Volume 692 Week 51 - Thursday 22 August 2013Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 692 Week 51 - Thursday 22 August 2013[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12745. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Thursday 22 August 2013Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Business StatementHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House):From the close of the parliamentary day today Parliament is scheduled to sit for only 11 weeks before the end of the year. There is a considerable volume of business on the Order Paper that the Government wishes to progress with a lot more to come. Accordingly next week it is the Government’s intention to move urgency to progress a number of bills on the Order Paper including the Patents Bill the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill and a number of other Committee stages and first readings of bills currently on the Order Paper.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):Can I ask the Leader of the House whether that includes orders of the day Nos 22 to 27—a number of first readings—because it appears that some of the select committees are running out of work because of inefficiency in this part of the House’s work.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House):Well I would have thought there was plenty to keep that side of the House occupied over the next week—the next 4 weeks in fact. However as I said it is the Government’s intention to move a number of first readings in the next week and it is my intention that the full urgency motion or the content of the urgency motion will be made available to Opposition parties later in the week.Questions to MinistersMinisters—Confidence1.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour)to thePrime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House)on behalf of thePrime Minister: Knowing how important confidence is to the member yes.Grant Robertson: Does he agree with the statement from Judith Collins regarding the Henry inquiry: “I felt it was a chilling experience to realise that ministers and staff emails and their right to privacy was treated with what I would say was frankly a contemptuous attitude”; if not why not?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member should not get too carried away by the dramatics of a Privileges Committee hearing.Grant Robertson: Would he like to expand on that answer and inform the House whose dramatics he was referring to?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I do not think this side of the House has anything to explain around dramatics on a day like today.Grant Robertson: Does the Prime Minister agree with his Minister Gerry Brownlee when talking about the Henry inquiry who said: “It’s difficult on a number of fronts to see that natural justice was served here in any way.”; if not why not?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It would be good if the member quoted Mr Brownlee’s entire statement which was also in the nature—[Interruption ] Oh I see. So that is why David Shearer lost today—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister did not address the question that I asked.Mr SPEAKER: I think he certainly did address the question.Grant Robertson: Does the Prime Minister agree with Gerry Brownlee’s comment as printed on page 2 of theDominion Posttoday talking about the Henry inquiry: “It’s difficult on a number of fronts to see that natural justice was served here in any way.”?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member should be aware that when at those Privileges Committee hearings members often taken a devil’s advocate position in order to try to get to the truth.Grant Robertson: How can the Prime Minister have confidence in Ministers like Judith Collins and Gerry Brownlee who are directly challenging his decision to release the metadata to the Henry inquiry?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Precisely because he has confidence in his Ministers and no confidence in the interpretation of the Labour leader aspirant Grant Robertson.Grant Robertson: Does the Prime Minister have confidence in the Attorney-General given his statements yesterday disparaging the New Zealander of the Year Dame Anne Salmond Sir Geoffrey Palmer Dr Rodney Harrison QC and Sir Bruce Ferguson?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes because many New Zealanders find such warm remarks from the Attorney-General to be delivered in the most affectionate terms.Grant Robertson: Supplementary question—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is this a supplementary question?Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well it was last time and it is now.Mr SPEAKER: The member needs to stand and call for a supplementary question.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I did last time. You did not respond.Mr SPEAKER: He needs to do it on every occasion.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I got to my feet after someone had already had four or five supplementary questions. Your duty then is to pass the supplementary question to me not now make it look like—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member should read the Standing Orders. The taking of a supplementary question is entirely at the discretion of the Speaker. Whenever the member wants a supplementary question he is required to get to his feet and call for a supplementary question.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Which I did.Mr SPEAKER: No the member did not do it on the last occasion. If the member wants a supplementary question—Rt Hon Winston Peters: Of course I want a supplementary question. That’s why I’m standing on my feet.Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question the Rt Hon Winston Peters.Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can the Prime Minister have confidence in a Minister of Finance who offers a Meridian Energy float offering three guaranteed dividends before the share buyer has to pay up in full when company law requires any dividend to be from profits or has the Government guaranteed now the profits of Meridian Energy?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Because he is an excellent Minister of Finance.Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can the Minister of Finance offer three dividends before the full pay up of the shares when company law does not allow that unless there is a guaranteed profit? The Minister is being asked to answer that question.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: There is nothing being done in this float that is unusual.Grant Robertson: Will the Prime Minister apologise to New Zealander of the Year Dame Anne Salmond Sir Geoffrey Palmer Rodney Harrison QC and Sir Bruce Ferguson after the disgraceful comments that the Attorney-General made last night?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is a bit rich for that member to ask the Prime Minister to apologise to anyone after standing up his former leader who was holding two fish in this Chamber a few days before he guts him.Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Minister Brownlee did not address the question I asked whether the Prime Minister would apologise.Mr SPEAKER: On this occasion I agree. The Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister did not answer the question. Would he please address the question.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The Prime Minister does not believe that is necessary.Employment and Job Creation—Online Vacancies and Initiatives2.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany)to theMinister of Finance: What reports has he received on employment prospects for New Zealanders in the year ahead?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Acting Minister of Finance):It is an interesting day for this question. There has been a number of recent reports indicating that businesses are becoming more confident and are looking to take on new staff. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment this week issued its Jobs Online report for July. This measures online job vacancies for all workers and also for skilled workers as advertised by businesses on the two main internet employment sites SEEK and TradeMe. All job vacancies increased by 8.3 percent per month in the month of July taking the annual increase to 13.2 percent. As the ministry noted seasonally adjusted data has been somewhat volatile from month to month but the overall trend shows a steady growth in advertised job vacancies. In fact I hear that even in the last half-hour the numbers have gone up yet again although they are not sure whether the particular vacancy is a skilled or an unskilled one.Jami-Lee Ross: How does the latest Jobs Online measure of employment vacancies compare with the other indicators of trends in the employment market?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Jobs Online measure of employment vacancies is broadly in line with other indicators—for example the household labour force survey shows that unemployment has fallen from 6.8 percent to 6.4 percent over the last year. It also shows that there have been 46000 more people employed in the past 6 months. We are of course working to see the unemployment rate fall further and the Government’s economic programme including the Business Growth Agenda is focused on encouraging businesses to invest grow and hire more staff.Jami-Lee Ross: What measures has the Government taken to help support businesses to invest grow their operations and hire more staff?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government has taken a large number of steps to achieve those things over the past 4½ years. In Budget 2013 alone we provided $400 million over 4 years for the internationally focused growth package and investing in research and development the tourism industry and international education. We have proposed changes to tax rules to allow start-up businesses to claim tax losses on research and development. We have remained firmly on track to surplus which helps keep interest rates lower and we have embarked on substantial measures in affordable housing including the Auckland Housing Accord and legislation to speed up consents and developments.Employment and Training—Essential Skills in Demand Lists and Aviation Industry3.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First)to theMinister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: Has PricewaterhouseCoopers applied to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to have “Aeroplane Pilot” added to the list of Essential Skills in Demand?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment):Yes PricewaterhouseCoopers acting on behalf of Air New Zealand has nominated “aeroplane pilot” for addition to the immediate skill shortage list which is part of the essential skills in demand list.Denis O’Rourke: Does he accept the claim that there is a shortage of airline pilots in New Zealand; if so what is the evidence to support that claim?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That would not be my interpretation based on the information we have collated in relation to pilots as a result of the changes to tertiary education recently. My understanding though is that the ministry is currently considering the situation as it is required to do and it will make a decision in due course.Denis O’Rourke: If the application were to be granted would it damage employment prospects for New Zealanders who train as airline pilots and is that a determining factor in whether the application will be granted?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not think that is necessarily the case. You have to look at all factors but I would note that we have had in recent times a surplus of pilots in New Zealand looking for the sorts of jobs that are described in the application. So those are the sorts of things that the ministry will have to consider. It is a very fluid situation of course at the moment with the skills demand list. For example the immediate skill shortage list may even change as recently as today because I understand that there is now a shortage of Opposition leaders and—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Denis O’Rourke: If the application were to be granted would it damage the future business sustainability of New Zealand’s world-ranking pilot training organisations and is that a determining factor in whether the application will be granted?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Actually there are a number of factors that would be considered. I certainly appreciate the member’s concerns about the issues he has raised. Obviously the ministry goes and seeks advice from other ministries and organisations such as the Tertiary Education Commission to get an understanding of what the flow-through of pilots is and the availability of training and so on. So all of that takes place but as I said it varies very much from profession to profession. In the example I mentioned before there may of course be a skill shortage but I understand that there may also be any number of people lining up to be an Opposition leader for example and—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call question No. 4. [Interruption ] Order! If the Minister wants to stay for his question he had better be quiet.Skycity Convention Centre—Advice to Cabinet and Compensation Provisions4.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green)to theMinister for Economic Development: Did the Regulatory Impact Analysis team raise concerns over the Regulatory Impact Statement prepared by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment for the New Zealand International Convention Centre; if so what were these concerns?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):Treasury’s regulatory impact analysis team noted that although the benefits and potential social costs are discussed in the regulatory impact statement qualitatively it was not clear that the regulatory impact statement quantitatively estimated benefits to the economy that outweighed the potential social impacts. However these issues were thoroughly canvassed prior to finalising the agreement. The regulatory impact analysis team also noted that the regulatory impact statement contained little analysis on alternative proposals to construct and operate the convention centre. However I would point out tothe member that that was thoroughly canvassed by the Government before the decision was taken to negotiate with the organisation.Metiria Turei: How does he justify recommending the convention centre deal when in his own Cabinet paper of 26 June that team did as he says raise the concern that there is no certainty that the economic benefits will outweigh the fiscal and social impact of the regulatory concessions in the deal? How does he justify it?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am thrilled that the member is so thrilled with Treasury advice suddenly because there is a lot of Treasury advice I would like her to take on including putting the interest back on student loans. Perhaps the Green Party might like to embrace that as a policy. But in terms of the particular example it is difficult to quantify exactly. The officials did their best in terms of the information they could gain and Cabinet made a judgment. Cabinet is happy with the judgment it made.Metiria Turei: How does the Minister reconcile his answer in the House to questions from the Green Party on 13 June—that Cabinet decided to proceed with the deal on the basis that the benefits of the deal outweighed the cost—with his advice to Cabinet 2 weeks later that showed that there was no evidence to show that the economic benefits would outweigh the social and fiscal costs?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No the advice was in relation to the regulatory impact assessment team of Treasury. My advice to Cabinet was very definitely that the benefits would exceed the cost and if the member would like me to take her through all the details I am more than happy to. That was the decision Cabinet took based on the advice from the Minister from the Cabinet paper and so on.Metiria Turei: Can the Minister confirm that he also advised Cabinet on 26 June that a court would not enforce contractual provisions where they appeared to impose a penalty rather than be a genuine pre-estimate of a party’s loss and that legislation was therefore necessary to enforce the compensation provisions of the agreement because contract law would not?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well the matter the member raises is actually the subject of quite a lot of discussion around contract law. My understanding is that there are some initiatives coming to deal with exactly that issue which is seen as a gap in New Zealand’s legislation in regard to this. So in effect we have taken a step to allow for the contractual remedies to be taken—in other words compensation to both parties in this agreement—but the broader law will definitely catch up with us in due course.Metiria Turei: Can the Minister therefore confirm that his advice to Cabinet was that if at any time in the next 35 years gambling regulations reduce the value of the concessions in the agreement it would not just compensate Skycity for their losses but also penalise the Crown for acting to reduce gambling harm?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No the member is incorrect in that assertion. It is very clear that in terms of the provision of the actual concessions they must be provided under the agreement or else compensation would apply. But in terms of the ability to regulate gambling under the gambling laws and regulations attached to those laws there is no fettering that ability and Skycity would be required to meet all regulations in that regard.Metiria Turei: Can he confirm then that the compensation provisions would be triggered if Skycity was required to use player-tracking technology in a way that reduced its pokie machine revenue by up to 40 percent—would the compensation provisions apply?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No it is very clear in the agreement where compensation applies and that is not one of them.Police—TeinaPora CaseANDREW LITTLE (Labour):My question is to—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! I have called Andrew Little.5.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour)to theMinister of Justice: What action will she take in light of the revelations on a television programme last night that Malcolm Rewa was identified to police as a suspect in a rape in 1988 which turned out to be the first of 25 rapes committed by him over seven years including the 1992 rape of Susan Burdett whoTeinaPora was convicted of murdering?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice):I have been advised this morning by the Independent Police Conduct Authority that an online form was submitted to the authority on 6 August 2013 2 weeks ago lodging a complaint about the failure of police to find a serial rapist operating in Auckland in 1992. I was advised that the Independent Police Conduct Authority declined to investigate the matter. I have this morning written to the authority asking for its urgent advice as to the reasons for its declining to investigate.Andrew Little: What does the Minister make of section 4AB of the Independent Police Conduct Authority Act which requires the authority to act independently including of Ministers and what real action will she take to ensure that the truth is found out for the benefit of the victims of this rapist?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I make a lot of the independence of the Independent Police Conduct Authority actually which is why I have taken the very unusual step of asking whether it could provide me as the Minister responsible for it the reasons. This is a matter that one would normally expect would be passed to the Independent Police Conduct Authority since it was set up in 2007 from the remnants of the Police Complaints Authority and following the inquiry that Dame Margaret Bazley led into police conduct. So one would expect that it is the right authority; if not I would like to know that from the Independent Police Conduct Authority and if not then I will look at other action.Andrew Little: Does the Minister seriously believe that writing to the Independent Police Conduct Authority to ask why it has declined to investigate a complaint is the appropriate action given that a gross injustice may have occurred toTeinaPora and to 25 women who have been raped one of whom has been murdered? How on earth can she possibly see that that is a serious response to this very serious situation?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Because as that member has already pointed out the Independent Police Conduct Authority has statutory independence from Ministers as well as from the police. I would also advise that member that I understand that the authority will be putting out a press release if it has not already done so where it is stated that the authority is currently reflecting on all the issues that have now been raised relating to this matter.Andrew Little: Does the Minister now accept that an appeal byTeinaPora to the Privy Council is no barrier to an inquiry given that an inquiry into the Pike River Coal tragedy took place while a police investigation into the same issue was under way and while prosecutions were being pursued under the relevant health and safety legislation in that particular case?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I do not agree with the member in all of his assertions. It is quite clear that MrPora has now lodged an application for leave to appeal to the Privy Council. As such it would be most incorrect for there to be an inquiry into matters pertaining to him. However from the other matters that have been raised about the rapist Rewa it does not seem to me that they are all necessarily matters that relate to MrPora. That seemed to me to be something that we should be concerned about.Andrew Little: Why will the Minister not accept that this is a very grave situation and that an appeal byPora to the Privy Council does not cover the issues that a proper inquiry into the whole situation of the police investigation of how a rapist was able to continue his foul and evil acts for 7 years would? Why will she not simply give confidence to the victims of this chap and set up an inquiry?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well the member is getting way ahead of himself. If he would just listen to what I have said to him it is quite clear. I will not—Andrew Little: Stop making excuses.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: He either wants to listen or he does not. What is really important is that the constitutional conventions are actually adhered to. What we have here is a situation where MrPora has lodged an application to the Privy Council and I will not go into that matter of MrPora while it is still a live application. However in relation to the rapist Rewa there are 25 women who have claimed that they have been raped by Rewa. That is another matter and that is why I have asked the Independent Police Conduct Authority to advise me why it has so far refused to investigate this matter.Andrew Little: That’ll be that independent body.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: And because it is in fact an independent body.Health Services—Elective Surgery Target Staffing and B4 School Checks6.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National)to theMinister of Health: What reports has he received on patients receiving better access to health specialists?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):Two days ago I told the House the positive news that a record 294000 patients had received surgical first specialist assessments in the last year. Today I am pleased to report to the member some more positive news. The total number of medical first specialist assessments in the 2012-13 year was a record 194000 extra patients 22000 up under this Government. This means that in the last year a record 487000 medical and surgical first specialist assessments were completed which is really equivalent to around one in every nine New Zealanders.Paul Foster-Bell: What does recent data tell us about access to first specialist assessments?Hon TONY RYALL: There have always been people who do not meet the threshold for access to first specialist assessment. However all patients referred to a specialist by a general practitioner are assessed by hospital-based clinical staff and those with the lowest clinical need are referred back to general practitioner care. Often the patient has not met the threshold for a full assessment. Some decide not to take up the assessment some move district and some may no longer need the treatment. This data has never been centrally collected. However copies of information received by my office indicate that around 45000 people are triaged back to general practitioner care by clinicians. With around 490000 assessments completed this number sits at less than 10 percent of total people referred and has been reasonably static.Kevin Hague: Why has the Minister taken no action to address the concerns of district health boards published in the Ministry of Health’s report into his elective surgery programme in June this year that the day-to-day pressure of pushing increasing numbers through waiting lists is “diverting resources from the robust consideration of the longer-term strategy and impact.”?Hon TONY RYALL: The Government sees itself as the agent of patients and patients tell us that they want improved access to the services that there are. This Government has put an average of $500 million extra into the health budget each year.Kevin Hague: Will he now confirm to the House that more than half of the 1000 new doctors he and the Prime Minister have been claiming to have recruited are in fact junior doctors and not specialists at all?Hon TONY RYALL: I think the Prime Minister and I have always been clear that the increased numbers refers to all doctors. In the term of our Government as that member knows through the large amount of Official Information Act material we have given him we currently think we are running at over 1200 extra doctors in New Zealand public hospitals.Kevin Hague: Given that all of the Government’s own district health boards and the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists have agreed on the need for at least 209 additional senior doctors every year how does he defend his underperformance in recruiting at less than three-quarters of that rate?Hon TONY RYALL: As the member will know we have over 1200 extra doctors working in the New Zealand public system since 2008. There is also a lot of information that shows that the most stable workforce in the entire New Zealand Public Service is the senior medical officers. So our Government has been investing very strongly in health. Turnover in staff numbers is down and we have more front-line staff than ever before.Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question related to the recruitment of senior medical officers. The Minister has not referred to that matter at all in his answer.Mr SPEAKER: The member should relook at his question. The essence of his question is how the Minister defended his underperformance in relation to that. The Minister gave a very justified answer to that.Kevin Hague: Well can the Minister then confirm that New Zealand still has the worst ratio of senior doctors to population in the OECD and explain why he has not taken steps to implement the plan agreed on by all district health boards and senior doctors?Hon TONY RYALL: I think the member will find that New Zealand’s ratio of senior medical staff to general population is relatively consistent in terms of international comparison which reflects the different models of care that we have in New Zealand. But look I have to say to the member that he can ask as many questions as he likes; it is not going to get away from the fact that we have got 1200 extra doctors on the public payroll because of the strong investment our Government is making in improving services.Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister has indicated he is happy for me to ask further questions and I would be—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order.Te Ururoa Flavell:Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. How do these results that he quoted in the initial response correlate to the significant disparity in outcomes forMāori especially hard-to-reachwhānau—for example the number missing out on B4 School Checks?Hon TONY RYALL: I thank the member for the question. Yes a lot of effort is going in from district health boards to make sure that those people who are offered first specialist assessments are provided all opportunities to make sure that it is at a time that best suits them. In respect of the area of B4 School Checks the Government is working very hard to expand the number of B4 School Checks and particularly to improve performance on those most at-risk children in our community. I can report to the member that in most district health boards around the country—the national averages—we have been improving that performance particularly for our young people at risk.Environmental Protection—Reporting Framework and Potential Conflicts of Interest7.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour)to theMinister for the Environment: How does the Minister intend to maintain independence of environmental reporting in her recently announced changes to that process?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):Firstly to clear up misconceptions there is no process to change as there has never to date been any legislative requirement for state of the environment reporting. We are introducing for the time legislatively mandated environmental reporting to be produced with the Government Statistician to provide assurance that it is independent. Its role is outlined in the Statistics Act and it has the legal responsibility for oversight of the methods and timing of the publication of statistics. This process is used in other countries for their environmental reporting and works very well here for the production and release of the economic development indicators. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will also provide an important role in assuring the quality of the reporting by providing independent commentary on any aspect of the framework. She will have a legislative mandate to provide analysis of the environmental data and reports identification of trends and a discussion of implications and responses.Hon Maryan Street: Who will decide what is to be measured for reporting purposes and how such things will be measured in this new reporting regime and how will independence be maintained by those bodies notwithstanding the comments just made about the statistician who will process information rather than gather it or measure things?Hon AMY ADAMS: Let me assure the member that the intention is that the framework what it will cover the domains that must be reported and the indicators that must be reported on will be set out either in the primary legislation or the regulations made under it. Other than that primary or tertiary legislation there will be no ability for Ministers to intervene within it. The work of completing a framework beyond those legislative bases will be developed and controlled by a project board made up of a working party from the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician. They will have joint responsibility for the design of the framework within the bounds of the legislative framework passed the measurement and the collection of data the compilation of the reports and the final production and sign-off of them. There will be a clear delineation between the role of the executive and the roles of the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician ensuring the report’s independence for the first time.Hon Maryan Street: When did National’s policy on independent environmental reporting change from Nick Smith’s cast-iron commitment to 5-yearly reporting in 2011 to the Minister’s recent statement?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well I can certainly acknowledge the fact that I have taken a paper to Cabinet seeking to change from 5-yearly reporting to 3-yearly reporting. I would have thought that most members would welcome that change. It has always been our view that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has a role to play in environmental reporting and we believe the framework that we have developed allows her the most scope to ensure that she can comment without restriction and without legislative fetter on any aspect that she considers necessary. In that respect I certainly noticed the comment of one commentator who noted that having the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment compile the reports completely would be impractical and expensive and it is one of the few times I find myself in agreement with the Hon Trevor Mallard.Hon Maryan Street: Given the repeated references to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in her preceding answers is she concerned by the statement of that independent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that the Government’s change of policy on environmental reporting was “a bit of a surprise” because she had been preparing for the job for years and “It’s been in party policy in two elections and I had always been expecting it ...”?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well I am also very mindful of the comments that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has made on a number of occasions around whether her office would be the appropriate place to carry out the work—both in 2010 and as recently as in her recent speech to the Environmental Defence Society conference where she talked about the fact that even with extra resources preparing such a report could incur an opportunity cost. There could potentially be less ability to undertake the investigations and provide the advice that is the fundamental work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. So I do believe that we have reached the right balance between the appropriate roles and I find it somewhat sanctimonious of the Labour Party to be criticising the independence of this reporting given that it was the only Government to have ever interfered with the production of an environment report.Hon Trevor Mallard: Pursuant to the answer to the second supplementary question did she inform her Cabinet colleagues of David Salisbury’s intention to provide consulting services to the oil and gas sector before her colleagues approved her offer of his appointment to the Environmental Protection Authority?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well all conflicts of interest are very carefully discussed and disclosed. That would have been the process in that instance.Hon Trevor Mallard: I seek leave to table a 29 May email from the Ministry for the Environment to the Hon Amy Adams’ office indicating that Salisbury intended consulting for the oil and gas sector and that this is a conflict.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular email. Is there any objection? There is none.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why did she not note in her 10 June Cabinet paper that David Salisbury intended to provide consulting services to the oil and gas sector while serving—Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We are dealing with supplementary questions to question No. 7. It is about environmental reporting and the independence thereof. Both the previous supplementary question and the question the member is starting—because I have got something on a completely different topic about the Environmental Protection Authority.Mr SPEAKER: I appreciate the point the member is making but in a subsequent supplementary question which was quite in order the Hon Maryan Street asked when the change of policy occurred. The answer was that it was when it went through a Cabinet process. So I think there was a clear connection then and the question remains.Hon Trevor Mallard: Shall I start that one again? Why did she not know—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will cease yelling out at the Speaker that that ruling was ridiculous. The Hon Trevor Mallard can now start his supplementary question for the third time.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why did she not note in her 10 June Cabinet paper that David Salisbury intended to provide consulting services to the oil and gas sector while serving on the Environmental Protection Authority; and does she believe her paper enabled herCabinet colleagues to “… make collective decisions based on sound information.” as required by paragraph 5.36 of the Cabinet Manual?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well I am afraid I would have to check the veracity of those quotes that the member is referring to. Given the scope of the primary question I did not come to the House prepared to answer detailed questions about a Cabinet paper relating to appointments to the Environmental Protection Authority in responding to a question on environmental reporting which is quite a different matter.Hon Trevor Mallard: I seek leave to table an extract from the Minister’s 10 June 2013 Cabinet paper where in the possible conflicts of interest section for David Salisbury she states: “None identified.”Mr SPEAKER: 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.Hon Trevor Mallard: I seek leave to table the letter from the Minister to David Salisbury released to me by her and described by the Minister in a 17 June 2013 email as Environmental Protection Authority appointments draft appointment letters andGazette notice where she appoints Salisbury to the Environmental Protection Authority effective immediately.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular letter. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Trevor Mallard: I seek leave to table a fourth document. It is an extract from the Hon Amy Adams’ 10 June Cabinet paper where she advises her Cabinet colleagues that “I can confirm that appropriate inquiries concerning—Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is enough information there for the House to decide. Leave is sought to table a further extract from that Cabinet paper. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Trevor Mallard: Did she write to David Salisbury on or shortly after 17 June 2013 appointing him to the Environmental Protection Authority “effective immediately” and asking him to complete a disclosure of interest form saying that this should “be completed before you attend the EPA and any conflicts … discussed at the meeting”; if so why did she state in the 10 June Cabinet paper regarding that appointment: “I can confirm appropriate inquiries concerning conflicts of interest—Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. How can that possibly be a valid supplementary question to question No. 7? I note your comment that my colleague the Minister for the Environment did make reference to Cabinet but to take it from the point that somehow in reference to Cabinet you can then ask any supplementary question on any element of a Minister’s role is I think not reasonable. If the member wants to pursue this line of very specific questioning he should set down a formal oral question.Hon Trevor Mallard: Speaking to the point of order—Mr SPEAKER: No I do not need any assistance. Although I appreciate the point the honourable Minister is making the question is in order. I have already ruled that so for the Minister to question that he is questioning the ruling I have given. It is now quite within the rights of the Minister when she answers the question to simply say: “I do not have that detailed information.” That is quite a satisfactory answer. I agree thatthe detail now being required would be difficult for a Minister to have in light of the original primary question but I do not rule the question out of order.Hon Trevor Mallard: I had not quite finished. Shall I start again?Mr SPEAKER: I think there is little choice but to do that.Hon Trevor Mallard: Did she write to David Salisbury on or shortly after 17 June 2013 appointing him to the Environmental Protection Authority “effective immediately” and asking him to complete a disclosure of interest form and that this should “be completed before you attend your next meeting of the EPA and any conflicts should be discussed at that meeting”; if so why did she state in the 10 June Cabinet paper regarding the Environmental Protection Authority appointments and reappointments: “I can confirm that appropriate inquiries concerning conflicts of interest have been carried out in accordance with the State Services Commission guidelines to identify any conflict of interest.”?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well I would have to check the specifics of what the member is quoting from but what I can tell the member is that it is quite appropriate that there would be a multi-stage process to identification of conflicts of interest. They are certainly worked through through the early stage of appointments and after people are appointed there is still an ongoing obligation on them as there is on Ministers to identify and continually update their conflict of interest status. So it is entirely appropriate that both situations would have occurred: an investigation during the appointment process and then an ongoing statement of continuing obligations of anyone appointed.Inland Revenue Business Transformation Project—Benefits8.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East)to theMinister of Revenue: What benefits will New Zealanders see from Inland Revenue’s Business Transformation programme he launched yesterday?Hon TODDMcCLAY (Minister of Revenue):The Inland Revenue Department’s business transformation programme will make interacting with the department easier and less onerous for New Zealanders be they individual taxpayers small businesses or large commercial entities. Specifically it will simplify for taxpayers the transactions that they have with the department and provide greater certainty around taxpayer requirements and obligations. Additionally it will reduce compliance costs for New Zealanders in meeting their tax and social policy obligations while improving the integrity of the revenue collection and administration system.David Bennett: What opportunities will there be for New Zealand companies to get involved in the business transformation programme?Hon TODDMcCLAY: That is a very important question. The transformation programme will be staged over several years. It is expected that the capabilities required to develop and implement these new operational systems will be provided by companies from New Zealand and from overseas. In particular there will be significant opportunity for the New Zealand market to participate in various aspects of the programme specifically around the design and build of the new system. The department will begin the procurement process by holding a number of workshops around the country and I as Minister will also be travelling to parts of provincial New Zealand including the cities of Hamilton Tauranga Queenstown Dunedin and Whanganui—all of which will be held by National MPs at the next election—to start the important dialogue with New Zealanders.GCSB—Interception Powers and Review of Compliance9.HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana)to thePrime Minister: Will he now that the bill has had its third reading give us the names of the 88 New Zealanders that the GCSB reportedly spied on illegally; if not why not?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General)on behalf of thePrime Minister: I need to begin by saying that among the misinformation surrounding the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation was a claim that 88 people were found to have been illegally spied on. That is not the case. TheKitteridge review found difficulties of interpretation in the law and the issue was forwarded to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The inspector-general found that there were arguably no breaches but said that the law should be clarified. That has now happened. That having been said I can say to the honourable member that the names of the 88 people have not been released publicly and will not be released. To do so would not be in the national interest.Hone Harawira: Given that the SIS has already admitted to spying on people like Annette Sykes Moana Jackson Jane Kelsey JohnMinto Sue Bradford union members Greenpeace members Amnesty International members New Zealand residents of German extraction and myself does the passing of the GCSB legislation mean that that spying will now be widened to include such subversives and terrorist sympathisers as New Zealand journalists law lecturers New Zealanders of the Year and Queen’s Counsel; if not why not?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I cannot really comment on the first part of the question that starts with the word “Given” and ends with “myself” but I can say that the passage of the GCSB legislation is not going to result in an expansion of surveillance. The member can rest easy in his bed each night.Hone Harawira: Can the Prime Minister confirm that under the proviso that the GCSB is to contribute to the economic well-being of New Zealand—Hon Simon Bridges: What’s all this honky talk?Hone Harawira: —those iwi who along with the New ZealandMāori Council oppose the sale—mēnā ehiahiaana koutou kiawhakamāoritiaōkupātai ka paitērā.Mēnā e kore mekōreroPākehāahau. Kei a koe te tikanga. He ahatōwhakautu?Horekau? E kore koe emōhio kitōtātou reo rangatira? Ka pai.[If you collectively want my questions translated intoMāori that is fine. If not then I will speak in English. It is your decision. What is your response? You do have not any? Do you not know our chiefly language? Good .]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! I am going to invite the member to start his question again. Could he help the House by asking the question in either English or Te Reo.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was beginning to be a long question but what Mr Harawira really said was: “Do you yourself speakMāori or is that stupid look on your face the one you were born with?”.Mr SPEAKER: Order! If he said that to me it is very uncomplimentary to the Speaker! But we are going to try to get the question asked and answered.Hone Harawira: Can the Prime Minister confirm that under the proviso that the GCSB is to contribute to the economic well-being of New Zealand those iwi who along with the New ZealandMāori Council oppose the sale of water-based electricity companies—because the Government has refused to properly recognise and provide forMāori proprietary interests in water—may become suspects worthy of the attention of the GCSB; and given that the GCSB has acted in the past without the prior knowledge or consent of the Prime Minister is it true that the GCSB may spy on thoseMāori organisations without telling them anyway?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I have to say in relation to the first part of the question which begins with the word “Given” that it is not a proviso about the economic well-being that is contained in the functions section. That goes back to the Labour Government’s 2003 legislation. But I can assure the member that organisations like theMāori Council which may take a principled stand in opposition to a particular Government policy are hardly likely to be the subject of surveillance and to suggest otherwise would be silly.Fines and Reparation—2012-13 Amount Owed and Collected and Improvements to Processes10.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel)to theMinister for Courts: What results did court collections achieve in the 2012/13 financial year?Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Minister for Courts):The year 2012-13 was another strong year for collections. The total outstanding fines and reparation balance fell for a fourth straight year. It is now at $564 million which is over $240 million or 30 percent below what it was when we came into Government. The amount overdue has also continued to fall. It is now down 43 percent from what this Government inherited. These are superb results and they reinforce fines and reparation as a valued part and an effective part of our criminal justice system.Scott Simpson: What does he believe was responsible for these outstandingly good results?Hon CHESTER BORROWS: There are three things. These results are a tribute to the hard work of the courts and collections department staff. They are a natural product of crime rates which under this Government have reached lows not seen in 30 years meaning fewer fines are being imposed. They are the result of the innovative thinking and new powers that this Government has introduced. Collections staff now have more options than ever before to track down fine dodgers and to make sure that they pay their debts.Scott Simpson: Would the Minister care to identify any new programmes that have been especially successful as well?Hon CHESTER BORROWS: Yes there are two innovations that have produced particularly pleasing results in the last year. The Credit Check of Fines programme which allows credit agencies to see whether a potential debtor has overdue fines in return for updated contact information has allowed the courts to recover almost $17 million in fines and reparation. This is double what was projected. Our enhanced data-matching with the Inland Revenue Department and the Ministry of Social Development is helping the collections department to track down fine dodgers. It was expected to return $20 million in its first year; instead it has helped the department recover over $80 million in fines that would otherwise have gone unpaid.District Health Boards—Resourcing and Service Delivery11.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai)to theMinister of Health: What recent reports if any has he received on an increase in pressure onDHBs and health professionals in providing health services in New Zealand?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):I have received a wide range of recent reports including a number of district health board annual plans which for the most part reflected increased provision of publicly funded health services and increased funding. We want New Zealanders to receive the best possible health care and we do put pressure on boards to deliver this. We have increased health operational funding by an average of around $500 million a year but as the member knows and has said herself it has always been and will continue to be an ongoing challenge for district health boards to live within their means.Hon Annette King: Has he been informed of nurses working at Starship hospital for 15 hours a day because of nursing shortages at that hospital being paid for only 12 hours and being told not to record 15 hours on their time sheets; and if he has not been informed will he investigate the nursing shortages and overwork at Starship before children are put at risk?Hon TONY RYALL: If that member has that information please make it available to me. I would have to check the information in light of previous claims made by that member but the latest information I have is that our nursing staff at the Counties Manukau District Health Board is up some 400 in the last 8 years.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think the Minister might have misheard. I said Starship not Counties Manukau.Mr SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Well in light of his answer then he did not address the question. I mentioned Starship not Counties Manukau.Mr SPEAKER: Order! There were two parts to the member’s question. The question was addressed. I invite the member to ask a further supplementary question.Hon Annette King: Has he been informed of growing pressure faced by general practitioners which has led one to write on Tuesday this week that general practitioners face a whole tsunami of issues with district health boards including not having basic access to ear nose and throat dermatology neurology renal services ultrasoundorthotics timely discharge summaries etc. etc. and that the Minister’s targets are often set with minimal or no recompense; if so why is this occurring in light of his claim that general practice is better off?Hon TONY RYALL: Well I would have to check the veracity of that member’s claim because I am aware of some documents that have been doctored in order to justify some of the press releases of the member. But what I would say to that is that our Government has in fact put a lot of extra money into primary care. We have increased for example the ability of general practitioners to refer patients directly for diagnostic tests without having to go through a specialist. We have also improved the access that general practitioners have to refer their patients to specialists. As I said in answer to a question earlier in the House today we have had a really significant boost in the number of first specialist assessments which are really the gateway to additional services that general practitioners often refer to.Hon Annette King: In light of that answer has he seen a copy of the letter that district health boards are now sending out to patients who have been referred to a specialist by their general practitioner which reads: “Unfortunately your clinical priority is such that we are unable to offer you a specialist appointment within the current resources and capability.”—even though the person’s condition could include osteoarthritis of a major joint with significant pain and restriction or significant functional loss and pain—and patients being told that their conditions must be urgent before they can get an appointment?Hon TONY RYALL: I would have to verify those claims. They could be like the claim the member put out recently that people were—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. On three occasions he has been doubting the word of me as a member of Parliament and I thought you might have pulled him up—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order. The member can start her point of order again.Hon Annette King: My point of order is that on three occasions now or perhaps it is four he has doubted my word as a member saying that he has to check my figures or the veracity of what I am providing. I am prepared to table the letters in a moment. I find that unacceptable. He should answer the question.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.Mr SPEAKER: No I do not need the assistance of the Leader of the House. Can I ask the member the Hon Annette King to look at Speaker’s ruling 165/6: “The Minister being questioned is perfectly at liberty to dispute the quote. That is the risk that members take when they include a quote in a supplementary question that has not been validated.” That was a ruling recently given by the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith.Hon Annette King: Supplementary question Mr Speaker.Hon TONY RYALL: You want an answer—Hon Annette King: Supplementary question Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Did the member not—Hon Annette King: No he just said he doubted my word so I got the answer.Mr SPEAKER: OK. Supplementary question—Hon Annette King: Does he think that refusing 35 percent of orthopaedic patients referred by their general practitioner for a first specialist assessment atWaitematā District Health Board in this last year because of the level of funding provided gives them better sooner more convenient health care; if so how?Hon TONY RYALL: As the member knows theWaitematā District Health Board has provided more orthopaedic service for patients in its area. The member knows that. Some patients have been referred and have been unable to be provided with an appointment but that has always been the case. As I said earlier on in the piece the activity and the ability of district health boards to provide more services for their patients have been increasing quite dramatically.Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table information from theWaitematā District Health Board that shows that 35 percent of orthopaedic patients in this last year were refused a first specialist assessment—Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be so tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Annette King: Has he seen a copy of the letter that district health boards are now sending out to patients after they receive their first specialist assessment—something that he was wanting to boast about today—a letter that reads: “You have been recommended by your surgeon for surgery. Although it is clear you would benefit from surgery and your surgeon and your GP would prefer this happened now it is not possible to provide it to you at this time because of limitation of resources.”? Could the Minister explain why it is good news to get a first specialist appointment to tell them that they need an operation and then to receive a letter that tells them they are out of luck?Hon TONY RYALL: Because—and I cannot believe this question was asked—40000 more people are getting operations this year than in 2008.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise to the Minister.Hon Annette King: You heard the question. There was nothing about what happened in 2008. I asked him whether he had seen a copy of the letter.Mr SPEAKER: And we do not need—Hon Annette King: I read out what was in the letter.Mr SPEAKER: Order! We do not need the question repeated. The question in essence was whether the Minister has seen a copy of the letter.Hon TONY RYALL: I have not seen a copy of that letter but I would have to check because I have seen press statements and documents that that member has distributed where the figures provided were doctored.Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table a copy of the letters that are being sent out from district health boards—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is all that is needed. We have had the letter quoted to us. Leave is sought to table that letter. Is there any objection to that course of action? There appears to be none. It can be so tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Television Switch-over to Digital—TVTakeBack Programme12.KATRINA SHANKS (National)to theMinister for the Environment: What recent reports has she seen on the progress of the TVTakeBack programme?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):Last week the programme received its 100000th television for recycling. The programme which sees the Government partnering with a range of councils recyclers and retailers to provide a nationwide network with subsidised options has now diverted thousands of tonnes of harmful material from landfills. The programme has also focused on improving recycling infrastructure raising public awareness and helping build options for the long-term management of electronic waste.Katrina Shanks: Where is the programme currently in operation?Hon AMY ADAMS: Yesterday the programme was launched in the lower North Island and East Cape. Through Government subsidy people in these areas can now recycle their unwanted televisions for no more than $5. Residents in these areas will be advised of the various recycling options via local promotional campaigns. The initiative will get under way in the remaining parts of the North Island including Auckland in October and follows the successful completion of TVTakeBack initiatives in the South Island and Hawke’s Bay over the past year.Point of Order—Leader of the OppositionHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order 35 I wonder whether it would be appropriate at this time for the Opposition to indicate given the resignation of David Shearer who is going to be the acting Leader of the Opposition or the deputy.Mr SPEAKER: I have seen earlier press releases and that is a matter for the Labour Party and it will make an announcement.Question No. 9 to MinisterHon TAU HENARE (National):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Earlier in question time in a question by Hone Harawira he spoke inMāori and you said to him that he should pick which one; he should choose eitherMāori or English—you did. Can I just remind you that we have the right to speak in either English orMāori—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I do not need to listen to any more of this. I was saying to the member that it would be helpful to me in placing that supplementary question if he could relate it in one language or the other. The member has a perfect right to speak in Te Reo and in English and I fully accept that. But in a lengthy supplementary question like the member was asking it was becoming very confusing for me and that was the point I was making.Point of Order—Leader of the OppositionHon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My point of order is in respect of the references regularly in our Standing Orders about the Leader of the Opposition. It requires that this House give due reference to who that leader is. I—Mr SPEAKER: I do not need any more of this. As I understand media reports I saw just before I came into the House the Leader of the Opposition David Shearer is still the Leader of the Opposition until the Labour Party elects another Leader of the Opposition. That is its business and the member in raising that point of order is simply using it to make a political point which is an unsatisfactory thing to be doing in the House.Questions to MembersEmployment Relations Amendment Bill—Submissions Received1.DARIEN FENTON (Labour)to theChairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee: How many submissions have been received on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill?DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee):Given the large numbers of submissions received the final total is still to be confirmed. However it appears at this stage that approximately 15000 submissions have been received.Darien Fenton: What parts of the country have submissions been received from?DAVID BENNETT: Submissions have been received from around the country. Hearings have already commenced and they will be continuing over the next few weeks in Wellington Auckland and Christchurch.Employment Relations Amendment Bill—Submissions Received and Requests for Oral Submissions2.DARIEN FENTON (Labour)to theChairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee: How many submissions on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill if any are unique submissions who have requested to be heard?DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee):At this stage it appears that approximately 1900 submissions include unique content and around 730 of those wish to be heard.Darien Fenton: Has he been advised as to whether the committee will hold meetings in other parts of the country other than Auckland Wellington and Christchurch and—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a question for the chair; that is a decision that the committee will make.Urgent Debates DeclinedDairy Products Milk Powder—Response to Contamination IncidentMr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Damien O’Connor seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the stopping of 42 metric tonnes of New Zealand - produced milk powder at the Chinese border because of an alleged testing failure in the systems approved by the Ministry for Primary Industries in May 2013. For there to be a particular case of recent occurrence there must be a new situation of sufficient importance to warrant a debate being held. While this is a new development I am not convinced that it justifies the setting aside of the business of the House today. The Government has released draft terms of reference of an inquiry for its investigation into the whey contamination incident and regulatory best practice requirements. An interim report is expected in some 3 months. There will be other occasions for the House to consider these matters. The application is therefore declined.Inquiries BillThird ReadingHon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Internal Affairs):I moveThat the Inquiries Bill be now read a third time . This bill is intended to reform and modernise the law relating to inquiries and it largely replaces the Commissions of Inquiry Act of 1908. It was introduced by the previous Government in response to a Law Commission review of the law relating to inquiries. The Government recognises that the law in this area is long overdue for an update. Contrary to reports this bill was not forgotten by the Government. The bill was reported back from the Government Administration Committee in 2009. Of course the Minister of Internal Affairs then was the Hon Nathan Guy. I would also like to thank him for his work at the time. I understand that there was some confusion during the second reading of the bill as the printed version of the bill was of course in the name of the Minister at the time of the select committee report.I would like to take this opportunity to clarify again that the bill was deliberately put on hold during the Canterbury earthquakes and the Pike River royal commissions of inquiry to enable us to learn from those inquiries and strengthen the bill as a result. Following those royal commissions of inquiry the Department of Internal Affairs began developing a Supplementary Order Paper which was close to completion when the whey protein contamination incident arose. This has highlighted the need for a robust inquiry process. I am pleased that we have been able to introduce Supplementary Order Paper 330 and pass the bill quickly through its remaining stages in response to this incident and I thank all members of the House for that.The bill provides a much stronger framework for an inquiry to occur. Up until now ministerial inquiries have been operating outside the statutory framework. The bill will ensure that Government inquiries have the powers and protections necessary to be effective. The bill provides a modern framework in which inquiries will be able to operate in the future and we largely have the Law Commission and the select committee process to thank for that. It provides for two new types of inquiries public inquiries and Government inquiries while recognising and providing for royal commissions established under the letters patent. Public inquiries will be established for matters of significant public importance. Government inquiries will deal with more immediate issues where a quick and authoritative answer is required from an independent inquiry. All types of inquiries will have the same level of powers and protections available to them.I would like to thank members for their constructive comments from across the Chamber in the Committee of the whole House and for their support for the amendments that were put forward. Those amendments arose from lessons learnt from the two recent royal commissions of inquiry and will provide greater procedural flexibility and clarity. I intend to arrange for the publication of the Cabinet paper detailing the work on those amendments on the Department of Internal Affairs website shortly. I am also pleased that we were able to support the amendment brought forward by the Hon Trevor Mallard which will ensure that inquiries give due consideration to the need for open justice when considering whether to withhold information.We recognise the importance of justice being done and being seen to be done. An open process is important for establishing or re-establishing public confidence and for perceptions of independence. However we also agree with the Law Commission that although inquiries should be as open as possible there will be cases where their purposes are better served without formal hearings and where witnesses can speak freely without fear of public exposure. The bill provides that an inquiry can set out itsown access regime including the circumstances in which access to evidence documents and hearings may be restricted.I would also like to thank Holly Walker for raising in the Committee stage the importance of participants in an inquiry having protections under the law. The privileges set out in the Evidence Act 2006 relating to confidentiality religious communications matters of State and confidential journalistic sources will apply to inquiries in the same way that they apply before the courts for civil proceedings. Under the new regime documentation from both public inquiries and Government inquiries will be subject to the Official Information Act once an inquiry has reported. However it will be possible to withhold information on specified grounds such as where a submission provided to an inquiry contains sensitive information. The bill also provides for the way in which the Public Records Act will apply to inquiry documentation once the inquiry has concluded.The Inquiries Bill is intended to eventually replace the outdated Commissions of Inquiry Act. Only sections 2 and 15 of the 1908 Act which relate to the appointment of commissions of inquiry and royal commissions respectively are repealed by this bill. This is because a number of other statutory entities take their powers from the 1908 Act. However the bill requires a review of the powers of these entities to commence within 5 years of the new Act entering into force and that review will identify whether the powers required by these entities can be more appropriately provided for in other legislation allowing the final repeal of the 1908 Act.Can I take this opportunity to thank my team in the Department of Internal Affairs. They have dealt with this bill for a number of years now and they are very pleased to see it moving forward and entering as legislation in the House. I particularly acknowledge the hard work of BrianHesketh and KateTimlin on this bill. It has been satisfying to see widespread support for the bill as it has progressed through the House. Once again I would like to thank the Law Commission for the extensive review it carried out into the law relating to inquiries. I am pleased that as a consequence of the commission’s review and this bill inquiries will now operate within a regime that reflects modern practices and that is a good thing. I commend this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I recognise the Hon Trevor Mallard.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker—after all these years! Labour supports the Inquiries Bill and I do want to start off by thanking the Minister in charge of the bill Chris Tremain for the cooperation over the last week or so as this has been progressed. I think it is an indication of Parliament working together in a way that it can. I think it is only a pity that he was unable to be present on Tuesday and yesterday in order to take charge of the bill because I think it slightly lost a bit as a result of people who were not quite as familiar with it taking care of it. A note for the future is to make sure that when a bill is in his name on the Order Paper if not actually on the copy of the bill the member who is doing it for him says “on behalf of” the other Minister. If that was done there would not have been the confusion that was the case.I think it is fair to say that the Hon Nathan Guy was somewhat confused over a couple of days on this. Also frankly it would have been better if someone who was vaguely familiar with what was in it rather than—what is his name—Simon Bridges who did not appear to have any knowledge of the bill was taking it through the Committee stage. All I am saying is that it is a pity because it somewhat undid the good work that the Minister of Internal Affairs had done on consultation and the work of the officials.I want to agree with the Minister that the Law Commission did do a good job. Although I understand the reasoning for the Government delaying this bill I am not sure that I agree with the logic. There have been a number of areas where it would have been better to have sorted this out earlier. I think particularly of theRena . This sort of level of inquiry—or one of the two inquiries that can be set up here—would have been a good approach for theRena . The ability to move more smoothly into the Fonterra issue and into what might be now a wider inquiry given Westland Milk Products and some other things that we are hearing about the Chinese border would have been useful as well.One of the things we know is that if we could have got something into place in 2009 and if there needed to be some updates they could have been done as part of an omnibus bill or a Statutes Amendment Bill or something similar to get it tidied up. It would have been better to have it in place. So I do want to compliment my colleague Annette King whose sterling work it was to get this going; Rick Barker who was prompt in getting the bill into the House; and the Government Administration Committee which considered it well.I think it is worth giving a little bit of comment around the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 330 because it is one that did make not major changes but changes that I think could be described as significant in the way they worked in the bill. What it does is it allows a bit more flexibility around the establishment of inquiries. As an example it allows the inquirer or the inquirers to be appointed before the terms of reference are finalised. I think that is something that is useful because it means that they can effectively be on the job and there can be some advice from them and some work with them around the terms of reference.I think that if anyone needs reminding of the importance of the quality of the terms of reference one needs only spend as I did today 10 minutes in the Privileges Committee listening to what happens when you have poor terms of reference and an inquirer who was not properly involved in the development of the terms of reference to know that getting that process right is something that is important. That certainly did not happen in that case. This process can help with that.The Supplementary Order Paper clarifies the process for appointing counsel to assist an inquiry. I think it is fair to say that that area was light. It clarifies the discretion of an inquiry to manage its process in applying the principles of natural justice. Without going too far into the conversations that the Minister and I had over the weekend I think it is fair to say that that was the area of greatest concern to the Labour Opposition. It was the fact that there was effectively a loosening a moving away from what had been established following the Erebus report and the Mahon report findings. As someone who thinks that it is important that people who are being criticised have a real and a fair opportunity to answer and to have their views incorporated I was concerned as were some of my colleagues.But looking at it in the end although there is a slight movement back there is a balancing factor of being able to get a report done relatively quickly in some cases because in some cases the findings are going to be quite important and are going to be needed for the development of policy the application of resources or to avert a further disaster. The last thing that you want is a highly legalistic litigant who is being criticised being able to hold up that process by way of reviews in the High Court and other action. It is like all of these justice issues: there is a balance that sits there. This is a slight tipping of the balance away from the fairness to the people who have been criticised towards the ability to get the inquiry done and dusted in a slightly quicker manner. But those rights still sit there.There are changes around the ability to recompense participants for their reasonable expenses without them having to be summonsed. Previously it was sort of a weird situation where if you volunteered to come as an expert you could not get your expenses whereas if you were sent for and required to come you could. That is really a silly situation and I think the bill has sorted that out.I also want to thank the Government for accepting my amendment. One of the things that—and this is no criticism of the Government at all because it is not an area where there was any change on the part of the Government around the question of people having orders restricting access to the inquiry. So either having private sessions or secret sessions—the very fact that some people come to inquiries is on occasions appropriate for that not to be made public. It is pretty rare. The way that the bill was heading it looked like it was a bit easier to do and it was almost as if the inquiry could do it without thinking.What we have done is make sure that sitting at the top of the matters that need consideration is the fact that the inquiry must take into account the benefits of observing the principle of open justice. On balance you do not go down that route but if you do there are some restrictions. Again there was a discussion about the Nicholas case and a number of others where earlier in the piece it could well have been appropriate. If—or when probably—Andrew Little forces Judith Collins to have the appropriate inquiry into the Rewa case there could well be women who were raped by that man who would prefer and will have the right to a secret hearing and a right to have their names never disclosed. My view is that that is absolutely appropriate.In summary this was a good bill. It should probably have been passed in a slightly less perfect form about 4 years ago but we have got to it now. It is better as a result of the changes and it is something that I think has got widespread support. Thank you.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National):The Inquiries Bill has had as we have just heard from the Hon Trevor Mallard wide support in the House. Indeed it is a bill whose time has come. It is being passed in order to reform and modernise the law relating to public inquiries and we have heard in depth from the Hon Chris Tremain and the Hon Trevor Mallard on the background to that. What I would like to do in a fairly short address is just cover the purpose of the bill to some extent but also to see just why it is important and how this bill will be so relevant to the moment. The purpose of the bill is to address the forms of inquiry that we have. It establishes two forms of inquiry: public inquiries which include royal commissions and Government inquiries which report directly to a Minister. It provides both forms of inquiry with the same legal powers and protection maximising flexibility and freeing inquiries from procedural constraints.Just a comment on the significance of royal commissions. It was suggested that we could dispense with those but having sat through a large proportion of the royal commission hearings in Greymouth associated with Pike River it was a very significant event for the people involved and for the industries involved and it is one that is beyond—to the best of my knowledge—any form of criticism. The public place a very high level of trust in a royal commission so it has been determined that those will be continued.Inquiries are important and the opportunity to make inquiries is important in order to investigate mistakes and accidents and ensure that they do not happen again; to bring accountability and transparency often to the Government or to Parliament in fact; and to better inform Ministers and the public on important issues. The Inquiries Bill is important to the proposed inquiry into whey protein contamination that was announced yesterday. New Zealand has a reputation as a credible and trusted supplier of safe and suitable food to both domestic and international markets. It is very important that that isso. The well-deserved reputation is a vital element in the continuing growth and productivity of the food industry.I had the privilege of working in the dairy industry for some 23 years earlier in my career and also in—Hon Trevor Mallard: They always said the member was a cow.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Yes. Well it gets better than that Mr Mallard. I was also a fish exporter. I would not have exported anything that was held up on that side of the House over the last week. In fact it is a tribute to the industry that in all the years of exporting fish every week for about 15 years I had I think two product complaints. We used to do about 4 tonnes a week. I had only two product complaints which is an attestation not of me but of the way the industry operates.New Zealand can be very proud of its food safety record. Being proud is not sufficient. We have to know that it is good. We have to be able to inquire when things go wrong. This bill will do that and facilitate that. It is a very significant bill. I am particularly pleased to see the way it has received support right around the House. I commend the bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the Hon Ruth Dyson.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Thank you for recognising me as well. It is always a relief is it not when you take a call to hear the correct—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I recognise that member as well.Hon RUTH DYSON: —name attributed to you. Can I just say that it is a really pleasurable time in the House not only for so many parties to be supporting such an important bill as the Inquiries Bill but also to acknowledge the process that has been gone through which I would commend to other Ministers to follow. There have been concerns raised by Holly Walker a member of the Green Party which were listened to and responded to in a respectful way. There was an amendment moved by my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard which was considered properly and agreed to. Both those processes have made the bill better.I think if that happened more often and people were less entrenched in the politics of their party and less determined to score points at other people’s expense then not just legislation but this Parliament would I think be a better place. So there is a lot of potential for improvement shall we say. Certainly the code of conduct that you yourself Mr Assistant Speaker have proposed would also contribute in that regard.I want to acknowledge the history of this legislation. It has been around for a long time. My colleague the Hon Annette King put it in place. The reason that she instigated the work to be done on this legislation was that it was clear that not just members of Parliament but the citizens of our country actually were frustrated with the lack of ability of inquiries to get the information that they were set up to get because their range of powers their abilities and their opportunities were limited because of our legislation. That is not good enough. When we have something serious whether it is tragic or otherwise or a matter that is of public concern the public deserve to have the information from an inquiry that would lead them to say “Now I understand what happened.” and then we as a Parliament can ask whether we should do something about it. We have had some very significant tragedies which I will refer to in just a little bit.But going back to my point the Hon Annette King set up this process because of the level of dissatisfaction with the range of powers and responsibilities inquiries had. They did not meet the public expectation. When it finally got to the House the bill was referred to the Government Administration Committee ably chaired at that time by the Hon David Parker. The junior member of that select committee was our deputy leader Grant Robertson so you can tell it was quite a long time ago. That bill was consideredand came back to the House in 2009. I omitted to mention another person who deserves credit and that is the Hon Rick Barker who was the Minister who actually introduced the legislation. The Hon Annette King set up the process for looking at the policy and the Hon Rick Barker introduced it. So it came back to this Parliament on 20 November 2009. It is now the third week in August in 2013 so it has been around a long time—nearly 4 years on the Order Paper.We have had examples this week of mismanagement of the House. The House is moving into urgency again next week we are told. I am not quite sure whether it is on Wednesday or Thursday or both days. But either way this is another example of the inability of the National Government to run the House properly. I would not presume that any other Cabinet Minister would be better than the Hon Gerry Brownlee but he has got a lot on. I wish he would put the Port Hills zoning review as a bit of a priority because we have just had another delay in the announcement of that. That announcement to the Port Hills residents my constituents was due by the way prior to Christmas last year—not Christmas this year; Christmas last year—so we are still waiting for that.Some people listening to this debate might ask why the scope the range the responsibilities and the abilities of panel members in inquiries are important. If you look at the two recent tragedies that we have had where there have been inquiries—the huge tragedy and loss of life at Pike River and the massive tragedy and loss of life in the collapse of the CTV Building and thePyne Gould Corporation building in Canterbury. There were 115 lives lost in the CTV Building—people who were just going about their day-to-day business and had no ability to understand the lack of structural strength of that building who died as a result. The family members of both the CTV Building victims and the men who died at Pike River at the very least deserve to know every single detail. It will never bring their lost family members back but it will give them the respect and the information that they deserve to have and currently our range of inquiries does not have that ability.This bill fixes that and I think it is a jolly good thing that this Parliament is not only progressing this finally but is doing it—as I said right at the beginning of my contribution—in such a robust way. That should give more confidence to the public of New Zealand that when there is something that is a public concern something that should have public information this Parliament acknowledges that and has ensured that every bit of information is gathered as robustly as possible.It is a real shame that that ability was not available in the recent David Henry approach. I feel so sorry for Mr Henry. I do not actually know him as an individual but he was hand-picked to take on the job of finding out what happened in theKitteridge report. He clearly did not have the mandate that he wanted but he called on the office of the Prime Minister which seemed to have leaned on a few people. The political adviser WayneEagleson in the Prime Minister’s office seems to have leaned on a few people. In the end we had access given to information about a Minister’s phone log and a Minister’s swipe card access. So the inquiry knew where the Minister went all around the building whom he had rung and whom he had received phone calls from. The same applied to a Fairfax journalist. I think that is appalling. If that inquiry had had the power to call witnesses and require them to attend and to make testimony under oath then we may not have had the situation that we have now.What we have ended up with instead of a robust process where we actually find out the facts of the situation is a terrible murky situation. A Minister has resigned on a point of principle. A journalist has had her professional work exposed in a very unusual way and a very unfortunate way. A senior public servant from the Parliamentary Service has resigned from his position. David Henry who headed the inquiry was attacked withsome vitriol by the media representation and by Judith Collins—described by her colleague Gerry Brownlee today as a drama queen. That was a bit unfortunate true though it may have been. Anne Tolley and Gerry Brownlee himself attacked Mr Henry. That position is not satisfactory and I hope that we do not end up with it happening again. This bill as I said should fix that.So why is this bill having been started off in 2008 and having sat on the Order Paper since 20 November 2009 after consideration by the select committee back before the House now? Well the reasons for that are the contamination of our dairy products the concerns of people who import them about the safety of our goods and the desire of the Government to have an inquiry that resolves those concerns and that answers all the questions not just of the New Zealand public—although of course we all want to know not only that it is investigated properly and somebody is held accountable but also that it is fixed and that the problem does not arise again.I totally support that inquiry having the ability to do that. The reason I support that is that I do not think there would be a single member of Parliament regardless of their party who would not agree that our No. 1 consideration must be the safety of consumers. If we sell goods domestically or export them we must be able to assure consumers particularly children of the safety of those goods. At the moment that is a little bit under a cloud because of recent events.Labour certainly backs the desire of the Government to have a robust inquiry into this so that we can give everybody the confidence they need about the safety of our products. Our international reputation as an exporter is at stake here. We have to ensure that that reputation is protected and perhaps even enhanced actually by the rigour of such an inquiry. But more important as I said we have to guarantee the safety of consumers of our exports.Our biggest company is Fonterra. It is important not just in the New Zealand economy but it is important in our social structure as well with the number of jobs it provides and with the number of other businesses it supports. The hard questions will need to be asked about the situations that have arisen. I am sure they will be by the additional powers that have been given. I again want to commend the process of listening to the concerns of Holly Walker and supporting the amendments of Trevor Mallard. It is a good process and it is a better bill as a result.Holly Walker: Mr Speaker—Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Ah good. I call the honourable member Holly Walker. I have to be able to hear you Ms Walker.HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am rather short of breath these days but I will attempt to speak loudly. I am pleased to stand to support the passage of the Inquiries Bill to begin where my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson has finished and to join her in thanking the Minister of Internal Affairs for the robust process that has been followed over the last few days both to address the concerns raised by the Green Party in the Committee stage and the second reading of the bill and also to adopt the amendment from Trevor Mallard. I agree with her that it has resulted in a better bill.It is a bill that is long overdue and indeed we have heard from a number of speakers that it has languished at the bottom of the Order Paper since 2009. It has now passed rather quickly through its final stages over these last 3 days. It is also good that despite that haste those concerns have been taken seriously. Obviously it is politically expedient for the Government to have this in place to inquire into the Fonterra botulism crisis. It is right and good that the new rules will apply for that inquiry. It is better late than never that we are passing this legislation. It is a much-needed modernisation and simplification of the rules governing inquiries and it does update legislation that is over a hundred years old—well past time.The bill establishes two types of inquiries: public inquiries and Government inquiries. Although both types of inquiries will have the same powers and functions and be governed by the same rules under this legislation there is a key difference between them and that has been quite important in the consideration of the bill in its stages over the last few days. Public inquiries which will include royal commissions—which are perhaps the most well-known form of public inquiry—will be established by the Governor-General and they will be functionally independent of the Government of the day in terms of how they are carried out. This is much as how current commissions of inquiry and royal commissions are held today whereas Government inquiries will be established by one or more Ministers and will be driven led and directed largely by those Ministers. So they will be less apolitical than a public inquiry.The key change in this bill is that it extends the same rules powers and functions to both types of inquiries and that is the biggest change from the status quo. Either inquiry can now be established to look into any matter of public significance and will have the same powers functions and abilities to compel evidence. In our view this is appropriate because there is a clear sense that one of the shortcomings of the current framework is that there is not enough scope to set up different types of inquiries with the relevant powers for different situations. For example there is a very big difference between an inquiry into a particular incident or issue that is aiming to get to the bottom of a series of events or perhaps allocate responsibility for something happening and a general inquiry into a matter of public policy—for example the Royal Commission on the Electoral System. So it is appropriate that we have some flexibility about what kind of structure we can apply to those different types of inquiries.Sometimes both types of inquiries will need the same investigative powers and sometimes they will not. That flexibility now exists under this bill. It provides the necessary flexibility to ensure that inquiries function well and have the ability to make concrete findings. It also ensures that they have the ability to discover relevant information and call witnesses when they need to. Crucially it also assumes a high level of public transparency and openness in the conduct of those inquiries and that is very important. That has been enhanced by the amendment in the name of Trevor Mallard which has been adopted by the Government. So we support all of these things.However we did raise some concerns at the second reading that there may have been some fish-hooks so to speak in the new rules. We abstained from the vote at that stage for a number of reasons. We were concerned that by granting those quite extensive powers to compel witnesses to appear and disclose information to inquiries the bill may have inadvertently impacted on the ability of journalists to protect their sources or on the ability of MPs to protect their private communications with their constituents. Both of these are important democratic principles which we strongly believe need to be protected. However thanks to helpful contributions from members in the House a close reading of the bill and the Evidence Act to which it is connected and a helpful response from the Minister’s office we have been reassured that the protections in place in the bill do afford the relevant protection to confidential and privileged information and they are sufficient to allay our concerns about those things. The bill ensures via clause 28 that the same protections apply to inquiries as they would to civil proceedings. That includes specific protection to journalists from disclosing their sources under section 68 of the Evidence Act. Also under section 69 of the Evidence Act it includes protection for confidential information specific relationships and the free flow of information. On our reading that would protect the communications of MPs with their constituents.The third area of concern we had which we raised at the second reading relates to a matter of parliamentary privilege. We asked the hypothetical question of what would have happened if the Henry inquiry into the leak of theKitteridge report on theGovernment Communications Security Bureau had been held under the new rules proposed by this legislation. Obviously we have been very concerned as have others about the way that that Henry inquiry was conducted and the fact that it was able to access email phone and swipe card records even though it did not have the power to compel the disclosure of that evidence. We felt that this constituted a breach of parliamentary privilege and an intrusion from the executive sphere into the legislative sphere effectively breaching our principle of the separation of powers. We were worried that if powers to compel the disclosure of evidence are extended to Government inquiries under this new legislation a similar situation could arise in future and with the legal backing of this bill.We still have that concern and we think that when the new legislation is in place it will be more important than ever for the critical distinction between the executive and the legislature to be respected in such cases as that kind of inquiry and for parliamentary privilege to be upheld and protected. But what it really comes down to is the question of whether or not this particular information in this case was protected by parliamentary privilege. We believe that it was and that it would therefore also be protected under the new legislation. However we acknowledge that this is a live issue in front of the Privileges Committee at the moment and that ultimately the Privileges Committee will rule on that matter. Indeed we may see legislation in this House clarifying that as a parliamentary privilege which would be helpful because that would set out in no uncertain terms what is protected under privilege and what is not. However it is clear to us in the Green Party that such legislation would be the appropriate vehicle to clarify matters of privilege not the Inquiries Bill. So for now it is sufficient for us to know that parliamentary privilege is protected under this bill in clause 28 along with all other types of privilege.So for these reasons the Green Party will support the bill. It does modernise and update existing law and provides for a more streamlined and simple process for inquiries in the future. We acknowledge that it probably should have been passed a long time ago instead of languishing at the bottom of the Order Paper but it is better late than never. We also hope that these important matters of democratic principle and parliamentary privilege that we have raised during the second reading and Committee stage and indeed today in the third reading will be taken very seriously by colleagues across the House. Indeed that seems to have been the case in the way the debate has been conducted and I thank colleagues for that. We also hope they will be taken very seriously in the conduct of future inquiries under this legislation. Thank you.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):Satsriakaal Mr Assistant Speaker. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak on the Inquiries Bill in its third reading. During my previous speech I highlighted that this legislation is part of the reform process that the National Government has taken towards improving law and legislation where necessary.Inquiries are an essential part of our democratic society. Therefore it is essential that we have improved legislation in place so that inquiries can be done based on the need of the hour using strong legislation. The current law governing inquiries is the Commissions of Inquiries Act 1908. As this 1908 Act is over 100 years old some of its provisions are outdated. The amendments made over time have generally been in response to the circumstances of particular inquiries. This means that they may have resolved a specific part of the existing Act without taking its wider context into account.Yesterday the Hon Trevor Mallard moved an amendment that was supported by the Government. As previously drafted the bill allowed an inquiry to make an order to forbid publication of information; restrict public access to any part or any aspect of the inquiry; or hold the inquiry or any part of it in private. We supported the amendment toprovide that before an inquiry makes an order to impose any of these restrictions on access to the inquiry it must take into account the benefit of observing the principle of open justice. The National Government supports the amendment as it will improve the bill and will allow inquiries to operate in a more fair and effective manner. With these words I support and commend this bill to the House.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):New Zealand First supports the Inquiries Bill and we are glad to see that the century-old existing legislation is being updated. We think it is a bit of a shame that it has taken so long to do this and when you consider the circumstances around Pike River the CTV Building and the Fonterra debacle you can see why updated legislation is so needed at the present time. Overall the bill is a good one and it ought to improve the ways in which public and Government inquiries are established and operated and the way in which they report. But the bill is not perfect and I have previously pointed to some areas of concern for New Zealand First. I accept however that these concerns are not major issues.With regard to reporting clause 12(2) states that the final report on an inquiry must set out: “(a) the findings of the inquiry; and (b) any recommendations of the inquiry.” I think it should also provide for the addition of the reasons for the findings and the recommendations and I accept that although that is probably implicit it would be better if that was stated specifically in the clause as well.With regard to clause 13 I note that clause 13(1) provides for an inquiry to have the power to request the appointment of counsel to assist it in its proceedings but in doing so it must have regard to effectiveness efficiency and fairness and to other issues such as the subject matter of the inquiry and the most appropriate procedures. That sort of flexibility is very good. This provision will also allow for legal assistance to inquiries but it must be justified in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. In practice of course there will need to be guidance on whether counsel to assist is always necessary and if so for what purposes. I note with satisfaction that the Crown Law Office is to develop administrative guidelines on the role and the appointment of counsel. That would be necessary to enable the general provisos in this clause to work in practice.In both public and ministerial inquiries people can be summoned and can be required to give evidence or to provide information and we think that is very necessary if we are to get to the bottom of some of the important issues raised by these inquiries. But I am glad to see that the inquiry is required to comply with the principles of natural justice especially if an inquiry proposes to make a finding that is adverse to any individual. If it does do that it must make the person aware and give the person the opportunity to respond to the matters that the inquiry intends to raise about that person.The power to impose restrictions on access to inquiry information in clause 15 is another important provision in this piece of legislation. An inquiry may forbid publication of any evidence or submissions or any report or account of the evidence the name or other particulars concerning witnesses and so on. It may restrict access to any part or aspect of the inquiry. All of that is fine. There is a need for restrictions in some circumstances. But before making an order an inquiry must consider the risk of prejudice to public confidence because if it is too secret that would certainly be affected. New Zealand First supported Labour’s amendment to make transparency a primary consideration because we think that is what it should be. Recent inquiries have shown why that is necessary. After all the main purpose of inquiries is to inform the public not just the Government.Turning to clause 19 and legal assistance for participants the legislation states that “(1) An inquiry may at any time make a recommendation to the [legal aid agency] that funding be granted for the purpose of providing legal assistance to 1 or more specified persons—(a) who wish or who are required to appear before the inquiry; or (b) who have an interest in the inquiry.” and the agency “may” grant legal assistance. Theconcern I have is that the legal aid agency has by the use of the word “may” instead of “must” a discretion. Hence the agency will probably—well presumably—apply its income and capital thresholds. It would have been better we think for this clause to use the word “must” so that the parties who are required to appear could as of right have legal aid if they apply for it. We do not think that it is the legal aid agency that should have the discretion; it should be the inquiry itself that does so. So I think the legislation is a little bit defective in that way. However it is not a major issue.Finally clause 30 includes offences such as refusing to be sworn or to affirm and give evidence. That is balanced by a provision in subclause 30(2) which states that a person does not commit an offence if “(c) compliance would be likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law … including the right to a fair trial.” Although that is an appropriate balance I have a concern about the term “would be likely to prejudice” because I think that is an uncertain term. I would have preferred a term such as “might in the circumstances prejudice” or something like that. I think the bar provided by the words “likely to prejudice” is a little bit too high. However again it is not a major issue. I am sure that if necessary the courts will sort that out. Although New Zealand First still has these few minor concerns we do consider the bill to be a good revision of the law on Government and public inquiries and it will therefore have New Zealand First’s support.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am pleased to stand in support of this bill the Inquiries Bill in its third reading acknowledging the broad support for it across the House. I think that all of us have experienced in different ways direct or indirect the import of inquiries. They are incredibly important. I think actually that the previous speaker Denis O’Rourke outlined one of the key principles there. It is about an inquiry not just for the Government’s sake but for the people of New Zealand so it is very pleasing to see that ultimately we will have three forms of inquiry: public Government and royal commission. These are well understood and will be well understood by the public of New Zealand.It has also been noted of course that not since 1908 has the principal Act been looked at. This bill began from the other side when it was in Government. We have now picked up the ball and brought the bill to completion. I note that some speakers have talked about it languishing on the Order Paper. I think two points are needed there. The first of course is that this Government has over 60 pieces of legislation on the Order Paper and therefore there is always the matter of priority. The second point of course is that we have been going through several commissions—royal commissions at that—of late. There arelearnings that have been taken from them and those have been tabled through the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 330.So again I am pleased to speak to this bill and particularly pleased to see the clarifications that have made for a better understanding of what clause 28 does around immunities and privileges. A number of us spoke to that—some at length some with brevity. It is good to see that cleared up with support across the House. Once again I commend the bill to the House at this third reading.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman):I am very pleased to make a speech in the House to support as Labour is supporting this necessary piece of legislation the Inquiries Bill which is being rushed through. Just briefly in response to the previous speaker Simon O’Connor who was trying to make pathetic excuses for why the Government sat on this for so long saying that there are 60 pieces of legislation on the Order Paper I have to say that it is a very light Order Paper and most select committees have a very light workload. That is no excuse. The bottom line on this is that the Government thanks to the Hon Rick Barker I would say was able to pick up a piece of legislation that had been developed with wisdom back in the last Labour Government and was deemed necessary but of course was parked up by the NationalGovernment. This Government was lucky that it could pick it up off the ground. I think “pick up the ball” was the analogy used by the member Simon O’Connor over there. It probably got flattened and had to be pumped up a few times really in the last few years. But anyway none the less it is still a useful piece of legislation.It is with some sadness of course that we read the motivators for the Government in this. As I have said in a previous speech deregulation by Governments has resulted in incidents and occasions that unfortunately have led to a lot of very negative outcomes—the worst of course being the Pike River disaster and the most costly of course being leaky homes. There is a legacy of National Government deregulation experiments that have failed and now we are bringing in a piece of legislation that will allow inquiries to investigate why these things happened. For some people the answer is really obvious and prevention is always better than a cure but none the less it is important that we have legislation that allows us—Mike Sabin: Fantastic but nothing ever happened under a Labour Government angelic-like that they are.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The member over there should be very conscious of inquiries. There are lots of them going on over there at the Independent Police Conduct Authority. Can I say that we need to ensure that inquiries are effective are a good use of resource and deliver the wisdom that we require from them. We do not have these inquiries for retribution particularly the ones that will come under this legislation. They will be we hope for the garnering of wisdom and the implementation of recommendations that will prevent incidents whatever they are big or small from occurring.The most recent one of course is around Fonterra and food safety. I have to say that the Speaker turned down my request for an urgent debate today on the basis that this is an ongoing matter and it is with some sadness that I accept that reality. Deregulation of food certification as has occurred in the dairy industry has been very successful for a long time—I acknowledge that. I know that the Assistant Speaker in the Chair has a great deal of wisdom in the area of dairy in his region. It has performed outstandingly well for a long time but the industry is in a new competitive environment. It is one where there is pressure on who can get suppliers to provide the milk and then who is going to sell into the market place. That competition dare I say drives new pressures internally and we hope that it does not ever cause companies to take shortcuts particularly when it comes to food safety. But if it does cause them to do that then we need to have a proper agency that has the ability to monitor to intervene and to stop any food produce going from New Zealand that is substandard in any way.This inquiry of course has been initiated by the need for an investigation into that food safety regime and I think that it will discover that a higher level of Government oversight is required. There is more resource needed. My good colleague the Hon Annette King comes into the House. She knows full well that we need an independent agency uncompromised by any other obligations—set up by the previous Labour Government and absorbed into the Ministry for Primary Industries by the National Government because it wanted to cut costs and deregulate—and that provides proper oversight without fear or favour to any part of any primary industry sector to say that this food meets the specifications of the customer and is safe for us to export.We saw yesterday another incident not of food safety but of higher levels of nitrate than the customers wanted and expected in a shipment of milk powder from the country. In the Chinese market nitrates have been associated with possible contamination by melamine when you go back. That is why China is so sensitive to it. That is why when we tested it here we should have identified those high levels before it got on the ship. That is indeed what used to happen in this country. But what we are seeing with the competitive pressure to get out into that market—China is a vast and growing marketwith huge opportunities and we want to deliver to China the highest-quality safest food possible—dare I say you know maybe someone is taking shortcuts by putting it on the boat and getting it into China before it has been properly tested.I do not want to prejudge what the outcomes of this investigation might be but they are very very important. The provisions laid down in this bill have been rightfully scrutinised by Parliament and we hope have provided the best outcome. My colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard of course put up Supplementary Order Paper 332 wanting a little more openness and transparency. I do not think that it has got through so we are going to have to trust the Government that it will do this. We should not forget though in relation to this Fonterra inquiry that it is a ministerial inquiry. The Ministers are ultimately responsible for the outcomes and in fact they can discuss the terms of reference with the chair of the inquiry. OK I am a bit uneasy with that I have to say. The chair is obviously appointed by the Ministers and reports to the Ministers and the terms of reference are in fact dictated by the Ministers in reality. In this particular case where I guess a lack of resources for a proper independent food safety agency is part of the problem here will the Ministers be honest and open enough to accept that criticism—Hon Annette King: And an inquiry.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —through the inquiry—and say that we have to up the level of resources here? The reality is that our exports to China have rapidly grown but the level of resourcing for oversight has not. Logic would say that something might occur at some point and indeed it has happened very very quickly. We have identified another problem. There probably will be others and I hate to say that. I am a staunch supporter of the dairy industry and ofFonterra’s position in the international market place. It is our biggest and best company and the most successful thing to come out of this economy full stop—the most successful. We cannot afford to have the company falter or fail. We must support it but it needs oversight and it needs guidance.The dairy industry grew because of legislation and the oversight that that provided. It is now deregulated. The least we can do is provide proper oversight objective assessment and high-quality testing for all the products it produces to ensure that we continue to maintain the reputation for the highest-quality safest food from any country. Almost 40 percent of the world’s tradable product is in dairy. This is huge. I hope that the Ministers in holding this inquiry do not compromise an honest outcome because they are reluctant to criticise their own funding formula which has effectively seen $26 million cut from the Ministry for Primary Industries. The Minister gets up and says that we have a world-class biosecurity system and a world-class food safety system. The inquiry into Fonterra will identify whether that is true or not. I hope that the Government is prepared to fund the resources to make sure that it does not happen again.Dr JIAN YANG (National):Again I rise to take a short call on the third reading of the Inquiries Bill. The purpose of the bill is to reform and modernise the law relating to public inquiries. Currently public inquiries are governed by the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908.In 2006 the Law Commission reviewed this law and found it to be antiquated with some outdated provisions. The commission therefore recommended a new law. This Inquiries Bill will largely replace the outdated Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908 and will result in more flexible effective and fairer inquiries. The Law Commission’s review also identified that commissions of inquiry and royal commissions are expensive to run and have developed an antagonistic culture over time. Also ministerial inquiries have no forceful powers and must rely on witness cooperation in order to be effective.This bill will address these problems by establishing two forms of inquiry—public inquiries which will include royal commissions and Government inquiries which report directly to a Minister. It will provide both forms of inquiry with the same legal powers and protections. It will maximise flexibility and therefore free any inquiries from procedural restrictions. The new legislation will provide a framework for all types of inquiries—public Government and royal commissions of inquiry. It will deliver due accountability for all of them.As I said a couple of days ago the bill has become even more important due to the whey protein concentrate contamination incident. So I commend the bill to the House. Thanks.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour):I rise to speak to the Inquiries Bill in its third reading. I acknowledge the genesis of this bill and the number of Labour hands that it has passed through including the Hon Annette King’s and then the Hon Rick Barker’s thereafter. I am pleased to support this bill with Government members. I would like to give a couple of bouquets as I have already. One is to my Labour colleagues who instituted this thing a very long time ago.I must say that Supplementary Order Paper 330 which the Government put forward was very good. It was a suitable improvement on the bill. I think it also represented something that you Mr Assistant Speaker would have an interest in and that is this new form of Supplementary Order Paper which I think is meant to be a readable Supplementary Order Paper. That is a real improvement. Often Supplementary Order Papers come to the Committee and we scrabble to find out exactly which bit of the legislation they previously related to. So this is very helpful in that what we really have in this Supplementary Order Paper is a tracked version of the bill in its final form. That is extremely helpful.One of the things I want to draw attention to—and I seek your indulgence for a moment Mr Assistant Speaker if this sounds like a second reading speech; I do not mean it to be—is one of the things that I was interested in during my role as chair of the Regulations Review Committee which was the extent of the regulation-making powers. I want to refer particularly to what is called an “establishment instrument” which establishes an inquiry. That has been an improvement I think with the deletion of the previous clause 7 and the inclusion of the new one. The establishment instrument is defined in clause 4 as being amongst other things “an Order in Council …”. That is when the Regulations Review Committee begins to prick up its ears and say: “OK how far does this Order in Council power extend and could it be used to thwart the original intention of the bill?”.But what has happened with this one is that it provides greater clarity. The establishment instrument if it is going to be an Order in Council must now do a number of things which I think is really important. In other words a Minister cannot simply say: “We are going to have an inquiry into this and I am appointing so and so and I will set the terms of reference.”What now has to happen is that whichever establishment instrument is used to establish an inquiry must specify the matter of public importance it must name the person or the persons appointed to be members of the inquiry it must name the chairperson if there is more than one person and it must specify the date when the inquiry may begin considering evidence. It must also notify the terms of reference for an inquiry. Or if this is not done in the establishment instrument the appointing Minister or appropriate Minister must establish those terms of reference by notice in theGazette as soon as reasonably possible.Some of this marks an improvement by nailing down the requirements for an inquiry if it is going to fit with this legislation. That is an improvement. I think there have been some other additional pieces that have been included and I refer to the amendment ofmy colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard which has been agreed to by members opposite. I think that also has refreshed and strengthened the purpose of the Inquiries Bill.I think that the introduction of Supplementary Order Paper 330 on the Minister’s part has quite legitimately and appropriately come from the Government’s experience with both the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Building Failure Caused by the Canterbury Earthquakes. Both of those inquiries were precipitated by tragic tragic events. If we are able to make the terms by which an inquiry is established clearer more immediate and more transparent by virtue of this bill then this is something this House should pass with alacrity. Not only has the Government’s haste on this been precipitated by two tragedies; it is also obviously in response to the need to have an inquiry into the recent events surroundingFonterra’s products.I for one am perfectly happy to advance the speed of this bill in order for the Government to be able to progress this Inquiries Bill and the amendments in it. So although we have had some concerns around some of the requirements we recognise that Trevor Mallard’s amendment provides that before an inquiry makes an order to impose restrictions on access to the inquiry it must take into account the benefits of observing the principle of open justice. This is really important.I draw for a moment again on the Regulations Review Committee’s experience. We have had a recent complaint before the Regulations Review Committee which is now public and has been reported on to this House in respect of the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal which is the teachers conduct tribunal. The tribunal’s presumption has been—for reasons that I can quite understand but which I think in the end were wrong—for the suppression of identities generally to protect victims in those circumstances. The Regulations Review Committee has come down on the side of the need for the presumption of open justice to be there and suppression of details to be made by exception and not as the rule.This bill is in a similar vein. Trevor Mallard’s amendment reinforces that same principle of open justice and also natural justice. The default position we believe should be that an inquiry the evidence that comes to it and the findings of it should be open to the public and that is the expectation that we have of inquiries that may occur in the wake of the passage of this legislation. So we believe that Trevor Mallard’s amendment is an important change and we are very pleased that the members opposite have considered it to be important as well. This will strengthen the openness of information. It will strengthen the conduct of inquiries and it will allow people in New Zealand to have confidence that when inquiries are called they will have access to the content and the results. Thank you.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):It is my pleasure to be the final speaker on the Inquiries Bill as it reaches its third reading. This bill enjoys widespread support across the House. It is an important piece of legislation that is of long gestation. It is ultimately about establishing two forms of inquiry: public inquiries which include royal commissions; and Government inquiries which report directly to a Minister. There are circumstances such as the one we are dealing with now on the dairy industry where we do want to have a high level of legal powers and protections and the ability to reassure the public of the integrity of the inquiry without necessarily having the 2 or 3 years that can sometimes be involved in a royal commission of inquiry. So this legislation I think gives us the flexibility we need. It needs to be done and I do not want to delay the passing of this bill any further. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.Bill read a third time.Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas BillSecond ReadingHon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing):I moveThat the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a second time . This bill is a critical part of the Government’s comprehensive work programme to address housing supply and affordability. It unblocks the ridiculously slow planning and consenting process and will enable us to get some momentum and some pace into residential development in areas like Auckland. It delivers the mechanisms to deliver on the 39000 houses provided for in the Auckland Housing Accord. This bill sits alongside substantive reforms like the changes to the Resource Management Act that have been announced which will require councils to provide for 10 years of land supply; the changes we are making to development contributions which will reduce section costs; the inquiry we have under way into the cost of building materials; the big investments that we as a Government are making into trade apprenticeships; the development of the online building consent system; the improvements we have announced to both the KiwiSaver home deposit scheme and the Welcome Home Loan scheme.This Government is not about gimmicks or slogans. It is about a substantive package of reforms that will make homes more affordable for Kiwi families. I note that some parties in this Parliament are opposing this bill and denying that land supply and cost is any part of the housing affordability problem. Let us look at the facts.Section prices have risen significantly more than the cost of actually building the home over the past decade. They were 40 percent of the cost of a house a decade ago and they are now 60 percent. In Auckland section prices over the last decade have gone from $100000 to an average of $325000. We have seen raw undeveloped land that was worth $30000 a hectare a decade and a half ago now being sold for $4 million a hectare in places like Flat Bush in Auckland. We know from research done by the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust that raw land inside Auckland’s metropolitan limit has a value ten times that of raw land outside that artificial line—the metropolitan urban limit.I also note that the number of sections that are available in Auckland plummeted from 4100 a decade ago to just 1400 and those 1400 sections need to be seen in the context of Auckland needing 13000 new houses a year to be able to keep up with population growth. Parties that are blocking the land supply measures in this bill cannot pretend to be serious about addressing housing affordability. They are part of the problem rather than being part of the solution. Members opposite state that they are going to build 100000 houses for $300000 each. My question and my challenge for members opposite is this. How are you going to build a house for $300000 when you will not deal with the issue of the section which averages $325000 in Auckland? I think that members opposite are digging themselves a hole. And how are they going to build 100000 houses when Auckland currently has only 1400 sections and they are not prepared to free up land supply? Labour members’ opposition to this bill shows that they are more interested in playing politics and grandstanding than addressing the real issues that will help Kiwi families get an affordable home.Let me remind the House how this bill will help housing affordability. We all know that Auckland’s metropolitan urban limit has to move that it is a straitjacket on Auckland’s growth and that it is allowing huge monopoly prices to be claimed by those who own the last few areas of undeveloped land. Without this bill that metropolitan urban limit will remain in place for another 3 years. With this bill we will be able to open up new areas of housing development by Christmas. This bill will enable brownfield development to be consented in 3 months as compared with the currentaverage of over 1 year. This bill will enable greenfield developments to be consented in 6 months as compared with the current average of 3 years.I want to thank and commend the Social Services Committee and particularly the chair Sam Lotu-Iiga for the diligent and effective job that he and the team on the committee have done in refining this bill. They have made helpful changes to the bill including improvements to the definition of what is meant by “predominantly residential” and what is meant in terms of defining building height. The process and tests for scheduling a district or region as having housing affordability issues have been improved. The bill was overwhelmingly supported by the 64 submissions to the select committee reflecting the very broad consensus—whether it be the Productivity Commission whether it be the Reserve Bank whether it be the IMF—that one of the most critical issues for New Zealand is increasing housing supply.I do treat with a bit of a grain of salt some of the complaints from the Opposition members that the bill has been rushed. These are the people who have been giving speeches all year calling on the Government to take urgent action on housing and when we take the urgent action they object.I want also to note the complaint that the bill does not specifically refer to the building of affordable houses. Well that is being too cute. The bill specifically mentions the Auckland Housing Accord. The Auckland Housing Accord very specifically has provisions for ensuring that the houses that are built include a portion that are in the affordable range. If you put the accord in the bill and the accord makes provision for affordability then they are simply playing games.Labour the Greens and New Zealand First need to have a very hard look in the mirror over the issue of housing affordability. Between 1999 and 2008 the average price in New Zealand grew by 102 percent—102 percent 8 percent per year. In the same period average wages grew by just 40 percent. In fact the last Labour Government has the worst record—the worst record—of any Government in the history of New Zealand in terms of deteriorating housing affordability. If we check the 5 years that we have been in Government well average house prices over the last 5 years have gone up by 13 percent or an average of 3 percent per year and—this is the key part—average incomes have gone up by 19 percent. So incomes over our period in Government have gone up faster than house prices but we know that we have to do more to address the scale that opened up over the course of the last Government.The problems of housing affordability actually go back many years and in fact several decades. This Government is taking those issues seriously. This bill is a crucial part—a crucial part—of the solution. I commend the bill to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū):In a week when the National Government showered $40 million on that tiny group of New Zealanders who plan to invest in Meridian Energy things continue to go downhill badly for young Kiwi first-home buyers. The price of housing has gone up even more. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand reports that Auckland house prices went up 14 percent in the last 12 months. The announcement by the Reserve Bank of loan-to-value ratio limits on mortgage lending without any kind of exemption for first-home buyers is a kick in the guts for first-home buyers because that Government on that side of the House mishandled its negotiations with the Reserve Bank and failed to agree to an exemption for first-home buyers. And now the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill in the House today for its second reading the centrepiece of the Government’s housing policy is a timid flawed badly thought through bill that will surely fail to meet its objectives.We have in this National Government a Government that will not think twice about bailing out the insurance companies about bailing out South Canterbury Finance. It is a Government that at the drop of a hat will rewrite this country’s laws at the behest ofWarner Bros of Skycity of Anadarko. It is a Government that will shower taxpayer largesse on RioTinto on investors in its botched privatisation of our country’s energy companies. It will do all that but it will not pull its finger out to do something serious for first-home buyers. The public knows it the media know it the Government is floundering around and Nick Smith is the Minister who has been delegated to give the appearance of doing something about the country’s housing crisis. Well people see through it. This bill—this timid flawed bit of draft legislation—is all the Government has and it simply will not cut the mustard.What is our attitude on the Labour benches to this bill? Well frankly we are underwhelmed by it. There is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of special housing areas. There is nothing wrong with the idea of fast-tracked consenting. We have a housing affordability crisis. It requires bold extraordinary measures but this falls a long way short of what is required. It would be nice if the Government approached the housing crisis with boldness and with a determination to tackle the fundamental intractable complex array of problems that underlie the housing affordability crisis but this bill is all the Government has and frankly it amounts to tinkering. That is all it is.Hon Dr Nick Smith: KiwiSaver. Welcome Home Loans.PHIL TWYFORD: KiwiSaver and Welcome Home Loans. I am really glad the Minister of Housing mentioned those—I am really glad he mentioned those. TheNew Zealand Heralddevoted an entire editorial to describing that Minister’s announcement on KiwiSaver and Welcome Home Loans as insipid as it is ill-directed. That is what the country’s biggest newspaper had to say about Nick Smith’s latest housing policy announcement.The weird irony of this whole bill is that it is the centrepiece of the Government’s response to the housing crisis but the Government would not even have to be wasting the House’s time with this bill if it had not made some serious errors of judgment earlier.The bill quite rightly sets out to bring in new greenfields land into Auckland. There is no problem with that. It attempts to fast track consenting to speed up the construction of houses. Fine. There is no problem with that. But if Nick Smith had not changed the law in 2009 to prevent new plans having legal weight from notification the Government would never have had to do this. If the National Government had acceded to Auckland Council’s request to fast track the Auckland Unitary Plan and allow it to have legal weight upon notification it would never have had to bring this bill to the House which simply cherry-picks some aspects of the unitary plan. If it had allowed the unitary plan to be fast tracked that would have been much better because it has a raft of other housing affordability measures that would have been much more useful than this bill.There is no doubt—and I want to put to rest any suggestion by the Minister of Housing in his last speech—that this party does not accept that land supply is a problem in Auckland. It is clearly not a problem in Tauranga and other regional centres that suffer extreme housing unaffordability. But for the sake of this argument let us be very clear and put it on the record that there is no doubt—the data makes it crystal clear—that constraints on land supply in Auckland and the failure to intensify is behind an increase in the price of land that has flowed on to the price of housing. But land supply is only one factor in the housing crisis and the National Party has a fixation with it. Its idea is that if it can just bring in extra greenfields land then that will solve the problem. That is the intellectual flaw underlying this bill. The price of housing is determined by an interaction between the supply and the demand for land.This Government refuses—refuses—to consider a capital gains tax that would crack down on land speculation and residential property speculation and take the steam out ofthe speculative pressures that are driving up house prices in Auckland. The Government refuses to consider the idea of putting limits on offshore speculators that see overseas property speculators outbidding Kiwi first-home buyers at Auckland property auctions. It refuses to stand beside first-home buyers. The National Party backs property speculators every time.The Government is doing nothing substantial about tackling the extreme low productivity that we have in the construction industry. The lack of scale and the lack of competition are entrenched problems that mean that the construction and building industry in this country has some of the lowest productivity in the OECD and the Government only has weasel words to say about that. It has a dinosaur mentality reflected in this bill that says that the problems causing housing unaffordability are planning laws and regulations. Its only response is to say: “Let us deregulate. Let us get rid of planning rules.” But simply bringing in some extra greenfields land in itself a perfectly sensible idea will not given the complex and intractable forces that are making Auckland housing prices so prohibitively expensive for Kiwi first-home buyers result in any more affordable housing.One submitter after another—including the Todd Property Group the Property Council the Salvation Army Auckland Council Tauranga City Council and Waikato District Council—came to the Social Services Committee and said that this bill on its own will not result in the building of any more affordable housing. All of those submitters highly credible and involved submitters came to the select committee and said that this bill will not result in one more affordable house being built.The premise of this bill is that if you open up more greenfields land and allow property developers to build some new houses no matter what the cost of those houses somehow that will reduce the cost of housing in Auckland. That is fairy-tale economics that Nick Smith is engaging in. The premise of this bill is that if you build some more houses no matter how expensive they are on the fringes of Auckland then that will make houses in Auckland more affordable. Well Minister that is a fairy tale and it is a lie that underlies this bill.I want to comment briefly on the override clauses in this bill that are undemocratic. They are unnecessary. They make a mockery of the fact that this bill is called the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. How can a council in good faith negotiate an accord with central government when it knows sitting across the table from the Government that this bill gives the Government the power to do whatever it wants no matter what the council says or believes? It is a mockery. It is undemocratic. It should not be in this bill.Finally I want to note that this bill weakens the protections of certain parts of our country including the Waitakere Ranges which currently are protected by the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act which gives that Act primacy over other local or district plans. This bill dilutes those protections requiring decision makers to have only regard to those objectives in the bill. That is a substantial dilution of the protection that those special areas currently have and I think that is a real shame. This bill is insipid and ill-directed just like theNew Zealand Heraldsaid about Nick Smith’s other housing policies. It is timid poorly thought through and it will not meet its objectives.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie):It is a pleasure to speak on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. May I first acknowledge the Minister of Housing the Hon Dr Nick Smith for his leadership his ability and his hard work in bringing this bill to the House. The reason why is that he understands the issues that relate to affordable housing in the country. He understands that there is a plan to address those housing issues in this country. He is taking action to address those issues that pertain to housing affordability in this country.We all know that the Minister has set out the case for this bill which is to enable the Government to work with councils to fast track consents for new housing developments across this country. When you talk to the developers out there they say the one thing the one barrier that does not allow them to get on to building houses especially in Auckland is around the red tape and bureaucracy. This bill will address that by freeing up land and bringing down the bureaucracy that really does not enable our developers to build homes in this country.The Opposition member Phil Twyford crowed that land supply is not the only answer. We on this side of the House agree with that. But this measure goes to attacking the single most important issue around affordable housing. The Productivity Commission the IMF the Reserve Bank and Treasury have said that land supply is critical so it saddens me today to listen to Labour members not allowing this bill and not voting for this bill when this bill critically increases land supply across this country. This bill is about the Government working with local councils.There are other issues. They include material costs. They include the building of infrastructure. They include productivity in the construction sector because we know productivity has actually declined over the last 20 years in that sector. I have already talked about red tape compliance costs and bureaucracy. So this bill will speed up resource consents.It is evident as the Minister has already said that in Auckland we need 39000 homes over the next 3 years. Clearly 1400 sections available for construction is not going to do it so this bill aims to redress that issue. If Mr Twyford and his mates across the aisle say that this is not going to do that then why has the de facto leader of the Labour Party in this country Mayor Len Brown brought into this piece of legislation being able to at least release land in the Auckland region? I challenge him to go back to his mates in the Labour Party and ask why Mayor Len Brown is supporting this.The Social Services Committee made a number of changes. I want to thank the select committee members. I also want to thank the officials who worked under what were quite challenging circumstances to assist the committee to get this legislation to the House. We heard submissions both here and in Auckland. Submitters generally supported the Government’s intent. Unlike what Mr Twyford said in his speech they actually support this bill to streamline consent processes and release land. One of the changes that the committee made was to clarify how and when the powers of the bill can be used and to clarify how the provisions of the bill will work with other legislation primarily the Resource Management Act. Submitters were also concerned that in determining which regions have housing supply and affordability issues the critical criteria around affordability were around land supply.Amendments enabled the Minister to consider other factors including projected demand and other things such as shortage of supply or lack of affordability or infrastructure. I think that is really important because we listened to the submitters and we inserted clauses in the bill to allow it to reflect the views of New Zealanders. We also looked at the definition of “predominantly residential” and what that means for qualifying developments and clarified that it must therefore have the supply of residential dwellings as its primary purpose.Mr Twyford also referred to the override provisions. To allay some of the fears of councils that made submissions the bill now includes the option of inserting a dispute resolution process into a housing accord.Phil Twyford: It’s a sop.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Mr Twyford knows it. He knows that those types of clauses are effective. Where both parties to an accord agree to a dispute resolution process then that will take priority. For clarification we inserted that into the bill. Wehave also dealt with definitions around what is adjacent or adjourning. Land owners are to be notified of new developments. The committee was generally constructive in bringing about some of those changes.I conclude by saying that high housing prices in Auckland raise debt and increase demands on the social assistance of both the Government and NGOs. Making housing more affordable is good for the economy it is good for our communities and it is good for those families who are seeking to get affordable housing in our communities. This bill as I have said is not the panacea. It is one of a number of initiatives that this Government is progressing to address the issue of—Phil Twyford: Like Welcome Home Loans and KiwiSaver.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —housing affordability and we will continue. Mr Twyford might laugh at the fact that this is a serious issue in Parliament—it is a serious issue for my communities in Maungakiekie—but we will continue to act in the best interests of all New Zealanders who want to live their Kiwi dream who want to live in their own home. We will continue to support and encourage those New Zealanders to aspire to their dreams and aspirations. That is why I commend this bill to the House.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):You will notice that neither the chairperson of the Social Services Committee Sam Lotu-Iiga who has just resumed his seat nor the Minister of Housing himself actually gave any sense of how many affordable homes would be built off the back of this bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. And why is that? Because they have absolutely no idea. One reason for that is that there is actually no requirement that any affordable homes be built as a consequence of this piece of legislation.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Read the bill.JACINDA ARDERN: I am happy to—later on in my speech in fact I will read the bill to the Minister because he seems to have forgotten that he left those provisions out.The chair of the select committee said that the case has been made for this bill. Look there is no question that the case has been made for action—no question whatsoever. We have dipped in Auckland alone in homeownership to 60 percent a new low for New Zealand—a record if you will. There has been a 30 percent increase in house prices since that Government took office. Auckland right now—right now—needs 30000 new homes in order to plug the housing supply issue.That Government claims that it has a large suite of options available to try to improve the situation and what are they? Well it is going to let first-home buyers draw down a little more of KiwiSaver but oh by the way the threshold for how much you need for a loan has gone up at the same time so that pretty much nullifies any advantage from that. Welcome Home Loans—I would like to see some of the numbers around Welcome Home Loans and whether they are making a dent in this massive issue.Then we have this bill. Let us absolutely acknowledge that supply is an issue. There is no doubt that in Auckland supply is in issue but it does matter what kind of supply. The Minister of Housing will be able to tell me how many affordable homes have been built in say the last year and what percentage of homes being built is affordable. Well if he does not give the answer I can tell him: 5 percent. Five percent of new builds are affordable. So how will this bill change the proportion of houses that are being built that will be affordable? Well it simply does not. It assumes that the only problem is land supply and planning regulations—and it is part of the issue. We have never questioned that that is part of the issue nor have we ever suggested that it represents the biggest part of the problem.Let us get down into the nitty-gritty of the content of the bill because Nick Smith seems so convinced that this bill stipulates that everyone who builds in a specialhousing area must build an affordable house. First though before we have a special housing area the Government must negotiate with a council a housing accord. It says in the bill at clause 11(2): “A housing accord may” “(a) provide for the Minister and the territorial authority to work together across a range of housing issues according to the matters that they may identify as relevant to improving housing supply and affordability”. It may—there is no requirement. There is absolutely no requirement and we need to keep in mind that that is just for the accord. So that is just to establish the grounds on which a council and the Minister may say: “In future we might create a special housing area.” But in reality it is functionally the way that the special housing area is set up that really matters because that is the thing that determines specifically where houses are going to be built and where they will have the special consenting process apply.So let us get down to the nitty-gritty of what is included in a special housing area and what a qualifying development is. The bill clearly sets out in clause 14 that a qualifying development is predominantly residential—yep—mostly has to be less than six storeys contains no fewer than a prescribed number of dwellings to be built again predominantly residential—blah blah blah. There is nothing about affordability.A qualifying development does not have to be affordable. The Minister knows that this is in fact true because I asked him at the Social Services Committee. I asked him why he has not required that a qualifying residential development has to be an affordable development. His response was that he did not want to be too prescriptive because of course someone who goes and builds a new house that might be worth say $700000 might be vacating a house that might be worth say $300000 so why would we want to prescribe that the new building has to be affordable because at least they might leave an affordable house behind them. Trickle-down housing—trickle-down housing is what the Minister has presented to us. It is an absolute farce for him to now claim that he required affordable housing because he admitted at the select committee that he has not and he even tried to give us a rationale for why he had done this.Secondly this bill assumes that the council is the barrier to this particular set of issues that this bill addresses. Even the chair of the select committee claimed that the council were all gung-ho and on board with this bill because of what it allows them to do. Let us be frank. Of course the mayor wants to try to speed up housing development. That is what he tried to do in his Auckland Unitary Plan. But when he presented to the Government his intention around housing development he said: “In order for me to progress what I need to do now for housing I need legal weight of my unitary plan from notification.” And what did that Government say? It said: “No way.” No way. But suddenly Nick Smith sat back and thought to himself: “It is election year and I’ve got a housing issue. I will go back to the council and tell them that on my own terms I will let them do what they want to do anyway but I will do it whilst being able to veto all of their rights if they do not do it in a way I want to.”It is a complete fallacy for the chair of the select committee to claim that the council is all on board because this is a great new idea. It is the only way it could do what it wanted to do in its own unitary plan. If that Government was serious it would have listened to the council when it first said: “Give us legal weight.” That is what it initially asked for. This is just about trying to negotiate an election sweetener so that the Government could look good at the end of it and it is absolutely appalling. [Interruption ]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The phrase “Tell the truth.” is out of order and unparliamentary. We will not have that for the rest of this debate.JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The fact is that in doing so it had to build in override provisions that further erode the ability—and I say“further erode” because that seems to be a mantra of this particular Minister—of the council to govern in the best interests of its citizens. Of course the council wants housing. Of course it wants housing and it has tried to achieve that on its own terms. But it is not just the council that the Government rides roughshod over; it is also riding roughshod over existing law like the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act.Advocates from the Waitakere Ranges came and said that they fought long and hard to get special legislation to protect the area of the Waitakere Ranges and to make sure that their legislation takes primacy over any other legislation to protect those ranges. This bill dilutes that. Now the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act will only have to be given due regard. The Government could have strengthened that and it did not.We have always said that we need a complete solution but we have never just said it; we have also demonstrated what we would do. Part of the problem at the moment is scale in the building industry. We know that it is scale and the Minister of Housing knows we do not have enough housing developments of the scale we require. Labour has said that it will build 100000 houses. We know that it is possible. We have already talked with the building industry in order to develop it.A second issue is the lack of competition in building materials. You need only compare us with Australia to know that that is the case. Again ourKiwiBuild programme will address that. We know that tax treatment encourages speculative investment and the capital gains tax that Labour will introduce will resolve that. We know that overseas buyers are reducing supply and leading to greater speculative activity. So we will address that. We know that quality matters and that is why we have a Healthy Homes guarantee. We will work with the council—with the council—to deliver housing in the areas where we need it most. Labour does not believe in tinkering in this area. We believe in step change and that is exactly what a Labour Government will do.HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am pleased to stand once again in opposition to the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. The Green Party and the Mana party were in fact the only parties to vote against the bill at its first reading. We are proud to continue to oppose it and are pleased to see that other parties are now joining us in that opposition.There are two key concerns at the heart of our opposition to this bill. The first is that it will not do anything to increase the supply of affordable housing. That is a fairly fundamental point when the principal stated purpose of the bill is to increase the supply of affordable housing. I will shortly go into some detail in my contribution about exactly why this bill does nothing to increase the supply of affordable housing.The second key concern at the heart of our opposition to this bill is that we are profoundly uncomfortable with the provisions that override the autonomy of territorial authorities and that limit consultation and appeal rights under the Resource Management Act although that is entirely consistent with this Government’s anti-democratic attitude on a number of fronts particularly its dismissive attitude towards local government. Indeed it is entirely consistent with its continued attack on environmental protections under the Resource Management Act so we should not be surprised. But we have serious concerns about those provisions and they are the other key reason why we are opposing this legislation. I will take each of those concerns in turn.First of all on the question of whether the bill will actually do anything to improve housing affordability we have heard some contributions on this topic already from Phil Heatley and Jacinda Ardern. There is no doubt that we do need legislation to improve housing affordability.Hon Simon Bridges: She just called you Phil Heatley.Phil Twyford: You called me Heatley.HOLLY WALKER: Phil Twyford—my apologies Mr Twyford. Ha ha! They both have a history of housing but one perhaps understands the issues better than the other. There is no doubt that we need legislation to improve the affordability of housing when the average house price in Auckland is over $700000—that is the average house price. And when it takes 70 percent of the average income in Auckland to service the mortgage on the lowest-quartile house we have a crisis and we need legislation to do something about it.It is not just in Auckland because the national average house price is around $400000 and that is unaffordable for many New Zealanders. There is also a particular crisis in Christchurch as a result of a lack of supply of housing because of the earthquake. It is a nationwide crisis so we need to do something about it.The Minister of Housing said in his speech that this bill was “a core part of the Government’s work to improve housing affordability.” Therefore you would imagine that a core criterion of anything in the bill would perhaps be that it would actually do something to improve housing affordability but unfortunately that is not the case. Actually it is not even what the Minister wanted to do. I had a look through the Budget papers about the housing measures that were introduced in the Budget including the measures in this bill. Actually up until quite recently before the Budget—quite soon before the Budget—the Minister wanted to establish an urban development agency which perhaps would have been quite an interesting and novel way of looking at the issue of housing affordability. But obviously he could not get it across the line for some reason so instead we got this bill patched together at the last minute. That was very apparent in the rushed way in which the bill was brought to the House and in the substantive amendments that were required at the Social Services Committee.The essential problem with this bill is that it defines the problem as the supply of affordable housing but it sets out a solution that is designed to address something different and that is land supply. The two are not the same thing. In fact they are very different. Numerous submitters pointed out to the select committee that with the possible exception of Auckland where the housing accord has already been negotiated the regions of New Zealand that display high rates of housing unaffordability do not in fact have a problem with land supply. So the measures in this bill to create special housing areas and to fast track consent processes will actually do nothing to address the issue of housing affordability in those other regions of New Zealand because the problem in those places is not land supply. So it is a land supply solution to a housing affordability problem and it will not solve the problem.That was a consistent message that was given to the select committee from council submitters as well as property developers and individual submitters. Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga spoke before and he said that land supply was the single biggest issue that we need to address when it comes to housing affordability. Well in fact the Property Council which consists of property developers came in front of the select committee and said that in its view it was at most—at most—half the problem. So this bill is not well designed to tackle the problem that we actually have.Secondly it was widely acknowledged by submitters that even if the special housing areas created by this bill facilitated faster building and property development the houses that were built as a result of that would be unlikely to be in the affordable category because there is no requirement that a certain percentage of those houses are affordable. The Minister said: “Oh yes there is because it’s in the Auckland Housing Accord.” Well it is in the Auckland Housing Accord only because the Auckland Council demanded that it be there. The Government would not have put it there if it was up to the Government. It has not included a provision in this legislation for otherhousing accords that might be developed in other parts of the country. So it is thanks only to the temerity of the Auckland Council that we have that provision there.Again even the Property Council acknowledged to the select committee that it did not expect that the bill would actually result in the provision of any more affordable houses. As my colleague Jacinda Ardern has said the Minister was asked about this when he appeared before the committee for the estimates hearing for Vote Housing. He basically acknowledged that that was the case. He said that it would be OK because wealthy people would move out of their smaller more affordable houses and move into the larger new homes and leave those houses free for other people to move into—trickle-down housing as Ms Ardern has said. That is a flawed assumption and it is a very indirect way to go about trying to tackle the problem of the lack of supply of affordable housing for a bill that is supposed to address that problem directly.What we should be debating in this House is much more direct legislation that tackles the problem of affordable housing head-on and we in the Green Party have got some ideas about how we might do this. For example we would tackle the housing affordability crisis with a direct programme of Government-built homes coupled with a progressive ownership scheme—effectively a rent-to-buy scheme so that families can move into those homes and pay a basic weekly rent to cover the cost of the investment to the Government and anything they pay in addition to that goes towards purchasing equity in that house. That is a way—a genuine way—to both increase the supply of affordable housing and help first-time buyers into homes without the need to qualify for a traditional bank mortgage and without the need for a deposit. That is a real solution to housing affordability but it is not what we are debating in this bill.We would also do this in combination with a suite of other measures that tackle housing affordability such as introducing a comprehensive capital gains tax that would exempt the family home and restricting non-citizens and non - permanent residents from purchasing residential property. As well as that we would address the problems of the rental market which are significant through having a warrant of fitness for rental properties and more secure tenure for renters. But sadly that is not the legislation we are debating today.Finally I want to address the issue of overriding local democracy which is the second major concern we have with this bill. There was overwhelming concern from submitters including but not just from territorial authorities—from a number of other organisational and individual submitters as well—about the override provision that would allow the Government to establish special housing areas to appoint commissioners and to grant consents in those special housing areas without the cooperation of the relevant territorial authority.We see this as an unacceptable curtailment of local democracy. It is entirely consistent with the dismissive attitude that this Government takes towards local democracy. It is quite literally dismissive in some cases such as the Environment Canterbury councillors who were actually dismissed by the Government. It will be impossible for councils to negotiate housing accords in good faith with the Government when they know that if they disagree with anything that the Government puts on the table or if they push back against any of the terms that the Government is demanding then central government can just go over their heads and establish this special housing area in the way that it wants to do it anyway. It puts councils at an incredible disadvantage in those negotiations and it means that good-faith negotiations essentially will not exist.The disputes resolution process in clause 11(2)(ca) that has been included by the Social Services Committee which was referred to by Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga earlier is actually optional. It has absolutely no teeth and so it will do nothing to redress thisincredible power imbalance. As well as that as I mentioned earlier in relation to local democracy all of the protections under the Resource Management Act that we would expect to see applying in this situation will not apply under this legislation and that is a major curtailment of local democracy as well. So for those reasons we are very proud to stand in opposition to this bill.MELISSA LEE (National):It is a pleasure to rise in support of and talk about the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill in its second reading. New Zealand is actually facing a housing challenge and I think many members have traversed that point. Not only is our housing market heated but we are seeing a shortage in the number of homes available to Kiwis. With housing demands projected to rise this bill will be a core part of our efforts to provide much-needed homes in Auckland where housing shortages remain serious. It was interesting to note the Labour Opposition and the Green member talking about the fact that we do have a shortage in housing supply. It is interesting to note that the only answer that Labour has actually provided isKiwiBuild.Let us talk aboutKiwiBuild which Labour provides as an answer. It actually says that it can provide 100000 homes for $300000 each and we all know that an average section in Auckland costs about $325000 to $350000. So Labour is probably talking about only the homes without the land. If that is the case I say to you that it is paying far too much for a house at $300000. The Hon Maurice Williamson has proven that in his Starter Home Design Competition in which I think they built a house for $165000. We know we can actually build homes cheaper; it is just that the land itself costs so much more and there is no way that Labour can possibly say it will deliver 100000 homes for $300000 each. That is delusional.We know that for housing developments to happen we need to focus on five key areas: material cost infrastructure productivity in the construction sector compliance costs and—most important—land supply particularly in Auckland as I have just mentioned. We cannot actually meet the needs of real Kiwis looking for real homes—realistic home prices—without addressing our land supply issue and that is exactly what this bill does. It responds to the supply issue at hand and gives local councils the tools they need to do it while longer-term reforms are being put in place. While drafting this bill we had the opportunity to hear more than 60 submissions and understand the concerns raised by many members of the community. Some of the issues raised were just how pressing the need for this bill was whether our policy was justified and what the unintended consequences of this bill might be and we have made great efforts to address these diverse viewpoints. We also appreciate the large number of submissions that have helped shape the bill as it is now.This is this Government’s answer to the shortage of housing that is available in Auckland. I cannot actually say the same for the Opposition which has not come up with a single idea that is valid. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):The National Government’s housing policy and the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill are a totally inadequate response to the housing crisis in New Zealand. There are severe housing shortages especially in Christchurch and Auckland and first-home buyers cannot afford to buy a house. In a home-owning democracy which New Zealand has always been this is a national disgrace. The Government waited for several years while a housing crisis developed and now it blames local government and pretends that with the introduction of housing accords and special housing areas it can solve the problem. In fact the problem is much bigger than that.The Government’s policies overall are to blame. Over the last 5 years the Government has allowed a housing price bubble to emerge in Auckland by its inept immigration and housing policies. Only a comprehensive housing strategy designed toaddress both demand and supply factors as advocated by New Zealand First will make housing affordable for home buyers. New Zealand First supports a broadly based housing policy that will again make homeownership a reality rather than a dream for working New Zealanders. Although New Zealand First has no problem with the concept of housing accords and special housing areas they will not be enough. In Auckland there is already a housing deficit of well over 30000 houses and it is growing. The Government’s plans are unlikely to result in more than 10000 to 12000 houses per year but we do not know how many because the Government will not say. It will not choose a figure and in fact it does not know. Anyway it will never catch up on that basis.The Government’s plan is obviously a failure. To make matters worse the hopes of first-home seekers have now been well and truly killed off by the Reserve Bank’s limiting of the quantum of high loan-to-value ratio mortgages that the trading banks can make by introducing an 80 percent loan limit as a ratio of the total property value. The Reserve Bank wants to restrict high loan-to-value ratio mortgages to reduce demand. This is a flawed policy that will do great damage to the proper expectations of younger people to access loans to buy a family home and this Government has done next to nothing about it. In any event the Reserve Bank strategy is a second-best strategy. Normally it would raise interest rates and it may do that as well despite raising an already overvalued dollar and inflicting all sorts of damage on the New Zealand economy. In addition the Reserve Bank’s housing policy is Auckland-centric. In Christchurch and elsewhere in New Zealand people face different housing issues and the results of Government policy and Reserve Bank policy are therefore likely to be patchy and inappropriate for much of the country.Another problem not being addressed by the Government is that it is doing nothing to deter overseas property investors and speculators who have been buying up Auckland property and who have ample equity. They of course are not hurt by the Reserve Bank’s loan-to-value ratio restrictions. Some can get cheap overseas loans and outbid Kiwis who are trying to buy a family home. The Government does nothing about the migrant flows which have been concentrated in Auckland. It does nothing to tighten immigration policy in areas such as parental reunion which have added significantly to housing demand in Auckland. Lastly and most important the impact of Government and Reserve Bank policies will fall most directly on first-home buyers. It is not the first-home buyers who are driving the bubble especially in Auckland but they will be the sector most heavily penalised by the limits on high loan-to-value ratio lending. Perversely that policy will encourage them to seek the extra funds they now need from potentially risky sources such as finance companies and loan sharks. This will add even more risk to the system. The Government’s response has been pathetic. It is allowing easier access to KiwiSaver savings for home purchases. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but it is not nearly enough. Most first-home seekers will still not be able to raise a 20 percent deposit with or without access to KiwiSaver—and by the way that should be preserved for retirement purposes.Therefore New Zealand First’s policy to assist first-home seekers is this: firstly to establish a new State agency to acquire land and create a land bank in areas where demand clearly exceeds supply. These are currently Christchurch and Auckland. The agency would sell residential sections of modest size on the basis of long-term agreements for sale and purchase up to 25 years to first-home buyers. This reduces the upfront capital cost of a new home by about one-third. Interest rates would be highly concessionary at 2 percent for an initial period of at least 3 years. Purchasers would build their own homes using normal bank financing and would have title to the section transferred to them with the amount owing to the agency secured by way of a second-ranking statutory land charge. Under that policy the 20 percent deposit problem simply does not arise.The Government’s special housing areas are not enough and its policy along with the Reserve Bank’s approach will kill off the hope of a home for most of New Zealand’s first-home seekers. New Zealand can do a lot better with New Zealand First’s policy on housing. It is very disappointing to see that this Government is willing to put up with the fact that first-home buyers will not be able to buy a home in this country for some considerable time. It is doing considerable economic and social damage by not doing enough on this problem. Everybody in this country knows it is not doing enough and yet Government members sit there today telling us that this bill and their policies will be sufficient to solve the problem. Everybody knows they will not so let us get real. Let us do something genuine about it such as some of the policies that Opposition parties have been advocating. The Government would do very well to listen to some of those. For those reasons New Zealand First will certainly oppose this bill.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei):I happily rise in support of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. What it does is it fulfils the suite of initiatives that this Government has worked on across housing. What we have done is we have made it very clear to the electorate that there is no silver bullet and that is certainly the reflection back to us from builders developers those buying a home and those in the banking sector. The New Zealand First Party policy—its whole immigration policy I guess—of attacking Asians and saying: “No more Asians in the country.” is not the silver bullet. The banks builders and developers are saying that the Greens’ policy is just to write a cheque with the country going into more debt. The Greens’ policy of borrowing money overseas to build houses for people I guess and handing it over to them with minimal contribution from those people is not the way to go. And of course the Labour Party policy which is confusing and difficult to follow is also not the way to go.Bankers essentially builders developers and first-home buyers are saying to us that there is no silver bullet. There is a suite of measures that you have to take and this bill really is the last of those that we are putting in place. We have been interested in the demand side. National has looked very hard at the Welcome Home Loan scheme where we provide insurance for those who are borrowing—borrowers’ insurance—so that they can borrow and we have looked at KiwiSaver deposits as well. Colleagues across the House and all parties cannot deny the statistics that interest rates under this current Government for the last 4 years have sat at around 5 and 6 percent compared with 5 or 10 years ago under the previous Government—the spend-and-tax Labour Government—when interest rates were sitting at 9 10 or 11 percent consistently.I do not think New Zealanders have forgotten that interest rates were around 9 10 or 11 percent under the previous Government. They appreciate the fact that good economic management under our team has seen interest rates sit at around 5 or 6 percent. Those percentage differences are 4 or 5 percent between a Labour Government and a National Government. On a $300000 mortgage 4 or 5 percent well 5 percent is $15000 in interest a year. That is an awful lot of money. One percent on a $100000 mortgage is $1000 and 5 percent on a $300000 mortgage is $15000 interest a year. Under Labour policy that is an awful lot of money each year to come up with. That is something we have focused on—interest rates.Also of course we are getting Housing New Zealand to better use those quarter-acre and half-acre sections. A lot of subdividing is going on on public land and Housing New Zealand land. We are subdividing and using the proceeds to build new State houses and using the land that is subdivided to also build houses on for families to buy privately. That is an excellent idea—the use of Crown-owned State-owned or HousingNew Zealand - owned land. We see it atTāmaki and obviously we see it at Hobsonville. There is also the Social Housing Unit the investment that we are putting into the social housing sector where we are going for a dollar for dollar and sometimes a $2 for $1 investment in housing as well.But this bill specifically looks at the last piece of that puzzle. It is not just interest rates it is not just the Welcome Home Loan scheme it is not just subdividing Crown-owned land and it is not just those other actions that we are taking. We are also looking at the land supply across New Zealand. What this legislation will do is it will mean that more land is freed up for subdividing particularly in high-demand areas like Auckland. There is a concern from those on the far left that we are carving up New Zealand’s beautiful countryside but it is a great reminder to people when you consider that New Zealand’s residential housing sits on around 1 percent of New Zealand’s land. So about 1 percent of New Zealand’s land—give or take a bit; it is not that accurate—is actually under residential housing. Even if you doubled it it would be only 2 percent. So the absurdity—the absurdity—of claiming that we are taking over New Zealand’s green space or keen agricultural land is brought to the point when you consider only 1 percent of New Zealand’s land is actually under residential housing.This is good legislation. I acknowledge the Auckland Council for how it has worked hard to make it even better in the select committee. I commend the bill to the House as part of a suite of measures that we are taking right across the board. I commend it to the House.Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):It was interesting to hear from the previous Minister of Housing Phil Heatley about his ideas. They were so successful that he had to give up that portfolio to somebody else. Clearly although he argues that this is a comprehensive programme that the National Government has it actually is not. What members on this side have been arguing quite consistently is that this is a piecemeal approach. We all agree that there is a problem. We would have thought we would agree on how to fix that problem. In fact that is not so difficult. The general approach to fixing a problem is to identify all of its pieces address all of them and integrate the solution. Any idea that the Government has come up with in any area that is like that members on this side have supported. This is a bit like the welfare reforms—bits and pieces here and there. We have not been able to reach agreement on this particular prescription.This bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill primarily is about addressing the housing crisis in Auckland. Because there is a sunset clause it expires after 5 years and it is a response to a particular problem. But it fails—it fails on several dimensions to address those problems comprehensively. I want to talk about these. Others have talked about these as well. The stories of the holes in this particular policy prescription are legendary. We can all tell that time and time again. There is actually daylight between the problem of housing as we all understand it and the impact of the policy prescription that this bill contains. There is daylight. Just to name one or two problems: it does nothing about affordable housing and it does nothing about social housing. I will come back to that as I go on.What drives this policy is this Government’s ideological understanding. What it has done is it has converted that ideological understanding into a theoretical position. The theoretical position that it has come up with is that this problem has all to do with land availability. This has now filtered down to that one prescription. Somehow it is the hallmark of those who do not have the capacity to think about complex problems in their entirety in addressing solutions so they simplify them along single dimensions. There is this kind of philosophy of National and the theoretical underpinnings that this reflects and this has all come together. That policy is laissez-faire. In the end the policyprescription that emerges from that kind of thinking is laissez-faire—do the least possible and then expect the market to resolve the rest of it. That actually creates a huge hole—Simon O’Connor: Actually laissez-faire’s a prescription; it’s not a philosophy.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —in the distance between I say to the member fromTāmaki the solution and the problem. This might be a solution to the problem but it is not a comprehensive solution to housing our people.I think the story is told much more graphically when we take what the Minister of Housing said. The lack of any requirement for affordable housing is because if we build a $700000 home then those with a $300000 home will move to the $700000 home and this creates affordable housing. There is no concession to communities at all. There is no concession at all to where people have lived for a long time. There is no concession at all to where people have made their homes. Somehow they will move out into the distant suburbs. They will move into some other suburbs and create housing.There is this notion as Jacinda Ardern said where trickle-down housing is also a hallmark of the right. It is a hallmark of laissez-faire philosophy. It is a hallmark of conservative ideology. The market is the mechanism Mr O’Connor which your party has come up with to say it will solve everything. Where has it done that? Give me an example where the market has solved these kinds of problems. There are none. There are not any. There are not any. They have all had to be cultivated developed in a whole series of solutions. So Mr O’Connor there are not any. I think that to stand up and defend half-baked policy must really hurt members on that side. The Minister has adopted a theory that does not work. The theory is to increase land supply and everything else will fall into place. Well it will not. And of course I do not think they care. I do not think that members opposite actually care because so long as somebody will build those very expensive homes—[Interruption ]—for that member’s mates to occupy then it does not matter.Well this side cares. This side cares about those who are on modest incomes—middle-income and low-income New Zealanders—who have saved enough money and want to get into a house. Of course the Government says: “Look we have brought interest rates down.” That is rubbish. That side has not introduced one policy that has brought interest rates down. That is interesting. That side says that when things go wrong it is the global economic crisis. When things work right it is the Government’s own doing. Well that is disingenuous—absolutely disingenuous—and that does not work. We know very well that there is a major problem of housing affordability and National Government members do not have any interest in addressing that because there is nothing here to address it.We all remember when that Government first came into office in 2008. Moana Mackay will remember this. Hobsonville was being developed right in the middle of the Prime Minister’s own electorate. What a hullabaloo there was there. There will be no show home—[Interruption ] He was—that is right. There will be no social housing over there at all because the land there was so expensive that the poor could not live there. The modest-income earners could not live there. Nothing has been done. What has happened to that? Now somehow it will happen. Well that was the honest position of National. It does not want low and middle-income people in those flash suburbs. That is what it is.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh we’re the “Workers’ Party”.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The member well knows it. The member Mr Simon Bridges may now deny it but that is so. That is absolutely so Mr Bridges. That is exactly what happened. Was he a member then that member? Was he a member? I am not sure. Butthat is what happened. No one believes this Minister. No one believes that the solution that National has come up with here will make the difference.The issue of rocketing costs is another aspect of the current housing crisis. That is not being addressed here as well. In fact if we look at the whole range of factors that impact on housing then it would be great if the Government addresses it. Poor productivity in the area is not being addressed. We have not developed the workforce here. We have not ensured that there are opportunities available. The ability to do large-scale building in the industry has not happened and that can be done. We need bold solutions and there is nothing bold in this. Cost of materials is one—why is it that the same materials we use here are cheap in Australia? When will this Government address that particular problem? The cost of that material is so high. The developers need more access to capital. That has not been addressed—a tax treatment.When we look at the range of matters that need to be addressed then that side does not have the answers. But probably the real cynical thing the real bullying tactic here is about the override provision. The override provision is a bullying tactic. What kind of belief does the Government have in its own prescription when it has to put in a clause that says if you do not do it this way then we will have an override provision. There is no need for an override provision. Every person who submitted to the Social Services Committee who knows about it agreed that this was highly objectionable. The lack of confidence in its own policy—it is one thing to bully those who want to build so here they have a set of provisions that says it will override. Well it is just not going to work.It will again be left to Labour to be hands-on in the housing area and to address these problems comprehensively. The Government talks about $300000 per section and how you can build more? I do not think the members opposite have heard about building several units on the same piece of land so that the unit cost of the land actually comes down. I do not think Melissa Lee has heard about it. I do not think Simon O’Connor has heard about it. Simon Bridges certainly has not heard about it. This can be done. This can be done and it will be done. So this is a bad bill and we will not be supporting it. Thank you.ALFRED NGARO (National):It is a sad day when that member Rajen Prasad writes his own speech notes. I think he should stick to the notes given to him by his communications team. The only cynicism really is from that honourable member there—he is an honourable member—who was along with me on the Social Services Committee when we were hearing submissions on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. We know that this bill is a short-term process in order to facilitate what we believe is an important part of the process to addressing these issues. This bill provides a short-term legislative tool that seeks to improve housing affordability by facilitating an increase in land and housing supply. There were 64 written submissions and there were 40 submissions that we heard as a select committee and we did hear the concerns. We heard from Local Government New Zealand and the Mayor of Tauranga Lawrence Yule came and spoke on behalf of all the territorial authorities.Hon Simon Bridges: He’s the mayor of Hawke’s Bay buddy.ALFRED NGARO: The Mayor of Hawke’s Bay; sorry I apologise.Hon Member: Hastings.ALFRED NGARO: Hastings. Oh well there you go. He is moving all the time. He is a very fluid mayor. Can I just read from the submissions because we want to deal with the facts and not just with assumptions.Dr Rajen Prasad: The member doesn’t write his own speeches so the member may as well read it.ALFRED NGARO: This is important and I would like that member to listen to this. Here are the key points that were brought out by Lawrence Yule when he spoke to theSocial Services Committee. This is what said: “The local government sector fully understands the rationale behind the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. We support many aspects of the Bill but there are key matters we diverge on—the principal matter we do not support is the ‘override’ provision proposed.” That is fair. It is fair to understand that. But let me just say that we heard that time and time again. The Opposition has continued to say that there was total opposition to the bill. Many said that they understand and support the intent of the bill and they understand the rationale of the bill but the devil is obviously in the detail.I want to go straight to the point that was raised by Lawrence Yule particularly in dealing with the override principle because it did cause some concern. We even heard from the Auckland Council which shared this concern. As a select committee we heard those concerns. However we also know that it is important to have a process that allows us the opportunity to act—we need to be able to act—when there is no ability to have an accord and when there is no agreement. That is what our communities are asking for—they are asking for action. So these are some of the amendments that the select committee has made. Some submitters were concerned about central government being able to intervene to speed up development if agreement cannot be reached with local councils. The Government wants to partner with councils but if agreements cannot be reached there must be a mechanism to streamline consenting and plan changes when these are also needed. The bill now includes the option of inserting a dispute resolution process into the Auckland Housing Accord. This option actually came from a number of the submitters. They said they did not like it but they knew it was there and that it was a principle of last resort. However if the provision is in there they asked for a clause to allow them to go to some form of arbitration or dispute resolution so they can ensure they come to some agreement.There are a number of things that are also very important. The Productivity Commission had identified that land supply is definitely one of the key issues and the honourable member Mr Prasad said of Auckland that many of us do not know what the issues involved with the purchasing and procurement of homes. Many of our families are in the very same situation. Housing can be made affordable by focusing on five key areas. We have heard the Opposition say that this bill does not allow us to actually realise affordability because it is not factored in there. But those who do understand construction and do understand consenting know that there is a multiplicity of different things you need to tackle at the same time and this has been evidenced by the Productivity Commission.There are five key areas. Land supply is one. The cost of materials is another. Also there is infrastructure productivity in the construction sector and compliance costs. At the moment for instance my taxi driver—his name is Rick—is purchasing a house over in Melbourne. He told me that to build there it is costing him around about $800 per square metre. Back here in New Zealand in Wellington it would cost him about $1700 to $1800 per square metre. That is the average cost. We know it is an issue. We know it is important. But there are five key areas that we are focusing on and that is what this bill is doing.Lastly I have been concerned about New Zealand First’s concern about what people are calling the “Chan ban”—this hatred against Asian people who have come here have become citizens and have wanted to be productive and contributing citizens to our society. Some have begun to say that this is about the pressure those people have put on the pricing and the purchasing of homes. But can I say that the BNZ survey shows that around 3 to 4 percent of house sales are to foreign buyers—3 to 4 percent.Barfoot and Thompson has also put the number of foreign buyers at around 4 percent. Can I also say that the honourable member Denis O’Rourke talked about the fact that we should banthese foreign buyers. Well the majority of those who purchase and are foreign are actually Australians so where does it end?This is an important bill. It is part of a suite of other things that we are doing. There is another piece of legislation coming through. This is the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. We are tackling five key areas. We believe that this bill will allow us to see not only land supply being more available but also the sales and cost of homes coming down. This is a good bill. I commend this bill to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Moana Mackey—5 minutes.MOANA MACKEY (Labour):Labour will not be supporting this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. It is not because it thinks that those accords or those special areas or fast tracking of consents are necessarily a bad thing. It is simply because this bill will do nothing to increase the supply of affordable housing.We seem to have a Government that says it wants to do things but then refuses to put those things in legislation. That has been a bit of a theme this week: put it in the bill. If what you want is affordable housing put it in the bill. The fact that the Government has refused to actually enshrine in legislation that this bill is about affordable housing leads us to believe that that is not really what it is about at all. The fact is that if what this bill will deliver are more houses it will deliver more unaffordable houses. How is that a solution to affordable housing?From our perspective in the Labour Party we think that if you are not prepared to actually make it clear in the legislation that this is not just about any old home in these parts of the country that are unaffordable but about affordable homes then you are probably not that serious about it. That probably indicates that you are not that serious about it. This Government is not serious about affordable housing at all.If you look at the Government’s track record you see that it has not been serious about the issue of affordable housing. The great initiatives of the National Party are two things. One is interest rates. The global financial crisis delivered lower interest rates but National has tried to take credit for that saying it has somehow been by its good management and not by a complete collapse of the global economy that interest rates have come down. But interest rates have come down because we have been in a recession and I say to the Hon Phil Heatley that a recession is not a housing policy. It is very worrying to hear from the National Party members that they seem to think that a recession is an affordable housing policy. Well even with the recession and the global financial crisis we have not seen the affordable housing crisis go away.The second big scheme the Government had was the Gateway Housing Assistance scheme. This was going to be the big game changer that was going to deliver affordable houses to first home owners who needed them in those markets where housing was particularly unaffordable—the main one being Auckland. Hobsonville a greenfield development was going to be the first place where we would see all these hundreds and hundreds of affordable homes. And how many did we have? I think we had seven. I think that policy delivered seven Gateway Housing Assistance homes and none of them were affordable. And this is the wonderful thing: the only people who could qualify for National’s Gateway Housing Assistance scheme were people who from day one could afford a home at market rates. The banks would lend to people on the Gateway Housing Assistance scheme only if they could see that down the track they could pick up the full cost of the land and the house.So in National’s first term what it did to help first home owners into their homes was to have tax cuts for the wealthy which none of these first home owners got and an affordable housing scheme for the wealthy. I actually know one of the young women who got one of those Gateway Housing Assistance homes and she got it only because her parents put up their house as collateral. Well they could have done that in theprivate market as well. So that was an epic fail on both fronts by the National Government in its first term.What we have seen is Labour introduce itsKiwiBuild policy of 100000 affordable homes for first home owners. That is where Labour has targeted the policy and it has scared the bejesus out of the National Party. Let us be honest: we are here passing this insipid piece of legislation because now National members know that they have to show that they are taking the affordable housing crisis seriously. Well this bill is not going to deliver affordable homes. It is not going to do anything to deal with the affordable housing crisis.There is a horrible moment coming for the National Party when it is going to have to accept that the invisible hand of the market is not going to deliver affordable first homes for first home owners. National is sitting back just hoping and wishing that at some point the omnipresent invisible hand of the market will finally show itself and deliver a housing market that means that first home owners can get into those homes. Well it is not going to happen.That is not going to happen without a Government that takes this issue seriously enough to actually intervene and assist and make sure that the levers are there for affordable first homes. It is not going to happen. The market is not going to deliver. So as I said there are things in this bill we support but it does not go even vaguely near the level of action that we need to see from this Government if affordable first home ownership is going to become a reality in this country.EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Well the Green Party continues to oppose the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill because as Holly Walker explained we do not believe it will increase the supply of affordable houses and also because it represents another erosion of local government and local democracy by this National Government—[Interruption ]—and I say to Mr Ngaro that democracy is a fairly important detail. The bill does this because it is overriding the decision-making powers of city and district councils in terms of urban planning and it is curtailing public participation rights under the Resource Management Act. It is certainly not about a partnership between central and local government. It is much more about a centralisation of power—more power to the Minister.This bill is going to have quite bad implications for urban planning because it cuts across the work that councils have done to identify areas for growth; to set urban limits in place; to prohibit residential development from going beyond those limits to make sure that our cities and towns promote compact well-planned residential development; and to make sure that residential development is integrated with existing infrastructure like public transport services major roads water supply and sewerage.But this Government hates planning. It hates to look beyond the short term to consider the needs of future generations for well-planned cities and towns. It is all about letting the market prevail with as light a regulatory hand as possible. This bill is a charter for property developers and for urban sprawl because it is giving the Minister and property developers a free hand to challenge and cut across urban limits and well-planned development. It does this through the strong-arm provisions which allow the Minister to designate these special housing areas where we will get much more permissive resource consent processes and a much greater fast tracking of those processes whether the council agrees or not.There is no requirement for the Minister to consult the affected local authorities and if you do not have an accord negotiated with the relevant council you get the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment becoming the decision maker on resource consents for residential development. The council is effectively strong-armed into agreeing to a so-called accord. As Local Government NewZealand noted in its submission where you get the Minister swooping in and where you get these ad hoc decisions about where residential development is to occur and is not in line with existing council plans or existing council priorities for infrastructure development you are going to get very fragmented decisions.It is really ironic that the Minister in charge of this bill Nick Smith was repeatedly beating up on local councils for their rates increases when he was the Minister of Local Government yet is now promoting legislation that encourages poorly planned residential development that does not integrate with infrastructure and will potentially increase the costs on councils if they have to provide for example new waste-water infrastructure or new water-supply infrastructure which they were not planning to provide in response to the new development in the special housing areas. That potentially increases rating costs and potentially as Local Government New Zealand noted affects the creditworthiness of councils.Also the bill is anti-democratic because it completely overrides through these special housing areas the investment that councils and their communities have put into developing their plans. It is those plans that reflect community aspirations yet the plans are given very little weight in the decision-making process—the fast-track decision-making process—for the new residential development that the bill allows. Again one hand of government does not seem to know what the other is doing because councils will limit areas where residential development can occur not just to set urban limits and encourage compact cities but also to ensure that development does not happen in areas at risk of natural hazards like areas that are flood prone.So we have got the Minister encouraging development that does not take account of plan provisions yet his colleague the Minister for the Environment is proposing to strengthen the natural hazard provisions in the Resource Management Act. As submitters on the bill noted the rush to reform means that we potentially get—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):I am please to take—there I go my microphone is bursting into life—the last call on this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill a very pragmatic bill. Actually it is a bill that is about doing. One thing that we know about and that everyone across this House accepts is the challenges that Auckland in particular and cities similar to it are confronted with in terms of the housing supply and demand conundrum. We can sit around and stare at the fluff in our navel as much as we like but ultimately someone has to get on and do something. So I find it ironic but unsurprising to see the Opposition opposing yet again another initiative that is ultimately about trying to create a circuit-breaker in something—Le’aufa’amuliaAsenati Lole-Taylor: A window-dressing initiative.MIKE SABIN: Oh I hear some murmurings from across the floor—some subtle murmurings! Talk up—I cannot quite hear the member. So what we are being criticised for yet again and what we are failing to have support from Opposition parties on is actually meeting the challenges that councils and communities have been stumbling over. I find it very ironic that the member Eugenie Sage is saying that this could bring unexpected costs on councils which might have to put in infrastructure and drains and such like. Is that not what we actually need in subdivisions to get houses built? It is only just slightly less ironic than what we hear from the Labour Party members who talk about the fact that they are going to get out there and build 100000 homes in I do not know how long it was—10 years was it or something like that—at a cost of $300000 per home. They are obviously using Mr Parker’s—I was going to say David Clark but Mr Parker is the man I am talking about—calculator because it does introduce a factor of seven into his calculations. But what they have failed to do—and I guess this is why they have had a wee leadership hiccup today—is realise that actually houses do notlevitate above the ground. There is actually something that generally you have to anchor them down on to. That is earth—terra firma generally. In Auckland you may be not surprised—sorry not you Mr Deputy Speaker—but members may not be surprised to know that the average section price is in the vicinity of $325000. So how does one build a house for $300000 on a section that costs $325000?Hon Simon Bridges: David Cunliffe couldn’t.MIKE SABIN: Well I am sure the member David Cunliffe will be a person getting out his calculator and checking its accuracy over the next wee while because he will want to make sure that his numbers add up exactly correctly.Hon Simon Bridges: What’s a house cost in Herne Bay?MIKE SABIN: Goodness knows—Mr Cunliffe will be able to tell us. But I will not dilly-dally on too much further.I want to commend the Hon Nick Smith for what he has done with this bill. I want to commend the Social Services Committee and the chairmanship of Sam Lotu-Iiga and my colleagues. This is another good example of the National Government getting on and doing what people need.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59;Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Question agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a second time.Ayes63New Zealand National 59;Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a second time.The House adjourned at 6 p.m.