Volume 632 Week 21 - Tuesday 25 July 2006 
Volume 632 Week 21 - Tuesday 25 July 2006 
[Volume:632;Page:4321] 
Tuesday 25 July 2006 
Madam Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Questions to Ministers 
Taito Phillip Field—Ingram Report 
1. Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Was Dr Ingram able to interview all the Thai nationals who allegedly worked on properties owned by Taito Phillip Field in return for immigration assistance; if not can she assure the House that she has taken every step open to her to ascertain whether any serious impropriety occurred involving a member of her executive? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 No he could not interview all those nationals but I am satisfied that did not impact on Mr Ingram’s ability to come to conclusions regarding ministerial conduct. The conclusion was that there was no ministerial conflict of interest. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Does the Prime Minister accept that for a member of Parliament to accept cheap labour or slave labour in return for immigration favours would be outright corruption; if so why is she prepared to turn a blind eye to the clear evidence against Mr Field? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There has been an exhaustive inquiry and there is no such clear evidence. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Does the Prime Minister accept that the truth regarding the accusations that Mr Field accepted slave labour in return for immigration favours can be reached only by interviewing the individuals allegedly exploited by Mr Field; if so why would she not follow the course normally followed under our laws and give the witnesses the protection they deserve and the authorities the power to question them? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I draw the member’s attention again to the words of Dr Ingram QC who said: “Even if I had possessed the power to administer oaths and to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents the process of inquiry may not have been significantly more satisfactory.” 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Ingram report suggests very strongly that a current Minister in her Government Mr Damien O’Connor exercised his discretion in the manner requested by Mr Field whilst knowing full well that Mr Field was benefiting personally from his representations and what steps has she taken to satisfy herself in relation to that very serious allegation? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There is no such implication in the report. 
Dr Don Brash 
: What is the Prime Minister’s response to Taito Phillip Field’s comment on  
Tagata Pasifika 
 last week that he expected to be reinstated to his ministerial portfolios because “natural justice is that they would look at reinstatement at some point. I think that that is only fair.”; and can she confirm that notwithstanding the serious allegations that still hang over Mr Field’s head she has led him to believe that he might in future be restored to her ministry? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Natural justice does require people to be treated fairly and of course people will always aspire to work their way back. 
Heather Roy 
: On the question of Taito Phillip Field’s impropriety is the Prime Minister aware of Mr Field’s key role in the election to the Manukau City Council of the Labour ticket including the election of his close associate Mr James Papali’i who is today before the courts on 14 counts of fraud and related charges arising from the operation of various trusts funded by the council or does the Prime Minister not know what Mr Field has been up to in local body politics? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I just remind members that there is no ministerial responsibility for those matters. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I have to say that that cannot be right. The question Dr Don Brash asked was directly about the impropriety of a Minister’s actions while he was a Minister; indeed this election occurred precisely when Mr Phillip Field was a Minister and he was heavily involved in that election. The question asked whether the Prime Minister was aware at the time. She certainly has responsibility for her Minister. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have made my ruling but the Prime Minister had set up an inquiry that was to deal with that particular matter. The matter that was raised in the question was different but as I said I have ruled on that. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Ingram report covers this issue so it is included. It is mentioned in the report and it is discussed in the report. I cannot see how some matters in the report can have prime ministerial responsibility and other matters in the report are declared by you not to have such responsibility. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If in fact the question can be tied to the report it is totally in order. The matter that was questioned was about something that was outside the report. That was the basis of the ruling I say to the member. So perhaps the member would like to recast her question so that it is within the Standing Orders. 
Heather Roy 
: On the question of Taito Phillip Field’s impropriety as discussed in the Ingram report is the Prime Minister aware of Mr Field’s key role in the election to the Manukau City Council of the Labour ticket including the election of his close associate Mr James Papali’i who is today before the courts on 14 counts of fraud and related charges arising from the operation of various trusts funded by the council or does the Prime Minister not want to know what Mr Field has been up to in local body politics? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: No because I do not follow every local body campaign closely. I can say however that if there is to be guilt by association then presumably ACT accepts it on behalf of Donna Awatere Huata. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I note with interest the Prime Minister’s reference to Donna Awatere Huata. Does that mean we can actually draw a strong inference in questioning the Prime Minister that Taito Phillip Field’s behaviour was equivalent to her behaviour? The ACT party actually took responsibility and made sure that Donna Awatere Huata left Parliament faced the courts of New Zealand and indeed served time in jail—if that is the standard that Helen Clark aspires to why is it not operating on Taito Phillip Field? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Are we to take it from the Prime Minister’s statements made today and previously that there are no consequences for one of her MPs who appears to have employed people at well below the legal minimum wage while using his position as an MP to advocate for those people; if so what effect does she think that will have on the credibility of this House with the public? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The consequence for Mr Field in this place is that he is no longer a Minister. If there are any further consequences people should refer them to appropriate inquiries. 
Rodney Hide 
: Is it of no concern to the Prime Minister that one of her Ministers was while a Minister the effective chairman—in practice though not in name—of the Labour ticket in the Manukau City Council elections that saw a fraudster elected to office; if that is not of concern— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. As far as I remember the charges have been laid in the court. It is not for this House suddenly to find a person guilty before the trial has even occurred. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member like to recast his question in more parliamentary language please. 
Rodney Hide 
: Is it not of concern to the Prime Minister that one of her Ministers was involved as chairman in practice if not in name of a ticket that saw elected to office a man who is before the courts for fraud—actually for defrauding the trusts funded by the council—and if that is not of concern to the Prime Minister what standard does she set for her ministry? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am sure it is of concern to any party when individual members let it down. The ACT party knows that as acutely as any and I note on the National front bench there is one member convicted of contempt of court and another of using unreasonable force—they are still on the front bench of the National Party. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I ask you how that answer can possibly be in order. The Prime Minister has no responsibility for the ACT party caucus—as good as it is and as large as it is. She has no responsibility for the National Party and its internal discipline. We are asking about her standard as Prime Minister for her Cabinet Ministers for which she is directly responsible and about which she is ducking diving and weaving. If a Prime Minister is not to be held to account for the behaviour of one of her Ministers then why have question time? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I remind members that points of order should be made succinctly and to the point. Speeches should not be given. The Prime Minister did address the question. 
Schools—Mainstreaming 
2.  
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What recent reports if any has he received on mainstreaming in New Zealand schools? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I have received a report that states that the Education Act 1989 ensures that all young people with disabilities and special needs have “the same rights to enrol and receive education in state schools as people who do not”. The National Government supported this policy through the 1990s parents support this policy because they want choice for their children and the Labour-led Government has supported special-education policy through a 50 percent increase in funding for special needs since 1999. 
Moana Mackey 
: What recent reports has the Minister seen on alternatives to mainstreaming in New Zealand schools? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I have seen reports of a policy to “wind back the mainstreaming of children”. 
The policy was launched without consultation at the National Party conference at the weekend. The Principals Federation responded with this comment: “Mainstreaming is working reasonably well and National needs to reconsider any suggestion to scrap it. If National does intend to block the rights of some children to receive the same kind of education as everybody else just because they have a disability they should have the courage to front up and say so now.” 
Hon Bill English 
: Does the Minister intend to persist with a policy that may mean for example that a teacher who has to handle a knife-wielding child terrorising a classroom is told by the principal that nothing can be done about it and he or she just has to manage? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I will not allow the member to weasel out of his criticism of mainstreaming and now pretend that he was talking about severe behaviour problems in the classroom. It was mainstreaming that he said he would wind back. That means children with disabilities. Explain that to parents! 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Does the Minister agree that mainstreaming is not necessarily the best approach for all special-needs children and that some of the resistance to it was created by the misguided zealotry of some educational officials in the early years of the Towards Inclusion policy in insisting on under-resourced mainstreaming or “main-dumbing” as it came to be known? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I agree that during the early days of the 1990s—dark years they were—this policy was not well applied by the National Government. These days mainstreaming means a range of choices for young people. Resources do have to rise and this Government has put in 50 percent more in the last 6 years. 
Judy Turner 
: Is the Minister happy with current conditions for the provision of teacher-aide hours for severely disabled students in classrooms as well as the conditions of employment for teacher-aides themselves? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Once again there has been a very significant rise in the amount of money going to teacher-aides. Any MP in the House would know that many years ago severely disabled students would have gone to schools with almost none; they now find a large number of aides in each of these classrooms. One of the things we want to do though along with the trade unions is look at how to regularise their employment so that they are more stable and more secure. 
Moana Mackey 
: What reports has the Minister seen on the views of parents of children and the education sector on mainstreaming? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: In 2004 the Ministry of Education ran an extensive consultation process that gave a wide range of new areas for action and we will be funding them to the tune of something like $400 million in the year ahead. We are committed to mainstreaming in its various forms. In contrast Bill English has said National will abandon mainstreaming. When the Parliamentary Library asked for the speech that contains that remark Mr English’s office said there was not one. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think you know what the point of order is. The member opposite has been here long enough to control his anger and not to interrupt in a way that is outside Parliament’s Standing Orders. 
Hon Bill English 
: This Minister has a habit which he now picks up most days that he answers questions of simply misrepresenting and in fact often of not telling the truth. He says things are one way when they quite clearly are not. In this case he purported to represent a quote from me saying National had said it would abandon mainstreaming. He knows that that is a lie but it has not prevented him from saying it in the House and that is why there is disruption. If he tells the truth then there will not be disruption. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: But the member knows that that is not the way to address those issues—you do not call other members liars. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Speaking to the point of order before the member withdraws can I say there is one other way to clear the matter up. If we could have a copy of the speech which no one can get hold of that would actually give us the full text. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I ask the member to please withdraw and apologise for using that unparliamentary term. 
Hon Bill English 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Dr Don Brash 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I seek your guidance. I understand that it is not parliamentary to accuse another member of lying but when a Minister says something that is clearly untrue are we obliged to sit and listen to that? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Yes as we are obliged to listen to completely untrue assertions as part of questions. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is well known that a member cannot say “lie” in this House. That is unparliamentary. The facility in use of the English language is such that most members know how to make their views known and there are a variety of ways to do so under the Standing Orders. A point of order could be taken as could a personal explanation and there is always the general debate. [ 
Interruption 
] The member did withdraw and apologise. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: In answer to the question we have run an extensive consultation process. We are funding this area of education to the tune of $400 million a year now. We are committed to mainstreaming. In contrast Mr Bill English has signalled that the National Party wants to wind back its mainstreaming policy—that is abandoning it. What he needs to do is give us a copy of his speech which even the Parliamentary Library has been denied so that we can check on what he says he said. 
Foreign Affairs Minister—Confidence 
3.  
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she have confidence in the Minister of Foreign Affairs; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because he is a hard-working and conscientious Minister. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Was it in New Zealand’s interests for our Minister of Foreign Affairs to interrupt mid-sentence the man who may well be the next President of the United States as he was outlining a case for better relations between New Zealand and the US and in particular giving his advocacy for New Zealand getting a free-trade agreement? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Senator McCain’s support for New Zealand is fantastic. We all heard it. Mr Peters was keen to get on with the meeting and hear more about it. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Can she assure the House next time all the planets align and a senior US politician tells us we are allies and that he supports us getting a free-trade agreement that she Mr Mallard or now Mr Peters will not inappropriately open their mouths or let their egos get in the way and put New Zealand on the back foot? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I very much welcome the strong support that Senator McCain has expressed for New Zealand and I am pleased the Minister of Foreign Affairs’ visit was such a success that we got those expressions of support. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Can she confirm her call in her post-Cabinet press conference yesterday for Mr Peters and the media involved to repair their relationships “like mature adults.”; and can we take it that the Prime Minister shares the view of the vast majority of New Zealanders that her Minister of Foreign Affairs has behaved like anything but a mature adult? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: What I can confirm is that at the conference I called for a ceasefire of hostilities. If we would like to have one in the Middle East it is fair enough to call for one here. 
Peter Brown 
: Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to outline to the House some of the many positive outcomes from the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Washington? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The very positive outcome of the visit is that the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs was received at the highest level of the foreign policy establishment in the United States of America. Further the United States demonstrated a willingness to move further in the relationship with New Zealand than it ever did in 9 years of National Government. That is why National has tried to wreck the trip. 
Keith Locke 
: When the Prime Minister talks about a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict is she calling for an unconditional ceasefire as some UN officials are pushing for or a conditional ceasefire requiring for example the prior release of the captured Israeli soldiers as the United States is pushing for; if she requires any conditions prior to a ceasefire how would she then justify the ongoing death and destruction that would ensue in both Israel and Lebanon? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The right honourable Prime Minister has had quite a long bow on that question but— 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There are a number of aspects to that question but I want to say to the member that the New Zealand Government strongly supports the United Nations Secretary-General’s call for a ceasefire forthwith so that the parties can get back to looking at some longer-term solutions to the problems in the Middle East. For a long time New Zealand Governments have supported a two-State solution for Israel and Palestine with both sides respecting each other’s security boundaries and right to exist. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Can she explain why only minutes after she at her press conference called for Mr Peters to take a press secretary with him on important visits in the future Mr Peters told her publicly to take a running jump and can she confirm that Mr Peters’ relationship with her is now roughly on a par with that which he enjoys with the press gallery? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Of course Mr Peters said no such thing. He said he did not want to make the cost on the— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Rubbish! Come on! 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Madam Speaker every answer I have given has been interrupted in this way. I want to quote exactly what Mr Peters said— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Will the member please be seated. All members are entitled to hear the answers to questions but it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to do so. I therefore ask members to please not make their interjections a barrage. The odd interjection is perfectly permitted but other members and those who listen to Parliament are entitled to hear questions and answers. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The exact quote is: “I am not going to expand the cost when it is not required.” That is reasonable. The whole point about this is that the National Party has not been able to poison the trip. The trip was a great success and the United States administration is moving on.  
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. We have now had three questions and I assume this one is just about at its end. There has been a lot of interjection that you have pulled us up on but the reason for it is the quality of the answers. I know that you do not arbitrate on that but if Labour Ministers are to be reckless with the truth on almost every occasion then where does that leave us? Obviously it will leave us in a state of disarray and disruption. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: We have had a plea on that position a number of times in recent years with the National Party via its deputy leader threatening the Speaker and the order of the House. What the National Party or what Mr Brownlee is saying—it is a sort of top-of-the-stairs approach to life—is that if Mr Brownlee does not like the answer then he and his colleagues deserve the right to behave in an unparliamentary fashion. Madam Speaker you are the sole person to maintain order not the National Party caucus. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I thank members for their contributions. That was not of course a point of order. 
Immigration Service—Provision of Information to Minister 
4.  
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
 to the  
Minister of Immigration 
: Does his department provide him with all relevant information prior to his making decisions and giving directions with regard to issuing visas as exceptions to policy? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 Decisions are made on the basis of the best available information at the time. The Minister of Immigration and his Associate Minister rely upon advice provided by the Department of Labour information put forward by individuals advocates immigration advisers and members of Parliament and verification processes. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: How does he explain the file note of Mr James Dalmer the manager of the Apia branch of the New Zealand Immigration Service which as revealed by the Ingram report records “knowledge of Thai cases—knows that Taito has had these people working for him—Damien knew that before he made the decision.”? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: As we have previously traversed in this House matters pertaining to the Ingram inquiry do not fall within my jurisdiction as Minister of Immigration. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Has the Minister’s office been involved in a cover-up when the Ingram report reveals that Mr James Dalmer the manager of the Apia branch of the New Zealand Immigration Service for which the Minister is responsible emailed the immigration intelligence unit on 9 June asking: “The question I have is whether our Assoc Minister was aware of the information we have received and all the circumstances involved … regarding these Thai nationals when he apparently made these decisions following discussions with Hon Taito Philip [sic] Field.”—an email sent prior to the Minister giving the special direction in the case of Mr Siriwan on 23 June 2005? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: This matter was traversed thoroughly in the Ingram inquiry. I repeat that the inquiry falls outside my jurisdiction but I note that the Prime Minister has said that no such implication of foreknowledge was drawn by Mr Ingram in his report. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I ask you to consider the answer given by the Minister that the questions relate to matters that fall outside his jurisdiction. Is he the Minister of Immigration? Does he have that particular delegation and if he does why does he not have responsibility for things that have happened in that department and why is he not responsible for advice that has flowed to his colleagues in that regard? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I listened to the Minister carefully. I think he clearly said that he is not the responsible Minister for the inquiry itself. Clearly matters that relate to the immigration portfolio and the administration of that portfolio do lie within the Minister’s competence and questions on those matters are properly addressed to the Minister. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: As I have ruled before the Minister of Immigration is not responsible for the report but is of course responsible for matters relating to immigration. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Has the Minister’s office been involved in a cover-up when the group manager for service international of the Department of Labour Mr Tavita telephoned the Minister’s office at 2.41 p.m. on 9 June 2005 to advise the Minister’s office of the information received from Mr Dalmer the branch manager in Apia prior to the Minister making his decision to issue a special directive in the case of Mr Siriwan on 23 June? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: While I repeat that I am not the responsible Minister for the report on the inquiry I understand—[ 
Interruption 
] Members opposite either want an answer or they do not. 
Hon Member 
: We do want an answer. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Well the members might want to listen then. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the Minister please proceed. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I repeat although I am not the Minister responsible for the Ingram inquiry report I would note that the report draws the inference that the Minister at the time had no knowledge of the communications to which the member refers. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Minister of Immigration is ultimately responsible for all decisions involving special directives. This question questioned the Minister about a special directive given on 23 June. I questioned the Minister about a call from an officer in the Department of Labour to the Minister’s office on 9 June prior to the Minister’s office making that special directive on 23 June. These are issues for which the Minister is directly accountable and much as he may not like it he has to answer these issues. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: The Minister is responsible as I have ruled on several occasions for matters relating to immigration. In terms of the last answer he did in the second part address the question though it may not have been a satisfactory answer from the member’s point of view. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Has the Minister’s office been involved in a cover-up when Mr Murray Gardiner a compliance officer with the New Zealand Immigration Service for whom that Minister is responsible served the removal order on Ms Phanngarm Mr Siriwan’s partner and emailed the Minister’s office with information on Mr Siriwan and Ms Phanngarm in Samoa on 27 May prior to the Minister’s decision to issue a special directive on 23 June; how does the Minister explain that if it is not a cover-up? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I repeat that although I am not the Minister responsible for the Ingram inquiry report ongoing matters do fall within my jurisdiction. The report concludes that the Minister had no knowledge of the matters to which the member refers and further the member’s question raises the issue of how far back in history current immigration Ministers should delve to investigate previous Ministers’ discretions. I warrant that there is a wealth of information on the other side. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I do not think there is any way you could conclude that that was a reasonable answer given that the Minister was not asked to comment on the Ingram report he was simply asked to comment on a chronology of events that happened in the office that he is responsible for and that culminated in the Minister of Immigration making a decision in favour of a request from Mr Field knowing that the person for whom the favour was granted was working for Mr Field. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Although the Minister started his answer with that preface he did go on to address the substance of the question although as I said it may not have been to the satisfaction of the member. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. With respect he then went on to say that the report did not find as the questioner is suggesting. Quite apart from the fact that that is wrong it is not an answer to the chronology of events that took place in the office he is responsible for. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: It is not for the Speaker to say what is a right or wrong answer; it is whether the question was addressed. 
Treaty of Waitangi—Legislation 
5.  
PITA PARAONE (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: Has he received any advice on the removal of references to the “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” from legislation and the impact this may have on the relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi to New Zealand? 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 Yes I have received advice on the implications of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill for current legislation. 
Pita Paraone 
: Can the Minister confirm that removing references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation will not remove all references to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation as the principles and the Treaty itself are clearly different? 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: Yes it is my understanding that the assertion in the first part of the member’s question is correct. However I cannot confirm that it would be without significant potential risk and negative impact on the relationship between many Maori and the Crown. 
Pita Paraone 
: Can he confirm then that the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Treaty itself are different and that removing the undefined principles from legislation will not affect the Treaty of Waitangi and its relevance to New Zealand? 
Simon Power 
: You can’t amend the bill during question time! 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: Mr Power aspires to my job but he has not got it yet. [ 
Interruption 
] He will have a long wait. A lot of the Opposition members are aspiring but they are growing old in their aspiration. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Could the Minister just address the question. 
Pita Paraone 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I asked the question but unfortunately I could not hear the answer. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I remind members—those asking the questions and those answering them—that if they just stuck to the questions and the answers and did not embroider them with any other comments we would get through them more quickly. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I apologise to the member for allowing myself to be distracted by members opposite. In answer to the member’s question of course one draws from the other. He asks whether it is the case that the removal of references to the principles would have no effect. No I cannot agree with that. Such a removal would amend several Treaty claim Acts in effect affecting the apologies given and I am afraid that that in turn would undermine the good-faith relationship between the Crown and those it settled with. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe Madam Speaker; tena tatou katoa i Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori. Kua rongo ia mo etahi korero penei i era i puta mai i te Minita Maori i te nupepa i te ranei e ki nei “Kaore te Wahanga Maori i te whakaae ki te pire” a he rereke he orite he korero taupatupatu ranei enei korero ki aua matapono e putake mai ana i te Tiriti o Waitangi penei i te noho tahi kia noho korekiko ai nga nawe o te tangata whenua; ki te kore he aha ai? 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
Has he received any advice as reported by the Minister of Maori Affairs in today’s newspaper that “the Maori Caucus is not in favour of it” and would he not think it inconsistent with the very principles embedded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi such as partnership if the concerns of the people of the land are ignored; if not why not? 
] 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I am aware of the comments in the newspaper that the member refers to. I can say to the member that the comments of the Minister are not at any odds with the views of his colleagues. The Labour caucus will honour its undertaking under the confidence and supply agreement. That does not mean we will not engage in very full debate of the issues raised in the bill. 
Foreign Affairs Minister—Media 
6.  
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
 to the  
Minister of Foreign Affairs 
: Does he stand by his actions in interrupting Senator John McCain during media questions at last week’s meeting and his subsequent description of media coverage as “a tissue of lies”? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs) 
: 
 Speaking as Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs I believe this is a matter best dealt with between the Rt Hon Winston Peters and the media. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Does the Minister stand by the accusations in his press release of 19 July—the day of the McCain meeting—in which he asserted that the New Zealand media had “arrived late” been guilty of “an unplanned intrusion” then “proceeded to hijack the meeting” and had broken an agreement to ask only a couple of questions; if not which of those accusations does he not now stand behind and why? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: As I said as Acting Minister I believe these are matters best dealt with between the Rt Hon Winston Peters and the media. I did watch  
Close Up 
 last night and indeed a couple of questions were mentioned before questioning began. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: What specific lies was the Minister referring to when he called media coverage of the incident “a tissue of lies”? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I have always understood that a tissue is a kind of seamless web. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Does the Minister still stand by his statement of 17 November 2005: “We have to exhaust every potential there is to obtain an improved relationship with the United States.”; if so can he explain how interrupting a senior senator—and potential United States President—in mid-sentence and overshadowing his visit with accusations that the media are retailing a tissue of lies would have contributed towards that objective? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The matters referred to in the last part of the question appear to have had no impact upon the United States at all. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Does the Minister still stand by his further statement of 17 November last year in relation to his goal of improving New Zealand - US relations: “We have got to go into this with the best of optimism and using the best of our intelligence and see if we can effect a better outcome.” and can he refer the House specifically to the displays of either optimism or intelligence on his part that were evident in Washington last week? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What I can certainly refer to is the fact that Senator McCain—who has yet to confirm he is a candidate for the presidency I noted in the interview relayed on  
Close Up 
 last night; the National Party appears to be jumping the gun in this respect—said he placed no weight upon the problems that arose out of misunderstandings and that discussions with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had clearly resulted in New Zealand and the United States expressing a wish to move forward which is something that did not happen under the National Government. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Can we conclude from last week’s tantrums in Washington that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has been taking media advice from the Minister of Finance and that the journalists responsible for the alleged “tissue of lies” are secretly conspiring with the National Party in order to get a tax cut? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: If they are going to wait for a National Government for a tax cut even Mr Espiner will have retired by that point. 
Primary Health Care Strategy—Feedback 
7.  
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: What reports has he received on support for the Government’s work to lower the cost of doctors’ visits and prescription drugs for all New Zealanders? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I have received many reports stating that lower health costs have been warmly welcomed by New Zealand families. The National Party is however committed to raising costs back to where they were—that is a policy to increase doctors’ fees by $27 and the cost of each prescription to increase by $12. That is current National Party policy—unless of course National is going to change its leader and change its policy. 
Maryan Street 
: What work is under way to accelerate the implementation of the Government’s Primary Health Care Strategy? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: On Friday I released a 5-year plan for primary health focusing on the continued extension of affordable doctors’ visits and on population health. By contrast at last weekend’s National Party conference Tony Ryall was the only member of the National front bench not allowed to give a policy speech. Why might that be? 
Nathan Guy 
: Has the Minister seen any reports on how devastated the people are in Levin at today’s announcement that the Village Doctors practice is closing leaving an extra 1500 people in Horowhenua without a general practitioner—like Gisborne Blenheim Kapiti Timaru—and why after 7 years of a Labour Government are doctors all over New Zealand in short supply stressed out and overworked? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member might like to refer to a press statement made by the primary health organisation itself that patients will be enrolled in a brand-new practice in Shannon as well as existing practices in Foxton and Levin. Things move quickly in health. He should try to keep up. 
Elective Surgery—Demand 
8.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Is he concerned about the Government’s ability to meet New Zealanders’ need for elective surgery; if not why not? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I have said many times that this Government is ambitious and assertive about the need for continuous improvement. For example I have asked the Ministry of Health and the district health boards to work with clinicians in the college of surgeons amongst others to improve the efficiency of operating theatres and to lift elective surgery volumes. The ministry announced some detail today. That is another example of the Government being open and constructive with its policy approach while the National Party refuses to confirm anything about its health policy—other than saying it is going to put up doctors’ fees. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: What sense of urgency is the Minister delivering in terms of the elective services crisis in New Zealand when today his ministry and he announced a number of working parties on top of the addressing disincentives working party—including a new theatre efficiency working party and plans for a working party on addressing acute demand—when New Zealanders have known about this situation for many years; why are we getting just another working party when elective surgery would do the trick? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member actually has not given us the complete list of working parties. This is a very busy space. We have still more than that and the end result will be that we have a health system that produces more elective outcomes and results in more patients being seen in a timely way than has ever been the case and I look forward to it. 
Barbara Stewart 
: Does he acknowledge the steadily increasing gap between the health system’s capacity and the public’s expectations and is any public discussion planned on the implications of this; if so when will it occur? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Yes just about every day in the paper. The capacity of our health system has increased markedly since the change of Government and the Budget the workforce the number of new hospitals and the provision of health care are all a good deal higher than they were 7 years ago. However the member is also correct in that our society has expectations—as do it appears others around the world—such that one could argue there is no such thing as enough money for health. 
Sue Moroney 
: What reports has he received on pressures on the public surgery system? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I have seen a report that migrants in this country are not putting undue pressure on public hospitals. That report goes on to criticise Tony Ryall and the National Party for their ignorance of health policy and their “Let’s kick a migrant.” attitude. That report is from a former National Party health Minister Aussie Malcolm. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: How will the health of 5000 Canterbury residents be improved by their being culled from a hospital waiting list on top of the 4500 culled earlier this year; how will the health of those 5000 Canterbury people benefit from their being culled off a waiting list? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The best answer is to say it is better for people to be seen by their general practitioner than by no one. I say to the member that if he has a copy of the advertisement he should please read it or get someone to read it to him. He will see an openness and transparency in this system that is strange indeed to the National Party. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Has any district health board notified the Government of its intention to reduce elective surgery this financial year; if so which? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I am yet to complete my examination of all district annual plans but to my knowledge none. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Then how does the Minister explain the statement of intent of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board that he tabled in the House last week which clearly stated that in order to meet a funding shortfall the district health board intended to focus on reducing elective services? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I refer the member to when he gets hold of it the district annual plan of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. He may find himself needing to withdraw his remarks. 
Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: Will the Minister admit that he is on target to deliver fewer elective operations—that is fewer actual surgical procedures rather than some mathematically concocted number—this year than 6 years ago which means that New Zealanders will actually receive less elective surgery this year than when Labour took over? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: No I do not nor do I think that repeating a lot something that is wrong makes it true. 
Electricity Commission—Smart Meters 
9.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy 
: Does he agree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that small consumers and providers of demand-side energy management solutions are not adequately represented on the Electricity Commission’s advisory groups and that the introduction of smart meters should be accelerated to give consumers more control over electricity costs; if so what action is he planning to take? 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 The membership of these groups is under the control of the Electricity Commission but I am aware that the chair of the commission believes that there should be consumer representation across all advisory groups and has invited consumer groups to make suitable nominations. On the issue of smart meters I agree that they should be encouraged. One of the objectives of the New Zealand Energy Strategy is to identify key areas where we can improve energy efficiency and I think smart meters are likely to play an increasing role. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Does the Minister agree with the commissioner’s recommendation also in this report that more should be done to promote distributor generation; if so when will the Ministry of Economic Development complete regulations to enable small-scale generation like micro-hydro community-scale wind and solar electricity to connect to the grid as required by the 2004 Government policy statement on electricity governance? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I have spoken to the parliamentary commissioner about his report and when he talks about micro-generation he actually includes demand-side management within the meaning of that term which is a rather strange and extended definition of it. I agree with him that we do need to pay more attention to demand-side management and including smaller generation. 
Shane Jones 
: Does the Minister agree with the parliamentary commissioner’s recommendation to develop an overarching policy framework for the energy sector? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Yes I do and I am pleased to say that that is exactly what the New Zealand Energy Strategy is being developed to do. It will put New Zealand firmly on the path to an energy system that supports economic development while being environmentally responsible. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Is the Minister surprised at the damning comments from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment over energy policy when his Government has built a new oil-fired power station at Whirinaki has supported its own State-owned enterprise building a new coal-fired power station in Whangarei has blocked renewable energy projects like Project Aqua and Dobson and has overseen increases in greenhouse gas emissions in the term of this Government that are three times that of Australia and four times that of the United States? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No I do not agree with them when characterised in the way the member just did. I do accept that New Zealand needs to build more renewable power capacity. I would point out that the increase in output of thermal generation has not been caused so much by an increase in the number of thermal stations as it has by the greater efficiency with which those plants have been made available to the market—that is they have been run more often. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: In view of widespread agreement that distributed generation should be encouraged what action will the Minister take to address the concerns of electricity lines companies that if they build small-scale renewable generation—as the Act now allows them to do—they are allowed to sell it only through their competitors the large generator retailers and that if they were able to sell directly to consumers many small renewable projects would become economic? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That is one issue that will be considered under the National Energy Strategy. But it is not an easy issue because of the risk of allowing lines companies to be able to retail direct is that they will be able to shift costs and effectively subsidise those generation options out of the monopoly rents that they could extract from their lines businesses. 
Electricity Costs—Senior Citizens 
10.  
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy 
: Has he received any reports that the price of electricity is the thing most worrying Grey Power members throughout the country as stated by the national president of Grey Power Graham Stairmand? 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 I am aware of Grey Power’s concerns and accept that adequate and affordable heating is important for the elderly. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Does the Minister agree with the statement made by Helen Clark to a Grey Power conference in April 1999 that superannuitants faced “a winter of misery” because of power price increases that were 3 percent and what sort of winter is it for our elderly this year who face power price increases of 10 percent? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I do agree with the comments the Prime Minister made then which were made against the background of the slashing of the superannuation baseline for superannuitants. 
Darren Hughes 
: Can the Minister tell the House what the Labour-led Government has done to assist low-income older people to meet their power bills? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: The Government has restored the baseline for superannuitants that was cut by the previous Government and has increased it further pursuant to the confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First this year. We have vastly increased the amount and eligibility criteria for the rates rebate scheme and have introduced a low fixed-charge option for those who use less that 8000 kilowatts of electricity each year. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: How does he explain a 32.4 percent increase in power prices between 2000 and 2005 as compared with inflation over the same period of 12.5 percent and increases in power prices from 1995 to 2000 of 14 percent? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: The main reason has been that Maui gas was running out. Until Maui gas ran out it was an artificial suppressant to the price of power because the price of Maui gas which set the market price of electricity increased at half the rate of inflation. Because that gas was depleting there was a need for more gas exploration to be done and there was a need to encourage generation in electricity in all fields. Accordingly it was necessary to remove price control from Maui gas and that has been the cause of the price increases. 
Peter Brown 
: Does the Minister accept it is distinctly feasible that the New Zealand First - Labour confidence and supply agreement item regarding the golden age card could in fact offer— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Where is the card? 
Peter Brown 
: —distinct and significant power rebates when it comes to fruition later this year? 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. You have consistently tried to encourage order in the House. You have in the past consistently dealt with members who break the Standing Orders and interject on a member while he or she is asking a question. From right beside you the booming voice of Gerry Brownlee came through the House midway through Peter Brown’s question and no censure was made. I ask you to deal with that. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I do not need any assistance. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I was wrong. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Well that is helpful. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I was wrong. I withdraw and apologise. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: That is all right. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Could I say something please Mr Brownlee? Thank you. I have been asking members when both questions and answers are given to respect the member who is speaking at that time. The odd interjection does not seem to me to impede the hearing of the question; it is a barrage that is offensive to everyone. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I think you need to let Mr Brown who asked the question know that asking a question about the non-appearance so far of the golden age card is not appropriate to the question on the sheet. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Well it is quite wide of the mark—and we have had a couple of those today—but if the Minister would like to answer he should be very brief. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Conceivably it could but I have no work programme to achieve that currently. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am a little concerned now about our process because that answer to a question may not have been heard. Are we to take it that the Government does not have the golden age card on its work programme for the foreseeable future? 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: No the Minister of Energy gave a reply and strangely enough the golden age card is not a ministerial responsibility of the Minister of Energy. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I think that that was in the realm of the hypothetical. 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I seek clarification of the ruling you have just given. Are you now saying contrary to the fact that in the past you have thrown members out of the House for interjecting on their own on a person who is asking a question that the odd interjection during the asking of a question as long as it is not part of a barrage is acceptable? Is that a correct understanding of what you have said? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I have asked all parties—and the member may like to consult with New Zealand First’s whip—to get a discussion going at the Business Committee on how we can in fact get more order in the House. It is not the rigid enforcement of rules that is important; it is ensuring that both questions and answers can be heard. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: When we have a chorus as wide as Grey Power the chambers of commerce Business New Zealand the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment even Government sweetheart Colin James and even the Government’s own power companies like Meridian Energy Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy all damning the Government’s energy policies will the Minister accept that this area is just a shambles? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No I will not. I also make the point in relation to price increases that some sectors have not actually had real price increases. Notably the commercial and industrial tariffs have in real terms stayed about static. There has been quite a significant increase in residential prices but that is not seen in the industrial and commercial tariffs in the market model. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek the leave of the House to table the electricity price index from 1995 to 2005 showing an increase in power prices of 32.4 percent since Labour came to office. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Social Welfare—Reports 
11.  
JILL PETTIS (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: What recent reports if any has he received recommending changes to the current welfare system? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I have seen an extraordinary report that the Government should cease supporting sickness beneficiaries back into employment. I have seen also a report that controls on beneficiaries that are currently applied to some Australian Aboriginal communities should be introduced into New Zealand. These are the mad ideas of National’s welfare spokesperson Judith Collins. Even she admits they are unacceptable to many in her own caucus which is why National at present has no welfare policy as is demonstrated by its weekend conference. 
Jill Pettis 
: What other proposals has the Minister seen on changes to the welfare system? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Despite unemployment dropping 22 percent in the last year to below 40000 for the first time since 1982 I have seen a bizarre proposal to resurrect a make-work scheme at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of $103 million per year. Perhaps we can best sum up such proposals in Judith Collins’ own words: “… one of the challenges I’ve got … is actually trying to get our policy in a state so that we can actually sell it.” That is because as this Government gets more and more successful at getting people back into employment Judith Collins gets more and more extreme. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe Madam Speaker. He aha nga whakarereketanga kei te whakaaro a ia i runga i nga korero i whakaputaina e te ripoata Tautikanga Ora i ki ra e 61 o-rau o nga kaiwhiwhi penihana he tamariki o ratau he tino pohara i te tau 2004 he tino rahi ake i te 41 o-rau i te tau 2000; kai te whiwhita ranei tenei Kawanatanga i tenei tu ahuatanga ka whakarerea te pani me te rawakore kia patua e enei kaupapa taurekareka. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
What changes will he be proposing to respond to the statistics as revealed in the living standards report that 61 percent of beneficiaries with children were in significant or severe hardship in 2004 a huge increase up from 41 percent in the year 2000; or is this Government prepared to stand by and continue to let our most vulnerable the children of this nation suffer from its policy of neglect? 
] 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: This Government is not standing by and not supporting people in areas of need. I am pleased to inform the member that further detailed information will be released that contradicts those rather broad-brush statistics that he referred to. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: He aha nga whakarereketanga kei te whakaaro a ia hei whakatika i nga kaupapa toko i te ora i runga i te ahua kua piki ake te utu mo nga koha pohara mai i te 5 ki te 6 miriona taara ki te 11 miriona taara neke atu ka noho ranei tenei kawana ka tukuna kia whara te hunga tino pohara i o ratou kaupapa whakaiti tangata? 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
What changes will he be making to the welfare system to respond to the fact that hardship grants have blown out from around $5 million or $6 million to over $11 million; or is this Government prepared to stand by and continue to let our most vulnerable the impoverished continue to suffer from its policy of neglect? 
] 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I do not need to remind the member of the extraordinary achievements of this Government in moving beneficiaries into work over the last period. I am sure he would agree that the likelihood of support for the less privileged in this community will certainly come from this side of the House rather than from those with whom he appears to align himself. 
Taito Phillip Field—Ingram Report 
12.  
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
 to the  
Minister of Labour 
: Has she received any reports that the minimum wage legislation may not have been fully complied with in the activities covered by the Ingram report? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Immigration) 
on behalf of the 
 Minister of Labour 
: No. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Maybe the Minister should do some reading. Does the Department of Labour plan to follow the suggestion of Dr Ingram it being the “appropriately authorised authority” to inquire whether the minimum wage regulations were breached given that the Ingram report finds that Mr Field substantially underpaid Thai immigrants who were working to upgrade his numerous premises? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I am advised that nothing in the Ingram report gives any concrete reason to believe that there are any issues around the minimum wage not being provided. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Can the Minister explain why the Department of Labour would not investigate breaches of New Zealand’s minimum wage laws in respect of work done at 51 Church Street given Dr Ingram’s statement that he was “concerned by the unsatisfactory nature of the explanations provided” by Mr Field and that Mr Field gave three different stories each of the three times he was questioned by Dr Ingram? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The Minister is not responsible for the conduct of the inquiry. I am further advised that the department does not have jurisdiction to investigate the relationship between a principal and a contractor. As an example New Zealanders engaging people to complete work on their houses such as painters do not normally enter into a direct employment relationship with the people providing the service. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Will the Minister ensure that the Department of Labour fully investigates breaches of employment law given Dr Ingram’s finding that Mr Field’s story that his tenant would paint the interior of the house merely because she was a friend as opposed to seeking immigration help from Mr Field was a “highly unlikely if not improbable proposition.”? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: If any member has any evidence of an employment relationship in relation to this case or breaches of the minimum wage I would encourage them to provide this information to the department. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Does it now seem that the Minister does not even believe that breaches of the New Zealand law on minimum wages should be investigated if it is the case that they involve a Labour member of Parliament? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: That suggestion is unworthy. I am advised that if the member has any information to put before the department or the Minister of Labour it will be fully investigated. That member might be better off spending his time on marshalling evidence rather than trying to drive down the minimum wage with a spurious bill that gives employers the right to fire within 90 days. 
Estimates Debate 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 20 July on the Appropriation (2006/07 Estimates) Bill. 
Vote Social Development ( 
continued 
)  
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 First I say to the Minister the Hon David Benson-Pope that it is no good reflection upon him that his department has performed so poorly during this estimates process. The Social Services Committee was unable to get answers to questions in time for it to deliberate as part of the normal select committee process. That is a very poor performance from the ministry and in fact the members of the select committee had to come back during the adjournment in order to further progress this estimates process. I say to the Minister that I hope he will take that up with his department and make sure we do not have to endure that next year. 
Today I want to talk about the merger between Child Youth and Family Services and the Ministry of Social Development. The Minister said at one stage that the stars were in alignment so the merger took place. Actually the Minister knew that those stars were going to be in alignment back in December of last year. Once could almost say that the Minister moved heaven and earth to make sure it happened. There was no analysis of the impact of that merger and during the entire estimates process we saw no analysis completed by any department on the impact of merging Child Youth and Family Services with the Ministry of Social Development. There was no consultation with any of the staff in Child Youth and Family Services. That meant there was no consideration of any gain in or loss of quality of care for Child Youth and Family Services and the vulnerable children and babies under its care and protection. They certainly came a dismal last in the consideration given to this merger. So we have no idea and no indication that there will be any consideration of the impact of the merger. It is not just me—as a member of the Opposition—who is saying this. In fact the audit report said that given the amount of change within the ministry within recent years the merger may increase the degree of risk to existing ministry services. 
This fragile department—Child Youth and Family Services—has a budget of $464 million and is responsible for 5000 children in its care. This year it is budgeting for 79000 notifications of abuse of children and babies and is planning to carry out 58000 investigations into such abuse. It has been reviewed and restructured every year since this Government took office because of poor performance. It has had four chief executive officers in the last 2½ years. In fact the State Services Commission’s paper to Cabinet stated: “… stakeholder reviews have consistently found there is a culture of ‘resistance’ amongst some front-line CYF staff. In the SSC’s view this reflects ‘professional disregard’ for management.” 
That same review went on to identify five major problems with Child Youth and Family Services none of which will be addressed by the Ministry of Social Development in any shape or form that we could find that we asked questions about through the coming year. The first problem is that there is no management of referrals or notifications. There is very poor understanding. In fact an internal review questioning why there has been such an increase in notifications came to the conclusion that it was a victim of its own success when in fact its own figures show the graphs the Minister himself presented to the select committee show that the majority of the increases come from police reports. In other words the increases are coming from the discovery by police of actual cases of abuse or neglect. The department does not have any understanding of why it is getting those referrals and how to manage them. 
The second query from the State Services Commission concerned the department’s need to improve the management of children in care. Because the department cannot manage the huge increase in notifications it drops the ball in looking after those most vulnerable children and babies in New Zealand. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 In looking ahead at the Government’s plans for the Ministry of Social Development over the year ahead one of the biggest questions the Green Party continues to have is around what exactly the proposed single core benefit is going to look like. Since 2000 the previous Minister for Social Development and Employment Steve Maharey and the current Minister David Benson-Pope have been promising a total overhaul of the social welfare system in this country. At the Social Services Committee this time round the latest news is that legislation for the new system is currently being drafted and that Cabinet will make its decisions in the next few months. I have lost count of how many times the Social Services Committee has been told that but I look forward with interest to seeing exactly what the Government does have in mind sometime before the end of this year—maybe. Meanwhile the Green Party continues to have considerable anxieties about what exactly the new single core benefit system will look like especially in light of what has already happened with the special benefit and temporary additional support. 
As part of the original Working for Families package in 2004—much lauded by the Government as the solution to family poverty—the special benefit was abolished to be replaced by temporary additional support. This change has come into force only recently but already the impacts are starting to seep through. For example last week I was contacted by a beneficiary whose benefit had been cut by $37 a week when she was put off the special benefit and on to temporary additional support despite the Minister saying that existing recipients would have their income protected by grandparenting provisions. The change from the special benefit to temporary additional support is a benefit cut carried out by a Labour Government and the impacts of that cut are only just now starting to come through. 
As it beds in the sort of deep and hopeless poverty referred to in the recently released  
New Zealand Living Standards 2004: The Report 
 will only get worse. That report showed that those worst affected by inadequate incomes between 2000 and 2004 were income-tested beneficiary families with children Maori and Pacific Island families and people with large families. The proportion of all children in severe and significant hardship increased from 18 percent to 26 percent in that period. The cutting of the special benefit and its replacement with temporary additional support will only make things worse for those people especially as it comes on top of the discriminatory in-work payment which means that beneficiary families miss out on an income top-up that is available only to those homes where at least one parent works 30 hours a week or more. 
Although the Government shrugs this off as being an excusable part of its welfare to work strategy the Green Party says it is inexcusable that a Labour Government continues to structurally entrench discrimination against the children of the poorest people in our country—and I hope Labour members read Chris Trotter’s article last week. We are delighted that beneficiary numbers are coming down and that unemployment has fallen to its lowest level in decades. We are pleased with the genuine work that the Ministry of Social Development is doing in helping a lot more people move from benefits into work and that it is doing that work better than it did in the past. However what we in the Green Party are not at all happy about is that those remaining on benefits because they cannot get work due to being sick injured or disabled or because they are sole parents should be pressed even deeper into a cycle of hopeless poverty despair and alienation. It is imperative that the new single core benefit regime if it is actually going to happen in this term of Parliament does not make things any worse. 
The Minister does give constant assurances inside and outside Parliament that the new system will not involve benefit cuts. However after what has happened with the special benefit I remain dubious. I fear that what will in fact happen is that there will indeed be a single core benefit bottom rate but it will be set at the level of the lowest work-tested benefits rather than at the higher rate that applies to for example invalids beneficiaries. The Government may then say that no one will lose out because it will grandparent existing beneficiaries so that their income does not go down but this only disguises an actual benefit cut for people who come into the system after the cut-off date as has already been done with the move to temporary additional support. 
Labour is at a turning point right now. It can choose to continue down the benefit-cutting path that it has already embarked on or it can take this opportunity to genuinely reform the benefit system so that it not only is simpler but also is fairer and actually pays enough for people to live on. The Shipley-Richardson cuts to benefits in 1991 were never restored. Benefits like wages remain far too low. Those who live on high wages and in warm homes and who have cars that go have no idea what it is like living in a freezing overcrowded house bach or garage without enough money to get from one end of the week to the other yet that is the reality for tens of thousands of New Zealanders in July 2006. I call on the Minister and his department to take this opportunity as they continue to work on the details of their new benefit system to end discrimination within Working for Families to reverse the impacts of the abolition of the special benefit and to use the single core benefit reform to lift rather than lower benefit levels and make the system a lot fairer for everybody. 
When the Social Services Committee looked at the estimates for the Ministry of Social Development this year we also heard evidence about the merger of the Ministry of Social Development with the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. This has now happened and I would like to acknowledge what I believe is the serious intention of the Ministers David Benson-Pope and Ruth Dyson and the chief executive officer Peter Hughes to do everything they can to build Child Youth and Family into a far more sustainable and sustaining organisation than it has been for the past decade. I still cannot help but feel aggravated by the virulence of National’s criticism of Child Youth and Family Services at times knowing that it was National that deliberately underfunded it in the late 1990s and doomed it to fail through the chimera of private sector management philosophy at that time. The Ministry of Social Development is still picking up the pieces now. 
But it has been a long time since then and I am sure that the staff of Child Youth and Family more than anyone else are heartily exhausted by endless restructurings and reviews. Each year at the select committee many of the same questions are raised and dutifully answered yet the same problems continue. This has all been made much more acute this year by the heightened awareness of child homicides in our community and the unresolved Kahui murders sitting sombrely in the back of all our minds. I do wonder to what extent Child Youth and Family and the Minister are looking at how they are going to deal with the ever-increasing number of referrals that result from heightened public and professional sensitivity to violence and neglect of children without blowing the Government’s Budget. How will the new differential response model actually work in practice at the interface between non-governmental organisations and statutory social work practice? Will the non-governmental organisations which increasingly carry out critical work on behalf of the State actually receive the funding they need to do their work properly or will they start off with a bang and die with a whimper as funding is gradually cut back as has often been the case in the past when the State devolves big hunks of its traditional functions to the third sector? I hope that apart from anything else Child Youth and Family and the Ministry of Social Development will have the capacity now to learn from the more successful models such as the SKIP programme that operate from a more community development orientated approach and that they will transfer that learning to the way they work with groups at the frontline of non-statutory intervention with the new differential response model. 
I would like to take a moment to congratulate everyone involved with SKIP—that is the short name for the Strategies with Kids - Information for Parents programme. During the process of debate and hearings around my bill to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act we have heard many individuals and organisations speak glowingly about what is being achieved in terms of providing practical information and support to parents and caregivers of children under 5. The Green Party is right behind SKIP and hopes the Government will continue to fund and in fact extend it so that it can provide even broader coverage than it does now. 
In terms of Child Youth and Family the Green Party also has some big questions about staff salaries and conditions following this latest restructuring and about the balance and resourcing between what goes into the various layers of management and what goes into the frontline. Social workers and those who work supporting them are the lifeblood of Child Youth and Family’s actual work yet their salaries are still well below what they should be. It is no wonder that we lose so many social workers overseas and that not enough new people are coming through our social work training courses. 
The Green Party will be watching developments with the Ministry of Social Development - Child Youth and Family Services merger closely over the coming year. We wish all concerned well with their steps forward but I do hope that by this time in 2007 some of the questions I and my colleagues on the select committee have raised here will be visibly and substantively answered so that the work that Child Youth and Family does is maximised for the benefit of all the children and young people it is there to serve. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I have been advised that Hone Harawira is going to speak in Maori. Just so everybody is aware the member is going to give his whole speech in Maori and then the interpreter will give the interpretation of the whole speech. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe. Tena tatou te Whare. Na te panuitanga i te ripoata tautikanga ora ka marama te ahua o nga tari toko i te ora i raro i tenei Kawanatanga. Kia mohio ai tatou—kua rahi ake mai i te 7 o-rau i te tau 2000 ki te 27 o-rau i te tau 2004 nga Maori e noho ana ki te pohara rawa. A ko a tatou whanaunga o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa kua rahi ake mai i te 15 o-rau ki 27. Ko nga whanau kei te tino raru ko ratou me o ratau tamariki kei te penihana. E te iwi—30 o-rau wa tatau tamariki kei te “pohara rawa” atu. Tangi ana te ngakau i tenei tu ahuaranga. E taka haere ana nga tautikanga ora mo te pani me te rawakore a ko te Kawanatanga ka noho ka titiro noa iho. Hara tenei i te pohara noa iho he rawakore me tona tahuhu korero.  
I a tatau e wananga ana i nga kaupapa whakapakari tangata me huri me aro ki nga akonga o nehera. I timata ai nga tikanga toko i te ora hei penihana kaumatua i te tau 1898. Ko era kahore i awhinatia ko te pohara te koretake te haurangi te paruparu me te taurekareka. Ko te tino pohara kua warewaretia. 
I whakauruhia e te kawanatanga “nga tikanga Maori” ki nga ture tuku penihana kia kaua e whanui atu te penihana ki te Maori. Kahore te ture whakahirahira o aua ra ara ko te Ture Putea Toko i te Ora o te tau 1938 i whakatinana ai nga painga ki te Maori. Kei kona tonu te rereketanga o nga utu penihana ki te Maori me te Pakeha. Na tera ka hangaia e Eruera Tirikatene tetahi ope kia haere ki te Minita mo Nga Penihana hei tautohe i nga mahi takatakahi i nga Maori. I korero ia mo te Pa o Ratana—ka riro e nga Pakeha te katoa o te penihana a he iti noa iho te utu ki te Maori. 
Engari ko te kaupapa a tauiwi ko rereke—ko to tatau iwi Maori kei waho tonu. A pera i enei ra ko nga tangata kei a ratau nga rawa ka hanga keti i mua i o ratau whare me te panui “kia noho atu ki waho”. Ngari hakoa te aha he iwi pakari to tatau iwi Maori. E orite ana ki te marama—hakoa ka ngaro ka ara mai ano.  
Na te Roopu Wahine Maori Toko i Te Ora i maranga ai tatau i te tau 1951 a ko nga korero whakamiharo i runga i a ratau mo nga mahi i waenganui i nga Maori o aua ra. I toro ake o ratau awhina ki te pani me te rawakore a na te werawera o o ratau rae ka rewa ake te tautikanga ora. I a ratou ripoata ka tuhia nga ahua whakaiti i te tangata; ka ki ratou “90 o-rau o aua ra 
  
ehara na aua tangata te raruraru engari na wahi ke atu.” 
Ko tetahi o nga mahi tuatahi i mahi na Whina he tirohanga ki te ahua o nga whare i Tamaki kei reira nga Maori e noho ana ka kitea he kainga koretake. Ma te kaha o Te Roopu Wahine Maori ka whakaae Te Kaunihera o Tamaki kia turakina aua kainga koretake kia hangaia nga whare pai mo te Maori. Koia nei nga tahuhu korero mo nga mahi toko i te ora. 
I kotia tuturutia e Nahinara nga penihana i te tau 1991 hakoa te tini o nga pohara. Mai i taua wa kua piki ake te putea mo te awhi pohara mai i te 5 miriona taara ki te 10 miriona i tenei wa. He korero ta tenei? Me wakama tatou ki te nui o tenei pohara roto i a tatou ano. Ko te kaupapa “Mahi ana mo nga Whanau” i wehewehe ano ra i te tu o te pohara ki te iwi kei a ratau nga rawa. Kua whakarerea ki muri nga whanau tino pohara. 
Ma tatou o te Paremata e whakatika nga takanga he o nga tikanga i whakaritea mo nga kaupapa toko i te ora. Me tautoko nga whanau me nga tamariki i nga wa pohara me nga wa e kore mahi ana nga matua. Koia nei nga kaupapa o te tautoko i te whanau. Ma te iwi ano e rapa tona whakamaramatanga. Kia ora tatau katoa. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the Committee.] 
[ 
Greetings to you. Greetings to the House. The living standards report released last week reveals the true picture of the state of social services under this Labour Government. Let us recall: the proportion of Maori living in severe hardship rose from 7 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2004. The proportion of Pasifika persons living in severe hardship rose from 15 percent to 27 percent. The state of the nation means particular strife for income-tested beneficiary families with dependent children. More than 30 percent of beneficiary children are in “severe hardship”. These results make me weep. The living standards of our most vulnerable are lurching dangerously into deprivation while the Government sits and watches. This is poverty in its worst extreme poverty which is indeed making history for all the wrong reasons. 
And when we are considering social development it is important to pay heed to history. The social welfare system started in 1898 as an old-age pension. This system though discriminated against the poor the undeserving the drunk the dirty and the immoral. Many poor people were ignored.  
For Maori “native custom” criteria were included in pension entitlement and became a basis for restricting Maori pensions. The famed Social Security Act 1938 failed to bring immediate benefit payments to Maori; clear-cut differences in benefit rates between Maori and Pakeha were maintained leaving Eruera Tirikatene to lead a deputation to the Minister of Social Security to protest against the victimisation of Maori. He talked of Ratana Pa—describing Europeans who lived in the pa as receiving the full benefit while Maori were on reduced rates. 
The so-called civilised social security system discriminated. And people our people were locked out as in today’s times where people of privilege build gates around their residences that say “keep out”. But our people are nothing if not resilient and like the moon that disappears and rises again we rose again no matter what the adversity. 
We rose in the form of the *Maori Women's Welfare League which at its time of establishment in 1951 was commended for its vigour in attacking the social welfare problems of contemporary Maori. Its welfare work extended to giving aid to members and others in need providing practical help to improve the standard of their living. In its reports the league recognised the stigma attached to a low standard of living stating: “Ninety percent of the time the causes lie beyond the control of the people concerned.” 
One of the league’s first initiatives instigated by Whina was a survey of Maori housing in Auckland revealing insanitary dwellings. It led the Auckland City Council and the Department of Maori Affairs to demolish slums and provide a higher quota of State and council houses for Maori tenants. This is our history of social services. 
Benefit rates were slashed in 1991 by the National Government. Huge numbers of beneficiaries became increasingly dependent upon hardship assistance. Hardship grants have blown out from around $5 million or $6 million to over $11 million in the past few years. Does that not tell members something? The  
level of deprivation for those most affected by poverty is shameful. The Working for Families package exploits this burgeoning inequality even further.  
Our poorest families are being left behind.  
We in this Parliament must take responsibility to address the abject failure of the system that characterises our social security. Families with children should be consistently supported including during hard times when parents may not be working. This was what the whanau development programme was set up to do—to  
allow our people to determine their own solution. Greetings to us all. 
] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to this estimates debate on behalf of ACT New Zealand and I will spend some time talking about children at risk in light of the estimates. Is money being spent in the right places and on the right things? 
I recently asked some parliamentary questions of the Minister for Social Development and Employment and the results were quite disturbing. The year 2006 has in fact been the most dangerous year for child abuse—the most dangerous year to be a child in New Zealand. The months of February March and June this year had the worst figures ever for child abuse along with August and November 2005. At the end of June there were 16173 people receiving social work services under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act—an increase of 12 percent on last year 2005. 
Over one-third of the referrals to Child Youth and Family Services last year were for Maori families. But it should be pointed out that domestic violence is not just a Maori problem. It is a problem for the whole of New Zealand. There is no gene for domestic violence and that is something that we should remember. Domestic violence and abusing are learned behaviours. There is no gene for them; they are not something that people inherit. Like the last speaker I would like to refer to the release of the recent Ministry of Social Development  
New Zealand 
Living Standards 2004  
report. I will focus on different things than the speaker from the Maori Party did but the report itself was actually very enlightening and highlights some very important facts that I think we as a Parliament and as policy makers should look to for the future when we are planning our welfare services. 
 For many years for far too long in fact we have looked at the problem of risk for children abuse domestic violence—whatever we want to call it—as a problem that has been brought about solely by poverty. That has traditionally been the view of the left—and I do not really like using the terms left and right because they make the field very murky—that poverty has been something that people always blame child abuse on. If this was the fact then being more generous with money funding families that live in poverty more generously and making that funding more widely available should have seen a decrease in child abuse. But as I have just pointed out this is not happening. The figures are continuing to worsen and as I said 2006 has been so far—and we are only halfway there—the most dangerous year in which to be a child in New Zealand. So we have a much bigger problem. 
The only positive thing to come out of the Kahui twins disaster is that we can now legitimately talk about the role of welfare dependency in the problem of child abuse. The Ministry of Social Development living standards report was enlightening in the following way. Children who are part of a two-parent family where one or both parents work are the least likely to suffer abuse. We might say that there is nothing surprising in that. We have always known that children growing up in a one-parent family are more likely to suffer abuse. But the report showed for the first time that children growing up in a one-parent family where that parent works are less likely to suffer abuse than a child growing up in a two-parent family where that family is dependent on welfare for its income—dependent on a benefit. 
It seems as many of us have been postulating for quite some time that work is very very important when it comes to lessening risk for children in this country. So even if families are not receiving a great income but one of the parents or the sole parent in that family is working it is a much healthier environment for children to grow up in. When we are formulating policy for the future we must look very carefully at this. Making people independent of the Government not only benefits them as adults but also it benefits their children. 
There is no doubt that the Working for Families package has made more and more families dependent on the Government for their income. The fact that someone in those families is working is a good thing but the attention is being focused in the wrong area. Those families already have children who are much less likely to be abused. The focus needs to be on the welfare families where nobody is working. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 Earlier in this debate—I think it was on Thursday of last week—I noted the huge success the Labour-led Government had had in getting working-age people back to work and I want to elaborate on that a little on this occasion. 
The ministry has played a key role in getting people back to work. Since March 2000 the number of people employed has increased by 316000 to just over 2 million—to 2108000. That is an extraordinary achievement of 144 more people in work each day every day since 1999 giving a labour-force participation of 68.5 percent which I am pleased to tell members is the highest ever for this country. Overall since the Labour-led Government took office in 1999 combined working-age benefit numbers that is all working-age benefit numbers—unemployment sickness invalids and domestic purposes benefit numbers—have dropped by over 30 percent so it is good to have the opportunity to put to bed the grand lie that the deckchairs have been moved. Those numbers have dropped from 372000 to 280300. Unemployment has dropped from over 160000 people in 1999 to fewer than 39000 people today. That means of course that perhaps the most pleasing factor in all of this is that the number of children in benefit-dependent households is already down by around 20 percent. 
The Ministry of Social Development is continuing its push in 2006-07 to help reduce the number of people who are unemployed. This Government is continuing aggressive work to ensure that our social support system is increasingly active in supporting even more people into work. The new work-focused approach is about providing enhanced job opportunities for all clients and focusing on what clients can do rather than what they cannot do. Having trialled that approach across 12 sites and two contact centres since May last year with very strong results I can tell members that we have rolled it out to all new clients and indeed will do so to the whole community from September this year. For example up to 20 percent of clients who would previously have received a non-unemployment benefit are being identified as able to work now. I am talking about sickness and invalids beneficiaries potentially who do not even apply these days for such support because they would prefer to work and the ministry is able to assist them. As I say that approach will be rolled out to the whole client base from September. 
I take this opportunity to say thank you on behalf of members of Parliament and the wider New Zealand community for what is a remarkable achievement. These things do not happen just because of Government policy; they happen because of the dedication the professionalism and the sheer hard work of the front-line Work and Income staff who are doing a wonderful job for people in this country. 
One of the other really successful initiatives is the expansion of the Youth Transition Service. We have been increasing and will continue to increase our efforts in supporting young people in the critical and often quite vulnerable transition from school to working life. To date we have launched six Youth Transition Services and by the end of this year 14 will have been rolled out. It is widely acknowledged that good support systems are needed to ensure that young people make the best transition from school into training into further education or into the workforce. In the 2006 Budget we are committing $7.5 million to expand youth transition services to support young people into work training or further education when they leave school. 
As I am sure many members know the Youth Transition Service works with local providers in giving support to young people. Each Youth Transition Service provider has experience in working with young people and helping them make good choices for the future. Through this initiative we have already worked with 5200 young people to date. I am sure members would agree that this is a key initiative that contributes to the youth-focused goal of Government and it is certainly one that is shared by the Mayors Task Force for Jobs which has a goal jointly with Government to have all 15 to 19-year-olds in work education training or other activities by 2007. 
Recent events have highlighted the serious problem of violence that we face as a society. Sadly those events are not new; nor are they isolated. Family violence impacts on thousands of New Zealanders. In 2005 29 of the 61 murders were recorded as being family violence related. Child Youth and Family Services and groups such as Women’s Refuge deal every day with children who have been subject to abuse or sadly who have witnessed family violence. The Government is absolutely committed to addressing this critical problem but we cannot do that alone. That is why we are taking a collaborative approach with Government and non-governmental organisations. Work on this is being led by the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families and we have engaged in good faith on a multiparty group on this serious issue. 
It is important at this point that I say to Ms Tolley who earlier spoke quite critically of Child Youth and Family Services that she has not applied a large amount of the facts to the comments she made. In terms of assessment and analysis what else were the baseline reviews about including the baseline review of that organisation? I find it sad that Ms Tolley chose to blame Child Youth and Family Services and its staff. The reality is that child abuse and family violence are problems we have in our community. We have to move past blaming a Government agency or claiming that it is responsible. It is not until we move past that sort of antiquated attitude that we will be able to address this problem together as a community. This is a societal problem and I find the sorts of attitudes we have from the National Party—the people who cut the benefits sold the State houses and constantly want to attack the vulnerable and marginalised—heavily ironic. It is exactly those people who blame Child Youth and Family Services because some sad person out there harms their children. 
Unlike the National Party the Government wants to reinforce the unacceptability of family violence and change attitudes towards violence and abusive behaviour. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to that person interjecting across the House that while I am talking about family violence and violent behaviour he might want to have a second thought about the tone of his comments to the whip across the Chamber. 
In this year’s Budget we have put $9 million into strengthening expanding and improving access to family violence prevention and support services. That will help to start to address the funding concerns of service providers that work with victims of family violence. We have also set aside funding of $11.5 million for a community prevention programme which will be led by the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families. Most important we have funded the continuation of Strategies with Kids—Information for Parents (SKIP) which has been so successful in providing parents with practical information for effective non-physical discipline to set limits and boundaries for their young people. SKIP supports parents in developing and having loving and healthy relationships with their children. It is aimed at parents and caregivers of children from birth to 5 years and resources have been developed to promote SKIP. They include information on practical ways to manage children’s behaviour child development and the management of parental stress. 
As the chairwoman Ann Hartley knows from her own personal experience this is an extraordinarily successful programme. It is only one of the programmes that the Ministry of Social Development is funding to improve outcomes for children. It is part of our early intervention approach that focuses not just on preventing family violence but on giving our children the best start in life they deserve. Through that early years approach we are looking to provide better support early on in the life of the child and earlier intervention in the life of a problem. 
In 2006-07 the Budget will see us building on the successes of our Family Start programme. Family Start provides assistance to families with children aged up to 5 whose family and social circumstances place their health education and well-being at risk. The service helps families to set goals for the future assists them in developing a plan to meet those goals and provides parent education and in-home assistance to get them on the right track. Family Start will be available in 32 locations by the end of this financial year. That includes the one Early Start programme in Christchurch and also five that are funded from Vote Education. The 32 locations are an increase from 17 in 2004. 
Family Start sits alongside other early intervention programmes that are funded out of other votes such as Vote Health’s Well Child programme which is very topical after the initiatives of the Children’s Commissioner yesterday and the Social Workers in Schools programme funded from Vote Child Youth and Family. Although the programmes sit in different votes and are administered in a different number of departments they all share the aims and objectives of the early years approach—namely to give our children and young people the start in life they deserve. 
Before I conclude I would like to return to the matters raised by the member from the Maori Party Hone Harawira who spoke earlier. I think it is sad that that member and some of his colleagues seemed to focus on what was by even a charitable assessment a litany of Maori failure. What I see in the history of the last 10 years is quite the contrary. Maori in this community with the support of this Government have achieved considerable success and a great deal of social change. So I would like to ask that member to be a little more responsible and to acquaint himself with the reality of what has happened in this country since 1999. I will begin by talking about the unemployment figures for that sector. In 1999 there were 41500 Maori unemployed in this country. Year on year that has reduced with only a minor increase in 2002 to the current figures. I will just run through them. From 41550 on the Maori unemployment register in 1999 I tell Mr Power that number dropped to 39000 in 2000 and to 35000 in 2001. In 2002 there was a slight increase to just over 36000. In 2003 there was a major drop to 32104. In 2004 it was 22000—from 32000 to 22900-odd. In 2005 it was 17659. I remind members we are moving at a downward progression from 41550 in 1999. Maori unemployment currently in this country is 13482. In addition to quite an extraordinary movement of Maori into the workforce and extraordinary achievements in employment for Maori—it is still not satisfactory and is still a focus for us of course—there has also been a significant improvement for Maori in housing affordability with a fall in the share of households with housing costs that exceed 30 percent of their income. 
There has been a huge improvement in Maori participation in tertiary education with around 24 percent of Maori aged 18 to 24 enrolled in tertiary education in 2005 compared with fewer than 20 percent in 1996. There has been a great increase in the share of Maori school-leavers with higher qualifications by 10 percentage points for school-leavers having greater than level 1 National Certificate of Educational Achievement in 2004 when the last figures were available. There has also been a pleasing increase in participation by Maori in early childhood education from 85 percent in the year 2000 to over 90 percent in 2005. 
Contrary to the sad tale that the member speaking earlier invented Maori have also had improvements in life expectancy they have had a reduction in Maori road deaths they now suffer from less household overcrowding they have higher median earnings and there is a reduction in suicide in the Maori community—a most significant social change for the better indeed. It is true that there has been no improvement around the area of obesity; nor in terms of Maori cigarette smoking. But indeed that is very much the focus of those health improvement programmes that my colleague the Minister of Health has also announced as part of this Budget. 
In conclusion I am delighted at the success of the ministry through Vote Social Development in making such strong progress in supporting our whole community into employment in supporting young people into training or further education and in making sure that as much as we can all New Zealanders grow up in safe and secure families particularly the focus of recent work which is building on what has been in the last three or four Budgets to ensure that every New Zealand child where possible has the very best start in life. It is vital that all families young and old enjoy such opportunities and share the security and progress that our fine country is making. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Vote Social Development be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 50 
New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Vote Social Development agreed to. 
Vote Commerce agreed to.  
Vote Women's Affairs agreed to.  
Vote Corrections 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I have been looking forward to making a few comments on Vote Corrections and I look forward to the Minister’s response to some of my concerns. 
First of all I send my condolences to Barry Matthews for landing the job of CEO Department of Corrections and probably getting himself into a department where he had no idea how bad things were before he got there. I quite genuinely wish him well in his attempts to right what have been a number of historic debacles in that department although I have to say they do not appear to be getting better at all. 
The estimates process is an opportunity for the Committee to ask the Minister a couple of questions. Could the Minister explain to the Committee and the public of New Zealand how the building of four new prisons originally estimated to cost $400 million ended up costing $890 million? I think the public of New Zealand would be quite interested to know the answer. Could he also tell us how in the building of those four prisons the average cost per bed across those four prisons is $535000? I think the public of New Zealand would be very interested to know that—in particular those people who live in Otago and are waiting for the completion of the “Milton Hilton” where beds are costing over $600000 each and in an environment—Milton—where one would imagine that sum of money could buy two or three homes for each prisoner not provide one prison cell. 
I think it would be useful if the Minister were able to explain how inmates have been able to go to the beach for a day supervised by the Department of Corrections. Because a number of inmates from Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison had “behaved well” they spent a day at the beach. I think the public of New Zealand would be interested to know how that occurred. I also think they would like to know how it is that prostitutes were phoned and invited to Rimutaka Prison in recent weeks. I think they would be interested to know how it is that people in South Island prisons are able to access steak eggs and chips lollies and ice cream for good behaviour. More particularly I think the public of New Zealand would like to know these two things: the first is how it is that $11 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent landscaping those four new prisons and second why that $11 million has not been spent on rehabilitation and employment programmes for those inmates so that when they come out of prison and as we all acknowledge they are all coming out of prison they are at least able to make some attempt at constructively being reintegrated. 
I would also like the Minister to tell the public of New Zealand and me how it is that with 7600 prisoners 83 percent of whom have drug and alcohol problems there are only 44 specialist drug beds in our prison system. I would like to know how it is that since 2004 when the Corrections Act was passed $2.6 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on transferring the management of the Auckland Central Remand Prison back to the public sector when that money could have been spent on rehabilitation employment programmes and drug and alcohol specialist beds in those prisons. 
I want to know how the Minister can keep turning his back on an utterly incompetent department over which he has no political management at all relying only on the bumbling efforts of senior management of that department to get things wrong on a daily and hourly basis. The only person who has had anything to do with corrections in the last 12 months—who sits here smiling—is Paul Swain. He knew the day he got out of that portfolio that it was all turning to custard. He laughs every time I say that because he knows that is right. 
I say to the Minister that these are serious questions. The department for which he has responsibility is in a shambles. The public of New Zealand are saying to the Minister that these questions are serious. His department is in a shambles. The public of New Zealand know it is in a shambles. I ask him to stand and explain to the public of New Zealand how it is that that level of money continues to be wasted in that department yet prisoners are not being rehabilitated and society is becoming no safer. The responsibility for that rests on his shoulders. 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I have been knocking around prisons for a while now and have been in and out of jail for about 30 years and thankfully it has been my choice to come and go. But over that time I have come to know a bit about inmates and I have put my fair share behind bars and done my fair share in preventing some from getting there. I have been in jails as a visitor a cop and a lawyer. I have represented inmates in prison hearings and in courthouses and on occasions I have had them out for the day and taken them home for lunch. So as fast as I am being pushed in one pigeon-hole by the other side of the Chamber I am doing my best to struggle out of it. I reckon that although I have a lot to learn about criminals and offending I think I have my head around a lot of things that set some people on the road to a life of crime. 
The Sentencing Act 2002 in respect of the purposes of sentencing is about denunciation and deterrence protection of the community rehabilitation and holding the offender to account for the harm done. The golden thread of custodial sentences must be “they’ve got to come out better than they went in”. My criticism of the Government is that in respect of this golden thread it has been an abject failure. In 1999 I took a group of National Party members to Kaitoke prison especially to look at the enterprise schemes operating within the prison. One of the schemes we looked at was a shoe factory. The shoe factory employed about 100 inmates a year and almost all of them had never worked before. Anecdotally the supervisors told me that they had never had one of their shoe factory inmates back on a custodial sentence. At the time the cost was about $55000 a year to keep an inmate in jail; the shoe factory prevented those people from reoffending. One could argue it saved New Zealand over $5 million a year. With expected recidivist rates it saved at least $3.5 million in any event but the contract ended and in 2002 the Labour Government decided not to renew it because the scheme did not make a profit. 
About 6 weeks ago I attended a Sycamore Project graduation in a prison. I have attended two such programmes which are marvellous for addressing the restorative element essential in turning an offender’s life round. I was talking to a man who was doing his first prison sentence. I understand it was for his first crime and it was for a serious offence obviously—a drug offence. He had heard the cell door slam behind him and knew straight away that he had stuffed up big time: that he had failed his family and those who cared about him and would be spending at least another 6 years in jail. He was a drug dealer and I have no sympathy for him or his kind. I do not believe that drug offences are victimless crimes and we need to deal swiftly and harshly with them to expedite the purposes of sentencing as I have already laid them out. But that man who wants to change his ways and wants to get off the drugs needs help to stay clean even in jail. But he cannot get on a drug programme until he has done two-thirds of his 8-year sentence. He needs help right now but he cannot access it. So 44 beds for 7600 prisoners 83 percent of whom have drug and alcohol problems is not going to cut it. Temptation is everywhere even in jail. But this Government withholds any assistance for another 4 years. 
What is more we know that almost every one of those offenders has multiple problems and multiple needs. They cannot read or write. They abuse substances and/or have big violence problems or sexual and physical abuse histories and frequently beat the hell out of women and children or have the hell beaten out of them. 
With prisoners it is not a chicken-and-egg quandary—we know which comes first. We know that violence begets violence and that the sexually abused become sexual abusers. We know that children of alcoholics and drug addicts breed children dependent on alcohol and drugs. Yet under this Government the treatment is withheld for no good reason other than that it is not a sufficient priority. We should get people into jail if jail is where they need to go and turn some lives round. One day we will see prisons shut for the want of inmates because people really will come out better than when they went in. We know that it will not happen overnight and it is not rocket science but it just has to happen. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 I welcome the opportunity to outline a few of the things that the Department of Corrections has ahead of it. I firstly acknowledge the good work of my colleague Paul Swain who is in the Chamber. I thank him for his incredible effort in getting from Dr Cullen—and it is not easy—a huge amount of money to build four brand new prisons that this country desperately needs. It is a sad indictment that we need them but none the less we are committed to a huge building programme. The programme initially started out at 1000 beds and has now ended up at 1600 beds—in fact we are moving to over 2100 new cells in this country. It is sad but it is necessary. This Government is absolutely committed to locking up dangerous and violent offenders for longer in order to keep society safe from those people. 
I welcome the new level of knowledge and awareness from the National Party because I have said as have my colleagues that there are a number of people currently in jail who we think may be better able to serve their sentence and repay society in other ways. In fact I read just today the statement: “It could be with some white-collar crimes that much more serious fines and the taking of people’s assets would be a more effective use of taxpayers’ money …”. That came from John Key. Well he may choose white collar criminals. I will not say whether people are white collar or blue collar but I accept there are people who could serve their sentence in perhaps more innovative ways. That is what the Department of Corrections is committed to do and that is what Barry Matthews is committed to do to help this Government to move forward. 
Since Labour came into Government in 1999 and after the Department of Corrections went through years of neglect and lack of investment by the previous National Government we have reduced by 80 percent the number of break-out escapes in our prison system. We have reduced by 90 percent the number of serious inmate assaults on staff. That is the true measure of how effective we are. Rather than listen to the garbage spoken by Simon Power about the department being ineffective and in chaos I say that the department does an outstanding job every day as do all the staff. But there are areas for improvement. I acknowledge the work that Chester Borrows has done in this area. I think he is doing a very good job to try to swing around a fairly narrow-minded National Party caucus—good on him; he should keep up that good work. Yes we do have insufficient numbers of drug treatment programme places and we are expanding them right now. 
Nick Smith as a former Minister of Corrections spent nothing and Labour has had to put in a huge amount of money to try to compensate. We are putting more money into drug and alcohol units. We are opening up one in the South Island we will have another one in the lower North Island and we are expanding the drug and alcohol units at Waikeria Prison. I acknowledge that there were cutbacks in employment opportunities within the prison system and that that has not been the best thing. We are turning that round and we are telling corrections inmate employment which is a part of the Department of Corrections to go out to work with industry and to work with regions to try to find employment opportunities related to those industries that are crying out for labour—because we have a very vibrant rural provincial economy because of this Government. 
We now have opportunities that were not there 5 or 6 years ago in regional and rural New Zealand and the prisons by virtue of their location are ideally placed to provide workers be it in horticulture agriculture forestry engineering or other areas where there is a desperate need for well-trained people. We cannot just turn prisoners from inmates into well-trained workers without rehabilitation without drug and alcohol treatment and without providing them with the opportunity to go through criminogenic programmes that identify the cause of their offending. We have evaluated one of the programmes Straight Thinking which was the mainstream programme. It was deemed not to be as effective as we need. The member Anne Tolley laughs. Well we are going to check all the money we spend and make sure it is being spent wisely. We have done so. We are re-evaluating the rehabilitation programmes so that they work better so that we get better outcomes and ultimately so that people come into prison once and go out and stay out. That is what we want to do. 
We do not want to keep building new prisons because more and more people are being thrown in prison. It is a difficult situation. In a wonderful country like ours where we know most people in our small communities—even Auckland is a small community by international comparisons—and know most of what is happening we lock up more people than we should. We do so at the second-highest rate in the Western World. I think we are embarrassed because people like Nick Smith did not put money into basic social services. He cut benefits in 1991—that is the kind of thing that severely impacts on the prison population over time. We are moving to address that. We are committed to more—and more effective—rehabilitation programmes more drug and alcohol treatment more effective criminogenic programmes and more work and skills training in prisons. 
We have a big task ahead of us—a wonderfully exciting challenge. I now welcome the new awareness of the problem and the change in attitude from the National Party in the latest statement by John Key. If there is still debate within the National Party caucus then I hope that sensible people like Chester Borrows and John Key obviously win the day and swing in behind us as we move through a process of shifting the prison system into one of proper rehabilitation and of reintegration back into society. We welcome the support from the National Party for that. We have had wonderful support from other parties to move in this direction but we still have a lot to do. 
Finally I again applaud the incredible efforts that all the staff from top to bottom of the Department of Corrections make. They work in very difficult situations with at times very difficult people. If we look at the cold hard facts we see the 80 percent reduction in escapes and the 90 percent reduction in serious assaults on prison officers. That has to indicate that the system is working but over time we have to reduce the number of people in this country whom we lock up and who are in prison for too long a period. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Vote Corrections be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Vote Corrections agreed to. 
Vote Tourism agreed to.  
Vote Communications agreed to.  
Vote Immigration agreed to.  
Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 In 17 years in this House I know of no area of public policy that is as big a botch-up as what we have with regard to energy and climate change. I am reminded of the debate we have just had in respect of corrections and the fact that in the era of straight thinking we have a policy whereby people who did the rehabilitation programme had a higher rate of reoffending than those who did not do it. Well in the area of energy efficiency we have it just as bad. Labour came to Government in 2000 and said in the great proud words of Pete Hodgson that we did not need to spend money on transmission or power stations because we had it with the great National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy. 
Over the last 5 years the Government has poured $100 million into this vote on that policy and in March this year we had a review. The review showed that gains in energy efficiency have been less than when we did not have a strategy—that is for the 5 years from 1995 to 2000 we had improvements of 0.7 percent a year in energy efficiency. Since we have spent $100 million and we have had this flash bells and whistles strategy energy efficiency has become worse. The Minister of Energy at the time Pete Hodgson must take responsibility for that fiasco and failure. 
But the situation is worse than that. In the area of climate change we had the Government powering in and ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The Minister Pete Hodgson told the country that we had to race in and ratify it because we would make hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact he said that for members like those in the National Party who opposed that early ratification it amounted to burning a multi - hundred million dollar cheque. Well what has happened? We now have a projected bill of nearly $500 million because of that. 
Let us look at the track record for the environment. This Government rejected the Dobson hydro scheme on the West Coast. That scheme would have been producing power as we speak if it was not for the stupid decision of Chris Carter in that respect. We had Project Aqua a very large renewable power scheme which the Minister in the chair David Parker campaigned against and passed dopey laws in this Parliament to defeat. Would we not prefer right now that Project Aqua was under construction to deal with some of these concerns? 
Well let us see what we did fund. The Government signed off $150 million to build an oil-fired power station in Napier. Its own State-owned enterprise has proposed building—and has received consent with the Government’s support—a coal-fired power station at Whangarei. The bizarre thing is that while we have had Pete Hodgson David Parker and Helen Clark giving speeches all around the world about how we have to move on climate change simultaneously the biggest change in energy generation is a threefold increase in the amount of power that we are producing from coal. Hang on the great greenies have given so many speeches—and we have trebled the amount of power produced from coal. That is madness! 
In fact it is very interesting to look at the latest data under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This Government has been keen to damn Australia and the United States. Well let us compare the figures. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up by 3 percent. The United States’ emissions have gone up by 2.5 percent—and they are the bad guys. They are the ones that Helen Clark damns. How much have our emissions gone up over the same period? They have gone up by 10 percent I say to the Minister. I ask the Minister to take some responsibility for the failed policies that have done just that. I also draw his attention to the damning comments coming from every corner of the energy sector in respect of his policies. Dr Keith Turner has said that the state of the transmission system— 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues) 
: 
 My understanding is that we are debating the climate change estimates not the energy estimates— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: —so I will not respond to the energy points that the member Dr Smith made. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: But they’re quite relevant. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: They are relevant to the energy sector and I will respond to them later. But dealing with the climate change issues the National Party is criticising the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol which was essentially designed by that very party when it had better representation in the form of Simon Upton. We have done no more than implement what that party when in Government thought was a good idea. 
There is no doubt that climate change for policy purposes has to be seen to be a real and pressing issue that demands a policy response. This Government has advanced a policy response to it through the Kyoto Protocol at the time when National having negotiated the terms of that protocol then said for reasons of political advantage that although climate change problems might exist we should do nothing about them. That is the essential difference between what Labour has done and what National did. 
In terms of the increase in the proportion of thermal generation over recent years the member is correct in quoting those statistics that show there has been higher utilisation of existing fossil fuel - based capacity. Although a small amount of that has been from the additional capacity this Government caused to be built at Whirinaki most of it has resulted from the increased utilisation of existing plant. And that of course was one of the objectives of the Bradford reforms which that member voted in favour of because it was true that levels of overcapacity in the generation sector were being inefficiently used. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why did you stop Dobson? Why did the Government stop Dobson? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: This Government did not stop Dobson. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Yes it did. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No what it did was it declined— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek leave to table the letter from the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter to TrustPower refusing to allow the use of the land adjacent to the Arnold River which saw the rejection of the Dobson power scheme. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member seeks leave. Is there any objection? There is objection. The member should wait until the end of a speech to seek leave to table something. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I was going to say that the Minister of Conservation declined to allow the dam to inundate areas of the conservation estate. That is not the end of the matter though because TrustPower having been turned back on that particular version of use of water from the Arnold River has redesigned its scheme and is presently pursuing a consent for a similar amount of power to be generated from the same water from the Arnold River but with a lesser environmental impact that would not inundate the conservation estate. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It has no storage. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well it may have less storage but it has run-of-river capacity that is still capable of generating a similar amount of total electricity for the benefit of New Zealand’s power system and indeed for the particular benefit of supplementing the supply on the West Coast. So I disagree with the member’s characterisation of that. 
He talked about the Whirinaki power station being built. The reason Whirinaki was built was that it was needed to cover dry year risk. One of the characteristics of New Zealand’s electricity system is our reliance on hydroelectricity. It is a wonderful resource that we are lucky to have but in a dry year when the amount of water stored in the lakes is less we have an additional need for generating capacity. The market did not deliver that dry year security of supply so the Government intervened by building the Whirinaki facility to cover that dry year risk. 
Criticisms are made of that Whirinaki facility. Some say it would be better sited elsewhere. Those criticisms are made with the benefit of firstly hindsight and secondly— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why didn’t you put it in the right place the first time? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: At the time the reason why it was set up at Whirinaki was that it needed to be done urgently and Whirinaki was a consented site. Therefore the facility was sited at Whirinaki. The reason why it needed to be set up urgently was that the imperfections of the market model which Dr Nick Smith voted in favour of—Mr Bradford’s reforms—left us with dry year risk that was not properly accounted for. 
Turning to climate change more generally this last week we have seen a re-estimation of the balance of the Kyoto obligations of the Crown during the first commitment period which runs from 2008 to 2012. Last year we had great hoopla from the National Party when it made great mileage out of the fact that New Zealand’s projected deficit during the first commitment period had increased to 68 million tonnes. It has now been reduced to about 41 million tonnes and I think that that is good news. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency be agreed to 
. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency agreed to. 
Vote Energy 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I was intrigued by the Minister’s explanation today to the House of Representatives—and I guess to those in the country who are enthusiastic enough to listen in to it—as to why power prices for every home commercial enterprise and industry in New Zealand have skyrocketed over recent years. I was involved in the 1999 election campaign 7 years ago—the Government having been in office for 7 years now. Labour said then that it would effect a change to power prices—that it would stabilise power prices and bring them under control for New Zealand voters. All we have seen in that time is a 40 percent increase on average across the country in power prices for residences throughout New Zealand. Labour has been in Government for 7 years and that is what we have seen. 
I was intrigued by the Minister’s answer to a question today in which he said that the reason why power prices have skyrocketed under Labour over the last 7 years is the cheap cost of Maui gas prior to that and the rundown of Maui gas in recent times with cheap gas becoming more and more scarce. He said that for that reason power companies are starting to build other facilities that are cost-effective and cost-competitive in their use of resources whether they are burning coal or oil or whether they are into hydro or wind generation and that electricity is being generated at a much higher cost than before. In other words he conceded that one of the solutions to keeping power prices low is to find a replacement for Maui gas—to discover other massive gas reserves which we know exist around this country. 
I ask the Minister why he has allowed the Associate Minister of Energy Harry Duynhoven to oversee a bleak rundown of exploration enthusiasm around the country. The block offers—the offers put up off the coast of Northland in recent months—have not been taken up by exploration companies. Around Taranaki and the East Coast of the North Island block offers have not been taken up in recent months by exploration companies. I know that Trevor Mallard said in the House that that was because of tornadoes or hurricanes off the coast of America. That is funny because an awful lot of exploration by rigs seems to take place everywhere else in the world regardless of tornadoes and hurricanes off America while no exploration is done in New Zealand. So that cannot be the reason. I will tell members what the reason is. Here is a headline from the  
Independent 
: “Govt drags its feet on oil exploration”. Bryan Gundersen a partner at Kensington Swan stated that overseas investors “highlighted barriers to investment” in oil exploration and gas exploration in New Zealand. Another headline from the  
Independent 
 is: “Explorers’ begging bowl goes unfilled”. 
No enthusiasm exists for exploration in New Zealand for two simple reasons. Firstly the Government’s regime of taxation and royalties is such a burden to investors that they are not bothering to invest here. Secondly the Government has clamped down on work programmes for exploration companies so much that they cannot meet the goals the Government sets. The hurdles are just too tough; the bureaucracy is too stern. The exploration companies are being ground under the heels of bureaucrats. That is why exploration companies across the world and even in this country will not take up the challenge of finding more cheap gas under our territorial seas which would help to keep electricity prices under control. The Minister will stand up and brag about a whole lot of block offers that have been taken up recently but he will exaggerate the truth. The number of block offers put up compared with those that have actually been taken up is absolutely appalling. We have seen a rundown in exploration enthusiasm in this country. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 Dealing with that last point there is no doubt that the overhang of the price controls on Maui Gas suppressed exploration for new oil and gas in New Zealand. That is why the very good work which the industry acknowledges widely of the Hon Pete Hodgson as the then Minister was so important to get through the impasse so that companies would start exploring for more gas—and they are. Indeed already this year we have seen announcements of increases in gas reserves as a consequence of those initiatives. 
It is true also that fossil fuel prices around the world have close to doubled. We have seen that at the petrol pump. We have seen also the influence of rising prices in terms of the effect of the rise in gas prices on electricity. It is true also that we have problems in the electricity sector not the least of which are those caused by under-investment in the transmission part of the electricity sector where for many many years Transpower was stymied in its investment in new infrastructure by the rules imposed upon it by the previous National Government. That Government directed through a policy statement that Transpower not invest in upgrades to its grid notwithstanding increases in demand for electricity unless it had agreement from its consumers—effectively local lines companies and major generators. Those local lines companies and generators would not reach agreement with Transpower as to its being paid extra for the extra money it had to spend so Transpower did not spend that money. 
Again that problem was remedied by the Hon Pete Hodgson who caused a change in the rules to allow Transpower to charge for the extra investment it had to make in lines. As a consequence the diminishing expenditure on lines in the late 1990s which had dropped to as low as around $52 million in capital expenditure in 1998-99—and $63 million $61 million and $84 million in the following years—has now risen to over $300 million per annum as Transpower does some of the upgrading that is so overdue. 
In terms of other energy issues it is true that the country needs to use its energy more efficiently. In a prior call Dr Smith criticised the performance of the Government but he should acknowledge that it was not until the first National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy was drafted that we actually had a meaningful strategy to pursue. It is true that pursuit of the strategy has not been perfect and that the Government thinks better can be done. That is why the Government has called for the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy to be recast with sectoral targets that it anticipates will lead to more efficiency within each sector by better identifying who is responsible for achieving those targets. 
It is true also that some of the other measures the Government has in place in climate change policy have brought forward renewable energy. Indeed one of the great successes of the Hon Pete Hodgson when he had responsibility for climate change and energy issues was to bring forward the development of wind power. Had the Projects to Reduce Emissions programme not been in place it is likely that much of the wind power development that we now see already being brought to the market and also being planned to be brought to the market in the next 2 to 3 years would not have occurred. 
As a consequence of Mr Hodgson’s lead in those areas the Government through the projects to reduce emission has quantified New Zealand’s wind resource. We have proven that it is probably the best wind power generation resource in the world. We have brought it to market in probably the most cost-effective manner in the world and now wind competes at the margin for new generation in a way that would not otherwise have occurred. As a consequence as we build more generating capacity in New Zealand—and more generating capacity is necessary; we cannot rely completely on improved energy efficiency—it is likely that a very significant proportion of new generation in the next decade is likely to be wind generation. That is good because it takes pressure off our gas resources and it is good also because wind generation does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. Both of those outcomes are very desirable. 
It is true that for four main reasons energy policy is experiencing a rethink around the world. We have had a very fast rate of increase in fossil fuel prices. We have had energy security concerns as a consequence of civil unrest in places like Iraq and Nigeria and problems in Venezuela for example. We have also had the peak oil debate where people are concerned that the production of oil is peaking and that as a consequence of its peak it will become unavailable. My own view is that that is not realistic. I do not think we are facing a future shortage of oil but what is true is that we have seen a peak of cheap oil. There are large additional reservoirs of oil in oil shales and deeper wells and there is also coal to liquids technology. But each of those technologies and sources is considerably more expensive than the traditional sources of oil that the world has had over the last decade or two. So I say that we have had peak cheap oil. 
As a consequence of those factors plus the fourth concern about the effects of greenhouse gasses on the atmosphere—or the ability of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gasses without the world warming—we have heightened concern around the world about energy policy. That is why this Government is grappling with those issues through our climate change policy settings and in particular through the New Zealand Energy Strategy through which New Zealanders will have an ability to submit on what they think should be the future direction of New Zealand’s energy sector. I think we will see an increased emphasis on renewables and increased emphasis on energy efficiency so that in the future we will have an energy system that is not as insecure as reliant on imported fossil fuels; nor as exposed to those energy security and price vulnerability issues that exist for imported fossil fuels. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Vote Energy be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Vote Energy agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The time allocated to the consideration of the estimates referred to in the Appropriation (2006/07 Estimates) Bill has expired. I shall now put as one question the remaining votes and provisions of the bill. 
The question was put that Vote Lands Vote Customs Vote Youth Development Vote Statistics Vote Consumer Affairs Vote National Archives Vote National Library Vote Community and Voluntary Sector Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade Vote Official Development Assistance Vote Racing Vote Revenue the preamble clauses 1 to 14 and schedules 1 to 7 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the votes the preamble clauses 1 to 14 and schedules 1 to 7 be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Votes preamble clauses 1 to 14 and schedules 1 to 7 agreed to. 
House resumed. 
Bill reported without amendment. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I move  
That the report be adopted. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the report be adopted. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Abstentions 6 
Green Party 6. 
Report adopted. 
Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Health Committee for consideration and that the committee present its final report on or before 20 December 2006. I also request that the Health Committee give particular consideration to the issue of whether schools and other community purpose buildings such as hospitals and public halls that have their own self-supply of water should be required by the bill to be on the drinking-water register or whether they should have discretion to be on it. 
This bill introduces a flexible risk management - based and outcome-focused legislative framework for reticulated and tankered drinking water in New Zealand. In doing so it will update inadequate and limited legislative provisions that are more than 50 years old. This measure will see New Zealand move into line with almost every other developed nation in having a regulatory regime to promote the quality and safety of drinking water rather than relying almost entirely on voluntary mechanisms to regulate the drinking-water sector which is a sector estimated to have assets in excess of $5.5 billion. Colleagues who follow me in this debate will elaborate on the current organisation of New Zealand’s drinking-water sector. 
The need for this legislation arises from the existing provisions that govern New Zealand’s drinking-water supplies to safeguard communities. Firstly and contrary to public perception this bill affects public health because New Zealand has relatively high rates of largely preventable enteric or gastrointestinal disease compared with other developed nations. For example the rate of those diseases in New Zealand is twice that of Britain and three times those of Australia and Canada. Secondly the current state of New Zealand’s drinking-water legislation gives little effective protection or deterrence against a major outbreak of disease due to the accidental or deliberate contamination of urban drinking-water supplies. Such events have occurred in overseas jurisdictions. For example in Walkerton a town with a population of 4000 people in Canada there were seven deaths and 2321 reported cases including 65 hospitalisations resulting from E. coli in the water supply in May 2000. Thirty of those 65 hospitalisations will be on kidney dialysis for the rest of their lives. Another example is in Milwaukee Wisconsin where between 70 and 100 deaths occurred and over 400000 people became sick in 1993. 
The bill is based on a number of premises and assumptions about drinking water that I think should be relatively uncontroversial. The main premise of the bill is that safe drinking water is a basic requirement for a healthy population. Although water can never be made completely safe it is clear that the standard of water in many parts of New Zealand puts too many people at risk of illness. We do not know how many outbreaks of illness go unrecognised. We have high rates of preventable gastrointestinal illness by world standards. Without adequate drinking water the daily health and well-being of a community is compromised. 
The bill assumes that access to safe drinking water is the right of all New Zealanders no matter where in New Zealand they reside. Although almost all people in urban areas have access to adequately safe drinking water many people in smaller towns of up to 5000 inhabitants sometimes do not. They often do not have sufficient protection against the risk of a major disease outbreak of the sort seen overseas and which could occur here unless we institute more proactive management of water. Rural people meanwhile are worse off still in that they often do not have the day-to-day access to adequate safe water that urban people largely take for granted and they have poor protection against a major outbreak of disease. We see the results of that in the higher burden of disease evident within many rural communities. 
Further the bill assumes that safe drinking water is an essential component of New Zealand’s economic health. That was recognised in the Ministry of Economic Development’s infrastructure stocktake which noted poor drinking-water quality in some areas as an infrastructure concern. Furthermore inadequate drinking water poses a very obvious threat to tourism. Many of our important tourism areas are served by the very rural supplies that pose the highest risk of disease. In addition the risk of harm to tourists—as opposed to locals—is greater because tourists are not acclimatised to the water. The damage that cases of individual tourist illness causes to tourism is mild in comparison with the damage and adverse publicity that would result in the event of a major disease outbreak. 
Why is regulation needed at all? Why can a voluntary system not produce the gains that we need? To date the Government’s drinking-water strategy has encouraged voluntary compliance with the New Zealand drinking-water standards and a range of other measures. We have seen a steady improvement in water safety since 1992 when elements of the current voluntary system were first put in place. However the improvement had plateaued by the year 2000 and there has been no overall improvement since then. That means that although 71 percent of the New Zealand population is currently served by water supplies that comply with the standards the remaining 29 percent is served by supplies that are either not compliant or not known to be compliant and with no prospect of improvement. In terms of the voluntary registration of water supplies by June last year the voluntary register recorded 1953 suppliers out of an estimated 2900. Again that is a good result for a voluntary system but it is not adequate if New Zealand’s drinking-water supplies are to be raised to acceptable levels. One can neither investigate a failure in drinking-water quality nor monitor the standard of New Zealand’s drinking water if the suppliers are not known. 
Lessons learned in overseas jurisdictions tell us that effective water management needs to involve multiple interventions at many levels so that if one part of the system fails the others are ready to compensate for the failure and provide back-up. However a universal proactive management system is unlikely to occur from within a voluntary system. 
If enacted in its present form the bill will bring in a regulatory regime that would continue the elements of the current Ministry of Health drinking-water strategy that are currently voluntary but will make them compulsory. For example it would become compulsory for suppliers to take all practicable steps to comply with the currently voluntary drinking-water standards. Suppliers will also be required to introduce and implement public health risk management plans for water supplies that serve more than 500 people. Suppliers will also be required to apply to be included on the register of community drinking-water suppliers. 
In a final note we acknowledge that the cost of implementing this legislation will not be insignificant. However it is worth it and the Government has measures to mitigate the cost. The Government’s drinking-water assistance programme allocates $136.9 million excluding GST for capital and technical assistance to water suppliers and the bill itself contains a number of mechanisms to address and minimise compliance costs to suppliers. 
The Ministry of Health has consulted widely in developing the policy for this bill. In order to remain responsive to the needs of the drinking-water sector the Government has established a technical advisory group that will report back to Cabinet on any issues with regard to the implementation of the new legislation. 
In summary the Government has done much within the current voluntary system to assist suppliers—particularly small suppliers—to improve the quality of their water. However that is now not enough on its own. We now know that the level of improvement we require can be achieved only through a combination of measures including a major overhaul of the legislative framework. I commend the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill to the House. 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 This bill the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is a heavy-handed overkill approach to address concerns about water quality in New Zealand. It is an approach that does not properly target those who might pose the greatest risk. To those who already comply it gives the shortest time frame for compliance and to those who may be the problem it gives the longest period for compliance. We in the National Party want to tell the House the reasons why we oppose this legislation—not the least of which is the huge burden and risk it will put on to local government which is something the Government failed to discuss in the Minister of Health’s introductory speech. 
The latest survey of drinking-water supplies conducted by the Institute of Environmental and Scientific Research in 2004 showed that about 70 percent of New Zealanders receive water that is compliant with drinking standard quality. It further went on to estimate that about 15 percent of New Zealanders receive water that does not meet the current drinking-water standards. Most of those supplies are in fact from very small systems that supply fewer than 500 people. The regime proposed by this bill will impose costs on the majority of complying drinking-water systems in an attempt to improve the quality of the drinking water provided by a very few small suppliers. 
We think the approach of setting up a whole new industry of assessors and compliers is complete overkill for what is required here. We in the National Party would have thought that the Government would come up with a bill that was more focused on targeting those systems it sees as the greatest risk providing more information and encouragement for those suppliers and involving local authorities through their asset management plans to improve the quality of those schemes for which they are responsible. Instead the bill puts millions of dollars of costs on to local government and ratepayers the very people who in 70 percent of the schemes currently under debate currently comply. 
The Minister was not able to give any local examples of where the problem is. He gave a whole lot of international examples of where the problem is but failed to give any New Zealand examples. We have a list of a few water supplies that have problems and the House will be interested to know that most of the recent incidents of water-borne diseases have in fact happened on school camps out in the wild. They are not happening in the areas the Minister is trying to suggest to the House. He failed to demonstrate that things were not working and that there are significant failures in the current system. What we wanted from the Minister was for him to define the problem and provide the answer. All we got though was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. 
And what about the cost? Have any members other than National Party members actually gone through the bill and read the compliance statements in it? Did anyone else see that Local Government New Zealand at one stage had estimated that it would cost between $50 million and $200 million to comply with the bill? Did anyone else read the fact that local authorities individually were last consulted on this in the mid-1990s? These are the concerns the National Party has—the devil in the detail—and they indicate why we oppose this bill. 
There is quite a lot of confusion within the bill about how various proposals will work. The bill hangs its hat on the fact that it will require local authorities to act in such a way that they do whatever is practicable to improve the quality of their water supply. But further on the bill states that they must do this and they must do that which is in complete conflict with the principle of their being able to do whatever is practicable to improve their water supply. 
We are worried about the overhead the new industry that will be created by this bill providing for the Director-General of Health to appoint assessors and officers who will be responsible for auditing drinking-water suppliers to ensure that they meet the requirements of the bill the drinking-water standards and their public health risk management plans. Initially the assessors will talk to local authorities about how they can improve their water standards but in the end they have the power to require that local authorities do x y and z. That is writing a cheque on the ratepayer but this Government was not prepared even to admit that in the Minister’s introductory speech. This is the Government that goes on about working with local government. I bet the Prime Minister did not stand up at the local government conference last week and say that regardless of what local authorities say a Ministry of Health bureaucrat will be able to decide how ratepayers’ money is spent—whether they want it or not. There was no mention of that. And there was no mention in the Prime Minister’s speech on local government of the risk to ratepayers from private schemes being priced out. 
Labour members will not have read the compliance cost. One of them should now yell out: “How much will it cost someone to register?”. 
Anne Tolley 
: How much will it cost? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: It will cost at least $130000 just to begin the process. That is the Minister’s own advice in the explanatory note. If one has a small water scheme supplying a few people in one’s neighbourhood that is a huge burden. We should remember that most of the schemes that are not meeting the water quality standards at the moment are the small schemes with fewer than 500 people. If we burden those schemes—generally operating at a not-for-profit level—with huge costs what will happen? The organisers will say it is not for them any more and they will give it to the council to deal with. And that is the problem. Local authorities will be at significant risk of private and cooperative schemes falling into their responsibility because of the burden of costs associated with this legislation. 
So what is the answer? The problem is that some smaller water schemes need to improve their drinking-water standards to meet the standards the Government wants. A small group of schemes usually supplying fewer than 500 people—a discrete group—could be targeted for improvement but what has the Government done? It has proposed a scheme that will apply to all local authorities and to all suppliers—even tanker operators—and that will put a huge burden on that sector and the Minister did not even talk about it in his introductory speech. The National Party says that the answer is to target the problem and to use the resources that are required to address the concern. 
The Government thinks it will get an easy ride on this bill. I tell members that local authorities all around New Zealand are marshalling their resources to oppose this legislation. The reason is that it not only imposes significant costs on those who are already complying but also imposes a significant risk to local authorities particularly rural councils that they will end up having to take over the private and cooperative water schemes that are operating out there at the moment. 
Why did we not hear from the Government the actual definition of the problem in New Zealand today? The Minister provided no New Zealand examples—all the examples were international ones—and there was no explanation of the costs. The Minister’s own statements in the explanatory note include an estimate from Local Government New Zealand that compliance will cost between $50 million and $200 million. That is a huge burden. Even though the Government proposes a 4 or 5 year phase-in that is insufficient. This measure does not target where the issues may be and this Government will find strong opposition not only within Parliament from members who are informed but in particular from local authorities which know that it will put a significant burden on them in costs. Members opposite might shake their heads in disbelief but they should ring their local councils tonight and find out the significant burden that this bill proposes for them. It is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 That was an interesting speech from the National Party spokesperson on health in the sense that it once again illustrates the strangeness of the National Party’s position. If this Government was not dealing with the issue and it was costing the health system lots and lots of money that member would be the first to be up on his feet to whinge about why the Government had not acted when it had the opportunity to do so. 
Mr Ryall may like to know that in 1984 3500 people in Queenstown were affected by sickness as a result of drinking contaminated water. That is probably at the extreme end of things because we are very fortunate in New Zealand that to date the voluntary system we operate has seen only relatively small examples of such sicknesses. Mr Ryall says such illnesses do not matter because they happen only on school camps. He says it does not matter about the kids who are on school camps. There were 61 cases of campylobacteriosis at a school camp near Christchurch in 1997 and there were 67 cases at Wainui—and one would expect that because there was a National Government at the time. But we will plead guilty that in the year 2001 187 cases at a local college were reported to the medical officer of health. 
There were 69 cases of viral gastroenteritis at a major ski-field in 1996. Those people were probably only tourists so the National Party would not worry about that. It would ask why we should worry about the biggest income earner for this nation which is tourism. National would say: “Let’s poison off a few tourists here and there.”—that does not really matter to the National Party. That is why the National members are over there in Opposition and that is why the Minister Mr Hodgson is sitting here on the Government benches. He will get on and do the job whereas Mr Ryall will just whinge and moan about the wastage that goes on in our health system. 
Mr Ryall does not care about the 49 cases of illness at a school camp in the Waikato in 2003 because once again that was just a bunch of kids. Maybe he has forgotten that one of his National Party colleagues represents a town called Masterton. Of course we can recall that in July and August of 2003 there was a significant contamination of the town’s water supply by cryptosporidiosis again. Whatever that is it was there. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: It’s bad. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: The Minister of Health says it is bad. But cryptosporidiosis is not seen as bad by the National Party members. They would leave it alone. They will oppose this bill and would do nothing about that. 
Of course Mr Ryall who is terribly upset about the cost of this legislation to the public by way of local government forgot to listen to the Minister’s speech where he outlined the $154 million contribution that this Labour-led Government will be making to small communities. They are not small communities such as the one we come from in Auckland; we are talking about communities of fewer than 5000 people. The National Party used to pride itself on representing those areas of New Zealand. As far as the National members are concerned they say we should let people in those communities drink dirty water and keep on getting sick because National says that we should not meet the cost of providing good drinking water in this country. That is why the National members are the Opposition and we are the Government. We care about people and they do not. 
I support this bill for that reason. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 I would just like to reiterate the Hon Tony Ryall’s comments about this being a sledgehammer to crack a walnut type situation. When one looks at this bill one can see that it really addresses a totally non-existent problem. New Zealand is known for having the best standard of drinking water in the world. There is just no question about that. We do not have typhoid in this country; we do not have cholera; we do not have elective surgery. The Government should be focusing on the issues that really matter to the health of New Zealanders. I can tell members that water-borne diseases are not a major public health problem in this country. But I can tell members that this legislation will cost an awful lot to ratepayers the length and breadth of New Zealand. 
Darren Hughes 
: How many people have to die before the National Party will support this? 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: I tell the marginal member for Otaki that rather than worrying about water standards he should be getting back to his electorate to address the problems with the lack of doctors and the lack of elective surgery and try to get himself back on the front page of the  
Horowhenua-Kapiti Chronicle 
 rather than letting the real MP for Otaki service the people of that electorate. 
Darren Hughes 
: I live on that front page! 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Not for long. But as I say this is a problem that does not need fixing and it brings with it absolutely excessive compliance costs. Reading through this bill one can see that it will cost ratepayers $100 to $250 million over the next 6 years. 
Of course it is the rural areas that will be hit. But Labour does not care about the rural areas. It will not be in Labour’s strongholds out in South Auckland or out in the cities. If one looks at the map one will see that New Zealand basically looks blue. The issue with this bill is that it will hit people in towns with fewer than 5000 people—people in electorates such as Otaki. If I were that member I would be very concerned. I am sure he would have been debating this pretty hard in caucus. I am sure he would not have been too keen on this legislation but he is having to come and defend it now. It does not matter to people in electorates such as that of the Minister of Health. Because of course they already comply with the drinking-water standards. It will hit the people of rural New Zealand. 
But it is pretty clear that Labour has given up on those seats. They have lost Aoraki. They have lost big chunks of the East Coast of the North Island—in fact all of the East Coast of the North Island. They have a new MP there as well. But it will be the people in electorates such as Mrs Tolley’s who will really miss out with this bill. But of course Labour does not care. In the Western Bay of Plenty very close to an area that the next Minister of Health Tony Ryall represents there will be a 60 percent increase in water rates over the next 10 years but Labour does not care because it has given up on that seat. In Rotorua Labour knows that Mrs Chadwick will also be going out at the next election. So really if there are more compliance costs for the people of Rotorua that will not really matter because Labour has given up there anyway. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: What a typical doctor. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: A typical doctor! 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: A typical GP—doesn’t care about public health. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Well actually that is not true. This is not an issue for public health in New Zealand. We have heard a huge litany of examples given here by the Labour members. If they looked a bit more closely at the detail in the cases they have described most of them have absolutely nothing to do with water-borne disease. We listened to the Minister before talking about campylobacter. Well I know that he is a veterinarian but I would expect him to know that campylobacter is actually a disease of poor food handling and it comes from chicken in the main. It is not actually a bacteria that one finds particularly often in water. Viral gastroenteritis is cited by the Ministry of Health as a reason for bringing in this bill. Well that is not generally water borne either—49 cases at a school camp in the Waikato in 2003. Well that says nothing about disease being water-borne either. So really there is nothing in this bill—it addresses a problem that does not exist. 
When one looks at the management of drinking water it is broken into three parts: the environment; the supply of water; and the storage and distribution. Those members were not listening closely to that boring speech that we had from the Minister of Health before. They were just doing their paperwork but they have certainly woken up now because they know that they are under pressure— 
Darren Hughes 
: I predict one term for you. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: That will be interesting. I predict that I will be here longer than him. Anyway back to water-borne disease. The issue here is that we currently have a perfectly adequate voluntary regime that is not really needing any modification. All this will bring is a whole lot of compliance costs. 
I can tell members what the Ministry of Health says it will do. The Government is instituting a drinking-water assistance programme that will have two parts: the technical assistance programme and the capital assistance programme. It will be spending $140 million plus GST on that. I remind Government members that that amount of money would almost twice over pay the district health board deficit for the whole country over the past year. 
This is just another example of this Government not knowing where it should be focusing its attention and resources. There is nothing wrong with the drinking water. We are being asked once again to submit to an increased regime of compliance. We see that 71 percent of the country’s water suppliers are actually fully compliant and 29 percent are served by suppliers who are not compliant or not known to be compliant. I say to members again and as Tony Ryall made the point in his speech we should be identifying those areas where the water is a problem and working with providers rather than imposing massive compliance costs and the potential costs will be highest in the rural areas—there is no question about that. 
The bill also asks for greater coverage on the drinking-water register. So once again Labour is wanting to count the problem. What good will it really do for the public health of the people of New Zealand just to count the number of water providers? The bill also asks for proactive management of water supplies through public health risk management plans. Once more we will have more plans more compliance and more costs for the ratepayer. The answer is not to engage in this costly compliance regime whereby at the end of the day it will be ordinary overtaxed New Zealanders who will see increases in their water charges. The answer is to have a common sense approach to identify where there really is a problem. 
I tell members once again that there is not a public health problem with water in New Zealand. We have the best drinking-water in the world. Examples were cited before from the USA and goodness knows where but there was not one example from New Zealand. That shows the flaws in this legislation. It shows that Labour’s thinking on health is flawed full stop. With the problems we have in this country with providing elective surgery and getting people access to basic medical care why are we spending parliamentary time and taxpayers’ money to try to solve a problem that does not really exist? Can the member for Otaki answer that question? He does not have an answer. Why would we bother to do that? What is more it will cost $130000 for providers to register for this regime. To me that is just imposing another ridiculous cost that once again will be borne by the ratepayer. 
In summary National thinks this is an excessive answer to a problem that frankly does not exist. We think the Government should be concentrating on common-sense solutions to real problems not imposing more compliance costs on councils and ultimately on ratepayers. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. It is an absolutely essential role of any Government to ensure there are safe and adequate drinking-water supplies for all New Zealanders. It is a public health issue. In fact it is a requirement for any First World country and here in New Zealand we like to think of ourselves as a First World country rather than as a Third World country. We believe that many New Zealanders believe that legislation is already in existence to ensure that all of our drinking water meets a required standard. 
It is an unfortunate fact that here in New Zealand we have relatively high rates of largely preventable gastrointestinal disease compared with other countries. Although we are realistic and we realise that it is not all due to drinking water a percentage can be attributed to contaminated drinking-water and this occurs particularly in rural areas. Earlier we heard that school camps are a very good example of this. The current drinking-water legislation gives little effective protection or deterrence against a major outbreak of disease particularly if the drinking water is contaminated. So New Zealand is faced with the need to review our strategy and improve it in this area. 
We were surprised to find that at this point in time a largely voluntary regime governs the procurement of water from the environment the actual storage of water the assessment and treatment of water and the distribution of that very same water to the consumer via pipes and tankers. Earlier speakers have already brought out the statistics. The voluntary scheme has resulted in 71 percent of the New Zealand population being served by water suppliers that comply with the E. coli criteria. A further 29 percent is served drinking water that is either not compliant or not known to be compliant. That when we consider it is almost a third. It affects rural communities particularly those communities that National proclaims to be its constituency. We are very pleased to see that the bill requires drinking-water suppliers to take all the practicable steps they can to ensure we have an adequate supply of drinking water that complies with some standards. 
Like many other New Zealanders I live and holiday in a rural area where all of the community is dependent on tank water. Of course in dry summers it is inevitable that the tanks run dry. We need water so we have to purchase a tanker load of water. The taste clarity and smell of the water vary greatly from one load to another and from one house to another house. Obviously we are very dependent on the source and supplies available at the time to the tanker driver. We all wonder about the quality of the water we are purchasing and of course as residents there is nothing we can do about the water if we do not like the taste or the smell apart from hope that the rains are coming and that that will give the water an improved smell and taste that makes it far more pleasant to drink. One of the positive aspects of this bill is that there is a requirement for water carriers to be involved in developing guidelines which will at some later date form part of these very water standards. In our area we cannot be sure of the cleaning processes or the cleaning products actually used by the various suppliers to clean the tankers that are delivering the drinking water to us. We believe that standardisation and compliance with a standard are essential. Perhaps we could then be sure about the quality of the drinking water we receive. 
It is unrealistic to believe that totally accurate information would be available to estimate the likely costs of compliance around the various regions in New Zealand affected by the bill as that depends to a large extent on the size of the operation as well as what it currently does. One would believe and hope that many of these businesses would already ensure that their water services and their water meet various quality standards so the cost to those people may very well be minimal. After all we are a First World country and we believe that safe clean drinking-water is essential. 
New Zealand First will be very keen to hear the views of various submitters on this bill as clean drinking-water that we can all be totally confident about is a very important issue. I was very interested to read on the Ministry of Health website that water-borne disease is estimated to cost the New Zealand economy about $15 million per annum at present. New Zealand First has some concerns that this bill applies another role for local bodies to deal with and that it will establish some expenditure priorities for them that they had not planned for at this point in time. Of course at the end of the day it is ultimately the ratepayers who will be paying this cost. I have spoken to some ratepayers who are very satisfied that under this bill their drinking water will comply with water standards and many of them are very keen to say this. As with other products that we eat it is a reasonable expectation that we can have the records and the documentation that relate to compliance. 
Anne Tolley 
: Did you tell them how much their rates will go up? 
BARBARA STEWART 
: I suggest that the National member who is continually calling out should look around her own electorate and find out some of the challenges that many of the rural areas have with water. Most of the non-compliant communities are very small. They are mostly communities of under 5000 people that are rural and socio-economically disadvantaged already. A significant proportion of the people in these communities are Maori and as we said these communities are widely distributed throughout New Zealand. 
I am very aware too that a large number of rural schools will be affected by this legislation. The Ministry of Education will need to ensure that compliance occurs in these areas. Children need clean drinking-water particularly if we are to encourage the message that water is the beverage of choice. If there is to be any action on the obesity challenges we face in New Zealand then provision of a drink that is safe and wholesome is surely the very first step and we should encourage children to drink water rather than the fizzy alternatives which we all agree are not the most healthy. 
 We are very pleased to see that there is to be a staggered process for the implementation of the new standard. That will assist those communities greatly. The timetable is laid out very clearly in the bill and will provide a very good guide for all of those communities affected. We note too that a drinking-water assistance programme is to run parallel to this legislation. That will assist these communities. We are very aware that clean drinking-water is an absolute requirement and a strategy to ensure that it occurs is essential. We know that our drinking-water law is virtually unchanged from the UK public legislation of the 1870s when water was untreated and sourced directly from unprotected streams and wells. All legislation needs to be updated to reflect the changing times we live in. The health and safety of people are paramount and we all need clean safe and wholesome drinking-water so New Zealand First supports this bill. 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill but we will listen very closely to submitters from around the country. Our basic position is that water is fundamental to our health and well-being and as such making water quality standards legally enforceable seems to be important. We think we do need more than a voluntary scheme to enforce water-quality standards when they are fundamental to our health and well-being. We note that the bill although not creating a strict liability offence for breaching standards at least introduces a duty to take reasonable steps to supply water that meets the minimum standards. 
One of the objectives of the bill is to ensure that all drinking-water suppliers have public health risk management plans. That seems to us to be perfectly reasonable and not too onerous. The aim is to ensure that drinking-water suppliers take all practicable steps to comply with the minimum drinking-water standards. That does not seem to us to be too onerous either. We note that Local Government New Zealand generally supports a minimum standard for drinking-water quality but is concerned that suppliers in small and rural communities could have difficulty in complying with the bill. That organisation basically says that the requirement that water suppliers take all practicable steps provides flexibility for small and rural suppliers because a failure to comply with the drinking-water standards does not necessarily mean there is a failure to comply with the legislation. As Barbara Stewart mentioned there is a timetable—it is a phased-in approach there is an agreed process for remedying deficiencies and so on and so forth. I think that all of those provisions seem perfectly reasonable. 
Another thing we are particularly pleased about in this legislation is that it establishes a duty on suppliers to provide an adequate supply of drinking water. We think that is very important. It is a provision that has never existed before and as I have said water is fundamental to our health and well-being. Of course as we continue to pollute and exploit our natural resources and as we face potential threats to water security—such as climate change—it is important that all New Zealanders have enough safe water to drink wash with and prepare food with and that that right be protected. So we are particularly pleased that it is being enshrined in legislation and we think that is absolutely fundamental. 
We will be interested to hear more about the suggestion that a reasonable step that a council could take may be to make submissions under the Resource Management Act or the Local Government Act 2002 or to contribute to the protection of a source of water by planting trees. We wonder what will happen if having made those submissions and planted all those trees the water is still substandard or becomes substandard. Will it mean that some New Zealanders will be left without clean safe water because councils will be able to have the loophole of just making submissions and planting trees? We have some concerns about issues like those and we will listen carefully to submitters on the bill. 
We have another concern which is about the ability of the Minister to use new section 69O of the principal Act to require fluoridation as a new water-quality standard. Under new section 69O “Minister may issue adopt amend or revoke drinking-water standards’’ which is inserted by clause 7 any matters relating to drinking water that may affect health may be specified. Until now the decision on whether to fluoridate or mass-medicate our drinking-water supplies has been made by local government under provisions set out in Part 7 of the Local Government Act 2002. We have concerns that the provision in this bill could be used as a back-door national standard—as a way to override the decisions of local communities as to whether they want to fluoridate their water. 
Barbara Stewart talked about fizzy drinks and the importance of trying to encourage people to drink water instead of such drinks. We think the way to tackle dental health in this country is through dental hygiene through getting fizzy drinks out of schools and by reducing the amount of sugar in people’s diets not by fluoridating the water. Increasingly controversial and contradictory evidence is coming through about whether fluoridation actually works. Most of Europe does not have it. Are Europeans’ teeth worse than New Zealanders’? No they are not. The Swiss did a major investigation of studies on fluoridation and concluded there was no conclusive evidence that it works. So let us not rush into water fluoridation. Let us save the money from the water assistance fund and put it towards helping to improve the quality of our water not towards mass-medicating us with fluoride.  
The other issue we have talked about is how many people in New Zealand are being made ill by water. We have had a few little examples of that here and there. Someone said that $15 million a year is spent on water-quality diseases. Well we are actually spending an estimated $70 million to $90 million on campylobacter which is a serious epidemic in this country and makes 100000 New Zealanders sick every year. What are we doing about that? Virtually nothing that I can see. Scientists estimate that at least 50000 New Zealanders are becoming sick because of the chicken that they eat. What are we doing to clean up the slaughterhouses to reduce the amount of contaminated chicken? Virtually nothing as far as we can see.  
We have known about the campylobacter problem for years and we are doing virtually nothing about it. In fact we are ignoring the Food Act which states that we cannot sell contaminated food. We are selling contaminated chickens every single day—millions of them—and doing absolutely nothing about it. So I agree with some members who have said that maybe the priority is being given to water-borne diseases when they pale into insignificance in comparison with other diseases such as campylobacter which is a genuine epidemic—and a preventable epidemic—that we could do something about. We hope the Government will do something about it.  
I have another little issue about water tanks. Will we find as a result of these standards that people cannot have water tanks because they may not meet a particular standard? As water becomes more scarce particularly in certain parts of New Zealand I think we will need to encourage people to have water tanks. I would be concerned if the provisions of this bill effectively meant that people could not have water tanks in New Zealand.  
So we do have quite a lot of concerns about this bill particularly about the fluoridation issue and about some of the compliance issues that have been raised. But overall I think that nobody could sensibly argue that drinking-water standards should be voluntary. Surely they are so fundamental to our health and well-being that we need to have basic minimum standards that we all have to comply with. It is not fair that some people in some parts of New Zealand have complying water supplies and others do not. We will be supporting the bill and will listen very very carefully to any suggestions—in particular from local government—with a very open mind. In general we think there really is no alternative to regulation. We cannot have something as important as our water-quality standards be entirely reliant on a voluntary scheme. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora. Ko te katoa o taku korero i te reo Maori.  
[ 
Greetings to you. I shall give the whole of my speech in the Maori language 
.] 
Tera tetahi korero kua tukua mai mo Kapumanawawhiti o Ngati Raukawa raua ko Tuhourangi o Te Arawa e pa ana ki te tino kai o te Maori ara ko te huahua. Mutu ana te hakari ara te huahua te tuna te ika te kai moana ka matewai a Tuhourangi na reira ka whakaaetia. Hakoa te reka nui o te huahua ka ora ke te tangata i te wai. 
E te rangatira me whai wai maori te tangata ka tika! Mai ra ano ka riro ma te tangata whenua o tatou awa o tatou hopua wai o tatou puna wai katoa hei tiaki. No reira e tautoko kaha ana te Pati Maori i wetahi huarahi kia maori ai te wai inu mo te tangata. 
Kua kitea he mea nui te wai maori te wai inu i roto i nga korero mai i te taenga mai o tauiwi. I mua atu i nga tahae whenua i noho nga iwi i o ratou pa. He pai nga manga tuku atu i nga waimate me nga waikura. 
Ka tahae atu te whenua ka heke te iwi ki nga mania ki nga wahi kahore e pai ana te manga tuku. Ka pangia te tangata ki nga momo mauiui. 
Mai i tera rautau ka toroa nga kainga Maori e Ta Maui Pomare hei matai i te wai inu i te tuku para i te paratutae. Kahore te iwi i aro atu ki ana korero. Na tona mokopuna a Miria te korero mo te akiaki o tana kaumatua kia ata matai te iwi i wa ratou wai inu. Na te titirohanga ki tona karu whakarahi i ohorere pai ai ratou i te nui o nga ngangara i roto i te wai. Katahi ratou ka aro ki ana kupu e pa ana ki te koropuputanga o te wai. 
Na reira kua roa te kitea o te paru i roto i te wai inu o Aotearoa. Ko te tumanako ma tenei pire e ngaro katoa ai wenei ahuatanga. 
I nga tau kua pahure ake nei he nui ano nga momo paru e uru mai ana ki roto i te wai inu pera i te manga tuku i nga pamu kararehe nga monehunehu i nga mara kai nui nga monehunehu whakamate ngangara nga wheketere puta noa nga ara waipuke e honohono ana i te wai maori me te wai parunga ngongo kua hanga ki te mata te whakaparu a nga paihamu me nga manu i te wai tuanui. 
Heoi ano i te marama kua pahure nei kua rongo ano te iwi o to matou rangatira a Tariana i te kino o te waipuke i pa atu ki a Whangaehu raua ko Waitotara. Ka raruraru ano te wai inu o tona iwi na te mahi whakawatea whenua kua horo te whenua me nga puketai. Ko te morearea ka uru atu te pungatara te paratutae me te paru ki roto i nga puna wai. Ka whakatau te marae o Whangaehu kia hoko wai inu kia kore ai ratau e mate i te wai paru. 
E hoa ma! Ehara i te mea ko te tangohanga o te wai ko te rerenga ranei o te para ki roto i nga awa i te take taiao noa iho hakoa tona whakahirahira. He take kaitiaki mo te tangata whenua he take oranga mo te iwi. E mea ana te pepeha: 
“E kore a Parawhenua e haere ki te kore a Rakahore.” Me ki he kupu whakarite a Parawhenua mo te wai a Rakahore mo te kohatu. Ko tona wai ora ko te whanaungatanga i roto i nga mea katoa. Ko te whakapapa o te taiao ara ko nga kararehe ko nga tupu ko nga maunga nga awa nga moana ko te hau ko nga takutai he mea hono ki te tangata whenua. Na reira ka tukuna iho e wa matou tupuna te kaitiakitanga o enei taonga. A tona wa ka riro ma nga uri whakatupu. 
I roto i te kereme e pa ana ki te awa o Whanganui ka whakatauritea te awa ki te rerenga toto matua o *Te Ati Haunui-a-Paparangi he mauri o nga mea katoa e hono ana ki te awa. Kahore to matou matauranga i whakaae ki te whakawehetanga o nga awa ki nga papa awa nga ara wai nga puketai nga wahi kia ngaua e te tai me nga wahi horekau he tai. 
Ko te whakatau a te Taraipiunara o Waitangi he taonga tuku iho te awa. He whanaungatanga tona ki tona iwi. Koia ra ko tona oranga tona mauri tona whatumanawa hoki. E mea ana te purongo a te taraipiunara mo te awa o Mohaka he taonga ano te awa no Ngati Pahauwera i te wa o te hainatanga o te Tiriti a haere tonu nei. Ka pera tonu te whakatau a te Taraipiunara o Waitangi mo Pouakani. He taonga te awa o Waikato no te waka o Tainui me Ngati Tuwharetoa. No reira he take ano mo te pire wai inu nei i tua atu i te arai i nga morearea hauora nei ara ko te manaaki te tiaki te atawhai i tenei taonga tuku iho. 
He take whitawhita tenei. I te tau 2003 tata atu i te tahi miriona nga tangata i whakawhiwhia ki te wai inu kahore i eke ki nga taumata e tika ana. Tini ana nga wa kahore nga kaiwhakarato i whai i nga tikanga tiaki i te wai kahore hoki ratou i ata aro matawai ano hoki. He whatinga tikanga kino atu tenei hei whai ake. I te tau 2002 i mea atu Te Kaunihera a-Rohe o Te Taitokerau na te mahi hanga i te whare herehere i Ngawha i piki ai nga taumata o te konuoi—ara ko te mercury tera—ka kitea i roto i te awa o Ngawha. Ka rere atu tenei wai ki te awa o Waiaruhe ki Waitangi ra ano. Koia ra te wahi ka tikina atu te wai inu mo nga tangata o Paihia me Waitangi. E mea ana te ripoata kua eke nui atu nga taumata konuoi ki te taumata tika. Mai ano i te marama o Pipiri he nui te ua a ka piki haere te wai i runga i te papa. Ma tena ka nui atu te rerenga o te wai me te konuoi mai i nga wahi hanga a he nui atu te paruparu. Koianei te putake o nga ohotata hauora e pa ana ki te wai inu e korerohia nei i roto i te pire nei. 
Haunga ana ko nga ahuatanga kua korerohia nei ka hoki ano ki a au ki Te Tai Tokerau ki tetahi atu tauira e whakaatu mai ana he oranga he rongoa mo tatou. Hakoa te aha ka para te awa i tona ara. Pera ano hoki mo tatou te tangata. Me tirohia e tatou ki to tatou ake matauranga kia kitea ai te rongoa mo tenei raruraru. Ko tetahi mahi rangahau i Hokianga ka hangai ki te wai inu pai mo nga marae me nga papa kainga e rua. A muri atu i nga waipuke kino i Hokianga i te tau 1999 ka kakari mai te iwi kia kimihia te wai maori mo nga papakainga me nga marae. Na nga waipuke i eke ai te take nei ki tona wehitanga. Ko te maharahara ko te urutanga o te paru ki nga marae kua tu hei wahi noho mo nga whanau i whakarere i o ratou kainga. Ka hui tahi nga hapu me te ratonga hauora a Hauora Hokianga ki te whakamatau i tetahi whakahaere e kiia nei ko Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga. 
Kua hua mai he wai inu maori mo te hapori o Hokianga ka ahu mai i nga punaha wai. Ka whakatungia nga punaha nei ka riro ma te hau kainga ano e whakahaere. Kua whakahekea rawatia te tuponotanga ka paru te wai inu. Ka riro ki te hau kainga te kaitiakitanga o te wai inu. Ka mutu ina tona whakahirahira ka whakawhiwhia ki a ratou te tohu mo te turanga tuarua o roto i nga kaitono tata atu ki te 2003 o nga Tohu Hauora o Aotearoa. 
Tautoko kaha ana te Pati Maori kia whakarite he taumata wai inu hei eke hei whakapumau hoki ma nga ratonga wai e kauparehia atu ai nga tini wero ki to tatou wai inu. Kua kitea i te mahi a Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga e taea ana nga taumata te eke mena e tu ana te tangata whenua hei kaitiaki mo tona wai. Ma te mahi ngatahi me nga ratonga o te rohe e puta ai nga hua. He tohu ora tenei hei tautoko ma te Paremata i a tatou ka rapu i nga huarahi e pai ai te wai inu e maori ai te wai inu a haere ake nei. 
No reira e te Whare e te rangatira tena koutou kia ora tatou katoa.  
 [An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
In our tribal history we have a story passed down that recalls a challenge between  
Kapumanawawhiti of Ngati Raukawa 
 and Tuhourangi of Te Arawa. The debate was over whether huahua preserved birds were really the greatest delicacy available to Maori. After a hakari of legendary proportions—of huahua eel fish and shellfish Tuhourangi was allegedly desperate for water so an agreement was reached: whilst huahua are indeed delectable it is water that will ensure our survival. 
The right to clean safe water is a fundamental human right. In a tangata whenua context the strong cultural traditional and historic links that we have with our wetlands and island waterways are seen as intrinsic to our responsibilities as tangata tiaki. Therefore any move to ensure the provision of adequate supplies of safe and wholesome drinking water from drinking-water supplies is strongly commended by the Maori Party. 
The importance of wai maori fresh drinking-water to be used for everyday purposes has been a feature of our recent history in Aotearoa post-settlement. Prior to land confiscation iwi traditionally lived on hill-placed pa sites. These sites had good drainage especially in regard to effluent which meant that waimate or waikura water that is stagnant or polluted flowed away from living areas. 
With land alienation however our people were forced to live on flat land in closer proximity and frequently without proper sanitation. Such factors inevitably resulted in their drinking polluted water which spread disease.  
At the turn of last century as a health officer Sir Maui Pomare regularly visited Maori villages often travelling miles on foot to inspect the water supply rubbish disposal and sanitary arrangements. His efforts to convince people not to drink water before boiling it first or sieving it did not always make him popular. His grand-daughter Miria Pomare described how at one marae the people made a spectacular discovery when he urged them to bring a bucket of water and look through his microscope at its contents. “They were horrified at these little bully-headed bugs that were prevalent in the water they were drinking. He was then able to show them that they had to boil the water—and that turned them around.” she said. 
So the existence of contaminated or polluted drinking-water has a long history in Aotearoa—a history we are hoping this bill will change forever. 
More recently threats to safe clean drinking-water have come about from a host of new pressures such as agricultural run-off horticultural sprays pest eradication sprays industry stormwater mixing with drinking water due to flooding and lead water pipes possums and birds contaminating roof water.  
And indeed just last month our colleague Tariana Turia can vouch for the impact of flooding again at Whangaehu and Waitotara in which risks to the provision of adequate drinking-water were again presented. The clearing of the land has led inevitably to the erosion of hillsides. The risk of contamination from sulphur sewage and mud all combine to create life-threatening damage to water supply. So Whangaehu Marae has made the decision to purchase water supplies for drinking rather than to risk well-being. 
It is important to note here that the extraction of water or the introduction of waste into rivers and streams as above is not just a matter of physical degradation of ecological compromise—although these are significant enough. For tangata whenua it is also highly offensive in a cultural sense. There is a pepeha that demonstrates this meaning: “E kore a Parawhenua e haere ki te kore a Rakahore.” Literally Parawhenua—the personification of water—would not flow if it were not for Rakahore—the rock. All things are connected. The whakapapa of the natural world—animals plants mountains rivers lakes air coasts—is linked to that of tangata whenua. As such we have an ancestral obligation to ensure that these taonga are protected and managed when passed on to the next generation.  
In the Whanganui River claim the river is described as the aortic artery the central bloodline of the one heart of Te Ati Haunui-a-Paparangi the life source of all things connected to the river. It is incompatible with our knowledge to divide the river into constituent parts of river flats tributaries riverbed banks and tidal and non-tidal areas. 
The Waitangi Tribunal ruled further that a river is a taonga handed down as an ancestral treasure and a living entity whose relationship with the people had been sanctioned by antiquity and ancestral beings. The tribunal’s report for the Mohaka River stated that the river was also a taonga of Ngati Pahauwera when the Treaty was signed and still remained so. The ruling by the tribunal for Pouakani was similar. The Waikato River is a treasure as well for the Tainui canoe and for Ngati Tuwharetoa also. As such the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill is vital not just to prevent public health risks but also to protect and preserve the respect for our taonga tuturu. 
The urgency for action has never been more apparent. In 2003 about 1.1 million New Zealanders were supplied with drinking water that failed to comply with current standards. Many of these causes for non-compliance rested on a failure by suppliers to take proper action including monitoring. Some breaches are more perverse. A couple of years ago in 2002 Northland Regional Council announced that construction work on the prison site at Ngawha was increasing the levels of mercury in the Ngawha Stream. It runs into the Waiaruhe River then into the Waitangi River—the place where the people of Paihia and Waitangi get their water. The report states that mercury levels have increased. Since June heavy rainfall has caused flooding and increased mercury contamination. This is exactly the nature of  
public health emergencies relating to drinking water that we envisage dealt with in this bill. 
Against all this reckless risk and adverse effects I turn to the north also for another case that demonstrates there is always hope in terms of solutions that our people are looking at to ensure our better well-being. For just as the river is always able to force a path through so too tangata whenua have looked to their own resources to resolve what may seem intangible problems such as water pollution. 
The Hokianga project involved safe drinking-water for marae and two communities. Following the floods that devastated the north and south Hokianga communities in 1999 there was an urgent need to ensure safe drinking-water supplies for the small marae-based communities. The floods brought the issue of the already declining water quality to a head with particular concern for dangerous contamination by faecal material for marae which had become the living quarters for families displaced by the landslides. Participating hapu 
and members from local health provider Hauora Hokianga helped to trial the community development model called Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga.  
The upshot of the project was that the Hokianga communities now have safe water supplies using non-chemical treatment systems. Once installed the drinking-water treatment plants are maintained by the communities themselves. The risk from contaminated drinking supplies has been reduced and the communities took on ownership of how to maintain acceptable levels of water quality. In fact so successful was the project that it won the “highly commended” award—second out of nearly 200 entrants—at the 2003 New Zealand * Health Innovation Awards. 
The Maori Party absolutely agrees that s 
tandards are required and need to be enforced given the numerous sources of threats to clean drinking-water that we have but touched on today. The experience in the Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga project exemplifies the solid progress that can be achieved when tangata whenua are able to assume their rightful roles as tangata tiaki of water and resourced to provide co-management with local authorities. These are positive achievements that we can only hope this Parliament will endorse in thinking creatively about solutions to ensure a sustainable safe water supply. 
Therefore to the House to the Assistant Speaker greetings greetings to you all 
.] 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I stand to support the first reading of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill on behalf of United Future. One of the interesting contexts I have found myself in was that shortly after I came to Parliament in 2002 I had an amazing opportunity to go to Viet Nam to represent New Zealand at a parliamentary population and development conference the subject of which was water. For me it was the first time I had ever really thought about water as a problem. In New Zealand we have always seen ourselves as having water in abundance. We enjoy our clean green image and think we are kind of all right. When we go into an overseas context we discover the very real problems that millions and millions of people face regarding poor drinking-water quality. 
However when I came back to New Zealand with I guess my senses heightened around the subject I discovered that all was not clean and green in New Zealand and unless we start to take serious stock of the way we manage our water resources we may find ourselves with some real problems in the future. One of the very interesting comments made on this matter when I was in Viet Nam was a prediction that in decades to come world wars will not be over oil but water. That was quite a scary and sobering thought. 
United Future has been concerned for some time about the overall issue of water quality in New Zealand. In fact as part of our supply and confidence agreement with the Labour-led Government we have received assurances that we will be looking significantly at ways of improving water quality in New Zealand in every sense. One of the things I discovered much to my horror was that we now have very few rivers and lakes where we are encouraged to swim. The pollution levels are such that signs are up on increasing numbers of rivers—even some of the rivers here in the Wellington region—in which people were previously able to swim only a few years ago and in which swimming is not now recommended. We think that is an appalling state for a country that prides itself on its clean green image. We are not doing as well as we would like to believe. Of course absolutely basic to this is the water we drink. One cannot have anything more essential as a human need than fresh clean water to drink and therefore we are very keen to see this bill looked at in a select committee. 
I remember a briefing we had recently from Ministry of Health officials at a committee I was on where they explained to us how officials respond to health difficulties as they arise. They simplified it for us by saying that there are three ways we can respond. The first option is we can ignore it—which almost seems to be what the National Party is saying. The second option is we can educate and historically I think that is what we have done with people who have been serving up water that is not of a high quality. We tell people to boil it and we talk about water purifiers and that has been our response. But the third thing of course is to regulate and start to bring in some realities around what needs to happen. 
The National Party is a party that boasts a sizable number of health professionals in its caucus and I think that should have been a real strength so I am a little disappointed that those members have taken such an oppositional position from day one on this bill. I think that is sad. I am also concerned that National members kind of accept that it is more of a rural problem and it is small isolated communities that have to struggle to maintain or even to have good water quality. Those people are their constituents. They are the people whom they rely on to vote for them. It feels to me as if they are saying to those people: “Please vote for us but do not forget to boil your drinking water and buy a water filter when you are in town.” I think there is something inconsistent there that those members need to consider in this matter. 
This bill has some really interesting provisions and I pick up on what Sue Kedgley from the Greens said because I think she made a very good point. She talked about the Greens’ concern about whether the Minister could use some of the powers suggested in this bill to for instance roll out across the country fluoridated water. Currently communities can make that decision for themselves and that is a good idea. United Future members support the right of communities to vote on that issue for themselves and we would hate to see that right removed from them. So there are some things in this bill that we would like to seek clarity about and we would like to see what comes up certainly during the submission process at the select committee but we are very keen to see this bill progress. 
The other thing that concerns me about some of the speeches from the Opposition on this bill was that those members talked about the fact that something like 71 percent of the New Zealand population is served by water that complies—right now—with New Zealand drinking water standards. National members have said that so many people are not affected by this matter and asked why we are worrying about it. They talked about this bill being a heavy implement to correct a small problem. Well that “small problem” is—as I think the member from New Zealand First has suggested—that nearly one-third of New Zealanders do not currently have access to water that officials can guarantee meets the New Zealand drinking-water standards. It is one-third of New Zealanders who we cannot say with surety will not be prone to some sort of infection or intestinal disease as a result of drinking dirty water. 
We also need to understand that although most of us think of the result of drinking dirty water being little tummy upsets and a mild bout of vomiting and diarrhoea the truth is that—and I think the Minister of Health himself talked about this—there are some very serious health consequences where people actually end up with renal failure and permanent disability as a result of some of the types of diseases that can be picked up from water. And they are not diseases that we hear about from just overseas; they are potential conditions and diseases that people within New Zealand right now have hanging over them. I think it would be irresponsible for any of us not to send this bill to select committee and we should be looking very seriously at this bill. This is a foundational issue. 
The worry that has been expressed about the pressure this legislation will put on local government is I think something that we may need to consider in light of some of the other issues that central government has successively dumped on local government such as zoning for prostitution and all the related local by-laws and compliance that are to be dumped on local government. We took the step of dumping those kinds of issues on to local government authorities when really those authorities are the best people to be managing water quality because they are looking after and overseeing the water resources in their own communities. They are the best people and it is affordable if we do not continually require local government authorities to do a whole host of other things. They are kind of morphing over time with a huge and hideous list of expectations that central government has devolved down to them—and yes rates are going up. 
But it seems sad to me that we then have to get tetchy about this hugely important local responsibility of drinking water quality and say that we cannot afford to have local government and local councils take control of this very vital service of water quality because it will cost too much. I think we need to be really disturbed about that kind of thinking because it is such an essential thing for our health. 
United Future is very happy to support the first reading of this bill. We are aware that the Government is prepared to put in substantial amounts—and the amount I have in front of me is $136.9 million that the Government has tagged to implement this policy. It is not a quick process; the Government is talking about a 6-year phase-in period that will hit first of all those areas that currently have a very good system of voluntary compliance around the New Zealand water standard. These councils and regions are virtually already there; they are already over the line. For them to comply requires little over a year and they will be up to speed because they are virtually there already. But a much more generous time frame is being put around those communities that we are the most concerned about currently. They will not be expected to come up to spec overnight. There is a 6-year phase-in which I think is a very sensible thing and I am really interested in some of the regulations being proposed to come off the back of this bill. We are very happy to support it at this first reading. 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I say to my colleagues that I stand to speak against the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. On the face of it it seems quite a commendable and laudable bill. By way of legislation it seeks to ensure that all drinking water is safe and of a high standard and I certainly agree with previous speakers that water is essential to life. But I stand to oppose this bill and I will explain why. I consider it is unnecessary it is overly bureaucratic and it is an example of over-regulation and of this Government’s attempt to try to fix things that are not broken to begin with. 
 It is an example of micro-management to the nth degree and of the Government’s fixation with trying to make one-size-fits-all policies. 
Why do we need this bill? I have asked myself some questions. Have we had a major outbreak of water-spread diseases? Certainly the Minister when he spoke to the bill before the dinner break mentioned examples of international outbreaks of gastroenteritis but as members with some medical background will know a lot of gastroenteritis is due to food-borne disease not water-borne disease. The two do need to be differentiated. Has New Zealand had an outbreak of cholera or typhoid that I had not known about? Does evidence exist that what we are doing now is not working? Does any evidence exist that the voluntary standards we have in place should be compulsory? 
I have really struggled to find that evidence and therefore to see the need for this legislation. I got information from the Parliamentary Library and I think the Hon Mark Gosche got the same information. Depending on how one looks at the information the glass is half full or half empty; it depends on how one perceives it. I had to go back over 20 years to find an outbreak of any significance in this country. In 1984 over 3000 people in Queenstown became sick because of contaminated drinking water. That is over 22 years ago. Otherwise it looks as though the outbreaks have been fairly scattered and infrequent: 61 cases of campylobacter at a school camp in Christchurch in 1997 another 67 cases of campylobacter at Wainui in 1997 some other cases at a college in 2001 viral gastroenteritis cases at a ski field—that usually is food borne not necessarily water borne—and another lot of cases at a school camp and so on. 
When we look through those cases we see quite clearly that we are not dealing with large urban areas with large populations. These are possibly rural communities and certainly school camps which are not generally located in large cities with large populations. A person hearing that list of examples of outbreaks in New Zealand would make the assessment when adding up the number of people who had been affected that maybe 500 or fewer over the last 10 years—0.01 percent of the population—had somehow been affected by these outbreaks. And these are mainly in small towns and non-urban areas. A person listening to those figures would probably quite rightly infer that the larger the water supplier—and that is usually in urban situations—the better the management and monitoring systems in place. 
Therefore the situations that seem more risky are the smaller populations and the rural areas. We have to ask what this bill does about these areas that are at greater risk of possible water-borne disease—the small towns and rural areas. I looked at the bill to see what it does for these small population areas and it seemed very contradictory and quite confusing. The bill will ensure “that all drinking-water suppliers (other than small and very small drinking-water suppliers and water carriers) introduce and implement public health risk management plans:” I will say it another way. That means that small and very small drinking water suppliers do not have to introduce and implement public health risk management plans. That seems quite bizarre when we have evidence to the contrary. It is the small towns that are at risk but they do not have to implement a public health risk management plan. That is totally bizarre. 
The other thing in the bill that seems quite confusing apart from these suppliers not having to comply with public health management plans is a huge differentiation in the timetable for compliance. The explanatory note of the bill states: “The timetable for compliance with the Bill is proposed to follow a staggered process whereby … new drinking water suppliers would have to comply from the date of commencement.” That is fair enough. But for pre-existing water suppliers there is huge variation. For instance the large water suppliers that serve populations of over 10000 have to comply within a year—these are the big groups. We also know that they are associated with very little risk but they have to comply quite quickly within a year. The medium drinking-water suppliers serving between 5000 and 10000 people would have to comply within 2 years. And the minor suppliers serving between 500 and 5000 people would have 3 years to comply. But I ask my colleagues to listen to this. The small suppliers serving 100 to 500 people would have 4 years and the very small suppliers serving 25 to 100 would have 5 years to comply. So these little groups which we know are at the most risk do not have to comply with a public health management plan and have up to 5 years to comply with the bill. It makes no sense. These are the groups that are at risk. 
It is very confusing. If there is a real concern about the safety of New Zealanders’ health from water-borne disease then rather than use a sledgehammer approach and legislate one-size-fits-all policy it would be much better to take a targeted approach. One would think from this bill that New Zealand’s water standards were in a dreadful state and that is absolutely incorrect. New Zealand has excellent standards for drinking water. New Zealand has been an active participant at the World Health Organization in developing strategies to deal with the issue of water standards and safety. Indeed the World Health Organization standards are reflected in New Zealand’s excellent technical drinking-water safety standards. I went to the Ministry of Health website and read a bit of a preamble to I think 180 pages on New Zealand’s drinking water safety standards. In that preamble a Dr Michael Taylor who is a public health senior adviser is quoted: “Most New Zealanders now have access to safe drinking-water because the larger suppliers are almost all entirely satisfactory …”. Even he agrees that the majority are entirely satisfactory. He goes on: “However some communities particularly small rural ones do not have access to drinking water of sufficient quality while others receive drinking water that is either inadequately monitored or not monitored at all.” So here we have an expert stating the obvious: the large suppliers are fine; it is the smaller ones that need to be watched. 
That is exactly my point. Surely a more targeted approach would be much better than this all-encompassing one. And why do we need a legislative answer when targeted education of those suppliers and communities would be far more likely to get the same result but without the compliance costs and the over-regulation that this bill would bring—not to mention the cost to the taxpayer through local government costs going up? 
This bill concerns me because it will create an industry and more compliance costs through that. It requires “drinking-water assessors appointed by the Director-General of Health to engage in compliance verification of drinking-water suppliers and their supplies”—what a mouthful! Also: “(in terms of the Act drinking-water assessors will be accredited to internationally accepted standards for inspection bodies to perform their functions):”. An industry is being created. We will have drinking water assessors all accredited running all over New Zealand ensuring that the 2222 registered drinking water distribution zones are complying. But there is more. Suppliers must take “all practical steps” to comply with the standards. The drinking water assessor will be the final arbiter as to whether all practical steps have been taken will have no accountability to the community for costs or consequences and will make judgments on trade-offs between risks consequences and costs. So we can see the picture. We will have some bossy power-hungry accredited water assessors running all over New Zealand checking out the 2000 water suppliers and making subjective decisions on whether a supplier has taken all the steps possible and the assessor’s decision will be final. 
Many small water suppliers provide almost a community service to local communities. One would not blame them if they pulled out and said that it was not worth it. And what would happen then? The onus would be on the local authorities with more compliance costs and more business costs and the taxpayers would suffer. Surely a targeted more educative approach would result in better responses better attitudes and better outcomes. In summary I oppose this bill for those very reasons. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a first time 
. 
Ayes 71 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 6; Maori Party 4; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 48. 
Bill read a first time. 
Bill referred to the Health Committee.referred to Health Committee 
Protected Objects Amendment Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 19 July. 
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act ( 
continued 
)  
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage) 
: 
 As I was saying when the Committee rose when we were debating this issue previously I am deeply grateful for the support of the Opposition. I found the contribution of the Hon Georgina te Heuheu to be a useful bipartisan approach to legislation that has been before the House in a variety of forms for a long time. Indeed this bipartisan approach was promised by the present National Party spokespeople on the arts at an Auckland forum. I am relieved that finally their undertaking appears to be taking form. 
This legislation is designed to amend and strengthen our ability under the law we have the Antiquities Act to prevent illicit trade in cultural objects of significant international importance here in New Zealand. I was concerned to hear some of the Opposition speakers particularly talking about “shrunken heads”. That indicates a strange lack of knowledge of koiwi tangata Maori which has been a major piece of diplomatic and cultural work by some really sincere and deeply moved New Zealanders who feel that the keeping of New Zealand ancestors’ remains in museums or in private collections around the world is deeply offensive. I have to say that this work is resulting in a worldwide movement where human remains are being repatriated and treated with the respect they deserve. So if any members want briefings on this issue I would be happy for the staff of Te Papa to offer these. International protection is the only way to oppose this unfortunate trade and to oppose the trade much more broadly. 
Jo Goodhew appeared to be demanding retrospective expropriation of property. Although I have some sympathy with things that are of New Zealand importance I am not in favour of that. I hope this legislation will require a new process for people who have title to property now whereby proper consideration is given on matters of New Zealand importance. 
The MP Chris Finlayson referred to new sections 10B and 10C regarding the return of unlawfully exported protected foreign objects and the payment of compensation to the owners of such objects. He asked what standard of proof would be required. I think we all agree that this is basically a civil matter rather than a criminal one so that the balance of probability standard would be in use rather than “beyond all reasonable doubt”. So I do not know whether Mr Finlayson wants to take that any further. 
I would like to commend the bill to the Committee. I think we have a range of challenges before us now. Steve Chadwick talked about Hinemihi pare. It is a difficult issue when valuable and important New Zealand artefacts have been exported legally or illegally in the past—in this case legally as far as we know— 
Hon Member 
: What? 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD 
: Hinemihi pare which was exported legally in the past is now up for sale. I am concerned that although it would be wonderful for us to have the power and the money to bring all of these important New Zealand artefacts—particularly Maori artefacts—back other members also raised the issue of the late Charles Upham’s medals. Although I think there are a range of views—Charles Upham himself said that these medals were won not by him but by the men he fought with—what we have to do in a democracy and a country that is increasingly acknowledging that there are important artefacts and important cultural icons that will matter for us and for the future is to have a robust debate about the different value that one generation may put on artefacts compared with the next. I think of the Te Maori exhibition which demonstrated to many New Zealanders that artefacts that were often disregarded—either not in museums or in museums—were of international value and importance as well as of course demonstrating the astonishing artistic tradition of Maori. We now find that those artefacts—this art—are attracting interest all around the world and that of course increases their monetary value. It is also an indication of the increase in value to New Zealanders. 
This legislation is trying to update New Zealand legislation but it is also trying to act as a kickstart for others around the world so that we will have international protection. We have seen the catastrophe of museums being raided in Iraq following the US and British incursion there. We have to recognise that the world’s culture matters to all of us. The Protected Objects Amendment Bill is an important step for New Zealand to take to recognise New Zealand’s culture and to stand up in the world and recognise the importance to every nation in the world and every group of people of their cultures. 
I thank the National Party for its support. I sincerely thank New Zealand First for its intelligent and able support of this legislation. I commend the bill to the Committee. 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chairman. I want to clear up a few things that may not have been clear from the last time I spoke. I used the colloquialism “shrunken heads”. That is how people used to refer to them. I am not referring to the Labour members I am referring to what used to be called the trade in shrunken heads. I am quite chuffed that the Protected Objects Amendment Bill is before the House because back around 1998 I travelled overseas to retrieve moko mokai—our ancestors so to speak—and brought them back here. As a lot of people have said in the House if we had had something like this legislation 100 years ago it would have been wonderful. 
I also want to raise two other issues. One issue is those taonga that are in museums at the moment that were taken from urupa in the last 100 years. I refer to one specifically where there is some dispute which is the Fraser collection. Fraser was a very interesting person up in the Whangarei area and just so happened to “find” all of these artefacts. Now they are called the Fraser collection and they are in the Auckland Museum and I want to ask the Minister how this bill protects those artefacts. 
I am absolutely overawed by the fact that now we have legislation that states that people cannot go around willy-nilly finding things and sticking them in their back pockets and then hocking them off overseas and so on. That is good. I remember that when we were talking last week the issue of Nazi memorabilia came up from Ron Mark. I concur with him that a lot of our soldiers came back from the Second World War with the spoils of war. Some of those spoils of war were actually what we would term now “Nazi memorabilia”; is that catered for in this bill? Also there are those spoils of war from the Korean War. I had an uncle in the Korean War and I have seen some of his stuff that he brought back. I want to know whether the bill takes care of that. 
But all in all I think this bill is a wonderful start. Maybe at a later date when we have had time to digest and when this bill has gone through its process we can come back and revisit some of the clauses and some of the issues that have been raised—not straightaway but in the very near future. So I wonder whether the Minister could give us a lead on those two issues that I have raised. 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou. Ta te mea ko te wa tenei mo te reo Maori e tika ana kia whakatairangatia te reo Maori maku e korero i te reo Maori ki a tatou e whiriwhiri ana i tenei pire. Erangi rawa ko nga wahanga e pa ana ki nga mana tunga e kia nei ko nga taonga tuku iho. 
I te tuatahi tautoko ana au i nga whakapae me nga awangawanga erangi rawa ko nga maharahara a taku whanaunga a Tau Henare ki te kitea he taonga me pehea ranei te hapu te iwi ranei no ratou tera taonga e hari i ta ratou take kia whakapumautia ai kei a wai ranei te mana mo tera taonga e hari ana au ka kite au i roto i te pire nei kua riro ma te Koti Whenua Maori e whakatau a ka ahei tatou te iwi Maori ki te haere atu ki te aroaro o te Koti Whenua Maori ta te mea taunga ana tatou ki nga whakahaerenga me nga ritenga o tera koti. 
Te take e toe ana hei korerotanga maku ki te kitea he taonga i tawahi i hea ke ranei kei raro i te ture nei e ki ana kei te Karauna ano te mana mo nga taonga penei. Pena e tika ana tera korero me tino awhi te Karauna i nga matapono o te Tiriti kia noho marama ai te iwi te hapu enei taonga hakoa kei raro i te taitara o te Karauna mo te wa poto ko te mauri o nga taonga ra kei roto i te iwi i te hapu ranei no ratou wera taonga i te tuatahi. Kia ora tatou katoa. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the Committee 
. 
] 
[ 
Greetings to us. Because this is a time for the Maori language it is appropriate that it be promoted and I will address us in Maori as we consider this bill relating to precious objects called taonga tuku iho. 
In the first instance I support the accusations and concerns especially those of my relation Tau Henare about what a subtribe or an iwi should do if a taonga that belongs to them is found—whom they should go to to have it certified that that taonga is really theirs. It was pleasing for me to see in this bill that the Maori Land Court will rule and we are able to go before it because we are familiar with that court’s proceedings and customs. 
The remaining matter for me to talk about is that if a taonga is found overseas or wherever this legislation states that the Crown has jurisdiction over taonga under those circumstances. If that statement is correct then the Crown must embrace the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi so that iwi and hapu have a clear understanding that even though the title is under the Crown for a brief period the life force of those taonga remains with the iwi and hapu that owned the taonga in the first place. Greetings to us all. 
]  
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I am happy and very pleased to rise in support of the Protected Objects Amendment Bill but in saying that I raise a small concern to the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard and perhaps she will be able to give me an explanation. I am somewhat at a loss to understand some definitions in clause 6 the interpretation clause in Part 1. Subclause (3) amends section 2 of the principal Act by omitting from the definition of “collector” the word “artifacts” and substituting the words “taonga tuturu”. I wonder why someone would do that when the principal Act states: “ ‘Collector’ means any person or body (whether incorporated or unincorporated) other than a licensed auctioneer a licensed secondhand dealer or a public museum possessing one or more artifacts:”. I would have thought that the words “protected object” would be a more general or more appropriate term than just “taonga tuturu”. I wonder whether the Minister could take a call or get some advice from her officials and explain which one is the more appropriate term. That might help to clarify matters for me. I just thought that people may want to refer to protected objects in general rather than just taonga tuturu. 
Clause 6(3) further amends section 2 of the principal Act by omitting from the definition “found” the word “artifact” in each place where it appears and substituting in each case the words “taonga tuturu”. I wonder again when the principal Act states “found” and the explanation is “in relation to any artifact” and as “artifact” is changed to “taonga tuturu” then one is saying “in relation to any taonga tuturu” instead of protected object. The definition of “found” in section 2 of the principal Act goes on to state: “means discovered or obtained in circumstances which do not indicate with reasonable certainty” etc. Certainly the term “taonga tuturu” is not inappropriate and it does not incorporate the general term “protected object”. I wonder whether that is an oversight or whether it is something I do not understand. 
Clause 6(3) further amends section 2 by omitting from the definition “replica of an artifact” the words “an artifact” and substituting the words “a taonga tuturu;”—yet again. So one could have replicas of other artefacts that are not necessarily taonga tuturu. I wonder whether the words “protected objects” might have been appropriate in that context as well. 
My concerns are about changes to the definitions and the way in which they are being used to amend the principal Act by referring to “taonga tuturu” and not the general term “protected objects” and whether in fact “protected objects” should be a part of that as well. I ask the Minister to please give us an explanation certainly in discussion of Part 1 and clarify that matter so that we know whether “protected objects” should be a part of the definition of “collector” in the principal Act rather than just “taonga tuturu”. The same goes for the definition of “found” where the term “artifact” is changed to “taonga tuturu” and not the words “protected objects”. I wonder whether the Minister can give us an explanation. I note the officials are looking at that. I would be happy to rescind part of my— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: The definitions are all in the bill. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: I know the definitions are in the bill. 
 Clearly the Minister does not want to understand what I am trying to say here. If we look at protected objects are we looking only at taonga tuturu? I would have thought taonga tuturu related only to Maori artefacts not protected objects. Therefore would the Minister not want the definition to encompass all protected objects? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: You could look at “protected foreign object” “protected New Zealand object” and “nga taonga tuturu. They are all covered. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: But I am not seeing that in this definition here. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: OK well read it more carefully. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Perhaps the Minister might like to take a call and give us an explanation for that. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: No. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Clearly she is not prepared to do that. That is fine— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Read the bill. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: I did read it but it is not clear. 
DIANNE YATES (Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I want to raise briefly with the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard something about the return of moko mokai. The reason why they were brought home was to return them to the rightful people so they could be back with their whanau. To this day I think they still languish in Te Papa and there is no mention of a regime whereby they are brought home and the rightful owners found. So I thought I would take a moment just to ask the Minister whether in future there would be some sort of working party that would try to figure out what we should do with the repatriated remains. 
I have thought of one more issue and that is to do with our soldiers buried overseas. Not a day goes by without there being a request from whanau from somewhere throughout the country asking whether they can bring home uncle so and so who may be buried in a Commonwealth grave overseas. I am not sure about this Government but it has always been an issue— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: They are not covered by this bill. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: They might not be covered by this bill but moko mokai are and it follows that there must be some sort of relationship. I am not asking for the return of our soldiers; I am just asking the Minister to be aware that the issue is out there. There are whanau out there who want to repatriate the remains of our soldiers. So hoi ano. Thank you very much Mr Chairman. 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Motion agreed to. 
Part 1 agreed to. 
Part 2 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I want to talk about nga taonga tuturu and the role of the Maori Land Court in establishing ownership and custody of artefacts. One of the first questions I want to ask—and I had a discussion with one of my Maori colleagues from the other side of the House—is about the use of the term “taonga tuturu”. Although I can absolutely appreciate that term I wondered whether any thought had been given to the use of the phrase “nga taonga tuku iho”. On the one hand some might say that “taonga tuturu” imports the same meaning but because it is “taonga tururu” and the other one is “taonga tuku iho” there is a difference. 
Taonga tuku iho has the sense of the obligation to pass things down to succeeding generations. I know that that is certainly one of the underlying sentiments that can be gleaned from the bill but I wondered whether the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard might like to take a call and indicate whether the use of “nga taonga tuku iho” was considered and how it was that “nga taonga tuturu” is the sentiment that is expressed. I am sure other Maori members who are far more fluent than I am might have a contribution on this particular issue and I think their contribution if they feel so minded to make one would be interesting. 
Nga tuturu of course is about the essence of something. That in itself is very very important. So I certainly support the change from “artefact” to “nga taonga tuturu”. But I would have thought that maybe “nga taonga tuku iho” gave that important component of the obligation of current generations to make sure that taonga pass on to succeeding generations. If that indeed is the sentiment that is in the bill—and I am sure the Minister will say it is there anyway—then we understand very very clearly why this bill is so important because if we do not take steps to make sure that these taonga these treasures are properly looked after and cared for and that they remain here in Aotearoa then current generations are failing in their obligation to make sure that they are passed on to our successors. So that is an issue around the definition. 
Then there is the issue of the role of the Maori Land Court in determining ownership. Before I come to that I want to say to the Minister that it is very proper that Maori phraseology has been inserted into the bill especially in these times when we as New Zealanders are all so much more aware of the need to protect our treasures and of the importance of protecting taonga Maori Maori treasures. These things belong to all of us as New Zealanders and they help to underpin our identity and our feeling of nationhood one with the other. 
Coming to the role of the Maori Land Court—and I was not on the select committee—I note that one submitter noted that section 11 of the principal Act provides for the Maori Land Court to take an active role in the authentication of artefacts found since 1976. Apparently a suggestion was made that museums already perform the role that the Act reserves to the Maori Land Court but the response to that was that the role played by museums is different. Determination of ownership of course is the preserve of the Maori Land Court—that is ownership in a customary sense. So it does make sense for the role of the Maori Land Court to be confirmed and it does make sense for museums to do the work they do which is to record details relating to newly found artefacts and authenticate them. That is a proper role for museums—that is their role. It is good as well as different to the role of ownership of artefacts and it is proper that the Maori Land Court does that. 
I have to say—and I am not sure whether any thought was given to this; maybe the Minister might also think it is worth making a comment on—that these days so much more work is being given to the Maori Land Court. Although provision has apparently been made for the appointment of more judges will proper provision be made for appropriate resourcing for the Maori Land Court to do all of the work it has traditionally done and also should there be an increase in activity in this area—and there may well be—for it to take upon itself such activity? Has thinking been given to the fact that resourcing is all-important to all our courts not least of which is the Maori Land Court to make sure that they can perform their role properly? Otherwise of course giving more responsibility to a court without proper resourcing is just a waste of time. If we are serious about authentication and making sure that ownership is established properly then I would like to think that the officials and those who were responsible for putting this bill together have thought about that. 
Coming back to the general thrust of the part I say that it is very important and proper and we in National are very pleased to see it. I am very pleased as a Maori that we as a nation now see the importance of incorporating some of these descriptions in a way that gives proper recognition to the fact that they are part of tikanga Maori and that it is proper to use the terms that more appropriately capture the essence of these treasures—these things—that are important. 
I just want to refer briefly to the pare the carved piece that comes from the meeting house Hinemihi in Te Arawa—I am Te Arawa as well as Tuwharetoa. Although that meeting house found its way legitimately—I guess—overseas and probably does not fall into the category being dealt with here the fact that that pare the carved piece above the doorway of that revered meeting house is now on sale internationally at figures of $1.9 million to $2 million again underpins I think just how important this bill is and how important taonga tuturu are. In fact tuturu I suppose very well encompasses the symbolic component of Hinemihi. That is a taonga—that meeting house not to mention the pare above the doorway. If we are talking about tuturu that should be here in New Zealand. That is tuturu. That object—that meeting house—is home on the land where it belongs. That is the meaning of tuturu as well. 
So as I say if we had known to do these things earlier we might have but it is not a minute too soon that this Committee gets a chance to debate these matters. As I say I am looking forward to hearing from one or two of the other Maori members—in addition to my colleague Tau Henare who is raring to go again and that is great—who might have a chance to say something as well. 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I too want to broach the subject of nga taonga tuturu. Clause 15(1) states: “The heading to section 11 is amended by omitting the word ‘artifacts’ and substituting the words ‘nga taonga tuturu’.” Does that mean that the word “artifacts” goes completely? If it does I am not that happy about it because I believe that one should have both. “Artifacts” means exactly what it means; it is an artefact. But I think we would be better off leaving both of the words in there so it is quite clear rather than to say that “nga taonga tuturu” is a translation of “artifacts”—because that is what it means to remove the word “artifacts” and put in the words “nga taonga tuturu”. I am not a fan of removing one and replacing it with the other. I think there is every reason to actually have both Maori and English in the provision rather than trying to translate and interpret what one Maori concept is as opposed to an English concept; one has them both there so there will not be any hassle down the road. So if the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard could enlighten the Committee that would be a miracle. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: This is Part 2. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: There is also the issue of why it should be the Maori Land Court—[ 
Interruption 
] I was on Part 2. 
I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Is there some issue about me not being on Part 2? 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No just at the beginning. Yes the member is right. You are into Part 2 now; you are quite right. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: But I was speaking about nga taonga tuturu and the word “artifact”. That comes in Part 2 does it not? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: No “artifact” does not. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Oh it does not? 
Sandra Goudie 
: Yes it does. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well why does the heading state: “Part 2 “Nga taonga tuturu ownership and Maori Land Court”? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Because it is in the interpretation. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Could the member please move on. He is on Part 2 now. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Oh for goodness’ sake! They will try anything in this Committee to break the flow of a really well-thought-out korero. I did not come down here just to waste the Committee’s time. For goodness’ sake! 
Sandra Goudie 
: Here is a definition of “artifact”. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I thank my learned colleague very much for the definition of “artifact”: “ ‘Artifact’ means any chattel carving object or thing which relates to the history art culture traditions or economy of the Maori or other pre-European inhabitants of New Zealand”—well there were no pre-European inhabitants other than Maori—“and which was or appears to have been manufactured or modified in New Zealand by any such inhabitant”. I am basically saying that those two should actually go together—“artifact” and “nga taonga tuturu”. There is nothing wrong with having them together. There is absolutely nothing wrong with actually putting it out there and saying “Here we are this is what it’s all about.” 
But I digress. One issue that I do want to raise with the Minister is why it is the Maori Land Court. Why should the Maori Land Court be the one to determine the ownership? Why are we not saying that actually ownership of artefacts or ownership of nga taonga tuturu is such a big thing why not put it up to the top court? 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: Because it costs money. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well of course it costs money. So is my colleague saying that we are better off putting it in the Maori Land Court because it is cheaper to get into the Maori Land Court? If that is the case then there is something wrong with our justice system—there is absolutely something wrong with our justice system. Who is to determine the ownership? Is it the Chief Judge on his own or is it the district courts—the lower-level courts system? It is not that clear. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: It is the registrar. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: So it is the registrar of the Maori Land Court who determines the ownership of nga taonga tuturu. Well I think that is a bit of a mess. I know a few of the registrars around town. They are all good people but if one is going to determine ownership in a court system— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: It is where the ownership is agreed. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: So who determines ownership when it is not agreed? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Well then it would have to go through a court process. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: And which court would that be? Is it the Maori Land Court or is it through the High Court system or— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Through the Maori Land Court. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: It is good that that has been sorted out. 
I am grateful for the—[ 
Interruption 
] Sorry? The member is having a conniption over there. I am grateful to the officials who have sorted out that matter because ownership when there is a dispute—especially when we are dealing with a Maori artefact—is sometimes mind-boggling. I refer back to the issue I raised earlier about moko mokai. Because they could be so ancient nobody particularly knows when those taonga may have come from. There may be an indication through ta moko where they may have come from geographically but nobody particularly knows unless a DNA test is done and God forbid that. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: It depends on whether you know who your father was. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I know who my father was absolutely. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Have you had a DNA test? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I know who my father was and I find that insinuation absolutely shocking. I find it shocking that in this day and age when some of our youngsters out there are crying out for their fathers and mothers I have an accusation from Judith Tizard asking whether I know my father. Damn right I know who my father is and he is a brilliant man. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: The issue was raised by the Minister not me Mr Chairman. I was in full flight talking about nga taonga tuturu. I was talking about artefacts. I am appalled. 
Tim Groser 
: We’ll get you counselling afterwards all right? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Victim support. 
I think it is a serious matter in terms of some of the issues that have been raised tonight especially about ownership. I would not like Parliament to get it wrong because if we do especially on an issue like this there will be repercussions down the line. There will be Waitangi Tribunal claims about ownership. Claims about ownership issues are already before the tribunal. Hopefully this part will go some way towards sorting that out. 
I do congratulate the Minister. I was only taking the proverbial about this and I understand that she was only joking as well. 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage) 
: 
 Part 2 “Nga taonga tuturu ownership and Maori Land Court” is a relatively small part of this legislation. I appreciated as always the useful and searching questions from the Hon Georgina te Heuheu. She asked whether the definition of “nga taonga tuku iho” had been considered. My understanding is that we have had a great deal of consultation on this legislation and the alternative was not put forward. What we are doing here is trying to determine the ownership of found artefacts not of heirlooms or owned property. That issue would have to go to a court. But I have to say that I have had a number of questions from Maori constituents concerned for example about a situation whereby a family member who has custodianship—kaitiakitanga—of nga taonga tuku iho has for example changed religions and destroyed them. I am very pleased to see that under this legislation it will be an offence to destroy artefacts but I think it is very much a family and legal issue and is not one for the Crown to deal with in terms of found objects. 
The member’s second question was around the resourcing of the Maori Land Court. Sadly that is not dealt with in this legislation but if at any stage I had any information I would keep an eye on it. Where I felt that the Maori Land Court was being overwhelmed with this work I would certainly make urgent representations to the Minister with responsibility for resourcing courts. 
Tau Henare asked about the issue of artefacts. Again it was an issue where there was a significant amount of consultation. A Maori reference group was established to advise on this amendment and others around the bill. There were no submissions to the select committee on the inclusion of artefact. Although I hate to stray into earlier parts that we have covered if the member looked at those definitions he would find that the definition is quite wide. This terminology was proposed by the reference group and has gone through the select committee process and I am very satisfied with that. 
The other question raised by Tau Henare related to the issue of how the land court would operate. As I understand it the Registrar of the Maori Land Court will make ownership determinations to avoid going through the full court process where all parties agree on ownership. My observation is that although I know there was some issue around the assertion in the legislation that the Crown would retain ownership until ownership had been debated that is a device and increasingly museums—particularly Te Papa but all museums around New Zealand—are taking the role not of owners but of caretakers orkaitiaki. 
I think we are seeing with the koiwi repatriation and the repatriation of human remains to other countries including Australia that museums around the world are increasingly respecting artefacts particularly human remains for their cultural and personal importance to the descendants of the people. Sometimes it is not possible for Te Papa to establish where koiwi have come from. They may have been taken into collections overseas and sometimes bought and sold and when they are returned it is not always possible to know where they have come from but there is a group advising Te Papa and if any member of Parliament or of the public wanted more information about that I would be very happy to provide it. I know that Te Papa is trying not only to be very open but also to acknowledge that these are the remains of ancestors of New Zealanders and must be treated as such not as artefacts or in the words of Tau Henare as shrunken heads. 
I thank members again for their I am sure sincere appreciation. But in relation to DNA tests I think of an expression that I received from my Scottish ancestors which is that it is a wise man who knows his father. I leave that with the Committee. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora e te Heamana kia ora tatou te Komiti. Ehara i te mea ki a matou o te Pati Maori nga korero katoa. Kei te Kawanatanga te mana mo nga taonga tuturu nei. I hangaia te Kawanatanga i tetahi atu ropu Maori ara ko te Kaunihera Maori o Aotearoa. He aha te take e kore ratou e whakaae kia tuku tenei mana ki te kaunihera? 
He take ano e tautoko ana a au i te korero a Tau Henare. E rereke ana te taonga tuturu ki nga taonga a tauiwi. Nga taonga tuturu nga taonga i tuku iho mai i te ao Maori. Ko nga taonga a tauiwi na ratou ano te mana. E kohikohi i nga taonga rere ke nei ki roto i te pouaka kotahi. Tuku atu nga taonga a tauiwi ki nga koti a tauiwi tuku atu nga taonga tuturu ki te Koti Whenua Maori. 
Hei korero whakatika e he ana te korero a Tau Henare mo te hokinga mai o nga koiwi. E rereke atu tera kaupapa ki nga tikanga o tenei pire. E tautoko ana matou hoki i te kaupapa ma te Koti Whenua Maori te mana tirohanga ki te nga taonga tuturu nei me te tautoko ano hoki i te inoi a Georgina te Heuheu kia tuku putea atu ki te Koti Whenua Maori hei kawe tika 
i taua mahi. Kia ora tatou katoa. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the Committee.] 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Chairman and to us in Committee. It is not as if we in the Maori Party have a monopoly on what is to be said. The Government has jurisdiction over these native treasures. The Government created another Maori organisation: namely the Maori Council of New Zealand. What is the reason for its not agreeing to this mandate going to the council? 
Regarding another matter I support what Tau Henare said. Native treasures are different from foreign ones. Native treasures are those handed down from the Maori world. Foreign treasures have their own integrity and we must not put these separate treasures in the one compartment. Foreign treasures should go to foreign courts and native treasures to the Maori Land Court. 
I want to correct what Tau Henare said about the returning of skeletal remains. That matter is quite different from what is in this bill. We also support the policy that the Maori Land Court should have jurisdiction over these native treasures and as well we endorse Georgina te Heuheu’s plea that the Maori Land Court should be funded to enable it to carry out its functions properly. Greetings to us all 
.] 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 12 in the name of the Hon Judith Tizard to Part 2 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 48 in the name of the Hon Judith Tizard to schedule 1 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Schedule 1 as amended agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 12 in the name of the Hon Judith Tizard to schedule 2 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Schedule 2 as amended agreed to. 
Clauses 1 and 2 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 Actually I thought we were on Part 3 but if we are on the title then that is fine. The title Protected Objects Amendment Bill is I would suggest a bit of a misnomer because the bill is really more about taonga tuturu as opposed to protected objects. I challenge the Minister in the chair Judith Tizard to take a call and answer the question of how people are going to know when they find taonga tuturu that they will be subject to a fine of $10000 to $20000 if they do not identify those objects to the appropriate authority. What sort of education will be provided to the public about their responsibilities in regard to taonga tuturu? 
I put it to the Minister that I doubt whether any consideration has been given to any sort of public awareness campaign so that the public—and landowners—will know that they now have some responsibilities following the discovery of taonga tuturu. Nothing has been talked about in terms of how the Government is going to educate the public so that people will know if they find any of these protected objects—which are taonga tuturu—they will be fined $10000 to $20000 if they do not then front up to the proper authority and declare those objects. I put it to the Minister that barely a landowner in this country knows that he or she will have those sorts of responsibilities and will be subject to that sort of a fine. Perhaps this time the Minister may like to take a call and explain to me what the Government is going to do in terms of a publicity campaign in that regard. In the principal Act the fine was absolutely miniscule. It has gone up from something like $500 to $10000 to $20000 which is absolutely extraordinary. That is a huge leap and a huge onus of cost on people who in all innocence are unaware of the provisions of this legislation. They can be pinged by people who will not give them any due consideration and will find them guilty regardless of their absolute innocence and unawareness or lack of knowledge of this situation. 
If one finds any taonga tuturu that is OK; one has to go and notify the general authority. But if one finds a protected object or a European artefact—if one could call it an artefact because the word “artifact” is used in the bill only in relation to Maori objects—nobody cares. It is a case of finders keepers—people can destroy the object or do whatever they like with it. But if the object happens to be a taonga tuturu well hey one has to go and notify the appropriate authority or one could be fined $10000 to $20000. Yes if it is a Maori taonga tuturu if it belongs to Maori then there is that fine to make sure that the finder does what he or she is told to do: go and see the appropriate authority or lose $10000 to $20000. But hey if the object is a European artefact it does not matter. That is a situation of finders keepers. The finder may burn a European artefact or throw it away; it does not matter. 
That is one of the concerns that I have about this bill. It throws out the principle of finders keepers in terms of taonga tuturu but we still have finders keepers in terms of anything that is a European object or is not classed as taonga tuturu according to the definition in this bill. That concerns me and it concerns me particularly when such a massive fine is being imposed on unsuspecting landowners who may actually happen to find a taonga tuturu that will now come under the definition of an artefact in the context of this new legislation. Although we are happy to support the protection of taonga tuturu and protected objects we just wonder how far this bill goes. We wonder what the Minister intends to do about educating the public and about the potential for massive fines for any landowner in this country—fines landowners can ill afford—who may actually happen to find one of those objects. I do not believe anybody in this country other than those of us in Parliament is aware of the significance of this legislation. 
I would just like to reacquaint the Committee with the matter that I brought to the Minister before in relation to the term “artifact” now being changed to “taonga tuturu”. On looking at the definitions in the principal Act one sees that those definitions are now to be changed. Instead of the definition of “artifact” we will now have only the words “taonga tuturu” and not the words “protected New Zealand object”. That quite clearly shows that only taonga tuturu which are Maori protected objects and not New Zealand protected objects are protected in this instance. In the context of the bill protected New Zealand objects in the wider sense do not seem to matter as much as taonga tuturu. The elevation of Maori taonga tuturu is huge in comparison with other protected objects. 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage) 
: 
 I really wish honourable members would read the bill that is before the Committee. This legislation will become known as the Protected Objects Amendment Act 2006. It covers protected New Zealand objects which are defined in clause 6—as we have already debated—as “… part of the movable cultural heritage of New Zealand that—(a) is of importance to New Zealand or to a part of New Zealand for aesthetic archaeological architectural artistic cultural historical literary scientific social spiritual technological or traditional reasons; …”. It also includes stolen protected foreign objects. As the previous speaker mentioned taonga tuturu are a new introduction. 
The point of the bill we are in the process of passing which has been considered in great detail over many years by the House is that we are recognising a range of protected objects—Pakeha Maori introduced foreign objects—and we will have to set out to explain to New Zealanders this reasonably modest change to the law. The Government has set aside $185000 in the 2005-06 Budget for implementation of which $100000 is one-off funding for initial implementation costs with an additional $85000 appropriated for out-years on an ongoing basis to cover the expected increased administration costs of the Protected Objects Act. The extra $100000 in the first year is to be spent developing a communications strategy with information reprints publicity and website development; training New Zealand Customs Service staff about the new regulations and establishing a national register of protected objects; and identifying and engaging expert examiners. 
We recognise that this measure is slightly new but I have to say that most New Zealanders take a very responsible attitude when they find objects that are obviously of value. Most people take them to their local museum. That is a very good thing for people to do and they should continue to do that because that is the place where most New Zealanders—who do not have a venal view of our collected heritage regardless of whether it is Maori or Pakeha—go to view those objects. 
The legislation also means that New Zealanders and foreigners will not be able to collect up New Zealand objects and export them. This is an exciting new development. As my friend and colleague Harry Duynhoven has pointed out this will mean for example that vintage tractors and vintage sports cars will not be able to be exported in the rather casual way they have been. They are important parts of New Zealand’s technological heritage. 
I am very satisfied with the bill and I look forward to working with members across the Chamber to make sure that people across New Zealand have good information about this exciting legislation. The bill of course is also joining New Zealand up to two major international covenants which will mean that when New Zealand cultural objects are exported illegally we can have them returned to New Zealand. That is a very exciting thing. It means that we also have similar obligations to other countries. 
Sandra Goudie 
: How will the Minister educate the public? 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD 
: I do appreciate the energy of members opposite and suggest that they put some of that energy into reading the bill that is before us. 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I am not going to go into the detail although just on that last point I think the Minister might want to refresh her memory on the definitions of “substantially physically authentic”; I think it might be a little bit different in terms of vintage cars. But as we are looking at the title I want to just step back and look at the broader purposes of the legislation. I will not try to go through like a school-ma’m marking people for their speeches but I thought that the debate we had when we first went into Committee on this bill was quite interesting especially to me as a new member of the Parliament. In this rather strange dialectical process on which this is modelled from time to time one can feel the House come together quite genuinely I think—not just in a formalistic sense. I had a strong sense of that when we were first in Committee on this bill and I thought that was noteworthy. We listened to one member tell us with a degree of justifiable emotion I thought about her community’s attempt to get back a treasured taonga for the community—unfortunately unsuccessfully. I think that is the sort of issue we are dealing with. 
I agree with the Minister that the bill is related in its broader purpose to New Zealand’s national identity. I have always felt that this country—the last place suitable for human habitation on a large scale in the world and that was inhabited by human beings—must be considered above all other countries as a work in progress. I just have a feeling that the kind of coming together we had in the Chamber on this debate on the last occasion we were in Committee on the bill probably would not have happened 15 years ago. There is a growing consensus about this issue of which this is merely one part—but I think an important part—and it struck me very much at the time. 
The National Party is very happy to support the bill. We support the objectives although as members will have heard some of us have questions in our minds about certain definitions. Sensible compromises generally have been struck over some issues that are not necessarily straightforward such as the definition of “comparable examples” dealt with in clause 6 and the matter I referred to earlier about “substantially physically authentic” in new section 7A of new Part 1 inserted by clause 9. 
Although the bill may not be perfect—because some of those definitional boundaries I guess are always a little bit hard to draw—we think it is a good one. We think it will do the business. It will bring the terminology up to date with recent legislation and will put in place appropriate penalties for serious breaches. I hope some common sense will be applied by those responsible for that process in the future. It does indeed provide a proper process for the registration of protected objects. Some of us have had time to look at the detailed provision on the role of experts and the very important exemption they have from any legal liability for giving their best-endeavours assessment of the historical significance of a contested protected object. I think there is some reasonable sound stuff in the bill which serves the country well. 
I am also pleased that the legislation is applicable to foreign protected objects. I have not yet because of clash of opportunity been to see the Constable collection— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: You must go. 
TIM GROSER 
: I certainly will. I know my colleague went and was obviously hugely impressed. I saw a presentation on it on television. Although perhaps in a technical sense the collection is a huge part of British culture and it probably has a price tag on it for insurance purposes in every real sense it is a collection priceless to that culture—a culture that has of course played a very important part in the formation of our culture. I am glad that the bill gives practical effect to the controlled import and export of great cultural artefacts such as the Constable paintings and of course to our own protected objects in that respect. 
We know that the matter of illicit trade is one of real moment. I have seen estimates that members have drawn in debates before I arrived in Parliament between $4 billion and $10 billion and one could buy a couple of Boeing 747s or Airbuses for that amount. This is not a small issue. In my earlier comments I drew attention to the underlying issue by reference to the notorious example of the Elgin Marbles. The bitterness about the export of the great cultural objects of the Parthenon is still felt not just in Greece but around the world—in my personal opinion it is obviously shared by many many other people. So it is not a small issue. What makes us a people is not just material objects important though they are but also a sense of identity. This bill is a vital part of that and I am pleased it will give us the ability to sign up to the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) convention—I never know how to pronounce that acronym in English but it is pronounced UNIDROIT in French; maybe it is the same in English—and the Unesco convention. I have been told that if ever I speak in French I will be expelled from the National Party so I will not do that. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: What about Latin? 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Latin is fine. 
TIM GROSER 
: Yes Latin is fine. The bill allows a person to sue in a foreign court for the return of stolen cultural objects. Also—and I think very importantly although one has to feel sorry for the poor mug who buys something that is stolen without realising it—we have the convention that outlines the only practical approach which is that a property right is not extinguished by on-sale. So that is a valuable adjunct to this legislation. 
A number of members have drawn attention to the fact that the bill does not have retroactive effect and I think there is a certain sadness on the part of all of us that this is the case. As members pointed out it is a bit like shutting the gate after much of the horse has bolted—in this case some of our own prized cultural objects. I will not make more than a veiled reference to what happened at the World Trade Organization overnight but this is a prime example of the excellent being the enemy—of the good people walking away from what is actually a good outcome simply because they wanted an excellent outcome. Happily that is not the case here. So although one can certainly criticise those two conventions as being well short of excellence particularly in respect of the issue of retroactivity I think the mood of the Committee is a good start and we welcome that. 
The definitions are quite interesting. Unfortunately if we take a purist view of it the bill does not apply to items stolen from private collections but it applies more broadly than just to museums. I note that the definitions include for example religious or secular public monuments and I am thinking about the recent theft—fortunately temporary—of  
Pania of the Reef 
 in Napier. In terms of my own personal history Napier was a very important place in my upbringing and I am sure that people who are Napier citizens felt far more strongly than I did. We were lucky we were dealing with rank amateurs there. Probably the international price of  
Pania of the Reef 
 was relatively modest its emotional significance being far greater. I think our immediate feeling over that was just how the illicit trade—in this case fortunately by just a bunch of amateurs—of these objects can strike right at the heart of our citizenry. They are very much a part of us. 
This bill is a very good initiative and National is very pleased to support it. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a call on the title and commencement. I hope a number of New Zealanders are listening to this debate—this might be one debate they are interested in. I know from comments I get from outside in real New Zealand land that in terms of a lot of the debates that go on in here a lot of our fellow citizens have no idea some of the time what we are going on about. But I think each and every New Zealander has a stake in the Protected Objects Amendment Bill. The things we seek to protect and to forbid the illegal export of and the penalties we make sure we have for people who deal with our things of value in ways that are not amenable to the protection of our heritage are I am sure of importance to each and every New Zealander. It might be for a change that those listening will appreciate what we are doing this evening. 
The bill will become the Protected Objects Amendment Act which will replace the Antiquities Act 1975. I guess when we think about it the word “antiquities” is in itself a bit of an antiquity. As long as we have made sure that nothing that was protected in the original Act has been left out by our changes in the current bill then hopefully we will do ourselves as New Zealanders and our fellow countrymen and women a favour. So it will be good when this legislation finally comes into force. 
As I have already said I commend the Government for bringing this bill forward. Our heritage culture identity and sense of nationhood are all tied into the underlying principles of this legislation. I made the comment in an earlier speech that in a time of globalisation when we are all suddenly becoming as one—but thank goodness we are not—those things that we consider unique to ourselves as New Zealanders become all the more important and it becomes all the more important that we take proper steps to protect them. 
I look at schedule 4. The Minister in the chair Judith Tizard made some mention of it in giving some level of comfort to my colleague Sandra Goudie who expressed concerns. I may not get this right but she seemed to think that all things Maori were protected and she asked about all things other. As a person who descends from both heritages—my mother’s father was English—I feel proud and privileged to be the inheritor not only of the Maori tradition but also the great tradition of the British. Some people may think since most of my speeches to this bill have concerned Maori custom and taonga Maori that I am worried only about taonga Maori but that is not the case. I was at the opening of the Constable exhibition as well. It is such a splendid exhibition. I urge those colleagues who are able to go and see it during the time it is at Te Papa to do so. I consider that exhibition to be part of my heritage and my culture vis-à-vis the good fortune of having had a Pakeha—English—grandfather. If that collection belonged to us I would be as equally concerned that it be protected under this bill as I would be about any of the taonga Maori that I am also fortunate to be a part of through my Maori heritage. 
Schedule 4 “Categories of protected New Zealand objects” refers to archaeological ethnographic and historical objects of non - New Zealand origin that relate to New Zealand and to art objects including fine decorative and popular art. Those are all included and protected in this legislation. I say that just so that my colleague Sandra Goudie feels a measure of comfort. The schedule also refers to documentary heritage objects and nga taonga tuturu which latter have been the subject of a lot of the discussion tonight. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: And incunabula—they are in schedule 3. I want Sandra to be sure of all of them. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Yes that is in schedule 3 as well. Sorry I have gone straight to schedule 4. Absolutely schedule 3 and schedule 4 set out very very clearly that all those things we—or presumably most of us in this Chamber—inherit are to be protected. It is so difficult at first when members are just brought in as cling-ons to make speeches and have not actually sat in select committees—I did not sit in this committee either although fortunately National had some very good representatives on it. Members do tend to get a little bit muddled when they are called down to the Chamber to make speeches. They think: “Hang on!”. They may well have thumbed through the pages of this bill thinking: “Well I cannot see the protection …”. 
 So I think that Sandra was absolutely right to raise the issues she did but I am satisfied—as a person of English origin as well—that those things of importance to Pakeha New Zealanders are as well protected as those taonga tuturu that come from the Maori culture. She is still saying no but that is OK. 
National supports the bill anyway. It is right it is proper and by supporting it we then align ourselves with the two treaties: the UNIDROIT—my esteemed colleague Tim Groser just did not even want to try to pronounce it so who am I to think that I could—and Unesco conventions to which we will become party. Again that measure would seem like it is long overdue. Those two conventions obviously make sure that not only do we have the necessary protections here in New Zealand but also we have the protections to follow or to retrieve taonga artefacts and things of great value to us as New Zealanders wherever they are. 
This bill is to commence—when is this legislation to commence? As soon as possible I guess. Perhaps the Minister will just— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: 1 November. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: OK—so that is only 2 or 3 months away and it is very important that it does commence. 
I did have a question about the commencement of new section 13 which is provided for in clause 2. That section will come into force on a date appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council. I would ask the Minister what does that mean? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: That means— 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: When will that be though? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: 1 November. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: So it will be the same date as the commencement of the Act. Well that is good. It is all great. This is about our identity and our sense of nationhood which is so important in a time of globalisation. We could easily lose those things as the global village comes closing in on us. In terms of our culture and our heritage both Maori and English—and I inherit both; lucky me—both streams will be protected. National supports this bill. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 I do not want to disagree with other honourable members especially with my learned friend who has just spoken and for whom I have enormous respect and affection but I thought that the Constable exhibition was pretty boring and chocolate boxy myself. But there we are; I have to admit I am a philistine. 
As Mr Groser has said National supports this bill. It amends and improves the Antiquities Act which provides for a system of domestic control over only the export of cultural heritage objects but as the Minister has indicated does not provide the means to recover objects that have been illegally exported. That is why as Mr Groser said the Unesco convention provides specific structures for international cooperation in the cross-border recovery of items that are significant in terms of New Zealand’s cultural heritage. That is also why the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) convention complements the Unesco convention and allows for a person to sue in a foreign court for the return of stolen cultural objects. 
This is a very interesting issue which I am pleased the New Zealand legislature has finally addressed. In previous speeches I have referred honourable members to decisions of the English Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in a very interesting case called  
Attorney-General for New Zealand 
 v  
Ortiz 
. In that case the then Attorney-General—I think it was Jim McLay—sought possession of a Maori carving and an order for delivery up of that carving. It had been sold to an Englishman and was found to be for sale in London. 
But the Court of Appeal in England held that forfeiture to the Crown under the relevant section of the New Zealand Historic Articles Act which was the precursor of the Antiquities Act 1975 was not automatic and the act had not happened here. Secondly the English Court of Appeal stated that the section was in any event unenforceable in England. The House of Lords stated that no seizure had taken place by the New Zealand Customs Service or the New Zealand Police and therefore the Crown was neither the owner of the object nor entitled to possession of the article in question—although the House of Lords declined to embark upon the difficult discussion of whether the Historic Articles Act was a public law that could not be enforced in England because it was an Act done in the exercise of sovereign authority that would not be enforced outside New Zealand. 
It was interesting to observe that almost 30 years ago Lord Denning in the English Court of Appeal concluded his judgment by stating: “The retrieval of such works of art must be achieved by diplomatic means. Best of all there should be an international convention on the matter where individual countries can agree and pass the necessary legislation. It is a matter of such importance that I hope steps can be taken to this end.” 
Actually Lord Denning’s comments on the issue were themselves the subject of comment by the former President of the New Zealand Court of Appeal in the famous “Spycatcher” case which was heard in New Zealand in early 1988 and I must say that I have always preferred Sir Robin Cooke’s approach. In that case Sir Robin stated that the MI6 agent Mr Peter Wright owed allegiance to the Crown in right of the United Kingdom that New Zealand has the same sovereign as the United Kingdom and that the Queen’s courts should protect their interests wherever they originate. If that approach to the law had been taken then that would have been very welcome in this area especially as between England Australia Canada and New Zealand. But unfortunately that is not the way that New Zealand law—and English law—has developed. Hence we have the need for international conventions incorporating not only Commonwealth countries but other countries as well. So that is the rationale behind why we have needed an international convention—because otherwise international law would get in the way. 
My concluding comments deal with clause 2 of the bill which deals with the commencement provisions. Subclause (1) provides: “Section 13 comes into force on a date appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.” Of course that is the part that implements the two international conventions. The rest of the legislation comes into force on a specified date. We have just heard from the Minister that that date will be in November although we do not know when the Order in Council will be signed by the Governor-General. 
Members should note also that the new regime has no retrospective effect—and that point was made by Mr Mark the other night. It takes effect only from the date appointed by the Governor-General. Presumably that is the way it will also be enacted in reciprocating States which means that many valuable objects are already lost to New Zealand and will not be recovered. But from what I can see—and I am sure that the Minister will agree with this—there is no way around that problem. One can only hope that this legislation and the structure it implements will in the future prevent a repeat of the very unfortunate facts that gave rise to the Ortiz litigation. 
As I said National supports this legislation and the sooner it is in force the better it will be. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 48 in the name of the Hon Judith Tizard to clause 2 be agreed to. 
Clause 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently. 
Coroners Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 10 May. 
Part 1 General Provisions ( 
continued 
)  
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 In resuming my speech in the Committee stage of the Coroners Bill I note that it is now some 2½ months since we were last in Committee to discuss this bill. I think that warrants a quick recap. The National Party will support this bill. The bill aims to reform the coronial system to improve its effectiveness. It aims also to ensure that the system responds better to the needs of bereaved families—[ 
Interruption 
] If Bob listened he might realise that this may apply to him some day. It aims also to address the cultural and spiritual needs of all New Zealanders. We live in a modern and dynamic society. I do not think anyone would deny that the make-up of our society has changed considerably since the original Act governing coronial functions was drafted. I think it is important the legislation reflects that. 
The purpose of this bill really is to help prevent deaths and to promote justice through investigating and identifying the causes and circumstances of sudden or unexplained deaths or deaths that occur in special circumstances. This legislation will allow coroners to make recommendations or comments with the aim of reducing the number of further deaths in similar circumstances. 
The legislation has a number of key elements. Firstly it will establish the office of a chief coroner a position we have not had before. Prior to this many coroners have operated on a part-time basis. I think it is worthwhile that the Chamber pay tribute to the men and women who have held the position of coroner over the years. We currently have 54 coroners most of them working on a part-time basis. They come from many different professions and backgrounds. Many of them come from the police the legal professions and the medical professions. But now with the appointment of 20 full-time coroners many of those people will be forced to reapply for their positions. This is one point on which the National Party may take issue with the drafting of the bill. It could be considered unconstitutional and indeed unfair just to dismiss these people after so many years of service with no compensation. I think the legislation needs to address that point. Also a workforce issue could arise in managing to get 20 full-time fully legally qualified people to maintain this function in the future. 
A key element of this legislation is to ensure that families are notified at each step of the coronial process. When people are in distress over the loss of a loved one the timeliness of the inquiry can often make a huge difference to how they deal with the grieving process. One of the good things about this legislation is that it will standardise processes throughout the country so that whenever a New Zealander comes into contact with the coronial system that person and their family can be assured that they will be subject to a standardised process that is the same the length and breadth of the country. This legislation will set down guidelines for professional standards to which coroners will adhere. Of course coroners have performed their function to the highest standards of professionalism but the terms under which they operate and what may be called their practice guidelines have never really been established. A key function of the chief coroner will be to oversee the performance of and the standardised procedures carried out by the 20 new full-time coroners. 
This bill also introduces a specific regime for the retention and release of body parts and bodily samples. My colleagues will address that issue in the debate on later parts of the bill. I know that Dr Worth has a specific interest in that. As he said some 2½ months ago it can be extremely distressing for a family after a death when a body may have been interred or cremated to receive some time afterwards—via the postal system or some other means of delivery—body parts and bodily specimens relating to their loved one. 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 Dr Coleman has led off in the debate on this part in magnificent style and has properly focused on the issues that are appropriately discussed in this Chamber at the Committee stage of the Coroners Bill which National supports. I would like to put some of the issues of the working-day coroner in a degree of perspective against the background of clause 4 which deals with the coroner’s role in relation to a death. I relate my comments particularly to what goes on at the moment in the office of the Auckland coroners. 
Of course Auckland has a very substantial history of coronial activity. It really goes back to the office of coroner first established in the Auckland City district in the 1840s. As the Minister reminded me in a discussion I had with him earlier tonight the first recorded inquest was held on 27 July 1841 by John Johnson then a doctor of medicine at the police office in Auckland. In those early years between 1841 and 1864 384 inquests were recorded all of which were conducted by a medical practitioner. The very first inquest at which some form of autopsy or medical examination was performed was held in 1841. The body in that case was examined by the assistant surgeon Patrick Gammie at the request of the coroner. 
Let us take a cross-section in community terms of what went on in Auckland last year—although we could go back further—to see the causes of death in the Auckland district. In 2005 we had 534 deaths from natural causes 151 from suicide—a very troubling issue and one that I know other members will speak about—87 from motor vehicle crashes 22 from homicide and 16 from drowning. We had 39 deaths of young children babies under a year old—a very timely topic at the moment to the sadness of this Chamber. That number of 39 deaths of infants up to a year of age breaks down in two ways. Firstly we have early neonatal deaths—11 from birth defects and nine from sepsis to produce a total of 20 deaths out of 39. When looking at the remainder those 19 other young children who died I think it is sobering and interesting to reflect that in gender terms there were eight male babies and 11 female babies. In terms of diagnosis 13 of those children died from what is called SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome and we had six overlaying deaths 12 deaths from co-sleeping and seven cot deaths. 
In Auckland we have something that I think is a bit unusual certainly compared to other districts: two very highly qualified full-time professional coroners. Those two people are Sarn Herdson and Murray Jamieson. I say that in the context of the comments Dr Coleman has made because one of the significant shifts in this legislation is a move to full-time and professional coroners. That is not without controversy as he said because the Government has decided simply to junk without compensation—in my view completely against all constitutional principle—a number of coroners who have given valiant and competent service. Significant constitutional issues arise there because as National members will later recount we are talking about people with tenure akin to judicial tenure and that is to be stripped from them. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 Following on from what Dr Worth said the National Opposition will support the Coroners Bill but major constitutional questions arise that should not be treated lightly by the Minister. We will be dividing the House on this issue because it is an important constitutional issue. It is interesting to observe that as so often happens English law is undergoing a change at the moment towards being a fully professional coronial system and its 1988 legislation is soon to be repealed and replaced by a Coroners Act that also brings in the concept of full-time coroners. As will be highlighted when we come to the debate on the schedules of the legislation the English are doing it properly as opposed to this Government which is acting unconstitutionally. 
I have said before to the Minister the Hon Rick Barker or to his colleague the Minister of Justice in the context of legal aid that they could learn a thing or two from their socialist cousins in England because the proposals contained in the English bill when appointments under the 1988 English Act cease to have effect provide that the Lord Chancellor can make regulations for compensation to be paid to those who lose office on the coming into force of the bill. I would be happy to give the Minister those provisions because that is the constitutional way that those who have held coronial office in New Zealand and whose services are no longer required should in fact be compensated. 
As Dr Worth and Dr Coleman have observed coroners in this country have performed a sterling service over often very lengthy periods of time. I found it incredible that one coroner for a rural and provincial district observed to me that the only time he was ever visited by officials of the Ministry of Justice was when someone visited him to tell him that this new regime was coming in and his services would probably no longer be required. So coroners cannot expect to be thanked and under this Government they can expect to be unilaterally sacked without any expectation of compensation. So although National thinks the new regime is a great improvement on the 1988 Act and that the move towards a professional coroner—as Dr Worth said is evidenced in Auckland—is good there are issues that we will need to canvass very carefully when we deal with the schedules. 
As I recall when the Minister was speaking in the second reading debate he more or less dismissed an important clause that was introduced by the Justice and Electoral Committee namely clause 4A which provides that coroners must perform their duties without delay. It is a clause that I think is extremely important. Some of the most touching evidence we heard before the select committee came from good New Zealand citizens who felt that coronial inquests had gone on and on and not come to an end and it prevented people from getting on with their lives. That is most unfortunate and it is why it is so important that it be emphasised to coroners that they perform their tasks consistent with justice and without delay. I regret to say—and it is most probably because coroners are so busy and have so few resources under the existing regime—that it is a sad fact that sometimes coronial inquests go on too long. 
I can think of a number of coronial inquests in recent times that have taken far too long—for example the air accident in Christchurch—and this stops people getting on with their lives. As Lord Falconer said in his introduction to the English Coroners Act and I think this really hits the nail on the head and applies with equal force to the New Zealand legislation: “Coroners have a vital task. They give certainty and reassurance to bereaved people and they meet the public interest by determining the facts of deaths which are reported to them. These deaths may be violent on occasion they may be unnatural or they may be of unknown cause but the coroner will investigate these cases and will conclude a formal inquest and that will among other things identify lessons for preventing future deaths.” It is extremely important that those functions be carried out without delay and that is why the committee was so emphatic that even if that was implied in various clauses it needed to be spelt out in words of one syllable that coroners are expected to perform their duties without delay. 
As to the other parts of Part 1 I do not think I need to delay the Committee for too long at all. National approves of the appointment of a chief coroner who will have an overview of the work in New Zealand and will also issue practice notes and provide guidance to other coroners. As clause 5 states that will “help to inform and achieve consistency in coronial decision-making and other coronial conduct …”. Those are good things but there are questions that the Committee will need to discuss. I sincerely hope that as we go through the bill and address those one or two points the Minister will take them seriously and take them into account. 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 Being a coroner is an important and sensitive role. It is important because coroners are required to inquire into sudden and unexplained deaths and to establish as far as possible the cause and circumstances of those deaths. Then through investigations coroners are required to find a way to avoid future unnecessary deaths from occurring. It is a sensitive role because death usually involves families and wider networks of grieving people left behind. A sudden and unexpected death is even more shocking and emotive. 
 National supports this Coroners Bill because it replaces the Coroners Act of 1988 which was well overdue for an overhaul. The main purpose of the bill is to professionalise the coronial system so it will be more consistent more effective more timely and more sensitive to family and cultural needs. Many submitters to the select committee process were family members who felt dissatisfied and even undermined by the present coronial system. The very large numbers of coroners working mostly part time has made it almost impossible to deliver a consistent and timely service across the country. Many coroners—and indeed JPs who do coronial work on occasion—are very experienced and do very fine work but as cases are becoming more and more complex and technically challenging it is timely that new provisions are introduced. The public must have confidence in the system. 
As part of this professionalisation of the process about 20 full-time coroners will be employed to replace a much larger number of part-time coroners and as we have heard a chief coroner will be appointed. The role of the chief coroner is key. It will be one mainly of leadership and coordination and he or she will be responsible for providing support advice and particularly practice notes to the team and for ensuring that investigations are orderly and timely. Time is of the essence. As we heard my colleague Mr Chris Finlayson mention so many of the submitters who talked to us were devastated by the length of time it took to deal with their coronial process. The chief coroner is particularly charged with maintaining the consistency of service that we heard from submitters there was a great lack of. He or she will be required to streamline the system by encouraging cooperation and by avoiding unnecessary duplication between coroners and other investigative authorities and official bodies. Right now most coroners deal with only a small number of cases every year. So moving to a system where coroners are full time will allow coroners to develop a greater expertise and will improve that important timeliness of inquests and the release of coronial findings. Full-time coroners will also have more time to undertake public education and to develop a closer relationship with other investigating authorities. 
The establishment of a full-time professional coronial system was strongly supported by submitters and by coroners themselves although in this process many of those experienced and competent coroners will lose their part-time appointments. I would like to register publicly the National Party’s respect and thanks for those existing coroners. 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 In speaking to Part 1 of the Coroners Bill I want to go back in history a wee bit to the old Halsbury’s  
Laws of England 
. [ 
Interruption 
] It is very interesting I say to the member. The office of the coroner is of great antiquity and no satisfactory account of its origin can be given. It is said to have existed at the time of the Anglo-Saxon kings. I find that interesting. The right to elect a coroner for London appears to have been granted to the citizens by Henry I in 1194. The justices in eyre were directed to see that in every county three knights and a clerk were chosen as custodians of the pleas of the Crown. The office may therefore be safely assumed to have existed at least as early as the beginning of the 13th century. 
Hon Member 
: Why is this member so interested in this? 
KATE WILKINSON 
: It is a history lesson I tell the member and one always learns from history. 
It is vital that the public has confidence in our coronial system and it is important in modern day to take into account the needs of families. It is important to understand the causes of certain deaths and this bill is overdue—according to the coroners it is well overdue. It is not a perfect bill as one has come to expect but it is here none the less. It is certainly important to ensure that deaths—and especially violent and sudden deaths—are dealt with with sensitivity with absolute professionalism and with consistency and timeliness and my colleague Mr Finlayson has referred to the duties of the coroner to act without delay. It is certainly arguable that that can be better achieved by having full-time coroners rather than the existing regime of some 60 part-time coroners although I note there is provision in the bill for relief coroners who can be appointed on a full-time or a part-time basis. 
I would also like to deal with the role of the coroner as dealt with in Part 1 which has already been alluded to. Again I think it is really interesting to go back in history. If members will bear with me they will see the similarities of the 21st century with the 13th century. In the 13th century the chief duties of a coroner were to inquire into the cause of death by holding an inquest or by ordering a post-mortem examination. That has not changed. Another duty was to hold inquests upon treasure troves. That has changed because—unfortunately—we do not seem to have the same number of treasure troves that existed in the 13th century. In fact we have lost a few of our treasure troves in just the last 7 years. Thirdly the coroner acted upon occasion in the place of the sheriff. Again unlike the 13th century we do not seem to have a sheriff any more. 
The coroner also had certain duties in respect of outlawry and it would be interesting to know whether the coroner in that case had some duties in terms of corruption especially in relation to the immigration field in New Zealand in the 21st century. In addition to that duty in the 13th century in the City of London the coroner’s duties extended to the holding of inquests on outbreaks of fires. So the duties and the role of the coroner in some respects have remained very similar and have not changed; in other respects they are very very different. The history is really quite interesting. In those days “a coroner [might] not take pleas of the Crown nor hold inquests of royal fish nor of wreck nor of felonies except felonies on inquisitions of death.” I am not quite sure why we would want to hold an inquest of royal fish to be perfectly honest and fish is not mentioned in this 21st century Coroners Bill. 
None the less the coroner’s role is fairly well pronounced in the bill. The coroner is to receive reports of deaths to decide whether post-mortems are required to authorise the release of bodies or parts thereof and to decide whether to hold open inquiries. I think there is a provision in this part of the bill that possibly requires some scrutiny because when we are dealing with death the last thing we want is for any family to have uncertainty about what is happening. There is enough uncertainty in dealing with the trauma and emotions relating to death— 
David Bennett 
: It’s to the Middle Ages now. 
KATE WILKINSON 
: I will soon get to the Middle Ages. We need to eliminate uncertainty especially in times of death. We also need to pay particular scrutiny to the definition of “immediate family” which in relation to a dead person means “members of the dead person’s family whanau or other culturally recognised family group who—(i) were in a close relationship with the person; or (ii) had in accordance with customs or traditions of the community of which the person was part responsibility for or an interest in the person’s welfare and best interests;”. I believe there could be some uncertainty in the definition of “immediate family”. I would not like to see a family that is suffering from the trauma of the death of a loved one to have then to prove they are the immediate family for the purposes of the Coroners Act. I would certainly appreciate the Minister’s elaboration on “immediate family”. 
As I said it really is vital that there is no room for uncertainty and that the issues of perhaps competing interests of various family members can be dealt with professionally quickly and competently. I think some of that consistency will be achieved with the appointment now of full-time coroners although as Mr Finlayson pointed out there is no provision for any compensation. It would be interesting to see how that relates to the Employment Relations Act in terms of redundancy because there are few jobs—apart from those of members of Parliament of course—that can be terminated at will if you like without any form of redundancy payment or compensation. Many of our experienced part-time coroners have spent many many years in the field doing a lot of work for the good of the community but now they will be dumped without remorse without compensation and without redundancy. There is some sort of inequity I think in that system and I wonder whether that could be addressed. 
I think I will leave my call at that. I have other history lessons to talk to in relation to Part 2 and I would not like to be seen to be filibustering on this very important bill. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Hoi ano e rua nga wahanga o taku korero i tenei po. Ko tetahi mo nga kaiwewete tupapaku ko te mea ka rua ko te whakamomori. Roto i a matou i Te Tai Tokerau he tino awangawanga. Kua roa rawa to ratou noho waenganui i a matou. Kei a matou nga kaiwewete tupapaku e noho ana mo nga wa roa roto i a matou. E mohio ana ratou ki nga whanau ki nga hapu ki nga iwi me nga kaumatua o te rohe me nga tikanga a-iwi. Engari ma tenei ture ka whakakaoretia i to ratou turanga. Ka tukuna tenei mahi ki tetahi tangata he matatau ana ki te ture engari e kuare ana ki nga tikanga. No reira hakoa e mea ana te pire nei e aroha ana ki nga tikanga Maori e kore e wakatinanatia i tenei wa. 
Mo te whakamomori kei roto i taku whanau tera tikanga. Ko tetahi o nga tino tikanga kia whai atu i te take he aha te take i whakamomori ai taku whanau. Me pehea ra te wakatika i te whanau kia kaua e pera ai. Atu i tera e 
hiahia ana te tangata kia wakapaho atu i tona korero. Engari e mea ana te ture e kore e taea. Engari mo te Maori he kaupapa nui tenei. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the Committee.] 
[ 
Indeed I have two parts to my address this evening. One relates to coroners and the other to suicides. There is a huge concern amongst people in the north. They have lived in our midst for a long time. We have coroners who have been among us for a long period of time. They know the families subtribes the people the elderly in the area and the customs of the tribe. But this law will remove their positions. This position is given to a person who is competent in law but ignorant of customs. So despite this bill saying that it is sympathetic to Maori customs it will not be mandated at this time. 
Regarding suicides I have that situation in my family. One important thing to follow up is why there are suicidal tendencies in my family and how the family can rectify the situation to remove the tendency. In addition people might want the outcome communicated to them. But the law states that this is not possible. But the matter is a very important one to Maoridom. 
] 
Dr Richard Worth 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I would just like to raise an issue for guidance from you. Because at the moment we are getting an interpretation from the translator. My understanding of the Standing Orders is that we should be receiving a translation. The outcome is hugely disruptive for the speaker who is having to pause and get word by word interpretation whereas only a translation is required. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No what we are going through now is an interpretation and that is the correct procedure. It is not a translation; it is an interpretation and I think it is going very well. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Horekau he raruraru ki a au. Ta matou tino kaupapa kia korero atu i nga whakaaro roto i te ngakau ki te whakapaho atu ki te ao whanui kia rongohia wetahi atu whanau ki te wakatipu i wa ratou tamariki. No reira e kore matou e whakaae ma te ture e whakakahoretia i ta matou whakapahotanga. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the Committee.] 
[ 
I do not have a problem with it. Our policy really is that one should be able to express oneself to let the whole world know so that other families know about it and raise their families accordingly. We do not agree that the law should remove this ability for us to broadcast it. 
] 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the Protected Objects Amendment Bill with amendment and progress on the Coroners Bill. 
Report adopted. 
The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.