Volume 705 Week 17 - Wednesday 27 May 2015Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 705 Week 17 - Wednesday 27 May 2015[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4021. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 27 May 2015Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Points of OrderChamber Lobbies and Galleries—Audio SystemHon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I realise that both you and the Clerk are speaking pretty softly at the moment but there may be some problem with the amplification system. It is a little hard to hear in this quadrant of the House.Mr SPEAKER: We will have someone look at the mikes immediately. In the meantime if the mikes are not working it would be helpful if members would keep their interjections to a minimum level.Questions to MinistersSocial Development—Providers1.DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she agree with the Minister of Finance when he said of the delivery of social services “There is no evidence at all that contracting out as the member calls it will reduce service provision.”?Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes.Darroch Ball: In her Government’s statements indicating a shift in social service provision to a voucher system is the Minister aware that a 2009 evaluation on a voucher system in Australia the Netherlands and the USA found that quality and supply to rural and provincial communities were reduced significantly aligning with the concerns in the Productivity Commission’s recent report; if so how is she going to address this?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have made no such statement.Darroch Ball: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am going to ask the member to repeat the question. The question as I understood it was more whether the Minister was aware of something. It is difficult to hear; the mikes are not working. So I invite the member to ask his question again.Darroch Ball: In her Government’s statements indicating a shift in social service provision to a voucher system is the Minister aware that a 2009 evaluation on a voucher system in Australia the Netherlands and the USA found that quality and supply to rural and provincial communities was reduced significantly aligning with the concerns in the Productivity Commission’s recent report; if so how is she going to address this?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The Government has made no such statements.Darroch Ball: Is the Minister aware that under her Government’s current investment approach for the delivery of social services a regular flow of regional closures has included services to Veterans Affairs New Zealand and to youth services provided by the Salvation Army which have shut down in Kaikohe Matamata Wairoa Waipukurau Cambridge Ngāruawāhia and Blenheim?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: This Government has made no decisions on an investment strategy.Darroch Ball: That is interesting. How can she justify letting Relationships Aotearoa close its doors on 7000 clients—operating under her Government’s failing investment approach to social services—and now leaving a huge gap in domestic violence expertise and expertise on working with Māori whānau with nothing to replace it?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: None of those assertions are correct. The Ministry of Social Development has worked very hard with Relationships Aotearoa over a number of years. In fact the figures I produced in this House last week showed that Ministry of Social Development funding had in fact increased by more than a Consumers Price Index adjustment. However no Government whatever the colour—whatever the colour—can underwrite with taxpayers’ money an organisation that is not financially viable. Unfortunately Relationships Aotearoa is not solvent. Moreover it was not delivering. It was not actually delivering the services it was paid for. It made the decision to close. This Government is working with a number of service providers to make sure that those clients of Relationships Aotearoa are well looked after.Darroch Ball: Can she reassure New Zealanders in our regions that social service provision will not continue to decrease with providers shutting down under her Government’s investment approach or be under threat of decreased supply and quality by the new voucher system; and how will she replace the vital services already lost?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: What I can say from this Government is that we are absolutely determined to make sure that every dollar of taxpayers’ money that is invested in our communities actually gets some results. That is what we want. We want to change people’s lives for the better and we want to use that $313 million that the Ministry of Social Development alone spends in our communities supporting the social sector to make a difference in people’s lives.Housing Auckland—Housing Developments on Crown Land2.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in the Minister for Building and Housing given that the Minister is considering building houses in Auckland on the site of an electrical substation?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes and I can assure the member that no houses will be built on a substation. But I do agree with this comment supporting the Government’s policy to free up Crown-owned land for new housing: “it is a no brainer to develop vacant government land in Auckland.” That of course was from Phil Twyford after the Budget was so well received by Labour I thought on Thursday. I thank Labour for the support.Andrew Little: Did anyone in his Government bother to check with Transpower about why it has a buffer of land around its substation and high-voltage power pylons before Nick Smith said he can jam some houses in there?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I may be incorrect but I do not actually think it was Dr Smith who raised that particular piece of land in question—I think it was Mr Twyford. Actually as we can see in this photograph there is lots of land—and oh! What are those? They are houses. So I guess if you are building there—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Are they next door?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes they are right next door. They are just there you see? If you can build them there I guess you can build them on the other side I suppose. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is hard enough to conduct question time today when the microphones are not working. I have called for silence to assist Andrew Little with his supplementary question.Andrew Little: Has he been advised that an explosion and fire at the substation in question cut power to much of west Auckland with one nearby resident saying: “there was a really loud arcing sound and a second after that there was a huge explosion.”? Do Bill English’s reassuring words that “I presume it’s not always exploding.” relate to the substation or to Nick Smith’s portfolio?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am sure Mr English is right. I am sure it is not always exploding. Otherwise all of the neighbours here in this photo would be concerned. But let us just get something in perspective here. What the Minister has said is that he thinks—and that is the best advice I have had—there will be around about 430 hectares of land. Is that a shock? Well no because the Government actually owns 150000 hectares of Crown land in Auckland and I am sure we will eke 430 out from all of that.Andrew Little: Can he categorically deny that the Māngere Lawn Cemetery is on any of the lists including the initial list of sites identified by the Government as residential land that it could build houses on?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have the list from the Minister but I am happy to accept it is quite a good idea to build houses on Crown land. Why do I think that is a good idea? I know because in 2008 Helen Clark actually announced it. And believe or not the programme Home Ownership on the Public Estate was called “HOPE”. Back then Labour Party members had hope for housing in Auckland. Now they have hope that the Labour Party will just survive. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! When I am on my feet members will be quiet.Andrew Little: How can anyone trust Nick Smith’s denials about his list when that Minister flatly denied any substations on his land on Monday only to discover a substation on his land on Tuesday?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is just making it up. There is a thorough process that the Minister is going through to identify what is the best estimate from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment of about 430 hectares out of 150000. Here is a bit of logic for you. If it is such a hard idea to identify 430 hectares answer this question: how on earth was Labour going to build 100000 houses on Crown land? Oh that is right. If it is Labour’s idea—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been answered.Andrew Little: Does he agree with Nick Smith’s assessment of his 500 hectares for affordable housing in Auckland that any house sold no matter the price “will be affordable to somebody”; if not how on earth can he justify leaving him in charge of affordable housing?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: By definition that is correct. [Interruption] Well it is just technically correct. But the aim of what we are going to do on this approximate 430 hectares of land is to do what we did in Weymouth and other places. I go back to the point I was making earlier. If Labour believes it could build 100000 houses on Crown land surely it must be possible for National in Government to build a smaller subset than that. We cannot both be right or wrong in this particular instance. Either the land is there or not and it is there.Andrew Little: Will he guarantee to every New Zealander that the houses built on the Crown land that he and his Minister are talking about will all be affordable houses for Aucklanders?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member has just defeated his own question because he said—by definition every house is affordable to somebody.Andrew Little: Given that his housing announcement can now be summarised as a speculator tax that will be lucky to catch a thousand speculators a year requirements on foreign buyers that are so weak they are a joke and the building of unaffordable houses among Auckland’s power plants and gravestones when will he admit that he and his Government have no answers to Auckland’s housing crisis?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I can see where the “live in hope” policy came from. Let us just get a few facts on the table. House prices doubled under Labour and went up faster in Auckland than they have under National. Secondly if the member thinks it is soft when it comes to foreigners actually having to give us an Inland Revenue Department number to have a New Zealand bank account and to actually have any profits withheld for tax I would hate to think what he thinks difficult is. If you look at the activity happening in Auckland under a National-led Government and the policies that we have adopted Aucklanders can see real progress. What they saw under Labour was no progress.Budget 2015—Economic Programme3.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) to the Minister of Finance: How does Budget 2015 continue the Government’s plan to manage spending and start paying down debt?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance): on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Spending is firmly under control. Core Crown expenses have fallen from 34.1 percent of GDP in 2008-09 and are expected to drop to 30 percent next year. We have stuck to a $1 billion allowance in Budget 2015 but we have been able to spend $1.5 billion per year on new initiatives because we have identified around half a billion dollars of savings in reprioritisation each year. This spending restraint means that we have come from an $18.4 billion deficit 4 years ago to seeing steadily rising surpluses into the future. In line with our long-term fiscal target net debt is now expected to fall to 19.7 percent of GDP in 2020-21.Jacqui Dean: What initiatives are included in Budget 2015 to support more economic growth and jobs?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Constrained Government spending is helping to keep interest rates lower for longer and that makes it easier for businesses to invest and to hire more staff. As part of the Business Growth Agenda Budget 2015 also invests in a range of initiatives that contribute to better infrastructure more innovation and lower costs for business. These include around half a billion dollars of further ACC levy reductions on top of the $1.5 billion already in place $86 million for targeted increases in university tuition rates $100 million from the Future Investment Fund for Lincoln University to rebuild its science facilities; $80 million for research and development growth grants; and $210 million from the Future Investment Fund to invest in the national rail network.Jacqui Dean: What are Treasury’s latest expectations for job and wage growth for New Zealand families?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government is working very hard to support higher wages for Kiwi families. Treasury’s Budget forecasts show that there are 194000 extra jobs in the economy since late 2010 and another 150000 jobs are expected by 2019. Unemployment is expected to fall below 5 percent in 2016. Average annual wages have increased by $5700 in the last 4 years and are forecast to rise to around $63000 a year in 4 years’ time and that is an increase of a further $7000. If we take the 8-year period as a whole the average wage is expected to go up almost $13000 or over 25 percent over that period compared with inflation of less than 14 percent over the same time. So the Business Growth Agenda is supporting a growing economy that is working for New Zealanders.Jacqui Dean: What other measures are being progressed to support further growth in the regions?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Almost all of the initiatives announced in the Budget will support the regions from increased health and education spending to higher welfare payments for families and reductions in ACC levies. In addition Budget 2015 also provides up to $25 million to support the establishment of new privately led regional research institutes to undertake scientific research in the regions $210 million to extend the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband into smaller regional towns and an additional $150 million from the telecommunications development levy which will go into rural broadband and filling mobile black spots. The first tranche of the $212 million regional highway package will be $97 million and up to $52 million will be provided to replace the Waitangi wharf on the Chatham Islands.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If there is a plan to start paying down debt what is the total debt attributable to the Crown as opposed to core Crown debt?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not have that figure in front of me for the member but if he is happy to put it down in writing then I am more than happy to give an answer to it.Local Government—Māori Representation4.MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party) to the Minister of Local Government: What advice has she received through report back from officials in March this year about Māori participation in local government processes and what consideration if any has been given by her as a result of that advice?Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Local Government): I have not yet received the advice that the member is referring to because officials are taking more time to work on it than originally thought. What I would say to the member though is that I am very supportive of Māori representation within local councils and I certainly support that and would like to see that increasing. For example here in the House over 20 percent of the members of Parliament are Māori. However I think it is quite interesting to point out that 72 percent of our Māori MPs are in general seats or are from the list and actually 28 percent are from Māori seats. We can see the skew that is going towards people being selected and put forward in general seats and that is what I would like to see happening on local councils.Marama Fox: Although we celebrate the Te Arawa partnership proposal and the decision that was made in Rotorua what is the Minister prepared to do to remove unfair provisions in current legislation that allow for the establishment of Māori wards on local councils to be overturned by referendum given this discriminatory legislation applies only to Māori representation as witnessed by the result in New Plymouth?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Although I respect that that is the member’s stance it is actually not mine and I do not think that it is unfair that people have their say and that there is a referendum. As I say it is not about us not wanting to see an increase of Māori on councils and the Te Arawa example is a good one where they have given them voting rights and this has gone through. But as such I think that if Māori wards are being put up then the current system that they go through a referendum is fair.Marama Fox: Does the Minister accept that given that this piece of legislation applies only to Māori and Māori wards it is in fact unfair?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Other groups that are set up are very different from what is proposed for Māori wards. For example they are advisory groups that might be through different ethnicities. They are not similar to what is proposed for Māori wards. They are different and as such there are special provisions within the law for them.David Seymour: What advice and consideration has the Minister applied to similarly numerous ethnic groups such as Chinese and Indian New Zealanders when it comes to participation in local government?Hon PAULA BENNETT: I cannot think of any advice that I have received on that to date.Finance Minister—Tax Revenue and User Charges5.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement “we would expect to be able to continue to expand the use of user charges”; if so what further user charges will he introduce?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Yes in the context it was made. The Government is not actively looking to identify further user charges. However there may be occasional instances that arise where it is fairer that the users of a service pay for it rather than taxpayers—such as the biosecurity and customs clearance charge on international passengers introduced as part of the Budget.Grant Robertson: Will he rule out user charges in the health sector?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: There are absolutely no plans for new user-charges in the health sector. I think we could go on this all afternoon Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The question has been answered.Grant Robertson: Is the $150 million telecommunications development levy passed under urgency last Friday a user charge given that Spark one of the country’s biggest telecommunications providers announced within an hour of the bill’s introduction in the House that it was passing the levy on to consumers?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It was actually announced at the last election and was campaigned on at the last election and was already in place. For Spark to suggest that it is going to pass it on in terms of an increase suggests that it is not passing it on already because it is already being charged. But actually on this side of the House we think it is a good idea to have a levy across the whole network to maintain—Grant Robertson: Is it a user charge?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —shh Grant. And—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a direct question and the Minister has failed to answer the question as to whether it is a user charge.Mr SPEAKER: The difficulty is that it was not a direct question. If the member had simply asked—and I think the way forward is that I am going to give him an additional supplementary question. If the question had been simply “Is it a user charge?” then he might have got an answer but when the member took the opportunity to include a Spark announcement etc. that then gave the Minister the opportunity to use that as part of his answer. I will allow the member an additional supplementary question.Grant Robertson: Is the $150 million telecommunications development levy passed under urgency last Friday a user charge?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The $150 millionextension of the telecommunications development levy over 3 years is a user charge and it is a user charge across the whole of the network to encourage the development of the periphery of the network which is the rural areas that would otherwise not get good telecommunications development. This Government is in favour of telecommunications extensions and broadband extensions in rural areas.Grant Robertson: Does he think that New Zealanders who are now paying more to travel more for their broadband and more if they sell their houses will think that they are paying a user charge or that they are just paying new taxes from a Government that said “No new taxes.”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: They will think that they are paying a user charge. Firstly the telecommunications development levy is already in place. They will not be paying anything more no matter what the mouthpiece for Spark on that side of the House says. That is not going to happen. The second thing is that I think New Zealanders can make a very clear distinction between user charges and increases in for example income taxation—as regularly promised by the Labour Party—or indeed means testing of superannuation.Grant Robertson: Does he agree with his National Party colleague Ian McKelvie that people-smuggling and the movement of sheep are much the same; if so will any sheep that need to be returned from the dodgy deal with the Saudi farm be forced to pay his border arrivals tax when they come back?Mr SPEAKER: In as far as there is ministerial responsibility the Hon Steven Joyce.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am sure Grant sat up all last night to try to do that one but it is just too tortuous to actually require an answer.Students with Special Needs—Resourcing6.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister of Education: How is the Government assisting New Zealand students who need the most support?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. I was pleased to announce last week as part of Budget 2015 that this Government is investing an extra $62.9 million of operating funding over the next 4 years to better assist children with special education needs to learn and achieve. The funding includes an additional $39.5 million for the ongoing resourcing scheme and $23.3 million for extra in-class teacher-aide support. This represents a significant investment in our most vulnerable students and builds on the increased funding under this National Government. Spending on special education has increased significantly up approximately 26 percent from 2008.Paul Foster-Bell: How many children will benefit from this investment?Hon HEKIA PARATA: The ongoing resourcing scheme supports the children with the highest special education needs. The additional funding in Budget 2015 will provide support for an extra 500 students taking the total number supported by this scheme to approximately 9000. The additional spending for in-class teacher-aide support will benefit approximately 1500 students from years 1 to 13. This extra classroom support will assist teachers to personalise students’ learning to encourage their participation and achievement.Chris Hipkins: Talofa lava Mr Speaker. How are students most in need being catered for when 60 percent of the support for National Certificate of Educational Achievement candidates with special needs is going to students at decile 8 9 and 10 schools—the wealthiest 25 percent of schools—while only 6 percent is going to students in the lowest-decile schools?Hon HEKIA PARATA: The number of approved applications for the special assessment conditions which I believe the member is referring to increased by 42.8 percent in 2014. We are reliant on schools applying and we have made the eligibility criteriamuch simpler for schools to apply since it was introduced by that member’s administration with the burden of bureaucracy and we have seen an increase and 98.4 percent of the applications received were approved. There is still work to be done on helping schools to apply but there is no ceiling on those who do apply.Chris Hipkins: Given the significant growth in the number of students applying for special assessment conditions over the past few years and the knowledge that has existed now for several years that those are predominantly in high-decile schools what is the Government doing to ensure that students with special needs in low-decile schools get access to the same support as students in wealthier areas are getting?Hon HEKIA PARATA: We have made it easier for schools to apply. We have simplified—Chris Hipkins: It’s not working.Hon HEKIA PARATA: Well it is clearly working if the member understood that it has increased significantly in the period that it has been operating.Hon Phil Goff: The lower deciles are missing out.Hon HEKIA PARATA: Well we work with schools. We make it easier but we do not take the choice away from them to use this. And we have had 98.4 percent of the applications approved. Clearly almost 100 percent of applications are approved. There is no ceiling. We are working with schools but schools themselves know which of their kids need the support and therefore schools need to take advantage of the simplified process.Skycity Convention Centre—Capacity7.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) to the Minister for Economic Development: How much smaller in percentage terms is the floor area of the main exhibition hall at the New Zealand International Convention Centre announced yesterday when compared to the 10000 square metre exhibition space heralded in 2011 when SkyCity became the Government’s preferred development partner; and how many fewer exhibitors does such a reduction represent in a “world-class convention centre”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): The member uses an interesting term in his question when he suggests heralding. I cannot actually pinpoint whether heralding occurred but I can tell the member that the proposed size of the exhibition space has varied a lot as this project has developed. For example the Crown’s expressions of interest called for greater than 6000 square metres; Skycity’s initial concept images suggested 10000 square metres but included catering areas. It then became 7500 square metres in the exhibition centre—Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: I will hear the point of order but if it is that you have not got your answer yet I think that if we gave the Minister time to answer it may well arrive. The Hon Steven Joyce—if he could give us the answer.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Thank you. It then became 7500 square metres following independent advice from Horwath HTL as to what was required. It then became 8500 square metres at concept design followed by 8768 square metres at the first preliminary design stage and now dropping to 8100 square metres in the revised preliminary design. For completeness and to be helpful to the House the percentage movements are up 67 percent down 25 percent up 13 percent up 3 percent and down 7.6 percent and for the member’s particular example down 19 percent. In terms of how many exhibitors each change represents that would depend on how much space each exhibitor occupied.Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I understand that the first part of my question was answered. If we could just look at strictly the second part—and it was a question on notice.Mr SPEAKER: The second part was also answered as well.Dr David Clark: There is a definition that they are working with of what a world-class—Mr SPEAKER: In my opinion there was absolutely no doubt the question has been answered. If the member wants to now take it further the answer is using a supplementary question.Dr David Clark: What is 2850 as a percentage of 5000?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not quite as good at the old mental calculations as I was in the old days but 2850 as a percentage of 5000 is definitely more than half and definitely less than 60 percent.Dr David Clark: When the maximum conference capacity in the Skycity deal announced yesterday is just 57 percent of the maximum capacity mooted before other bidders were knocked out of the process which the Auditor-General described as neither transparent nor even-handed how can he say the taxpayer is getting a good deal?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am sorry for the member but the supposition in his question is incorrect on about three levels.Dr David Clark: What value has been attributed in the final deal to the additional income Skycity has received as a result of the laneway retail development?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Actually that is an interesting question. I have been advised of a value of around $4 million and of course Skycity has increased its contribution by $28 million so it would suggest that the Crown is doing better under this revised deal than it was previously.Hon Member: Well it couldn’t get worse.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well it happens to be true.Dr David Clark: How can he tell New Zealanders he has delivered the promised world-class convention centre when he has delivered a convention centre 19 percent smaller which at maximum capacity accommodates just 57 percent of the conference guests mooted when Skycity edged other competing bidders out and which is built off the back of problem gambling?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member is incorrect in a number of ways and I will take a little bit of time because he obviously did not listen to the answer to the primary question.Hon David Parker: You always do.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This is an important issue I presume—otherwise the member would not ask the question. The initial expression of interest from the Crown called for 6000 square metres. It then became 7500 square metres following independent advice from Horwath HTL as to what was required. The actual second revised preliminary design is 8100 square metres. I have also sought advice in terms of the current size of the revised International Convention Centre and it has absolutely no negative impact on the initial assessment of economic benefit as supplied by Horwath HTL. So the member is simply wrong and trying to create a figure and then subtract a percentage is frankly—although typical—actually quite silly.Financial Services—Legislative Review8.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What action is the Government taking to improve the quality of financial advice?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Strong capital markets are integral to any productive and competitive economy as businesses need access to capital to grow. Access to quality financial advice is an important part of ensuring that they function well. The Government is reviewing the Financial Advisers Act and the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act to ensure that these pieces of legislation are working as well as they can be. Yesterday we released an issues paper for public consultation as part of this review and the aim is to identify opportunities to limit complexity identify any barriers to advice and ensure that appropriate levels of consumer protection are in place.Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: What areas will the issues paper seek feedback on?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: We want to ask all stakeholders and consumers key questions such as whether people feel they have access to good quality financial advice and whether they understand how advisers are regulated. We also want to find out whether the complexity of regulations has prevented people from considering advice and we also ask whether compliance costs have made advice less accessible. I encourage all New Zealanders with an interest in this issue to have their say. Making sure that our capital markets are strong and stable is just one of the many goals set by our Business Growth Agenda.Prime Minister—Greenhouse Gas Emissions9.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Firstly let me acknowledge that this will be the last question that the member will ask me as co-leader of the Greens. I look forward to questions from James Shaw next week. The answer is yes.Dr Russel Norman: Does he stand by his statement with regard to climate change that New Zealand is a country that is doing its fair share to tackle climate change given that New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 13 percent since he has been Prime Minister?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes I do stand by that statement. I think the member is being as I said before selective with the truth. If you look at New Zealand’s total emissions now they are about 4 percent lower than they were at the peak of 2005 and New Zealand’s net emissions are at about the same level as they were in 2007.Dr Russel Norman: I seek leave to table Parliamentary Library research showing a 13 percent increase in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular information. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Dr Russel Norman: Is the Prime Minister saying that the Government’s own greenhouse gas inventory released just a month ago which shows a 13 percent increase in net greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2013 is incorrect when it shows that net emissions have increased by 13 percent?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No but I am saying that the memberis I think being selective because of the time frame that has been used. As I said net emissions are about the same as they were in 2007.Dr Russel Norman: How much have net greenhouse gas emissions increased since he has been Prime Minister from 2008?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have that information with me.Dr Russel Norman: Why does he not know how much New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions have increased since he has been Prime Minister given that it is probably one of the most important things that will determine the kind of planet our children inherit?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because the member put down a general question. If he wants a specific question about climate change he should direct it to that Minister.Dr Russel Norman: Does the Prime Minister not think that climate change is one of the most important issues that a Prime Minister should be aware of given that it will have a phenomenal impact on his children my children and their children if we do not reduce our emissions?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes I think it is an important issue and that is one of the reasons why the Government has an emissions trading scheme and it is why the Government has pursued quite a number of policies. I think if we look at ourselves on a relative basis—I have always said that I do not think we should be a leader but more of a fast follower in this area and I think we are.Dr Russel Norman: Is it being a “fast follower” to increase New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent in the years since he has been Prime Minister according to the Government’s own greenhouse gas inventory—Hon Dr Nick Smith: No—selective.Dr Russel Norman: And Prime Minister do not listen to Nick Smith. He has—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think the member is being selective with the data. New Zealand’s total emissions are now 4 percent lower than they were in the peak of 2005 and net emissions are at about the same level as they were in 2007.Dr Russel Norman: If the vast majority of those who submit on the Government’s climate change targets to take to the Paris conference call for a target of 40 percent under 1990 levels will he listen to them?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I will of course listen to them but it does not mean I will agree with them.Free-trade Agreements—Saudi Arabia Negotiations10.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Who was paid the first $4 million in respect of the multimillion-dollar payments to Saudi Arabian interests referred to in the Cabinet paper of 13 February 2013 he tabled yesterday and how was the value calculated and split between “intellectual property which the Saudi investor brings to the platform the services and in-market networks he will contribute” and “the settlement of the long-running dispute”?Hon MURRAY McCULLY (Minister of Foreign Affairs): The $4 million was paid to Hamood Al Ali Al Khalaf Trading and Transportation under a contract for services between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Hamood Al Ali Al Khalaf Trading and Transportation. The value was identified in negotiations between the parties. This was a process overseen by senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the final agreement was signed off by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade with the support of myself as foreign affairs Minister and Cabinet.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question asked for the split between those different cost centres.Mr SPEAKER: The question very clearly did. Could the Minister address the part of the question as to the split of the $4 million.Hon MURRAY McCULLY: The matters that were considered by the officials who conducted the negotiations are referred to very fully in the Cabinet paper that I tabled in the House yesterday. They relate to all of the costs associated with shifting the operations that were previously based in New Zealand to a new hub in Saudi Arabia. They included the intellectual property of the Al Khalaf group and access to its physical location in Saudi Arabia and as I say many other items that are enumerated in the Cabinet paper that I tabled in the House yesterday.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did ask for the split and I still have not received it.Mr SPEAKER: I agree with that and we have now tried on two occasions to get it. The way forward now is with further supplementary questions. I invite the member to ask further supplementary questions.Hon David Parker: If this businessman needed New Zealand to pay many millions of dollars for the model farm using New Zealand technology and New Zealand sheep what intellectual property justified this multimillion-dollar payment?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: As the paper that I tabled yesterday makes clear the New Zealand Government specifically resisted the concept of compensation to the Al Khalaf group. But no doubt they would have had in their minds the fact that the actions of the previous Labour Government had exposed the New Zealand Government to legal claims estimated to be up to $30 million. The honourable member may wish to ask himself whether he as a member of that former Government carries some of the responsibility for that sorry state of affairs.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Hon David Parker: That is all very interesting but my question was—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I invite the member to re-ask that question.Hon David Parker: If this businessman needed New Zealanders to pay for the model farm using New Zealand technology and New Zealand sheep what intellectual property justified this multi-million dollar payment?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: As I indicated in my primary answer the agreement that was struck between officials and the Al Khalaf group included all of the intellectual property associated with shifting the Awassi sheep breeding operation from New Zealand to a new location in Saudi Arabia. Also in the minds of officials would have been the fact that the Al Khalaf group had taken legal advice and could mount a legal claim against the Government for an amount estimated to be up to $30 million. It is a bit rich for members of the former Government who exposed New Zealand to the risk of a $30 million claim to berate members of this Government for resolving the issue for one-third of that amount.Hon David Parker: Given that his Government renewed the customs export prohibition order on animals for slaughter in 2010 and that it is perfectly legal for New Zealand to have a policy banning live sheep exports how can he justify paying millions of dollars to settle a hollow legal threat?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I agree that the customs export prohibition order was renewed by the current Government. What was different was that we did not mislead the Saudi investors about the consequences of the roll over of that order. We fronted up and told them the truth when the previous Government had actively misled them over many years and exposed the New Zealand taxpayer to a claim of up to $30 million.Hon David Parker: Was the real reason the first $4 million was paid to pay off people whose influence in Saudi Arabia was getting in the way of the Gulf free-trade agreement?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I made it clear that one of the consequences sadly from this whole saga was that the relationship between New Zealand and Saudi Arabia was poisoned and that poisoned relationship spilled over into the wider Gulf Cooperation Council. But I have also made it clear that the officials negotiating this matter had to consider the fact that there was a looming claim for up to $30 million resulting from the actions of a Government of which the Hon Mr Parker was a member.Hon David Parker: Can the Minister point to any other example where the New Zealand Government has ever paid millions of dollars to an overseas businessman in order to advance a free-trade agreement?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I cannot point to any such example because I do not think New Zealanders had a Government as stupid and dishonest as the Government that Mr Parker was a member of.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not a fact that this is a new low in our international relationships and that this is a multimillion-dollar bribe that has been given to private interests in Saudi Arabia? Is that not a fact?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I have made it clear that the officials who were dealing with this matter would have had on their minds the damage that had been done to New Zealand’s fading relationship with Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf as well as having on their minds the exposure of the New Zealand Government to a substantial claim for damages resulting from the actions of the Government of which the right honourable member was a member.James Shaw: What legal advice did the Government receive as to the likely success of the potential claim by Mr Al Khalaf?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: As I have made clear the Government did not wish to proceed down that path and it entered into talks with the parties to try to avoid such an outcome. I am satisfied that we would never have done so had we not been advised that the claim had some prospect of success. The member may wish to look at the Cabinet paper and see that there is a redaction there which is a reference that would have been disadvantageous to the interests of the New Zealand taxpayers.Hon David Parker: Why is he the first Minister in history to back a multimillion-dollar facilitation payment which in other jurisdictions is called a bribe?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: Unfortunately the current Government inherited a serious problem in 2008 and—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked. The Minister has now got a right and a responsibility to answer it.Hon MURRAY McCULLY: It is clear to the Government that the relationship with the Saudi Arabian Government was poisoned that the relationship with the Gulf States had been poisoned and that the New Zealand Government was also exposed to a legal claim for up to $30 million. One solution was for us to go on misleading people as the previous Government had done but we decided it was time to front up and try to resolve that situation.James Shaw: How can the public be assured of the credibility of the tender process when it was overseen by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade which had already decided to compensate Mr Al Khalaf and is also responsible for negotiating the trade deal that was being blocked by Mr Al Khalaf?Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I have already told the House yesterday that the tender process was overseen by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials New Zealand Trade and Enterprise officials and an independent expert who was also a previous chief executive of Landcorp. I am satisfied as to both the capabilities and the integrity of all of the individuals involved.Land Information—Aerial Photography Collection11.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Land Information: What work is she aware of that has been completed to safeguard New Zealand’s historic aerial photo collection?Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): Land Information New Zealand is leading a project in partnership with regional councils to scan negatives of historical aerial photographs. This imagery consists of around 650000 film negatives of photographs taken from 1936 to 2005. These images contain a wealth of information spanning a third of New Zealand’s modern history. Land Information New Zealand is working to safeguard New Zealanders’ ability to use these photographs by digitising them to make them increasingly available to the public.Ian McKelvie: What benefits do historical aerial photographs have in New Zealand?Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Historical aerial photographs have a variety of uses. They show us changes in land use and coastal changes and assist with archaeologic and cultural research. By using these images we are able to make better decisions on future land use. An example is developers who have been able to use these photographs quickly to assess whether land can be safely used for the rebuild of housing for example in Canterbury. [Interruption] It is a shame that the members opposite are not interested in the rebuild of Canterbury. The work that Land Information New Zealand is doing contributes to this Government’s investment in open data by making location-based information increasingly available.Dairy Industry—Overseas Ownership of Processing Facilities12.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) to the Minister for Primary Industries: Does he believe Hong Kong-based He Run International Investment’s plan to build a dairy factory in Otorohanga will benefit the Waikato and wider New Zealand dairy industry; if so why?Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): I have not seen the full detail of the particular proposal so I cannot comment specifically but generally new dairy investments reinforce the fact that the medium to long term outlook for the New Zealand dairy industry is indeed very positive. These investments often generate hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars for local economies and help support regional economic growth.Barbara Stewart: Does he believe it is right that Fonterra farmers in the King Country will have to supply a direct competitor with 50 million litres of milk at just above cost because this Government wants foreign companies to have a hand up?Hon NATHAN GUY: I would not agree with the latter part of that question. To the first part of it if the member was up to speed with what is happening in the dairy industry she would in fact know that recently Minister Goldsmith and I announced that we have requested a report beginning next month on the state of competition in New Zealand’s dairy industry which will in fact address this.David Seymour: Can the Minister explain the difference between a dollar of foreign capital invested from Hong Kong as the member noted in her primary question and a dollar of foreign capital from Australia Switzerland the US the UK Canada France Germany or Russia?Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think there is very little ministerial responsibility for that.Barbara Stewart: Given He Run International Investment follows the larger Yashili factory at Pōkeno Yili’s expansion of Oceania Dairy Bright Dairy - controlled Synlait and Danone’s purchase of Gardians does he have any concern that we are on the path to becoming farm labourers in our own country?Hon NATHAN GUY: No I reject the latter part of that question. In fact I am embarrassed that the member has even bothered to raise it in the House.Barbara Stewart: I seek leave to table an extract from the Hong Kong company list showing He Run International Investment wasincorporated only at the beginning of May.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that information from the Hong Kong company register. Is there any objection? There is no objection. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Question No. 2 to MinisterHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not raise this at the time because I thought it was not of such significance at the time. But I do think in general it would be useful if you could have a look at question No. 2 and perhaps the paperwork that was provided that led to a question saying that this was a proposal to put houses on the site of an electrical substation when quite clearly that is completely nonsensical and should not have been allowed.Mr SPEAKER: I will have a look for the member’s sake but it was an authenticated question and I think—[Interruption] Order! I am speaking. It was based I think on authentication that was gained from a paper tabled yesterday in the House but I will have a further look at the question.Budget DebateDebate resumed from 26 May on the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): In my concluding remarks I would like to talk about Christchurch because the Government has a plan for central Christchurch but it is a plan for extravagant super-sized anchor projects that Christchurch cannot afford. That plan certainly is benefiting and working for the big construction companies the foreign hotel chains the consultants and the design contractors but it does not work for the people of Christchurch. It is not affordable for the people of Christchurch.The Budget should have provided additional funding to meet the more than $400 million shortfall in the costs of repairing the horizontal infrastructure: stormwater sewerage and local roads. But instead we see more money to speed up the anchor projects. We see the Christchurch City Council getting over $100 million in its budget to fund a stadium that no one wants. It is time for the Government to re-examine that cost-sharing agreement to make sure that projects are affordable and are not extravagant ones that burden Christchurch residents with debt box the city council into a corner and put pressure on the council to sell revenue-generating assets to pay for potential white elephants like the stadium that will not generate revenue. The Budget funded the wrong things and is putting priority on those extravagant projects rather than the basics that Christchurch citizens want.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): It is an absolute pleasure to stand in the House and talk about the great Budget delivered by the Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English. This was a Budget that was focused on the things that matter to New Zealand just as this Government has been focused on that since the day we were sworn into office in 2008. This Budget represents again excellent management of the country’s finances even in the continuing tough times that we are experiencing. We are seeing continued economic growth which most other developed countries are envious of. We are seeing restraint in Government spending from a Government that has shown that right through the global financial crisis in complete contrast to the people sitting on the opposite side of the House. When they had the very best of economic times they spent willy-nilly and really had little to show for it. This Government is focused on making sure that every single dollar of taxpayers’ money it spends is effective and is getting results for New Zealanders.We are seeing growth in employment low inflation low interest rates and low cost-of-living increases for New Zealanders. We have seen the lowest number of sole parents on a benefit in this country since 1988. That is absolutely outstanding.It just goes to show what a wonderful job those people working in the Ministry of Social Development are doing by working carefully with these women mainly going back into the workforce but also the desire of New Zealanders to be standing on their own two feet and supporting their families independently while making their own decisions about their own lives. That is what this Government is focused on doing.It is against that background of good economic management and good cooperation and work with the New Zealanders who have found themselves out of work that we were able to then focus on the children who we know are not living the sorts of lives we all expect New Zealand children to be able to live. So we were able in this Budget to dedicate a package of $790 million over the next 4 years that is very focused on those families whose children are experiencing hardship and who are earning the least in our communities.Over the next 4 years the package will deliver along with increased work obligations for our sole parents—so yes we are saying that when your youngest child turns 3 we want you to be out there looking for part-time work. Against that we are increasing the amount of support that we put in around those parents to help them do it. That does not mean that if they cannot find a job that suits them and their family we are going to be hard. Of course each individual person will be worked with and supported into work. As well as that we are saying to them that part-time work needs to be 20 hours. If you can get 20 hours’ work it lifts you up into Working for Families and we are seeing more and more of our sole parents getting into that space and able to come off a benefit and stand on their own two feet. That is what we want for more of them.I say watch this space because New Zealanders will take advantage of this. We will see those men and women who are sole parents now moving off and into work and we will see those better outcomes for their young children. The package increases the benefit rates by $25 a week by 1 April next year. I cannot believe the incredible stories that are coming into my office from people telling me the difference it is going to make in their lives. An extra $25 a week when you are a sole parent getting $301 a week—an extra $25 a week coming in every week will make an enormous difference for the choices that they have to make about how they can spend their money and support their children. That is a great thing that this Government has done. Even in the best of economic times Labour did not support those people on benefits by giving them an increase. Even in the very best of times when Labour had billions of dollars to spend every year it did not support those beneficiaries when it was very clear that they were falling behind. This Government even legislated the CPI to make increases automatic.We have stood beside those most vulnerable families in New Zealand since we came into the Treasury benches. So that means 190000 children in New Zealand from 1 April next year will see an extra $25 a week going into their households. But we did not just leave it at that because we know that although two-thirds of those children experiencing hardship are in benefit-dependent families there are good hard-working families with children out there who also have very lowincomes and their children are suffering too. So we supported those children by increasing the Working for Families payments. I think that is a tremendous thing. I have to say that the reaction out there in the community has been overwhelming both from people who are on a benefit and also from those working families who are going to get a huge difference in their life.But we did not stop there because as well as that in the Budget there is significant help for a wider variety of children—perhaps some of the most vulnerable children—in our communities and those who are in State care. We had an increase of $35.8 million to support the Children’s Action Plan over the next 4 years which helps the children who are just below those who require statutory care. My colleague Paula Bennett started setting it up throughout New Zealand as a result of a very long process. The community is very concerned about making sure we get in early and work with these families and prevent these children from being abused. This Government was able to support the Children’s Action Plan with a significant sum of money—$35.8 million over the next 4 years.We are also modernising Child Youth and Family. There is $5.8 million in this Budget to help with that modernisation project. We have got an expert panel having a look at the system that we put around our fabulous Child Youth and Family workers out there who are doing one of the most difficult jobs in our communities; that is making sure that young children are safe when they cannot be left at home with their families. When they are being abused or neglected by the very people whom they should be trusting to give them the best of care Child Youth and Family workers have to step in and take those children and find them a safe and caring home and they get to work to come in and support the families in order to get to the stage where those children can go back and live with them. There is $5.8 million over 4 years to help with that modernisation project.There is $5.7 million in this Budget over the next 4 years to support quite a small group of young people in State care who have very high needs very complex issues. The support is described as one-to-one therapeutic placements for these Child Youth and Family children with the highest of needs. These children have complex needs that need that one-on-one care. It is very expensive and the Budget provides for a small number of those children to get that ongoing care over the next 4 years.In fact this Budget does so much to support the most vulnerable people in our communities—our children. We hear a lot of talk in this House about vulnerable children children living in hardship children in poverty. Well I am proud to be part of a Government that has made that the centrepiece of its 2015 Budget against a setting of a growing economy that is producing more jobs. That means that the Government is able to take more care of those at the very bottom—the most vulnerable children in our community.MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Since last week we have been debating the Budget and as we did so there was a very important gathering of people who were meeting in Rotorua at a hui entitled Tūramarama ki te Ora. It is a most inspired name not just because it has part of my name in it. It is a most inspired name a name meaning the spark of enlightenment the lightning flash the epiphany when one’s purpose in life is realised. The agenda for that hui could be perceived as a heavy one: the national suicide prevention conference. In so far as it relates to our Budget discussion I am absolutely certain that they celebrated the $2.1 million of new operating funding for suicide prevention tagged for rangatahi Māori. Here I just want to make a point. Last night as I listened to the member Mr Pita Paraone talk about—Pita Paraone: It was a good speech.MARAMA FOX: That is right. He gave a speech blaming the Māori Party for youth suicide—blaming the Māori Party for youth suicide! I just want you to know that this is not a topic that should be treated lightly and with disdain in the way that I believe it was last evening. This is a very serious topic a topic that brought a whole community of people together. It is something that we have been delighted to support in the past years and continue to support.In all the big numbers that have been talked about recently that number—$2.1 million in new spending for rangatahi to help halt the march of suicide where our young people choose to end their lives instead of living their reality—is not something to be dismissed and thrown about as some sort of political gamble some sort of political leverage to try to get brownie points with the public. It must be addressed and we are proud to be addressing it.I want to tell you this. The Government came and said: “Marama you have to choose. We can’t get the 50 things that you want in a Budget bid.” and I did have about 50 different bids that I wanted to put in front of the Government. I was told: “Marama you have to choose.” In fact we whittled it down and whittled it down and came down to our utmost four priorities. And the Government said: “Of these Marama which one do you want?”. The answer surely is simple. I chose to help save the lives of our children through providing for suicide prevention funding.Earlier this year I spent some time with one such group. Youth worker Zack Makaore has with Te Taitimu Trust developed a project that builds the wairua—that is the spirit—and the confidence of the young people he works with. For these rangatahi poverty is not so much about the material things as it is about the deficiency in opportunity and resources and the poverty of spirit. Te Taitimu Trust works with these young people bringing their families together—families from all walks of life including gang families—with police with Water Safety New Zealand and with the Fire Service. They learn how to save their lives learn how to give comfort and learn how to be leaders based on the teachings of Mason Durie. They are also building resilience whakapapa leadership and self-esteem. I want to say again this is not something to be used as political leverage; it is a real issue that needs to be addressed and we are proud to be able to put some funding though it is small towards addressing it.Of course we are delighted that we have been able to accelerate the momentum of Whānau Ora through the navigator approach with whānau being enabled to help themselves through designing and developing the transformation that all of our families deserve. What has been even more compelling for us as a party is the effort we have put into establishing $790 million in the hardship fund. We are proud of this Government and our opportunity to work with it to put poverty on the lips of the people of this country.To be sure in 2008 when Tariana Turia when Hone Harawira when Te Ururoa Flavell when Rahui Katene and when Pita Sharples signed the Māori Party relationship accord with this Government people were not talking about it and in fact there is a paragraph in the very first relationship accord with this Government that says: “Eliminating poverty must be a priority.” Then in 2011 they signed the next relationship accord and they put together a Ministerial Committee on Poverty where all the relevant Ministers sat around the table and discussed how we could put an end to poverty. It was put into the relationship accord. It is part of the Māori Party’s commitment to our whānau.We are proud to be able to put our hands on our hearts and say: “Yes that $790 million is a result of influence from being at the table and not under the table—not eating the crumbs.” Those are some fairly expensive crumbs if that is what people believe. In 43 years people can look back over that time and see that during an equal amount of time—almost perfectly equal—both sides of the House did nothing to raise benefit levels. So again we are proud that there is an opportunity to do so through having a relationship accord with this Government.However in the swings and roundabouts in the game that we call politics we are only too familiar with the fact that despite the undeniable positive impact of that package there is a quid pro quo in National’s imposing stricter obligations on sole parents—we recognise that—who will now be required to return to work 2 years earlier and for longer hours. The rationale is that part-time work brings more income into the family and we agree with that. It is a stepping stone to full-time work and to going off the benefit altogether. There is also an equally valid argument to be made that a parent who wants to be at home is on economic social and cultural grounds the best person to raise their child.There is a particularly interesting blog called Sacraparental which tells us it is about the sacred practice of parenting. It outlines possible strategies that might prevent the punitive consequences of this policy causing harm to families. These include the following: the test that Work and Income applies to all decisions needs to be in the best interest of the child and all workplaces should have modern flexible attitudes to the needs of working parents. Some parents work at night I have a sister-in-law who takes a job at 2 o’clock in the morning while her husband is at home. They barely see each other because they take turns in providing the parental responsibility needed while they do that. People in this position would be much better off financially.I cannot emphasise how important it is that the investment approach is evenly applied to the effects of the Budget changes. For a family with small children relying on income support is stressful enough without adding the compulsory work requirement to their obligations. It is also to be said that the financial benefit for a family in meeting these new obligations can be negligible especially when you add in travel and childcare costs. For this purpose the increase to childcare provision is absolutely on the button and we applaud that step.I want to return to one of the themes of the suicide prevention conference that occurred in Rotorua. Ko te piko o te māhuri tērā te tipu o te rākau—a small sapling being well nurtured will grow into a strong tree. As has been talked about we know that we need to provide support for our most vulnerable families at an early age from the birth of the child or in fact from before the birth of the child. If the mother of an unborn child is put under undue stress we know through the Brainwave Trust that the brain development of that unborn child is stagnated. We know that when the child comes into the world and is put under stress through poverty and the stresses of hardship brain development is further stagnated.We need to alleviate poverty. We need to eliminate poverty and it takes nothing more than a “coalition of the willing”. It is not just a whole-of-Government approach but it is a whole-of-population approach. We need to take the steps and I am proud of this Government for taking those steps. They are not first steps—and I know my speaking time is just about up—but are part of suite of things like KickStart Breakfast for children free doctors visits for under-13s Computers in Homes paying attention to rheumatic fever and an extension to paid parental leave. All of these things come as a consequence of the Ministerial Committee on Poverty. It is not the solution; it is just relief for our whānau who suffer hardship and for those reasons I am proud to be part of this Government in a relationship accord that can bring relief to our whānau.Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister of Conservation): Talofa lava. I intend to spend my time today in this call talking about some of the initiatives that this Government is taking as a result of the Budget this year in the areas my portfolio responsibilities: conservation; arts culture and heritage; and seniors. I begin with the kiwi. Our iconic national bird has been under threat for a long time and that is to do with the amount of predators in this country. My job as the Minister of Conservation is to sign the death warrant on a lot of these unwelcome eco-invaders. Unless we can do that the 2 percent decline in kiwi numbers on our mainland will continue to grow at an alarming rate and in our grandchildren’s time there will be no more kiwi on the mainland. My aim in life is to reverse that decline and I intend to spend that $11.2 million on reversing that decline so that there is a 2 percent increase in kiwi numbers. This is a tall order.In addition to pest and predator control we are going to be working with a group that has been around in New Zealand doing great work saving kiwis encouraging breeding programmes for more than 20 years and I am referring to Kiwis for Kiwi. I am going to be joining forces with them and encouraging them to make as an umbrella movement a sort of a bringing together of all of the groups that have been working independently to save our kiwi. Kiwis for Kiwi will effectively deliver to the community programmes to allocate the money and to really pull together the programmes in conjunction with the Department of Conservation and I think that is the way ahead.We have had some successes in the past year or so with helping our native birds come back from the brink of extinction. Battle for our Birds has been enormously successful. It is in fact the largest ever predator programme in New Zealand’s history and it covered some 600000 hectares of land. We were aiming to save about 12 of our endangered species mostly birds but also snails and long-tailed and short-tailed bats and I am very pleased to be able to report that the 1080 aerial drops which were at the heart of that particular programme have been very successful. We have done some measurements around certain birds for example. We have had not a great deal of success in the past in places like the Dart Valley and the Routeburn Valley but this year the nesting successes for the threatened mohua or yellowhead have been spectacular at just under 100 percent whereas previously almost half of these nests in those two areas had failed to produce eggs or chicks that survived.We do need to be vigilant though and monitoring will continue and the Department of Conservation will continue an escalated anti-predator campaign over the next 4 years. The treatment of the rat numbers in particular in areas like Ōparara in Kahurangi National Park has also prevented stoat plagues. So this has been a measure of success that is undeniable and I think it is something we need to be proud of. I certainly am very proud of the efforts of the Department of Conservation workers who have been at the heart of that campaign.Next week is Arbor Day and I intend to be in the electorate of my colleague and friend Scott Simpson. In Coromandel their beaches are not quite as good as ours on the North Shore but certainly they have some remarkable natural attributes so I am going to be talking with him about some of the kauri dieback measures. We have spent as many of you are well aware more than $21.5 million. That was allocated in the last Budget; we have not yet spent it. I felt that the case for kauri dieback and the need to fight it in the last Budget was so urgent that we have brought forward the time when we can start spending that money and we have a designated team now who will be focusing on kauri dieback and I will be making further announcements on this in the Coromandel next week. But really when you look at the level of groundwork that needs to be done it is extensive. The key thing about kauri dieback is that it spreads through foot traffic. It spreads through soil particles being caught up on the hooves or paws of animals as well as on human beings’ boots and then the spores of the soil-borne pathogen are transferred from places—including by pigs goats and a number of other creatures.So we are being very careful to ensure that what we can do in terms of mechanisms—advancing education really. A lot of people do not really understand how it is spread so we are putting up different signage in different languages. We are putting up more than 500 extra hygiene stations which will enable people to clean their boots. We will also be ensuring that boardwalks are built. So that money is going to be well-spent in the next few years. We are set to begin this month with a detailed data analysis including the mapping of tracks and the cost estimates for the upgrades. We also need to prioritise the tracks that need to be either closed or contained in some way. Track closures are not something we do readily and easily but sometimes it is the only way to stop the spread of the disease particularly in the winter months because when there is mud it sticks to boots and so forth and is more readily spread. So our boardwalk specifications are based on field trials of drainage specifications to ensure the natural flow of water has been improved and those are the sorts of things we have been planning to do and are now rolling out.We cannot of course do any of this alone. No one Government department even if it is as good as the Department of Conservation can do all of this by itself so we need partnerships and collaboration. I am pleased to be able to say that regional councils collectively are aiming to commit more than $700000 per year towards the research programmes local engagements and on-the-ground management. They will also contribute significant staff time which is very welcome. Scion also will make a contribution of around $700000 towards kauri dieback research over the next 6 years and that is part of its Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment - funded Phytophthora research programme. So these are the sorts of measures that we are taking across the Government.That brings me to the healthy pursuits factor of the great outdoors. There is a programme that started I think in Korea. It has been picked up by the Americans as well. It is called Healthy Parks Healthy People and what it does is it brings together international evidence that really tells people that there is a benefit to going into the great outdoors. A recent study which the ill-informed members of the Opposition might be interested in listening to is from the New Zealand Transport Agency. It put together a report that estimates that walking and cycling saves $2.70 and $1.30 per kilometre respectively to the New Zealand economy in health benefits. These are the kinds of measures that I am talking about with my colleagues across the Government. We do need to explore ways of maximising the impact spreading the word and getting in a collaborative partnership with other departments and other entrepreneurs and philanthropists as well.Once again the cradle-to-grave mentality that the Opposition has peddled so unsuccessfully for so long is not something that the New Zealand populace appreciate at all. What it welcomes from this National Government is a collaborative approach not just leaving it all up to the drip-feeding of the Government—that sort of extreme socialism that means that there is never enough money to go around—and we spiral into indebtedness which is the reason why the Opposition will stay on the Opposition benches for decades to come I hope.I am about to declare war on weeds putting aside the vagaries of Opposition members’ nonsense. The Department of Conservation spends around $10 million a year on operational weed control. You may ask why I am not tempted to spray a bit of it around on the Opposition benches but I am not that kind of person. I believe that instead we need to target herbicides and measures for control against weeds where they belong. Again it is a collaboration. We have wildings which as many of you may well know are plants that are in the wrong place and that have spread to areas where they must not spread. The estimates say that in about 20 years’ time around about a quarter of our entire landscape could be taken up with these wildings these plants that have invaded good pastoral land and we need to hold them in check. The longer that we do not actually spend money and the longer that we hold back the more expensive and difficult the process is going to be. I envisage of doing more detailed work on this programme of high-priority weed work. We are going to target the dirty dozen of weeds. Department of Conservation officials and I are having a very good time looking around at the various places around the country—[Interruption]—do not tempt me; it is low-hanging fruit over there is it not? It is too low hanging. The dirty dozen in the Opposition members can look after themselves.When it comes to weed control we do really need to get specific. I want to engage the hearts and minds of New Zealanders to join with us in this fight because the suffocation of our New Zealand forests and the seedlings that are not making it through to the stage that they need to are the sorts of reasons why we need to try to combat the weed problem. I intend to work with Weedbusters and a lot of other very strong community groups to ensure that we can win this war on weeds.The New Zealand flag consideration is of course going on at the moment. Ultimately the law will come through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. We do indeed have many opportunities to look at flags. I will be hosting an exhibition here in Parliament. There is just not enough time in this call to do justice to all I intend to do but thank you for your time today.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is always good to follow Poison Ivy. Expectations were very high in the Budget that the Government would finally—finally after years of being in denial years of Nick Smith’s photo opportunities and political stunts—do something about the housing crisis. First-home buyers were watching with horror as the average Auckland house price cracked over $800000 in the month before the Budget. House prices in Auckland went up on average by $100000 in the last 12 months. Renters watched as their rents in Auckland went up by 10 percent over the year because landlords were seeking a return on the investment that they had made in skyrocketing house prices. There is a housing crisis and people desperately want action.The Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Grant Spencer publicly embarrassed the Government by coming to this Parliament and saying that the Government needed to do more that they were not doing enough and that they needed to something about speculators. So the stage was set for this National Government to finally do something meaningful about the housing crisis. What we heard about was a speculators’ tax. John Key announced at the National Party conference that he was going to change the rules for taxproperty speculators and he announced a so-called—and not very bright—brightline test that would taxspeculatorswho buy a house and flick it on within 2 years.At first glance it was remarkable that the Government which has been denying for the last 2 years that speculators are a problem in Auckland at last announced some policy that was supposedly targeting speculators.But it did not take very long for the commentators the analysts and the general public to realise that this was a Clayton’s tax response to rampant property speculationin Auckland. The so-called 2-year test is simply an invitation to speculatorsto buy a property hold it for 2 years and flick it on. Treasury analysis from 2010 indicates that the tax will be lucky if it nets as many as 1000 speculatorsevery year when there are 80000 property sales every year. It will be lucky if it nets $18 million a year when there are hundreds of millions—in fact billions—of dollars in turnover every year from property speculation.John Shewan probably the most influential of the Government’s tax advisers commented that this measure will not curb skyrocketing house prices and that it certainly will not do anything to deter property speculators. This knowledge seemed to finally catch up with Bill English the finance Minister on Q+A last weekend when he was asked whether he thought this tax measure would have any effect. He said: “I don’t know. I have no idea if it will have any effect.”What a damning statement because what that means is that the National Party used Budget tax policy as a political stunt to announce policy where they have no idea whether it will have any impact at all and on an issue that is probably the most pressing public policy of the day and that is the urgent need to rein in the Auckland housing crisis which is making an entire generation of young New Zealanders Generation Rent. Young people in Auckland—good hard-working New Zealanders—have no prospect of ever owning their own home in Auckland unless mum and dad are wealthy enough to write them a very big cheque.The second announcement on housing policy that we heard as part of the Budget was Nick Smith last week announcing that he had found 500 hectares of vacant Government-owned land zoned residential that he was going to make available to property developers to put houses on. On the face of it it was a perfectly sound idea—in fact so sound that the former Labour Government 7 years ago did exactly the same thing. It did an inventory of available Government land and what did the National Party of the day do? It derided it it ridiculed it it thought it was the funniest thing it had ever heard and as soon as National got into office it shut down that work and did nothing at all.Nick Smith in his mad poll-driven panic to try to come up with something to announce on housing before the Budget got his officials to go back to the shelf and dust off the work that Labour did 7 years ago. In the meantime the National Government had done nothing zilch nada about the idea of developing vacant Government land in Auckland.On the surface what seems to have been a perfectly simple idea has been completely stuffed up by Nick Smith the Minister for Building and Housing. He rushed out the announcement so fast that he did not give his officials the time to even go and look at the parcels of land that were on his list—the list ofparcels of land that added up to the 500 hectares that he announced. He is the harum-scarum Minister for Building and Housing. If you want a good idea stuffed up give it to Nick Smith because that is what he did. He rushed it out. The officials did not have time to go and look at the sites of land. They did not even have time to pick up the phone and talk to the Government agencies that own this land to ask them what they were doing with it and what they intended do with it.The 500 hectares of landthat Nick Smith announced last week includes electricity substations the Māngere Lawn Cemetery the SAS training base in Papakura and the Ōtāhuhu fire station just to name a few examples. Nick Smith in the House today denied that any of those things were on his land but I guarantee this: those public facilities were on lists that his officials prepared that led to him announcing 500 hectares of vacant Government land.Nick Smith has been extremely evasive and economical with the truth. On Monday he denied categorically to the news media that the Hepburn Road electricity substation was on the list. Yesterday he was in this House in question time promoting it as a site.Hon Annette King: And he tabled some lists.PHIL TWYFORD: And he tabled the land title for the substation. I want to quote Nathaniel O’Connor who was interviewed a year and half ago concerning the Hepburn Road substation where Nick Smith wants to build houses. When that substation blew up and caused a fire a year and half ago Nathaniel O’Connor whose house is located 150 metres from the substation was reported as saying: “Our lights flickered then there was a really loud arcing sound and a second after that there was a huge explosion. You could feel it inside your chest.” Well I think that probably Nick Smith could feel a tightening in his chest as we have discussed this over the last couple of days in the House. Bill English told the media in very reassuring terms: “I presume the substation is not always exploding.” So Bill English is very relaxed about it.Nick Smith thinks that building houses on an electricity substation is the answer to Auckland’s housing crisis. If that is true we are in a lot more trouble that we thought previously. Things are a lot worse than we imagined. We have three housing Ministers in this Government—three housing Ministers: Nick Smith Bill English and Paula Bennett. I think that John Key should appoint three more because since he announced those three housing Ministers Auckland housing prices have gone up by $60000.What have we got? We have got a weak half-hearted tax change to try to catch speculators. We have got a bizarre Nick Smith special—overcooked under-prepared and he has not done his homework. Both of these announcements were rushed out. They are half-baked and were scrambled together at the last minute in a panic. Their only objective is to make it look as if the Government is doing something—anything—about the housing crisis in Auckland.But what we know is that these measures will have minimal impact. They will not make any difference to the generation of young New Zealanders who are locked out of the housing market. They are first-home buyers who simply want the dream that their parents and grandparents had in this country and that is to own a home of their own. It will not help the kids in my electorate in west Auckland who are living in uninsulated garages because mum and dad cannot afford to pay the rent and cannot find a house anywhere.These measures will not be effective. What we need is a comprehensive crackdown on speculators. We need thousands of new affordable homes to be sold to first-home buyers. This Government is a crushing crushing disappointment.ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. Over the last week or so Opposition members have criticised us for our projected surplus forecasts. They say that they are not big enough. Well the question is: what would they do differently? We know that a surplus comes from two parts: the income side and the expenditure side. We know that the revenue side has taken a hit because of lower dairy payouts and the lower interest-rate environment that we find ourselves in—all these things affect the revenue side and are out of our control. So to increase our surplus we have to look at the cost side: the expense side. We have to spend less. So the question to the Opposition members is: what would they have done? What would they have cut to get a larger surplus today tomorrow and in the future?Would they have cancelled free GP visits for under-13-year-olds? I do not think so. I do not think they could. Would they have cancelled the increase in paid parental leave that we put in place? Would they have cancelled the $11 million of funding available for the kiwi breeding programme I ask the Minister of Conservation? Would they have cut the funding for kauri dieback? Would they have reduced expenditure in health which would have seen waiting lists grow cancer treatment patients go back to Australia and queues for elective surgery? These are the consequences of cutting expenditure which is the only thing you can do if you want to increase your surpluses. Would they have cut the rheumatic fever investment that this Government has made? Would they have taken away the $359 million that we are investing in schoolteachers to encourage and incentivise teachers to do better for our kids? Maybe they would claw back the $790 million that we have just announced for the most needy—that is the children in beneficiary households.These are the sorts of things that you have to do if the surplus is the only thing that you are concerned about. But we are not because we know that it is much more important to continue the spending and the investment in those things that I have just mentioned. You know where Labour is going to get the money from? It is going to go for the superannuitants. It is going for the superannuitants. There are two or three things that it could do. It could raise the age of entitlement which we have said we would not do. Maybe it could means test superannuation which we have said we would not do. Or maybe it can simply reduce the amount which we have said we would not do.This Budget focuses on those who are in need the most: the children of beneficiary families. This Budget is a good Budget. This Budget is fiscally responsible. This Budget has cut the kick-start programme which is a programme that is not about focusing on the most needy. We know that the $1000 per person was going only to middle and higher-income families. It was not targeted at beneficiaries and it was not targeted at lower-income families which is why we are cutting that back. There are 2.5 million people involved in that programme. It is working. I support this Budget. Thank you.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): All businesses farmers and households are so pleased with this Budget. Again this National Government under the leadership of the Rt Hon John Key has proved that we are working hard for all. We are working hard for all New Zealand families and children. We are working hard for all—from the young ones to the old ones. National Government members are doing what we promised to do. We promised to work hard for our families and children. We promised to work hard to get families ahead. We promised to work hard for mums and dads and children to get a better start in life and for young ones to get better opportunities to succeed.This National Government is continuously implementing plans to support a stronger economy to support more jobs and to support higher incomes to help New Zealand families and children. Since 2011 194000 jobs have been created under this National Government—194000 new jobs. This equates to 120 new jobs a day. Budget 2015 shows our commitment to address the drivers of hardship. Under this National Government there are 42000 fewer children in benefit-dependent families than 3 years ago. This shows that our spending is working. This shows that our spending is helping those who need it. At the same time we respect the taxpayers who pay for it.Budget 2015 provides $790 million to help children in hardship to help children in New Zealand’s poorest families. This National Government is continuously working hard to deliver better public services. We are always seeking new and better ideas to deliver better public services because we are focused on getting results for our New Zealand families and children. At the same time we are working hard to reduce cost. Yes we are working hard to reduce cost. We are not like the previous Labour Government whose spending increased by 50 percent even when it became clear that the global financial crisis was coming our way. That is why when we came in in 2008 Treasury projections were of doom and gloom and endless debt for New Zealand.Yes our focus is on children in hardship and along with that we have a big boost for health and education. Health spending is going to be a record $15.9 billion next year. This includes $98 million to help New Zealand families get timely elective surgeries and for prevention and treatment of orthopaedic conditions. In education early childhood primary and secondary education spending will be a record $10.8 billion next year. In tertiary education it will be $3.1 billion. We are investing in more things—things that matter to our families and children. We are able to do this because we know how to carefully manage the Government’s books. That is why we are able to invest in things that matter to New Zealand families and children.A strong economy is important if families are to flourish. Economic growth is forecast to average 2.8 percent over the next 4 years. Average wages are forecast to increase by $7000 to $63000 per annum by mid-2019. The unemployment rate is forecast to drop below 5 percent by 2016 and there will be ACC levy cuts of $500 million in 2016 and 2017. This is on top of the $1.5 billion that we have already put in New Zealanders’ pockets and at the same time our focus is to get our net debt below 20 percent by 2020.We are also working hard to make houses affordable. This Budget provides $52 million for facilitating housing development on Crown-owned land in Auckland. We are also helping more young New Zealanders into their first homes through our KiwiSaver HomeStart programme. This programme is aimed at helping 90000 families to buy their first home. This proves how responsible this National Government is. This National Government has just delivered a great Budget a Budget that will keep New Zealand on the right track. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand has developed a housing crisis since the National Government took office in 2008. It has developed it since then. It has been like the frog in the saucepan waiting for the heat to increase without noticing it until the pot boils over. The crisis during that time has become chronic and this Government has done little or nothing about it. In fact this Government has had a worse record in meeting housing demand than any other Government in living history. In the last 6 years house prices have gone through the roof in Auckland and nobody over there could deny it. Houses are now unaffordable to most homebuyers and very little is being done to help. We have had some action taken on access to KiwiSaver at the price though of compromising retirement savings. Too many people do not have access to enough money in a KiwiSaver account to make any difference. The causes of the crisis have not been addressed. Few Kiwis have left for Australia that is true and that has led to an increase in demand but so has relatively uncontrolled immigration—56000 in the last year. That has led to a very significant increase in demand for housing and the Government has done nothing at all about that. According to the Bank of New Zealand 11 percent of homes are sold to foreign buyers in Auckland—11 percent—and the Government has done virtually nothing about that.Even this Government cannot deny the problem now. It is belatedly bolstering tax rules on residential property which is something that should have been done years and year ago. There is no need at all for a capital gains tax if income tax is broad enough. No action has been taken on that either. The Government is not doing enough about foreign buyers. Requiring overseas buyers to have a New Zealand tax number is not nearly enough. Determined buyers from overseas will not be deterred by that at all. The brightline test for all buyers selling within 2 years is much too easily avoided and will have little effect. Two years is too short. Although special housing areas and accords with councils will help the real issue has been the Government’s unwillingness to invest directly in housing itself. New Zealand First’s policy is for the Government to buy and develop land for housing and to use existing Crown land for the same purpose and for the Government to sell directly smaller sections thereby making modest homes more available to more people with easy repayments over 25 years at a low interest rate.The Government has taken a leaf out of New Zealand First’s book with its use of Crown land but only 400 hectares of it—a very small portion. It is only 400 hectares and only as a last-minute effort in the Budget to try to look a little bit better. It is very cosmetic. Even that land is ill-defined. We do not really know exactly what land the Government has got in mind and not all of it of course will be suitable. Only $52 million has been allowed for in the Budget to develop that land and that seems very light. There is also very little information about how all that will work. The Government should take another leaf out of New Zealand First’s policy which requires a permanent special agency to buy and develop land for residential housing.The Government has had an even worse record in social housing. The average rental is now $379 a week. Since 2008 the increase under National has been $65 a week or 20 percent and 11.7 percent above the Consumers Price Index. That is huge. People cannot avoid that. In Auckland people typically have to pay 50 percent of their take-home income in rent and that is crippling. In Christchurch people often have to pay something like $1000 a week or more for an ordinary three-bedroom house. It is a very significant problem in the major cities. The Government’s social housing measures will not help to increase rental housing stock. Those measures are designed to minimise the role of the State and to emasculate Housing New Zealand. This Government is actually abdicating its responsibility for social housing by contracting it out to non-governmental organisations and private providers. Government members say there will be flexible purchasing as described in the Government’s recent legislation allowing what they call tailored agreements dictated in detail by Ministers who will be biased of course. That is to try to give certainty to providers so that they can go out and borrow money and build homes. But are they really capable of doing this job? We really will not know until it happens—until the worst happens perhaps. But Housing New Zealand of course could do all that and used to do all that much faster and much better. So what is the point of this exercise of farming it out to non-governmental organisations?The whole thrust of the Government’s housing programme is to suppress demand for State rentals to do little for first-home buyers and it simply does not adequately address the housing crisis at all.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): The member for Wairarapa Alastair Scott spoke earlier and said that the Labour Opposition is criticising the Government’s Budget trajectory. We are not criticising the trajectory; we are criticising the deficit. Over the last 3 or 4 years all we have heard is that this Budget is going to deliver a surplus and it has failed to do that. All we have heard are broken promises and squandered opportunities. This Budget has done nothing nothing whatsoever to address the real issues that are going on in New Zealand.We also criticise the fact that the Government has borrowed $84 billion over the last 7 years. The last Labour Government left the new National Government in a great position and with great opportunity. We had zero Government debt and now we have got $84 billion worth of debt. Government members do not say a lot about that. They keep talking themselves up but all we can see is $84 billion worth of debt. I do not criticise $790 million going towards the families that need it the most but $790 million or $25 per family per week is not enough even to keep up with the cost of living. They seem to forget that in 2006 Working for Families delivered a $60 tax credit for families on the benefit as well. We hear a lot of talk from Government members. They are talking themselves up but the reality is they are not delivering. This Government has lost its way. It is failing to meet the needs of New Zealand families and it has no long-term plan to address the challenges ahead. The Government is robbing from our children’s future just to scrape by today. This is a Government of broken promises.We have a beautiful creature in Māoridom. It is called the kēwai. A kēwai is a freshwater crayfish. A freshwater crayfish moves by flapping its legs and moving backwards and this is what I would say is a “kēwai Budget” where the Government members are backtracking and back-pedalling as fast as they can flap themselves. They promised a surplus and all we have got is another deficit. There were nine surpluses from this side of the House and seven deficits from over there.What would a responsible Government do? It would grow incomes. This Government has failed on that. It promised that incomes would grow by $7000 and it has failed to meet that by some $3000. It has not fixed the housing crisis. Phil Twyford was very eloquent in describing the issues around the housing crisis in Auckland. The Government has not hit the speculators and when it started to hit the speculators it was just a Clayton’s attack. We are not going to see much difference in what has happened. I think of my nephew. He is very lucky that he bought a house some 5 years ago in Auckland for $400000. He sold it at the end of last year for $790000. He is one of the lucky ones. But people coming into the housing market now are the ones who are going to miss out. A real Government would invest in a productive and diverse economy. All this Government is doing is relying on dairy and disaster. If it was not for the Christchurch earthquake the growth in our economy would be about 25 percent less than what it is now.This Government needs to prepare New Zealand for the next generation of wealth creation. It is not doing that. It has not transformed tertiary education to match skills with future jobs. By the way something that we need to keep harping on about is the previous Labour Government’s record when it comes to unemployment. We got it down to 3.4 percent—3.4 percent—and what has this Government done? Well it has doubled that now. Not only that in Whangarei in 2007 there were 58 people on the unemployment benefit. You could just about name them if you sat down and tried to memorise their names. You could basically do that. I do not know how many hundreds if not thousands are on the unemployment benefit now in Whangarei.Let us have a listen to some of these broken promises. Well there is the surplus. We have already covered that. We have had seven deficits. We are promised now that next year there will be a surplus. Actually let us remember the Minister of Finance’s analogy. He said: “Oh well if you’re trying to lose 10 kilogrammes to fit a suit for your brother’s wedding and you lose only 9.8 kilogrammes well what does it matter?”. I prefer this analogy. When the All Blacks go to the Rugby World Cup this year in order to bring home that William Webb Ellis Cup they need a surplus of points—more points—than the other team. If they end up with a deficit of points they are losers; they have lost. That is why the people of New Zealand are losing because of this Budget.What else? Jobs and wages—this is in John Key’s open letter to New Zealanders after the election. He promised that “Over the next 2 years we expect to see about 150000 jobs created.” National will fall short on that promise by 60000. Then there is the KiwiSaver kick-start contribution of $1000. The Government is robbing our children’s future to scrape by today. That is unacceptable. Then we have new taxes. Of course we were told there would be no new taxes. That was an election promise—no new taxes. Well we have got a new capital gains tax that is not really a capital gains tax. We have got an airport tax that we are told is not really a tax; it is a levy. We have got a broadband tax. What is the next one? National promised to increase exports to 40 percent of GDP. Well that is heading south as well. Then there are the regions. Well the regions spoke—Northland spoke. It has been forgotten. The Minister of Transport Simon Bridges said: “We’ll promise 10 bridges.” Thank God his name is not “Simon Tunnels” or else we would have 10 tunnels going through Northland. This is a reckless Budget.I just want to touch on the police estimates because the poor police are doing a great job out there but they are just getting no Budget increases. In fact they have had $15 million in cuts this year. I know that the Minister is going to get up here and say: “Oh no that is not true. We’re implementing $160 million in new initiatives.” Well really what the Minister has done is taken a pack of cards shuffled it allowed a few cards to fall out on to the floor and then re-dealt them and said that it is all new money. Well I can tell everyone that it is not new money; it is $15 million less. Let us just have a look and let us just use the estimates that came out last week. If we look at the columns in Budget 2014-15 the final budgeted amount was $1.624 billion and in the estimated actual it was $1.624 billion. What is the budget for 2015-16? It is $1.609 billion. That is a Budget cut and no Minister can walk in here and say that they have increased the funding for police. It is here in black and white that the Government has cut the police Budget and that is unacceptable.But when you look through the police Budget what do you see? You see that the Government’s targets are more on revenue collecting. For example it has got greater targets in chasing up people using cellphones while driving. I think it is trying to double the number of people who are using cellphones whom it wants to catch. There is funding for incorrect lane changing and warrants of fitness and yet there are people like our colleague the Hon Phil Goff who had his motorbike pinched. He ain’t going to see that again because the high-volume crimes—those really irritating crimes such as theft burglary assault shoplifting—are not having as much money put into them.In fact many of the cuts are coming from catching drivers speeding. The Government wants to catch more people but it is actually giving the police less money in order to catch speeders. Heavy vehicle fleet—I take it that that is catching trucks that are overloaded. Fatigue and distraction—the Government is taking away $133000 from that. Traffic management—it is taking away $408000 from that. Alcohol and impaired drivers—now you would think that that would be a massive priority but it is taking away $2.815 million from there. High-risk drivers—it is removing $5.128 million from there. So the Government is asking the police to do more to catch more people but it is giving them less money and these are all high revenue collecting crimes—rather than going out and catching those criminals who are breaking into homes and like I say stealing the Hon Phil Goff’s motorcycle. This Budget does not deliver.I would really like to carry on about the Department of Corrections. There is a big mess there and it all comes around the prison privately run by Serco which is a direct transfer of jobs from the public sector through to the private sector. Unfortunately my time has expired. Kia ora.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I call Nuk Korako—5 minutes.NUK KORAKO (National): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Talofa lava. Kia ora. E mihi atu ana ki te whanaukatanga ki Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ā huri noa te Whare kia ora.[Thank you. I acknowledge the relationship with the Great Sea of Kiwa.And throughout the House hello there.]First of all this is a split call. Obviously it is my first timestanding and speaking as a member of the House in a Budget debate. The last speech by Mr Davis epitomises for me what has actually happened since the announcement of the Budget last week called “A plan that’s working”. I have listened very carefully to the debate which started last week and I understand now that that people across the other side of the House have selective memories and that in some ways they have selective hearing as well. I just remind Mr Davis of the fact that when Bill English took over as Minister of Finance in 2008 what he accepted was possibly one of the biggest hospital passes that was ever given to a Minister of Finance. What happened there was that the Labour Government had squandered 9 years—9 years—of good economic conditions and over the last week we have had constant reminders from the other side of the House that Labour ran surpluses for 9 years.But at least let me ask those members opposite what they have to show for it. What do they have to show for it?It is all very well boasting about making surpluses but you did absolutely nothing for children living in hardship nothing for Māori and nothing to support our most vulnerable people. Labour had 9 years of spending up large yet it did not increase benefits one bitin real terms. It took a National Government with the support of the Māori Party to give our most vulnerable whānau a $25-per-week increase as part of a $790 million package of support for children and whānau living in hardship. There is also some targeted support and that is what I want to concentrate on—two major ones particularly for Māori. The first one is the Te Ture Whenua Māori network where we are investing almost $13 million in supporting Māori landowners improve the productivity of their land along with a timely review of the Māori Land Act—under the Māori Land Act if you take into account that 11 percent of land in the North Island is under that legislation 80 percent of that land is underdeveloped. We could see $8 billion injected into the Māori economy along with 5000 jobs created over the next 10 years. That is part of this innovative situation that we have actually put into this Budget about starting to review all of that legislation.Today the New Zealand economy continues to grow and so does the Māori tribal economy. This Budget also appropriates $1.4 billion over the next 5 years for the settlement of historic Treaty claims—and I want to talk about Treaty settlements. The Government’s commitment to its programme of Treaty settlements is more about pumping money into the Māori economy if we look at that and think about those Treaty settlements and if you look at the work of Minister Finlayson and what he has done over the last two terms—over 40 Treaty settlements. In doing that that is actually linked to regional economy. When we look at the largest iwi Ngāpuhi it has just begun negotiations with the Crown. But all we have heard on that side of the House is negativity—a lot of negativity. We heard it last night about whether a settlement would really change things up there. I say to my Māori colleagues on the other side of the House just look at Waikato-Tainui just look at Ngāi Tahu. All of that the references to the scourge of property developers and all of that that we have heard from that side of the House—Ngāi Tahu are the largest property developers in the South Island and those properties are being invested in the future of our people.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Talofa lava. It is great to be a New Zealander. It is great to live in New Zealand. I know that many other people who live in this fine country know it is great to be a Kiwi and great to live in New Zealand. The reason I know this is because of the recently released New Zealand General Social Survey the biggest social survey outside the 5-year census. It shows that 83 percent of people are highly satisfied with their lives. That is between eight and nine people out of 10 who are highly satisfied with their lives. And 87 percent of people have a high sense of purpose in their lives. That is fantastic news but there is a lot more to be done and that is what this National Government is doing.It is also great to be a Canterbury National MP and it is great to be part of a team of Canterbury National MPs. We have increased the Budget for the Canterbury rebuild from $15.5 billion to $16.5 billion. That is an extra $1 billion for the Canterbury recovery and that shows the faith that the voters put in us in the last election because of course this National Government won the party vote in every electorate in Canterbury. A lot of the credit for that needs to go to our Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery the Hon Gerry Brownlee. It was great to see the opening of the bus exchange in Christchurch on Monday morning another great anchor project opening in the recovery. We are committed to the recovery and this Budget proves that. It is one of our top four priorities.I remember campaigning in the last election when I met many voters who were voting National for the first time. They had voted Labour all their lives but they were voting for National because National was working hard for New Zealand listening to New Zealand and working for the working people of New Zealand. I come from a background in mental health which is about making a difference in people’s lives and this Budget is making a difference in people’s lives. I am proud to be part of a Government that at the first opportunity for this term stood up in this Budget debate and supported children and families. This will make a big difference in people’s lives.The $790 million child hardship package will give working families up to $25 a week. That is over 50000 families who will get up to $25 a week. People also said to us that they wanted us to support the vulnerable and that is why we are increasing the benefit by up to $25 a week. That is the first uplift since 1972. I was born in 1972 so beneficiaries have not had an uplift like this in my whole lifetime. It took a National Government to deliver that. It is about making a difference in people’s lives and this National Government is delivering.This National Government cares. We care about New Zealand and in New Zealand we have a mixed economy of care. We have State provision we have private provision and we have community provision. It is not about a small State; it is about big communities and it is about this Government backing communities. To all those creative community-sector organisations we believe in you—we believe in you to make a difference. This mixed economy of care is about flexibility and choice. This was demonstrated in our social housing reform where our legislation will allow an extra 3000 people to access housing support.To those 3000 people tell them that the Labour Party said no the New Zealand First Party said no and the Green Party said no but that it was this National Government that said yes to them. And to all of those tenants with high complex needs—like mental health and drug addiction—the Labour Party said no to extra support the New Zealand First Party said no to that legislation for extra support and the “Red Green Party” said no but this National Government said yes because at the end of the day this party is working hard for New Zealanders. We are listening to New Zealanders because the National Government is the working people’s party. Thank you.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Mr Assistant Speaker a split call?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): A 5-minute call.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: Yes. As a number of my colleagues have already noted the 2015 Budget statement said virtually nothing about the biggest economic issue facing this country—that is climate change. The Budget revealed new policy of course on a variety of household issues. They are important issues especially to those directly affected but they are not the overarching macroeconomic issues that will at the global level—and therefore at the national level—overwhelm everybody if they are not properly addressed.The Minister of Finance is tinkering at the margin with his seventh Budget. It is like the captain of a ship transferring his passengers into a dingy with an outboard motor. Both are heading into the hurricane ahead. The captain is saying: “Not to worry we have just enough freeboard to stay afloat.” He is saying this even as the sea is getting bigger. That hurricane is climate change—literally hurricanes storms and floods that are already occurring.Why is extreme weather relevant to New Zealand’s Budget? It is because the stress on the planet’s resources through global population increase and burgeoning economic activity per person is unsustainable. We are incurring today a global ecological overshoot of 50 percent. Although New Zealand is rare in having a national ecological surplus we are negatively affected including our fiscal outlook by the unsustainable and worsening global economy. That is the reason the Minister is failing even though he is widely seen as a successful economic steward.The most important global meeting to date occurs in December. It is the 21st annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. It is the equivalent of the failed conference in Copenhagen in 2009 but it is more important because we have lost 6 critical years yet there is not a word on this in the Budget.The world has lost ground. No longer are the negotiators engaged in global planning. Top-down is out; bottom-up is in. Binding commitments are out; voluntary contributions are in. We going to tame dangerous climate change you understand through voluntary contributions by 194 competing States jealous of their national sovereignty. God help us for we know not what we do.That voluntary contribution is labelled in the latest jargon “INDC” or intended nationally determined contribution. It is “nationally determined” not “globally determined”; it is “intended” not “committed” and the jargon is sanitised to the point of stupefaction. Global warming above 4 degrees which is labelled by international organisations as catastrophic is described by this Government as having “substantial environmental economic and human impacts”. God help us.New Zealand is lumbering its way towards its intended nationally determined contribution. It has held public consultations throughout the country. The Minister for Climate Change Issues is conspicuously absent. He does not care; his mind has moved on. He will none the less announce the intended nationally determined contribution within a few months. It will be insufficient—probably between 10 and 20 percent. He will pepper it with conditions and irrelevancies. He will imply that he is in possession of complex and arcane knowledge that accords superior insight.The Green Party has already said that the intended nationally determined contribution must be 40-plus percent. That would bring New Zealand’s net emissions down from 67 megatonnes today to 40 megatonnes in 2030. That is consistent with the Green Party policy of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Is getting to 40 megatonnes feasible? Yes it is. As far as can be determined we could do at least that and we are talking about domestic abatement alone. In fact it is possible that we could go further. What might be New Zealand’s maximum abatement potential assuming all policy signals are optimal and there is sufficient political will? The experts will differ but the range could be anything from 40 megatonnes down to perhaps 20. So let us have the debate over what can be done—a genuine public debate not a trite ministerial sermon—and let us then have a genuine cross-party political debate.My final point is that that is simply our domestic abatement. If we are talking about doing our fair share in the global effort to ensure a 2 degrees Celsius outcome New Zealand’s national responsibility target goes far far beyond that.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Gareth Hughes—a 5-minute call.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. According to the Bible it took only 7 days to form the earth and all the plants and animals on it yet Bill English managing a so-called rock star economy has not been able to achieve this over 7 years. Of course this was National’s seventh Budget. It continues 7 years of deficits debt dairy dependence and declining homeownership. It seems the only indicator that is not going backwards for National is our greenhouse gas emissions which we know are just going up and up.The Budget did nothing for a whole generation of young Kiwis who are swimming in student debt and cannot get into their first home or for Kiwi workers half of whom have seen their wages stagnate under National. After 7 years our economy is more dependent on a few raw commodities. It is a simpler economy than when we started. Just this week we saw a massive $2.6 billion trade deficit the largest in the 6 years since the middle of the worst global recession we have seen in decades. What we are seeing now are the impacts of falling dairy prices and also the dependence our country has on exporting this raw milk powder around the world.Likewise you can see it with the data that we saw in the Budget. The horses that the National Government has picked are not working. We have seen oil royalty income go down 38 percent minerals income go down 34 percent. We have seen coal royalty income go down 33 percent. On the other side of the ledger though we have also seen flat to declining science funding. Tertiary education has seen $1 billion stripped out of it over the last 7 years. We have seen New Zealand continue to languish in the bottom half of the OECD. We are going backwards on the important things like science and innovation yet we are increasing our dependence on things like dairy and oil which are not paying off. You can see it in the perilous state of the country’s books that Bill English showed us but you can also see it in the experience of the majority of Kiwis.Hon Anne Tolley: Perilous?GARETH HUGHES: Well Ms Tolley in this country Kiwis are working some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages and we are paying some of the highest costs of living in the entire developed world. The whole country is sprinting just to keep where we are. We are not actually getting ahead as a country. The fact is we have got 290000 Kiwi kids in poverty yet for a country—[Interruption] I hear the National backbench interjecting. For a country that is feeding 20 million people around the world in our agricultural exports it is a travesty that we have got hungry kids going to school without food but your party voted against supplying them food in schools.Under National’s New Zealand we see the richest 1 percent controlling 16 percent of the country’s wealth. And the bottom half what does it have? It has got only 5 percent. Every year under National it just gets worse and worse. But the fact is that it is bad for our economic performance. The OECD has found that National’s rising inequality has shaved 10 percent off our GDP over the last decade. Sure there have been some productivity improvements but they have not flowed through to the workers. So sure we have got rising inequality but we are also seeing rising generational inequality.Previous generations of Kiwis used to have an affordable education and State support to get into a first home yet for Kiwis in their 20s or 30s a good job an affordable education and support to get into their first home are considered luxuries. Parents are struggling to raise their kids burdened by massive student debt and the high cost of living in areas like electricity and food. The majority of young Kiwis are forced to rent. In fact we have had to create an entire new name for this new generation which is being called Generation Rent. For this generation the dream of homeownership is slipping further and further out of reach. So we are seeing rising inequality generational inequality but perhaps the biggest inequality is what is happening with the planet which the last speaker Kennedy Graham just touched on—intergenerational inequality in terms of future generations’ security literally on the planet.Over those 7 years under National what we have seen is our emissions increase by 20 percent since National came into power. They are forecast to increase 48 percent by the end of this decade. Just in the last week within National’s Budget guess what there was? There was $31 million to subsidise polluters. National’s emissions trading scheme is a complete farce. It is not incentivising the clean-energy economy we should be developing and those clean-energy jobs; in fact it is subsidising polluters and that is National’s vision for the future. However there is a better alternative. That is why the Greens are putting up so many good ideas to rebalance our economy reduce inequality and give all Kiwis a fair go. Kia ora.Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs): Well Budget 2015 is a great Budget. It is Minister Bill English’s seventh Budget and I think he has nailed it. The Government’s plan is working. We have got a strong growing economy and it is translating into real benefits for Kiwi families Kiwi households and Kiwi businesses. I think really the Budget delivers careful management of public spending but also shows investment into better services that Kiwis need. We have prioritised the things that matter most to most New Zealanders. If you think about it we cannot do anything in life unless we are healthy so we have put more money into health: $1.7 billion more this year. That will mean there is a record spend of $15.9 billion for 2015-16. And then there is education. Our Government believes that a good education is the best foundation for people to live good lives to be able to have choices in their lives. We have invested there again another $686 million which means that the suite of early childhood primary and secondary education is getting $10.8 billion and then on top of that we are spending over $3 billion on tertiary education.But for me as the Minister for Disability Issues I am really interested in what is being spent for special education. We have increased the amount of spending every year since we have been in Government. This year we are investing a further $62.9 million over 4 years. That is more money for the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding. What we have got this funding for is for significantly disabled youngsters—people who have problems with physical or mental issues and learning disabilities. What we are doing is putting this money in towards giving them a better quality of life and a better chance of education. We are also going to add $23 million for extra in-class aides for kids who do not quite meet the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme category. They are the ones who still need help but are not in the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme. We want to make sure that our disabled youngsters have the best opportunity to live the life of ordinary kids. We believe that education is the best place to make that happen.We are also working on housing programmes obviously. We are particularly focusing on affordable housing in Auckland and Christchurch but also for first home owners. We are investing in ultra-fast broadband regional highways KiwiRail and urban cycleways. They are all things that I think are money well spent. Let us look at jobs. Our Government believes that work is good for you. We believe in work not just for getting wages or a salary but because if you go to work you are part of a team you are part of a contribution you can use your skills and that is what people do in our communities. I am delighted that businesses have been able to create 194000 new jobs since 2011 but we are backing them to do more. We are backing them to deliver 150000 jobs over the next 4 years. We also want good wages. Average wages have increased by 15 percent in the last 5 years. We are expecting that to continue and we are hoping that the average wage will be able to rise by about $7000 to get to $63000 by mid-2019. The ACC annual levy cuts will also inject $2 billion into the back pockets of Kiwis between 2012 and 2016 and I think that has been very well received.But I have to say the highlight of the Budget has got to be the package for children from poorer families which is the $25 a week increase in benefits. We understand that people on benefits struggle to look after their kids so $25 will make a difference for families with children. As we have already heard this is the first time in 43 years that benefits have been lifted. But we are not forgetting the people who are working with lower incomes either. The Working for Families payments will also increase by $12.50 a week. That total package is $790 million over 4 years and that will help about 160000 low-income families and will touch 300 children. I think that is absolutely a great effort it will make a real difference and it is something that I think most Kiwis support.Going back to the disabilities sector I am delighted that Budget 2015 also provides special money for transition for disabled students. It provides $16.3 million for participation and inclusion services to help young people who are disabled and who are leaving school and entering into adult life. We are giving them what we call our very high-needs support system. I think anyone who has been involved with teenagers understands how difficult that transition from school to the real world is. It is particularly difficult for disabled people particularly if they have significant physical intellectual or sensory impairments or maybe a combination of all these things—learning hearing vision or mobility impairments. I think this is a particularly important area and I am really pleased to see that money has been put there.Now I want to talk about the Customs Service because customs and the security and safety of our border have benefited from Budget 2015. First of all there is a capital sum of $4.7 million for extra officers to screen departing passengers—that is screening them for terrorism and drug threats. That extended risk screening for departures complements what we already do there in terms of existing automated and face-to-face passport checks and also complements the alert system that is already in place. This is an aim to counter terrorism and to make sure that we can maintain New Zealand’s low-risk status. It is important that New Zealand is seen as a safe country and New Zealanders have told us they want that to remain that way.It is because they are so keen to see a safe and secure border that we are introducing the new border processing levy for travellers. It is an important step in managing both biosecurity and people threats at the border. It brings the screening of travellers and the cost recovery of processing at the border in line with what we already do with goods. Since the early 1990s there has been a cost recovery from importers of goods and now we are looking at travellers. The beauty of this levy is that it is flexible because as the numbers of travellers go across our borders the amount of resource increases. This is particularly important because we are getting larger numbers every year—about a 3.5 percent increase and we are expecting that to increase—and more complex passengers language issues and different cultures. It is really important that that resource will be available where it is needed.The border processing levy is also fairer. At the moment taxpayers—that is you me the panel beater from Whangarei and the solo mum from Christchurch—all pay for visitors to come across our border. Of those people coming across our border 58 percent are international visitors. Many of them are on luxury cruises or golfing trips to New Zealand and I do not really think it is right that the New Zealand taxpayer should pay for them. What is more it is a lose-lose. We pay for those overseas visitors to come through our border but as soon as we go back to their country we have to pay again. This is because most countries have a border levy; it is international best practice. New Zealand’s border levy will be about $20 give or take and that is actually very light in comparison to the countries that we visit—places like Australia which charges about NZ$58; the UK which charges NZ$150; and Canada and the US which are all very similar. The majority of the levy will be on the arrival part simply because that is where the biosecurity screening happens but we still need part of the levy to cover departures and the face-to-face and screening of passport checks. It will apply to all travellers—about 95 percent are airline passengers but also cruise passengers. If you come on your private yacht or airline you will have to pay as well. We are getting stakeholders a consultation—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Thank you. The member’s time has expired.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. Talofa i lau afioga le fofoga fetalai. Talofa fo’i to the members of this House and I acknowledge all of those members who have been able to contribute to Samoan Language Week. Le vaiaso o le gagana Samoa i lenei vaiaso. Faamalo le tapuaiga a le tatou Atunu’u Samoa i itu e fia o Aotearoa. Fa’amalo foi le tapua’i i le itumalo o Magele.The theme of Samoan Language Week this week is “Tautua nei mo sou manuia a taeao” meaning serve now for a better tomorrow. Although “tautua” means serve it also means to be a servant to others but the operative words here are do it now for a better tomorrow. I think that is quite fitting when we are debating this Budget because we are talking about what this Government is doing and the ramifications that its actions will have on the future of this country on the future of our young people and on the future of the next generation of the workforce in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although the Budget promises so much—and we heard on Thursday Friday and Saturday how this Government just enjoyed crowing and shouting from the rooftops about those particular promises—I think when we start digging a little bit underneath those promises and try to identify the detail of those promises we find that the Government is woefully short on the things that it needs to do for a better tomorrow.I want to say that it is woefully short because National ran last year’s election promising us that there would be a surplus this year. National convinced all of us and convinced the New Zealand public that if National returned to Government we would have a $300 million surplus. That was the promise that National made to New Zealanders at the last election. Well what do we get—what do we get? Now Government members are saying “What’s in a surplus?”. They are trying to blame us for the Government’s deficit. The reality is that a surplus is important because it is a sign of an efficient Government. It means that the Government can invest in the future. It means that the Government can pay off debt. Right now we are in hock for $83 billion paying $10 million in interest. There is no vision for the future because of the fact that the Government has failed time and time and time again 7 years in a row to achieve that surplus. Every time we try to hold the Government to account Government members say “We’ll do it next year.” They promise it for next year. Now I think the New Zealand public has got wind of this.The Government has now have created a pattern for itself of making promises that it never intends delivering on—empty promises. Let me just give you an example—when we talk about the details of this Budget and the lack of vision for the future. I spoke at a school assembly in South Auckland on Monday to launch Samoan Language Week this week. That school belongs to a cluster of schools called the Auckland Samoan Bilingual Education Cluster. The principal whispered to me that they were really disappointed that there was nothing in this Budget whatsoever to recognise Pacific bilingual language to recognise the value of Pacific bilingual language to students and the value of the teachers who work in these units. They said to me that in the last 4 years they had been engaging with the Ministry of Education with this Government to try to get it to recognise the value of Pacific bilingual language. What did they get? Zilch—zilch nothing.What this Government has done for Pacific bilingual language education is cut the resources that these units required. Remember the Tupu series? Remember the Folauga journals? The Government cut the development of them. Not only that it removed Pacific bilingual education as a goal in the Pasifika Education Plan 2013-2017. The Government removed that and there is nothing that is in this Budget today that gives any hope any inspiration to the next generation of bilingual students in South Auckland that this Government recognises the value of languages. The foundation of cultural identity of self-respect of self-responsibility and of self-discipline is in the language and this Government continues to fail to provide for that.This Budget continues to fail to eliminate the growing inequalities that we face as a country. It continues to fail to recognise and address the housing crisis. It continues to fail to provide any hope whatsoever to hard-working ordinary New Zealanders who are day in day out just doing it tough and struggling to make ends meet. It fails to provide any inspiration that someday if they work harder they will be able to buy a house of their own. That dream has become virtually impossible for the low and middle-income bracket in our communities. It fails to provide any inspiration.The Budget did provide some band-aid fixes. I call them “band-aid fixes” because they provide no long-term solution to the issues that we face today. For example Government members crowed about the $25 that the Government is giving to the beneficiaries. They crowed on Thursday Friday Saturday—we got sick and tired of them shouting from the rooftops—but when you look underneath the details they say that they are concerned for the poor but we do not get the $25 now. We have to wait a whole full year to get it. They have to wait till next year to get it. What then happens while we are waiting? Is anything being done for the poor? No. They remain in Struggle Street. But in the meantime that paltry $25 a week gets swallowed up by the increases in rent the increases in petrol prices and the increases in power prices. Woe unto those people during this winter. It is going to be a cold cold winter.The other thing is that the Government thinks that people on benefits want to be on benefits. It thinks that people on benefits love that lifestyle. That is not a lifestyle choice. The majority of people on benefits find themselves being there through economic and social conditions out of their control. I have never come across somebody on a benefit who dreams of remaining on a benefit. Pacific people do not want handouts. They want a hand up. Sure the Government said that it was going to try to get people into jobs. Forcing solo parents when their child is 3 years old into a job that does not exist is not a work plan. The best welfare support for communities who are done by is to get them into jobs—high-value jobs high-paying jobs jobs that can enable them to support and sustain their families jobs that can enable them to contribute to the community through various activities in schools etc.So let me just make that point: people do not want your handouts which are short-term band-aids. Yes it has been welcomed by many but that is because Kiwis generally have a sense that we have an obligation to look after those who are unable to help themselves. To think that the Government is forcing people solo parents in particular to find part-time jobs—show me flexible employers that are willing to work with and support those young solo parents. Show me them in our community. There are some but members opposite are expecting every one of those beneficiaries to get into jobs that will not be there without a comprehensive plan to ensure that they get those jobs.I have heard speakers here say that the Government is raising incomes. That is a crock and that is the softest way I can say that. Flexible industrial laws fire-at-will industrial laws and eliminating good faith bargaining are all the signs of driving wages down and keeping them low. That is the Government’s mantra.The housing sell-off—Pacific people want to own their own homes. They do not want to be renting for the rest of their lives but it is becoming impossible under this Government. The selling-off of State houses which we rushed through this House on Friday and Saturday is not a plan to make housing affordable. How on earth does the Government intend to create more houses if it is selling off State houses? Pushing people into the lines of social housing is not a plan to ensure that people have some dignity and are able to achieve sustainability and respect for themselves. But that is what the Government intends to do. Its plan is to keep the money in the hands of the few and ensure that the rest of the New Zealand population continues to wallow in the poverty the inequalities that the Government has created the mess that it has created because it has failed over and over again to achieve that surplus which is a sign of efficient Government. It is not an efficient Government. It does not matter what Government members say; it is not.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I was not going to reply to the comments of my dear friend and colleague as co-chair of the New Zealand - Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Association—such giddy heights have we risen to!Chris Bishop: That member will go no further.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Anyway—what was that?Chris Bishop: He’ll go no further.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think he will. I think he will one day get his own chairmanship.Anyway I was not actually going to reply but I just had to. I actually felt a bit sorry for the Labour members after that Budget. There they were listening to Bill English go on and on during the Budget speech—and that is not a criticism of Bill because every Minister of Finance just reads out their speech word for word no problem. They sat there and they listened to us take a huge chunk out of their territory. I thought: “Gee this is going to be interesting. I am going to look forward to Andrew Little’s reply.” and then not a lot really happened actually. I think he remembered that Bill Clinton once used to say that “kiss” is the thing to remember—you know “keep it simple stupid”. Then of course he got himself all tied up with that other KISS character Gene Simmons. I actually felt almost a bit sorry for him. I am not going to fib to the House and say that I did feel sorry for him. I thought: “That has got to be the worst Budget reply speech that I have ever heard Andrew Little.” I looked around at his colleagues on the Labour benches and their little heads were down or they were busy reading things that they needed to read or they were looking anywhere except at their leader and that said to me everything really. This Budget surprised them. This Budget delivered on an area where they had expected absolutely nothing which is actually about really giving some people who are at the poorest end of society in terms of socio-economic wealth a little bit more.It was a bit disheartening to hear Su’a William Sio refer to $25 per week as a paltry amount. Well I guess it probably is if you get the sorts of salaries that we get in Parliament but actually it is not if you are on a benefit. It is actually quite a significant amount of money. I would say that there would not be too many people living on benefits who would say: “Actually I do not want to have that paltry $25 per week.” I reckon that they will all want to have it—and actually probably they need it—and I think that is a good thing. This is of course the first Government to deliver a real increase in benefits in 43 years and that is worth crowing about. In fact that is actually a longer time than most of the people here in Parliament on the other side have been alive.Hon Member: An entire Matt Doocey.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes it is in fact an entire Matt Doocey.The other thing that I wanted to talk about in this Budget debate which I am really excited about is the extra funding that is going into special education. I am very pleased to be a member of the Education and Science Committee at Parliament and I would just like to say that we have had a wonderful discussion today around special education particularly for children who have Asperger’s syndrome and autistic spectrum disorders—dyspraxia and dyslexia in particular. We have actually come a long way I think not only as a Government but also generally across parties on this. We are often in danger in that committee of having peace break out which I always think actually that the public would rather have.We talked quite a lot today and learnt quite a lot about what is actually being done and I actually think that over the last few years we have seen some significant improvement. So when the announcement was made by the Hon Hekia Parata that we are in fact going to be allocating $39.5 million to the Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme which is also called ORRS and that is support for an extra 500 students. These are kids who in fact do have to learn in a different way often with different assistance but they can often achieve hugely if they are given the right help and assistance environment. It also helps to pay for speech language therapists psychologists physiotherapists and occupational therapists and provides additional teacher time and teacher aide time.We are investing an extra $62.9 million of operating funding over the next 4 years to give kids who have special needs when it comes to learning or who have different ways of learning to be able to learn and to achieve. I am going to speak now to those parents of children who do not have these sorts of issues that they need to work around and who sometimes say: “Oh why are you spending all this money and this time on these kids?”. Well actually if you want to just go and have a look at the movie The Imitation Game you will see Professor Alan Turing. That man clearly had Asperger’s syndrome. Today he would be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. So much is made of him being gay and being persecuted for being gay and everything else but you could also say that he was persecuted for being different. He was different because he clearly was on the autism spectrum and yet what did he do with that?Louisa Wall: He’s a genius.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well apart from being a bit difficult to deal with sometimes he was actually as Louisa Wall has just called out an absolute genius. Actually ordinary people like us here and I include myself in this—we are pretty normal ordinary people; we just get a lot of fun in what we do in our work—are never going to invent the computer. We are not made like that. We do a lot of talking we do a lot listening and we do all the social stuff but we are never going to be able to do that. We need people who are absolutely completely different from us who are going to go out and think completely differently from the way that we do and who are going to see things that none of the rest of us would ever be able to see. Sometimes we get to see their work. That movie I would say is an extremely good example for anyone to see the behaviours of somebody with the disorder.Back in the 1940s this was not known as a disorder. He was just really good at maths. Well actually lots of people with autistic spectrum disorder are really good at maths because maths is unlike us—unlike us—completely logical. Also I always reckon that maths is a bit magical really. You can do almost anything with maths. So sometimes—[Interruption] Yes you can—absolutely Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard. You can do almost anything with maths. It is unbelievably magical and the more that we learn about it the more I find it most interesting. But do you know what? Instead of trying to make kids who have different abilities be just like the rest of us let us celebrate the fact that they are different because without their differences we would still be back in the Stone Age.Think about Isaac Newton. If you learn anything about Isaac Newton he was clearly someone with autistic spectrum disorder. This was a man who lived most of his life in the Tower of London—not under guard—but the more I hear about him the more I realise that he was absolutely like that. Einstein—clearly. People say that about Bill Gates—clearly—and Steve Jobs. These are people who often have difficulty talking to people in the normal social situations that the rest of us thrive in. They do not do cocktail parties; they actually make a difference. They do not do chatting about nothing; they actually make a difference. So when I look at this area I would say to all the parents who think that it is not money well spent and to all of those teachers who think “Why do I have to have someone different in my class?” that thankfully we do have people who are different. I hope that now we are getting ourselves intelligent enough—if I could possibly put it in that way—and accepting enough to understand that not all kids are thankfully made the same. If we would only appreciate that we would get more from it.This is the first time that I have seen in one of our Budgets a commitment of this order. If I or our committee has done anything to help bring that along I am very grateful for it. If we have not never mind; we will no doubt try better next time. But I would say that our committee is working very well on this issue and it is a privilege to be part of a team—a cross-party team—that takes this issue seriously. It is an issue because it behoves us to make the best use we can out of everybody in our society and some people are different from most of us. Thank goodness they are; I am very grateful for it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Richard Prosser—a 5-minute call.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Another year has passed and the Minister of Finance has delivered yet another Budget—another bland helping of not very much. This Budget will not go down in history as one of the great Budgets. It will not be remembered in the same way as the Black Budget or the “mother of all Budgets” are remembered. In fact if the Budget is to be remembered for anything if it is remembered at all it will not be for what is in it but for what is not in it. It may go down in the history books as the “great dull beige Budget of 2015”.In terms of what is not in it as far as the forestry sector is concerned there really is not much at all. Through the last term of Parliament I had a flat down on Thorndon Quay for when the House was in session. It was just over the road from the stadium and it overlooked the log-loading docks. Every morning on my balcony over the oatmeal I was confronted by the horrible sight of piles and piles of logs—North Island radiata pine—piling up ready and waiting for the ships to take them away to China and Korea and other faraway places where they would be turned into things. Going out with those shipments were shiploads of New Zealand’s forestry and sawmill jobs and shiploads of the potential for value-added timber products coming out of New Zealand and adding to the economy. I am not there anymore. I have moved out to the finance Minister’s home town of Karori so I do not get that sight in my face every morning but that does not mean the problem has gone away. As far as what this Budget does not contain for the forestry sector it is not going away any time soon.So the lack of any real commitment to forestry is one of the more disappointing aspects of this Budget. Expenditure on the management of Crown forestry assets is expected to fall by about $5 million on the actual versus the budgeted expenditure for 2014-15 and the appropriation for 2015-16 is down by another $15 million on that. At the same time the value of stumpage per cubic metre is budgeted to fall by about 15 percent over the next year. Indeed the market report from the May 2015 edition of the New Zealand Tree Grower magazine which is the official journal of the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association warns that the value of a cubic metre of softwood landed in China has fallen from US$130 for a JAS which is an Japanese Agricultural Standard cubic metre in October last year to about US$100 in April and it is forecast to fall to US$90 or below by the end of this month.The future for the New Zealand forestry sector and exports from it is not in the form of logs. At present there are around 5 million cubic metres of log infantry sitting on the Chinese wharves and China has effectively stopped buying. Consequently there are about a million cubic metres of radiata sitting on the docks in New Zealand that effectively have no buyer—there is no market for them. New Zealand has been supplying around 60 percent to 65 percent of the softwood log imports into China with the rest being made up by exports from the United States Canada and a few from Russia. I ask what this Government is doing in this Budget to address this problem and what incentives and what assistance it is offering the forestry sector and the wood-processing sector. The answer is between “nothing” and “very little”.There is the Primary Growth Partnership of course and there is a scheme within that programme that is developing the steep land harvester. That is a great thing and we are all in favour of the Primary Growth Partnership. It is a grand scheme a marvellous initiative and New Zealand First fully supports it. We do have one beef and that is that there is no provision for the retention of rights to a share in the intellectual property that is generated by the Primary Growth Partnership projects. That intellectual property goes to a private partner and all too often that private partner is a foreign partner. But in other regards the Primary Growth Partnership is pure socialism and we have every support for it. It is quite surprising it is being promoted by a National Government and that Labour does not seem to like it but that is one of the vagaries of politics I suppose.My point with the steep land harvester is that although it is going to be a very good thing what is the point in it if we have not got a market for the trees it is going to harvest and the wood products that can be made out of them and more to the point if we do not have the capacity to produce those wood products? The magazine New Zealand Tree Grower tell us that about 70 percent of the logs that China imports are used for making construction plywood. So the question that comes from that is: why are they buying logs? Well they are not building log cabins. If they were building log cabins you could understand the fact that we are selling them logs. In fact they are after plywood so why are we not selling them plywood? What is it that is in the Budget to incentivise and to assist the forestry sector and the sawmill sector?Brett Hudson: Has the member considered that maybe the customers want to buy logs?RICHARD PROSSER: Well they do not want the logs for the logs. They want the logs for the things they can make out of them. The whole point of an intelligent economic programme is that you sell the product that is worth the most.Brett Hudson: They’ll buy the logs from the people—RICHARD PROSSER: Listen and you may learn. The incentives are not there and this Government—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired. I call Barbara Stewart—5 minutes.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): In New Zealand First we have made our position on the 2015 Budget very clear: we see red we see red we see red. But it is not just the books that are in the red. Basically the vision of the Government is in the red. It is not forward-looking in any way.Basically the Budget has been a missed opportunity to invest in long-term solutions and prevention. We need to reduce further demands on our health care system down the road. We know that New Zealand is on the verge of a great population shift and that will mean a change in the demands on our health care system. We know that the over-65 population is set to double to 1.2 million people over 20 years. Unless this Government shows that it has a plan for trying to manage this the whole situation is going to become totally unmanageable.Our over-65s deserve to be cared for with dignity and they need appropriate conditions in which to live out their lives with some sort of dignity and pride. Without some sort of action in aged care this sector will become unsustainable. Without investment there will be staffing shortages. We know that the aged-care workforce is struggling to try to recruit and retain quality staff because the work is just too hard too heavy for the miserable pay that they receive.In Budget 2015 there is absolutely nothing for the aged-care workers. Aged-care workers will be seeing red but it is not only them because every other New Zealander who is looking ahead to their years aged 65-plus—people in their 40s and 50s—should be seeing red as well. What is going to be there for them? And all of this because of the Government’s inaction today.The coming crisis will not be just in the aged-care sector; it will also be in the demand for surgery. Although we appreciate that extra money was made available for surgery the demand is not going to be met by that extra money. There will be longer waiting lists and we know that the nurses and doctors are in panic mode because of course there was nothing in the Budget to ensure that more nurses and doctors are recruited and retained as well. So we have higher demands on the waiting list and a shortfall in what can be offered.Health professionals tell us that the sector is absolutely devastated. It is underfunded and they are the ones who see the result of underspending. So of course they are also seeing red seeing red. And of course we just have to look to the Southern District Health Board—it has a deficit of $17.8 million. The funding for Ōāmaru Hospital has been cut by 5 percent for next year. Dunstan Hospital in Central Otago is set for a $1 million shortfall in funding with predictions of closed hospital wards a lack of staff and service reductions. So all of those locals are going to face a long trip to Christchurch to get what they need.We once ran a health system that was world leading. Today it has been weakened beyond compare and everyone is just seeing red. It does not need to be this way. The answer is simple: invest some money now to save some lives with further money further along the road. The extent of missed opportunity within this Budget to do that is evidenced by the bowel cancer screening programme. We know that bowel cancer is a terrible disease that kills 1200 New Zealanders per annum and of course there is nothing in the Budget for this screening programme. We saw an extension of the very successful Waitematā bowel cancer screening programme but there was nothing for the rest of New Zealand. Is this an example of what we are to see—health by postcode? We really hope not and we are seeing red over that. Thank you.MELISSA LEE (National): Talofa lava. O manu o le lauamanu e felelei mamao. I think that the second bit I said was “Birds that fly together go far” in view of the fact that this is Samoan Language Week. It is a reflection of the National caucus and how fantastically we are doing. We actually flock together we will go very far and after that Budget we are guaranteed to go very far.I have to react to the contributions of the members opposite. My dear friend Barbara Stewart actually tried to quote her leader by saying: “I see red I see red I see red.” Apparently that is what he said. Darling you have to have a better memory. He actually said: “I can see red.” and I thought he was talking about the fact that he was not colour-blind or that he could actually see rather than about the Budget. He did not actually say “I see red I see red I see red” as in the lyric. He was trying to connect to the Split Enz lyric and he was trying to make fun of the Budget with some sort of rhetoric.I also have to react to my dear friend Richard Prosser. Sir you are a great mate but with the speed at which you speak I sometimes lose it. You are like a bullet—so fast. I am hoping that you actually said “shipload” rather than something else—I hope.I remember that people always say that the grass is greener on the other side and for many New Zealanders for a very long time Australia was in fact the greener pasture. I will quote from an article: “The sun seems to shine a bit brighter therethe pay packets are a bit fatter and they have koalas. But times are changing. The decline in long-term migration figures to Australia is just one example. And the reason is simple: Australia may have cuddly koalas but New Zealand has John Key.” That apparently is in relation to how fantastic our Prime Minister is and how well this Government is doing.It is about radical incrementalism which somebody mentioned to me. When people get sick do you know how you feed them medicine? We are saying that we are not trying to force-feed them medicine; we are convincing them that they are sick and that they want a certain kind of medicine. This Government is doing exactly that. We are giving people information about what this country needs and we are showing them the pathway that we want them to take for a better life. Having economic growth is actually a good thing and this Budget demonstrates National’s clear commitment to economic growth and dedication to helping hard-working New Zealanders and their families to grow. New Zealand is a small economy in global terms. Our population is a lot smaller than that of many countries but our economic performance in recent years has been very very strong and it is ahead of many nations that we could talk about.Earlier a member opposite talked about his community having been poor for a very long time. It sort of struck me that the member has been a Labour MP for a very long time. Before the National Government become the Government in 2008 there was in fact a Labour Government for 9 years and yet that community was poor then and it is still poor now.You know sometimes it is about people. This Government is taking action where the Labour Government did not take action. This Government is increasing benefits and spending $790 million over the next 4 years to help children living in some of New Zealand’s poorest families to be slightly better off. We are not the richestof nations and as a nation we cannot actually afford more than that and we are saying that we are giving families a helping hand. This is the first time that a benefit has been raised in real terms in 43 years. The previous Labour Government never actually did that. We are building a more competitive and productive economy through a number of critical initiatives.I want to talk a little bit about the way that this National Government has contributed to education. I know that my learned colleague the Hon Judith Collins talked about the special education sector which our Education and Science Committee had a discussion about. I have to agree with Ms Collins that we have a very friendly select committee where we actually work together very well indeed. Our discussions on dyslexia dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome were really interesting for me because I did not even know what dyspraxia was. I knew what dyslexia was but dyspraxia was something that was a bit new to me. Apparently it is about ordering things. For example—this example is for fun—Superman wears his underwear over his tights. You could call him dyspraxic because he obviously does not put them on in the right order—underpants should be underneath the tights I would have thought. I know I am cracking jokes about something serious and I should not but it is a disorder. It is an ability to learn in a different way.Our teachers should be better equipped to help children who have disorders in order to help them learn better and so that they can cope in our education facilities like the new modern learning environments which are actually way way better than they used to be. When I was child in Korea there would be 65 children in one class. There would be two children to each table in a row and if you moved the teacher would throw a chalk at you whereas the new modern learning environment is quite a different thing. A child who has attention deficit disorder cannot sit in a classroom for 50 or 60 minutes and they need to move around but in a modern learning environment the teacher can cope with teaching the kids who do not have these issues and they can also pay attention to those who do in fact have those issues.Education is particularly important in many ethnic communities. I know for example that many in the Korean community basically move to a country like New Zealand because they want a better opportunity for their children. What that means is that when they uproot their family to come to a country like New Zealand they do not have the family connections or the social support networks or potentially even a job. Often because they do not have a job they are even poorer than when they were in their home countries but they do this because they want a better opportunity for their children and education is something that is paramount in their minds.I am very proud that Budget 2015 invests an extra $686.7 million over the next 4 years in education bringing our total investment in education to $10.8 billion next year—$10.8 billion not million. This is a clear indication that reflects National’s determination and commitment to helping all young New Zealanders from all different ethnic backgrounds to achieve their brightest and fullest potential. That is what we are focused on when we talk about helping the families who are the poorest and beneficiary families with children by giving them extra money.But we also have a commitment for them to be available for jobs so that instead of living in a benefit-dependent home the parents are in fact working. Hopefully it would be part-time while the children are a lot younger. Personally speaking I went back to work when my child was only 5 weeks old and that was because it was my choice. I had the opportunity to work. If I did not work my staff could not possibly be paid. I had more than a dozen staff members whom I had to pay wages to so I went back to work when my son was 5 weeks old. But I was lucky to work in an environment—the television industry—where people were very forgiving of mothers who were working and who had children around.Budget 2015 delivered for New Zealand. I think that Labour and the other Opposition parties are just sore because they did not think of it first.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): That speech from Melissa Lee epitomised the attitude of the National Government to this country and its management of it. Those members think: “Because I did it everyone else should be able to do it too.” and they overlook the reality for many New Zealanders that many are born into certain circumstances and are in circumstances beyond their control.This was a Budget of broken promises and lost opportunities. We have to name the broken promises because this Government has been given the privilege of being trusted by the majority of the people of New Zealand for three elections and time after time it has broken the promises. Those people who have enough time to stop and think are starting to realise that you cannot carry on breaking promises and being trusted by the people.John Key said: “We will be in surplus.” He said: “There will be no new taxes.” He said: “The $1000 for KiwiSaver will remain as it is now.” This is quoting word for word from the Prime Minister. It is an absolute insult to then turn round in a Budget and to slap on new taxes to not get back into surplus for some pathetic reason the Government members have put up—mainly that they have reduced taxes drastically at the top end of town—and to then take from young Kiwis the $1000 incentive. Those members know full well about financial incentives because do you know what they did? They left in the Budget the incentives for their corporate mates. They left the incentives there through the Primary Growth Partnership to ensure that they would commit to research and development and to developing their businesses but they were not prepared to do it for the young New Zealanders who wanted to take up KiwiSaver.There are two particular areas of my portfolio interest: one is mining and the other is dairying. In fact this Government came into power saying that those two industries would take us into a new world. “Mine the national parks and we will all be wealthy.” those members said and they quickly realised that that was a pretty dumb move to make not only because New Zealanders want to protect their national parks but in fact because if they had looked through the history of mining and looked at what is happening on the West Coast today they would have seen that it is a very cyclical industry. In my region where I am a staunch advocate for that industry for us to rely on that for our future is both naive and stupid—ask the Australians. Mining does have a future but we cannot base our economy on that alone.Dairying on the other hand has a more sustainable future and I have been a passionate advocate of that as well. But in the absence of an economic plan from the National Government all of those industries are under threat and the lost opportunity in this Budget was to give any indication of where this country is heading. There was no indication at all and no idea of where we should be in the future. That was the lost opportunity. Can I go back to dairying. The reality is that the industry faces not just one but two or possibly three seasons of low payout and that leaves our country stumbling to put it politely because the National Government has no idea of what else we should be doing. Even within the primary sector I ask the Government: “Where is your help for strategic planning for the meat industry? Where is your help for strategic planning in the wool sector or forestry or indeed fishing?”.It has taken a hands-off approach—well not quite. It has got the Primary Growth Partnership funding which is corporate welfare—welfare. What those members have done is committed $300 million of taxpayers’ money and paid it over to their mates—to their mates—to carry on for the most part business as usual for something that the Office of the Auditor-General could not identify. It could not identify additionality. It could not identify in the six programmes it studied any real additional benefit for the New Zealand economy because the National Government just likes paying out to its mates.The dairy industry was one of the recipients of that money. The industry is in a bit of a dilemma at the moment. It does not know whether to keep the cost of production high and hope for a rise in payout or to wind back production and try to remain sustainable and viable into the future. The reason is that the dairy industry—our No. 1 industry—has no strategic plan and no strategic vision.The big company the one we still own is Fonterra—the one that John Key would like to see floated on the stock market. I am sure that his mate Mark Weldon when he tries to slide his way into Parliament will sit alongside the Prime Minister and ensure that Fonterra sits on the stock market so that the traders and all the mates over there can clip the ticket and sell it off—sell it off to foreigners. Take a previous example: the Hon Ruth Richardson runs around the country now. She sold off Synlait. She has been a director on that company for a long time. Now it is completely in the hands of foreigners.Hon Jo Goodhew: All her own work.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Oh and the member over there says that that is OK. Read Statistics New Zealand’s report about the growing deficit the increasing deficit because of the leakage from having foreign ownership in our economy. That is a strategic issue: who should own New Zealand and who should own New Zealand’s future? Fonterra our No. 1 company must be kept in New Zealand hands but this Government and the Prime Minister would love to see it sold off.Can I go back to the primary sector as a whole. We need a primary sector council a high-level body that will look at each and every sector and work with them to develop a strategic plan for the future. The Riddet Institute identified this need years ago. The National Government continues to ignore the reality that we need strategic planning and we need leadership to know where we are heading across all the primary sectors. We need leaders—not just people appointed to bodies but people who are prepared to show leadership in the sector. It is not occurring and we are going round in circles with our fingers crossed in the hope that commodity prices will lift.We need structures that can deliver on those strategic plans. Labour offers an alternative approach in the primary sector area one where leadership will be delivered where necessary and where support will be delivered for those strategic plans and visions. This Budget ignored that reality and missed the opportunity to show leadership.I am going to talk about not a rock star economy but what is a rock-bottom economy for too many New Zealanders—not the 250000 children in poverty but the people who run around and care for our elderly in the country. If you are a doctor or a nurse and you care you get a reasonable salary. But if you are a support worker in this country you get paid $14.75 an hour to go around and look after the parents of the likes of you Mr Assistant Speaker and me who are living in rural areas. It is an insulting wage to care for our elderly which is a measure in my view of the failure of the National Government to do what is right.Those people who are getting $14.75 an hour get a massive $1.08 per hour for their travel. I have met one of these support workers. She is a wonderful woman who travels between 600 and 800 kilometres every fortnight and she gets the grand total of $1.08 times 32 hours. That is the insulting payment she gets for travel.Up and down this country in rural New Zealand we have people being paid a pittance to care for people who without that care would be absolutely destitute and would be incapable of cooking and caring for themselves and that is the environment that every one of those MPs over there is overseeing and endorsing. It is an outrage that must be addressed.The Government’s policy of caring for people in their homes seems wonderful until you start to pick it apart. The Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector Jo Goodhew should be right at the forefront of addressing that issue which insults those people and insults the elderly people in our country—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry—[Interruption] Order! The member’s time has expired.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is with an enormous degree of pride and pleasure that I rise in this Budget debate to speak in support of Bill English’s seventh Budget. And what a great Budget it is not just for this John Key - National-led Government but also for New Zealand and all New Zealanders. It is part of a plan that is working. It is part of a plan that has been in place for 7 yearsnow—7 years of careful prudent fiscal management—that has enabled Bill English and the National Party team to negotiate their way on behalf of all New Zealanders through some of the most difficult economic times that our country has seen. It is a Budget that has allowed us as a Government now that some light is emerging at the end of the tunnel to address some of the real hardship and need that exists in our community.Before I get into the meat of my presentation to youtoday I just want to make comment on the contribution made earlier this afternoon by my colleague the Hon Maggie Barry Minister of Conservation. I was delighted as the member for Coromandel to note that the Budget includes a further spending allowance of $11.2 million to protect further the future of our native bird the kiwi. People who are familiar with the Coromandel will know that the Coromandel produces fine kiwi. It is a natural breeding area and an awful lot of terrific kiwi preservation work is being done by worthy organisations such as Moehau Environment Group. I commend to this House the work that this group and many others do. I was delighted to see this extra spending because kiwi are of course known around the world as our national symbol and they are under threat. This is a Government that wants to make sure that that threat is diminished and that further protection for our kiwi is made available. I am particularly enthused by the Kōhanga Kiwi project where kiwi will now be able to be farmedessentially. Their longevity and future prosperity as a species will be preserved and secured.What I particularly want to talk about in terms of my Budget contribution today is how proud I was when the Prime Minister stood up on election night last year and after acknowledging the comprehensive National Party victory that we were able to secure said: “This National-led Government will govern for all people for all New Zealanders.” Here in this seventh Budget of Bill English is the evidence of that occurring. Yesterday afternoon I listened very closely to my colleague the Hon Paula Bennett giving her Budget speech. She also spoke of her pride now being an Associate Minister of Finance in the work and preparation that she and the finance team did in the lead-up to Budget 2015. She reminded us that Bill English and his team have been working away steadily on this Budget for probably the best part of 12 months. In fact I understand that work on Budget 2016 has already commenced.It is easy to forget that ours is an economy with 2.8 percent economic growth and that we are projecting a further 150000 jobs being created. It is easy to remember that when National first started talking a couple of years ago about creating 170000 jobs members of the Opposition and on the left were derisory in their comments about our ambition and aspiration to create that number of jobs. It would be fair to say that they took every opportunity to criticise to discount and to reject that as any kind of realistic prospect. Well here we are now in Budget 2015 saying that no we did not actually create 170000 new jobs. Actually the economy has produced 194000 new jobs. Since 2011 194000 new jobs have been created in this economy under Bill English’s prudent and careful management. That is important because it makes an absolutely fundamental difference to the quality of life and the future prospects of New Zealanders.Seeing the average wage increase year on year on year is another sign of how strong our economy is and of what the tangible material benefits are for hard-working New Zealanders. That people have more money available in their pockets and are able to get jobs is a sign of a healthy growing economy. Seeing us project that unemployment will continue to drop and that employment will continue to rise is another sign of good things to come. From the projections it is easy to see that Budget 2015 indicates well and truly that we are headed in the right direction. We are projecting a 4.5 percent unemployment rate which is still too high but it is better than those of almost all comparable nations around the world.What we can see is that over the last 6½ years we have moved resources of the State to those who fundamentally need them the most. Watching the faces of Opposition members while Bill English was reading his Budget—I was sitting on the cross benches at the back as I do as a hard-working backbencher—it was obvious that the blood literally drained from Grant Robertson’s face. National is unashamed in its approach of wanting to target benefits and increases for those who are facing the most difficulties and who are in the most hardship in our society. Actually we have done that over a number of years as Paula Bennett pointed out in her speech yesterday by resetting the compass if you like of welfarism in New Zealand. I remember well when this Government first came to power in 2008. Paula Bennett was the Minister for Social Development and Employment. She said in her speech yesterday that she has never forgotten as the new Minister for Social Development and Employment visiting Paris with a number of social development - type Ministers from around the world and telling them that we had a social welfare system where there were absolutely no obligations placed on a person receiving State-funded welfare until their youngest child turned 18. She said that in other countries it was unimaginable that a social welfare system could operate like that where it was simply a matter of having another child when the youngest child turned 18 in order to get another 18 years of unquestioned access to State welfare.Well we have fundamentally changed that expectation and the balance of what is expected of people. Social welfare is part of a social contract. The social contract is such that it means that there is support—the benefit of support from the State and other taxpayers—available to people when they need itmost. All of us agree that that is a fine and wonderful baseline for our social welfare system. But the quid pro quo is that the people who are receiving State welfare should not see it as a lifestyle or a permanent choice; actually they should be available for workwhen they can. Part of the change that has occurred in the period of time that we have been in Government is that we have reset this balance. We have made sure that those people have hope and opportunities. Under the last Labour—Green Government they did not have hope or opportunities. We have reset the balance that was lost from our welfare system for so long. Now people who are receiving welfare can see some bright hope on the horizon and that their life is not destined to be one of perpetual unlimited relentless welfare dependency into the future. I say that that has got to be a very good thing.What people sometimes forget is that we could not have made that reset change if it had not been for the careful prudent stewardship of the Government’s and the nation’s financial accounts that Bill English and his team have been able to provide on our behalf over the last 7 years. We could not have done that and reset the welfare expectation balance if the underlying books had not been sound. I think Paula Bennett can take huge personal credit for the achievements of the Government in that area and for the brighter future that so many New Zealanders now have. This is a good Budget. It is a prudent careful Budget. It is a Budget that shows that this Government has a great understanding of what is needed in times of hardship and it also has a glimmer of hope for the future for all. I commend it to the House.JAMES SHAW (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Budget 2015 contains a number of “weak tea might work a little” proposals that the Green Party has been promoting for years. We were pleased to see that the Greens’ call for additional funding for things like telecommunications infrastructure and biosecurityare finally being heeded. [Interruption] Be careful what you wish for Brett. Yet this Budget also demonstrates a remarkable lack of vision on behalf of the Government. Rather than making a concerted effort towards transitioning to a smart Green economy the Government is offering New Zealanders a couple of feel-good policies mixed in with a myriad of ones that are failing. The end result of this will be the creation of a lost generation stuck with an ailing economy and wedded to mid-20th century ideas. We reject this future. The Green Party is committed to building a smart Green economy that works for all New Zealanders.The Budget is not without its merits. From the point of view of economic development there are a number of policy initiatives that do align with our call to move towards a smart Green economy. A green economy involves more extensive and intensive use of digital technology and communications. This enables a more distributed emergent business-model than the highly centralised dominant models of doing business that we are familiar with today. It enables distributed digital manufacturing greater access to better education in our most remote towns and provincial centres and weightless exports as a much greater proportion of the overall economy. In turn that means a much more resilient economy than the highly fragile risk-loaded economy that we have today. It means greater distribution of wealth to the regions and to our small towns and provincial centres. To that end the Greens support fully the Government’s move to extend the telecommunications development levy so as to provide extra funding for the Rural Broadband Initiative. Access to fast reliable broadband is an essential and central piece of our economic infrastructure and it is good to see the Government taking action on this.Similarly we are happy that the Budget provides a $24.9 million boost in funding for biosecurity in order to make up for the cuts that National made at the beginning of its tenure. The future of our tourism industry relies on the protection of our unique flora and fauna. Biosecurity staff play an essential role in this and it is good to see the importance of their work finally being recognised by this Government. However these are isolated successes. There does not seem to be any overarching strategy to transition New Zealand to a green economy. In fact some of the initiatives that are supposed to protect the environment are doing the exact opposite. In Chris Bishop’s maiden speech when he summed up the National Government’s approach to policy making he invoked the perennial free-market hero Milton Friedman.Hon Member: Ha ha!JAMES SHAW: And although you might laugh Friedman said: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” This is a laudable notion. So let us look at some of what National says its programmes are intended to do and then let us take a look at what they actually do.Although the supposed purpose of the New Zealand emissions trading scheme is to reduce emissions it is actually doing the precise opposite. The Budget has revealed that in the 2014-15 year the Government handed out almost $114 million worth of free carbon credits to industries that cause climate change but received only $83 million through the emissions trading scheme.Hon Member: Corporate welfare.JAMES SHAW: Taxpayers picked up the $31 million difference—and that is corporate welfare. The consequence is that our emissions have grown by 13 percent since the National Government was first elected in 2008. If we are going to judge the emissions trading scheme by its results as Mr Bishop suggests we do then it is clear that the policy is an abject failure. The emissions trading scheme illustrates a broader problem with the Government’s strategy—or lack thereof. Instead of taking decisive steps towards the creation of a smart Green economy the Government focuses on empty gestures and policies that sound positive but that have no impact. The effect is the creation of a lost generation of New Zealanders who will be left with an economy that is woefully inefficient and that has a heavy carbon footprint. Is that the legacy that we want to leave the next generation? This is unacceptable.We need a smart Green economy that works for all New Zealanders and it is clear that this Government is not delivering that. The Green Party is proposing meaningful initiatives to facilitate this transition. Decisive action is needed in order to mitigate climate change and leave future generations with high levels of natural capital. Instead of wasting taxpayers’ money on an emissions trading scheme that subsidises polluters we need to introduce a proper price on carbon emissions. Pricing carbon properly would act as a simple but effective incentive to move away from polluting technologies and industries towards cleaner production and forms of energy. In turn personal and company tax rates could be reduced. Under our proposal polluters would actually bear the cost of their actions whilst green businesses and ordinary New Zealand households would benefit and that seems fair reasonable and equitable to us.In order to support businesses with the transition from a carbon-intensive economy to one that is green we should also set up a green investment fund. The aim of this Government-owned for-profit bank would be to provide funds to support green private investment in the areas of renewable energy and clean technology. Fossil fuel subsidies would be stopped raising the overall tax take from oil companies from 46 percent to the global average of around 70 percent which would give us more than enough to cover the $120 million for the first 3 years of the funds’ operation. In time the bank will see billions of dollars going in to things such as renewable energy plants the development and production of biofuels and clean technology products. Investing in a smart Green economy is essential not only for the environment but also for the future of our economy.Alongside these funds for investment we also need to see greater commitment to research and development and the innovation that results. The Greens would allocate an additional $1 billion over 3 years to research and development while also collaborating directly with the private sector by providing tax credits and grants in relation to research and development. These would provide us with the technology and ideas to drive the transition to a smart Green economy. These are innovative but sensible policy solutions that are being proposed only by the Green Party. This Government has adopted a “weak tea might work a little” version of policies that we have been promoting for years and years. So clearly the Greens have won the policy argument. National has done it because it has had to not because it has wanted to. If voters want the real thing if they want policies that achieve results rather than just good intentions then they should make sure to vote for us at the next election. The Greens are offering long-term solutions to a sustainable future economy for all New Zealanders and for that and for all those reasons we oppose this Budget.Hon JO GOODHEW (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): I move That this debate be now adjourned.Motion agreed to.Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 20 May.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): It gives me great pleasure to resume my speech on the Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Legislation Bill. There are two parts of this bill that I would like to touch on. One is around human trafficking and the other is around what are known as “facilitation payments”. There are two members of the National Party right now who should be feeling pretty sheepish about themselves and pretty embarrassed. First of all Ian McKelvie in the previous time that we were debating this bill made some very unfortunate comments likening sheep rustling to human trafficking. We have got a new name for Ian McKelvie—it is now Ian “Rustle” McKelvie—for even suggesting that sheep rustling is anything like human trafficking. We just need to look at the news in the last day or so to see the effects of human trafficking in Malaysia where people have been trafficked they have been tortured they have been murdered and they have been left buried in the jungle in Malaysia. That in no way compares to sheep rustling. I am sorry for all the farmers whose sheep do get stolen—that is unfortunate—but there is no way on earth that we can compare sheep rustling to the effects of human trafficking.I do have to say that the picture I just painted around the human trafficking in Malaysia is the worst side of things. It actually goes on everywhere and it is not always that nasty but the effect it does have on people’s lives is terrible. This bill actually makes it a crime to traffick people within a country not just crossing over borders. It is about the exploitation of people who for various reasons such as slavery sexual exploitation—there is a whole heap of things that do happen in countries such as New Zealand. It is not all about people being trafficked across borders and being tortured and murdered and left buried in the bush.The second National MP who should be feeling a little sheepish with himself is none other than Murray McCully. Old Murray was left looking and sounding pretty silly in the House today with this whole deal around the sheep farm from some Mr Al Khalaf a Saudi-Arabian sheep—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is the Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Legislation Bill.KELVIN DAVIS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The connection is around the facilitation payments and the member was asked today why he was the first Minister in history to back a multimillion-dollar facilitation arrangement with other jurisdictions—called a bribe. He should be feeling pretty sheepish about himself because he has allowed this flock of sheep to be bought by the New Zealand taxpayer. So we should be all feeling pretty fleeced by the arrangement. He rounded up this mob put them on a plane and we can only assume that they were in cattle class although the cost of flying them over there must have been some first-class benefits. And then what did he do with those sheep? He got the flock out of here. He flew them over to Saudi Arabia. We are picking that he—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This has got nothing to do with the bill that is before us and I will ask the member to come back.KELVIN DAVIS: Mr Assistant Speaker there is a very strong connection between the facilitation payment also said in many jurisdictions to be a bribe and what has happened with the sheep farm for Mr Al Khalaf. New Zealand has paid for this man’s business to be facilitated. We have bought a flock of sheep that we have sent over to Saudi Arabia. The New Zealand taxpayer does not—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I will not remind the member again. We are on this bill here and I will ask the member to come back to it.KELVIN DAVIS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. What has happened is New Zealand has had a proud tradition of being an honest nation that takes a strong stance against things like facilitation payments. And yet what we have here is the facilitation of a Saudi Arabian sheep farmer’s—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is the third time. I am terminating the member’s speech. A split call Nuk Korako—5 minutes.NUK KORAKO (National): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. I take this split call on the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. If I could relate a little bit about a past life working away from New Zealand because I am reminded of a very famous New Zealander who coined the phrase “You don’t know how lucky we are.” I went away for 2 years but stayed for 25 years and in my career within the tourism industry I visited or worked in every country in Eastern and Western Europe with the exception of Albania. That is where I really did see a lot of corruption. Particularly the further south you got in Europe the worse it became—and the further east as well. I was there at the finishing of the Iron Curtain the breakdown of the Berlin Wall and then the influx of Eastern Europeans coming to the West. Indeed a lot of what they brought with them was a style of life that they had to endure within the Iron Curtain which was very much focused around living by your wits and living with corruption.It was interesting even when traveling south. There are interesting stories that I could relate here to the House about organised crime and corruption. There are things like if you worked down in southern Europe you actually had to take a guide whom you were given because it was under the control of an interesting group that starts with “m”. If you did not take that particular guide well then you ran into immense difficulties further on down. Other things happened as well with the coach drivers. If they did not actually park in the coach park that was run by these sorts of corrupt organisations—one interesting story is how one night a colleague of mine a driver parked his coach in the coach park that he should not have parked in. He came back the next morning and he went to start his motor coach and it would not start. He went to the back of the coach and opened the back bonnet into the engine and there was no motor there. They had taken the motor that night. That was the penalty for not parking right. So all of these sorts of corrupt practices that have actually gone on outside of New Zealand—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look we are on a second reading debate and just as I mentioned to the previous speaker I will refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 110: “On the second reading of a bill discussion must be confined to the bill before the House”. The bill has been reported back from a select committee and that is what we are focusing on. Anything outside that while it may be interesting can be referred to but the focus of the bill as substantive matter must be what is in the bill as reported back.NUK KORAKO: Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Again it is a privilege to live in New Zealand and the main reasons are that one of the great things about our country is that on every international measure we are considered to be one of the least corrupt countries in the world. There is no reason to sit back though and this is what this bill is about. We cannot sit on our laurels and be complacent. That is not how this Government does things. Since this Government was elected the National-led Government has kept up the fight against crime in our communities and particularly against organised crime which was my point before. We are also focused on making sure that we remain a respected member of the international community and that there is one of the most important factors—doing our bit to prevent what is increasingly becoming a borderless issue. New Zealand is a member of the Financial Action Task Force which sets international standards to help crack down on money-laundering. This bill continues the good work of the Government which it has already done in passing the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 etc. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call David Bennett—5 minutes.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Following on from that great speech by a great new member of this House who I think has added a lot to the political dynamics of this House this is an important bill. I just want to take a different tack and look at the bill with regard to money-laundering and international wire transfers and physical cash transfers from the perspective of part of my community.In my community we have a very big population from the Middle East predominantly a Somali population. A lot of the people who have come from Somalia to the Hamilton community over the years have been refugees. As refugees they have settled here with little or nothing and have made their own lives and their own futures in this country. They are a very strong and supportive group in our community and I enjoy immensely their hospitality and sense of humour. They are very good on the football field as well which is good to see. One of the issues that that community faces is the ability to get money back to their friends and family back home. It is very difficult in a country like Somalia where there is no banking system. For example a New Zealand - Somali family may well have cousins back in Somalia whom they wish to assist in some way and that is fair. We have so many people from many other communities who do that and also many previous generations in this House would have done that as well. The problem that members of the Somali community have got is that there is no registered bank in Somalia and no ability for them to transfer their money.The modern money-laundering rules are very strict and very much follow an international format and they have been through the Finance and Expenditure Committee over the last couple of years. Under those rules there is not a lot of room for movement. We need to be very cognisant of those communities when we progress legislation like this because—Phil Twyford: How do they deal with the “Cabinet Club”?DAVID BENNETT: No Mr Twyford we are talking about real people and their real issues and we are talking about how people want to be able to get ahead. I know that you do not care about those parts of our community but they are something that we do care about and we do work in their best interests. I am saying that in this bill we need to be aware of those issues as well because this is a large segment of our community who feel distressed under money-laundering legislation because they feel that it compromises their position to be able to have active and successful lives.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.DAVID BENNETT: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.Hon Annette King: Too much.DAVID BENNETT: Annette have you got a problem?Hon Annette King: Too much.DAVID BENNETT: Too much. That is Annette’s problem.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] No we will not do that. The member knows how to address other members in the House. He has been here quite a long time and I am just assuming that he is acting in a deliberate manner.DAVID BENNETT: Mrs Annette King said that it was too much before the speech had even started. That was a shame. Before I left the House at dinner time I was talking about my Somali community in Hamilton which is a fine community of people and has delivered a lot to our city. That community often wants to transfer money back home to brothers sisters cousins and other members of their extended families who may be at home. We just need to be mindful of that when we are progressing legislation like this because in countries like Somalia there is no banking system. When my constituents wish to transfer money they often have to transfer it through a third destination like Dubai. Often that money is actually transferred to third parties who then buy goods and services to transfer to the Somali community in Somalia itself. I know that Mr Assistant Speaker is also aware of this issue in his community where it is a big issue as well.I just want people to be mindful of this when they look at legislation like this so that we take into account those communities that have a genuine need to transfer funds outside of the normal process of going through inter-bank transfers—through two major banks in two developed countries. Often those transfers are seen as money laundering in a wider sense because there are not two recognised banks doing the transfer although they do have quite a legitimate reason for doing it the way they do and that is simply because the country does not have that ability to accommodate that system. I just want people to take that into account when this bill goes further. Thank you.Bill read a second time.Health (Protection) Amendment BillSecond ReadingHon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I move That the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I would like to thank the Health Committee for its work on this bill. The committee received 71 submissions and heard 22 oral submissions.Of course good health is hugely important to New Zealanders. I think when you look at it it would be the No. 1 priority for people across the nation. That is why I am very pleased that this bill supports the Government’s unwavering commitment to good public health as reflected in the recent Budget whereby health received over $400 million of new funding. Of course there were a number of excellent new initiatives there that are supporting working families in New Zealand in terms of their health. But it was a health Budget for all New Zealanders.Anyway this particular bill will amend the Health Act 1956. Back in October 2013 the Government decided to improve the range of measures in the Health Act in two specific areas: measures to protect the public from the risk of the spread of some infectious diseases and in the case of people under 18 years of age measures to protect them from the harm associated with artificial UV tanning. The bill will protect people from these preventable harms and it will do so through measures that are proportionate to the risks that are faced.Unfortunately New Zealand has very high levels of sexually transmitted diseases. This impacts heavily on individuals families relationships and communities. Sexually transmitted infections have a variety of complications including chronic pain infertility neonatal morbidity and genital-tract cancer. The bill adds new provisions for the surveillance and management of infectious diseases. These measures will improve the availability of information on certain conditions provide for more effective management of behaviours that put others at risk of infection and strengthen legislative provisions for contact tracing. The bill strengthens the principles applying to medical officers of health and the courts in exercising disease management powers. People exercising powers will be required to take into account any known special circumstances or vulnerabilities of the individual. These might be due to youth disability incapacity or other circumstances.The bill also requires that measures are proportionate to the public health risk that they pose. The principles also encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own health. Currently sexually transmitted infectious diseases with the exception of AIDS are not notifiable by medical practitioners and laboratories in New Zealand. The bill makes HIV gonorrhoea and syphilis notifiable on a non-identified basis along with AIDS. The notifying information needs to be sufficient to enable different kinds of public health interventions while complying with privacy safeguards. Submitters said that clause 5 and clause 6 went too far in restricting effective monitoring of serious sexually transmitted infections in favour of privacy. This is because the list of identifying information that should not be disclosed with disease notifications included sex date of birth and National Health Index number. The reported-back bill requires notification of these matters while protecting the individual’s identity from being disclosed in the first instance.Submitters were also concerned about potentially coercive actions by officers such as contacting a young person’s employer or school and asking for details about friends and associates. Reluctance to disclose information or to be diagnosed or treated could arise from fear of the consequences as a result. However that information may be absolutely vital in identifying those who may be at risk and to prevent the further spread of disease. The bill says that information requested and provided under new Part 3A will not be used or disclosed for any purpose other than the management of infectious diseases. Contact tracing is a valuable public health tool in preventing and managing infectious disease outbreaks particularly diseases with a rapid onset such as meningococcal disease and gonorrhoea. New Subpart 5 extends contact tracing powers to contacts of people suspected of having an infectious disease and that is an important change. That will allow for speedy follow-up diagnosis treatment and containment.It is important that contact tracers are trained and are suitably qualified health or community work practitioners and the bill has been changed to require that. It clarifies the interface between appointed formal contact tracers and informal contact tracers. The latter might be general practitioners sexual health clinic staff or organisations like the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. The bill will not regulate their largely voluntary contact tracing practices unless they are nominees of district health board employees or a medical officer of health.The committee was clear that existing venereal disease legislation is badly in need of an update. The current definition of “venereal disease” is not fit for modern conditions. For example it does not include HIV AIDS or chlamydia. Other outdated provisions the bill will repeal include section 79 of the Health Act. That authorises a medical officer of health to detain and isolate people likely to cause the spread of infectious disease. New Part 3A effectively replaces section 79 with graduated powers of increasing robustness when an individual is not complying with management aimed at preventing the spread of further infection.Part 2 of the bill prohibits the commercial provision of artificial ultraviolet light or UV tanning services for people under the age of 18. The Health Committee reported back that it is satisfied that the bill will protect the vulnerable under-18 age group while allowing adults to make informed decisions. That is comparable to other legislation such as legislation on the sale and use of alcohol which recognises that 18 is an age where people are capable of making their own choices.Clause 8 and clause 13 include several new provisions. These provide an infringement process to deal with breaches of the ban on providing artificial UV tanning services to people under the age of 18. This process would deal efficiently with offences and prevent expensive and time-consuming criminal prosecutions. Voluntary standards and guidelines on the operation of UV tanning beds already exist. However surveys have found consistently that there is variable compliance with those voluntary steps designed to minimise harm despite considerable effort to educate operators and to encourage compliance. I have therefore asked health officials to look into whether the licensing of premises and operators and the introduction of mandatory standards are appropriate.This bill is going to improve the protections we have for the health of New Zealanders. It is an important part of our legislative framework for managing and reducing health risks. I commend this bill to the House.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Labour supports this bill the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. We support this bill. The amendments come from the Public Health Bill which was introduced by me quite a number of years ago. When the Minister of Health said that he had an unwavering commitment to good health well I can say that 7 or 8 years ago so did we. Unfortunately we have had to wait some time for this to become a big enough priority for the Government to bring into this House. I am very pleased we are now on the second reading because there has been concern that the current legislation does not fully support public health practices. That has been articulated by those who work in public health and those who have worked in public health agencies over a very sustained period of time. We realise these concerns. In fact there are many more amendments that do need to be made that are in the Public Health Bill which still sits on the Order Paper and perhaps the Government may like to lift a few more things out of that bill and proceed with them.This bill does give effect to the Government’s decision in October 2013 to improve the range of measures available to protect the public from the harm associated with infectious diseases and with artificial UV tanning. I think the Minister probably pretty clearly set out the aim of the bill and just briefly it is to increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable to the medical officer of health without identifying the information of the patient or the diseased person. As the Minister said this includes HIV gonorrhoea and syphilis. It also improves the management of persons with infectious diseases by providing new management options including directions issued by the medical officer of health court orders urgent health risk orders and interventions. It strengthens legislative provisions for contact tracing of people who may have an infectious disease and this bill introduces a ban on the provision of commercial artificial UV tanning services to people under 18 years of age.I just do want to correct the Minister—maybe he had not been informed—it was not a unanimous decision of the Health Committee that we would only ban commercial UV tanning services for people under 18. In fact there is a minority report provided from Labour the Greens and New Zealand First and I will get to that in a moment. I do want to say however that I am really pleased at the way the Health Committee is working under the chairmanship of Mr Simon O’Connor. I thought that we had a very good chair in Dr Paul Hutchison and we worked very well together. I have to say that Mr O’Connor is shaping up to be a very good and open chair.The work that was done on this bill I think is commendable because when you look at the number of amendments that have been made they were made—with the exception of UV tanning services—through listening to the submissions that came from the public. Also I think a very good contribution was made by Kevin Hague who because of his background and the work that he had done in many different spheres but particularly working for the AIDS Foundation was very helpful in helping us make some of these amendments.I do not want to go through all the amendments we made. Anyone reading the bill would see that the select committee improved the bill by the amendments we made. But I do want to look at the amendment relating to privacy and identifications of persons. We have recommended that the changes here will ensure that the information collected by the new Part 3A “Management of infectious diseases” is to be used or disclosedonly under the provision of the Health Act. This is to encourage individuals to provide private information without fear of inappropriate disclosure. I think it is really important that the fear that something about a person could somehow be made public is recognised. I think that we have amended that so we make that a lot stronger. Also with regard to identifying information it does allow the sex date of birth and the National Health Index number of a person with a notifiable disease to be disclosed. That will assist medical officers of health with disease surveillance.The only other point I want to mention is in the whole area of appeals. I want to pay credit to Kevin Hague for raising this issue and getting an amendment up which would never have happened in the way it did if we had the previous Minister of Health Tony Ryall. Although Dr Coleman is not here to hear this little bit of praise I may give him—and this will be a very rare occasion—Dr Coleman was sent the suggested amendment that was made within the committee as we were deliberating. It was an amendment made by Kevin Hague that enabled a person to be able to make an appeal to the High Court about a District Court’s decision on an order part of an order a variation of an order or an extension of an order. It gave a proper appeal process which was not in the original bill. When we came to an agreement on it it was sent to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Health responded within a very short time and accepted the amendment. I say sincerely that I do not believe that we would have got the same response having been through a number of bills under the previous Minister.However I do want to express my real disappointment—and I actually even think that most members on the committee share this disappointment—that we could not get the Government to agree to ban commercial UV tanning services in New Zealand. You see we are a Health Committee and we do like to base our decisions on good evidence. That is what we must do. We must look at the evidence and we must then say: “What is the best we can do for the public health of New Zealand?”. The Minister said: “These changes we’re making are proportionate to risk.” Well that does not apply I have to say to the banning of UV tanning services which applies only to those under 18.I would like to say why. The World Health Organization classified sunbeds as a carcinogenic in 2009. It estimates that sunbed use before the age of 35—not 18 but before the age of 35—increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent. Can I repeat that: sunbed use before the age of 35 increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent. Skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer affecting New Zealanders. Each year over 2000 new melanoma cases are identified and on average 325 New Zealanders die from melanoma every year.Sunbed operators at the Health Committee—and we hadonly one submission I think that we heard; only one came along to support it—claimed that artificial UV tanning beds are an important source of vitamin D. Well the Ministry of Health the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research the World Health Organization senior dermatologists and the Commerce Commission argued that short-wave UVB rays which are rays that reach the outer layer of your skin from commercial use pose a cancer risk that far outweighs any minor vitamin D benefits. The overwhelming majority of submitters were opposed to the commercial use of these sunbed services.In fact Australia which does not often beat us in terms of public health in many health measures has banned them. It can see that they are of no benefit. We are now going to rely on some sort of code. Unfortunately there was very recently on 8 May an undercover surveillance of tanning salons undertaken by Consumer New Zealand and it uncovered that more than 40 percent of the 60 sunbed operators it visited failed to implement safety checks such as checking the customer’s age asking them to sign a consent form and providing information on the dangers of UV exposure. One operator allowed a 14-year-old to use a sunbed.We do not believe this bill has gone far enough. This was the opportunity for us to ban the commercial use. We cannot stop what people do in their own homes; that is up to them. But there is absolutely no benefit from the commercial use of sunbeds. There is high risk presented to New Zealanders. I just feel that many members on the committee felt the same way as we did but were unable to do anything about it. So although we support the bill we want to strongly stress that during the Committee stage we will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper to ban the commercial use of sunbeds.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am very pleased to take a call on this Health (Protection) Amendment Bill which is on its second reading here. Can I thank the Hon Annette King for her generous words. I think such generosity is probably costing me thousands of votes in my electorate at the moment—people who are going: “Oh what’s he doing?”. But actually in all seriousness I do want to acknowledge all the members of the Health Committee and in particular Annette King Kevin Hague from the Green Party and Barbara Stewart from the New Zealand First Party for the cooperative nature in which the committee is working—Louisa Wall as well as a Labour member and then my fellow National Party members Jacqui Dean Barbara Kuriger Scott Simpson and Dr Shane Reti. It is a fine committee and I think it is one that is working together because we understand that there is always politics in all things but health is one of those matters where we try to work together.I think we have heard in the speeches tonight two so far that by and large there is a lot of agreement but also—and it hints at the political nature or the difference of views—that you do not agree on everything. I am very pleased to see that members of the House from all the parties are supporting this as I understand it. This bill is in two parts. The substance of the bill is around contact tracing and the second part of the bill not as substantial but of course as important is around sunbeds.As the Minister pointed out we had 71 submissions. I thought that was actually a really good number in light of the nature of this bill. In fact I thought there was a very high quality of submitters who came before us. I cannot remember the exact breakdown of how many came to talk to us around the contact tracing side of things versus the UV tanning but I am sure other members will echo—well I hope they will—that it was the quality of the submissions and the quality of the oral presentations. These were people who are experts in their field. That is not to take away from the individuals who might come and choose to share their experiences. But I thought there were very high-level submissions to us. Twenty-two people were heard. It kept the committee busy but I can say for myself and I am sure for the others that actually it was incredibly fascinating as we would talk through the different issues.The first part of this Health (Protection) Amendment Bill is around contact tracing. For those in the House and particularly for those at home this is about how we work out whom a person with an infectious disease has been in contact with. The intention of this bill is to enable health authorities to better manage infectious disease outbreaks or to limit them when they arise. So we are talking infections and I hope my father listening at home is not going to blush. We are talking about things like syphilis gonorrhoea tuberculosis HIV and the like—so some serious diseases that are out there in the community or potentially so. With those I note that tuberculosis is currently under another Act. One of the elements of this bill is to actually take it from being a distinct Act of Parliament the Tuberculosis Act and integrate it into this Health (Protection) Amendment Bill.These are serious infectious diseases and when they arise we as a society need to move swiftly and promptly to limit their effect. One only needs to think of the measles outbreak. That is not—I had better be clear—one of the infectious diseases noted at the highest end of this bill. There are good reasons for that but I think of the outbreak—I think it was in Christchurch—and just how swiftly these diseases can spread and therefore consequently the State the health authorities if you will need to move swiftly to manage them.So we have introduced these extra diseases to be traced. A big part of that is: who are the people whom those with an infection have been in contact with? Up to now the provisions have not been sufficient enough or proportionate enough. To put it really simply if someone chose not to actually enable contact tracing to help with certain diseases it would not happen. So we are strengthening the ability of health agents to encourage and then enforce the information required so that we can make those contacts and better understand the spread of disease. One of the debates of course is around privacy and that was discussed at length. There was some concern from some submitters particularly around the use of the National Health Index number—that it could lead to the identification of particular people and consequently discourage them from coming forward.We heard from a good number of submitters who work within the epidemiological field who said that the need for this data is absolutely paramount. Having data such as the sex date of birth and the National Health Index number are very very important. One thing the committee did in a few of the changes it looked to bring about was to list principles which we are hoping will be clear not only to the public but to the courts if they need to get involved. The first principle above all others is that the intention of this bill is to protect public health not just the person with the infectious disease but all of us. That is the paramount principle.But we as a committee thought it was also really important to stress that the respect and dignity of the individual must always be noted and upheld and thirdly—although not in a priority order in this case—that a proportionate response is followed. So depending on the nature of the infection their proximity to people for example the length of the infection and so forth—what is the proportionate response? Because as indicated implicitly by Annette King in her speech there is the ability to bring about court orders to force an individual to release the information required. Again we would want that to be a proportionate response depending on the infection.I want to briefly touch on the question of acute hepatitis C. This was something that members on the committee will know about. We spent an enormous amount of time considering whether acute hepatitis C should actually be brought into the same level as gonorrhoea syphilis HIV and the like. We took a lot of advice and decided it did not require at this stage to be at that top level but I think it is really important for the House to understand and those submitters that it does remain on the schedule. It is still part of the Act. One has to think of this as a graduated bill a graduated response. Although it is not at the top level it is in there. It is a formidable disease and fortunately one that does not occur as frequently as some others but when it does it needs a lot of treatment. I am very pleased to see actually that there are a number of very good pharmacological options available now for people there.Briefly I want to acknowledge as the Hon Annette King did Kevin Hague’s contribution around appeals. It is really important and certainly for me that you always have consistency in legislation. The ability of a person to be able to reach through the respective courts to have their appeal heard around these matters is consistent so reaching the High Court makes a lot of sense. I think it is important though that the orders remain in place. The committee did debate this a bit that if someone is going to start going through the legal appeal process it is not going to stop the ability of the health organisations to engage. When it comes to infectious diseases we need to move promptly.I want to turn to the sunbeds the UV tanning beds. The science is very clear on this. It is unambiguous and I am more than happy to stand on the Government side and say this with the legislation as it is with a graduated response to UV tanning beds. This bill seeks to say that under-18s should not use them and that there should be regulation for those who do. Auckland Council amongst others has actually quite a good system in place already and it was really good that it came in and talked us through how it regulates sunbeds in Auckland. I think it is a model to follow. I want to be clear that it is not the model; there are a few we can look at. But we are looking at a regulatory approach. It is sort of that graduated approach or one step at a time.Again the science is very clear. As many members know I worked at Southern Cross before coming into Parliament so although I am not a doctor I involve myself with a lot of things medical and particularly in the dermatological and plastics field. Look there is no doubt about the issue of skin cancers in this country and the place that sunbeds can play in that. I think I heard from one of the experts one of the doctors I used to contract with that something like 7 minutes a day of sunlight is all that we need so where is the need for sunbeds in that case?I think we have come to a proportional response in this regard. We understand the science; we understand the information put to us by a number of medical experts in the likes of the Cancer Society. On this side of the House I think we are saying that we understand that and we understand the excessive risk for those under 18 but at this point we feel that an outright ban is probably not the best way forward. We will introduce a graduated approach to that. We will see that regulations are put in place.As any responsible group would do—in this case the Government the ministry or the Minister—we will continue to engage with the information. So I think we have landed in a good place and if I might say as I conclude I think it was good to put a bit of light on to this bill.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora. Lau Afioga le Fofoga Fetalai. Kia ora. I am a proud member of the Health Committee and I want to echo my colleague Annette King’s kōrero earlier about how this committee is working. It is a very productive committee. I think that a lot of the discussions that we have are incredibly important because we are talking about a health system that we want to help design and to ensure meets the health needs of all New Zealanders. Essentially the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill covers two areas. I am going to touch a lot on one of those areas but briefly the first area is about protecting the public from the risk of the spread of some infectious diseases. I think that what we did in the committee was have quite an interesting discussion about what some of those diseases should be. Obviously the bill wanted to introduce tuberculosis to the schedule but there was much debate about whether or not hepatitis C should be added. Obviously because of that we had discussions about other diseases that we think should be monitored because the spread is actually causing an adverse effect particularly in some communities. The second area that the bill covered was really about protection from the harm associated with artificial UV tanning.I am going to spend the majority of my contribution talking about the ban on solaria or UV tanning machines because I think the evidence was actually incredibly compelling that 18 is in fact not the right age to have set if we were going to protect the largest number of New Zealanders. I want to agree with my colleague Annette King when she said that the World Health Organization is categoric in terms of UV tanning machines causing cancer. From the evidence that the World Health Organization has gathered in fact 35 years should be the age that we ban the use of UV sunbeds if we were going to set an age. That is part of the discussion that I think is still ongoing. Essentially we have set it at 18 years because once you are over 18 you are an adult and the State ceases to care about you. This is even though we have got overwhelming evidence that the use of these devices is harmful to you and in spite of 2000 more New Zealanders getting diagnosed with melanoma every year and over 326 of us dying because we get melanoma. So in spite of all the evidence we set the age at 18 because up to the age of 18 you are a child and as the State we will protect you. But if you are over the age of 18 you are on your own and you make your own decisions. So if you are not as informed or if you practise UV sunbed use because you think it makes you look attractive and you want to be browner or whatever it might be we say that that is your choice.What we in the Opposition say is that it actually should not be your choice because at the end of the day there are alternatives. If you want to get brown you can spray stuff on you these days right? So if you are doing it for cosmetic reasons there are actually alternatives that are not going to kill you. What we said was that actually given that there is an existing by-law—Auckland Council has one that already bans under-18-year-olds from using UV tanning machines—the effectiveness of this piece of legislation is essentially going to benefit only 25 percent of the sunbeds that are out there. Auckland Council made that decision and the other interesting submission from my perspective was from Palmerston North City Council. It made a decision as a council. It made a decision because it had some evidence from a dermatologist a woman called Louise Reiche—I hope I am pronouncing her name correctly—that in the MidCentral District Health Board region the rate of melanoma is 51.55 per 100000 people. The national average is 39.12.So as a council it got actively involved in this piece of legislation because it was relevant to the council and also there was a case of a young 16-year-old Jessie Anitoni who got cancer. There was a lot of publicity I guess in that community about the effects of UV tanning machines so it was very clear that it wanted central government to ban them. Rather than having every local council in the country going through a process of banning these machines it wanted us to take responsibility as central government and enact a piece of legislation that was going to benefit the community—the public good. This is because when you look at who actually benefits from using UV sunbeds there are some cohorts of New Zealanders who do such as those who suffer from seasonal depression and are actually prescribed to go and have some UV sunbed treatments and also people with psoriasis. So actually there is a medical rationale for using UV sunbeds that we agree with. In fact it would have been exempted in terms of a ban because it was to be used in a medical procedure. Those beds are actually in hospitals and they are available to people who need them.So I think that the decision that the committee made to set the age at 18 is really not in the interests of New Zealanders. It is not in the interests of the 326 people who die from melanoma every year and the over 2000 New Zealanders who get diagnosed with melanoma every year. If we had been brave—and I do not even think that we would have been brave. In fact Australia and Brazil have already banned UV sunbeds because they realise that it is bad for the community and for the citizens of their countries. Are their rates higher than ours? Actually they are not. We have higher rates than Australia. We have higher rates than Brazil. So this really was I think one of the critical decisions that the committee made—the decision not to ban them—because we think that that would have somehow sent the message that we were being nanny State we were telling people how to live their lives and we were not allowing them to be adults and make decisions for themselves. Well actually no. Our responsibility as legislators is to protect the people of New Zealand and when we have evidence which is overwhelming that says that the effects of UV sunbed usage is so detrimental and that there is nothing to be gained from it then I think it is incumbent on us to act. I have not given up hope. I want to acknowledge that my colleague Annette King has got an amendment that wants a progressive system over a period of time that will mean that in 5 years there will be no more UV sunbeds. So we are not going to take them away immediately but we want to phase them out progressively and let those people find the spray-cans if they are doing it because they want to look lovely. They can go to the chemist and buy those and look all brown and people will think that they have been in the sun. They do not need to sit under those sunbeds and actually harm themselves.The only other thing I wanted to cover was that I was really interested in the discussion about what is ionising and what is non-ionising. What I want to highlight in my take-away from the ionising/non-ionising debate is that I understand that non-ionising is actually low frequency—it is not as intense. But what I also got from the discussion we had with the experts was that it is about the compound effect. It is about the compound effect so how much is too much? If you go and have these sunbeds once a week once a fortnight once a month—actually what is the frequency when the compound use of these things actually has the same effect as ionising radiation? That was not clear. I am clear about what is ionising and non-ionising because associated with UV radiation are cell phone towers Wi-Fi power lines and all those things. They are in our environment. I understand that. We live with those. But what we did not get to do was to consider that if this is non-ionising with a compound effect then actually maybe we should limit the frequency. So are we going to say: “OK you are over 18. You can make up your own mind but actually you can use these things only once a fortnight. If you use them more than that the compound effect is like using ionised radiation.”? So that is my contribution to this debate. I look forward to an ongoing discussion because I am hopeful that the Government is going to support Annette King’s amendment. Nā reira tēnā koutou katoa. Talofa lava.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on the second reading of the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. Just following from the last speaker Louisa Wall I think that for many on the Health Committee the biggest education was actually not about the terms ionising and non-ionising; it was actually to separate them from iodising. At one stage we had someone who was convinced that the word was “iodised” as in salt and of course it is a completely different thing.I would like to join with other speakers tonight in congratulating the work of the total committee actually. When we see a select committee working at its collegial best to ensure good outcomes for legislation I think that that is when we see Parliament working at its best. I am delighted to report to the House that under the chairmanship of my colleague Simon O’Connor the committee is functioning very well very collegially and we are getting good results. I think members will have seen something of the tone of the committee reflected in the speeches that we have heard tonight and I am sure that will continue to be the case as this debate continues.Notwithstanding the minority report of the Labour Party New Zealand First and the Green Party I am very pleased to learn that I think all those parties are going to support the progress of this bill through the House. The point of difference between Government members and Opposition members around the committee stems as Louisa Wall has said from the extension or the potential extension of the commercial UV tanning clinics and as the committee chair Simon O’Connor made clear during his contribution—and the Minister—that is at this stage a step too far. I am personally quite relaxed about that at this stage but I would like to reserve my personal view on how that might unfold over the years to come. I think that in many of these matters relating to health science and education we find that it is a learning process. Technology and information change and we find ourselves in a position to be flexible and nimble of foot in terms of the legislative response.This bill seeks to amend the Health Act of 1956 and the fact that we are amending that Act gives some context to the change that has occurred in both medical science and in human knowledge over the period of time since the principal Act was passed by this House. So it is very appropriate given the changes in both medicine and also in society that we update legislation to accommodate changed circumstances.Back in 1956 I doubt that there could have conceivably been a situation like one that may exist today where people for reasons that were probably almost criminally motivated would use the fact that they had some kind of communicable disease some kind of infectious disease to actually wreak harm upon other human beings. I think that would be something that the legislators back in 1956 would have found difficult to comprehend.Regrettably we have had cases in our recent history where for instance—and this is very rare I know but it is important that as a legislature we accommodate the rare situations—people infected with AIDS or HIV have gone about actually infecting others in a way that is as I say criminally negligent and culpable if not anything to do with medical responsibility.So we need to update our legislation to ensure that as a society we have an opportunity to protect the greater good of the wider community from what are essentially rogue individuals. This amendment bill essentially does that. It creates a progressive stage of restrictions management if you like—controls might be another word we might like to use—in terms of managing people who have a defined range of infectious diseases. Some of those diseases are quite damaging and they are highly infectious and I think we have an obligation an absolute obligation as legislators to put the protection of the wider community first.There are times when we have to think about the potential impact on the rights of individuals versus the rights of the greater wider community. This bill I think seeks to achieve that through a number of means. One of the I guess constitutional issues that those who are interested in matters relating to civil rights and personal human rights might have been concerned about—and it was raised in the select committee—was the question of how far these additional management provisions would go in terms of inhibiting the rights of individuals who may be infected with a particular disease.So the framework that the committee and this legislation seek to adopt uses a principle of risk management and proportionality based on the risk associated with the individual versus the risk to the wider community. I think the bill places as few restrictions as are possible while at the same time maintaining that greater good concept and principle that is important to protecting the wider public health objectives of the original statute and of course this amending piece of legislation.The measures provide actually better tools for public health staff to deal with people who for one reason or another do not voluntarily seek treatment or do not voluntarily modify their behaviour once they have been diagnosed with a communicable and notifiable disease. So that behaviour I think is one that we need to be able to balance carefully against the individual’s rights.So where consent is not given—and I stress that this is a very small minority of potential cases—the current legislation simply does not allow for an appropriate response. For instance the current legislation does not allow for the detention of an infected person. The provisions in the bill cover the rights duties offences and penalties and a range of restrictive powers and procedures for directions and court orders and it also creates a regime for urgent orders for people whose consistent and persistent behaviour may place others at risk. I think that is an appropriate moderate response given the state of society and science today.Powers at the lesser end of that regime—for example the power to give directions—are able to be exercised by a medical officer of health and I think that again provides an appropriate response to the lesser communicable and infectious diseases. Directions are the community-level measures and they may include for instance directing people to seek testing or treatment or counselling or they may involve the direction of people not to attend public places for a specified period of time. There would be some who would argue that the restriction on the movement of an individual may be a step too far. I am not one of those people. I think that this is a balance that is about right. If people choose not to take their responsibilities to their wider community seriously then I think we as a society have an obligation to enforce those responsibilities for them.The lack of such intermediate powers has been identified as a weakness in the 1956 legislation so this amending bill we are considering here tonight provides a more restrictive power—for example detention in some cases. But that can be exercised only following a public health order made by a District Court. The select committee considered appeals and the process all around that sort of thing and I think we have landed in a pretty good spot.I have addressed most of my comments this evening in the second reading to matters relating to civil rights and the ability of the State and us as a legislature to enforce powers on individuals in cases when that is required and I think balanced and necessary. This is I think a very good piece of legislation. It updates some now quite old legislation that was well intentioned in 1956 but that is in serious need of an update. This bill does that and I thoroughly commend it to the House. Once again I thank the select committee for the collegial and congenial way it has conducted its affairs. Thank you.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to begin by thanking members of the select committee. As others have said the Health Committee works in a very collaborative way and I appreciate that from members from all sides. I also want to pay tribute to the officials who worked with us. This is a fiendishly complex piece of legislation and the officials did a great job of staying on top of that work. Thank you to the submitters also who are no doubt watching this debate tonight. Some great submissions were heard by the committee. And thanks in tonight’s debate to Annette King and Simon O’Connor for noting my particular contribution to the debate in the select committee and to Jonathan Coleman in fact for agreeing to the changes that I recommended.As others have noted this bill has two parts and both of those parts go to the limitation of individual liberty. Part 1 limits individual liberty for the sake of the public good and therefore seeks to strike the balance on that issue. Part 2 deals with another situation the restraint of individual liberty which is where the State intervenes to curtail the liberty of an individual to take action that would cause harm to themselves. These are two of the kinds of situations that this House grapples with from time to time.Picking up on one of Scott Simpson’s comments in the most recent contribution Part 1 as he said seeks to amend the Health Act of 1956. I am reminded that a couple of years ago in this House we passed the marriage equality Act which was overhauling a piece of legislation from 1955. That legislation had fossilised in law some attitudes and mores from our society at that time. I have worked with Nikki Kaye in fact to draft a bill to completely overhaul adoption law because the Adoption Act 1955 fossilises some mores and attitudes about children that pertained to that time but are no longer relevant in ours. In 1956 the Health Act was written to deal with some particular issues—chiefly tuberculosis in fact—and it applied attitudes towards the restraint of liberty that prevailed at that time but no longer seem as relevant.Perhaps unusually in this House I have had some experience of applying the 1956 Health Act. I used to be the executive director of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. I dealt with a situation—in fact a couple of situations—in a New Zealand city of a person who had HIV and who had persisted despite all efforts to change his behaviour in having unsafe sex with multiple sexual partners and I was faced with the dilemma of what on earth I should do about it. Doing nothing would mean that a number of people would be needlessly exposed to the risk of HIV infection—something I certainly did not want on my conscience—so I looked to the law. What did the law allow me to do? What did the Privacy Act permit me to do? What did the Health Act permit me to do? I was astonished that essentially the only path that the Health Act made available was for me to notify the medical officer of health who then would seek a court order to detain this man indefinitely. That was the only option that the law provided.So I am relieved that I have played an active part in some of the work that went into drafting the Public Health Bill which sits at No. 30 on the Order Paper—it would be great to move that forward some time—specifically to actually provide medical officers of health with a wider suite of tools and with the option of action that is proportionate to the risks that they are trying to mitigate. I am very pleased to see these measures progress through the House.I did have some concerns—which I expressed in the first reading debate and members of the select committee will know that I raised them repeatedly during our hearings—about whether or not the existence in the bill of the provision that would enable medical officers of health to obtain identifying information about those who had for example tested positive for HIV would constitute a disincentive for people to test. Body Positive shared that concern. We heard the Human Rights Commission also expressing some concern about that point and about whether the contact tracing provisions would also provide a disincentive for people to test.At the AIDS Foundation we provided our own testing services. Why did we do that? We did that because we knew that many of those who were at risk feared going to established health services for testing because even though those services were offered anonymously they did not trust those services to keep their information anonymous. They feared discrimination. So I am still troubled by that risk—whether the benefit of better epidemiological data outweighs the risk that some people will no longer present for testing—but I am reassured by the evidence of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and other epidemiologists that my fears are groundless on that point.I want to just briefly note my approval that we are adding chlamydia to the list of conditions for which the powers and provisions of this bill can be used by medical officers of health because this is our No. 1 sexually transmitted infection. It is the No. 1 infection which we need to be taking action on. So I am very pleased to see that development.I come to Part 2 which is the part of the bill concerned with sunbeds. As the minority view in the select committee report says like my Labour colleagues—and I am sure that Barbara Stewart will mention this in her contribution still to come—I am disappointed that the Government did not move on this. We have heard for example the evidence of what Australia is doing. We have heard the evidence repeatedly from the cancer organisations and the health experts. In fact I think that almost all of the evidence that the select committee heard on Part 2 said: “This does not go far enough.” There is no benefit to having these sunbeds except in the rare cases that Louisa Wall has mentioned. They should be banned all together. There is no safe level of exposure.I think it was Scott Simpson actually at one point in the select committee—perhaps after we had just heard the excellent submission from Consumer New Zealand—who said that there are still people associated with the sunbed industry who maintain that there is no link between their industry and cancer. The very next submission we heard was the one submission—the one submission—that we heard from someone who said that we ought not totally ban these sunbeds. This was someone from the industry who actually presented us with a couple of reports that she had printed off the internet that in fact claimed that there was no link between sunbeds and cancer.What that goes to is exactly what Consumer New Zealand had told us which is that the industry simply cannot be trusted to act in a responsible way. It has had a voluntary code for a long period of time and as Annette King has outlined tonight the industry has repeatedly and in a prolonged way completely failed to comply with its own voluntary code. In that time many many New Zealanders have been exposed to unnecessary cancer risk. These sunbeds should be banned altogether and I encourage the House to have the courage to do so.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I am very pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First. New Zealand First will definitely be supporting the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill.It is a brilliant committee the Health Committee. Basically we work to improve the health of all New Zealanders and we all work very constructively towards that end which is a really good aim for a committee. I must say a thankyou to the officials who were very patient and to all of the many submitters who came along to talk to us.This bill is more and more important—particularly the contact-tracing part—given the number of people who are now coming into New Zealand with multidrug-resistant TB. This type of TB cannot be cured it can only be managed so contact tracing of these people is really really important. We know that there are many of them in the hospitals but we also know that there are many walking around our streets our cities and we need to ensure that we have notification of them before they contaminate others with the disease.We are satisfied with the confidentiality changes made to this bill—thanks to Kevin Hague from the Green Party—regarding the private information of patients. The information of New Zealanders is not going to be freely available beyond the necessities of actually managing an infectious disease so that is an important change that we made as a Health Committee to the bill.I was delighted to hear what Dr Coleman said about the inclusion of chlamydia and other STDs in the list of notifiable diseases. Submitters were absolutely positive that this was something that had to occur. We need to ensure that there is some education around this mandatory notification especially for younger people because the last thing we want is for them to go untreated because they are frightened of some sort of mandatory notification and not getting themselves checked. So confidentiality is important and we will be very interested to see how this works out.We in New Zealand First were hoping to see sunbeds banned. We had heard about it on a previous select committee trip over to Australia and we do not believe that this bill actually goes far enough: to ban commercial sunbeds outright. Many of the submitters—most of the submitters except one—actually wanted these tanning beds banned. I would say that damage that is caused to skin by using a sunbed does not just stop when you turn 18. I know that many years ago I decided that I would like a tan so after trying many of the products to paint one on and getting the racing stripes—not an even sort of look—I decided that I would go to one of these sunbed clinics. I was accepted fair skin and all and I have never had such a bad burn; it took weeks and weeks for it to go away and I did not have any tan whatsoever. As my brother said to me I got the vegetable tan: red as a beetroot and peeling like an onion—and it lasted for months. So I am one of those people who when I heard the submitters come along and talk about the evidence of skin cancer before 35 and the increased risk of melanoma now know that I have to take some action and perhaps look at what I may have done to myself. We know that 2000 cases of skin cancer are identified each year and I am just hoping that I will not be one of those cases in years to come.The Ministry of Health recommended banning these sunbeds for commercial use and we know that Australia has banned these beds as has Brazil. The irony of it is that our sun over here is just as harsh and we should be following their lead. We know that Australia has a higher level of skin cancer than we do but we have a higher death rate from skin cancer than Australia does. We were quite concerned too when Consumer New Zealand came along and after doing a check on many of the sunbed operators found that the regulations were being regularly flouted: 17 out of 20 operators allowed type-1 skin mystery shoppers to have a session—I think I must have had a type 1 skin. Therefore I think that more needs to be done to ensure compliance with these rules—perhaps some consent form perhaps ensuring that people are advised of the dangers—and of course there is the age but I would have been past that age.One of the things that really concerns me is that there is no monitoring on the strength of the light and the intensity of the light that the beds are actually emitting. Knowing that we are now importing second-hand sunbeds from Australia—and many people have them privately in their homes—really makes one wonder what can be done to ensure that the cases of skin cancer that may occur at some later stage are monitored as much as they possibly can be. So there are quite a few issues there.I know that we will be speaking on the sunbeds at some later stage but I would like to say that this is a good bill. The Health Act 1956 needed updating. Since 1956 a lot has changed and we in New Zealand First believe that preventive measures are far better than trying to fix things up once they have actually gone wrong. We need a fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom. So we in New Zealand First will be supporting this bill as it is working towards protecting the health of all New Zealanders and for us that is a priority. Thank you.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I enjoyed Barbara Stewart’s contribution to this debate along with other members of the Health Committee. The Health (Protection) Amendment Bill has been through a good process in the select committee and the House and I along with others acknowledge the good work that the committee has done. I felt for the member Barbara Stewart when she described her experience on a sunbed receiving what I suspect was quite a bad burn in the process—and have we not all done that? I too have done that and I recall getting bad burns on a number of occasions. But that was simply being out in the sun as a child on the shores of Lake Taupō back in the day when as children we would be out in the sand digging catching tadpoles swimming and doing all of the things that kids do.I vividly rememberbeing badly sunburnt. I come from a medical family—mum was a nurse and dad was a doctor. The point I am trying to make here is that the perils of sunbeds are known and are not contested except by the one proponent of sunbeds who came to the committee. Just as you can receive a bad burn from a sunbed so you can from the sunshine. I guess that these days parents and schools—thank goodness—take a lot of care of kids so we do not get to see that degree of burning. I highlight the issue just to say that we need to be very careful that we do not overly prescribe nanny State provisions as somebody today said. Maybe I agree with the position that you cannot protect New Zealanders from every little bit of harm. I acknowledge that tanning beds are dangerous. So is alcohol but we are not banning that are we? It is that same principle of banning versus regulating.Hon David Parker: How about water?JACQUI DEAN: Good point—a very good point. Do not make me lose my track. That is very unfair. The point I was trying to make was that—Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s still a very good story.JACQUI DEAN: Yes drinking Ruth. Yes it is all about the drinking is it not? The point I was trying to make is that the position we came to in the committee was to restrict the use of tanning beds to those people aged 18 years and older.I was walking along Lambton Quay the other day with this in mind. I happened to go past a sandwich board that was extolling the virtues of tanning. As we had just had that conversation in the select committee I picked up a brochure took it back to my office and had a look at it. I think what needs to happen in the tanning industry with solaria and sunbeds in the face of the scientific evidence is for some responsibility to be taken and for some acknowledgment to be given that there are dangers associated with sunbeds. In some people’s eyes there are benefits. That is fine. I acknowledge that there are benefits in some people’s eyes but there certainly are dangers. I also just want to make that first point again. The dangers of burning are not just with sunbeds; it can happen any day of the week outside in the sunshine.The member is also right in saying that there was one submitter who had quite a different view on the scientific evidence and that was interesting. I thought it was a brave attempt by that submitter to fight her corner. It was a female submitter. I do not recall her name. Why not fight her corner in the select committee? The fact is that she was an importer of sunbeds and from memory had franchises for sunbeds. Why not fight her corner? I know that I have got it all round the wrong way because the provisions relating to sunbeds—Part 2 clause 13 of the bill—include the new provisions that provide for infringement processes to deal with people who do not comply with the new regulations around sunbeds.I also thought about the contribution made by a Labour member who said that there are some health benefitswith solaria in a very narrow range and that they relate to depressive illnesses relating to winter and also to psoriasis. I do know a couple of people who suffer from psoriasis and I do know that occasionally they will take a course of sunbed sessions because that provides them with relief. The member Louisa Wall said that yes there are sunbeds available at hospitals. You can go to the hospital—you can if you can find a car-park—make an appointment go in and have treatment. Or you can go to the solarium during your lunchtime and get your treatment there. So I do not think that with sunbeds we should necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are some beneficial aspects to sunbeds. I will leave that to one side but that was the major cause of disagreement within the committee over this otherwise accepted bill.Kevin Hague mentioned in his speech tonight—and he gave some very thoughtful contributions on this in the select committee—the issue of the need for contact tracing whilst at the same time protecting the privacy of some vulnerable populations. This was a point that was also considered very closely by the committee. On the one hand there is the need to stop the spread of some pretty infectious diseases such as gonorrhoea and hepatitis in some populations. STDs are not great diseases to have and they can hang around for many years and can cause all sorts of problems later in life—all sorts of health issues. They are not diseases to be taken lightly. But as Kevin Hague pointed out to the committee—and this was also backed up by submissions—the provisions around contact tracing need to be very carefully applied so that the rights of individuals are not necessarily impinged and so that the rules around contact tracing and the provision of information are commensurate with the potential risk that is posed by the disease.In this bill contact tracing is designed not to be a mallet but rather to be a process that has gradual interventions. The first stage of that is to attempt to gain voluntary consent from somebody who has presented at a hospital or a GP’s surgery and is found to have what is now going to be a notifiable disease. If that consent is not gained voluntarily then the bill introduces a duty on a person who may have an infectious disease or who might have been exposed to an infectious disease to provide the prescribed contact information. That contact information could well be clearly people whom they have had contact with—names addresses; that sort of thing—obviously so that the medical officers can trace those people and can confine the outbreak or potential outbreak.The practice of seeking voluntary consent for contact tracing will be the preferred method and the first option for managing the risk of infection. The provisions in the bill increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable thereby improving the surveillance of infectious diseases that are of concern including their long-term impact on health. The more quality information that is held about these things the more likely it is that any potential outbreak or spread of an infectious disease or STD can be contained. There are measures being introduced in the bill to protect the identity of individuals and to allay concerns that people might not seek treatment if they believe that their identity will be made public. The issue that Kevin Hague brought very clearly to the committee is that we do not want populations of people hiding away for fear of being publicly exposed as having a certain notifiable disease or STD.The approach taken in the bill and I congratulate the Minister on this approach is to use the principles of risk management and proportionality. Rather than as I said using a mallet to strike a walnut the principles of risk management and proportionality are brought into play in this bill. This is a good bill which is being well supported around the House. We do have a point of difference of course around tanning services—of course we do—but otherwise I am pleased to see that the bill is enjoying good support and good debate. I commend it to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Jan Logie—a 5-minute call.JAN LOGIE (Green): Fa‘afetai lava. I rise to take a call on this the second reading of the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. It will be a relatively short call I think. Much of the content of the bill has been well covered in the House this evening. The Greens are supporting this bill and also supporting the Labour Supplementary Order Paper to extend the ban on tanning beds.This bill does take us forward on both provisions. The bill kind of breaks down into two halves—one is in relation to contact tracing for infectious diseases. There has been an extension and an inclusion of new diseases in that list—which is a good thing—including chlamydia which as my colleague Kevin Hague pointed is the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection in this country. So it is very good to have it on that list.This legislation was first written in 1956 so it is well overdue to be updated. My colleague Kevin Hague in his speech at this stage told the story of his experience with the AIDS Foundation—which was quite informative for the House—when he was in the situation where somebody he knew was I think HIV positive and perhaps not engaging in safe sex. He was concerned about interventions and contact tracing. The only possibility at that stage according to the legislation was to inform the medical officer of health who would then go to a court and that person would be detained. So it was a very very blunt instrument and not one that balanced people’s rights versus the outcome in terms of protection. So it is very good that this bill is now introducing stages and that first stage which has already been stated would be the preferred option of seeking voluntary consent from people for contact tracing. Then on a failure of that there is to be a duty for that person who may have been exposed to a disease or who may have the disease to provide the contact information for the tracing to be able to happen. So that is all very good.I would just like to note from that the discussion I have been hearing in the House this evening from members who sat on the Health Committee that it sounds as if it was a very constructive process. It was an interrogation of what this legislation would mean in practice and in the balancing of it on that basis and that is a fantastic thing to happen. That is what we would really love to see happening more often in this House and through the parliamentary process.It does seem that the second part of the bill—which in relation to sunbeds—reached an ideological divide or a brick wall. It seems that the Opposition side of the House was primarily weighing on the side of the need to ban the sunbeds because of the extreme harm that is caused. The fact is that New Zealand has such high levels of melanoma—2000 new cases are identified every year and over 300 people die of melanoma in this country every year—and the information is that in terms of sunbed exposure for those under 35 there is I think a 73 percent increase in the risk of getting melanoma from using a sunbed. That makes sunbeds to my mind—not having been through this process—a dangerous item.It is disappointing to see that this legislation is banning it only for those under 18 particularly in light of there having been supposedly voluntary regulations or a code of conduct for the use of sunbeds in place already that have not been abided by. Consumer New Zealand has been doing surveys and has found that these companies are not abiding by it. So how would we expect them to abide by this limit of 18 years? We know that some pubs do not do it. Are we expecting these people who are already breaching their own voluntary rules to be consistent just because we pass the law?I met with Business New Zealand people the other day to talk about another matter and they said to me: “Jan you know actually if it comes to what we think is a nanny State you pass the law and we’re going to ignore it.” I did not realise business was quite so anarchic but apparently that is how some businesses think. When there is such a problem with melanoma I think actually we just need to ban sunbeds for safety purposes. Thank you.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Talofa Mr Deputy Speaker. Talofa e ngā mema o te Whāre nei. It gives me pleasure to take a short call on the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. Listening to all the contributions tonight can I also acknowledge obviously the collegial way in which the Health Committee worked.In listening attentively to the contributions made tonight I do want to raise a couple of facts in relation to them that have come to my attention. Every year 325 New Zealanders die from melanoma. Sunbed use increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent. A Consumer New Zealand survey found that 40 percent of sunbed operators failed to implement basic safety checks. I understand that the majority of submitters at the select committee believed that banning sunbeds would result in a decline in skin cancers.If I can take us back Labour supports this bill. It is great to see that the Government is finally acting on the work started by our colleague the Hon Annette King. The amendments in this bill are from the Public Health Bill introduced by Annette King some 7 years ago which was in regard to infectious diseases. That bill stemmed from the concern that the current legislation does not fully support public health practice as being articulated by staff in health agencies over a sustained period of time.The bill gives effect to the Government’s decision in October 2013 to improve the range of measures available to protect the public from the harm associated with some infectious diseases and with artificial UV tanning. The aim of the bill is to increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable to medical officers of health without identifying the information of patients or diseased persons. This will include HIV infection gonorrhoea infection acquired immune deficiency syndrome—AIDS—and syphilis. It also aims to improve and manage persons with infectious diseases by providing new management options including directions issued by a medical officer of health court orders urgent health risk orders and interventions. It also aims to strengthen legislative provisions for the contact tracing of people who may have an infectious disease or who may have been exposed to one. It also aims to introduce a ban on the provision of commercial artificial UV tanning services to people under 18 years old.Tonight we have heard that the tension in the select committee particularly with the Opposition members has been around the full banning of commercial UV operations—i.e. tanning beds. Of course Labour will be introducing an amendment for the House’s consideration when we come to the Committee of the whole House which is around why we propose an outright ban.In terms of the select committee like previous speakers I too want to acknowledge the way in which those members have operated and come to the House. I understand that 71 submissions were received and 22 submissions were heard before the select committee. I was not a member on that committee but I do acknowledge the way in which people have conducted themselves.I understand too that scientific data was presented to the committee. That scientific data indicated coming back to the contentious issues of banning sunbeds that sunbeds emit a higher concentration of UV radiation than the sun. Personally I cannot say that I have experienced sunbeds. There are probably very few in my family whom I can actually tap on—Kris Faafoi: Not me.MEKA WHAITIRI: Not you either Mr Kris Faafoi. But there is a serious nature around the impacts of UV sunbeds and so all jests aside it is important that we do acknowledge those who lose their lives. A previous speaker Jacqui Dean mentioned something that I do have to differ with her on in terms of her statement about taking a mallet to a walnut. I would hate to be the one who is sitting in front of the families of the 325 people who do lose their lives every year through these sunbeds.I look forward to the bill coming back to the House and to its being debated in the Committee stage. Labour therefore supports it and we look forward to the support of the Committee in terms of our amendments. Thank you very much.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to be here tonight taking a call on the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. It is particularly pleasing because this is the first bill that I have actually followed from the beginning as a new member of Parliament and I am following its way through the process. So it is always going to be particularly relevant to me.It is clear that some parts of the legislation from over 50 years ago need updating in order to improve it for modern times. If I think back to 50 years ago a lot of infectious diseases and things were actually quite isolated within communities because people actually did not travel as far as we do now. So when you think about the progress in travel and the way people shift around communities in the last 50 years the risk has become much much greater than it ever was in the past. It is also the science that we have developed over time and the thought development and also the tracking systems that we have. When everything was manual 50 years ago there was not the ability to do some of the things that we do now.The Health (Protection) Amendment Bill aims to amend and update the Health Act 1956. It also seeks to update the legislation around sunbeds. If I think back I cannot remember any of our parents brothers sisters or people back many many years ago actually having a fetish for sunbeds. I think people are now starting to learn the lessons of those sunbeds and we are starting to become aware of the harm that they are capable of causing.Good health is of crucial importance to New Zealanders young and old. This National Government has an unwavering focus over the past 7 years in respect of maintaining and improving our public health services. New Zealanders are receiving better and more convenient health care and it remains one of the Government’s priorities.During this bill’s time in select committee we heard over 70 submissions that came in. I was really really impressed to see the diligence that people applied when they were presenting their submissions. The other thing that I was really impressed with over the course of sitting and listening to those submissions was the way that different groups in the community that are working together to strive to make things better in the health sector were actually coming together and working on joint submissions to make their cases stronger. I was very very impressed with that. They did bring a lot of concerns to us. I would also like to commend the officials who were in the room because as you can imagine tracking a whole range of infectious diseases and contact tracing is actually quite a large thing to do. So we were always able to test and measure back with those officials for things saying: “Is this possible? Can we do it? The things that these people are asking for—is it possible to do that with your system?”. The reassurance that they gave us that it was possible certainly helped us to make our decisions.The provisions in this bill are multiple and they primarily allow for the tracing of people who have infectious diseases and the introduction of a ban on the provision of commercial UV tanning services to those individuals under 18. I have to say that this is the area where I feel that those people need to be protected more than in other areas. People who are under 18 have not actually had the opportunity to read as widely as older people and they are still very much minors. They are not old enough to vote and they need to be protected in that sense of the word.But I also want to make a comment. We heard before about how we have pubs letting in people who are 18 and people will not respect the law. Well to be honest pubs will only do that until somebody actually catches up with them and until somebody actually realises that they are selling alcohol to a minor. I believe that the regulations around this are going to ensure that these places are tested measured and audited in order to make sure that they are not breaching the legislation. I also think it is really important that they do have respect for the legislation whatever the age of people they are dealing with because we know so much more now about the dangers of how sunbeds are used. I think it is really important that the usage of them is much more under control because unfortunately this is an industry where it has largely been ignored. The more you ignore the regulations the more you open people up to health risks and the more you find that they are susceptible to getting melanomas from sunbeds.I too have to say that I am impressed with the overall cross-party support that was shown in the Health Committee. It is certainly rewarding to New Zealanders when we are able to work together to achieve great results. The Health Committee is definitely a pleasurable place to go and I give credit to all the members of the team. I have to say that it is also reflective of our chair Simon O’Connor who does a great job in chairing the committee. Since the first Act in 1956 as I have said before the knowledge and scientific development have put forward strong evidence in a lot of these areas. It was great to see that evidence coming in and having people talking to us.I am very pleased with the outcomes that we are putting forward this evening in the House. On balance I know we have heard a bit about whether we should widen the scope of sunbeds but I think the evidence of health harm gives sufficient justification for intervention particularly around those people who are under 18. Other than that the measures in this legislation largely provide for better tools for public health. We have a better opportunity for staff to deal with infectious diseases especially when people do not offer to seek voluntary treatment. So if somebody is not actually coming in and presenting with a disease and not obviously offering voluntarily to behave in a best-practice way around this then this legislation gives the officials a chance to do something about it. It places a duty on the medical practitioner who is in charge to provide information to officials who are in charge as to whether there are measures needed to prevent the further spread of disease. I think this is such an important thing and the cooperation between the health officials and the public means a safer environment for all New Zealanders.I want to say that we did have quite a bit of discussion and we did have some people coming in to the select committee who were rather concerned about privacy issues around that. But the bill has provisions in it that make sure that everybody’s privacy is absolutely protected. However there is always a balance and there is always a judgment and I think we are reaching that right judgment where there is a balance between the person’s own privacy issues and protecting the public as a whole. And so you do not get to the point where actually you are keeping someone’s privacy so quiet that the rest of the public are exposed to a huge risk.It is a pleasure to be here tonight supporting this second reading of the bill to improve the tracing of people and to increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable. I think it also provides a series of incremental options for the management of individuals with significant diseases whose behaviours do put others at risk of contracting a disease. There are a number of changes that will streamline legislation such as the inclusion of tuberculosis as a notifiable disease under the Act and the consequent repeal of the Tuberculosis Act 1948—that is an Act that goes back quite a way in time. It is my pleasure tonight to commend this second reading of the bill to the House. Thank you.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I must say it is a pleasure to hear that the Health Committee is still operating with a constructive and mostly bipartisan approach. As someone who was a member of the committee for 6 years I must say that I miss that committee. I understand that under the chairmanship of Simon O’Connor it is doing well.Sarah Dowie: I’m hurt. You’re on TPR—I’m hurt.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well Sarah Dowie we have got an interesting select committee tomorrow so we will cross that bridge when we get to it—more interesting for you guys than it is for us I must say. But it is good to hear that there is a convivial mood at the select committee and it was good to hear that we can have a bipartisan approach to some of these health issues and how constructive it can be. I am pleased that the member who was speaking previously Barbara Kuriger was enthusiastic about the bipartisan approach—a new member who delivered a very good 10-minute speech; well done.This bill does a number of important things—a number of important things that I think as some of my colleagues have pointed out could have been introduced quite a long time ago if the legislation that included these aspects and others had been supported by the National Party back when the Labour Government introduced them. So we could have been 7 years ahead of where we are right now if we had had that same bipartisan and constructive approach back when National was in Opposition. It is a shame that we did not have that same bipartisan and constructive approach.This bill does a number of things that I know the National Party has had some issue with in the past. It increases the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable; it improves the management of individuals with infectious diseases whose behaviour puts other people at risk of contracting a disease by providing new management options including directions issued by the medical officer of health court orders and urgent health-risk orders and interventions; and it strengthens the legislative provisions for contact tracing of people who may have an infectious disease or may be exposed to one. All of those measures require a degree of I suppose a person having to divulge information about themselves. It may be uncomfortable for people to divulge some of that information but it is really important for public health for our community and for our collective health that those individuals are expected and are now required under this legislation to offer up that information.The New Zealand National Party has not always been a big fan of this approach. I go back to the minority view expressed in the report back on the Public Health Bill which was the Labour bill that was introduced by Annette King that contained many of these provisions as well as others. Under a paragraph entitled “Forced disclosure of health information” National had this to say: “The bill in requiring disclosure of health information creates a provision for non-Government health care providers to mandatorily supply information to the Ministry of Health beyond what if any is already voluntarily provided. This has potential to create significant costs for these non-Government providers (such as private hospitals general practices and Māori health providers) and funders (such as health insurers) without reimbursement. For example the cost to private hospitals of employing specialist coding staff to supply surgical data by purchase unit or diagnostic related group to the ministry will not be insignificant. The ministry advisers even acknowledged that it may take considerable time for providers to collate requested information. Providers and funders could be required to provide confidential financial and business information in the name of ‘advancing health knowledge health education or health research’.”It goes on. It goes on to talk about National’s concerns about people having to divulge information and health providers having to provide such information the costs that would be related to that and the impact on people’s individual freedom to maintain that information. That was one of the somewhat spurious reasons on which National based its opposition. This is not new. We have seen the National Party do this a number of times where it sees a political opportunity to make political attacks and to undermine a Government whether or not that actually is in the interest of advancing the well-being or the health of New Zealanders.The fact that 7 years on we are hearing from members about the wonderful bipartisan approach that has occurred at the select committee and the fact that these are all important measures to improve the public health I think absolutely reveals the appalling political games that the National Party played with health when it was in Opposition. It is just true. Some newer members are looking over at me shaking their heads a little bit. Well this might be a history lesson for them. They might not have been aware of this but actually time and time again in the 6½ years that I have been in Parliament we have actually debated and passed nearly unanimously in most cases legislation that the National Party in Opposition vehemently and loudly opposed because there was some group out there that it was trying to appeal to or even if there was not a group out there that it was trying to appeal to but it just saw an opportunity to undermine the Labour Government. That was all it was about.Brett Hudson: The unions elected your leader and you talk about people being beholden to groups. What a joke!IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well there you go. That is the level of debate. That is what Brett Hudson thinks is an important contribution to make to a debate about public health. He is wrong of course. He obviously actually has not understood how the Labour Party works but what we are talking about here Brett Hudson is advancing the public health and well-being of New Zealanders and the fact that the National Party plays politics—the fact that the National Party plays politics around these things. It is great and it is fantastic that we are doing this and that the select committee in its bipartisan and constructive approach has actually come back expecting that even more information will be devolved including sex date of birth National Health Index number—all things that are going to be useful in terms of bringing under control notifiable infectious diseases and advancing the public health and well-being of New Zealand. I just come back to the fact that we could have done this 7 years ago—we could have done this 7 years ago. But what does the National Party do with all this stuff? It always plays politics.I had a look because I am not on the select committee any more at the departmental reports and I found that there were two departmental reports—one on infectious diseases and one on the issue around sunbeds—both of which were nearly 100 pages long. There were numerous submissions and there was obviously a lot of evidence to go through. It would appear that for the most part the select committee in its bipartisan and constructive approach has taken an evidence-based approach to these issues including the issues around the link between sunbeds and melanoma. I noticed one of the reports that the select committee received noted that there was a strikingly high rate of university students who use suntan beds. Those would be university students I assume who are over 18 and who are possibly in their early 20s who are using these beds. It is concerning that these young people are perhaps using these beds in an unregulated environment not being fully aware of what the long-term impacts might be of using those beds.It is good to see that Parliament is working together to do things that are constructive that take a long-term view of health and that are about maintaining health and well-being to try to prevent disease further down the track particularly around melanoma. It is good to see that for the most part the Government seems to have followed the evidence. There are some small differences of opinion between this side and the other side of the House about how far it went in following the evidence but for the most part this side of the House is very pleased to see the continuing passage of this legislation. We are just so disappointed that it has taken 7 long years for National to finally see sense.Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is my privilege to speak to the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill tonight. Just in brief reply to the previous member Iain Lees-Galloway I would indicate that we are certainly interested in learning from the past but we are more interested in working in the present and that is certainly where I would like to be tonight. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues on the Health Committee for the due diligence they have done in progressing this bill and the guidance of the chair Simon O’Connor.There are two themes to this bill as has been commented on. There is the infectious disease theme and the UVB tanning theme. I will talk to each of them.I will talk first of all to the infectious disease theme and there are several parts that this bill actually talks to. First of all it talks about modernisation improving contact tracing and improving management options. As has been commented on the previous Act is an old Act from 1956 and it is modernised in this new amendment. If we look at some of the areas that are modernised we had Toi te Ora suggest to us amending “premises” to include “vehicles” so the definition of “premises” now reads “… any commercial premises private premises vehicle ship or aircraft”. That makes sense. An “educational institution” was also clarified as “… any place where people gather for the purpose of education or training;” and “an individual who has an infectious disease” now includes “… an individual who is infected or colonised by or is a carrier of an organism capable of causing the disease even if the individual does not exhibit any of the symptoms of the disease.” We have modernised the Act with this bill.The second part of the bill that I will talk to is around some of the new diseases that have become notifiable. In fact they are not new diseases but they are now notifiable. Very important diseases—HIV gonorrhoea syphilis—are now added to the schedule along with hepatitis A hepatitis B hepatitis not otherwise specified leprosy rabies and malaria. So these are really important diseases that we have now put on the correct schedule. This bill also attends to contact tracing. I was a sexually transmitted disease officer in Northland for many years and contact tracing was very very important to us. It is nice to see these regulations tighten up and give us new and better tools for what we are doing.What we have done with contact tracing is significantly strengthened with graduated measures a sliding scale and a range of techniques we can bring to the task ranging from voluntary to non-voluntary contact tracing and also including self-managed contact tracing. Significant powers have been given to the medical officers of health for example. To safeguard those potentially intrusive activities that they have the bill enunciates a number of principles that describe the balance between voluntariness self-management and public risk. These principles include “Respect for individuals” “Voluntary compliance” “Individual to be informed” the “Principle of proportionality” “Least restrictive alternative” “Measures to apply no longer than necessary” and that the “paramount consideration … is the protection of public health”. I think these are some of the safeguards to the new powers we have given under the bill.We have also looked in the amendments to section 74 at notification of some of the infectious diseases. This was the point that Kevin Hague made which I think is absolutely correct. There was a lot of discussion around provision of identifying information with the notification information. I would add here that the New Zealand AIDS Foundation when it presented to the select committee was very comfortable with the range of information we were looking to collect. That aside we felt that we should peel it back and that we did not need all of it. So where the initial list was name date of birth sex address place of work and National Health Index (NHI) number we have peeled that back to sex date of birth and NHI number. Again the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and other stakeholders were very very comfortable that that was appropriate information to be collected—particularly NHI numbers which can be symmetrically identified to a person. The foundation felt that considering the NHI is stored appropriately and meets a lot of privacy constraints it was comfortable with that.Behaviour that is risky to public health is also covered under this bill. As I have mentioned medical officers of health are given increased powers of compulsion. There are other safeguard measures. One of them is in regard to the Director-General of Health. In many places in the bill it is stated: “If the Director-General so requires the medical officer of health must send him or her a copy of all or any of the directions given … under this section” which is another really good safeguard. There is another part to that: “If the disease that the individual is believed to have is not a notifiable infectious disease every direction given to the individual must have the prior approval of the Director-General.” Again that is another good safeguard.I would like to talk briefly about chlamydia. I think this is a really important thing that the Health Committee has had added to this bill. Chlamydia was commented on as the most obvious sexually transmitted infection that was not on the infectious diseases schedule and not on the notifiable diseases schedule. A 2014 report by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research looking at 2013 data showed that across all the district health boards there was an incidence rate of 633 cases of chlamydia per 100000 people. That was less than what it had been in the previous year so it was improving but it was still twice that of Australia and in absolute numbers it was 25000 positive tests. This committee raised the attention of officials to chlamydia and placed it on the schedule. We have placed it on the infectious diseases schedule and its type is non-notifiable—that is in the Health Act schedule 1 Part 2 as amended by clause 10.This is a big step. If we look across the bill and ask what parts of the bill will touch the largest number of people and impact on the largest number of people I think this clause is an unexpected benefit that we will look back on and say: “Ha! We really did something good there. We really had an impact on vulnerable communities with that clause. I mean we didn’t know at the time whether we were quite going to do that.” So chlamydia now joins other infectious diseases that are non-notifiable in schedule 1 Part 2 which includes standard influenza scabies and impetigo contagiosa which is school sores. They may seem trivial but let us remember some of these can be really quite significant. School sores can certainly destroy your kidney through a bizarre autoimmune process. So again I just want to commend the committee and officials for taking into account and including chlamydia in that schedule.I would like to now turn to the second theme which is around artificial UV tanning services. As the member Jacqui Dean commented it is actually quite common in hospitals to find UV services. Particularly in the dermatology department you will find UVB which is used quite frequently and UVA. UVA particularly is used in “PUVA”—psolaren plus UVA. Again she mentioned psoriasis and 10 to 20 percent of New Zealanders have psoriasis. Probably those in this room tonight who have dry skin on their elbows and knees will think it is just dry skin but no it is not; it is psoriasis. Of those who have the unfortunate affliction of dandruff 20 percent will actually have psoriasis as well. So it is quite common. Therapeutically we would use—Kris Faafoi: Give me a script for that.Dr SHANE RETI: I could. Actually you do need a prescription for light therapy. It just shows how controlled it needs to be.Anyway Part 5 of this bill talks to UV tanning services and fundamentally restricts them to being used by those over 18. The question first would be: well why restrict it at all? There is very clear evidence of the nexus or the relationship between ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer. We generally break skin cancer into two types: melanomatous and non-melanomatous. The melanomas are the brown moles that change in size shape and colour and certainly that can be very terminal. There is in fact a very high frequency in young people. It is one of the most common causes of cancer in young people. The non-melanomatous are the scaly lesions on the back of your hands—the basal cell carcinomas squamous cell carcinomas and solar keratosis moles—Simon O’Connor: The full squamous cell.Dr SHANE RETI: The full squamous cell as you say. There is very clear evidence from the people who presented to us of the relationship between UVB and melanomatous and non-melanomatous skin cancer. It is unequivocal; there is no question on that.Where there was some debate was around age. We looked at age and said look it needs to be consistent with other legislation. It needs to be consistent with where we think the age of autonomous consent and autonomous understanding sits and consistent with other legislation such as tobacco and alcohol legislation. If we are going to set an age as was correctly mentioned by someone we need to consider how we are going to monitor that. How are we going to check that the sunbed industry is indeed treating only people over the age of 18? What is required there and what you will see in Part 5 is quite a detailed infringement platform or infringement programme if you like. We wanted to be firm but we wanted to also be fair in what we were doing so there are escalating infringements to try to avoid the unnecessary criminal prosecution pathway which can be long and expensive. Having said that the officials made it very clear that if there were repeated and deliberate infringements they would head to criminal prosecution.It has also been commented and I think it is interesting that our prime intervention here is on age. We could look at what the Auckland Council has done. It has actually regulated the industry under by-law. I think there are some interesting things coming out of that as well. There are actually other parts of the legislation that can be brought to bear in this arena—there is legislation around electrical safety and various other things—but I think reassuringly at the end of the day what we have said in the new Part 5 is that we will review it in 3 years’ time. So let us learn the lessons from what Auckland Council has done as a by-law. Let us see how this goes.I think this is an excellent piece of legislation and I think it will give us much better tools to do a better job. I commend it to the House. Thank you.Bill read a second time.Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3)Second ReadingHon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs): I move That the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time. At the outset I would like to thank the members of the Government Administration Committee for their efforts in thoroughly considering this bill. It was referred to the committee in November of last year and was reported back to the House on 11 May this year a considerably faster track than its predecessor. The select committee received 126 written submissions on the bill as well as hearing oral submissions in Wellington and Auckland.This bill makes a limited number of amendments to the Gambling Act 2003 but does so in several key areas. The majority of these changes relate to gaming machines or pokies in bars and pubs. This form of gambling generates a significant amount of money. For example in the 2013-14 financial year New Zealanders spent around $700 million on over 13000 pokie machines in commercial venues across the country. The select committee’s report recommends a range of key amendments to the bill which I support. Many are quite specific and traverse a wide variety of aspects of the Act. For example the committee’s report tidies up the important definition of “key person” in the bill to prevent unintended consequences. The regulation-making powers under the Act involving the way societies distribute funds to the community are also improved and this will resolve some gaps and fix some drafting issues.One purpose of the Act is to limit opportunities for crime and dishonesty associated with conducting gambling. People can be involved with conducting gambling either through a society that is licensed to conduct the gambling or as venue personnel where the gaming machines are located. Obviously there are those who receive grant funding as well. The Act looks to prevent conflicts of interest by prohibiting personal benefits being given or taken between those groups. The objective here is to ensure that personal gain is not a prime motivator for people’s actions over and above community benefit. This is a very difficult area because it is hard to define exactly what the unwelcome behaviour is. It is also a problem getting sufficient proof to successfully prosecute offenders. So the committee has recommended a change of approach considering that the bill originally went too far in trying to clamp down on transactions between these groups. Instead it has recommended an amendment to the bill so that the behaviour at issue is more effectively targeted.That will prevent everyday transactions between say the society and venue staff from triggering a potential conflict situation. For example someone from a society buying a meal at a bar where pokie machines happen to be located could well have been caught by the provision in the bill as drafted. I think the committee has arrived at a reasonable outcome. It has also introduced a longer limitation period for bringing prosecution actions for conflict of interest offences and that will more accurately reflect the length of time it takes to uncover the behaviour and gather enough evidence to mount a prosecution.Let me touch on some other improvements to the bill that the committee has made. It has recommended changes to give greater certainty in a few areas. One such change concerns the ability of the secretary in screening licence applicants in terms of their suitability to be involved in providing gambling. It is important that all relevant information can be considered to give a complete picture of a person’s past behaviour. Another change protects the ability of affected parties to seek a judicial review. The Gambling Commission has been given the power to delay the effective date of its decision so that a review can be sought. Another change of note concerns licence periods. The intention is to allow longer licences for highly compliant operators and the committee’s recommendations make it very clear that that will be a decision for the Secretary for Internal Affairs to make which will mean that there will no longer be appeals and arguments about why everyone is not getting a longer licence.I note that the committee’s report includes minority views on the most notable area of change that the bill introduces. This is in the area of payments to venues that actually host the machines. The committee has a couple of minority reports in that regard. New regulations would need to be developed to replace the current system which is agreed by all parties to be very cumbersome and time-consuming. The minority reports from Labour and the Greens describe particular concerns about the favoured option which is a commission-based system. Their concerns essentially are that a commission-based system could incentivise operators to maximise gambling in their venues. It was their perception that venue operators could take advantage therefore of vulnerable patrons rather than carrying out their duty to be responsible hosts. In response to those concerns I note that the design of the system for the regulations is still being developed. The aim here is for a payment scheme to cover the cost of venues. It is not intended to provide profits.Of course no system will be absolutely perfect but I do believe a change is needed. The current system requires a considerable amount of time and effort by the department and the societies. If payments were simplified the department could focus on other areas like harm prevention to ensure greater compliance by the sector. In short I want to give the House an assurance that the potential concerns about a new payment system are being taken seriously. Under the Gambling Act when new regulations are being proposed I am required to be satisfied that consultation has occurred with the people likely to be substantially affected. There is an onus on the department to ensure that all groups are consulted before final proposals are put forward and that their views are considered. Once the new system is in place class 4 operators will be expected to meet their harm prevention responsibilities.One of the purposes of the principal Act is to ensure that money from gambling benefits the community. I believe that this sits at the very heart of what we try to achieve in this country when it comes to the regulation of gambling. We are unique in the world in the way we channel money from gambling back into community purposes. It is a feature that I think we need to keep to the fore when we look at changes to our gambling laws. Gambling is an established legitimate form of entertainment. For the most part it is harmless fun but for a small few it is not fun but extremely destructive. We need to do all we can to make gambling a safe pastime and that is where the Act balances the provision of gambling with the need for harm minimisation measures to be put in place.I am aware that some have advocated the introduction of pre-commitment technology into our gaming machines. Although the Act already includes an ability to do this through regulations the evidence on pre-commitment is still unclear. The overseas experience has been mixed. Much depends on the specific design and features of such a system. In short there are many unknowns. Although I accept that the use of technology in this area has a lot of potential and could be a powerful way of encouraging people to gamble in a way that is appropriate to their circumstances and there are advantages in such a system I do not think we need to be rushing to impose that new technology. It would create a significant cost at the expense of community purposes. A reasonably strong compelling case is needed for features that will work best in the New Zealand context. I expect the Department of Internal Affairs to remain active in monitoring research and developments in this space including having discussions with the Ministry of Health and the Associate Minister of Healthwho has an interest in this issue as well.Finally can I conclude by acknowledging all of those who took time to make submissions to the select committee. It is a well-known fact that gambling issues always prompt a range of strong views from across the community. I think the committee has done a good job in working its way through those and presenting us with a workable piece of legislation. As a consequence of the committee’s work I think that the bill that has now come back to the House responds to the specific concerns raised about pokie operators. It does provide for better transparency in the sector and also some greater controls. That in turn will help ensure that the very important objectives of the Gambling Act are fulfilled. So I have great pleasure in commending the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House.ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Talofa lava. Malo Samoa. Malo le soifua. It is a pleasure to speak on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) in this second reading. I want to acknowledge the 126 submitters who sent their submissions from problem gambling organisations to venues and societies to individuals. I want to thank them all because I think they contributed greatly to the amendments that have been made to this bill which I think have made this bill a lot better than it was at its first reading.The Labour Party will be supporting this bill but we do have some concerns. I want to thank the Minister of Internal Affairs for addressing those very concerns that we have in his speech first up. There is the issue around commission payment. A number of problem gambling organisations made submissions about their concerns about putting in place a commission-based payment system. Their concerns as the Minister said were around incentivising gambling so that venues would be better off with the more money that went through those machines and in so doing it would put their host responsibilities at risk. We want to highlight that.I have heard what the Minister has said and maybe there is room for a Supplementary Order Paper to make sure that that happens. One of the models that could be used in developing a commission payment system could be to place a cap on the percentage or the total amount that any venue can gain from one particular machine. I think that could address that issue so I guess the challenge for this House in taking up what the Minister has said is to make this bill even better than it is now. If we were to put something in this bill as a Supplementary Order Paper—and I am sure that I am bound to want to do that—it would be to make certain that the commission-based system does not incentivise more gambling.I have to point out that at the end of last year in the Department of Internal Affairs mystery shopperstudy only one of the 102 venues was compliant. So that does not give me a lot of encouragement about some of the venues actually being in a position at this time to not take the incentive of a commission-based system. That is why it is really important I believe that we think carefully about that and make sure that the commission-based payment system does not incentivise gambling.The other area that I want to pay particular attention to is harm minimisation measures. I think that we have missed an opportunity here. I believe that at every single opportunity when we are talking about gambling and the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) before us we should have and could have taken stronger measures around minimising the harm caused by gambling. The Minister mentioned—and it was also raised in the minority reports—implementing a pre-commitment system. Other countries have implemented this very system and I believe it is incumbent upon this Parliament to actually make sure that we have every opportunity to implement systems that do address the harm caused by gambling. Two of the submitters—I will not mention them by name—on two separate occasions spoke to the Government Administration Committee about their experiences of the harm that they have suffered through gambling. That was very passionate it was very powerful and what was very clear to me was that a system that actually worked around pre-commitment could have prevented the experience that they had had to go through. So I want to thank those two particular submitters who told us in very raw detail about the effect that gambling had had on their lives.There are some good things in this bill and that is why our party is supporting it. We have already heard from the Minister about the suitability of key persons and the key persons’ issues that are addressed in this bill. I want to focus on the benefits with conditions attached. The inclusion of just one word altered the whole of clause 16 to the satisfaction of the many many submitters who submitted against this particular clause and that was the inclusion of the word “improper”. Just one word and it changed the whole nature of the clause. Feedback from those submitters indicated that the inclusion of that word has addressed their issues because their issues were about things like being able to pay their staff because the clause had some unintended consequences that meant that as key persons they would not be able to walk into the pub of another society’s venue and order their dinner and a drink without breaking this law. So that is a proper thing for them to be able to do. The intention of the clause was to eliminate improper actions. So that was something that collectively as a select committee we were able to address.There were a number of submissions around the definition of a “relative” and that issue also was addressed. It was narrowed down to parents son daughter spouse or partner rather than the wider whānau. Some of us have got really big whānau which would have meant that we and the rest of our family would all be unable to carry out a normal transaction if we were a key person. Also we extended the limitations from 2 years to 5 years because there were indications that cases had been advised through the proper authorities but they were out of time. Two years seemed to be too short and so that has now been extended to 5 years. Also there are some specific clauses that the New Zealand Racing Board needed to be addressed and those amendments address those issues to an extent that I understand that it is satisfied. I am not sure whether all its members are happy but they are certainly satisfied with the amendments that have been made.So finally I just want to again thank the submitters and also acknowledge the members of the Government Administration Committee for the work that has been done. I also acknowledge the Minister again for acknowledging those key issues and concerns we have with this bill. Nō reira tēnā tātou.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Talofa lava. Greetings Mr Deputy Speaker and thank you for allowing me to take this call on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). The fact that it is No. 3 suggests something. It is a series of technical bills off the back of a parent Act the Gambling Act 2003 which was reform legislation to minimise harm in the industry of gambling.This bill I believe is an example of the MMP environment at work. It is the Government working with its coalition partners—in particular the Hon Peter Dunne who has shepherded this bill through the House and the Māori Party. But I also want to take this time to thank the Government Administration Committee. We often hear that it is a high-powered select committee that hears some very important bills. I want to thank the committee members for their collegial spirit in panel beating this bill into shape.I think it is worth noting that even though this is an amendment bill and it is technical in nature gambling—and this is certainly something I have learnt from other submitters whom we heard in Wellington and Auckland—affects all New Zealanders whether directly or indirectly at some point in their lives. That is why I think these bills should not be taken for granted. They do affect us and they are important when we are finessing this industry to minimise harm. This bill is in particular in respect of class 4 pokie machines and they are pokies that are held off site from casinos. We are trying to make the industry more transparent and of course at the end of the day a better industry.We heard from 126 submitters and as I said before we heard them in Wellington and Auckland. Most of those submitters were in support of had conditional support for or had a mixed view on the mooted draft bill. There were some submitters not in support of the bill because as we heard from our counterparts they believed that the bill did not go far enough in respect of some of the harm minimisation measures. I think that their intent is admirable and I certainly listened carefully to what they were saying but at the end of the day I believe that that went beyond the ambit of what this bill was considering. But it was certainly educational for me to hear those submissions and I take their wisdom on board.In respect of what this bill is trying to achieve in the first instanceit is trying to achieve transparency around grant decision-making. This bill introduces new requirements for publicising societies’ grants: the details as to what has been applied for what is received the purpose and what has been granted. It also provides that this information is detailed and sent through to the Department of Internal Affairs so as to achieve a balance and check on that society and so that the public can scrutinise that society and what it is providing—the funds that it is sending back to the community from where essentially they had been lost.The bill also requires any real conflicts of interest between societies that collect the money from gambling class 4 pokies and those grant recipients to be published again adding to the transparency and the accountability in the community as to how those funds have been applied. Regulations are to be developed later and they will set out the detail as to how all of this will be achieved so it may well be that general information is published in a local newspaper but then more detailed information is published online. Regardless of the mix of that the information will be readily available and hence that adds to the accountability.The second theme of this bill is to increase transparency around the operations of societies themselves. Under regulations the publishing of financial statements and the form in which they are published by societies will be mandated highlighting the efficiency of the operation itself. So again we are running with the theme of transparency and are trying to tidy up the industry and filter funds back into the community in which they were lost.The third theme I want to touch on is simplifying compliance costs in venue payments. We have heard from members opposite that they believe that a commission-based system will incentivise gambling societies to increase the number of machines or to be irresponsible hosts. They also oppose rewarding societies that perform well with longer licences at the discretion of the Department of Internal Affairs. On this side of the House we do not believe that that view has foundation. There is no evidence to suggest that moving to a commission-based system will incentivise gambling and the design of any new payment system will be detailed in regulations. As we are advised the department will run a full consultative process in respect of that and I think that that consultative process is extremely important for the purpose of giving more thought to what exactly the best cost recovery basis is to keep compliance costs down and again to keep things simple. Furthermore the grant of longer licences to societies that perform well does not equate with an abuse because those licences will be at the discretion of the regulator which will take into account the suitability of the applicant and past performance.It would not be appropriate for me to end this speech without some examples of some responsible class 4 operators that are performing well and that of course leads me back to my own electorate Invercargill and the Invercargill Licensing Trust. It is responsible for sponsoring our community in a fantastic way. It has allocated total grants of $49.57 million—Paul Foster-Bell: How much?SARAH DOWIE: —total grants of $49.57 million—during the 2008 to 2013 period which is an average of $9.92 million per year. It has delivered some really big-ticket items like our stadium ILT Stadium Southland and the velodrome which is responsible for some really fantastic projects. The stadium is integral obviously to our community. The weather is not always great. Of course I keep waxing on that our people are so positive we do not need weather to keep us positive but we can go indoors and use our stadium and enjoy that. But the trust has also delivered electronic whiteboards in schools. It has built learners’ pools for swimming and even contributed to tertiary scholarships. In saying that it has granted more than 170 scholarships to individual Invercargill students locally and abroad. Each student receives $2000 for 3 years and the total paid in 2012 and 2013 was $374000-odd. This is an example of a society working hard for the community. It can be done well and I believe that these measures in this bill will uplift the industry make it more transparent and minimise harm as the 2003 Act set out to do. So with that I commend this bill to the House.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I would like to begin by requesting an extension of time for the member who has just resumed her seat Sarah Dowie—maybe for another 3 minutes. Seriously can I begin my contribution by saying talofa lava malo le soifua as part of my contribution to the celebration of the wonderful Samoan language this week. The week to celebrate Samoan language immediately follows New Zealand Sign Language Week which we had last week. I am calling on the member Ron Mark to give as much highlighting to the Samoan language as he did to New Zealand Sign Language Week last week but perhaps in a more gentle way. But the publicity we got for that language was great.This is a pretty momentous occasion tonight. I think that there have been few times since 2008 that we have not had on the Order Paper a gambling bill of some description so I am delighted to be speaking to the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). The other significance of this legislation as other members have indicated—the Minister who spoke the member from Invercargill and my colleague who is responsible for gambling issues for Labour Adrian Rurawhe—is that with a couple of policy points as exceptions this bill has been supported by the Government Administration Committee and most of the submitters. The submitters came to our committee and said: “We support this bill except for one area and it does not go far enough in another.” That was the basis of the contribution of some really substantial submissions and I have to say also that there were some submissions that were very moving.It is a huge difference to be debating a bill that has got agreement as opposed to that shonky Skycity deal that Minister Joyce brought to this House where we saw Skycity getting more pokies in return for a convention centre. In 2011 when Skycity booted out all the competition we were told would get a convention centre that could accommodate up to 5000 people. We will have a convention centre that can take fewer than 3000. Is that an international convention centre? I do not think so.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m.