Volume 684 Week 25 - Tuesday 16 October 2012 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Volume 684 Week 25 - Tuesday 16 October 2012 
[Sitting date: 16 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5793. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Tuesday 16 October 2012 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Visitors 
Cook Islands—Speaker House of Representatives 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Members I have much pleasure in informing the House that the Speaker of the Cook Islands House of Representatives the Hon Niki Rattle is within the precincts of this Chamber. I am sure members would wish that she be welcomed and accorded a seat on the left of the Chair. 
The Hon Niki Rattle accompanied by the Deputy Speaker entered the Chamber and took a seat on the left of the Chair. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The right honourable Prime Minister. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The right honourable Prime Minister. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Point of order. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Mr Speaker. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Well— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Prime Minister has— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Point of order. He has not asked for a point of order. I have. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: But I have taken the Prime Minister as having called a point of order. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I am raising a point of order and now. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have already recognised the right honourable Prime Minister. The member will resume his seat. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Mr Speaker I am raising a point of order which is my right to do. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I have already recognised the Prime Minister for a point of order. The member will resume his seat. I have recognised the Prime Minister for a point of order. The Prime Minister will raise his point of order then the member may raise his point of order should he wish. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am on my feet! 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Well can I conclude with my— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No the member will actually leave the House unless he actually complies with my rulings. It is very simple. I will not tolerate that kind of nonsense. The member can raise his point of order when he gets his chance. I have recognised the Prime Minister. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! Order! Members will resume their seats. I am on my feet. This nonsense will stop. The Speaker is at perfect liberty to recognise any member in the House when the Speaker chooses. The Speaker has done that. He has recognised the right honourable Prime Minister on a point of order. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Point of order the Hon Trevor Mallard. It had better be a different question. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It is a point of order Mr Speaker. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No no. Mr Speaker you’ve recognised a point of order you can’t call another one. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member is quite correct. The member will resume his seat. The right honourable Prime Minister on a point of order. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The members will resume their seats or members will be leaving this House—their choice. I have given a final warning. We will hear the Prime Minister’s point of order. If a member seeks to raise a point of order while the House is hearing the Prime Minister’s point of order—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! The members will leave the House unless they behave themselves. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Well I will. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member is quite at liberty to do so. 
Hon David Parker 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will resume his seat or leave the House. 
Hon David Parker 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will leave the House. 
Hon David Parker withdrew from the Chamber. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The right honourable Prime Minister— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That member will also leave—[ 
Interruption 
] The member will leave the House or he will be named. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I have recognised the Prime Minister on a point of order. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! The member will leave the House. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters withdrew from the Chamber. 
Personal Explanations 
Dotcom Case—Government Communications Security Bureau Briefings 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct answers I gave to oral questions during the last sitting week. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: A number of oral questions put to me and the Minister answering on my behalf in the House between 25 and 27 September were based on public statements by me that the first I knew of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s involvement in the Dotcom matter was on 17 September. That response was based on my recollection. It was shared by the director of the bureau. 
 A subsequent review of all material held by the bureau found that on 29 February I had viewed a presentation that was not related to the Dotcom file during a visit to the bureau. I am advised that the talking points for the presentation included a short reference to the Dotcom arrest as an example of cooperation between the bureau and the police. The cover slide was a montage of 11 small images one of which was of Dotcom. Neither the presentation nor the talking points were provided to me in hard copy. Neither the director of the bureau nor I can recall the reference to the Dotcom matter during the visit but I accept that it may well have been made. 
I wish to make it clear that I was not briefed by the bureau on its role in the Dotcom matter nor any issues of potential illegality until Monday 17 September. This information affects the answers to three specific supplementary questions during oral question No. 1 and oral question No. 10 on 26 September and oral question No. 2 on 27 September but I also accept that it did impact on the questions that were asked during the course of the week. My answers to questions were based on my recollection at the time and the view of the director. There was no intention to mislead the House. 
Points of Order 
Call Seeking—Speaker’s Acceptance 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. A few moments ago—I just let the din settle down before I raise this point of order with you. A few moments ago the Prime Minister sought the call. He called “Mr Speaker”. He did not indicate at the time that he was calling a point of order. Mr Peters Mr Parker Mr Mallard and various others then sought to raise a point of order with you. Of course under the Standing Orders a point of order comes before all other business so even if you had granted the Prime Minister the call you would have been required to take the point of order from Mr Peters. I accept that that led to a testy exchange between members and that was unfortunate. However I do note on the Order Paper that Mr Peters does have a question down. It is a legitimate question—it is presumably along these lines—and I wonder whether you would consider allowing those members now that things have settled down to return to the House particularly so that these matters can be canvassed by way of questions. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member knows full well that I do not ask many members to leave this House—in fact up until today only one member this year. I do not do it lightly. The only grounds under which the Speaker could have recognised the right honourable Prime Minister was for a point of order because there was no other provision for the Prime Minister to speak. Even for a ministerial statement the Prime Minister has to seek the Speaker’s—[ 
Interruption 
] Well the Prime Minister does not have to seek leave to make a ministerial statement but he does have to under a point of order give an explanation that he is making a ministerial statement. So a point of order was the only grounds under which the Prime Minister could have sought the call then and that is why I recognised it as a point of order. I was perfectly happy to let the members raise their points of order after that—after the House had dealt with the Prime Minister’s point of order. But I am not going to have that nonsense. The Rt Hon Winston Peters is a very experienced member. He knows full well that members who have questions on the Order Paper if they are required to leave the House—the Hon Trevor Mallard is back in the House and actually I accept he left voluntarily. I accept he left voluntarily. I note that. But members know experienced members know that if they have questions on the Order Paper and they are required to leave the House no one else can ask those questions. I am not about to change the rules. Members know the rules and members should think about that before they take the Speaker on like that. I was very happy to hear the member’s point of order at the appropriate time. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I am on my feet. But the matter is dealt with. I feel sorry that the member has been dealt with in that way but I must say he was kind of fortunate he was not named for that performance today. 
Privilege—Procedure for Raising Alleged Breaches 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My point of order is that the Rt Hon Winston Peters wrote to you on 3 October 2012 with a reminder yesterday on 15 October 2012 concerning an investigation into a breach of parliamentary privilege by the right honourable Prime Minister— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! Order! [ 
Interruption 
] Order! The member will resume his seat or he will be—the member will resume his seat. That has nothing to do with the proceedings of the House. Those matters are dealt with by a letter to the Speaker and the matter is being dealt with. It is not a matter to be dealt with—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! I am on my feet. The member will learn to respect that or he will be joining his leader. It is his choice just like I warned other members. It is their choice. They comply with my rulings or they leave the House. 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. On that same matter surely the House is entitled to an explanation— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I have ruled on that matter and that is the end of the matter. I am sorry but all members have to be treated the same. The matter is not a matter legitimately raised by point of order in the House and that is the end of that matter. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I seek leave to table the letters to you from the Rt Hon Winston Peters. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 I seek leave to table two letters to you from the Rt Hon Winston Peters one dated 3 October 2012 and one dated 15 October 2012 concerning a request for an investigation to be undertaken into a breach of parliamentary privilege by the Rt Hon John Key. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 






Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Would it be possible—I am asking as a member of the Privileges Committee on this occasion—for you to give the House an indication of when you might have concluded an answer to the request set out in the letter please? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Speaker receives such letters on a frequent basis. There is nothing unusual about that. In fact the Prime Minister’s response on this occasion was received yesterday and the matter is being considered today. 
Questions to Ministers 
Dotcom Case—Government Communications Security Bureau Actions and Prime Minister’s Statements 
1. 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he stand by all his statements in relation to Kim Dotcom and the inquiry into the actions of the Government Communications Security Bureau? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I refer the member to the personal explanation I have just given to the House. At the time I was responding to the questions I believed the answers to be correct. However evidence has since come to light that suggests that the answers I gave to the House in one specific area may well have been incorrect. I had no intention to mislead the House and I corrected these answers at the first opportunity. 
David Shearer 
: On what date did the Government Communications Security Bureau first become aware that its surveillance of Kim Dotcom was illegal? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: The first day that I was briefed by the Government Communications Security Bureau about it being illegal was likely to be the 17th. 
David Shearer 
: Point of order— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think I can predict the Leader of the Opposition’s point of order. The member actually asked on what date the Government Communications Security Bureau became aware that its investigation may have been illegal not the date on which the Prime Minister was advised of that. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I do not have that date to hand. 
David Shearer 
: Further to his answers on 26 September when he said he was unsure about the involvement of the SIS or the other staff from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in the Dotcom case can he now confirm what involvement those staff had? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I cannot confirm all the involvements. I can confirm that the SIS played a minor vetting role as it always does when people make applications. I can also confirm that when the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau say things they do not just make it up—like some members do. 
David Shearer 
: Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
]  
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I want to hear the Leader of the Opposition’s question. 
David Shearer 
: In light of his answer to written question No. 8353 where he confirmed that he discussed the Government Communications Security Bureau’s illegal surveillance of Dotcom with the Attorney-General but was unable to recall which other two Ministers he raised the issue with can he now recall and tell the House who those other Ministers were? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No. 
David Shearer 
: Why did his Acting Prime Minister sign a ministerial certificate to suppress and cover up the Government Communications Security Bureau’s illegal activity? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Firstly he was not covering something up. What actually happened was that the Government Communications Security Bureau wanted to have its name not in the public domain because it believed legally it had acted legally. It also had the paperwork to support that. I have seen that paperwork and the paperwork made it quite clear it believed its activities to be legal. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: What is his response to the serious allegations made by David Shearer that “there wasn’t a video simply because they’ve taken the hard drives and wiped it”? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I believe that those allegations against the Government Communications Security Bureau are extremely serious and reflect on the integrity of the organisation and its staff. I have been advised by the director that there was no video—that there was never a video—and that nothing has been deleted from the Government Communications Security Bureau’s system. So quite frankly Mr Shearer should put up or shut up. In fact he should apologise for his unsubstantiated— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
David Shearer 
: Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! Order! I know the issue is a tense issue but I want to hear the question from the Leader of the Opposition. 
David Shearer 
: Which of the following statements does he stand by in his answers about knowledge of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s involvement in the Kim Dotcom case: “No I don’t think so.” “No I don’t remember.” “Look I don’t know. Um you know who knows?” “I’m not in a position to answer that.” and “I don’t remember cracking a joke about that one because I crack jokes all the time.”? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: In the course of my job I answer questions on a daily basis at length to the media. If I am in a position to give the correct answer I do. If I am not I simply make sure that I get the correct information. David Shearer went on to  
Campbell Live 
 and said there was a video and it had been taken. Then he told David Fisher at the  
New Zealand Herald 
: “Well no it’s been wiped because they’ve taken the hard drive.” Then he told  
Firstline 
 it had been erased. Now he says it is not about the video. Apparently it is not about the video. 
David Shearer 
: Has he received any information about other potential illegal or unlawful acts by other New Zealand Government agencies or a foreign Government agency in the Kim Dotcom case? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: As the agency pointed out when the review was taking place there are three other cases that took place between 2009 and 2012. 
David Shearer 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a specific question about other agencies not about the Government Communications Security Bureau. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think it was not unreasonable that the question was misunderstood. I invite the member to repeat his question. 
David Shearer 
: Has he received any information about other potential illegal or unlawful acts by other New Zealand Government agencies or a foreign Government agency in the Dotcom case? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: To the best of my knowledge no. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Supplementary question to the Prime Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I want to hear this question. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Did the Government Communications Security Bureau report to him on the introduction of kiosks into Work and Income offices; if not why not given that under the law it is required to give advice on the security and protection of information held by the Government? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No. I give the member full credit for auditioning for the new job as Leader of the Opposition because apparently the way— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! [ 
Interruption 
] No order! Question No. 2 Metiria Turei. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! Unlike the aforementioned gentlemen the Prime Minister did sit down when I got to my feet. 
Social Development Ministry—Security of Private Information 
2. 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development 
: Does she have confidence that the Ministry of Social Development can keep private information it holds confidential? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 In relation to the Work and Income kiosks I would have to say no. As the member will be aware there is an independent investigation into that matter. 
Metiria Turei 
: Prior to her announcement of the vulnerable kids information system in the white paper did the Minister ensure that her ministry could keep information about our most vulnerable children confidential given that her ministry was advised in April 2011 that this risk existed in Work and Income offices? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: In relation to the vulnerable kids information system I had many meetings not just with my own department on that but on what the security would be around it. I have got at least 18 months to 2 years to actually put up a prototype and to work through what those experts in security will be around it. We had made the decision previous to this week that we would have an experts advisory group that would ensure that information was kept secure. 
Metiria Turei 
: Given that she herself has leaked private details about beneficiaries to the public contrary to the Privacy Act will she take personal responsibility for creating the cavalier attitude to privacy now evident within her office and her ministry? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I have not leaked private information about individuals. 
Metiria Turei 
: Did she or any of her staff have any involvement in the leak of Ira Bailey’s name to the media? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Not to my knowledge no. 
Metiria Turei 
: Will she investigate whether any Ministry of Social Development staff in her office or in the Ministry of Social Development generally were involved in the leak of Ira Bailey’s name to the media; if not is this because she herself has exhibited such a cavalier attitude to the protection of the privacy of individuals? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: To be fair right now my ministry and I are very concerned about people’s personal information being made available through the kiosks. That is our focus; that is the seriousness with which we are taking that. I have zero interest in going on a bit of a witch hunt at the moment. I want to get to the core of what this problem is. I want to fix it and I want the public to have assurances that that is what we are concentrating on. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Metiria Turei. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! Order! I want to hear Metiria Turei’s question. 
Metiria Turei 
: Does the Minister accept that her failure to respect and protect private information has now exposed thousands of vulnerable New Zealand children to further risk of harm and abuse? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: No. 
Metiria Turei 
: How can New Zealanders trust her oversight of her ministry’s privacy systems when she herself has revealed blatant disregard for privacy has leaked the information—private information—of individuals to the public and was not aware that her own kiosks posed such an enormous risk to vulnerable children and in the midst of the biggest privacy drama someone in her office or in her ministry may be responsible for the leaking of private citizens’ information to the media? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Quite frankly I do not quite know where to start on the presumptions that were in the member’s question. So one is that Mr Ira Bailey phoned into the ministry did not ask that his information be kept confidential or anything else and now that his name is out there—and a lot of people knew his name and knew that he had access to that—it is all of a sudden a leak right? It did not come from me. I did not leak this information so I actually take that as being factually incorrect. I have not leaked people’s information previously. I think the member should concentrate on what is really important here and I think that we are taking this very seriously as we should. As soon as we knew this on Sunday and it came out we locked all systems down. We are concentrating right now on restoring the public’s confidence in our ability to hold information. 
Economic Programme—Policies and Reports 
3. 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What are the main features of the Government’s plan to build a more competitive economy based on more savings higher exports and less debt? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The Government has a number of aspects to our plan. The first is to focus on economic growth as illustrated by the recent publication of a series of documents outlining our initiatives to support business growth. The second is to focus on a path back to surplus so that Government debt will stop increasing. The third is to provide better public services and a more productive public sector and the fourth is to rebuild Christchurch. Basically the Government’s plan is roughly on track. 
Katrina Shanks 
: What results has he seen of progress in the Government’s programme to build a more competitive economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: In the face of some headwinds from the global economy we have been able to make progress with a number of deep-seated problems in the economy. Inflation is under control and as we have seen today the cost of living is rising by just 0.8 percent according to the CPI for September which came out this morning. Our fiscal policy is roughly on track. We have growth of 2.6 percent which is in the range of 2 to 3 percent that we have talked about for some time. A net 57000 more New Zealanders now have jobs than 2 years ago and household savings are continuing to rise. 
Katrina Shanks 
: What reports has he received on the impact of the current global economic situation and its likely impact on New Zealand? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: In recent weeks there have been a number of forecasts relevant to the global economy that have been more subdued than earlier on in the year. The forecasts indicate that Europe and emerging economies in particular are likely to grow more slowly than expected. We have yet to see how that impact will flow through to New Zealand. Treasury is going into another forecasting round for the half-year update that will be released in December. 
Katrina Shanks 
: What reports has he received on alternative policy approaches that would leave New Zealanders worse off pushing up their cost of living? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I have been surprised at reports that political parties that have been advocating in the past that the cost of living was rising too rapidly are advocating essentially that the Reserve Bank should start printing money now. Of course that would have the effect of driving up the cost of living further particularly for the most vulnerable. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Has he seen the 2010 IMF report entitled  
Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy 
 which finds that “Central banks in small open economies”—like New Zealand—“should openly recognize that exchange rate stability is part of their objective function.” not just inflation targeting; and does he agree with the IMF that the New Zealand dollar is overvalued by about 15 percent which is damaging the export sector? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Yes I have seen the report and the Government has said a number of times that the level of the exchange rate is providing quite a strong headwind for the rebalancing of the New Zealand economy. However one cannot really argue about stability. In fact one of the issues of the exchange rate is that it has been relatively high now for 4 or 5 years. It is to the credit of our exporters that they have been sufficiently resilient to be able to grow export volume and value in any case. 
Social Development Ministry—Security of Private Information 
4. 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development 
: Has the Ministry of Social Development competently managed the private information in its charge? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 In relation to the Work and Income kiosks I would have to say no. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Why did she not know about the vulnerabilities raised by an IT company a year ago when according to a letter from her to Bill English in 2009 the roll-out of the kiosks would be monitored by both her and her chief executive closely? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Because it is very operational. It was the IT division within the Ministry of Social Development that did it and it was an operational issue. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: How can the public have any faith in her plans to establish a database of vulnerable children even if it takes a year to roll out given that the latest failure was developed internally tested externally and supposedly monitored by her? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: The member can keep saying that but it is factually not true in the end. It is an operational matter as far as the security of the systems and that is where it lies. The vulnerable kids information system is going to be a very very different system. Firstly it is password protected so only certain people have access to it but I do admit that it needs absolutely the right checks and balances in place. I will have the right experts within the ministry but equally externally from the ministry going through and making sure that we get that right before we put anything out there. 
Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor 
: Will the security and integrity of all Ministry of Social Development databases now be checked and by when? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: The chief executive has got Deloitte doing an independent review. We are doing it in two phases. The first phase will be on the immediate problem with the kiosks what has gone wrong there why what should have been done differently and what we need to do immediately to fix it. We estimate that that should take about 2 weeks. The wider issue of the systems within the ministry will also be done by Deloitte but I do not have an absolute time on that yet until it has done the original scoping. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I seek leave to table a letter from the Minister to Bill English on the automation of front-line services where she says she will be monitoring the progress of these plans regularly with the ministry chief. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? [ 
Interruption 
] Order! There is no objection. 









Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: When did she first learn the name of who had identified the vulnerabilities in her department’s system and did she consider this relevant information and in the public interest to know? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: To the first part of the question I was informed on Wednesday afternoon last week and at that point no I did not feel like it needed to be made public. We were not sure on the veracity around it. The ministry itself had started doing checks of systems but was obviously looking in the wrong place. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Why did her ministerial adviser access the LinkedIn profile of Ira Bailey on Thursday? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Actually it was on Wednesday and it is quite common for someone to google a name when it comes up as a person who might be looking at the systems. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Can she assure the House that neither she nor her office leaked the name of the person who originally uncovered this serious breach of privacy? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I have answered that before but I am happy to do it again for the member. Well certainly I did not and to the best of my knowledge no one in my office did. There is a wide range of people who knew that and if the member thinks that this is the biggest issue of the day I say we have much more serious things to consider than a side issue like this. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Question No. 5 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I say to the Minister I have called her colleague. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I have called the member’s colleague and I expect a little courtesy. 
Child Abuse and Neglect—Focus of White Paper for Vulnerable Children 
5. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development 
: What children will the White Paper for Vulnerable Children be targeting? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I am sorry Mr Speaker. I was a little focused on being called a liar by the member over there. Right this paper is focused on this country’s most vulnerable children: those who have been and are at most risk of being seriously maltreated. This paper does not undermine the importance of ensuring universal support to children but unless we put a clear focus on these most vulnerable children things will not change for them. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What have the trends— 
Grant Robertson 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister for Social Development just made a very unparliamentary remark across the House and I ask that she withdraw and apologise for it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I actually heard what the Minister said. I do not want to repeat what she said but she did not actually accuse anyone of lying. She made a comment a quote from past time that is probably even on the record of this Parliament already and I am not about to rule those words out. But members should not—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! Members should not take that as a being a precedent to call other members liars. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! Before I call the member I ask the House just to settle down a little because members may recollect that the thing that caused the Minister to get a little offended in the previous question was that she perceived she had been accused across the House of exactly that. That is why I just ask the House to come back to a little more order. I know it has been a tense time. I understand that; I respect that. It is the House’s right to be tense at times and to take issues very seriously. That is absolutely the prerogative of the House but I think it is time now for a little more reasonableness. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What have the trends in child abuse and neglect been since 2004? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Notifications have increased considerably and continue to do so. Those notifications that require further action have also continued to increase. For as much as it can actually that is good news. It means that people are actually reporting and we are able to do something about it. It means that we are following up with those children who are potentially being maltreated. However Child Youth and Family has reported a 4 percent drop in substantiated findings and that is the first time we have seen a decrease since 2004. 
Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor 
: How can the public have confidence that information stored in the proposed vulnerable children information system will be secure given the recent security breaches by other departments such as Work and Income ACC and the Inland Revenue Department? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: For a number of reasons. One is the time it will take to build it. The second reason I would give the member is that actually the mistakes that have happened and that have come out most recently will certainly be putting a spotlight on this and the pressure to get it absolutely 100 percent correct is well and truly on me. I know that and I will be following it with every level of detail. The other thing is that we will be getting expert advice from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and we have asked some of those with ethics backgrounds to be involved in it as well. So we will work our way through quite a systematic process to make sure we get it right. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What other initiatives in the white paper will make a difference for our most vulnerable children? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Particularly around those children who are currently in the care of the chief executive and are currently or have been quite seriously abused and neglected there are a range of initiatives that we are going to do for them—for example expand the number of specialist-trained caregivers for high-needs and high-risk teenagers; review the paid parental leave provisions to ensure that the provisions applying to adoptive parents and those taking foster children in also work for families who give children a home for life; and extend parent-child interaction therapy which is being trialled in Child Youth and Family and is proving to be very successful particularly in dealing with those children with high and complex needs. 
Schools Canterbury—Criteria for Proposed Closures and Mergers 
6. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What specific criteria were used to determine whether a school in Christchurch was identified for restoration consolidation or rejuvenation? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. The criteria for clusters were restore mainly low-level change; consolidate moderate-level change; and rejuvenate major change across the cluster. However it is important to note that those categories describe learning community clusters and not individual schools. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister’s answer has given me an explanation of what each of the categories are. I have asked for what the criteria were in order to put schools within those categories. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the member has got a legitimate grievance because the member actually asked what specific criteria were used to determine whether a school was identified for restoration consolidation or rejuvenation. The Minister in answering gave criteria for clusters. If she could clarify for the House whether that applies to individual schools that would be helpful because that is what the question asked. 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Those identifications—restore consolidate and rejuvenate—relate to learning community clusters for which I have given you the criteria. They do not relate to individual schools. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thank the Minister. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Schools were specifically listed in her proposal under one of those headings and I have asked the criteria on which they were listed under those headings. That is a primary question and it is not an unreasonable question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I accept absolutely that it is not an unreasonable question and that is why I sought clarification from the Minister. What the Minister seems to be pointing out to the House is that those three classifications—restoration consolidation or rejuvenation—did not actually apply to individual schools. As to what the Minister has told the House I have got to take the Minister’s answer at face value. I cannot second-guess that. The Minister has given an answer to that question. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I apologise to my colleague. The member asked for the criteria and whether or not they were applied to a school or a cluster I am not sure that any criteria were given. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister did. The Minister in answering the question if I heard her correctly went through the three categories—restoration what applied to that; consolidation what applied to that; and rejuvenation what criteria applied to that. She went through each one. Admittedly she made it clear those did not apply to individual schools and that is why I think there are some grounds for concern here. But just because the question asked that information does not mean to say the question was right in assuming that those categories applied to each school. The Minister is telling us that they do not and I have got to take the Minister’s word at that. The member may dig further because it seems the member may have information that disputes that. 
Chris Hipkins 
: What specific criteria were used to identify whether a specific school was proposed for a merger or a closure? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Sorry could the member repeat the supplementary question? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite the member to repeat his question. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I will try. What specific criteria were used to identify whether a specific school an individual school was proposed for a closure or a merger? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The primary question actually refers quite specifically to the identification of restoration consolidation and rejuvenation and I have answered what the criteria were for that and I have made it clear that they did not apply to individual schools. We are now on quite a completely different question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! If I am going to help members on this matter they should be a little silent. I think it is not unreasonable—the primary question asked what specific criteria were used to determine whether a school in Christchurch was identified for restoration consolidation or rejuvenation. The Minister in answering that question pointed out those three categories applied to clusters of schools so the member has not unreasonably now dug further into that answer and asked then what criteria were used to identify schools for I think his language was merger which is similar to consolidation or closure which is highly relevant to some schools in Christchurch. That is not an unreasonable supplementary question and I am ruling that it is not an unreasonable supplementary question. 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: There are 215 schools captured by the education renewal plan; 37 have specific proposals. However all 215 are distributed across the three clusters and each of them has different and specific criteria that relate to each of them. That is what— 
Hon Members 
: What are they? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: For the 215 schools each of them has a different status. For the proposals for the 37 the criteria relate to low moderate or high-level impact of the earthquake to weathertightness integrity to functionality of buildings to rolls falling or growing and to movement of population from one area to another. Those are some of the criteria. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Were the assessment of earthquake damage and the likely cost of repair for each of the schools proposed for merger or closure based on a physical inspection of each site and building; if so who conducted that assessment? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: The assessments were made in a range of ways. Some of them involved physical assessment by independently contracted engineers. Some of them involved book assessments. Some of them involved use of the property management information database from the schools themselves and some of them involved permutations of all three. 
Colin King 
: Was the change in demographics taken into account when developing the criteria? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Yes it is a people-related issue. Prior to the earthquake in 2010 there were 5000 surplus places in the Greater Christchurch schools. The latest July roll data show that 4300 children have left the area as a result of the earthquakes. So obviously those 9300 empty places were one factor that had to be taken into account. In addition a number of families that have stayed in Christchurch have moved which has also impacted on school rolls. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Was a physical assessment of the earthquake damage done on each of the schools that she proposed for merger or closure before she proposed that; if not why not? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I do not have the specific range of assessments that were used for each of the schools. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Tracy Watkins [ 
Interruption 
]—Tracey Martin. I beg your pardon. My goodness. 
Tracey Martin 
: Kia ora Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I beg your pardon. 
Tracey Martin 
: Kia ora— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: My apologies to the House. 
Tracey Martin 
: Can the Minister assure the House that parental elections for boards of trustees will be held within 6 months of any consolidation or merger of schools in Christchurch as per the requirements of the Education Act 1989? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: We are currently in consultation with all of the schools that are affected in Christchurch. It is my expectation if we get through the process in the time that has been outlined that that will be the case. However there is some flexibility in the time line depending on the consultation needs of the process. 
Tracey Martin 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I apologise. Perhaps I missed it. I understand the time line around mergers might not be quite clear at the moment but my question was whether the elections for boards of trustees would be held within 6 months of any consolidation or merger as per the Education Act 1989. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite the Minister to actually answer that question. 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Yes. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did she review all of the information prepared by the Ministry of Education on the likely or estimated cost of repairing schools that she was intending to propose for merger or closure before she made the decision to propose those schools for merger or closure; if not why not? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Yes. 
Government Communications Security Bureau—Taping of Prime Minister and Results of Audit 
7. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister responsible for the GCSB 
: What were the dates of the three cases that the Government Communications Security Bureau audit highlighted because they could not assure him “that the legal position is totally clear” as referred to in his statement of 3 October 2012? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Minister responsible for the GCSB) 
: 
 I do not believe it is in the public interest to release the dates of these cases which have been referred to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security for review. It is not yet clear whether there is an issue of illegality with the cases and I encourage the members not to jump to conclusions until the status of the cases is clear. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Why is it that when illegal spying on Kim Dotcom came to light the Minister stated that Sir Jerry Mateparae was not in charge of the Government Communications Security Bureau while it went on yet now by not naming the dates he is refusing to identify who was in charge of the Government Communications Security Bureau? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: In the case of the decision made by the Government Communications Security Bureau that the particular surveillance on Kim Dotcom was illegal that was a known fact at that point so it became important I thought to clarify that matter. In these other cases it is far from certain whether there is an issue or not. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Given that the Prime Minister by failing to answer this question has thrown a question mark over the Governor-General’s role at the Government Communications Security Bureau and that this now means that this scandal has dragged in the Prime Minister and several Ministers including the Minister of Police is that not another reason for an independent inquiry to clear up the mess under his watch and also to clear Sir Jerry’s name? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No. 
Grant Robertson 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that a camera capable of taking audiovisual material was on a tripod in the staff cafeteria at the Government Communications Security Bureau when he spoke to staff on 29 February? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I cannot confirm it but I am advised that there was a camera there. There could certainly be a camera capable of taking a video—absolutely right. So let us go through that for the purposes of ensuring that his leader really hangs himself— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Grant Robertson 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a straight question and the Prime Minister answered it by confirming that. That was good. 
Hon Members 
: Point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will hear the Rt Hon Prime Minister first. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I have not finished my answer. There is a very specific and clear and non-political point I need to make to finish my answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the Prime Minister should have the opportunity to do that to put an answer in context but that should not involve attacking another party. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: When allegations were made by the Leader of the Opposition— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Here we go. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: —that there was a tape—no I am just running through the details—taken by the people of the Government Communications Security Bureau and I have referred to the quotes earlier and he then went on to say that tape had been erased I took those allegations very seriously. I went to the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. He firstly went through the use of the tape. It was used on 21 February and then not used again until April. The bureau then went to every camera operator that it has including some who are currently posted overseas and confirmed that they did not take any audiovisual or video of me. Thirdly we went through— 
Grant Robertson 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I asked—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! This is a point of order. 
Grant Robertson 
: I asked a specific question to confirm the specific fact and the Prime Minister has done that. He has now gone well beyond that answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I think in—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! I am on my feet. I think in fairness—I accept absolutely that it was a very specific question but were the Prime Minister to answer it just like for example as I understand it “Yes.” he could be creating an impression that a live camera was operating at the time. I do not think it is unreasonable for the Minister—in this case the Prime Minister—answering a question to have the chance to in answering the question give further information as to whether or not there was any chance that the camera was actually operational at the time. I do not think that is unreasonable because if we are genuinely interested in the real facts and the truth that cannot be wrong. What would be wrong would be to restrict the Minister’s answer in a way that implied something else. That is why I will not allow the Prime Minister to attack the Leader of the Opposition but if he gives information around that camera I see nothing wrong with that. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Just to recap a situation was taken where we looked at the logs of when the camera was used. We then looked at the situation about speaking to every one of the camera operators to ask them whether they ever used the camera. They had not. The head of the Government Communications Security Bureau then went on to look at all of the logs about whether there was any deletion of any audio material. There was not. To satisfy himself—and let us understand this: this is a spy agency; we do not delete things; we archive them—they went right back to the ultimate source document and asked themselves that question: has there ever been a deletion? The answer was no. There was no tape taken by the Government Communications Security Bureau. The Leader of the Opposition— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! No I think—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! It was perfectly reasonable for the Prime Minister to be able to put that answer in context but he should not go on now to criticise the Leader of the Opposition. Question—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! 
Question No. 8 to Minister 
Mr SPEAKER 
: We come now because the Rt Hon Winston Peters is not here for question No. 8 to question No. 9. 
Earthquake Christchurch—Review of Civil Defence Emergency Management Response 
9. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
 to the  
Minister of Civil Defence 
: Why did he reject the independent Civil Defence Emergency Management earthquake review’s recommendation which was made in response to the finding that duplication of control was “not only inefficient but put people and property at risk” and that “the same situation could arise in a number of different parts of New Zealand”? 
Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Civil Defence) 
: 
 Just so that we are clear about the recommendation the recommendation was that civil defence emergency management groups not territorial local authorities should lead and control the response to emergencies. To specifically answer the member’s question and give the reasons for rejecting the recommendation firstly it was that most emergencies are short term in this country and they are localised and best controlled at a local level. Secondly civil defence emergency management group controllers already have the legal power to control the response to local emergencies if necessary. Thirdly the ministry has already commenced a capability assessment framework to focus on improving leadership and governance not only in Christchurch but across the nation. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Did he factor into his decision the fact that the Wellington regional territorial authorities have adopted precisely the model recommended by the independent review on the basis that “disasters don’t abide by territorial boundaries …” and that “A shared approach to emergency management will enable our communities to be better prepared and will provide an ability to share resources to best effect.”; if so what does he know that they do not? 
Hon CHRIS TREMAIN 
: That is an excellent question. In fact the response by the Wellington civil defence regional group was as part of the capability assessment framework the recommendations that came from that framework assessment as well. Christchurch is a part of that and there were recommendations on that point to the Christchurch group as well. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: When did his ministry first become aware of the situational and local political factors between Christchurch City and the Canterbury civil defence emergency management group given that they had been through the same analysis that Wellington had been through prior to the 2010 earthquake and what steps were taken to address these before people and property were put at risk? 
Hon CHRIS TREMAIN 
: Pre-empting that particular question I looked for specific dates. The capability review process was commenced in early 2010—that was before the first earthquake—it was finished in August 2010 and I understand that it was given to the chair of the group on or about 3 September a day or so before the earthquake. So they were aware of it but they did not really have any opportunity to introduce the recommendations. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question was specifically when did his ministry first become aware? It was not a question about the local group. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the Minister did actually indicate that date. If I remember correctly he said some date in August. 
Louise Upston 
: What positive aspects of the response were highlighted by the civil defence review? 
Hon CHRIS TREMAIN 
: The report concludes that police fire ambulance defence civil defence health services and lifelines maintained control rescued the injured and kept the public safe. The courageous efforts of emergency services and volunteer groups were commended by the reviewers. The earthquake was an unprecedented challenge but overall the report concludes that the emergency response worked very well. 
War Pensions Law Commission Report—Government Response 
10. 
MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) 
 to the  
Minister of Veterans’ Affairs 
: What is the Government doing to improve the support and recognition given to veterans? 
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister of Veterans’ Affairs) 
: 
 Yesterday the Prime Minister announced the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s review of the War Pensions Act 1954. The package adopts in full or in part 132 of the 170 recommendations and provides new funding of $60 million over the next 5 years to implement these changes. The major changes include new and updated legislation replacing the War Pensions Act 1954 with the introduction of two coverage schemes; an increase of 5 percent plus the annual CPI adjustment forecast to be around 1.8 percent bringing the increase close to 7 percent which would occur from 1 April next year for the war disablement and surviving spouse pensions; increased eligibility for support services such as home help and lawnmowing; and also new veterans weekly income compensation for veterans under the age of retirement and unable to work. I am proud of this very comprehensive package. 
Mike Sabin 
: When will these changes take effect? 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: The 5 percent increase including the annual CPI adjustment to the war disablement and surviving spouse pensions will take effect from 1 April 2013. The bill to enact the other changes is currently being drafted and will be introduced to Parliament as soon as practicable. We will listen carefully to veterans and other members of the public through the select committee process. Our aim is for most of the changes to begin from 1 July 2014. 
Andrew Williams 
: As the Government has announced that it will adopt 132 of 170 recommendations of the Law Commission review of the War Pensions Act 1954 what do the other 38 recommendations encompass and what is the ongoing status and future of those remaining 38 recommendations? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I do not want the Minister to speak too long in answering that. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: I am happy to go through those in some detail. The member is coming into my office this week; I think that would be the appropriate time to have that discussion. But in essence Cabinet made a very good decision to support veterans who have done an amazing amount of service for New Zealand. We are very mindful of the fact that the Law Commission took 3 years to draw up 170 recommendations that were uncosted. Of course 12 Government departments had to work through that process of doing the robust costings. I took the proposals through to Cabinet and I believe we have ended up at the right place in supporting veterans into the future. 
Andrew Williams 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We do not need to have the full details but even a brief overview— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I accept the member’s point. He asked what the 38 recommendations were that were not picked up by the Government. I did not want the Minister to go through all 38 but some flavour of some example might have been helpful to answer the question. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: One that was unfortunately not included was an increase in the funeral grant. Currently veterans do get a funeral grant but it is less than ACC recipients currently get. Cabinet also made a decision about one of the recommendations which was free medical care for those over 80. In essence Cabinet decided that we should be supporting veterans in need not in particular to their age. That gives you a flavour of some of the examples that we could not fund. I think the important thing is in very tight economic times that this is a very good package of $60 million supporting veterans now and into the future. 
Andrew Williams 
: How will the Minister ensure improved outcomes for veterans when many of those affected state that Veterans Affairs New Zealand otherwise known as VANZ continues at times to provide inconsistent advice and responses that are often illogical poorly timed abusive offensive and lacking any duty of care to the veterans? 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: I do not agree with those assertions. It was interesting that when this Government came in at the end of 2008 there was a backlog of 11820 claims waiting to be considered. That is an embarrassment. They had been waiting for 6 months. Veterans Affairs under a decent Government regime has turned that round and now we do not have a backlog of claims. The member should stand up and applaud the direction of this Government to ensure that we are supporting veterans. 
Hon John Banks—Confidence 
11. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he have confidence in Hon John Banks; if so why? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes; because he is a hard-working Minister. 
Grant Robertson 
: Is it still his policy as he told media on 30 April this year that a Minister who lies or misleads about his actions would lose his confidence as Prime Minister? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes. 
Grant Robertson 
: Does he think Mr Banks has met this standard after he told the  
New Zealand Herald  
on 14 September that the police were responsible for his witness statement being withheld when in fact it was he who asked for it to be withheld? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I have no knowledge of that. That is a matter for the Minister. 
Grant Robertson 
: I seek the leave of the House to table a letter from David P H Jones QC Mr Banks’ lawyer to the New Zealand Police dated 10 August 2012 which says that disclosure of any material relating to Mr Banks is opposed. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 









Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Grant Robertson 
: Why is he hanging on to John Banks as a Minister when sworn witness statements of others and Mr Banks’ own actions show that he has lied to New Zealanders or is the Prime Minister simply prepared to put his own political interests ahead of the high ethical standards New Zealanders expect of Ministers? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Because I accept the member’s word that he has complied with the law. 
Earthquake Commission Review—Objective and Focus 
12. 
NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
 to the  
Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission 
: What is the objective of the Government review of the EQC? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission) 
: 
 Recently the Minister of Finance and I announced a review with the objectives of learning the lessons from the Canterbury earthquakes for New Zealand disaster insurance arrangements. The Canterbury earthquakes have generated 698215 exposures for the Earthquake Commission and this has proved to be the biggest test of the current legislation since it came into operation in 1993. The commission has been an important part of the Government’s overall management of disaster risk and recovery in New Zealand and the review will ensure that the legislation provides the best possible protection for New Zealanders’ homes in the future. 
Nicky Wagner 
: What will the review focus on? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The review will focus on what types of property the Earthquake Commission insures including structures that are built and the extent of Earthquake Commission cover for land; how the Earthquake Commission prices its insurance; the institutional structure and design of the Earthquake Commission itself including its roles; and the financial management of the Crown’s risk and its exposure and how that should be financed moving forward. 
Questions to Members 
Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill—Purpose 
1. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
 to the  
Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill 
: What is the purpose of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill? 
METIRIA TUREI (Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill) 
: 
 The purpose of the bill is to transform the in-work tax credit into a child payment for the poorest New Zealanders and their children. The payment will apply to New Zealand families whose incomes fall below a certain threshold whether they are in work or receiving a student allowance a benefit or New Zealand superannuation and will assist in bringing 100000 New Zealand children out of the severe poverty that they currently suffer. Every child is entitled to a good life and a fair future and my bill will make sure the poorest kids get that same opportunity to enjoy those rights. 
Holly Walker 
: Does she agree with the Prime Minister’s statement that the bill will give rich families even more money; if not why not? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: No the Prime Minister is wrong. The payment will be available to the poorest New Zealand families not the richest as my bill ensures that the means test will stay in place. My bill is a step towards a universal child payment as recommended by the report of the Children’s Commissioner. 
Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill—Effect on Child Poverty 
2. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
 to the  
Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill 
: Does the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill attempt to fix discrimination in the current Working for Families tax credit scheme? 
METIRIA TUREI (Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill) 
: 
 Yes it does. The Human Rights Commission has found that the current in-work tax credit discriminates against the poorest families on the basis of income source. That is because poor families on benefits student allowances or superannuation do not receive the payment but those who work a minimum of 20 hours do. That is discrimination under New Zealand law on the basis of employment status. 
Holly Walker 
: Is this discrimination acceptable given that 270000 children in New Zealand live in severe poverty? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: No it is not acceptable and New Zealanders do not believe it is acceptable either. Any policy that leaves 270000 Kiwi children in severe poverty—the highest number that New Zealand has seen since the early 1990s—is deeply unjust. The Child Poverty Action Group is appealing a recent decision of the High Court in this matter and I hope the appeal is successful as no child should be discriminated against in New Zealand law. 
Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill—Effect on Child Poverty 
3. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
 to the  
Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill 
: What reports has she seen relating to reform of the In-work Tax Credit through the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill as a measure to address child poverty? 
METIRIA TUREI (Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill) 
: 
 The recent report of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty for the Children’s Commissioner notes that my bill is before Parliament and welcomes the opportunity for a debate on child-related benefits. I also note that working paper No. 10 accompanying that report recommends that the hours worked test in the in-work tax credit regime be removed. My bill does as that working paper suggests. I have also read reports by Professor Susan St John of Auckland University who says that my bill “provides a practical and just way to make an immediate difference to New Zealand’s disgraceful child poverty problem.” and that “There are many … ways to make work pay that don’t involve punishing the poorest children.” 
Holly Walker 
: What reports has she seen about the impact of the in-work tax credit on poverty rates overall? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: I have read Government reports stating that the in-work tax credit has been responsible for halving poverty among children whose parents meet the work hours requirement—halving it to just 8 percent. These same reports reveal that poverty among the children of beneficiaries has remained unaffected at 70 percent. My bill would give those children the opportunity to have a good life and a better fairer future which the children of working parents have. 
Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill—Support 
4. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
 to the  
Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill 
: Has she received any advice on other parties’ support for the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill? 
METIRIA TUREI (Member in charge of the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill) 
: 
 The Maori Party New Zealand First and the Mana party are all supporting the bill. Labour has agreed to support it at its first reading. I want to thank those parties for their support. 
Holly Walker 
: Is that sufficient support for the bill to pass? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Unfortunately for New Zealand’s poorest children it is not sufficient. I have asked Peter Dunne to consider various options for supporting the bill but I am advised by his office that he does not consider that the Government can afford to assist the poorest children in New Zealand. Given that the cost of leaving these kids in poverty is estimated at $6 billion a year I would have thought that $300 million to $400 million for these poorest kids was an investment—a wise and just investment—in them and their futures. 
Urgent Debates Declined 
Rail Napier-Gisborne—Decision to Shut Down Line 
Government Communications Security Bureau—Briefings and Unlawful Interception of Communications 
Earthquake Christchurch—Review of Civil Defence Emergency Management Response 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Honourable members I have received five letters seeking urgent debates under Standing Order 386. The first is from Phil Twyford seeking to debate the mothballing of the KiwiRail line between Napier and Gisborne. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility of the Government. However the business of the House should not be set aside just because an announcement has been made. There will be other occasions on which this matter can be debated. Members may raise such matters of concern to them during the general debate. That application is therefore declined. 
The second application is from David Shearer the Leader of the Opposition seeking to debate further revelations about the unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Prime Minister’s knowledge of such events occurring. A proposal to discuss a continuing problem such as this is not one contemplated by Standing Order 386 as a particular case of recent occurrence. Furthermore the House has recently considered the matter. An urgent debate was held immediately before the adjournment on 27 September. Every subsequent press release on the matter will not necessarily require the immediate attention of the House. That application is therefore also declined. 
The third application is from the Hon Lianne Dalziel seeking to debate the Government’s decision in response to the recommendations of the independent report commissioned by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management entitled  
Review of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Response to the 22 February Christchurch Earthquake 
. The release of the Government’s decisions is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. The test for whether a particular case requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one. The business of the House should not be set aside just because a ministerial announcement has been made even though it may be important. There must be an element of urgency for the matter to take precedence over other business. A corrective action plan for work programmes over the next 2 years is being developed. I do not think I would be justified in giving priority to this particular issue over other business of the House today. The application is therefore also declined. 
Urgent Debates 
Social Development Ministry—Security of Private Information 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The fourth and fifth applications are from Jacinda Ardern and Metiria Turei seeking to debate the Government’s failure to protect private information at the Ministry of Social Development. The failure is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The requirement of recent occurrence refers to when the member became aware of the matter rather than when it actually occurred. Given the need for public confidence in the Government’s handling of sensitive personal information particularly at this time when and in an area where further shared information systems are proposed I consider the matter important enough to warrant the immediate attention of the House by way of urgent debate. As Jacinda Ardern lodged her application first I call on Jacinda Ardern to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. Every single New Zealander has a right to feel concerned about this massive breach of privacy that has occurred within the Ministry of Social Development. This is by far the worst breach of privacy that I have seen not just as a member of Parliament but as a citizen. I would bet that every single member in this House would be severely challenged to find a breach more serious than this one. But there is actually some competition for that title. In recent times we have seen breaches by both ACC and the Inland Revenue Department—serious breaches. In fact ACC in particular grabbed the headlines for a long period of time and I expect that this breach will do the same. This time we add the Ministry of Social Development to that list. 
Unlike ACC where specific information was sent to an individual claimant this breach is different. In this breach any member of the public could have walked and did walk into a Work and Income office and accessed a publicly available kiosk to view the personal and private information of some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders. It is utterly astounding that that could happen in this country but it points to a cavalier approach to privacy and to the protection of information by this Government. 
The buck has to stop somewhere. It is all well and good for Ministers time and time again to stand up and call these issues operational. But the protection of information held by the Government goes to the heart of people’s trust in the State. This cannot be left as an operational matter to public servants. This is a matter very much at the heart of what the Government must be doing and must be held to account for. But we saw today the level of accountability that this Minister wants to take. She was quick to say this was an operational matter and we will come to whether or not that is a fair claim. 
But first let us review the background of what has happened in this incident. Recently an individual who wished to stay anonymous encountered an issue with Work and Income kiosks. Let us be clear about the vulnerability in the system. This individual did not hack into Work and Income systems. Unlike what the Prime Minister and at times the Minister have implied they did not need to know what they were looking for to find this information. They needed to know only how to use a mouse and click it as little as three times. They literally clicked on “open file” in Microsoft Office in order to access this vital and key information. Linking a public Work and Income kiosk system to the main database of the Ministry of Social Development is unforgivable in this day and age. Even the most lay of people when it comes to IT issues would understand that that would be a risk and would put vulnerable people at risk. 
The individual who discovered that issue contacted the Ministry of Social Development—it took several days for the Ministry of Social Development to respond to the original call—and the main query they had was like Facebook or Google whether it gave any kind of remuneration for vulnerability testing of systems. The Ministry of Social Development responded last Wednesday but in the intervening period Keith Ng a blogger and an investigative journalist had been approached by this individual. Keith took a look himself. What he found was devastating. 
Let us start at the top. Firstly there was contractors’ information: full names hours worked pay rates and pay details for all Ministry of Social Development contract workers including for media trainers—probably coming in handy at this present time. 
Secondly there were doctor and radiology invoices with full names of candidates for adoption foster parents and Limited Service Volunteer candidates—some of our youngest and most vulnerable on Government support. In others there were invoices from doctors in radiology for X-rays of children in care and protection with their full names and their chief complaint—the cause of their abuse. Some of these were X-rays for injuries and broken limbs. 
There was debt collection information. The Ministry of Social Development debt collection unit uses Veda Advantage for its debt collection needs and when it invoices it includes a list of people who owe it money. 
 But then there are the invoices that relate most specifically to our most vulnerable children. There were phone bills from Telecom for Child Youth and Family homes and care and protection facilities. Although some of this information may be publicly available what would of course not be known is who resides there and the phone logs that were made to those addresses. There were pharmacy invoices including prescriptions that identified not only children in Child Youth and Family care but also the medication they are taking including antidepressants and in some cases cancer-related medication. There were legal bills which in some cases included historical claims against Child Youth and Family—obviously in some cases for abuse. 
The availability of this information is an indictment on this Government and it has to be said on this Minister. She may claim as she has done in the House today that this was an operational matter but in 2009 she wrote a letter to Bill English as part of her review finding value for money within her Government department as all departments did. When she wrote to Bill English she said the following: “Whilst the Ministry has a strong focus on reducing its national office numbers there are also substantial plans to automate frontline services for clients through the use of online and other IT solutions.”—a specific reference to the use of kiosks in Work and Income offices. She went on to say: “I will be monitoring the progress of these plans regularly with the Ministry’s Chief Executive.” Quite clearly the Minister did not do that. She did not monitor the automation of those services. She did not even follow what the Ministry of Social Development had done in terms of review. 
Even the ministry itself undertook external reviews which found vulnerabilities that this Minister did not even know about. How can she claim that this was an operational matter when she told her own Minister of Finance she would monitor it and clearly she did not? She has claimed that it is “disturbing” that her department did not act on vulnerabilities that were identified by an IT analysis. I find it disturbing that she did not act. I find it disturbing that she did not know of such a flaw in her own system. 
But let us come to what was happening within information and communications technology within the ministry generally. Let us be clear. The systems were developed in-house. It was not a contracted activity originally. It was done in-house by her staff and by her team and the systems were rolled out in 2010. At almost the same time Treasury was asking Government departments to save $130 million per annum on information and communications technology costs. Something had to give and quite clearly it did. 
There were also contractors involved—this is true. There has been some suggestion that those information and communications technology contractors themselves failed. In fact the ministry implied that in some of its media conferences yesterday. But now it has retracted and stated that it is not sure or can no longer be confident that the ministry even followed up on a report from Dimension Data in April last year which the ministry paid it $10000 to complete. It did not even follow up on the flaws that that company identified. Dimension Data raised issues with the Ministry of Social Development. The ministry paid it $10000 to do that and then did nothing to follow up the problems it identified. That is an absolute outrage. The fact that this problem could have been prevented and was not is an absolute outrage. 
It was not just an information and communications technology company paid by the ministry that found this problem. It has also been raised by a beneficiary advocacy group. Over a year ago it raised with the Ministry of Social Development issues with its system. There are two options. Either the ministry did not act on that information or it simply did not know what it was meant to be looking for. Either way it is an epic fail and this ministry has shown that it cannot be trusted with the personal private information of vulnerable individuals. 
But there is another matter that the Minister has referred to in the past week that has now been drawn into this debate and that is the issue of the White Paper for Vulnerable Children. The children affected by this breach will in most cases be the very same children the Minister wants to protect through her white paper which has been totally undermined by this incident. The Minister’s plan hinges on a database of vulnerable children being established and information shared. She herself acknowledges that faith in the system is critical for this database’s success. In the white paper she said: “While there is much to gain from better information-sharing about vulnerable children and their families there are also associated risks including a possible reluctance to use services if there is a perception that information will be shared”. We have more than a perception that information will be shared. We have a perception now that information will be severely compromised. 
She went on to point out that a similar system in the UK was dumped in 2010 in part because of concerns about the security of the system. She states that on the basis of this experience there are four key elements required for this system: social—and in that she lists “trust within and between agencies”—a legal framework resources and finally “Technical—system capability is part of the solution but trust (that personal information will be shared when necessary and with the right people) should underpin computer system design …”. She herself has identified the very issue that could bring down the key element of her white paper and it has already happened before she has even started. Two of the four elements that she says are needed no longer exist. 
 It is key that we do something to support and assist young children in this country and to prevent young children in this country from being abused but the Minister has undermined her own ability to achieve that and must rebuild the faith in her department’s ability to hold and use information appropriately. But can this Minister do it herself with the record she has? Not only was external testing not followed up and not only were public complaints not followed up but the culture that she presides over through her own leadership is highly questionable. 
It was not that long ago that the Privacy Commissioner was directly involved with this Minister over the release of personal details of someone on Government support. She was willing to release someone’s private information in order to deflect from the bigger issue around her leadership of welfare at that time and she was unrepentant even saying she would do it again. She has assured the House that she has not given the personal information of the original informant around the vulnerabilities of her system to the media. But we can be utterly forgiven for asking. The Ministry of Social Development advised her office of Ira Bailey’s name on Wednesday. On Thursday the Minister’s own political adviser looked at Ira Bailey’s LinkedIn profile. On Sunday the story broke. On Monday the  
New Zealand Herald  
suddenly had the name of that individual and when so few people knew his identity it is absolutely right that the Opposition asks in order to figure out whether or not the Minister was trying to detract from what is the most pertinent issue here and that is her ministry’s utter incompetence in dealing with the information of vulnerable New Zealand citizens. 
Members of the public will make their own judgment as to whether or not this Minister and her department can be trusted with the information of our most vulnerable citizens. But this Opposition will continue to hold that Government to account for what is clearly a systemic issue and a massive massive failure. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 The public deserves to have full confidence that Government systems are robust and secure. We should all be able to trust that any personal information will not be revealed by human or systems error and that that information should not be accessible by any unauthorised person. From what we have learnt over the past 48 hours it is clear that the Ministry of Social Development has breached that public trust. I cannot and I will not make excuses. An independent review has been called and that needs to be given its due process so that we have all of the facts on the table. But I want to say to this House and to the public that it is not acceptable. It is being taken very seriously by this Government by the chief executive by the extended Government. I have received an apology from the chief executive and I certainly have passed that on to all of New Zealand. 
The members opposite are calling out. I am not sure whether everyone can hear them out there but I think that while we are going through the independent review I will give them some of the background on the kiosks themselves and on how long computers have been in Work and Income and members might want to note that that goes right back to the late 1990s. So I think we had better be careful as to where we jump to conclusions in terms of where some of it has actually been set up. 
There has also been a lot of misinformation and I know that a lot of people out there are worried about what has been accessed. There are few things that I think need to be set in balance. Core systems were not breached so people’s individual files as such were not accessible for the public or for anyone who was accessing that system. As the member who spoke before me Jacinda Ardern identified though a high level of personal information was accessed because of the four servers that were attached to the kiosks as such or the computers there. Of those four three were inaccessible and they could not get access to the information I am told to believe but with one of them they could. I also want to make it really clear that they could not stand in the Work and Income office and read that information onscreen. What they had to do was download it as the blogger did then take it home and convert it into a readable file. So they were not standing in a Work and Income office as such and looking at it—he converted it down and then had to take it and convert it into a file that was readable. That is the information I have had to date. 
I just want to reiterate—because we have been getting a little bit of that kind of concern as you can imagine—that at no stage was anyone able to go into the Social Welfare Information for Tomorrow Today (SWIFTT) or Cyras systems which is where we run Child Youth and Family. They are quite separate. They are password protected so only staff can access them and actually the staff have different levels of access to the information within that system as well. So the blogger was not able to do that. 
I am extremely disappointed and I do not think that this is acceptable in any way shape or form. I am going to be as upfront and as transparent as possible and I will put as much information out there as I can as we work our way through this process. I am happy to answer any questions as I can while also having respect for the processes as we go through the independent review. So just bear with me. It came to my attention on Sunday evening that the blogger had contacted a media outlet saying he had managed to get into the Work and Income systems via the kiosks. At that point I was told that all systems were going to be shut down so that there could be no further access to them so that access was not possible. The first I knew of it being the actual kiosks was at 5.46 on Sunday evening. Then as more staff worked overnight on the issue I was formally briefed when I got to Wellington about 10 o’clock on Monday morning. I think the department’s immediate response to this situation was absolutely appropriate. It took the situation very seriously and moved swiftly to contain what is very obviously a serious security flaw. We demanded answers from the department and we got a few but I think not enough to satisfy the public and certainly not enough to satisfy me. That is why the chief executive has called an independent inquiry which is going to be run by Deloitte. It is important that the investigation got under way immediately so it has already started. We should see the results of that within 2 weeks but the further results are going wider into the second phase of what should be this review. It will take more time and I think we need to do a scoping expedition first to then give the House a real time line on when we will get that back. 
What did come to light last night was that a report was done in April 2011 and from what I have seen of the report it identifies this flaw in the system. What I cannot get answers on and what I am asking the independent review to look at is why how and when it was acted on—so if it was not acted on why was it not and if it was acted on what has since gone wrong and made the information yet again available. So we are looking backwards and that will all be investigated. When we discovered that the chief executive and I wanted to put that out in a statement this morning so that we are quite clear on what we do know and what we do not know. It is been only about 36 hours now but at that stage it had been only about 24. 
I want to give some information about the kiosks themselves because I do think this is important. What they are effectively obviously are computers that people can go into. They predominantly use them to write CVs to update their CVs and to job search. So they access the internet and from that they also access Microsoft Word which is predominantly what they use to do their CVs on. Actually computers have been available to the public through Work and Income since the late 1990s. The only difference now is that we have put them throughout the offices. Technology has caught up a little bit and they look different because there is a stand that you stand at. But actually if you wanted to use that term they have been around since the late 1990s. In those early years technology was obviously different but the computers were more used for typing CVs. Over time Labour when in Government moved them more front of house so they were more easily accessible to the public. Beneficiaries were able to go in and search for jobs. They had been able to do that for years. Some were done in seminars. Most of them were able to go in separately. If you go to different Work and Income offices you will see that some of them are in a room attached and some of them are in the main body of the building where people also go for benefit advice and income. 
 This is what happened in July 2010. As I say the kiosks themselves effectively are a stand that has the computer in it and the computers have been there for some time. We rented out the kiosks which would be more front of line which means that we were having people more self-servicing rather than using up all of the time going to case managers—they could actually access it themselves. In July 2010 they were trialled in six sites and in April the ministry made a business case and made the decision to roll them out. They have rolled out more than 700 I think from memory. So 730 have been rolled out across the country but that just means we have replaced in many places the computers that are there and have put them in the stands of the kiosks. 
The Ministry of Social Development has around 1500 servers. What were visible were five of these and as I have said no core systems were compromised but I do not want to undermine that a totally unacceptable amount of personal information was available from the server that he could access. As I say that one server very much failed to have the protections that it should have. As a consequence all the servers are being looked at. We are checking all of our information and we are making sure that we know where it is and what is happening. As I said we will work our way through a process here. I cannot change what has happened and I cannot look backwards. All I can do is assure the public that I am taking it very seriously and putting the checks and balances in place so that we can make sure that we have people knowing what is happening. I can give assurances that our review will be robust that it will be transparent and that there will be a change. 
I will briefly touch on a couple of things that Ms Ardern raised in her speech. One was about Mr Bailey. The information that I have is that he contacted the ministry on Monday 8 October and he received an answer within a day and a half and he got a phone call back. As an aside there has been this kind of innuendo that she makes that my staff members were looking into him. It would be quite common for someone to google someone whose name came up. In fact he looked at her LinkedIn file as well so I suppose it is quite a common way of looking at each other’s social media. So perhaps the member could give it a go herself. [ 
Interruption 
] Exactly it is hardly the scoop of the day is it? It is quite interesting that the members over there think that it has been leaked and everything else where I think in fact we need to concentrate on what the issues are that are most important here. That is that people’s personal information was unacceptably contacted. They should not have had access to that level of information and that is the fact. I can see Lianne Dalziel yelling out over— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: You should offer your resignation. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Well should we talk about who should give their resignation? That member had to when she lied in unison which was the actual reality of it so I suppose she has personal experience of what that means to lie but I have not. I have been absolutely factual with this House and that is where it sits. I can understand her anger but she needs to calm down and have a bit of a look in the mirror—have a bit of a look in the mirror—if that is where she wants to look. As I said I think this is unacceptable. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I am going to stand up and be counted for it and I think that is reasonable. We will make sure that we are getting to the bottom of this situation and ensure that the public know about it. 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The revelations of this massive breach of privacy and information and communications technology security failure at the Ministry of Social Development are a very clear indication of both a ministry and a Minister that are prepared to cut corners with scant regard for the privacy of the most vulnerable New Zealanders in this country. We would have thought that all of the Ministers of this National Government learnt the lessons from the debacle that we have seen at ACC and that they—Paula Bennett in particular—would call in their chief executive officers and chief information officers and seek assurances from their own people that nothing similar could possibly happen in their departments and that if there were problems they would take immediate action to remedy them. Some of those Ministers might have done that but it is certainly clear that Minister Bennett did not. Minister Bennett learnt nothing from Minister Collins in the ACC breach from the Inland Revenue Department breaches nor even from her own disgraceful behaviour in breaching the privacy of two women—two mothers—who just happened to have the gall to disagree with her policy. This is the example that Minister Bennett has set for her ministry. This is not an operational issue; this is a leadership issue. This is a breach far worse than ACC where human error was a significant factor. 
I just want to reflect on some of the things the Minister has said today and in her answers to questions. She talked about how the Ministry of Social Development has breached the public trust and that New Zealanders should be able to trust that no information will ever be revealed intentionally or by error. She talks about how she is so extremely disappointed and how she is committed to a process that is upfront and transparent. But where is her statement her commitment to zero tolerance for privacy breaches? Where has she locked down and made sure that there will be no such breaches? 
She could not do that because she has no credibility when it comes to privacy issues because she herself released private information of beneficiaries that she got I understand from the computer in her very own office. She got it from that computer in her office and released private information about the incomes of two women who were solo parents on the DPB who then suffered very severe public consequences in terms of people who verbally attacked these women and frightened them in terms of the protection and security of their children. Paula Bennett breached the Privacy Act and was found to be in breach by the Privacy Commissioner. Did she apologise to those women? No she did not. She did not say sorry to the women whose privacy she breached. In fact did she guarantee that she would never do such a thing again having been found to be in breach? No she did not. She did not guarantee that information held by her and her ministry—private information—would never be released. 
And now she has the gall to stand in this House and say that she is extremely disappointed with these failures that she wants to be upfront and transparent and that no information should ever intentionally be released. Well this is the Minister who is leading the privacy breaches in her own ministry. She has set the standard for the Ministry of Social Development that it is OK to release any information you like to not care for the protection of that information and to have no respect for the people whose information is kept and that has led to the kinds of breaches that we have seen—not just this recent Ministry of Social Development breach but also the continual leaks that appear to be coming from her office. She should at least now have a zero-tolerance policy. She does not which means that all the things that she said in this House today mean nothing and can guarantee nothing for New Zealanders. 
This is a systems failure of gargantuan—enormous—proportions. The front door to the Work and Income office was left wide open and anyone—anyone—could walk in and access personal details about the location of vulnerable children in the care of Child Youth and Family. And the ministry knew that there was that vulnerability. It knew in 2011 18 months ago—more than that—that there was a problem with this information being accessible and it did not do anything about it. 
I think one of the most shocking revelations has been around the information of vulnerable children that has been available. The Minister has gone on and on about protecting vulnerable children. She has gone out and stigmatised beneficiaries in the process of her supposed desire to protect vulnerable children. She has harassed people over the issue of vulnerable children and is punishing people through punitive welfare reforms to justify protecting vulnerable children and yet her own ministry and her own process are unable to protect even the addresses of the children who have been removed from abusers. The addresses and private information of children who have been removed from abusive households have been available potentially to those abusers. Somebody described this as a potential shopping list for paedophiles. That is the risk that Paula Bennett has put vulnerable children under. She has exposed them to that risk. And has she committed to zero tolerance of any privacy breaches? No she has not and has herself been guilty of putting other children—the children of other beneficiaries—at risk themselves. 
This is an information technology security failure that is so huge that there has been some analysis from Daemon Consulting. Matthew Poole is talking about the fact that the entire Work and Income New Zealand network and probably the entire New Zealand Ministry of Social Development network should be considered to be fully compromised not to mention the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the Families Commission because some of that data was also available through the kiosk. Every server and workstation should now be considered to be accessible and controllable by people who are not employees of Work and Income or the Ministry of Social Development. 
Bizarrely even passwords were available on that information. Those passwords were stored as plain text so anybody who has access to that file has access to the passwords of who knows how many other computers or files. Minister Bennett in answer to a question today said that the reason why this vulnerable kids information database will not be as vulnerable as the current system is that it will be password protected. Well not if they keep the passwords as plain text on a system that is so accessible at this point by who knows whom. That information that system will not be at all secure until the entire system at the Ministry of Social Development has been secured and who knows how long or what cost that will take. 
Personal information may have been downloaded false information uploaded and existing information altered. There is a very high risk—even higher now—of internal fraud within the Ministry of Social Development as a result of this privacy breach. The Minister has tried to downplay some of the risk in these circumstances. She talks about data and information but actually we are talking about people’s lives being affected here if there is serious information interference such as people who are being convicted or accused of fraud people who may be accused of overpayments on their benefits and people who may lose access or entitlement to their benefits possibly because false information has now been placed on the Work and Income files and there is no capacity to tell whether or not that is the case. All of those files are now compromised. It is not just a matter of data; it is a matter of whether those people will suffer the consequences in their daily lives of this failure—the most vulnerable New Zealanders who do not deserve this kind of treatment. Of course it is no surprise that it has happened on Minister Bennett’s watch because she has as I have said already demonstrated scant— 
Charles Chauvel 
: It was inevitable it would happen. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Well my colleague from Labour said it was inevitable that it would happen because of her scant regard for privacy and I think he is probably right. 
Today we have also had a revelation from the Ministry of Social Development’s chief executive Brendan Boyle that in April of 2011 the ministry was informed about the flaws in the information system. Minister Bennett did not take that seriously and nothing happened. Just last week when Ira Bailey approached the Ministry of Social Development and did tell it that there was another failure in the system—a whole information security hole at the ministry—what did it do? Nothing. The ministry looked at him; the ministry investigated him. It did not bother to investigate his concern that there was a security breach in the information. It did not bother to go out and find the breach and now it has been revealed to the whole public. The ministry can take full responsibility for that failure to check when it had been told time and time again that this risk was present. 
It has also been revealed that Ira Bailey’s name was leaked to the media and again Minister Bennett has taken no responsibility at all for the consequences of the leak. In fact she is so blasé about privacy breaches she said today she is not going to bother to find out whether or not her office leaked that name. That is her attitude. Her attitude is one of disgraceful disregard for the rights of New Zealanders. She does not deserve to be the Minister for Social Development if that is the kind of leadership that she is showing to New Zealanders. Thank you. 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 This is yet another case of the Government failing in its most basic duty to protect the rights of ordinary New Zealanders. If the Government collects as it has in this case important and personal information and records that information then it clearly has a duty of care to make sure that that information remains confidential. That is the basic function that has been breached in this case. There can this time be no excuses. There have been far too many occasions within Government agencies when breaches of privacy have occurred in just this first year of this term of this Government. First of all we had ACC we had the Inland Revenue Department we had Work and Income and now we have this. When is it going to stop? It cannot be allowed to go on and on and on. 
Work and Income in this case has breached the public trust. It is not something that the public of New Zealand should let go past without protest. It is totally unacceptable. I listened to the Minister for Social Development and her apology and I listened to her explanation today. I heard terms such as that some individual files were not breached but one was. Well what has that got to do with anything? It does not matter how many files are breached. It does not matter what information was obtained that should not have been obtained. It is not good enough whether it is a lot or a few. I heard that only “a high level of personal information was accessed” and that of course really does not matter either because it is perfectly clear that important personal information was available through the department’s own facilities. 
I also heard the Minister talk about being “disappointed” in the performance of the department concerning these breaches of privacy being “not acceptable”. But what we really did not hear from the Minister was whether she was taking any personal responsibility for this and whether she was actually going to make sure that nothing of this kind would happen in the future. Quite frankly what I heard from the Minister was a totally inadequate response to such a serious issue. 
The flaws in the department’s kiosk system should have been identified by any number of in-house or external reviews. I am making the assumption that in this department like other departments there are robust in-house reviews and there is a robust system of auditing as to the performance of privacy provisions within departments. I did not hear from the Minister any words about that and I would like to know and I am sure the public would like to know too. 
In fact we do know that in April last year the Ministry of Social Development paid for a report by Dimension Data and it actually did expose a number of flaws in the system. Why did the Minister not talk about that? Why did the Minister not say what those flaws were? Why did the Minister not explain what has been done about those flaws? Or is she just not interested? Quite frankly that is the impression I get not just from this Minister but from this Government as a whole. It seems to be deeply and comprehensibly disinterested in the protection of the privacy of individuals in this country in respect of their personal information. 
Nothing whatsoever has happened about that particular review. We are left in this case with yet another example of a Government agency clearly inadequately staffed and inadequately funded where those high up in the hierarchy are merely going through the motions and ticking boxes and they are not in fact making sure that the privacy of people is genuinely protected. New Zealanders deserve a lot better than that. 
Under this Government we have of course seen a whole litany of these kinds of omissions. First amongst them was ACC and we eventually had the resignation of a Minister. We have had breaches of privacy in the Inland Revenue Department and now we have Work and Income. You have to ask: where is it all going? What is going to happen next? What will be the breach of privacy in what department or what agency next month? It cannot be allowed to happen. The only way that this Parliament can make sure it does not is to hold Ministers accountable. That in fact is what it is there to do. Ministers are responsible to this Parliament. 
What I have heard from this Minister is just this: that she does not think this is so serious that she should have done a lot more about it. As a result we have a comprehensive lack of trust in this Government by the public generally. When you heard the debate earlier today during question time and some of the things stated by the Prime Minister you would have had to ask yourself as an ordinary New Zealander whether you could have trust in him as the Prime Minister of this country. When you think about the performance of Mr John Banks in this House concerning the issues that have concerned him in recent times as an ordinary New Zealander you would have to ask basically whether you could really have trust in that particular Minister. I do not think many New Zealanders would be prepared to answer in respect of either of those cases that they have full trust in those Ministers. As I have already said we have already had a resignation from one Minister Mr Nick Smith and that came back to trust as well—trust in doing things properly and in accordance with correct procedures. 
What we have with this Government is a culture of mistrust. There is a disconnect between the trustworthiness of this Government and the expectations of the people in this country or what they should be. I have a number of questions to ask as a result of all this. First of all the most obvious question of them all: where is the ministerial responsibility? Where is the accountability? This sort of thing has happened far too often—in far too many departments—and the Government just glosses over it. Well it is time for this Minister to stand up and be counted. It is time for this Minister to resign. It is time for her to go. This issue is that important and it cannot be allowed to go past. She should now really consider her situation. Why has she not demanded the resignation of her chief executive? That should also be called for. 
In the end somebody has to take responsibility. It is not good enough for this to be glossed over once again. Why does nobody in this Government ever take responsibility for anything? It is always “Smile and spin your way out of these situations.” It is never “Let’s take responsibility.” This is the way it should be. That is what the expectation of this House must be—for that Minister to resign. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I am somewhat pleased to stand and take a call on this issue. I am not pleased because there is absolutely no argument in this House that this security breach is appalling and there is damage that has been done as a result of this breach. What I do find objectionable though is that members in this House stand here and say that they have not heard the Minister come to her feet and explain in some detail exactly what has happened. Instead what do they do? They go into emotive language and scaremonger about information that may have been made public. That is what I find offensive. The Minister stood here 10 or 15 minutes ago very clearly fronting this issue. She stood here fronted the issue and said she would make information available as it comes to her. She read an apology from the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development. 
I am impressed. I am impressed with how quickly when this serious breach came to light and how rapidly those kiosks were shut down. So as soon as the threat was identified it was shut down. And then not even 2 days later—not even 48 hours later—not only is there an independent review under way but also the consultants Deloitte have been appointed and they are under way. 
So there is no debate. There is no debate that this is a serious breach. But what there is a debate about is the fact that this side of the House fronts up deals with issues as they go wrong and focuses on the problem—not petty politics not scaremongering and not scaring the New Zealand public. I mean it is an absolute joke that on Sunday morning that member of the Opposition Jacinda Ardern went on television to say that she would support perhaps some of the issues in the White Paper for Vulnerable Children but not even 48 hours later she is using this to attack those same children. And here we have another party suggesting that paedophiles would use this information as a shopping list. That is despicable. That is absolutely despicable language in this House. There is a breach. We recognise that. The Minister and the chief executive have got onto it. They are dealing with it. So what is important now is that this issue is taken into focus and that it is looked at in every level of detail possible to ensure that it does not happen. This is a problem. We are not saying it is not. The Minister stood there 15 minutes ago and fronted up with some detail about what information was potentially accessed. She talked about how absolutely mortified she was that there had been a breach. So for that side of the House to then use it to attack the very constructive work in the White Paper for Vulnerable Children which over 10000 New Zealanders have contributed to is despicable. 
This is a Government that is focusing on what is important. It is focusing on what is important to New Zealanders. I am not going to stand here and have criticism of a Minister who I believe is the most courageous Minister for Social Development we have had in this country. Is she going to sit back and let generations rot on benefits? No she is not. She is taking the hard calls. She is reforming the system that that side of the House did not have the guts to deal with. She is dealing with the issues of fraud. Constituents in my electorate— 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not interrupt the member immediately because I was expecting you to interrupt her. The member cannot accuse other members of the House of lacking guts. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Well technically the member is right. Generally we apply that ruling when the word is referring to an individual. It was used in general terms. In my view it is inappropriate and I would just ask the member to desist. 
LOUISE UPSTON 
: As I was saying this is a Government that is focusing on what matters to New Zealanders. What matters to New Zealanders is having a system of welfare that supports those in need and recognises that work is the best opportunity for families and children. We are taking the hard calls to protect the most vulnerable in this society not playing petty politics with them like that side of the House. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed her seat Louise Upston accused members on this side of the House of trying to distract attention from the true subject matter of the debate. Well that is actually what she just did in the final couple of minutes of her speech. What this is all about is whether or not we have a Government that can guarantee the security of data that it holds on behalf of New Zealanders. Plainly it cannot. 
Just have a look at the examples that have occurred over the last couple of months. We had in September the Inland Revenue Department breaching the privacy of 30 people. At the same time in the 2 weeks ahead of the tax return deadline 70000 phone calls to the Inland Revenue Department went unanswered and it has $7 billion worth of tax yet to collect. This is a department that needs decent IT. It is being starved of decent IT. The Minister of Revenue in perpetuity apparently the Hon Peter Dunne—he has been the Minister now for 7 years—seems to have no urgency in his mind about addressing this. He says there is a plan to upgrade the Inland Revenue Department’s systems over the next 10 or so years. Well who knows how many privacy breaches there will be over that time? 
And then there is ACC. The Privacy Commissioner recently examined how the private information of 6748 people was sent to Bronwyn Pullar with ACC’s compliance. It is just mind-boggling that that could occur. The independent inquiry into ACC on that occasion found “such an error was more likely to occur because of systemic weaknesses within ACC’s culture systems and processes.” Then of course Bronwyn Pullar’s details somehow miraculously made it into the public domain. It is only necessary for me to quote the former president of the National Party Michelle Boag who said: “When you can’t send a communication to a Government minister without fearing that the privacy of that communication is going to be breached that’s very very dangerous.” That was Michelle Boag in the 
 New Zealand 
Herald 
 on 28 March. 
 Then we come to the departments that are within the responsibility of this Minister. In 2011 10 Work and Income staff had to be sacked after two inquiries into breaches of privacy. Seven staff were dismissed for appalling breaches including sharing information with family members and three were sacked after a second inquiry for breaching the so-called zero-tolerance policy that was in place at that department. Well some zero-tolerance policy! Then in September 2012 Work and Income sent a client’s private details to another client. Someone’s one-page application was included in a pile of papers the client received at the meeting. When the client rang Work and Income to report it the client was asked to just destroy the document. Then in August 2012 there was a further breach. A woman who was absolutely vigilant about her safety was called at home by a man who said he was conducting a survey to ascertain whether she was happy with her experience with Work and Income. He knew her name and had information about her. She had never consented to the release of that information. That is the record of this Government on protecting privacy and keeping data secure. 
In answer to the previous speaker the reason why members on this side of the House have real issues about the sincerity of this Minister on this issue can be summed up when we look at the way that she dealt with the privacy breach in relation to Natasha Fuller. The Human Rights Commission found that Paula Bennett breached that woman’s privacy. She was asked whether she would do the same thing again and she said: “it would depend on the circumstances”. The Prime Minister backed her to the hilt. That is the culture of compliance that we have under this Government. The apology that we heard that was read out by the Minister cannot be taken seriously because of the Minister’s form and the handling of this issue: blacken the names of the people who reveal the breach say that they were after money and leak their identity to the media. 
We have got a real issue here. We have got a Law Commission report on privacy half implemented. We have got another Law Commission report on the Official Information Act which is inadequate. Nothing less than a royal commission into the security of the way the Government holds the data of individual New Zealanders is going to be able to fix this problem. If we do not see it from this Government we are going to see it hopefully through a member’s bill because I am certainly keen to see one drafted to bring about that reality. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) 
: 
 I think the Minister for Social Development has done all that she could in the last 48 hours or so since learning of this appalling breach of privacy. No one is arguing that it is anything other than just that. For the Opposition to say that the Minister is insincere I think does obscure the problem that we have to deal with here. It does make it very personal when in fact the reality is that this is something that could have happened to any Government at any time. It is not unique to the current circumstances. If members are realistic and honest about it they will accept that these systems have been in place for a very long time and therefore have had some of the vulnerabilities that have occurred or come to light I should say in the last several months. What it does indicate is that we are now living in a world where a great deal of our information is held electronically not just by State agencies but by many private sector agencies as well. Very few people would write cheques these days for example preferring to do everything by electronic means. It is simply the world that we live in. That does not excuse the appalling breach of security that has occurred inside this system. I am very very certain that the Government wants to get to the bottom of this particular issue and to sort it out. 
I am also very much in admiration of the Minister for being so upfront in saying exactly what it is—an appalling breach of private security—and not trying to create any degree of obfuscation through various excuses that might have previously been offered by other Ministers and I speak about Ministers from other Governments in the past. The reality is that the Minister has done all that can be done at this point and continues to supervise a programme that will fix this problem. Mr Chauvel calling for a royal commission on this shows I think that he has not thought through exactly what he is asking for. This is an issue that is not necessarily confined to the State sector. It is one that could well affect the private sector. Indeed there are some very interesting cases before the courts at the moment about privacy about breaches of privacy and about the way in which people’s individual intellectual property in fact is dealt with as well. We live in an age of increasing electronic activity. We live in an age where all of these things do need to be well looked after and the commitment from the Minister and from the Government is to sort this matter out. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It gives me no pleasure to speak on this motion. I think I share the sentiments of all those in the House here today when we see a security breach where private information has obviously been put in the public domain unnecessarily. That situation is unsatisfactory and it is disappointing. I am sorry that this has happened. But it is about taking leadership and action and this Minister—and I stand to support this Minister Paula Bennett—has fronted with the chief executive she has fronted to this House today answering all the questions that have been put to her and she will continue to fight for vulnerable children and she will continue to fight for the truth in this matter. And the truth is that at this point in time no one knows. I do not know what happened and how this information became public. Lianne Dalziel does not know what happened. Across the floor here the Green and the New Zealand First members do not know what happened. But there is an independent investigation that is being carried out and no stone will be left unturned in order to get to the truth of the matter. We hear cries from the Opposition of royal commissions of inquiry and we hear cries for resignations when what is required here is calm what is required here is leadership and what is required here is restraint in order to get to the bottom of these matters. 
So I stand to support the Minister I stand to support the independent investigation that is going on and I stand to support the reforms that this Government is doing in the area of social development. That includes welfare reforms in terms of streamlining those reforms. It includes the white paper reforms that the Minister clearly outlined last Thursday. It includes reforms to help the vulnerable the poor and those in need. So I am not happy to speak on this motion but I am certainly here to say that this Government is doing everything in its power to get to the bottom of this case to get to the truth and to ensure that in future systems will be put in place in order for us to protect and safeguard the private information of our citizens. It is about the confidence and trust in our Government and that is what is being done. Thank you. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 The very last sentence that the member who just spoke Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga said was absolutely true. This is about the confidence and trust New Zealanders can have in their Government. There are some questions that all New Zealanders will be asking around this release of private information. How did it happen? Who knew or should have known about the situation? When did they find out and when they found out what did they do about it? Those are very legitimate and reasonable questions for every New Zealander to be asking. 
So how did this happen? It actually starts back in 2009. There is a paper trail that starts back in 2009 when Bill English wrote to Ministers in the incoming National Government and asked them what they were going to be doing to save money. One of the questions that he asked them was around what they were doing with regard to staff numbers. Of course let us consider that in context. The context is that at the time the unemployment rate was going up the economy was in a downward spiral and there was clearly going to be more demand on Work and Income staff to provide front-line services. 
 What was Paula Bennett’s response to that? Paula Bennett’s response to that was to say—and I am quoting directly from a paper that Paula Bennett has signed off—that “Whilst the Ministry has a strong focus on reducing its national office numbers there are also substantial plans to automate frontline services for clients through the use of online and other IT solutions.” i.e. the kiosks in the office. She stated: “I will be monitoring the progress of these plans regularly with the Ministry’s Chief Executive.” So how did this begin? How did those kiosks come to be in the Work and Income offices in the first place? The Minister made a conscious decision in the context of rising unemployment that rather than employ more people at the Ministry of Social Development to deal with that challenge and to provide support to the people who were going to be coming into the Ministry of Social Development and into Work and Income offices she decided that she would put computer terminals in the offices instead. It was a conscious decision by the Minister that resulted in this problem. 
Who knew or should have known is the next question that we then come to. Who knew or should have known? Should the Minister have known about this? When they decided to implement this IT solution by putting kiosks in the front-line offices with access to databases did the Government Communications Security Bureau get asked about that and did it provide advice to the Government? If it did not why not? That is actually its job. That is what the bureau is there for. Members of this House all have electronic devices that have restraints placed on them by Parliament on the advice the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is its job. It proactively goes in looks at the IT systems of Government departments and places requirements and restrictions on the use of those IT systems. So when it did this when the Government decided on Paula Bennett’s direction—it is in her letter here—that it was going to put kiosks in Work and Income’s offices rather than employing staff to deal with people and to allow people access to its IT system did it get the bureau involved and did it check to make sure that its system was going to be robust? If it did not then Paula Bennett has some serious questions to answer about that because she is the Minister responsible and this system was implemented under her direction. It was her initiative. She is responsible for it. 
The next question then becomes “When did they find out?”. Taking aside how we got here when did they find out and what did they do about it? The kiosks were rolled out in 2010 and they were told in April last year that there were potential vulnerabilities within the system. So the question is what happened then? What happened then? When the Government found out there were potential vulnerabilities in the system what happened then? That was April last year—that is a year and half ago—so why is it that this problem was not identified and fixed at the time? Beneficiary advocates reportedly told the Ministry of Social Development 1 year ago that there were issues with this problem. Again why was it not looked into at the time? Why was it not fixed at the time? 
On Monday last week the Ministry of Social Development became aware of the problem—on Monday last week. It took it until Wednesday to tell the Minister that there was this problem. That is a problem in itself. Taking 2 days to tell the Minister that there had been a serious breach of privacy is not good enough. That is the first problem. So Paula Bennett found out on Wednesday. It was Sunday when a blogger released all of the information online before it became public. I want to know what Paula Bennett was doing for the 4 days in between. What did Paula Bennett do last Wednesday when she found out about this and why was it that people could still access that on Sunday? That is simply not good enough and the public of New Zealand should be able to expect better from Ministers in this Government. 
What did Paula Bennett do? Did she have her officials into her office straight away to find out what was going on? Did she contact the Government Communications Security Bureau at that point knowing that this is the bureau’s fundamental job? Did she contact it at that point? I will tell you what: if Ministers find out that their departments’ databases containing private information about New Zealand residents and New Zealand citizens have been accessed inappropriately and they do not immediately require some action to investigate what is going on and to make sure the problem is shut down then they are negligent. They are totally and utterly negligent. Paula Bennett found out about this on Wednesday—last Wednesday. Yet Sunday when it became clear on the blogs was the first the public knew about it—late on Sunday night. Paula Bennett had that information for 4 days and what did she do? What inquiries did she launch? What steps did she take to make sure that databases were shut down or sealed off until she knew that they were secure? Four days is a long time. A hell of a lot of information can be accessed in that time and a heck of a lot of damage can be done in that time—4 days. 
It is now over a week since the Ministry of Social Development found out about this situation and we are debating it in Parliament the public having found out about it only yesterday a week after the ministry was first informed about it. Why is that? Why did it take a week before the public found out about it? In that week were any of the people whose information was accessed informed that their information had been accessed? If information for example was accessed—and I am only going on reports here—about children living in safe houses what steps were taken as soon as the Government knew that that information had been accessed? What steps were taken to protect those people? 
These are legitimate questions that the Government must front up and provide answers for. This is not good enough. This is a serious breach a release of information involving some very vulnerable people and for the Government to take a week to reveal that to the public is simply not good enough. For the Minister to sit on this information for 4 days is simply not good enough. The public is entitled to expect better. 
To come back to the very first point that I made and to pick up Sam Lotu-Iiga’s point this is about trust and confidence in the Government and if its handling of this situation is any guide to go by the public cannot have any. They cannot have any trust and confidence that the Government will take their private and personal information treat it carefully and responsibly and make sure that it is not released for purposes that it was not collected for. Trust and confidence in the Government will be seriously eroded by this not just by the fact that it happened not just by the fact that it happened because of Budget funding cuts not just because the Government sat on it when it found out about it but because the Government when it did find out about did not do what it should have done. It has been negligent and the Minister has been negligent in her handling of this situation—full stop. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I can say I think with a reasonable amount of credibility that I am one of only a few members in this House who made my living developing computer systems before I came to Parliament. Yes it was actually prior to the internet coming to New Zealand. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I was going to say I thought you were a bit old. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Even so there were communication systems on the airline system that allowed people to hack into the mainframes of stuff we developed. Whenever an issue like this occurs I think the Minister has in the words of that great Led Zeppelin song “two paths you can go by”. You can either try to hide obfuscate the issue justify what happened and so on or you can do what I think Minister Bennett has done absolutely admirably and that is to be open admit there is a serious issue actually move heaven and earth to try to identify what the issue is and fix the matter urgently. I want to say to the member Chris Hipkins who has just finished his speech that his facts were wrong. Yes Minister Bennett on Monday was alerted that there was a risk to information. But that alert did not say where it was or what it was but just that it was an unknown risk that needed some identification. 
Chris Hipkins 
: But what did she do? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: The member has just now played beautifully into my hands because the Minister got KPMG to start trolling through the Ministry of Social Development’s systems to find what it was that could be the risk and where it could lie. I am told that KPMG did not come back to the Minister until Sunday identifying that it was the kiosks. For that member to be standing in this House today and saying that the Minister knew back on Monday and let a whole week of all this exposure go on without her doing anything is just factually incorrect. What the Minister did was to get KPMG immediately. It can happen to any one of us. Just about every Minister in the Government has departments that have information held on their departments’ computers. 
 God knows on 5 March next year Statistics New Zealand one of my ministries will collect incredible information in the census about individuals. I have gone out of my way to ensure that that stuff will be protected and kept safe and that no individual records will be made available. But Minister Bennett did exactly what she should do. And I want to say to members on the other side of this House that it is quite possible that these sorts of security breaches occurred while they were Ministers. It is quite possible that people would have been into the systems and seen information but it did not quite get to be as exposed in those days because there were not things like bloggers around who felt it was really neat to get some coverage for blogging that stuff. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: When we were Ministers? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Yes. Blogging came into fashion only just towards the end of the Labour Government. Blogging has been around only 4 or 5 years now. It was not around in the early 2000s. I want to remind this House that we did not even have the internet in New Zealand 20 years ago. It came in only in 1993 and we are in 2012. So it is not yet 20 years for the internet. 
So Minister Bennett did exactly the right thing. When you come to be the Opposition there are again two paths you can go by. You can start screaming and yelling and blaming the Minister because she allowed a security breach in a computer system or you can actually demand that she take action to identify what the issues were to make sure they are being fixed immediately and that any security holes in the system are being closed off and to identify a regime that will prevent any such failures in the future. And again I believe that is what Minister Bennett has done beautifully. She has actually gone in to identify what matters are at risk in the system and so on. If it is any member of this House’s advocacy that the Minister should know there is a security hole in some hardware/software networking then I tell you that you are wrong. I tell you that you are wrong because I can tell you that it occurs even at the highest echelons of information technology—for example Microsoft probably the world’s biggest developer of information technology systems has every now and then had to put out an announcement that it found a security hole in its Internet Explorer or it found a pinhole in the back of some internet protocol of one particular product and it has had to put out a fix otherwise people would be able to breach the firewalls and breach the internet protocol and so on. So to any member of this House prepared to get up and say that Minister Bennett should have somehow been crawling underneath the computers pulling out all the internet cables and the ethernet plugs and checking the IP addresses and what protection there was I say that what Minister Bennett had to do was rely on her department giving her an assurance that when it brings a system into the market place like it did it puts those protections in place. 
But these sorts of things can and will happen again. They will happen even when there is another Government in this country in years to come as more and more information gets put online as more and more sophisticated systems are out there and as more and more sophisticated hackers find ways to go through some form of a click-box server in the Ukraine come back via a pinhole in the firewall somewhere and pick up stuff. What does that mean? Well we could actually shut up shop and not put any information on the internet at all. We could go back to parchment and quill pens and go back to the old days and I am sure there are some people around who think we should do that. But the rest of the world is moving on to putting its information on to information systems where they have phenomenal value where people can go and read stuff and so on. But having said all that there will always be risks. I hear I think it was Chris Hipkins say that we should have got the Government Communications Security Bureau in but even the Government Communications Security Bureau will not be able to identify every hole in every piece of software wherever. Only when that hole or that security risk is found should the actual Minister the department the computer people KPMG and whoever else move heaven and earth to fix it and that is what has gone on here. I actually ask all members of this House especially from the Opposition to be a bit careful about what they are advocating. I am happy for them to advocate that Ministers should step up to the mark and demand to find out how this happened. I am happy that she steps up to the mark and demands that immediate action is taken to close off the loop in it. I am happy that she demands— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Leadership on privacy! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am hearing something from Lianne Dalziel about privacy. Paula Bennett like every other member of this House believes truly in the need for privacy for individuals. No one in this House wants privacy breaches of information to be out. This was a failure of an information technology system. I look at stuff that I have rolled out of my ministry. I look at things like SmartGate and the taking of photos as you come through customs and whether there may be a breach in that. I have asked and asked I have been assured and I have gone and had a look at it and I am quite confident that there is not. But if anyone ever identifies a breach in that I can assure you that like Paula Bennett I will move heaven and earth to close down the risks to shut down that system and reopen it only when I am confident that we have found that particular bug. 
But I finish as I began: big issues can occur even across the most sophisticated developers in the world and huge companies with billions of resources have identified those risks. Well the Ministry of Social Development got this wrong Paula Bennett has said so and Paula Bennett is fixing it. I think we should be very proud to have a Minister of her calibre. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill; and Bills Therefrom 
Third Readings 
Hon TARIANA TURIA (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill the Education (Student Allowances Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill the Income Tax (Working for Families Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill the Social Security (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill and the War Pensions (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. I am really pleased to be able to stand and talk about something that the whole of the House generally agrees on. First I would like to thank my ministerial colleagues particularly the Hon Chester Borrows for their assistance in the second reading and Committee stage of this legislation and I want to again mention the professional commitment and passion way beyond the call of duty of the health officials who championed tobacco reform. 
There was a statement made to the Finance and Expenditure Committee by the coalition End Smoking NZ trust which places this bill in a proper context. The trust saw this bill as a means to correct the market failure that has resulted in the death of some 200000 New Zealanders since 1950. According to the trust the high profits gained from the sale of the product which continues to kill 5000 New Zealanders every year suggests that prices should be capped and profits recovered as excise. It was a message that in various forms was replicated through the submissions of the 94 interested groups and individuals who so generously contributed to the debate. In fact the great majority of submissions—75 out of 94 received—recommended higher excise tax increases to reduce smoking even further. Repeatedly the committee was told that increasing tobacco tax is the single most effective measure to reduce tobacco consumption. In essence that is why this legislation is so important and I hope it will receive the right support right across the House. 
I am pleased that the speeches made by members throughout previous stages have been supportive of our goal to address the enormous harm that is caused by smoking which is by far New Zealand’s leading avoidable cause of serious illness and premature death. I accept the healthy scrutiny that all parties take up in relation to discussions around revenue gathering as part of the core parliamentary debate. I want to give my solid assurance to this House and to the public that I have never considered tobacco reform to be important because of the revenue that is gained from higher excise. We should not play politics with such a serious issue. In actual fact if our goal to make New Zealand smoke-free by 2025 is achieved tobacco excise revenues will be significantly reduced over the longer term. There is only one universal goal in my mind and that is to reduce tobacco consumption and in doing so we are literally saving lives. What greater goal can there be? 
Modelling referred to by the New Zealand Medical Association suggests that if smoking was eradicated from our country it would see an overall increase in the life expectancy of Maori and Pasifika by 5 years and 3 years for others. Increasing tobacco excise is a critical lever to raise the retail price of tobacco products. This provides a strong signal and financial incentive to dissuade people from smoking. It is effective it is immediate and we know it works. Increasing tobacco excise definitely impacts on our young people who might be contemplating taking up smoking because we know that they are very responsive to price. 
Secondly lifting the excise provides all smokers with another trigger to quit. Not only can they avoid the high risk of tragic health consequences from smoking but they can save themselves sizable sums of money. I heard the most wonderful story from one of our Whanau Ora collectives which described a w’anau in Taumarunui who came together to chart out a plan for their future. They had an overwhelming desire to own their own home but on their income projections that simply was not going to happen fast. So they looked around and they realised that they were all sitting on a significant source of revenue: their cigarette addiction. They literally took the power into their own hands by improving their health while at the same time increasing their savings and their potential for buying their own home. They quit smoking they joined their savings together and they are well on the way to homeownership. 
Thirdly the rising cost and increasing unaffordability of smoking provides those who have quit or are struggling to stay quit with reinforcement to stay strong. The basic framework of this bill as announced in this year’s Budget is to provide for four 10 percent increases in tobacco excise to come into effect on 1 January in each of the next 4 years. In practical terms it means that an average pack of 20 cigarettes will cost over $20 in 2016. The mechanics spelt out in the legislation provide for these new annual increases in tobacco excise and excise-equivalent duties to be made in combination with the existing processes available to keep pace with inflation. This is an important mechanism to maintain the value of the tobacco increases and the unaffordability of tobacco products in real terms. 
This bill will ensure that the financial incentive against smoking is not watered down through the cost indexation of social assistance payments. Exactly the same thing was done in April 2010 when the last excise increase went through under urgency so I have to admit to some surprise at the arguments that have been raised by Mr Lees-Galloway during the debate. It makes no sense to raise tobacco prices on the one hand in order to reduce tobacco consumption only to then factor the increase in tobacco prices back into the calculations used to keep social assistance payments in pace with inflation. Of course we are sensitive to the impact that tobacco excise increases will have on those who are unable or unwilling to quit but what the proposal in the bill does is strike a balance that does not unduly punish low-income smokers or their families while ensuring that there is a strong incentive for them to quit and thereby significantly boost their disposable income. The Government provides a range of services and subsidised treatments to help smokers quit and I am very mindful that there is always more that we could do. 
I have been very impressed by the bold steps that have been taken by the Queensland Government that make it illegal for people to smoke in cars where there are children. From 1 January 2010 anyone over in Queensland who smokes in a car with children has been liable to a $200 fine the rationale being that the level of tobacco smoke inside a vehicle is very high and that young children involuntarily exposed to tobacco smoke in confined environments have significantly increased health risks including bronchitis pneumonia asthma ear infections and sudden infant death syndrome. Queensland also has extensive smoking bans in outdoor areas including beaches sports facilities and children’s playgrounds. So there are plenty of ideas for us to consider in our quest to be smoke-free by 2025. 
Finally I want to note two recommendations that the committee has made in its report on this bill—namely to monitor closely the progress that will be made over the next few years towards the goal of a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 and implement further excise tax increases after 2016 if its achievement is in doubt and to undertake work to access the compatibility of New Zealand’s duty-free tobacco concession with the goal of achieving a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025. 
I absolutely believe that we must search far and wide for all the avenues that we can use to reduce tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco. I am proud that this Parliament is having the courage to increase the price of tobacco as one of the key levers of our comprehensive tobacco control programme. Although the increases in tobacco excise in 2010 2011 and 2012 have reduced consumption and prompted thousands of smokers to quit we cannot and we must not rest there. That is why this bill is needed to bring in a further series of annual 10 percent increases over the next 4 years and that is why I commend this bill to the House. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support this legislation. I listened intently to the third reading speech of the Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia. The Labour Party is wholeheartedly in favour of the bill that was Part 1 of the original Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We are less wholeheartedly in favour of the legislation that was Part 2. I want to elucidate that shortly. We will support Part 2. Certainly there is no argument from the Labour Party as far as Part 1 is concerned where this excise is used to reduce tobacco consumption. It is one very valid way and one very effective way of reducing consumption particularly to discourage new smokers—young people in particular. 
I want to use some reference from the regulatory impact statement from Treasury when it was considering and advising the Government on this measure. Treasury said: “There are three broad reasons for taxing tobacco: raising revenue addressing negative financial ‘externalities’ from smoking”—that is what Treasury calls it—“and discouraging tobacco use for social policy reasons”. 
The bill that was Part 1 addresses quite properly the social policy reasons. There are very profound health reasons for increasing the cost of tobacco. In fact Treasury says that there will have been a very substantial impact between the years ended June 2009 and June 2012 on tobacco volumes. They are forecast to have fallen in that period by 20 percent which is a good thing following a 38 percent increase in price. We in the Labour Party absolutely support this. This is a lethal drug. It is legal and it is lethal and if there is anything we can do to discourage people particularly young people from taking it up then it is incumbent on this Parliament in my view to do so. And so we have no issue at all in supporting the Minister entirely in her efforts for the social policy reasons. 
The concerns I have around this are that it is going to generate additional revenue of some I think $528 million over 4 years—$528 million over 4 years—with the passing of this legislation. Treasury says: “At over $1.3 billion per year tobacco excise revenues may already exceed the direct health system costs of smoking”. That is contested by one of the latest surveys—a recent Ministry of Health study which Treasury refers to—which estimated the health costs of smoking at up to $1.9 billion a year or some 15 percent of Vote Health and that estimate used more detailed information than ever before. What I really hope the Minister is able to do and to impress upon her Cabinet colleagues is that this excise should be ploughed back into health. It should be ploughed back into addressing quitting smoking making sure that there is as little access to it as possible but mostly assisting people even more assiduously than we do now paying more money into the assistance for those who wish to quit smoking. 
But my suspicion is that this is not the aim of other members of this Government and certainly not of members inside Cabinet. If it were a health measure entirely this legislation would have come to the Health Committee. It did not. It went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee because it is a revenue-raising measure. I would like to see this revenue-raising measure tagged to the health budget as additional funding to assist people to quit smoking and then I might take some of the Minister’s colleagues more seriously in their intent. The Minister proposing this legislation has outlined her absolute commitment to the reduction and eradication eventually of smoking in New Zealand and I support that entirely and I do not doubt her motives but I would like to see more teeth in this legislation which would apply this additional revenue to health outcomes. 
I need to talk for a moment about Part 2 of the original bill which is the bit of the bill that divides the bill up into six additional bills. We expressed some concern in the Committee stage of the bill and I was one who expressed some of those concerns. We will support these six bills but they raise issues for us that I think are worthy of consideration. First of all of course the CPI measures the rate of the change in the price of goods and services purchased by New Zealand households. Statistics New Zealand visits 3000 shops across New Zealand to collect prices for the CPI and to check product sizes and features in order to arrive at some understanding of how much the cost of goods and services to New Zealand households has increased over the previous year. 
The import of the part of the bill with six additional bills in it is to take tobacco products out of the CPI basket of goods that applies to beneficiaries of all sorts—we are talking students we are talking war veterans we are talking superannuitants and we are talking other beneficiaries—and what those families might spend their money on. So the CPI indexation drops for those people and those people only. This is a way for the Government to mitigate its costs. In other words it is cheaper for the Government to take tobacco out of the CPI indexation for the appropriations for which it is directly responsible—in other words benefits. So all of those benefits—war pensions and all of those things that I mentioned earlier—will be adjusted by a CPI that is lower. It is a CPI that is lower by a fraction but it all adds up to Government expenditure lowered by a fraction for those people who are dependent upon the Government for their income. 
This raises issues for us and we in the Labour Party think that it is time perhaps to review how the CPI is arrived at. It might be a useful exercise to see whether or not it remains fair and non-discriminatory to apply a differential CPI to those who are dependent on the Government for their income. Of course there are cost impacts for Government in this but we think that it is time that the process around arriving at the CPI could be reviewed particularly to see whether there are items that ought to be exempted and there are items that ought to be included in the CPI and whether or not a differential CPI rate is fair and equitable. 
If this is about money then certainly this all works in the Government’s favour. Not only does the Government get additional excise but it also has to pay out less of a CPI increase to those for whose income it is responsible. We did not do this when we were in Government. We did not exempt tobacco products from the CPI for beneficiaries. This has been something that this Government has done. What I am saying is that we fully endorse the health objectives of these bills. We will support the other objectives entirely we will support progress of the legislation that was Part 2 of the bill but that is not without question marks and not without the need for some future consideration and review. 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the legislation arising from the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill because they are extremely important pieces of legislation and I am glad to hear that parties on all sides of the House will be supporting them. I am not going to take issue with any particular part that I may think could be made a little bit better. I am going to celebrate the great work that this Government has done under a very effective Minister over 4 years and to look at what realistically these changes that have been brought through in this legislation will do. 
I think it is clear to everybody in New Zealand—and if not they are deniers—that smoking is the leading preventable cause of early death. We have groups within society that are affected to a much greater degree than some others. I particularly want to recognise the work that Minister Turia has put in to this House over the last 4 years to look at changing the disproportionate overrepresentation of Maori and young Maori in smoking statistics. That is harm that can be avoided and all members of this House rather than focusing on what else could be or should be done or how they would do it if they were still in Government should actually be focusing on the achievements that have been brought through in these pieces of legislation. 
Very clearly this legislation will do one thing and one thing alone: it will increase the cost of tobacco by 10 percent per year each year for 4 years. At the end of that period of time cigarettes will be close to $20 per packet. That is $1 per cigarette. For our young New Zealanders I believe that this is one of the most important things that we can do to put smoking out of their reach. If we think about when some of us grew up when the price was so much less cigarettes would be shared freely around the place. I encourage you Mr Speaker or any other member of this House to go out to a school and walk around asking kids in the playground for $1—say “Can I have $1? Give me $1.”—and I guarantee you will not come away with very many dollars. But what this equates to was years ago “Can I have a cigarette?” was seen to be asking for something not of any value or any great cost. So I say to the Minister that these changes she is bringing into effect are going to have the biggest positive effect upon young people’s health by stopping them from starting smoking. I will come to what we are doing around helping people to stop to support them but stopping young people from starting smoking is the very best gift we can give them in so far as these pieces of legislation are concerned. 
Statistically we know that a 10 percent increase in the price of tobacco equates to a 4 percent decrease in consumption and therefore with this legislation over the next few years we estimate that there will be about a 16 percent decrease in consumption. What that means is fewer people smoking so it is not just that some will smoke less but fewer people will smoke. Fewer will start smoking and many more people will give up. 
It is important that in doing this we continue to support those who are challenged who are addicted to this drug and the harm that it does them. The Government—I am very proud to say—in the Budget in 2012 put in $20 million extra to assist pathways towards a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025. This is on top of funding that was put in by previous Governments. Indeed Mr Speaker what I can say to you is that we are making these increases but they are in addition to annual inflation-indexed increases in excise. They follow a 40 percent increase in the price of tobacco since 2010. So our record on this when it comes to smoking is clear. 
Each year 4500 to 5000 New Zealanders die due to smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke and that is 4500 to 5000 deaths that can be avoided and I believe that this legislation will help in the future to reduce that number. About 650000 New Zealanders smoke and we know again through surveying that the majority of people who smoke—the vast majority of people who smoke—wish they had never started and want to find a way to stop. I recognise that it is not easy but it can be done and there are many members of this House who are able to attest to that. 
I want to just briefly touch on some of the things as a Government we have done previously to decrease smoking as it stands. There has been a 40 percent increase in the excise price since April 2010. We have adopted Better Help for Smokers to Quit which is one of our six priorities in the health sector. We now know what has happened under Tony Ryall is that 89 percent of people who go to hospital or who visit their doctors are asked about giving up smoking and are offered support. That is up from 0 percent because this was not a target and did not happen before. In the 2011 calendar year 129000 patients received advice on how to quit and support from their general practitioners. One of the most important things that can happen is having your general practitioner or health professional ask you: “Do you know smoking is not good for you?” and knowing how you can stop. We have increased fines for those who sell tobacco to minors from $2000 to $5000 for an individual and to $10000 for a body corporate. We have banned smoking in prisons. A jump of 50 percent in calls to Quitline has resulted in significant increases in funding from higher tobacco taxes. We have increased the uptake—82 percent in those 18 months—of people who are looking for nicotine replacement gums and patches. We have included tablets that you can take to help you reduce smoking. They are now freely available from the health service. 
I want to finish here with one statistic that I think is fantastic. In 1999 15.6 percent of school-age students smoked. That is not the fantastic part. In 2011 that number had dropped to 4.1 percent. That is a wonderful decrease. There are so many more young New Zealanders whose lives will be longer and healthier. But I set a challenge to this House: 4.1 percent of school-age children smoking is still far too high. We need to work collectively together to find ways to reduce that number and to support those who smoke to not smoke. 
I commend the Minister for this legislation and I thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its work. I commend the legislation to the House. Thank you. 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I rise to support this legislation arising from the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We wholeheartedly as the Labour Party support this legislation recognising that smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in New Zealand. The previous speaker Todd McClay referenced the importance of being positive about this change and indeed we do support it. We think that this is the way to address smoking. It is very clear that price levers are amongst the most effective tobacco control measures. They make it harder for young people to start smoking and they make it more difficult for the tobacco industry to retain its clients in this industry which currently affects about one in five adults in New Zealand. 
It is interesting of course to note that historically the National Party although it is calling for support now opposed such measures. The previous member may not recall—there seems to be a little bit of that going around the National Party at the moment that recollection loss—but the Hon Bill English said in 2000 that the reason the National Party voted against these kinds of measures was that “It is a tax on the poorest people in New Zealand it is an increase that is far too large and that is why we voted against it.” He said that not so very long ago in opposing such an excise tax message. Those members may have forgotten that they had a different stance. In this case we celebrate that lack of memory from the National Party. In other cases we have been a little more critical where the private details of New Zealanders are concerned but in this case it is a happy thing that National members have forgotten that they opposed this kind of increase on supposedly principled grounds. 
I am a little bit suspicious that what really is going on here is a revenue grab. It is actually a naked revenue grab. 
Todd McClay 
: It’s not in your nature to be suspicious. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: The chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee tells me not to be suspicious in this regard but I am afraid his body language is not convincing and it is a little too late because we know that the Government has a significant revenue hole. This is excise legislation we are debating here in Parliament. The Government has had a revenue hole since revenues dropped by 4 percent under its watch. Its own officials say that 1.5 percent of that can be attributed to the global financial crisis roughly in line with other countries around the world but that 2.5 percent of that revenue drop is directly a response to Government policy changes. 
The 2010 tax switch that this Government put through we were assured was going to grow the economy. Actually what we have seen is the economy in real terms struggling and the only reason we have had any growth figures whatsoever is due to population growth. Real wages for New Zealand workers have gone down. These 2010 tax measures which switched around the way who got which tax cuts and how much of the value of the produce that New Zealand made went where were not to the benefit of the majority of New Zealanders. Forty-four percent of the value of those tax cuts in 2010 went to the top 10 percent of earners; just 2 percent went to the bottom 20 percent of earners. That is hardly fair but what we were told at the time was that this would grow the economy and that it was broadly fiscally neutral. If you can remember back that far Mr Speaker—and I am sure you can—we were told that it was broadly fiscally neutral. The effect has been not broadly fiscally neutral in my opinion because what has happened is that those revenue drops have happened the Government is now scrabbling around and here we have a measure that looks more like something that is to do with expedience than something that is to do with principle when we look back on National’s track record. 
I am very proud to be a Labour member of Parliament because Labour has taken a stance on this issue that is consistent over time that is principled and that is actually about reducing the harm that is linked to tobacco use. So National’s stance stands out starkly in contrast to that when we see a revenue hole emerging and a different stance being taken. 
The Government has had various other measures that we have seen recently in this Parliament that are along a similar line and aim to fill this revenue hole. We have seen the car park tax recently announced. I am sure we will see legislation around that before too long. We had the paper boys and we had the cleaners and now we have a tax increase in the tobacco area. What we also know is that those who will struggle the most with this of course—the National Party had a good point originally—are those who are the poorest because they have the least room to move. It will affect people who are poor the most and Labour has some sympathy about that. That is why we have said that we would like the Government to undertake a review of the CPI and of how it is used to index Government payments and revenue. At the moment it is used in an inconsistent and sometimes a discriminatory way. For example the bills that we are looking at today ensure that CPI minus tobacco is used for benefits and superannuation yet the full CPI is used for annual excise tax increases on petrol. The full CPI continues to be used for wage negotiations aged-care subsidies inflation-indexed bonds and various long-term contracts in the public and private sector. So there is an inconsistency here that we think should be examined. We will be supporting the measure today because as I say we know that this is an effective way to curb tobacco use. 
One of the things that is deliciously ironic about all of this of course is that National not so long ago was trumpeting the entry and the jobs created by the Imperial Tobacco Group’s expansion in Lower Hutt not so far away. At the time it was thought that there were going to be 50 new jobs created—and goodness knows we could do with jobs being created in this economy. There were many many more applications lodged for those jobs than there were places available I understand. So we have some job growth here. Ironically the delicious irony here is of course that this industry will be one of the ones that will in very short order be hit by this measure. It shows how short-sighted National’s thinking is on this and other measures. 
 Of course when it comes to manufacturing the real story is that the sector is contracting outside the primary products sector. Simply transformed materials in the manufacturing sector have contracted by 15 percent since 2008 in 2008 dollars looking at the figures—a full 15 percent contraction in that manufacturing sector for simply transformed products and a 10 percent contraction in elaborately transformed areas. Perhaps tobacco products fit into the primary products process category. The statistics on overseas merchandise trade which Statistics New Zealand puts out in its data series suggest that primary products is one of the few areas in New Zealand where the manufacturing sector is surviving. 
Of course that story is about the way in which our dairying sector carries on. Those products still have to be processed regardless of the difficulties with the high dollar that that is creating for exporters. The processing in the primary sector continues but it is the other sectors of our economy that are really struggling. One has to wonder whether manufacturing across the board will go down if the Government continues to take a short-term view in the way it does on many issues where it switches from one position to another. Businesses like certainty and this issue of customs excise on tobacco is as I say an ironic change given Bill English’s vehement opposition to a similar change under the Labour Government. It is also ironic given the touting of these few extra jobs which presumably after the $45 million expansion of the plant in Lower Hutt will now be less secure than they were before. 
To conclude I want to say that Labour will support this legislation because on principle we understand and appreciate the importance of raising the price of these dangerous drugs in a way that gives people the chance over time to quit the habit. We support the measures taken to support people quitting smoking and we hope that the one in five New Zealanders who currently smoke will find their own way out of this habit in part because of the measures proposed in this bill and the previous measures taken by the Labour Government in its principled view on this matter. Thank you. 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 This is now at the third reading no longer one bill but seven. Part 2 of the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill which we have been debating over some months is now divided into six bills around indexation of benefits pensions and allowances. The Green Party is going to continue to support the first bill which really all of the debate has been about until this stage today. But we will oppose the six indexation bills and I will come to that shortly. We join others in thanking and praising the contribution of Minister Turia in bringing this to the House and steadfastly campaigning on these issues. Tobacco is as others have said the greatest preventable cause of harm in New Zealand. Price measures—measures that increase the price—are the most effective strategy for reducing consumption and therefore reducing harm. So the first bill here is an absolutely sensible measure. It is interesting—I make the comment in passing—that the same argument in fact applies to reducing alcohol-related harm yet we saw the Prime Minister in response to the Law Commission’s report immediately ruling out using price as a mechanism to reduce that harm. 
There have been concerns raised in previous stages of the bill and indeed in the public debate about these measures and about what the Government’s intent was. Minister Turia alluded to those in her contribution today because academics from the University of Otago raised the suggestion that the Government could dispel speculation that its primary motivation was about revenue raising by adding into the bill a purpose that made it clear that this bill was in fact about improving the health of New Zealanders. The Government has declined to take up that suggestion and I think that is unfortunate because that will ensure that there will continue to be a question mark not over Minister Turia’s motivation but over the motivation of the Government as a whole on this issue. That speculation has been fuelled by the fact that the particular option that was chosen by the Government from those that were offered by officials for how excise tax could be increased over time to reduce tobacco-related harm was the one that had the least positive impact on health. So it is natural for the community and in particular the health community to wonder about what the Government’s primary motivation is. 
I also draw attention to the fact that this legislation will not keep tax increases to a rate that will reduce tobacco consumption to meet the Government’s goal of a smoke-free Aotearoa by 2025. So what that means is that the Government is planning to fail to meet its objective in 2025. It is good to see the comments from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think the select committee is concerned about those matters. It is good to see the comments about possible other steps that the Government might take to help achieve that goal but the easiest step would have been to take the suggested excise tax increases that would have put this country on a path to achieving that goal and it is unfortunate that the Government did not do that. 
Treasury officials in their comments to the select committee said that the reason for choosing the excise tax increase regime of 10 percent by 10 percent by 10 percent instead of that proposed by health community groups and academics from around the country universally—of an immediate increase of 40 percent in the excise tax followed by smaller increases in future years—was that it was concerned about the impact that would have on low-income New Zealanders. I think we would all share a concern about a disproportionate impact on low-income New Zealanders. But when we asked Treasury officials about what modelling they had undertaken to support their conclusion on that in fact there had not been any at all. This was just a supposition on their part. And when we asked the health groups who worked with those low-income New Zealanders or represented those low-income New Zealanders what they thought about the assumption Treasury had made they all supported the more aggressive tax increases of an immediate 40 percent increase followed by the others. The reason they did that they said when we asked them about it was that yes it was true that there is disproportionate cost on low-income New Zealanders but also there is a massively disproportionate benefit both in health and in the economic gains that came from that improved health. That is why they rejected the option that was chosen by the Government. 
I want to come to the six indexing bills. It is certainly the case that making tobacco products more expensive reduces consumption but the logic that the Minister has outlined in her contribution today around the justification for these six bills fails a basic mathematical test. She said it makes no sense to make tobacco products more expensive on the one hand by increasing the tax and then giving that money back by including tobacco in the indexation for those benefits and allowances and so on. Unfortunately that is not how the trade-off works. That is not the linkage between those two things. These six bills which remove the increase in tobacco excise from the CPI for the purposes of indexation effectively erode the incomes of all New Zealanders who receive those benefits or allowances or pensions—of all of those people regardless of whether those people are smokers or non-smokers. So it applies to all of those people in a completely non-targeted way and it erodes their income. It is not specific to tobacco at all. What it does instead is to relatively increase the price of everything that they spend their money on. That is what it does. It is not a trade-off in the way that Minister Turia seems to imagine that it is. Therefore these six bills are not measures that in anyway provide an incentive to reduce tobacco consumption. What they instead do is punish the poor and that is not an objective that the Green Party can support. So we support the first bill and we reject the other six. 
PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) 
: 
 I am very happy to support this legislation the purpose of which is to increase the excise tax to reduce smoking to dissuade young people from being involved in smoking and to improve the health of all New Zealanders. 
I just want to touch on a couple of quick points. One area that the Finance and Expenditure Committee looked at was this whole question of duty-free tobacco sales and the committee requested that the Government work to assess the compatibility of New Zealand’s duty-free tobacco concession with the goal of achieving smoke-free status by 2025. I did also want to note that the evidence we have had before the committee is that for every 10 percent increase in the price tobacco consumption falls by about 4 percent. It is very interesting to me to see that the Greens and Labour very much understand that price measures are the most powerful and that taxes affect behaviour and I do wish that they would extend that logic and abandon their constant desire to increase taxes on a whole heap of other things—work and savings—and follow that logic through to the rest of their political programme. But I support this legislation. I think it will make a great difference to the lives of many New Zealanders. Thank you. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First for the third reading of the seven bills arising from the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will support the first bill the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill but we oppose the six other bills in relation to indexation. In relation to this perhaps we could just explain again for the benefit of the people out there who may be a little bit confused as to why there are seven bills wrapped into this. The other six bills basically serve to remove the CPI indexation from tobacco in terms of tobacco in relation to the CPI so that those receiving increases in student allowances those receiving increases in children young persons and their families support those paying income tax on Working for Families support New Zealand superannuitants and also social security and war pensioners who have the annual CPI adjustments will find that they will not get the full CPI because the CPI will under these bills exclude tobacco from their CPI assessment. 
In that respect it is somewhat discriminatory that many many New Zealanders—thousands of New Zealanders—who have nothing to do with smoking and are non-smokers in a sense will be receiving a small amount less in their pensions because of the fact that tobacco is going up by a significant amount—10 percent each year—but that is being removed from the equation when the CPI indexation is assessed. It is in a sense also penny-pinching in that this has not occurred in the past and it is most unusual for a Government to start actually pulling out and removing certain aspects of the economy in order to help balance its books. Therefore it is being discriminatory and it is punishing many of those who can least afford even a small adjustment in the CPI indexation. 
This week has been the national conference of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association. It is very interesting that one of the major concerns of returned servicemen and servicewomen has been the aspect of their pensions. This Government this week has announced some measures to support the war pensions review being conducted by the Law Commission. So it is somewhat ironic that while on the one hand we are trying to assist the likes of the war pensioners and indeed many other pensioners on the other hand we are penny-pinching by making a small adjustment to their CPI because of the fact of cigarettes going up in price by 10 percent per year for the next 4 years. That is somewhat disappointing and I think was unnecessary. 
It perhaps reflects on a Government that at the moment is having to look at every last cent to balance its books which included as we have referred to before taking something like $14 million from the paper girls and paper boys of this country in a new taxation regime this year. Again it does get back to the whole concept of the “Fagin Budget”. When you start to actually attack those who are most at risk and those who are most vulnerable and cannot really stand up for themselves such as the young children of this country such as the pensioners such as the war pensioners of this country then it is a sad day. 
Perhaps this would have not been necessary and these penny-pinching measures would not have been necessary had the Government not given the significant tax cuts to the very wealthy people of New Zealand 2 or 3 years ago when several billions of dollars in taxes were returned to those who could certainly afford to pay their taxes and as a result we are having to put up with these penny-pinching policies now. Certainly the head of Telecom did not need a $5000 a week reduction in his tax the Prime Minister did not need a $1000 per week reduction in his tax and many other very wealthy New Zealanders did not require those. So in a sense I am certainly somewhat disappointed in the country of New Zealand where we have been known to be a world leader in our social welfare and where we have been a pioneer in providing a good healthy social welfare State and supporting those in need and giving them a hand up not just a handout. But it is disappointing to see these six other aspects of this combined legislation which is just basically attacking those in need who can least afford it. 
But getting back on to the actual tobacco excise side of it New Zealand First has supported the increase of the tobacco tax but with reservations. We have said in this House before that we hope that the $528 million that is taken over the next 4 years with the annual 10 percent increase in the excise tax is not just again put into the general big black hole the big Treasury coffers to try to balance the books but that in actual fact this has been taken for the purpose of trying to reduce the levels of smoking and trying to help people with addictions in smoking and certainly to also assist with our health aspects in terms of those affected by smoking. In that respect we have said in this House before and we have put it to the National benches that we in New Zealand First certainly will be monitoring it to ensure that programmes are followed through and we certainly hope that the associate health Minister Tariana Turia will ensure that funding is put into the programmes to support all those in need of support who are afflicted by smoking. That includes education and it includes resources to help with smoking cessation programmes. It includes having innovative ideas to try to curtail the level of smoking. It also means that we will have greater education hopefully out of some of this funding to stop young people getting into smoking in the first place. 
 We also want to ensure that there are other measures taken in terms of smoking and it is interesting that there are still many areas within the smoking situation that are not being addressed—and it was raised by the select committee—such as the anomalies with duty-free cigarettes being so very cheap and people are encouraged to bring them in. We heard stories of places particularly the Pacific Islands and Asia from where people are encouraged on arrival in New Zealand to buy large volumes of cigarettes for family and friends. Again that sends the wrong message. Surely in this country if we are trying to reduce smoking and this measure is trying to reduce the levels of addiction then why are we not also looking at the duty-free side which Australia across the Tasman has done? 
Therefore I hope the Government is not just glossing over this and is not just looking at this as one more way to make money to make tax out of those who can least afford it and that it is genuinely taking this as a disincentive for people to take up or continue smoking and that it is genuinely interested in the health aspects. But we do have our doubts and we do wonder whether the health aspects have at any stage taken any priority in all this and whether in fact much of that $528 million will see the light of day in terms of positive things from some of those funds. So New Zealand First will support the first bill but will be voting against the other six bills. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 It has been really an effort because this bill the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill is being directed at trying to improve the atmosphere around that member’s environment—Andrew Williams who has just resumed his seat—by pricing tobacco off his leader’s budget and thereby reducing the amount of smoke that that member has to inhale by association. I think he must be impacted by too much cigarette smoke because it is impacting on his ability to think clearly and logically. 
If the Government raises $528 million by increasing the excise tax—which I doubt very much because the whole idea is to drop that amount; we want to stop collecting excise tax on that by cutting out smoking—that money does not go into a big black hole Mr Williams. That money goes into providing health care for the people who are damaged by smoking. If he actually studied this issue before he got up in the House and fired off cliché after cliché after cliché he would discover that in the 1920s the connection between cigarette smoking and life expectancy was beginning to be drawn. It was only around 1932 that statistical evidence began to be collected on relating smoking to lung cancer. 
The second error of that member’s logic is to assume that increasing the excise tax is always going to go into just the Government’s budget. That is not the case at all because the Government has said: “OK we’re going to collect more money. We want people to stop smoking. We’re going to put $20 million over 4 years into smoking cessation and helping people to stop smoking.” I think that the policies are working very well. I pick up the point that my colleague the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Todd McClay mentioned which is the really significant drop in young people smoking—from 15.6 percent smoking every day in 1999 down to 4 percent in 2011. 
I would like to make just one point to the House as I conclude my support for this legislation. Recently I was watching some basketball players at the ASB Sports Centre at the bottom of Cobham Drive and I heard the young people calling out the term of derision “smoker” to their colleagues who muffed calls in the game. It was really fascinating for me to listen to these young people abusing their colleagues using this foul word. 
I have no hesitation in supporting this bill. As an ex-smoker and sometime smoker myself I know how hard it is to give up. But those people across in the Labour Party know about this business of raising excise taxes. I can remember one Arnold Nordmeyer who had his famous Black Budget. The next day my father stopped smoking because of that tax grab. This is not a tax grab. This is an inducement to the community to stop smoking by 2025. Thank you. 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and speak to the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill and six other bills. We will be supporting these bills. I think it is important to point out the overall ambition of these bills and that is ultimately smoking cessation as we understand it. It is an increase in excise that is intended ultimately to have some public health good. There is an estimate though that this legislation will raise an additional as I understand it $528 million— 
Andrew Little 
: Over 4 years. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: —over 4 years. But I think it is important to clarify that at least on this side of the House it is the public health measures—the public good that is done by trying to reduce smoking amongst our communities—that drive our support ultimately for this bill and the other bills. But is that what is driving the National Government when it comes to its support of this legislation? I think probably the easiest way to give us some sense of what is motivating the Government and driving it on these matters is voting record. That usually is indicative of where a political party’s ideological views you could say or you could say values stand on these matters. 
When we look at Labour’s history and record when it comes to smoking and smoking cessation I think it is a record that we can certainly stand on with some pride. That is of course because not only did we focus on excise as a way to address the issue but also we looked at how you create culture change. I think that one of the most significant moves in that regard was the legislation that was pursued and defended and rigorously developed by Steve Chadwick. That was I remember at the time extraordinarily controversial—the idea of removing the ability to smoke in bars and restaurants. It certainly came under heavy scrutiny externally from those in industry obviously but also from some in the hospitality industry. There was a view that it would bring down tourism hospitality—all sorts of messages were thrown around. But because our main driver was the public good and the public health good of these measures we pursued them with vigour. Obviously there is always risk attached when you do pursue such matters in that way but it was the right thing to do and I do believe it has made a significant difference. I have got nothing more than my anecdotal experience to say that I think it has made one of the most significant differences in recent times to shifting our culture to shifting the amount certainly that people are smoking but overall to try to move us closer to a smoke-free New Zealand. 
It is estimated that half of all long-term smokers die of a smoking-related illness and about 5000 deaths each year in New Zealand are directly attributable to smoking or second-hand smoke. It is unlike any other substance almost that we regulate in New Zealand because we know of its dire consequences. That does give it a slight difference than alcohol. But I will come back to that point. 
But let us look at National’s record on these matters when we took extraordinary urgency to increase the excise on tobacco in May 2000. Bill English—well the National Party—voted against those measures. But Bill English specifically said when defending his reasoning for not having voted for those measures: “The reason we voted against this measure was that the Government did not ever say that it would do it and that is the measure it set—not us. The Government did not say before the election that it would do it—that is the Government’s standard not ours. It is a tax increase. It is a tax on the poorest people in New Zealand it is an increase that is far too large and that is why we voted against it.” I want to try a little experiment here. Let us pretend that instead of this being a quote about an excise tax increase on cigarettes and instead of this being a quote given by a National member let us turn it into a quote about GST increases and let us turn it into something said potentially by a member of the Opposition. I think you would find that it probably would hold: “The Government did not say before the election that it would do it. It is a tax increase. It is a tax on the poorest people in New Zealand. It is an increase that is far too large.” I think that would be a much more fitting quote for the National Government’s increase in GST than it would be for an increase on excise around tobacco. 
And when it comes to increases in excise here is an interesting point. Are those things that one campaigns on? Well there is a reason why excise in many forms is often debated under urgency—you know last year’s sherry taxes alcohol taxes. There is a reason: you try not to encourage the enormous uptake of purchasing before you move an excise in a particular direction. It is a really practical reason. It is interesting I think that Bill English has though exposed at that time and perhaps even now where the National Government sits on these issues. Is it a tax grab? I would like to be slightly more generous than that. One thing I do know is that I have absolutely no doubt that the Maori Party has made a significant difference to the National Government’s positioning on smoking. It absolutely has and credit where credit is due. If Tariana Turia in particular was not driving this agenda on that side of the House I doubt we would have seen the measures that we have seen. Certainly plain packaging of cigarettes is an issue that Tony Ryall was very dismissive of—very dismissive. And I think when you pull out the record of the Government on issues like that it certainly exposes not only the Government’s lack of commitment overall but also the difference that a coalition partner has made. 
One of the questions I want to ask is this: if we know that higher prices are one of the most effective tobacco control measures that we have can we transfer that reasoning and rationale to the debate around alcohol? Both substances are associated with known harms. Obviously in cigarettes from the first smoke to the 10th smoke there is harm whereas with alcohol we are debating questions often of moderation but you could argue there is immediate harm depending on your age and your station and so on depending on who is consuming. Why then are we not having the same discussion around the difference that price points make for alcohol? Well there is only one reason why we are not having that debate. It is that the Government does not want us to have that debate and we should be having it. If the alcohol legislation that the Government is bringing before this House is the substantive opportunity that we have in this lifetime to change this nation’s culture around alcohol as with smoking price should at least have been part of the discussion. It should have at least been debated. The idea that we need to collect more data I am afraid just does not hold. 
But I want to acknowledge how far we have moved in this debate—how far even in my generation. I recall when I was at school for instance that my basketball coach—I did at some point engage in team sports which is something that would be known to be unusual if anyone knows me—told me that at one period during his life his doctor had prescribed him cigarette smoking as a way to deal with anxiety issues. He had prescribed cigarette smoking! That was my high school teacher. We have moved and we have come a long way but we must make sure that we do not lose our drive around dealing with this significant issue. 
The one final thing I wish to say is that we are dealing with CPI adjustment in this bill in a piecemeal way. Labour believes that the Government needs to undertake a review of the CPI and how it is used to index Government payments and revenue rather than fiddle with it in an ad hoc and potentially discriminatory way. I am pleased to be seeing a little more proactivity at this point and I hope we will be seeing a lot more. 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 The Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill is a good bill. It is important that we see the other parties vote for it. I was very disappointed to see their speeches though like that last speech which try to condemn the theory behind what has been happening in this area. But it is something that all New Zealanders wish to see that we look after the health of our fellow citizens. This mechanism of using the customs and excise on tobacco products is a means to send the right signals out there and hopefully encourage people to not engage in this activity going forward. 
It is easier said than done. There are a lot of cultural and historical factors and advertising that go into these products which set people on that course. But as a Government we are making endeavours to try to challenge those behaviours in the best interests of the individuals and also of our country going forward. This is good legislation and we thank all those people who have been involved in getting it to this stage. Thank you. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Any further speakers? The question is that the motion—[ 
Interruption 
] I call Andrew Little. It is a split call—5 minutes. 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 This is just a brief contribution to the debate on the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill and the associated legislation. As my colleagues have said Labour supports this legislation on the grounds of the contribution it will make to health and to public health. 
Labour has always been at the forefront of measures to improve health through reductions and disincentives for smoking. We led the way for example with the smoke-free workplaces legislation back in 1990 and then with the extension of that to virtually every other public place or place where the public gathers with the smoke-free environments legislation in the 2000s. They were very important measures. 
They were difficult measures because certainly for a lot of working people having a smoke was seen as a reasonably cheap way of doing something that was pleasurable and luxurious and as somewhat of an acceptable vice. But the truth is that as we know smoking has made an enormous contribution to negative health effects across New Zealand. Smoking was the source or the cause of cancers of throat cancers of lung cancers and many others of hypertension and of a range of other medical conditions. So those measures were necessary. If we wanted to address those health issues we had to do something about smoking. 
The reality is we now know that when it comes to activities that come with a patina of social acceptability—like smoking—if you increase the price of them you reduce the level to which the activity is subscribed to and there are improved health effects. That is why as some of my colleagues have raised too it is so disappointing that this Government can see the implications and the benefits from increasing the price of a social activity that has negative effects like smoking but it will not do the same thing when it comes to the social activity or at least the social drug of alcohol. 
We know that alcohol has extraordinarily negative health effects. We know that price will have an impact. We know what the research says and what the Law Commission tells us but there is no corresponding gesture from the Government when it comes to addressing those health issues through legislating for minimum pricing on alcohol. That is just an inconsistency that we are going to have to grapple with and deal with as a House. The citizenry of New Zealand look to this House for leadership. They see leadership on the smoking issue and on the measures that we take to reduce smoking and improve our health performance. They see us taking leadership here today with this legislation. What a pity they have not so far seen us taking it on the measures to do with alcohol but that debate is yet to be concluded and maybe—and we live in hope—there will be change in that regard as well. 
As I said Labour has always been ahead on smoking issues. I remember when the smoke-free workplaces legislation was first introduced. It caused issues for employers and for their workforces and they had to negotiate their way to manage that. I remember representing many airport workers at Auckland Airport back in the 1990s when they were prohibited from smoking in the workplace. They had to duck out the back as so many did for a quick shoofty in the dark dim cold barren places corners that most employers had in their workplaces. What they found at Auckland Airport of course was that travelling passengers particularly those from Asian origins who had flown for 11 or 12 hours across the continent and into New Zealand were desperate for a smoke and special provision was made to have a special smoking room in the Auckland International Airport. Great problems were caused when the great clouds of smoke went up in the international terminal. All the workers there who were hanging out frankly for their smoke could not partake of it even though the passengers travelling through the airport could. It is interesting to see now that that smoking room has gone. 
That was one measure that was taken but the reality is that the underlying health problems that we still have with smoking have needed the last hurdle to be leapt and that is the price hurdle. This legislation will do that. It will have a significant impact on reducing smoking and improving health effects. We will have to nurse those remaining dedicated committed and some would say of course addicted smokers through it because they will have a negative response but the long-term effect will be good. It will be good for the youngsters in our community and for the diehards who will have to work their way through. 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 Other Government members have detailed the excellent measures within the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill and I commend the Associate Minster of Health Tariana Turia for her excellent work in this area. I commend too the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Todd McClay who has done an outstanding job of shepherding through some of the people who for example think that smoking is good for you and say that they enjoy it. There is one in particular on the Finance and Expenditure Committee who has taken a fairly mischievous outlook on this all the way through but let us not relitigate all of that. 
I think that this bill in its third reading actually does all that it sets out to do. [ 
Interruption 
] OK two of them smoke; that is true. This is an excellent bill. We know that 80 percent of people who smoke wish they had never begun. Once people are addicted once they begin the process it is a very very difficult thing to give up. As W C Fields said: “Smoking is easy to give up. I’ve done it thousands of times.” It is a difficult process but we in this Government are unashamedly encouraging smokers to quit. For every 10 percent increase in the price tobacco consumption falls by 4 percent. That is good enough for me. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you. 
Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Indexation 
— 
Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 98 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 23 
Green Party 14; New Zealand First 8; Mana 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
Education (Student Allowances Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill read a third time. 
Income Tax (Working for Families Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 98 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 23 
Green Party 14; New Zealand First 8; Mana 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Social Security (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 98 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 23 
Green Party 14; New Zealand First 8; Mana 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the War Pensions (Indexation—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 98 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 23 
Green Party 14; New Zealand First 8; Mana 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
Third Readings 
Debate resumed from 27 September on the Commerce (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill the Fair Trading (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am destined to have breaks in my speech—[ 
Interruption 
]—and I am sure that keeps members opposite entertained especially Mr Maurice Williamson. Just to reiterate the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill was originally introduced by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel. It was adopted by Simon Power and now the Hon Craig Foss. It was reported back from the Commerce Committee in November 2010 and it has languished on the Order Paper but it is good to see the legislation arising from it back here in the House. 
The proposals of the legislation are part of the work programme supporting the memorandum of understanding on business law coordination with Australia—therefore the legislation aligns the systems of the two countries—where similar legislation was passed in 2007. So finally in 2013 we do catch up with Australia on this matter. The legislation certainly expects to facilitate greater reciprocal assistance from equivalent overseas regulators which is increasingly important for the effective enforcement of competition and consumer law where businesses operate in multiple jurisdictions. 
What is interesting for me in this legislation is that there are now provisions about cooperation and the flexible way in which we will engage in that cooperative relationship. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Well this is my third go at it and it feels like a bit of a conspiracy. Two weeks ago I was given 1½ minutes and a couple of hours ago I was given another 2½ minutes. This is the third go. But it is good that I have the chance to finish what I was going to say. 
As I said the Commerce (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill is a bill that we support. It puts in place some very good provisions around cooperation with Australia to give meat if you like to the memorandum of understanding that has been signed. The bit here that is of interest to me is the cooperation arrangements that the bill proposes. That seems to be the flavour of the provisions in the bill—in all of the bills now as the bill has been broken up into four. 
So it is the desire here to get regulators to cooperate to manage competition and consumer effects of transactions on domestic markets. And then in the legislation there are the provisions about how information that has been acquired compulsorily on this side of the Tasman is then to be shared with regulators across the board. That is provided for and further down in the legislation there are some safeguards that are built in about the sharing of this information. Indeed it says very clearly and very directly that the matters of maintaining confidentiality of information the storage of information the copying returning and disposal of anything that is provided and the payment costs are some of the provisions. 
It is good to see in the bills those kinds of provisions put in place. So the point here is about information sharing and maintaining the confidentiality of information. But I have to say that this is not a good week if you like to have a look at— 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: Oh it’s a great week. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Mr Bridges will soon realise exactly what I am talking about. Mr Bridges it is about maintaining the confidentiality of information. So for the member’s Government this has been a bad week where information that should have been well protected was actually made available accidentally. So there you are Mr Bridges. I say that his Government now has a bad record and therefore I am glad that this part of the legislation is here. But I hope that his Government can deliver on it because the kind of information that is collected around credit and around payments etc. is really highly confidential. 
Mr Bridges has gone quiet. I am pleased he has because he acknowledges that there are some holes in the Government’s commitment to protecting information and protecting privacy in that way. So those provisions are here. The Government has had a bad week. It has got a lot of work to get through to regain the confidence of the public around information and around maintaining the confidentiality of information. These bills enable that type of information collected here to be treated in a confidential manner when it is to be shared with our counterparts in Australia. 
There are many warnings from the recent experiences that the Government has had around ACC and around the Ministry of Social Development just a few days ago about information. So with those kinds of statements those kinds of anxieties we have about confidentiality of information we are pleased to be supporting these bills. I am glad that I finally got to finish my last comments without interruption. Thank you. 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 May I just in beginning compliment Dr Prasad on his perseverance in getting through his contribution. It has been a long haul. I am pleased to take a final call on these bills: the Commerce (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill the Fair Trading (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill which have evolved or rather been derived from the original Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill. We have been happy to support that bill throughout its rather extended journey through this House—some 4 years coming on 5 years. We were happy to support the division into the four bills that we are discussing collectively tonight. It was an appropriate and a sensible thing to do. 
In his opening remarks the Minister of Consumer Affairs on behalf of the Minister of Commerce pointed out some of the features of these bills as they emerged collectively; initially that they are intended to enhance cooperation between our Commerce Commission and its Australian counterpart and indeed the consumer and the anti-competitive regulatory bodies in other countries. That is an entirely appropriate and sensible thing to do. 
It is interesting that the notion of cooperation is emerging much more in business. Competition has its place of course and anti-competitive behaviour ought not to be tolerated but equally in the evolving and emerging language in the business sector there is much more recognition that in a small country a high level of inter-business cooperation and collaboration is a good thing. Indeed I think that notion can extend. That notion of cooperation can even extend across the Tasman given that New Zealand and Australia have some combined economic interests clearly as well as having our independent sovereign interests. But equally we should recognise that the notion of collaboration is an extremely powerful place to start looking to do business and to do well economically as well as in other ways. 
The bills contain the notion of reciprocity—that all participants be they in bilateral or multilateral arrangements should benefit. Again that is entirely sensible and appropriate otherwise what would be the motivation for other countries to participate? The notion of flexibility that these bills allow for both Government to Government and regulator to regulator relationships to be built up over time and for action to be taken at that level was particularly important. It is a long time ago now but I recall that the Commerce Committee looked at the issue of regulator to regulator engagement and to some extent that was based on recognising that otherwise we could find ourselves in the situation where the commission was having to deal potentially with half a dozen different state Governments in Australia. That simply was not feasible. There was no point to not creating this other flexibility and these other flexible arrangements. 
As I said the Greens have supported the original bill throughout its extended journey. Our only concerns initially were about the issue of the regulatory powers that allowed for an exemption in terms of the fees. We had some suspicions about that but I can say that they were allayed through the select committee process. Clearly the intention is that the exemption may be applied to small to medium sized enterprises recognising that it is not appropriate to put on a small to medium sized business the same burden or cost as that put on a larger concern a large corporate that is very likely trading across the Tasman anyway. We think that is a very good thing. 
I hope that that continues—that the Government continues to have regard for the well-being of the small to medium sized enterprises sector. I have to say that within the sector there is a great deal of concern that such support for small to medium sized enterprises seems to be conspicuous by its absence from this Government—notably for example a week or so ago at a gathering of 150-odd small to medium sized enterprises at the Small Business Summit. I was there for the third time and a third year. Labour sent a senior MP; a former Minister. 
Regrettably the Government did not seem to be able to produce a person despite the fact that the organisation organising this event for the 150-plus small to medium sized enterprises actually shifted the date of the event to accommodate the diary of the Minister for Small Business who nevertheless could not manage to be there and nor could one single member of this National-led Government which is quite extraordinary. 
These bills do give some consideration to the small to medium sized enterprises and to the small business sector and that has been as I said notable by its absence in many other contexts. The Government seems to have no interest in this sector which provides over 30 percent of employment in New Zealand and contributes something like 40 percent of value-added production in New Zealand. Small to medium sized enterprises make up something like 97 percent of all of the enterprises in New Zealand so their collective contribution is extraordinary. And we do hope that the contribution or the acknowledgment of the small to medium sized enterprise sector and its special character—which this legislation which is about to become law does recognise; these Acts as they soon will be—will not be entirely overlooked by this Government. 
Having said that it is not entirely an issue because the Greens are very very happy to pick up the cudgels to become the champions of small to medium sized enterprises because after all even our largest companies started out as small businesses. The Greens are very pleased and very happy to be involved in supporting small to medium sized enterprises helping them down a sustainability path and helping them to become contributing members of our economy to our environmental well-being and to our social well-being. 
So although this Government seems to have lost its way in supporting small to medium sized enterprises the Greens are very happy to pick up that task and continue it. So with those few comments as I say we will continue to support the progress of this legislation and we look forward to it being passed into law. Kia ora. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak on the third readings of the legislation arising from the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill. It is legislation that will be welcome. It enables greater cooperation between the Commerce Commission and our Australian counterparts as well as other overseas regulators. The legislation is particularly important because it advances the single economic market outcomes framework that was announced by our Prime Minister John Key as well as Prime Minister Rudd in 2009. 
What this legislation does is it allows for better trans-Tasman enforcement of competition and consumer laws. It enables the commission to share information with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and other regulators. It will support the work that we have been doing around consumer law reform which is also proceeding through this House. It is about international cooperation between our regulators and our foreign counterparts. It is legislation that will be good for commerce good for our country and good for jobs and opportunities here. I support the legislation. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the bills arising from the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First is supporting this legislation. We supported the original bill through the first and second readings and now we support the third readings of this legislation. 
As we have heard the primary objective of the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill was introduced on 9 September 2008 so it has taken a long time to get to this point. It is somewhat disturbing that it has taken 4 years to get through the legislative process when it does provide some assistance in terms of our Commerce Commission and dealing with its associate in Australia the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. So it is somewhat disappointing that it has taken this amount of time for that cooperation to be confirmed. 
 The new powers will also affect the Commerce Act the Fair Trading Act and the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act so they do have some ramifications for those Acts as well. The main thing in terms of this legislation is the reciprocity and the main justification for this legislation is that any assistance that is provided to the commission is then reciprocated with its sister organisation in Australia. This is achieved by requiring formal cooperation arrangements to be in place before the commission can offer any investigative assistance or information. Every such agreement must provide for the commission and the overseas regulator to provide information and assistance to each other. 
The concept of reciprocity between regulators is important. It should go without saying that the commission should not dedicate its time and limited resources to assisting an overseas regulator unless there is something to be gained by it and New Zealand consumers. The commission’s core function is to promote competition in markets for the benefit of New Zealanders. There are some safeguards in this. New Zealand firms already complain of the sluggishness of the commission to reach decisions for mergers and other investigations. For them a diversion of the commission’s limited resources away from its core function would be unwelcome. This legislation provides some safeguards in that respect. 
Cooperation arrangements must consider the potential consequences for New Zealand consumers and businesses of providing compulsorily acquired information or investigative assistance to the overseas regulator. The Minister must also have regard to the legal framework around the use of the information in that foreign jurisdiction. This should alleviate concerns that information obtained in New Zealand may be used in another jurisdiction in a manner inconsistent with New Zealand’s legal principles. The legislation also provides for the commission to seek payment from an overseas regulator of any costs it incurs in assisting. Again that is a good move so that we are not just doing things in the freebie situation and so that there are charges incurred and therefore they will be genuine inquiries that come from any sister organisations from other jurisdictions. 
The legislation seeks to better equip regulators both here and overseas to detect and deter anti-competitive behaviour. The proposed powers represent a significant inroad into international law concepts about the extraterritorial reach of domestic legislation and the powers of domestic regulators. This legislation overcomes international difficulties by providing an alternative and some may say back-door route for obtaining international legislative documents. 
Where information is to be provided to an overseas regulator the commission must advise any person to whom it relates about that unless disclosure compromises the overseas regulators or the commission’s investigation. In practice it is likely that the commission could if it so wished often argue disclosure would prejudice an investigation. For example it may tip off a company that an overseas regulator is investigating a particular industry or if the information has been received pursuant to a leniency application it could reveal the identity or existence of the whistleblower. 
The legislation also contains provisions to expressly protect privileged documents the commission receives from overseas regulators and vice versa. Existing agreements are already in place with some countries such as Canada the United Kingdom and Taiwan. These provide for cooperation on certain matters including coordinating enforcement activities and exchanging non-compulsorily acquired information or with the consent of the providing party. The legislation is an acknowledgment however that without compulsorily acquired information being able to be shared mutual cooperation is somewhat limited. These existing arrangements will likely need to be amended to incorporate the new proposed powers. 
As to the timing of the change this has been a long gestation as I said before—since 2008. It has taken 4 years. The Australian legislators have already enacted this some considerable time ago so we have been lagging in terms of our response to this. This is overdue. New Zealand First supports this legislation. We have said we support good policy when it is put up by the Government. This is good policy. It is very sad that it is long overdue policy but it does certainly give more strength to the Commerce Commission to this country and across the Tasman with its sister organisation to ensure that there is good practice in terms of our economy. New Zealand First supports this legislation. 
KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to stand and support this legislation arising from the original Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill at the third reading. The legislation leads to increasing economic performance because its main aim is to facilitate and increase cooperation between New Zealand’s Commerce Commission and its counterparts in other parts of the world particularly the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and other regulators in Australia. Needless to say the end beneficiary of this simplified process will be the end consumer as the process will promote competition and fair trading in the domestic market which will result in lower prices more choice and of course better consumer protection. 
For a small trading nation that exports almost 85 percent of what we produce it is critical that we build good relationships and that rules and regulations are agreed by our trading partners so that we can compete on a level playing field. This legislation makes it simpler for New Zealand businesses to operate in international markets and economies that have the same type of international laws and regulations as we have in New Zealand. I sincerely feel that this legislation will serve as a big help to our exporters and I commend it to the House. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on the third readings of these cognate commerce bills. As my colleagues have said we support the original bill the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill which has been divided into the following bills in the Committee of the whole House: the Commerce (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill the Fair Trading (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications (International Co-operation) Amendment Bill. 
As many people have observed the original bill was introduced by that excellent Minister of Commerce of the former Labour Government the Hon Lianne Dalziel way back in 2008—a long long time ago. It was adopted by Simon Power who has now gone elsewhere and now we have Craig Foss. It was reported back from the Commerce Committee in November 2010. Since then we have had a general election and here we are now in 2012. Finally after seeing the bill languishing on the Order Paper for some time we are finally getting to what we agree are very good bills that need to be passed tonight. 
It is very instructive to look at the report from the select committee which as I said reported back in 2010 and to look at exactly what the process was. It is hard to see looking at that why this legislation has been so difficult to pass. There were seven submissions from interested groups and individuals and the committee heard two submissions. So this was hardly controversial. There was a high level of agreement around this legislation. There was also of course advice from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Development which has since then gone through a whole other evolution. What is it called these days? Is it the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—something like that? Yes it has gone into a whole new thing. 
I was also interested in the select committee membership way back then. It is a bit of a who’s who of who was in the ACT Party in 2010 and who is no longer here. There was John Boscawen. I do not have a problem with John Boscawen. He has gone on to better things I am sure. He was on the select committee. Hilary Calvert had a very very short career in Parliament actually. I think my abiding memory of Hilary Calvert is that—you know I cannot do it—that clown face that clown thing that she did in Parliament. You know that was her face— 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: Nah nah nah it was the building with her eyes on top. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Oh OK. Yes that is right the building with her eyes on top. That is right: “This is not a sex shop”. That is the one. Also Sir Roger Douglas the Hon Sir Roger Douglas was on the select committee. As I said this is a bit of history that we are debating tonight in these third readings—a bit of history. We are looking back to some honourable members who were here for either a long time or a short time or who came back after a career when perhaps they should not have. I could probably make some analogies about current ACT members but I will not. 
The proposals in this legislation are part of the work programme supporting the Memorandum of Understanding on Coordination of Business Law with Australia. The legislation aligns us with Australia which passed similar legislation in 2007. I do have to say that it is really nice to be debating legislation in the third reading where we actually are aligning ourselves with Australia. Apart from the promises that we had from John Key in the 2008 and 2011 elections and the 2025 Taskforce which was all about catching up with Australia—remember that? Half a million dollars went to Don Brash and friends to make recommendations about how New Zealand was going to catch up with Australia. 
Of course the only thing that has caught up is this legislation. That is evident. We certainly have not caught up with wages; we are dragging way way behind Australia. John Key’s famous hoarding during the 2008 election campaign “Wave Goodbye to Higher Taxes. Not Your Loved Ones.” has become a joke. He has become a laughing stock because day by day week by week month by month and year by year tens of thousands of our kids our best and brightest are going to Australia. Actually a lot of them are in the 18-30 year age group so we are losing a lot of young people to Australia. So that promise— 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: I saw you on telly tonight having a laugh. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes that is right I did. I like laughing and I certainly like laughing when we talk about catching up with Australia. So it is really good as I said to have some things that we can talk about where we are aligning with Australia even though it passed similar legislation in 2007 which is a long time ago. It just reminds us of the dragging that this legislation has taken. Five years later here we are at the third readings passing this legislation. 
The legislation is expected to facilitate greater reciprocal assistance from equivalent overseas regulators. This is increasingly important for effective enforcement of competition and consumer law where businesses operate in multiple jurisdictions. That is an increasing issue as people are aware. We support what this legislation does with this but I think there are other issues that over time we will need to address—issues around similar jurisdictions and particularly the relationship between New Zealand and Australia. 
How often do we have people talking to us about the job they do here compared with the job they do in Australia where the wages are so much higher? They ask how that is fair and why it is different. We have this relationship with Australia we have had this treaty with Australia for so long yet New Zealand seems to be positioning itself as a low-wage country. So it is really good that we are going to be able to enforce competition in consumer law and protect people where businesses do operate in multiple jurisdictions. 
The legislation will allow Government to Government cooperation arrangements or regulator to regulator arrangements subject to ministerial approval. That was inserted by the select committee. I think that is probably a really good thing although I always have reservations about ministerial approval as well. But it is another check and balance that probably needed to be added to this legislation. 
It is interesting to read the select committee report. In submissions the Commerce Committee requested that this legislation also apply to information gathered under the Telecommunications Act. Obviously that was a big discussion at the select committee. Telecom and Vodafone opposed the inclusion of the regulations that were included in the Australian legislation but this has been included by way of a Supplementary Order Paper. We support that. 
The select committee has also recommended a consultative procedure where the commission is concerned that a request for assistance might have significant international trade implications. The commission may consult the Minister of Trade after consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and then rely on a statement by the Minister of Trade as to whether providing the information or assistance would significantly prejudice New Zealand’s international trade interests. That is a good provision because it is looking out for New Zealand’s international trade interests. 
We hope certainly that our negotiators on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement are looking out for New Zealand’s international trade interests as well as our sovereignty interests. And we will wait with interest and some anticipation that the Government will do what it says it will do. When it comes to that particular trade agreement there is a lot of concern about this. However there is a flexible regime that will come about because of this bill. It facilitates enhanced cooperation between the commission and overseas regulators and it seeks to do this while ensuring that there are appropriate safeguards in place to address public interest considerations. 
So all in all I think the Commerce Commission the select committee and others have done a very good job on this bill. There will be new powers for the Commerce Commission—statutory powers—but they can be used only in relation to enforcement and adjudication in New Zealand. There are legal constraints on the provision to overseas regulators of confidential compulsorily acquired information already held by the commission. 
Most overseas regulators consider the likelihood of reciprocity as a factor in determining whether to provide assistance or information to the commission. As I said when I started out Labour supports these cognate commerce bills. We are pleased that we have finally got to the third readings of these bills. We are pleased that we are finally passing this legislation— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: After all these years. 
DARIEN FENTON 
—after all these years—and the excellent work done by the Hon Lianne Dalziel not only as a Minister but also as a chair of the Commerce Committee. It is very fulfilling to see that the work of the former Labour Government is coming to fruition at last. Labour is very pleased to support this legislation. 
MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this the third reading of the Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill. It is very important for this country that our export and trading sector continues to grow. This bill is just part of the Government’s bigger programme—an aspirational programme—for the future growth of New Zealand and for futureproofing New Zealand for our younger generations coming through. 
Eighty percent of our economy is actually small to medium sized businesses and many of those will look to markets like Australia to want to grow into. Often they will look at the barriers and the risks associated with entering a new market like Australia. The great thing about this bill is that it actually removes a lot of those risks and a lot of those barriers for them. I am confident that with a bill like this we will see more of our businesses wishing to take the step into a new market like Australia and continuing to help the country to grow. Thank you. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Is this a split call? 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: It is Mr Speaker—5 minutes. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Thank you. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a quick call on the cognate commerce bills and in particular this telecommunications aspect. The Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill was originally introduced by Lianne Dalziel. It was adopted by Simon Power and now Craig Foss. So it has got quite a history and I know that none among us with any right mind would wish to disagree with the work of those three eminent parliamentarians. Of course Labour is supporting this legislation through. 
This legislation is part of a broader programme of work to iron out some little crinkles in the business relationship with the “West Island” and based on this progress we hope very much that we are going to address bigger and brighter things like dividend imputation in the near future. We expect that the legislation is going to facilitate greater reciprocal assistance from overseas regulators. 
It is very very important that our Commerce Commission which plays a key role in the regulation of markets is able to access experience from across the Ditch. The reasons for that are several. One is that we are a small island market and our experience across different industry sectors is—oh look Mr Speaker I know the House is going to be delighted by this news. I have just been advised that I can now speak for the full 10 minutes so I am going to detruncate the remarks. What I would like to do— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Could you spend a little bit more time praising the former Minister and— 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Now that I have longer to praise the former Minister the Hon Lianne Dalziel— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: And the chair of the select committee. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Who was the chair of the select committee? No in all seriousness let us get back to the topic which is the importance of having coordination between the regulators on both sides of the Ditch. Why is that important? In a syllable it is because the businesses are coordinated because they are cross-owned. If you are dealing with telecommunications companies like Telstra and TelstraClear just as a random example or Griffin’s Foods or Heinz-Wattie or anyone even Vodafone which is a multinational any of those companies of course has a footprint on both sides of the Tasman. They are global businesses in many cases and in the eternal game between poacher and gamekeeper it is very important that the gamekeepers have access to the same global resources and information as the poachers and that is why it is important that our regulators are unified across the Tasman. 
So there will be greater reciprocal assistance from the regulators across the Ditch allowing more Government to Government cooperation arrangements and regulator to regulator arrangements. This might not sound very important to the people out there in TV land but what it means is in the telecommunications sector for example a better chance of getting cheaper faster broadband. Pretty simple. If the companies concerned are held to a more competitive market standard it means the price you will pay for your phone bills at home will go down. The data caps you get on your internet will go up and that is a good thing. The regulators on both sides of the Tasman will be able to hold the market to account. And as the companies concerned are global companies operating on both sides of the Ditch it is very important that the regulators are able to work across both sides of the Ditch. 
The Commerce Committee has recommended a consultative procedure where the committee is concerned that a request for assistance might have significant international trade implications. The commission can consult the Minister of Trade after consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and then rely on a statement by the Minister as to whether providing the information would significantly prejudice New Zealand’s international trade interest. It is not easy to think of an actual example where this would be an issue but it is a safety valve. Let us imagine that the regulators on both sides of the Ditch want to swap information about a particular business. The proposal exists as a result of the select committee’s work for the Minister to say no. As long as it is within the international trade rules the Minister can deem that that would be severely prejudicial to the interests of a New Zealand company and can thereby say: “No. We don’t think that’s a good idea.” That seems like a reasonably practical thing for us to insert into the legislation just to make sure that Kiwi companies do not get rolled over by their larger “Kangaroo” competitors. That is a reasonable safety valve to have in there I think. We ought to acknowledge the select committee for its work. 
I think it is probably relevant and fair at this point to note the change that has occurred under the current Government in the trans-Tasman trade liberalisation negotiations. Under the previous Government the standard to which New Zealand negotiators were held was to do what was in the interests of the New Zealand public and the New Zealand economy. In the last round of the single economic market negotiations that standard was amended and it is now for the negotiators to do what is in the joint interests of the two countries. Those sharp-eared and sharp-eyed amongst you will of course understand that that means that we could now be negotiating something that is not in New Zealand’s interests as long as it was in the trans-Tasman interest. As we are the smaller partner we cannot discount the possibility that that might occur. 
I guess I would call upon the Government speakers next up to explain to the House why as the custodians for the next 18 months or so of the national interest they believe it is in New Zealand’s interest for us to subsume our negotiation objectives to those of the whole trans-Tasman market rather than to act in the interests of “New Zealand Inc.” One of the things that right across this side of the House—and just as a little aside I think the public has seen in the last week with things like the manufacturing inquiry an uplift in cooperation between New Zealand First and Labour and the Greens all acting in a very professional way together to deliver services to the public. They are seeing us act as a united Opposition to try to bring policies forward and ideas forward that will really help New Zealand go forward and hold the Government to account. So we are asking on this issue as a united Opposition why National Government are you subsuming the New Zealand interest to the trans-Tasman interest? And why then is there a risk that the New Zealand regulator might be leaned on by a Minister because they get a phone call from Canberra? I could tell a few stories about meetings in the Beehive with the representatives of major Australian corporations but perhaps it is not the occasion. 
The Commerce Commission is currently constrained from providing investigative assistance and compulsorily acquired information it holds to Australian or overseas regulators. That is an important issue. If evidence is found in perhaps a trans-Tasman monopoly issue that bears upon the behaviour or performance of the Australian parent company—let us just say it was a bank for a start—the law currently prohibits the New Zealand Commerce Commission from sharing that information with the Australian regulator. That is not a smart thing to do. If the company is cross-owned then the sheriff needs to be able to share information with the posse. That is a reasonable and prudent thing to do in order to get good governance on both sides of the Tasman. 
In general Labour thinks that this legislation is worth supporting. We acknowledge that it flows from work that has come from cooperation across the House a bipartisan approach to international trade—or hitherto bipartisan—where we are managing for New Zealand’s national interest where we acknowledge the importance to New Zealand of our status as a trading nation and the importance of fair international trade rules. We understand that for that to work you have got to have teeth amongst the regulatory systems on both sides of the Ditch and that in turn means the ability of the regulators to exchange information and ensure compliance on both sides of the Tasman. 
This is a small but positive step forward. It is not the end of the road. Looking forward to conclude my remarks on behalf of the Labour Opposition may I remind the House of the importance of whoever for the time being is sitting on the Treasury benches Mr Bridges operating in New Zealand’s national interests in particular as well as those of the trans-Tasman economy as a whole. It is New Zealand mums and dads New Zealand taxpayers who are paying our wages and in whose interests we are working. Thank you. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 Well how lucky were we to have 10 minutes instead of 5 minutes from the previous speaker the Hon David Cunliffe. I feel that all of the issues have been so well traversed that it leaves it for me simply to sum up by saying this is good legislation. It needs to be passed into law and I support it. 
Bills read a third time. 
Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 26 September. 
Part 5 Amendments to other Acts and regulations ( 
continued 
)  
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Members the House is in Committee for further consideration of the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill and for consideration of the Legislation Bill the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill and the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill. Members we come first to the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill. When the Committee last considered the bill we had reached Part 5 and the Hon David Cunliffe had the call. He has 3 minutes and 20 seconds remaining if he so wishes. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chair. That is incredibly generous of you to remember back that far and I am delighted to take up the other 3 minutes and 20 seconds. I had actually temporarily forgotten that my last soliloquy was so rudely interrupted by the clock. So let us pick it up from where we left off which of course is that the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill—which Labour supports the Chairman will be pleased to know—is part of a much broader plan that the Labour Opposition has for creating jobs by supporting our exporters to expand and to earn more and to help Kiwis get the education and skills they need to seize the job opportunities of tomorrow. It sounds pretty good does it not? But none of that is going to happen unless we have a tax system that works for our businesses and for our people. 
It is important that we grow our jobs and businesses by investing in science and innovation so that we can own the intellectual property rights that will help us command a premium in overseas markets and we also want to be able to help Kiwis save for a first home. This is a long-held and long-cherished part of the Kiwi dream that you can own your own patch of dirt but in order to achieve that we need to have a reasonable tax system that encourages homeownership. 
So how does this bill fit in? Well in general the picture that New Zealanders are seeing is that under National things are slipping backwards— 
Todd McClay 
: Oh such a good speech until now. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —the member for Rotorua—that sadly National does not have a plan for taking us forward that it is increasingly out of touch with ordinary Kiwis and that it is spending its time debating things like its defence of Dotcom actions and so forth whereas what ordinary Kiwis are saying to us is “Actually we care more about paying the bills you know? Yes Labour you’ve caught them out but it is time you came back Government to what matters to us: paying the bills putting the roof over our head getting the kids through school and making sure that the hospitals are there when they need them.” and that is what we are determined to do. 
This bill makes a very small contribution to a few good things. I am going to run through just a couple of them. It raises the employee contribution rate for KiwiSaver from 2 percent to 3 percent. The irony of that is of course that only 2 years ago National cut the KiwiSaver rate from 4 percent to 2 percent. But we are broad-minded. We are pleased to see that the Government has now admitted that it has got it wrong and it is doing a U-turn which we are now pleased to support. It is a small U-turn. The Government went from 4 percent to 2 percent and now it has gone from 2 percent to 3 percent and for National that is a revolution. It is a very small revolution. It is a step in the right direction. 
It is worth noting that Labour’s KiwiSaver plan which was taken to the last election would have increased the savings rate by four times over National’s plan—four times—and that would have been of huge benefit to savers to the banking system and to our businesses that wanted to access investment capital. Labour’s KiwiSaver Plus plan would have really guaranteed a good savings future. 
What the chopping and changing on KiwiSaver does though is it undermines New Zealanders’ confidence and it does nothing to improve our dire savings situation. So what we would recommend to the Government is that we are supporting this increase from 2 percent to 3 percent so why do you not get with the programme and increase it to 12 percent or 19 percent which is what the Australians are doing through their employer contribution? That would be real change. This is just tinkering. We are supporting it just because it is going in the right direction. It is a small step. 
The bill also confirms that GST applies to late payments. The Minister of Revenue claims that he is merely trying to clarify the law around GST on late payments but tax experts say that late payment fees neither were particularly good nor were they a service and therefore they were not supported by the first-principles approach to GST. That is complicated tax language for the fact that this confusion should never have occurred in the first place. We support the tidy-up but it really should not have been there. 
The National Government of course has bad form on GST. I am sorry to have to remind the House of this but of course we all have emblazoned in our minds the indelible picture of John Key facing the camera and recalling that he would never raise GST. And then in a sudden stroke of amnesia he forgot and he raised it and then said that he never promised he would not. It is extraordinary that bloke’s amnesia is it not? You know one minute he is running a spy agency; the next minute he cannot remember where he had lunch. It is extraordinary. One minute he is promising he will never raise GST; the next minute he is raising it and then forgetting that he had promised not to. Anyway let us let bygones be bygones. We are bigger than that. That was last election. We are preparing for the next one. We are supporting the bill. We are supporting the tidy-ups on GST but that brings me to the next issue. 
Members will recall the tax switch. That was the much-heralded idea and one of really only two ideas that the Government has had in the economic area since coming into office that it would swap increasing GST on everybody for cutting the top tax rate for rich people—very rich people—and that that would cause the economy to bloom and it would not lose money because it would be fiscally neutral. Bad idea for everybody except the top few percent because the economy did not grow and it was not tax-neutral. The taxpayer was out of pocket to the tune of $1.1 billion over 4 years. That was one of two bright ideas National brought to the table as a new Government. The other one was selling State-owned assets. Neither has made a blind bit of difference to an economy struggling to get out of the mire. 
National’s tax switch was therefore really a tax swindle. Hard-working Kiwi families ended up paying more than they needed to and they saw little in the way of tax cuts. The current Government has got more problems because as we have long suggested the Inland Revenue Department’s computer system is on the brink of falling over. What that— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Order! Part 5—I am just struggling to find the part of Part 5 that the member is referring to. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: It applies to KiwiSaver and this tax system is required to implement KiwiSaver. 
Maggie Barry 
: Drawing a long bow. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: We specialise in long bows. I will come back to Part 5. We have been on a little what we might call derivative tour through macroeconomics. We went from KiwiSaver to the savings rate. We went then to the tax system and the fiscal balance which of course is impacted by the savings and so back to KiwiSaver of course which is referred to in Part 5. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: That is a long bow. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: It is a long bow but it is relevant because what we are doing is actually cutting through the fine print to what is really important to New Zealand households and that is being able to pay the bills put a few cents away for the rainy day and make sure that they have left something for their own retirement and something for their kids. 
New Zealand needs KiwiSaver and it needs it to be bigger it needs it to be better and it needs it to be stronger and National’s record in this regard is not flash. It cut the contribution rate from 4 percent to 2 percent. In this bill it is lifting it from 2 percent to 3 percent. We think it is a good idea. We are prepared to support the bill but do not let anybody out there in listener land get the wrong impression that it is a full solution. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill. We are on Part 5 which deals with among other things changes to the KiwiSaver Act of 2006. I have to say I am surprised to be here debating a bill a measure put forward by the National Government to increase the KiwiSaver contributions to 3 percent. This is a special moment for me because one of the very first speeches I gave in this House—I think it might even have been before my maiden speech—was opposing the newly elected National Government’s decision to cut KiwiSaver contributions from 4 percent to 2 percent. I said at the time—I had only just arrived here—that I thought it was a very short-sighted measure and that 4 percent probably was not enough. Here we are and I am pleased the Government is increasing the contributions to 3 percent. In fact I think they should go back to 4 percent and potentially go higher than that. So I am very pleased to have this opportunity to talk about this decision. 
I think that moving back to 3 percent is a very sensible move. I think it was an unwise decision to drop the contribution in the first place. I am not entirely sure what the motivation behind the National Government proposing that at the time was given that the uptake of KiwiSaver was so high. I think KiwiSaver when it was first created in 2006 exceeded the then Labour Government’s expectations manyfold. I do not think it was possible to anticipate that so many people would sign up for KiwiSaver. It was hugely popular and I remember watching Michael Cullen continuously ticking off milestones in the KiwiSaver scheme. I think that was really fantastic. I think it was therefore confusing when the incoming National Government decided to cut it in half without any real justification for doing so because it was clear that 4 percent did not provide a barrier to people wanting to sign up for KiwiSaver. They were already signing up for KiwiSaver in large numbers at 4 percent and so the argument that more people would sign up for it if we dropped the contribution rate to 2 percent was in fact a little bit of a folly. So I am very pleased to see that it is going up to 3 percent now. 
There is another interesting aspect to this which is that we want to encourage retirement savings generally. Dropping the KiwiSaver contribution from 4 percent to 2 percent created some inequities in the system whereas the Government had previously provided other superannuation schemes that were more generous than 2 percent but less generous than 4 percent. For example when I was a public sector employee I was a member of the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme and that has a contribution rate of 3 percent. When KiwiSaver was introduced future public servants were prevented from signing up to be members of that scheme on the basis that everyone could sign up for KiwiSaver. It was more generous there was a bigger contribution and therefore they were better off doing that. When the Government cut that to 2 percent it created some real unfairness because it meant that newer people signing up to be public servants—and we want people to sign up to work in the public service and serve New Zealanders—were being penalised and they were being disadvantaged because they could no longer get the 3 percent employer contribution that they might have been able to get before KiwiSaver was introduced and before membership to the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme was cut off. So this bill now brings KiwiSaver back up to that rate. I think that is very good and I am sure it will be welcomed by the people who would otherwise have missed out on that extra 1 percent employer contribution. 
There is an interesting provision in new section 112B inserted by clause 157B about non-deduction notices. I have not had a chance to study this in great detail with reference back to the principal Act and of course when you are reading an amendment bill without making reference to the principal Act sometimes things are not always as clear as they might otherwise be. But by my reading of this matter people can whenever they want to issue a non-deduction notice to their employer and stop their KiwiSaver contributions and the employer contributions would also cease at that point. Previously you needed the approval I believe of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue or his or her delegated agent in order to cease your contributions to the KiwiSaver scheme. What I am wondering is whether these non-deduction notices remove that requirement. Can anybody just opt out of KiwiSaver whenever they feel like it or will they still need that waiver if you like from the Commissioner of Inland Revenue? Certainly read on its own that is what that section would suggest but as I say I have not got the principal Act in front of me to refer back to and it may well be that there are sections in the principal Act that I have missed that might actually cover that issue. 
There are some other interesting provisions in Part 5 in particular the provision relating to unsuccessful software development in new section DB 31B inserted by clause 163. Section DB 31B(1) states: “This section applies when a person incurs expenditure in the development of software for use in the person’s business if—(b) the development of the software is abandoned before the software is fit to be used in the person’s business;”. I think it is really important to note that Government software development does not come in under this category here because as we have seen in recent days and weeks the Government is not doing particularly well when it comes to software development and how it manages information within departments. I think maybe we do need to look at how we could incentivise the Government to up its game here. Obviously a tax deduction is a bit pointless because the money would go back to the Government in the first place but there is merit in discussing how we could get the Government’s software development and IT project development sharpened up a little bit in light of recent announcements and recent debates that have taken place in this House. 
There are some other interesting provisions in this part such as clause 166 “Spreading forward of deductions for repairs to fishing boats”. I have to say that is an interesting topic. I am sure the owners of the fishing boats will be very very pleased with these amendments. So on that note I would finally say that the Labour Party is supporting this bill because it contains many measures that we do support and particularly I am pleased— 
Dr David Clark 
: What about cabbage boats? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: What about cabbage boats? That is a good point actually. I have just thought of another 5 minutes! Will this amendment to the repairs of fishing boats apply to cabbage boats that Mr Banks might be wanting to come into the country on? That is a very good question. I do not know because the definition of a fishing boat—from just glancing through it—is defined under the Fisheries Act 1983. I do not know what the definition of a fishing boat is. I am not sure whether John Banks’ cabbage boats would necessarily come in under that but I am sure that one of the other members of the Opposition or the Minister in the chair the Minister of Consumer Affairs might be able to clear that up for us. He is nodding his head so I am feeling very optimistic. I think he is misleading me though because I get the sense that he is not going to take the next call and answer all my questions. I am going to be bitterly bitterly disappointed by that because I think there are many issues to be cleared up particularly this new revelation that has just arisen a few moments ago that in fact John Banks’ cabbage boat could be covered by this exemption or these requirements around certain repairs to fishing boats. That is a very interesting development and one that I think it would be interesting to hear the Minister’s feedback on. 
I was winding up before and David Clark kindly gave me some new material to work from but finally I just want to summarise by saying that the Labour Party supports this bill. We are very pleased with the KiwiSaver amendments in particular. We do not think that the Government did the right thing in cutting KiwiSaver contributions from 4 percent to 2 percent particularly at a time when the Government was saying it wanted New Zealanders to save more money and its decisions around KiwiSaver certainly went in the opposite direction. So we are very pleased to see it going back to 3 percent and the Labour Party will be supporting this piece of legislation. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Senior Whip—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I am taking a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill. We also will be supporting this bill and now that we are on to Part 5 of the bill we certainly also support the whole new structure in terms of the employer contributions for KiwiSaver returning to 3 percent from 2 percent having been reduced from 4 percent a year or two ago by the National Government. It is somewhat ironic that having halved them the Government is now increasing them by 1 percent back up to 3 percent and one wonders why it dabbled with the KiwiSaver scheme in the first place when it was working so well. 
There is a little bit at the moment of a feeling of rearranging of the deckchairs on the  
Titanic 
 when it comes to this Government at the present time. There seems to be an awful lot of tinkering around the edges when it comes to some of these taxation things as we have heard earlier in the evening on other taxation matters where the Government seems to be intent on just tinkering with the trivial in taxation while leaving the big-picture stuff aside. 
In that respect I have already spoken in the House tonight about the several billion dollars in tax deductions for the wealthy in this country that resulted in us in an earlier bill having to look at the CPI adjustments to do with the cigarette excise and here we are looking at putting up the percentages again. Again there is an awful lot of tinkering without solid results. In fact here is a situation where the Government is having to basically concede that it was wrong on the KiwiSaver deductions. So hopefully this will help increase the savings of Kiwis with the contributions from employers increasing to 3 percent and it will help the ongoing savings of New Zealanders for their retirement in the future. 
But it is interesting looking at some of the other clauses in this bill. The previous Labour speaker Chris Hipkins also mentioned about the software deductions and that if you have failed software then you can have the appropriate tax deductions. Presumably this will not apply to the likes of Work and Income and to other Government departments that have had some colossal software failures obviously in recent weeks under this Government and where there have been some huge huge holes found in the software and in the access of our computer systems in some of the Government departments. So it is somewhat ironic that if you have failed software you will be able to get deductions under this new taxation. Perhaps they could foresee that there were going to be some of these problems with some of these Government departments. 
But it is also interesting when it comes to clause 172(1) under “Fees” that in terms of departmental consultation the fees are going to be increased from $50 to $150 in terms of deductions for consultants such as valuers engineers and architects in obtaining advice as to the estimated useful life or estimated residual value of the property to which the application relates. And is it not interesting that we have a Government that often complains about the rising cost for instance of charges by local government and that local government has been exceeding its charges exorbitantly according to some of the National Party members and increasing the charges colossally. And here this Government is increasing the fees in relation to this regulation from $50 threefold to $150. That is a pretty jolly good increase by anyone’s standard to put forward a threefold—300 percent—increase in fees. So again it is a little bit like the bull in the china shop or throwing stones in glasshouses. This Government is quite happy to put up fees by three times but then criticises other parts of local government and other parts of all sorts of things that simply are doing their job and this Government sees no problem at all. 
So New Zealand First will be supporting this bill but it is very mindful of the fact that once again a lot of this is overdue a lot of it is tinkering a lot of it should never have happened in the first place in the case of the KiwiSaver changes. Basically as I said before the deckchairs of the  
Titanic 
 continue to be rearranged. We hope that finally one day this Government will get things on an even course so we do not have to have these sorts of bills coming to the House. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 98 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to Part 5 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 5 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Part 5 as amended agreed to. 
Clause 1 Title 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 1 be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 Commencement 
The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 98 in his name to clause 2 be agreed to: 
to insert before the amendment to subclause (6B) the following amendment: 
Subclause (6): replace “Section 137” with “Section 137(1) and (2)”.; and 
to omit the amendment to subclause (10B). 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments to the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Amendments to the amendments agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 98 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to clause 2 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Amendments as amended agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 8; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Clause 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently. 
Legislation Bill 
In Committee 
Part 1 General provisions 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee stage of the Legislation Bill. As of course we are all aware the Legislation Bill is designed to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation bringing them together in a single piece of legislation. So that is an excellent move in respect of this particular piece of legislation and that is something that we all support in this House—in fact we welcome it. I think that it is an important advance in the way that we are able to bring together the legislation into the one single format. 
This bill was introduced to Parliament on 25 June 2010 and normally I would make some reflection as to the time that it has taken to return to the House in the Committee stage. I think Mr Chairman would know that normally I would be somewhat critical of such a delay but I am not critical of the delay in this particular instance because I believe that the legislation is so important. 
In many respects it is not the sort of legislation that as my husband might use the phrase smokes your tyres. He always uses that expression. Something that is particularly exciting is something that smokes your tyres. This does not normally smoke the tyres of anyone I know but the truth is that it is really important legislation and it is worth taking the time in order to put the effort in and in order to make it really worthwhile. So a lot of people who are tuning in to their crystal sets tonight will be thinking that this is a very technical and a very dull bill but I can assure those people who are listening tonight that this is anything but certainly for this side of the House and for certain members on both sides of the House. For a lot of members of the House this will be a technical and dull bill but those of us who have been here for some time will know that it is a really important part of making sure that our legislation speaks to our modern environment rather than reflecting that which has come before. 
There are elements around this particular law though that I do think are worth reflecting on as we deal with the Legislation Bill in the Committee stage. I really would like the Attorney-General to speak to a particular issue that I want to put on the table and it relates to a former Leader of the House and Attorney-General Sir Michael Cullen who believed very strongly that the Parliamentary Counsel Office should report to the Leader of the House as opposed to the Attorney-General. I personally think that he was on the right track with that and I really would like the Attorney-General to respond to that because it was a comment made by a former Attorney-General. 
The reason I support it is that in fact the Leader of the House controls the agenda of the House controls the Order Paper and looks after the legislative programme. I remember as a former Minister having to negotiate quite a hard bargain from time to time to get bills that I wanted on that programme. Often the point at which it was held back was when the Parliamentary Counsel Office was not able to prioritise that work. Therefore rather than having the Attorney-General being the Minister responsible for parliamentary counsel it actually made good sense to have the Leader of the House with that particular role. Actually the more that we debated this issue—because we did have quite a long discussion about this when we were in Government—and the more we had the discussion around the different roles that were brought to bear in this regard there was not a vote as it were that sat with the role of Leader of the House and it made good sense for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to be the basis for a vote to be allocated. 
I will give you an example of where that particularly worked. I want to go back perhaps more than 10 years now back to the last time when the sale of liquor legislation was before the House with any sorts of substantive amendments. Of course in those days all parties operated under a conscience vote. As a result of a number of different amendments that were going to be moved during the Committee stage of the sale of liquor amendment legislation that we had in front of us at that time the Attorney-General was asked to make provision for parliamentary counsel to be available to private members—to individual members—to assist in the drafting of amendments. The reason that this occurred was to ensure that under a conscience vote scenario if legislation was to be amended by way of a Supplementary Order Paper by a member at least it would be drafted in a form that would work. Again that really reflected back to me. 
I am trying to remember who the Minister was at the time. I know that Tony Ryall was the Minister of Justice when the legislation went through but I cannot recall whether it was still Doug Graham in those days who was the Attorney-General. But whoever it was they did make the Parliamentary Counsel Office available for the amendments that were going through. It did strike me at the time that it would actually go a lot better with the role of Leader of the House. 
In terms of the good order of the House around the question—particularly in conscience vote areas and I know that there are fewer of those today—it did seem to me that it made a lot of sense for that to occur. So I really would appreciate the Attorney-General actually responding to that issue. I know that Sir Michael Cullen would have felt—well I think he would appreciate the fact that the House was considering this particular issue in the context of the Legislation Bill in front of us tonight. So I do ask the Attorney-General whether he would respond to that particular question. I do actually think that it has a lot of merit. 
I want to mention just one other example of when this particular issue came to light and that was when I was part of a select committee that was looking at constitutional arrangements. Again this dates back a number of years. I think it was just prior to 2005—it might have been 2004 or 2005. I was involved in a small select committee that was established for the purpose of looking at constitutional arrangements and I recall that Peter Dunne I think was the chair of that particular committee. We traversed a whole range of different issues around constitutional matters including this whole question of whether a vote should apply to the Leader of the House and whether there were grounds for particular support around some of the constitutional issues that would arise in terms of the House and the roles of private members arose on that occasion as well. So even though it is not obviously a part of this bill in the sense that it was not a proposition that the Government did pick up I would actually appreciate having the Attorney-General on record in response to that particular issue because it is an important one. 
The point that I really wanted to make was how important these sorts of legislative measures are. There is a lot of serious work that goes on behind the scenes to modernise the rules around legislation. I think that for legislation to be accessible and available to people generally we do have to have a serious look at these kinds of legislative improvements from time to time. 
The select committee looked at the regulations disallowance changes proposed in the bill as well—the provisions in the bill that separate the publication and the disallowance of delegated legislation in the broad definition of “disallowable instrument”. That is designed to ensure that there will be parliamentary oversight of the use of delegated powers by the executive and to make it more difficult to avoid disallowance. I also agree with that. I think it is very important that we are able to hold the executive to account which is the proper process of the Regulations Review Committee and parliamentary process in general. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I want to make a couple of points about Part 1 of the Legislation Bill. The purposes of the bill are set out in clause 3. The first is that the new Act should bring together the main provisions of New Zealand legislation relating to the drafting publication and reprinting of legislation and the disallowance of instruments. The other purposes include providing for electronic and printed copies of Acts and legislative instruments to be published to provide for official versions of Acts and legislative instruments to be published in electronic form—at the moment the only authoritative form is the written form—and to facilitate the production of up-to-date reprints that are modernised and made consistent with current drafting practice concerning their mode of expression style and format. 
The next purpose is a very significant one because it relates to accessibility. This is a principle that the Regulations Review Committee has stressed the importance of a number of times. The bill expressly sets out to make New Zealand statute law more accessible more readable and easier to understand. It sets out to do so by means of facilitating a progressive and systematic revision of the New Zealand statute book so that statute law is rationalised and arranged more logically inconsistencies and overlaps will be removed obsolete and redundant provisions will be repealed and expression style and format will be more modernised and made more consistent. Another important purpose of the legislation is to enable certain kinds of subordinate legislation to incorporate material by reference in reliance on the statute subject to compliance with consultation and other requirements. 
Members will know that the phenomenon of the incorporation of material by reference into our law is an increasingly common phenomenon particularly as we adopt international legal standards. It is not uncommon for legislation these days to refer for example to Treaty provisions that are extraneous to the statute itself and which are not necessarily even scheduled to the statute as used to be the practice. There is often a reference in the schedule to where the provisions of the Treaty can be found. So it is important that we are clear about how material incorporated by reference into the laws of the land is able to be found by the reader so that the reader may ascertain on any occasion what the law of the land is. 
Finally the legislation will replace an Act of Parliament that is many many years old—the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920. It will replace it with modern legislation that continues the Parliamentary Counsel Office but as a separate statutory office that facilitates the drafting and publishing of high-quality legislation. Those are all purposes with which the Opposition wishes to associate itself. Listeners to the debate might be wondering why this set of aims is necessary and what is wrong with the status quo. Perhaps what they might like to think about is the way in which statutes are published and accessible at the moment. When they are published Acts of Parliament are ordered chronologically which means that the user looking for an Act on a particular topic is likely to have trouble knowing exactly where to look for it unless they have an index or unless they are searching on the internet for electronic copies of the legislation. 
The law on any one particular topic could be scattered through an entire range of Acts. All of the content of an Act may not be indicated by its title. Provisions about certain matters can be located in all sorts of unlikely or unexpected Acts unless the reader or the searcher has a degree of legal training and knows because of that training where to look. Sometimes it might be quite a surprise to find particular provisions where they are actually located. 
Amending Acts sometimes contain substantive provisions that stand separately from the Act being amended and these can be easily missed when searching for provisions on a particular subject. Obviously some Acts are old drafted in archaic language that is difficult to understand or drafted in a style that because it is not compatible with contemporary usage is just not accessible to the reader today. 
Acts can be amended several times before they are replaced and this can mean that there are inconsistencies in drafting style between the original and the inserted provisions in the same Act. In addition redundant and obsolete provisions can remain in force and although the Parliamentary Counsel Office is responsible for publishing Acts of Parliament it does not have an express function relating to the presentation or accessibility of public Acts. When formulating policy Government departments do not always treat accessibility of statute law as a priority. 
So I am hopeful given the aims of the legislation that those are some of the problems that we currently face in accessing our statute law that will be remedied by this bill. Certainly that was the hope that was expressed by a number of submitters to the Regulations Review Committee and the committee has done its best to ensure that in reporting a draft of the bill back to the House the principles that I have listed will be preserved as we enact the legislation. 
Just a word about the background to the bill. The bill will implement the majority of the legislative recommendations made in two Law Commission reports: first  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 dating back to October 2008 NZLC R104 and  
Review of the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 
 from May 2009 NZLC R107. Many of the problems that I listed earlier are identified in those reports and the bill is an attempt to address a number of them. 
The Minister has tabled I see a 27-page Supplementary Order Paper and it would be I think helpful to know while we have had a chance to read Supplementary Order Paper 127 at least cursorily whether the Supplementary Order Paper makes any substantive changes to the aims of the legislation and the purposes of the bill. Obviously it would be helpful if that were the case for him to address any of those changes so that the Committee is clear as to what we are doing as far as recommendations that might differ from the reported-back version from the Regulations Review Committee are concerned. 
Perhaps also just a word here about the legislative history. The bill was considered by the Regulations Review Committee of the previous Parliament. The deputy chair from the committee is present in the Chamber. There was I think at one point a proposal from the Attorney-General that this legislation should be combined with the Regulatory Standards Bill and apparently that does explain some of the delay in bringing the legislation back to the House. I think the Attorney-General would agree that it was considered not proper to combine this legislation with the regulatory standards legislation given that the latter bill does not have wide support across the Parliament whereas as my understanding is concerned this Legislation Bill does have that support. So it has been decided to now bring this bill forward in its current form back from the select committee with the reasonably substantial Supplementary Order Paper that I mentioned. If my understanding is correct if the Minister in the chair can confirm that then certainly that is a move and an approach that the Opposition would support. 
This legislation is good technical remedial legislation. It would not have been appropriate to combine it with legislation that advances a particularly partisan agenda from the ACT Party as the Regulatory Standards Bill is intended to do. With those few words of introduction on Part 1 I certainly look forward to and anticipate the rest of the debate with interest. 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 This is an important piece of legislation and a very worthy piece of legislation. In equal amounts it is very technical and very dull which probably explains why all the speakers tonight on this bill the Legislation Bill with my exception will be lawyers. They thrive on this sort of thing. Labour will be supporting it. It looks like a common-sense bill and certainly not before its time when you consider that one of the pieces of legislation that the bill replaces is the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920. Well that was 92 years ago. That was a different age and it is really quite remarkable that a piece of legislation could have survived this length of time albeit with amendment but in its original form. Because the legislation has been there for 92 years I guess it is understandable that this legislation has sat around since the Regulations Review Committee heard submissions on it about 2½ years ago. So it is not the sort of legislation that the Government has given any particular priority to notwithstanding its worthy nature. In fact I see the closing date for submissions was 23 September 2010. Almost exactly 2 years later the Minister brings to the House an extensive Supplementary Order Paper which runs into 23 pages. Because this bill is about drafting and printing one wonders why the Supplementary Order Paper has come in and those technical changes were necessitated so long after the submissions were received and the select committee looked at it. Maybe the Attorney-General can give an explanation for that. 
Essentially what this bill does is to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation and it brings them together in one piece of legislation. Well I think that is an important first point. It replaces three pieces of legislation: the 1920 Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act which I have mentioned and two pieces of legislation from 1989 the Acts and Regulations Publication Act and the Regulations (Disallowance) Act. So it is always good that in the myriad tomes of statutes we can try to consolidate down legislation into one piece. In fact the first purpose of the bill under Part 1 is set out “to bring together in this Act the main provisions of New Zealand legislation that relate to the drafting publication and reprinting of legislation and the disallowing of instruments:”. So that is certainly something to be said in its favour. 
Because it is a modernising Act it also provides as well as for printed copies of Acts for there to be electronic copies. The old days when people studied for long hours over dusty books in the law library have been replaced with most people having access to legislation online and that certainly has been an improvement as well. The bill sets out as a purpose the facilitation of the production of up-to-date reprints that are modernised and consistent with current drafting practice particularly in terms of expression style and format. That is a good thing. What so much of this legislation is about is to try to make Acts of Parliament less impenetrable for the average citizen. I am going to come to the really important part of this legislation and what the Law Commission actually said about that in just one moment. 
The bill also sets out as its purpose “to make New Zealand statute law more accessible readable and easier to understand by facilitating the progressive and systematic revision of the New Zealand statute book …”. What it tries to do in that sense is to rationalise and arrange statute law more logically and that is praiseworthy; to remove inconsistencies and overlaps and certainly the legislation will benefit from that; to repeal obsolete and redundant provisions and if you can make the legislation shorter again that makes it more comprehensible; and to modernise the expression style and format and make sure it is consistent. I note what the Law Commission said which is at the heart of this legislation and this was in its  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 that came out way back in October 2008. I want to quote from it because I think it is the heart and the soul of the legislation: “The state has an obligation to make law accessible to citizens. People have to obey the law; ignorance of it is no excuse. So they need to be able to find it and understand it. They will not respect the law if they cannot. Moreover law which is not accessible is expensive in terms of both time and money.” It is notable that this legislation—I mean it is very hard to find any politics in this legislation—actually comes out of two reports by the Law Commission. I want to acknowledge the work of the Law Commission because this is the sort of thing that actually you would be waiting forever for if it was the Ministry of Justice that was responsible for putting it together. The Law Commission put out first of all the  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 in October 2008 and then a year later the  
Review of the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 
. 
I think it is important to go over what was wrong with the existing law why we have this very large new piece of legislation and why it is necessary. There are a number of things I think we need to take into account. Acts of Parliament are ordered chronologically which means that the user who is looking for an Act on a particular topic is likely to have trouble in knowing where to look for it. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the law on one topic can be scattered across any one of a number of different Acts. That makes it very hard for somebody who is trying to understand the law in a particular area. We need to address that. All of the content of an Act might not be indicated by its title which again makes it more difficult for people to find. Sometimes the legal provisions about particular matters are located in very unlikely sounding Acts and that is a frustration for people trying to follow the law as well. Amending Acts sometimes contain substantive provisions that are actually separate from the Act that is being amended and therefore you can miss that when you are looking for the provisions on a particular subject. 
A lot of the Acts that we are dealing with—and you have only to walk out into the lobbies and pick up some copies of the statute book to see that—are old drafted in archaic language that is difficult to understand and drafted in a style again that is not accessible. Acts can be amended several times before being replaced—God knows how many times the Crimes Act has been amended and it still has not been replaced. One day there will be a Government with the time or the courage or the stupidity to take on that particular task. But because of those amendments it can mean that there are inconsistencies in drafting style between the original and the inserted provisions in the same Act. You are clearly looking at something that appears to be scissors and paste in how it is put together. It lacks coherence it lacks consistency it lacks flow and again that is not desirable. Sometimes when the National Party is really desperate and it is looking for a member’s bill it repeals things that nobody has thought about nobody cares about and that have not been seen for many years. The truth is that you get redundant and obsolete provisions that remain in force for a very long time. That is one of the— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: John Banks. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Sometimes members of Parliament come into that category too my colleague Lianne Dalziel very—well I would not say unfairly I think it is absolutely fair—unkindly suggested that John Banks might be redundant and obsolete. One wonders why he is in the House—a dead man walking. The last point to come back to— 
Maggie Barry 
: People in glass houses. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes people in glass houses. Well tell us about it. One day Maggie Barry somebody will explain why somebody who lies can retain a ministerial portfolio. Can you explain that? Not you Mr Chairman but Maggie Barry if she wants to worry about glass houses. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I know. I will come back to the point. I have been distracted by that unfortunate intervention from that unfortunate member. So what you can see from what I have been saying right up to date—trying to make this non-political because essentially the bill is non-political—is that there are real problems with the status quo and we need to make those changes. If we look at the summary of the provisions the Parliamentary Counsel Office which is the key agency here will be required to publish legislation electronically and in printed form. It will issue official versions of legislation in both forms. This provision is a sensible one. We support it. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Legislation Bill. Many of my colleagues have already spoken at length on this bill and what it seeks to do. And they spoke very well. We heard from Lianne Dalziel who got up and told us that although this was not a very exciting piece of legislation and was not legislation that would smoke your tyres it was indeed very important legislation that needs good consideration by this House. 
Then we heard Charles Chauvel in a much more tempered way call this bill good technical remedial legislation—he did not go down the “smoke your tyres” route. And then Phil Goff called it technical and dull and said that he was going to be the only non-legal to take a call on it—well I join you in taking a call on this bill. In fact Charles Chauvel and I decided that you got the gold star for finding politics in this bill. 
In all seriousness this is an incredibly important piece of legislation. As colleagues have set out what it is doing is both modernising and improving the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation. At its core what this bill is about is making the laws that we make in this House accessible to the people whom we make those laws for. I think that is an incredibly important piece of work. 
This bill was very carefully considered at the Regulations Review Committee under the excellent chairmanship of Charles Chauvel. It is important that it had such a thorough examination at the select committee because it deals with important constitutional matters as previous speakers have talked about. What this bill does is provide unelected officials greater power to change the words agreed to by this Parliament in terms of the law of New Zealand. These provisions are carefully constructed to ensure that the powers are limited only to obvious errors. This should be the case; we need to make sure that we have tight controls around this when we have unelected officials making changes to what we enact in this Chamber and the laws that we make here. 
In terms of clause 3 “Purposes” what we see is that there is a very great purpose in this bill. The provisions giving the Parliamentary Counsel Office the power to correct errors are sensible. In fact they not only are sensible but will also be of great assistance to this Parliament. However any time that we propose to transfer this power as I said we must make sure that that transfer is wise. I think that this legislation has achieved this. 
The bill also establishes the very important practice of revision bills which will be overseen by the Attorney-General. This will provide for the revision of the wording the numbering the title etc. of Acts of Parliament. The aim of these bills will be to simplify New Zealand’s legislation and make it easier to access and understand by embarking on a 3-yearly programme of systematic revision. 
I note that in the regulatory impact statement the Chief Parliamentary Counsel has considered the cost of what this revision will be. He says that it is not possible to quantify with any precision the cost associated with a statutory programme of revision because it will depend on the size and nature of that programme. A programme of 3 or 4 revision bills per year would approximate to around $220000 per annum of additional cost to the Parliamentary Counsel Office but $220000 is a small price to pay to make the laws that we make more accessible to people. 
Many members have spelt out the status quo and what is wrong with it. Acts of Parliament are ordered currently in terms of chronology. That means it is hard for ordinary members of the public who are looking for an Act on a particular topic to know where exactly to look for it because things are scattered all over the place. We need to consolidate this and bring this together. 
All the content of an Act might not be indicated by its title. There are laws and provisions contained in Acts with titles that would never lead you to suspect that that is what you are looking for. Amending Acts sometimes contain substantive provisions that stand separately from the Act being amended and these can be missed when people search for the provisions on a particular subject. So when the Parliamentary Counsel Office publishes law it has an express function relating to the presentation and accessibility of public Acts. When formulating policy Government departments do not always treat accessibility of statute law as a key priority. When they are putting together policy and putting together legislation whether or not people can access it and find it easily is not their key concern. 
My colleague Phil Goff talked about the Law Commission saying that it was going to save a lot in terms of time and money making this process much simpler for it. The Law Commission has gone back to some very clear research on the values of plain drafting of legislation. Several pieces of research have found that untidiness and obscurity in statute law are likely to add to the costs of providing legal advice about rights and obligations to Government businesses and the public generally. 
So what we have here in this legislation is not only an ability to make law more accessible to the public of New Zealand more generally but also an ability to make it more accessible to the Government when it goes about its business and to New Zealand businesses when they are going about their everyday work and running their businesses. Anything that seeks to modernise bring together and make what we do here in making laws for New Zealanders more accessible is something that we are happy to commend to the House. Thank you. 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Motion agreed to. 
Part 1 agreed to. 
Part 2 Law relating to publishing reprinting and revising legislation 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Legislation Bill is divided into three subparts—a bit like Gaul. Subpart 1 deals with requirements and responsibilities for publishing legislation. The Chief Parliamentary Counsel will be required under the bill to arrange for the publication of copies of every Act enacted after the commencement of the legislation copies of all legislative instruments—which is the term that is used in the legislation broadly to describe delegated legislation—any reprints of Acts and legislative instruments any reprints of regulations made before the commencement of the section and finally reprints of imperial enactments and imperial subordinate legislation that remain in force as part of the laws of New Zealand. 
The innovation that will be required by the bill is that not only is there to be a definitive written copy of the legislation which is to be the responsibility for publication of the Parliamentary Counsel Office but there will be an authoritative electronic version of legislation as well. Clause 6(2) requires that every Act must be published in electronic form after enactment and clause 6(3) requires there to be a copy of every legislative instrument in electronic form. The rest of the clause carries on the scheme that I have begun to describe. Then there are provisions around availability sale of physical copies and availability of electronic versions. There are also provisions around the numbering of legislative instruments and notice of making legislative instruments all of which are sensible machinery provisions that will assist with the accessibility questions that were referred to in the debate concerning Part 1. 
One of the other things that the bill will enable when it is passed is a more logical way of accessing delegated legislation and that is certainly something that I think people will welcome generally. At the moment the regulations are well accessible if they are actual regulations in the strict legal sense of the term but there are a whole range of other types of delegated legislation that are much more difficult to access and it is hoped I think that the provisions of the bill will make that sort of thing much easier to locate and read. 
There is a sensible provision around the power to revoke or otherwise declare ineffective or no longer effective a legislative instrument. That is a power that the Governor-General will have on advice from the Attorney-General. The re-enactment of provisions around judicial notice of Acts regulations and legislative instruments and confirmation of the official status of both electronic and written versions of legislation—all those are very sensible provisions as I have said. Particularly in this age where a whole new generation has become quite accustomed to locating reading and using material that is not in printed form at all any more—it is all simply online—this is a useful probably overdue innovation. It is good that a number of years after the Law Commission recommendations around these matters we are finally moving to enact them. 
Subpart 2 of Part 2 deals with reprints. There are some sensible provisions around empowering the Chief Parliamentary Counsel to make changes around gender-neutral language and changes around updating references so that references for example to Her Majesty the Queen can be automatically changed to references to the Sovereign in keeping with contemporary usage and references are able to be changed automatically around the content of legislation and schedules. As I say they are all measures that make a lot of sense and ought to make for much more efficient updating of our body of laws. They are ones that we commend. 
Probably the most interesting part of Part 2 though is the provisions around revision bills which are contained in Subpart 3. 
Denis O’Rourke 
: Fascinating! 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I know that my New Zealand First colleague is raring to speak on this particular issue. He is greatly excited by the notion of revision bills. But seriously the bill will require that the Attorney-General provide each new Parliament with a draft 3-yearly revision programme. The revision programme will be presented to the House as soon as practicable after it has been approved by the Government. 
Basically revision bills can do a number of things. They can revise the whole or part of one or more Acts and for that purpose combine or divide Acts or parts of Acts; they can adopt a title that is different from the title or titles of the Acts or parts of the Acts being revised; they can omit redundant and spent provisions and renumber and arrange provisions from Acts being revised or parts of Acts; they can make changes in language format and punctuation to achieve a clear consistent gender-neutral and modern style of expression; they can include new or additional purpose provisions outline or overview provisions examples diagrams graphics and flowcharts; they can include new or additional provisions alerting users of the revision to enactments that are not incorporated in the revision but are relevant to the subject matter of the revision; they can correct typographical punctuation and grammatical errors and other similar errors; they can make minor amendments to clarify Parliament’s intent or reconcile inconsistencies between provisions; they can update monetary amounts other than an amount specified for the purpose of jurisdiction or an offence penalty with regard to movements in the CPI; they can omit forms and schedules and instead authorise the matters in those forms and schedules to be prescribed by or under regulations; they can make consequential amendments to enactments that are not incorporated or are incorporated only in part in the revision; and they can include any necessary repeals savings and transitional provisions. 
Then there are some safeguards that are built into the legislation around revision bills so that they are not able to be misused. There has to be a certification that a bill is in fact a revision bill. The certifiers are to be the president of the Law Commission the Solicitor-General a retired judge nominated by the Attorney-General and the Chief Parliamentary Counsel. 
This provision relating to revision bills really is an important part of the legislation in respect of the objects that I referred to in my earlier contribution. It will allow for mechanical updating in a sensible way that is not provided for at the moment. It is really a very important piece of the bill. It is a subpart that the Regulations Review Committee considered in some detail. We did recommend some amendments which I am pleased to see are largely being adopted. One thing that is not dealt with in the bill but was dealt with in the Law Commission report is the necessity to come up with some new Standing Orders to facilitate the changes that will be made by Subpart 3 when revision bills become a reality. I am sure that the Attorney-General has given this careful consideration and is already working with the Office of the Clerk to ensure that these new Standing Orders are recommended to the Standing Orders Committee. They will be required. There was some suggestion that we ought to deal with these machinery Standing Order - type issues in the bill itself but we on advice agreed with the position that that was really a matter for the House. It was for the procedure of the House itself and it was something the Standing Orders Committee would need to come to in due course in order to operationalise. It will be I think a welcome move to see those provisions in particular and those new Standing Orders come into force and to see the very commendable innovations that Part 2 will enact. 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First supports the Legislation Bill wholeheartedly. We think it is a very good piece of legislation. Indeed we think it is high time that this country had it. I would like to begin by acknowledging the work of the Ministers involved of the Regulations Review Committees past and present and also of course of the officials who have been involved in producing this very good piece of legislation. For me I think the improvements it will make to public access—what I call understandability and what is called navigability in the regulatory impact statement—are the most important aspects of the bill. I can tell you that when I was admitted to the Bar in 1972 things were a lot more difficult for people then when they tried to navigate their way through legislation. I remember staggering into courtrooms with arms full of statutes or regulations in case I had to refer to some obscure part of one of them and track my way through various amendments. So Phil Goff’s reference to dusty volumes was very real for me in those days. But of course things have much improved and this particular bill is going to make things better still. I think accessibility and understandability not just for judges and lawyers but particularly for the public are what I particularly like about this piece of legislation. 
It is very important legislation dull though it may be to many people because it does govern the drafting of legislation in this country. It also concerns some new definitions of roles for the Chief Parliamentary Counsel. Principally it will be replacing the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 which is an old and rather out-of-date piece of legislation the Acts and Regulations Publication Act 1989 and the Regulations (Disallowance) Act 1989. More important still will be the programme for a 3-yearly review on a systematic basis of New Zealand legislation. I think that is extremely important as well. I do think also that the functions of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel in ensuring that legislation will be published in an electronic as well as a printed form are equally important and that he will be able to issue official versions in an electronic as well as a printed form. That is also important. 
I do however particularly want to refer to something that is stated in the regulatory impact statement when giving an example of why it is important for people to be able to navigate their way through legislation. It says: “For example the law on one topic can be scattered with provisions sometimes hidden in unlikely statutes; and Acts are amended many times before they are replaced. This can lead to inconsistencies with obsolete and redundant provisions remaining in force.” Those are exactly the sorts of problems that this bill addresses and it is why New Zealand First is so happy to support the bill. 
I do want to refer especially to clauses 31 and 33 because I think that these are most important parts of the bill as a whole. The most important part of all is clause 29(2) which sets out the purpose: “The purpose of revision is to re-enact in an up-to-date and accessible form the law previously contained in all or part of 1 or more Acts but (except as authorised by this subpart) revision is not intended to change the effect of a law.” That is the crux of the whole thing I believe. I also note that in clause 33A(1) it says: “A revision Bill as introduced must not contain any proposed change to the effect of the law unless the amendment is authorised by section 31.” So that is repeated there again. I note with some pleasure also the requirements for certification in clause 33 which I think are a very valuable safeguard. 
However if I were to express any concerns at all—and I must say that they are not great concerns—I would have to refer to clause 31 which does provide the revision powers. It refers particularly to some I think important items in clause 31(2) which states that “A revision Bill may—(a) revise the whole or part of 1 or more Acts and for that purpose combine or divide Acts or parts of Acts:”. I do not think that is likely to cause any difficulty with regard to the requirement not to change the law. However if you look at clause 31(2)(f) it does state that it is possible to “include new or additional purpose provisions outline or overview provisions examples diagrams …” and so on. So actually that does make it possible for some change in the substance of the law to be introduced. However with the certification provisions I think the risk of that is minor. The greatest risks—if there are any of course—are in clauses 31(2)(i) and (j). Clause 31(2)(i) says that it is possible to “make minor amendments to clarify Parliament’s intent”. The problem is of course that we will never really know what the word “minor” means and “to clarify Parliament’s intent” can be a lot more difficult than the words as stated might on the surface mean. Clause 31(2)(j) refers to updating “any monetary amount” and so on—those sorts of things. So there is some scope for a change to the substance of the law to be introduced as part of a revision bill. However I think care has been taken in the bill as a whole to make sure that that will not happen especially the certification provisions. Indeed clause 31(3) states quite explicitly that “A revision Bill must not change the effect of the law except as authorised by subsection (2)(i) or (j).” which are the very ones I referred to under which such a change is possible. 
But I think the safeguards are quite sufficient and New Zealand First for that reason is very satisfied with the bill as it stands. We believe that it will result in legislation being regularly updated that it will be much more understandable or navigable as it says in the regulatory impact statement and that certainly from the public’s point of view it will be much much more accessible. For all of those reasons New Zealand First will be very happy to support the bill as amended at this stage. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I was very keen to speak on this part of the Legislation Bill because this is a particularly exciting part. In particular it is actually Subpart 2 “Reprints”—not retreads Megan Woods; it is reprints that I am talking about. The reason I am quite excited about this is the capacity for legislation to stay up to date with current drafting practice. 
When I first arrived in Parliament a few years ago I had completed my law degree at Canterbury University. I actually enrolled for a particular component of my degree and it was a course called Legislation. My university lecturer was one John Burrows who went on to become of course an esteemed professor at our university and then on to his most recent role at the Law Commission. Because of his influence I believed that working in the Parliamentary Counsel Office was something that anyone with an interest in the law a passion for the law would be absolutely interested in and fascinated by because he made the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the work of parliamentary counsel sound so fascinating and so important. 
When I arrived here I did not find that colleagues were quite of the same understanding of the fascination and the passion for the work of parliamentary counsel. But having served for three terms on a range of select committees I actually did realise that parliamentary counsel were able to bring to bear a consistency in terms of the language that they used and the method for prescribing the law in a way that made sense right across a range of different laws. And they were all able to do that. We had some incredible parliamentary counsel officers from the top down at select committees but right across the board there was this absolute commitment to what is now described in this legislation as current drafting practice. 
There would be some challenges faced when legislation came before a select committee and it did not meet that test of current drafting practice. The one I recall the most was actually a very early bill that was referred to the Justice and Law Reform Committee as it was called in those days and that was the Companies Bill. It was a brand new piece of legislation that had been the subject of a Law Commission report. The Law Commission had in fact drafted a bill but the bill did not meet the Parliamentary Counsel Office’s current drafting practice to adopt the modern phraseology. As a result the Ministry of Justice issued drafting instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office and completely redrafted the legislation. 
I will never forget sitting at that select committee listening to submission after submission after submission all of them beginning with their particular theory as to why the Law Commission draft was different from the Ministry of Justice’s draft. There was theory after theory after theory as to why a particular phrase was used and why a particular clause was drafted in a particular way and so the debate at the select committee came about as a debate around the two different drafting styles and the different approaches that they represented rather than a discussion about what our company law ought to look like. I have to admit and I think that colleagues on both sides of the House felt exactly the same way how difficult this made our job as a select committee. It really led me to the very strong view back in those early days that the Law Commission should in fact have the advantage of a direct delegation of someone from parliamentary counsel to the Law Commission when it was drafting bills. Then we would get the current drafting practice merged into the Law Commission’s work so that when it returned a bill to the Minister the Minister would with confidence be able to introduce that bill to the House. So I am very pleased to see an entire subpart of Part 2 devoted to this whole question of current drafting practice. 
One of the frustrations that I have experienced over the many years that I have been here is when legislation was drafted in a format that is no longer representative of current drafting practice and an amendment has to be made and the number of times that parliamentary counsel have to go through the existing legislation in order to essentially upgrade it so that it is fit for purpose and to accept an amendment that Parliament is dealing with several years later. I believe that that frustration can be dealt with as a result of this subpart which is why I am very very pleased to see it in the form that it is in. 
Of course there are simple editorial changes that can be dealt with at the time of a reprint which actually make incredibly good sense. We can for example see language changed to gender-neutral language so that we can refer to “he or she” instead of the word “he”. I mean I remember all of those laws that existed for many many years that only ever referred to “he”. You know I felt as a woman that these things never quite— 
Andrew Little 
: Excluded—you felt excluded. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I felt excluded. That is exactly the word I was looking for. Thank you Mr Little. 
Charles Chauvel 
: They didn’t apply to you. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: But sometimes I felt that they ought to apply to me. I felt definitely excluded. But now the words “he or she” can simply be replaced for the word “he” and that enables the law to be updated in a sensible way. The word “chairman” may be changed to “chairperson”. I remember—this is going to show how long I have been here—the Rt Hon Sir Robert Muldoon debating in the House once and he actually got a bit upset that somebody had been referring to the Chair. He got up and gave a speech about how unfortunate it was that the previous speaker was able to address only an inanimate object that the Chairman was sitting on. He really was not quite up to date himself. 
The words “Her Majesty the Queen” may be changed to “the Sovereign”. I actually think the fact that we are signalling this does suggest that you know we are getting ready for the inevitable there. I think the same thing happens when you refer to things like Queen’s Counsel and it becomes King’s Counsel over time and vice versa. We have to make sure that our legislation is able to stay up to date in that regard. 
Then there are some simple changes that just reflect some sensible changes to the way we use language. Sometimes there are simple spelling errors errors in numbering and cross-referencing and any other errors of a similar nature. All of these can be tidied up in a very straightforward manner and that is something that I think makes really good sense. So I believe that this is a helpful part of this legislation—this subpart in particular I think—to embed current drafting practice because of course the language always speaks to the present moment. The definition of “current drafting practice” in clause 23 is that it “means the legislative drafting practice for the time being used by the PCO”. That means that whatever the drafting practice of the day is that is the definition that will apply. That will enable our laws to remain of a particular standard. That means that when one looks at a particular piece of legislation and at another piece of legislation the differences will not be there. They will in fact be drafted in the same way and will meet the same tests and that will ensure that people have a common understanding of what they mean. 
So again I think this is an excellent bill and I am pleased to see this particular part. I know that people have sort of taken my comments as being somewhat facetious but having had the experience of sitting on a variety of select committees and seeing the incredibly hard work that our parliamentary counsel bring to the task I believe that these changes will assist them in the work that they do and obviously in that regard assist the work of this House. 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on the Legislation Bill. Some of the comments from my colleagues and others in the Chamber earlier might have suggested that this legislation is tedious or boring but this is actually absolutely fundamental to the operation of the House. If there is one thing that this House stands for and that it is measured by it is the lawmaking that it does and the legislation that it produces. Therefore to make good the record of the laws that we make and to ensure that the public and the voters—the citizens who are subject to the laws that are the product of this House—have access it is vital that those laws be properly accessible and understandable. So this legislation goes some way to ensure that that happens. 
What I wish to address my comments to is that issue of accessibility. I know hearing some of the earlier comments from other speakers as I say that some people think that this is more exciting for lawyers than it is for others. I have to say that yesterday morning like no doubt many others I watched the leap—the death-defying leap—of Felix Baumgartner from 39000 feet on the edge of the stratosphere and that was exciting. But when we get to talk about our role as lawmakers that goes beyond excitement. That is enjoyable and it is essential and it is uplifting and it is a better thing than watching somebody jump 39000 feet. When we talk about the accessibility of the law clause 7 of the bill requires that the places where the printed legislation can be purchased be designated so that there are known places where the law can be purchased. But the good thing is that the places where printed legislation can be purchased are not just confined to designated places; it can be purchased from other places as well. That is a good piece of flexibility in a good piece of law. Clause 8 requires the price of printed legislation to be reasonable and so it should be. That is another question of accessibility and if I can refer to the debate in this House earlier hopefully the CPI measures can be properly adjusted to ensure that the price of printed legislation is not artificially inflated or added to and that it remains accessible. 
I think that what is most important in this day and age in the 21st century and the age of the internet is free access to legislation on the internet. We already have the legislation.govt.nz website which is a fantastic resource wherever you are and no doubt that will continue to be a place where the legislation is available and provided for as the legislation says for free. I think the question about accessibility through the internet is going to be vital and we need to ensure that that portal that means of access to the legislation is as widely available to as many citizens as possible. May I suggest without a hint of facetiousness that maybe the IT department for Work and Income could be contracted on a special project to assist in that to ensure that the widest possible access is given to legislation available through that portal. That will satisfy the demands and the needs of clause 9 of the bill and that will be very important in that central task of making the laws that we make accessible. It is grouped together as we know on the present internet site. When you enter your search it provides all the available legislation—delegated legislation as well—that is relevant to the topic and this new legislation will ensure that that is mandated by statute. 
The provisions in this particular part go on as my colleague Charles Chauvel talked about to the 3-yearly review of legislation. It is now a standard procedure in any organisation private or public to ensure that the outputs and the services that are provided are given a regular review to ensure that they are up to date meet the need and are fit for purpose. 
I do notice in clause 33 that those who are empowered to give certification to legislation that is reviewed and given revision—so that there is editorial change without changing the meaning of the law—are confined to the president of the Law Commission the Solicitor-General and a retired High Court judge appointed by the Attorney-General. That is a sensible provision so that this House does not get bogged down in having to utilise its very expensive processes to make what are often purely administrative or editorial changes to make the law current and alive and relevant for today. Typographical errors need to be able to be dealt with without taking unnecessarily the time of this House. Making the changes that tidy up the law and modernise the language without changing the meaning is a very important task and in terms of those who are tasked with it and those who have the job of certifying that the task is done without the changing the meaning of the law I would note that it does require some of the best legal minds we have. Indeed the provisions in clause 33 with the designated positions that are provided for will I am confident ensure that that will happen. 
On this part of the bill we are very keen to support it and see a 92-year-old piece of legislation transformed and modernised so that we can get on and ensure that our legislation the work we do continues to be made relevant and most important made accessible to the citizens who are touched by it. Thank you. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Christopher Finlayson to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 127 in his name to insert new clause 32A be agreed to: 
to omit new clause 32A.  
Amendment to the amendment agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 127 in the name of the Hon Christopher Finlayson to Part 2 be agreed to. 
Amendments as amended agreed to. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Progress to be reported presently. 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill with amendment progress on the Legislation Bill no progress on the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill and no progress on the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill. 
Report adopted. 
The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.