Volume 623 Week 80 - Wednesday 16 February 2005 
Volume 623 Week 80 - Wednesday 16 February 2005 
[Volume:623;Page:18657] 
Wednesday 16 February 2005 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Questions to Ministers 
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Problem Notification 
1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: What are the details if any she first received including the date and from whom regarding the problems with NCEA and what directions did she give at that time? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I have not had advice about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) but in respect of scholarship I was first alerted by the Minister of Education to concerns about the overall pass rates for scholarship on the weekend of 15 and 16 January. I was first alerted to the likelihood of the variability of results across subjects on the evening of 25 January by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet with further information arriving the following evening. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Why did the Prime Minister have such a huge amount of time between 15 and 16 January and the later date she gave when in fact by the 17th via an email to the Minister’s office the issue of the subject results with the huge variability was before the Minister of Education? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I can confirm that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority did indeed send an email to the Minister’s and Associate Minister’s offices on 17 January. I am absolutely satisfied from the investigation I have made that the Minister of Education and the Associate Minister did not have their attention drawn to that email until late on 25 January. 
Deborah Coddington 
: Would the Prime Minister care to reconsider her answers when any rational person would have seen problems with NCEA 7 years ago when it was first put up by the National Party and opposed by the ACT party? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I think it is important not to confuse NCEA with scholarship. We are dealing with quite different issues here. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm her statement to the House just now that the Minister of Education advised her about pass rates in scholarship on the weekend of 15 and 16 January; and how does she square that with the statement she has just made that on 17 January an email to the Minister’s office from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority contained no alert that there were problems? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: What I was alerted to by the Minister was that the overall number of passes in scholarship was fewer than had been expected. What I advised the House just now was that on 17January the New Zealand Qualifications Authority emailed staff in the Minister’s office. The Minister did not have that drawn to his attention until late on the 25th. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Did anyone—[ 
Interruption 
]  
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is the one warning I am giving today. The member had already started his question. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Did anyone inform the Prime Minister— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take some exception to your lecturing of this side of the House in that fashion. There was no interjection on the speaker. There may have been some conversation between two bench colleagues but that is not unreasonable. The fact is that the Prime Minister’s answers so far are laughable and were laughed at. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. The member is now trifling with me and the Chair. I tell him that he will not do that again today. I heard the interjection as did a lot of other members. The member himself knows who made it. I am not going to identify him but he knows who it was. 
John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I too heard the comment but I take exception to the fact that there was a suggestion it was an interjection. It was a comment made by a member not an interjection. I take exception to the fact that you are suggesting it was. It was not an interjection on the Prime Minister who had just resumed her seat. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: It was an interjection after the member had started his question. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Did anyone inform the Prime Minister during the period in question that it was not necessary to have students’ scripts returned in order to moderate the scholarship marks statistically; and is it not true that such a recommendation was rejected because it would have meant taking scholarships off some students who had already been awarded them? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I have not dealt with the issue in that detail. My first thought when I was given the figures as to the range of passes subject by subject was whether the papers should be called back in re-marked and moderated. I was told that that could not be done because they had already gone out to the students. 
Hon Bill English 
: Why is the Government blaming the New Zealand Qualifications Authority for not alerting the Minister to problems with scholarship on 17 January when she has just told the House that the Minister of Education advised her on the weekend of 15 and 16 January—the day before the Qualifications Authority is meant to have let the Minister down? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: There are two points at issue. The first is the overall low rate in scholarship which the Minister alerted me to as I have said on 15 and 16 January because he wished to bring a paper to Cabinet about that. The other issue is the variability of results across subjects which both he and I—[ 
Interruption 
] No I am sorry but members have obviously studied it very little if they think it is the same thing—became aware of on 25 January. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Why would the Prime Minister’s Minister of Education—having been given the provisional picture from the provisional results on 14 January and having alerted her on 15 or 16 January as she said—take all the way to 25 January to understand just how serious the issue was? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The Minister was advised that there were fewer scholarships awarded overall than were expected. That is why he asked to bring a paper to Cabinet. 
Student Allowances—Parental Income 
2.  
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Is he satisfied that it is fair to base eligibility for student allowances for students under 25 on their parents’ income even if the students are married or have been supporting themselves for two years; if so why? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Yes. The changes to student allowances apply the parental income test in a manner consistent for all students who do not have dependent children. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: How can the Government claim that it has removed one form of discrimination on the basis of employment status by treating students who have supported themselves financially as if they are now dependent on their parents when the biggest form of discrimination on the basis of employment status still remains—students under 25 are deemed to be financially dependent on their parents but young people on the dole are not? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: There are a number of issues that sit in there. To do an equalisation I am advised would cost about $3.5 billion over 4 years and that is not this Government’s priority. 
Lynne Pillay 
: How many students have benefited from the changes to student allowance eligibility? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am advised that an estimated 36000 students will benefit from the changes to student allowances announced in the 2004 Budget. Over half of all full-time students can now receive an allowance. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Is it not correct that the requirements of the human rights legislation which were the excuse for these changes in policy could have just as readily been met by simply establishing a universal allowance; if so why did the Government not take that course of action—or has the Minister already answered that question? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think I have answered that particular question when responding to Mr Ogilvy. To have a universal allowance at about the level of the unemployment benefit would cost $3.5 billion over 4 years and that is not the highest priority for this Government at this time. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: Is the Minister aware that the Prime Minister Helen Clark had been lecturing at Auckland University for 2 years before her 25th birthday and is he saying that he believes she was a child dependent on her parents during that time? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I know the Prime Minister’s parents are wonderful and generous people but I should say that at that stage she probably was not heavily reliant on them. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: How can the Government justify treating married students as if they are financially dependent on their parents when Cabinet papers prepared by the Minister’s own officials point out: “There is a cultural and legal assumption that on marriage a person’s primary emotional and financial dependence transfers from one’s parents to one’s spouse.”; and that this is reflected in other laws that remove guardianship rights and responsibilities upon marriage? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have not seen that bit of advice but I can inform the member that my experience is that children tend to be dependent on their parents before during and after their marriage. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: Can the Minister confirm that although the cost of broadening student allowance thresholds is $157 million over 3 years by forcing married students and those who have supported themselves to have their allowance based on their parents’ income the Government is actually saving $82 million over those 3 years which means that the net increase in spending on allowances is more like $75 million—less than the amount the Government is cutting from the scheme; and is that not akin to tertiary highway robbery? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I cannot confirm the figures and no. 
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
3.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Did he make the decision that the New Zealand Scholarship award would be implemented in 2004 in the form it finally took; if so what form did that decision take? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The decision that that scholarship would be standards based and that there would be no intersubject scaling was a Cabinet decision. It was made by that member and his colleagues in 1998. As the member is aware I deferred the implementation by 1 year soon after coming into Government. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm that he announced a change in policy when he issued a press release on 26 January 2005 and that that press release included a statement: “As this is the first time the new Scholarship system has been run there is particular interest in the pattern of results and achievement of students.”; how much did he know about the scholarship results when he issued that press release? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I knew that there were eight who had three outstanding scholarships when the expectation we had taken to Cabinet and had published was that there should have been 50. I thought it was unfair that as a result of the scholarship exam being harder than we thought it was going to be four people got outstanding passes and other kids who had done really well missed out on the money that had been allocated. I therefore moved with Cabinet permission to a Cabinet decision in order to get that money allocated to kids. If Opposition members think that kids who did really well at really hard exams should not get the money they should stand up and say so now. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Can the Minister explain why the Associate Minister told the House yesterday that the level 4 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) qualification was created as a standards-based assessment system by the October 1998 Cabinet paper when the paper does not do anything like that at all and what were the contents of the subsequent Cabinet papers on scholarship that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority chief executive officer referred to today at the select committee? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The subsequent papers went to the question of reward and I think probably timing rather than to the substance of the qualification. The decision in 1998 stated as part of the paper in paragraph 29: “There will be no intersubject scaling of the external assessment. This has been a source of dissatisfaction because of the distortions that have occurred between raw and final marks.” I have been advised that as recently as 2003 we had science subjects where no one passed before scaling. 
Deborah Coddington 
: How does he feel about his decision to implement scholarship in light of Nobel Prize - winner Alan MacDiarmid’s comment last weekend that: “NCEA scholarship is a disaster for New Zealand science.” adding: “It’s done a great disservice to the country because New Zealand needs for its national security in the future to encourage science education and this is going to put kids off”; or does the Minister know better than a Nobel laureate? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Professor MacDiarmid and I have had some pretty intense discussions not on this subject but on the subject of Waiwhetu School. He is an expert in an area of science. He admits I am sure that he is not an educational expert. 
Hon Bill English 
: Is it not true that when the Minister issued his press release on 26 January he knew about all the problems with scholarship results because he was emailed the results on 14 January he advised the Prime Minister about problems on 15 or 16 January he was emailed again on 17 January and on 18 January his most senior officials started meetings on the issue yet he issued a press release on 26 January that made no reference to the variability in results which the Cabinet later decided was so bad it had to step in; and why did he cover that up? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: At no stage did I cover it up. I want to make it clear that on the evening of the Cabinet meeting that made the decisions as to the extension I was briefed and I received a piece of paper. The next day I discovered for the first time that unlike NCEA levels 1 2 and 3 the scholarship standards had not been subject to intersubject moderation. That was something I discovered then. That of course was a result of that member’s decision. 
Hon Bill English 
: How can the Minister possibly expect the House or the public to believe that over a period of 2 weeks between 14 January and 26 January he had no knowledge of pass rates in scholarship when the analysis is as simple as one table with four columns on one page; and how can he expect us to believe that Cabinet made a decision to extend scholarship without paying attention to that analysis of the scholarship results which can be done in 5 minutes? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Because it is the truth. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: What did the Minister take from the NCEA results from 2002 and 2003 which showed that 5000 maths students were graded “excellent” in level 2 in 2002 but that that dropped drastically to 70—down from 5000—in level 3 in 2003 when the cohort had not changed; and why did he and his colleagues ignore that varying and disturbing statistic? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Off the top of my head I do not have the results for 2002 and 2003 and the analysis of those results that was done at the time. If the member puts a question on that in writing I am quite willing to answer it. 
Hon Bill English 
: If the Minister only knew about the number of students who had passed scholarship then why did he know enough detail to be able to make this statement in his press release of 26 January: “Provisional results indicate that some students did exceptionally well in Scholarship but didn’t necessarily sit three subjects.” when finding that out would have required detailed knowledge of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s analysis because it is nowhere available in the public arena? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Very very simply it is because eight people had passed three subjects with “outstanding” when we expected 50 to do so. 
Hon Bill English 
: But you don’t know which ones. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No I do not. I now know which schools they were from; I still do not know the subjects those eight people passed. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: I seek leave to table a paper by Warwick Elley  
Facts and Fallacies about Standards-based Assessment 
 which includes the statistics the Rt Hon Winston Peters just talked about. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Kyoto Protocol—Australia’s Non-ratification 
4.  
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Will she be raising Australia’s ongoing refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol with Australian Prime Minister John Howard during his forthcoming visit to New Zealand; if so what exact message will she be conveying? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 No. The positions of our respective Governments on this issue are well known. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Is the Prime Minister aware that Australia’s Kyoto Protocol target is the slackest in the OECD and allows a 7 percent increase in net emissions; if so how does she expect to strengthen Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations in the future if Australia will not accept even those international obligations? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: To the best of my knowledge the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement does not cover the Kyoto Protocol targets. What the Australian Government does in that respect is entirely up to it. 
Larry Baldock 
: Does the Prime Minister acknowledge that both Australia and the US are making significant progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions despite not having signed up to the Kyoto Protocol; if so does she accept that it is just as effective to have an internal carbon-trading regime rather than being tied to a bureaucratic and uncertain international one like the Kyoto Protocol that does not yet involve the developing world? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am not responsible for the policies of those Governments but I would say that New Zealand as a very strong supporter of multilateralism across the board likes to be moving with the broad mainstream of international opinion. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Will the Prime Minister be pointing out to Prime Minister John Howard that some New Zealand businesses expect to gain a competitive advantage from the Kyoto Protocol as reported in today’s  
Dominion Post 
 or will she allow that advantage to be undercut by Australian businesses that are not playing the game? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I would think that businesses in the United States and in Australia will be looking very carefully at how they might be disadvantaged by not being part of the international trading system that comes out of the Kyoto Protocol. 
Larry Baldock 
: Does the Prime Minister agree with the statement made by the Hon Pete Hodgson yesterday in the House: “Cars and cows are where our greenhouse gases largely come from …”; if so what plans does her Government have to phase out inefficient polluting vehicles—ironically many of which have “GE Free” or “Save the Planet” stickers on them—and replace them with new technologically advanced more environmentally friendly vehicles that offer greater hope of reducing overall carbon dioxide emissions than all the Greens’ policies combined? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: One is tempted to quip that it might be easier to phase out inefficient polluting cars than inefficient polluting cows. However having resisted that temptation I will say that of course the Government in its overall policy is addressing the issue of emissions from cars but the reality is with regard to electricity generation that only 8 to 9 percent of our greenhouse gases come from there. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Will the Prime Minister remind Mr Howard that commitments from China India and other developing countries are dependent on the OECD taking action first and that the refusal of Australia and the US to ratify might give developing countries an excuse to remain outside the Kyoto Protocol for even longer? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Again I am not responsible for what excuses others might use for not coming into an international trading system. What I am satisfied of is that New Zealand has done the right thing in agreeing to be part of this very important multilateral initiative. 
Economy—Government Initiatives 
5.  
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
 to the  
Minister for Economic Development 
: Has he received any recent reports on Government initiatives which will contribute to lifting economic growth? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 Surprisingly yes. Just yesterday I co-chaired the inaugural meeting of the Food and Beverage Sector Taskforce which covers the most significant sector in our economy. It contributed over $14000 million of export earnings last year. The task force will develop strategies to increase the value of our food and beverage sector identify obstacles to growth and ultimately take action to boost growth in the sector. As with other sector initiatives we are working in partnership with that key sector of the New Zealand economy. 
Hon Matt Robson 
: What specific outcomes does the Government expect from the work of the Food and Beverage Sector Taskforce? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The task force will establish a strategic plan for the development of the food and beverage sector and will work towards the implementation of policies that will improve sector growth. It will coordinate links and networks between the Government and business to further that goal. Specifically among a wide range of objectives it will develop industry knowledge and capacity broaden product range expand market penetration and market share and increase skills and capabilities in the sector. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: Why has the food and beverage sector been chosen for additional economic development work? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: We have targeted the food and beverage sector because almost two-thirds of our export earnings are from primary production. Building on that area of competitive advantage is an obvious place to start in order to boost the living standards of all New Zealanders. 
111 System—Police Resources 
6.  
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Has he taken any action to increase police resources dealing with 111 calls since his press release endorsing the commissioner’s review of the system in October; if so what? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I have advised the Commissioner of Police and this House that if the independent review of communication centres discloses a need for additional resources to be allocated to the centres then those resources will be provided. I also support the commissioner’s directive that all staff be fully aware that with priority one calls the nearest staff member should respond. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: How does the Minister explain these two contradictory statements made by him yesterday: “If the commissioner needs more resources we will make sure that he gets them.” and “The police always ask for more than they are going to get.”? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Easily. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! That is an answer to the question. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! The member knows that he cannot interject. He will stand withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Obviously the rule is different this week from last week. Last week on an interjection you ruled that the member had not started speaking so it was OK to have an interjection. This week the member had not started speaking but the rule is different. All I seek is clarification. Can we just have the same rule for a couple of weeks in a row? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Yes well I made a mistake. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: As the Minister can explain these contradictory statements so easily would he do so now? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: It is obvious that when we do Budget rounds the police come with a big shopping basket. However the police have the resources they need and the commissioner can shift resources around if he needs to. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Ron Mark 
: Why has the Minister publicly stated and reinforced just now that it is up to the commissioner how extra resources for police are used when in a 2002 report from the commissioner to the Minister on Auckland policing issues the commissioner stated: “… staff funded from Government initiatives have been ring-fenced for specific areas. … the task-specific nature of these allocations has been eroding the flexibility historically available to me and to District Commanders to distribute resources across emerging problem areas in a timely or responsive manner.”; explain that? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Obviously the commissioner was always looking for more resources. But I can tell the House that since we became the Government we have provided over 1000 extra staff. In Auckland we have provided 370 extra staff in that time. Of course some of those things are ring-fenced; with others there is flexibility. 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Consistently in this House we have trouble getting first answers to written questions to this Minister on time— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Please come to the point of order about this matter. 
Ron Mark 
: The point of order is that I specifically asked about the ring-fencing of police resources and the commissioner’s own statement to the Minister that that was impeding the police’s ability to utilise them. The Minister did not address the area of Government ring-fencing at all. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. The Minister started out by not doing that but in the last part of his answer he most certainly did. 
Stephen Franks 
: Why did the Minister fail in the last Budget to get the extra $8 million at most needed for the extra 111 operators to fix that service for all New Zealanders when Mr Maharey managed to get from his Cabinet colleagues $239 million to pour all over Te Wananga o Aotearoa which is 29 times what the police needed and what does he now feel about Labour’s priorities? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The commissioner was asking for 22 additional staff there. He got 18 but of course he does have the power to shift more there if he needs to. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: If as the Minister has told the House today the police have all the resources they need how does he explain the circumstances of Iraena Asher the Bentley family the young woman in the Waikato and the lack of public confidence in the 111 system? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police have had nearly 1000 extra staff since we became the Government. National was going to take 540 away. But this matter is subject to the review and I want to wait for the outcome of that review and that is what is happening. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister will now come to the question actually asked. Please re-ask it. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: If as the Minister has told the country today the police have all the resources they need how does he explain the never-ending series of calamities with the 111 system and the public’s lack of confidence in it? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police—as does every other department—go through Budget rounds. They are annual. They will ask for more money I am sure. But I am prepared to wait for the outcome of the review which is exactly what should happen. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No the Minister did address that question. 
Labour Market—Youth 
7.  
GEORGINA BEYER (Labour—Wairarapa) 
 to the  
Minister of Youth Affairs 
: What reports has he received on young people and the labour market? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Youth Affairs) 
: 
 Data from the household labour force survey released last Friday shows that the annual average unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds in 2004 had fallen to 9.4 percent which is the lowest rate since 1988 and 10 percentage points below the all-time high reached in 1992. 
The number of young New Zealanders in employment has grown by 44000 since this Labour-Progressive Government was elected. The number of young people on the unemployment benefit dropped by an astonishing 62 percent between 1999 and 2004. 
Georgina Beyer 
: What have been the Government’s key initiatives for getting the youth unemployment rate down? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The Government has invested in a range of programmes to create greater opportunities for young New Zealanders. These include creating more than 7000 Modern Apprenticeships; the Gateway programme which addresses the needs of senior secondary school students; expanding careers advice; the huge expansion in industry training; and Work and Income placing special emphasis on placing young people into jobs. The results are quite astounding and that is why we will carry on investing in that very important area of policy. 
Craig McNair 
: What will the Minister do about the OECD report of January 2005 which indicates that New Zealanders are now categorised as low middle-income earners along with two former Communist countries; and a report that average student debt has increased from $11664 in 1999 to $14242 in 2004 giving working and young New Zealanders a bleak outlook under this Labour Government? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Of course with unemployment at a record 3.6 percent we are certainly looking to issues like skills training productivity exporting adding value to commodities the list goes on and on to provide higher wages to New Zealanders to join that higher group in the OECD. 
On the issue of student debt the member might like to know for example that the Swedish Prime Minister who has just been through this country would be telling him that young Swedish people do pay for their education. They pay for it after they have finished their degree. They pay for it through a very high level of tax. 
Marc Alexander 
: Can the Minister confirm that in the year to October 2004 2342 young people received the independent youth benefit and that 1804 of them—or a full 77 percent—graduated on to other benefits; and what specific steps does he intend to take to stop the independent youth benefit from becoming the “dole with training wheels”? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I was just flicking through my notes because I am sure the member will be delighted to know that under this Government the number of people who were on the independent youth benefit but have moved off it to do other things such as education and jobs has dropped dramatically. Unfortunately I cannot quite find that number but when the member asks me afterwards I will pass it on to him. He will be very pleased with the news. 
Marc Alexander 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was quite specific with regard to 77 percent of those on the independent youth benefit having graduated to other benefits. How the Minister can suggest there was a self-congratulatory fall in the numbers is beyond the imagination of anybody. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That may well be so but the Minister addressed the question. 
Georgina Beyer 
: What is the Government doing to assist young people during that crucial period in the transition from school to work? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The Government is doing a great deal. It has introduced in particular the Youth Transitions Service which focuses on those young people who are at risk of falling through the cracks once they leave school. The first five youth transitions services which have been developed in consultation with their communities have started in Whangarei Waitakere Rotorua New Plymouth and Porirua. Last month I announced the next five locations where the Youth Transitions Service will be established—namely Manukau Hamilton Gisborne Upper Hutt and the far north. 
The service will be available in 14 regions by 2007 covering one in two people in that target group. The pace at which the service is becoming a reality is evidence of this Government’s serious commitment to young people. 
Te Wananga o Aotearoa—Funding 
8.  
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: How much Government funding was provided to Te Wananga o Aotearoa in the 1998-99 financial year and on what date did he or the then Associate Minister first have doubts that the taxpayer was getting value for money? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The then Associate Minister of Education and I consistently had concerns about a range of issues in relation to this institution including excessive growth uneven levels of quality assurance and management and governance capability. Funding to tertiary education institutions such as the wananga under rules adopted in 1998 is based on how many equivalent full-time students are enrolled. In 2003 this Government introduced a managing growth cap on all institutions. In 1999 Te Wananga o Aotearoa enrolled 861 equivalent full-time students compared with 34282 in 2003. Funding in 1998-99 was $3.9 million. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This question was down on notice and it specifically asked the Minister on what date he had doubts. Now the Minister has had a few hours and it is quite important. He never answered the question on what date he first had doubts about the taxpayer funding. When we put a question on notice members of the Opposition have given up expecting answers to supplementary questions but we thought we would at least get an answer to a primary question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister certainly answered the first part of the question. As far as the question “on what date” could I have an answer? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think it is fair to say that my doubts pre-date my responsibilities as Minister of Education. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. “On what date” does not mean “It was some time before I took over the job.” It specifically asks “on what date”. The Minister has had several hours— 
Hon Member 
: Five years! 
Rodney Hide 
: Yes 5 years but several hours to get an answer to this question. I think it is trifling with the House—[ 
Interruption 
] Mr Cunliffe might care to interject— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Cunliffe will leave the Chamber. [ 
Interruption 
] Did Mr Cunliffe interject? 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: No I had an involuntary yawn and it was purely physiological. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Cunliffe will leave the Chamber. 
Hon David Cunliffe withdrew from the Chamber. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I suggest to you that when members ask questions as vague as in terms of what might have happened at some distant point in the past they can scarcely expect a precise answer. One could equally ask the member on what date did he come across this conversion that tax deductions were the answer to all problems. I doubt he could name a specific date; it is probably embedded in his genes somewhere. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thought the Minister addressed the question perfectly satisfactorily. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You may well have thought the Minister addressed the question perfectly satisfactorily but I wonder whether you might like to think about what he actually said. He indicated to the House that he was concerned when the wananga was picking up $4 million yet did not do anything as the figure climbed to $239 million. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. That was a comment and the member knows it. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You have removed Mr Cunliffe from the Chamber and I understand the reason for that. However it raises a point about interjections during points of order. An earlier interjection was made by a member in the ACT party that Mr Hide acknowledged in the comment he made. That should also result in a member leaving the Chamber. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will make those decisions. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: In light of the fact that the cap imposed by this Government saw the funding expand from $8 million to $239 million can the Minister tell us what is his response to the fact that Te Wananga o Aotearoa runs a corporate fleet of over 350 staff cars including LTD limos? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am not aware that Te Wananga o Aotearoa runs a fleet of limos. I am aware however of a supportive statement stating that Maori should be able to set up their own universities and that we should move past the colonial view that the Government knows what is best for Maori. That separatist statement came from Rodney Hide. 
Tariana Turia 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I have some clarification from Mr Mallard about a statement of self-determination being separatist? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No because that is not a point of order. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: What measures have been put in place over the last 5 years in response to ministerial concerns about Te Wananga o Aotearoa? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have quite a long list. In 2001 there was a settlement around expectations on retention completion and staircasing. The wananga was also subject to—[ 
Interruption 
] Well Mr Brownlee and staircases and pensioners are probably an interesting point. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister of course can be advised by his whips as to how long he would like question time to go on for. He is ensuring that it proceeds very much more lengthily than it would. Would he please answer the question? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: In 2001 there was an unscheduled audit from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Government put in restrictions on the offering of inducements. In 2002 Mr McNally was appointed to advise following concerns over the rapid growth in enrolments. In 2003 the wananga was subject to a special audit and the Government introduced the managing-growth policy across all institutions. In 2004 the Auditor-General was asked to look into the issue of potential conflicts of interest. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority undertook a further audit and there was a funding review of levels 1 and 2 courses. Earlier this year I wrote to the chair— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That answer is far too long. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I was asked what we have done. There were allegations that I had done nothing; now people are saying that I have done too much. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Should hard-working taxpayers be concerned that the Ministry of Education’s Tertiary Advisory Monitoring Unit has said that it has no particular concerns about the contract arrangements between Te Wananga o Aotearoa and a number of contractors with family links to wananga administrators; if so can the Minister confirm that it is the same Tertiary Advisory Monitoring Unit that had no problems with the COOL IT arrangements at Christchurch Polytechnic that ripped off millions of taxpayer dollars? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have concerns about that. My former Associate Minister Steve Maharey indicated that he had concerns about it. That is why the Auditor-General is looking into it. I think the Auditor-General is the appropriate person to look into conflicts of interest in tertiary institutions. 
Mike Ward 
: Is the Minister aware of the ground-breaking work being done by te wananga on second-chance education and adult literacy programmes and what value does he put on those? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I know that some very interesting work is being done by Te Wananga o Aotearoa. I know that it has put into tertiary education people who previously had not been able to get there. Whether those low-level courses in literacy are appropriate for a tertiary institution I have some doubts. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: What is the Minister’s response when I advise him that the enormous fleet of corporate wananga cars are groomed around the country by a single car-grooming company that is apparently on a contract that never goes out to tender? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Given the concerns that have been indicated to me about governance and management issues at the wananga I am not very surprised. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: What is the Minister’s response to the situation whereby the large corporate fleet of wananga cars is exclusively groomed by a company called Gazza’s Groomers which is owned and operated by Gary Wood who just happens to be the partner of the wananga’s deputy chief executive Min Marshall? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think that we have another thing to add to our list of things that the Auditor-General is looking at. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Can the Minister confirm advice that I have received today from a senior education administrator that if one were to take all the staff cars owned by every university polytech secondary school and primary school in New Zealand the figure would not reach 350; if that is so is that not yet another example that under the Minister’s administration there are two laws—one for the wananga and one for the rest of the education sector? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I had thought that the ACT party was the party that supported innovators and that paid people more according to their skills. These people have been very innovative but probably not in a way I approve of. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is I suppose complimentary to be told by the Minister that I am in an innovative party. But we are actually asking questions about his portfolio and I would like to know from his knowledge of the education sector whether it is right that the whole of the education sector put together would not have 350 staff cars. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I do not think that the member is right. Group Special Education as part of the ministry has a fleet of cars because they go around seeing children all over the place. But in relation to the tertiary part I think he is probably right. 
Rodney Hide 
: What responsibility does the Minister take for overseeing the taxpayer input into the wananga—going from $3.9 million a year up to $239 million a year—which has seen millions of dollars siphoned off into shelf companies to line the pockets of Dr Rongo Wetere and his family members and those of his seconds in command and their family members or is he content just to say he did not know? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There were three questions there; two can be answered. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I think that what the member does know is that I am exceptionally concerned about it. Because of my concerns and those of Mr Maharey the Auditor-General is investigating it. The promise I make is that if there have been inappropriate payments made to Rongo Wetere— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Isn’t this the man who got upset about Tuku’s underwear? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well that member’s underwear is always too tight. That is why he squeaks all the time. If money has gone out inappropriately then every endeavour will be made to have it returned. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not want to sound like a broken record over this but my specific question was— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: When is he senior to me? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member asked a question. He had a point of order that I presume was about his question. 
Rodney Hide 
: The member does not understand. He should get used to getting second— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will please come to the point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: My question asked what responsibility the Minister took but he answered that he was concerned. We also know from an earlier question that he has had concerns for 5 years so does his being concerned mean an acceptance of no responsibility? The question was: what responsibility does he accept? It was not: is he concerned?—because he has been concerned for 5 years over the very time all this happened.  
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. The Minister addressed the question. 
Security—Money-laundering and Financing of Terrorism 
9.  
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: Is he satisfied that New Zealand laws sufficiently protect this country against money-laundering and financing of terrorism? 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 Not entirely. New Zealand has in place laws that deal with money-laundering and financing of terrorism. Indeed it is not clear that New Zealand is being targeted by international groups involved in these activities. However because of our largely deregulated financial system there are potential loopholes in our laws which require closing if we are to meet strict international requirements and to deal with local groups that may be seeking to launder money. The Government has therefore announced today a number of proposals that will tighten the laws in this regard. 
Tim Barnett 
: What action is the Minister taking to tighten these anti-terrorism laws? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: The action taken is with regard to both money-laundering and the potential financing of terrorism. We are drawing up legislative and other measures that will put in place a monitoring framework to ensure that all financial institutions comply with standards to counter money-laundering and terrorist financing. These will include a registration regime for people providing money-transfer or currency-change services; statutory requirements for internal anti - money-laundering systems and procedures; and requirements to verify and retain information concerning the identity of originators of wire transfers of finance. 
Tim Barnett 
: When does the Minister expect these measures to be in place? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: In regard to money-laundering there is an inter-agency working-group that is being chaired by the Ministry of Justice and it will shortly undertake consultation with the financial sector on anti - money-laundering compliance monitoring frameworks and a registration regime. It will report back to the Government by the end of April. In regard to terrorism members will be aware that the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill which broadens and tightens the laws against terrorist financing was introduced in the House last week and is currently before a select committee. 
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Levels 1 to 3 2004 
10.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Education 
: Has the Ministry of Education reported to him on anomalies or problems in the 2004 NCEA examinations for levels 1 to 3? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 No. 
Hon Bill English 
: Has the Minister seen a report that a retired professor of chemistry and former chief examiner for the bursary exam could not complete the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 chemistry exam in the 3 hours allotted and reports of comments made by the chair of the Canterbury Science Teachers Association that: “Level 3 students will be very disadvantaged because they will get much lower marks than they really deserve.” estimating that 2000 to 3000 students would be affected? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I have not seen either of those reports. 
Helen Duncan 
: What information has the Minister received from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority about the NCEA results? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I asked for information from the Qualifications Authority and the key information about the 2004 university entrance pass rates is that they show that in 2004 47.2 percent of year 13 students gained university entrance compared with 51.9 percent in 2003 and 51 percent in 2002. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: Can he confirm that students who do not attempt certain external standards are marked as “Not achieved”; if so might this account for the increasing number of failures in certain subjects in light of anecdotal evidence that students are increasingly attempting only those standards that they need in order to pass the required number of credits? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Yes I can. I think the factor the questioner identifies is a major one in the apparently large failure rate that is showing up. This matter will be clarified as the full analysis of the final results is carried out. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm his earlier response that he has not seen any of these reports and that that means he is sitting in his office and asking the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to give him reports about the bits of the NCEA that did work so he can put those in press releases but is ignoring the raft of stories that are coming out of the woodwork right across the country from students teachers examiners markers and parents? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I did not say that I had not seen any of those reports. I referred specifically to the two reports that Mr English raised. I can assure him that I do give my attention extensively to the material that comes to me. I study it and ask for specific comment where appropriate. 
Helen Duncan 
: Can the Minister advise the House what reports he has seen about NCEA? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: Yes I can. For example I received a report from a meeting of the secondary school representatives on the Schools Consultative Committee which met on Monday 14 February. I quote from that report: “Generally the sector has confidence in the NCEA. It was recognised there were still rough edges but this was inevitable with such a major change. Again from their perspective what was important was that there was confidence in that as problems and issues arose the sector and the agencies concerned worked together to address them in a credible and transparent way.” That attitude is exactly the attitude the Government is taking. 
Hon Bill English 
: Why is the Minister interested only in good-news reports about the NCEA and will he be interested in a paper that will be published in a New Zealand chemistry magazine in which the author—the same professor who could not finish the exam in 3 hours—will say that he wonders whether the NCEA pattern of writing achievement standards in small sections is not producing an over-complex system containing too much meaningless gobbledygook and that the length of the 2003 chemistry exam was inexcusable and a disaster for students; if so what will the Minister do about that or will he just ignore it? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I can assure the questioner and the House that I am interested in all reports positive and negative about the NCEA and I am happy to investigate any particular instances that raise concerns with the member. 
Hon Bill English 
: What reassurance can he give an estimated 2000 to 3000 students who may have been disadvantaged by a shonky examination paper; what message can he give them today to reassure them that they have been not been cheated out of results they should have got as a result of their hard work and the hard work of their teachers? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: If the member is prepared to provide me with any substance of such allegations I will have them investigated. 
Police—Auckland Staffing 
11.  
RON MARK (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: Can he confirm that a Budget bid was made on 14 November 2002 by the police commissioner for an extra 100 fulltime-equivalent staff in Auckland for the specific purpose of improving response times particularly emergency response times; if so what was his response to that request? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 A bid was made for 100 extra staff to be deployed over 3 years. Initial bids are almost always scaled during the Budget process. The commissioner did get an extra 50 staff over 2 years. The commissioner has been given over 1000 additional staff and $200 million extra in his budgets by this Government since 1999. 
Ron Mark 
: Has the Minister reconsidered his original position given that the Government was warned by the commissioner more than 2 years ago that the response rate to emergency calls in Auckland was substandard and if he has not how can he continue to pass the blame on to individual police and the commissioner when it was clearly him and this Government that failed to act and that failed the Bentley and Asher families? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Chief executives always put up Budget bids knowing that they will not get all that they ask for. However I have to say that the response rates in the Auckland area generally have improved. 
Dave Hereora 
: How many of the more than 1000 extra police staff provided by this Government since 1999 have been deployed in Auckland? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Of the 1000-plus additional police staff appointed since the Labour-led Government was elected in 1999 370 have been deployed to Auckland. That is why the crime rate is the lowest it has been for the last 21 years and that is why the road toll is the second-lowest since the 1960s. And more good news is on the way. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: If as the Minister told the country today the police have all the staff they need does that mean they have enough staff to provide a 111 service that can minimise the risk to the public? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police are well provided for but they can always do with more and that is why we have Budget rounds. 
Ron Mark 
: Is it not a fact that the reason he refused to give the police the numbers they asked for in terms of their emergency response was that this Government’s focus is on traffic policing which is evidenced by the fact that 76 percent of all newly funded sworn staff since 2002 were “ring-fenced for road policing” as stated in a report from the commissioner to the Minister dated 21 November 2002? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: No. I seek leave to table two documents. The first one sets straight the record of the Southern Communications Centre response to 111 calls made in the House last week. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The other document concerns the policy not to pull detectives off serious investigations. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is that a press release? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: It is a press release from the office of the commissioner. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. 
Ron Mark 
: I seek the leave of the House to table a report from the Commissioner of Police to the Minister of Police on issues relating to policing in the Auckland area dated 21 November 2002. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is. 
Asbestos—Compensation 
12.  
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
 to the  
Minister for ACC 
: Has she received any advice as to the number of people who have qualified for lump-sum compensation for asbestos-related illnesses under the agreement between James Hardie Industries and former union employees that she tabled on 10 February 2004; if so how many people have qualified? 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 No. 
Sue Bradford 
: Why then did she emphasise the 1974 agreement between former union employees and James Hardie Industries in her answer to questions from Sue Kedgley on 10 February last week as if this agreement was a panacea when in fact it actually has not helped a single victim as far as we can identify? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: Because the primary question from our colleague Sue Kedgley actually related to the comparable document that is an agreement between James Hardie Industries and employees in Australia. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: Could the Minister tell the House again what assistance the Government gives to people with work-related asbestos-related illnesses? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: Claimants may receive a weekly independence allowance which can be capitalised. They may also be entitled to earnings-related compensation; home help; childcare; treatment costs; specialist medical treatment; personal care; non-emergency transport; medical products; aids and appliances; housing modifications; and pharmaceutical medications. Their estates may be entitled to funeral grants and any dependants may be entitled to survivor grants. 
Sue Kedgley 
: If James Hardie Industries accepted liability for New Zealand employees who worked in its south Auckland asbestos factory on 1 April 1974 why then is the Minister not putting on the company the sort of pressure that the Australian Government applied to it in Australia to get it to accept liability for sufferers of asbestos-related illnesses who worked in its factories there after 1 April 1974? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: I have had no formal approach from either former or current employees of James Hardie Industries about my entering into that sort of negotiation with the company. I would consider it if such an approach were made. 
Sue Bradford 
: Does the Minister agree with Dr Pam Smartt who was reported in this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 as saying that the Accident Compensation Corporation needs to adopt “a more lenient and positive approach” to those who are entitled to claim in respect of asbestos-related diseases; if not why not? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: The Accident Compensation Corporation is required to administer the legislation. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Does the Minister agree that it is unfair and inequitable that a person who is diagnosed with an asbestos-related illness after 1 April 2002 is entitled to lump-sum compensation but someone diagnosed a few months earlier is not; and why is a Labour Government with a tradition of treating workers fairly not ensuring that all people afflicted with these terrible diseases are entitled to the same compensation? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: The determination of deemed date of injury is a matter that is currently before the courts and I do not wish to comment on it. 
Urgent Debates Declined 
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have received a letter from Deborah Coddington seeking to debate under Standing Order 373 the announcement by the Associate Minister of Education of the assembly of an expert group to look into deficiencies in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) scholarship system. The assembly of the group is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. However it does not meet the requirements for the immediate attention of the House for two reasons. Firstly the setting up of an inquiry will rarely justify an urgent debate. Even when an inquiry reports it is only in an exceptional case that the report will justify a debate—see Speaker’s ruling 155/6. Secondly the House held an urgent debate on the problems with the NCEA only last week. There can be no justification for another debate today. 
General Debate 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. The big story of this week is Dr Don Brash. Do members remember Dr Don Brash? He was the first-term MP who elbowed his way to the top of the National Party by saying that he would set the policy agenda. That was his strength we were told. He was no good in the House and that is proven by the fact that he has asked four questions this year so far—one primary question and three supplementary questions. We know he cannot get the other good questions because other members of his party will not give them to him as he is no good at asking them. He is no good at public speaking we were told. He is no good at campaigning he cannot get elected directly he is no good on television and he is not much of a team player—but he does do policy well we were told. 
Last year we got the infamous speech at Orewa but we got no policy. What we got was a speech that ended in the sacking of Georgina te Heuheu. That is what we got from that speech. 
We moved on to law and order but the rhetoric got even thicker. We learnt that we would get 10 more prisons but no money to pay for them. 
This year the soufflé tried to rise for the third time. At Orewa we got the welfare debate the adopting out of babies and the forcible immunisation of children—all the kinds of rhetoric we have heard before—but no real policy. 
The only lasting result was that Katherine Rich disappeared from the front bench. I said at the time that Katherine Rich was not moving because she was forced to; she went because she wanted to go. She was very very wise to reposition herself because the National Party leader is being repositioned as we speak. 
He is no longer the focus of strategy. Policy is no longer what the National Party is about. Clue one: where is Murray McCully? Murray McCully used to be a limpet on the side of Don Brash—the consigliere to the Don. The consigliere to the Don is not seen any more; he is gone. 
What we have in his place is the slow rise of Bill English—not so much soufflé as refried beans—who is appearing on the front bench of the National Party. Mr English is the one who is now being noticed by his colleagues. I predict that Mr English is about to begin to make that move. But how interesting can it get? The National Party could not be unified behind that. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Five years! 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Maurice Williamson who is calling out now hates Bill English. Bill English hates Maurice Williamson. Gerry Brownlee wants to be the leader but John Key is the hair—and I mean “hair”—apparent at the present time. 
This is the big story: the Brash experiment has not worked. He has no policy to inspire the troops or the nation. He is quietly being abandoned by the people around him. He is not even speaking now. He sits like a lonely cloud in the House with no one noticing even when he leaves. He is a forgotten man. 
On 14 February 2005 it was reported that the National Party was closing the poll gap on Labour. The picture was of Don Brash but the face was that of Tony Ryall. Tony Ryall wants to be Don Brash at present. There is no doubt that following the next election Don Brash will be replaced as leader but there are strong signs now that the troops simply cannot wait. The damage is too great. The momentum is too weak. He does not lead; he does not even follow; he just sits. 
I do not know whether members have seen the film  
Dead Man Walking 
. It is a film about death-row prisoners. As those prisoners walk to their execution people call out: “Dead man walking!”. I will give members a break. They do not have to go to see the film to hire the video or to borrow the money. All they need to do is to watch Don Brash. Whenever he gets up the House is watching  
Dead Man Walking 
. I say “Goodbye!” to Dr Brash. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 I think the House and the country at large is concerned at the lack of accountability that has been exposed in Te Wananga o Aotearoa. The Government’s representative on the governing board Mr McNally has described a culture of executive extravagance. Yet we have also learnt this week that under this Labour Government funding for the wananga went from $8 million per year to $239 million last year. That is over a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money. 
Let us have a look at some of the governance issues. I say at the outset that the ACT party applauds entrepreneurial spirit. We do not mind people getting rich or becoming prosperous provided it is based on quality service provision and provided they are not rorting the taxpayer. They are the two key criteria and I very much doubt that this organisation meets them. It is clear that a group of people in this organisation are getting very very rich at the taxpayers’ expense. 
When we look at the governance situation there are a number of issues. The key question is: why has the Government not moved to address these problems? One thing we do know is that one of the major programmes the Mahi Ora programme was developed by a staff member and sold to the wananga for $7 million. That was $7 million of taxpayers’ money. The course was developed and sold to them by a woman called Susan Cullen 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: How much did she make? 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Indeed! She happens to be the daughter of the chief executive officer Rongo Wetere. That just happens to be a coincidence. That is the pattern of governance and I believe what could well be rorts in this organisation. 
We have heard today about the car-grooming business. There are dozens of these shelf companies. If we look at the ownership structure of these companies—the shareholders and the directors—they are all cross-pollinated. It would seem that all the same people are cross-pollinating these companies clipping the taxpayers’ ticket and rorting the taxpayers of this country. 
I will talk about the Oma Investments shelf company which supplies all the apparel and the resource kits. Let us be quite clear—there are 27000 students at this university. It is an enormous organisation and the inducements that are paid—using taxpayers’ money of course—to get students enrolled include free T-shirts free sweatshirts free briefcases and free laptops which students are told they can keep at the end of the course. Why? Because every time the wananga enrols someone it gets funding for another equivalent full-time student—another $5000 of taxpayers’ money. We learnt last year that it even enrolled members of Parliament. Members of Parliament were staggered to find that they had been enrolled in a wananga course. One needs only to stand in a queue for a hamburger particularly if one looks Maori and the next thing one knows one is enrolled and getting the kit with the apparel and all the rest of it. 
So Oma Investments supplies all this equipment. Guess who the shareholders are? The shareholders are the wananga chief executive officer Rongo Wetere the campus manager from Te Kuiti the ex-chairman of the council three other council members and the directors. It is made up of Rongo Wetere two of his sons the chairman of the council and so on. This is an absolutely endemic pattern. That structure was revealed in the parliamentary select committee inquiry that was tabled in the House yet the Government has continued to pump in nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in one financial year into this organisation. The quality of some of the courses provided is such that I have information to say that students do not even need to finish a course they need only to enrol. The wananga is not interested after a student enrols; it has its $5000. There are no quality checks. It even seems that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is giving out certificates to students who are now complaining because they pulled out of their courses yet they got their full kit—their T-shirts their sweatshirts and their computers. 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 The 9-year experiment of the ACT party is almost over. Its founders have deserted it. Roger Douglas has given up. The members hate each other. There are eight people in the party and six of them think they should be leader but only 1.6 percent of the country thinks that ACT should have anything to do with governing or that it should be in Parliament. We will see the last of that party in September of this year. 
But the public is asking another question and that is the question I want to focus on today. That question is: where is Dr Brash? This is the third week of the parliamentary session. Dr Brash asked a question on the first day and he has not been heard of since. Maybe he is following the advice that it is better to remain silent and be thought inadequate than to open one’s mouth and prove it. Time and again in this House Don Brash has opened his mouth and proven his inadequacy to lead the National Party. Bill English knows that. Bill English sees that. Bill English remembers that he was stabbed in the back by that newcomer to Parliament. Bill English will show the same loyalty to Don Brash as Don Brash showed to him and he cannot wait. 
Dr Brash is as silent now as he was during that great catastrophe the tsunami. I remember that Dr Brash left the country 3 days after the tsunami to take a holiday in Hawaii. He said nothing before he went. He lay on the beach for 10 days and said nothing. Then he came back and criticised his fellow New Zealanders for doing too little about the catastrophe. Don Brash has learnt nothing. This House remembers when Don Brash made a comment in the  
Australian 
 newspaper about this country being just another small Pacific Island State on the path to failure. There is the man who wants to be Prime Minister of New Zealand but runs down his own country. And he got the reaction. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Rubbish! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: That member knows the record. The article was written and that is what it said. Well I am proud to be a citizen in this small Pacific Island country. I am proud to be a citizen in a country that since the year 2000 has created more than a quarter of a million jobs. I am proud to be a member of a Government that has seen unemployment in the last year alone fall by 19 percent to the lowest level in more than 21 years. I am proud to be a member of a Government that is currently seeing 126000 people in job training with over 8000 of those on the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. I am proud to be the Minister of Justice in a Government that has seen crime fall by 18 percent to the lowest level in 21 years. 
But I go back to my original question. Why has Dr Brash been rendered mute in this country? I believe that it is a crisis in confidence because of his appalling mismanagement of the Katherine Rich affair. I want to finish by quoting this question asked by Linda Clark to Dr Brash: “Do you have a problem with women?”. Dr Brash replied: “I don’t believe so.” Linda Clark said: “Well Georgina te Heuheu; Lynda Scott is not standing again or seems to feel marginalised by you in some way; and Katherine Rich. No female on the front bench.” and Dr Brash said: “There are a number of reasons why Lynda Scott is leaving.” and “Georgina certainly is a woman; Katherine is as well.” What perception and insight! He said: “I’ve explained why both of these people couldn’t continue in their portfolios.” Linda Clark also said: “But you’ve got to be able to work with women.” and Dr Brash replied: “Er absolutely—and I can.” Yeah right! 
The problem with Dr Brash is not that he cannot work with women but that he cannot work with any of his caucus. There are now more former front-bench members of the National caucus than there are people currently sitting on the front bench. Dr Brash has brought a management style from the corporate sector to his caucus and it has failed. More than one of them has a grin on their face right now anticipating the day Dr Brash will be knifed in the back. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I suppose it is to be expected that Labour would be worried about Dr Brash’s relentless rise in the polls but the real crisis of confidence is one that Labour still cannot understand and that is the crisis of confidence of 150000 young New Zealanders in the school qualifications for which they study so hard. Why did the Government not mention that today? The other crisis of confidence is between Helen Clark and her main “Mr Fix-it” Ministers: Trevor Mallard Steve Maharey and David Benson-Pope. 
David Benson-Pope and Trevor Mallard remind me of one of those pantomime horses we see when the kids are doing a show. They both are fighting to be the back end! Neither of them wants to be responsible for stories like the one today where the head of the chemistry teachers association—a man whom I have never met and who probably has no partisan bent—tells us that 2000 to 3000 students were disadvantaged by a shonky exam. A professor of chemistry who used to set and mark exams could not pass that exam in the time allotted. That is why the Prime Minister has panicked and today she has dumped the Minister of Education right in the middle of it. 
It turns out that he knew about the shonky New Zealand Scholarship results because he told the Prime Minister about them on 15 or 16 January. He knew then because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had told him the day before. We are not talking about some large complicated analysis of the millions of papers which they keep referring to; we are talking about a single-page table that shows the number of people who entered and the number of people who passed. How could he know that fewer people were passing scholarship than expected without his having seen the table that showed the subjects? Was he given just the little bit at the bottom—the rest being covered up—and told: “Trevor you’re allowed to see only the one number at the bottom.”? Was he given a big square sheet of paper with one number on it and the rest was withheld under the Official Information Act because it was not in the public interest? How ridiculous! 
He was told on 14 January. He told the Prime Minister on 15 January. He was told again on 17 January. On 18 January his most senior officials Karen van Rooyen and Howard Fancy convened an officials group to work on the problem. On 26 January he put out a press release. Was it not wonderful? In it he said: “As this is the first time the new Scholarship system has been run there is particular interest in the patterns of results …”. Except that today he told the House he never looked at the pattern of results. He is particularly interested—so particularly interested that he never even looked at it. Who believes that? The Minister also stated: “Provisional results indicate that some students did exceptionally well in Scholarship but didn’t necessarily”— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I thought you might have intervened at that point. A member’s word has been given in this House and it cannot be doubted in this House as it was then by the Hon Bill English. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I heard it and I think it was borderline. In fact that is the way I accepted it—as being very borderline. But I did hear it. It was hypothetical. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: So there is particular interest and there is detail about the provisional results—so detailed that apparently he knows how many students sat three subjects and others that are not publicly available. But apparently he did not know anything. 
This press release was an attempt to cover up shonky results in New Zealand Scholarship which came to public attention only because concerned teachers and parents brought them to public attention. What we now know from what the Prime Minister and the Minister have said is that we would never have heard about that from those people. They set so much more store by the aspirations of young New Zealanders but they did not do what they should have done—that is tell the public. We would never have known—never. It would not have happened. It would have stayed covered up by the 26 January press release. 
In the real scrap going on now between the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Minister whose head will roll—Karen van Rooyen’s or the Minister’s? I say it will be the Minister’s. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 The whiff of the election has finally penetrated the previously blocked nostrils of the Opposition. The comatose members opposite have come out of their stupor and their sloth and they are setting out to convince New Zealanders that they are fit for the purpose of governing the country. Well for 2½ years they have been backbiting back-stabbing divided and demoralised—and that is just within the National Party caucus. Now they want Kiwis to believe they are united they are brimming with ideas and policies and they are eager to take the country boldly forward. Yeah right! It is all a bit rich. 
Let us examine their warrant of fitness for the job. Do they pass the test? Are there too many broken bits too many worn out bits? Are they riddled with corrosion and rust? Are their indicators on the blink? Has the previously sleek limo—only affordable by the rich—turned into a clapped-out hunk of junk? Where is the key to their future? Is he sitting two seats along from their leader? And who is in the driving seat anyway? 
Well New Zealanders could be forgiven for thinking it is supposed to be Don Brash but everyone knows that it is the invisible man Murray McCully who is often described as National’s powerful strategy and tactics man. He is a shadowy figure. He certainly does not represent the East Coast Bays in this Parliament. We never see him. When did he last speak in this Parliament? When did he ask a question? When did he last sit on a select committee? He is not even a permanent member of a select committee. Everybody else has to carry his load. He reminds me of a mole. Moles work underground they cannot see 10 centimetres ahead of them and their main purpose is to dig holes for everybody else to fall in. Even  
Molesworth & Featherston 
 in its latest edition thinks Murray McCully has lost the plot. This is the man who called the scrupulously neutral and honest commentator Colin James a leftist and who said this week that the use of condoms is an official endorsement of homosexuality. He should say that to the thousands of hot-blooded heterosexual males. 
Don Brash is the puppet and Murray McCully is the puppeteer. He has turned Don Brash into the metamorphosis man—the man who is constantly changing his principles and constantly changing his policies. Dr Brash reminds me of one of those plasticine stick men that we can bend and twist in any direction we want to put them in at any one time. In fact he is able to portray two different positions at the same time. He was for and against the seabed and foreshore legislation. He was against 4 weeks’ holiday and now he is for 4 weeks’ holiday. He was for civil unions; now he is against civil unions. He was against the superannuation fund; now he is for the superannuation fund. He was for Simon Power; now he is against him. He was for Katherine Rich; now he is against her. He was for Georgina te Heuheu; now he is against her. He was for Lynda Scott; now he is against her. He was against Nick Smith; now he is for him. He is both for and against Gerry Brownlee and he is still making up his mind about John Key. He is for blokes but he is against women—although to be fair he has been heard to say he has great respect for women. I am sure that even some of his best friends are women. He even recognises that Georgina te Heuheu and Katherine Rich are women. That is amazing. It took him 2 weeks to find a woman who was willing to talk about him in a positive light after he made the National Party front bench a woman-free zone. 
I think my local paper the  
Cook Strait News 
 got it right in its editorial last week when it wrote this about Don Brash: “Don Brash is starting to show his age … the good doctor is edging towards a twilight of shuffling around the kiwifruit orchard in slippers making unsolicited and long-winded small talk with passing strangers … He’s started up with schemes that were disastrous in the middle of last century but now have a certain nostalgic appeal to anyone who was young then.” I would say that that paper has it about right. 
What about policy? To get an insight into National’s policy we have to buy the  
Independent 
 and pay $550 for a table to be able to find out what National Party policy is. 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I bring to the attention of the House an area of great concern to Aucklanders and that is the forthcoming rates increases that the various councils are beginning to speak about. It is often said that it is the straw that indeed breaks the camel’s back. United Future has campaigned hard for a long time in this parliamentary term for a zero rating of rates for GST purposes. Now when we begin to see again that the rates increases in Auckland City are running at double and triple the current rate of inflation I believe that this issue needs to be brought to the forefront and to our attention. 
Earlier this year our member Gordon Copeland brought in a member’s bill that would have achieved the zero rating of GST on rates. Many in the House chose not to support that measure yet the cost would have been only $160 million. With the Budget in surplus and debt tracking down $160 million is almost petty cash territory in relation to total Government expenditure. 
Look at the interesting scenario we have in Parliament right now. The current Minister of Finance was an opponent of GST being applied to rates when he was a Labour Party senior whip. The Leader of the Opposition whom we have heard much about in this debate Dr Don Brash was the co-chair of the committee that recommended that GST be applied to rates. He is the same leader—Don Brash—of the National Party whom I heard badgering in this House yesterday against United Future because we wanted and supported an increase in fuel tax so that we can get the gridlock and the roads unlocked in the fine city of Auckland. That same leader was on the committee that put a tax upon a tax. Every fair-minded New Zealander knows that GST on rates is just a tax on a tax. One of the things that concerns me as a mere tradesperson who went into business—[ 
Interruption 
] I do understand GST far better than Chris Carter for example who offered to have me briefed by the Inland Revenue Department on zero rating of rates for GST purposes only to be told that our understanding was correct and his understanding was not correct. 
Removal of GST will not alter the revenue intake by local authorities. Both Australia and Canada do not have GST on their rates because they consider it a tax on a tax. Yet when we try to deal with that issue for the public of New Zealand we get a press release from the chairman of the Local Government Forum Simon Carlaw stating that United Future’s campaign to get rid of GST on rates would raise costs for everyone. Clearly and unfortunately those people in local government do not understand the issue that we are dealing with. Let us be clear. The removal of GST on rates will not alter the revenue of councils or the net revenue of businesses. It will however mean that the 12.5 percent GST impost will no longer be added to the bills of 1.7 million New Zealand ratepayers. The ratepayers need a break. Councils will increase rates from time to time but let us give them a fair go. They know that 9 percent of a rates bill goes to the Government coffers as a tax on a tax. United Future says that it is time to remove GST from rates. That would provide a 12.5 percent leeway so that over the next few years the hard-working New Zealand ratepayers—the homeowners of this country—will at least get a break and the camel’s back will not have to be broken. 
Removal of GST will positively affect the cash-flow position of ratepayers. They will have more dollars in their hand. I have never seen a Government that is such an expert at collecting tax as this Labour Government has been. The surplus is incredible. If the Government genuinely wants people to save if it genuinely wants people to become homeowners let us not put another negative on that by thumping the poor old ratepayer once again. Let us give them a break. Let us remove the GST from rates. 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 This morning I had the joy of cycling from Wainuiomata a lovely little town just outside of Wellington with three parliamentary colleagues. It was a delightful thing to do a most appropriate thing to do because it is Bike Wise week. Bike Wise week is a week devoted to encouraging people to get off their backsides to use their own means of getting around on a bicycle. One might say that it is a sort of frivolous thing to do but unless we encourage our younger people to adopt different lifestyles the reality is that a lot of people will get sicker as a consequence of having too little exercise in their lives. Type 2 diabetes is the most striking manifestation of this probably at $200 million a year annual cost to our health budget. It is something that is likely to blow out sometime in the next 20 years to over $1 billion—$1 billion that we could quite easily avoid from an input of relatively modest sums of money to encourage lifestyle changes at this stage. 
Is biking difficult? Is getting out and getting exercise difficult? Well it is in a society that has been designed around the motorcar. If people want to ride a bike they take their life in their own hands to do so. For the uncertain it can be a scary prospect. In fact this city has made some attempt to make it slightly easier. It has taken some of the grit and the gravel off the cycleway but none the less it is not the kind of thing that most people would do willingly. 
For the rest of the country—well could I say that the land transport roading programme last year devoted something like $100000 to each community for cycling initiatives. Most local authorities have not actually budgeted to spend that money. They have nothing in their particular roading programmes or in their regional land transport strategies to spend that money on. None the less the money is there to do it. It is a move by the Government in the right direction. What we have to do now is make sure that those local authorities take it seriously. 
The other reason Bike Wise is important this week is that it is an important part of changing the culture of high energy demands that our lifestyles require. Climbing into motorcars to travel to places that we should have been much closer to in the first place is not only extraordinarily expensive it is extraordinarily risky. Some time in this century the carbon dioxide levels are likely to double. They have increased by only 90 parts per million in the last 240-odd years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that in fact they are likely to increase this century by 550 parts per million from 370-odd parts per million. In fact since it made that prediction there have been announcements of 3 and 4 parts per million increase in carbon dioxide per year which gives a doubling to something like 775 parts per million. 
Now a 90 parts per million increase in carbon dioxide levels over the space of a mere 240 years gives rise to 1 degree of warming—large parts of northern China and large parts of Inner Mongolia turning to desert and extreme weather events. What can we look forward to if in fact carbon dioxide levels double this century? It is not the kind of thing about which we can simply say: “Well it may not happen the technicians will come up with a fix.” It is something that all of us have to take seriously and nothing less than a substantial culture change will do it. The reality is that the Kyoto Protocol is a requirement of all of us. This country has given an example accepted the responsibility and it now has to measure up to it. 
As I said nothing less than a substantial culture shift will meet that responsibility. So what is this culture shift? Well it is sourcing our needs closer to home. It is choosing to live closer to the places we need to be so we do not spend half our lives getting there and the other half of our lives earning the money to pay for it. It is actually supporting Buy Local. It is actually going into our supermarkets and looking around for the products that are made here and that do not have an ecological footprint of thousands of miles. 
I find it absurd in a food-producing nation that something over 60 percent of the product on the shelves in this country are imported. In a food-producing nation that is absurd. It is also something we can no longer afford to continue; carbon dioxide and sanity decide otherwise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I call—[ 
Interruption 
] Does Jill Pettis wish to take the call? 
Jill Pettis 
: No not us. 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 This is fortunate. We move up into the slots due to other people’s disorganisation but no doubt they will get their act together. I do not mind that they do not because we are in election year. But— 
Jill Pettis 
: It is not our call. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is somewhat unusual and I want to try to traverse it a little bit carefully in order not to breach Speakers’ rulings and a tradition in this matter. It is my understanding that there is a party with only one member the Maori Party that does not have a whip to keep it up to date. I wonder whether a messenger could be sent to Ms Turia’s room to let her know that she has twice now missed her call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank the member for raising that. It is a simple issue. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Well having said it was a simple issue I will take some more advice on it. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: When the member did not take the call because the member is not here I sought the call before my colleague in New Zealand First. On the schedule National is in the 10th spot. I am here and I did seek the call. But you did give the call to Mr Mark. He also sought the call but I think I was on my feet earlier. You might not have noticed but I did go for the call. But he is No. 12 on the list. So I seek your indulgence as to who should actually get the call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I have actually given the call. But— 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No I do not need any more assistance. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: It is a different point of order altogether. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Well I want to deal with the previous point of order and the member may then raise his point of order. We have a list here which I am following very closely. If members had taken the hint we would not have got into this. They did not take the hint. I gave the call to not the only person on his feet seeking it but the one in my clear vision and I apologise to Mr Tisch for that. But I have given the call to Ron Mark on that one and we are not about to use any resources of the House or any messengers to whip the Maori Party member. So that is where that lies. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Our Standing Orders are quite clear that a member may not refer to the absence of another member. It is quite wrong and indeed a serious breach of our Standing Orders for Mr Mallard to try to do that under the guise of a point of order. That was very unruly certainly a clear breach of our Standing Orders and very unfair on the member who may not be here. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Yes the absence of a member was referred to. I took it as the member trying to be helpful in the situation but I thank the Hon Ken Shirley for raising it. 
RON MARK 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. For your information and to clarify and assist the House I can inform the House that New Zealand First has just had communication with the member concerned and the member has expressed that she will not be speaking in this debate so I leave it to you and the whips to sort this out. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank the member. 
RON MARK 
: I recall in 1996 when I came to this House as a member of the New Zealand First caucus seeing members on the Opposition benches frothing at the mouth foaming about and telling the Government of the day what they were going to do about crime and law and order. In fact one of the key speakers in that Opposition team was the man now known and referred to as the Hon George Hawkins. Mr Hawkins in those days lambasted the Government for the lack of resources for the police and in fact in one particularly famous speech he accused the Government of under-resourcing the police because they were not able to paint out the scratches on their vehicles. Indeed he said they were having to use Twink to cover the scratches on their vehicles. 
Well a lot of water goes under the bridge and eventually a man who spent 9 years planning to be in Government to be the Minister to implement a National Crime Authority—something that he just dismissed as a possibility yesterday when it was called for by one of the other Opposition members—is now the Minister is now totally in control of resourcing for the police is now the one person the police go to for resources and to get the priorities and what are we seeing? Today we see a crisis of confidence in the police from the public. Today we have a situation where members of the public now know that if they have an emergency they can dial 111 and get a taxi. They were then told that if they dial 111 and people do not listen to them they should scream louder down the phone. Then they were told that if they dial 111 they would be told where the nearest police station was and they could walk to get there. 
What is at the heart of all of this? The heart of all of this is the priorities and the resources this Government gives to the police. We have known for quite a long time that there has been dissension and division in the police ranks with general duties officers calling the other lot “snakes”—the “snakes” are out there issuing their quota tickets. The Government sits by and plays Pontius Pilate and says that it is a police issue and the police determine the priorities. From reading the 2003-04 supplementary questionnaire to the examination of the estimates in the baseline update reports and the comments we now see there are specific requests in there from the Commissioner of Police asking this Government for specific resources. 
What did he say? He said that the Auckland area was failing in its ability to respond to emergency calls with 45 to 55 percent reaching the standard of 10 minutes. He asked for 100 extra officers just to deal with responses to emergencies. What did he get? He got one-third of that figure over 3 years. Yet this Minister has the audacity to sit here and tell the House that he has no control over the police resources or where they go and what they do. We now know that that is not true. 
In a report written for the Minister we now know that the police have said as far back as 2002 that their ability to deploy the resources to meet the emerging threats to law and order are now being heavily interdicted by the Government which ring-fenced resources for specific tasks only. We also now know from that same report that the Government has put the primary focus not on providing general duties officers to fight crime and promote law and order but the Government has put the focus on providing traffic cops. 
How do we know that? We know that because this report stated at that time that of the 375 newly funded sworn staff allocated by strategic priority the main beneficiaries had been road policing—285 positions. That says it all. That says that the Minister is manipulating how the police operate the Government is dictating where the resources go and the Government is emphasising a policy of road safety over and above all else. Today we get a bizarre statement from a police officer saying that no detectives are being pulled from serious investigations. The Government should tell that to a woman who has had her house invaded and burgled. Does this Government not have any idea of how personal a burglary is and how serious it is to people? Clearly not! 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 The Prime Minister opened the parliamentary session with one of the more uplifting speeches that I have heard in some time. I well remember the contribution made by the leader of New Zealand First Winston Peters when he said of the National Party that it now has three factions. I went back home and sought to put the names and addresses of each member of the National caucus into one of those three factions and I could not. I took Winston Peters’ speech seriously and tried to fit the National members into one of three factions but I could not. The reason is that I have six factions. Normally one does not get six factions in a political party; normally there are just two. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What about ACT? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: ACT has four factions. It had four people running for the leadership and therefore the ACT members split themselves four ways. For example New Zealand First had just two factions: those who went off with the Government of the day and those who did not. Certainly the Labour Party has had its splits and divisions in its history. I am sorry to say that we had a fair bit to do with the starting of the ACT party and of United Future. I guess we got ourselves up to three but not to six factions. 
National’s factions are not firm factions; they move daily. But they do have a certain pattern to them and they are often determined around behaviour gender or geography. It is worth taking a look at how those factions come to be. The first faction is the group of National MPs who will speak freely about what is going on in the National Party caucus as compared with those who do not. So it may be an issue of discipline it may be an issue of disaffection with the leader or it may be a little bit of each. When we look at the members who speak out and have something to say about the good Dr Brash generally speaking we find that they are people whom one expects will not vote for the good Dr Brash when he comes up for re-election after his failure at the next general election. Lynda Scott is an obvious example of that and Brian Connell is another. We can see—and I will be careful not to mention some names—that a number of National Party caucus members are quite happy to speak out including off the record but they find themselves reported as: “National MP says …”. We have a list of their names. As I said they include some unfortunate examples and I will not read that list out. However there is certainly a faction that will speak out versus those members who will not. 
The second faction of course is based on gender. The leader of the National Party has six women members in his caucus but none of them are on the front bench. One of them has decided to retire one of them got the biff earlier this year and one of them got the biff earlier last year. That is three out of six women who are disaffected and of course they are supported by the other three. So there is certainly a gender faction within the National Party; there is no doubt about that. 
The other group of MPs who are offside with Dr Don Brash are South Islanders. I do not know why but it just so happens that his predecessor Bill English is from the South Island. The aforementioned Katherine Rich is from the South Island as is the woman who is retiring Lynda Scott and also Nick Smith who was to be the deputy and then he was not and of course the member for Rakaia Brian Connell a member of the National caucus who publicly said about his own leader: “I am very disappointed. I think it’s a stupid decision.” He comes from the South Island. There are only two MPs from the South Island who are not on that list. One of them is Gerry Brownlee and I will come to him in a minute and the other one is who? Who have I missed out? Which South Island MP have I missed out? That is right; nobody can remember. David Carter is from the South Island. He sits there as the one South Island MP who is probably still onside with the leader. 
Then there is the brat pack. One of them is retiring one of them was the leader one of them was going to be the deputy leader and one of them is Tony Ryall. The members of the brat pack are not the friends of Dr Brash because one of the brat pack is Dr Brash’s predecessor and that faction sits there. 
Then there are the young and the restless. At the moment the young and the restless really have only three true paid-up members. They are Katherine Rich John Key and “Simon Says”. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Who? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I am sorry; Simon Power. Let me tell the House something about the young and the restless. They had a to-do just last week when Simon Power had to tell Katherine Rich not to resign from politics. 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 There is a major issue brewing in rural areas that affects the lives and security of many many people. A cloud is starting to develop that this Government will have to take responsibility for. I refer to the news of the last few days about the cut-back in fire appliances and fire trucks in regional areas. Here we have a headline “Brigades fear trucks could go in shakeup”. The Minister then comes out and says: “Burton denies plans to cut fire engines.” In the same article the Fire Service national operations director Steve Turek said on Monday that it was possible some fire stations may lose fire engines. So who is right? The Minister said that there will be no cuts or reductions yet the operations manager said that there will possibly be some cuts. 
I have asked some parliamentary questions about this issue. One question was: “Does the Fire Service intend to reduce the number of Fire Trucks …?”. The answer came back from the Minister: “I am advised that it does not.” In another question I asked: “If there is a reduction in the number of Fire Trucks … how many will be involved and at what locations?”. The Minister said I should refer back to what he had stated previously. I have a document about the fleet strategy which I intend to table after this debate. The New Zealand Fire Service’s fleet strategy states: “The initial application of this strategy shows that over the first five years 54 new appliances will be introduced. This will stimulate the relocation of 250 appliances and a condition report for 136 appliances.” That document states that there will be a relocation of appliances and the Minister has said that there will not be one—which is right? Is the Fire Service right in saying that it will relocate fire appliances or is the Minister sticking to his denial as he did in the newspaper today of any cut in the number of fire engines? 
This is a serious matter. The Fire Service fleet strategy report further states: “Appliance relocations and disposals will be inevitable as we work to get the actual fleet allocation aligned with the authorised fleet establishment.” It is quite clearly the intention of the Fire Service to reduce the number of fire appliances. In fact I am told that that figure could be as high as 143 fire appliances. Where will they come from? They will come from the small rural brigades that are at the forefront of fighting fires and looking after our interests. They are the first to arrive at the site of accidents yet this Government has no respect for the commitment and contribution that volunteer firefighters make to New Zealand. There are 11000 of those people. They give up their time. They are at the forefront. This Government is sticking it to them and saying that their contribution is not recognised and not worthy. 
This draft report on the fleet strategy also states under the heading “Barriers to overcome”: “Barriers that need to be addressed as part of this strategy include: The existing fleet allocation needs to be reshuffled in the best interests of our service and the people we protect. This will require management commitment tact and diplomacy.” There it is. The Fire Service is saying it will do that yet the Minister said in answer to my written questions that there would be no reduction in or relocation of appliances and in the paper today also said that there would be no relocations. 
I have here the Transalpine fleet strategy dated 16 July 2004. That presentation made by fire managers identifies exactly where the machines are placed in the Transalpine fleet area and what will happen to them. I will table it because it clearly articulates and shows that the Government will move to reduce them. People’s lives are at stake and the Government will be held accountable. 
I seek leave to table two documents. The first is the New Zealand Fire Service’s fleet strategy. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: The second document is the Transalpine fleet strategy report of 16 July 2004. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 Recently I spoke with parliamentarians in another jurisdiction and they asked me why this Parliament operates by insult. I thought that was a good question to ask. On listening today to question time and to many of the speeches particularly to the speech made by the Hon Bill English I think it is time to reflect on whether we should actually look at issues and at the way we can move the country ahead rather than continuing to operate by insult. National ACT and New Zealand First lead the pack but many of us are tainted by it. It was good to have the Swedish Prime Minister in New Zealand this week. His Government is the successor of a string of socialist Governments that have concentrated for over 6 decades with rarely a break in Government on public investment in infrastructure on building security for their people and on having a planned economy. In contrast New Zealand started off in the 1930s at the same time as Sweden did with a Government committed to using public resources to build the economy and social infrastructure in a planned and rational way. But unfortunately there have been very long periods of right-wing Government which have interrupted the progress that would otherwise have been made for the benefit of all people. 
Over the past 5½ years however we have had in a coalition Government a progressive administration that for the first time in three generations—the first time in almost 60 years—has a realistic chance of winning a third consecutive election. The Government has learnt from the Swedish model. The fact that pundits judge that there is the chance of a third term shows that achievement. It has been made possible because this progressive Government has had a clear strategy of partnership of sensible intervention in the economy of social development and of investing sensibly in our infrastructure. A reflection of that success is the unemployment rate which is the very lowest in the entire OECD group of wealthy nations. It has been reflected in the breaking of all records on job creation in the extending by 33 percent of workers’ annual holiday entitlement to 4 weeks’ leave and in the introduction and extension of paid parental leave for working parents. It has been further reflected in putting investment into regional and industry sectors that have delivered economic development better than Australia’s over the past 5 years so reversing the previous 30-year record of failure. Those achievements have come about because attention has been given to the key issues. We have seen an increase in the investment in public health and education to the benefit of all New Zealanders. The list of achievements is extraordinarily long because the work behind it has been extraordinary. 
Sweden’s Government has kept winning elections for decade after decade because it has stood four-square for strong investment in public education and health services combined with intelligent pragmatic economic and social policies conducive to ensuring that Sweden is able to sell to the world. Just last week that country with some of the highest and most progressive income taxes in Europe announced that it will over the next decade increase them further in order to further bolster its already world-class public services which are the envy of the world. The Swedes enjoy free high-quality school and university education generous unemployment benefits if people fall out of work State-funded maternity and paternity leave guaranteed childcare and much more. But Sweden has a pragmatic approach to its economy. For example alongside its progressive taxation system it has a headline business tax rate of 28 percent so that it can compete with its European Union partners. There is no contradiction for a successful social democratic party in raising income by a progressive taxation system while simultaneously reducing the corporate headline tax rate and promoting planned economic development with flexible policies. 
I started off by talking about the policies of insult and I have a warning for ACT. ACT is presently throwing accusation after accusation against Te Wananga o Aotearoa. The Progressives do not advocate that there be a turning away from the allegations that have been raised—there have been some serious allegations—but that the process of investigation be fair and not be conducted in the atmosphere of a kangaroo court. It does no good in New Zealand when we have a successful institution that has developed successful literacy programmes to tackle the 530000 adult New Zealanders who are illiterate or functionally illiterate to have ACT in a scramble to get above 5 percent in the polls intoxicated by the politics of insult. I believe and the Progressive Party believes that a country moves ahead if it looks seriously at its problems but does so in an atmosphere of analysis and informed debate and not in one of the politics of insult. 
JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to join the debate today because some very interesting dynamics have gone on in the House this afternoon. Mr English was the first speaker for the National Party today and it was very interesting to watch the little joy club that assembled around him as he got up to make his contribution. 
Darren Hughes 
: He’s doing the numbers. 
JILL PETTIS 
: He is doing the numbers. I tell those who did not bother to stay that there were quite a few members down here in the House. Quite a few National members were here supporting Mr English and clapping enthusiastically. So I tell those National Party members— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Don will be gone by Sunday lunchtime. 
JILL PETTIS 
: Yes Don Brash will be gone by Sunday lunchtime let alone by any other lunchtime after the next general election. I tell those members of the National Party who did not come down to the House that the numbers are gathering. So although we know that the National Party is riven with factionalism we can see that one faction is gaining momentum. I even saw one National member go over and very humbly fill the member’s glass with water. My grandmother would have said: “Don’t be a crawler.”—but never mind. I have a friendly warning for National Party: I would keep my eyes and ears open because the network is building. 
I want to comment briefly on Lindsay Tisch’s statement which was almost pyromanic in its content in relation to rural fire engines. I have to disabuse Mr Tisch of any idea he has that rural fire stations will be downgraded. Talk about ambulance-chasing! He is not ambulance-chasing but he is like habitual pyromaniacs who follow fire engines around the country and just get in the way. I urge Mr Tisch not to get in the way. This matter is about reviewing the equipment that rural fire stations require. I have a number of rural fire stations in my electorate and we are making sure that they have the best equipment possible. So the member should stop ambulance-chasing and shroud-waving because that is all it is. 
I assume that Mr Brash is listening to the wireless and is very aware that the debate this afternoon is about his performance in the House or lack of it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He’s hiding behind the bench. 
JILL PETTIS 
: I am sure he is hiding behind the bench. He is a mere shadow of his former self. He is not exhibiting the characteristics of a leader. A leader is “up there at ‘em” is in the front firing on all cylinders and has the caucus behind him or her. Well I tell Mr Brash that he should not have the caucus behind him too much or if he does to put on a flak jacket because the need for it is growing. Mr Brash’s performance since the House resumed this year has been absolutely abysmal. He has asked only one primary question and that is not the sign of a leader who is on the way who is strong and masterful and who is exhibiting the characteristics of leadership. It shows us what a paucity of support there is for the National Party out there in the wider electorate in that the party had to go as far as Switzerland to get somebody to speak positively about Mr Brash in his former employment. 
Darren Hughes 
: She’s probably staying in John Key’s holiday home. 
JILL PETTIS 
: Yes she is probably staying in John Key’s holiday home— 
John Key 
: Which one? 
JILL PETTIS 
: In the Alps. Fancy having to go all the way to Switzerland to get somebody to speak publicly in favour of or supportively about Don Brash! That speaks volumes. 
I have to tell other speakers today about the statistics with regard to our police personnel numbers. Those numbers are the highest they have been in living memory. More than 1000 additional staff have been allocated since this Government came to power in 1999 and an extra $200 million has been allocated to the police budget. That is absolutely unprecedented and it is why the crime rate is at the lowest it has been in the last 21 years— 
Darren Hughes 
: How long? 
JILL PETTIS 
: For 21 years. And the road toll is the lowest since the 1960s. Significant attitudinal and behavioural changes are taking place in this country and things that were previously socially acceptable are now no longer so. Drink-driving and driving at excessive and dangerous speeds on the roads are now no longer socially acceptable. People want the police on our roads in order to keep us safe. Our police force is multi-talented and multi-functional and that is why the crime rate is so low. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill 
Third Reading 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Customs) 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. Today the Labour-led Government is securing investment in the land transport infrastructure for New Zealanders in order to keep the economy moving. Over the last few days there have been headlines following the December household labour force survey showing how the unemployment rate is at a record low of 3.6 percent. That is the lowest in the OECD. Living standards have improved and business is expanding. To keep that momentum going which is what we all want it is imperative that extra money goes into building better transport systems over the next 10 years. High productivity and the avoidance of delays are the key to keeping New Zealand moving in the 21st century and money for that is needed now. Money will be collected in two ways. 
The bill contains two amendments to the Customs and Excise Act. It brings an amendment to increase the amount of duty paid on petrol by 5c per litre excluding GST. It also provides for excise and excise-equivalent duty allocated to the National Land Transport Fund to be indexed to inflation. That remains unchanged. Indexation will be annual and will come into effect on 1 April 2006. At expected average rates of inflation each annual increase will be approximately 0.5c per litre of petrol. That is necessary because the cost of land transport initiatives and the actual cost of improving our infrastructure keep going up. The Government will determine when it is appropriate to start the increase in duty taking into account the international price of oil. The Government is not raising the duty without careful consideration of the effect the extra cost will have on households and businesses but it has weighed up the advantages to New Zealand of doing the urgent work and it is confident that this is the best way to get our transport system working quickly. The duty will begin sooner rather than later at a time the Government decides and the passing of this bill allows for that duty to begin on 1 April should the Government decide that that date is suitable. I point out that any delay is not desirable and that contractors and workers are ready to start work and are standing by now. 
What will the money—that 5c per litre of petrol increase being introduced through this bill—be spent on? The total amount raised by this bill will go towards regional transport funding. This was first signalled last December as a means of addressing urgent infrastructure constraints as a key element of the Government’s growth and innovation framework. This unprecedented investment package in New Zealand’s transport infrastructure is central to maintaining a healthy economy. For the first time in years it provides the certainty that contractors and the wider business community need to make investment decisions. Over the next 10 years every cent of this extra money will be spent across the regions on a per population basis. That is good for local communities as it means the money will be there for the local projects that Transfund and Transit have planned in their areas for the next 10 years. 
All regions of New Zealand will gain extra transport project work from this funding: Hawke’s Bay will gain an extra $70 million; the Canterbury region will receive $252 million; Wellington will receive 219 million; further north Northland will receive $73 million; and Auckland will receive $716 million and another $9 million from the consolidated account. I reinforce the Minister of Transport’s view that effective land transport that meets the needs of industry helps attract investment into areas with potential growth. This extra money adds to the Government’s $227 million from the “Moving Forward” package of 2002. The increase in petrol excise and road-user charges will generate approximately $207 million annually excluding GST. This Government is committing a massive $18 billion to land transport over the next 10 years to rebuild the country’s neglected infrastructure. I restate to this House and to members of the public that all the additional funds from this tax will be dedicated to land transport and allocated under the National Land Transport Programme. Its provision it is promised will improve land transport roads and local networks. 
I say to those on the Opposition benches who are considering voting against getting New Zealand moving that they are risking the New Zealand economy and frustrating New Zealanders. National says that the money should come from slashing other areas of Government spending where money raised from fuel duty is currently spent. Two of the biggest areas funded by the Crown are health and education. Those members should try telling the public: “Oh sorry! There’s going to be less money for nurses less money for doctors and less money for treatments.” Is that what the public wants? Try telling people: “There will be no more money for computers in schools and there will be a cut-back in public services and tertiary education.” That is the prescription of the National Party. Or does the National Party want to plunder the balance sheets of State-owned enterprises and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund or the committed capital expenditure programmes for hospitals and prisons which are a major constituent part of what is referred to as a surplus? 
What New Zealander would vote for those cut-backs? New Zealanders do not want a Government that would vote to strangle public services. By failing to support this transport funding package National is saying loudly and clearly that it will not invest in making our roads safer. It will do nothing to reduce congestion or help business to undertake its work by decongesting our roads. Ordinary Kiwis trying to get their kids to school on time in a car need decent roads to get through the traffic flows. The National Party is saying that it will do nothing to help those ordinary families in that situation. 
 This Government by contrast says “Yes” to safer better roads and better infrastructure. However good transport systems cost money and this bill ensures that there is money now and in the future to make improvements to land transport. Companies complain that domestic freight is stuck in traffic as the roads are clogged. People running businesses are sitting in traffic. This is bad for productivity and this Government is determined to turn that round and keep New Zealand competitive. 
As I conclude I would like to quote the National Party leader who said: “There is no doubt that our roads are under huge pressure.” He also said: “The real solution to Auckland’s traffic congestion lies in building more roads and doing so without delay.” The failure of National and New Zealand First to support this bill is another flip-flop: flip—something needs to be done; flop—failing to commit to what needs to be done. No one wants to be sitting in traffic. It makes sense rather than burning petrol in thin air and getting nowhere to put some extra money into fuel thus getting traffic flow going and safer better roads. 
The Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill is designed to provide a more secure funding base for improvements in land transport. It is only with a dedicated revenue stream indexed to inflation that we can be confident that all our land transport will receive the ongoing improvements it needs. This Labour-led Government is bold enough to make the tough decisions that will get New Zealand moving. Responsible and progressive members will vote in favour of this bill. I recommend the bill to the House. 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 The great tragedy about the speech from the Hon Rick Barker we just heard is that he actually believes it. 
Peter Brown 
: I don’t think he did. 
JOHN KEY 
: I am sorry but I say to Mr Brown that the Minister actually believes it. That is the tragedy. 
I have two pieces of very pertinent advice for the Minister: firstly he should get a new speech writer and secondly before he comes down to the House to give a speech he should read it first. Then he will be able to work out the bits he should delete so that he does not make a fool of himself in the House as he just did. 
National believes in fixing New Zealand’s roads. In fact National members have been out front talking about this issue and about its impact on the infrastructure and the growth of our economy for months and months. So I will put a few facts on the table correctly. 
The first of them is that that was a speech by a Minister whose Government brought to the House the Land Transport Management Bill. What was that legislation? Oh that is right: it was a coalition agreement between the Green Party and the Government. It was all about cycleways walkways and ways to make sure that the private sector cannot be involved in building one single road in New Zealand. Lo and behold it has been an Act for a number of years now and we have not seen a private-sector road built—and nor will we. That is how much the Government really cares. 
There should not be any confusion on this issue at all. National believes in building roads; we believe in building lots of roads. I do not think one could find a New Zealander who has met me or who knows me who would criticise me for saying that I do not believe in building roads. 
Darren Hughes 
: That’s true. 
JOHN KEY 
: They will not accuse me of saying that I do not believe in building roads I say to Mr Hughes. We believe in building roads and in building them effectively. 
But what we do not believe in is the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill we are debating in the House today. We do not believe in it for some very very sound reasons. 
I want to run through what the bill for a large part will do. The first thing it will do is add a 5.6c a litre petrol tax to the current motor spirits excise that is levied on people as they fill up their cars at the service station. The amount is not 5c; it is 5.6c because it is 5c plus GST—a tax on top of yet another tax. 
This is happening at a time when the Government is running the biggest surplus in New Zealand’s history. According to Michael Cullen the Government is out of cash and unable to do anything. On the other hand it is running the largest surplus in New Zealand’s history. Dr Cullen has been very quick in the House to berate journalists up and down the country about the fact that they do not understand accrual accounting—that they cannot understand that a $7.4 billion surplus is not a cash surplus. I actually agree with Dr Cullen. It is not a cash surplus and the Crown will have a borrowing requirement going forward at some stage. 
But what I also know about accrual accounting is that if the Government wants to go out and spend $200 million on roads—the equivalent of what will happen through this petrol tax if it ever comes in—it could do that by borrowing the money and making an investment in our economy. That would cost approximately $12 million a year as a hit on the operating balance and the financing costs of those borrowings. Or it could take the $500 million that it puts into the Reserve Bank—in my view another capital item that it does not need for an intervention programme that will never take place—and put that money into New Zealand’s roads. Or it could look at a number of other capital items it is making and put those into our roads. That is the first point. 
The second point is that lo and behold last year the Minister told the House that he would not introduce the petrol tax right at that moment although this bill allowed him to do that because he was concerned about the price of oil. When I asked him what the price was in New Zealand dollars that he as the Minister was targeting—because we have to consider the actual underlying oil price and the exchange rate—he could not give me an answer. He did not have an answer. 
Well of course he has an answer. It is not an economic answer but an election-date answer because he knows as I know and as the other 4 million New Zealanders know that when a party goes to the polls having increased a petrol tax while running the biggest surplus in New Zealand’s history that party is not very popular. 
Darren Hughes 
: It’s all cash. 
JOHN KEY 
: I say to Mr Hughes that no it is not all cash and I wish he would wake up from that sleepy little hollow that he is obviously occupying and listen to my speech. The Minister could well and truly finance roading out of capital requirements and it would cost $12 million a year. A $200 million petrol tax would not be needed. 
Darren Hughes 
: To build all the roads the member wants? 
JOHN KEY 
: Absolutely—it would build all that the Government will fund. I suggest that Mr Hughes should wake up from that sleepy little hollow and pull out an economics book—or go and ask the Minister of Finance when he next sits behind the Minister to explain accrual accounting to him. The Minister would do that in a breeze; he understands it very well so that would work well. 
We do not know when the petrol tax will be introduced. The only sort of fly in the ointment came in a story last week in the  
Dominion Post 
. It stated that contractors were very worried because they had geared up on the back of the new roads to be built. 
But of course when the increase in the petrol tax does not come because the oil price is too high those roads will not be built. How do we know that? How do we know that the roads will not be built? We know that because at the Finance and Expenditure Committee the very diligent National spokesperson on finance—my good self—asked the Minister whether the roads would be built if the tax were not introduced and he said “No.” That is right. It might come as a shock to Labour members but he said “No.” 
Jill Pettis 
: But we are putting the tax on. 
JOHN KEY 
: That is right. Labour will impose the tax—after the election if it wins. I know that that is a very big “if”. 
In the meantime legislation has been introduced to the House that gives any future Minister of Finance carte blanche to impose that tax any time he or she wants. And we do not actually know what rate will be targeted. Michael Cullen does not know because a rate is not something that can be measured within 31 days of a calendar event. That is not the way one looks at oil prices. 
So I think the Minister of Finance owes it to the country to be honest with us. He should tell us the truth; we are all grown-ups. He should come and tell us that he does not want to impose the tax because it is really unpopular because he is running a whopping huge surplus and because he knows that if he does impose it he might not get re-elected. He should say that he really cares about being elected so that he is not going to impose it until after the election—if his party wins. That would be the honest answer. At least we could all live with it and at least we would know we were being treated like grown-ups. I for one would thank the Minister of Finance for his honesty in coming to me and telling me exactly the way it is. But instead we have to weasel our way through the information. 
The second point I want to touch on is the issue of indexation. This is a very interesting Government. Not only does it not quite understand accrual accounting but equally it thinks it is absolutely fine to index its revenue stream. The Government has no problem at all with applying indexation to the excise on motor spirits tobacco and cigarettes and no problem at all in saying that the cost of inflation is having an impact therefore it needs to inflation-proof its income stream. But when it comes to the income of New Zealanders when it comes to the workers out there and their earnings being inflation-proofed this Government does not want a bar of it. We have had 5 years of the biggest surpluses and of inflation gnawing away at people’s after-tax earnings but there is not one skerrick of movement towards inflation-proofing incomes. 
Peter Costello did that for the Australian people but Michael Cullen did not do it and when his own support partner the United Future party came to the House with a Supplementary Order Paper on a tax bill and said it wanted to suggest the indexation of income bands the Minister of Finance vetoed the suggestion. So it is OK according to the Minister of Finance to veto inflation-proofing when it is somebody else’s money but when it is the Government’s money coming in the Government has its hand out and is very happy to index it. That is the message from the Labour Party. 
This is a Government that frankly I do not think has its head at all around the issue of roading. I do not think it has a plan. It does not want to see the private sector involved. For all the numbers that Government members quote like the $18 billion the real truth is that real spending on new roading as a percentage of GDP has been falling over the last 20 or 30 years not rising and that the private sector has no involvement in New Zealand roading. This is a very very unfortunate piece of legislation that National is very proud to oppose. 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 I am not sure what is the most interesting part about following John Key in a debate. I am not sure whether the part when he conceded that the National Party cannot win the next election and that Labour will be returned to office and he is concerned about our transport programme following that was the most revealing part because we have not yet worked out what faction he is in. I am not sure whether the most revealing part was the kind of typical National Party voodoo economics that we see right throughout our electorates at the present time. The National Party keeps saying that this country is overtaxed and we need to slash tax rates to try to get more people to move to New Zealand while at the same time with every piece of Government expenditure they see they want to spend more. Whatever it is the National Party’s answer is: “Let’s spend more on it.” 
I have not seen a single thing that National members do not want to spend more on. They want to spend more on education and on health. Lindsay Tisch made a very animated speech about fire trucks. They want more money for that. John Key says they want more money spent on roads. The National Party has been whingeing up-hill and down-dale about roads and about the need to improve transport. Guess what? The Labour-led Government agrees. I want to see more roads built to get to my electorate on the Kapiti Coast. I am very very keen to see that happen because it is necessary for the economic development of our region. 
But I will finish the rest of the argument which is: how are we going to pay for it? The Government has brought to Parliament a bill that sets out very clearly and carefully how we want to fund the extra money for roading through the National Land Transport Fund. The parties whose members stand up in the House and say: “Woe is me we need more roads.” also walk through the Noes lobby and say they do not want to pay for them. They cannot have it both ways. The Government has been very upfront with the people of this country and people appreciate that kind of honesty. 
Let me ask the Opposition spokesperson on finance a question. If by some dreadful chance National became the Government at the next election would it repeal this petrol tax? He does not have so much to say now. Would the National Party in office repeal this petrol tax? They do not want to say a thing—there is silence. So they will oppose it today. They will walk out of this Parliament and demand more roads but they do not want to pay for them and they will not say what they would do if they had the chance to repeal this legislation. That says a lot about the rudderless National Party of the present. I am voting for the bill because it will bring more roads to our region and I think that will be good for New Zealand. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 This is a very sad day for New Zealanders. The Government is about to pass legislation that will add 5.6c per litre to our fuel bills. I think today is the day that the Kyoto Protocol will be ratified and I think we can expect a carbon tax to go on our coal-fired power stations which represents— 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Hooray! 
PETER BROWN 
: —listen to the Greens—6 or 7 percent of the power generated in this country and probably from shortly thereafter if not today they will be paying a carbon tax. Mr Howard is coming here very shortly from Australia where I think 76 percent of electricity is generated from coal. He is not going to put on a carbon tax because basically the Australian Government thinks of its people first and foremost. 
I heard Jeanette Fitzsimons say on the radio the other day that this Government has lost its heart. It has—it has lost its heart. It has lost its concern for the average working person and indeed the Greens have coupled themselves alongside it. It is an absolute disgrace to put 5.6c on a litre of petrol. It is unnecessary and I think everybody knows that. I heard the Minister say he wants to do this to keep the economy moving. I will come back to that statement. 
John Key 
: A clanger. 
PETER BROWN 
: Yes it is a clanger an absolute clanger and I will come back to it. But he made another statement. He said that this is the best way to address the issue. I ask any Government member and United Future what alternative they have examined. When the Government says it thinks this is the best way that implies it had some other option. But it has not considered anything at all. The Government is simply saying that it wants more money so it will tax the poor old motorist. 
Gordon Copeland 
: What’s the alternative then? 
PETER BROWN 
: I will answer that. I ask the member to sit there because he might learn something. I will tell the member another thing he should learn and it is that I come from a party that means what it says. We do not go along with the philosophy—and this is a debating point so the member need not raise a point of order—whereby we say we want changes to tax rates and so on but when the Government says it wants confidence and supply we roll over. We are not into that league at all. 
There are many ways of advancing New Zealand and one of the most important ways is to build more roads promptly. The report that the Government should at least read—and Mr Copeland should take note of this—is the Allen report. It identifies four areas of concern in this country. There are only four areas—and I have the report here. Those areas are called the Passing Lanes package the Auckland Western Ring Route package the Tauranga Strategic Roading Network package and the Wellington Regional Land Transport package. The report identifies the benefits and I will read them for the benefit of the Government because I know they are too tired to read this booklet on their own: “The total benefits comprise a net increase in GDP of around $1 billion a benefit of $65.9 million attributable to the value of lives saved and permanent disability and the benefit of $511 million from travel time savings related to non-work activities.” 
It goes on to summarise those benefits: “This implies that for every dollar invested in the proposed packages New Zealand will receive benefits worth approximately $4.75 and these are economic benefits only. For every dollar invested New Zealand will be better off by $4.75.” That varies from package to package but it is the overall average. Further it states: “Regardless of whether the packages are undertaken individually or in aggregate the expected gains tower over the initial investment costs required to finance the proposed infrastructure.” 
This document alone states that we should be borrowing to advance our roading if we cannot afford to do it from the current revenue stream. 
Let us examine the current revenue stream in the National Land Transport Programme for this year. Government members might like to look this up to see that I am not talking fiction. The estimate over the next 10-year period including this tax and the indexation is $18.7 billion. If we take out this tax and take out the indexation we are at around $16 billion. That is a lot of money in anybody’s language. If we look at what the Government takes from the petrol motorist over the same 10-year period it is a further $7 billion. So over a 10-year period we are talking about the Government collecting from the motorist through road-user charges registration petrol tax and everything else something like $23 billion. I suggest to members that if they drive down any street in this country that is occupied they will see a number of buildings and most of those buildings are mortgaged or have been mortgaged. They will see cars or trucks and most of those cars and most of those trucks are either leased or paid for on hire purchase. 
In other words the average New Zealander uses the opportunity to borrow against future income for his or her house building business farm or whatever—and for his or her vehicle. Yet for the roads we stick to this antiquated “pay as you go” philosophy. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I hate to break it to you but the Government has a mortgage too. 
PETER BROWN 
: Mr Prebble will get his time in due course. Basically roading in this country is on a “pay as you go” system and it is old hat. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: What? 
PETER BROWN 
: Mr Prebble obviously has not read the literature available to him. I suggest that he does because this Government spends what it gets and collects next year for the motorists. Last year it underspent by something like $230 million. 
Roads have not kept pace with vehicle traffic and user demand. We know that and we know that that is principally because past Governments have taken from the motorists and used the money here there and everywhere. That is absolutely wrong. National wants to correct the situation. I listened to John Key with considerable interest. National wants to correct the situation by allowing private enterprise into the system. We say that that is not necessary. We say that that is equally wrong. 
There are three things we in this country should be doing. Firstly we should be identifying the specific roading we need for long-term use and getting it absolutely correct. Secondly we should be building those roads on an as-required basis. In other words if we want a bridge that will accommodate 100000 vehicles a day in 10 years’ time we should build it in such a way as to achieve that without adding a great deal to the design and construction costs. Thirdly we should be putting in place a continuous and sustainable funding stream. The only way to do that fairly given what the motorist currently pays is to use the money that is taken from the motorist at present through fuel taxes road-user charges etc. 
If that is not enough—and I suggest that it will not be enough because the system has been robbed blind for so many years and we need to do so much—we will need to get into borrowing mode. I believe that sufficient income will come in to justify that. The gains outlined in the Allen report support our getting on with the job and doing it now. We must move away from the “pay as you go” regime and towards a 21st century type of regime. There is not a person running a business of any size who would finance expansion in the way we finance the expansion of roading in this country. It is a sad day indeed when the Government is sticking to this antiquated thinking and is imposing on the motorist a further increase in fuel taxes—and worse still indexing the whole darn lot to inflation. New Zealand First will be opposing this bill. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
:  
I seek leave to table the 1996 coalition agreement between New Zealand First and the National Party in which both parties gave their word that they would form a coalition Government for the 3 years through to 1999. 
Document not tabled. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I thank my colleague Richard Prebble for allowing me to swap places on the speaking list so that I can get to another appointment. I appreciate it especially as what I am about to say is probably rather different from what he is about to say. 
The Greens support this bill because it will help us move to a transport system that uses less fuel in order to get us to where we are going. There are two very important reasons why we need to do that. One is the question of climate change. We have been celebrating the coming into force today of the Kyoto Protocol but if we are going to stop the climate change that threatens our agriculture our economies our health and our way of life it is absolutely vital that we start burning less fossil fuel—and transport is one of the chief offenders. The other reason is that we are now getting quite close to the time when it will not be possible to meet the rising demand for oil simply by pumping more out of the oilfields. We are getting close to what is known as peak oil. When that happens prices will rise quite alarmingly and availability will steadily reduce. 
This bill helps to reduce energy use in transport in two ways. Firstly it allows more money to be raised to invest in the infrastructure we urgently need in order to adapt to rising oil prices and by that I mean the rail systems the public transport systems the travel-demand management systems and the cycling facilities which will be funded along with some roading improvements. Secondly the petrol levy rise signals the long-term oil price rise in time for people to start adapting to it in their own lives. As petrol starts to cost more people will start to see the reason for making sure that the next car they buy can do a minimum of 50 miles to the gallon the reason for making sure that the next time they move house they try to live closer to their work and the reason for trying to make sure that they can do short trips on a bicycle or on foot. 
Most people still have not caught on to the fact that the oil price rises we have seen over the last year are not temporary and are not the result of the war in Iraq. Although a number of short-term fluctuations are caused by those supply features the long-term trend is that oil prices are going steadily up. New Zealand needs to prepare for that. We need to prepare for it with more efficient vehicles. If we had vehicle standards we could get twice as much out of every litre of fuel as we do now. We need to prepare for it with more public transport more rail and by becoming less dependent on long-distance overseas trade for low-value commodities. 
I am not convinced that the diesel increase that is foreshadowed in the bill but will happen through Order in Council should be only for vehicles under 5 tonnes. I am not convinced that the heavy vehicles are actually paying their full way in terms of paying for roads given the very much greater damage they do because of their axle weight. We cannot afford to feather-bed the trucking industry if we want a fair level playing field for rail which is more energy efficient. 
I am concerned that the decision of the Minister and the select committee to defer the coming into effect of this increase means that it may never happen. We are not being given any particular oil price at which the Minister feels he will be able to trigger the coming into force of this rise. The futures market tells us that the price of oil will not drop below $40 again. Treasury places a lot of faith in the futures market when it does its oil price forecasting. We are still however operating under a Government Budget that has an assumption that by now oil prices would be back down to $19 a barrel and will stay there indefinitely. Prices will of course go much higher than $40 a barrel and if the high New Zealand dollar starts to drop we will feel that increase as a double whammy. 
I note that the new money raised in this way must still be allocated under the National Land Transport Programme and must be spent in accordance with the Land Transport Management Act. I think that this has escaped the notice of a number of regional land transport committees and local councils many of whom have not yet got to grips with the new Act. It is not just a roading binge that will be accelerated by this extra 5c a litre but a balanced range of transport options—road rail public transport cycling walking and travel-demand management. If those bodies put forward proposals only for roads they may find that the funding does not actually reach their bank accounts. 
I particularly note that the proposals of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Land Transport Committee—the Minister lives in that region and he might like to look into this—for spending the new funding are 100 percent for new roads for trucks particularly for getting freight to the port. It makes no rail public transport or demand management proposals and it makes no proposals to consult with the community. I hope the Minister will meet with his regional council staff and tell them to read the Act or they might get a nasty surprise and find that the funding will not follow their grand plans. 
Finally I return to the question of climate change as this is the day on which we are celebrating the Kyoto Protocol. I particularly commend the four Greenpeace activists who are on top of the Marsden B power station at the moment with a big banner that states: “Save the climate—stop coal”. This is a proposal that will massively increase our greenhouse emissions. The Marsden B power station is a very old inefficient dirty station that will convert coal very very inefficiently into electricity. It will shower the people of Whangarei with sulphur dioxide dioxins and fine particulates that cause cancer and it will dump mercury and other heavy toxic metals into the harbour. It will import millions of tonnes of coal from Indonesia and stockpile it near the wharf in a leaky stockpile. The local residents are appalled at this proposal and I commend the young people who have got themselves on top of the building. The company refuses to go down and meet them so it looks as if they might be there for quite a while. I say good on them. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. I follow the Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons and I am appalled that she should use her time to applaud a group of people who are trespassers and who are breaking the law. The Green Party’s idea which it promoted again today is that it is perfectly OK for the Green Party to break the law but for no one else to do so. Those people on Marsden B power station are not activists they are criminals. I hope that when they come down from the private property on which they are trespassing they are arrested and that the courts finally decide to get tough on people who claim that their principles enable them to break the law. 
I will make another comment for the Green member about the Kyoto Protocol. One of the reasons that the ACT party has always opposed the Kyoto Protocol is firstly it will not solve the greenhouse problem. If we were to look 50 years into the future it will have made almost no difference. Secondly it is fundamentally unfair to New Zealand because of the appalling way that successive Governments negotiated our position. The member should understand that the targets for each country are different. I will give one simple example. A friend of mine who owns a reasonable-sized farm did a purge on possums and was staggered to discover that he took off 8000 possums. He had a look into this and found that 20000 tonnes of green matter is eaten by possums every day. He asked why the Government did not just get rid of possums and thereby meet our greenhouse target easily. Getting rid of possums would meet the target but the Government will not do it because the Green Party said that getting rid of possums should not count and it will not. So even if we do get rid of possums it will not count. Of course all the forests in Russia count but New Zealand’s forests do not. That is because of the way that the Green Party the Labour Party and the National Party negotiated the Kyoto Protocol which is very unfair on New Zealand. 
What is proposed under this excise tax is to increase fuel tax by 5c per litre. The ACT party is opposed to this measure. Are we opposed to more roads? No we are not. In fact if members were to go back and look at the parliamentary record they would see that the first party in Parliament that stood up and consistently argued that we have under-invested in roads and that we need more of them especially in Auckland was the ACT party. The parliamentary record shows that. Is there a shortage of money to build roads in New Zealand? Of course there is not. There is no possible argument for any Government to say that we should increase taxes when it is running a record surplus. Currently there is a tax of 18c per litre plus GST on fuel. Half of that money goes into the Government’s own accounts so there is no justification for an increase in taxation. 
I will raise for the House an even more serious issue and it is a constitutional one. By indexing fuel taxes to inflation the executive is removing the necessity for the executive to come to Parliament and ask for permission for tax rises. Those who have studied history will know that the reason we have parliamentary control over the Crown and the little control Parliament has over the excesses of the executive is that every Government no matter what colour its stripes has to come to this House and justify an increase in taxation. But this bill means that the Government does not have to come back to Parliament again to increase fuel taxes. The Government might say that there is a precedent for that move because alcohol and cigarette taxes are now inflation-adjusted. Indeed I was part of the Government that did that. I think it is wrong. The more I think about it the more strongly I think that it is wrong and that no real Parliament should ever agree to it. 
The Westminster system means that whatever party is in Government it must ask for approval from the House to increase taxes. But this tax is even worse because with this bill the Government has said that it wants the ability to increase tax from 1 April but it then wants the ability to decide whether it will. We all know how the Government will decide; it will have a look at the public opinion polls to see how it is rating. If it thinks that it is polling high enough to introduce an unpopular fuel tax it will introduce the tax on 1 April. If it thinks that the polls are not that good it will put it off until after the election. Then we will have the constitutional monstrosity of a tax going up under the new Parliament that is elected at the next election. That breaks the rule that states that one Parliament should not pass laws that bind the next Parliament. 
We all know that that is the constitutional position. I find it appalling that our officials such as Crown Law and the like who are supposed to advise us on these matters did not put in a document to oppose this bill and to point out that it is a constitutional outrage to have a measure whereby this will be the last time possibly that we will ever debate fuel tax increases. Because after this the Government will say that the tax should go up according to a change in the consumer price index. Where is the evidence that the consumer price index is the right principle to use to increase a tax that the Government says is for roading? It is not very difficult for members to realise that it is quite possible for the consumer price index to have increased but for the cost of roading to have gone down. That has been the situation a number of times in my parliamentary career. The Government has only put forward this fixed formula to avoid parliamentary scrutiny to avoid having to debate its roading programme and to avoid having to discuss transport. They are the only reasons that this bill has been put together. 
I point out to the House that when the Government inflation-proofs its revenue and it is now doing it on petrol alcohol and cigarettes it means that the Government does not care about inflation. In fact the more inflation we have the more money it gets. But the Government will not inflation-proof income tax. We all know that because income tax has stayed the same despite wage rises the average New Zealand household after tax is no better off than it was 5 years ago. The economy may have grown but after tax—because income tax rates have not been inflation-proofed and because things like cigarettes alcohol and now fuel are going up—the average household is no better off. That is yet another reason why the ACT party says that this is a bill that no Parliament worth its name should ever allow. I am appalled to see that this bill is able to be got through because of the Green Party. It is so ideologically blind in its views about energy that it is not prepared also to realise that as parliamentarians we should never agree to a bill of this sort. It just gives the Government revenue without any accountability. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I want to cover a few points that have been raised in the House on the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill particularly during the Committee stage just to confirm United Future’s final position on the bill itself. First of all we will be voting for this bill. We do so because like the great majority of New Zealanders we are appalled and alarmed that for a long time now successive Governments have consistently underspent on New Zealand’s roads with the resultant congestion that we have on a daily basis. This is particularly so in Auckland where this congestion is simply unacceptable and has been for many many years but also in places like Tauranga Wellington and parts of Christchurch and so on. 
Of course the funds raised through this excise duty of 5c a litre on petrol will go towards providing those roads and we simply need to get on with it. We can debate here in the House for some time whether it is the right strategy but at the end of the day the people of this country are saying: “Look just get on and do it please because we are sick and tired of spending hours each day trying to get from A to B.” My colleague Paul Adams who lives on the North Shore would say a big “Amen!” to all of that I am sure. He tells me that it is very very frustrating trying to get to the airport. 
However we did make an important qualification in our minority report—one that was subsequently misquoted by ACT party leader Rodney Hide. He either did not have the energy to read down to the third paragraph or decided he would quote it selectively in order to score some political points in the process and in fact to mislead people. 
However United Future said in its minority report that the increase should be accompanied by a reduction in income taxes in New Zealand in this year’s Budget. It is very very clear to me even based on his evidence before the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning that the Minister of Finance Dr Michael Cullen has really just got into the habit—no matter what happens to our accounts essentially no matter how much more money comes in over and above his original estimates—whereby his knee-jerk reaction is either to bank the money or to spend it. That is all that seems to come into his mind. 
I want to tell the House today that over the 4 years to 2004 the Government collected $4.5 billion more than its Budget estimates. The Budget Policy Statement issued in December reworked the forecast position out to 2008 in which time it will spend—listen to this—$5.7 billion more than was projected in the Budget in May just 6 months before. 
Now that is a total of $10.1 billion more revenue than the Government’s own Budget estimates the estimates on which it originally based its expenditure—another $10.1 billion—and it simply is not credible for the Minister of Finance to say that tax cuts are not affordable. Indeed he admitted today that the fact that he will be reducing gross debt to 20 percent in 2008 rather than his original target of 2015—7 years earlier—basically will be putting the Crown balance sheet in better shape at the expense of the balance sheet of New Zealand households. In my view that is completely wrong. I do hope that if he does not address these things in the Budget New Zealanders will note those remarks and vote accordingly in the next election. 
In United Future’s view income tax cuts are definitely affordable. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. Dr Michael Cullen says they are not affordable. He says that because he seems to assume there is something divinely ordained about the decisions he makes on expenditure. In other words what he has decided to spend has to be spent and there is no alternative. Plainly that is completely wrong. 
Let me just run through a few things that could be cut in terms of expenditure. First of all there is enormous bureaucratic excess in the present Government. The number of civil servants being employed in this country has gone up alarmingly in the last 3 years and it is simply unnecessary. We should get rid of that trend. Secondly United Future would introduce public-private partnerships for health corrections and roading—yes even roading. It is in the legislation but the Government is not doing it. Just through doing those things we could save literally billions of dollars. We would bring to an end the corporate welfare machine on which the Government spends several hundreds of millions of dollars per year. 
We would review the private training establishment funding arrangements. In the House in the last few days the ACT party has been bringing to the attention of New Zealanders the scandal of $239 million being spent on one single private tertiary institution which now has 34000 students. I was interested to find out that Oxford University has 13000 students just to put the figure in some perspective. I really have no idea—and no one does in this country—whether that is money that has been properly spent. I suspect that it is obviously not—that it is money wasted. 
We could eliminate huge waste form the health budget. A paper at the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning from the Public Health Association reinforced this. There is a lot more that we could do in terms of preventive medical strategies through well-thought-out well-researched initiatives which the Government is simply not taking. So it simply does not wash with United Future that there is no room for tax cuts. There obviously is. 
It seems increasingly lame to the people of New Zealand for the Minister of Finance just to repeat the same old mantra: if there is more money we will spend more money. Today he indicated to us that there is no end in sight to that policy even if he should remain the Minister of Finance after the next election. 
I want to turn to the attacks on United Future that have been mounted by New Zealand First and the National Party and I think the ACT party managed to get in there—Ken Shirley did as well—about why it is that United Future does not simply pull the plug on its supply and confidence agreement with the Government with the demand that it has to drop the 5c a litre tax reduction. I want to go through this in some detail. I have said it ad nauseam but it needs to be said. 
First of all United Future gave its word in 2002 that it would enter into a supply and confidence agreement until the next election. That is exactly what we intend to do; I say to Mr Brown that it may be OK morally for some parties in this House to welsh on deals but it is not OK for us. We feel morally and contractually bound to fulfil exactly what we said we would do. That is the first point. 
The second point is that it would be a futile gesture because the Green Party is also voting for this 5c a litre increase—OK? It seems to escape those parties when it suits them that the Government has alternatives to United Future. It can turn to the Greens and if it does not want to turn to them it can turn to New Zealand First as it did on the foreshore and seabed legislation. I ask Mr Brown what the answer from New Zealand First members would be. I can tell the member exactly what it would be. They would say: “How soon do you want us there guys?” because those members jumped into the foreshore and seabed legislation overnight. They were waiting for the proposal to be made and they said yes before the words were out of Helen Clark’s mouth. That is the reality of what happened on the foreshore and seabed legislation. It is simply not credible for you to keep coming along to the House and criticising us when we fulfil our word and you do not. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please do not bring the Speaker into the debate. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: I am sorry Mr Speaker. I did not mean to bring you into the debate. I was of course referring to the New Zealand First Party and I think the listeners would probably have picked up on that. I apologise for the slip of the tongue. 
Can I also bring to the House the comment made by the OECD just before Christmas. It was quite an interesting comment. It said that New Zealanders had had 4 good economic years and it has. They said that one of the reasons for that was the political stability in this country. Who has provided political stability for this country in the last 3 years? No it was not the Labour Government; it was United Future and both the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister have been gracious enough to say that. We are the ones who have provided stability and we intend to go right on doing that through until this year’s election. 
JANET MACKEY (Labour—East Coast) 
: 
 I listened to the speech of the list member from Tauranga Mr Peter Brown with great interest. It was a speech that could only have been given by somebody who had nice big wide roads and a very good bridge. Because can I say that the people of the East Coast welcome this legislation. There is only one thing worse than sitting in a traffic jam in Auckland and that is sitting in a queue at a road accident on the East Coast or sitting behind six logging trucks on a one-lane road and watching schoolchildren getting off the local school bus and being spattered with gravel as the trucks pass them by. 
As the only member of Parliament who has an unsealed State highway in her electorate I say there is a very good reason why we do not make a song and dance about that. It is the road around Waikaremoana and we are very concerned that if they tar-seal it lots of people from Auckland and Tauranga will then want to drive on it. So we are leaving it as it is for now. But can I say that the people of the East Coast welcome this increase in the price of petrol so that we can have roads that look as though they come out of the same century as the rest of New Zealand. The Automobile Association report will tell members that 10 of the worst roads in New Zealand are in my electorate. I look forward to this money being invested in decent roading for the hard-working people in Gisborne and the East Coast. I think that those members who have lots of roads and big bridges should stop whingeing about it. 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I would like to remind the Labour member who has just taken a call Janet Mackey that in the last financial year Transfund once again reported a surplus of unspent money of $230 million. I suggest to that member that if in all her tenure in this Parliament she has failed to secure Transfund funding for Gisborne it is too bad. 
Darren Hughes 
: How’s this member’s constituency going? 
PANSY WONG 
: It is amazing that the junior Government whip always has a lot to yell while he is sitting on his backside but does not take a call to explain matters to the public. He is just a doormat who says yes when Ministers wish him to. 
The National Party is totally opposed to this bill. The bill aims to do three things. Firstly it will put up the price of petrol by 5.625c per litre inclusive of GST. Secondly the increase is to come at a time at the discretion of the Labour minority Government in an election year. Thirdly starting from 1 January 2006 there is to be indexation of petrol price increases according to changes in the consumer price index to avoid any future Government having to explain to Parliament why the petrol tax has to be increased. 
Before I expand further on some of those three aims that we object to I must say that I found some points that were raised by various members in this debate to be quite interesting. First the Minister and Labour members once again reinforced in their speeches the Labour Party’s continuing lack of any solution to problems other than its continuous motto of expanding taxation to solve them. It was almost comical to note that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee the Minister of Finance on the one hand tried to tell us on Friday that the financial statements would once again show a surplus even a cash surplus but on the other hand he claimed poverty and said that he would not be able to spend that surplus because of his fiscal responsibility constraints. Yet at the same time he told the select committee that he was quite happy to spend up to $500 million to please the business community by announcing various tax incentives such as the depreciation regime for short-term assets. Also he announced the initiatives with regard to so-called housing ownership and the expansion of the Working for Families package which will put more New Zealand families on welfare. So it seems to us that the minority Labour Government has a lot of money to spend and that it can afford to spend it when it comes to buying votes in an election year. Yet when it comes to building roads and we are staring at a surplus of $230 million from Transfund more tax increases are to be loaded on to motorists. 
It is interesting to note that the Green Party the party that is always supportive of Labour will support the bill. The only part it is not happy about is that the bill does not go far enough. The Greens ask what is to happen with regard to diesel users and say they should be made to pay more in tax. The Greens always believe in punishing individuals because they believe that people get into a car simply for the luxury of driving and not because they need to even though we had one submission from a group that provides a volunteer service for people in hospitals and that spoke on behalf of the Meals on Wheels volunteers as well. The group complained that its members do not get paid for their good deed to the community and that although they will be out of pocket they will have to face those increases. So in future the Greens are trying to force the people who provide Meals on Wheels to provide “Meals on Bikes”. The only problem is that we do not know how secure those “Meals on Bikes” will be. I say that the Green Party instead of always believing in the worst of human nature and wanting to punish New Zealanders needs to be sympathetic to people who have to use motor transport to do some of their work. 
United Future’s position is even more interesting. United Future did put in a minority report that gave people the impression that indeed it would be morally and contractually honest to its supporters by voting against this bill. United Future has always said that it is against high taxes and believes in rewarding hard-working New Zealanders. United Future’s minority report states that it supports the petrol tax and everything and that the only reason it put in a minority report is that it believes that that increase should be offset by a reduction in personal income tax. Of course this bill itself has nothing to do with personal income tax. However when the income tax bill to confirm high tax rates came before the House last year although United Future says that it wants to bring down income tax it also supported that bill. So I am not sure where that minority report leads to. United Future says that it is against high income tax but when high-income tax legislation came before the House it also supported that. 
I come back to the issue of why Labour should continue to believe that every time there is a problem and every time projects have to be financed the only solution it can think of is to introduce another tax. Interestingly this morning the Minister of Finance shared some of his inner thoughts with the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. He said that the reason he has had to bring in the indexation of the petrol tax is that companies have invested in more environmentally friendly fuel—fuel that is more efficient. The Labour Government is actually collecting less revenue and because of that he said it has had to bring in indexation. This measure is more about increasing the Government’s revenue than it is about really giving people the incentives to invest in measures that may produce a more environmentally friendly solution. 
We all know that building roads benefits not just the current generation. After all one likes to think that roading contractors do not aim for roads to last for just 5 or 10 years. Overseas countries particularly Australia should have provided this Labour Government with a lot of inspiration about the success of involving the private sector and also of extending a vision into the future. Because the investment in building more roads benefits not just the current generation but creates a long-term benefit there is nothing wrong with borrowing in order to fund the building of roads. Also there is nothing wrong with inviting the private sector to take an active partnership role in ensuring that the congestion in Auckland is solved. Just now the junior Labour whip yelled out the fact that this Government has been in place for 6 years. I cannot believe that any Aucklander in all those 6 years has seen road congestion be resolved even a little bit. 
National is totally opposed to the passage of this bill. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 That was Pansy Wong from the National Party. One does have to admire anyone from National who can speak for 10 minutes trying to explain National’s position—because of course it has so many positions—and say nothing. The criticism of the Government— 
Pansy Wong 
: You did not listen. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I listened very carefully to the member and Pansy should pay me the same courtesy. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The Minister should use the member’s full name. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: The member’s critique at best seems to be that this Government when it has something to say to people has the gall to be upfront look people in the face and say: “There’s something to do and it needs to be resourced. We’ve got to fund it and here’s how we’re going to do it.” That is the criticism—as opposed to National’s strategy which is: “We’re going to spend more on everything but we’re going to tax less and we’re not telling you where the money’s coming from and anyway we’d better be careful because the leader Dr Brash doesn’t say much any more.” 
Don Brash has not flip-flopped in the last week and a half because he has not said anything. He has not done anything. He has sat in the House like a vegetable. I have been here only 11 years and you Mr Assistant Speaker have been here a little longer—but I should not bring you into the debate so I will not. But I have to tell my colleagues that in my 11¼ years in Parliament I cannot recall any Leader of the Opposition coming to the House plonking himself in his chair and saying nothing—not a question not a word not even an interjection. 
Government Member 
: Was he awake? 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: I do not know whether he was awake. I presume he was. 
This bill is about fairness and security. It is about providing a more secure funding base for those things that we all know have to be done. I am pleased to support the progress of the bill. 
CRAIG McNAIR (NZ First) 
: 
 As I heard that Labour member speak I had a new hope within me. I thought the Labour Party members were actually going to debate this bill. But as usual—they do not take all their slots anyway—the members who got up to speak to this Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill did not take even half of their allotted time. They know that they have not contributed to the debate on this bill in a satisfactory way at all. 
Hon Member 
: That’s right. 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: I have another member over here saying I am right. The hard-working New Zealanders who are driving home from work in places such as Auckland—driving back from Auckland City up to the North Shore and Whangaparaoa where I am based—will be listening to this. They will know that the Government members have not satisfactorily contributed to the debate on this bill. If they did not know that I am reminding them now but I am sure the public are very well aware of that as they are driving home at drive time as I speak. 
In speaking to this bill I must admit that in relation to the commentary as I read page 1 then page 2 and then page 3— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: You would not have been awake after that would you? 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: It was hard work but as I was reading through it I noticed the Green Party and the United Future party minority views on page 5. Then I started reading through the actual parts of the bill. As I read through it I came to a conclusion. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: What was that? 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: The conclusion that I came to I say to the member who asked me what it was was that clearly the bill has the wrong name. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Tell me. 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: I will tell the member why because he asked. This bill has the wrong name because the actual name really does not satisfactorily represent the content. I will tell this House why. As I was reading through the commentary I noticed an excerpt that stated: “the bill provides for the indexing of the proportion of excise and excise-equivalent duty allocated to the National Land Transport Fund to inflation”. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: What’s that mean to the average man? 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: I will tell the House exactly what that means in just a few minutes. Then I read another paragraph in the commentary which stated: “We received 16 submissions.”—obviously this is the Finance and Expenditure Committee speaking—“Submitters generally expressed opposition to the increase in excise duty suggesting that the funding required should be provided from the duty currently allocated as general Crown revenue”. Then I flicked over to the heading of “Commencement date” under which was stated: “as oil prices are at high levels the Minister of Customs proposed that we amend the bill to allow for the excise duty increase to come into force on a later date by Order in Council to allow the implementation of the increase to be delayed.” Then I flicked over to “Minority views” and I saw that the Green Party and the United Future party had put minority views in but— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Who was that? 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: The Green Party and the United Future party. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: They are not supporting an increase in tax! 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: They are supporting an increase in motor vehicle tax. But not only that; I tell the member that they have put minority views in the commentary but they are supporting the bill. Quite frankly I think that is—well there is a word that I know of that I am not allowed to mention in this House and it starts with “h”; I will leave it to the imagination of the members. 
So as I was reading through the bill I realised that it had the wrong name. After reading all those aspects that I have just mentioned to the House I realised that a more appropriate name for this bill would be the “Manipulation Bill.” I call it the “Manipulation Bill” because it is a direct attempt a savage attempt by the Government to sweep under the carpet by indexation the whole issue of it coming to Parliament every year to increase taxes on petrol. This Government loves taxing New Zealanders year in year out—and I will go into that a little bit more later on in my speech. Then I thought no that name “Manipulation Bill” does not go far enough. It actually should really be called I believe the “Deception Bill”. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: That might be a bit harsh. 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: I think it is very appropriate. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Fair enough! 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: The member says that that is fair enough when he thinks about it. When other members of the House think about it they too will think it is a fair enough statement. I want to explain this to the House. As I mentioned earlier page 2 of the commentary states: “as oil prices are at high levels the Minister of Customs proposed that we amend the bill to allow for the excise duty increase to come into force on a later date by Order in Council to allow the implementation of the increase to be delayed.” I have to ask the Minister—he is not here at the moment so I might as well ask the members who support this bill and they are the members from United Future the Greens and the Labour Party—whether they honestly expect the people of New Zealand the people who as I mentioned are driving home from work right now to seriously believe that rubbish because that is what it is. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: No! 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: The member over here is right. Members of the public will not believe such rubbish. I just cannot believe what I am reading. It is a bit like a couple of years ago when I was a new member in this House when the sherry tax bill was introduced. I could not believe what I was reading. The Government said it would bring in the sherry tax to curb youth drinking. To be honest with you I do not know— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please do not bring the Speaker into the debate. 
CRAIG McNAIR 
: That is a very good point. I do not know of any member in this House—young or old—who honestly seriously believed that. 
To get back to this bill it is obviously a work in deception. That is my whole point. It should probably be named the “Deception Bill”. I have only one other name for this bill because I think I have summed it up pretty well. It should be called the “Anti-Democratic Bill”. I cannot believe that during the Committee of the whole House yesterday the Minister had the audacity to say that to debate this bill was a democratic process and that it was the first bill like this to come to Parliament and it was being debated. I thought this will be the last time we debate this matter as well; there will not be a lot of need to bring to the House the issue of petrol tax because of the indexation clause within this bill. 
So we get right back to what I was talking about earlier right at the beginning of my speech: this bill is a deliberate attempt by the Government the Greens and United Future to sweep under the carpet the whole issue of taxation of petrol—and they know it. The average hard-working good New Zealander knows it as well. Since this Government came into power in 1999 it has brought in 24 new taxes. Out of those 24 new taxes this will be the fifth tax increase on motorists. As I said the Government wants to index this tax so that it can maybe reduce the amount of times it actually puts it up. 
As I close I want to say that this bill is a disgrace that the people of New Zealand will see through it come election time and that they will vote for New Zealand First because they know that New Zealand First can fix it. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Communications) 
: 
 The country is recovering from a decade of neglect to infrastructure. Auckland is bogged down with a roading crisis and this Government is doing what it can to solve that problem. My only reservation about this bill—to the extent that I have any—is that two-thirds of the money is not going to Auckland and $1.3 billion is going to other places around the country. However despite that I support this bill. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 69 
New Zealand Labour 51; Green Party 9; United Future 7; Progressive 2. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7; Maori Party 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
Films Videos and Publications Classification  Amendment Bill 
Third Reading 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. The key feature of this legislation is that it implements tough sanctions against the production trading and possession of child pornography and objectionable material of a nature similarly unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders. Electronic technology has made the transfer of images of this nature around the world much easier and the volume of this material has multiplied over the last decade. Every image represents the actual abuse of a child and every trader and consumer of such images creates a market that encourages more such abuse. 
Child pornography and extreme images such as sexual torture and snuff movies are unacceptable in our society. The sanctions against it should reflect our abhorrence and intolerance of such material and should act as a deterrent against it. Consequently this legislation dramatically increases penalties for the production of trade in and possession of such objectionable material. 
For those producing trading and distributing these images the maximum penalty increases tenfold from 1 year’s imprisonment to 10 years. This brings us into line with comparable countries such as the United Kingdom Canada and Australia. For intentional possession of child pornography and like material the penalty increases from the status quo where there is no prison sentence to 5 years’ imprisonment. 
I moved a Supplementary Order Paper in Committee increasing the level of penalty to 5 years rather than the 2 years in the original bill and the 2 years recommended by the select committee. This was to recognise the desirability of consistency with like countries. Canada and the UK have had this level of penalty for several years and states in Australia not already at this level are currently moving towards it. 
The deterrent effects of course are not only in the level of the penalty but also in the prospect of being caught. In this respect I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the Department of Internal Affairs and its commitment along with police and the Customs Service to stamping out this vile trade. The Department of Internal Affairs has an effective monitoring and investigation unit that has achieved a prosecution success rate close to 100 percent. Its work is recognised by Interpol and by its counterparts in other countries as being second to none. It rejects and I reject allegations by an ill-informed Australian journalist in  
Time 
 magazine that New Zealand could be a haven for child pornographers. That is sensationalist and inaccurate Kiwi-bashing that is simply not true. 
Aside from the major changes to the penalties that apply to objectionable material and the broadening of powers to exercise search warrants for it a number of small changes have been made to clarify what the principal Act prohibits. By and large no changes have been made to the scope of the material that can be found objectionable and that is therefore banned under the Act. The same gateway provisions are maintained in relation to what can be subject to censorship. Those are: “matters such as sex horror crime cruelty or violence”. The Act and the bill are not about exercising control over what people think and the opinions they wish to express as falsely claimed by the ACT spokesperson Stephen Franks. We live in a relatively liberal society in terms of what is accepted as an adult right to view or to hear but there are images that are and will remain unacceptable to the vast majority of New Zealanders that we will not allow because of the damage done to individuals and society. In particular those are images that involve child pornography extreme violence and sexual violence. 
The bill makes explicit the decision in the second Moonen case before the Court of Appeal that sexualised images of naked children meet the gateway test for objectionable material. That does not and will not affect innocent images but will allow the censor to deal with material currently and frequently being swapped by child pornographers. The bill also allows the censor to restrict some further matters as objectionable if shown to or viewed by children. That does not equate to an outright prohibition but rather is a restriction to protect children. It has been accepted that some material that can be distributed to adults ought not to be put before children. Both publications and films currently have when deemed appropriate restrictions that do not allow access to them by those aged under 18. 
Restrictions placed in the bill relate to matters such as language that is highly offensive suicide infliction of pain and self-mutilation and physical conduct of a degrading dehumanising or demeaning nature. Despite the arguments of the libertarian ACT party to the contrary it is appropriate that we protect children against extreme examples of those things. 
It is also important to address what was in the 2002 Government Administration Committee inquiry report on the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act that is not included in this bill. Hate speech is not included because I do not regard that as an appropriate topic to be addressed by the censor. Given the fundamental importance of freedom of speech in our society it is a subject that needs to be approached with real caution and in a way consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. There was bipartisan agreement on the committee to hold an inquiry into hate speech. It is an appropriate subject for debate and analysis and I look forward to hearing that debate. There is however no predetermination of what the outcome of that inquiry might be. 
The other issue addressed by the select committee was covert filming. The covert filming of people without consent or knowledge in situations involving nudity or physical intimacy where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy frankly is unacceptable. Separate legislation will be introduced later this year consistent with the Law Commission’s report on that issue. 
Finally I thank the select committee for the job it has done in—I believe—a non-partisan way and most parties in this House for their support for what I believe is important and necessary legislation. I commend this bill to the House. 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 National concurs with the views of the Minister—not all his views but certainly we have supported this bill through all its stages and we will continue to do so during the third reading debate. 
I want to summarise how National sees the bill. I think we need to take a step back to 1993 when the principal Act that we currently have was passed. Society has changed considerably. The emphasis then was on classifications that revolved around hard copy but with the advent of the Internet text messaging and chat rooms the scene has changed considerably. With that in mind National has supported this bill. 
It is also interesting to note what has happened in Australia. The Minister Phil Goff mentioned Australia. I have here a report from the Minister for Communications Information Technology and the Arts released last year headed: “Tough laws to target Internet child sex crime”. I will read the first paragraph because it summarises our position as well. This is what the Australians said last year: “Use of the Internet for accessing transmitting or making available child pornography will be punishable by ten years’ jail and using the Internet to procure or ‘groom’ children for sex will be punishable by up to fifteen years’ jail under proposed new laws released for public comment today.” 
That is what is happening in Australia and New Zealand is in line with that. However I think another comment that came from a report by the Standing Committee on Social Issues is important. The chairman stated: “At the centre of this inquiry has been the tension between the right of adults to see and hear what they want—a right that underpins democratic and cultural expression—and the need to ensure that vulnerable people especially children are protected from exposure to dangerous and exploitative material. While this tension has always been apparent in classification law it poses new problems in the rapidly developing medium of the Internet.” It is interesting that while we have been debating this over the last 12 months—and prior to that when we had the inquiry—the issues that other countries have also been facing are apparent. 
The bill will not go far enough for many people. They will certainly see it as not being tough enough in the direction they want to take. For others the bill will be seen as maybe too restrictive—and we heard that view during the Committee stage of the debate. It is certainly National’s view that the bill clarifies some of the important issues that have arisen since the 1993 Act was introduced. It deals with subject matter such as sex and it enables the Office of Film and Literature Classification to consider whether such material should be prohibited applying the same substantive rules that it does now. 
In relation to nude or partially nude images of children or young persons the chief censor is likely to assess whether a publication firstly deals with the subject matter in such a manner that the availability of the publication is “likely to be injurious to the public good” and secondly “promotes or supports or tends to promote or support the exploitation of children or young persons or both for sexual purposes:” With regard to the provision dealing with highly offensive language there is just a small number of publications that the bill captures. It does not deal with any of the objectionable grounds such as sex horror crime cruelty or violence but nevertheless it contains an emphasis on the quantity of highly offensive language and age restrictions then become justifiable. 
No one has talked about intimate covert filming which the bill does cover and I will mention that. The bill does focus on covert filming of another person without that person’s consent or knowledge in situations involving nudity or physical intimacy where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy and I think that that is an important position. I talked about the display of restricted publications in relation to trailers for DVDs videos and films. They have a classification and a trailer should have whatever classification the film has. 
No one has talked about film festivals. They are not exempt from the legislation. The legislation requires all films to be rated classified and labelled before they are made available to the public. That underpins two fundamental objectives that National supports. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I find myself in the position of wishing to complete Mr Tisch’s call. He was speaking prior to the dinner break and I understand he had 4 minutes to complete his contribution. It will not come as any great surprise to members of the House to learn that the National Party will support the third reading of the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. Some reservations have been expressed by members on this side of the House regarding the penalties imposed by the bill and the severity and extent of those penalties. I am sure that like me members have received a number of pieces of correspondence on the issue of penalties and their severity if indeed a person is found to be in breach of the provisions of this bill. 
There is no doubt in the minds of National Party members that in respect of this legislation in an attempt to balance issues of freedom of expression on the one hand and then to deal with what can only be described as despicable criminal behaviour on the other hand the issues of freedom of expression are well and truly overtaken by a greater public good—which is of course to protect innocent children and to protect innocent members of our society who may be taken advantage of in the technological age. I do not think that any member of the House would quibble with that fact. As I say Judith Collins the member for Clevedon will follow me later in the debate and give a comprehensive outline of matters relating to this bill. She of course was heavily involved in the bill’s stages as it progressed through both the House and the select committee stage. 
I will complete Lindsay Tisch’s speech by simply saying that it would be a brave member of Parliament—actually it would be a foolish member—who stood in this Chamber and did anything but support the intent of this bill. Members of the National Party as I have expressed do have some reservations about the severity of the penalties to be imposed under the offences provisions of the bill. I will leave the matter there and I will look forward to the contributions that other members in the House will make. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to be given the opportunity to make a third reading speech. First I would like to thank the chair of the Government Administration Committee Dianne Yates who nurtured this bill through and also all the members on that committee. They took this legislation very very seriously. It was one of the nicest bills I have ever worked on—for something so contentious and difficult—in that we worked in consensus on it. I thank the National Opposition members who were on the committee Lindsay Tisch and Shane Ardern. They worked very well with the other committee members. 
Also we were well supported by staff from the Department of Internal Affairs. They took us to see their monitoring of Internet sites and I was incredibly impressed with the professionalism of the small unit that traces the trading and movement of Internet pornography globally and with how well it did it. New Zealanders can be very proud of that unit which is run by the Department of Internal Affairs. They can feel confident that the unit is taking a real world lead in participating in and contributing to the tracking of child pornography. That was very reassuring to the whole committee. We had first considered this bill after the Ministry of Justice review of offence and enforcement provisions but it was only after looking at some of the images when we visited the unit that we realised that perhaps the penalties regime proposed in the original bill was too light. 
Also it was really quite deeply disturbing to see after a briefing by the Chief Censor of Film and Literature the censorship challenges that members of the censor’s staff have with the classification of publications—whether those be moving images books or magazines. I personally found their work to be hugely challenging. I would be classified as being a liberal but there was a threshold at which I found some of the images to be absolutely abhorrent because they definitely depicted women children or men—who were not actively participating in the filming of those images at all—being grossly exploited. There was a margin where one thought: “This is OK—Whoops! This is the cut-off.” So after having been briefed so intensely by the chief censor and the classification office as well as by the Department of Internal Affairs we certainly took this bill incredibly seriously. 
The offence provisions and penalties in the bill are not light and that is exactly as we intended. We intended to put out the message that reflected both this Government’s and society’s abhorrence of the dealing in this material. As well people who distribute pornography do not do it lightly. It is not just a matter of those people flicking on a file; it is about their downloading material meticulously filing it into subfolders and then posting if off to people whom they know like the particular material in a folder. The demand for that is incredibly sophisticated. 
As a mother I feel regretful that I did not watch my children’s use of the Internet closely enough. I thought they were happily engaged. I really do urge all parents in New Zealand to monitor more what their children are quietly doing when they are on the family PC and make sure they are not happening upon quite innocently often some horrific Internet pornography sites that are very very easy to trip on to. I urge parents in New Zealand to take more of an active lead in that respect. 
This bill is a very good tidy-up of outdated legislation passed in 1993. Technology has moved on quite dramatically in the last 12 years—from what first were just publications really. Films that went through the censor are now also part of the fast-changing global Internet. I believe we have got the measures in this bill right and I would like to thank all those who contributed to it. The bill sadly is not supported by one Opposition party probably because its members were not party or privy to what we saw when on the select committee. I believe that if responsibly they had been party to that process they would never have held the rather peculiar views they subscribed to in their debate on the bill. I know that our community can feel that we have a pretty good grip on this now and that those who are dealing in this material—not innocently but deliberately—will meet a penalty that is commensurate with penalties in the UK and Canada and that will put us on an equitable footing with the rest of the world. I was proud to be part of this process. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I have to say that New Zealand First was not represented on the Government Administration Committee but we have been following the bill as best we are able with quite some interest. I was a little bit concerned about the select committee’s report back and the member who has just resumed her seat has highlighted that concern even more. This bill came back to the House with a meek and mild penalty regime. It was only the Minister in response to a letter or some urging from a Denise Ritchie of the Stop Demand Foundation who brought in a Supplementary Order Paper that brought the penalties in line with those in Britain and Canada which have had such penalties for some several years. Australia is currently examining its penalty regime. So New Zealand First was concerned that a bill went through the select committee process and clearly the members on that committee did not take any notice or do any research into what the penalties were in other countries. 
New Zealand First supports absolutely tougher penalties for people who want to trade in pornographic material—particularly child pornography. We are in no doubt about that. We refer to such people as “people” but I have another word for it although I do not know whether it is parliamentary. It is something along the lines of “scumbags” or something like that. I like to think I am too polite to refer generally to people in that way. But I do compliment the Minister on having the fortitude to say that the penalties recommended by the select committee were not good enough and his Supplementary Order Paper would bring them in line with Canada and Britain 
and with what Australia plans to do. We are talking about an international trade in pornography and it is traded internationally; make no bones about it. Frankly I would like to throw the book at these guys and some of them I would not let out again but that is just me. 
I want to touch on a little concern that I had about the way the debate was handled. I know that ACT will oppose the third reading— 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: What for? 
PETER BROWN 
: No doubt the honourable member will hear an ACT speaker and learn why. In fairness to ACT Stephen Franks put forward six amendments in the Committee stage last night and I looked at them as closely as I could and I thought he made some very good points. In fairness to ACT which I know will oppose the bill although I cannot understand why I think Stephen Franks wanted to tighten up on the legislation not change it. From what I have read he did not want to change the intention of the bill he wanted to tighten up the powers of the chief censor. 
There was one issue that touched me and I know that Stephen Franks will highlight this or at least I hope he will. It relates to clause 4B(3): “Without limiting section 42(3) of the principal Act the Chief Censor may be satisfied under that subsection that there are special circumstances justifying reconsideration of a decision made in respect of a publication if the Chief Censor considers that the decision may be altered because of the new provisions.” That is giving this guy—the chief censor who I personally believe is not doing his job very well to be honest—the power to look at decisions retrospectively. A video was produced a few years ago by I think Living Word 
. 
 I had heard so much about it that I thought I would watch the thing. It is a good cure for insomnia! I struggled to keep awake. It is as boring as can be but shows people in the background as I recall expressing their concerns about homosexuality the spread of homosexuality and the effect it has on people. I cannot recall it in detail and I do not want to but it revolves around a crowd of people mainly homosexuals saying how they were going to change the world sell their cause and so on. The censor banned that video— 
Sandra Goudie 
: It’s in New Zealand. 
PETER BROWN 
: It is. The censor banned it only to have the decision overturned by a higher authority. Now under clause 4B(3) I think he can ban it again. I have a genuine concern that this could lead to the banning of people expressing views particularly on moral issues. I agree with the Hon Phil Goff that we should be able to debate such things. I am talking about hate speech. I think it is ridiculous to have legislation banning hate speech to be honest. It is one step from banning “think speech”. Some people have nasty thoughts about other people all the time and we cannot change the rules to deal with that. But this seems to be an insidious way to open the door on that sort of thing. 
I sat here last night in the Committee stage and listened to every speaker. The Hon Phil Goff made some very very good points in his contribution and I like Phil Goff; I think he makes good sense. But I was disappointed when he turned to Stephen Franks’ amendments because he became somewhat hysterical— 
Judith Collins 
: Emotional. 
PETER BROWN 
: He became emotional and hysterical as he sometimes does. But my admiration is so great for the man that if I had a bottle of Valium with me I would give him a pill. I would not give it to many of those members opposite but I do admire Phil Goff and I would give him a pill to calm him down if I possibly could. But last night I did not have any pills with me and nobody could calm him down and effectively he got stuck into Stephen Franks quite unfairly and Stephen Franks was not given the right of reply. Although I disagree with Stephen Franks on many of his views I think he has made some sense here and should have had the right of reply to explain what he stands for and what it is all about. Clearly he has put a lot of work into these amendments and as I say they sat comfortably with me and my New Zealand First colleagues in the short discussion I had with them to ask them whether we would support the amendments. We did in fact support them. It disappoints me and I say this sincerely that if we are going to have debates where somebody can raise something and then not give the member a right of reply after he or she is attacked then we are not doing justice to ourselves we are not doing justice to Parliament and certainly we are not doing justice to New Zealanders. This is a hot topic in the minds of very many people. 
I personally think the interpretation of the censorship legislation in this country is so loose and liberal that it is almost useless. From time to time the censor in my view does a good thing—about once in every hundred. I have read many of his reports. I would not have the gumption the fortitude or whatever to read his reports out in this House. They describe so many disgusting and degrading actions that occur in films. I have seen one of the films—only one. I will never go to another. I was asked to go and have a look at it and see what it is about— 
Simon Power 
: This member has been on the wharves! 
PETER BROWN 
: I have seen and heard things on the wharves but they pale into insignificance compared with some of these movies that are coming through. I have not lived a sheltered life. I might look like that but I have not lived a sheltered life. I have seen this world the seamy side of it in all places but this stuff that we are allowing into this country and the censor is allowing in is absolutely disgusting. I am of the view that if we feed our bodies with lousy food if we feed ourselves on hamburgers and chips every day and night we all know that our bodies will suffer. I say to the honourable members that if we feed this sort of garbage that is going through the censor’s office day after day— 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: Have you given this advice to Gerry Brownlee? 
PETER BROWN 
: I give advice to anybody I can but whether they listen I do not know. It is not for lack of trying. If young people are subjected to this sort of garbage they turn out worse for wear. I have sincere regrets that Stephen Franks did not get the opportunity to talk to his amendments last night which is only fair and democratic. As a result they were defeated. But I think he probably could have made a point whereby members opposite could have said they were worthwhile. They listened to Denise Ritchie. They could have listened to Stephen Franks with some sincerity and I think this bill would have been better for it. Nevertheless New Zealand First is going to support this bill because in large part it covers a very very serious issue. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party in the third reading and last debate on this amendment to our censorship legislation. I have very much appreciated the comments made by Mr Peter Brown of New Zealand First whom last night I noticed was following the debate. There were 15 calls including three from Lindsay Tisch and from other members who sat on the Government Administration Committee. Peter Brown followed the debate very closely because he was genuinely using it for a purpose for which it is not often used in this Chamber. He used the debate in the Committee stage to try to decide how to vote on a matter that is quite thorny. 
Censorship is a thorny issue. We can all feel horror at the perversions that are made to seem normal or attractive. We can all wish that pornographers were much more heavily sanctioned socially or that there was a way in which the community’s disgust could be converted into making life much harder for them. I remember years ago when my firm was working on the upgrading of the new trans-Pacific telephone cable. We had to go into the financing of that and do a whole lot of the background technical work. In the end we called the team of lawyers who worked on the funding of that billion-dollar project “team pornography” because we found that the traffic that was expected to pay for the cable was typical of the traffic on the Internet. The experts told us that at that stage about 60 percent of the data load would be porn which is very sad when we think of that flowering of human capacity and the enormous talent that is being crystallised on the Internet—and what it was being used for. 
I thought we would be approaching this bill as a no-brainer that in fact there would be a few ritual speeches and we would all vote for it because it was updating our censorship law to take account of the Internet and to increase penalties in areas where we have found we needed them—for example for people who may be liable for trading but not for possession but who nevertheless have enormous quantities of that sort of material. If the law is to be there it should be enforced. I thought we would get an explanation from the Government of just why it was passing new law yet again when it is not very good on enforcement. We have just had  
Time 
 magazine labelling us as a “pervert’s paradise”. The truth is that it does not matter how many words we put into the law or what we talk about in this Chamber if there is some kind of reluctance to enforce the law then it is idle to be increasing penalties. 
Mr Goff referred to the very good work being done by the Department of Internal Affairs in trying to track down child pornographers and people who harbour pornographic material and he referred to it with his throbbing intensity of distaste for them. However he did not explain why it was that when a list was supplied to the Australians by US customs from a very big sting in the US the Australians went out and arrested some 200 people but when the list showed that New Zealand participation had apparently been pro rata much the same nothing happened here. We understand that the police had actually assembled and planned to do a raid but still nothing happened. [ 
Interruption 
] 
So I was a bit stunned I say to Mr Brown to find that I was the victim of an attack from a Minister who would not explain what had happened in that respect or answer legitimate questions as to why Australia had discovered a whole lot of those people in its midst named from a list supplied by the US but we had apparently found none. And of course how will we find them now once they have been warned of the scale of this bust and they know where the list came from? 
To come back to the bill I was persuaded by Mr Goff’s explanation that my proposed amendment to the meaning of the word “objectionable” was unnecessary. I was also persuaded by Mr Goff’s hysterical reaction that what I had identified as “the risks” in the other part of the bill was eminently justified because he could have been just as reasonable and detailed in his explanation on that part as he was on the first amendment. Instead he did not even try to deal with it. 
My concern is that this bill is a Trojan Horse. The Government has bracketed and tied together some very sound ideas for improving enforcement capacity and penalties with a sneaky and very very slippery change to the censor’s powers to enable the censor to go back and take revenge for having been blocked in trying to block the Living Word videos. I read in the new sections 3A to 3D proposed to be inserted into the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act by clause 4A of the bill precisely the language that the censor tried to use against the Living Word videos. Mr Brown usefully summarised them as being about a pretty unpersuasive boring group of talking heads in suits saying why they thought homosexuality was bad for kids and bad for the country. The censor was stopped from banning those videos because the Court of Appeal correctly said that it would have been an intrusion on free speech. Whether or not we like it people have a right to say that they do not like lifestyles and to try to persuade others not to adopt them. That is how cultures evolve. If it is offensive to some people to have their lifestyle described as despicable degrading dehumanised or in all those other ways; that too is how societies evolve. The Catholic Church responded with rage to what it said was blasphemy when people first questioned some of its doctrines and now those things are mainstream. It could happen only with free speech that was offensive to the majority. 
What do I find in the new section 3A in clause 4A of the bill? I find a power to ban “highly offensive language”. Mr Goff said that it just means swearing and foul language. Well I ask why he did not use those words. Why does the bill not say that because it is defined in the new section 3A(3) as something that is “highly offensive to the public in general”. That is precisely why we have free speech. We must tolerate people who are offensive and we should define the term so that it does relate to swearing and foul language. The bill should clearly state that it does not relate to the content. People are not entitled to take offence purely at content. 
Section 3 of the current Act covers violence torture horror and exploitation of children—the things that this community has decided censorship ought to cover and that we recognised and would have supported. Instead we have this term “highly offensive language” which the censor can use to cover anything that he does not like. Worse still the censor will now be able to ban stuff in the hands of people of a specified age—but the bill does not say what the age is—if it describes depicts or expresses physical conduct of a “demeaning nature”. That is in the new section 3B. Demeaning? Well that would include laughing at fat people. Is that now able to be bannable? Section 3B(3)(b)(ii) goes on to include visual images of a person’s body “with any other contents of the publication” that is degrading or demeaning. Well that could be anything. Then section 3B(4) goes further and states that the censor can do that if the availability of the publication would cause people to be shocked or encourage them to regard themselves or others as demeaned. That is precisely what free speech is about. 
Then I find that section 3D—although the select committee reported to this House that it did not want to interfere with the Court of Appeal’s decision on a gateway; in other words the subject matter had to be about violence torture horror or exploitation of children before the censor could start inflicting his own philosophy—excludes and reverses the Court of Appeal’s decision. This section states very clearly that the censor can apply those new tests without regard to section 3. Then as Mr Brown pointed out we find out further on in clause 4B that it is retrospective. It is retrospective which is bad in principle. The select committee made no explanation as to why it should be able to go back and Mr Goff made no attempt to tell us why he was so adamant that this was not intended to allow reversal of the decision on the Living Word video or anything like it. 
I am extremely sorry that we cannot vote for this bill but we have to stand up for a principle. The Government deliberately brackets together a bill that has been toughened up with our support—a bill that we could have supported 80 or 90 percent of—tying it together with the agenda of that nasty little cabal that controls the Labour Party and wants to tell others how to live. This is a direct assault on freedom of speech. I was delighted that National New Zealand First the Greens and ACT stood for principle yesterday and voted for amendments to try to restrict this bill back to what it should be about which is child pornography bestiality and other disgusting material for censoring and I was astonished that United Future saved this little plot of the Government’s. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be voting for the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. However we think it could have been a much better bill. The increased penalties in the bill should have been targeted at those who are involved in child pornography—that is the sentences should have been applied to child pornographers rather than to people who might possess other types of objectionable publications. This is why the Law Society suggested—and it could easily have been done—that we increase the penalties for trading exhibiting and possessing child pornography not for possessing or trading all other types of objectionable publications. Now everyone is subject to the maximum sentences of 10 years in jail for circulating any type of objectionable material and 5 years in jail for possession. 
The public would have been confused by what they read this morning in some newspapers which reported that the maximum penalty for possessing child pornography had been increased to 5 years’ imprisonment. In fact there was no mention whatsoever of child pornography in the amendment put to the House last night. The 5-year maximum term applies to every single type of objectionable material which is why the Greens voted against that amendment. In explaining our vote we said we opposed the amendment because the House had not done as the Law Society suggested and separated out the higher-end penalty specifically for child pornography. 
There has been an incredible increase in the maximum penalty for possessing any type of objectionable publication. This application to all objectionable publications could be dangerous particularly in these days of the Internet. This is where I think many New Zealanders need to get very worried. I am not talking about child pornography; I am talking specifically about all the other objectionable things that circulate on the Internet—material with offensive language pornography other than child pornography and “how to” guides to doing anything that is currently illegal. The censor has declared for example that having a guide to cultivating marijuana is illegal. 
Ordinary New Zealanders get a lot of different types of objectionable material through their email through email attachments accidental downloads from the Internet or downloads by others who happen to live in the same house and use the same computer. We all know that teenagers are often overly inquisitive and as Steve Chadwick the Labour promoter of this bill has just said it is very very easy to trip over this sort of stuff. Under the amendment passed last night a person can now be thrown into jail for 5 years for having that sort of material on his or her computer whereas previously that person would have been eligible for a $2000 fine. Admittedly there now has to be a “reasonable cause to believe” that that person actually knew that the stuff was on his or her computer but it might be hard for people to prove that they did not know. People process their emails and Internet downloads very quickly. They do not take into their brains all the contents or catch on that some of the stuff they flick through very quickly could be defined as objectionable and thus illegal or that they could be put in jail for 5 years because it is still sitting on their computer. 
Who determines whether the material on one’s computer is objectionable? It is the police and the Department of Internal Affairs in the main particularly when dealing with what is on one’s computer. It is not the censorship authority although one could bring it in if one was defending oneself against the police in court. We cannot always trust the police to get it right and this is the same police force that a couple of years ago prosecuted Aucklander Bruce Hubbard for sending an email to the American Embassy accusing the American Government of “napalming babies” in Iraq. The police were absolutely clear that those two words—“napalming babies”—were objectionable and justified prosecution although under pressure they later dropped the charges. This is the same police force that tried to censor Ahmed Zaoui saying when he arrived here that he could not be allowed access to the media in case he got support for his cause. Admittedly the police and the censorship authorities are generally much better than they were in the past. However when constructing legislation and bringing in harsh penalties we have to bear in mind how those penalties could be used by a more repressive Government in the future—a Government that gets the police force the Department of Internal Affairs and the censorship body to act more harshly. 
In 1989 the Department of Internal Affairs put out a book called  
Censored: A Short History of Censorship in New Zealand 
 which details a long legacy of political censorship in this country. The Labour politicians who in this legislation are pushing through high maximum sentences for all objectionable material including politically objectionable material would do well to read this book and read about way the Labour Party has suffered from political censorship in the past. In the past publications circulated by Labour politicians were censored. Walter Nash who became a Prime Minister was a left-wing book seller before he became a politician and he had a lot of trouble with censored radical books. In the 1930s socialists were jailed for possessing banned books. All sorts of films have been banned over the years such as Marlon Brando’s  
The Wild One  
and 
Last Tango in Paris 
 and so on and we might laugh about that today. In 1967 the censor judged the film  
Ulysses 
 to be “an embarrassment for mixed company to view” and ordered that audiences be segregated into male and female. In 1972 Germaine Greer was convicted for using the word “bullshit”. 
In reality Governments at various times like to use political scares to make people fearful in order to get them to support the Government. There have been numerous scares in New Zealand over the years. There were scares about “Red Fed” unionists early last century scares about the Labour Party destroying the country in the 1920s and 1930s scares about socialists and communists and most recently there have been scares about Islamic extremists. In all these scares censorship has been applied to the targets. Currently in Britain the biggest case concerns an Islamic extremist called Abu Hamza al-Masri who has been charged with possessing certain documents videotapes and audiotapes and may be subject to penalties. The views he expresses in those documents videotapes etc. are often distasteful. Some of them are what we might call “hate speech”. The Minister says that hate speech will be dealt with further down the track but the reality is that if this legislation later includes hate speech that offence will be covered under the harsh new penalties of 5 and 10 years’ imprisonment so it is part of this debate. We could get the situation where if Destiny New Zealand circulates certain emails to its members hundreds of people could be subject to 5 years in jail for possessing objectionable publications. That is a possibility. 
I put forward an amendment yesterday to try to make the definition of child pornography in the bill more consistent. Clause 4 “Meaning of objectionable” specifies images of “nude or partially nude” children that are “reasonably capable of being regarded as sexual in nature.” That is too broad for us to go along with because it could be used against people who simply possess naked images. It is very hard using that definition to distinguish between what is truly child pornography and what is not. The solution I offered which was supported by a number of parties in the House but unfortunately not by the Government was the obvious one of just using a definition from elsewhere in the bill. The definition in new section 145A inserted by clause 32 which talks about extraterritorial jurisdiction for child pornography offences is a much better one. It states: “ ‘child pornography’ means—(a) representation by any means of a person who is or appears to be under 18 years of age engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities; or (b) a representation of the sexual parts of a person of that kind for primarily sexual purposes”. 
Why not be consistent in this respect? Why do we have to create a problem whereby we might ban Germaine Greer’s book  
The Boy 
 because it has a lot of images of boys? She says not only that they are artistic but also that she gains pleasure from looking at them but she is not talking about the kind of pleasure of someone who is involved in child pornography. We do not want to get into a situation where we are overly censoring simply naked images. That is why I put forward the amendment. As I said at the beginning of my speech the Green Party supports this bill overall and we will be voting for its third reading. But we will continue to be concerned about and to argue against the censorship implications of the bill beyond the question of child pornography. 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 The previous speaker mentioned that socialists had been imprisoned for what they said and thought. Although I am not an advocate for censorship I am now starting to warm to the idea. 
The problem of pornography and child pornography in this country is one of huge concern and this bill addresses a number of things. The Department of Internal Affairs caught 103 men trading in child pornography between 1997 and January 2003 in Operation Landslide but it is a long and drawn-out process and a difficult one for the department. Investigators have to go into chat rooms. When offered child pornography they can obtain a warrant to get the personal details provided to the Internet service provider. They then trace the address of the person who offered the material. The investigators then have to obtain another warrant to visit the offender’s address and seize his or her computer and any other evidence that is deemed necessary. Of course New Zealand law does not allow the police to execute search warrants on people who simply visit a website. 
The point is that it is a very long drawn-out process and up until now the penalties have not been very substantial at all. On 14 January of this year it was reported that nearly half of the 185 convicted child-pornography users profiled in a study by the department had regular access to children. That is hugely worrying. Those offenders aged between 15 and 20 were the single largest demographic group and represented 25 percent of all child-pornography users. That should be a big warning sign for all of us. 
On 11 March it was reported that an Auckland man was caught trading advertising and collecting images that included the rape of 3-year-olds toddlers being tortured and sex acts on babies. He did not even get a prison term. We clearly have a long way to go and this legislation is but one of a number of steps that we have to pursue to try to stem the tide of pornography which is an abuse on individuals and child pornography which is the worst of all in many ways. 
I take issue with some of the matters raised by the ACT member. Highly offensive language is targeted in this bill. There is a distinction between highly offensive language and highly offensive ideas. They are not the same thing. A message can be conveyed without certain types of language being used and without the message necessarily being watered down. Furthermore it is not an out and out restriction; it is simply a cap. Highly offensive language is not subject to an outright censorship but to a restriction—a curb—for those under the age of 18. So that creates a very reasonable balance with the main aims and thrusts of this bill. I think that ACT’s objection is a Trojan Horse that hides behind the facade of freedom of expression at the expense of the protection of our most vulnerable. I simply do not buy it. 
Under this legislation people producing trading in or distributing child pornography will face up to 10 years in jail—a tenfold increase on the present penalties—and that has to be welcomed. The bill also extends the offences of trading and distribution to cover all forms of distribution whether or not commercial gain is involved. There will also be new offences of possession with knowledge to apply where a person has reasonable cause to believe that a publication is objectionable. 
It is sad that such a bill needs to be passed by the House but it must be welcomed. It is good to see that nearly all parties in this House have put party political nonsense aside in order to be constructive and to work together. It is good to see that when matters of law and order are concerned both National and Labour have sought to put aside their differences and put the interests of the public ahead. I also acknowledge the support of New Zealand First and the Greens. It is a tragedy that there was not a unanimous decision by all the parties of this House to pass the bill. It is a tragedy that ACT could not see beyond its own strange odd libertarian nonsense and put the interests of children and the most vulnerable people in our society ahead of its own nauseating sanctimonious ideologies. United Future supports this bill and commends it to the House. 
GEORGINA BEYER (Labour—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I am very very pleased to take a brief call on the third reading of the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. I must express how impressed I am with the quality of the debate that has occurred this evening and with all the various views that have been shared about these important matters regarding censorship and pornography and the greater penalties for offences that are provided for in the bill. 
I planned to take a longer call because I could refer to my own problems with censorship in the past. I too was in a film once—a legitimate one—that ended up on television. It was censored and that delayed the programme going to air for a year because apparently the subject matter was contrary to the public’s good taste. The subject matter was about a day in the life of a transsexual and a transvestite. It took a year for the chief of television of the day—and this was in the 1980s—to get it to air. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Get over it! 
GEORGINA BEYER 
: Exactly! Get over it. It did go to air and received five nominations for the 1987 film and television awards including I humbly say one nomination for myself. 
However I do not want to trivialise the serious nature of this bill. I congratulate the members of the House who by majority at least are supporting the bill. I appreciate and respect the ACT party’s view. They are entitled to it. We may not agree with it and obviously we do not on this particular matter but nevertheless Mr Franks made himself clear. It is just that he left us seeing it as clearly as mud sometimes. I commend the bill to the House and hope that it proceeds speedily through the rest of its course. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I find myself in the rare position of agreeing with most of the speakers most of the time this evening. That is a shock to the system. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: There must be something wrong. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: It is a shock to the system and as Mr Samuels said there must be something wrong. There is not very much in the bill that I would like to object to except for the fact that United Future should have supported the ACT amendments last night because they were sensible amendments. Everyone else would have sung United Future’s praises and understood why that party is in Parliament because we have no other idea what it is doing here. This would have been the opportunity for United Future members to stand up for a bit of common sense. But they did not— 
Darren Hughes 
: Great! MP Judith Collins on moral issues! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
:—and on a moral issue too. It was absolutely a moral issue. But they did not and it was all to do with United Future’s little rules. But a lot of life is not about rules; it is about getting on doing the job and doing the right thing. 
I was a bit shocked that I kept agreeing with Mr Locke—until he got on to the censorship issue about the reds under the bed when I thought that maybe censorship was OK after all. But never mind! I will not discuss that because I am generally quite opposed to censorship except in respect of things like child pornography and images of the degradation of people rape and things like that. I am personally very concerned about the censorship of let me say impure words because I am frankly very happy we are still allowed to say impure words. It is sometimes a lot better to swear at someone than it is to hit the person. For a lot of people who have not gone through university and learnt fancy words that is how people communicate and it should be legitimate. If we cannot have a good swear in a movie that cuts out just about any movie that is worthwhile watching— 
Darren Hughes 
: This is the family spokeswoman! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
:—in terms of the 1970s. Yes. I tell the member that I would rather people had the freedom to say what they liked than be hamstrung by silly laws written by people who do not like what others say. That is nothing to do with them. 
Darren Hughes 
: What about Disney movies? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I stopped watching Disney movies about 30 years ago. Maybe Mr Hughes still watches Disney movies but I have moved on. 
There is one reason why I am supporting this bill. It is not about the silly hate-speech nonsense the Government is trying to push through; it is because of the increase of penalties relating to child pornography. If there is one offence that every single person in this House I hope thinks is revolting disgusting and beyond thought it is child pornography or child sex acts. I am sure we all agree about that. No doubt that is why everyone in this House is shocked to see that we have under-18-year-olds prostituting themselves in central Christchurch in Manurewa and in other places like that yet nothing happens about enforcement. 
I take the good point that Mr Alexander made about the lack of penalties being imposed on offenders in cases of child pornography. It is all very well for us to stand up here and to praise the wonderful work of the Department of Internal Affairs in its picking up of those perverts—frankly I think: “Good on the department!” for doing it—but such people have to be prosecuted and they have to be penalised in some way. 
I am particularly concerned from what Mr Alexander said—and I know it is true—about the children of 15 to 17 years who are accessing this stuff. These are young people with very young minds at very impressionable ages and what they might think of doing when they say: “Let’s have a look to see what it is.” can very easily become what is quite clearly an addiction like any other sort of addiction except that it is an addiction to views of children being abused. I think that is pretty awful. 
When we think back to the days when we had the first bill of this sort back in 1993 we remember that we really did not have total access to the Internet for everybody in the house. Now many homes have more than one computer—let alone just one—because computers have got a lot cheaper over the years as technology has improved. There is also access through libraries schools and workplaces and that is one of the problems. 
A concern I have in relation to this bill of course is that of unwitting possession which Mr Franks dealt with again tonight: the situation where the sorts of pornography we are talking about can be put on to files that we as people who may not be experts in computers can download by mistake. We have often seen and many of us will have found the cookies that are put on to computer websites. One could end up in a particular website and the next thing that happens is that something flashes up on-screen. Normally it is trying to sell some sort of male health-issue drug—which is not something that I need I can tell this House. That is the sort of thing that can happen and I am very concerned that those sorts of things can end up— 
Hon Mark Burton 
: Far too much information. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Did Mr Burton want to make a comment about that? He wanted to know all about it. Well I am sure that he can get someone to look at it; I know Dr Paul Hutchison as a doctor will be happy to help. 
On a more serious matter it is of concern that the Government bowed only to the pressure brought on by Denise Ritchie and End Child Prostitution Child Pornography Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes—and I should hasten to add by the work of Deborah Coddington the ACT MP; as the House should know I do not often give praise—which brought to the Government’s attention that it would be soft on this sort of crime again if it said that 2 years was enough as the maximum penalty for possession. 
It is all very well for us to hear after a lot of huffing and puffing from the Ministers that we will now be tough and have the same penalties as the UK and Canada. Well why should New Zealand not lead the world? Is this not something we could lead the world in? Could we not be a little tougher and at the same time could we not be a little more sensible—as Mr Franks urged this House to be in relation to some of the other parts of the bill—as to how we could make this work better in practice? I see Mr Alexander is impressed with those comments. There is no point in getting ourselves excited and pushing this amendment bill through and then having to come back into the House after the first court case when we realise that in fact it has not quite worked out the way we hoped it would. 
Perhaps I can just ask the House to think about the work of the censors the Internal Affairs people and the police—the people who have to work with this child pornography. I wonder how often anyone ever looks at those people and asks how it is affecting them. Do they in fact get some sort of opportunity to do something about whatever goes into their heads? I am very concerned that those people are working with living with and looking at extremely abusive portrayals. I am really quite concerned as to what that does to them over a long period of time. Certainly and the point has been properly made by my colleague Sandra Goudie it can desensitise people to pornography. 
That is something we should be concerned about because I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to be the Chief Censor—unless they could not get another job!—the Deputy Chief Censor or any other position to do with this issue unless they in fact have a passion towards stopping the sort of pornography we are talking about. I do not know if that is true in the case of the current incumbents but I am sure it is. 
In terms of the penalties and of what happens to the people who trade in pornography I say that the penalties are clearly not enough; otherwise people would not keep on doing it. Clearly there has not been a deterrent effect; otherwise it would stop overnight. The trade is not going to stop until people involved in it can see that the chances of getting caught are really really high—just as high as speeding not paying taxes on time or those sorts of things. The penalty has to be really high; it has to be public; and it has to stick. 
It really concerns me that certainly the Australian experiences and the American experiences tend to suggest that the people who trade in child pornography are from all sectors of the community—the fact that they might swear has nothing to do with it because I am sure they do not—from one end of the spectrum to the other. I really believe there is more likely to be concern because of people’s ease of access to those sites. The concern is about the mentality of people who think they can enjoy—if there can be such a word in relation to this sort of perversion—looking at a child being abused. How could anyone do that? Of course we are talking about people who are often control freaks people who have very secret lives and people who are in positions of power. Those are the sorts of people who are likely not to get prosecuted because they are often a lot cleverer than they should be. 
DAVE HEREORA (Labour) 
: 
 I take the opportunity to stand alongside my colleagues in support of the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. In doing so I suppose I acknowledge the most important reforms that the bill provides against the alarming growth in the trade of child pornography via the Internet. I now have some confidence that for those of us who have computers at home and who have children there are some protections against in particular those who distribute child pornography in the proposed prison sentences the bill provides. 
To that end I also acknowledge the chairperson of the Government Administration Committee for steering its members to the conclusion of this bill. Finally I say that I support it. 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 National members are pleased to support the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill because our children are our future and it is our job to protect and support them as they grow in order to ensure that they become well-adjusted contributing adults in our many communities. Our children should not be subjected to the abuse that produces child pornography or vulnerable to the availability of child pornography. 
It is a tragedy that approximately 20 percent of those viewing child pornography are aged between 14 and 18 years of age and these statistics came from the Department of Internal Affairs. End Child Prostitution Child Pornography Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT New Zealand) is also very concerned about those statistics and it gave a substantial submission to the bill. While supporting much of the bill ECPAT New Zealand was concerned that home detention should not have a presumption in favour of the offender. In my view home detention is the soft option. If people do the crime then they should do the time. In fact I believe that home detention should be scrapped. 
However the strengthening of the penalties in this bill is welcomed. One can only hope that they are enough to stem the tide of an activity that we can only guess at the scale or size of. We have to recognise the changes in technology that provide for the ready availability of pornography throughout the world and recent advances in mobile phones add to the problems—even more so when mobile phones are becoming the norm not just for teenagers but also for more and more primary school children. 
Television advertising is using children acting as adults to sell this new technology and that means the task of protection is even more problematic. My understanding is that further legislation is to be introduced to address the issue of covert filming and that has been exacerbated by the continual advancement of mobile phone technology. If child pornography has risen fifteenfold since 1988 with the antiquated technology of those times it does not take much to guess that accessibility is now likely to be barely controllable and that was illustrated by Stephen Franks. So I wonder if there has been any study on whether there is any correlation between the advancement of technology and the increase in child abuse. I ask the question because there is a strong link between viewers of child pornography and child abusers. 
My learned colleague Richard Worth expounded on US statistics. Of the 2000 men arrested in the US for possessing child pornography 35 percent were also child abusers. So with greater accessibility—members should do the maths. I have no problem with labelling publications with an age restriction and while parents are the first line of defence with this bill we are making sure that we further protect our children and that we adopt a range of methods by which we do that. We also deal to the perpetrators of crime against our children by increasing the penalties in this bill and I applaud that. We just have to make sure that we use those penalties and we get into more enforcement. But I have no doubt that given the fine line between the protection of our children and young folk from becoming victims of pornography and the right to freedom of expression the definition of “objectionable” as outlined in clause 4 will be tested in the courts. 
Amendments to address concerns for a number of matters were lost. I have no doubt that they too will be tested in the courts in due course particularly in relation to freedom of speech. Censorship is a reasonable and justified limitation on the freedom of expression when it aims to protect children and young people from any harm inflicted by the publication and display of child pornography. However censorship of any kind is a limitation on the right to freedom of speech. While the bill correctly attempts to address the pervasive problem of child pornography the test established in clause 4 is both broad enough and vague enough to encompass more than just child pornography. The definition of “offensive language” encompasses a range of possible usages. Offensive language could also include insulting language. 
Censorship on the basis that a publication is insulting to a person or group of persons is very broad indeed. While the bill actively aims to strike the right balance between protection and freedom of expression it is questionable whether that has been achieved. It just so happens that tonight was the occasion of an excellent presentation by the New Zealand Film Commission. Creative genius with which New Zealand is greatly blessed does I am sure value freedom of expression. New Zealand is a pluralistic and democratic society and as mentioned the freedom to express opinions and ideas is central to the conception in such a society. I shall read members an extract from  
Handyside 
 v  
United Kingdom 
 where the European Court of Human Rights clearly stated: “Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of such a society one of the basic conditions for its progress and for the development of every man. Subject to”—some of its articles—“it is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of difference but also to those that offend shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.” That underscores and reinforces the concerns of Stephen Franks. The European Court stated further: “Such are the demands of that pluralism tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no democratic society.” 
So this bill has some very serious unintended consequences and that means amongst other things that “every formality condition restriction or penalty imposed in this sphere must be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued.” I reiterate that I can see that there will be recourse to the courts to test some of the definitions that are evidenced in this bill. 
The second amendment that was proposed was designed to protect freedom of speech. These are the amendments put forward last night that were overturned. It was stated that contentious propositions are often highly offensive to the public in general. The amendment makes it plain that it is the language that must be offensive not the argument. As I have just read it is ideas that challenge us and help to shape and direct our societies over time. It would be a tragedy indeed to see any restriction on our freedom of speech or freedom of expression. 
One amendment in particular that I would like to read is the fourth amendment. It is designed to ensure that the censor cannot use these amendments to go back and reinstate the disgraceful decision on the Living Word video by claiming that it would upset teenagers who are wondering whether they are gay. I am concerned about the retrospectivity of the particular clause that gives the censor the unbridled power to do that. That should be a major concern to us all and I cannot understand why that retrospectivity was continued in the bill. I did ask the Minister to take a call to give an explanation but it was not forthcoming. So there is a concern around that. 
There was an amendment designed to ensure that freedom of speech for ordinary people is not put at risk in the hands of a censor with his or her own political or social agenda claiming to protect a small disturbed overly sensitive group—for example those raised with rigid religious views or indeed minority groups such as the homosexual community. This concern has been expressed and while we are supporting the bill and its intention which I am sure everybody commends there are some serious concerns. I have no doubt that those concerns will be tested over time in the courts. 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 With the exception of the ACT party at the fringes of politics all parties in this Parliament will be supporting this bill receiving its third reading tonight. There have been many speakers from across the political divide which shows that we can come together on important matters like this. The bill increases penalties tenfold improves the abilities of the Department of Internal Affairs to complete its investigations—I note that it has an almost 100 percent success record—and also moves the law in this area into the 21st century particularly around issues concerning the Internet where most images of children are unfortunately traded very cheaply and very quickly. The law we currently have is from 1993. Mr Goff’s law brings that up to 2005 and I am pleased to support the comments that have been made by every party in Parliament with the exception of ACT which for some reason has not stood with the consensus on this matter and has put itself at a very peculiar fringe of New Zealand politics. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 110 
New Zealand Labour 51; New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 9; United Future 7; Progressive 2; Maori Party 1. 
Noes 9 
ACT New Zealand 9. 
Bill read a third time. 
Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 15 February. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. You will recall that the last time the Committee was to consider this particular bill I raised the issue of getting a translation of the Minister’s own Supplementary Order Paper tabled yesterday which is to include a new recital (10A) in the Maori text of the preamble to the bill. The Minister in the chair on that evening said that a paper would be made available today to indicate exactly how all of this works. No such paper has been forthcoming. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: Oh yes it has. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: It has certainly not been sent to my office which would seem to be a major oversight on the part of the Minister. Rather instead we have on the Table of the House a proposed amendment to the Supplementary Order Paper also in the name of the Hon Margaret Wilson which asks the Committee to consider inserting in the proposed new recital (10A) in her Supplementary Order Paper after the word “Hurae” the expression “2002”. Now that leaves the Committee no clearer at all about what the situation is. I think it is quite disrespectful of the Minister to expect us to continue at the present time and I move that the Committee defer this bill until the matter is cleared up. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I gave an undertaking and I regret that the member for whatever reason has not located the document. It was circulated both electronically and manually in hard copy to every member’s office close to midday today. I gave an undertaking and I honoured it. I have a hard copy of the paper which the member is welcome to. I do regret that he has not located it for whatever reason but I had it sent both by messenger and electronically. To the best of my knowledge every member should have received it and I see at least one of the member’s colleagues nodding that she has received it. So I cannot explain why the member has not got it but I certainly did circulate the document that I am holding in my hand. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I probably have not received that for the same reason that I did not receive an invitation to the Labour Party fest known as the Hui Taumata to take place the week after next. It seems to be a particular style of the current Minister in charge of Treaty Negotiations; perhaps that is at play. None the less I do not think the matter is at all clear. I think perhaps the Minister should take a few minutes before we begin the debate to explain what is in his document. Because although members may well have been circulated quite clearly one member was left off the circulation list. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank Mr Brownlee. I undertook last night to have the matter looked into and some action taken. The Minister has done that. The member is welcome to a copy of the letter that was circulated—I see there is one there for him. The Minister is very happy to give any explanations that may be needed as we get into the debate. I do not propose to take the matter any further. I think it has been handled well. We are now on the Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill and the question is— 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The previous matter was not a point of order. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I am not going back over that. My point of order relates to the proposed amendments by way of a Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Pita Paraone. These are interesting proposals and I think quite serious ones. For those who are unaware of the serious nature of this essentially if this bill were to pass in its current form then the House would for the second time this session be in a position of creating either new hapu or iwi by statute something that is quite new and inappropriate. I therefore seek leave to move a motion for this bill to be sent back to the select committee in order that this particular matter might be better considered. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The matters raised by Mr Brownlee could have been dealt with when we moved through the debate on the bill. They relate to Part 2. The Committee has no power to grant leave to refer anything back to a select committee. That is a matter for the House. So we will proceed with the bill. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This is a proper point of order—I am asking for your advice here. If we were to recall the Speaker I assume that the House would then be in session and such leave could be sought and granted. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is correct. If the member does that then that matter could be put to the House and dealt with by the Speaker. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 Could I speak to that point of order before the member does that because I may be able to help. Far from this bill creating hapu I think when we get the opportunity to have a sensible debate on what I think is a genuinely intended but I would suggest an erroneous Supplementary Order Paper from the member that will be a matter for fair debate. But far from it being the case that this bill creates the hapu they actually exist in the Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Act. It is my understanding that they exist already in that Act. 
PITA PARAONE (NZ First) 
:  
The Minister referred to an earlier regulation and I think that perhaps he may have been misadvised. Because that earlier regulation in no way refers to the word “hapu”. It refers to divisions or specific sections. But it does not refer to the word “hapu”. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: These are debatable matters which we could have reached when we went through the bill and very likely all members could have been satisfied. But I am in members’ hands. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I think this is a more serious matter than perhaps your understanding of it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: All matters are serious in this Chamber and this one probably more so than most. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Yes it is. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is why I am hearing from the member with a view to trying to accommodate the member’s wishes. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I want to give some explanation because I do not want to sound trite in this. But you could perhaps appreciate the situation where this bill has had a haphazard approach to it from the Minister. The Maori Affairs Committee was given a very short time to consider an extensive Supplementary Order Paper that was put on the table last year early in October. As you know the House concluded its business in December. That Supplementary Order Paper has found its way into this bill. There was quite a bit of pressure in the select committee process to get it there. The desire of the Committee I am sure is that all parties would want to support a settlement bill. But matters like this are not inconsiderable. It is about the mandating opportunities that the iwi concerned has. And I have already expressed some severe reservations about that process. But here we have as Mr Pita Paraone has just made clear a bill that creates a new if one likes designation for a group within the Ngati Awa group—a hapu which is a much bigger status than a group that has the affiliations that Mr Paraone just spoke of. I do want to see this taken through and the House given the opportunity to send it back to the select committee for perhaps another week’s work. Accordingly  
I move that the Speaker be recalled. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am afraid that I cannot resolve the matter for the member. We have commenced the Committee stage of the Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill. If the member wishes to pursue the matter of whether the bill should be withdrawn or referred back to a select committee then that is a matter for the Speaker. If the member wants that process to commence it is over to him. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the Speaker be recalled 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I take it that the member has moved that the Committee reports progress? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: If that is the correct procedure I am indeed moving to report progress. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: The member moved that we recall the Speaker. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Yes I have. Reporting progress is something a Government does when it wants to suspend a bill. If we report progress we will not be able to get to the bill again today. I just want to recall the Speaker. 
Motion agreed to. 
House resumed. 
Speaker Recalled 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Madam Speaker on the motion of Gerry Brownlee you have been recalled to facilitate or otherwise a request he will put to you. This matter arose at the commencement of debate on the Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill. No debate has been taken directly on any of the questions. We have been dealing with the matter that Mr Brownlee raised. I leave it there. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I am sure the desire of the House overall is to see a bill such as this pass with a fair degree of unanimity of the whole Parliament. That is the intention with which we approach this particular matter. However there are a couple of matters that are of concern. The first one has to do with the Supplementary Order Paper put on the Table yesterday by the Minister. We discussed the matter last night and an undertaking was given to circulate today material relating to that Supplementary Order Paper. I understand that it was circulated to some members but most certainly it was not circulated to me—and I was the member who raised the matter. That may be of no account in the general scheme of things but it calls into question the reasons for the Minister’s office making such an obvious error. 
Leaving that aside we now have the issue of the Supplementary Order Paper tabled by Mr Pita Paraone. That Supplementary Order Paper calls into question the appropriateness of a settlement bill that will create two new hapu through legal statute. I would have thought it quite obvious that if a group has hapu status it is granted by Ngati Awa not by this Parliament—recognised of course in a settlement bill if Ngati Awa so wish but not created as a hapu. 
If we look at the whole process of this bill we will see that last October a very substantial Supplementary Order Paper was dropped on the Table by the Minister sent to the Maori Affairs Committee and in a very short time completely incorporated into this bill. The concern there is not only the speed and haste of that but also the fact that we are having to take up members’ days to pass a Ngati Awa runanga bill—a bill we are told by the Leader of the House that has to be passed separately from the claims bill. The claims bill itself sets up legal entities for the receipt of claims moneys in relation to the three claims or sub-claims that were dealt with in the October Supplementary Order Paper. It is only appropriate that the House consider whether it was appropriate for the Minister to handle this matter in that way. A process of handling settlement bills has been established and to have that process undone so unilaterally seems to me to be quite inappropriate. So I am moving that this House recommit this bill back to the select committee for a period of 2 weeks for full consideration to be given to Mr Paraone’s Supplementary Order Paper and the consequences of passing a settlement bill that establishes runanga authorities where in every other case that has been done quite separately. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member needs to seek leave. He cannot “move”; he needs to seek leave. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I seek leave to so move. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 To address the matters the member raised in order: firstly last evening I gave an undertaking as the Minister in the chair to circulate physical information to explain a Supplementary Order Paper. I did that. The document was reproduced in my office and distributed via the parliamentary messengers. I note that one of the member’s own colleagues handed him a copy—not a Labour member a National member—during the course of the earlier debate in the House. The member implied that he was left out or for some other reason did not receive a copy. It is equally possible that the member simply did not clear his mail or that his staff failed to do so. Whatever the explanation I think he does himself and the House a disservice by the comment that he made. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Don’t be so pompous. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The Minister is speaking to the point of order. There will be silence. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: He should stick to it then. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I was ruling on that. I ask Mr Brownlee to please stand and withdraw that remark. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I withdraw the remark. I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: No we are in the middle of a point of order. 
Hon MARK BURTON 
: Secondly the matter the member raised beyond that is a matter for debate. Mr Paraone quite legitimately introduced it into the debate by way of Supplementary Order Paper but it is a matter for debate. I repeat what I said to the Committee before you were recalled Madam Speaker: the newly created urban hapu were established by Parliament on the advice and with the full agreement of Ngati Awa in the Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Act. The member suggested that somehow that is a new creation. 
I would also like to assist the member because he made what I think is a very pertinent comment in his previous contribution: that this matter is ultimately one for Ngati Awa. I have a communication dated today sent directly to me on behalf of Ngati Awa in the name of Professor Hirini Mead the chairman of Te Runanga o Ngati Awa. He said that Ngati Awa: “… has adopted a more open and inclusive attitude towards the establishment of hapu. More importantly how Ngati Awa determines its internal structures is a matter for it to decide. There is no one classical iwi model to follow.” Professor Mead made that comment in support of the proposal in this legislation because it constitutes part of a carefully negotiated settlement. We are being asked to respect the will of Ngati Awa. That is what is being put in front of Parliament and it is the will of Ngati Awa. I agree with the member that it is for Ngati Awa to decide. They have decided. Now the question is whether that member and all members will respect their wish and the negotiation that has been concluded. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I have heard the two speakers and I am ready to proceed. The Speaker is recalled under Standing Order 178 to give a ruling on a matter of procedure. Whether or not a note was circulated is not a matter of order on which the Speaker can rule. The member has correctly sought leave that the bill be returned to a select committee. It is his right to do that. I am now putting that leave matter to the House. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That is not the leave matter. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member has sought leave— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Might I say what it was? I sought leave to move a motion to send it back. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is right the member has sought leave to move a motion. That is exactly what I said. I am putting that leave now. Is there any objection for the matter to be put as Mr Brownlee asked? There is. That is the end of the matter. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I make the point that in the contribution you listened to from Mr Burton you allowed no point of order to be raised but provided him with an opportunity to engage in the sort of debate that should have taken place had the motion been moved. I think that from that point of view the disservice to the Opposition is quite notable. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I say to Mr Brownlee that he was heard in silence and put his point. Mr Burton was certainly entitled to be heard in silence. That is the end of the matter. That is my ruling. 
In Committee 
Debate resumed. 
Preamble  
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I am very loathe to vote in favour of this preamble simply because we still do not know exactly what is in it. Despite repeated requests last evening—and indeed just now—for a simple translation of no more than seven lines the request has been denied. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister says: “Rubbish! We have circulated a paper.” I ask the Minister whether there is a full translation in that paper. I think that this Committee is entitled to that. I am not surprised that we are dealing with this bill in such a messy way. Not only does it have the fingerprints of Margaret Wilson all over it but it has the footprints of Parekura Horomia all over it as well. He is a Minister of Maori Affairs who is much more interested in using his ministry to promote the best interests of the Labour Party than he is in Maori interests. 
John Tamihere 
: Get on with the bill. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Mr Tamihere the man who as we all know has an enormous amount of interest in things Maori and must be wondering today why on earth he mucked around with a community trust when he could have set up a wananga—a much more profitable enterprise than the one he was involved in—is telling me to get on with the bill. We are getting on with the bill. We are talking about the preamble the explanation at the beginning of the bill. I simply say to Mr Tamihere and Mr Horomia that one of the treaty partners would like to know what is in this bill. I cannot see the problem with having our translator who is with us this evening stand up and translate this piece of paper. If the Minister had allowed that to happen last night an awful lot of mucking around this evening would not have happened. 
We are asked to speak about this preamble but it is difficult when we cannot be absolutely sure what is in it. I will respond briefly to the suggestion from the Minister that we were behaving in a disrespectful manner to Ngati Awa. That is quite untrue. Personal attacks have always been a hiding place for the guilty—they personally attack the people who have questions about the procedures being used. This process has not been tidy. This is the only settlement bill that Labour has done on its own without National holding its hand in 5 years and it has to be a messy process like this. The Government is creating new hapu here and there by a stroke of the legislative pen and throwing in an extra three or four claims here and there to boost the numbers without reference to a full select committee process. [ 
Interruption 
] I ask Mr Okeroa whether he calls 2 months at the Maori Affairs Committee a full process when the committee very seldom works for more than 2 hours once a week. That is hardly a full process. Without that translation National will have some difficulty in voting for this preamble. 
Mahara Okeroa 
: You were on the committee. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: That member is right I was on the committee—and guess what? This Supplementary Order Paper did not hit the floor of the Chamber until yesterday. The select committee process totalled 6 months and we had 2 months on a special Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister and then another one was laid on the Table yesterday. Further just to make it all look really shambolic an amendment to yesterday’s Supplementary Order Paper was tabled today. All we want is a simple translation of seven lines. What is wrong with the Labour Party? Why does it not want us to know what that is all about? I suspect that the piece of text that Margaret Wilson wants to put into the bill is interminably boring but somehow we cannot know what it is. 
Once again I ask the Minister to allow the translator to take the microphone and give us a translation in order that this preamble debate may progress without the sort of interruption that those on that side of the Chamber have forced on the Committee since we commenced last night. 
I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have in front of me Supplementary Order Paper 327. Its salient point is a provision that states: “I te rangi tuawaru o te marama o Hurae ka whakaretangia e te Karauna me Ngati Awa he Whakaaetanga o Nga Whakataunga. Ka tatu i te Karauna me Ngati Awa taua Whakaaetanga o nga Whakataunga i te 27 o nga ra o Maehe 2003 e whakatatu ana i nga take katoa e tika ana kia whakatauria tuturutia te katoa o nga kereme o nehe o te iwi o Ngati Awa.” I apologise for my stilted pronunciation of that. I simply ask that we now have a translation. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I seek a translation of those comments by Mr Brownlee. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am not giving any direction here or denying the member but it appears to me that Mr Brownlee read out from the Supplementary Order Paper recital (10A) of the Maori text and a translation has been provided to all members here. 
Simon Power 
: Point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No no. I am just pondering a few things here thank you. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: If the Labour senior whip is giving a message I cannot hear it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am dealing with a point of order and unless members want fewer people in the Chamber they will keep quiet. Did Mr Power want to assist? 
Simon Power 
: I am happy to assist if I can Mr Chairperson. Page 33 of  
Speakers’ Rulings  
covers the use of the Maori language both in the House and in the Committee of the whole House. It seems to me that the third sentence of Speaker’s ruling 33/3: “Interpretation into English is for the benefit of members who do not understand Maori …” is particularly appropriate. Now that Mr Brownlee has made a contribution—and whether the contribution was read or not read is something the Speakers’ rulings do not seem to distinguish between—we seek in accordance with Speaker’s ruling 33/3 that translation. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Yes. The member gave most of a point of order in Maori and the translation for that is in fact in the bill as members would have found when they read it. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: It’s not in the bill. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Yes it is in the bill. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Where? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: On page 22. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: It can’t be. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am just making an observation. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: It’s not. You have been misinformed. If it was in the bill the Minister would not have circulated the letter. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: If members had allowed things to move on a little this matter would have been tabled. The Maori version of recital (10A) is in fact translated in the bill on page 22 under “recital”. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. If you look at recital (10A) as per Supplementary Order Paper 327 I ask you to show me where those words are on “( … page 7)”  as the Supplementary Order Paper states. They are not on page 7. There is no translation in the explanatory note. In the rest of this bill the preamble is first in Maori and then it is translated into English. But there is no (10A )in the Maori version and there is no (10A) on page 22. The recital (10A) is being proposed by Supplementary Order Paper 327 and that Maori insertion has no English translation. As a result the Minister circulated a letter apparently before midday. The reason why Mr Brownlee was forced to read (10A) in the Chamber was so that the translator would then give us the English version so that as per Speaker’s ruling 34/5 a translation appears in  
Hansard 
. I would ask you to consider that recital (10A) does not appear in the Maori version—it is being inserted without an English translation. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: On the back of the Supplementary Order Paper it states quite clearly that that Maori version is a “translation of  
recital 12 
 of the English text:” which is on page 22. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: So why would they have different numbers? 
John Tamihere 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. On page 22 of the commentary on the bill it is quite clear—in terms of the understanding of Maori members—that from recitals (10) through to (12) inclusive the matters raised in recital (10A) are fully interpreted in English. Having said that for the benefit of the Committee right now I am willing to express in actual detail exactly what Mr Gerry Brownlee read out in Maori to put the matter at an end—notwithstanding Speakers’ rulings 33/2 through to 33/7 in terms of the Maori language. So I am prepared with your permission Mr Chairperson to interpret exactly what the member Gerry Brownlee read out in terms of (10A) in order to place the matter at an end and I would be grateful for your direction in that regard. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No I do not need any further help. The member has spoken Maori and now seeks a translation. I am going to ask the honourable John Tamihere to translate. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Mr Chairperson you have a translator here. You cannot insult us like that. You have a proper translator here. I do not want to have my words translated by the Government—I am in opposition to them. That is a political insult and the Committee should not be offering it to anybody. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Which is the insult? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I find it insulting that I can stand in the Chamber and speak in Maori and then Mr Tamihere is asked to translate what I have said—while the taxpayer is paying a translator to sit in on proceedings. Now if it were not a reasonable call for people to have their speeches accurately translated by someone fluent in te reo Maori then we would simply right at the start of this debate and at the beginning of the last Parliament have said: “No we will not have a translator present. We will simply ask someone in the Chamber to interpret what was said”. I cannot imagine that Mr Horomia as a Minister would be happy asking Mrs te Heuheu to translate his regular speeches in Maori to this House. I think it is very very strange that I get my speech apparently translated by John Tamihere. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: It is not strange. I refer the member to Speaker’s rulings 34/1 and 34/2. I can make that decision. I can ask anyone in whom I have confidence to interpret irrespective of whether there is an interpreter in the Chamber. It is a bonus that we have one. What is more Mr Tamihere has made the offer which I am going to accept. If the member wants to take the matter further after that we will deal with that then. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Is the point of order relevant? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I did wish to speak to the point of order before you ruled. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I will accept that. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Although those two rulings confirm that authority in the Chair I do suggest that even in the way they are framed they assume that the translation is non-contentious or they assume that it is given in circumstances where there is no reason for someone to raise a question about whether the translation might not generate confidence in the House. I am perfectly happy to accept that the Minister’s offer was made in good faith and that he would undoubtedly simply read the English that Mr Burton has already provided to us—[ 
Interruption 
]—sorry the former Minister. But in a situation where we are trying to establish a principle it would be seen as very odd not to use the official translator. When the official translator is available it is almost inexplicable that the official translator would not be used for that purpose. I venture to suggest that those two rulings would have been given in relation to a circumstance where there would have been a delay or some other problem associated with using the official translator. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister for Racing) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No I really do not need any further assistance. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I rarely raise a point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is true. I call the Hon Damien O’Connor. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I am not sure whether there are Speakers’ rulings on the situation which appears to me to be one whereby a member has stood up and made a speech and now we are seeking to have an interpretation of that speech because the member does not know what he said. 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No. Mr Brownlee has asked for what he said to be interpreted. I have had an offer from Mr Tamihere to do that and I have accepted that offer. In any case common sense would say that what the member said is clearly set out in English in the bill itself. Reference to that is on the back of Supplementary Order Paper 327. If the members who are raising this issue had bothered to trace it through they would have seen that. It may be convoluted but it is in the bill. [ 
Interruption 
] I am still talking albeit I am sitting down. The translation that is on the paper that was sent around was made by Maori translators licensed via the Maori Language Commission etc. I think we are getting a bit silly here. Either members want to hear a translation which I am prepared to accept—in fact I am calling the Hon John Tamihere to please translate. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Because you have ruled this is now a procedural matter. I move  
That the Speaker be recalled 
. 
Motion agreed to and House resumed. 
Speaker Recalled 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Madam Speaker at the request of Mr Brownlee you have been recalled to the Chamber to rule on a matter that I have dealt with in the Committee. As part of a point of order raised by Mr Brownlee he spoke what we have referred to as recital (10A). He gave a very good rendition of that recital as it is in Maori and then requested that it be translated. The Hon John Tamihere offered to translate. I have confidence that he is able to do that and I have asked him to translate it. But besides that the matter that Mr Brownlee has presented the Committee with is in fact translated in the bill itself and there is a translation on a paper circulated by the Minister which is actually a certified copy—that is the English version of the Maori. Mr Brownlee sought to recall you to deal with the matter. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I have heard the debate. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The difficulty that we are in is because of Supplementary Order Paper 327 put on the Table by the Hon Margaret Wilson which asks the House to consider placing a new recital (10A) in the preamble to the bill. There is also a proposed amendment to that Supplementary Order Paper on the Table in the name of the Hon Margaret Wilson to insert a further expression in the bill that expression being “2002”. The bill itself refers to activities that took place in 2003. The question is further made complex by the fact that the Maori text is to be numbered (10A) and we are told that the translation for that is (12) in the English version. The question that comes to mind is that if those recitals are translated one by one why do the numbers get out of order? We are just keen to understand that what is written in the letter that was circulated today is what is in the bill. That is not unreasonable and given that the insertion is going in because of a mistake and there is a mistake in the insertion itself I think it not unreasonable that we ask for the translation extraordinarily of just seven lines of text. 
I refer you in the matter of interpretation to Speaker’s rulings 34/1 and 34/2 because although Mr Tamihere has generously volunteered to interpret my contribution to the Committee he has done so while the Committee has its own interpreter here. You will see that Speaker’s ruling 34/3 states: “The interpreter is responsible to the Speaker (in committee the chairperson). If members do not like the way the interpreter is rendering their speeches into English they are at liberty to give their own interpretation. Members do not ‘own’ the interpreter’s contribution; it is controlled by the Speaker on behalf of the House. Members can seek to correct the subsequent  
Hansard 
 translation in the normal way.” 
I will not have access to Mr Tamihere’s translation in  
Hansard 
 before it is published so the question arises of why we have an interpreter in the House responsible to the Speaker where members are able to reasonably consider how well that interpretation has been given if we are to have the Chairperson of the Committee determine that we will not use the interpreter provided to the House. Rather the Chairperson has said we will use a member in political opposition to the person who has spoken to interpret that member’s words thereby denying the member who has spoken in Maori the opportunity to check that the  
Hansard 
 record is correct or to take issue with any aspect of the interpretation that a political opponent may like to put upon the originally stated words. In other words the situation would be a little like Parekura Horomia as Minister of Maori Affairs coming to the House to make a ministerial statement choosing to do so in his chosen language te reo Maori someone on the Opposition side of the House being asked to interpret what he has said and the House leaving him with no opportunity to question whether that interpretation was totally accurate. 
I would like your view on whether if we proceed with this particular course of action we will create a new Speaker’s ruling that will do away with Speaker’s ruling 34/3 which was given to the House in 1999 at about the time the interpreter’s services were required in the House on each and every sitting day. So the real question is why my rights as a member to have my speech interpreted by the official interpreter are being usurped in this case. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am ready to rule on the point of order. I heard the debate. There are three things that I want to say. It is the Chairperson’s absolute right to call on a member to interpret. He or she is perfectly entitled to do that and a member’s word in the House is to be taken. But the most important thing about this matter is that there is no translator in the House. There is an interpreter. The interpreter is here to interpret words used by members in the course of a debate not to give definitive translations of the texts of bills. If members are not satisfied with the words in a Minister’s amendments they should vote against them. The interpreter is an official of this House not a person to be brought into the debate. Where a Minister has an amendment questions about the amendment should be addressed to the Minister. What I would say though is that in future it would be helpful if Ministers in moving an amendment on a Supplementary Order Paper included the translation in the explanatory note of the Supplementary Order Paper. Had that been done I do not think that this issue would have arisen. 
In Committee 
Debate resumed. 
Preamble ( 
continued 
)  
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: We were discussing the preamble and following from that we come to a translation to be given by John Tamihere. 
JOHN TAMIHERE (Labour—Tamaki Makaurau) 
: 
 Supplementary Order Paper 327 has been read in large part by Mr Gerry Brownlee. The interpretation is as follows and can be followed by all members in recital (12) of the preamble to the bill: “The Crown and Te Runanga o Ngati Awa initialled a deed on 8 July 2002. Ngati Awa ratified the Crown’s settlement offer and entered into a deed of settlement on 27 March 2003 recording matters to give effect to a full and final settlement of all Ngati Awa’s historical claims.” 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. As it now seems that Mr John Tamihere is the pre-eminent Maori speaker and interpreter in the Chamber I wonder whether he could prevent us from getting further into a bind by letting us know what the effect would be of the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 327 in the name of the Hon Margaret Wilson to insert recital (10A). 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I hope that the member could perhaps answer my question as well. I freely admit that my knowledge of Maori is extremely limited but in recital (10A) I can clearly see the numbers 27 and 2003 and I would therefore expect 27 and 2003 to be in the English version in recital (12) of the preamble. Furthermore I cannot for the life of me see 8 2002 or the Maori word for July in recital (10A). I am somewhat confused that recital (10A) clearly makes reference to 27 March 2003 but that it does not have any reference to 8 July 2002. Therefore I ask whether recital (12) in English is an accurate translation of recital (10A) in Maori. Perhaps the member another Maori member or our interpreter could clarify that point. 
PITA PARAONE (NZ First) 
: 
 I believe that this is one of the difficulties that was highlighted by Mr Brownlee when he questioned the appropriateness of another member in the Chamber making the interpretation. In the actual words that were read out by Mr Brownlee in Maori—notwithstanding that I had some difficulty understanding the Maori; I am not a teacher of Maori as he is—no mention was made of the year 2002. Yet the interpretation that the honourable member Mr Tamihere read out referred to the year 2002. So one could essentially argue the technical point as to the accuracy of his interpretation. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Associate Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) 
: 
 I think the point has been made several times that there is a difference between giving a word-by-word translation and delivering the clear intent. The intent is clear and that is precisely what Mr Tamihere delivered to the Committee as I think the member would honestly agree. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I just wish to clarify. There is no mention as Mr Paraone has said in the Maori text of a particular date. I suspect I am right in saying that the amendment is supposed to do that. But although it amends the text to include the year it does not include the date. So we are still left with the situation whereby the text in Maori is not the same as the text in English. That incidentally was my point last night. It could have been cleared up some hours ago but some people in this Chamber are just too clever for their own good. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I think we need to move on. 
Stephen Franks 
: Mr Chairman we will have to come back to it if we do not clear it up now. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: All right. I will just say on the last matter that the amendment of the Hon Margaret Wilson and the version included in Mr Brownlee’s speech were what were interpreted by Mr Tamihere. We could run around in circles— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: We will have to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: No we will not. My understanding of what was said is pretty clear. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This may be a similar point that can be readily clarified and I would accept the interpreter’s assurance on it without reservation. Again being cast to it I see no reference to the runanga in the Maori text. That may be because there is a longer way of describing it or because something is summarised in the term “runanga” but I would have assumed that “runanga” is a Maori word and would not need to be retranslated into Maori text. If the neutral interpreter had given us that statement I guess we would not be asking these questions. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: All of the matters raised are matters of debate. The matters raised will no doubt provide material for the debate as we go on with it. That process should be followed. If members do not agree with it they can vote against it. I do not see any sense in further points of order on this. It is very clear to me. 
Stephen Franks 
: How can we debate translation matters? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The points being raised by members are incorrect as to specific words and I am told that the month and the day are in the text. 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I do not want to have a debate on that. The Greens support the bill. I just want somebody to explain to me where in recital (10A) of the Maori text are the Maori words for 8 July 2002 which are in the English text. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: If the member wants someone to explain that to him I will ask the Minister to do so. 
ROD DONALD 
: Yes because it just does not seem to be there. If I may ask a second question then I will not say anything more in this debate. Why can the numbers in Maori not connect with the numbers in English which would help to reduce the public’s confusion when this bill is finally passed so that people could look at one number and text in English— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I understand. Mr Donald has asked for someone to attempt to explain that and I have asked the Minister to make that attempt. 
Hon MARK BURTON (Associate Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) 
: 
 In the Maori translation the fourth word on the first line “tuawaru” means “the eighth”. It is written as a word rather than a number and is therefore less obvious to members but that is the translation. 
PITA PARAONE (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think that the point of order raised by Mr Franks was a valid one in terms of talking about Te Runanga o Ngati Awa as opposed to Ngati Awa. Maori members of the Committee will know that when we talk about te runanga we are talking about a governance body whereas in the translation where the term “te runanga” has been omitted we are talking about the whole tribe. The point Mr Franks raised is I believe a valid one. 
This is one of the first bills during my time here for which the Maori interpretation has been provided and I am saddened that there is a fear—particularly for me as a Maori member—that in future our opportunity to promote our language may be lost because unfortunately on a technicality people are unable to understand clearly the translation or the interpretation; whatever word members want to use. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I do not think we need anything more on this. As we go on through it will be entirely up to members to move an amendment if they think a word is out of place or is not understood. I think the Committee has made its best attempt to resolve the issue. There was a translation made for most purposes and I accept it. It may not be acceptable to all members but we could go on all night. All 119 other members in this Chamber could give their version and no one need accept it. We will now move on to the preamble. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I asked for a ruling on the role of the interpreter in this Chamber and what he is here for if not to avoid just this kind of dispute. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I am sorry Mr Franks. That ruling on the role of the interpreter was given by the Speaker. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The Speaker gave a ruling on that particular matter. I am now asking why we cannot ask the interpreter in order to stop us from looking as if we are arguing between ourselves on a matter of translation when we are not. We are simply asking to know that the words being used in each provision mean the same thing. I believe that we would all accept the interpreter’s comment but you Mr Chairperson said that we have to accept the Minister’s explanation and that of Mr Tamihere. I asked for a ruling about why we have an interpreter in the Chamber. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is all the member was asking. I did not ask members to accept the Minister’s ruling. It was another member who asked for anyone to assist with the matter. That is why the Minister was asked. I am not asking members to accept Mr Tamihere’s translation of the text. It is all pretty obvious because it is there in the English text which has been gone through by a translator who has a Maori translator’s licence. 
Stephen Franks 
: There is no “runanga”. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Hang on. 
Stephen Franks 
: That is in the Minister’s statement not in our man’s statement. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member’s question is about why we have an interpreter. It is a good question. The Speaker explained the role of the interpreter and the choice that the Chairperson has. I cannot tell members any more than that. I guess that we have an interpreter in order to enable members to gain a reasonable understanding of what was said in the debate. We do that and we will continue to do it. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The Speaker gave us a ruling that confirmed the authority of the Chair to invite someone to interpret but the Speaker did not give us a statement on the role of the interpreter. We are now on a separate matter from that. We are now asking why there is what appears to be such a significant difference as the omission of “te runanga” which refers to the governing body as opposed to the whole tribe. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: These are matters of debate that members can raise later on. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: No they are matters of interpretation. I do not want to argue; I just want to understand. We have an interpreter in the Chamber who sits here night after night and is never called on and now we want an explanation and he will not be called on. No one can tell me why. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I repeat that the Speaker covered that precise point. That is exactly what the Speaker covered. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. When the Deputy Speaker came back to the Chamber she quite rightly said that the role of the interpreter is to interpret not to translate. The House accepted that and Mr Tamihere translated. We are now saying that it is a concern to a number of people in the Committee that the translation was not correct. It comes down to the question of whether “te runanga” is mentioned in the Maori text. I cannot see it there but there could well be a translation available that would state that the expressions convey that sentiment. 
It strikes me as strange that we have had in this country 160-plus years of argument over what was actually said and meant in the Treaty of Waitangi and here we are 160 years later trying to sort out grievances that apparently have arisen from the beliefs and understandings of obligations that were given conferred and accepted in that treaty. We ask for a simple interpretation from an interpreter who is provided to the Parliament so that we can find out what is in this text. We are going round and round in circles because you have told us that it is a debating matter. The last debate over a translation issue took 160 years. We would like to get on with this. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is right. That is what I was suggesting quite some time ago and I realise that we are going to get on with it. I say to Mr Franks that the interpreter is there to give an oral version in English of words that have been uttered orally in Maori. Members may well say that that is exactly what Mr Brownlee did but that is not what he did. Mr Brownlee read out—very well—what he had in front of him and there is a distinction there. 
Members are effectively asking the interpreter to give evidence to the Committee. He cannot do so any more than the Clerk can. If members do not like the Maori text they can move amendments to it but they cannot ask the interpreter to second-guess a member’s statement. There will always be variations when we are dealing with that sort of thing. Can we move on now please? 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Can I take from your ruling that we can actually move an amendment? Speaker’s ruling 102/4 states that we cannot amend what has been agreed by the parties and I understood that this recital fell into that category. If it does not then we can make a number of amendments—which I think New Zealand First members have felt unable to make—where the recital wrongly refers to the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. I have assumed that New Zealand First wrote its Supplementary Order Paper which does not try to correct that on the basis that that was part of the agreement. If in fact we can now move amendments to the recitals then we will do so. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member is quite right. There was an agreement on clauses 7 8 9 and 10. Members can put in as many amendments to the preamble as they wish—from zero to many hundreds if they want to. There is no limit on that. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Kaore nga kupu “te runanga” i roto i tenei pire mo nga kupu o te Minita. 
[ 
In respect of the Minister’s statement the words “te runanga” are not in this bill. 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Would the member for my benefit and that of the Committee please give the English interpretation? 
JOHN TAMIHERE (Labour—Tamaki Makaurau) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Standing Order 104 and the Speakers’ rulings relating to speeches in Maori make it very clear that the trifling that has gone on with the Chair tonight is not just frustrating to members here but is absolutely disrespectful to the Ngati Awa chiefs who are here tonight. I feel obliged to stand up to say that. The stunt that was just pulled in Maori is just another abomination this evening. My point of order is that Standing Order 104 does not state that the Maori language must be transliterated to the extent that other members like it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I accept that. 
JOHN TAMIHERE 
: Mr Franks does not and Mr Brownlee does not. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: It has gone past Mr Franks. 
JOHN TAMIHERE 
: The point we have to get at is quite simply this. In the event that we express ourselves as Te Runanga o Ngati Awa or Ngati Awa we are using movable terminologies that are dependent on the context of the expressions being used. Members opposite might not understand that but that is the reality. The point I make is that we have now spent 30 minutes on a very special bill and— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: And none of them have been points of order. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Would the member please sit down. I have let this go on—I know what it is—because I have tended in many ways to let members run their course. The judgment on whether they have been misusing this Committee or trifling with the Chair is for other members to make and I have no doubt that they will. 
Progress reported. 
Report adopted. 
The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.