Volume 701 Week 2 - Tuesday 28 October 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 701 Week 2 - Tuesday 28 October 2014[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:249. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 28 October 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.VisitorsFiji—Deputy Speaker and Parliamentary DelegationMr SPEAKER: Honourable members I am sure the House would wish to welcome a parliamentary delegation from the Parliament of Fiji led by Deputy Speaker Ruveni Nadalo who is present in the gallery.Questions to MinistersPrime Minister—Communications with Blogger1.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green)to the Prime Minister: Did he tell Cameron Slater that he recognised the mother of a car crash victim—a young man described by Mr Slater as “a feral”—from his Pike River meetings?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes as I stated publicly when this matter came up during the election campaign. I would note that I did not use the language paraphrased in Mr Slater’s stolen emails.Dr Russel Norman: Was Cameron Slater correct to tell Television New Zealand that the Prime Minister texted Mr Slater to say that the Prime Minister recognised the mother of the dead car crash victim Judd Hall as being the same person he had encountered at Pike River meetings?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not believe that to be correct. I believe that the only conversation I had with him in my capacity as leader of the National Party was one on the telephone.Dr Russel Norman: Why did the Prime Minister text Mr Slater to say that he recognised the mother of the Greymouth crash victim Judd Hall described by Mr Slater as “a feral” who did the world a favour by dying? Why did the Prime Minister give that information to Mr Slater?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not believe I did. As I said I had a phone conversation in my capacity as leader of the National Party and as part of that phone conversation the particular woman in question was raised. From memory I said to him that I recognised her from Pike River. That was the extent of it as I recall it. I do not have a copy of my text messages.Dr Russel Norman: Is this the correct sequence of events: he was notified that Whale Oil had posted an answerphone recording of Mrs Hall on Slater’s blog he listened to the recording and recognised Mrs Hall’s voice from the Pike River meetings then he contacted Cameron Slater to tell him he recognised her?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Dr Russel Norman: Given that he recognised Joe Hall as a mother from Pike River who had lost a son in a mining tragedy why did he not put on his prime ministerial hat and offer his condolences over the death of another son rather than contacting his friend Cameron Slater to gossip about her instead?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I made it quite clear at the time that I did not know the particular details of this story. I just simply said in passing that I recognised her.Dr Russel Norman: Will he now admit that he was the Prime Minister when he texted or phoned Cameron Slater to talk about a women who had lost all four of her sons; and will he say sorry to Mrs Hall?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No; I was leader of the National Party. What I said was that I recognised her and that does not deserve an apology just as the member himself was the leader of the Green Party when he went grovelling up to the Dotcom mansion.Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order. I want to hear it in silence.Dr Russel Norman: Standing Order 386 is very clear about the content of replies; they must not include statements of fact unless they are strictly necessary and so forth. The Prime Minister chose to introduce things into the reply that are completely unnecessary to the reply.Mr SPEAKER: I ask the member to equally look at Standing Order 380 with regard to supplementary questions: “Questions must be concise and not contain: statements of facts and names of persons unless they are strictly necessary to render the question intelligible and can be authenticated or arguments inferences imputations epithets ironical expressions or expressions of opinion …”. When I consider the content of the question I do not consider the content of the answer to be out of order.Dr Russel Norman: Why did the Prime Minister not behave like a Prime Minister on hearing that this was the mother who had lost four sons and actually offer condolences to that women instead of contacting the attack blogger Cameron Slater to offer him information about this woman—instead of behaving like a Prime Minister who should have offered condolences?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member should stop making things up.Prime Minister—Communications with Blogger2.Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour)to the Prime Minister: Did Cameron Slater provide him with the information that led him to say on 12 February 2014 in Parliament regarding the Rt Hon Winston Peters that “I will accept that member’s word that he did not discuss untoward things when he went to the Dotcom mansion three times.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):No. As I said at the time I can read. I believe the reference came from an item I read in the New Zealand Herald on 7 February 2014.Hon Annette King: When he said on 14 February at a press conference regarding the specific details of calls he made to Cameron Slater that he would “have to go and look at my files” were those files ministerial files or does he hold files regarding his interaction with Cameron Slater in his capacity as a husband?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I can certainly confirm that I am not married to him and I do not have any files.Hon Annette King: Was Cameron Salter correct when he wrote last week that the Prime Minister is always the Prime Minister or he has double standards; if not does he explain to Mr Slater when he texts and calls him that he only talks to him as a private citizen?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Actually Mr Slater is correct about one thing: I am always the Prime Minister for areas where I have prime ministerial responsibility. I am also always the leader of the National Party. I am surprised that the member does not know that because Helen Clark used to lecture this House about that difference all the time. But maybe the member does not remember that or maybe this is the reason why Labour is polling so badly—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That answer will not help.Hon Annette King: That’s right get stuck in.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have not called the member yet. Supplementary question—Hon Annette King.Hon Annette King: Well has he ever called or texted Cameron Slater in his capacity as Prime Minister?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No I do not believe so.Hon Annette King: Well try this one Prime Minister. Did he give instructions to his ministerial colleagues to avoid ministerial responsibility when asked embarrassing questions about contact with Cameron Slater; if not is he aware that Judith Collins in July this year denied texts phone calls and correspondence with Mr Slater in her ministerial capacity?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the first part no. The only embarrassing thing is the way that Labour performed in the election campaign.Hon Annette King: In light of the review that is now under way into Judith Collins and the release of information to Cameron Slater will she be excused if she uses the Prime Minister’s excuse that she was not acting as a Minister when she passed on information but that she was acting as a private citizen?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is not what the review is in relation to.State and Social Housing—Housing New Zealand’s Role3.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East)to the Minister responsible for HNZC: How will changes to Housing New Zealand help meet the Government’s objective of providing more quality housing to New Zealanders most in need?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister responsible for HNZC):The Government’s changes in social housing which were well signalled in legislation last year are focused on providing quality social housing to more New Zealanders—that is housing in the right place the right condition the right size with the right kind of support services for New Zealanders who most need them. These changes will put tenants’ needs at the centre of the housing policy rather than the number of houses owned by one entity Housing New Zealand Corporation. One way we are going to improve the quality of housing is to open up the social housing sector to other providers as happens in almost all other developed economies so we have more choices about where those who are in serious housing need can have those needs met. The Government will continue to maintain at least the current number of households eligible for income-related rents which is around 60600.David Bennett: How does the Government’s programme to improve the performance of Housing New Zealand fit within its overall approach to delivering better public services to New Zealanders?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Our overall approach with Better Public Services is to get better results for people rather than have more programmes for Government departments or in this case we will be measuring our success on meeting serious housing need rather than on how much we spend on investing in State houses. We have found that what works for people when we get good results works for the Government’s books. With housing our focus is going to be on ensuring that we have the kinds of choices that we need to ensure that those in serious housing need have their needs met but also that they can move to housing independence rather than being reliant on the Government for housing subsidies for the rest of their lives.David Bennett: Over the past few years what steps has the Government taken to prepare for Housing New Zealand’s new approach to providing housing to those in need?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government’s programme has been well signalled for the last 4 years. In 2010 we published a detailed report from the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group in 2011 we set up the Social Housing Unit which has spent $130 million on subsidies to the community housing sector already and last year we passed the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Act 2013 opening up social housing to approved non-Government providers and in April 2014 the assessment of social housing applications moved to the Ministry of Social Development.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why did Housing New Zealand wait until just after the election to place four units in Waione Street Petone opposite the beach which had been wrongly evacuated 2 years previously as earthquake risks and were the subject of hundreds of thousands of dollars of vandalism on the market?Hon BILL ENGLISH: You would need to talk to Housing New Zealand but I think it is an indication of the growing pressure on it to perform that it is now taking action to redevelop that site.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why is Housing New Zealand favouring developers and landlords over ordinary Kiwi families wanting to get their first home by requiring that all four of these units be sold as a block rather than individually despite them being on individual titles?Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is a very good question. We would be quite happy to see Housing New Zealand Corporation selling some of its units to hard-working Kiwi families who find those units affordable. But I would have to say it has been under some constraint both from this Government and previous Governments stopping it from doing that. I have never really understood why that is the case but I am happy to take up the member’s cause with Housing New Zealand Corporation.David Bennett: How will the Government improve the way Housing New Zealand manages its portfolio to provide better housing for tenants?Hon BILL ENGLISH: First the Government certainly takes the view that with an asset valued at $18.7 billion we can do better than having too many people living in garages around New Zealand. We must be able to use that $18.7 billion better. Secondly Housing New Zealand will start to realise that some of its houses are in the wrong place. In the past it has taken a bit long to change tenants over in its houses because it will start feeling the pressure of other providers who may do a better job.Hon Trevor Mallard: How is it good use of an investment to have four units empty for 2 years and subject to about half a million dollars’ worth of damage when the fifth unit in the block previously sold by Housing New Zealand has had a tenant in it through that time under a sublease arrangement whereby that individual tenant is a Housing New Zealand tenant?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well on the face of it as the member describes it that arrangement does not make a lot of sense and it is an indication of the amount of improvement of performance we can get from Housing New Zealand and also an improved supplier of affordable housing to the market under the reforms the Government is putting in place.Government—Transparency4.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First)to the Prime Minister: Is he committed to an open and transparent Government?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Consistent with an open and transparent Government when will the Prime Minister assure the public that at no time did his staff provide inappropriate services to the National Party whilst employed at the public expense?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That would be a matter for the party but I do not have any advice or any evidence to support the idea that they have done anything other than act totally professionally.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am asking the Prime Minister about his staff. That is not a matter for the National Party. It is to do with his staff for whom he is responsible.Mr SPEAKER: The difficulty I have with the question that has been asked and the answer that has been given is that it is asking now for a level of specificity that cannot be expected to be given by the Prime Minister in light of the very open and general question that was asked in the first place.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question asked whether consistent with open and transparent Government—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have heard the question. [Interruption] Order! Resume your seat. I have already ruled in respect of the first supplementary question that in light of the generality of the primary question the question has been addressed by the Prime Minister. The way forward is to continue to ask further supplementary questions but not to question the Speaker on the adequacy of the answer that has been given. I invite the member if he wishes to to ask further supplementary questions.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not contesting your ruling on the adequacy—Mr SPEAKER: Then I will hear the fresh point of order.Rt Hon Winston Peters: My point was that the Prime Minister’s answer was that it was a National Party matter. In my supplementary question if you look at it I am asking for an assurance about his staff so it cannot be a National Party matter—or is he condemned by his own statement?Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You would have to consider the entire answer in which the Prime Minister said that he expected them to maintain professional standards at all times.Mr SPEAKER: The way forward is the advice that I have given to the member. If he has further supplementary questions he should ask them.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Consistent with an open and transparent Government when will the Prime Minister advise the public of all the facts pertaining to Mr Jason Ede’s services to the National Party whilst employed at the public’s expense?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: When questions are appropriately asked they will be appropriately answered.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Consistent with an open and transparent Government when will the Prime Minister give the public all the facts about—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The difficulty I have is that it was only during about question No. 3 when a Government member again asked a supplementary question without leading with a question word. We cannot have one rule for Mr Peters—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes but he knows better. He’s been here a long time.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I accept the right honourable gentleman should know better but equally Mr David Bennett has been a member of this House for some time as well.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Consistent with an open and transparent Government when will the Prime Minister give the public all the facts about his staff’s services to the National Party’s Jo de Joux whilst employed at the public’s expense?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have not seen any advice that would confirm that the National Party has done anything other than spend taxpayers’ money appropriately and legally.Hon Dr Nick Smith: What did Brendan Horan say? Look at your own house.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not a fact—well actually we were exonerated turkey.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That is a good lesson to that quarter of the House of what happens when you get an interjection through a question. Would the right honourable gentleman simply ask his supplementary question?Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is Jo de Joux a National Party campaign manager deeply implicated in improperly acquiring services from his office’s staff?Mr SPEAKER: I invite the Prime Minister if he wishes to answer but I cannot see any prime ministerial responsibility in that question. I will leave it for the Prime Minister to answer it.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have no authority for that and I refute the proposition.Question No. 2 to MinisterHon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour):In light of the Prime Minister’s answer to my last question saying that the review into Judith Collins had nothing to do with the release of information to Cameron Slater I seek leave to table the terms of reference for the Government inquiry which in fact in item 2 say just that.Mr SPEAKER: The document has been described. It will be over to the House. I will put the leave. [Interruption] Order! Leave is sought to table these particular terms of reference. Is there any objection to them being tabled? There is not. They can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.State and Social Housing—Housing New Zealand’s Role5.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū)to the Minister responsible for HNZC: How does he anticipate Housing New Zealand will operate within a contestable market for social housing?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister responsible for HNZC):I expect that it will participate successfully but development of a contestable market is still some way off. The Ministry of Social Development currently holds around 62000 income-related rent subsidies. From now on a tenant can take that subsidy with them to a provider who best meets their housing health and employment needs or offers better wraparound services where those are required or a better path back to housing independence. Housing New Zealand will find in a contestable market that it will be required to develop similar kinds of services. I expect that for quite a long time it will remain by far the largest provider of social housing.Phil Twyford: Is he aware that social housing NGOs say that they do not have the resources to buy State houses and how will he make up the difference between the likely sale prices and the funds that he has signalled will be spent on his Government’s pet projects and his other political promises?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well I am sure there are some community housing providers who feel like they would not have the resource to buy the houses but then they will not be obliged to. As long as they are registered as a community housing provider they can work with others who own the houses and they can participate in this market without the need for large lumps of capital. I would expect that they will be providers who are most motivated for instance by wraparound services for the most complex clients who could actually get a better deal there than they currently get or for new clients who are not in Housing New Zealand houses but have serious housing needs to be met. With respect to the funding issues the member raised I am not exactly sure what he means so I cannot answer the question.Jami-Lee Ross: What reports has he received on the operation of contestable social housing markets overseas and what does this say about Housing New Zealand’s role?Hon BILL ENGLISH: New Zealand is a bit unusual in the way that we have run our traditional State housing. The Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group report in 2010 pointed to a number of similar countries that run social housing markets. For instance in the Netherlands there are 400 housing associations. In Canada the Crown specialises in financial support rather than the provision of houses and has a much more diverse range of housing providers. In the UK and Australia there are now large alternative providers to Governments that are doing a very good job of operating as mixed entities. Here in New Zealand we expect that Housing New Zealand will continue to play a major role alongside community providers but it will no longer be the only provider.Phil Twyford: Was he offended when his Cabinet colleague Paula Bennett launched an attack this morning on his failed housing policies when she said that sending people to live in caravans cars and garages as his department has been doing for the last 6 years was not suitable?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No I was not offended. In fact I had a discussion with Ms Bennett along these lines: if you wanted to house an extra 1000 people under the traditional model it would cost you $500 million to build the houses and it would take 5 years. Under the new model if you want to house an extra 1000 people it will cost $12 million a year in income-related rents because they are $12000 a year each in Auckland and if the houses are available across the whole market you could do it within a matter of months. Surely that is a better system for dealing with people living in caravans and garages.Phil Twyford: Was he concerned when Treasury warned the Government that it is not possible to provide social housing at a profit and when it advised exploring “how we can unlock the potential of Housing New Zealand’s asset base” was he concerned that that advice suggested that the only way to develop an artificial marketplace in social housing was to flog off State houses and knock down prices to make it look viable?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not sure whether the member understood the advice. Certainly I do not recall the advice being put in exactly that way. The Government subsidises social housing very extensively. We spend $1.2 billion on accommodation supplements and $700 million a year on income-related rents and we simply want to do a better job of it because despite spending $2 billion a year in subsidies there are thousands of people in serious housing need whose needs are not being met and thousands of people in State houses who should be on the path to independence but are in long-term dependency. We care about the people more than the houses and that is the difference between us and a Labour Party that cares more about State houses than people with serious housing needs.Phil Twyford: Is it not nonsense to talk about a market in social housing when it is impossible to even enter the market without a massive taxpayer subsidy and virtually giving away public assets and why did the Government deliberately conceal from the public at the election its plans to destroy a Kiwi institution that has been housing struggling families and giving young New Zealanders like the Prime Minister a decent start in life?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The irony of that comment is that when we passed the social housing reform legislation—the Labour Party used to be progressive because its members voted for that in 2013 which is when all this was laid out and debated. So it was hardly a secret. But clearly in the interests of Labour’s leadership contest those members are reverting to their 1960s notions of State housing.Question No. 2 to MinisterCHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to draw your attention to Speaker’s ruling 179/3 with regard to the correction of answers. We have a situation where the Prime Minister gave a very specific answer to Annette King’s supplementary question and she has subsequently tabled information showing that that answer was incorrect. I wonder whether he will be now taking the opportunity to correct that.Mr SPEAKER: As the member has had explained to him before if any Minister in answering a question feels he wants to correct that answer then it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister or the Minister to decide when to do that. The member is right: it should certainly be done at the earliest convenience but it is not a matter for this House. It is a matter in this case for the Prime Minister if he deems it necessary.Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):I assumed the question was in relation to the passing of information about a public servant. That is not a matter for the inquiry as I understand it. The information in relation to Mr Feeley is absolutely a subject of inquiry but I took the member’s question to be a completely different accusation.Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Perhaps we could clear it up if I was to repeat the question because the Prime Minister—Mr SPEAKER: No. [Interruption] Order! If the member was not satisfied with the answer she had the opportunity at the time to ask another supplementary question. We have now moved well past question No. 2.Technology Sector—Performance and Funding6.CHRIS BISHOP (National)to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What reports has he received on the performance of New Zealand’s technology sector?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation):Last week I attended the release of the latest TIN100 report the 10th annual report looking at the growth and success of New Zealand’s top 100 high-tech companies. The report notes that TIN100 companies now have $7.6 billion in annual turnover which is an increase of $1 billion a year over the last 5 years. This growth in the face of challenging international conditions and an unusually high New Zealand dollar is very impressive and those companies should be congratulated. It also shows the benefit of innovation and investment in research and development. Those TIN100 companies have lifted their investment in research and development a further 9.7 percent in the last year reaching just under $700 million across the 100 companies.Chris Bishop: How is New Zealand’s growing technology sector contributing to the wider economy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A very probing question. The really impressive aspect of the TIN100 report and the companies contained in it is how well they are competing and succeeding on the world stage. Since 2008 TIN100 company exports have increased by half a billion dollars to $5.6 billion per year or nearly 75 percent of their total turnover and for the top 200 technology companies exports are up to $6.1 billion a year. The report notes that this level of exports is higher than both meat and log exports. The Government is focused on assisting these companies to further increase their exporters by helping them increase their expenditure on research and development on skills and with infrastructure. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! If there are further supplementary questions—every member has a right to ask a question and a reasonable right to hear the reply without the level of interjection I was hearing from various quarters throughout that answer.Chris Bishop: What is the Government doing to develop New Zealand’s growing technology sector?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A great question. The Government has made science and innovation a priority. Despite tight financial times we have significantly boosted funding in research and development to a total of $1.5 billion by next year. We have established Callaghan Innovation which as the member will be aware is based in the Hutt Valley which helps innovative Kiwi businesses get their ideas out of the lab and into the market. Through the grant system we have encouraged private sector investment in research and development with our goal of doubling business spending on research and development to 1 percent of GDP by 2018. Over the next 3 years we will continue to work to achieve that goal and assist our technology companies to be even more successful on the world stage.Employment Relations—Impact of Legislative ReformDENISE ROCHE (Green):My question is to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and says: does he have any concerns that the changes proposed—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Sorry. I am going to ask the member to start again and could I ask the Minister and Mr O’Connor to cease their interchange across the floor of the House.7.DENISE ROCHE (Green)to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does he have any concerns that the changes proposed in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill will weaken workers’ rights and therefore make it harder for workers to deal with workplace bullying; if not why not?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety):No. I do not believe there are any provisions in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill that make it harder for workers to address workplace bullying. Workplace bullying is unacceptable now and it will remain unacceptable when the bill is passed.Denise Roche: How strong a position would a worker being bullied by their employer be in to even negotiate a tea break after his Government takes away this fundamental right with its anti-worker legislation?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I reject the premise in the question that this legislation is anti-worker. Tea breaks and meal breaks are a right set out in the Employment Relations Act but for many many years the law provided for some flexibility. That was removed and it took away some very sensible arrangements that needed to be made in places like sole-charge air traffic controls night shift supervisors in service stations and in health care settings where leaving the workplace would be inappropriate and unsafe. That is all we are doing. It is not an attack on workers.Denise Roche: Does he consider that his Government is effectively acting as a bully by taking away the rights of some of the most vulnerable workers in New Zealand with the Government’s attack on Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Mr Squeak—Mr Speaker. [Interruption] I withdraw and apologise before being asked.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: And I did not mean to bully the Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am looking forward to the answer so if I can hear it from Mr Michael Woodhouse.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The question is an attack on workers. It presumes that they are not capable of negotiating appropriate arrangements for themselves or that their unions cannot protect them if they feel they are being hard done by. Agreement must be reached. It is as simple as that.Denise Roche: Is his Government not just paying lip-service to solving the problem of bullying in the workplace by launching anti-bullying initiatives on the one hand while pushing through legislation that hurts workers and will make them easier targets for bullies on the other hand?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I reject the question but I do acknowledge that WorkSafe has provided excellent guidance this year on the management and detection of bullying in the workplace and although that has not resulted in an increase in bullying it has certainly resulted in an increase in people feeling confident enough to speak up. I think that is exactly the sort of workplace framework this Government is looking for.Denise Roche: I seek leave to table the research from Victoria University’s Centre for Labour Employment and Work entitled Public Servants Want to Make a Difference which actually says that—Mr SPEAKER: Order! No further explanation is needed. It is a research document done by Victoria University. Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Just in relation to this question and I have left it until now to ask is it appropriate that a question gets on the sheet that in its second part presupposes an answer to the first part? If you look at it it says “therefore make it harder.” That is a supposition that is unreasonable for anyone to make prior to the first part of that question being answered. I am just suggesting that if we are going to get better answers to questions as you are requiring there needs to be greater scrutiny of the questions that are being put on the sheet each day.Kevin Hague: The questions asks: “Does he have any concerns that the changes” etc. and therefore “will weaken workers’ rights” and therefore the point made by Mr Brownlee it seems to me actually is not valid.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If someone wished to question what is in a question before this House the time to raise it is before the question is asked not be the last guy to wake up in the House—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member can resume his seat. The question has been raised before the question is formally asked in this House. It has been accepted. It is on the Order Paper. We are going to proceed with the question. But I will certainly have a look at the point that has been raised by the Hon Gerry Brownlee.Employment Relations—Legislative Reform Collective Bargaining and Pay Equity8.SUE MORONEY (Labour)to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: What are the major collective employment agreements currently under negotiation where there would no longer be a duty to conclude bargaining when the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is passed in Parliament?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety):It is not possible to give a definitive list. That would depend on the member’s definition of the term “major” it would depend on the timing of the implementation of the bill once it is passed and it would depend on the conclusion of employment agreement negotiations presently under way which is not able to be assessed.Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That question was on notice. This is the Minister formerly known as the Minister of Labour and he should know what major collective employment agreements are being bargained for at the moment. It just defies belief that he does not.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Again it is one of these issues around ministerial responsibility. The Minister is not actually responsible for the stages of any of those major collective negotiations. He may well have been aware and that is why the question has been accepted but he certainly does not in my mind have ministerial responsibility in regard to those agreements.Sue Moroney: Was the priority given to amending the Employment Relations Act determined by the fact that negotiations are about to take place to renew the collective employment agreement for 25000 nurses working in public hospitals?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No.Sue Moroney: Was he aware then that the Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly reported to nursing and teaching conferences that Deputy Prime Minister Bill English told the Council of Trade Unions that the Government would pursue the Employment Relations Act amendments because it had “Ministers around the Cabinet table who want more flexibility” when it comes to negotiating with teachers and nurses?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No but I would agree that the bill when passed will be an improvement on the employment relations framework in this country and I am not surprised that the Deputy Prime Minister is keen on having it passed.Sue Moroney: Will today’s Court of Appeal decision confirming equal pay rights for female-dominated occupations enable him to update the Employment Relations Act to reflect that decision?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The decision of the Court of Appeal has only just been handed down. It behoves the Attorney-General and me to consider it carefully and I do not think it would be appropriate for me to speculate on future changes.Sue Moroney: Will he give a guarantee then that he will not pass legislation to undermine today’s decision given Simon Bridges’ recent statement that the Government may “intervene in the proceedings”?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I do not believe the Employment Relations Amendment Bill when passed would undermine any decision of the Court of Appeal and therefore the question is moot.Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was not about the Employment Relations Act specifically. It was “Will he give a guarantee”—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I heard the question. The essence of the question “Would the Minister give a guarantee …”—he has not answered it specifically; he may want to. I would have thought it was fairly obvious from his answer that he was not about to give a guarantee. In my mind the question has been addressed. He was never going to give a guarantee which was the essence of the question as I took it from Sue Moroney. Before I call question No. 9 can I just clarify with the Hon Gerry Brownlee the point he raised earlier. Was it in regard to question No. 7 or was it in regard to question No. 8?Hon Gerry Brownlee: 7.Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member.Canterbury Recovery—3K to Christchurch Initiative9.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri)to the Minister for Social Development: What recent reports has she received on the uptake of the Government’s 3K to Christchurch scheme?Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development):I am pleased to advise the House that since the 3K to Christchurch initiative started in July over 600 people have been provided with an incentive payment to move to Christchurch to take up full-time employment. The scheme provides beneficiaries outside Canterbury with a one-off payment of $3000 if they have a full-time job offer in Canterbury and are ready and willing to move there. The rebuild is creating thousands of new jobs in Christchurch which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and is facing significant skills shortages. This scheme is a win-win. It provides practical help to beneficiaries to move off welfare provides employers with motivated staff and saves the taxpayer money by reducing welfare numbers.Matt Doocey: What steps will the Government take to build on the success of the 3K to Christchurch initiative?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Given the success of this initiative the Government plans to expand the scheme to help beneficiaries move from areas where there are limited employment opportunities to areas where employers are looking to fill jobs. While policy work is still under way for the expanded scheme it will continue to focus on young people aged 18 to 24. The assistance provided by this initiative will provide beneficiaries with assistance to move by helping them with their travel accommodation and other set-up costs to help them get settled. We are focused on getting people off welfare and into jobs and this initiative will help address some of the barriers people face finding work.Television New Zealand—Outsourcing of Māori and Pacific Content10.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana)to the Minister of Broadcasting: When did she first become aware of TVNZ’s plans to outsource its Māori and Pacific content?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Broadcasting):I received verbal advice on Friday 17 October that Television New Zealand (TVNZ) would be making an announcement the following week about outsourcing some of its Māori and Pacific content.Kris Faafoi: Does the Minister believe that TVNZ has a duty and responsibility to Māori and Pacific viewers and does outsourcing current affairs programmes for that audience sit comfortably with the Government?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well TVNZ certainly has obligations under the Television New Zealand Act which that member I am sure is familiar with. The Government’s concern in this space is to make sure that good quality content that is relevant to Māori and Pacific audiences continues to be available. The Government does not have a view on whether those programmes are better produced in-house or outsourced. We will however be very interested to continue to monitor whether there is any drop in the quality the content or the quantity of programming as a result.Rt Hon John Key: Is some of the outsourcing that Television New Zealand is considering the outsourcing of Labour Party events that otherwise would have been hosted at Television New Zealand?Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is certainly no ministerial responsibility for that.Kris Faafoi: What advice has the Minister received that indicates that outsourcing Māori and Pasifika current affairs programmes will benefit Māori and Pasifika audiences?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well as I mentioned in the answer to the previous supplementary question our interest is in ensuring that good quality relevant content continues to be available. Whether TVNZ chooses to do that in-house or to outsource it is entirely a matter for TVNZ. I would note that this is not the first time that locally produced content has been outsourced. It has been quite a successful model that TVNZ has used in the past across a wide range of programming.Kris Faafoi: Does this Government consider that current affairs programmes like Marae Investigates Tagata Pasifika Waka Huia and Fresh are similar to shows like MasterChef New Zealand My Kitchen Rules New Zealand Dancing with the Stars and Mitre 10 Dream Home which TVNZ has also outsourced?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well as I continue to say the Government’s interest from a broadcasting perspective is that good quality locally relevant content is available particularly reflecting things like ethnic minorities and Māori perspectives. We do not have a view on whether TVNZ is best to produce that in-house or to outsource it but I note that it is still retaining the in-house production of Te Karere and that this outsourcing model is a model that it has used across a range of programming across various contents and applying it in this context is a similar approach from TVNZ.Kris Faafoi: Is TVNZ’s decision to outsource a clear signal to the Māori and Pasifika communities that this Government does not care about current affairs shows for those communities and that rather than quality content they should be fed cheap and cheerful content?Hon AMY ADAMS: The decision of TVNZ had nothing to do with the Government. We were advised under the no-surprises approach. It is entirely a decision that TVNZ has made. It is consistent with its obligations to us but as a Government we will be very interested to ensure that the quality and content remain at an applicable level as they are now.Peeni Henare: Can the Minister confirm that one of the primary functions of the Broadcasting Act 1989 is to promote Māori language and culture and how does the outsourcing of Māori and Pasifika programmes by TVNZ help to achieve this function?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well again it is the information the content that is being provided that is of relevance in that regard not who makes it. Whether it is provided in-house or outsourced the obligations are the same and TVNZ is entirely within its statutory obligations and its obligations to the Government to act in that way.Transport Infrastructure—Rail Network11.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First)to the Minister of Transport: What new infrastructure projects costing over $50 million will commence on the rail network over the next 3 years?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport):Although there is no one project over $50 million the Government has in the 4 years to June 2014 funded $869 million of KiwiRail’s $1.2 billion capital expenditure. Over the last 7 years we have also funded almost $2.2 billion.Denis O’Rourke: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was specifically about the next 3 years not what has happened so far.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question was answered right at the start so that is probably sufficient.Denis O’Rourke: What new stations will be opened on the rail network in the next 3 years?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I would have to check.Denis O’Rourke: What new lines will open on the rail network over the next 3 years?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I would have to check. Certainly though we have done a significant amount of work in upgrading electrification—some 2.2 billion in Auckland and Wellington.Denis O’Rourke: Given that funding has already been set aside by the Waikato District Council for a new station at Tuakau when will the current diesel commuter train service be extended south to Tuakau and Pōkeno as a means of extending an initial commuter service into the Waikato where housing costs are much cheaper than in Auckland?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: That is a level of detail the member should ask me in writing.World War I Centenary—Commemorations12.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney)to the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage: What progress has been made on New Zealand’s First World War Centenary commemorations?Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage):An excellent question and we are indeed I am happy to report making excellent progress. Recently along with Senator the Hon Michael Ronaldson the Australian Minister for Veterans’ Affairs we unveiled a tribute to the main body of troops who departed New Zealand from Wellington for service in World War I 100 years ago—8500 troops and 4000 horses. Then along with the New Zealand veterans’ affairs Minister Craig Foss we unveiled a sign that marked the beginning of Ngā Tapuwae a heritage trail project. The heritage trails will be providing information about New Zealand’s contributions to the First World War by providing heritage site locations where New Zealand played a significant role and at the same time Lest We Forget was launched at the official start of Wellington’s First World War centenary programme.Mark Mitchell: What progress has been made on the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park?Hon MAGGIE BARRY: I am very pleased to inform the House that great progress has been made on that project as well. The Arras Tunnel in Wellington has been completed ahead of schedule and the National War Memorial Park project has begun literally on top of this tunnel. Construction has now commenced on the Australia memorial opposite the National War Memorial and was inspected. Pukeahu National War Memorial Park is on schedule to be opened on Anzac Day next year.Mark Mitchell: What activities are happening around New Zealand to mark the commemorations?Hon MAGGIE BARRY: The number of activities and events listed by groups organisations and individuals from around New Zealand who want to be part of WW100 is increasing by approximately 30 per month—that is one a day—and we now have over 700 listed. A further $5 million of lottery funding has been allocated this year and is contributing to a diverse range of imaginative commemorative projects including exhibitions local histories musical and dramatic productions commemorative events digitisation projects the restoration of memorials and the creation of contemporary memorials—indeed a very comprehensive programme of events for next year and the following four. Thank you.Address in ReplyDebate resumed from 23 October.Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage):E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā tangata katoa tēnā koutou katoa. I am indeed honoured to be a member of the Cabinet and part of this Government under the leadership of John Key. It is a Government with a track record of delivering for New Zealanders and it will continue to deliver following the strong mandate at last month’s election.I acknowledge my predecessors in my three ministerial portfolios: the Hon Chris Finlayson the Hon Dr Nick Smith and the Hon Jo Goodhew. I am very reliably informed that I am the first Minister in Cabinet to simultaneously hold the portfolio of arts culture and heritage as well as conservation. This gives me as an individual the opportunity to engage in a wide range of issues around our unique national identity involving both our cultural and physical landscape as well as the historic events that have shaped us to become the nation that we are today.The WW100 commemorations have begun already and will be a major focus over the next 4 years. On 16 October we marked the departure of the New Zealand troops from Wellington 100 years ago. The waterfront of Wellington marks where the journey to Gallipoli and the Western Front began for many of our troops. Senator Michael Ronaldson the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs in Australia also spoke at the ceremony and we both reflected on the beginnings of that strong Anzac tradition which we are continuing to build on through our shared centenary relationships.The significance of Anzac Day 2015 will be looming large in the minds of New Zealanders next year. The Government has demonstrated a very firm commitment to the centenary commemorations through the construction of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington which will be opened in time on Anzac Day next year literally on top of the new Arras Tunnel which as I said a moment ago was completed ahead of schedule. This is going to become the national place for New Zealanders to remember and reflect on this country’s experience of war of military conflict and of peacekeeping and on how those experiences shaped our ideals and our sense of national identity.Pukeahu will also include an Australian memorial with additional memorials to be added over time from other nations that fought alongside us in those important battles. All of this highlights I think the international aspects of our centennial commemorations building on our long-held and valued relationships with other nations and a shared recognition of the First World War and the impact it had on us. Our ongoing relationships with France the United Kingdom Turkey and other nations during the centenary period will be a testament to the strength of these ties that bind. Lottery Grants Board funding of $17 million will also enable community and national projects as part of these commemorations with a further $5 million just allocated.Next year is also a very significant year for anniversaries of events that have shaped our nation specifically. Waitangi Day 2015 will mark 175 years since the signing of the Treaty while Wellington will have been the capital for 150 years. These events provide an opportunity for all of us to engage with the ideas of identity and nationhood and this includes the flag. The conversation about whether we want to change the flag or not and the binding referendum process will be coming through my office. Again it is an issue that will be left to the people to decide—whether we want to stay with what we have or whether we want to change. There will be very wide consultation and two binding referenda and no presumption of change.Brand New Zealand is very much about who we are and where we fit into the world. New Zealand’s creative sector is significant national and internationally. The growth and sustainability of the sector is essential to our future well-being. Within the arts culture and heritage portfolio I look forward to building positive relationships across a diverse range of organisations that represent the many dimensions of our cultures and their people. These providers of services make our New Zealand culture accessible whether in a performing arts environment or through content distributed online. These providers represent and preserve our collective past and our present but there are also funding organisations that futureproof and safeguard New Zealand’s cultural output whether it is in the form of music dance or film.I will be working with Heritage NZ on furthering progress on the National Historic Landmarks List. This will provide an appreciation of New Zealand’s most important heritage places and the conversation about them and the conservation of them. I would like to acknowledge Minister Chris Finlayson’s contribution to not only the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act but also of course the broader arts culture and heritage portfolio. It is an integral part of our national identity which informs another of my portfolios conservation.I have spent a lot of my spare time—and a lot of my working life for that matter—studying and being around the flora and fauna of New Zealand. It is something I enjoy very much. I speak with personal experience and sincerity to say that for me the national parks are some of the many jewels within our landscape. The New Zealand Conservation Authority has made a recommendation that a new national park be established in the Waipoua Forest and to include a visitor centre. I very much look forward to progressing discussions with Te Rōroa about the Kauri National Park. This Government has also committed $30 million to containing and controlling kauri dieback which is an extremely challenging disease to manage.I am a great believer in building strong partnerships and within conservation I believe that this is a key priority. By growing these partnerships we can improve our ability to protect biodiversity and help New Zealanders and visitors to this country further enjoy what our wonderful and unique environment has to offer. These partnerships involve collaboration across central and local government working with private landowners and businesses as well as individual benefactors. Kiwis for Kiwi partnerships with Air New Zealand and Fonterra and a huts maintenance project and arrangement with Federated Mountain Clubs and Predator Free New Zealand are all examples of developing these initiatives. Here I would like to acknowledge Rob Fenwich who is a visionary with energy and commitment and who has given a lot of his time and thought and the breadth of his philosophy and experience to these vital tasks. I would also like to acknowledge my erstwhile colleague Ruud Kleinpaste the “Bugman” for his unique contributions.Treaty settlements also offer further opportunities for strengthening relationships between the Department of Conservation and iwi as primary partners. This Government has created a record number of 10 marine reserves in this past year doubling the set-net protection for the Māui’s dolphin. We have introduced a ban on shark finning and we have created new whale and seal sanctuaries. The balance between marine protection and resource use is very important for all New Zealanders and as the Minister of Conservation I am absolutely mindful of that. Work on threatened marine species is also conducted collaboratively including working with the fishing industry and port authorities to find practical solutions to protect marine mammals and our seabirds.Improvements to New Zealand’s legislative framework for marine protection help ensure our protected status for marine areas in the exclusive economic zones and our territorial seas. The development of new marine protection legislation will address limitations in the Marine Reserves Act 1971. The current Act is I feel outdated and restrictive and it does not encourage collaborative planning. I think there is an opportunity for New Zealand to be a world leader in how we manage our oceans. There are also two new marine recreational parks planned in the Hauraki Gulf and Marlborough Sounds and an improved regulatory framework around those.We face ongoing threats to our biodiversity from predators and we will continue to take a practical science-based approach to dealing with these challenges. The use of 1080 is a cost-effective and scientifically verified method of managing these eco-invaders. Pest control will be extended to 1 million hectares to protect our native species. I would urge people to become up to date with the science on 1080. It is backed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. This year the department’s Battle for our Birds predator-control programme will combine the use of 1080 and trapping to combat the increased threat to at-risk species from stoats and rodents. The Battle for our Birds programme has the potential not only to make huge improvements in natural landscape conservation but also to benefit agriculture.Economically the Department of Conservation plays a vital role in New Zealand’s $24 billion recreation and tourism industry. It is key that we work with the industry on the short medium and long-term actions to deliver benefits for tourism and recreation while benefiting conservation. Our natural heritage is a legacy to be handed on to future generations and the sound management of the natural environment is absolutely essential to this.My portfolio as Minister for Senior Citizens is one that I have a very strong interest in. This Government is committed to ensuring that older New Zealanders have security and well-being and are given very importantly the respect and the value that they deserve. They have contributed hugely to this country. This Government and me as Minister will continue to value our older New Zealanders in practical ways. People are living longer and are healthier into their old age more so than in any previous generation. The New Zealand population trends show that the number of people over the age of 65 is projected to double in the next 20 years to around 1.2 million in 2036. This means that older New Zealanders will contribute significantly more to the economy and also contribute to our society in unpaid and voluntary work. Thank you.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on some of the great crises and challenges that are facing the world and New Zealand at the moment. I want to identify two in particular what I would call the twin crises of inequality and climate change. Of course we are all increasingly becoming familiar with both of these things but I think it is important that we underline just how important they are to New Zealand and the world.When it comes to inequality what we have seen over the last 20 or 30 years is a dramatic growth in inequality in New Zealand in particular but globally as well. As our societies have become more unequal wealth has become concentrated in the top few percent and the vast majority of people no longer own very much at all and have been stripped of most of their wealth as a result of the neo-liberal reforms and the new-right policies pursued by successive Governments. There are now a great many New Zealanders who have no access whatsoever to wealth which is being concentrated in the handful.On the other side of the coin we have climate change. The thing about climate change is of course that it is a global issue but it does have very significant consequences for New Zealand as well. I want to start by talking about one of those which is ocean acidification. What we have found is that the acidification in the ocean has risen by about a quarter since pre-industrial times so say over the last couple of centuries. The amount of acid in the ocean has increased by about a quarter as a result of all the carbon that has been emitted into the atmosphere. Some of the carbon in the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean and that means that the ocean is becoming increasingly acidic. That has a huge effect on shellfish and their ability to form shells. The Ministry for Primary Industries recently produced a report saying that ocean acidification is a threat to our aquaculture industry. This is a $375-million-a-year industry and it is directly affected by climate change which is causing ocean acidification. Climate change in New Zealand has huge costs already but it is only going to grow in time if we do not take action to do something about it.Today I want to talk a little bit more about climate change. How we respond to climate change one of the greatest challenges of our generation will define us as a nation. Climate change is a reality. The science is very clear that human-caused climate change is a scientific reality but of course we have a Government that is in denial about that reality. Yet climate change will affect every part of our lives from how we grow food in the case of ocean acidification to how we make our living. And of course as the ice sheets melt as a result of climate change and also as the thermal mass of the water expands we will then see rising sea levels which will inundate coastal communities in particular. We recently learnt that parts of the Antarctic ice sheet have begun an irreversible slide into the sea. It is about 160 billion tonnes of ice that is being lost every year. Antarctica is literally shedding ice.In spite of the denial of the current Government in New Zealand climate change is happening right in front of us. A recent report in the Dominion Post about Wellington’s downtown streets such as Lambton Quay being turned into canals gives you a flavour of how it is going to affect us. Sea level rise is a dramatic problem.Of course the current Government says that we are such a small country that cutting our emissions will not make any difference that we should not do anything to cut our emissions and that because we are so small we cannot take any effective action. In fact the Prime Minister’s favourite line is “We’re only 0.2 percent of global emissions. What difference will it make?” which is of course exactly what you could say about voting in an election. If you took that attitude towards voting you would not vote. Of course we know from the Dirty Politics book that the National Party members do not want people to vote because they see that as a threat to their hold on the Government. The thing is that National has completely failed to grasp the challenge of climate change.So far under this Government New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 20 percent. So at a time when we should be cutting our emissions to relate to the reality of climate change in fact the Government is increasing New Zealand’s emissions. The Ministry for the Environment once again has produced a report that looks at emissions going forward and according to the Ministry for the Environment New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase by about 50 percent over a decade. So just think how grossly irresponsible a Government is that has policies that will result in New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions increasing by 50 percent. Imagine if other countries in the world were as grossly irresponsible as the New Zealand Government if other countries were projecting to increase their net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in a decade.Fortunately most countries and most Governments are not as grossly irresponsible as the John Key Government but New Zealand is a major problem because we are an international player. So when the New Zealand Government goes out to the world and proudly tells everyone that it plans to increase New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent it undermines international efforts to do something about emissions. It is in fact a national disgrace.National rejects any proposals for a proper price on carbon so the Green Party and others have put forward proposals to put a proper price on carbon which we know is the cheapest most effective way to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the Government has hollowed out the emissions trading scheme so that there is virtually no price and has weakened it to the point of redundancy ensuring that it is a failure. The emissions trading scheme was designed to incentivise investment in clean technology emission reductions and the planting of trees. It has done none of these things—in fact it has done the opposite. New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 50 percent over the next decade according to the Ministry for the Environment. That is the hard reality of what is going on in New Zealand. It is embarrassing it is farcical and it is a disaster for the climate.The Government is giving away free permits to pollute—in fact it has given away $1.3 billion of free permits to pollute under the emissions trading scheme. When companies do pollute rather than handing back these units the big polluter companies have been selling them and then handing back cheap units that cost only 20c so the Government has enabled a flood of these units to come in from overseas.According to the Minister for Climate Change Issues—of course in this context that means the Minister for accelerating climate change Tim Groser—National has chosen to stick with its completely ineffectual scheme. It is ineffectual at reducing emissions but very effective at increasing greenhouse gas emissions. National has chosen to stick with its scheme to increase greenhouse gas emissions because the National Party base the voters for the National Party are not interested in action on climate change according to Mr Groser. At a pre-election Climate Voter event where I was there with him he said that to many National Party supporters climate change is nothing more than a United Nations conspiracy—a non-issue.Tim Groser is underestimating National’s supporters and in doing so he is abdicating responsibility for actually doing something. Instead of leading National is actually taking New Zealand in exactly the wrong direction. Remember the official statistics from the Ministry for the Environment say that under current policies New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 50 percent in a decade a dramatic increase in emissions—a grossly irresponsible act. But the National Party has misjudged the people who voted for the National Party as well as everyone else. Eventually National’s wilful neglect will come back to bite it and all of us.National has a 20th century attitude on the climate and it is not just a monumental failure on the environment—which of course it is—it is also a failure to grasp the economic opportunities of our times and a failure to understand where the global economy is going. The global economy is heading towards a cleaner smarter economy. That is where it is going—a greener economy. Instead of being part of that this current Government is desperately trying to lock in 20th century technologies that have very high greenhouse gas emissions per unit. It is hoping to lock them in. The Green Party put forward alternative policies such as our climate tax cut where we would put a price on greenhouse emissions and all the revenue that was raised would be returned in the form of tax cuts both for individuals and for companies. Of course the National Party completely rejected the climate tax cut which was fiscally neutral because of its desire to increase our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent according to its own figures over the next decade—an increase in New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions.Just this weekend the EU agreed to cut its emissions by 40 percent by 2030. At next year’s global summit in Paris countries will have to commit to binding agreements. We cannot continue with the policy of this Government of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions. It is time to move into the 21st century a century that will be marked by cleaner smarter economics and Governments that understand the science of climate change and actually cut greenhouse gas emissions instead of this Government which is proposing to increase them. But I suspect it will require a change of Government for us to move there.Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):Can I take a moment to welcome all the new members to Parliament. Can I congratulate the National Party on returning back into Government after the strong leadership and campaign by our fantastic Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key. Can I also acknowledge the 14 new National MPs who have come in. On this side of the House we have certainly refreshed and rejuvenated our caucus. Welcome to them. We have already seen the strength and depth of the National Party caucus through some fantastic maiden speeches being delivered. There are 14 new MPs on this side of the House. I think across the whole of the rest of the House there are 10 new MPs and I welcome them.Can I also acknowledge the Speakers as well. Mr Borrows can I acknowledge you in your new role. Can I acknowledge the Hon Trevor Mallard Lindsay Tisch and importantly the Rt Hon David Carter who is going to do a fantastic job as he proved he could do over the term of the previous Parliament.While I am in a mood of congratulations can I congratulate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and especially the Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully on securing our nomination and our place at the top table of the United Nations Security Council. That is a fantastic result for a small country down here in the South Pacific New Zealand. Well done to all the officials who have done a fantastic job in securing a seat at the top table in New York. I know it will bring very tangible benefits for the New Zealand Government for the next 2 years when we begin at the top table early next year.Can I also address the Speech from the Throne. It is hugely important for the direction of New Zealand and hugely important to outline the work programme for the John Key Government into the next 3 years. What you heard from the Speech from the Throne was the importance of the primary sector for the New Zealand economy and also getting back to the election campaign how rural and provincial New Zealand back the National Party. What we heard in the Speech from the Throne was that we are going to have a relentless focus on returning to surplus and that we are also going to aim to reduce Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2020.The Speech from the Throne talked about a real focus on trade. It is great that the Minister of Trade the Hon Tim Groser has just come back from a ministerial meeting in Australia over the weekend. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is moving in the right direction—maybe it is not moving quite as quickly as those of us on this side of the House would like but it is making solid progress. Hopefully in the early part of 2015 we can see some even greater progress. We know that that is vitally important in opening up new markets for our exporters. What is also going to be important is landing a free-trade agreement with Korea and the Gulf States as well and many other countries. We should also acknowledge the focus that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have on enlarging our international footprint to make sure that we have got the right offices in the right places to open up new opportunities for our exporters.Also the Speech from the Throne focused on investment into research and development. The challenge for industry and for businesses in New Zealand is to continue to invest in research and development. We are currently at about half a percent of GDP and we want to focus and make sure that we can extend that to 1 percent by 2018.We have also got a focus on food safety and biosecurity. The Speech from the Throne talked about the Food Safety Science and Research Centre which is going to be one of the important things that came out of the Fonterra whey protein concentrate ministerial inquiry last year. We have also got a real focus on Primary Growth Partnership programmes—there are 16 of them under way delivering value right across the primary sector value chain. We have a real focus also on infrastructure. That is to do with roading that is to do with rural broadband and that is to do with irrigation.If we think about roading let us think about the tangible benefits in my electorate of the Kapiti Expressway a project that across the Parliament Labour and the Greens have opposed all the way. It is a road that is investing $630 million into my region. It is a road that is going to connect communities. Already we are seeing 400 jobs created and it will grow to 1000. So when our opponents stand up and say that we are doing nothing for the regions and nothing to create jobs well here is a classic example. It was fantastic during the campaign to turn the sod with the Prime Minister on Transmission Gully; a project that has been on the cards—hot cold and lukewarm—for decades. Now we have a Government with the guts and vision to build Transmission Gully which is going to be vitally important for the Wellington region.Now we need to focus specifically on connectivity for our rural and provincial towns and communities. That is why it is fantastic that $150 million is going to be rolled out on increasing our mobile coverage and also on rolling out rural broadband because we know that our rural communities are the powerhouse of the New Zealand economy. They need to be able to connect with consumers and customers around the world and it is frustrating when they cannot do that so we are backing rural and provincial New Zealand. In the last couple of years since I have been Minister we have been through periods of drought and we know that water storage is hugely important for the most productive part of the New Zealand economy and that is the primary sector. We do not have a shortage of water in this country; it just falls at the wrong time in the wrong place. We collect and store only about 2 percent of the water that falls in this country. That is why the Government is investing $120 million in the Crown Irrigation Investments company to kickstart these regional water storage projects. We know that they are going to help to grow our exports. We know there are about 400000 hectares of land in New Zealand that could be under irrigation that are not currently. We know that it is also vitally important for the environment that you can maintain summer water flows and that is good for the aquatic and marine life.There is also going to be a real focus on water quality because we have brought in national standards for freshwater—bottom lines—and also we have in the campaign said that we are going to bring in a policy that is going to mean that dairy farmers will need to ensure that their cattle are excluded from waterways by 1 July 2017. We need to acknowledge that our dairy farmers in New Zealand have come a long way. They have fenced 22500 kilometres so far which is fantastic and we have got just a little bit more to go. We have also indicated that we are going to invest $100 million in a voluntary buy-back of significant land near waterways of significance. That is going to be done on a voluntary basis with the landowner. We need to acknowledge the fact that farmers in my opinion are environmentalists. They want to ensure they are leaving their farms and their land to their children and grandchildren in a better place than when they took them over.We are also going to have a focus on making sure that we do the Resource Management Act reform that we have talked about. I need to acknowledge we have done a fair bit already but there is more to be done to ensure we give more certainty timeliness and cost-effectiveness. We are also going to have a focus—as you heard from the previous speaker the Hon Maggie Barry—on the ocean’s environment and some of that touches on the area that I look after which is fisheries. We are going to modernise the marine protected areas legislation which will allow us to create recreational fishing parks in the inner Hauraki and also in the Marlborough Sounds. We are going to focus on international research to do with greenhouse gases—and there is much more to do in terms of encouraging industry to come and plant more trees.Finally we are working closely with Minister Flavell the new Minister of Māori Development because a big part of the growth opportunities in the New Zealand primary sector is in Māori agribusiness and I will be working closely with him. There is a fantastic programme of work laid out for the next 3 years and I am really excited about it.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):There is a new game in town and it is called “Guess Which Hat the Prime Minister is Wearing”. We have seen it in the last few days in the House when the Prime Minister has been answering various questions about his many conversations with his close friend Cameron Slater the National Party’s paid attack dog and we never really know which hat the Prime Minister is wearing. We do not know whether he is wearing the Prime Minister hat. We do not know whether he is wearing the husband hat—Hon Annette King: What about the cat-owner hat?PHIL TWYFORD: —the cat-owner hat or the leader of the National Party hat. I have to wonder which hat the Prime Minister was wearing when he signed off on National’s policy to gut State housing. Was he wearing his Prime Minister hat or was he wearing his “poor boy made good” hat? Or was he wearing his “rich guy living in a $10 million Parnell mansion” hat? I want to know and I think we should know. We should be told which hat the Prime Minister was wearing.Was he wearing his Prozac hat? Was he the perpetually relaxed and comfortable Prime Minister—comfortable and relaxed and feeling good about everything that is going on and every decision that is being made including the dismantling of an 80-year tradition in this country of providing State housing to our most vulnerable families to ensure that every child growing up in this country no matter which side of town they are on and no matter how financially struggling mum and dad might be will get a decent roof over their heads? Under National that is all about to go.A few years ago at a National Party conference the Prime Minister told the audience: “we lived in a State house. I will always be grateful for the opportunities that gave me and I make sure this is reflected in the policies I sign off on as Prime Minister.” Well I have one word to describe that: doublespeak. This is the dark underbelly of John Key’s political persona. You see he is all about the aspirational message of “you can be like me” but actually what he is doing is pulling up the ladder. He is denying a new generation of New Zealanders the same security of housing the same decent roof over their heads that he and his family enjoyed growing in Christchurch.Paula Bennett is just as bad. She has made a career out of pulling up the ladder. As a solo mother she enjoyed the generosity of taxpayer-funded support—in particular the training incentive allowance which was designed to encourage parents back into the workforce. Then as soon as she became the Minister for Social Development she gave it the chop. She is an expert at pulling up the ladder. But that is how National rolls.Paula Bennett was on the radio this morning bemoaning the fact that people in west Auckland are living in the Rānui caravan park. It is a caravan park in the electorate that she represented for 6 years at the same time that she served as the Minister for Social Development but apparently it is not suitable. Well that is funny because when she was the Minister for Social Development her department was routinely referring people to go and live in that very same caravan park.For 6 years under National the housing crisis in Auckland got worse every single year. For 6 years the National Government never did a thing to increase the provision of emergency housing for the homeless and for 6 years National did nothing to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis like actually build more houses.But if you want the ultimate example of doublespeak it is National’s State house sell-off. National members do not talk about privatisation. They do not describe it as a sell-off of State housing. Bill English talks about helping more vulnerable families. In fact he talked in question time today about putting the needs of tenants first. He talks about modernising social housing. Let us look not at what National is saying but at what it is doing and what it is planning to do. What has become clear since the election and what National did not see fit to tell the New Zealand public before the election is that it is planning a massive State house sell-off of up to one-third of the 65000 houses that the taxpayer owns. That is a publicly owned asset worth $6 billion.Who is National going to sell them to? Well Bill English has said: “We’ve been talking to banks to property developers to iwi to the Salvation Army—we could sell them to anybody.” That is what he said. That is what he told the New Zealand Herald.Well what will happen to the proceeds when all these State houses get sold off? Bill English has refused to guarantee that the proceeds of State house sales will be earmarked for more State and social housing. He has openly canvassed the possibility that the proceeds of the sale of these State houses could go back into the consolidated account and you have to wonder—Hon Ruth Dyson: Make up another surplus.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes with National’s track record of flogging off publicly owned assets and then using them to fund its corporate mates like funding rural irrigation and using the so-called Future Investment Fund for the proceeds of asset sales to fund any number of boondoggle political projects. He was asked whether he would use the proceeds of the sale of State houses to rebuild more and more modern State housing. He said no. He said: “if we want less stock there’s not much point rebuilding stock with it.” Well you could not be much clearer than that.This is the end of State housing. The Government no longer intends to own the houses; it wants to pay a subsidy to landlords. It might as well just put all social housing tenants on the accommodation supplement because that is the clear logical consequence of what National is talking about.There is more gobbledegook and doublespeak. The Government wants—and we heard Bill English talk about it in question time today—a contestable housing market even though its own officials in Treasury advised it that it is not possible to run social housing at a profit. You might as well try to run the hospitals at a profit or try to run the public transport system at a profit. This is social housing that we are talking about. The market has never ever delivered decent affordable social housing for people at the bottom end of the market. It is a nonsense and it is only the ideological tin hats on that side of the House that think it is at all a possibility worth considering.Treasury was very clear that in order to get players to even enter a so-called social housing market it would require a massive taxpayer subsidy. Treasury said: “You would need to unlock the potential of the Housing New Zealand asset base.” Well it is pretty clear what that means. National wants to sell State houses at knock-down prices to its mates. That is what it is all about.So in the middle of a housing crisis when Government departments are routinely referring people to live in camp grounds when homelessness is on the rise and when we have got people living in cars and garages what does National do? It wants to privatise State housing. It wants to flog off $5 billion or $6 billion worth of State housing.The final chapter has now been written in National’s continuing running down cutting back and winding down of State housing in this country. This is the wholesale privatisation of Housing New Zealand. It is the end of State housing. It is an 80-year tradition a commitment that we have had in this country that the Government of the day will guarantee that the kids of even families who are really struggling to keep their heads above water will at least have a secure warm dry roof over their heads. That is as New Zealand as you can get and this Government is about to dismantle that tradition because of some ideological view that the Government cannot do anything right—that it can never even run State and social housing well. Well we reject that view.I want to quote Dita De Boni who was writing in the New Zealand Herald last week. She finished her opinion piece on the opinion/editoral pages with this statement: “It is astonishing that a Prime Minister who grew up in a state house and has gained huge political advantage from being able to trumpet that fact can’t see why it is wrong to pull the ladder up after him.” Well we will not allow the Government to get away with this. We will fight to ensure that all New Zealanders get a fair go. We will hold those members to account and we will fight this policy to the bitter end.Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister for ACC):It is a privilege to be back in this House. I think that the election was a referendum on the general direction of this Government and what we saw was nearly 50 percent of New Zealanders backing the direction of this Government. The speech that we just heard is actually part of the reason why. We have a Prime Minister that our caucus backs. We have a united caucus. We have 14 talented new members. This side of the House has itself in order.The other side of the House is focused on ideological battles. What I heard when I was doorknocking in Auckland Central—and I am very pleased to be the member for Auckland Central for the third time—and I knocked on over 9500 doors were a number of things that people said to me. Firstly they acknowledged the work that we had done in terms of the economy. We came back from the largest hit to GDP of any developed nation in the world to have some outstanding economic figures and we have to acknowledge our economic team—in particular the Hon Bill English who has done an outstanding job in terms of the New Zealand economy.Here are some of the figures. The economy grew by 3.9 percent in the year to 30 June. Average wages are up by $2500 in the last 2 years. The figures are outstanding given what we have been through. As the Minister of Civil Defence I am personally very aware of the situation in Canterbury the level of destruction. From an economic and social perspective what our Government has invested is huge so it is significant to acknowledge the general economic direction that we are currently under.But I want to talk today about some of my priorities as a Minister. In particular I want to focus on my Associate Minister of Education role. It is very important to acknowledge as well the Hon Hekia Parata who is in the House today and the outstanding job that she is doing as the Minister of Education. What we constantly hear from the other side is that this side does not have a heart. I believe the reason we commanded nearly 50 percent of the vote of New Zealanders is that that is just blatant claptrap. Look at the results and what we have done for our most disadvantaged: 100000 houses insulated more money in terms of rheumatic fever prevention more young people in early childhood education more young Māori and Pacific students in early childhood education National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) results up and NCEA results up for Māori and Pacific students.What the other side will tell you is that we do not care. The reason that we have people voting for us from many diverse communities over the country and the reason we have members of Parliament on this side of the House who came from pretty disadvantaged backgrounds is that they believe in our policies. They actually believe that it is wrong not to know where those children are who are not achieving. That is why we have national standards. They actually believe in the policy.As the Associate Minister of Education I am very proud that we have invested more than $700 million to enable young people to have access to fast reliable uncapped connections funded by the Government because at the heart of that policy is equity. I was really pleased to be in Te Aroha to have the 1000th connection for Network for Learning. I acknowledge the local MP Scott Simpson. What we can see happening in these schools is not just about today; it is actually about investing in New Zealand for a long period of time. Some of these children are involved in robotics and they even had a television and radio station.What we are offering as part of our Government’s investment is a real investment for the future. That includes not just ultra-fast broadband but also our School Network Upgrade Programme. It is an investment in the managed network but it is an investment in wireless technology. We also fund laptops for teachers and we fund professional development in this area. That is a significant achievement of this Government and it shows that those issues of equity are our priority. I am very proud to be the Associate Minister working alongside the Hon Hekia Parata to deliver for some of our most disadvantaged students.As the Minister for ACC again what it is about is results. When I was on the doorstep people were really clear. They could see real policies from National and also real results compared with some of the ideological battles that are still being fought in the Labour Party. We were handed a very difficult situation in terms of ACC. At a fiscal level I was very proud to announce in the last week as well that the surplus is at $2.1 billion. That is $300 million more than what was expected. What we have committed to as a Government is that there will be $480 million in levy reductions going back to households and families in New Zealand. The reason that we have been able to do that is we have taken some very hard decisions and we have ensured that there is fiscal responsibility here.I do want to acknowledge that there is a long way to go in terms of the corporation. It is an organisation in transition and it has a number of plans to deal with the issues in terms of privacy. But as long as I am the Minister I will be focused on ensuring that we treat some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable better through the system whether it is through working on that claims process or whether it is through some of the issues in terms of entitlement. But at a fiscal level the corporation and the Government can be very proud of where we have taken that organisation in the last few years.As the Minister of Civil Defence as I said before we have been incredibly focused on ensuring that we are better prepared as a nation for an event like the Canterbury earthquakes. What does that mean? It means ensuring that we are better equipping our local authorities to deal with some of the smaller events that occur. As the Minister of Civil Defence in the last term I was there up in Northland helping out with the Northland floods but we also had the Wellington earthquakes. We are the Shaky Isles. We have many threats to this nation and I think it is pleasing that we are doing things around young people getting them involved in emergency services.We are reviewing our National Civil Defence and Emergency Management Plan. We have shifted the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management into the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. That is a really important move because it is saying that not only can we ensure that all of Government is better prepared but also we have a greater focus and greater sense of preparedness at the highest levels in terms of New Zealand.I do also want to acknowledge that in the area of civil defence we are seen as world leading and I am very proud that Minister McCully and I signed a new partnership agreement that is about helping some of our Pacific neighbours. We have been helping countries like Samoa with their siren warning systems. I want to acknowledge at this point the Hon Murray McCully because I think it is an extraordinary achievement. We know that members like David Shearer have been involved in that Security Council campaign but it is a huge achievement for a small nation to win that seat at the table. I think in part it is because we have programmes in areas like civil defence where we play our part we are there on the ground actually helping deliver real systems that may one day save lives in countries like Samoa.I am also the Minister for Youth and I do say to people—and I am sure I will fight with many of my ministerial colleagues on this—that I do believe that I have one of the greatest jobs in New Zealand. I get paid to go and meet a whole lot of amazing young New Zealanders. I often say that you will not always see on the front page of the paper the stories of some of the young people who are doing amazing things. But I can tell you that we have young people in New Zealand who through our school system are developing new apps around processing blood samples quicker developing things for conservation and doing some extraordinary things in New Zealand. In part it is because of the investment that we make in areas like information and communications technology and it is because of the amazing teachers we have in our classrooms.But there is still more to do. One of the areas that I am passionate about is the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project. I think it is significant that our Prime Minister has chosen to lead that area. We still do have too many young people dying and taking their own lives. Part of that is about issues like bullying. Part of that is about mental health issues. There are a number of initiatives and over $60 million being invested in that Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project. It is a really important project.I do want to put on record that as the Minister for Youth Affairs I am looking at some new priorities. One of them is around the prevention of sexual violence. In particular in my ACC portfolio I can see there is a huge amount to do in that area but I also think there is a huge amount more that we can do in terms of young people with disabilities and I look forward to working on those areas.It is a privilege to be in this caucus. It is a privilege to be the member for Auckland Central and a member of John Key’s Cabinet. I do think this is the best that I have seen our party. We have a leader we have a united caucus and we also have a number of really really good policies and I want to leave you with a couple of them that are pretty dear to my heart. I want to acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata. One of the policies that we have campaigned on but that really has not got a lot of media attention is very important to me personally and also in my capacity as Associate Minister of Education. That policy is the 800000 hours that we have committed to in order to help some of our students in special education. My little sister has severe autism. I have met with many parents across New Zealand and I know that is an area we want to do more in. I think the fact that the Hon Hekia Parata secured that as part of our election policy is a tribute to her and her leadership but it is also going to be very important to help some of those students who need further support so thank you very much.JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise to speak this afternoon about one of the two crises that the Green Party has identified as facing the world as well as this country and that is inequality. The levels of inequality in New Zealand are killing children. That is a bald and brutal truth. University of Otago research has shown that every year around 60 children are dying before the age of 1 due to diseases related to low incomes. The Government tells us that it is going to save these children by getting their parents off benefits even though there are not work-test requirements for sole parents with children under the age of 1. I doubt that anyone in this House would want any.The Government tells us it is going to save these babies by getting their parents off the benefit while refusing to even check what happens to those babies after their parents get off the benefit. The Government tells us it is going to save these babies by getting their parents into work and then the very first piece of legislation the Government introduces into this House undermines the ability of people to negotiate decent pay and conditions. This Government tells us it is going to save these babies by getting their parents off benefits and then intervenes on behalf of an employer trying to argue against pay equity for some of New Zealand’s hardest-working and poorest paid women—caregivers.These babies are not dying because their parents are bad; they are dying because we have not acted to save them. They are dying because of the policies that entrench and exacerbate inequality. In this place we have the power to make decisions to stop those children dying. The Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty created the road map for the Government to save the lives of these babies but the Government has largely ignored this. The Green Party used that document to create a comprehensive suite of policies to save these babies and to make our entire society fairer and more productive to boot. On average another 24 women and babies are killed every year due to domestic violence in this country. We do not even know how many more are dying because of health problems suicide or related injuries associated with domestic violence. Australian research suggests that it is probably more than those who are dying on our roads.The Government has said from the initial speech that it will be trying to reduce family violence and I am just hoping that the omission of sexual violence in that list was an omission rather than a decision. The Government has previously said though that domestic violence was a priority last term while at the same time it systematically eroded and undermined essential protections like core funding for Women’s Refuge like legal aid like functioning Family Courts like social housing like Work and Income protection for women coming out of violent relationships and like the survivors’ network that networks up all the community agencies and helps them share stories and respond appropriately. It just makes me despair when Government members say on the one hand that they are taking this seriously and on the other hand they remove the vital protections that we need to save lives.In the Prime Minister’s reply to the Speech from the Throne he said that the Government would be focusing on gangs in relation to family violence. Sure it is one part of the puzzle—sure—but not the sole focus surely when we need to be reviewing all of our legislation and policies to make sure we can turn this round because we can turn this round. You know that a core aspect of the prevention of domestic violence is reducing inequality. New Zealand deserves better and I welcome the opportunity to work collaboratively with Ministers and MPs right across the House to save lives because this place has the power to do that.MOJO MATHERS (Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to talk about inequality and disability. The recent census showed that nearly one in four New Zealanders lives with a disability—up from one in five in the previous census. These figures include some of the most marginalised people in New Zealand especially those who have had a disability since birth. Disabled people are seriously under-represented in paid employment and experience correspondingly higher levels of poverty as a result. This poverty is absolutely dire for many disabled people who often have no resources and no buffers to cope with a long-term lack of income.The figures are stark. For example let us look at homeownership. In New Zealand the rate of homeownership for the average population is 64.8 percent. In contrast only 52 percent of disabled adults own or partly own a home. However when we look at those who have been disabled from birth the rate of homeownership drops to 27 percent. That is less than half the rate of the average population. Can you imagine the outcry that would exist if fewer than one in three New Zealanders owned their own home? And yet that is the reality for those who live with a disability from birth. It shows just how systematic the barriers are that disabled people face in every level of society from birth onwards which ends up with their being unable to access their own home.As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities the Government has an absolute responsibility to step up and remove barriers to participation for disabled people. It must take this responsibility seriously. Disabled people do have so much that they can contribute but they are locked out of paid employment and face a lifetime of rejection. No matter how skilled or qualified they become they still face rejection and difficulty accessing paid employment.I have spoken with disabled people throughout the country who are desperate to be active productive participants in the paid workforce and may have valuable skills. Be Accessible which is an organisation that works on disability issues estimates that the opportunity cost of workplace exclusion of people with disabilities is $11.7 billion in New Zealand. That is the economic value of the work that they could be contributing but are not able to because of the barriers that are in place to paid employment.One of the immediate steps that this Government could take is to step up and prioritise providing paid employment opportunities to disabled people. One obvious place where the Government can start is in the public sector. A best-practice model from the Government in employment in the public sector will have massive direct benefits and also serve as an encouragement for the private sector to follow suit. The public sector still remains the biggest employer in New Zealand with over 36000 front-line paid staff. At the moment most Government departments do not have active specific initiatives aimed at identifying and recruiting people with disabilities even just into the potential labour pool. That means that many disabled people do not even get a foot in the door.It is time for the Government to step up. What the Green Party believes is that the public sector needs to lead the way by being a positive employer for disabled people by amending the State Sector Act to put a stronger emphasis on the responsibility of the State sector to give disabled people an equal chance to get a job and in doing so is the act of thinking about how we can do this. How can we remove barriers? This will mean becoming more aware and setting up a positive cycle of reinforcement. This is something that I would like the Government to absolutely look into seriously. It is something that disabled people have called for time and time again because they have had so many dire flow-through effects on the whole culture and attitude of the country as a whole towards disabled people towards recognising our skills and our abilities and getting them actively included into the economy and into Government. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:I am advised the next call is a split call.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel):It is a pleasure to be back here in the 51st Parliament of New Zealand and to be giving the first speech in this Parliament that I have had an opportunity to give. I want to commence by congratulating you Mr Deputy Speaker and the other presiding officers on your election to office and on the good work you do on behalf of the Parliament of New Zealand.It is a great pleasure and honour to be back for the third term of this fifth National Government. It is an enormous privilege and an honour to be representing the very fine and most beautiful electorate of Coromandel. Indeed I want to thank the Coromandel people for their generosity for their support and for their endorsement of my second term in this place. They have in fact humbled me by the level of support they have given me and I am very delighted to be back here being their face their voice in this special place. I want to restate my personal commitment to the people of Coromandel that I will be a strong and reliable advocate for them in this place and I recommit myself to another 3 years of hard work and dedication to Coromandel and its people.We live in a very small intimate and precious little democracy. It is a participatory democracy. It is a democracy that has an unbroken tradition going back 160 years now. In that 160 years there have been something like 1400 MPs who have come through this place. That is actually not terribly many when you think about the length of time we have been operating as a democracy.Part of what makes our democracy so special is as I say that it is a participatory democracy. It is a democracy that requires volunteers to actively be involved in campaigning to support their parties to take a view to take a position on issues of the day and to be involved in the great contest of ideas that is an election campaign. So when we had the election only a few weeks ago it came as no surprise to me that thousands of people all around the country decided to get involved and to become part of that campaign. I want to acknowledge participants volunteers and activists from every sphere of the political spectrum actually in terms of being involved.One of the things that always fascinate me is that a number of our fellow country folk just say: “Oh well I’m not interested in politics. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.” Those are the people whom I find most frustrating in terms of our democracy because they should care. It is important and they should take part in it. I have a much greater personal regard for those people of a differing political opinion from mine who at least have invested some time effort and energy in coming to a view and who are prepared to stand up defend it and go out and argue for it even if it is not something that I support. So I want to thank the volunteers I want to thank everybody who participated and I particularly want to acknowledge and thank not only my fellow contestants in the constituency of Coromandel but all of those who offer themselves for election to public office—win lose or in some cases come close to a draw. Standing for Parliament is a big deal and it is a big commitment but it is important for the sake of our democracy that in fact people do offer themselves to Parliament.I want to just comment on a couple of things in relation to how this Government—this third-term Government the fifth National Government—is going to assist the good people of Coromandel. I particularly want to raise and take up a point that the Hon Nikki Kaye made only a few minutes ago about the importance of access to fast internet and fast broadband. One of the policies we went to the election with was to get up to speed more than 80 percent of New Zealanders having access to ultra-fast broadband. That means that in my community there will be towns like Te Aroha Whitianga Thames Paeroa Katikati and Waihī that will be eligible for contention in terms of further ultra-fast broadband roll-out. That is going to be a big process and I know that those communities will be stepping up to the opportunity and the challenge that is offered by the benefits that come with ultra-fast broadband.Further there is going to be increased spending in the extension of the Rural Broadband Initiative and another $150 million will be invested by this Government in extending that Rural Broadband Initiative. In my electorate farmers understand how important it is to have connectivity—good reliable connectivity. Business folk do as well. Thank you very much. I look forward to participating in this Parliament.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard):Jacqui Dean.Hon Ruth Dyson: It comes as a big surprise.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):It does come as a surprise to me—but a very welcome surprise. Indeed I would welcome some guidance from my whip on just how I am going to focus my speech but actually it is not going to be that hard to focus my contribution to this debate because what we campaigned on leading up to the election was an agenda of stable government. I think that with the support of the New Zealand public we have truly been given the mandate to deliver on that promise of stable government. In fact the Hon Bill English as the Minister of Finance not only has steered this ship very well for the past 6 years but promises to do so again for the next 3 years and New Zealanders up and down the country can be assured that this Government will be delivering on its promise of building the economy and looking after all New Zealanders.I want to actually focus particularly on one area of the New Zealand economy that is of particular interest to me and that is tourism and regional development. In terms of regional development something that I am very proud of in the last two terms of Government has been the development of the New Zealand national cycle trails programme. I can recall standing in this House on several occasions over the past few years talking about the benefits of the cycle trail to the local economy of Central Otago. I noted at the time that the Otago Central Rail Trail was making a significant impact on some of the small towns of Central Otago.I recall that as I was saying this and talking about the small town of Lauder the small town of Middlemarch and the small town of Ranfurly which were enjoying something of a renaissance there would be gales of laughter coming from the other side of the House. Those members were going: “Oh come on. What’s $7 million to Central Otago? That’s nothing. We live in Auckland and we’re much bigger than that.” Well the joke is on them because not only have Central Otago and those small communities benefited from that investment by the Prime Minister which was his initiative back in 2009 but so has the rest of New Zealand. So the laugh is on them because Labour the Greens and New Zealand First did not get it. They did not understand that regional economic development has to start from the ground up. It has to start by a Government investing in the infrastructure to enable growth in the regional economies.Hon Annette King: Who invested in Whale Watch Kaikōura? Look at a real success—Whale Watch Kaikōura.JACQUI DEAN: You see the Hon Annette King still does not get it. The Hon Annette King over the other side of the House still does not get it because—I do not know where she lives. Is it Hutt City or Wellington or “city slickers”—who would know? But regional development is well understood by the members on this side of the House for a very good reason and it is that we all live in the provinces. If you have a look around at our fantastic new line-up of MPs you will see that a good deal of them come from the provinces. Why is that? Because the voters in provincial New Zealand appreciate and understand what good government represents and have voted in vast numbers for those very members. So it stands to reason that in terms of regional economic development of course Labour does not get it. Of course the Greens do not get it. How could they? They do not represent rural and provincial New Zealand.So let us talk just for a moment about the ultra-fast broadband initiative. Let us talk just for a moment about rural broadband investment into our regions and what a great benefit that is going to be having for the agribusinesses throughout New Zealand. Let us talk about the investment into schools and into hospitals by this Government. Let us talk about the work that the Minister of Education the Hon Hekia Parata is putting into modern learning environments for our young New Zealanders in the cities because yes we care about them as well but a lot of it is going into provincial New Zealand. I am so proud that my small towns in the seat of Waitaki are benefiting from all this investment being put in by this Government. We stood up and we promised stable government before this election. We stood up and we have delivered.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard):Before I call the Hon Ruth Dyson I want to just compliment the member Jacqui Dean on making a speech without reference to notes.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Can I begin by also congratulating the member Jacqui Dean who clearly was not aware she was on the speaking list and made a good contribution to this debate anyway. I also congratulate her on her re-election as the MP for Waitaki. I want to congratulate the Rt Hon David Carter on his re-election as Speaker. He was my opponent in I think six elections in the seat of Lyttelton and Banks Peninsula and more recently in Port Hills. He has not been my opponent in the last couple of elections and obviously he is not going to be now because he is the Speaker. I also want to congratulate Lindsay Tisch the Hon Chester Borrows and yourself the Hon Trevor Mallard. It is a pleasure to have you as the rigorous person who I guess understands the rules of the House more than anyone else but also who is intent on having them implemented which will be a pleasant change from others who just make a passing reference to them during their ruling.I want to congratulate all returning and all new MPs. It is a huge honour to be a member of Parliament and with that honour comes a great deal of responsibility. I look forward to getting to know particularly the new members more and sharing some of our experiences for the betterment of New Zealand. I think we are all in here for the same reason but we all have different views on how that betterment can be achieved.I want to thank the Labour team in the Port Hills for our campaign. It is a privilege to have been re-elected to represent the Port Hills electorate. Regardless of what Scott Simpson said earlier in relation to his electorate Port Hills is actually the best electorate in the country not only because of the Port Hills the river the estuary and the harbour; it is really because of the people that it is the best electorate. We have had more than our fair share of challenges over the last few years and the people of the Port Hills have shown they are up to meeting those challenges and supporting others through them. I pledge to continue to be a strong voice for our electorate to be accessible and to work hard to progress the aspirations of my constituents.I want to acknowledge and thank Kristine Bartlett the Service and Food Workers Union and Peter Cranney for the victory in the Court of Appeal case on the pay equity legislation. This gives the Government members a real opportunity to make good of at least one of the points they made that has been the subject of this Address in Reply debate and that is looking at wage issues. If they can respond to that victory on pay equity with some substantive moves that would be a huge contribution and recognition of the value of the work that so many women workers do in our nation.I want to support the amendment to the motion before the House the amendment that was moved by the Hon Annette King. She talked in her amendment about wanting to see all New Zealand children living in warm dry homes. She wanted to see the number of affordable homes increased ensuring that all New Zealanders have access to affordable healthcare wages for all rising faster than the cost of living jobs created unemployment back under 4 percent exports increasing as a percentage of GDP the diversification of our economy the reduction of economic and social inequality targets to measure and address child poverty a commitment to a cross-party approach to the elimination of domestic and sexual violence real measures to address climate change and improve our sustainability a plan for the recovery of Canterbury and the Government to be guided in its work by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. If those issues were addressed and if that amendment was supported then all New Zealanders would indeed have a more positive future to look forward to and all New Zealanders would have an opportunity to contribute to the best of their ability and to have a better future for them and their children.I want to touch more specifically on three of those points: on child poverty on housing and particularly on employment law as it is so relevant at the moment being debated as the first piece of legislation the incoming National Government wants to progress. On child poverty it really has beggared belief to watch both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance progress the issue—after 6 years of total denial of the existence of child poverty in New Zealand let alone any inclination to want to address it—and to suddenly decide that it is going to be a priority for this term.I thought the icing on the cake though was when Bill English blamed local government for child poverty. I saw one of the better tweets on this issue when somebody said: “Mum’s just got home opened the door and said: ‘Couldn’t find a job today so there’s no dinner.’ And the children screamed: ‘Damned urban planners!’.” That really spoke volumes about the lack of understanding that Bill English has and his total inability even after 6 years in Government as the Minister of Finance to take any responsibility at all for the increasing number of children we have in our country living in poverty. There are 20000 more children living in poverty now than when this National Government was elected and first took office. I hope that the commitment bears some fruit. I doubt that it will after the constant denial but for the sake of those children who are living in poverty and for the sake of their futures and their children’s future I certainly hope that the National Government will deliver on that.In relation to State housing there was not a mention during the entire election campaign of the Government’s commitment and plan to sell off one-third of our State housing. It is breaking an 80-year-old agreement across all parties in this Parliament that it is a Government responsibility to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society have somewhere to live. We have seen an increasing number of people not being able to have access to any home at all and that is where the Government needed to get into that space to say: “We do not have enough houses to house New Zealand families. We should be building more houses. We should be making sure that all New Zealand families are able to live in a house. It does not have to be a flash house but it should be a decent house. It should be warm and dry.” Instead this Government is breaking that 80-year-commitment to ensure all New Zealand families are properly housed. It is walking away and saying it is going to be someone else’s responsibility. This is one of the biggest moves—the biggest abandonment of commitment to New Zealanders—that I have ever seen a Government take and all the newcomers all the newbies in the Government will just close their eyes close their ears abandon the commitments they made when they were standing for election to this Parliament and support the Government selling off one-third of State houses.I think it is an outrage particularly after what both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance said in this House about good organisations like the Salvation Army and what they said about people like Campbell Roberts a leader in social policy research and advocacy in New Zealand. Mr English and Mr Key said he did not know much and he should get out more. That is what they said about the leadership from the Salvation Army and now they are saying that the Salvation Army can be the major providers of social housing in New Zealand.I just want to conclude by talking about the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. Simon Bridges who has been speaking during the Committee stage on behalf of the Government clearly has no understanding of the history of one of the provisions in the employment legislation we are discussing which is the right for people to have a break during their working time. He talks about air traffic controllers causing chaos. He talks about small businesses having to close so that the workers can have a break. I am going to challenge him during the next round of the Committee stage to give one example where any business or any airport has had to close so that the workers can take a break. The legal right for a worker to have a break has been in our legislation for only a few short years and the first thing this Government has done—this incoming National-led Government—is to take away that right from New Zealand workers. I think that is wrong. It is not as if anybody in the workforce is asking for much. The right to have a break should be something that this Parliament supports. I do not buy into the argument that bad employers will abuse the law; I buy into the argument that this Parliament should be about making good law and nothing that this Government has signalled as introducing is good law. Thank you.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):Mr Assistant Speaker this is a split call.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): This is a split call—5 minutes.SIMON O’CONNOR: I want to take umbrage with the previous speaker Ruth Dyson and Scott Simpson: Tāmaki is the best electorate in the country and I invite all MPs to come and visit. I want to start with some thanks. There are some illustrious figures in the gallery. I want to acknowledge the regional team of the National Party who are here today. It is good to have you guys here. I also want to thank the headquarters team from the National Party too who helped us to such a fine performance in the election. They were the architects of that. But most of all I want to start by thanking my Tāmaki campaign team: Cyrus Andrew Richard Eric Graham Ben Christine and Hari. Thank you too to the hundreds of volunteers in Tāmaki who got out and about and helped us out with everything from phone-calling to doorknocking from flyers to letters.Tim Macindoe: And the elderly supporters.SIMON O’CONNOR: Elderly supporters? Are you thinking of one in particular Tim Macindoe?Tim Macindoe: Yes.SIMON O’CONNOR: Do you want to make a shout-out to your mother here? Very good.Tim Macindoe: She’ll be pleased to hear from you.SIMON O’CONNOR: Mrs Macindoe your son says hello. All those volunteers from flyers and letters to hoardings catering scrutineering and special voting—it was an incredible effort which paid off. What a result in Tāmaki—the most votes and the highest percentages in the country. In fact it was a great result all round although I do have to acknowledge my colleague Amy Adams who got 140 more votes in her majority than I did. Next time Amy we will see how things go.Really it is thanks to the people of Tāmaki for their great support of both me and the National Party. I have enjoyed the first 3 years here in Parliament and I am looking forward to the next three. I want to acknowledge all of our new MPs particularly our 14 new National MPs. One in particular Todd Muller who is giving his maiden speech today comes from St Heliers. I am always sorry to lose a vote—I am hoping he was a voter of mine—but you know I do not want to think of this so much as my losing a vote as gaining an MP. Speaking of MPs I want to acknowledge Peeni Henare. Peeni and I worked together in the Ministry of Social Development many years ago and I am looking forward to working with him here in the House. His electorate Tāmaki Makaurau takes in mine or perhaps my electorate takes in part of his.Thinking of Tāmaki I want to acknowledge the outage that we locals experienced recently. I want to acknowledge the work that Vector and others did in keeping me in the loop which in turn enabled me to engage with my constituents throughout the power outage. I am very grateful that the Minister of Energy and Resources and this Government are looking to undertake an inquiry there through the independent Electricity Authority. That is quite important.In the days after the outage I took the opportunity to go around the electorate to meet as many of the business owners as I could not only to have a discussion on their experiences around the outage but to get their sense of what was going on in general. What was very clear to me was that the businesses and the business owners of Tāmaki are very pleased with where this Government has gone in 6 years and where it is going. They are in good heart. They are very positive about the economy. They know that ultimately National is on the right track and that unlike the other side it is not a three-ring—sorry hold on a four-ring—circus. They are very positive about where the National Government is going.There are lots of positives there not only from the result within the Tāmaki electorate—and that really comes down to some amazing work by hundreds of volunteers some of whom may or may not be here today—but because we are on the right track. Even when we had that adversity of a few weeks ago through the outage people were still very positive about the choices that this Government was making. As the final bell rings in this speech in reply I just want to say—Tim Macindoe: There are plenty to come.SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes it was just for myself—that was incredibly selfish and self-oriented.Tim Macindoe: You can’t shut down the debate that early.SIMON O’CONNOR: That is right. Is this not the adjournment? Oh well.I just want to acknowledge the opportunity to become chair of the Health Committee. I spent many years in the past with Southern Cross the health insurer. I thoroughly enjoyed that and I am very much looking forward to engaging with an impressive team from across the House actually in an area of interest to me.It is great to have this call albeit a short one in the Address in Reply debate. It was a good Speech from the Throne. In fact the whole ceremony of the State Opening was incredibly important for us as New Zealanders to understand our democratic process. In fact I was saying to some friends recently that the fact that you can have politicians the judiciary and the heads of the military all together as one in a peaceful democratic system says much about this country. Thank you very much.JOANNE HAYES (National):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is great to be back. I am just so rapt to be back in this House; it is a privileged position that I hold. I want to congratulate you Mr Assistant Speaker on your promotion. I also want to congratulate Lindsay Tisch on his Assistant Speaker role; the Hon Chester Borrows Deputy Speaker; and of course the Rt Hon David Carter on his role as the Speaker.I also want to extend a welcome to our new MPs to this 51st Parliament especially our 14 new MPs. It was not long ago that I actually stood in your shoes. It was actually the end of January this year. It is a highly privileged position to be in as you know. I know that you are going find the time here very valuable and you are going to meet some very good colleagues along the way.I want to extend my thanks to those people in Christchurch East those wonderful people who party voted National. I was selected 100 days prior to the election and spent about 50 days on the ground there and I met some amazing people in those streets. Some of those streets are a little bit battered but the people were strong and resilient and they continue to be that today. No doubt they will see me in their electorate from time to time.I also want to thank the volunteers from the Christchurch East National Party electorate committee. I want to thank Rae Mills. Rae is an old soldier from way back and he has worked tirelessly for the Christchurch East electorate. Rae if you are watching today I just want to extend my thanks to you for chairing our great electorate committee and also to Peter Macguire our deputy chair. I also want to say kia ora to a whanaunga over there on the Opposition benches Adrian Rurawhe. Adrian and I worked together. Adrian was actually on a board that I was the chief executive officer of in Whanganui so I want to say kia ora to you too Adrian.My Address in Reply speech is just going to cover off a couple of areas: one is growing the economy and the other is supporting beneficiaries in employment in Christchurch. I know that a strong economy produces more jobs and higher incomes and that when we have more jobs and higher incomes our well-being rises quite high. One of things I want to say is that these two ingredients for better well-being will go down well in the Christchurch East electorate. I know that.The Business Growth Agenda comprises six key areas. Those six key areas include education. Without a good education we struggle to get on employment ladders—we struggle to do a lot of things. I was brought up to believe that and that a good education will set you free.Innovation is the next key area. We have the No. 8 wire innovative thinking of all New Zealanders. That is what we do. If we have not got the tool we make it. That is what the innovation area is all about. When we start looking at infrastructure we are looking at roading and all those areas. For the Christchurch area we are progressing well in that area for horizontal infrastructure.When we start looking at skilled and safe workplaces it is one of the areas that Minister Michael Woodhouse is working on and it is a great area to work in because it is really important. I come from a Māori health provider area and that is one of the key areas that we had to do policies for to make sure that our staff are safe in their employment.Export and capital markets are key in order for this country’s economy to grow. We are already feeling the benefits of a growing economy. Already our best and brightest are starting to return to New Zealand. We are feeling that and it is great to have them home so they can help us keep on growing this wonderful country that we live in.My second focus area is in supporting beneficiaries into employment in Christchurch. When I was campaigning the Opposition MP did not like that. She thought it was a waste of money. Well I can tell you now that on the front page of the Christchurch Press we had one of those beneficiaries who came from the Wairarapa. He got a job in construction and he was made a supervisor in such a short time. I do not think that he would have felt very humbled or very happy that MPs were out there saying that what this Government has done was a waste of time for him. Thank you.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):I begin as I should by congratulating all those who deserve to be congratulated on the assumption by them of high offices in this Parliament. I first of all refer to the Rt Hon David Carter and wish him the best for this Parliament. I had hoped that he would wear a black gown this Parliament rather than that strange fur thing that he has taken a liking to but I guess that style is the man.I congratulate my distant cousin the Hon Chester Borrows on his appointment—Hon Annette King: What about your other cousin?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —I will come to you shortly—as the Deputy Speaker and of course I congratulate the Assistant Speakers. It is the first time I have seen you Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard in the Chair and I think that you are going to be a wonderful Chair. You very much look the part and I think you are going to require the highest standards from all members of Parliament at all times. For example I cannot imagine for one moment that you would tolerate members of Parliament hurling homophobic slurs across the Chamber at other members of Parliament. So I very much look forward to your time as Assistant Speaker.I also congratulate the Prime Minister who moves into that category of Prime Minister like Dick Seddon and Peter Fraser both of whom would be members of the National Party today. I particularly want to pay tribute to that great Prime Minister Peter Fraser because at the weekend we are all going to be celebrating—Hon David Cunliffe: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek your advice and I am sure you will correct me if this point is not within the Standing Orders but I wonder whether it is possible for a member to take exception on the part of a former member because in the case of—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will be seated.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Quite apart from losing an election he has lost his sense of humour. But—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Trevor Mallard): Order!Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Not you Mr Assistant Speaker but—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And referring to a point of order that has been dealt with—the member will get on with it.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Oh mea culpa and thank you for your guidance. I do appreciate it. Let us come to Peter Fraser and the Polish refugees because that was a real act of statesmanship by that great Prime Minister as a consequence of which we have a wonderful vibrant Polish community in New Zealand. I am sure Mrs King is going to be with me on Sunday when we recognise that contribution in Wellington.Let us move to Mrs King because I want to congratulate her on her wonderful victory in Rongotai. Admittedly she lost the party vote for the first time since 1996 but her electorate vote margin was impressive and I want to congratulate her. Labour bombed in the party vote but she did well in the electorate vote. Mind you Labour bombed by 900 votes in the party vote. It was not as much as the margin by which Mr Robertson lost the party vote in Wellington Central. It was the second time that the Labour Party—Hon Annette King: You haven’t looked at your final vote.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Oh 894—do not quibble. It was the second time in a row that Labour has come third in the party vote in Wellington Central. Indeed comments are being made about his lamentable performance and I think it is going to reflect in the great Labour leadership campaign.As Mrs King will know the Chatham Islands are now bluer than ever. I think they may even possibly be bluer than Epsom and that is a testament to the work that the Government is putting in over there. It is not numbers; it is quality.I had a very good time on the campaign with Mrs King. She is an excellent campaigner. She is an impressive performer and I cannot understand why she is not seeking the leadership of the Labour Party because I do think that she would wipe the floor with the four current contenders. Indeed my favourite meeting—I do not know what Mrs King’s favourite meeting was—was in Island Bay—Kris Faafoi: One when you weren’t there.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —I was at all of them—when a man followed me down the street yelling that I was working for the CIA. Perhaps he had had a tip-off from his sources about my new portfolios; it was just that he got the wrong intelligence agency. It was all jolly good fun. No dirty politics in Rongotai—well apart from the people who defaced my billboards—but it was all good solid fun. Some of Mrs King’s billboards were defaced as well and I was really quite upset about that.I want to say something about the various portfolios for which I have responsibility. Of course my new portfolio responsibilities have necessitated my handing over the arts culture and heritage portfolio. It is a fantastic portfolio and as can be seen from Mrs Barry in the House today I think she is going to be a superb Minister for the arts. She could possibly be even better than Allan Highet who I think it is commonly accepted was our greatest Minister for the arts. She knows that there is more to arts than self-promotion unlike some other Ministers for the arts and I confidently predict that the golden age of the arts that I have spoken about so often is about to morph into the platinum age.I am pleased to be Associate Minister for Māori Development again and I very much look forward to working with that great Minister Te Ururoa Flavell on a number of important matters particularly reform of Te Ture Whenua Māori. I think this is one of the biggest pieces of economic reform for many many years and I would be delighted to meet with the new Labour MPs to talk to them about the potential that this has. The Ministry for Primary Industries report published a few years ago said: “Get this right and it is worth over $8 billion to the Māori economy over 10 years and could be worth 3600 jobs.” so it is worth putting in the effort. It is not about—as we heard during the campaign—doing something to destroy the jurisdiction of the Māori Land Court but is about expanding the jurisdiction and making sure that we do the right thing there.I very much look forward as you can imagine to working on Treaty settlements. Ngāpuhi Hauraki Ngāti Tūwharetoa Taranaki iwi Wairoa Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa—these are all major settlements and I am very much looking forward to getting stuck in there.I particularly want to say how delighted I am that Ron Mark is back in the House. I have been very involved with Ron over a number of years working on the Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa claim. I know that because he is back here he has had to hand it over but he did a great job. I confidently predict that he will soon be the leader of New Zealand First. I think we have seen a number of appalling contributions from Mr Peters since the House has been back. He has no interest in being here any longer and he is already counting down the days.On the subject of leaders in waiting I also want to welcome James Shaw to the House a person whom I have known for some years and a person of whom I have a very high opinion. I am delighted that he is going to be making his maiden speech immediately after me. One of the more pleasant aspects of standing in Rongotai quite apart from the fact that Mrs King is such a jolly good sport was when James Shaw turned up to debates instead of Russel Norman. There were two positives in that. Mr Shaw is not an ideologue. He is a practical and pleasant individual and more in line I think with the way the German Green Party has developed. The German Greens seem to me at least to be a principled environmental party not a dogmatic left-wing rabble that talks down to people. I have to say I have lost count of the number of times I have seen iwi representatives in the gallery visibly laughing at the contribution of Green Party members on Treaty bills.When the Greens move on from their present anti-establishment phase I know that Mr Shaw will be waiting in the wings to take them into Government and I wish him all the very best. Then all he is going to need to do is replace Catherine Delahunty Jan Logie Eugenie Sage and some of the other Green comedians in the Green caucus and I think it will be a real party.Finally I want to say something about the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS. I am very privileged to hold those portfolios. In the few weeks I have had responsibility for those jobs I have come to respect those people and the very important work they do. They are the unsung guardians of our liberty and we are going to have a debate on aspects of those organisations in the next few weeks but I want to acknowledge the very dedicated and capable people whom I have met and who I know are committed to securing the freedom of New Zealanders. Obviously they cannot talk very much about what they do but the work they do is very important and I acknowledge it.I certainly hope that in this Parliament at least the intelligence questions that we as members of Parliament are going to have to face will not be dealt with in a partisan way. Debate is good; debate is necessary but using the intelligence agencies to get at the Prime Minister for example is wholly unsatisfactory. I hope as it is very important for this country that the two big beasts of politics if you like—the National Party and the Labour Party—work together to create a consensus in this area. As Minister responsible for those agencies let me say to the Acting Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and to others on the Opposition benches that I will be seeking to work with them so that we can rebuild that bipartisan consensus.JAMES SHAW (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. May I start first by thanking the Attorney-General for his most whimsical of contributions.I would like to take this opportunity to speak a little about the past a little about the present and a little about the future. The privilege to serve in this Parliament was given to me by all those who gave their party votes to the Green Party in this year’s election. I thank them all. I pledge to do my utmost to live up to their hopes and their expectations. In particular I would like to thank the people of my electorate Wellington Central 30 percent of whom voted Green at this year’s election. Over 300 people volunteered on the Green campaign in Wellington Central this year. Thank you all so much for everything that you did. You are an amazing group of people. That 30 percent belongs to you. I am proud to be associated with you.I am proud also to be a Wellingtonian. I was born here in 1973. Surviving on only her teacher’s salary my mother Cynthia Shaw raised me and somehow managed to save enough to send me to a private primary school Scots College. Later I transferred to Wellington High School where occasionally I went to class.My mother grew up on a farm called Waiwhero near Ōpōtiki. She and her brother and sisters were the last generation to grow up on that farm which had been in the family for nearly a century. They were the first generation to go to university to live in the cities and to travel the world. My first ancestors in New Zealand were Charles John Shaw and Annie Mathilda Baggett. They were married in St John’s Church in Christchurch in 1867. Annie was the granddaughter of a Jamaican plantation slave worth £80 in an 1807 inventory. Charles Shaw grew up in Somerset in the UK. His older brother William died fighting in India in a struggle for independence that the victorious empire referred to as the Indian Mutiny. After that Charles’ father thought that his prospects might be brighter in New Zealand and he packed him off here with a saddle a bridle spurs and a double-barrelled shotgun.My mother is here today with my brilliant beautiful wife Annabel. Annabel and I were married in January of 2013. Six months later the right to marry the person whom you love was extended to same-sex couples couples like my mother and her partner of 30 years Susanne who helped raise me. They are here along with many members of my family. I thank them and I acknowledge them all. My story is woven in with their stories.In their speeches friends of mine in the seats opposite are fond of occasionally referring to their conservative heroes like Margaret Thatcher. Well Margaret Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to warn about the problem of climate change. Thatcher trained as a chemist. She understood that you cannot change the chemical composition of the atmosphere without consequences. In a speech to the United Nations in 1989 she said: “What we are now doing to the world … by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate … is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”Thatcher was right. In 2013 New Zealand was hit by our worst storm in 60 years. It left 30000 Wellington homes without power; some for up to a week. It set the city back $4 million in direct clean-up costs. Around the country it resulted in $31 million in insurance claims. That summer of the same year we had our worst drought in 70 years. It cost New Zealand $498 million in lost exports. Treasury estimates that this drought cost our economy over $1.5 billion. It was the worst drought in 70 years. It was the worst storm in 60 years. It was the warmest winter on record. There were billions of dollars in costs and damages all in the same 6 months.I am 41 years old. In just those 41 years fully half of all of the planet’s wildlife has been extinguished. Thousands of species have become extinct. This is ecocide—the destruction not just of species but of habitats and life support systems that they need to survive. We know that the cause of this carnage is economic and that the solution is political.Annie’s grandmother was a slave in a time in which slavery was seen by many as a vital component of the global economy. The abolition of slavery was posed as a threat to financial stability. Charles’ brother William was a colonial soldier during a time in which India was the jewel of the British Crown and empires were considered necessary for the expansion of wealth and trade. Annie herself was not allowed to vote and people opposed to the suffrage movement argued that giving women the vote would lead to the breakdown of civilisation. There would be a battle between the sexes. Society would crumble as women became militant and unruly which is just as well because the Green Party draws much of its strength from militant unruly women.People pollute the atmosphere. They destroy rivers ecosystems and species for the same reasons that they used slave labour or seized land belonging to a race of people whom they considered inferior—because they can. If people can maximise profits and reduce costs by polluting the environment they will do so because the market incentivises that behaviour. I am a huge fan of the market. When it comes to setting prices and allocating scarce resources it generally beats the alternatives hands down. But the market is not sentient. It is not magical. It does not know that habitats are being eradicated that species are being extinguished or that the climate is changing. We need to tell the market that this is happening. We can do it the same way that we told the market that we would not tolerate slavery colonialism or limits on suffrage.Through the political system we change the law. Just as we believe that we have an inherent fundamental and inalienable right to life liberty and security of person we can eradicate ecocide by extending to Earth’s other inhabitants the same legal protections that we enjoy. Corporations already have legal personhood. Why not actual living things? There are already precedents for this in Aotearoa. Both Te Urewera and the Whanganui River now have legal personhood. They have the right not to be polluted the right not to be degraded the right to exist—inherent fundamental and inalienable just like us.There is always controversy about the expansion of rights. Whenever the status quo is threatened there are always doomsayers warning that civilisation will collapse or vested interests warning that the economy will be destroyed. But the changes that seemed so threatening to so many people never are in hindsight and the warnings that seemed so serious always sound absurd to subsequent generations.In my 20s I left New Zealand. I joined AIESEC the Association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales. Founded in the aftermath of World War II to promote peaceful relations between nations AIESEC was and is the world’s largest student-run student exchange programme. I went to work with it in Brussels. Then I moved to London where I worked as a business consultant for 12 years first as a manager in the chairman’s office at PricewaterhouseCoopers then at Future Considerations an organisational development consultancy that I helped to establish. My specialty was in working with business teams to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems. In my time I have worked with groups of people in over 30 countries and I have travelled to more than 50. I have learnt that underneath all of our differences there are values that are common to all of us no matter how incomprehensible or alien we seem to each other—which should serve me well here.Last year we were working with a village near Lake Bhimtal in the foothills of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand India. The village was on the edge of a bamboo forest that theoretically enjoyed full protection and yet the people from the village relied on bamboo that they harvested illegally from the forest. The traditional sources of bamboo were going because of dramatic changes in rainfall patterns. The forest park rangers were in conflict with the villagers. The villagers were losing what little livelihood they had. Their children were leaving the mountains to work for factories and call centres in Delhi. When we sat down with these people we had no idea what the solution to their problem would be. As it turned out part of the answer was to get the forest park rangers to bend the rules and to allow the villagers to enter the forest and continue to harvest the bamboo. In return the villagers agreed to plant two bamboo seedlings for every one that they took. It was a simple solution; it just had not occurred to the forest park rangers or to the villagers because of the adversarial relationship between them.When we are presented with this conflict between the economy and the environment it is almost always a false choice. There is almost always a solution that delivers both. The solution is not always obvious when you start out. Problems and conflicts that seem unsolvable have solutions. The hard part is getting the different parties to work together to find them.I enter Parliament as a member of our country’s loyal Opposition. My role is in part to hold to account to challenge and to speak truth to power but I am not committed to partisanship for its own sake. Political tribalism is I believe the greatest barrier to creating enduring solutions to the great challenges of our time. I do not know what the answers are. I believe that the notion that anyone here thinks that they have the answer is itself a dangerous thing. It is a pretence that we feel forced to maintain for purposes of political theatre.I do know that we need to change the way that we see ourselves and our relationship with the world. I know that those changes will scare some people and that there will be warnings about the destruction of the economy and the end of civilisation but as always those changes will be seen as obvious and harmless in hindsight. I know that presently we are stuck. To get unstuck we will all need to let go of some things and to be more committed to finding the answers than to being right or to others being wrong.Time is too short for resignation. Things are too bad for pessimism. It is too big a task for petty politics. It is too important for partisanship. These things we must transcend and transform. If any other member of this House from any political party or any member of the public listening hears this challenge and wants to rise to it my door is open. Thank you.MARAMA FOX (Māori Party):E Te Mana Whakawā nei rā te mihi mahana ki a koe anō rā ki Te Whare hoki. I tērā wiki i tū ake au ki te tuku ki tērā o ngā hōia kua hinga ā e tika me mihi ki a rātou katoa kua mate. Kei ngā ringa o Te Atua e karapoti nei i a rātou i tōna korowai nei aroha. Rātou ki a rātou ka tika. Ā ki a tātou te hunga ora nei ko tātou te hunga i whakatutuki i ō rātou nā wawata tēnā tātou katoa. Ko wai tēnei e tū ake nei? Ā he uri o ngā iwi o Te Ikaroa Rāwhiti o Ngāti Kahungunu Ngāti Porou o Rangitāne hoki. He uri tēnei o te kāhui rangatira o Te Pāremata Māori rātou i hanga i whakarite i ō rātou ake pāremata i runga i te whakaaro kua ngaro rā Te Reo hāpai i ngā hiahia ngā wawata ngā take o ngā iwi Māori o te motu ā ki te whai hoki i ō rātou ake rangatiratanga. Tamahau Mahupuku Hoani Rangitakaiwaho Manihera Te Maari Whatahoro ā me te kuia Niniwa-i-Te Rangi a wai rā hoki wairua mai! Ka tū whakaiti au kei mua i ō rātou nā aroaro kei mua i a koutou aroaro ōku pou ōku rahi. Hoi anō rā ki Te Whare katoa tēnā koutou.[Mr Speaker warm greetings to you and to you as well the House. Last week I got up to deliver a tribute to the soldiers who were killed. It is fitting indeed that one be made to them all who died. They are in the arms of God enveloped in his loving cloak. It is appropriate that they be left among their own. And to us here the living we are the ones to accomplish their aspirations and I salute us all. Who then is this individual standing here before you? Ah it is a descendant of the tribes of Ngāti Kahungunu Ngāti Porou and Rangitāne also of Te Ikaroa Rāwhiti. This then is a progeny of the esteemed company of the Māori Parliament the ones who create and prepare their own parliament upon the view that the very language to lift up the needs aspirations and matters pertaining to the Māori tribes of the nation is gone. They pursue their right to exercise autonomy as well. Tamahau Mahupuku Hoani Tangitakaiwaho Manihera Te Maari Whatahoro the matriarch Niniwa-i-Te Rangi and others come back spiritually! I stand humbly before you my pillars and my greatness and so my thanks to you all the entire House.]Today is an auspicious day. It is a significant day in the history of this country yet there is no pomp and ceremony to mark this day no grandeur no national public holiday and no special programming by our State broadcaster. In fact I would hazard a guess that there may be some seated here in this House who do not know what it is that I refer to. Today is in fact the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Today 179 years ago a confederation of Ngāpuhi chiefs gathered together in Te Hiku o te Ika to sign the article declaring this land its own sovereign State an independent country in its own right—not open for discovery not free to be claimed for princes and principalities but independent; a land with its own customs its own languages its own methods of environmental protection and its own system of justice its own rangatiratanga.Interesting and topical as it is now those chiefs had also previously established their own flag—a symbol of independence flown across the bow of the ships owned by Māori as they sailed throughout the world to trade in the ports of Australia Canada and the United States and a symbol of their nationhood raised to the world to show their independence. If these chiefs were here today what would they think? What would they think of what has become of their nation? Would their flag be branded a racist flag in the way the Māori flag was just the other day by members of this House?It is both interesting and enlightening to read the history of the Declaration of Independence from the indigenous viewpoint provided through Ērima Henare who said: “The words of the declaration come right from the heart of Māori—from the eyes from the mind the face of Māori.”The truth or otherwise of the significance of the Declaration of Independence will not be solved here in my maiden speech. I raise it to bring light to the fact that we continue to express our nationhood in one-dimensional viewpoints. We raise our children on a litany of “Eurocised” history largely neglecting altogether the rich and vibrant history of pre-colonised Aotearoa.On this historic day how do we remember our past? How do we take stock as we act in our present? How do we determine the ingredients needed to forge a pathway for our future? It is only right and proper to acknowledge Dr Pita Sharples for his role in bringing Māori history into our curriculum for the benefit of all our mokopuna and all of Aotearoa.Just a week ago I proudly stood in the House to swear allegiance to the Queen and my commitment to carrying out my duties as a member of Parliament but I was not afforded the honour to do so to the founding unification document of our country the very document that allowed the Queen to assert her sovereignty in this land—to the Treaty itself. Surely if I come here from the Māori roll I come as a representative of the Māori voice. Surely I take my place in this House as a representative of the Treaty partner and should be able to acknowledge the Treaty and the Oath as a partner to the Crown.It was heartening to me to know that every single party in our 51st Parliament attended a karakia taunaki held in Matangireia on the morning of the swearing in. The karakia offered on our behalf were significant. The wairua felt by all present bore testament to the chiefs who signed the Treaty and testament to the contributions of great Māori and non-Māori parliamentarians of the past. I look forward to the day when all will recognise the importance of such remembrance and adherence to the Treaty as a matter of course in the fulfilment of our responsibilities as members of this House and representatives of this great nation. I look forward to the day when I can pledge an oath to carry out my duties in accordance with the law and the Treaty of Waitangi. I also look forward to the day when they will not mean two different things.When I first entered this House I desired to feel a sense of the spirit of this place—this place where debate and conjecture have raged over determining the pathways of our people; this place where our Māori predecessors stood to uphold the unending struggle to assert Māori aspirations; this place where Ngata Pōmare Te Rangi Hīroa Kara Meha and others have spoken and where Matiu Rata Tirikatene Parata Horomia Turia and Sharples have argued the cause of Māori endeavouring to uplift and change the impact of assimilation and colonisation on our people.I recall reading for the first time the debate that raged in the Parliament of the day when discussing the Native Schools Act. I was astounded not just by what was said and done but by the lasting impact of such legislation on the intergenerational lives of our Māori. Here in the Parliament of this country in 1867 they debated whether to exterminate the natives or to civilise them through education but if they were to educate them they needed to do so through a language that was more conducive to human thought. In the debate that followed there was also reference to the fact that “We need to be careful not to hunt them into education as we have hunted them into the selling of their land for fear that it might engender a spirit of resistance.” Hence Māori language was outlawed in this country by an Act of Parliament. The Native Schools Act was entrenched and the native schools were instructed to teach only rudimentary literacy and numeracy to the natives. Instead teachers were encouraged to teach labouring cooking cleaning and nursemaiding—not nursing just nursemaiding—for that is all they were capable of learning.This was indicative of the colonial understanding of the day. This is not a reflection on those who are gathered here. It was after all a long time ago but understand this: that piece of legislation stayed in place in this country for 100 years until 1969. That is generation after generation of our people being told: “Your language is not good enough.” “Your culture is not good enough.” and essentially: “You are just not good enough.” At the very least it is social engineering and cultural genocide.I come to this House as a proud descendant of Papawai the home of Māori Parliament. Papawai is where our Māori Parliament operated from 1892 until 1902. During that time it also met at the settlements of Waipatu Tokaanu Pākirikiri Waiōmatatini Rotorua and Waitangi. It acted as a forum whereby Māori leaders from around the country could discuss issues of the day and as an opportunity for leaders to meet with parliamentarians to discuss legislation that affected Māori. It was the place where my ancestor and hero Niniwa-i-te-rangi stood on marae ātea around the country to promote the Māori Parliament and the concept of kotahitanga or the uniting of Māori to achieve equity and transform lives for the future well-being of the people. She would have made a great Māori Party MP.It is time to stand up and determine that this country has come of age by recognising our duality of nationhood as coined by Hingangaroa Smith. When we can acknowledge our joint history with all of its warts and tragedies perhaps then we can move forward as one nation. I look around this place and I wonder where our joint symbols of nationhood are. Where is the place of Māori? Many continue to debate the necessity of the Māori seats in this House. I put it to you that when there are no longer disparities for Māori in this country then we can remove the Māori seats. When Māori are recognised as value added to our country and not merely entertainment fluff to be rolled out for special occasions then we can remove the Māori seats. When we can converse in Te Reo Māori without the need for a translator then we can remove the Māori seats.Now I hear the murmurings that that will never happen. Well why not? Surely we have proven our worth. Surely our ancestors who have given their lives on the battlefields of this earth have fought the price of citizenship. Surely those of our people who have sacrificed their land their dignity and their traditional knowledge have given more than was necessary to give to share this land and to be acknowledged and valued. When our local governments can look at their numbers of Māori population as an asset and not a deficit then we can move forward as a nation. When we can report wellness and not unwellness and when we can strive for equity and not just equality we can move forward as a nation recognising duality of nationhood becoming truly ambi-cultural and not just bicultural.I know the Western culture. I have been completely assimilated into it. I know the constructs of that culture. I also know my own culture. I am equally versed in the traditions of my ancestors their knowledge and their histories. I regard myself as ambi-cultural—equally versed in the dual cultures of this country. I come here today to forge a place for Māori in this country as value added—as an asset not a deficit—to change the poverty of not just the hand but the poverty of the mind for all of our people to believe there is a real place for Māori in this country through language culture and identity.It is not the only reason I come here today. In the gallery are members of my family hapū and iwi. I stand on their behalf. I am driven forward on their behalf to address those disparities I have referred to. I want to add my voice to those who advocate for our children and to build a nation where our children are not plagued by hunger where our children are not reared on a diet of drug and alcohol-fuelled parties and where our children are not schooled by those who do not know how to say their name taught by those who do not believe in them or harmed and exploited by those who are supposed to protect them.In Wairarapa we know the pain of child mortality and tragic death. In 1992 our naive peace was shattered by the murders of seven of our whānau in the Judds Road massacre. The enduring picture I have of seven coffins lying on our marae ātea surrounded by the mothers sisters aunts and grandmothers of our whānau is both bitter and sweet—sweet at the memory of the outpouring of love that followed. The other picture that will haunt me is that of one large open pit where all seven coffins were lowered into the grave because seven graves side by side could not be dug with strength enough to hold up the walls of earth. As if this tragedy was not enough in the 10 years that followed we lost the Sherman baby the Aplin sisters “Lillybing” and Coral Burrows and we gathered here from Wairarapa were related to them all.When our children suffer in this way then I must stand up. When our young people choose to end their lives instead of live their reality then I must stand. When our children cower in fear on the streets of this nation then I must stand. When our children sleep their nights in the backs of broken-down cars then I must stand. I stand to give voice to those who have lost their voice and the song in their hearts. I stand to find a way to heal and restore love to our homes. I hold fast to a hymn of our church that sweetly reminds the listener:There is beauty all aroundWhen there’s love at homeThere is joy in every soundWhen there’s love at homePeace and plenty here abideSmiling sweet on every sideTime doth softy sweetly glideWhen there’s love at home.The most important work we will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes. When we change what we do in our homes we will change society.That song is the song of Whānau Ora the lyrics of which Tariana Turia has written into the hearts of every person who calls this land home. So I want to acknowledge home and those who have brought me here the kuia and koroua who put my billboards up from Wharekāhika in the north to Ūawa: Kōkā Connie Pāpā Prince Pāpā Erueni and Pāpā Hemo ka tūpou taku māhunga ki mua i a koutou. [Uncle Prince Uncle Herewini and Uncle Hemo I bow my head before you.]Leona Lynlee Auntie Cath Uncle Hōri Hēnare Phyllis Christine Jael Rose Pānia Pānia Kiri Maxine me au tamariki PJ Big Bill Ivy Baden Pete koutou e Takapou werawera nei tā te mihi kore rawa atu ki a koutou katoa. [To you collectively Takapou the warmth of my appreciation to you all is endless.]To the Māori Party membership far and wide who have supported me to stand here today proud to be a representative of the strong and independent Māori voice in this Parliament tū Māori mai! To my family my sisters my brother who has acted as my father and even my dad who I am sure will watch this on YouTube I love you all. You have made me who I am. My children Jordan and your spunky wife Marion; Rikihana and your cheeky wife Mahli our moko Rākainuku; Ririwai and your soft and generous wife Fe and my darling moko Tohumairangi; to Whatahoro the epitome of whose name you bear; and Mānahi—Mānahi I will not forget bubba who was lost to us almost a year ago Lania—and my daughters Te Ao Mārama Mihiroa Aromea and Moeteao I love you so much. The testament of that love is etched on my heart and my puku for ever. To my darling husband whom I have trained to be a super-dad over the last 26 years—we were married 26 years ago today which I just remembered this morning—I am for ever in your debt and care.And finally to the one who is my privilege for I am privileged—not in the way it has been expressed in the past by members of this House but I am privileged—to be raised by a mum who taught me never to allow myself to be treated less than I deserve who taught me I can do anything who taught me to be better than the best I can be and not to be a statistic. You are my privilege—you who drove me 14 hours non-stop during the election when I was too sick to drive myself. There are not enough words to express the gratitude I have to a loving Father in heaven who blessed me with you as a mother.I commit myself to this House. I commit myself to our people. I commit myself to this Government to ensure that those whom I love and those who deserve the love of this nation will have the full benefit of all I am able to give on their behalf. I am excited to work alongside my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell to add to the greatness of this nation built on the greatness of our ancestors.Otirā e Te Whare huri noa i te motu me maumahara nō Rangiātea tātou katoa he tangata rangatira tātou nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.[But at the same time to the House and indeed to those ones throughout the country you must remember that we are all from Rangiātea and a revered lot so acknowledgments salutations and congratulations to you all.]WaiataDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National):Esteemed guests and colleagues friends and family I will start by offering my congratulations to the Prime Minister and the National team for securing a historic win and a well-deserved third term. May I also congratulate all new Ministers and MPs and you Mr Speaker on your re-election. It truly is an honour and a privilege to be part of this high-performing team and to serve my fellow New Zealanders.I would like to especially thank our leader the Rt Hon John Key for being a source of inspiration to me and many other New Zealanders. I would like to acknowledge the National Party leadership team especially the president Peter Goodfellow board members Alastair Bell and Malcolm Plimmer northern regional chair Andrew Hunt and former regional chair Alan Towers. Thank you to the Hon Paula Bennett the Hon Maurice Williamson Belinda Milnes and Ele Ludemann for their encouragement and support. To my campaign chair and team especially Diana Freeman Gavin Logan and Rita Van Pelt—thank you. A special thanks to our volunteers and the Young Nats—you all are amazing individuals. I am also thankful for the tremendous welcome I have received from the community.As my colleagues will agree none of this would have been possible without the support of my family. My husband Ravinder Parmar has given unwavering support. And thanks to our boys Jagmeet who turned 18 a week before the election and voted for the first time and Abhijeet who is 12 and very eager to become a teenager.Earlier this year I was chosen by the National Party as the candidate for the Mt Roskill electorate and I am extremely proud to have repaid its faith in me by winning the critical party vote in Mt Roskill. Now I am a list MP who has the privilege of looking after the Mt Roskill electorate. About 39 percent of the residents in Mt Roskill are of Asian ethnicity which is more than three times the national average of 11.8 percent. Just under half of the people in Mt Roskill in 2013 were born overseas and I am one of them. Mt Roskill reflects the growing diversity of our country and it is clear that the National Party reflects that diversity. Mt Roskill comprises small businesses professionals and hard-working people looking to get ahead in life. I can assure them that my values and those of the National Party align with their goals and aspirations.I was born in India one of four sisters to very hard-working parents. My father Sham Jaswal is now retired after proudly serving in the Indian Air Force for 38 years. As you would expect our home environment mirrored the morals virtues and also the discipline of the armed forces. Actually I am grateful to my dad for that. My mother Kuldeep Jaswal looked after the family and I spent my early years travelling with my parents from one air force base to another. Those early years of changing schools every 3 to 4 years and moving between different air force bases in different states of India helped me to learn about different cultures and lifestyles and also taught me how to make friends quickly. I remember it being a very busy time.Both of my parents worked hard to raise us and to provide for us. Like many of my colleagues education was extremely important in my family. I remember during my final years at school the exciting new field of biochemistry becoming a proper subject and a popular topic of discussion at school which attracted me to the study of biochemistry. I left school wanting to become a scientist to find cures for deadly diseases so I completed a BSc in chemistry and an MSc from the University of Poona India. During this time studying biochemistry I realised the importance of gene cloning strategies to identify the cause or causes of diseases and I decided to do my PhD in this field.But then as is traditional in my culture I married Ravinder in an arranged marriage and came to this amazing country to join him and start a new life with him in New Zealand. On arriving here in 1995 and settling into life in Auckland I wanted to continue my education at the University of Auckland. I was lucky enough to find Associate Professor Nigel Birch at the University of Auckland to supervise my PhD. He is one of New Zealand’s great scientists and he played an important role in making me a scientist. To be technical for a minute for my PhD I investigated a possible role for neuroserpin in neurite outgrowth by its over-expression and under-expression in two types of cell lines. Neuroserpin is a serine protease inhibitor predominantly expressed in neuronal cells during the late stages of neurogenesis and in the adult brain during synaptic plasticity. The result of my research suggested a new role for neuroserpin in neurite outgrowth in-vitro and my published papers highlighted the physiological importance of neuroserpin with emphasis on its role in neurite outgrowth neurite regeneration and maintenance in the nervous system. Simplified my work looked at whether it was possible to use it to re-establish connections in the brain. My postdoctoral work built on this research and then later I moved into research on retinitis pigmentosa—an inherited degenerative eye disease that causes progressive vision loss.By this time while working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Auckland I felt it was time to put my training into a more practical realm and I decided to move into the commercial sector. After spending some time in the scientific commercial sector I decided to use my skills to move into business and I joined my husband to start up natural health products manufacturing within our existing facility which was being run by Ravinder to make confectionery and chocolate products. My days in business were focused on product development improving efficiencies and productivity and providing the best possible environment for our staff.My time in my manufacturing business gave me an in-depth understanding of our local and international markets our food manufacturing sector and our regulations and how we compare with international markets and how our manufacturing in New Zealand is distinctive from other countries. Our local innovation keeps us one step ahead in the business world. We Kiwis are innovative people and full of ideas to start businesses. Although owning and running a business is stressful busy and often intense it is also rewarding. I am eager to work for our dynamic business owners so that their hard work pays off and their great responsibility is recognised.Like my family I have always believed in hard work. From Monday to Friday I was a scientist and then later a businesswoman and on the weekends I worked as a broadcaster for 16 years on an Indian radio station in Auckland plus of course there was my role on the Families Commission and the Film and Video Labelling Body of New Zealand. Somehow I managed to fit in raising our two boys and putting in more than a decade working in the community especially in the field of domestic violence. My values of strong caring families and communities personal responsibility and equal citizenship and opportunities mirror those of the National Party.During my time in this hallowed precinct I am eager to make a positive difference in a number of areas. Firstly in science and innovation and in particular the conversion of science to business. We are producing very highly skilled scientists and I do not want New Zealand to be just a breeding ground for good scientists; we need to provide opportunities for them to explore their scientific vision in our homeland to attract more interest and to retain that pride in good work. We need to supercharge the activation of the amazing research that is currently under way in New Zealand institutions and apply it to our businesses our industries and our products. I believe there are huge potential advantages just waiting for New Zealand to seize on.I am passionate about enabling and encouraging business. Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and 97 percent of New Zealand businesses are small businesses. If big corporates are doing well or otherwise we hear about it but small businesses often do not make the news even though they make up a significant part of our economy. They provide a career for those who value economic independence they supply components and services to large companies and they contribute to innovation and invention—something that all economies require. But behind every small business is a group of really hard-working people in different industry sectors and I think they need attention so they can keep making the contribution they are to our economy. I believe there is a lot more that needs to be done to help them thrive. I respect and admire the courage of all business people out there and those entrepreneurs who are starting up new companies.I believe in family values and in the need to mount a coordinated effort to stamp out domestic violence and to build resilience and respect in family relationships. For many years I have worked in this sector and have seen the impact of family violence on family members communities and in the long run on societies. We cannot afford to skirt round this issue if we want to increase the quality of life for New Zealand families. Plus it makes fiscal sense. Family violence has been estimated to cost the equivalent of the Canterbury earthquakes on our economy every year. Equally as important though is the significant negative impact that domestic violence has on children’s well-being—psychologically and socially. As an advocate for gender equality I also believe in merit. I am a proud member of a party and a caucus that do not believe in a quota system for women—I am here purely on merit and I would not have it any other way. I think many other Kiwi women feel this way. Equally although I am proud of my Indian heritage New Zealand is the only place I call home. I do not consider myself to be just an ethnic MP; I consider myself to be an MP who brings many perspectives and experiences along with my ethnicity which I will apply to the serious and important work of an MP in this House.With a multi-professional background as a scientist businesswoman community advocate broadcaster and mother and wife with strong family values I have come to the House determined to make a positive difference in the scientific world the business world and in our communities. I hope to use my professional background and my scientific background to simultaneously bring imagination and patience to my work here having learnt as a scientist that sometimes it takes multiple approaches to get an outcome. As a businesswoman I bring the energy drive and eagerness that are needed in a business person in order to see growth. As a community advocate who has worked in the heart-wrenching field of domestic violence I bring an appreciation of the effort and hardships of our communities.I am truly grateful for all of the experiences in my life which have given me the opportunity to evolve into the person I am today. Since becoming a New Zealander I have had 20 years of opportunities and I believe it is now my turn to give back. It is a privilege and an honour to be a member of a team that is working for New Zealand—the team led by the Rt Hon John Key. Thank you.ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua):Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa. It is an honour to be able to address the House today in this august Chamber rich in history personalities and its politics. But I would like to begin with a thank you to my wife Tina and our three boys who have afforded me this opportunity. I know that Parliament brings challenges to family life and to have your support is important to me. I was just showing my boys around the Parliamentary Library and the first book they picked up was called Twitter For Dummies—that is my boys. I would also like to thank my parents especially my 92-year-old father who is unable to join my mother here today. Mum and Dad you have always been open to the opportunity of the possible. This has been a powerful and liberating force throughout my life. I also acknowledge that I am here primarily because of the strength of the National Party and the support of the good people of Hunua. But first a little about my journey here to Pāremata Aotearoa.I am a fifth-generation New Zealander. The Bayly family origins are a tiny village called Clawton on the border of Cornwall and Wales. In the 19th century three brothers decided that they wanted a better life. Before leaving they walked to the nearest village found three sisters married them and then set sail on the Amelia Thompson arriving in New Plymouth in 1841. My great-uncle was a fluent speaker of Te Reo and ended up acquiring land in Kai Iwi near Whanganui where I grew up. My mother’s connection with New Zealand came through Eliza Pattle who was married to Edward Gibbon Wakefield principal of the New Zealand Company.My identical twin brother Paul and I were the youngest of six boys. Our life on the farm was mayhem but great fun. People often say: “Your poor mother with all those boys.” Here she is in the gallery today and she looks pretty good to me. I can remember going on only one holiday as a family. All of us boys were squeezed into the back of the Rambler Rebel. We got a flat tyre before we left the garage we fought all the way to Napier and it rained all weekend. Never again! But that suited me fine as I loved nothing better than riding horses and mustering sheep and cattle.My first school Waitahinga School had nine pupils. At lunchtime we would jump the fence and go looking for wild deer in the bush. However academically it was less than memorable. But looking back now I do not think it mattered. What was much more important was the sense of community it taught me. My father helped build the school swimming pool and my mother drove the school bus. Everyone knew everyone and helped each other. There is nothing more powerful than the spirit of community.At age 11 it all changed. Paul and I were dispatched to boarding school but we loved it—sport friends and new experiences. The school was steeped in tradition and hierarchy—and I daresay much like this House. After graduating from university I trained as an accountant and then spent 10 years working with merchant banks in New Zealand and in London. It was the heady days of the 1990s. Our firm in England was listing a new company on the London Stock Exchange every week and we also managed some of the world’s largest privatisations. Exciting times. But like many we made a choice. Tina and I came home. Since then we have focused on managing our own businesses. We have been doing that for the past 18 years—some successful some less so—but the experience has been invaluable.Managing a business is a challenge. It is about strategy. It is about products and services and meeting changing needs. It is about dealing with people but most of all it is about perseverance. I want to acknowledge today all the hard-working business owners who spend countless hours thinking and worrying about their own companies and how they are going to pay the wages next week.But life is not all about business. They say you can take the boy out of the farm but not the farm out of the boy. Having a sedentary job I have always turned to the outdoors. I was a Territorial officer in the New Zealand Army and then in the British Parachute Regiment. When I was in my twenties jumping out of a C-130 Hercules at 800 feet was exciting. Nowadays I have got to tell you you would have to push me out. It is not until you have commanded a squadron of Leopard tanks in the desert or seen an A-10 “Warthog” aircraft in action or felt the reverberation of a grenade going off that you can start to appreciate the skill and dedication of our armed forces both current and those who have gone before us. There is nothing more resourceful and tough as a New Zealand soldier. It is no wonder they are in demand by our allies around the world. Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted the need to have a rapidly mobile and credible Defence Force and the investment by the Government now looks well timed. Further developing peacekeeping and civil emergency capability is I believe a natural progression.Like so many Kiwis I love sport. I have competed in three Coast to Coasts and numerous adventure races and marathons. What I like about these long-distance events is the personal challenge and the people. These races are honest. There is no room for ego. You meet amazing athletes who are modest sincere and dedicated—great people to be around.Over time it gradually dawned on me that the young bucks were getting faster than me so I took up mountaineering. You may have to go up but at least you do not have to run. After climbing some of our superb mountains in New Zealand including Aoraki / Mount Cook the summit of my adventuring was a visit to Antarctica in 2013. There is something very special about being the first person to climb a mountain and then to have the privilege of being able to name it or to drag a sledge high up on the exposed polar plateau at minus 30 degrees Celsius to the South Pole. Hauling your own possessions and food knowing you are hundreds of miles from safety is not just exhilarating; it is also enlightening.Speaking of special places this is also true of the electorate that I represent. I state categorically that I am here to serve all the people of Hunua. I want to acknowledge my campaign chair Romi Patel and thank also the many volunteers who came out during the election. It is both humbling and a privilege to follow a long line of great parliamentarians who have represented this electorate—these include the Rt Hon William Massey who as the Prime Minister stood on the steps of this building 100 years ago as the Governor-General announced that New Zealand was at war with Germany. Then there was Sir William—also known as Bill—Birch our hard-working former Minister of Finance and more recently Dr Paul Hutchison who diligently represented our electorate and made a significant contribution to this House as the chair of the Health Committee.When I contemplated a new challenge in my life—that of coming into Parliament—I knew I could do so only to represent an electorate for which I felt a close affinity. This is how I feel about Hunua. It spans the windswept Awhitu peninsula on the Tasman Sea. It takes in the townships of Waiuku and Pukekohe with all its rich red soils and goes up into the beautiful Hunua Ranges. It traverses the verdant green areas of Clevedon and Whitford before finishing up at the Waitematā taking in the pōhutukawa-lined coast stretching from Beachlands and Maraetai to Orere Point.During the election campaign I knocked on 14000 doors. There is a certain honesty you get when you stand on someone’s back doorstep and talk to them about their lives and issues.One particular matter I wish to achieve is to work with the people of Ngāti Te Ata to conclude a just and equitable settlement with the Crown.I hope this gives the House an insight into my journey to this place and the experiences that will inform my views and my conscience as a member of Parliament.It was always an easy decision to stand as a National Party candidate. This Government has shown significant skill and judgment in steering this country through very difficult financial times. I do not think many New Zealanders fully appreciate the gravity of the turbulent international events that have gripped nations around the world over the past 6 years. This Government got us there without compromising the level of financial support provided to families and individuals in need. That took faith. However we can take no pride in the fact that there is a group that feels disconnected. The causes are many and this is one of the issues that drew me into politics. I think that putting the individual and family at the centre of the issue rather than focusing just on government processes is to be commended but more is required. We need to continue to grow our economy as this will deliver more employment and better-paying jobs.For the first time in modern history New Zealand is now well placed geographically to benefit from being on the doorstep of the most dynamic economies in the world. This physical advantage together with the power of digital connectivity and improvements in logistics means that the traditional issue of our tyranny of distance is being transformed into proximity of opportunity and that opens up exciting possibilities.There are a number of ways we might further improve our economic performance. We need to continue to do what we are good at. It is great to have a strong primary sector but our economy is much wider than that. We must continue to value our manufacturing sector and developments such as 3D printing are ideal for niche New Zealand original equipment manufacturers. Expanding the professional and creative industries is also essential given they account for 25 percent of this country’s total exports. We must better link our universities to business by carving a symbiotic and seamless pathway from study to jobs and we need to build capability by supporting and upskilling our entrepreneurs as they are the ones who have the potential to build significant companies over time.Another key area of interest is environmental management. When it comes to these matters talk is cheap. My credentials are that I have established a composting and recycling business processing over 40000 tonnes of material each year into beneficial products for horticulturalists and farmers. I have also worked with a number of clean-energy companies and I wonder why New Zealand is not a world leader in electric car usage in smart home energy systems and in harnessing excess electricity for hydrogen generation. I stand alongside so many New Zealanders who believe the environment is precious and must continue to be protected.In closing may I say that it is an honour and a privilege to be part of this new community here in Parliament representing the people of Hunua. I have never dodged a challenge I am not afraid of adversity and I value open and robust debate but I cannot and will not abide intolerance prejudice and injustice. I intend to follow these principles here in Parliament. Thank you and I look forward to working with you all.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Ko 1862 te waka Ko Mauao te maunga ko Wairoa te awa ko Pākehā te iwi ko Poutūterangi te marae ko Todd Muller ahau.[Greetings to you Mr Speaker. 1862 is the canoe Mauao is the mountain Wairoa is the river the people are predominantly of European descent the courtyard is Poutūterangi and I am Todd Muller.]This afternoon I rise with immense gratitude to the people of the Bay of Plenty electorate for their strong support of the John Key - led National Party and for placing their trust in me as their local MP. It is a realisation of a childhood dream and I commit to work for all of you and to advocate without fear or favour and for the good of all our community. To begin I wish to acknowledge the Borell and Bidois whānau of Te Puna who have given me this very special korowai to wear this evening. I am very deeply humbled.There are many whose love and support have enabled me to stand here before you today. Firstly my parents Mike and Trish Muller who are in the public gallery—thank you for your unconditional love your values and unerring belief in my potential. Thank you for showing me the power of fusing a loving family with hard work. The more I observe society the keener my appreciation grows. I wish to acknowledge my three younger brothers: Gavin Craig and Nathan. We were a tight family growing up who made our own fun largely around backyard cricket rugby and the kind of fierce hand-to-hand combat that only brothers of a certain age can understand. Thirty years on the hand-to-hand combat is now verbal and I remain blessed with the certainty of a family’s love.To my wife Michelle thank you for believing in me for being willing to walk our life’s journey together and for being such a wonderful mum to Aimee Bradley and Amelia. To my darling children thanks for your understanding and acceptance that in coming to Parliament daddy will not always be at home. My biggest work in progress remains being a loving dad and husband and I will continue to strive to be there for them when they need me.I wish to acknowledge my predecessor the Hon Tony Ryall. His extraordinary performance as Minister of Health is well documented but it is his integrity and work ethic for the people of the Bay of Plenty that is the benchmark I will seek to emulate. I wish to thank the local Bay of Plenty National Party; campaign chairman Sean Newland; electorate chairman Mark Bayley; my campaign team; and the hundreds of volunteers for their tireless commitment to our cause. I am humbled by your support.Finally my thanks to those who have backed me throughout my career often affording me opportunities that my experience did not justify particularly the late Professor Lew Fretz at Waikato University; you Mr Speaker in my earlier days in the National Party; Doug Voss at Zespri; and more recently Theo Spierings at Fonterra. In particular I would like to thank the Rt Hon Jim Bolger who plucked me from party obscurity to be his executive assistant throughout his second term a role that took me across the country to engage with the diverse families and communities that make up this extraordinary place. Jim I have always been extremely grateful for your support now spanning across two decades. You are a statesman of great mana and I am very honoured you are here today.I was born in Te Aroha 45 years ago but the Bay of Plenty is home. Like many before us and particularly after us our family moved from somewhere else to the bay 40 years ago for a better life. In my parents’ case it was a move from dairy to a new industry that was just emerging from the corners of citrus orchards in Te Puke and Te Puna. I went to the local school at Te Puna then Tauranga Boys’ College and then the University of Waikato where I followed my passion for public service and its contribution to history.My personal passion stems from two great influences: the power of the written word and the fulfilling power of deeds. Firstly I want to acknowledge the unnamed salesman who convinced my parents to use their savings—such as they were—to buy the latest World Book Encyclopedia in 1978. I devoured those books in particular the sections on American Presidents. It fired my imagination to such an extent that I saw myself as a future United States President constitutional challenges notwithstanding. I even wrote a book as a 10-year-old that saw me elected Vice-President of the United States as a very young man in my 20s becoming President upon the very unfortunate death of the then President and then going on to serve 13 consecutive terms until I think I died of old age. My mum still has the story hidden away in our attic and I suspect it is best for it to remain there.For the power of deeds it was my grandparents Henry and Eileen Skidmore former Mayor and Mayoress of Te Aroha who gave close to 60 years to that small mountain-bound community and their impact on me has been profound. Family faith and community were at the core of their lives and their example shines for me still. They demonstrated how selfless service not only enriches those who receive it but for those who give it enables a life that has distinct meaning. I have always wanted to serve my community and for me the vehicle for that service is the National Party. The National Party has been an integral part of my life since 1989 when I was welcomed into my first meeting with open arms encouraged to speak and to contribute and—typical of National Party values—the more I did the more opportunities opened up.We are a party made up of ordinary New Zealanders committing extraordinary levels of personal time and commitment to a philosophy that has anchored our own lives over many years thereby proving it is fit for the lives of generations to come. I believe that the National Party philosophy speaks to the aspirations of the families of the Bay of Plenty and the values of our country. Our belief in family—though we are singular individuals we are made complete through the shared effort and experiences that family brings. Our belief in individual enterprise—hard work and application should be encouraged and rewarded whilst acknowledging the need for resilience and perspective because life is often unfair. Our belief in the importance of constant self-improvement—education is a lifelong experience that is neither defined by nor concluded with a graduation ceremony and certificate. Our belief in the value of personal dignity particularly for our elderly—our elderly should be our most venerable but can particularly in their twilight years become some of our most vulnerable. We must get the balance right between supporting those who have much to live with those who have given much already. Our belief in the right to personal security be it in our communities or our homes—our commitment to public safety must be underpinned by tough deterrence for those who breach our trust. And finally our belief in a compassionate community that looks out for others and provides a pathway for improvement that is matched with expectations of self-motivation and individual responsibility. These are the values of the National Party. They speak to the aspirations of the country and will be my guiding stars.I am very privileged to represent the Bay of Plenty electorate. It wraps round the city of Tauranga and is made up of the small communities of Āpata Ōmokoroa Whakamārama Te Puna to the west; Kaimai Ōropi Ōhauiti to the south; and Welcome Bay Maungatapu Arataki Ōmanu Matapihi and the future city of Papamoa to the east.It was a very different place when I was a boy when the regional population was just over 30000 and the communities were mostly rural. All my childhood memories are about harvesting the bounty—in our case kiwifruit—and the sense of place and space that this remarkable area affords. And I recall the families coming year after year and the challenge and opportunity that growth brought. In 1974 no one with perhaps the exception of local icons Roly Earp and Bob Owens could imagine dairy kiwifruit and avocados so developed or a community city of our size with the supporting roading and port infrastructure of the excellence we have. Now we stand in 2014 as a city of 120000 and a region spread from Katikati to Te Puke of 175000 and growing at over 3000 a year.My vision for this community looking out to 2030 is a vibrant diverse region that energetically and innovatively connects itself to the world confidently drawing on the unique talents and character that underpin our small communities of today. Our region is one of the fastest growing in the country and we should welcome and celebrate that growth and be demanding of our city planners and of Government for the ongoing investment that is required for our region to thrive. One in five Bay of Plenty locals is from offshore and half of them are from the UK. Our growth story to date is one of warmly welcoming new people from around the country and around the world. Long let this continue.I commit to the people of the Bay of Plenty that I will add my voice and efforts to theirs and always look to promote our natural advantages of climate soil vocational and tertiary education innovation and manufacturing excellence and diversity of people and ideas which together with our global port gateway is increasingly taking our uniqueness to the world.Throughout my career I have had the privilege of travelling extensively throughout our country. It has nurtured in me a fascination for people and a yearning to understand their stories and observe the power of place and belonging in their lives. I believe our country will for ever be defined by the land and its influence on the people. Its abundance sustains families and communities and its physical beauty—almost mythical in its scale and power—drives our collective creativity and inspires our innovation a forever changing landscape with a brooding intensity and an energy that is palpable. Aotearoa gets under our skin and the longer we have been here the more intrinsic the connection to the land becomes.Our tangata whenua have specific words that speak to the power of this place but you can see it in the sixth-generation farmers who express kaitiakitanga in different words but showcase it on their farms. You can see it play out in those who seek to protect it from others who wish to come and make a life here. You can see it in those who wish to tame it or in those who wish for it to be for ever locked in yesterday’s memories. You can see it in our new migrants who shed tears when sharing the impact of moving here.The power of this place is real and it affords us as a people with huge privileges and opportunities. We need to be careful that our innate and subconscious awe of our environment does not blind us to the opportunities that it presents us. We have one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world. Close to 90 percent of our water flows to the sea. We have a productive basin underpinned by sustainable practices that are admired by many around the world. We have trading partners who see value in what we can offer and are willing to pay for it. Let us use our natural resources to their fullest potential. I am not advocating plundering New Zealand with 19th century tools and ideas; I speak of alloying the world’s best technologies and innovations with some of the greatest natural resources and talent in the world for the betterment of our people.There is always risk in any endeavour but I firmly believe that there is greater risk in inaction. Not only will we deny ourselves the opportunity to improve our standard of living for generations to come but we are quite frankly denying history. Since the dawn of time scarce and valued resources are rarely left untouched. We have the opportunity to use our natural resources and advantages for the benefit of our people or to know for certain that some other people of some other age yet to come will do the same.The capacity of this country to imagine this future one that leverages our natural resources with our people and for our people in a way that acknowledges our genuine respect for place and space is one of the defining challenges for this generation. It is about fusing the environment the economy and our education system with the values of our country and the values of the National Party. Captain Cook’s Bay of Plenty is as good a place as any to start. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.Sitting suspended from 6.04 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch for the opportunity to speak. I do want to firstly acknowledge you in your role and the new Speakers of the House. Thank you very much for everything that you do in keeping order in the House. I want to welcome our new members and we got to hear some of them give their maiden speeches today and I want to greet the returning members. It has been an honour to return this term to experience the full ceremony and celebration of the Commission and State Openings of the 51st Parliament and I send my regards to the constituents of Christchurch East for affording me the privilege of representing them again.I listened with interest to the Speech from the Throne for this Government’s commitment to our people on housing and I am sad to say that I was saddened by what I heard. Our people know that shelter decent housing and a roof over their heads are the most basic rights and it is absolutely the State’s responsibility to house its people. Our Government has in the past built our nation on this fundamental premise and it is our responsibility to ensure that our people have shelter. We need to look further and say that this shelter must be accessible and that there are no barriers that exist to decent housing whether that barrier be the lack of income lack of availability or the colour of your skin whether you are a beneficiary or a paid employee or whether you have a disability or a mental illness. This Government is saying to our people: “You are on your own and furthermore we are going to provide private landlords with more stock with which to charge exorbitant rents and force low-income people out of the housing market and into cars and garages.”I believe that the provision of housing is a core function of the State and the reasons are simple. Housing and shelter are important. They are basic human rights and they are rights that provide protection from the elements and those things that might harm us. They permit us to establish ourselves and to gather and preserve those things around us that are important to us. They provide us with a base from which we can flourish—a safe place to restore and to recover. But it is not just about housing. It is about decent housing that is warm dry and above all affordable.What causes me the most concern is the lack of commitment to ensure that the sell-off of our State houses is not detrimental to those on low incomes and prices them out of the market for a decent home. We are being assured by Minister English that social housing providers will be able to purchase these homes for their clients arguably the same people currently living in them. I would ask why the State should not continue to be the provider. The State has the resources to maintain these properties. It is cost-effective to hold a large portfolio of property to contract at the best Government rates for maintenance and repair. Again I ask why the Government should not continue with State housing.We have seen plenty of examples of the benefits of State housing and what has been provided to members on both sides of the House and I include the Prime Minister in that line-up. There is a need for housing; no one can deny that. So why does this Government want to sell State houses because clearly the Government is the best provider of social housing in terms of affordability and in terms of being able to maintain and repair these houses? The State has been a good provider of social housing as evidenced by members of this House. It comes down to one thing I believe and that is ideology. The Government does not believe in preserving assets paid for by New Zealanders for the use and enjoyment of New Zealanders. This is wrong.These State houses have been the backbone of strong communities and building decent lives for 80 years and we should be building more of them not flogging them off and flogging them off with no guarantee of any new homes to be built to make up the shortfall in our communities. Why should we not sell these homes? Let me quote John A Lee who knew a thing or two about housing: “It is well to remember that good housing is essential for a good community.” Being able to put down roots and develop links and connections into that community and to take advantage of community capital the social capital takes time and people have to have time to do so regardless of whether they own or they rent.There should not be a barrier to long-term residency in a community simply because of your ability to purchase a home or to affordably rent a home. These are not individual benefits; it benefits the community to have well-networked residents who are aware of their neighbours’ situations and supportive of them. A natural disaster is the time when these connections are most apparent and Christchurch is a case study on well-connected communities pulling together and working together through a very difficult time. Decent housing provides good outcomes for children. They will be connected into school and school will be connected into the family. Children are safer women are safer and communities are safer when those connections have been developed and enhanced over time and outcomes are better for families when transience is minimised or eliminated.The relationship of the cost of housing to income is without question the most critical situation that needs addressing and supply plays a significant role in that cost. The housing issue paints a different picture depending on which part of the country you are in. If you are in Auckland or Canterbury experiencing escalating prices this is pricing first-home buyers out of the market. This fuels pressure which flows through the system and those with fewer resources are competing for rents. We know the story; we know it well. It is repeated every day to us by our constituents and by our media. The result is families in cars and caravan parks in tents and in seriously overcrowded unsafe and unhealthy homes putting their friends and families at risk of losing their tenancies. For low-income people and families it is the most insecure time for housing in many years.Here I want to quote Alan Johnson well-known to many who commented on the Government’s record card on housing in his report Give Me Shelter: “A lack of any vision or unifying view of social and affordable housing … A poor understanding of future housing need and a failure to plan for this need … Inadequate funding and an absence of any funding models which might address housing need in an effective way and on a sustainable basis”. What is the responsible approach to housing? It is one that considers the person’s ability to pay for that housing. This means not only affordability and availability but the income available to pay for that housing which for most of us is the biggest take out of our pay packets each week. This means decent pay raising the minimum wage and setting a target to achieve a living wage in jobs where we value workers with decent conditions adequate rest and meal breaks.At question time in the House today Minister English said that we should not be surprised that the housing programme for sell-off has been signalled for 4 years now and that the Government’s programme will address the serious housing needs. Minister English also admitted that there are serious housing needs which I must say is refreshing to hear given the accusation that our side of the House is always overstating the problem—catastrophising I think the Government calls it. So it is with relief I acknowledge that the Government is finally taking some notice of this. The Minister says that this programme will deliver housing of the right type in the right place of the right condition and of the right size. I do hope that it will deliver for our people. The Minister went on to say that under the Government’s programme of delivering better public services it is taking a better approach to people and that it will be measuring success based on the measures of serious housing need.I can only say that the Government needs a better measure than the one that it is using for reducing child poverty for example because if it is serious about addressing this need and the serious housing need it needs to get real about the impact of its policies on that need. By this I mean the benefit reforms the investment approach to social services and delivering better public services. Do these deliver real solutions to our families? I believe that our families are being put in an impossible situation where based on resources that they have they have no choice. It is not bad decision-making; it is that they do not have choice. Above all I believe that we want a Government that will make it possible for Kiwi families to put down roots and fully participate in a healthy community life.Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):I move That this debate be now adjourned.Motion agreed to.Employment Relations Amendment BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 23 October.Clauses 1 to 3 (continued)DENISE ROCHE (Green):When we were interrupted we were talking about the title and commencement of the bill. I was just explaining the second reason why we should actually be calling this bill the “Undermining Health and Safety Legislation Bill”. The first reason was around the removal of a right—a right—to have a tea break and the impact on workers’ health and safety in those circumstances. The second reason is that this bill also includes the removal of the right for new workers when they start to be offered the same terms and conditions as the collective employment agreement that would be in place on site. It removes that right. What it does say is that those workers are then left on their own. They are then required to negotiate individually with the employer.This is an inroad into the health and safety of workers when you consider that new workers are also in the situation where they are on a 90-day trial which this Government introduced legislation for a couple of terms ago. This means that an environment has been fostered where workers are unable to speak up not only about requiring a tea break but also about any health and safety risks that might be on site. This bill undermines health and safety in that way as well. That is why we should call it the “Undermining Health and Safety Legislation Bill”.But I think that we have a very good reason to call this what it really is which is the 1991 Employment Contracts Act because this bill is a great step backwards. This takes us straight back to what was happening in 1991. There are some of us in the Chamber who were actually working in the industrial relations field at the time who went through with the workers exactly what that legislation meant.The legislation before us mirrors a lot of the same provisions that were in that 1991 Employment Contracts Act specifically around the reduction in the rights of unions to organise with workers the movement away from in those days industry-based bargaining to enterprise bargaining and then breaking it down into individual case bargaining. Make no mistake—this is what this bill is about. It is about bringing things back down to individual-based bargaining. Who wins when that happens? The employer does. We know for a fact that Cabinet briefing papers on this legislation—CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I am very happy to make my speech on the title and commencement provisions of this particular legislation. I want to pick up a point regarding a technical issue that I raised last week with regard to the schedules. I want to particularly refer to clause 3 of the bill which refers to the principal Act. It says: “This Act amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 (the principal Act).” The reason that I raise this is that during the Committee stage I had a bit of an interchange with the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety about some circular wording in a later clause of the bill—in the schedules of the bill—where instead of referring to the principal Act the wording has actually been changed by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to now refer to “this Act” itself rather than to the principal Act.The reason that that is important is for example the provision in clause 2(6) of new schedule 1AA which says: “Part 6A of this Act (as it was immediately before the commencement of the 2013 Act) continues to apply to the restructurings as if the 2013 Act had not been passed.” The reason that that becomes significant is that if the words “this Act” are interpreted to mean this bill that we are now passing then that simply makes no sense whatsoever—it becomes completely circular. Basically it is a double negative that cancels itself out. However if the words “this Act” are taken to mean the principal Act then the subclause actually makes sense because it basically says that the principal Act will continue to apply as if this bill that we are now passing had not been passed.If we are talking about the principal Act in one part of the bill and we are talking about the bill itself in another part then that becomes slightly confusing for many many people involved. I thought our objective in this Chamber was to try to start drafting law into plain English rather than something that you need to have a law degree in order to be able to follow because it is incredibly complex.Hon Ruth Dyson: What did the Minister say when you asked?CHRIS HIPKINS: The Minister did reply to the comment although even then I am not entirely sure that he quite understood what his answer was. In fact he admitted that he did not quite understand it himself but that he had been advised that that was the right thing to do. So at least he was honest about saying that he did not understand what he was doing and that he had been advised that that was the right thing to do. I commended him for at least taking part in the debate which was very good. I think that this is a drafting issue. I think that at some point in time in the future someone from the Parliamentary Counsel Office may like to provide some guidance to the Government about this to get a greater degree of consistency on it because it seems to me that we should be—well like I said—consistent right throughout the bill.The second point that I want to raise relates to the commencement provision clause 2 of this legislation. It comes into force 4 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. This is a very topical issue—well it is kind of topical; I am about to make it topical—because the Royal assent has of course a degree of royal prerogative within it. The head of State could refuse to sign this particular piece of legislation if they so choose. That has never happened in New Zealand’s history but technically it could happen. In reality in New Zealand it is of course the Governor-General who signs Acts on behalf of the Queen but the Governor-General or the Queen could refuse to assent to legislation and therefore it would never come into force. As I said that has never happened.The reason that I say it is topical is that it falls of course within the bucket otherwise known as the reserve powers of the head of State. The last time that the reserve powers of the head of State were used in Australasia was when they were used by the then Governor-General of Australia to remove the Prime Minister of the then Parliament Gough Whitlam who passed away last week. So it is of course possible that the head of State or the Governor-General acting as head of State can use reserve powers. Therefore this bill like any other bill that gets passed by the Parliament could technically never come into force if the head of State chose to refuse to give it the Royal assent. There is actually a reasonably recent example where that has happened—not in New Zealand or Australia but in fact in Belgium. The King of Belgium refused to provide the Royal assent to a piece of legislation that was a conscience vote. I think it was about either homosexual law reform or gay marriage and the Royal assent was refused. There in Belgium the parliamentarians used a very little-known power that they also had to effectively depose the King for a period of time. In this case I think they deposed the King for about 24 hours and the Prime Minister was then able to sign the legislation instead—[Interruption] I have not quite finished yet Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You have now.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):I am sure my colleague Chris Hipkins can pick up his strand of thought in one of his many contributions on this part of the bill throughout the evening. Tonight I want to talk specifically to clause 2 of the bill around the commencement date that is set down. As my colleague Chris Hipkins was just talking about this is a piece of legislation that is due to come into being 4 months after it receives the Royal assent. I am not going to be talking about whether or not the Governor-General will indeed give this bill the Royal assent but I will talk about the significance of the commencement date being 4 months after the Royal assent and what some of the ramifications of that are.What we have is a number of employers in New Zealand who are very aware of the commencement date of this legislation. In fact they have been waiting and hoping that this bill will come into force and indeed they have been delaying collective bargaining. Why the commencement date as stated under clause 2 of the bill has been of specific interest to these employers is around what clauses 7 8 and 9 do around the removal of the duty to conclude collective bargaining. What we have is a large number of employers—or a small number of employers in this country actually because we do not have a large number of bad employers in this country. What we have is a very bad piece of legislation going through this Committee in relation to our employment law.Let us look to some examples of individuals and where this commencement date in clause 2 of the bill is going to affect their lives. Have a look at Freda Soe who works as a community support worker. She is poorly paid and her union has been trying to negotiate a collective contract for her and her workmates for the past 12 months and it still has not achieved that collective agreement. The employer has made it known that it does not want a collective agreement on this worksite but it is currently obliged to conclude unless there is a valid reason not to.But what we have with the commencement date in clause 2 of this bill is a complete removal of that right and this is what this employer has been waiting for. We can see very clearly what this commencement date of 4 months after the Royal assent that is given to this legislation is going to mean to individual workers out there. It is going to mean there will not be a collective agreement because the employer can simply walk away from it because of the provisions that are in clauses 7 8 and 9 which will come into being after the 4-month commencement date.We can also look to the meat industry where this is something that a major employer is very aware of—when the date of the commencement of this legislation is going to be passed and put into place. We have seen in the meat industry in the last couple of years very long and bitter battles that have been waged around the issues of collective bargaining and one that a major employer is now waiting to see there.We see that there are worksites where collective bargaining is not being concluded. In fact they are refusing to acknowledge the meatworkers union’s request to enter into negotiations and bargain around a collective agreement because they know that this legislation has been sitting waiting on the Government books. They are just surprised that the commencement date under clause 2 is going to be a little later than they first thought it would be of course because the Government hoped to get it through during the last Parliament but having lost the vote of John Banks it was not able to. So the commencement date has been pushed out a little further and it is a good thing too as my colleague has said.We also saw the duty to conclude collective bargaining around the Ports of Auckland and this being a very key issue in what happened in the Ports of Auckland dispute a couple of years ago. If this legislation had been in place at the time we would have seen a very different outcome of that dispute. It is a very clear illustration of why it is that employers are waiting with such bated breath for the commencement of this legislation 4 months after the Royal assent for this bill to enter on to our statute book. Under clauses 7 8 and 9 we will have a complete shift. So there were many pernicious things in this legislation that will come into being—Kris Faafoi: Pernicious.Dr MEGAN WOODS: —thank you Mr Faafoi—4 months after it receives the Royal assent. We have talked at length in this Chamber about the removal of the tea break. We have talked about Part 6A and extending that out. But the removal of the duty to conclude collective bargaining is one of the most fundamental shifts we are seeing in our employment legislation that is going to come into being when this bill is passed into law and it is something that we absolutely need to be concerned about. Those are the very reasons why my colleague Chris Hipkins was talking about the fact that this is—BARBARA STEWART (NZ First):Firstly can I say congratulations Mr Chairman on your appointment to this very important role in our Parliament and we have to say congratulations to the other Speakers as well. We look forward to working with you all.I am pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First to ensure that New Zealanders know that we are definitely opposed to this Employment Relations Amendment Bill just as they are and we have not heard anything in any part of this debate that will make us change our minds. The title of the bill gives us an indication of the serious matters that are actually covered by the bill changing workplace conditions as they are known today. It is definitely not about improving employee relations. Last week when we were talking about this bill we were asked to provide some novelty so in the interests of providing this novelty we put our thinking caps on and decided to come up with some different titles. The first one that we thought of was “Back to the Past Amendment Bill”. The fact that tea breaks and lunch breaks can be totally negotiated away is ludicrous. Back to the early 1900s we return when these breaks were not considered necessary at all.Perhaps we could also call the bill the “Stamp on Health and Safety Bill”? In the last Parliament we passed a lot of bills focused on ensuring that worker safety was at the focus of all workplaces but this bill we believe is actually putting health and safety at risk. All workers regardless of their job need a break. After a break productivity is usually higher the focus of the workers is higher and of course the potential for accidents is a little less but this legislation has got the potential to erode all the previous legislation that we have put through in this area. The bottom line is that all workers have got the right to return home safely at the end of their work day. We on this side of the Chamber know that many of the workers today are working more than one job to try to make ends meet. Of course how easy it will be to negotiate away your lunch breaks and tea breaks to ensure that you get just that little bit more money. They will negotiate away this basic right and we will have challenges.We can also call the bill the “Anti-worker Amendment Bill”. We all know that the employment relationship is not a level playing field despite the Government telling us that it is. If you are a young worker and there are numerous other groups as well not many of those workers and groups have got the capacity or the capability to negotiate with the employer. It is not a level playing field. And guess what? Many of the workers do not want to negotiate because they fear for their jobs. We know that employment should be a collaborative relationship but despite the hype jobs are not numerous in most regions throughout New Zealand. I know. I look in my region in the Waikato and there are not a lot of jobs going there. Everybody wants to keep the job that they have got so of course they will negotiate away tea breaks lunch breaks anything to ensure that they retain their job.We could also call the bill the “Employment Relations Minus Common Sense Bill”. Common sense is actually missing from this piece of legislation. There has been absolutely no call from employers or employees for this bill or any of the criteria that are in it. It has not been the result of a gap that has been identified in the workplaces. Employees and employers were working together so why change what has actually been working quite well? It is not common sense. We believe that this bill has got the potential to create a very hostile work environment with a decrease in productivity. The fact that the Act comes into force 4 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent really raises some questions for us. So we believe that the title of this bill is not right. It does need to be reviewed and we would like to see some other titles come up. This bill is not for workers. Thank you.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National):I move That the question be now put.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau):Thank you Mr Chair and I appreciate the call. I would like to talk about clause 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. I would just like to say that I agree with a number of the names that have been raised by members of both New Zealand First and the Greens—in particular the “Undermining the Rights of Kiwi Workers Bill”.In fact there is an area that I have a bit of passing interest in and that is education. I believe that this bill may have the potential to undermine the rights of Kiwi teachers. You see new section 44A inserted by clause 11 allows employers to opt out of multi-employer collective bargaining. I would like to know exactly the effect that this will have on education. When teacher contracts are negotiated the representative organisations of teachers are the New Zealand Educational Institute or the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA). The Ministry of Education represents its own interests.The anomaly here though is that the employers of teachers are actually the boards of trustees of which there are over 2000. Those boards of trustees from my understanding of how this is written have the potential to opt out of the collective bargaining. I ask whether this means a board of trustees if it wants to could refuse to offer a union-negotiated contract and offer instead only the individual contracts it may wish to offer. Hence I say that this could be the undermining of Kiwi teachers’ rights. If that is the case I ask what the relationship is then going to be: between boards of trustees and their employees the teachers; between the boards of trustees and their employees the principals; or between principals and teachers. Principals are actually in a really strange situation where not only are they part of a board—i.e. part of the employer group—they are actually an employee of the board of trustees as well. So this has the potential to impact quite significantly on the relationships between the employers and the employees in a myriad of ways when it comes to schools.My big fear is that this may be a bit of a stalking horse for that old National Government policy of the 1990s: bulk funding. If boards of trustees can opt out of offering the collective contract then they can basically offer what they want to teachers in terms of wages and conditions. Of course we know that education is woefully inadequately underfunded. The first thing that goes when schools or organisations or businesses are running low on funds is workers and their salaries. In the case of education if salaries or wages were to go then teachers would leave. Normally the first teachers who will go will be those who can go—the best teachers. This may then compound achievement because what they will be doing is narrowing down the pool of teaching talent in schools.As I say not only is this undermining the rights of Kiwi workers; it could potentially undermine the rights of Kiwi teachers which in the end will undermine achievement for our children our most vulnerable people in society. This bill could actually go so far as to have a negative impact on educational achievement across schools.I would like the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy to answer these questions around new section 44A. Does this mean that boards of trustees can opt out of multi-employer collective bargaining—boards of trustees which are the employers of teachers? The New Zealand Educational Institute and the PPTA are the groups that actually do the negotiating on behalf of teachers but the Ministry of Education is the Government’s representative. That of course is strange because boards of trustees are actually the employers of teachers. So it is a very strange situation that does need to be answered on behalf of all the teachers out there who are listening and all the principals and all the members of the boards of trustees. We certainly do not want the spectre of bulk funding to arise again in education in New Zealand.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):I move That the question be now put.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):Thank you to my colleagues for their congratulations on my getting the call. I rise to speak to this bill and will note from the start that there is a Supplementary Order Paper in my name Supplementary Order Paper 14. I have not put in too many Supplementary Order Papers in my time in this Parliament but I have on this occasion because I feel particularly strongly about this bill.The Labour Party opposes this bill in principle because we believe in protecting New Zealand families and building a high-wage economy. This bill will so soon—in just 4 months—strike to the heart of some of the current protections that are afforded to our vulnerable workers. The changes that are going to be made the punitive clauses will have natural justice consequences. Some of these actions that have already been undertaken by workers who are entering into strike activity—partial strikes and so forth—have been undertaken on the basis of the law as it stands currently. So people who have families that depend on their wages who have commitments to mortgages and other kinds of commitments of various types which we all have as citizens in this country like financial commitments already undertaken—that was a circular sentence but you know what I am saying—have still got these things in front of them.The law is changing and this does raise an issue of natural justice. I touched on that briefly when I spoke on Part 2 of the bill. But what I am proposing here in my Supplementary Order Paper is that this bill’s commencement date be pushed out by replacing in clause 2 the word “months” with the word “years”. That would amend the commencement date of the bill from 4 months to 4 years. That would ensure that employers unions and workers will have more time to consider and adapt to the changes proposed. It not only will allow time for those negotiations that have already been undertaken to be concluded but actually more generally will allow more time for the whole system to adapt to what is proposed. It will also ensure that the changes around collective bargaining and multi-employer collective agreements do not affect the negotiations currently under way or agreements that are soon to expire which is a variation on the case that I have been laying out for natural justice.So with that simple simple amendment we could make this bill a much better bill and make it a bill that is fairer to those who are already undertaking activity. It will make it an even transition. It may even allow for some movement to examine this in the cool light of day in a more reasoned debate and we may come to a different conclusion with this bill. I would be interested in the Minister’s view on this because it is a simple amendment. One word is changing. The Minister in the chair Nathan Guy will have a view I am sure about this amendment. Although he does not look to be engaging on it right now I am sure he will have a view.If I can give some examples of negotiations already under way I have a list the length of a number of pages of negotiations that will be settled in that time period that I am proposing. Those negotiations cover a huge range of services in our society that all of us at one point or another come in contact with. They are in the sectors of education mentioned by my colleague Kelvin Davis. We have the School Caretakers’ and Cleaners’ (incl Canteen Workers) Collective Agreement. We have got the Secondary and Area School Groundstaff Collective Agreement. We have got the Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement the Special Residential Schools’ Collective Agreement the Area School Teachers’ Collective Agreement the Primary Principals’ Collective Agreement the Primary Teachers’ Collective Agreement and Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu Early Childhood Teachers’ Collective Agreement. All of those particular agreements in that particular list which is one of several I would like to touch upon are due to expire between March 2015 and March 2016. That is not so far away actually. Those teachers will have already been thinking about how they go about their next set of wage agreements before this legislation has passed through the House.Another area that is covered by many agreements is the health care area and I have several pages’ worth of agreements that are due to be settled within the first 6 months of 2015. We have got midwifery agreements. All of us who have had children or have had the joy of children in the midst of our immediate family will have come into contact with midwives as the primary lead maternity carers in our society. Their agreement—SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill):I move That the question be now put.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):First of all I would just like to say warmest congratulations to you Mr Chair on your new position. Unfortunately though it is with deep disappointment that I rise to speak for the first time in the 51st Parliament on this particular bill which is probably one of the worst bills that we have seen put forward to us by this Government. Speaking to the commencement and title clauses of this bill I say this mirrors not only the 1991 Employment Contracts Act but also the Workplace Relations Act introduced by the 1996 Australian Howard Government. Unfortunately though at that time there was a confrontational approach by both Governments to unions and to workplace rights. This bill would be more aptly named the “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing Bill” because ultimately that is what it represents and ultimately we know that it is not good employment law.Just referring to what my colleague Chris Hipkins said earlier tonight about a potential constitutional crisis emerging from the confusion around the title of this Act there was a very apt phrase used by the late Gough Whitlam at the time of the constitutional crisis in Australia which was: “Well may we say ‘God Save the Queen’ because nothing will save the Governor-General!”. It may be that we never hear those words in New Zealand. It was not a great phrase to be used in Australia at that time but unfortunately the legislation that is being put before the Committee tonight has the effects of bringing into question constitutional issues and striking to the very heart of the contract between employers and employees.It is a particularly deep disappointment to hear that the Minister who is shepherding this bill through the House as we speak is the Minister who comes from a long line of workers in the rail industry and in the waterfront industry where there were conditions that were very hard fought for that are now being eroded as we see in the Chamber tonight. Unfortunately when he first spoke in the Chamber last week he painted the Opposition as irrational ranters like meerkats and he spoke as if we were cloth-cap socialists. Unfortunately the ideology that we are seeing through this bill actually comes from that side of the Chamber and not from this side of the Chamber because ultimately all we want and all the workers that stand behind us want is a fair go. Government members use words like “flexibility” and “small changes”. They paint the Opposition as irrational but it is the ideologues and the ideology that are coming from the other side.My colleague David Clark who just got cut off while reading from the list of collective agreements that are going to expire in the next couple of years started to read an important list of the workers who are actually going to be affected and who basically cover the whole spectrum. These are not just workers whom you would classify as being vulnerable workers. Every worker in this country essentially is going to be impacted on as a result of this bill. When you think about it at the moment so many of the workers in the health industry are very stressed and are not able to take breaks through the pressures that are being put on them. I will give as a good example of that nurses at Dunedin Hospital.CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First):It is a great honour to be able to stand up here for the first time in this 51st Parliament to take the call today on behalf of New Zealand First which passionately opposes this bill. Specifically I want to be able to talk to the clauses relating to rests and meal breaks.Moving forward we have heard some very sensible voices today on this side of the bench particularly from the Greens Labour and our fellow New Zealand First members. It does concern me that this has come into this Parliament particularly in light of the fact that this new amendment that is being proposed does not make sense to us. It has got no reason to be there particularly when we talk about the rights of our workers who are the lifeblood of our country and who have worked so hard for generations to get the acknowledgment and the respect whether it be by employment hours or by the terms and conditions that they seek.I think if we give employers this ability to negotiate away the rights of our employees we are going to have some serious issues in the future particularly around our health and safety; around our lower productivity which this bill of course is designed to try to increase; and of course around strong employer and employee relationships which will be at the very best stretched if this bill goes through.When I think about the accidents that happen in our workplace particularly in the forestry industry and the trucking industries people in these industries are forced to take breaks because lives depend on them being rested well fed and ready to go on with their job. If we put this into its pure form we have got people who are stretched out beyond belief financially in their homes who are prepared to work through their meal breaks to save a few extra dollars if it might get milk food and bread on their tables. They are likely to take those risks and put the lives of themselves and many other New Zealanders at risk.We would like to think that we are a sensible Parliament looking after the needs of all New Zealanders equally—employers and employees—and that we can find a balance where we are showing that equilibrium in its true form. There is so much more that I could talk about with regard to the other aspects of this bill that we disagree with but I feel strongly that taking away the right for people to have their breaks during the day—including this wonderful House the members of which have just enjoyed a 1½ hour meal break—would certainly change the environment. Certainly Parliament TV might be looking upon sleepy politicians. For those who are prepared to work through their meal breaks for a few extra dollars it just does not make any sense whatsoever. So I would like to oppose the bill on New Zealand First’s part. Thank you very much.JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National):I move That the question be now put.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes64New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.Motion agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes62New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.Clause 1 agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 14 in the name of Dr David Clark to clause 2 be agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes59New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.Noes62New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes62New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.Clause 2 agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat clause 3 be agreed to.Ayes62New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.Clause 3 agreed to.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.Accounting Infrastructure Reform BillIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to ActsDr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):Part 1 of the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill contains the real meat. It is the part that lays out the arrangements for combining the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants with its Australian counterpart or perhaps it should be put the other way round. This move opens up both opportunities and risks as one would expect. The opening up of audit activities to trans-Tasman competition effectively will ensure that the standards are fair across things and we can imagine that there is going to be an advantage in scale for some auditors. Often where there are big jobs New Zealand firms miss out in favour of those Australian firms that are geared up have an office in Sydney and can service the greater Australasian area for overseas clients. However New Zealand is also a nimble economy and often competitive. We have people here who are ingenious and can create opportunities so we would be hoping in supporting this bill that those risks of trans-Tasman dominance that we have seen in the banking sector would not take hold in the audit sector in the same way and that instead we would see some innovative New Zealand firms bidding for and picking up audit work through being competitive professional and generally good at the work they do.The provisions in the bill that we like are about simplifying things and making the system more transparent. That has got to be a good thing. Transparency is incredibly important in our market place. Quality auditing and the ability to have a look through companies are the kinds of things that make for a competitive and effective market and one that services the needs of New Zealanders and people offshore for the provision of services that assist with growing an economy. We will be supporting the bill and we will be lending our voice to it getting through this Parliament non-controversially. Those in the area who submitted to the Commerce Committee pointed out those risks that we have already discussed and the opportunities that lie there. The Institute of Chartered Accountants is not fighting this so we are prepared to take its lead in seeing less red tape across the Tasman and we will be waiting to see what happens.We do hope that New Zealand’s interests will be protected too in the setting of standards. We have seen in areas like housing regulations that where red tape is removed solutions that are regarded as standard across Australasia can give more weight in the regulations to Australasian climatic conditions than to New Zealand climatic conditions. So in the audit sector as we know issues that arise in Australia are likely to dominate in an Australasian environment. We may see regulations or the expectation on those auditors that reflect the situation the conflicts the risks and so on that arise in Australia more nearly more closely and more loudly than they reflect the risks that arise in New Zealand. So there we are putting a heavy burden of proof on the New Zealand companies to be innovative to be professional to put their case when it comes to setting standards for audit and to carry out those audits in a way that is both compliant and cost-effective.I want to take a second to congratulate the Minister in the chair the Hon Paul Goldsmith on his recent elevation. He has been alongside this bill as it went through the select committee if my memory serves me correctly and is now in the ministerial chair shepherding it through the Committee. He will correct me I am sure if my memory is inaccurate on this. He is a kind man. [Interruption] Well I did support his bid to become the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I have seen him then rise rapidly through the ranks. We may differ though heavily on our particular view of the world but I suspect we will both agree that properly regulated markets—though we may disagree on what constitutes a properly regulated market—are important to New Zealand’s future success in the international commercial environment.The proposal of the Institute of Chartered Accountants has been accepted. Some of its other proposals which we think could have been—STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):As my colleague Dr David Clark mentioned we are supporting the Accounting Infrastructure Amendment Bill. But I do have a couple of questions that perhaps the Minister in the chair Paul Goldsmith may want to answer. One thing that we know we need in this country is a high level of confidence by the public in the people who are charged with actually ensuring that our companies are well run that our level of governance is high and that the people who are charged with making sure that things work actually are the right people to do it.First of all I would like to look at clause 24 in Subpart 2 “Amendments to Charities Act 2005”. What it talks about there is the difference in compliance between large charities and medium and small charities and what their requirements are in terms of audit. If a charity is a large charity—and the definition of a large charity is if you have revenue of $1 million or more—then it must get its accounts audited and I have no problem with that. Where I have a little bit of a problem is that what it actually says here is that if you are a medium-sized charity then you do not have to get your accounts audited. All you have to do is get your accounts reviewed. This is in section 42C(2)(b) in clause 24. It states: “audited or reviewed by a qualified auditor if A is of a medium size”. The concern I have about this and as mentioned we are supporting this bill is that there is a significant number of charities in this country and a significant number of charities actually go out to the public and seek funds to undertake whatever they may be doing whatever their charitable cause is. And $500000 to $1 million worth of operating expenditure revenue is the definition here. Sorry it is not revenue; it is operating expenditure that is the definition. And $1 million worth of operating expenditure that is a lot. OK audit them I agree. But $500000 worth of operating expenditure even in this day and age actually is a lot of money. When we have got a significant number of charities in this country and the medium ones—$500000 to $1 million—only have to be reviewed I just have a little bit of a concern about that because I am not too sure what “review” actually means from an auditing sense so please excuse my ignorance from that perspective and maybe the Minister can talk about that.We all know what an audit is—that is when an auditor carries out his task an auditor is a defined person as defined by the legislation. But a review does that just mean that the auditor has to cast his or her eyes over it and then sign off and that is fine and then they have undertaken and completed their duties? It just concerns me because I think that this takes away a level of confidence that the public who give money to these charities actually deserve. And the thing also is that the cost of a full audit is actually not a substantial amount of money. I mean you can get an audit for a simple charity actually for I would say a couple of thousand dollars to be honest and when you consider the fine as set out in clause 24—this is still clause 24 but it is down to section 42E as inserted by clause 24—is $50000 for not complying with the conditions in the Act $50000 is a lot of money. It does not matter whether you are a large charity i.e. with an operating expenditure of over $1 million or a medium charity i.e. with an operating expenditure between $500000 and $1 million the fine is still the same but the conditions that must be met in terms of those audited accounts are different.The other thing I would like to talk about as well is clause 36I on the Registrar of Companies. This is quite curious: “Registrar of Companies may authorise person to continue to act in respect of audit despite cancellation or suspension under section 36H.” I do not get this. To be quite honest I do not get this. It says here in subsection (2): “The Registrar may authorise the person to act or continue to act as the auditor in respect of the audit on the terms and conditions that the Registrar thinks fit”. We have just been through this massive financial crisis and I do not think there would be any doubt in this Committee that the confidence in a lot of our financial managers was at an all-time low but what this actually says is that the Registrar of Companies may actually allow someone who has been suspended to continue to act as an auditor under certain terms and conditions. Well the term is actually—[Bell rung] Mr Chair can I continue this point? It is quite important.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Stuart Nash.STUART NASH: The thing that concerns me a little bit here is that the test in section 36AA(5) in clause 31 is “conditions that the Registrar thinks fit.” I do not want to call into question the integrity of the registrar because the Registrar of Companies is held in very high standing but I actually think that the test of “sees fit” is a little bit loose and I think that just needs to tighten up. What I would have liked to see here and maybe the Minister can just elaborate on this is under what conditions the Minister would think that the registrar may continue to authorise a person who has been suspended or struck off to continue to act as an auditor in that role. It just seems a little strange.But again if we go down here—and this is where there is a little bit of misunderstanding. I am just a simple man from the bay so I become a little bit confused every now and again. What it says here is that the registrar “may allow a person” but then it gets quite strict. We are looking at section 36J inserted by clause 31 which says: “(2) The Institute any other accredited body or an approved association must … (b) keep available a record of the persons recognised by it at all reasonable times on an Internet site maintained by or on behalf of the Institute body or association” and it talks about keeping a register of people who have had their accreditation cancelled or suspended. So it is quite clear about that. Then we move over here and it says in (5)—it jumps around a little bit: “A record under subsection (2) is required to include information relating to a suspension under section 36G(4) only if the Institute accredited body or approved association is aware of the suspension.”What that says to me is that the test of “is aware”—it does not seem there is a proactive test. So if someone is suspended is it their duty to then inform their professional body that they have been suspended? The test here is how the institute is made aware that someone has been suspended. We all know that auditors play a very important role in making sure that the accounts of an organisation or an institute or a body corporate or whatever go through everything here are up to scratch—where it goes to court. I can see a case where it goes to court the auditor has done a bad job he or she has been suspended and actually the institute puts its hand up and says that it did not know this person had been suspended. So where is the onus on ensuring that this record is kept up to date? It does actually say in section 36J(4)(b): “the record must be reasonably prominent on the Internet site or the Internet site must contain a reasonably prominent link to the record.”So what the bill says on the one hand is—and I completely agree with this—that we need a level of transparency to allow a level of confidence in the auditors who are undertaking these especially if you are part of a body corporate or an organisation that has its accounts audited. It is very important. We all get that. But then there are these other tests that do not quite fit in with that level of transparency that I think the bill is trying to bring in. Again I go back to subsection (5) the onus of proof—if you could just give me a couple of examples Minister where you think the Register of Companies may authorise a person to act if they have been struck off if the register thinks fit. They are the only questions that I have.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Registrar.STUART NASH: Sorry registrar. What did I say?Hon Paul Goldsmith: Register.STUART NASH: Sorry registrar. I apologise. As we know I am a simple man from the bay. Could you perhaps give a couple of examples where you think that the Registrar of Companies may allow a struck-off auditor to continue? They are the points I want to make. Thank you very much.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Can I just take this opportunity to congratulate you Mr Chair on your appointment as Deputy Speaker. This is my first substantial contribution to this debate tonight. I also congratulate Lindsay Tisch Trevor Mallard and the Speaker himself.I would like to go straight to subpart 2 of Part 1 of the bill which goes some way to amending the Charities Act 2005. Before I start that I do want to acknowledge the officials who are in the Chamber tonight because there is one clause of subpart 3 particularly clause 31 which I think adds new section 36M to the principal Act which contains an exemption from membership requirements for certain members of religious societies or orders in having to register under this legislation. This actually did trigger quite a serious debate at the Commerce Committee because the religious group that was looking for an exemption is known to politics in that they were members of the Exclusive Brethren. I thought as a member of the Commerce Committee in the previous Parliament that they gave quite an interesting submission to look for exemption from this legislation.Members of that religious group wanted to not be registered as members of the particular accounting society or organisation that is being given the rights and the responsibilities to police certain parts of this bill that we are debating today. It was for religious reasons that they did not want to be included or registered but they were quite willing to be I guess judged upon their actions as accountants and upon their behaviour under the legislation. So that gave us a bit of a dilemma as to whether or not they could act or transact business as accountants but not do that as registered members of the organisation at hand. We did come up in the select committee with something that is not necessarily done all too often in legislation and that is that we did exempt people with certain religious beliefs from being party to or members of an organisation—or in this clause under section 36M exempt from membership of accountancy bodies—because of their religious beliefs.Obviously this created quite a bit of debate as to whether or not we were setting a dangerous precedent but I understand and maybe we can get a nod from one of the officials that there was one other precedent for this—I am getting a nod so that is good—in legislation where we did give people who held certain religious beliefs an exemption from being members of organisations such as this. But I think in all honesty that we came to a happy arrangement. We had a submission from members of the Exclusive Brethren where they said that they would act in the spirit of the rules of the organisations that they did not want to be members of and if they were seen to be breaking any of the rules and regulations that that organisation had they would be quite happy to I guess be ruled by that as well.There were some conditions upon that. There had to be a written agreement between the parties looking for an exemption and the body they were looking to not become members of and at any time I believe that body could take away that exemption. If it did that my understanding is that it would almost be impossible for them to trade as accountants under the new law. I think that this was an issue that the Commerce Committee looked at in great detail because we did think that there were some concerns around setting a precedent in this way for this type of exemption. It was heated because the members of the Exclusive Brethren obviously have had a role in politics in the last 10 years but I believe that the select committee of the last Parliament looked at this in a very constructive way. They were given quite a grilling as to why they wanted to be exempted from this particular part of the bill but I think we came to what I would call a happy medium.I think we should watch this very closely. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair Paul Goldsmith would be able to suggest how we monitor this over the next 2 or 3 years as this is new ground not just for the Parliament but also for those people with those particular religious beliefs. I do think given the heat that could have been in the situation there—Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs):I do want to start by acknowledging the efforts of Jonathan Young as chairman of the Commerce Committee and my predecessor Craig Foss in bringing this legislation to the House. I do want to acknowledge the spirit of bipartisanship that we have seen on this issue which was so evident amongst my supporters in Epsom as well. I would like to carry that on in this area.I think it would be useful at this stage just to quickly remind the Committee of the four sets of changes that this piece of legislation brings in to improve accounting market performance in financial reporting settings. Subpart 4 deals with changes to the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants Act 1996. The function of that Act is to require the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants to regulate its members in the public interest and the non-regulatory functions including the promotion of quality expertise and integrity in the New Zealand accounting profession. The changes in this bill will permit the institute which has about 30000 members to complete a merger with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. Subpart 4 deals with those details and enables the benefits of the merger to go ahead.Subpart 1 which was discussed earlier on covers the changes to the Auditor Regulation Act. That 2011 Act prohibited bodies corporate from carrying out audits of financial statements prepared by financial markets conduct reporting entities. There was no real clear public policy purpose in that and so the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill removes that prohibition maintaining auditor independence and audit quality but also allowing flexibility around the arrangements. I do want to reassure the previous speaker Mr Nash who was worried about a review—Hon Annette King: Faafoi was the last speaker.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —the previous speaker bar one—of the formal assurance process. I can assure the member that review is a formal assurance process that is subject to assurance standards issued by the external reporting board. It is a lower level of assurance than the audit but it still requires the auditor to carry out rigorous assessments.Subpart 3 deals with the Financial Reporting Act and changes there. Under the old legislation only members of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants and certain overseas-qualified persons were able to carry out statutory accounting functions. The Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill broadens that so that all appropriately qualified New Zealand members of an accounting professional body can operate as accountants in New Zealand. That is all about expanding the base of qualified accountants in New Zealand.Finally Subpart 2 deals with the Charities Act which as has been noted by previous speakers allows registered charities with an annual operating expenditure of $500000 or more to have their financial statements audited or reviewed by accountants. We think that is an appropriate measure to be set.All in all I think we have got a good start here and on that basis I am sure that we can iron out any further details as the evening progresses. Thank you.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):As others have said this is a bill with very little controversy that is supported by my Opposition colleagues in line with the Government and supported by the New Zealand accounting profession and CPA Australia. I do agree with the Minister the Hon Paul Goldsmith—we all agree—that this will bring the profession closer together as trans-Tasman regulatory reform and legislative reform have done in other areas of banking and finance. It will create efficiency and some greater transparency. Again the Minister sort of leapt into the fray and has not answered some of the questions.I think the previous speaker Mr Faafoi in all seriousness raised some issues about the religious exemption. We want to make sure that the context is clear here. We are not going to enter into some religious discussion involving the Deity—I see a former qualified member of it over on the other side—or what people may or may not think. The issues in respect of this bill were in truth centred on whether we were somehow going to have the department or officialdom trying to define outside their brief what was for instance a legitimate religion and trying to be a sort of arbiter or referee of those nefarious forces—there always are in these things—who may try to use this particular clause to get around being members or being subject to the constraints or rules and obligations of the legislation. So it was as Mr Faafoi said a serious debate.I do question—and I suppose to my point—that the body itself would have to make judgments. New section 36M(1)(a) inserted by clause 31 states: “the relevant body is satisfied that A is a practising member of a religious society or order whose doctrines or beliefs preclude membership of any organisation or body other than the religious society …” blah blah blah. The question for us was quite simple. No disrespect to our friends in officialdom or to the new entity itself but how are they qualified to make those judgments? That was our question. How do you stop those folks who just want to pull the wool and walk around the regulations and the strictures? How do you avoid that happening?My colleague is right. There has been precedent. I believe it was labour relations legislation. I recall this because when we were in Government my colleague Damien O’Connor and myself were approached by members of the Brethren sect or whatever they call themselves to approach the then labour relations Minister Margaret Wilson to seek a continuation when we disposed of the Employment Contracts Act and reformed that legislation of an exemption based on their beliefs. Mr O’Connor and I went to bat for the Brethren out of genuine concern. Little did we know that that would come back to almost knife us in the throat back in what was it 2005 as certain members of that sect decided that they would abrogate their own religious beliefs—so-called—and enter the fray under surreptitious means and they almost bought an election with a million bucks. But putting that aside I think this is a fair clause that does tread a path to allow people who have religious beliefs to be a part of this legislation but it does not impinge on their own individual religious beliefs and views and values. But I would be interested if the Minister could perhaps claw back into history and into his own I think Anglican upbringing and perhaps reassure us that the entity—Hon Paul Goldsmith: Baptist.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —Baptist; my apologies—will not be asked to make arbitrary decisions around what is a genuine religious belief or not because that would be rather absurd. I doubt whether the Australians would want to enter into that sort of activity themselves.But this is a good piece of legislation. It will promote efficiency and transparency and a high degree I think of quality work within the professions and will allow expansion and amalgamation across the trans-Tasman boundary. We do support it. It is a pity it has been around for so long and it does worry us—no disrespect to the new Minister who I am sure is diligent in all his work—that the commerce portfolio has slid down the greasy pole from being inside Cabinet to being outside Cabinet and then being at the bottom of the outside of Cabinet somewhere near the dunny. So we do worry about that because the commerce portfolio has I think we would all agree been through the offices of Simon Power and Lianne Dalziel and a number of Ministers and has been treated very very seriously.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):First of all I would like to congratulate the new Minister on his role as the Minister of Commerce. I echo my colleague Clayton Cosgrove’s concerns about the place that commerce is now held viewed by the Government as being outside Cabinet. I would also make the comment that I look forward to the new agenda that the Minister of Commerce is going to announce very soon to the country as to what he has in store in terms of ongoing legislation and the particular stamp that he wants to put on his portfolio. There is particular interest around the necessary reform called for by the chair of the Commerce Commission of section 36 of the Commerce Act and the improvement of competition law—leaving aside the cartels bill that is going to be hitting the House at some point soon—and where he wants to take that evolution of competition law next.I am very keen to hear the views of the Minister given that his previous claim to fame has been passing after many many months of discussion in this Chamber the august Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill. It was one of the most shall we say meaningless pieces of legislation I have seen come through this House in the 6 years that I have been here which tidied up a small area of uncertainty in contract law around the timing of when a contract is accepted by electronic means. That summary is basically about all that bill deserved.Just in relation to this bill and the debate in the Commerce Committee there is no doubt first of all that there was a very cooperative discussion on this bill across all parties in the House and that some useful outcomes came out of the select committee stage in the changes that were made. As colleagues have mentioned the biggest part of this bill that taxed the discussion in the select committee was the religious exemption. There is no doubt that that created some real challenges for the officials—and I would like to acknowledge their role in the whole of this bill not just on that particular part—because leaving aside all hilarity around the particular issue it actually presented a real moral dilemma for the committee. The officials had to work quite hard to go back and look at precedent around exemption on religious grounds and I think that at one point we heard about a similar provision in the Valuers Act of 1948 which is really going back quite a long way.I just want to put on it record in the Committee tonight that I still have reservations about the position that we came to. I think it was a fair outcome but I still have reservations around the unintended consequences of that religious exemption from belonging to an accredited body and the importance of that—how you can sit outside that body and still perform the functions and how there can be the necessary scrutiny. I would like to hear from the new Minister any views that he would like to share with us around that.I just want to quickly mention another matter that was brought to us as a result of submissions and that did raise some discussion with the officials but never actually made it into the bill and that is around whistleblower provisions. I just want to briefly inform the Committee around that. “BDO New Zealand”—which is the accountants and auditors and advisers—“noted that due to confidentiality rules the auditor cannot share client information unless there is a misstatement resulting from fraud.” and it recommended “a wider ability for auditors to communicate with the relevant regulator for statutory audits.” This is actually quite important and the committee went away and looked and said that “Under the [Financial Markets Conduct Act] auditors must whistle-blow in relation to certain financial products. Auditors of issuers of debt securities and registered schemes … will have an obligation to provide information to supervisors or in certain cases to FMA if there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a serious problem with the issuer or scheme. Auditors will also need to provide relevant information about issuers to supervisors on request.” So that Act does protect auditors “against civil criminal and disciplinary proceedings in relation to the disclosures made.”There are also similar provisions for auditors for banks and insurers to report to the Reserve Bank and obligations for “auditors of other companies or corporate entities to provide requested information to the Registrar of Companies …”. Although the officials told us that they could “see the value of extending whistle-blowing protection provisions (and protections from liability) these are obligations that need to be considered in relation to particular regimes and regulators.” They said that these obligations have got “significant consequences for auditors and their imposition has given rise to concern from auditors in the past.” They said that “The International Ethical Standards Board for Accountants’ initial proposals on the appropriate extent of auditor responsibility for whistle-blowing under audit and assurance standards have not been well received … because ‘one size does not fit all’.” However they did say to us that “any extension of whistle-blowing obligations would be best considered once the outcome of that analysis is known.”I would just like the Minister to take note of that. Whistleblowing protections in this country are not that great. They are quite weak generally. In this particular area of financial markets and the collapse of financial companies and in all of the areas dealt with by the Commerce Committee—which with respect the current Minister has not been party to in the last 6 years—the ability to blow the whistle so to speak and the ability to reveal information and to bring stuff to the public attention and get it dealt with has been paramount and has underpinned a lot of the legislative changes that have taken place right across the board.In this particular piece of legislation this should not go unnoticed and it should be considered as an ongoing issue to be watched. Whistleblowing around practices whether it is through auditors or accountants whether it is lawyers whether it is financial advisers or whether it is anybody else operating in the financial environment where corporate crime white-collar crime is rife is an issue that I think we are only scratching the surface of in this country. It is something that I would hope that the new Minister in the chair will in this position be taking serious account of.There will be further discussion around this bill with the various provisions. I certainly think that there has been a lot of hard work done by the Commerce Committee. I do want to acknowledge the role played by the chair Jonathan Young and other members of the select committee and right across the Chamber. I think this is a good piece of legislation. I think there are some issues that still need to be paid attention to and I do again register some unease around the exemption on the basis of religious affiliation for belonging to and for having to belong to an accredited body.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call—are you calling? I will just explain to Mr Tabuteau. If the member wants to have a call—and I know that you stood up earlier—you must call out “Mr Chairman”. If you do not call then the call goes to someone else. I know that you stood before and sat down. You stood again but did not call. So that is the procedure. You must call. All right? If the member wants to call he needs to stand up and call “Mr Chairman”.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First):Thank you for your patience Mr Chair and thank you to the members this evening. I take this as an opportunity as a member who has come from a tertiary background who has had the privilege to work as a stakeholder in this environment to commend the Commerce Committee and the members for what looks like to me to be an amendment to the bill that has obviously been well considered it has been well-thought-through and there is clear evidence of bipartisan discussions and relationships. So I think this will be a rare opportunity for me on behalf of the New Zealand First Party to stand in support of an amendment to bills being passed through this House.I spoke of my association with the stakeholders. As the head of a business school I spent the last 2 years working with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants and was privy to the discussions. I take this opportunity to acknowledge some of the individuals and say to the members here that it was not a straightforward discussion. It was not a straightforward decision for some of these members to amalgamate or merge with their Australian counterpart. I acknowledge the strength of will and the hope that the merger would benefit the New Zealand accounting association. I take this opportunity—thank you.The first part of this bill’s intent to create efficiency and effectiveness in terms of auditing an essential part of effective business operation is to be commended. Initially I was wary of some of the first part that lessened the requirements to be an auditor and lessened some of the regulatory requirements in terms of complying but I do note and am satisfied that contrary to this the stipulations and the requirements in terms of auditing and meetings standards were conversely increased. So on behalf of the New Zealand First Party it is a privilege to stand before you tonight with a quick word from me. Thank you.MELISSA LEE (National):I move That the question be now put.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 471 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss and the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 2 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith to Part 1 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 1 as amended agreed to.Part 2 Amendments to other ActsThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members we now move to Part 2. This is debate on clause 52 and includes schedule 2.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):Can I just talk on Part 2 please?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You may.STUART NASH: Thank you very much. There are just a couple of questions here. Part 2 is one of those parts that talks about all the Acts that have been amended due to this legislation going through and there are a whole number of them in schedule 2.Hon Annette King: Read them out.STUART NASH: Well there are a whole lot of them. There are a couple actually and because I have not got those Acts in front of me perhaps the Minister in the chair Paul Goldsmith could just answer a couple of questions. We talk about the Education Act and in schedule 2 we talk about—there is a whole lot of this—“chartered accountant” being replaced with “qualified auditor” within the meaning of the Act. And we know what this means. The concern I have is whether any of these sections here relate to boards of trustees or anything like this? Or is it simply replacing something of the old with the new? The reason I ask is that if you have to have a qualified auditor when a chartered accountant might do in some of these bodies then you are taking it up another level because all qualified auditors are chartered accountants but not all chartered accountants are qualified auditors if you know what I mean. I am talking about the schedule 2 changes to the Education Act. There are a whole lot of these where all we are doing is replacing “an independent chartered accountant” with “a qualified auditor” but the onus on a lot of this may be quite substantial because there are not actually that many qualified auditors around to be honest whereas there are quite a few chartered accountants.One question—does a registered audit firm have to be a partnership? Can a registered audit firm not be a company? We are talking here about the schedule 2 changes to section 461E(3) of the Financial Markets Conduct Act: “after ‘registered audit firm’ insert ‘that is a partnership’.” That is just a question. I thought that audit firms could actually be companies but maybe I was wrong there. But the thing I really want to talk about—Mr O’Connor might know—is whether audited firms have to be partnerships? Can they not be registered companies?Simon O’Connor: I’ll leave that to the Minister.STUART NASH: Yes well the Minister might know. The thing I want to talk about here is the schedule 2 changes to the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. It adds quite a bit to that Act. I am not too sure where this came from and maybe one of my colleagues who sat on the Commerce Committee may be able to fill us in.There is a whole lot here in schedule 2 where it is talking about replacing clause 8 of schedule 2 with: “Restrictions on publication by Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants or other accredited body”. What it says under subclause (1) is: “If any disclosure is made under clause 6(d) the Council or governing body referred to in that paragraph must consider the information given in private and not otherwise.” Does that mean it must only consider the information given in private and it cannot consider any other information? Is that what it says? I am not 100 percent sure there so maybe it should say “must only consider information given in private and not otherwise.” I am not too sure what this is about. I am wondering whether it means that the process has now been formalised to such an extent that the evidence is presented—like in a court for example—in a formal process where the person who is under scrutiny has the ability to have someone representing them beside them and that it is actually not open to abuse in any way shape or form. In a way I suppose what I am talking about is natural justice—the ability of a person who is being tried to have a fair trial. I do not mean tried in a legal sense; I mean by the rules and procedures governing the Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants.Then it says in subclause (2): “It is not lawful for any member of the Council or governing body or for any officer of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants or the accredited body to publish to publish to any person any information so disclosed except in evidence in disciplinary proceedings” blah-blah-blah. I am wondering here what the purpose of that subclause is. The reason I ask that is to find out whether there have been instances where people from the governing body the Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants have gone out and actually published material that they have heard as part of a disciplinary hearing. Has that been a problem and is this trying to remedy that problem? Or is it simply because it did not exist and the Institute of Chartered Accountants thought: “Hey this is our chance. We have got one of these amendment reform bills. Let’s just whack it in there just to mitigate the risk of this sort of thing happening.” That is where I am a little bit confused.The other thing that strikes me as slightly unusual is that I would have thought that at some point the Council of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants would need to publish these proceedings because what I am seeing with this Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill is transparency and this is what this bill brings. I would have thought that at some point publishing them brings that transparency.Part 2 agreed to.Schedule 1AA agreed to.Schedule 1 agreed to.Schedule1A agreed to.Schedule 2 agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):I just reiterate the support that Labour has for this bill. What we have done throughout this discussion and throughout the debates on the first reading through to the select committee hearings is that we heard from a broad spectrum of voices from the accountancy audit and professional services on this Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill. It appears to be quite straightforward and in a lot of ways it is. It does make some general changes with the intent of making the accounting and audit industry more efficient and effective. I think it is part of a spectrum of measures that the Commerce Committee worked quite cooperatively around to take a common-sense approach to the way that our financial systems operate and to try to bring some accord between particularly the New Zealand and Australian ways that this operates.Five particular law changes are included in this bill to reduce restrictions on the legal form for audit firms to provide that charities assurance which I know that my colleague Mr Nash has reservations about. There was quite a degree of consideration around the changes to charities audits in the bill. The bill requires charities over a certain size to have their financial statements assured by a qualified auditor. Many charities of the large size already obtain assurance and these provisions make that compulsory. What is actually happening is that it is being made compulsory and ensuring that the quality of the assurance of those charities of that size are brought about by requiring them to be performed by a qualified auditor using the correct audit standards.The third thing it does is that it means that members of accredited bodies perform statutory audits. From my perspective one of the most significant parts of this bill is that members of accredited professional bodies be allowed to perform most statutory audits if they are recognised by their professional body to be qualified to do so. I think what that does is bring about that efficiency.The only rider to that is that there is an exemption. There is an exemption on religious grounds which is most unusual. We do not see that in most legislation—or any legislation in my experience—that has come before the House. As to how that will actually play out and what the implications of that are especially given that we are talking about auditing an auditing function which is a position of great trust I am yet to be fully convinced that the legislation is actually going to provide the protections that are necessary to those bodies being audited and to the general public having confidence in the system. I am not saying that we should not do it; I am just expressing some unease still around that.Fourthly in respect of qualified accountants performing statutory accounting roles references to “chartered accountant” in various Acts will be replaced with “qualified accountant” where the context relates to specifying who can perform those accounting-related statutory roles in order to include the qualified members of the accredited bodies.Then there were the changes to the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants Act 1996 which are necessary to ensure that agreement to join the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia in a combined new trans-Tasman institute. I suppose in relation to that it makes sense and there is no doubt about that. There was wide agreement—not complete agreement.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):I am going to make only a very short speech. I have just a couple of quick questions on this and they are around the commencement. Obviously you have your stock standard lines that through the Governor-General by Order in Council the bill will become an Act. I am slightly curious so maybe the Minister of Commerce can help me out on this one and I was not on the Commerce Committee so I am not privy to this and maybe one of my colleagues who was will help me. Clause 2(2) actually says: “To the extent that it has not previously been brought into force under subsection (1) the rest of this Act comes into force on 1 April 2017.” I am not too sure but are there some parts of this bill that actually are not going to be brought into force for another 2½ years? That would seem like a long time for a bill that professes a level of transparency that is required which I think this bill brings by and large. I have outlined some of my concerns around the charities provisions and my colleague Clare Curran has talked about those. I still have slight concerns to be honest.Clare Curran: I’m sure we can continue the discussion.STUART NASH: Well I do have some slight concerns that if you have an operation between $0.5 million and $1 million you do not have to get your accounts fully audited though they can be reviewed. The Minister talked about the difference between being reviewed and being audited. I appreciate that and I thank the Minister for his input on that. But are there any parts of the Act that actually are not going to be enforced for another 2½ years? I get the date. Obviously 1 April is the beginning of the financial year for 2017 but it is a long time I think you will agree between this Act coming into force and parts of this Act not being law for 2½ years.I wonder whether there is a reason behind this. There often are when you get these sorts of Acts because there are processes that are already in place that need to go through to their conclusion. Obviously there is no point in having retrospective legislation even though this is not technically retrospective. If there is already a process in place or things need to run their course then I understand that. I must admit that 2½ years does seem quite a long time but there may be something in here that I am unsure of or I do not know about and therefore the Minister or maybe even Miss Curran could enlighten me on that. It is quite a long time.The other thing also is that it is slightly unusual where it says in clause 2(1) that “…1 or more orders may be made bringing different provisions into force on different dates.” I am just wondering again whether this is maybe because of a submission that was put in during the select committee process and for whatever reason it was deemed that this would not hit the books straight away but that it would be sort of drip-fed in. That might have been because this is about consolidating a lot of the practices that occur in New Zealand and Australia. Am I right there Miss Curran? There may be reasons behind this and no doubt there are perfectly good reasons.We all agree on this. This is a good bill which I think will bring a level of transparency. I think that some of the clauses may be open to jurisprudence as we go forward. As mentioned I have real concerns when the Registrar of Companies has the ability to allow an auditor who has been struck off to continue to practise under certain circumstances. We did talk about this and I did allude to this but I am curious to know whether there are any parts of the Act in particular that are not going to come into play for another 2½ years. That is my only question.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Auditor Regulation Amendment Bill the Charities Amendment Bill (No 3) the Financial Reporting Amendment Bill and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants Amendment Billpursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 470.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2)In CommitteeDebate resumed from 2 July.Parts 1 to 4 and clauses 1 to 3DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to take a call on Part 1 of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) and I have to say I do find it a bit intriguing. This bill was first introduced to the House in 2007 and then came back to the House for its second reading in 2009. In fact just looking at the report from the Government Administration Committee the people who were on that committee then were Shane Ardern Darien Fenton Brian Donnelly the Hon Harry Duynhoven Sandra Goudie and the Hon Dover Samuels. Sue Bradford was the Green Party MP who was sitting in as a non-voting member. It strikes me that quite a considerable amount of time has passed since 2009 until now. When I looked through the previous speeches particularly in the first reading of this bill which was like a historical investigation for me those speeches did say that part of the reason for the bill—and particularly for this part as well—was around wanting to tweak the original 2003 Gambling Act. That Act was still fairly new at that time—we were only 4 or 5 years into it—and there were some anomalies that needed to be addressed. I commend the Minister of Internal Affairs the Hon Peter Dunne for bringing this bill back to the House but I do have to say that quite a lot of time has elapsed since that second reading in 2009 and the Committee of the whole House where we are about to address the bill today although I do acknowledge that it first came back to the Committee of the whole House in July this year.We have introduced quite a substantial number of Supplementary Order Papers on the substantive part of the bill. They are in the name of Kevin Hague but I do have to note that because of the amount of time that has elapsed the original submitter of those Supplementary Order Papers was actually Sue Bradford. A lot of those Supplementary Order Papers actually refer to reducing gambling harm. In particular proposed new clause 22 on Supplementary Order Paper 65 talks about increasing gambling harm prevention measures like player tracking and pre-commit cards. I note that in the passage of the last term of the 50th Parliament although there have been other gambling bills that have come through this House none of those bills and the discussions we have had around them have actually yet succeeded in getting this type of gambling harm reduction measure in place. I would hope that the Minister will be considering our Supplementary Order Paper this time around for this bill.Our Supplementary Order Paper 65 also talks about limiting and changing the meaning of “authorised purpose” so that it basically reduces the ability for the proceeds from gambling from class 4 machines to go towards “the maintenance and development of racing club infrastructure and racecourses including the payment of wages and salaries and purchase of goods and services ancillary to this purpose and the promoting controlling and conducting of race meetings under the Racing Act 2003 but not including the payment of racing stakes:”. We do not believe that it is reasonable for one form of betting which is class 4 betting to go to the pockets of those who own racehorses and who are providing the racehorses and who already get paid from the betting from that form of gambling. We do not think it is reasonable and we certainly do not feel that it falls within the strict interpretation of what “charitable purpose” means or funds that should be used for a charitable purpose. I have never really heard of a racehorse owner who was a charity case but perhaps the Minister can define that as well.The basis of our Supplementary Order Papers is really around wanting to ensure that communities are able to choose whether they have gambling outlets in their communities. The Supplementary Order Papers also seek to ensure that the proceeds of gambling and those funds—and let us face it around about 40 percent of the proceeds of class 4 gambling comes from people who have very limited control over their gambling habits—are redistributed fairly. There have been cases and cases and cases well documented in the media and throughout this House as well in other gambling legislation showing that frequently there are rorts and all sorts of dodgy dealings around the distribution of funds. I think actually that that has sometimes occasionally happened in Ōhāriu. The Minister may be able to comment on that as well.We are quite concerned that we should be able to ensure that this legislation enables the fair distribution of funds from gambling and that most of the money that comes from gambling that is to be distributed for charitable purposes should go back to the communities where the money was gambled—for example to ensure that the money from Jokers pub in Manurewa which actually has quite a large take from gambling does not go to the Otago rugby club and actually gets spent in Manurewa. It is the people in that poor community—particularly the people in that poor community with limited control over their gambling behaviour—who contribute the funds that are to be used for a charitable purpose.We are also quite keen through our Supplementary Order Papers to be able to ensure that councils and local communities have more say over where gambling premises can be. We have seen time after time particularly in places like Ōtara Papatoetoe and Ōtāhuhu a prevalence of gambling clubs—pubs really; but they are more like pokie parlours—being positioned right near community facilities and liquor outlets. These are the communities that provide the most money to community funding from gambling proceeds because they are the ones in which there are more problem gamblers per head of population. We would like to see those communities be able to have some say over whether they want these gambling facilities in their midst. We know that this Government in the last term actually took quite a few steps towards restricting the rights of communities to have a say over things like where they can do things. We know that in South Auckland particularly the communities themselves are saying that they want more control. We see this in places like Ōtara with the Ōtara Gambling and Alcohol Action Group a phenomenal group that promotes activities around healthy eating and entertainment options. I have seen group members out and about and I have seen them celebrating pokie-free bars in Manukau for example as a way of trying to highlight the fact that you can have a night out without actually having to be in a place that provides pokies as a form of entertainment when all too often that entertainment is the cause of harm and addiction in many families in those areas.We are not quite sure actually what a lot of the point of this bill is given the period of time that has elapsed since it was introduced in 2007. We have been assured that it has around about 25 technical amendments. To some extent we are not opposed to them but we do want to make the point that we could strengthen this bill by implementing the Supplementary Order Papers in the name of my colleague Kevin Hague. I would urge the Minister to take those on board and maybe even adopt them as his own. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I have to confess I am just refreshing my memory of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). I would like first of all to acknowledge the Minister whose name is on the bill the Hon Rick Barker a very competent and excellent Minister of Internal Affairs. Of course this bill was introduced back in 2007 and I would like to congratulate him on his foresight.I would say however that one of the reasons this bill came about in the first place was that the then National Opposition was concerned that the Gambling Act—it was originally called the Responsible Gambling Act and after Parliament was finished with it it became just the Gambling Act because it decided that the word “Responsible” no longer applied—was too prescriptive and that in fact it would date too quickly. Indeed that proved to be the case at least in some instances. So this amendment bill was introduced by Rick Barker in 2007 in order to try to keep up with some of the changes. I am therefore delighted that given National’s concern about how quickly the bill would date it has expedited this process and 7 years after the bill was introduced we are now making progress here in the House.If we turn to Part 1 in particular and look at some of the definitional issues that are covered by Part 1 it is very clear that the Act would date very quickly because of the technology changes that have come in since then. We are talking a lot about gambling machines and there are some technical provisions on that that I know my colleague Stuart Nash is intending to speak about so I will not steal his thunder but there are other provisions here around electronic means which I relocated again just before—for example instant game and remote interactive gambling. There have been huge technological advances since this bill was introduced—and in fact since the Gambling Act itself was passed back in 2003—that make this legislation necessary.I would of course point out that I think the Minister in the chair Peter Dunne is now the fourth Minister of Internal Affairs to be in charge of this bill. Rick Barker introduced the legislation. Richard Worth—things did not quite work out for him—then picked up the legislation after that. Chris Tremain I think was after that and now Peter Dunne. Have I missed one? I must have missed—Hon Peter Dunne: You might have missed two.CHRIS HIPKINS: I have missed a couple. So there have been a few other Ministers along the way. Actually no I think Nathan Guy was the Minister of Internal Affairs for a little while there. So this bill has passed through many hands.Of course it is a largely technical piece of legislation and there are a variety of Supplementary Order Papers designed I guess to try to bring the bill up to speed with what has happened in the 7 years since it was introduced. But it is a necessary piece of legislation because it deals with some loopholes and so on. I am aware that there is another gambling amendment bill also on the Table which I am sure Parliament will get to in due course.The bulk of the provisions that I want to speak to are actually in future clauses of the bill but just to give you another example things like eftpos devices are better defined in here. There was eftpos 7 years ago so I am not sure what the necessary change is but there are a variety of changes that are being made simply to bring the law up to date with technological advances and changes that have happened.I do want to talk about the purpose clause in Part 1. There is an amendment here—the very first amendment under the purpose clause clause 4(1)—that changes the purpose of the overall legislation by omitting “the harm caused by” and substituting “harm from”. This is something that I would quite like to have an explanation from the Minister on about what the justification for that is because it seems to me that “harm from” gambling could actually be more narrowly defined than “the harm caused by” gambling.One of the overall purposes of the Act I think—if you go back and look at the principal Act—is that we want to try to reduce the harm caused by gambling so I would like to know why the wording has been changed there in the purpose clause. It is now around “the harm caused by” gambling and it is being changed to “harm from” gambling and it seems to me that the latter definition could well be interpreted as being more narrow than the definition that is in the Act at the moment. So I would like to know what the justification for that wording change is.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am pleased to take a call on this bill. I just acknowledge the work that has been done obviously by previous Ministers and committees particularly those colleagues of mine who have been on the Government Administration Committee.We are dealing here with Part 1 and as the former speaker Chris Hipkins has noted this is quite a technical part primarily around definitions so I will try to keep to that. I suppose the overall balance though for the Government is how you take something like gambling—definitional and otherwise—and acknowledge that for many Kiwis it is something that is enjoyable fun consciously entered into freely and so forth but for others of course it becomes a problem an addiction a disease or however we define it. So that is the balance that we attempt to seek here. I found that across my own work in the community over the years visiting different organisations within my electorate of Tāmaki that have gambling machines—particularly those of the class 4 variety—it is that tension ultimately between Kiwis who enjoy quite responsibly the act of gambling and those who enjoy it in a way that is not healthy for them.So I want to pick up the latter question put forward by Chris Hipkins which was why in clause 4(1) in Part 1 around the purpose we are changing “the harm caused by” and substituting that with the “harm from”. I think ultimately what it tries to indicate is that gambling itself can in some instances be the primary cause of trouble or in other instances it is the secondary form. It is something that contributes if you wish towards someone’s harm. So if someone is in a vulnerable position a financially troubled position or whatever you wish to call it gambling itself may not be that which caused it. It may be an indirect cause but it may be a direct cause. So in other words it is saying that there is some harm from gambling but it might not necessarily be the absolute reason why a person is in a situation of harm. So it is a subtle—Chris Hipkins: But why narrow it?SIMON O’CONNOR: I actually do not think it narrows it. My colleague across the Chamber asks why it is narrowing. In fact I think this broadens it ultimately. The older definition in Part 1 of “the harm caused by” is saying that if someone is in a vulnerable position and is a gambler the harm caused is by the gambling. This change to substitute that with “harm from” broadens it out and says that actually there can be a whole lot of contributing factors that have led to the situation. Gambling informs it but it is not necessarily the only one and I think that is probably a healthier way to approach the whole question of gambling.More often than not if I was to draw from my previous experience addiction breeds addiction so often people who have serious gambling problems may also have a tobacco problem or areas of issues with their finances alcohol and so forth. I think actually this change to the purpose clause acknowledges that in a very subtle way by saying that actually gambling again is a part a contribution a contributing factor or perhaps a secondary element in this.But overall as I said at the start Part 1 is definitional. I think it is really important that this bill gets this right. A serious amount of consideration has been put into this bill by the Government Administration Committee. It is trying to work with an area that is quite evolving. I know a number of members have pointed out that this bill was first put forward in 2007 but a lot has changed. We see even in the Supplementary Order Papers that things are changing again. We learn as we go along.So we are seeing some of the definitional changes including around what a “class 4 venue” is. A simple amendment to the words—a little bit like changing “the harm caused by” to “harm from”. A “class 4 venue” now is seeing the whole notion of “conduct” change to operation. I think that is an important distinction. Again the very fact that the class 4 facility is operating is separated from just how it chooses to conduct itself. I think that provides clarity there. The former member—or the previous member rather; he is not former yet—was talking about an eftpos device. It has just broadened that out. I think that 7 or so years ago eftpos for us was a very specific device and it was separate from credit cards and so forth. Now it is almost a ubiquitous phrase that we use.The definition of a “gaming machine” has been changed here in Part 1. That is noted now to be something that is either “totally or partly mechanically or electronically operated” and it is something that is “adapted or designed and constructed” for gambling purposes. Again it is very clear that there is an array of devices that can be employed here. Ultimately as it says here in Part 1 this device this gaming machine is something that “is played or confers a right to participate whether totally or partly by the insertion of money …”.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):I tend to agree with Chris Hipkins’ definitions around “the harm caused by” and “harm from”. One to me is causation and the other is lot more passive. It does not matter if you are in deep financial stress and you turn to gambling to get yourself out of that financial stress no matter what that may be that is still harm caused by gambling. You get yourself into trouble from gambling but I actually agree with my colleague Mr Hipkins. I think one is a lot wider and one is about the causes of gambling which is really what we should be dealing with in this bill. Harm from gambling—well it does not have the same ring or the same causation as “the harm caused by” but that is last thing I will say on that.Gambling is a rather insidious disease. I do not think there is anything good or enjoyable about gambling. I do not mean to sound like a wowser but there are 50000 New Zealanders who have a gambling addiction. For every person with a gambling addiction there are probably five or six who are affected by it and they include the employer who might have had money stolen or the family members and so on and so forth. The media is full of stories of people who actually have stolen whose lives have been ruined who have lost marriages lost their houses lost their jobs let alone substantial amounts of money and their self-respect.But what I would like to talk about is clause 5(5A) and the definition of a “gaming machine”. I was not aware until Mr Hipkins mentioned it that there is actually another gambling bill on the Order Paper. When I had a look at this bill it really is a 2007 bill because even though in 2007 we had the internet and we had all those whiz-bang devices that we have got now gambling really did not come to the fore on the internet until the last 2 or 3 years. In fact what we are finding is that a lot of people are not actually going to casinos because there is a stigma associated with playing the pokies or putting money in those slot machines. But they can now do it in the comfort of their own home and the privacy of their own home so somewhere we need to include on here something to do with the internet. I am sorry but maybe the Minister of Internal Affairs can tell me whether this bill will come before Parliament yet again with another amendment as technology continues or is the new bill that is on the Order Paper about internet banking and the regulation around that—not internet banking; internet gambling and the regulation around that.Hon Ruth Dyson: Some people sort of see it as banking.STUART NASH: That is true—that is true. The other part of internet gambling—which is so insidious of course—is that there is no tax paid on it. People say that the best way to launder money is obviously by going to a casino and that is how you do it but at least Skycity and other operators like that actually do pay tax whereas there is actually no tax paid on internet gambling. It is a major concern. As the Minister in charge of the bill is a former Minister of Revenue he will know the impact of the internet. It has had a significant effect on the amount of revenue the Government can collect. With the amount of money spent on gambling the tax implications are significant. So can the Minister inform me whether the bill we have on the Order Paper is about regulating internet gambling or whether there will need to be Supplementary Order Papers around this to bring that in.Here it talks about a device whether wholly or partly mechanical or electronically operated—we all have a picture of those; you go down to a casino and there are thousands and thousands of them—that “is adapted or designed and constructed for gambling; and … is played or confers a right to participate whether totally or partly by the insertion of money into it or by the direct or indirect payment of money by any other means;”. So to me this precludes internet gambling.Although the Hon Rick Barker was a man of a lot of vision and foresight I do not think even Mr Barker in his time would have foreseen the growth of the internet gambling industry and actually how many people can play it and the insidious nature that it has. In fact in this day and age you can even buy your Lotto tickets online so it is not just the overseas sites that are controlled by the guys operating out of Macau. This is actually the New Zealand Lotteries Commission. What we have done is made it easier and easier over the years—not incrementally almost quantum leaps—for people to gamble away their money but as a consequence of that I see that a whole lot of legislation is going to have to be introduced to regulate this industry and actually keep people from harm.As mentioned there are 50000 people in this country with a problem gambling situation and we will need to do something about that but in the meantime I am keen to know what the definition of a gambling machine is also because—Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs):Following some informal discussion can I seek the leave of the Committee for all of the provisions of the bill to be taken as one question?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am just restating the question. The question is that Parts 1 to 4—so that is Part 1 that we are already debating and clauses 1 to 3—stand part. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is no objection.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you particularly for that clarification because when you earlier outlined the parts and the clauses I think there was a little bit of confusion so that is very clear—the whole thing as one debate and everyone seems agreed on that.Can I just back up a little bit and go back to the original point of this legislation which as other members have referred to was actually introduced 7 years ago. Seven years ago the Hon Rick Barker introduced this legislation and I recall the debates at the time. They were not as heated as some of the gambling debates that we have had around the behaviour of the Government for example with Skycity. There was a lot of cross-party agreement on the need for the legislation. The issue of problem gambling was becoming more and more known to members of Parliament and I think there was a genuine desire to address that but there was some concern at the time that the legislation was very prescriptive and therefore would soon become dated and we would have a need for amendments to update it.I want to ask a question of the Minister in the chair Peter Dunne who despite our political differences I think shares with me an understanding of how the other works and I think the Minister would have considered it. What I want to know is what the tipping point is—in terms of definitions that we know will become dated but we do not know how—with regard to having them in primary legislation as opposed to schedules. I would be very interested to know—not that it is going to make a difference in terms of support or otherwise of the legislation but in terms of the best way of either redrafting or amending legislation such as this in the future where we know that practices will develop practices will change and the current definitions will become redundant—what the best way is to ensure that they are kept relevant.So I would like the Minister’s answer if he has an opportunity—it may be this evening. Peak listener time is just about to come upon us as the Minister is well aware. He knows that between 8 minutes to 10 p.m. and 5 minutes to 10 p.m. is when most people like to tune in to listen to what is happening in Parliament. But quite seriously I would like it if he could just say what he thinks is the tipping point in that because throughout this legislation you can see things that may well disappear in the very near future but the intent to try to minimise harm is obviously still relevant regardless of what the cause is.So that was the reason that we had this legislation as an amendment in the first place—because the very concerns that were raised were shown to be correct in that respect—but I do not think we are getting it right in this legislation because we have still got so many definitions in the primary legislation.I want to have a look at Part 1 and the definitional issues that I think Stuart Nash and perhaps Chris Hipkins as well referred to. That is a very relevant example of the areas where the technology changes will in fact make the very sections that we are debating now become irrelevant to Parliaments of the future. So that is my primary question—what is the tipping point for definitions such as this which are at the heart of the legislation? They are not minor; they are at the fundamental heart because they describe the triggers for either offences or other regulatory regimes or controls that are put on. So the very heart and soul of this legislation is included in the definitions.I am hoping that the Minister is about take a call in which case I am very keen to hear the answer to that question. What is the tipping point? What can we safely leave in the primary legislation and not have to come back in the future and spend the time of the House making amendments to when we all agree on the primary purpose of the legislation? And what can more usefully be put in a schedule which can then of course be updated by Order in Council particularly given that the Minister is well aware of the fact that there is widespread agreement in this area?Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs):The member who has just preceded me the Hon Ruth Dyson sets a pretty stern challenge at this hour of the evening but I will attempt to respond. To my way of thinking the fact that we have before the Committee tonight a bill that has been 7 years getting to this point is unsatisfactory frankly for a variety of reasons. That is water under the bridge but I will just highlight the dilemma she poses.As this bill goes through—and we already have Supplementary Order Paper 454 which I have tabled amending some of its provisions because they need to be amended—I have a second bill titled the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) awaiting its first reading and that process will continue. I am of the view that what we are seeing—and it is my personal view only—is a fundamental change in the nature of the gaming industry in New Zealand. I actually put the words “in New Zealand” in deliberately almost parenthetically because I think the challenge for the future will not be in terms of how we regulate our domestic environment. So many of our gaming opportunities will be offshore through the internet or through a whole range of other technologies and they will be extremely difficult to control and to regulate. So to some extent in passing legislation of this type and amending it and trying to keep it fit for purpose we are fighting a little bit against history because the big challenge is going to be the nature of the games that lie ahead.I recall being in this portfolio in the mid-1990s and also being the Minister of Revenue at that stage when internet gambling was first taking off. I remember being approached quite properly by two very large international internet gaming providers wanting access to New Zealand domain names because we were seen as reputable. The deal for New Zealand would be the name and we would negotiate a form of tax payment. That never got beyond the drawing board for a variety of reasons. But even then I think it was an early warning sign of the nature of the way in which this industry was going to develop and has in fact mushroomed over the period of the last 20 years.So the challenge I think is a twofold one. One is to try to regulate the terrestrial gaming environment within New Zealand as best we can and have legislation that is going to be fit for purpose in that respect. The second and more difficult one is to be at the same time keeping an eye on broader developments. Already we see challenges. You hear from time to time when a major sporting event occurs the debate for instance between the TAB and Centrebet over the odds that they offer. You see on occasion the debate around the extension—and I do not want to reopen it—of the number of gaming machines at Skycity last year and about the relevance of that in the context where people can actually go online in the privacy of their own home and gamble.Hon Ruth Dyson: We thought it was relevant.Hon PETER DUNNE: So the point I am trying to make and I think the member would agree with me is that this is very much—whatever we do and however frequently we amend the law—a holding operation in respect of an environment that is changing rapidly. If anyone had said to anyone in this House 10 years ago that their lives would be governed by one of these—a smartphone—and that we would do all sorts of amazing things from one of these I think we would have thought that was pie in the sky. Just apropos of that I read this morning in a newspaper that we are about to see all home appliances—jugs and teapots and all those sorts of things—wired in such a way that you can charge your phone while you are using them. That just shows you how these things are changing.So I cannot give the member an absolute answer to her question. I acknowledge its significance and I think our challenge is going to be that twofold one of making sure we have a proper sustainable regulatory environment for the domestic territorial gaming scene while at the same time making sure also that we do what we can to keep an eye on monitor and ensure we have best practice in respect of offshore operations—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister but the time has come for me to report progress.Progress to be reported presently.House resumed.The Chairperson reported the Employment Relations Amendment Bill with amendment the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into four bills and progress on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2).Report adopted.The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.