion about donations in which that member has been remarkably inconsistent.Hon David Cunliffe: Does he agree with his finance Minister that there is an expectation that people “will be doing better than zero pay increases”; if so would he expect those to take effect before 1 October 2015?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes the Prime Minister does agree with the finance Minister which is a better effort than that member who seems to have trouble agreeing with himself.Hon David Cunliffe: Has the Prime Minister or perhaps his finance Minister put a figure on an acceptable level of a pay increase; if so what is it or are they taking advice from Mr Joyce?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I presume the member is referring to the pay increase for Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment staff who were in industrial action yesterday. The Government has focused on managing the economy so that it can produce more growth and therefore higher incomes. Of course the process by which any family or individual person gets a pay increase depends on their employer the workplace they are in or the market into which they are selling goods or services. Those are matters best worked out by them.Hon David Cunliffe: If the Prime Minister is so worried that people are struggling to get by why does he not adopt Labour’s policy of immediately increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour or is he just crying crocodile tears?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has just recently—I think it was just 3 months ago—increased the minimum wage and in an economy where there is consistent growth we will be able to continue to increase the minimum wage.Louise Upston: What sorts of tax changes would have an effect on household savings in New Zealand?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has made a number of tax changes which have had a positive effect on savings. In 2010 we reduced the tax on work the tax on profits and the tax on savings which enables all households to get a better return to saving. Other tax changes such as a widespread capital gains tax could actually have the effect of reducing savings because as I understand it the proposition for a capital gains tax is that it would apply directly to funds managed in KiwiSaver accounts which means that gains currently being made by the growing investment through KiwiSaver would become subject to a capital gains tax thereby reducing future savings.Hon David Cunliffe: What is the Prime Minister doing to help people in the regions save when they are being punished by interest rate rises increases that the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research says is a huge mistake and risks tipping them into recession?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has been very supportive of the regions through policy that enables them to make the best of their resource-based economies. In fact we have been strong advocates for the regions in a fairly similar way to the way the Leader of the Opposition was a strong advocate for Mr Donghua Liu as we discovered today.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Government Financial Position—March 2014 Balance of Payments and International Investment Position2.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National)to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on progress New Zealand is making in improving its external trade and investment position with the rest of the world?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):Statistics New Zealand this morning issued data showing that New Zealand posted a balance of payments surplus of $1.4 billion in the 3 months to 31 March. This is the largest quarterly surplus on record before seasonal adjustments. It helped to reduce the annual balance of payments deficit to 2.8 percent of GDP the smallest annual deficit since 2010 and it is another indicator of progress since the Opposition parties decided there was a balance of payments crisis. Looking ahead the deficit is likely to increase somewhat as capital investments pick up further and export prices come off their historic highs. We are working hard though to prevent a reversion to the deficit that was as large as it was between 2006 and 2008 under the previous Government.Paul Foster-Bell: How do the latest balance of payments and net international investment position statistics compare with the situation this Government inherited nearly 6 years ago?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Both of these indicators have improved in the last 5 or 6 years. In late 2008 the balance of payments deficit was around 7 percent of GDP having peaked at 7.9 percent in 2006. Today it has narrowed to 2.8 percent of GDP—acknowledging though that it is likely to deteriorate over the next couple of years. Our net international investment position has improved significantly. In 2009 New Zealand’s liabilities to the rest of the world were equal to 85.9 percent of GDP. The latest figures are that this has improved substantially to 65.3 percent of GDP. That is still high by international standards but it is the lowest level of liability since 2001.Paul Foster-Bell: What were the main factors driving the improvement in New Zealand’s balance of payments and net international investment position in March?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There were a number of contributing factors. There were goods exports across a range of commodities with meat making the most significant contribution. Exports of services were also increased as overseas visitors to New Zealand spent more while they were here. Unfortunately Statistics New Zealand was not able to count secret donations from Mr Donghua Liu to the Labour Party—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon David Parker: Is he concerned about the conclusion of the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Shamubeel Eaqub who says that the big gaps opening up in New Zealand are across geographical race and education lines and he thinks that this is one of the biggest challenges for New Zealand?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No I am not concerned about his conclusions. Mr Eaqub may have recently discovered that there are educational differentials within New Zealand. This Government has been working very assertively to close up those differences over the last 5 years. It is now starting to make some significant progress—where for instance it is now much more likely that Māori and Pasifika students will reach national standards and that they will pass NCEA level 2.Paul Foster-Bell: What approaches to economic policy would put at risk the good progress being made with the balance of payments and net international investment positions?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There are really two things that the Government is seeking to manage. One is that a rapid rise in Government spending has occurred up to 2008 and the Government is managing that by curbing its own spending over the next few years. The second is to work with councils to manage our fast-rising housing market because continued inflation in the housing market will tend to force interest rates higher than they should be.Business Innovation and Employment Ministry—Pay Negotiations3.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central)to the Minister for Economic Development: Did he meet with the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment on 4 June 2014 and if so did he discuss with him the pay negotiations that were under way with MBIE staff?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):Yes and yes. The chief executive briefed me on progress with the negotiations.Grant Robertson: Is it correct that pay negotiations with ministry staff were adjourned until 3.30 p.m. on 4 June to allow for his approval to be sought for the offer the ministry intended to make at a meeting held at 2.30 that day?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I have no idea about the timing on that day or on any other. He was just briefing me with an update on the negotiations.Grant Robertson: When he said to the House yesterday that the Cabinet Manual and the State Sector Act both make it clear that Ministers are not to get involved in pay negotiations why was he approving the pay offer to be given to Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment staff which resulted in negotiations being delayed until he had given that approval?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member’s assertion is completely incorrect. I did not approve it.Grant Robertson: What did he say to David Smol in the meeting on 4 June with regard to the pay offer being made to ministry staff?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As I recall it Mr Smol came in he sat down and he gave me an update on the negotiations. I do not think I said much to him at all except I think I said to him that my only counsel to him was to keep the State Services Commission informed on progress.Grant Robertson: Did he tell the chief executive at that meeting that he did not believe anything more than the pay offer that was on the table was appropriate?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well as I say Mr Smol did not seek my advice in that regard and I did not give it.Sexual Violence Prevention—Initiatives4.MELISSA LEE (National)to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made about campaigns to prevent sexual violence amongst young people?Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development):Last week I was pleased to launch the Are You That Someone? Let’s Stop Sexual Violence campaign an initiative aimed at preventing sexual violence amongst young people. One in three women and one in 10 men will be victims of sexual violence at some point in their lives and 16 to 24-year-olds are at a higher risk of sexual assault than any other age group. Central to the campaign is a series of four posters showing situations that could lead to sexual violence such as an intoxicated young woman being led into a bedroom by a man at a party and a man paying unwanted attention to a woman in a bar. The posters encourage people to step in and intervene when they see someone in potential danger or to even just ask them whether they are OK.Melissa Lee: What was revealed about young people’s attitudes and experiences of sexual violence when the campaign was being developed?Hon PAULA BENNETT: What some of the young people revealed during focus groups to develop this campaign was quite shocking. They said that sexual violence was common at parties and in bars but that there was a culture of standing back and not doing anything about it. Often they do not intervene because they are scared of being made fun of by their friends. Some of the comments that focus groups received included: “Because we have got a drinking culture these things just happen.” “Sexual violence definitely happens. There’s at least one creep at every club.” “I have seen situations when guys are all over girls and they’re clearly not into it but the guy doesn’t seem to care.” and “If you get it wrong”—intervening that is—“then it’s you who looks like a dick.” Their feedback told us that what we needed to do was to empower them to know how to intervene and when to intervene.Melissa Lee: What success has the campaign had so far in reaching its key audience?Hon PAULA BENNETT: We launched it just last Friday and as well as the posters the campaign is being promoted heavily on social media such as Facebook in order to reach its target which is young people. Its reach is already wider than we expected with 163000 people already viewing activity on the Facebook page.Carol Beaumont: What are the reasons for the Government’s failure to act on the recommendations of the Task Force for Action on Sexual Violence that it received in 2009 which would have meant over 5 years of focus on preventing and dealing with “the appalling rate of sexual violence in this country”?Hon PAULA BENNETT: We certainly have picked up some of the recommendations from that task force and from that report. What we have also done of course is just this year put another $10.4 million into sexual violence services for those at the coalface which is making a huge difference. Also ACC has stepped in and is also providing another whole lot of information. Actually if you spoke with people in the sector they would say there is more going on in terms of the support for those front-line social services than ever before and that they have had their money doubled.Oil Gas and Minerals Exploration—Protection of Marine Environments5.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green)to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does he stand by all his decisions?Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation)on behalf of theMinister of Energy and Resources: Yes and particularly the decision to see nearly 300000 more homes insulated improving people’s health reducing energy use and helping make their power bills more affordable.Dr Russel Norman: How can he stand by his decision to open over 3000 square kilometres of the West Coast North Island marine mammal sanctuary to oil exploration a sanctuary that was established to protect the Māui’s dolphin?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because it is a perfectly logical decision. The area where the Māui’s dolphins reside is between the Kaipara and Kāwhia harbours out to 7 nautical miles. The block offer is nowhere near this. There has not been a single observation of a Māui’s dolphin in the block offer area and furthermore there has not been a single incident involving Māui’s dolphins in the oil and gas industry in Taranaki over the past 44 years despite 23 wells being drilled in the closest proximity to where the Māui’s dolphins live. The proposals to quadruple the protected area for Māui’s dolphins to areas where there is evidence they do not go and to ban all activities like oil and gas would cost Taranaki over 5000 jobs and the New Zealand economy $3 billion a year. It would be extreme Green lunacy.Dr Russel Norman: How can he propose more seismic surveying in a Māui’s dolphin sanctuary against the advice of the world’s largest professional scientific body dedicated to research on marine mammals which has specifically asked his Government to stop such seismic surveying because it is a threat to the very survival of the Māui’s dolphin?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In fact prior to this Government there were no rules around seismic survey work in such areas. It is this Government through both the exclusive economic zone legislation and then the seismic survey regulations that sets down very clear standards to protect marine mammals. If Parliament were to adopt the position being promoted by Russell Norman you would have no oil or gas industry in New Zealand because marine mammals are throughout our ocean area and that would be an economic disaster for this country.Jami-Lee Ross: What is the Minister’s response to the decision today by the Environmental Protection Authority to decline the application by Trans-Tasman Resources to mine ironsands in the exclusive economic zone south of Hāwera?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This decision of the Environmental Protection Authority confirms the robustness of the regulatory framework this Government has put in place to achieve our balanced approach of developing New Zealand’s mineral resources but within the parameters of high environmental standards. I remind the members opposite there were no rules in the exclusive economic zone prior to this Government. This proposal would not have even needed a consent if it was not for our law. Members opposite have slagged the Environmental Protection Authority as a joke and as a rubber stamp. They now owe the Environmental Protection Authority an apology.Dr Russel Norman: Is the Minister now saying that the 2000 expert marine mammal scientists are wrong to assert that seismic surveys can harm dolphins’ hearing and drive them into unprotected areas where they are more exposed to fishing nets and hence death; if so what is his evidence that the 2000 marine mammal scientists who have told him not to do this are wrong?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister of Energy and Resources has consulted with the Minister of Conservation and the very best advice in New Zealand in respect of protecting Māui’s dolphins. It shows that over 95 percent of the risk to Māui’s dolphins is in fact from set-netting and this Government has doubled that area of protection. There has not been a single Māui’s dolphin recorded or observed outside the area that this Government has protected. What the member is effectively advocating is that we shut down industries like fishing and oil and gas even in areas where despite hundreds of trips of independent observers there is no sign of any Māui’s dolphin. My challenge to the member is simple: show me the Māui. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is a good example of how disorder is created. If the member would simply rise without interjection and ask his supplementary question I for one would be very grateful.Dr Russel Norman: Does the Minister understand that there is a difference between the risk to Māui’s dolphins from existing production wells and adding new risks to Māui’s dolphins from new seismic surveying and new drilling of exploratory wells which is exactly what he has just approved?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I refer the member to the extensive risk management report on Māui’s dolphins. It said that over 95 percent of the risk to Māui’s dolphins was from set-netting and that is why this Government has doubled the area of protection from set-netting. It said that the risks from the oil and gas industry were small and actually smaller than from passing vessels. That is if you want to take the approach that the oil and gas industry is a risk to Māui’s dolphins an even bigger risk is from having boats that might hit them when they go past. If the member is seriously suggesting that we ban all boats from any movements on the west coast of the North Island I look forward to campaigning and contesting that stupid extreme Green point of view.Dr Russel Norman: Why will the Minister not just be honest and tell the people of New Zealand that he cares more about expanding the oil industry—this is new oil industry—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the member would just finish his question. It is a good example again of the member inflaming the situation with his opening remarks. Would he finish the question so we can get on with it.Dr Russel Norman: Well you do not quieten them down Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will finish his question otherwise we will be moving to the next question.Dr Russel Norman: Supplementary question then Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Just finish the question.Dr Russel Norman: Why will he not say that he cares more about expanding the oil industry in New Zealand because that is what it is all about rather than whether or not the world’s most endangered dolphin becomes extinct? He has put expanding the oil industry ahead of protecting—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The question has been asked and the Minister can answer.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would love to have an honest debate with the member about this issue because there have been 23 drills for petroleum within the marine mammal sanctuary over the last 40 years without incident. If the member’s position is that there should be no oil and gas he should be honest that that means closing the Pohokura gas field which provides 50 percent of New Zealand’s gas resource. It would mean putting 5000 people out of work. And I point this out: it would result in the coal-fired power station at Huntly having to be turned back on again greenhouse gas emissions going through the roof and that would be both economically and environmentally reckless and irresponsible.Dr Russel Norman: When will the Minister simply tell the truth about this issue—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I will give the member one opportunity to ask a supplementary question in accordance with the rules otherwise we are moving to the next question.Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In many of the Minister’s answers he has said or implied that I have not told the truth. You have not pulled him up once about that.Mr SPEAKER: The Minister has responded I think reasonably in line with the line of questioning. I invite the member if he wants to ask another supplementary question to do so. [Interruption] He does not wish to? Then we move immediately—Dr Russel Norman: Supplementary question.Mr SPEAKER: Well the member just shook his head. If the member wishes to ask a supplementary question in line with the Standing Orders I will give him the opportunity.Dr Russel Norman: How does opposing the expansion of the oil industry through new oil exploration drilling wells and through new seismic testing equate to the same thing as shutting down the entire existing production oil and gas industry as that Minister keeps implying in his answers today and in his other public statements?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I think there is a logical inconsistency to be saying that about the existing 23 wells that have been drilled as well as the Pohokura gas field that currently operates within the marine mammal sanctuary and saying that for over 40 years there has not been a single incident of any harm toMāui’s dolphins. There has not been a single report. What is more when the scientific evidence is that the primary risk to Māui’s dolphins is set-net fishing it has been absolutely right and rational for this Government to focus its efforts to ensure the survival of the Māui’s dolphins by focusing on those things that actually cause the Māui’s dolphins harm and within the areas where the Māui’s dolphins actually exist.Dr Russel Norman: With regard to the scientific evidence has he read the report from the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission which concluded that the protections he is talking about will not stop the extinction ofMāui’s dolphins and that the “current management situation falls short of that required to reverse Māui’s decline.”?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes I have read the International Whaling Commission’s latest recommendation and report. It promotes that the Government increase by fourfold the area of the set-net fishing ban. But I have a simple problem: there has not been a single case of an observation of aMāui’s dolphin in that quadrupled area—not one. There have been over 700 fishing trips and on every one of those fishing trips there has been an independent observer. I am not going to shut down industries whether it be oil or gas or fishing industries in places where there is no evidence that Māui’s dolphins exist.Christchurch Recovery—Innovation Precinct and Other Initiatives6.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki)to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What announcements has he made on the Christchurch Innovation Precinct?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation):During the adjournment the Canterbury earthquake recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and I released the spatial framework for the Christchurch innovation precinct and announced that Vodafone’s new South Island headquarters will anchor that precinct. It will bring together businesses and innovators alongside residential retail hospitality and professional service providers to create a vibrant and exciting new part of Christchurch. Vodafone has announced it will set up an expanded main South Island office in the innovation precinct as well as one of its international zone incubators which will be only the sixth such incubator that Vodafone has set up across the world. The zone incubator offers advice support and assistance to technology start-ups focused on mobile platforms consumer electronics smart charging and automotive technologies.Jacqui Dean: How will the Government support the innovation precinct?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government will be supporting the innovation precinct by developing an additional innovation hub to accommodate start-up companies within the precinct. This purpose-built facility will accommodate Callaghan Innovation and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s business-facing services as well as one of three new information and communications technology graduate schools that have been announced as part of Budget 2014. Innovation precincts work best when they bring together a good mix of larger established companies innovative start-ups research and teaching facilities. Offering a low-rent option for start-up companies in this knowledge-rich environment among other innovative firms will help them grow and expand and provides an ideal mix of small and large firms within the precinct.Jacqui Dean: What role will the new information and communications technology graduate schools play in the precinct?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As part of the Budget the Government is establishing three new information and communications technology graduate schools and one of them will be in Christchurch in the precinct. The new schools will be provided with funding for education research and collaborative initiatives to attract top students and academics and connect them closely with high-value high-tech firms accelerating the growth of New Zealand’s information and communications technology talent. We expect to see a combination of final-year undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the schools plus an innovative use of internships and research to help improve the connections between providers and businesses and ensure a smooth transition of students into work. It is vitally important that New Zealand lifts significantly the number of people with high-level information and communications technology skills and knowledge so that they can help drive the innovation we are seeing in this rapidly expanding sector.District Health Boards—Health Benefits Ltd7.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai)to the Minister of Health: What concerns if any has he expressed regarding the progress Health Benefits Ltd has made towards obtaining the $700 million of “savings” which he required them to obtain in September 2012?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):I have expressed the view to district health boards as to the importance of working collaboratively to harness the power of bulk purchasing and standardisation to free up resources to invest in more front-line services for patients. By way of example by working together the district health boards are expecting to save up to $16 million this year on banking and insurance costs and $34 million this year on regional shared-service initiatives. The estimate is that by the end of this financial year we will have saved around $300 million which is in addition to some other district health board savings.Hon Annette King: Is he aware that as recently as 2 months ago Health Benefits Ltd signalled to district health boards cost escalation and potential delays of at least 1 and up to 2 years in the implementation of his flagship finance procurement and supply chain programme; if so what impact will this have on the $700 million saving he requires health bosses to make?Hon TONY RYALL: On the finance procurement supply chain issue the latest set of data that I have looked at is that we are running below the budgeted cost. It is now operating on the national platform at Hutt Valley District Health Board. But I have got to say that implementation is always an area of risk and it has certainly been my message to the board of Health Benefits Ltd to make sure that a lot of emphasis goes into the implementation because if we are to generate the savings that we need to put straight back into the health service then implementation has to be a very strong focus.Hon Annette King: Has he been informed that profound concern has been expressed at the mounting risk to the delivery of health services because of Health Benefits Ltd’s lack of transparent and timely information lack of accountability for decision making lack of timely communication and the absence of a credible implementation plan?Hon TONY RYALL: With change always comes worry for people because they have uncertainty about their jobs. I am very aware that people are worried about some of these proposals but people need to keep their eye on the real gains here and the gains are that by working more effectively together district health boards can make significant financial savings and those resources can go back into supporting improved front-line services together with the average $500 million a year extra that this Government has put into the health service.Hon Annette King: Would he be taking action if all chief financial officers of district health boards said they had grave and collective concerns about his flagship Health Benefits Ltd programme its cost escalations implementation delays benefit erosion and escalating risk profile; if not why not?Hon TONY RYALL: I have been really quite keen that chief financial officers were taking an active interest in the implementation of these programmes because they are very important and very significant. Some parts of the programme are moving ahead and ahead of budget and others are going a little bit slower because of the implementation risk. Overall we are going to be freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars over time for district health boards and all that goes into improving front-line services. As you have seen already with the insurance and banking and other initiatives that is money that we can save that goes into more care for patients.Hon Annette King: What is the cost of funding the growing empire of Health Benefits Ltd which now occupies four floors across two buildings in Central Park Auckland while at the same time district health boards are struggling to retain staff because of the uncertainty of Health Benefits Ltd’s programme leading to significant risks in continuing current services?Hon TONY RYALL: I do not think there is any risk to the continuing of front-line services in our district health boards. This Government has put an average of $500 million a year extra into the health service. But it is not just about money; those extra services are benefiting from the improved productivity that we are seeing where we have 40000 more New Zealanders a year getting hips knees and other elective procedures than when that party opposite left Government.Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table a letter from all chief financial officers of district health boards saying there was uncertainty leading to significant risk in continuing current services that there is profound concern—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The document has been described. It is a letter signed by all chief financial officers. Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hospitals—Redevelopment Projects8.SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country)to the Minister of Health: What recent investments has the Government made in health services for the Bay of Plenty?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):Last week the local MP Mrs Anne Tolley and I were privileged to open the new $67 million Whakatāne public hospital. With more hospital beds and extra services this building will ensure that the 50000 people living in that region continue to receive high-quality care for many years to come. The new building includes three state-of-the-art operating theatres a larger emergency department a modern radiology department bigger in-patient wards an acute care unit for patient observation and a 10-bed paediatric ward. This new building makes it easier for staff to provide better faster and more convenient care for patients in that region.Shane Ardern: What other capital investments has the Government made in health services?Hon TONY RYALL: Well that is a very good question. The Government has invested around $1 billion in the most difficult of economic times—$1 billion—into capital projects and district health boards and we are continuing to invest more money in upgrading our New Zealand public hospitals. This includes $83 million for the revamp of Rotorua Hospital; a $190 million clinical services upgrade at Middlemore Hospital; $80 million at the Taranaki-based hospital at which the member will be joining me at the official opening I think next week in New Plymouth; and $27 million for the east wing redevelopment of the Tauranga public hospital.Schools Partnership—Funding Assets and Contract ArrangementsTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First):How much public money has been spent on land and other physical assets for Partnership schools up to 31 March—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the member to repeat that question. It was being interjected on from my left. It was unable to be heard.9.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First)to the Minister of Education: How much public money has been spent on land and other physical assets for Partnership schools up to 31 March 2014?Hon NIKKI KAYE (Associate Minister of Education)on behalf of theMinister of Education: The Government provided $6.6 million in establishment funding to five schools for 2013 and approximately $1.9 million in operational funding for the first quarter of 2014. Around a quarter of that funding is provided for property and insurance in accordance with the partnership schools funding formula that was approved by Cabinet. What they have actually spent will vary across schools and is monitored quarterly through their reporting. One of the key aspects of partnership schools is that they have more flexibility in how they spend their total funding.Tracey Martin: To whom do these taxpayer-funded assets now legally belong?Hon NIKKI KAYE: Obviously I am answering on behalf of the Minister of Education but what I can confirm is that there are specific agreements in place with each of the five partnership schools. In some cases I am sure that they will own the specific assets.Tracey Martin: In light of that answer is the Minister able to tell us what ability the taxpayer has to reclaim these assets should a partnership school close or be closed?Hon NIKKI KAYE: That is a very good question. My understanding is that should a partnership school contract cease prior to the expiry date the ministry would work of course to recover any unused funding by any means possible and ideally through a negotiated agreement. In terms of issues around land etc. that would go through a commercial process. Any course of action taken will depend on the circumstances contributing to the ending of the contract.Tracey Martin: Can she assure the public that the funding for partnership schools on a per student basis is at a no more favourable rate than mainstream State schools?Hon NIKKI KAYE: I think this a very good question as well. I think it is very unhelpful—I have seen comparisons of the per student funding basis between State schools and partnership schools. The whole point of these schools is that there is an establishment phase. That means we will be spending more money in that establishment period. But also it is very important to realise that just like any other school that is being established they will not reach their maximum roll necessarily in the first year. What I think is important is that we give these schools a fair go and we realise that actually they are dealing with some of our most disadvantaged students and so in the first instance those comparisons are very unhelpful.Tracey Martin: Can the Minister just clarify that in her answers to the two previous questions she said that there is no set process for the reclaiming of public assets purchased by partnership schools should they close and that at the same time the Government is currently funding them at a higher level because they are establishing schools?Hon NIKKI KAYE: No that is not what I said in terms of both parts of that question. The first thing that I said is that we would seek via the sponsor agreement to work through what had been agreed but we also go through the same process with any other school that closes. We look at what the commercial situation is around those assets. So there is a set process—it is the same process that we go through with other schools; it is just a little bit more complicated because there are sponsorship agreements. In terms of the second issue I said that I think it is very unhelpful to compare on a per student basis because yes they are in the establishment phase and also the whole purpose of partnership schools is that there is flexibility around what those funds can be used for so comparisons are very unhelpful. But what I would say to the member is that I think what you can have confidence in is that they are on track in terms of their establishment roles and when you look at that overall basis when they get to the maximum roll we are very confident of the investment that we are making in these children—some of our most disadvantaged children.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is long enough.Chris Hipkins: Do the sponsorship agreements for partnership schools allow the Crown to recover capital from those schools in the event that they cease operating prior to the end of their contracts; if so which clause allows that?Hon NIKKI KAYE: I do not have all of those contracts on me but what I can say is that the advice I have had is that should a contract cease prior to the expiry date the ministry would look to seek to recover that funding by any means possible—ideally through a negotiated agreement.Tracey Martin: In light of the Minister’s previous answers that partnership schools are not being given priority in terms of education spending how can she explain that at least one of the current partnership schools is funded at a level to allow a 1:9 teacher-student ratio while mainstream State schools have a prescribed ratio of one teacher to 27.5 students?Hon NIKKI KAYE: I do not agree with what the member said in the first part of the question. The second thing that I would say though is we have been really clear actually that the whole benefit of bringing innovation into the system is to enable these schools sometimes to do different things and have more teachers per student for very disadvantaged students if that is what the school thinks is best for those students. We are very proud of the fact that we are helping some of our most disadvantaged students and we need a flexible model to do that.Tracey Martin: I seek leave to table a speech by Hekia Parata on 16 May 2012—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That speech will be on the web and available for all members.Oil Gas and Minerals Exploration—Protection of Marine Mammals10.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth)to the Minister of Conservation: What steps has the Government taken to improve marine protection particularly in respect of dolphins?Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation):This Government has approved a record number of new marine reserves. We have banned shark finning. We have passed a new exclusive economic zone law that requires the Environmental Protection Authority to robustly check proposed activities in our vast ocean area for their environmental effects. Specifically for dolphins we have also implemented compulsory regulations to protect marine mammals from adverse effects from seismic testing. I also note the recent good news that the estimated population of our Hector’s dolphin on the east coast of the South Island is now at 9000 which is significantly up from the previous estimate of 2000. Their west coast sub-species the Māui’s dolphin is the greatest concern and there we have more than doubled the area of protection and banned from set netting which actually is the greatest risk to that species out of 55.Jonathan Young: Has the Minister any concerns for the Māui’s dolphins from the 2014 petroleum block offer to the oil and gas industry in Taranaki?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No I do not. The vast bulk of the block offer is nowhere near the home of Māui’s dolphin and in fact there has not been a single sighting—despite over 885 sightings—in the area of that block offer. Secondly there has not been a single incident involving a Māui’s dolphin in the oil and gas industry over the last 40 years in the Taranaki region.Hon Ruth Dyson: So is he saying that he is right and that the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission consisting of 200 whale and dolphin scientists which has said for the third year in a row that these protections he has outlined are inadequate is wrong; if so why is he right and they are all wrong?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I rely on the scientific advice from both my Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries. I would point out the International Whaling Commission technical committee has been absolutely up front that it had no interest in issues in respect of the economy of fishing or in respect of the oil and gas industry. It has not been able to provide me any evidence in wanting to go out to 20 nautical miles of the presence. A single report—Hon Ruth Dyson: The International Whaling Commission—listen to them.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I have a single challenge for the member. Show me a single incident or a single record of an observation of a Māui’s dolphin. What members opposite are arguing is that we ban fishing and oil and gas exploration even in areas where there is no record of Māui’s dolphin having ever been observed.Hon Ruth Dyson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order Dr Russel Norman.Hon Ruth Dyson: I seek leave to table two maps. The first shows in green the nautical mile—Mr SPEAKER: Just describe them very quickly and I will put the leave.Hon Ruth Dyson: —protection that is being offered and the brown existing and continuing line—Mr SPEAKER: Order! OK that one has been described. Would you describe the other.Hon Ruth Dyson: The second one shows in yellow the proposed block offer—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] The member will resume her seat. Those documents have now been adequately described. Leave is sought to table those two maps. Is there any objection? There is none.Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House.Adult and Community Education—Funding11.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram)to the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: How many secondary schools currently receive Adult and Community Education funding compared to the 212 secondary schools in 2009 when the funding was cut?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment):I am advised that 21 are directly funded and a number of others are indirectly funded through the first 21. For the member’s information there are also 26 community providers six private training establishments one Rural Education Activities Programme 18 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand and one wānanga funded.Dr Megan Woods: Does he think it is acceptable that since the 2009 funding cuts there is now no school-based adult and community education provision in the Hawke’s Bay and the Hutt Valley and that in the lower North Island where there used to be 21 adult and community education providers there now are only two?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member should look at the wider question of foundation education in those regions. Actually we have unapologetically been more focused on foundation education that delivers qualifications that get people on a ladder to achievement and improved incomes. In this Government we have achieved a record number of qualifications. The member is entitled to her view but actually I think we have a good balance of foundation education across all parts of New Zealand.Dr Megan Woods: If foundation literacy and numeracy are his priority as claimed why did he in 2012 cut $22 million worth of community education funding designed to encourage embedded literacy and numeracy learning in level 1 to 3 courses?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not have the exact information to hand but I am pretty sure the member is incorrect. There was a shift in funding from one fund to another fund at that time but actually we are spending something like $69 million a year in community education including the type the member mentioned just then—$69 million a year—so I invite her to go back and look through the appropriations. I am more than happy to help her find the locations of the particular sums of money.Dr Megan Woods: How does the Minister reconcile the Hon Bill English’s 2009 claim that a good proportion of those people will be able to continue to adult and community education with the fact that there are now 150000 New Zealanders who once attended night school but do not now have the opportunity?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As I said to the member if she is determined to make it simply about schools yes there has been a change—there is no doubt about that. But there are a whole lot of other providers for both informal and formal foundation education. If the member is criticising us for cutting funding for Moroccan cooking and concrete shell mosaics and some of the other classes that were in those schools at that time I am very happy for her to do that. This Government’s record on tertiary education is a heck of a lot stronger and if her solution is to simply go back to 2008 she is welcome to it.Dr Megan Woods: How does the Minister reconcile his comments labelling adult and community education courses as low-value and hobby courses with the view of his colleague the Hon Bill English who in 2005 emphasised the importance of a wide range of night classes including furniture restoration and painting and stated that he believed that adult and community education is a place for education not aligned with Government priorities?Hon Bill English: That’s exactly what we’ve done.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think that is exactly what we have done. The reality of the situation is the Government is funding $69 million a year in community education across a whole range of providers. The member of course is entitled to her view. I think the whole Labour Party thinks that everything that happened prior to 2008 was pretty good and everything that has happened since is pretty bad. That appears to be its view. I do not think it has got anything new to say but if it wants to go back to 2008 that is fine. We stand by our record and the number of qualifications achieved in foundation education.Family/Whānau and Sexual Violence—Funding for Crisis Services12.JAN LOGIE (Green)to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by her statement in relation to sexual and domestic violence that “it is actually about services on the ground that are able to address it”?Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development):Yes.Jan Logie: Given this focus on services on the ground will she step in to ensure that the only 24/7 specialist sexual violence service in Canterbury has the funding to remain open after Friday when it will otherwise close due to her funding decisions?Hon PAULA BENNETT: That is not correct. It is not correct that it is due to our funding decisions that it is closing. That service is currently not a Ministry of Social Development - approved provider although officials have been working with it. That is the report that I have had. We are very keen to see it stay open but at the end of the day it has to be an approved provider and it has to be financially viable for us to be doing that.Jan Logie: What is her message to the women of Canterbury who from Friday will no longer have a specialist sexual violence service to go to for help now that she has refused to fund SAFECARE?Hon PAULA BENNETT: We are not simply just refusing to fund it. There are issues with the provider that we are very keen to resolve. We will continue working with it. The member is shaking her head; she makes it sound like we do not want to fund it or that it is our desire to see it close down. Nothing could be further from the truth. When there are issues with the provider we have a responsibility accounting-wise and auditing-wise to the taxpayers of New Zealand to make sure that that funding is being used appropriately and that is what we are doing.Jan Logie: Has she consulted in that decision the police who refer four victims a day to that service and are required to refer to it when somebody reports but who after Friday will not even have a service in Canterbury to meet their protocol obligations for immediate support for victims?Hon PAULA BENNETT: I really have nothing further to add. I am being as upfront as I can. There are issues that we are very keen to resolve. The ministry is working with that provider. We would like to see it open next week but we have a responsibility to the taxpayer to make sure that we are doing that in the appropriate manner and that is what we are doing.Grant Robertson: In light of her answer to the primary question why did she and her ministry deny funding to Shakti to have a safe house for Asian African and Middle Eastern women who are victims of domestic violence in Wellington despite Housing New Zealand having found a property for it?Hon PAULA BENNETT: We are still working with Shakti. We have done a review of the Wellington region. It is working with Women’s Refuge—and not at this time because we think there is further work that needs to be done alongside the refuge but we are certainly not closing the door completely.Jan Logie: Does the fact that services are closing and are being denied funding and refuge funding cuts has meant that Palmerston North Women’s Refuge has lost one of its two safe houses three staff including all of its children’s advocates and it has had to cancel its children’s programme not just show that it is not about services on the ground at all but about saving money by short-changing women and children?Hon PAULA BENNETT: It is simply not true that it is about short-changing women and children. What I can say is that yesterday I said that women’s refuges are getting millions more under this Government than they were under Labour. Funding has increased from $11.6 million in 2007-08 to $15.3 million now in 2013-14. We put an extra $10.4 million into sexual violence services which we announced just 2 months ago which shows a real commitment to making sure that that funding is there for front-line services. We have a responsibility as well though to make sure that that funding is being spent responsibly. That is what we are doing across the board. We will support those services where we can and where it is a responsible thing to do.General DebateHon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Just last week Pattrick Smellie said that the National Government was wise to go to the election early because the economic news from here on gets worse. In other words this is as good as it gets. In a year when 46 percent of New Zealanders got no increase in their wages his message to New Zealand is that National has gone early because it gets no better than this. The economic recovery is built on a housing bubble in Auckland and the Christchurch rebuild. Exports have peaked; from here they go down.You might think “Well Pattrick Smellie—a trusted economic adviser.” but who else is saying this? Just yesterday Shamubeel Eaqub the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research said that raising interest rates is a huge mistake at a time when inflation is incredibly low and you are doing it only because of the housing market in Auckland. He said: “It scares the hell out of me because the collateral damage rises with each increase. You risk tipping them [the regions] into recession.” He said that yes house prices are out of control in Auckland—that is me saying that—and that they have gone up by 20 percent in real terms since 2007 but in the rest of the country they fell by 21 percent during the same period. That is of course excluding Canterbury. He then said that the gaps opening up in New Zealand are really big across geographical race and education lines and that one of the biggest issues of this generation is the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. That is from the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. That is his conclusion after 6 years of a National Government.Across both sides of the House—Labour and National—we favour consistently stronger economic growth. Indeed since World War II the rate of economic growth in real terms has been slightly higher under Labour than under National. We both stand for economic growth. I do not deny that. National does stand for it; we do too. Of course we do. We are the party of labour and we need jobs and higher incomes. But the bigger difference lies in our desire to share that around fairly so that the economy is stronger and everyone gets ahead. It is Labour that always brings forward the long-term structural changes that reduce inequality. National is not worried about that. It denies it is occurring. Despite decreasing homeownership rates—the lowest in 50 years—increasing child poverty an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the refusal to tax capital gains National denies that inequality is getting worse despite the fact that someone like Shamubeel Eaqub the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research says that those gaps are widening in every way.We believe that long-term solutions are important. That is why we introduced KiwiSaver which National voted against. We believe in making long-term savings through the Cullen fund which Bill English described as a dog when he voted against it and now says is a good idea. It is now time to move to universal KiwiSaver. New Zealand is dissaving again at the moment. We are actually borrowing more money from overseas because we are not saving. We are spending more than we earn. We are dissaving. One of the answers to that is a capital gains tax. Another important answer to that is a universal KiwiSaver scheme. That is what they have got in Australia. That is one of the reasons why they have got higher wages in Australia. It is one of the reasons why they own their banks plus ours plus so much of our corporate sector. They have a work-based savings scheme. Everyone in Australia has to be in it.We hear National saying that the low-paid should not be able to afford to save. We think differently on this side. We think that everyone needs a nest egg. We think the economy is stronger as a consequence. If people at the bottom end cannot afford to save they need a lift in the minimum wage and a push towards a living wage. Higher wages is what they will get under Labour. Following through on that we will have higher growth rates. We will have a lower exchange rate higher values in exports and more high-value jobs all at the same time as avoiding this ridiculous housing bubble in Auckland that has arisen under National.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am just concerned that perhaps we need to turn up the heating in the House because Mr Henare is obviously very very cold over there. I just wonder whether you might like to increase the heating so that he can take that scarf off.Mr SPEAKER: I cannot see a valid point of order coming out of that but I will comment that the level of interjection through that speech from David Parker was unreasonable. I hesitated over whether to assist the member but I did not want to—Hon David Parker: I didn’t need your assistance.Mr SPEAKER: I agree he did not need it. I did not want to interrupt his speech. It is a robust debate—it is the general debate—but the level of interjection must be reasonable.Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister):In the next few days the Labour Party has to come clean about every contact with Mr Donghua Liu and every donation from him because if it does not come clean it may be unable to save its leader. That is where it has got to. The reason the Labour Party has to explain all those contacts and donations is that no one trusts what David Cunliffe says about the donations and the contacts with Mr Donghua Liu.It is not as if this House has not had the opportunity for every member to understand that Mr Liu has been active in the political scene. Partly as a result of declarations of donations from Mr Liu Maurice Williamson stepped down from his job so it is not as if no one knew that Mr Liu was about. There does appear to be one person who either did not know or did not care and that is David Cunliffe the leader of the Labour Party. The reason no one trusts him is this: “Do you recall ever meeting Mr Liu?”. “I don’t recall ever meeting him no.” “Did you have anything to do with granting his permanent residency?”. “No I did not.” “Did you advocate on his behalf at all?”. “No.” “Were you aware of any advice against granting him permanent residency?”. “Not to my recollection.” That was yesterday. Today of course we have the letter that he wrote advocating exactly for his permanent residency.Any member of Parliament can say: “I don’t remember writing a letter some time ago on behalf of a constituent.” but the problem is that when David Cunliffe says that who will believe him? You cannot believe him. This is the man who set up his own personal trust as part of his leadership campaign precisely to hide donations—precisely. When asked to reveal those donations as his leadership rival Grant Robertson did he still would not reveal those donations so how do we know that one of the donors is not Mr Donghua Liu? How do we know? We do not know.So Mr Cunliffe has a very simple problem. If anyone trusted him before—and who knows how many of those there were—will anyone trust him now? I am not talking about the public. I am not talking about the Government. I am not talking about the media. I am talking about his own caucus. So as the champagne is popped in Grant Robertson’s office today and David Parker wanders off on his intellectual journey across the Sahara trying to find something that might mean something to being in a future Government do the rest of the members of the caucus trust what David Cunliffe says?Hon Members: No.Hon BILL ENGLISH: And you can tell that by looking at them. You can tell that by looking at them. So the Government has made up its mind the public have made up their minds and the media have made up their minds. There is only one question left: when will the Labour Party caucus make up its mind?SUE MORONEY (Labour):Was that not very interesting—that Bill English had nothing to say about what that Government’s future is for this country? All that Government members could do was get very excited about a letter about an MP advocating for a constituent. That is all they can get excited about. Well I can assure New Zealanders that on this side of the House we are excited about the future of this country under a Labour-led Government because it is under a Labour-led Government that we will actually get that brighter future that so-called brighter future that that lot have been promising for year after year but most New Zealanders are yet to see. What New Zealanders see instead is those at the very top getting more and most New Zealanders going without and struggling every day to make ends meet.Those are the issues that concern us. Those are the issues that concern the Labour Party. So we are doing something about it. We are not going to go into this negative sort of picture that the Government members are going into. Their politics is the politics of negativity and of trying to muddy the waters. Ordinary New Zealanders know that they will not make progress until there is a change of Government and they know very clearly now that it is a Labour-led Government that will actually look after the interests of ordinary New Zealanders—actually look after the interests of ordinary New Zealanders.New Zealanders have seen our fabulous Best Start policy. They have seen it and they know it means that families with newborn children will get $60 a week extra for the first year of that child’s life and if they are low-income families they will continue to get that $60 extra a week until that child’s third birthday. Those are the sorts of things that New Zealanders want to hear about when they switch on their TVs and watch Parliament TV. They want to know what that lot over there are doing to make ordinary New Zealanders’ lives better and the conclusion they are coming to is that most New Zealanders need a change in Government to actually get a fair go in this country.It is clear that the economy is starting to improve. It has taken far too long but it is starting to improve and what ordinary New Zealanders want to know is whether they are going to get their fair share. Under a Labour-led Government they know they will. They know that a Labour-led Government is one that actually knows that investing in the early months of New Zealanders’ lives is going to make a big difference. That is actually smart economics and smart politics and ordinary New Zealanders know that if we get it right in those early months and early years all of us get to reap the benefits.I was dismayed to see the games that have been going on about our bill to extend paid parental leave to 6 months. The Government has got nothing better to do than to try tricks and games to stop that bill from going through. Despite the majority of parliamentarians wanting it and despite the majority of New Zealanders wanting it that Government is putting all of its energies into stopping that from happening. Well here is good news for New Zealanders: the bill can go through now with a two vote majority and there is time for that to happen before Parliament rises for the election.I look forward to the National Party trying some positivity for a change. Try to do something positive and stop filibustering on that bill. Stop trying all your tricks. You might think it is smart to have those tricks here in Parliament but New Zealanders are watching. It is absolutely offensive to try that sort of trickery around a bill that is important for New Zealand families. You might think that you are funny having a go at the Labour Party but actually if you get in the way of support for ordinary New Zealand families they will not forgive you for that.So I look forward to the Government actually getting its act together using the next two members’ days properly and not trying to get in the way of a very good bill that should have its support. If the Government is trying to convince New Zealanders that it prioritises families and children then here is its chance to prove it. It has a chance in the next 5 weeks to prove that it will let democracy take its course that it will let children have that support of 6 months’ paid parental leave in the first year of their life and it has a chance to prove that it is worthy of leading this country.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration):I ask the previous speaker Ms Moroney who said that we in this Parliament should be focusing on the things that matter where on earth was that speech a month ago when the Labour Party spent 2 weeks railing against sideshows? If there was a textbook for beginning MPs the very first teaching in that textbook would be this I suggest: if one is going to throw stones be very careful to ensure that one is not standing in a glasshouse. I have run that gauntlet in those 2-week periods. I have been accused of all manner of things and I have responded with an absolutely straight bat declaring everything listening to people on immigration policy without fear or favour and without any knowledge of donations. So it absolutely amazed me when I heard today that the Labour Party has not been quite as consistent with the solid ground that it wanted us to be on as it should.Apparently the Labour Party has been receiving donations from a Mr Donghua Liu not that anybody from the Electoral Commission would know because it apparently has not been declared. So I ask the House whether that failure is imposture or incompetence because either way for a party that aspires to lead this country whatever the answer is it is not a good look. And it is certainly not a good look for a Leader of the Opposition who has spent not only the last week but this morning denying unequivocally having had anything to do with Mr Liu—“Do you recall ever meeting him?” “I don’t recall ever meeting him.” “Do you have anything to do with the granting of his permanent residency?”. I have to say I do not normally disagree with the Deputy Prime Minister but when he said that Mr Cunliffe said: “I don’t remember.” actually Mr Cunliffe said: “No I did not.” It was not as if he could not remember. He said: “No I did not.”Imposture or incompetence? Either way this fellow aspires to lead this country and what we have is a man who would change his register of pecuniary interests—no he will pay the money back before he discloses who supported him in his leadership campaign. He stands in this House and says that Martians are more likely to come here than a boat from Indonesia and then he dog whistles on immigration policy but does not say what he would do to reduce the number of migrants in this country. That is not the behaviour of somebody who should aspire to lead this country.But do you know what? He is not alone. Five months before Mr Cunliffe advocated on behalf of Mr Liu his ministerial colleague Chris Carter—who was not the constituent MP for Mr Liu it appears; so why he would who knows—wrote a letter to Immigration New Zealand saying this: “Look I know things are a bit slow at Immigration at the moment but Mr Liu has put $3 million in a bank account”—I hope it was not the Labour Party’s bank account—“and is keen to purchase a particular building for redevelopment. I would be grateful for any consideration that could be given to expediting this application.” That was Mr Chris Carter on behalf of Mr Donghua Liu.But here is where it gets really murky. What on earth was the Hon Rick Barker doing—a Minister of the Crown on holiday in China? He did not have a ministerial responsibility for economic development. He was not responsible for immigration. He was not responsible for trade and he went and visited a concrete factory. He took time out of his own holiday to visit a concrete factory for a person he claimed not to know and cannot recall. Well I can tell you there appears to me to be a lot of Labour Party members and former members who are very very forgetful.Remember about that consistency—about not throwing stones if you are standing in a glasshouse? Which was the party that accused this side of being a little forgetful? Well I am sorry but it must be contagious in this House because those members appear to me to be a heck of a lot more forgetful or are they forgetful? I think the public is entitled to ask how forgetful Labour Party members really are. With the benefit of hindsight they seem to remember things only when they are publicly disclosed. This party this Government has played a straight bat on every single disclosure it was meant to make. When it comes to the ballot box—Hon Annette King: Whose great-uncle was it?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: My grandfather’s first cousin. That has been absolutely cleared up. Clark knows it; Curran knows it—stop telling fibs. The public has a right to know the truth and they will make it known at the ballot box.MOANA MACKEY (Labour):That member Michael Woodhouse is a Minister in the Government but his mouth so often works for the Opposition.I want to talk about something that actually matters. I want to talk about jobs because we are being told that we have a rock star economy. We have a rock star economy. As David Parker pointed out it is lucky we are having an early election because all the indicators are that it is downhill from here.So who has benefited in this rock star economy that we are seeing so far? I think the questions New Zealanders are going to be asking themselves are: “Do I feel better off?” and “Have I got my fair share of this rock star economy recovery?” and overwhelmingly the answer is no. Yes there have been some people who have done very very well out of this current Government but for the average Kiwi family they are struggling to stand still and too many are going backwards. That is the reality of a so-called recovery under the National Government and it is only going to go downhill from here.If we put Christchurch aside because we all accept that Christchurch is a special case I sometimes feel as though this Government thinks that New Zealand ends at the Bombay Hills and that the rest of us do not really matter. It has been a long time since I have heard the words “regional economic development” coming out of the mouth of a National Government Minister. I am not surprised that it took an election year for regional economic development to suddenly be paid lip-service to by this National Government.When we were in Government we had a Minister for regional development. We prioritised it. As members will know much of the wealth in this country comes from the provinces of New Zealand. If they are in trouble we are in trouble. We recognised that 9 years of a National Government in the 1990s had put our regional economies and regional communities at risk and so we did something about it. We invested in rural and provincial economies.Hon Anne Tolley: Does this member read the regional development stats?MOANA MACKEY: Regional economies Mrs Tolley. Well she would not know anything about that. If Mrs Tolley thinks that things are going great on the East Coast and in the Eastern Bay of Plenty then I suspect that shows how arrogant and out of touch she is.What have we had in Gisborne? In Gisborne we used to have a rail line. There was a washout on that rail line and instead when you put this in the context of the billions and billions of dollars being spent on roads of national significance around Auckland all we asked for was less than $4 million to fix the rail line from Gisborne to Napier. Everyone wanted it—everyone except Mrs Tolley. Everyone wanted that rail line reopened and the National Government said no. It said to the Gisborne community: “No. We don’t care that you are the most isolated district in the country. We don’t care that you’ve had enormous success at getting traffic back on that rail line. We say no we won’t fix it but here you go. Have $14 billion more for roads of national significance up around Auckland.”In the Labour Party we think that is not fair. We think that regional New Zealand deserves the same kind of attention that Auckland gets and it is important that Auckland gets attention—it is our only international city; I absolutely support that—but the rest of us matter as well.So in lieu of our rail line the National Government said: “Instead of a rail line you can have an economic development potential report.” So we got this report. It cost $200000—$200000—to tell us what we already knew. It would have been better to give that $200000 to our council to actually do some good with in terms of economic development instead of having the Government tell us—and this was great—“The East Coast suffers from a perception of deprivation.” No we do not. We suffer from deprivation. That is the whole point. It is not a perception; it is a reality and this Government is doing nothing about it. Inequality is getting worse. The gap between the haves and have-nots is widening and unfortunately we have far too many have-nots on the East Coast and in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.So basically we knew what the report would say. It would say that if you do not want jobs in the oil and gas industry stop whingeing about being unemployed. That is essentially what it said. Any jobs that come from that industry would be very welcome on the East Coast provided the environmental protections are there. I think that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recent report showed that there are big gaps in that but the chances of us finding something commercial are very small.Do you know what? We in the provinces think we deserve a plan B. We deserve a plan B in case plan A which is the only plan the Government has does not come to fruition and it is more likely that it will not than it will. So where is the plan B for the provinces? Where is the plan for those communities that make up the backbone of this country? It is not there.A Labour Government would play an active role in regional economic development. We funded forestry roading in Gisborne last time we were in Government. That is the kind of thing we would look to do again. We would work with the provinces rather than working against them as this Government does every day.Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):It is a difficult day for Mr Cunliffe when the C-team is being rolled out in the general debate. We had David Parker and then we had Sue Moroney and then Moana Mackey a list MP for Labour. They are hardly a ringing endorsement from the Labour front bench. Look I know what they are going through. Having been in Parliament for 24 years I have seen a lot of this—leaders in terminal decline. You get your normal blusterers on the front bench who just keep chipping and chirping the whole time and not making any sense and then the only people who will front up in the debate to back you are the people who installed you as the leader. No one else will front. No one else will take a call. No one else will defend what has gone on here.What we have seen happen in the last 2 days—2 hours even—is another example of the fact that David Cunliffe lacks situational awareness. He never understands the fact that you cannot say one thing to somebody one minute and then another thing to somebody else a few moments later. We have seen it time and time again. Whether it is talking to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions whether it is talking to the teachers whether it is talking to people in business or whether it is talking to journalists there is a lack of situational awareness. There is a lack of actually knowing that what you say to one group is going to be reflected upon by another. We have seen that time and time again with David Cunliffe. We are seeing it time and time again with the Labour Party. It is spiralling out of control. It has a complete lack of leadership and no moral authority. But what is worse is it has no alternative vision for the future of this country.This is a Government that is focused on a plan of action and is focusing on the things that matter. This is a country where most people think the nation is heading in the right direction. This is a country where people think the Government is playing its part and New Zealand is heading in the right direction. More jobs more opportunity better education better health better targeted support—that is what New Zealanders think. This country is headed in the right direction and Labour Party members hate that. The reason why they hate that is because they are completely focused on their own problems. So here is Mr Cunliffe who only a few hours ago denied he had ever met Mr Liu and said the Labour Party never got any donations from Mr Liu. And here we have today a letter from Mr Cunliffe making representations on behalf of Mr Liu. It is just not consistent with what he has been saying previously. It is hugely embarrassing for Mr Cunliffe and for the Labour Party.Hon Member: Will he survive?Hon TONY RYALL: Will he survive? Look I think that when you consider the calls that have been made by senior and respected journalists the lack of participation from the front bench in this debate—in fact the lack of participation from any bench of the Labour Party and any bench opposite in this debate—speaks volumes. I will tell you what is happening. Those members are all in their little groups in their friends’ offices saying “Can he survive this? Do you believe what he said on this? What more is to come? What about these donations for the bottles of wine that haven’t been declared and is there anything more? What is going on with that?”.While the Opposition is focusing on its internal problems this is a Government that is on the move. It is a Government with a plan of action. It is a Government with a vision for New Zealand. I think that every day we see the benefits of the leadership of our Prime Minister John Key who is out there talking to world leaders about the opportunities for New Zealand in a vast growing world. The global opportunities for trade investment and wealth—that is what our Prime Minister is talking about. And here at home led by our Minister of Finance we have got a Government focused on the things that matter: creating the environment we need for people to take a risk and invest in their businesses and to grow jobs in this country. Indeed the contrast between the centre-right and the hard left could never be clearer than it is today.Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs):Tempted as I am to do otherwise I will give Mr Cunliffe the charity of my silence as he seeks to work his way out of a nigh impossible predicament. I want to talk about another couple of issues that are in a similar vein and have the potential to adversely impact upon the current election campaign.It used to be said that every New Zealander enjoyed one vote of equal value. What we are seeing through the antics of Mr Dotcom and Mr Craig is a sense of people with large sums of personal wealth to divert the political process in such a way to promote their own objectives. I think that is reprehensible and I think strongly particularly when you think of some of the crackpot notions they are both promoting that it is something that New Zealand can well do without. In Australia another crackpot called Clive Palmer the man who brings a new car to Parliament every day spent $12 million to buy his way into the federal Parliament at the last election. An eccentric football team manager in the United Kingdom spent £1.5 million funding the United Kingdom Independence Party to spread a poisonous racist message through Britain during the last European and local elections. We are now seeing the same trend starting to appear in New Zealand.So one of the tasks that the Electoral Commission and the appropriate select committee in the next Parliament will need to confront in my view is examining the level and limit of personal donations to political parties. I have no objection to people supporting political parties—funding them making their donations in a way that is open and accountable—but I think there is a clear line to be drawn between that sort of upfront open process and rich boys with their toys simply funding political parties to promote their own selfish objectives. I think most New Zealanders would agree with that objection.The second point that I want to raise relates to an issue that has been around this House from time to time. It has got the colloquial name of waka jumping. We have got it on the agenda at the moment because of the Mana-Internet agreement which actually ceases to be 6 weeks after the election. So in the event that Mr Harawira retains his seat a whole number of Dotcom MPs arrive here and clearly after 6 weeks they walk away from the arrangement. They have got no legal status no moral authority and yet they sit in this Parliament draw the privileges the allowances and the money and promote Mr Dotcom’s continued residence in New Zealand.It is time for this Parliament to revisit the legislation that was in place some years ago but that was stalled in the end because of high horses. Members of Parliament who are elected in constituencies are accountable to those constituencies. But members of Parliament elected on a party’s list are primarily accountable to that party and when they choose to leave that party their moral and political mandate goes with them and they should be required to leave this Parliament.We need to revisit that situation and amend the electoral legislation again to make it clear that list members of Parliament who for whatever reason usually incredibly ill-founded and ill-considered decide to leave their party during the term of a Parliament do so but they leave Parliament as well. Otherwise we face the prospect in the next Parliament of a loose unit group of MPs coming in here on someone’s coat-tails—and we have had a lot of debate about coat-tailing provisions—but actually intending to desert the coat-tail as soon as they get here. What could be more reprehensible than that?So when we are talking about standards and the debate today has generally focused on the political standards of the Leader of the Opposition there are broader standards here in question. When we are talking about them let us look at the system. Let us ensure that no one can buy an election in New Zealand in the way that we are seeing two characters trying to do at the moment. Let us also ensure that people who are elected to this Parliament by the voters of New Zealand serve their terms on the basis of the allegiance for which they were elected. If times move on and an electorate MP feels that they cannot do that then they face the judgment of their electorate at the next election. They have that authority. But if a list MP does not and we have had one case already in the term of this Parliament then that person leaves Parliament full stop.There ought to be a consensus around this House that that is the case and there ought to be a move for amending the Electoral Act accordingly in the new Parliament to make sure that we deal with that aberration at the very least. Unless we deal with the former question I think we are headed into a very sad shoddy and potentially corrupt period of New Zealand politics.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua):The tweet of the afternoon comes from Mr David Farrar and it reads that Rajen Prasad has reversed his resignation to come back as leader of the Labour Party. That is how desperate Labour is—nobody wants the job. Nobody wants the job. It is a grave grave worry for the Labour Party. Last night I was in the parliamentary cafeteria and I just happened to glance across and there was Matt McCarten chief of staff of the Labour Party looking very dishevelled but next to him was an even more dishevelled absolutely dejected David Cunliffe. I reflected to myself: “What have they done to that once proud Labour Party?”.First of all there is a different dimension to this latest revelation and that of course is that Labour has shifted under David Cunliffe deeply deeply to the left. We have of course the recognition that the Labour Party leader whatever he is must be centre-left—just a little bit pink. But what we have seen on the horizon is this deep hue of red almost scarlet as we see the influence of Matt McCarten. We see the coalition partners: the Greens—a total misnomer undoubtedly with their Marxist co-leader Russel Norman—followed by Labour’s other coalition partner Mana led by Hone Harawira who is to the left of Russel Norman. And then there is the newcomer on the block Laila Harré. Laila Harré and Hone Harawira are bankrolled by none other than that Germanic oddity who has certainly shown his true colours just as David Cunliffe will in the near future. But the deep concern about this is that this group of individuals this coalition of the left may have the possibility of taking the Treasury benches but the chances are fortunately becoming less and less and less.The good news though is what a great and justified accolade Rod Oram political economic commentator gave the National Government in the Sunday Star-Times in the weekend. Mr Oram is not known for favouring the centre-right but during the weekend—Paul Goldsmith: He must be unwell.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Well that is what I was worried about. He is a law-abiding citizen so he was definitely not on psychoactive drugs or anything like that but he gave the National Government three “excellents” and Labour one “excellent”. In fact Mr Oram praised the National Government and the Hon Bill English in his words “for their strong [fiscal] discipline and bold strategy to help us survive the global financial crisis and build for the future.” He praised the National Government saying that since 2009 it “has improved fiscal discipline initiated its Better Public Services programme and set itself 10 big challenges such as reducing welfare dependency and boosting skills and employment.” These are the sorts of things that that ragtag collation of the left could just simply not do because they are destined to tax more to borrow more to lend more and now to deny more.But Mr Oram praised the National Government in his words for having “bravely tackled the incredibly complex and fraught issues of freshwater regulation.” He goes on and notes that “The previous Labour Government had failed abysmally on these ...” issues during the 9 years it was in office. And these are very serious issues as Kennedy Graham would agree but that regime would absolutely fail to address them. Mr Oram praised the National Government for changing New Zealand Trade and Enterprise from a good to an excellent support agency for many of our fastest exporters. And what better praise could Mr Oram give the National Government than when he stated that “Callaghan Innovation’s overall strategy represents the most intelligent ... response yet by a [New Zealand] Government to the challenge of commercialising science and developing a more sophisticated economy.”? Even more National’s Primary Growth Partnership “is now delivering exciting breakthroughs such as the new technology for precision seafood harvesting.” Finally Mr Oram says that “National was right in the 2008 election to commit government investment to accelerate the development of ultrafast broadband.”POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Goodness it is a lively general debate today. I just want to say Dr Hutchison that I think quite highly of you but even I was a little taken aback at that speech and the swipe that you took at us. Perhaps you were getting a little out of your depth when you talked about the Labour caucus’s relationship with its leader.I want to bring us back to things that actually matter—things that matter to ordinary New Zealanders. I want to bring us back to some basic principles and talk about housing. It is a basic human right to have housing—the right to shelter. Housing in the primitive sense is about protection. It is about having protection from those things that could do us harm. It permits you to establish yourself and to have a base where you can gather those things around you that are important to you. It provides also a base for us as humans to flourish to restore and to recover. But when we talk about housing it is not just the structure we are talking about. We are talking about decent housing that is warm and dry and affordable.How does warm dry affordable housing benefit our people? Well there are several ways. Let us just look at the health benefits of warm dry affordable homes. It is well documented that a home that is in a decent condition—a place that is warm and dry—contributes to the good health outcomes of the population. So with Labour’s healthy homes guarantee for example homes will have insulation and heating for those who rent and you will have a decent standard of accommodation that will help to combat the really high rates of respiratory conditions that our children suffer.There is also something about the affordability to heat your homes. With NZ Power we are looking at making the affordability to heat your home a reality for New Zealanders because having a warm dry home is a source of well-being for young children and for older citizens alike. Preventing poor health outcomes in our population has a positive impact on the cost of health to our population not only for the country but also for the overall well-being of individuals and families—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member but it is not acceptable for a member to be making a call on a cellphone while in the Chamber.POTO WILLIAMS: It is well to remember that good housing is essential for a good community. John A Lee said that back in the 1930s and it is as pertinent today as it was back then. Being able to put down roots and develop links and connections in the community and to take advantage of that community capital—that social capital—takes time and people need to have time to do that regardless of whether they own their home or they rent. There should not be barriers to long-term residency in a community simply because of your inability to purchase a home to rent a home or to have the support from social providers into housing. Homeownership should be available to all Kiwis who want it.These are not just individual benefits either. It benefits the community to have well-networked residents who are aware of their neighbours and the situations that their neighbours live in and who are supportive of them. Difficult times such as a natural disaster are times when those connections are most apparent and recovery in communities would not be possible without there being strong connections in place. So—soon.Finally I want to talk about taking a responsible approach to housing one that considers a person’s ability to pay for housing which means not only the affordability and availability of that housing but also having the income available to pay for that housing which for most of us is really the biggest take out of our pay packets each week. I just want to finalise by saying that we want to provide an environment that encourages saving through compulsory KiwiSaver contributions which means we will save for our retirement but we will also have deposits for our first home and we will have a tool to manage inflationary pressures as well. Above all we will make it possible for Kiwi families to put down roots and fully participate in community life. Thank you.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):I want to start by referring to the Hon John Banks and I am conscious that we have a debate about him following this one. The court has adjudicated on Mr Banks that he did the wrong thing and he has certainly paid a high price for that and people will make their own judgment on that. But I do hope that as his active public service of nearly four decades draws to a close people will recognise that for all his faults he tried his best and he made a significant contribution. It was he who first drew me into politics 18 years ago when I began writing his biography as a green history graduate then working at the Waitangi Tribunal for better or worse and I am grateful to him for that.Three months out from the election speculation about what will happen in the seat of Epsom is picking up strongly and commentators can speculate all they like. As we all remember the party vote was the primary objective for us in the 2011 election and whether that remains the case in 2014 is for another day and the Prime Minister has said that many times. But let us not forget that under MMP it is the party with the most party votes that wins the election and that is the simple reality in Epsom and in every other electorate in the country. The overwhelming sentiment that I hear day in day out—as my family and I live in Epsom—at school functions at the supermarket and on the doorstep is that people want John Key to remain Prime Minister and the National Government to remain in power. This is not at all surprising because this Government has done a magnificent job in steering the economy through these past 6 difficult years through difficult economic times. People can see we are heading in the right direction. The economy is growing at around 4 percent inflation is subdued interest rates have been kept lower for longer average wages are rising faster than inflation and unemployment is falling.This is the time to consolidate the gains and continue the never-ending challenge of improving New Zealand’s international competitiveness which is what sustains our living standards. Consistency and predictability lead to confidence confidence encourages people to invest and investment leads to growth and jobs. Epsom which includes the suburbs of Remuera Parnell Epsom and parts of Mt Eden is full of wealth creators—people who have their own businesses who take risks and employ people. I meet with them every day and I celebrate their success. Their success is New Zealanders’ success. They look to the Government not to solve all their problems but simply to create an environment of consistency and predictability. They expect the Government to be managed properly and for spending to be disciplined. That is why they support John Key Bill English and this Government in large numbers. I am proud to play a small role in that in Parliament and on the ground in Epsom.What most people struggle to understand is why on earth we would want to lurch in a new direction just as we have got the country heading in the right direction—why we would want a capital gains tax why we would want to overturn monetary policy and why we would want to nationalise electricity and become a global leader in climate change policy. So we contrast John Key as a leader with whom you know what you get with Mr Cunliffe who cannot recall writing a letter in favour of—David Shearer: Judith Collins?PAUL GOLDSMITH: Is that not interesting—is that not interesting? Donghua Liu—Mr Cunliffe cannot recall whether or not he wrote a letter to him. I remember somebody else being in a similar predicament. I am reminded of a quote from a well-known UK fictional politician that seems highly relevant to Mr Cunliffe and it starts: “After the smiles after the handshakes after the arms round shoulders and the merry hollow laughter after the conditional promise and the purchased friendship after the elusive dangling reward the nagging threat ... After all that the calculation of the odds the sifting of the probabilities and then the fear ... Fear in the smell of damp newsprint and the crackle of the radio ... Fear that this might be the day we wake to find the magic gone.” And I am afraid that that is what is happening with Mr Cunliffe and the Labour Party members. They are hanging their heads in shame at the moment. All the list MPs know they will not be coming back. There is very good probability there will—David Shearer: You’re a list MP.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well at least National is likely to have list MPs after the election. Labour under all the probabilities will have zero list MPs and their stunning careers—Sue Moroney’s stunning career is going to be coming to an end the way things are going and I feel very sorry for her on that account.It is very interesting to see John Armstrong and many of the commentators saying right now right here today that Mr Cunliffe is in deep trouble and Labour is in deep trouble. It is a beautiful thing to watch. Thank you.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):During the past adjournment the Green Party launched its climate protection package. It is an understatement to say that this far-reaching policy has been well received. Critics of the policy have been limited to the Government which fashioned the current scheme and those benefiting financially from it—they who are polluting with near total freedom while the taxpayer foots the bill. The Minister for Climate Change Issues true to form veered off-key and found that the Green policy exceeded his worst fears. That may prove to be the most prescient political statement he ever makes.Mr Groser’s dismissal of the Green policy was lampooned in the Dominion Post editorial as “lazy and arrogant”. Overall support for the plan is extremely positive. Business commentator Pattrick Smellie describes the tax as “a good idea” and the Government’s response to it as “mildly hysterical”. Business commentator Bernard Hickey says that “most people think the ETS has been a failure and that New Zealand had back-pedalled on climate action and that a climate tax would be more efficient than the ETS.” Business commentator Rod Oram said: “The ETS is a scam. The Greens’ carbon tax would fix it.” Business commentator Brian Fallow described it as a way of “shifting the burden from household incomes and business profits and on to polluters.” Prominent economists Matt Nolan and John Small have shown support. Farmers Weekly ran with the headline: “Emission plan to reward good farmers”. The policy was described as a masterstroke on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon.What of the political commentators? Matthew Hooton concluded: “Embarrassing for all concerned but on first glance I think I support the Greens’ climate change policy over National’s or Labour’s.” David Farrar said the policy had credibility and merit. Martyn Bradbury calls it “a brilliant political masterstroke”. Political commentator Bryce Edwards says: “The Greens have shown us why they’re still among the smartest operators in politics.” Toby Manhire said the climate tax cut is welcome because “it puts climate change squarely on the agenda for September’s election.”What of the interest groups? The Taxpayers’ Union said the carbon tax is “simpler more transparent and likely to reduce New Zealand’s overall tax burden.” The World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand welcomed it. The OraTaiao: New Zealand Climate and Health described it as a “specific fair and realistic plan to curb our greenhouse [gas pollutants].” Forest and Bird said the Green Party is right to be making climate an election issue and to be campaigning for an end to subsidies for major greenhouse gas polluters.Anyone else? Yes. John Armstrong in the New ZealandHerald said: “In one deft stroke the policy has the Greens saving the planet helping the poor giving big carbon users an incentive to be more efficient while stimulating investment in more sustainable industries.” Gareth Renowden on Hot Topic said: “This is a carefully considered and constructed set of coherent policies that should deliver substantial emission reductions without causing substantial economic dislocation.”Since the launch of the policy 2 weeks ago I have also been meeting around the country with professionals experts and stakeholders on the subject. They are of course asking penetrating questions which is a sign of the seriousness with which they view the policy. Some are understandably concerned at the implications of change that the policy contains. Who would not be concerned at the prospect of a fundamental national economic transformation? But without exception they are all constructive in their attitude and they appreciate the answers we are giving. They know along with the Greens that policy to date has failed and a new course of direction is required. This is what I would expect because the days are gone when the deniers were given credence and the prevaricators could hide behind the deniers. We all know now that we must undergo economic transformation. The Greens are going to lead in that endeavour.JOANNE HAYES (National):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to stand as the final speaker in this general debate. Not long ago I think it was about February 2013—most on the Opposition benches will remember this because I think it was around about the time of the first Labour leadership coup—Mr Cunliffe chose as his deputy to run with him the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. No doubt the whānau of Tainui would have been ecstatic about this proposition. Yet only months later Mr Cunliffe’s second run at the leadership saw him dump the Hon Nanaia Mahuta in favour of his current deputy. Yes he dumped a Māori girl from Tainui. That is disgusting. I can imagine how much of a kick in the guts that would have been for Nanaia and how that hurt—how that hurt and how that hurt resonated through Tainui. That is absolutely disgusting I say.Then we on the Government benches watched with interest as the only other Labour MP with heaps of talent—we all know who that was Shane Jones—quit. He quit because he could not stomach the direction his leader was taking the party in. When it comes to working with the Greens—a Labour-Greens Government that is frightening. Then of course there was the Tāmaki Makaurau candidate selection. What a farce that was. Shane Taurima was ruled out leaving Will Flavell as the last man standing. But did the Labour leader accept Will? No he did not. He allowed nominations to reopen and our Will missed out.I have observed a Labour Party leader who quite happily tramples on his own MPs and also those who wish to aspire to be on his team and I do not know why they want to do that. Why on earth would they want to do that? Why would any Māori MP or anybody want to be there on Mr Cunliffe’s team let alone vote for Labour? Why would anyone trust this man? We have heard all the porkies that have been said. We have read them in the newspapers. We heard them from my colleagues today. The clouds of Cunliffe are dark and uncompromising. They are dangerous.This country must not let the clouds in for if that happens then New Zealand will go back decades. This National-led Government has worked very hard for this country and the results speak for themselves. Under a National-led Government we are global economic leaders and nobody—absolutely nobody—can argue with that. All this will be lost if the clouds of Cunliffe and his lies are let in. I reckon it is not going to be long before Labour’s “ABC” club opens its doors again. But then who wants to drink from the Labour Party chalice which has been filled with poisonous droplets from the clouds of Cunliffe? Kia ora.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.Member VacancyEpsom Electoral District—Hon John BanksHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House):I move That pursuant to section 131(b) of the Electoral Act 1993a vacancy in the Epsom Electoral District having arisen and the House having been informed that a general election is to be held within six months of the occurrence of the vacancy no writ be issued for the election of a member of Parliament for that Electoral District to supply the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of John Archibald Banks. What an irony it is that we are here today debating as a House and most likely agreeing that there should be no by-election in the Epsom electorate—a by-election that is caused by the resignation of the Hon John Archibald Banks subsequent to the findings of the court that his memory of donations around an election campaign were to say the least hazy.I will speak more of John Archibald Banks in a few minutes but the irony is that we are debating this today when there are so many rumours swirling about undeclared donations by the Labour Party—donations that can total we believe if all is to be revealed some tens of thousands of dollars. Today we have the allegation out there that a $15000 donation has been made to the Labour Party and not declared. What we hear is that the Labour members have no record of it they have no memory of it and there is no possibility that the donation was made.Well there is more to come on that but the real point here is that the Hon David Cunliffe used that same set of excuses in the last couple of days. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am merely pointing out that the House has dealt with matters today—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members on my left have been here a long time and they know the Standing Orders. A point of order is to be put tersely and there are to be no interjections whatsoever.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I was in the middle of a point of order I believe.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Yes you were.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It was that you were giving the well-known Ross Robertson signal for “Come back to the topic”. I was accepting that you were actually signalling a wide scope at that point—I assume that it was not to get me in scope of your view—but it was in fact worth recognising that many of the matters—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is this a point of order?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes I am in the middle of it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. Look can I just say to the honourable members on my left whom I have known for many years that you are well versed in the Standing Orders. All members are well versed in the Standing Orders. I call the Hon Gerry Brownlee.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: To continue my point of order I assume.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Continue your point of order.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: My point of order is that the matters I was discussing and that you were suggesting might be slightly out of scope are incredibly relevant to the circumstances that have caused the House to have this debate today and I think it is not unreasonable that they are at least in passing rehearsed.Hon Trevor Mallard: I am standing up to agree with the member but to say that comments on Speakers’ rulings even if they are descriptions of width are something that you should not be doing in a point of order. If you are giving the member signals and making rulings in a sign-language way then it would be most disorderly for the member to comment on it by way of a point of order.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Speaking to the point of order it is just that I am used to all sorts of hand signals and other gestures from the Labour Party.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order. That can actually lead to disorder.Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! We have a point of order on the floor.Tracey Martin: This is a plea for clarification. Mr Brownlee is saying that the debate should be wide because there is some stuff in the paper about the Labour Party but my understanding is that this debate is because Mr Banks has been found guilty of fraud. I do not understand how there is this wide debate when actually it is about a person who has resigned because he has been found guilty of fraud.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The issue is actually sub judice. Members have to be careful what they say in this debate because it can lead to disorder. I just ask members to be conscious of that for when we throw mud we lose ground.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is important that we get the parameters of this right but the fact that the member has been found guilty of electoral fraud is not sub judice; that is a matter of fact and recorded by the court.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That it is Mr Mallard but it is still sub judice in the sense that there has been no sentence as yet so I am just cautioning members that we need to be careful how we couch this debate.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I hear that and I do not disagree with the ruling but we are able to say things about the Hon John Banks who is no longer a member. The protections that exist for members do not exist for former members.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well can I just say to members that matters that are sub judice are subject to the discretion of the Speaker. Members are to be cautioned as to the use of parliamentary privilege to circumvent the judicial process as it can undermine public confidence when standards falter or appear to falter. We live in a democracy and although we enjoy freedom of speech it comes with the responsibility to the common good. So I am just cautioning members about the issue.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Thank you for your very wise words Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate them. The point is that no doubt when other members stand up this afternoon they are going to engage in some sort of reasonably severe character assassination on the Hon John Archibald Banks. I am making the point quite simply that although he was in fact dragged into the courts over a local body electoral issue and although it was pointed out to him that his recollections of events were not found to be as the court would like them we also have a situation here in this Parliament right now where there are allegations about donations to a political party the Labour Party—tens of thousands of donations from a Mr Bill Liu. We have got a party that knows that all that is there and it has a leader who has been found out to be someone who is to say the very least reckless with the truth and it is going to put the boot into John Banks. Well Mr Banks did the right thing. He resigned from Parliament.Hon Annette King: He had to!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: He has not been convicted. He has resigned from Parliament. He did not have to. He has not at this point been convicted. But he is an honourable man. He is a friend of mine and he will remain that. The point that is made in this debate is about setting aside the need for a very very expensive by-election and it could be simply made by everyone agreeing in one or two sentences that spending up to $1 million on a by-election so close to a general election would be a waste of time. But I know that you are going to get the fake sanctimony from the other side of the House as the members all roll out trying to protect a beleaguered and besieged leader who has got a huge job to convince anybody that anything he says is worth listening to let alone believing. Now we are going to see a character assassination of John Banks. I am wanting to pre-empt that by making it clear that it is not appropriate in this House for the pot to call the kettle black which is effectively what I am sure we are going to see this afternoon.I am aware that Grant Robertson the shadow Leader of the House has said “Well all bets are off. This is an unlimited debate and so we’re just going to go at it hard and the Government will be here all the way to 31 July debating this particular motion.” Well I want to make the point that that is not going to happen because there is no confidence on that side of the House in the situation that Mr Cunliffe finds himself in today. There is no comfort in the House over the undisclosed donations. There is no acceptance that there is some sort of a blunder inside the Labour Party that has meant that a donation that should have been recorded and should have been made available to the Electoral Commission has not been declared.I think it is going to be very very interesting to see the positions that are taken today by our opponents. We do not think an election is a good idea at this point because it could end up being on the Saturday of the general election the Saturday before or—even worse if the days are extrapolated—the weekend after the general election when the public would be asked to vote for a member for a Parliament that no longer exists. In any event on 14 August this Parliament ceases to exist so unless that by-election were held before that date everyone would be trotting off to the polls to vote for someone for a Parliament that no longer exists. So I think there is in actual fact quite a hole in the electoral law that deals with all of these circumstances. I do not think the clauses in the Electoral Act have actually got us to a point where we can—Rt Hon Winston Peters: What happened?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member over there Mr Peters asks what happened. Mr Peters is one of those members in the House who is probably more singularly responsible for the rewrite in electoral law than anybody else here. I say that not because he has been here forever but simply because of his other interactions at various times.We are really having a debate because the law requires us to but it is a nonsense because there is no way that someone could be elected to sit in Parliament for a Parliament that no longer exists. I just look forward to the contributions from those over there who are amassing circling the wagons around David Cunliffe. I note that as the Leader of the Opposition he would normally have something to say about the setting aside of a by-election.That is unlikely this afternoon and that is largely because of the contradiction in circumstances that we find here today—a member having gone all the way through the courts and having been found to have not appropriately declared donations; and a member today found to have misled the media and all sorts of other people over his knowledge of Donghua Liu. And it gets worse than that. I will read from his letter in a minute—and some of the Labour Party members should do so too. Also that member is not prepared to deal with or acknowledge the fact that there was at least one donation—and we know there were more–from Donghua Liu. If anybody is under any doubt about whether or not it is fair for Mr Cunliffe to say “I had a brain fade. I don’t remember.” this letter—Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is a pretty broad debate that we are engaged in here but really David Cunliffe is not the subject of the debate under any interpretation of the Standing Orders.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): This is a robust debate a robust Parliament and it is within the Standing Orders.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So here we have across the House a little bit of interplay saying that my comments have so upset the Labour Party that it is going to make this a rough one. Well let us see how good it is because in the end it is on the back foot big time. Mr Cunliffe in his letter said “It would be very helpful to Mr Liu to be advised”—in others words for him to be advised—“of an estimated period of time in which he could expect a decision.” That isthe sort of letter that you write if the person who is being written about is well known to you. So any suggestion that it was some sort of formal thing is absolute rubbish.It is going to be interesting to see how the Labour Party positions itself this afternoon. I think there are matters that it will be aware of that are going to come to light in the next few days which I think is going to be to say the least interesting. Although the Labour Party thinks that we might have come down the Yangtze River on a cabbage boat let me suggest that there are far more plush vessels that have travelled down the Yangtze River than a cabbage boat and we will see in the next couple of days just who was on board.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):It is a sad day today but it is also a just day. I am somewhat saddened that when the Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee stood to take a call he did not actually traverse what has led to the resignation of the Hon John Banks. He instead tried to spray accusations around against other people.Hon Tau Henare: It’s coming!Hon DAVID PARKER: What is that?Hon Tau Henare: It’s coming!Hon DAVID PARKER: It is coming? Well I am happy to traverse the facts of this. The Labour Party will be supporting the motion that no writ be issued for a by-election in the Epsom Electoral District. It would be ridiculous to have a by-election at this stage but it is important that we have a clean democracy. One of the ways that you have a clean democracy is that you have transparency of what goes wrong and people are held to account for their mistakes.That is what has happened here. Mr Banks failed to make declarations of donations received during his mayoral campaign some years back when he was standing for re-election as Mayor of Auckland and did not succeed. But during that period he received donations from a number of parties including Skycity and Dotcom he filed a declaration to say that he did not know of those donations and a court has found that he did. That is why we are here today.I think this episode brings into stark relief what happens when there are what I think are effectively abuses of the Electoral Act. The litany of mistakes by the ACT Party which has led it to this place goes back a number of members and for a number of years. They were here in this place this time only because of the deal that was done with the National Party including in respect of the “tea party” which I will come to. You have to go back only 3 years and the ACT Party was already mired in controversy. The ACT Party was on its knees because its prior leader Rodney Hide the so-called perk buster was busted for perks. He had around him David Garrett. David Garrett had railed against short sentences and name suppression and was shown to be a hypocrite because he had obtained name suppression and discharge without conviction for passport fraud. He had stolen the identity of a dead baby and obtained a passport using it. He had been pushed on to the ACT Party by the Sensible Sentencing Trust whose members including Garth McVicar had supported him in those efforts to get a discharge without conviction and name suppression. It was against that background that the ACT Party was in such a terrible state of affairs that it suffered a takeover from a septuagenarian Don Brash who was not even a member of their party.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Don’t be ageist.Hon DAVID PARKER: It was actually a description Mr Finlayson. So neither of them were members of the ACT Party at that time but they saw political advantage to help the National Party. Remember that Don Brash was a former leader of the National Party and John Banks was a former National Minister. They saw advantage for the National Party and so they took over the ACT Party even while they were not members.The ACT Party then stood in Epsom. I stood in the Epsom electorate. We had the embarrassing spectacle of Paul Goldsmith caught pulling out his own electoral hoardings—he was photographed doing it—and then the signal was sent to the electors of the Epsom electorate that they should not vote for the National Party candidate but should vote rather for the ACT Party candidate in an attempt to use the single-seat lifeboat provision in the MMP legislation. That legislation says that you normally have to get 5 percent of the seats in order to get representation in Parliament. If you get one seat you get the proportion of your seats even if you get less than 5 percent. So someone can get 4 percent in an election and get no representation but someone some party—like the ACT Party—could get one seat but say 2 percent and they would get proportionate representation which is plainly unfair.That provision has been recommended against by reviews of the MMP environment. It is widely hated by electors and in fact it brings democracy into disrepute and that is a bad thing because democracy is such an important thing but none the less the National Party persists in supporting that rule. We have a member’s bill to close that loophole and the bill has been drawn from the ballot. National has said it will not vote for it or advance it and the reason for that is that National does deals such as the deal it did with John Banks. It is strange though that National backed him. You would think that this was the party of fiscal rectitude—this was John Banks who on the record had tripled council debt when he was last mayor. So he is hardly a fiscal conservative—this was all about political advantage.So we then come to the “tea tapes”. I was there on the day; the media tipped me off. I was standing in the electorate. I went along to the cafe. The whole thing was a stunt—everyone knows that. There were about 40 journalists there with cameras clicking away. They had an interview with John Key and John Banks and John Key told people they should vote ACT and not for Paul Goldsmith in the local electorate. Then they had a staged cup of tea behind some glass with 40 cameras there. It was a publicity stunt—it was public. Ambrose the photographer left on the table a container that was a recording device that uploaded automatically from his camera. He did not know it was operating according to what he said and he got back to the office and he found that he had audio of the conversation between Banks and Key. Key then called in the police in order to use that against the media during an election. He used the power of the State against the media during an election caused a week of controversy which suited him because he was the centre of attention for a week and then at the end of it the police did not prosecute but John Key deemed the photographer to be guilty. That is what John Key said—he deemed him to be guilty despite the fact he always had two defences: one that it was inadvertent—if you believe what he says and I have no reason to doubt him—and two that it was a public event. There was no way a court was ever going to convict that journalist for what happened because it was a publicity stunt gone wrong.So here we have it. After that John Banks came in here and it is found out that he lied about his donations. I can say that—he lied about his donations. It is true and I can say that and that will forever be to his shame. He pretended that he could not remember a helicopter trip to Dotcom’s mansion. He pretended that he had not asked for the cheques to be split into two amounts so it was less obvious. He pretended that he did not know of the donations and none of those lies—because they were lies—were believed by the court. John Key knew this at the time because it was set out in the witness statements that were produced by the police but he refused to read them. He did not want to know because it did not suit his political imperative which was to keep John Banks’ vote in this House.Hon Trevor Mallard: So he wouldn’t know he was a liar.Hon DAVID PARKER: That is right. He refused to look at the facts that showed John Banks to be a liar. We have seen other instances of that with Peter Dunne and the Government Communications Security Bureau fiasco. We have seen other acts of unprincipled behaviour by John Key and the National Party.This is yet another reminder as to why MMP needs to be changed to remove the single-seat lifeboat. The Rt Hon Winston Peters agrees with this. The Green Party agrees with this. The Rt Hon Winston Peters even though it is not in his interests to have a 5 percent threshold says we should keep the threshold at 5 percent and not have the single-seat lifeboat for the likes of John Banks. Mr Peters is a man of principle. So is the Green Party and so are we. We could all seek electoral advantage from this but none of the other parties does. The Rt Hon Winston Peters recognises that the threshold is appropriate to keep out the loony parties essentially which have very little support but could distort Parliament which is exactly what John Banks has done for the last 3 years and it is a shameful stain upon our Parliament that the police did not prosecute.The police did not prosecute. They were happy to deem Ambrose guilty but they would not prosecute John Banks. They did not prosecute John Banks. The police were politicised by—Hon Christopher Finlayson: That’s a disgraceful allegation.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well it is absolutely disgraceful that the Prime Minister used the police against the media during an election and then deemed Ambrose guilty when he would never have been convicted. This is a stain upon this House. We ought to be criticising John Banks. We ought to be criticising the things that led to this not being brought to a head many years earlier. Effectively the Government has got away with it. The Government has got away with it. For 3 years it was able to close its eyes to what was an obvious rorting of the system. It is just that John Banks was convicted albeit it is sad.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):We are having this debate today because John Banks has effectively been found to be lying about a donation to a political party or rather to himself as part of a local body election. He hid the source of the donation. The reason why that is important is that if our democracy is to be protected it is important that there is transparency about the money that goes to politicians and political parties. That is one of the founding principles of electoral finance rules and all the rules we have around our democracy to try to protect it from the influence of money. What John Banks did is he took donations—large donations—and he lied about them in his donations return in order to try to cover up the source of the donations. Gerry Brownlee has got up in this House and said he thinks John Banks is an honourable man in spite of this. I think it is extraordinary that the Government the National Party—and I assume Gerry Brownlee represents the National Party—thinks it is an honourable thing to do to break the electoral finance laws because that is what John Banks did. He broke one of the founding laws that protect our democracy from the influence of money because it requires political parties and politicians to tell the public within certain rules who gave them the money. That is important.If you think about what the Government does—what does it do day in and day out? It spends $60 million to $70 billion of public money. It makes a whole bunch of rules that have a huge influence on what happens in our society who can make money who cannot and how they do it. So we want to know who is giving money to political parties so that we can see whether those political parties are influenced by those donations. What John Banks did is circumvent those founding electoral finance laws in order to hide the source of the donations. That is why he has had to leave Parliament after the matter has gone to court. You pointed out Mr Assistant Speaker that he has not had a conviction registered against him yet but he has lost the case and the judge will make a decision shortly. That is why Mr Banks had to leave Parliament—because he broke those laws.The National Party has come out in this debate and said that Mr Banks is an honourable man. I think it tells you a lot about the values of the National Party that its members seem to think it is OK to break electoral finance laws and that you are still an honourable person even if you get forced out of the House when you break electoral finance laws.Hon Christopher Finlayson: How’s Jolyon White?Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Chris Finlayson is speaking out about it but Gerry Brownlee just stood up in this House and said that Mr Banks is an honourable man even though Mr Banks has just been proven to have lied in his donations return and to have hidden the source of the money that was funding his campaign. That is pretty shocking from this Government. I think it says a lot about the values of this Government.John Key of course is implicated in this up to his eyeballs because it was John Key who gifted the seat of Epsom to John Banks in the first place. John Key failed in his duty as Prime Minister when he failed to look at the evidence that was mounting around John Banks the evidence that John Banks had broken the electoral finance law and the evidence that John Banks had been lying. Mr Key of course is on the record in relation to a whole different issue during the Privileges Committee in 2008 which was a very high-profile issue involving Mr Peters and many others when he called on Prime Minister Helen Clark to stand Mr Peters down saying that that was what he would do if he were Prime Minister. Well where are the standards? That is what Mr Key said back in 2008. Then when Mr Banks was found very clearly to have broken the law Mr Key did not even want to look at the police report. He was faced with a very similar situation he would not act and he would not enforce those standards.What I want to draw attention to today are all the bills that have been passed in this House because of the vote of the disgraced John Banks. There is now a series of laws in New Zealand on the statute book only because of the disgraced vote of a disgraced MP who broke the campaign finance laws before he came to this place. Before he even got here he had broken the campaign finance laws and he should never have been in Parliament. Because of that one vote—that dodgy vote that John Key organised with the dodgy deal in Epsom—a series of laws was passed. There was an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act that made it easier to mine our conservation land. Thank you John Banks and the National Party. That amendment undermines the ability of the Minister of Conservation to carry out the protection and preservation of our conservation estate and it gave the Minister of Energy and Resources input into the decisions on mining on conservation land. It also undermined the right of New Zealanders to protest. That was in the Anadarko amendment which restricts people’s protests at sea and criminalises protests at sea. That law exists on the statute book only because of the vote of John Banks the man who should never have been in this Parliament and who broke campaign finance rules before he even stepped back in here again. It was his vote that delivered that law.Then we had the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill which not only brought back youth rates but extended them to 18 and 19-year-olds. It overturned all the hard work done by the Greens unions and others working with Labour when it was in Government in getting rid of youth rates in 2008. This law is a clear discrimination on the basis of age. That law only got through on the single vote of the disgraced MP John Banks. It would never have happened if John Banks had not been here. There was the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill—Tau Henare’s bill—which was a solution looking for a problem. The Mixed Ownership Model Bill which is the partial privatisation of electricity companies is perhaps the most destructive legacy of this Government. That bill got through by only a single vote and that was the vote of the disgraced MP John Banks a man who should never have been in this Parliament. The Government even used the vote of John Banks to help pass the Skycity legislation despite the fact that Skycity was involved in Mr Banks’ court case.The fact that Parliament ended up passing these controversial bills and that the National Government was happy to rely on the vote of John Banks to pass all of these controversial bills tells you everything about the values of the National Government. The Prime Minister had a police report sitting on his desk that told the truth about John Banks and the Prime Minister refused to open and read that police report because he knew that if the truth came out Mr Banks would be kicked out of Parliament and Mr Key would not be able to pass all of these pieces of legislation through our House because he would not be able to rely on the disgraced vote of the disgraced MP John Banks. That is the reality of what has happened in this Parliament.It is time to clean up the donations regime and the campaign finance rules. It was important that John Banks got caught and it was important that he got prosecuted and good on Mr McCready. It would not have happened had he not done it because of course the police did not pursue the case but it was a pretty cut and dried case as it turned out. But we do need to clean up the rules. We need to clean up campaign finance rules around donations and spending caps non-party party election activities and the partial public funding of political parties. We also need to look at whether the current set up—the electoral agencies—should be able to enforce campaign finance rules because one of the things we discovered of course was that the police do not seem to want to prosecute these cases which in this case was a pretty straightforward case.Of course this also goes back to amending MMP. We just had a referendum on MMP and the people of New Zealand wanted to keep it by a majority but they also wanted to reform it. The independent umpire went away and made a series of recommendations about how we could fix the anomalies around MMP which is the coat-tailing rule in exchange for lowering the threshold to 4 percent. There were a number of other amendments proposed by the Electoral Commission. The party that blocked progress on reforming MMP was the National Party. The other parties in this House would have been able to deliver a 75 percent majority in order to fix the one thing that everyone was concerned about in MMP which was the coat-tailing rule. The independent umpire the Electoral Commission recommended that we change the coat-tailing rule and lower the threshold to 4 percent and the National Party blocked the progress of it. That is just the facts. The National Party wants to abuse that rule in Epsom with ACT and John Banks as we saw and with others. MMP is a great system but like all good systems it needs to be improved. The independent umpire gave Parliament a series of improvements that it could make and the National Party blocked making progress on those improvements which actually would have led to a better and fairer electoral system.As Andrew Geddis said the National Party is acting in manifest bad faith regarding electoral reform. That is because it is acting in its own petty political vested interest rather than acting for the country as a whole in order to improve our electoral system as the independent umpire the Electoral Commission recommended to this Parliament and the other parties around here except the National Party which blocked progress on implementing the recommendations of that independent umpire. That is why we need to actually implement those recommendations. When there is change of Government in September this year we will implement the recommendations of the Electoral Commission.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First):The ACT Party’s recent affair is a long-running saga of political sleaze double talk and cant unparalleled by any party in this country’s history. The National Party can smile. The National Party can laugh but I know what happened here. John Banks took legal advice. It was wrong and he should have turned away from it when he determined that that was the case having looked at the charges against him and sadly he has wrecked his career. But he should have known this from the start. The ACT Party was no party to join in the first place. Finally justice has prevailed and it should be without any thanks to the Prime Minister of this country. The Prime Minister you know has no knowledge of electoral law he has no view that it is a cornerstone of our democracy and if electoral law can be flouted and manipulated with apparent ease what sort of country would New Zealand finally become?Right now as we know next week the Conservative Party is going to launch its campaign in East Coast Bays. Tell me when are we going to learn about the sleazy deal that is going to happen there? As it has for the ACT Party as it has for United Future and sadly as it has for the Māori Party which has destroyed all reason for special seats for Māoridom if that is the way it is going to construct its politics. The whole integrity of our system is put at risk. The law is the law and the Prime Minister seems oblivious to why we have electoral law.This party has faced these accusations in the past. I want to remind members that in 2008 it was the ACT Party and the United Future offshoot that brought charges against New Zealand First for funds for an electoral petition—not a campaign but for an electoral petition—as to who was the right member of Parliament for a seat called Tauranga. The accusations you know went to the police the Serious Fraud Office and the Electoral Commission and all turned out to be doughnuts—nothing—but the National Party did not stop did it? No no it had a Privileges Committee hearing—a total kangaroo court—and sort of said: “We’ll hang him in the morning but before that we’ll give him a trial.”I want to remind those members and most of all the member who is the Attorney-General because he is meant to be an expert in law that if he goes to the three drafts from that commissioned report—Hon Christopher Finlayson: They’re a great Privileges Committee.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —no do not mumble—the three drafts of that committee all have this statement. Those three final drafts said that should Winston Peters have won the case in Tauranga then he would have pecuniary interests because he would become the MP with all the extra additional electorate funding. Look at the three drafts it is all there.I called up the clerk of the committee—knowing full well that the chairman was Simon Power a lawyer; they had an adviser Stephen Kós who is now Justice Kós a lawyer; and the committee clerk was a lawyer—and I said to her: “I cannot believe with all the lawyers on that committee and your legal advice that you don’t understand the law because it is not going to be one MP out another MP in. No it is a by-election and an extra cost to the member. So how can they possibly allege pecuniary interests?”.Look at the final draft. Out comes that clause—it said that he still had pecuniary interests and it applied it retrospectively. I know when politics stinks and we came back from that because a lot of people in this country—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Ha ha!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No Mr Finlayson they do not think it is a joke. They know that parts of our system are rotten. Despite that New Zealand First still said that we should keep the 5 percent threshold and that we should get rid of the coat-tailing provisions and that is the way we should run our democracy under MMP not pervert and distort it at every move. What did Mr Key say back then? Before the committee even had the inquiry he said: “He doesn’t meet my standards.” He had not heard any evidence of course. No no he believed Owen Glenn although I demolished 32 statements that Mr Glenn had made. I demolished 31 but could not find the phone accounts in 4 days as the committee was demanding.It is rotten but we are back and we are never going to forget it Mr Finlayson because your party used the whole system in a kangaroo court in a majority report and who were the strongest proponents? The ACT Party the Māori Party and United Future all stood there in condemnation. So if you think we are going to forget that—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —then you are dreaming. No no no you will not forget it Mr Assistant Speaker because the law is the law. I say again look at those three drafts which all make the allegation of pecuniary interest. It becomes demolished by the—Hon Anne Tolley: Move on.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh “Move on.” Oh of course she says: “Move on.” because she is the Minister of Police. Why she is the Minister of Police is beyond me because she does not understand the law. I saw her the other day helping a member of Parliament and boy she is going to be embarrassed by that as these facts are unfolding. It just shows why she is so unqualified to be the Minister of Police. And the Minister of Justice as well was doing the same thing as was the head of the Māori Affairs Committee Tau Henare. There is a day of reckoning—Hon Anne Tolley: All right. Rave on. You’re good at making accusations but you never actually prove them.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh no you will make my day. I will not be making yours of that you can be sure. It is no use shouting out here. The point is that it is sleaze to think that you can organise all these arrangements before the election prop up the guy in Epsom prop up the guy in Ōhariu maybe prop up the Māori Party—although it is wasting its time there—and last of all do a deal with someone who says: “There is such a great demand for our brand of politics that we need a ladder from the National Party.” Unbelievable. And that is the reason why MMP will soon sort itself out. It is because the public are wising up to this.But what I want to ask the National Party is this: why did it apply such duplicitous standards in the case of Mr Banks? Why did the Prime Minister say: “I am not going to read the police report.”? Next question: “Why not?”. Answer: “Because I trust Mr Banks.” Likewise do you remember when it came to the allegations about Mr Peter Dunne—whose speech today I mean I could not believe this. I thought: “This guy is going to get struck by lightning very shortly. He is seriously going to get struck by lightning because he is talking about integrity and honour in politics.” And what did Mr Key say about the leak in respect of the Government Communications Security Bureau report? He said: “I would like to believe him.”—“I would like to believe him.” Then he went and suddenly he found a renewed belief because Mr Dunne came back and he is back now as a Minister. He leaked State secrets four times.This Prime Minister has got standards that are so low they could parachute out of the bottom of a snake on issues like this. That is how bad it is. No do not frown. Out there there are tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of National Party people who in a recent poll said that they find all of this business so distasteful but those members will not be making allegations about New Zealand First receiving money for campaign funding will they? No the National Party is so bad that to get round the electoral law it had an auction to play a game of golf against the world’s most famous golfer—John Key—and up gets an Oravida man who pays $53000 to play a game of golf against John Key. How do you like that? Naked venal sleazy underhand—Melissa Lee: Because they won’t pay to play with you mate.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What did you say there the woman over there who made that statement?Melissa Lee: I said they won’t pay to play a game with you. That’s why you’re jealous.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No nobody tries to play a game with New Zealand First. Do you know why? We have got honour. We have principles. We stand for them. Out there in New Zealand there are hundreds of thousands of people who are telling me that they seriously want us back in big numbers in 2014 and yes one-third of them happen to be National supporters. Oh that took the smile off their faces. I have got great news for them. In 21 years this party called New Zealand First has never engaged in this sleazy coat-tailing coathanger deal - type of behaviour—21 years. It is the only immutable honourable party in this respect.Hon Christopher Finlayson: 1999.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What was the deal we did in 1999? Remind me Mr Finlayson. Remind me. What was the deal in 1999? Oh he has gone silent. Just makes an allegation off the top of his head opens up his mouth lets the wind blow his tongue around and he cannot sheet home the allegation. He is meant to be a lawyer. He tells us he is the best one Parliament has ever seen—the best one Parliament has ever seen. But when he is asked the simple question: “What was the deal that New Zealand First did in 1999?” he has gone strangely silent. Not a mutter not a murmur not a syllable not a sound.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Hey what was the deal that brought Denis O’Rourke in here? Tell us about Denis.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh and they made the allegations of course about Mr O’Rourke to the media and guess who got nailed? The National Party member over there—the National Party member over there the recently imported one. Poor old Claudette she got nailed. The allegation was against my member. Let me be honest. I thought: “We’re not taking that sort of thing in this campaign. I know someone who is doing just that. Her name is Claudette. I’ll tell the media.” and the rest is history.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member must use—Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Thank you very much—I know I know I know. But you see somebody over there wanted an example. Mr Coleman—again tongue engaged before brain—and now he has found out again.Hon Members: Dr Coleman.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh Dr Coleman. Well if that is the case it is the Rt Hon Winston Peters to you then sunshine. I am sorry for John Banks. I personally am because I—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Oh yeah right!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No no hang on a minute. John asked me—or at least his team did—whether I would bear witness in his case. I did not say no. That is a fact because I think he was badly advised by the lawyers. But my real point is that he exposed the National Party for what it is—a shadow of its former self.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police):I stand in this House to support the motion in front of us today—which we might have all forgotten after that tirade—that we do not have a by-election in the Epsom electorate. Following the court judgment and of course the resignation of the Hon John Banks from this House that makes eminent sense because if the normal processes were followed we could expect to see a by-election held in Epsom probably in early August some time around 2 or 3 August.I believe there are three good reasons why we should not be doing that. First of all that by-election would have to be held on the old boundaries. As we all know the boundaries have changed and that would be very confusing to the electors. Secondly it would be less than 2 months out from a general election and of course the House would have risen so you would be electing someone to come when there was nowhere to go and it would all be a bit outrageous. Most important of all it is an enormous waste of taxpayers’ money—almost a million dollars to run a by-election. In fact I think Christchurch East cost about $870000. So the motion in front of us today is the right one and I am sure that this House will have the sense to vote for it.I would like to say that I want to recognise the contribution by the Hon John Banks. He gave almost four decades of service both in local government and in Parliament and of course he was the Minister of Police. I have a special place for him because he had been the Minister of Police for only about a month when we had the Aramoana massacre. Of course people remember that that was by a 33-year-old unemployed man who shot and killed 13 people in the very small township of Aramoana. The first police respondent on the scene who was subsequently shot was of course Sergeant Stewart Guthrie. That was a tragedy for the police force for New Zealand and for that small township of course which would take many many years to recover. I think everyone in this House can appreciate the difficulty of being a Minister at a terrible time like that.I just want to make the point that somebody said earlier that the Hon John Banks had to resign. Of course he did not have to. He could have stayed here right until Parliament rose but he actually chose to do the right thing. He did the honourable thing by resigning and I think that that deserves some recognition. He was a good man and he did good for a lot of people and that needs to be remembered. Our Prime Minister John Key said I think today actually that politics is all about trust. Well Banksie realised that he had lost that trust and he went.There are others in this House who need to take a lesson from him. It is very easy to stand and be all holier than thou but actually you have got to be aware of history. So speaking of trust—and I will come back to David Cunliffe in a minute because at the moment trust and David Cunliffe are interposed and intertwined in people’s minds. I want to talk about another sort of trust. I want to talk about the trust we must have as legislators in our very excellent police here in New Zealand and our very excellent justice system. We are envied by countries around the world for both our police service and our justice system. This National Government this John Key - led Government trusts the police to use their independence wisely. We trust them to do that and to make their decisions independently from any politics and any politicians. We trust them to do that. The police deal with around 140000 prosecution cases every year—140000. So this Government trusts that they have expert advice whether it is in-house or whether they seek that from other places—legal advisers who will give them good advice on cases that might be simple or that might be sensitive or indeed complex cases.Actually the Opposition over there does not have that trust. Andrew Little was very quick off the mark and he publicly called for an independent high-powered inquiry into not just this case but the way that politically charged cases are handled.Hon Members: There is one.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes there is. Why did Andrew Little not just say “The Independent Police Conduct Authority should have a look at this and I am going to refer the case to them.” He could have said that but he did not. He said “We want an independent high-powered inquiry into politically charged cases.” You have to ask whether that would then have included David Cunliffe’s illegal tweet on the by-election day in Christchurch. Should that have been investigated by an independent investigator? Would it include perhaps the Labour Party’s illegal use of taxpayers’ money on electioneering with its pledge card? David Parker talked in this House earlier about the abuse of the Electoral Act. That was the major abuse so should there be a high-powered independent inquiry into those sorts of breaches? Would it also include events leading up to the resignation of the Labour MP Darren Hughes? Should that have gone to an independent high-powered inquiry?You tread very carefully when you start making statements about what the police should do and what the police should not do and who should be looking over their shoulders because we have good systems and this Government respects them. It is very clear that the people sitting on those Opposition benches do not because of the very—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but we have members who do not have the floor interjecting on each other which is out of order.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: My point is that members on that side of the House have made very serious allegations about police behaviour and they need to be very careful because—I think someone has already said it in this House—people who throw stones should not be standing in glass houses. Andrew Little went on to say that those charged with upholding the integrity of the electoral system need to be willing to account where necessary and to prove that they were independent of Ministers but clearly that is not needed when it concerns Labour MPs.Speaking again of trust Jacinda Ardern then got involved. She not only questioned the processes used by police; she questioned their decision making and the decisions they had reached. She worked with the police union trying to link police decisions with funding. Of course the police’s response to that was “We can however say that suggestions that resourcing issues meant police did not seek a Crown Law opinion are absolute nonsense.” It is the police saying that not me: “absolute nonsense”. It did not stop her; she went on. But I have to say why would the police trust either of those two MPs or in fact David Parker?Really for the whole Labour Opposition sitting across the House here to interfere with the police independent prosecutorial role—because its members have already suggested that the police got it wrong that they know better than the police and therefore we need an independent high-level investigation into any of those politically charged events. Just because an MP is being investigated or a politician is being investigated it does not mean that other politicians should get involved in the process. This Government believes in the police. They have the duty of care and they have to take the responsibility.If politics is all about trust and I think that was a very very good saying from the Prime Minister this morning then today’s revelations show that really we cannot trust—nobody can trust—this Labour Opposition. David Cunliffe either told a lie or did not actually care enough about a constituent. This was a constituent who came to him for help. It is unbelievable to me that David Cunliffe who has been in Parliament since 1999 does not have a record in his office of the constituents for whom he advocates. We know he advocates because Sue Moroney earlier on talked about how he had advocated—Hon Member: Have you got all your records going back 15 years?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: You can dance on the head of a pin but I have heard members in this House accuse various people of advocating on behalf of constituents. In fact a Minister lost his job when all he did was write a letter. That quite clearly was not advocating but he fell on his sword because he knew he had lost trust. So be careful again about—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister but her time has expired.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I am going to slightly divert at the start from what I was going to say to answer the allegations that the Hon Anne Tolley has made with regard to the role of the police in this matter. The police got it wrong. The police have accepted they got it wrong. David Carruthers is investigating it. The Minister of Police has got to stop defending the indefensible. This is not a general criticism of the police but I think there is a specific criticism in this case—they did not do what they should have done where there is a marginal case of this sort as they thought. They did not refer it to the Crown Law Office in the way that was appropriate and in the way that would have been an appropriate protection for them. But that matter is now being investigated by David Carruthers.I do want to make some comments about John Banks and say that frankly I have found over the years John Banks to be a mixed bag. In the mid-1980s when I was advocating for homosexual law reform there was not one more rabid person in the House on that issue than John Banks. He was absolutely awful. He was shocking. He was rude. He was obscene. He was offensive in this House and outside the House. But what I want to say is that over the years after that he grew. He began to understand the issues. He began to have some compassion and understanding in the area to the point where he voted for the marriage equality legislation last year.I just want to say that I admire him. It is sometimes easier for those of us who generally have been liberal on issues to stay being liberal than it is for people who have had deep convictions to move from those convictions to what he considered in the end was a point of principle. I also want to say that I very much appreciate the leadership he has taken in the last year or so around the awful legislation that the Hon Peter Dunne was in charge of around legal highs and in particular the leadership he has taken with regard to the position of animals being experimented on. I think that without his support we would not have been able to make the changes that we have and I want to acknowledge Mr Banks for that and to say thank you.I also want to say that his judgment has never been brilliant and in this particular area he made a very fundamental error in that he trusted Michelle Boag. Michelle Boag designed for him a system to cut donations into $25000 chunks and thereby pretend that they were anonymous. The Dotcom one is one where there has been a lot of publicity but those were not the only two $25000 cheques that were donated into this campaign. That system was designed by a fund-raiser with enormous experience in fund-raising for the National Party and hiding that money—Michelle Boag.One of the questions that I think David Carruthers and other people who are reviewing this case should look at is whether a case should be reopened in this area whether in fact Michelle Boag is an accessory to John Banks’ electoral fraud and whether she has herself committed a crime. That is something that I hope is covered in one of the reports that are going to be considered.I also say that although John Banks has moved from very conservative to quite liberal in a number of areas I just think it is awful that he is leaving the ACT Party to a leader who is promoting incest. I mean it is just awful that John Banks having come to a point of principle is leaving a party that will have “Duelling Banjos” as its theme tune for the next election. I think the idea that a deal will be done whereby Paul Goldsmith continues not to run in Epsom and we will have the third failure—we have had Rodney Hide we have had John Banks and we now have a new ACT person who I am sure will be a failure as well in that area—is very sad.I do want to make clear that I have an interest in this matter. It was my letter of 23 April 2012 to Bruce Thomas who was the electoral officer at the Auckland Council that kicked off the series of investigations into John Banks. The original complaint contrasted the comment from Skycity that it had donated to both campaigns with the fact that Mr Banks did not declare. I did that on 23 April 2012 and I followed it up on 30 April because following the publicity around it which flowed from my letter Kim Dotcom made some public comments which I then added and Mr Thomas made a quick and a proper decision to refer the matter to the police.The police for reasons that I cannot work out decided that instead of getting one of their legal experts or one of their leading investigators from head office to deal with it or even from Auckland they would get a Canterbury police officer a detective superintendent based in Christchurch to investigate this matter. That to me was I think to say the least surprising. Peter Read who was at the time Detective Superintendent Southern was the person who was responsible for the egregious error in this case. I think it is quite sad that that occurred.The Labour Party will not force a by-election in the Epsom electorate. It is just not in the public interest to have someone elected to Parliament when the first time that they could come to the Parliament would be after the Parliament has dissolved. That is something that is just silly. It is senseless and it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. We will not support that.What has come out of this though is a lot of focus on the manipulation of the system that is occurring on the part of the National Party with regard to MMP. I just want to say to members opposite that in the end the public will get sick of it. They will get sick of the National Party saying that it does not matter whether Peter Dunne leaks State secrets—vote for him anyway—and it does not matter in Epsom.It appears that someone is sharpening the rusty screwdriver for Murray McCully so that he cuts his arm off because that is what he said he would do before he gave up the seat to Colin Craig. The point I make is that I want to see people with integrity people like Kelvin Davis who say they are not match fixers. They are not going to rort the system. When the Labour Party runs in a seat it runs in a seat. It does not run in a seat and say “Don’t vote for me.” Although I will say as a final comment that I hope that Holly Walker when she comes to speak in Hutt South says the party vote is the most important. Thank you very much.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):I just want to take a brief call because some very serious allegations have been made about the course of this prosecution and I think it is incumbent on me as the senior law officer of the Crown to make a few comments about that because they are serious allegations and this is a very serious matter. I support the motion for all the reasons that other members have referred to. We are very close to a general election. By-elections cost a great deal of money. For example the Te Tai Tokerau one a couple of years ago is an example of where someone put the State to a lot of money to prove some principle to himself but not many other people.I too want to say something about Mr Banks. I wish him all the best for the future. It has been a humiliating period for him made doubly worse this afternoon I am sure by the prospect of him having to listen to and be lectured on bad judgment by someone like Mr Mallard whose entire career or indeed entire life has been characterised by misjudgments. That is the person who was convicted of common assault for I think it was said to be punching Mr Henare in the House but my understanding was that it was more a sort of adolescent slap. But be that as it may it was one of a number of convictions—Hon Trevor Mallard: He went down.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: His head went down—oh yeah right! This is the person who used to do girly weights at Bodyworks with Chris Carter lecturing people on manliness. Oh he is back—he is back.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did do weights occasionally but I did not get my trainer to carry my drink bottle and towel like that member did.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I will have a bicep competition with that member any day.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sure that will read well in Hansard.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Anyway getting away from Mr Mallard’s lack of biceps and coming to the real issue I think we need to take the House very carefully through what happened in the course of this matter. First an important starting point as the member for Rongotai Annette King will know is the Policing Act which she was responsible for when she was Minister of Police and section 16(2). It makes it very clear—very clear—that the commissioner must act independently of any Minister of the Crown in relation to the enforcement of the law in any particular instance in particular in the investigation and the prosecution of offences. The law makes it clear that these cannot be political decisions. Some of the allegations that have been made over the last few weeks have suggested that it has got close to a political decision which is a grotesque allegation in our democracy.So what happened was that a complaint was laid with the police regarding Mr Banks’ electoral return. The police investigated and in July 2012 they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to consider a prosecution under the Local Electoral Act 2001. Then Mr McCready brought a private prosecution in the Wellington District Court after the police decided not to press charges. This private prosecution was brought by Mr McCready. It came before a number of judges including Judge Gittos who decided that there was sufficient evidence to commit Mr Banks to trial and then the Solicitor-General the junior law officer of the Crown—utterly independently of anything to do with me—took over the prosecution and instructed an independent Queen’s Counsel to conduct the prosecution. The key point is that at each juncture the justice system has worked according to proper process.That is all that can be said because the decision in relation to the police is before Sir David Carruthers and I would caution members not to get too far into that material. But I thought that given some of the frankly scurrilous allegations that have been made about political interference and so on it was important to bring those salient matters to the attention of the House. It could well be that there should be a mature discussion next year in the context of the review of the electoral laws about whether or not there should be an independent political prosecutor.I would be very keen to engage in that discussion with the Labour Party members but I would say to them with respect and affection to be careful what you wish for. Because for example in 2006 the police investigated the Labour Party’s pledge card and leaflet and established that there was sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case in relation to an offence under the Electoral Act but they let the party off with a warning. In 2008 the police investigated a Labour Party pamphlet that was found by the Electoral Commission to breach the Electoral Act. They exercised their discretion and did not bring charges. In 2011 the Electoral Commission again referred the Labour Party’s electoral propaganda to the police and Mr Robertson said the party had taken the view that the flyer was not an election advertisement. In 2011 the Labour campaign manager and former Minister Jim Anderton was referred to the police by the Electoral Commission. The police exercised their discretion and no charges were laid. In 2013 the Labour leader David Cunliffe decided to test the law by tweeting an encouragement to vote on the day of a by-election. No charges were laid despite Mr Cunliffe’s admission of responsibility and an apology.I have to say I have got no particular problem with any of those decisions. The police were operating independently. They looked at the matter exercised discretion and decided not to prosecute. Last year again—and this was not an Electoral Act matter—Mr Goff breached a suppression order in a coronial inquiry. He was let off with a warning although other citizens have been prosecuted for doing exactly the same thing. And of course I say to Holly Walker there is Jolyon White the social justice coordinator for the Anglican diocese in Christchurch who was investigated. It still remains an open investigation so one should be careful with what one says about vandalising all the National Party billboards and breaching the Electoral Act. The police are independently looking at that matter without fear or favour.So maybe we do need to have a discussion about an independent electoral prosecutor. As I said if I am privileged enough to be back here after 20 September I certainly would contend for that. But I would say to the Labour Party to be very very careful. Be careful what you wish for because that party’s record is not all that flash. There is one party whose name is constantly being referred to the police for breaches of the Electoral Act and that is the Labour Party. I remind the House that it was a Labour candidate Mr Singh who was sentenced earlier this year for his involvement in a case of electoral fraud where unbelievably he registered 51 votes at the same address in the 2010 super-city elections. Of course we all know about Mr Phillip Field but out of compassion and charity I am not going to say anything about him. He has left this place. He cannot answer for himself here and I think that some of the purple prose placed in the direction of Mr Banks this afternoon was pretty unfortunate to say the least.So let us have that discussion next year. These are important issues. Let us have a principled discussion over these things in the context of the Electoral Act. I simply say to the Labour Party that it is time to get off the flea-bitten old nag because when all is said and done it is that party whose record over the years has caused so many complaints to the police.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):The Labour Party is of course supporting this motion. We do not believe that there should be a by-election held at this time so close to the general election. As other speakers have pointed out anyone who is actually elected in any by-election would not be able to take up their seat in this House at all. Also I do not think that the people of Epsom should be put through the charade that National puts them through every election again and again. We have already heard from David Parker about the sight of Paul Goldsmith pulling his own electorate hoardings out of the ground trying desperately to stop people from voting for him. The people of Epsom do not need that. We have already seen in this period leading up to the election in 2014 that Paul Goldsmith will not show up to debates and that Michael Wood the very excellent Labour candidate in the Epsom electorate has provided for the people of Epsom a substitute in the form of a bag of flour. That bag of flour is making some great comments compared with Mr Goldsmith recently and that is what National puts the people of Epsom through.I do on that note want to say that I think that National members are coming across the “three strikes and you’re out” law for themselves. They might want to make the people of Epsom go through the farce of an election where they do not want their candidate to win they might want the people of Ōhāriu to have to keep voting for Peter Dunne despite all of the murk and mess around what has happened to him in this term but if they try it on one more time in the East Coast Bays to get Colin Craig up and push Murray McCully out I predict that that will be “three strikes and you’re out” for manipulation of the electoral system by National. The people of New Zealand rightly have expected National to come forward with some changes to the MMP laws and rules because that is what the Electoral Commission got charged with doing. People worked very hard to produce a report which was then put back to the Minister of Justice Judith Collins who quite frankly did absolutely nothing to try to get the kind of cross-party support that would be required.The Minister did that deliberately because she did not want to face up to the fact that it is National that has twice now rorted the system—and I predict a third time. It will try to use the system in a way that goes against what New Zealanders believe is fair and right. In that Electoral Commission report there were recommendations that could have got broad-based support across this Parliament. The Labour Party has a member’s bill in the name of Iain Lees-Galloway to do away with the coat-tailing to reduce the threshold for entry of parties into Parliament and to help tidy up the MMP legislation which New Zealanders were promised in the wake of the referendum. This is what New Zealanders were promised in the wake of the referendum. Instead the very thing that brought John Banks to this Parliament the very deal that brought John Banks to this Parliament continues to be protected by National rather than be followed through on what the Electoral Commission asked and what New Zealanders were led to believe they would get. It would be a major stain on this system that we have now if National goes for three deals three cups of tea around the country—but I predict that is what it will do and I think it will suffer for that.I want to speak briefly about John Banks. I respect the fact that colleagues in this House who have known Mr Banks over a long period of time have said that they have mixed views about him. I do not actually have a particular desire to dance on his political grave. I will say this though. I have been prevented in this House from calling John Banks a liar because we have rules about the way we treat one another when we are members of Parliament. The problem we have had for nearly 2 years is that John Banks was lying. He lied to New Zealanders he lied to this House he lied to John Key and he lied to the police. That is what John Banks did and we have not been able to say that because he was in here so it is important to put that on record. This was not a pursuit of a matter of insignificance. This was the pursuit of a person who was a member of Parliament who has now been found guilty of electoral fraud.The reason why the maximum sentence for that crime is 2 years is because it is regarded as so serious. The reason why Mr Banks would inevitably have had to resign even though he has done it before a conviction has been entered is because of the length of the sentence. The length of the sentence has been set in law because this is an extremely serious matter. As MPs we all know that when we sign off on our returns after an election it is us who are responsible for them. We are the people who have to stand up and say to New Zealanders that we have followed the rules. John Banks did not. He broke the rules he knew that he broke the rules and that is why he has had to resign. Mr Banks called it a tragedy. I think it has had more elements of a farce than a tragedy to be honest with you. But the tragedy here is that the law was broken and the trust in all of us as politicians gets compromised when people do this. All of us—we know that. Everyone across the House knows that it ends up being a stain on all politicians and that is why it is good and right that this went through the process.I do want to comment briefly on the question of whether the police should have prosecuted this. Mr Finlayson in his list of what happened was factual but he paused at a point and that is the point at which the police decided not to prosecute. The police did not take advice from Crown Law about whether they should prosecute. They made that decision themselves. As Trevor Mallard has said they have acknowledged that decision was wrong it was incorrect and I welcome an Independent Police Conduct Authority investigation into this because anybody who looks at the facts of what happened in this case would have concluded that it should have gone through to prosecution and we look forward to the outcome of that.The person I want to talk about tonight is actually John Key because John Banks’ resignation should have come far far earlier in this process. In the judgment that was brought down on Mr Banks the concept of wilful blindness is the most important concept within that judgment and it is John Key’s wilful blindness that went on here. He deliberately hung on to John Banks to prop up his Government. John Key is on the record as saying he would do whatever it takes to be in Government. Well what it took was to cling on to somebody who he knew was not being upfront with New Zealanders who he knew was not telling the truth when he was being questioned about this. John Key has gone on the record and said that John Banks is a thoroughly honest man. Well the problem for John Key is that that has now been proven in a court to not be the case.John Key deliberately did not look into that. Day after day I stood up in this House and I asked John Key questions about the police report into this case and day after day John Key said he would not read that report. He refused to read the police report because he did not want to know what was in it. That is the kind of wilful blindness that this Prime Minister is now becoming known for. That is the kind of approach that he said he would not do. He said he would lift the standards of ministerial behaviour and he has completely failed to do that. So John Banks should have resigned but he should have resigned a lot earlier.John Key actually said this. This is one of the answers he gave in the House to a question when we asked whether it was right that John Banks was still here. He said: “There is quite a wide definition of ethics. The test I have to apply is the law. I think he did exactly what he’d always said which was comply with the law.” If John Key had read the police report back in 2012 he would never have said that. He would never have said that because it simply was not borne out by the facts. The Cabinet Manual tells Ministers they must uphold the law act lawfully and behave in a way that upholds and is seen to uphold the highest ethical standards. For months and months in this House it was clear that John Banks had not done that and yet John Key refused to act. John Key refused to do anything to call him to account for what he had done.In November 2008 John Key said: “I expect high standards from my Ministers … if they don’t [meet these standards I set] then obviously I will take action …”. John Key did not do that. John Key hung on to John Banks for electoral convenience and that is a stain on his Government and on this whole House. John Banks has been found guilty of electoral fraud. He has resigned. He should have resigned earlier. The fact that he did not sits at the feet of John Key. The fact is that John Key was prepared to hold on to his slim majority in this House no matter what to pass legislation like the asset sales legislation and to pass legislation that was bad for New Zealand in the course of this—charter schools coming in. The one good thing is that we will not get the employment relations law passed because of that.There should not be a by-election in Epsom but this is not a happy day. This is a sad day because a member of Parliament has committed electoral fraud and National continues to stand for that kind of behaviour.HOLLY WALKER (Green):Well like the other parties that have spoken so far in this debate the Green Party will support the motion that no writ be issued for an Epsom by-election following the sad departure of Mr Banks. Like others we agree that it is in no one’s interests to have a by-election just 3 months out from an election with just 4 sitting weeks left in this term of Parliament.We do not want to waste taxpayers’ time and we do not want to waste taxpayers’ money with an unnecessary by-election at the same time as a general election campaign. It would be irresponsible to allow a by-election to go ahead. But of course plenty of taxpayers’ time and money have already been wasted in this sad affair. In fact you could argue that the past 3 years have been a complete waste of time and money for Epsom voters because they are ending this term of Parliament with no MP and for much of the term their representative was under a cloud after being charged with and eventually being found guilty of electoral fraud relating to donations he received before he even re-entered Parliament at the last election during his 2010 Auckland mayoral campaign.The unfortunate events resulting in Mr Banks being found guilty of electoral fraud are not good for this Parliament as we have just heard from the previous speaker Grant Robertson. It reinforces the perception many members of the public hold that Parliament is full of corruptible self-interested dishonest individuals and it does nothing to enhance the reputation of this institution. This case not only reflects on all of us here in this House in a poor light but also brings into question much of the legislation that has been passed in this term of Parliament.As my colleague and co-leader Dr Russel Norman noted in his earlier contribution in this debate the single-vote majority afforded to this National Government by Mr Banks has allowed this Government to pass 13 controversial bills by 61 to 60—a single-vote majority—during the current term of Parliament. Bearing in mind that the offence that Mr Banks has been found guilty of took place before this term of Parliament commenced I believe that that calls into question the legitimacy of that legislation. That legislation includes the legislation that allowed the sale of our State assets. It includes the legislation that returned us to the discriminatory system of paying a lower minimum wage to young workers. It includes legislation that removed protections from our conservation estate that gave the Minister for Economic Development decision-making power over our conservation estate and that restricted New Zealanders’ rights to protest at sea. These were controversial bills that were not supported by the majority of New Zealanders but they squeaked across the line in this House thanks to the vote of someone who has now been convicted of a dishonesty offence that took place before the commencement of this term of Parliament.That single vote is a vote that John Key was prepared to keep casting on behalf of Mr Banks. Even after the allegations were made public even after the police report was placed on John Key’s desk even after a private prosecution was taken and found to have merit even after the police belatedly took up the case and it was taken up by Crown Law and even after it was obvious that John Banks was going to stand trial in the dock for electoral fraud this Government and its leader John Key were perfectly happy to keep casting the vote of Mr Banks to pass legislation like those 13 controversial bills. And for a brief moment last week after the verdict in the case and before his advisers had got in his ear the Prime Minister was even prepared to keep casting John Banks’ vote for the remainder of this term of Parliament—before somebody had a quiet word and said it might be better for Mr Banks to simply go.So were it not for Mr Banks none of that legislation would have been passed. It should never have been passed and the fact that it did highlights how badly we need reforms to improve the transparency of both central government and local government and to tighten the rules on electoral donations particularly anonymous donations. The Green Party has a bill to do just that. It is our Local Electoral (Finance) Amendment Bill in the name of my colleague Denise Roche. That bill would bring the provisions for local elections into line with those for general elections when it comes to the declaration of donations when it comes to filing returns and when it comes to the limits for anonymous donations. It would lower the limits and bring those rules more into line. We went some way towards doing that earlier in this term of Parliament but we have not gone far enough and the case of Mr Banks in Epsom I think highlights exactly why that bill needs to be adopted and passed in this House.I also want to speak briefly about the implications of all of this for our electoral system MMP. The Green Party is supporting this motion not to have a by-election in Epsom because we do not want to waste taxpayers’ time and money. In many ways any election in Epsom is a waste of time and money because of the way that this Government has chosen to continually exploit the MMP electoral system. For the last several elections—and it looks like this year’s election is going to be no different—the National Party and the ACT Party have collaborated to attempt to exploit the coat-tailing provision where if a member wins a single seat their party’s party vote allows them to bring more MPs with them into Parliament in order to maximise the majority in Parliament for the National Government. That worked for them when Rodney Hide was the leader of the ACT Party in 2008. Because he won the seat he brought several MPs into Parliament with him. It did not work so well actually in 2011 because despite the sideshow that was the cup of tea in Epsom all we got was John Banks—thank goodness—and his single vote allowing National to govern and to pass the kind of legislation I talked about earlier. What it showed was that voters are absolutely sick of that coat-tailing provision being exploited in that way.The sideshow that was the cup of tea in Epsom was really the nail in the coffin I think in terms of the public’s opinion of that coat-tailing rule. So when we had the opportunity to review MMP because of the referendum and the review system that was set up as a result of a positive result in favour of keeping MMP at the referendum in 2011 voters spoke out in no uncertain terms saying that they would like to see that provision changed. In terms of the large amount of feedback that was received by the Electoral Commission in reviewing MMP the one-electoral-seat threshold was by far the one that received the most feedback and it was the clearest in terms of public opinion both in the polling that was undertaken and also in terms of the submissions received. Not only that but the members of the royal commission that recommended the introduction of MMP in the first place back in 1987 have subsequently said they feel that the introduction of the coat-tailing rule was their one mistake in the introduction of MMP. So there is a very very clear set of public opinion that that coat-tailing provision should no longer exist.Unfortunately though John Banks is not the only recent example of people trying to exploit that rule and there are new parties forming at the moment aiming to do the same thing. As the Green Party spokesperson for electoral reform I am extremely concerned that as a result of all of this our electoral system is becoming a political football. It never should be and it would not have been had the process that was set up following that referendum on MMP in 2011 been followed correctly. What happened was that a referendum was held and the public vote of 58 percent to retain MMP—because clearly people saw that it was a good system and that it should be retained—triggered a review process where changes could be made and where people could have their say on things like that coat-tailing provision the 5 percent threshold and a number of other aspects of the system.In good faith many thousands of members of the public engaged with that process thinking that this was their opportunity to make the changes to our electoral system that they wanted to see. Unfortunately after that process was completed—as Russel Norman mentioned in his contribution before—we got no further because the Minister of Justice sat on it for months and months and months until there was pretty much no time left in which to make the changes before the election. Then she announced she could not get the majority in Parliament that she needed to make those changes neglecting to mention that the only party that was not prepared to entertain those changes was her own party the National Party.What has happened since is that our electoral system has become a political football. We now have parties seeking to exploit the rules again. We also have parties seeking to change the rules in this House through members’ bills and through other proposals from outside Parliament to amend parts of the electoral system. We have parties taking different positions on different recommendations and I fear that this is going to continue and that the public’s confidence in our electoral system will continue to be eroded. What should have happened is that the Electoral Commission’s recommendations should have been adopted as a package. Until that happens unfortunately the sad case of Mr Banks simply continues to underline the fact that our electoral system has become a political football.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):The Labour Party supports the motion that is before the House today that no writ be issued for a by-election in the Epsom electoral district. We will not be party to forcing a by-election in this electorate because it is not in the public interest. We all know that we are very close to a general election and a by-election is unnecessary and would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. They are expensive and it would be seen by voters to be a frivolous political stunt and I think there have been far many of them already in the Epsom electorate. We would like to take the opportunity today in this debate to say to John Key that it is time that we did change the Electoral Act to stop the coat-tailing provision that enables parties like ACT to come in by winning a seat. It is time that we took these issues seriously instead of looking only at the close political advantage that might be gained from them.But I want to begin by saying that I think this is a very sad day in the New Zealand Parliament—a very sad day. It is a day when because of the actions of a member of this House we are debating not issuing a writ for a by-election. It has been caused by the conviction of a member of Parliament for electoral fraud. It is a sad day for John Banks and I feel sorry for him at a personal level. He is a man who has come from the school of hard knocks. He was brought up in a number of foster homes. He was pushed from pillar to post. He was estranged from his parents who spent much of their lives in and out of jail. He was a man who decided to make a better life for himself and his family. He pulled himself up and became the member of Parliament for Whangarei. He was proud to be a member of Parliament. He was proud to be the people’s representative as he used to say living in God’s own country. He became a Minister and he strutted his stuff as Minister of Police. He was very proud that he could pass the police fitness test—probably the only Minister of Police who has. He could be funny he could be outrageous he could be caring and he could be courageous.But he has been proven to be cunning to be conniving and to have been careless and in the end he was convicted. That is why we are here today debating this issue. So I feel sorry for him on a personal level but I feel sorry for this Parliament as well. None of us like to be here doing this. It is not the way to end a political career. Most of us would like to have the opportunity to stand before our colleagues and make a valedictory speech as many will come July. Some of us are sent to the wilderness for a short time when the voters vote us out; others end as John Banks has. Fortunately that is not very often. My cousin Christopher Finlayson when he went through the list and the litany of problems—always mentioning only the Labour Party—was generous enough to mention that probably there has been only one real fraud issue that of Phillip Field.So I think it is a sad day for this Parliament and I wish we did not have to do this. It is sad because the truth is that John Banks had been misleading this House for almost 2 years and a blind eye was turned to that. A blind eye was turned because when you look at the evidence that was provided from the witnesses it was as plain as the nose on one’s face that Mr Banks knew he had received anonymous donations. He had solicited anonymous donations from people he knew. It has been clear to many including Mr McCready who lives in my electorate and Mr Brooking that this member of Parliament was misleading the public and knew that he had got anonymous donations.The sadness is that the Prime Minister knew that as well. It was his job to uphold the highest standards. I have listened as we have gone through the list of members of Parliament who were Ministers who have lost their jobs under John Key and how he upholds the highest of standards. And I think in the beginning he did. I think in the beginning he wanted to show that he was upholding standards and was looking very carefully at how he managed his Cabinet. But as the years have gone by those standards have slipped and they slipped to the very bottom when it came to John Banks. John Key knew that John Banks had done wrong but John Key turned a blind eye because he needed that one discredited vote from the ACT Party. He needed it because he needed to pass legislation so he did not want to know that wrong had been done.I have to say that it is the sort of cynical manipulation of our democratic system that many of our old soldiers went to war to oppose. They do not like cynical manipulation of democratic systems but that is what has happened under the leadership of John Key. Let us have a look at what he has been saying about holding on to power. He does have his motto. He has said: “Whatever it takes.” That is what he has said. That is a quote—“Whatever it takes.” He said: “We are going to do what we practically can to … form the next Government”. That meant taking the vote of John Banks with a deal that was done over a cup of tea—a deal that has been discredited and criticised ever since. He was so desperate to do a deal then that he is prepared to continue in that vein at this next election. He is prepared to put aside the fact that in September 2012 Colin Craig a person he is going to do a deal with sent out 20000 leaflets in Mr Key’s own Helensville electorate telling the voters of Helensville not to vote for Mr Key because he was “too gay” to be their member of Parliament. That is a quote. That is a direct quote from Mr Colin Craig. I would be wondering whether I would want to do a deal with him. But the deal will be done just as it was with John Banks. So the sadness to me is that a blind eye was turned when it should have been investigated and action taken 2 years ago.We have had enough of those dodgy deals but they are going to happen again in this election. But what happened from that grubby deal and blind eye was that we had legislation passed with John Banks’ vote that many in New Zealand had opposed. The most obvious example is asset sales. Thousands of New Zealanders signed a petition against asset sales. The vote was so close in this House because many parties also opposed it. But with John Banks’ vote the Government was able to sell off our assets—a hugely unpopular policy. Of course it was sold to the public that they had given the Government a mandate to do it. Well I do not believe that when people vote they vote on just one thing; they vote on a number of things. There are some things they like and some things they do not like. For example they took the Prime Minister at his word that he would not increase GST but when he came into Government he did. But then they returned him to power 3 years later so they forgave him for that. So when the Government said it has a mandate to sell assets it did not listen to the voices of the people when it came to the oldest form of talking to the Government: a petition to this Parliament. The Government relied on the vote of John Banks.Another example is charter schools. I could go through a number of pieces of legislation passed over those 2 years with the vote of a person who has been convicted of electoral fraud and the National Party knew that 2 years ago.SUE MORONEY (Labour):It is a pleasure to take a call in this debate about whether we should have a by-election in Epsom given the resignation of John Banks. I think it is all about timing really is it not? This debate is all about timing because when these allegations first came to light if the police had prosecuted at that point then we would not be having a debate about whether to have a by-election; we would definitely be having one because it would have been around about 2 years ago that this would have all occurred. And then we would have had the prospect of trying to find out whether the National Party was going to stand a bag of flour whether it was going to stand a candidate or in fact what it would do in the case of a by-election for Epsom. Because the police chose not to and made a decision not to prosecute Mr Banks at that time we are instead here having this debate on this day where all the parties are agreeing that it actually would not be a good idea to have a by-election even though the disgraced MP has resigned because of the timing of this now. We are running hard up against a general election and everyone I think whom I have heard speak so far in the debate has seen the logic of not having a by-election at this particular point in time.But I think there are questions that remain around why that prosecution did not happen 2 years ago when it should have. My colleague Annette King is quite right—there are a number of pieces of legislation that have been to the detriment of the New Zealand public that would not have passed if John Banks’ vote had not been used to prop up those pieces of legislation. These are pieces of legislation that have not found favour with the public like the sale of our State-owned assets and pieces of legislation like charter schools. Just hearing Annette King speak about that reminded me that of course at the time when the charter schools legislation went through supported by John Banks’ one vote the Government was not really very upfront at that time and did not tell us that of course the students going to these charter schools would be funded at a much higher rate than children who are going through our State schooling system. I wonder had John Banks known that—or perhaps he did—whether he would have voted for that legislation and it may not have gone through anyway.Here we are some 18 months or 2 years on from when this debate could have been held about a by-election in Epsom when it would have been in a suitable time frame for exactly that course of action to be taken. Some many pieces of dreadful legislation later—propped up by John Banks who has now departed this place—and we are all saying that having a by-election would not be in the best interests of the public purse or of the public spend because we have got an election coming up. However in the meantime quite a lot of damage has been done by a vote that should never have been able to be used. I think that is the thing that causes me grief for democratic principles. What we have been talking about on this side of the House is that it was plain to us 2 years ago that this action should have been taken.I think it was plain to the National Party as well because I can see now in hindsight exactly why the Prime Minister chose the election date of 20 September. It was earlier than many people were expecting but of course the Prime Minister in hindsight I believe chose that date knowing that John Banks would be found guilty and would in fact be prosecuted and therefore would have to leave as a member of Parliament. So I find that a deeply cynical thing for the Prime Minister to have done—to have been so certain that John Banks was in fact guilty of what he had been accused of that I believe the election timetable has been set around that certainty. And if I am right and if the Prime Minister was certain that that was going to be the outcome of the court case then why did he not do what he should have done all along and actually act on the information that he had? Why did the Prime Minister sit it out and wait it out for around 2 years knowing what he knew and wait for a court to make that decision?I just want to place on record my view that the Prime Minister did in fact know—that he did in fact know—exactly the finding that the court would come to because what other explanation do we have for a 20 September election date?Ian McKelvie: How could he know that?SUE MORONEY: How could he know it? Ian McKelvie asks how the Prime Minister could know that. Well just use your imagination Mr McKelvie. The Prime Minister kept saying over and over again that he took Mr Banks at his word and yet once he knew that John Banks was going in front of a court of law he set about choosing an election timetable that would have us having this debate around about this time with parties conceding that actually having a by-election at this point so close to a general election probably is not the best use of taxpayer funding. I think that the timing of that has been quite deliberate. So I am concerned about that but I am also concerned about that one vote and I think that now New Zealanders can look at this and go: “Gosh actually this Government is hanging on by a thread—absolutely hanging on by a thread.” And do you know how they know that? It is because members of the public now know that the Government has not got the votes to put through some legislation it dearly wants to put through.I want to speak about one of those pieces of legislation because it is a piece that is very dear to my heart. That is the amendment legislation that the Government has in front of this House to take away the legal right to have a tea break at work. It is very dear to my heart because actually I wrote the original piece of legislation. It was a member’s bill that I had in my name in my first term in 2005 when I came in. Fortunately it was a Labour-led Government and the Labour-led Government chose to take up my member’s bill as a Government bill. Labour actually added a little bit more on to it around breastfeeding breaks at work as well but up until that point—I think it finally got passed in about 2007—there was no legal right for people to have a tea break a lunch break or a meal break at work. If they had it in their employment agreement it was a legal right for them but if their collective employment agreement was silent then they did not have that right.That law was passed in 2007 by Labour and that is the piece of law that is part of the piece of legislation that the Government now cannot pass—thank goodness—because John Banks is no longer here to prop up that very very bad piece of employment legislation. Of course it does other very bad things as well like taking away the ability for people to get a decent pay rise by ensuring that employers do not have to negotiate and do not have to conclude a collective employment agreement. It does all sorts of terrible things for working people but I am really pleased that that one vote will no longer be used to take away people’s legal right to have a break at work.So I am very pleased in some ways that the Government no longer has that very—what would I call it? I cannot use the word I really want to use but the mandate that it has used the one vote that it has used to put all sorts of dreadful laws through—it should never have had the right to use that vote because this debate has been going on for a couple of years now about whether John Banks knew what he knew and whether he did what he was accused of doing. I think the National Party knew all the way along that he was in fact guilty as the court has found him and it should never have been using his vote to prop up the very bad legislation that it has been putting through in that time.It is a sad day for Parliament because one of our own has had to resign. He has had to resign because in fact when you are found guilty of a charge such as the one he has been found guilty of then you have no choice but to resign. The only thing that he had a choice about was the timing of that resignation. The timing of this debate I think has been constructed for some time. Thank you.Motion agreed to.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 17 June.Part 1 Amendments to Companies Act 1993 (continued)Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Commerce):I will pick up from where we left off last time. Mr Parker had raised a few questions and I will just quickly address those. Someone else raised a question about the size of Supplementary Order Paper 465 and I pointed out that Supplementary Order Paper 465 is not quite just a stand-alone Supplementary Order Paper; it is a revision-tracked version of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill including the Supplementary Order Paper. So essentially Supplementary Order Paper 465 is the new bill. I think one member was trying to measure it by weight or something somewhat naively. Mr Parker was asking about section 135 of the Companies Act. He was concerned about that last time. I pointed out that the criminalisation in section 135 has in fact been removed and that was the part he picked up on. But of course that was a stand-alone offence and it has now been included as a new offence under section 380 of the Companies Act. The serious misconduct that will be caught is the director dishonestly incurring debt for a company when their company is insolvent or the director knew the company would become insolvent.That kind of goes to the crux of the only issue really. The Commerce Committee in its own commentary was wrestling with how to deal with the level or the measurement of criminality of directors’ behaviour and how it should be described and captured. As you can see in that Supplementary Order Paper we have landed in I think a relatively good space. Regardless of whatever definitions came about of course there were questions such as: what if a company was facing difficulty and then some reckless trading issues started to arise because directors were making decisions on a company’s circumstances where on one interpretation they could have been behaving recklessly and therefore facing some criminal issues or in fact they were behaving as their shareholders would have expected and trying to make decisions to trade or build their way out of whatever the circumstances were? And of course there is a distinction on a balance or a measurement of the risk involved when a director directors or a board are making such decisions regardless of how the company got into the position that it may have found itself in. So there was a lot of discussion and as I say that is where Supplementary Order Paper 465 has landed. We really landed in a place where looking at dishonest actions with intent is the area that the criminality side of things here addresses.As another speaker spoke about last time an issue is the expression of potential effect on the entrepreneurship or the willingness of directors to be directors full stop. That was a fair comment. Again the committee I think did a really good job in grappling with that amongst the other issues it dealt with. All parties from whatever side of the spectrum could actually see the issues that the committee was trying to deal with. I am confident that we have come to a place of balance even though we have almost come full circle about good faith now into bad faith and what that means for a company’s circumstances under this new Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill. I am very comfortable and again I thank the Commerce Committee for the hard work it did dealing with some pretty complex issues.I do note that in previous readings this bill has passed unanimously I think across the House and that is fantastic. It is a credit to the select committee’s work. It is also a credit to the ongoing consultation and ownership that these commerce bills and now Acts have. I asked that officials engage with the various sectors so there was strong ownership of the bills once they landed and turned into Acts. It might take a bit longer to get that process through but when it lands across the House we tend to have pretty good support.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):I will speak to Part 1 of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill. Can I first of all thank the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce for taking a call to respond to some of the issues that were raised by my colleagues—Hon Member: He responded quite well.KRIS FAAFOI: Yes he did respond quite well actually to be fair to my colleagues David Parker and Dr David Clark by first of all acknowledging that the rather large Supplementary Order Paper 465 that layers over Part 1 is not in fact the big document that was claimed earlier but is worked into the new revision-tracked version of the bill. We do acknowledge that Minister.Also there was the point that David Parker the deputy leader of the Labour Party raised around trying to get the balance right between companies and directors who look to take action in what you would call desperate times for some firms where they have to consider whether their actions may be considered either reckless or actions that are needed to take a company or a partnership that is in a precarious position back into a safe position. He also talked about where the line may be drawn in terms of the willingness of those directors to take some action that they may deem necessary but which they may think may not be the wisest move if that action may be seen as a criminal action under the law as it was first drafted. Thank you very much Minister for taking the opportunity to answer some of those questions.But as I mentioned first—Hon Simon Bridges: Don’t worry Kris. Remember what I said last night. You’ll be all right. You’ll be here after the election.KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you for that. But as I mentioned first there is a rather significant Supplementary Order Paper that layers over Part 1 of this bill. Although I was not on the Commerce Committee I think that because of the way that the bill was presented back to the House before Supplementary Order Paper 465 was added to this bill in its current form the select committee and the officials who were dealing with this bill did find themselves in a bit of a conundrum. They thought there were still issues about getting the balance right in terms of being specific about the criminality that may be acted and making sure that there was some in layman’s terms wriggle room there for directors to make sure that they could take action that they saw fit if they were in dire straits with that firm. I think that in the commentary on the bill the select committee did point that out.If I can take the opportunity just to quote from the commentary on the bill where the Commerce Committee says: “However we are aware that the bill could be perceived by directors and their advisers to criminalise legitimate business risk-taking behaviour. We have therefore sought an appropriate balance between encouraging positive entrepreneurial behaviour and imposing clear and effective sanctions on behaviour that crosses a criminal threshold.” But the commentary went on to say that the committee does not recommend any changes other than minor drafting and would support “further consideration of the drafting of these new offences to ensure that the provisions are expressed in a way that provides clear guidance to directors and does not have a chilling effect on legitimate business ...”.So I think what you have got here is a strange position where the Commerce Committee identified that there was a problem which was that it thought the legislation had to be much more specific in terms of what the criminal actions might have been but it could not offer up a remedy for that conundrum that it found itself in which I guess meant that Supplementary Order Paper 465 had to come into play. We have looked at Supplementary Order Paper 465. I understand that we believe that it does strike the right balance to make sure we are very specific about the criminal behaviour that can be outlined as the Minister said around intent where there could be actions taken by directors and where there could be criminal behaviour and the other side of the equation where drastic action needs to be taken by directors to ensure that a company can stay afloat.This bill does have the support of the Labour Party. We know that New Zealand has a very good reputation in terms of the ability of people to come here and do business but we also know that lately there have been instances that have gained not just local media attention but also global media attention where people have taken it upon themselves to exploit the good reputation that New Zealand has by using shell companies to take advantage of the legislation that we have and taking advantage of our good name. So we do believe that this piece of legislation is necessary to make sure that that reputation stays intact.But we do know that this legislation has been on the Order Paper for some time. I believe it was introduced in about 2012—halfway through that year—so 2 years later we have got a piece of legislation that has had the support of this House to quite a strong degree being put forward. It does beef up the rules around the Companies Act and gives more powers to the registrar which has had the full support of this side of the House for some time. So we question why it has taken so long to get to the stage where it is now where it progresses to the final stages of becoming legislation.It may be the fact that we are very unlikely to see any controversial legislation come through this House now because we have seen one member of the House former ACT leader John Banks have to resign. What we may get is a lot of what you may call rather mundane legislation that the Government may have to start putting through this House because it simply does not have the numbers to get anything controversial through any more. So what you might be seeing is a Government petering out over the next 2½ months here in the House and simply not being able to implement its far-right agenda because Mr Banks is no longer here. That is upsetting I guess for the Government members but good for us on this side of the House because we have seen the kind of legislation that has been passed with the support of Mr Banks which has concerned the sale of quite a number of our State-owned assets and also a controversial move to introduce what the Government members over on that side call partnership schools but that are quite well-known as charter schools on this side of the Chamber.One other part of the legislation that we do support is the increase of penalties for any directors who undertake criminal behaviour which is specifically laid out in Part 1. Those increases see a maximum imprisonment sentence of 5 years I believe and also a maximum fine of $200000 for each offence that occurs. I think that does send a pretty strong message to anyone who is either here in New Zealand or overseas that if they are caught contravening this legislation a pretty harsh penalty will be imposed upon them.Just going back to be specific about Part 1 I think it is clause 4 that introduces a rather large new section 138A into the Companies Act which gives quite new powers to the Registrar of Companies to investigate and deal with non-compliance with the Companies Act. This includes I understand the power to flag companies on the register that are under investigation. That is a new power and it is a good power given to the registrar because of some of the concerns that I have mentioned before around overseas interests that are coming here to use New Zealand companies as shell companies to basically act illegally under that shell company.It will also allow the removal of companies from the register if they provide inaccurate information or persistently fail to comply with the Act. I guess that we hope that the Registrar of Companies is given the resources to be able to monitor that quite closely. I think that if you have got well-resourced people—again probably from overseas—who are taking advantage of that loophole you want to make sure that you are able to monitor that quite closely. Also the registrar will be able to ban directors of those companies from taking part in the management of any company for up to 5 years. I think it goes without saying that anyone who gets themselves involved with that kind of behaviour is not the kind of person we want to be a company director here in New Zealand.We do support this bill. It does contain some good measures to ensure that when doing business in New Zealand the reputation of New Zealand is upheld. We do have some concerns as I have said around the timing of the bill—the fact that it has taken so long and also the fact that it is here now so late in the piece and why it is here. It is quite clearly because John Banks is no longer here.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Why has it taken so long for the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill to come back to the Committee? It is not an unreasonable question. Why has it taken so long? I have just gone today and looked back at the last time it was that I spoke on this bill which was in July last year—July last year—in the second reading. Before that it took 18 months to actually get to the House and then another year to get through the Commerce Committee. So why has it taken so long for this piece of legislation to come back to the House for the Committee stage? The next question is: how long is it going to take for it to get to the third reading and for it to actually get through? Is that going to happen or is that going to take another year? This is a really important question and I think that everybody who is watching or listening on the radio to this debate tonight should actually be asking themselves this question.I do not know how many times I have stood in this Chamber and said basically these same things. Why is it taking so long for legislation that is around managing and ensuring accountability for the corporate raiders in this country—for the white-collar criminals to be actually held accountable? Why is it that it is taking so long for the legislation that holds them accountable to get through this Parliament under that Government over on that side of the Chamber? Why? I would like to know whether it is a deliberate strategy because we are seeing an awful lot of other legislation that is going through the House that is actually impacting on working people and people who are the most vulnerable in our society and making their lives harder under this Government. But when it comes to those who are responsible for white-collar crime it takes for ever—for ever—to get legislation passed through the House.That is a really important difference between the National Government and the other side which is the Labour Party which actually cares about the lives of ordinary working people who might invest their life-savings into a company where they think that they will take some shares in a company and what happens is that they get ripped off by the corporate raiders who are supported by the National Government. They get ripped off and it takes for ever—for ever—for any legislation to get passed and for them to have their rights protected or feel as if this Government is actually on their side. This Government is not on their side. This Government is on the side of the corporates. This Government is on the side of monopolies. This Government does not support the ordinary working person and does not support the ordinary battling person whether they are a small-business person or a person who is really just trying to make their way—even a person who has got good ideas and is trying to get a good company up.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh Mega.CLARE CURRAN: Excuse me? That is what I would like to hear from the Minister sitting in the chair Craig Foss because I do not know how many times I have stood in this Chamber as a member of the Commerce Committee who has sat and heard submissions on this bill. We have heard through the financial reforms that have come through in the last few years people before the select committee who were crying who have lost their life-savings and who have been extremely badly affected. Inch by inch by inch we have seen legislation eventually coming before the House taking years—simply years. If there was urgency why would a bill like this not be considered to be an important bill? Why would this bill not be considered a bill that could merit being passed through the House really quickly? Well because it is not a priority. That was my first point: why has it taken so long? I would be really interested to hear the Minister of Commerce’s explanation for that because there is no explanation. If there is it would be really good to hear what it was.The second point that I want to make tonight around this piece of legislation is the work—[Interruption] I know that the members on the other side of the Chamber are feeling a bit embarrassed about that because actually there is nothing they can say really to dispute the fact. The fact stands that it took 18 months to even get the legislation before the Commerce Committee then it took at least another year once it had got out of the select committee to get before the House. No doubt it will take a long time to actually pass it into law.The introduction of criminal sanctions for the very serious breaches of existing duties of directors—that is my second point. I do want to comment on the important work that the select committee did on this because it was important work. There was an important balance as the Minister said when he got up. I do appreciate the fact that the Minister did get up. This Minister despite the fact that he does take a long time to get legislation through the House does not resile from standing up and taking a call. I do want to give him credit for that because he does not resile from doing that. Unlike other Ministers in this Chamber who just sit there like dummies and do not say a word this Minister actually does have the guts to get up take a call and try to provide explanations on issues.Sue Moroney: That’s you Simon.CLARE CURRAN: Yes there is at least one of those Ministers sitting in the Chamber tonight. With regard to the work that was done on the criminal sanctions and the importance of creating that balance so that it was not seen to be punishing risk-taking innovative behaviour members on this side of the Chamber are right behind the engine room of our country in terms of economic development which is small business. That is where your innovation comes from that is where we are going to see the greatest ideas and what are we doing? We are actually backing small business. That Government over there actually backs crony monopolists and the big companies that are its mates. In terms of small business which is where innovation comes from in this country that Government is not behind it. It is really important that we do not put barriers in its way in terms of innovation.It is also very important that there is accountability. When it comes to the impact of corporate behaviour on investors—particularly on the small investors who get really badly done over—it is really important that we have criminal sanctions. White-collar crime should be treated with much more seriousness in our country than it is. So on this side of politics on this side of the Parliament of New Zealand we believe that it is all about intent—dishonesty with intent. If it is dishonesty with intent then it should absolutely be penalised. That is a basic principle. It is a basic principle of law it is a basic principle on which this country is founded and it is a basic principle of Labour values and that is extremely important. After the work that was done in the select committee—I want to thank my fellow members of the select committee and the officials who participated—on this part of the law we have found that balance and we should be proud of ourselves for that.My conundrum is: why has it taken so long? Why? Please Minister get up and tell us what it was that was so important that it had to be passed under urgency that might actually impact on the lowest-paid people and the more vulnerable people in our country. Why is it that we are not saying that white-collar crime is not OK? It is absolutely not OK in this country and we are going to not only put laws through this Parliament but say that they are important urgent laws. We are going to do it quickly and we are going to ensure that they are sorted.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National):I move That the question be now put.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):I rise to speak on Part 1. It is a delight to actually stand to speak in favour of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill. It is a positive contribution to make in this House and we from this side of the Chamber do not always get to commend the Government for making a good step forward. It happens rarely but it is great that here we are debating a piece of legislation that takes the country forward through criminalising breaches of directors’ duties. None of this detracts from what Clare Curran said. Why has it taken so long? The fundamental point she made in her speech is worth repeating. But here we are passing a bill that will help to level the playing field. It is the dishonest practice—Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am reluctant to actually stop my colleague while he is in the middle of his contribution on this bill but I know it is after the dinner break and I am not sure—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! If the member is making a point of order she should make the point of order and not comment on dinner or any other reason. Points of order should be made tersely.Sue Moroney: Well my very terse point of order is that I can barely hear my colleague speak and there are members opposite who have moved their seats in order to try to barrack at speakers on this bill. I do not know what they took in during the dinner break—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Now I have cautioned the member and the member has deliberately—so I am going to require an apology to the Chair before I do anything else.Sue Moroney: I apologise to the Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Thank you—Hon Todd McClay: Speaking to the point of order—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No I am not taking any more and the barracking was too much so the point of order is upheld.Dr DAVID CLARK: Thank you Mr Chair. As I was saying I was congratulating the Government on its good behaviour and unfortunately those members have let themselves down as your point of order has rightly ruled.But here is the Government dealing with the criminalisation of breaches of certain directors’ duties and actually making a law that helps to level the playing field a little bit step by precious step. It is true that this bill has taken many years to get to this point in Parliament but here it is describing what penalties should apply for bad faith where directors knowingly act in a way that results in serious loss to a company through the incurring of debt through fraudulent dishonest behaviour and so on.We know that this kind of legislation is incredibly important in our democracy. If we wish to have a functioning democracy where businesses can flourish and where people who work hard and have talent can get ahead then we do need a level playing field. We need a set of useful regulation because it is certainly true that where there is good regulation our markets can prosper and make good decisions and where there is poor regulation or a lack of oversight very poor outcomes can come into play.We are lucky that we continue to enjoy a reputation broadly in New Zealand as a country that has a transparent and robust democracy. We have a long and proud history of democracy. Of course those things are under threat all the time and we must be wary and it is very good that the court has found the honourable member—or formerly honourable member—John Banks guilty because we have seen an important judicial process take place and we have a robust judicial system that can actually say when something is wrong.There are other things that do not get across that line. There are decisions made in this House that we might find ethically repugnant that end up making life more difficult for many people and we can all think of our own examples of those. But here we are debating a positive piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that will actually improve the lot overall of New Zealand and improve the health and the atmosphere in which our institutions our businesses can flourish.There are of course many other things that do not find their way into Part 1 of the bill or into the bill at all—other things that would help to make our environment flourish. I mention in passing pro-growth tax reform the kind of research and development tax credits that Labour would like to see introduced and a capital gains tax that would see money move away from the speculative housing sector into the productive sector and would actually increase exports.We would like to see a growing economy. This Government seems reluctant to grow the economy where that will put at risk the interests of the wealthiest few. We know that the interests of the 1 percent that are at the very top are growing all the time that we have the largest gap between rich and poor that we have ever had that the majority of New Zealand citizens are going backwards that median wages have dropped in real terms under this Government’s watch and that there is no doubt that this is the Government with the worst economic record in 50 years. So it is therefore a pleasure to get up and support at least one piece of legislation that makes a small step in the right direction which has taken a long time to get here but we certainly welcome it on this side of the Chamber.We do want a more positive New Zealand—one where New Zealand families can hope to own a company one day to build up from perhaps owing a small business starting themselves out saving working hard registering a company and all of these things. Clause 7A in Part 1 of the bill covers the nature of an application for registration of a company.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney):I move That the question be now put.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to Part 1 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 1 as amended agreed to.Part 2 Amendments to Limited Partnerships Act 2008Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):These amendments to the Limited Partnerships Act are being made so that those misusing New Zealand companies cannot avoid the new regime by registering limited partnerships instead. So Part 2 of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill if we put it really simply is to avoid an unintended consequence by tightening up one area of the legislation that dishonest or mischievous directors might pursue by structuring their companies in order to do the kinds of ill practices that we are trying to stamp out here the kinds of things that we discussed earlier: taking debt dishonestly behaving fraudulently and behaving not in the best interests of the company they are representing. So if those same people who wanted to practise those things look for a different structure to misuse New Zealand companies they are not going to find it in the amended Limited Partnerships Act or at least we hope as the bill is drafted and has been carefully considered that that will be case.In this part of the bill we have also got reference to the Financial Markets Authority which was established in 2011 I think—if memory serves me right—and that has authority for oversight. It has got a responsibility here for overseeing the behaviour in the sector. In clause 46 in Part 2 we have the requirements for a limited partnership. They are all laid out and stipulated. The law is changed so that the nature of those people who can take up that particular nature of organisation is quite clear as is what behaviour might be deemed acceptable and unacceptable.The better alignment of these bits of law is of course a no-brainer in a sense. I mean who would oppose it? And that is why it is really good to be able to support this legislation. It is taking sensible steps forward and as others before us have asked we must wonder why these changes have taken so long. Those who do commit a serious breach of their duties to act in good faith will face consequences and that will not be significantly different under this part of the bill. I would invite the Minister of Commerce if he is willing to speak about any changes that there might be between the Companies Act and the Limited Partnerships Act in terms of the kinds of penalties that will apply but my reading of it is that the penalties apply under the two structures in the same way. Minister I am looking to you for a nod of affirmation or perhaps I will—I cannot see any response from the Minister there but perhaps he will get back to us on that in due course. It would be interesting to know whether there were any differences because what we try to do as I said at the outset is ensure that the law is aligned across the different structures to avoid those unintended consequences. So I would invite the Minister’s considered view on that. Certainly I cannot find how it would be applied differently.These new powers will give ultimately a power to investigate and deal with non-compliance. That is what we are asking for; that is what we have got. That will help to build that reputation New Zealand has for transparency and for being a good place to do business where people can deal fairly and we know we need that. We know that currently the environment is lagging. For example we heard today from Mr Brownlee in the select committee that there had been 11000 new small businesses formed since the Canterbury earthquakes. That is higher than usual turnover. That would tend to suggest that small business is not doing well in that area. Businesses are starting and folding in Christchurch. That tends to suggest that all is not well and we know that over the past 4 years more small businesses in New Zealand have been destroyed than created. The number of small businesses being created has dropped substantially and the number of small businesses that are not surviving has risen.So the environment is not healthy for small business. I am sure members in this Chamber who engage with small business as I do in my spokesperson roles for the Labour Party will have spoken to people who are struggling to get by. Often small-business owners in retail are earning less than the people whom they are employing. That is a situation brought about by an economic environment where the rewards of any recovery are not shared fairly across the population. Everybody wants to know that there is a fair environment one in which anyone who puts their shoulder to the wheel and is willing to work hard and abide by the rules can hope to prosper. [Bell rung] So this sets up—Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Are you seeking another call?Dr DAVID CLARK: Yes Mr Chair. So this piece of legislation sets up the rules in such a way—sorry Mr Chair I was in the moment. This legislation sets up a fair system a system where people can imagine that they can start a business where they can prosper where they can get ahead where they can make the most for their family and for those around them where they might hope to one day own a home. We know that of course homeownership is unfortunately at its lowest rate in 50 years in New Zealand and this is something that the Government has not addressed.Labour has a plan to build 100000 new homes across New Zealand in order to work with New Zealanders to reach that aspiration. Of course we will do that in partnership with industry but having that dream is part of owning a business. It is part of hoping for a fair business environment and hoping that you can get ahead to own that home to have a family that has the things that you would wish them to have as they grow up: a good education a good health-care system and to be able to live in a country where there is high trust not just in business but across the society and of course work. And we know many employers feel that part of what they are doing is providing a social service actually. I talk to employers every week who acknowledge that a great part of what they do in their workplace is supporting their employees. Actually a lot of small-business employers are very well minded about this and believe that part of their civic duty is to create a structure where they can support and encourage and grow people who might one day own their own business or who might work somewhere else but who for the meantime are in their employ.So I congratulate the Government on finally getting the bill to this stage. I hope that it moves quickly from here because it is a piece of legislation that is worth getting into law. It makes sure that those white-collar criminals are brought to justice and that the rules for doing that are transparent. We applaud that on this side of the Chamber. We wish that some other white-collar criminals who are known closer to this place were brought to justice more promptly too. We do not always get what we want but this is a good step in the right direction. Thank you.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):I will speak to Part 2 of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill which talks to amendments to the Limited Partnerships Act. Can I just begin where my colleague Dr David Clark finished and that is that we do support this piece of legislation and we do agree with the party on the other side on making sure there are good business conditions for New Zealand firms and that those firms want some certainty. That certainty comes about from many things. It comes from the reputation that companies have. One of those factors is obviously the laws governing companies and limited partnerships here in New Zealand.We have seen of late some concern about the reputation of some of our companies and about some people who have come to our shores to make use of our good name and to take advantage of our laws to ply their illegal trade under the guise of a New Zealand company. This bill in Part 2 goes quite a long way in the specifics to combat some of the issues that have come about. Part 2 gives the Registrar of Companies the ability to remove a limited partnership company from the register if in certain circumstances the registrar believes that there are grounds that the company is not carrying out business and there is no proper reason for it to continue to trade.I guess that is pretty precisely what I was talking to at the beginning of my contribution in terms of those people who come to New Zealand to ply their trade under the flag of a New Zealand business but have no proper reason to do that and who are engaging in what we would call either scurrilous or illegal behaviour. So that is a good power that this bill has added to the registrar to make sure that that reputation and certainty is there for New Zealand firms. There are also grounds for the registrar to remove a limited partnership—[Interruption] I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. We have already had one instance of some barracking from across the Chamber—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! You cannot refer to a previous point of order. I have already cautioned a member on your side to be terse. Please raise the point of order or I will dismiss it.KRIS FAAFOI: I cannot really concentrate on my speech with the level of barracking across the Chamber.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Let us just have a bit more decorum all round. There is a degree of agreement on the bill and there is no need for this interchange.KRIS FAAFOI: That is right. It is a relatively good day here in the Chamber. The bill also gives the ability for the registrar to respond to requests to confirm information under its enhanced investigatory powers. There are two good instances of where the Registrar of Companies has been given more power to I guess increase the reputation of New Zealand legislation around our companies to protect their reputation.I would like to refer specifically to clause 58 of the bill which inserts sections 103A to 103G in the Limited Partnerships Act. New section 103A talks about people who are prohibited from managing limited partnerships and subsection (2)(b) refers to a person who has been convicted of an offence under any of sections 377 to 380 of the Companies Act or a crime involving dishonesty as defined in section 2(1) of the Crimes Act. Maybe someone in Parliament with a legal background might be able to help me because I am not sure whether that is quite specific as to what Mr Banks was found guilty of in terms of his case which sees him no longer in this House. That certainly was a dishonest act because he declared a couple of donations as anonymous when he knew what their source was.My colleague Clare Curran made a very good point in the first part of this debate as to why it has taken so long for the changes in Part 1 and Part 2 to find their way to the Committee stage when this piece of legislation I believe was introduced to the House some 2 and a bit years ago. She made I think a very strong point that the party across the Chamber is very vocal and very quick to pass legislation when it claims it is getting tough on what you would call street-level crime but when it comes to crime of the white-collar nature it seems to drag its heels to the extreme. I think that is certainly the case here.This piece of legislation was I think first mooted by the Hon Simon Power and then introduced in the new term of this Government but we are finding ourselves on 18 June at only its Committee stage. If someone can remind me when the Commerce Committee reported this bill back to the House—I think it would have been some time ago. So maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce could answer that question as to the Government’s attitude and its lack of urgency on this kind of criminal behaviour which again goes to the reputation of doing business here in New Zealand but it seems that when it wants to beat its chest around law and order on street-level crime even when it is not really effective it will move that through this House with great haste.Maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce could answer that question. He has made contributions in the Committee stage that were quite useful so maybe on that specific point Minister Foss might be able to point us in the right direction as to the different attitudes that this Government has to street-level crime and to white-collar crime.We will be supporting Part 2 as we did Part 1 because it does go some way to increasing the protection around the reputation of New Zealand businesses specifically to be more specific about who can and who cannot ply trade or manage limited partnerships. Part 2 does give the Registrar of Companies much more power to monitor those. Again I make the point I made when we debated Part 1. We need to make sure that the registrar has the resources to do that because this Government along with the likes of the Commerce Commission has talked about giving the registrar new powers but has not necessarily given him the ability or the backing to make sure he can effectively express those new powers. Certainly that has been the case in other pieces of legislation.So just to finish off we would ask the Minister in the chair to talk to the specific question as to why this Government has a different attitude to street-level crime and to white-collar crime. I do not really rate our chances of getting an answer.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):In speaking to Part 2 of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill I would just like to I guess remind the Committee of the actual history of this bill. It is pretty important to keep that in the public’s mind. There were two Cabinet papers as I understand it that came before Cabinet in 2011 which was actually 3 years ago. The issue that was being considered was whether or not there was a case for criminalising directors’ statutory duties. That arose within the Ministry of Economic Development and it was part of I think a 2010 securities law review discussion paper. The history of this legislation goes back to 2010 and then it came to Cabinet in 2011. It ended up taking 18 months to get through the select committee process and its second reading was a year ago in 2013. I think nobody can dispute the history of this piece of legislation and again it would be quite good if the Minister of Commerce could get up and say why he thinks it took so long.I also want to remind everybody as to what one of the major issues was that really sparked I guess the impetus around this issue. This was in New Zealand in 2012—actually on 27 June. It is nearly 2 years ago minus 9 days that New Zealand got removed from something called the white list which is a European Union list that provides guidance for EU banks and financial institutions about countries with EU-equivalent money-laundering and anti - terrorist-financing laws. It has a white list of the countries that are basically the preferred countries—the countries that are transparent that have got good laws in place and that actually do the right thing around financing standards in terms of dealing to anti - money-laundering and counter-terrorism.We got removed from that list in 2012. New Zealanders listening out there tonight that happened in 2012. That is 2 years ago. This Government claims it is the Government for business and transparency and all that sort of thing. New Zealand got removed from that white list 2 years ago. We were basically being told we had to undertake additional measures to ensure that customers including companies from New Zealand are who they say they are. That essentially means that we have to be able to reassure people that businesses and business transactions that are happening in this country are actually transparent and that we are doing everything we can to ensure that dodgy behaviour is not happening and that people are not getting away with that. Well you would think that this Government which claims it is the Government for business would have thought that this was a priority. Why was it not a priority? We have been removed from a list—Hon Simon Bridges: You’ve already given this speech.CLARE CURRAN: Minister Bridges how about getting up taking a call and telling us what your views are on this. Why has it taken 2 years for a piece of legislation that was already before a select committee—why was it not a priority? Why was it not a priority? What is the answer?Hon Simon Bridges: This was your first speech.CLARE CURRAN: Yes but what is actually the answer? Why was it not a priority?Hon Simon Bridges: A busy Government.CLARE CURRAN: “A busy Government.” is the answer. It was a busy Government. So what was the Government actually busy with? What about our international reputation? What about our reputation and getting back on to that white list? Why is that not a priority?Hon Simon Bridges: Oh you want me to take a call?CLARE CURRAN: Yes it would be great if he takes a call because we might actually get an answer. [Bell rung] Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Clare Curran.CLARE CURRAN: Thank you Mr Chair—a very good decision. We got dumped from that list and that was around growing publicity of New Zealand - registered companies being linked to crime overseas. There was a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. There was a company called Tormex Systems Ltd a New Zealand - registered company that allegedly laundered US$680 million through a Latvian bank account. That was just one of many examples of entities that exploited New Zealand’s simple company registration regime. There were plenty of other examples. I know that the select committee considered many of those examples and took that issue really seriously. We were actually doing our job in this Parliament thinking “Right we’ve got to sort this. We’ve been removed from this white list. We’ve actually got to get the issue sorted.” yet it was 2 years down the track before the legislation came back to the House and it still has not been passed. It still has not gone through the House.What has happened to our reputation? Well members have all got their heads down over there on the other side of the Chamber so clearly they actually did not think that that was that important. There were obviously other more politically expedient pieces of legislation they could put through the House that would impact on people who were actually more vulnerable and for some reason those members just decided to take their time.The select committee actually did quite a lot of work on this and we recommended—and this goes to Part 2 around the requirement for directors to live in New Zealand. This is actually quite a good part of this legislation. There was a lot of work done on this. We recommended that the requirements for an agent living in New Zealand be omitted: “Better balance could be achieved by requiring a company to have a director who lives in New Zealand or who lives in and is a director of a company in a country with which New Zealand has reciprocal arrangements for the enforcement of low-level criminal fines.” This was pretty important. We strengthened the legislation before the select committee on this.We put a higher test into the legislation. I am just going to read out what it says in the commentary because it is quite important: “The purpose of requiring a director who lives in New Zealand is to ensure that there is an identifiable individual with a substantive connection with the company who can be questioned about the activities of the company and who can in certain circumstances be held to account.” That is so important. It cannot be just an address. It cannot be just a shop or a door behind which there is no actual person. We heard submissions on this issue. We knew that it was really important to actually ensure through legislation that there could be actual people.Hon Simon Bridges: Now Phil Goff is counting the numbers.CLARE CURRAN: This is the committee working together.The big problem Mr Bridges is that we have not actually got to the point of passing the legislation. It is important that the people of New Zealand know tonight that that Government over there is actually not that concerned about white-collar criminals. This Government drags its heels on putting this sort of legislation through. It does not consider it urgent. It does not consider it that important. This legislation has obviously been put down the pecking order because that is such a busy Government doing other things that are actually going to impact on ordinary struggling New Zealanders who are just trying to keep their heads above water and pay their bills every week. Instead we are letting the white-collar criminals in this country off the hook.This piece of legislation does need to get passed. It needs to get passed soon. We have got to address these issues. Thank you very much to the officials for the work that was done by them in the select committee. The work done generally by the select committee around this is important. I have no idea why this bill as with so many bills that seem to come before the House on these sorts of issues is taking so long to actually get through the House. I would really like to hear the Minister get up and tell us why that is. Why is it that his legislation seems to get put down at the bottom of the list—at the bottom of the list?Hon Phil Goff: Because he’s a junior Minister.CLARE CURRAN: Is it because he is a junior Minister? What is it? Is it that the Minister sitting there Simon Bridges seems to have a louder voice and therefore his stuff gets put up—Dr CAM CALDER (National):I move That the question be now put.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to Part 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Schedule 1 agreed to.Schedule 2The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to schedule 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.New schedule 2AThe question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to insert new schedule 2A be agreed to.New schedule 2A agreed to.New schedule 2BThe question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to insert new schedule 2B be agreed to.New schedule 2B agreed to.Schedule 3 agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Thank you very much for giving me a call on the title and commencement date clauses of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill. This is usually the part of the debate where people have a bit of fun with the title of a bill. I will not do that and I will turn to clause 2 the “Commencement”.Generally as my colleague Clare Curran has pointed out the commencement of this bill is going to come far too late. This is a Government that claims it is business-friendly and works in the interest of both big and small—usually big—business. But this piece of legislation which is designed to protect the reputation of the legislation around our companies and limited partnerships has languished on the Order Paper under this Government. I think it was Minister Simon Bridges who said it was because this Government has been a busy Government. Well yes in one respect it has been a busy Government—selling our State-owned assets introducing rank changes to our education system—and all of a sudden this piece of legislation lands in the Committee. We have not seen it for some time and we have to ask the question around its commencement: why is it all of a sudden here?Why is this what we would call relatively mundane piece of legislation which has support from both sides of the House all of a sudden arriving here in Parliament? It is because—for the people at home who do not understand what is going on here—John Banks is not here any more and this Government cannot pass any of the legislation that it really wanted to pass. That is really the bigger game here. That is what is going on. Because John Banks is not here you will not see anything go through this House that the Government can just squeak through with its one vote majority and that is the likes of selling our assets changes to housing and changes to our education system. You will not see much of that any more because this Government no longer has the numbers to make sure that that kind of legislation gets through. For a long time now this Government has relied on the votes of John Banks and Peter Dunne to get all that kind of controversial legislation through. But no longer will we see that—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Clauses 1 and 2.KRIS FAAFOI: —because the vote of Mr Banks is no longer here.That goes back to the commencement date and why I say that this is coming in far too late. This is a piece of legislation that is very important and that has cross-party support. As you have seen there are a number of changes that the Minister has made in Supplementary Order Papers post the select committee process that members on this side of the Chamber are very very happy to support. So you would think that because of that relatively good working relationship on this side of the Chamber this piece of legislation would be shuffled through pretty quickly by this Government. We have had this legislation there for the benefit of protecting the reputation of the legislation that governs our companies. But no the commencement date will not be for some time because this piece of legislation has sat quite a way down on the Order Paper and its commencement date will be some time into the future. It could have been quite sadly passed much much sooner.We wanted it to be passed much much sooner again because of the protections it gives to our firms to protect the reputation that they have around the world. I have a number of small businesses in my electorate. They trade—I will not mention names because they will not enjoy that—and they go out there to the global market and because they are from New Zealand the people they work with are quite happy to work with them because of the reputation that New Zealand businesses have. As I said earlier there has been concern both domestically and internationally because like in a lot of other countries around the world there has been a fair degree of people using the reputations of firms in countries like New Zealand and taking advantage and using shell companies. So to protect the reputation of New Zealand firms—and I think quite rightly and with the support of this side of the House—the Hon Simon Power in 2010 began work for this legislation to be improved. That is right I did say 2010. So it was quite some time ago and National has had quite a high degree of support from this side of the House but it was not until 18 June 2014 that we have got to this stage where this can get through the Committee stage.I think that is a sad state of affairs where the Government does not think that this kind of legislation is very important more so for those smaller businesses that use our reputation for doing business to ensure that they can get business. Those kinds of firms are very strong around the world. They could have had a lot more confidence in going overseas and selling their products overseas with more protection from this piece of legislation months or years earlier had this Government given this piece of legislation priority. I think it is a sad state of affairs in terms of when this piece of legislation will commence. As I say it could have happened much sooner only this busy Government was doing much more controversial things and now it has got to the stage where because of the mathematical realities of the House non-controversial pieces of legislation will now be coming through the House.I just want to talk about some of the things that will commence under this bill. I want to talk about clause 4 where under section 131 of the Companies Act I understand it will be a criminal offence if a director breaches his or her duty where a director knows that a breach is seriously detrimental on the interests of the company or where under section 135 he or she breaches his or her duty knowing that a breach will result in serious loss to the company’s creditors. I am trying to think of a situation where that might be the case. It certainly might be the way that Ministers have carried out their dealings with the likes of say Solid Energy because we certainly know that the direction given to that company had a detrimental effect on that company and now it finds itself in a very tricky position of trying to work itself out of a serious amount of debt because of the pressure that this Government put it under. It will be interesting to see how this piece of legislation would lie over that kind of situation because in that situation the directors of that company were put under a fair amount of pressure to increase their gearing to make sure the Government could get a better return from what was a well-performing State-owned enterprise but is now one that is struggling to quite an extreme extent and has to force many lay-offs. That is the kind of management of our State-owned enterprises that we have had from this type of Government.In terms of the title and commencement on this side of the Chamber we say that it has happened far too late. We have made requests to the Minister as to why this piece of legislation which deals with criminality in a corporate sense was not given the same priority from the Government in terms of the other legislation that deals with criminality at a street level. Again we think there is a degree of dog whistling going on over there from a Government that said it was business-friendly but really in this sense it has not walked the talk and has not given those smaller companies the protection of the reputation of doing trade in New Zealand. I think our businesses may have suffered to a degree because of that. The Government has not given what it calls its natural supporters the protection of this legislation which could have happened much much earlier.I do again offer the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce in the dying stages of this Committee stage the opportunity to explain the Government’s position on that. Again I am not so hopeful of getting a response.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):I do want to go back to the issue of New Zealand being removed from the white list just in this final stage of the Committee stage on the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill around the title and the commencement. It is important to point out that that white list includes countries such as Australia Brazil Canada Hong Kong India Japan South Korea Mexico Singapore Switzerland South Africa and the United States. Not everybody in New Zealand would know what that white list was but being removed from it actually means that banks and other financial institutions in the European Union for instance can no longer accept and acknowledge the “know your customer” identification and analysis performed in New Zealand. It would seem to me that that is actually something that we should be a bit worried about and a bit ashamed of.I understand that back in 2012 when we got removed from that white list there was a flurry of activity by various Ministers including the Minister of Justice over there and the Minister of Foreign Affairs about trying to get us back on that white list. It would be quite interesting to know because I just did a wee Google search on it as to whether we are back on that white list. Can anybody confirm whether we are or not? No everybody has got their heads down so I am presuming that we are not.Hon Todd McClay: Oh don’t presume.CLARE CURRAN: Actually that is quite significant—Hon Judith Collins: Why don’t you just make it up?CLARE CURRAN: So are we or are we not? Are we back on the white list? Are we back on the white list Minister? Are we? If we are that is a good thing but let us actually hear from you as to whether we are or not. No answer? No. Clearly we are not.So it is 2 years—2 years—since we got removed from that white list. We got removed from that white list because we needed to change our laws. We needed to change our laws and put in place more restrictions on the way that businesses were operating in this country and white-collar crime was actually being conducted. Well we have dragged our feet. The Government has dragged its feet. It has not actually done the best it could for New Zealand businesses and as a result we have a black mark against us in the international environment around the way that New Zealand does its business. I think that that should be reinforced because this Government pretends it is there for businesses and for good business practice. In reality—Dr Paul Hutchison: Oh there’s no pretence about it.CLARE CURRAN: Well can you over there on the other side of the Chamber dispute the facts? We did get removed from that list. Have we actually got back on it? If we have then that is good but clearly we have not.This bill has taken far too long to get through the House. It is really important to have robust debates. We need the time in Parliament to have those robust debates but there has been too much time in between those robust debates so we are not seeing the legislation actually make it through the House in the way it should where it actually impacts on the white-collar criminals the behaviours that lie behind them and the behaviours that are condoned in a system that should be being fixed. The issues were identified at least 3 or 4 years ago. They have not been acted on fast enough. It is an indictment on this Government that it has not done that. It has not done it because it has been pushing through legislation that is impacting on other aspects of its agenda—which is a political agenda and an agenda about making the vulnerable more vulnerable and working people’s lives harder—and not holding to account the behaviours in business that are behaviours that we as a country should not be condoning.We support this legislation because it is important. We did a lot of work in the Commerce Committee to improve the legislation to make it more effective. Unfortunately it has taken far too long for it to get back before this House and it is going to take even longer for it to get passed and then for it to be commenced and actually put into law. I think that that is an indictment on this Government and the way that it has conducted itself over the last 6 years. This Government is actually not about holding to account the white-collar criminals in our country.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National):I move That the question be now put.Motion agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 465 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to clause 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Clause 2 as amended agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Companies Amendment Bill (No 4) and the Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill (No 2)pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 466.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 16 April.Part 2 Non-contact ordersCAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):Labour supports the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. We think that Part 2 does provide with the provision of non-contact orders the opportunity to fill a gap that is currently there. There are measures currently in place to protect victims of serious crime. The Domestic Violence Act of course provides for protection orders but that means that basically victims have to have been in a situation where they were in a domestic relationship and the Harassment Act provides for restraining orders but only in circumstances of harassment. Basically the notion here is that we are talking about a non-contact order and these can be applied for as set out in in clause 7 of Part 2. A victim may not apply for such a non-contact order if another form of order is currently in place. That is important. It is not in addition to those other situations I have talked about—protection orders and restraining orders. It is a distinct situation and it will cover the sorts of situations where somebody might for example as we have seen evidenced in this country choose to live next door to somebody whom they have seriously assaulted raped or whatever.Of course we support a bill like this where we are trying to do something to recognise the ongoing effect of serious violent offending on victims and recognising that in fact we do have a real problem with serious violent offending in this country. There are no two ways about it. Of course it is interesting that we are speaking on these victims’ orders this week when we have in fact had the Glenn Inquiry report or part of it—the part that dealt with 500 interviews with people who have had violence done against them or with people who are working with women and children primarily who have been victims of domestic violence. It is quite timely that we are continuing to work our way through the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill.One of the other things I would point out at this stage is that although we support this bill we do have significant concerns about the piecemeal approach that is being taken around dealing with violent crime. We and I am sure colleagues of mine will be traversing this ground tonight about what we might do in a broader sense. The Glenn Inquiry does of course give us the opportunity to reflect on what we need to do. They have in that report that has been released this week raised substantive concerns about not only the magnitude of the problem we face but also the way the justice system is actually not working for victims of violent crimes. So although this bill fills a particular gap and we support it—we think it is a useful additional thing—what we would really need to be looking at if we were serious about this as a Parliament would be this whole area. We need to look at substantial reform in the justice system particularly we need to look at reform in our policing and of course we need to look at the wider issues around basically trying to prevent violent crime.I note for the record that in response to the Glenn Inquiry we had questions in the House this week where we were talking about what the Government’s response was to that Glenn Inquiry—that approach rather than a very narrow approach as is outlined in this bill. Labour suggested to the Government that we actually have some sort of cross-party consensus on issues like domestic violence; that we actually work together as a Parliament to try to look at real change across the whole range from prevention to looking after those who have been victims of violent crimes. In the Glenn Inquiry we were looking particularly at domestic violence but we also as a Parliament are very actively raising issues around sexual violence and the Social Services Committee is of course considering that issue at the moment. We really need as members of Parliament to say that we have some responsibility in this space to make change to try to prevent violent crime and also then to look after those who are victims of such violent crimes. We need to make sure that the criminal justice system does not revictimise them and does not make it too hard for them to get justice and to see those who have offended held to account for that offending.There were very good changes made in the bill as a result of the work of the select committee. I was not on that select committee but I want to acknowledge some of those changes. The select committee for example amended clause 7 of the bill to allow an application at any time after sentencing so that there is not potentially a gap at the point where the person is released from prison and there is a wider scope to the orders than parole conditions could provide. I think that was a very positive situation.There is also another concern that we have got and that is in relation to an application for an order being a civil proceeding and that victims would have to meet costs unless they qualify for legal aid. The select committee has mitigated that somewhat by allowing two types of order—temporary and final. In relation to the situation where the victim has to take their case to a judge in the presence of an offender that has been mitigated to a certain extent by allowing two types of orders temporary and final and the offender would be present only for the application to make a temporary order a final one. This would also assist in lowering cost and contact with the offender but not eliminate it. So we do continue to have a concern on that particular issue.I think the interesting point on this as I said earlier is that this is quite a specific thing. The regulatory impact statement said that potentially the number of orders that are likely to be issued on average could be as few as 10 per year. That is not a reason not to do something but I do go back to my earlier point that there is a broader range of issues that I think as a country we really do have a strong desire to see addressed. I would like to urge the Government to look more broadly at these issues; not to keep working in a piecemeal approach which is what is happening at the moment. I would suggest that we do use the opportunity created by the Glenn Inquiry to actually acknowledge that the community certainly sees the desire for a much more comprehensive collaborative and committed response to ensuring that the victims of violent crimes are not further penalised.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):Right at the start of the debate when this Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill was introduced Labour said that it would support the bill. The reason for that was pretty clear-cut. We need to have a system that pays more attention to the victim. Sadly in relation to serious violent and sexual offending there are far too many victims. It is time actually to produce some fundamental change in the way our system works; to try to build more fences at the top of the cliff rather than try to do small repair jobs at the bottom.Frankly the bill as introduced was pretty weak. My colleague Carol Beaumont has referred to the regulatory impact statement. I say to the Minister of Justice that I was kind of astounded to read in the regulatory impact statement that the best estimate of your officials was that this bill might deal with 10 cases a year—10 cases a year. We are talking about thousands of cases of sexual and violent offending each year and the victims who arise from that. Each year hundreds maybe thousands of people are let out of prison and there was not protection for the victims in particular circumstances. Minister you will recall that the origin of this bill was a case in Invercargill where a woman was raped her offender was convicted he was sentenced to prison he served prison he was let out of prison—as happens at the end of your sentence or when you are released—and he moved in next door to the victim. The victim was absolutely powerless. Every day she faced the risk of confronting the man who had sexually violated her and there was nothing she could do about it. That apparently was what caused this bill to be introduced.The difficulty with the bill is that when it was introduced we found that it would have had no application at all to the woman whose case sparked the need for the legislation. Why was that? Because in order to have the protection of the non-contact order the offender had to be jailed for at least 5 years’ imprisonment. He had been jailed for 4 years. There was no protection in this bill for the very person whom it purported to protect. So that was a huge weakness. We indicated at the first reading of the bill that that was utterly inadequate and that we would fight to get that changed. In the Law and Order Committee they moved it to 3 years and after a discussion with the Minister personally she agreed to move it to 2 years. I think 2 years is appropriate. It brings it in line with the definition under the Parole Act which demarcates a serious from a less serious offence.But there are other important changes that we made in this legislation to strengthen it and they are set out in Part 2. The first is that the way the bill was introduced once again meant that you could not get a non-contact order until the offender had been released from prison. That was pretty dumb. That meant that there was always going to be a gap between the release from prison and the victim being able to get a non-contact order. In fact the victim would not always know that the offender had been released and there was real risk in it. So we made I think a very sensible change in the committee that you can get a non-contact order at any time after the offender has been sentenced. That was a sensible move.The other area of weakness that we addressed really came out of the submissions that the select committee heard. It was that some offenders were reasonably cunning in the way they sought to revictimise their victims. They did not do it themselves but they got an associate to do it. So what we have put into this bill is a provision that will allow the non-contact order to apply to people other than the offender. We have put reasonably strong safeguards in there. In order to have a non-contact order made out against a person who was not the offender they need one to have been encouraged by the offender to engage in the behaviour that is being prohibited; two to have engaged in those kinds of behaviour; and three the person’s behaviour has been and continues to be detrimental to the victim’s ability to manage the effects of the offending. So there were three key weaknesses in this legislation that we have addressed and I think the legislation is better for it.But I want to come back to the point that I made at the beginning. We will not be dealing with just 10 cases a year now. Maybe we will be dealing with scores of cases but the number is still pretty small. What we actually need is a substantial piece of legislation if we are truly to protect the interests of the victims. I found out from a victims organisation in west Auckland—indeed the chief executive has just been acknowledged in the Honours List this year—that maybe in one in 100 cases of sexual violation is the offender actually charged convicted and sentenced to prison. One in 100. One in 100 cases means that 99 percent of the victims are not seeing justice done. We have helped by helping another 0.05 percent of the victims. It is worth doing in specific cases because there is a gap in the legislation where people are not covered by the Domestic Violence Act they cannot get a protection order they are not covered by the Harassment Act and they cannot get a restraining order. We do address the gap but we do not address the problem.The problem lies in a number of areas. In part it is a case of protection. We have just considered the estimates on the police to find out that for 5 years in a row the police budget has been cut in real terms—cut by $114 million dollars. If we want to protect victims cutting the police budget cutting police staff and closing police stations does not appear to be a very good way of doing that. We are doing a mildly good thing here but not offsetting a very bad thing that the Government is doing by reducing protection of victims by cutting the police budget.Secondly you need attitude change and that is not short term; that is the change that we can make through our education system. There needs to be a concerted effort and I do not think anybody in the Committee would be opposed to that sort of education programme being run or opposed to more effective programmes for those in prison who are guilty of violent offending.The third area is this. I really want the Minister in the chair Judith Collins to address this because if this bill is about protecting victims then we have got to face up to the fact that we have a system that is not designed to protect victims. We have a system that is adversarial. We have a system where still even after various changes in legislation the victim feels that they are being revictimised in court. The victim does not want to go to court. The victim feels that they are going to be revictimised because of this adversarial system. I guess the question that I have for the Minister is why she is so opposed to changing the system in its fundamentals to having a more inquisitorial system that is better designed to protect the interests of victims and to get to the truth in order to help the victims themselves.I would have to ask the question about why we are not doing more in the area of restorative justice because a number of rape survivors whom I have talked to said they are actually not interested in a 20-year sentence for the offender; they simply want an expression of remorse and of contrition to confront the offender and to actually hear the offender admit that he was wrong in what he did. That does not seem enough to me in terms of a person who has been a victim in that way but it is a hell of a lot more than what they are getting out of the present system. In the present system—I come back to the statistics—99 out of 100 victims of sexual violation are not going to see justice done. Although this piece of legislation is a very small help it pales into insignificance compared with the nature of the problem that we should be addressing in this legislature. This is not enough. We need to do a lot more.In terms of the actual provisions of the bill I have outlined the key provisions where I think we have made changes that were necessary so that this legislation would at least have some real practical effect. I think we have closed the gap that we are talking about but we have not resolved the problem. That is why I ask the Minister to not simply bring a series of minor pieces of legislation to the House—we will always support any piece of legislation that will enhance and promote the interests of victims—but to do something that will really make a difference to the overwhelming majority and the too many people who fall victim to serious sexual and violent offending.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I am pleased to take a call in this part of the proceedings on the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. I begin by saying that in a week in which the nation has had its attention drawn to the horrific reality of domestic violence and sexual violence for this Committee finding solutions—real solutions long-term solutions—should be front and centre of what we do right now. As my colleague Phil Goff has said—and indeed Carol Beaumont as well—although this bill goes some of the way and provides a solution of sorts to the dreadful embarrassing shameful problem that this nation has it is still a half-hearted effort. More could be done. I am going to come to two particular provisions to illustrate what I think the remaining problems are with this bill.Carol Beaumont talked about the fact that this bill still requires the victim to take the initiative. It is a civil proceeding that the victim must initiate. For impecunious victims getting access to legal aid so they can make an application of this nature has got a lot harder under this Government. It is just harder to get legal aid. In the Budget that has just been handed down this Government under this Minister of Justice has put up this outrageous proposition where legal aid is cut by another $12 million—$5 million out of civil legal aid alone—and now with this legislation when this legislation is passed the people who are looking to it for protection are somehow going to have to find the means to make the applications to court. The reality is that most of them will have to do it off their own bat. They will have to represent themselves because getting legal aid will be too hard and many simply will not be able to afford a lawyer. So that gap remains and I expect that that gap will get only ever larger.But this bill also in the two types of orders that it creates—the temporary non-contact order which happens or is granted on a without-notice application and then the final non-contact order which is granted or at least processed on notice and is granted after a hearing—will require adequate and sufficient resources to be available in the registries of our courts up and down the country. The reality is after the shameful act of cutting our legal aid the next most shameful thing that this Government has done under this Minister of Justice and her Minister for Courts is to gut the court registries of this country and put huge pressure on the remaining staff who are there to process applications. That pressure is only ever going to grow under pieces of legislation like this.I frankly despair at the thought and the prospect of victims of violent offending violent sexual offending and domestic violence when they are able to collect themselves process what has happened to them and start to take control of their lives then having to go through this process most likely at their own expense and deal with court registry staff who are under so much pressure and are probably unlikely to give them a lot of help. That is the justice system that we are developing under this Government and it is shameful. We have a Minister of Justice who is happy to swan around London mince around with Angelina Jolie photobomb Brad Pitt and talk longingly about protecting the victims of sexual violence in war zones but she cannot do enough for the good citizens of New Zealand and those who are in the unfortunate position of being victims of that sort of offending back here. Well we deserve better. The people of New Zealand deserve better.I want to talk about just a couple of provisions here because my colleagues Phil Goff and Carol Beaumont have talked about the bill. First of all I want to point out clause 15 “Discharge of non-contact order on application”. That allows an application for discharge to be made by a person against whom an order was made which could be the offender or an associate according to the bill “at any time”. An application for discharge can be made at any time. So no sooner is an order issued from the court with the victim having taken the initiative and gone to their own expense and negotiated and navigated their way through an under-resourced court registry the offender against whom the order is made can then at any time apply for a discharge. There is no constraint on that at all—no limitation on the offender no requirement that the order is in place for a limited period of time. You would have thought that at least for orders made on notice where there has been a hearing and the court has heard from the offender or at least from the subject of the order there must surely be a minimum time for the order to apply before an application for discharge can be made. But that provision opens it up for the offender to harass the victim in other ways by applying for the discharge.Then I want to turn to clause 15B which allows the offender of course once an application has been made to require a hearing to take place. In terms of principles of justice I do not have a problem with that—I do not have a problem with that. But where I am concerned is where the registrar of the court then takes on a number of responsibilities. The registrar can take the application for a hearing set it down and in the subsequent clauses of the bill it is the registrar who can take the responsibility for explaining the impact and the consequences of one of these orders to a person against whom an order is made.I go back to my earlier point that the resources of our court registries particularly the District Court where these applications will be made are stressed beyond belief right now. The court registry staff are just absolutely under the hammer. You have only got to talk to some of them to find out that that pressure is unrelenting because this Government has said “We must squeeze more out of you. You must work harder.” We have got court registry staff not just working late on weekdays but now coming in on weekends just to catch up with the work they are doing particularly in relation to civil applications because they are often the most complex ones to process and to work out who has to be served with what what has to go to which court official and all the rest of it. The court registry staff in this country are under unreasonable and unremitting pressure because of this Government. When this bill gets passed they will be under even greater pressure and they will be required to deal with distressed people and it is just unreasonable.Mr King may think it is funny. Mr King may think that we should cut short this discussion and this debate on this very important issue. Maybe the National Party members really just do not care about the victims of this sort of abuse and the importance of these sorts of orders because to look at them to hear the Minister of Justice and look at her actions which frankly speak louder than words you would think they do not give a toss—they do not give a toss. That is why we have this bill in this form.I want to echo my colleague Phil Goff’s comments that it is well time well overdue for this country to have a comprehensive piece of victims’ legislation setting out rights and allowing victims to look to the State to afford them the protection that the criminal justice system ought properly to offer them. It is not enough to rely on victims to take the initiative in their distressed state to protect themselves. That is what this bill does. It is time we had a new set of principles so that victims can look to the State and the courts to provide them with proper protection at all stages of the criminal justice system. There is no reason in principle why the orders that are contemplated in this bill could not be part of either the sentencing process or the parole process so that the victim does not have to take on the burden of that responsibility yet again.As my colleagues have said we will support this bill because as is often the case something is better than nothing. But the people of this country are fast demanding something a lot better and it is the Labour Party in Government that will deliver it because this Government has shown in 6 years that it is not up to the task. It really does not care about victims and it is not doing enough.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Hon Judith Collins to Part 2 be agreed to:add to clause 13A the following subclause:(2)On the hearing of an application made under subsection (1) the court may if it thinks fit vary any condition or direction imposed under section 11(2) in respect of a temporary non-contact order.;insert in clause 14(2) the following paragraph:(ab)vary or discharge a condition or direction imposed under section 11A(2):;in clause 20(2)(b) replace “2009” with “2014”; andin clause 20(3) replace “2009” with “2014”.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):This bill is entitled the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill and the reason we have it before the Committee tonight is that there is currently in place no long-term mechanism that the police or the courts can use to prevent an offender coming into contact with a victim in the absence of a domestic relationship or evidence of deliberate harassment. This bill was designed to address a gap in the system. The Domestic Violence Act provides protection orders for people usually women who have been the subject of domestic violence. The Harassment Act provides protection for the victim against those who continue to harass them. But there is nothing in the current legislation that deals with the situation where a person who has been the offender against the victim can harass them silently if you like by their presence.What this bill tries to do is prevent things such as the following or the watching of the victim and the loitering near and the prevention or hindering of access to or from the victim’s place of residence business employment educational institution or other place that the offender knows the victim might visit. It is about stopping a person from following or accosting the victim. It is about stopping people making contact with the victim that is unwanted contact.Some people might say that when an offender has served his or her prison sentence then their rights need to be upheld alongside the rights of anybody else in the community. My view is somewhat different from that. Yes of course offenders do have rights but those rights cannot be superior to the right of the victim not to relive the suffering that they have had inflicted on them by the offender by seeing the presence of that offender in their community near their place of residence or at their place of work or education.There was a gap in the law. This bill closes that gap but let us not exaggerate the impact of what this legislation actually does. The Law and Order Committee found that there are 1000 people each year released from prison who would meet the sentencing criteria for being covered by this bill but equally officials have said that this bill will apply to a very small number of people. We do not know what it was. As the Minister of Justice had originally drafted the bill it would have applied to just 10 people. I have got to say that when I read the regulatory impact statement I was really worried about everything that I read in that statement that suggested that what the Government was doing and the officials were doing was premised on what the costs might be of extending the rights of the victims. Indeed when you look through the options that were put up the Government said: “This would be quite costly. We cannot do it.” Well let us start to think about the costs that are inflicted on the victim and the need to protect the victim which is what this bill is supposedly about.But I want to say that although this bill as the title suggests is about orders against violent offenders it is a drop in the bucket in terms of the actual problem of serious violent offending and serious sexual offending in our community. I had the terrible task earlier this week of visiting the family of the dairy owner Arun Kumar who was murdered in his shop in Henderson. Talk to the family and try to find words that are adequate to match the suffering of that family—an elderly dad who has lost his son; a wife Anita whose husband has died before her eyes and in her arms; and two children who know that their dad will never be there to be the grandfather for their children—and you realise that when we talk about victims we are not simply talking about statistics. We are talking about people real people and the enormous suffering that so many people have inflicted on them in our community—the suffering of violence and the suffering of sexual assault.It is time that we in this House made more than just the token effort of saying that we will patch the system here or we will patch the system there. It is time to look fundamentally at what is going wrong in our society and to build the fence at the top of the cliff rather than trying to make sure the ambulance at the bottom might arrive on time. When the offenders as in that case in Henderson are of the age of 12 and 13 you know fundamentally that something is happening that is wrong in our society and if we think that we can fix that by passing small pieces of legislation like this we are sadly wrong.We have to do more to address the causes of offending. That requires much more than legislation. We have to do things that ensure that the system works. In that case in Henderson you have got to ask the question of why a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old were not at school and what was happening to make sure that they should be at school. You have to ask the question of why a 13-year-old whose father is in prison and whose mother is constantly before the courts is left to his own devices and why there is nothing in the system to put him on the right track which might have prevented him from stabbing the dairy owner in the neck as alleged. That is why we need something more than simply this piece of legislation.We need a change in the system. In terms of sexual offending we need a system that will respond to individuals in a way that does not frighten them away from the system but that allows them to come into the system in order to see justice done. When only one in 100 of those who are victims of sexual violation get justice through the system that we have at the moment we know that the system is simply not good enough.So the Labour Party has come into the House at each reading of this bill and has supported the bill for the small but useful things that it will do for a small minority of victims. We will always support the victims but this bill as the title suggests is no panacea no widespread solution and no answer to the fundamental problems that after 6 years have not been addressed by this Government. It is not the time to make this into a political football but it is the time when this House should come together and say: “Let’s do something more than pass tiny pieces of legislation that apply sticking plasters.”Let us do something to make sure our system works. Let us do something to create a society that addresses the causes of offending. Let us do something to have a policing system where the police do not have their budget cut as they have had in every Budget for each of the last 5 years so that we now have fewer police staff out there working in the police force and fewer police stations. That is the track record. In Henderson the thing that people told us on the ground as we went from shop to shop was: “What we really needed was a community police station in this town. What we needed was to see our police out in the street. What we needed was some intervention when we could see the problem out there.” They needed to know that the system would respond to that problem and prevent the problem because after the damage has been done it is too late.So I say to the Minister of Justice that it is fine to have this small narrow piece of legislation. We will support it—we would support it if it helped just one person—but it is time to have a system that actually works for the greater good of a greater number of people. We need to address the causes of offending have a policing system that is visible on the ground and that works properly and have a justice system that encourages people to come into the system and see justice done because for far too many people today justice is not being done.DAVID CLENDON (Green):I want to take a short call and clearly the Chairperson has some enthusiasm for advancing the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. This legislation undoubtedly fills a gap. The Greens are supporting it with some reservations which we have expressed at the Law and Order Committee and elsewhere but it does fill an obvious gap. A person who has suffered an assault or attack of some sort at the hands of someone with whom they had a relationship—a domestic relationship or some other form of intimate relationship—can make an appeal for a protection order. It seems perverse that there is no similar provision for someone who has been assaulted by someone who does not meet the criteria for a protection order. Undoubtedly this new mechanism does fill that gap.I would reiterate what Mr Goff has just said and indeed what Carol Beaumont referred to earlier and that is that community safety and the safety of individuals will never be achieved simply through legislative instruments statutory provisions or indeed through longer sentences more jails or more and better policing—not to say that the latter particularly does not have a significant role to play. Ultimately we will achieve peaceful and safe societies when people have access to education health care housing and useful and productive employment. The social situations and conditions that breed crime need to be dealt with rather than simply the punitive and reactive mechanisms that we can deal with through legislation like this.Having said that we certainly will support this legislation albeit recognising that it is not a panacea; it is far short of that. We continue to have some concerns and unlike some of our Labour colleagues we have some concerns about the threshold having been reduced from 5 years to 2 years. That seems a significant drop. The original advice from officials was that the 5-year threshold was set because the policy intention was that the orders should be available only in the most serious and violent sexual offending. In part—and I do not entirely accept the notion that it was driven by cost—the Attorney-General’s report on compliance pointed to some potential compromising of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but conceded or acknowledged it was justified given that this order would be available only in response to the most extreme and serious offending as determined by that 5-year sentence. Regarding the fact that we are reducing this significantly to 2 years—although I understand the logic of aligning it with the Sentencing Act and with other legislation—information was given to us that a change in the threshold could undermine the Attorney-General’s conclusion that limitations imposed by the order could be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is not a trivial matter.My other reflection is that of course now that there are many many more people who will be eligible to apply for these orders the numbers will undoubtedly increase. The number of these orders could actually become quite significant not only because of the reducing of the threshold to 2 years but equally because of the other significant change which now enables people to apply for an order immediately post-sentencing at any time after sentencing. In the heat of the moment in the trial process yes the victim is often obliged to some extent to relive the very traumatic and unfortunate experience. At that point the victim is most likely to think “Yes we will apply for one of these orders.” whereas 2 or 3 years later on they might be perhaps more thoughtful in their approach. Time has passed and there is perhaps an acknowledgment that offenders can actually be rehabilitated in our prison system on a good day or on a best occasion. So I think the likelihood of large numbers of these orders being issued is something we can reasonably expect.Given that there will be more of these orders it does concern me that we might eventually come to a similar situation as the one we have come to with protection orders where the efficacy of protection orders is being questioned in part because there are a lot of them and in part because they are not necessarily respected or given weight either by the enforcement agencies or indeed by the people whom they are intended to protect. We have instances where a person protected by an order will willingly allow a breach of it and these consented breaches if you like lead to more serious breaches later on. The waters get seriously muddied the police are put into unfortunate situations and the integrity of the protection orders is compromised very often and makes them less of a protection than they might be.There is also the danger that people will become overly reliant and expect too much of these orders be it a protection order or the new victims’ orders and will assume that they will actually give them a very real protection. Unfortunately the orders cannot be entirely relied on. Ultimately no document statutory device or mechanism can provide protection. Sometimes it just requires common sense community and family support and all of those other things. Those two substantive changes made through the select committee process—the lowering of the threshold and the ability now for an order to be applied for and issued at any point after sentencing—we think could actually backfire and ultimately could put us in a less desirable situation in ways that were not necessarily meant to be. I can understand that there were problems with not having the orders available until after an offender had been released because there could then be a gap of time when the victim could feel threatened—or indeed could be threatened—before an order could be worked through the system but we think that immediately after sentencing is probably too early in the piece to allow for this very serious document this order to be applied.With those comments I do say again that we will support this bill but I would echo the comments made by other people that it is part of a piecemeal approach. We do look forward to having a clean slate—a new beginning in a sense—and an assessment of actually how you get justice and how you get community safety. That does require I think some more creative and zero-sum thinking than simply tacking on more and more provisions to existing provisions.I had a conversation today in fact with a person who had long experience as a lawyer in a provincial town. He had experience in everything from criminal law and family law through to tribunals—the whole gamut of legal action and advice. He among others is seeing practitioners who are understanding very well that our justice sector is in many ways under stress. We are not providing for a lot of the needs of people as they arrive and the priorities can be wrong. The system is stressed in many ways not least of all financially as has been mentioned. The capacity of our system to deal with people fairly and in a timely fashion is degrading—there is no question about that. With the cuts in legal aid many lawyers now simply cannot afford to function at legal aid rates if indeed people are deemed eligible for it. So we have some very serious problems in the provision of justice that need to be addressed and certainly piecemeal approaches like this bill simply will not do it. Thank you.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.House resumed.The Chairperson reported the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into two bills and the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill with amendment.Report adopted.Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) BillThird ReadingHon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Revenue):I move That the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a third time. The purpose of this wide-ranging tax bill is to bring greater clarity to the tax rules to ensure that they remain fit for purpose that they support business and innovation and that everyone pays their fair share of tax.The bill therefore proposes a number of practical measures to clarify the tax treatment of employer-provided accommodation accommodation allowances and other payments provided by employers to employees to reimburse them for expenditure incurred. There is clarification for the treatment of accommodation provided to ministers of religion based upon a historical agreement with the Inland Revenue Department as well as clarification for the Defence Force. Equally there are measures to assist employees who receive a clothing allowance as well as a uniform. This will be welcomed by the New Zealand Police force and other employees in New Zealand. In particular the measures proposed in this bill will help employers and their employees to determine where to draw the line between what is taxable and what is not when payments are linked to business travel secondments and projects.A second group of measures in the bill is designed to support business growth and innovation by clarifying certain rules and removing distortions created by the way some existing rules apply such as those arising from the current black hole tax treatment of certain types of expenditure. Under the changes proposed the deductibility of certain company running costs will be clarified and the expenditure on abandoned applications for patents resource consents and plant variety rights will be immediately deductible. A range of technical or remedial changes is also proposed to the GST rules to make them easier to understand and to apply.The acquisition date of land and agreements for the sale and purchase of property or services in foreign currency have also been clarified to give greater certainty to taxpayers as have the tax rules for charities that have been removed from the register of charitable entities. Other proposals such as changes to tighten thin capitalisation rules and the rules relating to the tax treatment of land-related lease payments are intended to remove distortions and protect New Zealand’s tax base. Finally the bill contains revisions to allow our financial institutions to more easily comply with the intergovernmental agreement signed between New Zealand and the United States last week.In reaching the third reading I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the passage of this bill: the policy officials for their work on the detailed content of the bill the drafters who have put the policy intent into the required legal framework the many people in the organisations who made submissions on the proposed legislation and the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its consideration of the bill and its recommendations for further fine-tuning. Finally I thank members of this House for their consideration. I commend this worthy Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill to the House.Hon David Parker: I rise to take a call on behalf of the Labour Party—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member is calling is he?Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):I am. I now thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for allowing me to take a call on the third reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill which the Labour Party is supporting. I wondered what I was going to add to the earlier contributions that I had made in this debate until the Minister of Revenue spoke. The Minister—and I wrote his comment down—said: “The purpose of this legislation is to make sure that everyone pays their fair share of tax.” Well would that not be great if that was the effect of this bill? Would that not be great if that was the effect of this bill because this is the Minister who in the chair last night when asked the question that he would not answer at the select committee about how many people pay tax on their capital gains for investment property—Paul Goldsmith: What’s this got to do with the bill?Hon DAVID PARKER: Well actually Mr Goldsmith—you are from Epsom. I am surprised that you do not know that most of your members do not want to pay capital gains because they disproportionality earn their income as capital gains. The Minister said that this bill about annual rates of income tax therefore affects tax on what is taxable income. The question that is quite properly raised is what sort of economic income is caught by the regime and what is not.Dr David Clark: I hope Mr Goldsmith’s not speaking.Hon DAVID PARKER: Mr Goldsmith was at the Finance and Expenditure Committee a couple of weeks ago when the assertion was made initially by the Minister of Revenue Todd McClay that we already have a capital gains tax in New Zealand on investment property. It is true that if you buy with the purpose of resale or you are a trader then your house becomes your stock in trade just as it would be if you were buying and selling shoes. It is treated in the same way as stock in trade and you account for income tax on your profits over and above your cost of sales and therefore you do pay income tax in respect of that—not capital gains tax. It forms part of your income tax because it is a trading activity.If it is an investment activity as opposed to a trading activity then of course you do not pay tax on your gains for investment property. I know that. Everyone in New Zealand knows that. The National members pretend that that is not the case because it is another of those instances where they close their eyes to reality because it does not suit the interests that put them in Parliament and keep them here. The plain truth is that the vast majority of people who buy an investment property often make deductions for their taxable losses suffered during the period of ownership because their interests and rates costs exceed their rental income. They offset those losses against their other income but then when it comes to the sale of the property they do not pay any tax on the economic gains they make.Mr McClay having made the assertion that we had a capital gains tax was asked I thought the reasonable question by the Opposition: what proportion of sales of investment property attracts tax in New Zealand? He said he could not tell us; he would check. I asked him and the Government members said it was a stunt. I actually thought it was at least a general question he might be able to answer. I said: was it closer to 100 percent than it was to 0 percent? And he said that he did not know the answer to that either. We all know it is closer to 0 percent than it is to 100 percent. So he went away. We put that question down officially to him and he was going to come back. The answer that came back to the select committee this week was they do not know. So there is no substance behind his assertion earlier that people are routinely paying tax on the profits that they make on the sale of investment properties.Roll forward to today—this week at the Finance and Expenditure Committee we actually deliberated on the report about that sad episode and the day after we had a Committee stage in this House on this very bill when we asked the Minister whether he had been able to find out since the select committee and he did not take a call. So we thought: well we are voting money to the Minister of Finance in respect of Treasury and he was up for an estimates hearing today. It was in a public session so I am not breaching privilege or anything. We asked him whether he had had any advice from Treasury as to the percentage of investment properties that are sold for an economic gain that pay tax. He said no he did not have that either. So here we have the Government overseeing an economy where we have got increasing inequality we have got the lowest—Hon Steven Joyce: Oh rubbish! Makes it all up.Hon DAVID PARKER: So here we go—here we go again. Well actually repetition is necessary for some of the people opposite. We have got the lowest rates of homeownership in 50 years. We have got the highest rates of child poverty certainly in my lifetime and we have got growing gaps between wealthy suburbs and less wealthy suburbs in Auckland as proven by the latest census data which is the best data that we have and which showed a very large increase in the gap in the relative well-being of peoples in Auckland. And then we have had the chief economist of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Shamubeel Eaqub in the last day saying that these gaps are widening between ethnic groups between geographic regions and effectively—Simon O’Connor: Be careful using his analysis. It might come back to bite you.Hon DAVID PARKER:—between the wealthy and less wealthy. Well I suspect it is not going to come back to bite me during any term under this Government because this is classic conservative party politics around the world: cut taxes for the wealthy. It is what it has done disproportionately in its earlier—Hon Steven Joyce: Rubbish again.Hon DAVID PARKER: Rubbish again says Mr Joyce.Hon Steven Joyce: How many lies can you fit into one thing?Hon DAVID PARKER: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Mr Joyce just called me a liar. I would ask that he be forced to withdraw and apologise.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): If the member has used that word it is not acceptable in the House. It can lead to disorder. If the member has used it I would ask him to stand withdraw and apologise.Hon Steven Joyce: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to point out that I did not call the member a liar. I did say there were some lies. I appreciate that is still unparliamentary and I will withdraw and apologise.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That is drawing a long bow. I would ask the member to stand and withdraw.Hon Steven Joyce: Do you want me to do it again? I withdraw and apologiseThe ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I ask the member to stand and withdraw. The member will do it properly. The member will say: “I stand and withdraw.”Hon Steven Joyce: I stand and withdraw.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.Hon DAVID PARKER: It is true that the income tax cuts of the National Government disproportionately favoured the well-off.Hon Steven Joyce: That’s incorrect.Hon DAVID PARKER: What is that?Hon Steven Joyce: That’s incorrect.Hon DAVID PARKER: That is correct—thank you.Hon Steven Joyce: That’s incorrect I said.Hon DAVID PARKER: “That’s incorrect.” he says. Forty percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of income earners. The offsets that the Government claims in respect of removing depreciation allowances on property were not paid by the same people and the incidence of the increase in GST in proportion to income disproportionately falls on the lower-income people relative to the higher-income people who pay a lower proportion of their income in GST than lower income people do because people who save their money do not pay GST on their savings. Higher-income people save more relative to their income compared with lower-income people. The arithmetic of this is so clear and yet the National Party denies it. We have a country where we have got decreasing rates of homeownership and increasing rates of child poverty.The Government misrepresents our inequality statistics every day. It says that the Perry report shows that annual income inequality has not changed much in recent years which is correct. The only time it has gone down substantially in the last couple of decades was actually pursuant to Working for Families which the National Party including John Key called communism by stealth at the time. Other than that period income inequality on an annual basis has not changed much in recent years although it has changed a lot in the last two decades from being in the best 30 percent of the world to the worst 40 percent of the world. The unfortunate reality for New Zealand is once you get to being in the worst 40 percent of the world and when you realise that those figures do not include capital gains—which are more concentrated in New Zealand than in other countries that tax capital gains because we encourage them by way of our tax system—you realise that inequality in New Zealand is of course getting worse every year because the consequences stack up year after year after year. They do stack up year after year after year and you see it in homeownership rates that decline year after year after year and in child poverty rates that increase year after year after year.Despite that we have the Minister of Revenue saying that this bill meets its purpose of making sure that everyone pays their fair share which is just patently not true. In fact the greatest tax burden in New Zealand falls on the middle classes. The middle classes do not have that concentration of tax avoidance through non-taxable economic income in the form of capital gains. They do bear most of the burden of paying tax in New Zealand and of course they pay a higher proportion of their income in GST than wealthier New Zealanders. So in effect middle-class New Zealanders pay higher rates of tax than the most wealthy people in New Zealand and that is patently unfair. Indeed you just need to see the massive increases in the wealth of the rich listers and the small amount of tax that is paid by them as a proportion of their income and then you look at some of the other high asset-owning classes of taxpayers like farmers and you see they do not pay their fair share either.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):It is very kind of you to give me this call on the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill Mr Assistant Speaker. I must begin by saying you do have to hand it to David Parker—I would never have believed how many social ills financial ills and general problems in the community could be solved by a capital gains tax. But he is relentless. At every single opportunity he never misses the opportunity to talk about all the problems in the world that will be solved by the introduction of a capital gains tax notwithstanding the fact that half the capital gains are inflation anyway and it is a bit unfair to be taxing that and the fact that we have had endless numbers of detailed royal commissions and detailed studies on taxation in this country. The last one under the Labour Party the McLeod Tax Review drew the clear conclusion that a capital gains tax in New Zealand is not warranted particularly if it exempted the family home as is being suggested here. It would add all sorts of tax compliance and difficulties in the taxation system more broadly.This Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill does not introduce a capital gains tax. What it does cover is employee allowances thin capitalisation rules black hole expenditure deductions and foreign account information-sharing agreements as well as a number of other things to tidy up our taxation laws. We did a lot of detailed work in the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I do want to pay tribute to the work of the members of the select committee on all sides of the House including Mr Peters who was very diligent in some of these matters—less so in others.The review of the employee allowances in particular was given—[Interruption]—well yes indeed—a fair amount of attention. The Government listened to a number of the concerns about some of the details in this area and a significant number of changes were made particularly around when an employee is expected to work away from their normal workplace for up to 2 years. Employee-provided accommodation will be tax-exempt—that was one area. Another area was further clarification when accommodation is provided with regard to shift work involving periodic sleepovers and fly-in fly-out workers in remote areas. So there was a lot of detail that the committee went through and I think that the overall result is much better as a result of that consultation.The other area that we heard a lot of submissions on was the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act which is the result of obligations contained in the intergovernmental agreement with the United States. A lot of submitters were very concerned to discover their tax obligations as US citizens or people who had been born in the US—who had never lived there but happened to be born there; they had been in New Zealand all their lives. They were worried that they were suddenly going to be drawn into the United States tax ambit. I suppose the important thing to say in relation to this is that this legislation does not change anybody’s tax obligations if they are a US citizen or a US tax person—they have always been there and they remain there. What this bill does is allow for New Zealand banks to pass information on certain people who are US citizens on to the United States. So it is an information-gathering exercise and there are thresholds over which people have to stand before that information is passed on.Again the select committee looked at that very closely. The Opposition was most concerned about reciprocity in this and the intergovernmental agreement that has just been signed with the United States is reciprocal. That is important because we would expect to uphold the US tax system in New Zealand and likewise we would expect to have the same level of assistance from the United States in the way that we collect our taxes.So all in all this bill is one small piece in the great work of building a more competitive and productive economy in New Zealand which is one of the overall goals of this Government. At the end of it all increasing New Zealand’s international competiveness is what sustains our living standards in New Zealand and what provides us with the opportunity to have the growth the jobs the health care and the education system that we need. We do not get any of that if we do not have an internationally competitive economy. The Business Growth Agenda which is at the heart of this Government’s response to lifting New Zealand’s competiveness includes having an efficient tax system. This bill goes some way in clarifying some areas and ensures that taxpayers are treated as fairly as possible in the intricate details around employee allowances. On that basis I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First):This is a very important night because that was probably the last speech that member Paul Goldsmith is going to make until 20 September 2014. He is the phantom MP who will not put up hoardings does not know whether he wants to stand for Epsom or not and appears to be an absolute doormat for his party’s scheming and plotting. If he thinks that is diligent that is his view but it is not the view of others in this Parliament who are prepared to stand on their own feet and fight their own causes without seeking a ladder from someone else all of the time.So when I hear those free marketeers talking about the value of endeavour and free enterprise I think to myself “How shallow is that?” when in their own behaviour they evince the very opposite. No they will not take a risk. They will not say “I’ll put it all on my belief in myself and my colleagues and my party.” Oh no no—they have got so many fingers outside they are like a six-armed octopus trying to survive against the storm in the sea and they will not win doing that.Let me say this. We in New Zealand First believe in an up-to-date fair and efficient tax system. We think it is fundamental to a great democracy. We have always supported a robust tax system and funnily enough Mr Goldsmith got up and started talking about a capital gains tax. Has he not heard Mr English and Mr Key say that we have already got one under National? So the question is a matter of degree is it not and let us not have these stupid arguments in this campaign that are so shallow but obviously so beloved of innocent new members who are cannon fodder in the National Party.There are aspects of the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill that we can support but the FACTA the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is what we are concerned about. It raises aspects that are very serious in respect of this country’s national sovereignty—issues that have never been sufficiently and fully addressed. Worse still this bill came before Parliament and then the Finance and Expenditure Committee when they had not even completed the agreement with the United States.What sort of public policy is it when you pass legislation dependent upon a later agreement that you have not actually resolved? That is not the way we do Government surely in this country but under National if the United States says something National says “How high?”. If the United States says “We want to be able to go down to the home or the business of any former US citizens who may have been here 35 years under a sovereign nation called New Zealand which has had an unbroken line of democracy and which has been holding elections for the last 150 years.” National says that sovereignty can be invaded by another country—namely the United States.Simon O’Connor: Go back and do Constitution 101.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Go back and do what?Simon O’Connor: Go and read your Constitution 101.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh Constitution 101? What are your qualifications in the constitution?Simon O’Connor: More than yours.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes I want to know because I will tell you this. One thing about our constitution is that it says the New Zealand Parliament is paramount. That is the No. 1 principle. It is sovereign that this country is answerable to nobody else. That is what our constitution says. But here comes the former abbot trainee who did not even graduate and he comes and tells me that he is a constitutional expert. Well what great news—the National Party members over there have got themselves this shining bushel of light that we hitherto did not know about! So I am delighted that at last they have found a font of all knowledge about constitutional matters because hitherto they had shown so much ignorance on these matters.You know the interests of the United States are not always synonymous with our interests. Allowing the US to open the door into our tax and banking system is not something that can be done lightly. I already now know of KiwiSaver providers who are saying “If you are from the US we can’t take you on. We are not opening our books to the United States and so we won’t take any US former citizen on in New Zealand.” I think that is appalling. I think that is abysmal.I know of a time when the National Party would have been shocked to hear those sorts of things—and these were men like those in Labour who had come back from the war and had spent 4½ years fighting for freedom and they understood what freedom meant. Over there you have got a party that is posing under false pretences. It is no longer the National Party; it is the “International Party”. The United States asks for something and it says “What did you say Uncle Sam? What is that again? Uh huh; we’ve got it. We’ll do exactly what you want.” And while they do that the people they promised protection to when they emigrated to New Zealand lose all right to have privacy the kind of privacy that we as New Zealanders used to enjoy. I think that is—Hon Member: Rubbish!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I know it is rubbish—I will get around to that member’s specialty later but I am talking about some serious matters here. It is a significant piece of legislation passed by Congress in March 2010.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)