Volume 696 Week 66 - Wednesday 5 March 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 696 Week 66 - Wednesday 5 March 2014[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16319. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 5 March 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Questions to MinistersTeachers and Support Staff Payroll—Problems with Novopay Payment System1.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) to theMinister responsible for Novopay: Does he stand by his statement of 11 February 2014 “education payroll is the most complex in New Zealand and more work remains to be done to simplify the business processes to ensure it runs as smoothly as possible each year”?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister)on behalf of theMinister responsible for Novopay: Yes the ministerial inquiry found that the school payroll system is hugely complex particularly for end-of-year and start-of-year pays. For instance at the start of the year 80 percent of all staff on the payroll have adjustments to their pay. There are currently around 80 separate allowances for teachers and 99 allowances for principals. That is 99 different allowances applying to different principals under several different collective agreements and those can change at any time depending for instance on the number of staff who are employed in the school. Teachers who have changes made at the start of the year may have had their allowances expire they might be on fixed-term contracts or they might be on contracts that go from one term to the next. All of these have to be restarted at the beginning of each year and it is not surprising that there is the odd error when 80 percent of all teachers have changes to the payroll at the start of the year.Tracey Martin: Can he confirm that the education payroll is no more complex than when it was under the previous payroll providers Multi Serve and Datacom?Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is likely but under those systems there were considerable errors. In fact for many reasons it would be a good idea to simplify the payment of teachers so for instance there are not 99 separate allowances payable to school principals. I think a lot of teachers and a lot of the people responsible for data entry in the schools would like to see a simpler way of paying teachers so that there are no errors.Tracey Martin: Is he aware that under Novopay many teachers cannot match a single payslip from the last 15 months to deposits in their bank accounts and are unable to identify the cause of the problem in order to rectify it; if so what confidence can he have in the error reports that he is currently receiving?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Crown and the Minister of Education must meet their obligations to pay teachers. There is no choice about that. If teachers believe they have not been paid the right amount then there is now a fairly comprehensive process set up to ensure they are paid correctly because that is a legal obligation of the Crown. I would say though that it will be less expensive for the Crown more certain for teachers and certainly less costly for the payroll system if we could negotiate collective agreements that are significantly less complex than the ones that currently apply. Large amounts of resource were spent under the previous administrative system correcting continuous errors in pay.Tracey Martin: Can he confirm that the 2013 payroll error reports are now overdue to schools and that as many of the 2012 reports themselves were incorrect they now require double-checking by schools?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I cannot confirm that. What I can confirm though is that the complexity of the payroll which was previously buried in an expensive system run by Datacom is now obvious to every school. In the long run all our interests will be better served by negotiating a collective agreement that does not have 99 different changeable allowances for school principals.Chris Hipkins: Did he state last year when he became Minister responsible for Novopay: “I want to see within three months the situation where as much as possible workloads for administrators are back to where they were before this thing started”; if so is he satisfied that he has delivered on that promise?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes. The error rates on this massive complex payroll are now well under 1 percent and the Minister is satisfied that he has delivered on undertakings. It can be improved now only by making the underlying collective agreements less complicated than they are.Tracey Martin: Is he aware of a school in Rodney that has lost $29000 out of its operations grant following the failure of Novopay’s debt collection arm to collect overpayments from support staff some of whom were non - New Zealanders and have subsequently left the country?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not aware of that particular case but the Minister is certainly aware of the problem of overpayments and debt collection and considerable effort has been applied to try to resolve that on behalf of schools. Again the pay arrangements for teachers are more complicated than for almost anyone except the police. In both cases we would get better results for everybody with much less complicated collective agreements.Tracey Martin: Can we take from his answers that the National Party believes in flexibility inside of education for everybody apart from teachers and their payroll?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No. The Government believes it needs to meet its legal obligations to pay people who work hard who educate our children and who contribute much to New Zealand’s economic and social development and we will do everything we can to meet those obligations—in fact more than what we can; we actually have to meet the obligations. I am simply making the point that in the longer run teachers would be better off the Government would be better off and the system would be much less expensive if we could simplify the arrangements. There is simply no justification for 99 separate allowances for school principals. That is nuts and we should try to change it.Jobs—Availability and Protection2.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “the true builders of that future are the millions of New Zealanders working in the homes the businesses the industries of our country”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes I stand by that statement. But just to be technically correct the member should note that the statement was from the Speech from the Throne that was actually delivered by the Governor-General in December 2008.Hon David Cunliffe: What is the Prime Minister doing to protect our sawmilling industry as 400 sawmill workers’ jobs are currently on the line at Southern Cross Forest Products in South Otago because it has gone into receivership?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am just not briefed on that particular situation but what I would say is that the Government has been working very hard actually to make sure the economy is efficient productive and working well and that all of those factors are in play which is why our economy is the envy of so many other countries around the world.Hon David Cunliffe: Since the Prime Minister did not notice those 400 jobs that were in danger what about the 120 workers who lost their forestry jobs at the Tachikawa Forest Products sawmill in Rotorua months ago or the more than 10 workers who lost their lives in the industry in the last 13 months?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is good news that the member is focusing on people who might lose their jobs. In any one given—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of interjection coming for this answer is now completely—[Interruption] Order! The Prime Minister should not start that way but when he was given a question that started the way it did then the Opposition could expect the sort of answer the Prime Minister is giving.Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can you elaborate on what you found offensive about that question?Mr SPEAKER: I did not find anything offensive. Otherwise I would have ruled it out of order. But if you recall the wording of the Hon David Cunliffe he said words to the effect “Since the Prime Minister does not know of that incident” and then led into his question. They were—[Interruption] Order! They were unnecessary to the question and because they were given in the question they invite a very wide response from the Prime Minister.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The labour markets in New Zealand are very dynamic and in any sort of 3 month period around about 100000 jobs are created and somewhere between 100000 and 200000 jobs in any similar period can be lost. But what we do know is that the economy is growing 1500 people a week are leaving welfare for work the economy is showing—and the unemployment rate is falling. It is one of the reasons that consumer and business confidence is rising but there will always be some companies that shed employees for a variety of different reasons and we know that one of those companies could be an organisation called the Labour Party.Hon David Cunliffe: Were the 52000 New Zealanders who have left for Australia since he took office helped by the fact that this Government presided over the closing of the Hutt and Hillside engineering workshops after KiwiRail awarded contracts to offshore manufacturers rather than to New Zealand producers?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: For a start off it is pleasing to see that we are now on a record 10-year low of New Zealanders leaving for Australia. It is equally true that if we look at the unemployment rate in New Zealand it is currently 6 percent and the participation rate is far higher than Australia’s—although its official rate is 6 percent if it had the same participation rate in fact its unemployment rate would be over 10 percent. I am surprised that the member is actually raising these individual items without getting to his feet to talk about the many many thousands of New Zealanders who are gaining jobs each week.Hon David Cunliffe: Since the Prime Minister is now making up future unemployment rates would he like to make up some asbestos regulations so that imported Chinese locomotives do not poison New Zealand railway workers?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I said to the member yesterday that is in breach of the contract. I have seen a report today that says that there are no harmful effects but that is a matter for KiwiRail ultimately to do things. But what I would be interested in doing is not—not I say—making up the two names of people who gave David Cunliffe money. I would be interested in finding out exactly who they are. Why does not the member tell us? If it is Kim Dotcom why does he not just say it is him?Hon David Cunliffe: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order. It will be heard in silence.Hon David Cunliffe: The Prime Minister is establishing himself as a fantasist in the public’s mind but that—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can the member please resume his seat. I have invited the member to raise his point of order. I have told the House that this point of order will be heard in silence. The member needs to now raise the point of order.Hon David Cunliffe: The question is one of relevancy and whether the Prime Minister’s conjecture has anything to do with the question of asbestos regulation. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I do not need assistance from the Prime Minister. The difficulty the member has is the way he asked his question. He led into the start of his question by saying “Since the Prime Minister is making it up …”. If the member wants a clear concise answer as I told him yesterday he needs to ask a clear and concise question. [Interruption] I have addressed the matter.Hon David Cunliffe: What is the Prime Minister doing to ensure that specialist industries such as rail construction and boatbuilding have any future under his Government when KiwiRail gives contracts overseas and ferries are built in Bangladesh not in New Zealand?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There has been a very broad range of initiatives undertaken by the Government through the Business Growth Agenda and what we know is that they are working. If you look at the BNZ-Business New Zealand Performance of Manufacturing Index which is the best reflection of manufacturing we know that month after month after month—I think for the last 14 or 15 months in a row—we have seen an increase in manufacturing output in New Zealand. What we also know is that from time to time New Zealand companies will bid on a contract that they will not get because someone will be able to provide it at a much cheaper rate. On the advice that I saw in relation to the ferry that the member actually asked the question about it was multiples more expensive if it was built in New Zealand. So if the member is telling us and telling New Zealand taxpayers that the way that he would run the show is to spend enormous amounts of money buying only New Zealand products that is interesting on two fronts.Hon David Cunliffe: What about the tax on the jobs?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well I tell you what let me just finish this point because you might find it quite interesting. The first point would be that taxpayers would be paying a lot more. The second point the member is making is that New Zealand companies should buy only New Zealand products but when Australian supermarkets wanted to buy only Australian products that member went nuts.Hon David Cunliffe: Can the Prime Minister understand why the unemployment rate has now climbed to 9.3 percent in the Bay of Plenty and what steps is he taking to assist the kiwifruit industry and those workers who are bearing the personal tragedy of the Psa disease in terms of lost jobs?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Two things. Firstly the moment Psa was discovered the Government put in I think off the top of my head $25 million which was matched by the industry. We worked very hard to make sure that the kiwifruit growers were back on their feet. I have met with quite a number of them and the industry over the years. My understanding is that they are doing a lot better but obviously it has been a very tough time. But one thing I will say is that we take about 8000 people a year on the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme which works heavily in the horticulture sector including obviously kiwifruit. My understanding is that that sector is lobbying the Minister very aggressively for an increase because it is so busy it cannot get enough staff.State-owned Assets Sales—Genesis Energy and Purpose3.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) to theMinister of Finance: What progress is the Government making with its share offer programme which is freeing up money for reinvestment in new public assets without having to increase Government debt?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Last week the Government confirmed that the last of its share offers for a minority shareholding in Genesis Energy will proceed later this month. The offer is expected to open in the second half of March with the company likely to be listed on the market around mid-April. All of this of course is subject to market conditions. We will set out the details for the float over the next few weeks. As with the other share offers New Zealanders will be at the front of the queue and we remain committed to at least 85 percent Kiwi ownership. The Genesis Energy share offer will be structured to meet the Government’s objectives of achieving good value for taxpayers as well as providing opportunities for New Zealand investors.Maggie Barry: What were some of the Government’s objectives for the share offer programme and have those objectives been met?Hon BILL ENGLISH: One of the objectives was to enable the Government to finance new infrastructure with the savings of New Zealanders rather than by borrowing from foreign banks. There were also a number of other objectives. We wanted to help to deepen the capital markets so that as New Zealand goes into a growth phase more New Zealand businesses can go to the public market to raise the capital they need in order to invest in New Zealanders’ skills and higher incomes in the future. It has also enabled us to free up money for reinvesting in priority public assets like schools hospitals and ultra-fast broadband. So far we have raised around $4 billion to do that and that is $4 billion of New Zealanders’ savings rather than $4 billion of borrowing from foreign banks.Maggie Barry: What are some of the features of the Genesis share offer that will help build interest among New Zealand investors?Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is obviously up to investors to decide what level of interest they take in the share offer but the Government will introduce new features to the Genesis offer. First the shares will be priced at the start of the offer period which means that Kiwi investors know the price when they apply for shares. Secondly we have expanded the range of what we expect to sell to 30 to 49 percent of the shares subject to market conditions. The Government wants to be able to test demand in the market before making a final decision. We will also be offering a loyalty bonus scheme and a more succinct investment statement for retail investors.Maggie Barry: Without the share offer programme what alternative approaches could the Government have taken to pay for new public assets such as schools and hospitals?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There are other ways of financing it for instance increasing taxes or introducing new ones such as the dopey internet tax the Labour Party is proposing. Another option would be not to invest in these public assets and to tell New Zealanders to make do with what they have. We did not do that. We could have gone out and borrowed $4 billion from foreign bankers whom the Opposition would rather we do business with but we chose to go to New Zealand savers. Finally there is another option. We could have set up a trust and asked for secret donations!Pike River Mine Disaster—Release of Information4.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) to theAttorney-General: Will he release all correspondence between the Christchurch Crown Solicitor or any other solicitor actingfor the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and counsel for Peter Whittall on the decision not to proceed with the prosecution of Mr Whittall under the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 relating to conditions at the Pike River Mine that lead to the deaths of 29 miners; if not why not?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): No because that is not a decision for me to make.Andrew Little: In light of that answer and in light of the public statement made by counsel for Peter Whittall on Friday 28 February at 4.23 p.m. that “Neither Mr Whittall nor Mr Grieve have any issue with any of their letters on this matter being made public.” and thereby waiving their legal professional privilege why will he not now ensure that that correspondence is released?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: The member did not listen or did not listen carefully to my answer to his first question. That is not a decision for me to make. Perhaps I can help the honourable member by referring him to the Solicitor-General’sProsecution Guidelines and the introduction to it by me which says “Under our constitutional arrangements the Attorney-General is responsible through Parliament”—Grant Robertson: This is humble.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Well instead of making unpleasant comments Mr Robertson should listen because I am sure Mr Little would agree this is a very serious matter.Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the Minister could just give his answer it would be helpful.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I will go back for a minute because Mr Little at least is taking this seriously. Under our constitutional arrangements the Attorney-General is responsible through Parliament to the citizens of New Zealand for prosecutions carried out by or on behalf of the Crown. In practice however the prosecution process is superintended by the Solicitor-General who pursuant to section 9A of the Constitution Act 1986 shares all the relevant powers vested in the Office of the Attorney-General.Andrew Little: What information about the state or progress of the prosecution did Cabinet have before it when deciding not to take action to ask the shareholders in Pike River including Crown entities to make good the reparation orders made by the District Court on 5 July 2013?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Regrettably the member did not listen to the first answer to the question. Cabinet did not make a decision and the implication in his question is deeply constitutionally offensive. These are decisions that are made by the Solicitor-General. Cabinet has no place in deciding on the initiation the continuance or the bringing to an end of a prosecution.Andrew Little: Was the offer on behalf of Mr Whittall to pay $3.41 million to the families of the dead miners taken into account in the decision not to proceed with the prosecution and in the subsequent decision to offer no evidence and seek a discharge the equivalent of an acquittal?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As I said these are matters for the Solicitor-General. To the best of my knowledge when the Solicitor-General and through him the Crown prosecutor in Christchurch were determining the matter that was a factor that was taken into account. But there were a number of matters that meant that the Crown decided not to proceed with the prosecution.Andrew Little: How was the public interest test required under paragraph 5.1.2 of the Solicitor-General’s prosecution guidelines of 1 July 2013 met in this case in light of the clear findings of the royal commission of inquiry of the level of negligence by themine owner’s officers leading up to the fatal explosion on 19 November 2010 and the fact that 29 men died at work in one fell swoop causing widespread public alarm?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Once again I have to bring the member back to the prosecution guidelines and to the person who makes the decision and the factors that are taken into account in making the decision. These matters are free from political interference or at least in a National Government they are.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I invite you to go back and look at that answer look at theCabinet Manual and look at the Standing Orders and inform us who is answerable in Parliament for those decisions if it is not the Attorney-General.Mr SPEAKER: I will accept the invitation from the member and I will certainly have another look at it.Southern District Health Board—South Link Health and Fraud Allegations5.KEVIN HAGUE (Green) to theMinister of Health: When were Ministry of Health officials first informed that the dispute between the Southern District Health Board and South Link Health involved allegations of the misuse of public funding and when were they first informed that this alleged misuse was suspected to involve elements that could be fraud?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I am advised that this complex commercial dispute is over savings from pharmaceutical and laboratory contracts from 1995 to 2002 and it has been ongoing for over a decade. I am advised that the Ministry of Health has been aware over all of this time that Southern District Health Board has had concerns over the agreed and proper use of savings and that is why there is a dispute. In relation to the second part of his question I am advised that they became aware of concerns about fraud in late 2013. The member knows that this matter is now with forensic accountants to see whether there is an issue of fraud but the member may also be interested to know that the Ministry of Health has advised me that it has seen no evidence that suggests fraud.Kevin Hague: Does the Minister continue to maintain that he did not know that there were allegations of misuse of funds prior to late 2013 as he answered in this House in the last sitting session when this fact had been extensively covered by mainstream and specialist health sector media for more than a decade?Hon TONY RYALL: Yes I do because as I said to the member last week we have searched our records the ministry’s records and the records of the district health board and we have found no evidence in respect of that 2010 advice that he talked about. Look the member can cast as many aspersions as he likes on whatever individuals he wants to look at but the fact is that the forensic accountants are now looking at this. It will be interesting to see what they come up with but I have received advice from the Ministry of Health that they have seen no evidence that suggests fraud.Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is unclear from the Minister’s answer whether he is answering yes or no to this basic question of whether he is continuing to maintain—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I can assist the member. I heard the Minister say that yes he maintains his position.Kevin Hague: Does the Minister continue to maintain that he did not know that there were allegations of misuse of funds prior to late 2013 when his written answers today show that his own office was communicating directly with the district health board chief executive on multiple occasions about this very issue in 2010?Hon TONY RYALL: That is because at the time they were seeking to get mediation and arbitration. There had been no advice given to me that there was any fraudassociated with that. The member has got to acknowledge that this has been going on for 12 years. It is a very complex situation—Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question related to allegations of the misuse of funds not about fraud specifically—that is a separate matter and a subset. The Minister has been claiming that he had no knowledge prior to late 2013 that there were allegations of the misuse of funds. It would be good if his answer could address that point.Mr SPEAKER: I am going to invite the member to repeat his question because the Minister had started his answer before he was interrupted by the point of order. Repeat the question please.Kevin Hague: Does the Minister continue to maintain that he did not know that there were allegations of the misuse of funds prior to late 2013 when his written answers today show that his own office was communicating directly with the district health board chief executive about this very issue on multiple occasions in 2010?Hon TONY RYALL: I think the member is trying to create some sort of mystery around this use of the words “misuse of funds”. As I said in my main question the whole issue—Hon Annette King: The main question?Hon TONY RYALL: —answer—of this debate over the last 12 years has been whether there has been agreed and proper use of the money. If you want to call that “misuse of funds” the member can but all of his questions have been about the issue of fraud. The reason why we are talking about this—Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister is effectively trying to litigate the question rather than answer it.Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. The Minister has addressed the question. The member himself referred to the issue of the misuse of funds. The Minister has addressed the question. If the member has further searching supplementary questions that is the way that he might get the sort of answer that he is after.Kevin Hague: Given that the Minister does continue to maintain that he did not know that there were allegations of misuse of public funds prior to late 2013 has he asked ministry officials district health board staff and board members why they withheld that crucial piece of information from him for so long even though they knew that he would be extremely interested in such claims as a result of his own extensive actions over the massive Michael Swann fraud at this very same district health board?Hon TONY RYALL: We have been quite clear in every answer to this question that there has been a long period of public awareness that there was an argument over whether the money was being spent for agreed and proper purposes and I have answered that in the House a couple of times. If the member is talking about fraud I have been quite clear that a search of my records the ministry’s records and the district health board’s records shows that we have not been advised of that—Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have listened to quite a bit of the answer—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to repeat that question.Kevin Hague: Has he asked ministry officials district health board staff and board members why they withheld that crucial piece of information from him for so long even though they knew he would be extremely interested in such claims as a result of his own extensive actions over the massive Michael Swann fraud at the very same district health board?Hon TONY RYALL: Officials have been quite clear that they were unaware of those claims of fraud resulting from the 2010 advice that we have talked about previously.Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The claims that are referred to are claims that public—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now contesting whether that question was addressed. It was addressed.Kevin Hague: Is the Minister saying that board member of the district health board Richard Thomson is lying when he says that the board referred the matter to the ministry’s audit and compliance unit in December 2010 because Mr Ryall did not want it taken through the courts?Hon TONY RYALL: Well certainly I would reject any suggestion that says that I told the district health board not to take the matter to courts if it was a matter of fraud. No Minister would put themselves in that position.Kevin Hague: When the Minister claims to know nothing about allegations of misuse of public funds in the dispute how could he advise former district health board chief executive Brian Rousseau not to take this misuse of funds to court?Hon TONY RYALL: As the member knows because it was published in theOtago Daily Times on Saturday on that matter Mr Rousseau was talking about civil action—not fraud action but civil action—that the district health board was taking and my position on all those matters is that we should not have one taxpayer-funded organisation taking another essentially taxpayer-funded organisation to court if there were options for mediation and arbitration. That is the advice that I would always give a district health board in that circumstance.Kevin Hague: What exactly did the Minister say and when did he say it to Brian Rousseau that he interpreted to mean: “Do not take this case to court.”?Hon TONY RYALL: Well the member is asking me questions about 3½ to 4 years ago. You would have to ask Mr Rousseau. But if I go by what is in theOtago Daily Timeson Saturday it was before any of this issue in respect of fraud was raised. I think it is a perfectly responsible position for a Minister to say that if there is a matter of a civil case—a contractual dispute—we should not have one taxpayer-funded organisation taking essentially another to court if there is mediation and arbitration available. I know that the Greens are under pressure because of the polls but they—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That part of the answer will not help this House.Kevin Hague: In view of the Minister’s impending retirement—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Kevin Hague: —will he instruct the Southern District Health Board and the Ministry of Health to immediately release all the documents I have requested under the Official Information Act including advice to himself and in-committee board minutes relating to this matter?Hon TONY RYALL: I think that has got nothing to do with my forthcoming retirement from Parliament but I have to say that I think the member’s performance on this might be a reason for an involuntary retirement with the behaviour that we are seeing—Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister has not addressed the question at all.Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the member wants a clear and concise answer he should ask a clear and concise question. There was no need in that question to refer in any way to a member’s intention to retire from this House.Kevin Hague: Will the Minister support my request to the Auditor-General for an urgent investigation into the role played by him and his ministry in the decision of the Southern District Health Board not to pursue legal channels to recover public funds from South Link Health?Hon TONY RYALL: I think the member is demonstrating with all this sort of stuff that we really are getting into the election-year period. I would have to say to the member that the forensic accountants are looking at it because of a request by the Southern District Health Board. I think we should wait until the forensic accountants’ results come back and consider those issues then. The Ministry of Health has advised me that it has seen no evidence that suggests fraud—Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister is not addressing the question.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will sit down. For just about every question the Minister has attempted to answer we find that the member rises to his feet during the answer. In this particular case the Minister very clearly addressed the question. He said that you should now wait until the forensic accountancy investigation has taken place. It does not help the order of the House when the member not getting the answer he wants continues to rise to his feet and claim that the question has not been adequately addressed when it has been.Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Can I just clarify whether the member is in any way questioning a decision I have just made.Kevin Hague: I am just checking whether you are saying that the Minister has answered as a no.Mr SPEAKER: The member needs to take time to read the Standing Orders. There is no way he can demand a yes or no answer to any question. In this case the member asked his question the Minister very adequately addressed the question and that is the end of the matter.Tertiary Education—Tertiary Education Strategy 2014-19 Performance-based Research Fund and Centres of Research Excellence6.Dr CAM CALDER (National) to theMinister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: What announcements has the Government made on the Tertiary Education Strategy for New Zealand?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment): Earlier today I launched in Auckland the Tertiary Education Strategy 2014-19 which sets out the Government’s expectations and direction of the tertiary education sector for the next 5 years. The future tertiary system needs to be more outward facing and engaged in order to respond to the international expansion of tertiary education the needs of a growing economy and new technologies. That means having strong links to industry community schools and the global economy. The Tertiary Education Strategy is designed to help guide tertiary education investment and the actions needed from the Government tertiary education organisations business and the wider community to significantly improve further our tertiary education outcomes.Dr Cam Calder: What are the priorities for tertiary education identified in the Tertiary Education Strategy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The strategy identifies six key priorities: delivering skills for industry getting at-risk young people into a career boosting achievement for Māori and Pasifika growing education linkages strengthening research-based institutions and improving adult literacy and numeracy. Good progress has already been made in many of these areas. Since 2008 there has been a rise in the number of full-time students we are seeing more graduates than ever before and at higher levels and we had 10000 new apprentices sign up between March and December of last year. The number of Māori students enrolled in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher has increased from 17500 in 2007 to nearly 29000 in 2012. The number of Pasifika students enrolled in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher has risen from 8500 in 2007 to nearly12000 in 2012. Our tertiary sector must continue to adapt and change in order to provide the skills and qualifications that New Zealanders need in order to contribute in the labour market in innovative and competitive ways.Dr Cam Calder: How is the Government strengthening research-based institutions?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Alongside the Tertiary Education Strategy I launched today I also announced changes to simplify and strengthen the structure of the Performance-based Research Fund. The Performance-based Research Fund rewards and encourages excellent tertiary education research by assessing quality allocating funding based on results and publishing information on performance. The changes I have announced today are designed to simplify the research assessment process to save time and reduce costs for organisations and research staff; reward tertiary education organisations to attract external research income from international sources or New Zealand industry or not-for-profit organisations or iwi; strengthen public reporting on research performance; and reward tertiary education organisations that recruit develop and retain new researchers. We have a system with a number of strengths when compared with other funding systems around the world. These changes will build on those strengths reduce complexity and lower compliance costs.Te Ururoa Flavell: Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. How can the Minister stand by his Tertiary Education Strategy which provides for Māori achievement and success when his Tertiary Education Commission is shutting down the only Māori national centre of research excellenceNgā Pae o te Māramatanga?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member raises a very fair point. The centres of research excellence review is going on at the moment and the research society of New Zealand is actually doing the work to evaluate those centres of research excellence and determine which should be funded from the end of 2015 onwards. My understanding is that the member notes that that particular centre of research excellence is not at this stage proposed for funding. It will be up to the institutions as to how they run them. It is important that this is an independent process with scientists measuring the progress of each of these centres of research excellence and that they are not being assessed by politicians sitting in this Chamber.Earthquake Commission Minister—Statements7.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) to theMinister responsible for the Earthquake Commission: Does he stand by his statement made yesterday in the House with regard to Canterbury Labour Members of Parliament that they “have made no more than five requests for assistance through the Earthquake Commission”; if not when will he be correcting his statement and apologising?Hon AMY ADAMS (Associate Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) on behalf of theMinister responsible for the Earthquake Commission: I can advise that I am prepared to table the advice received yesterday from the Earthquake Commission about the number of emails received from Labour MPs. This advice was not an accurate reflection of a number of requests for assistance from Labour MPs and for this the Minister unreservedly apologises and will be writing personally to those MPs with his apologies. The Minister will be taking this up with the Earthquake Commission at the highest levels. I seek leave to table the email the Minister referred to yesterday.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular email. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon Ruth Dyson: What generated the request to the Earthquake Commission for this information and why?Hon AMY ADAMS: I do not have that information to hand.Hon Ruth Dyson: If he is so unaware of the complaints made to the Earthquake Commission by Canterbury Labour MPs how many thousands of other Cantabrians will be having their complaints to the Earthquake Commission fall on deaf ears?Hon AMY ADAMS: I cannot speak as to what is in the Minister’s mind but I can assure the member that the Minister and all of the Government members are absolutely clear in their messages to the Earthquake Commission—that we expect all complaints to be dealt with at an absolute high standard of care.Poto Williams: Can he confirm that former Labour MP Lianne Dalziel asked for assistance from the Earthquake Commission for Mrs Dot Boyd on 18 June 2013 8 full months before it was out in the media; if so when will he be correcting his statement and apologising?Hon AMY ADAMS: No I am not in a position to confirm that.Poto Williams: In light of the incorrect information provided to him and conveyed to Parliament can he now confirm that this is one of the reasons that he is so out of touch with Canterbury issues?Hon AMY ADAMS: No I cannot confirm that.Hon Ruth Dyson: I seek leave to table from the office of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove a snapshot of referrals from his office to the Earthquake Commission between October last year and February this year; a total of 19 cases with the names deleted—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has been well and truly adequately determined. In light of the situation I am prepared to put that leave. It is a summary of correspondence between the Hon Clayton Cosgrove and the Earthquake Commission. Is there any objection to that being tabled? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Poto Williams: I seek leave to table a summary of contacts that my office has had with Dot Boyd on behalf of the Earthquake Commission—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is equally adequately now described. Leave is sought to table that particular summary. Is there any objection? There is objection.Information and Communications Technology Programme—Progress and Alternative Approaches8.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) to theMinister for Communications and Information Technology: How is the Government’s Information and Communication Technology programme improving New Zealanders’ access to improved technology and better connectivity?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Communications and Information Technology): This Government’s information and communications technology programme is about enhancing New Zealand’s ability to excel in an increasingly digital world. We are doing this through initiatives like our ultra-fast and rural broadband initiatives the roll-out of 4G cellular spectrum and supporting the growth of the information and communications technology sector. The modern infrastructure network we are delivering will provide businesses and individuals alike with a vibrant competitive platform for innovation and growth. New Zealand has a highly talented and successful information and communications technology sector and our role is to support it to be innovative and create competitive offerings not to start from the ideological belief that Governments can do everything better than the private sector and should dictate it all.Mark Mitchell: Are there approaches to information and communications technology policy the Government has considered and rejected?Hon AMY ADAMS: I can confirm that the Government will not be taking advice on the creation of its future information and communications technology initiatives from Kim Dotcom. We will not be supporting a Kiwi tax on the Kiwi net. We will not be establishing Kiwi Google. We will not be dictating how much bandwidth each Kiwi gets to use. One thing we definitely will not be doing is forwarding our draft policies to Labour for it to peer review.Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question Grant Robertson. [Interruption] Oh I apologise—Mark Mitchell. I apologise. I apologise to both members for such an insulting comment.Mark Mitchell: Apology accepted Mr Speaker. What recent reports has the Minister seen on potential funding sources for information and communications technology initiatives?Hon AMY ADAMS: This morning I saw a report in which an internet tax funding option was described by Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners as “crazy and outrageous” and by Telecom as concerning. Mr Stanners went on to say that those behind it “should just go the whole hog and nationalise everything.” The funding initiative he referred to of course was the Kiwi con internet tax from information and communications technology supremo “Kiwi” Curran. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! All members have a right to ask a supplementary question.Clare Curran: They certainly do. [Interruption]Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I wonder whether the Minister for Social Development who was interjecting and is now continuing to talk might like to show some leadership to the rest of them and make them shut up for a minute. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am giving the supplementary question to Clare Curran and I certainly want to hear the question so I require silence from this side of the House.Clare Curran: Given the Minister has been in the role for 27 months and has not announced anything substantive when should the information and communications technology sector expect to see any new ideas from her?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well I certainly reject the allegation in that question but I can tell the member that when we do announce our ideas they will be ours and not Mr Dotcom’s.Chris Hipkins: I seek leave to table a briefing from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority sent to Hekia Parata’s office which was sent to the Labour Party this morning. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I will put the leave. [Interruption] Order! Leave is sought to table this particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Chris Hipkins: I seek leave to table a further briefing from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to Hekia Parata’s office which was sent to the Labour Party last month.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just going to check whether there is any further information the member needs to table.Chris Hipkins: No that is sufficient.Mr SPEAKER: That is enough. I will put the leave. Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is none. It will be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Clare Curran: I seek leave to table an email meant for my office mistakenly sent from Amy Adams’ office to a member of the public.Mr SPEAKER: I guess we have started on a bit of a pattern here. I have to put the leave. Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is none. It can also be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Kris Faafoi: I seek leave—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: I am waiting for the point of order.Kris Faafoi: I am waiting for some quiet.Mr SPEAKER: Well if the member does not want to carry on we will move on. If the member—Kris Faafoi: Yes I do. I seek leave to table correspondence from the Department of Corrections to theDominion Post which was mistakenly sent to Labour.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that information. Is there—there is objection.Justice Minister—Compliance withCabinet Manual9.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to theMinister of Justice: On what date did she receive an invitation to visit the Shanghai office of Oravida Ltd during her Ministerial visit to China in October 2013 and what actions did she take to ensure this visit met her obligations under the Cabinet Manual?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I received a letter of invitation from Oravida Ltd by email on 9 October 2013. The letter states that Oravida “specialises in the promotion and distribution of premium food products from New Zealand”. The letter notes that they “are passionate about improving and enhancing New Zealand’s primary food sector”. I accepted the invitation provided that it could be worked into a schedule of a planned visit to China at the invitation of the Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China. Consent from the Prime Minister for travel to China pursuant to theCabinet Manual was obtained in August 2013. I had previously told Oravida that it could not use my name or photograph to endorse or promote its business products or services so I did not take any further steps in respect of that.Grant Robertson: Given the first part of that answer that she got the invitation on 9 October why was there no mention in her media release of 16 October or any other publicity prior to travelling to China of her intended visit to Oravida?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The media release is about the major parts of the visit. I was visiting at the invitation of the Ministry of Justice in China and so most of my visits were with that ministry and its organisations.Grant Robertson: Does she consider that using taxpayer funding to visit and promote a company where her husband is the director may lead to accusations of conflict of interest?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member’s premise is quite incorrect.Grant Robertson: Is her husband a director of Oravida Ltd?Mr SPEAKER: Well in so far as there is ministerial responsibility—Hon JUDITH COLLINS: There is no ministerial responsibility but I would say to that member that if he goes on to the Companies Office website he can find the information out himself.Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table information from the Companies Office website that indicates that the Hon Judith Collins—Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that information. Is there any objection? There is objection.Grant Robertson: When she agreed to visit Oravida did she or her office inform Oravida of her obligations under section 2.87 and 2.89 of theCabinet Manual to not endorse products or use any photos in a way that could be perceived as an endorsement by the Minister of its products?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I have already answered that in my answer to the primary question.Grant Robertson: Does she think that Oravida placing on its website two photos of her visit and a description of her “endorsement” of its products constitutes a perception that she might be endorsing it?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That question is absolutely hypothetical because if the member goes to the English version which I have seen—and unlike the member I am obviously not fluent in Chinese—I would say that Oravida did not say that at all.Grant Robertson: Point of order—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I cannot assist the member with a point of order when there is so much noise coming from members.Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table an English translation of the Chinese text on the website that includes the phrase “endorsement”.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table the English translation. Is there any objection? There is objection.Grant Robertson: Did Oravida Ltd have any involvement in the Minister’s trip to China just 1 month after her visit to the Oravida office where she addressed the APEC women’s leadership forum given that Oravida was a platinum sponsor of that event?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am trying to work out what the member is trying to say and ask—[Interruption] Well I am trying to work out what the question is. Would he like to have another go—in English this time?Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to deal with the point of order first.Grant Robertson: There was absolutely nothing about—Mr SPEAKER: The best way forward is for the member to repeat that question.Grant Robertson: Did Oravida Ltd have any involvement in the Minister’s trip to China just 1 month after her visit to the Oravida office where she addressed the APEC women’s leadership forum given that Oravida was a platinum sponsor of that event?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Certainly not.Rt Hon John Key: Is the Minister aware of whether the Cabinet Office has provided any advice on whether the Minister’s visit to Oravida’s premises in China is in any way a breach of theCabinet Manual?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes the Cabinet Office I understand has advised the Prime Minister that my visit in no way contravened theCabinet Manual.Grant Robertson: Does the Minister think that visiting a company where her husband is the director endorsing the product opening its office in Auckland and given that it donated $55000 to the National Party might create in the minds of New Zealanders a perception of conflict of interest?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Again a hypothetical question and secondly I am just wondering whether or not I should have taken a trustee with me and got them to drink the milk instead.Grant Robertson: In light of that answer I seek leave of the House to table the record of donations that shows that $55000—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That will be information that is publicly available.Schools Buildings—Public-private Partnerships10.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to theAssociate Minister of Education: Did the communities in Christchurch Auckland and Queenstown where four schools are to be built using a public-private partnership (PPP) model ask the Government for private sector management of their school buildings?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of theAssociate Minister of Education: The member is getting ahead of herself. The Ministry of Education simply put out a request for expressions of interest and no contracts have been signed. If the expressions of interest do not result in the best value being delivered the schools will be built via the traditional Ministry of Education procurement process.Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not ask about the expressions of interest process in the business sector. I asked whether the communities such as the Christchurch one—Aranui for example—had been consulted.Mr SPEAKER: I think the member is making a very fair point. Does the Minister require the question to be repeated because I do not think the question has been addressed. [Interruption] Can the member please repeat the question?Catherine Delahunty: Certainly Mr Speaker. Did the communities in Christchurch Auckland and Queenstown where four schools are to be built using a public-private partnership model ask the Government for private sector management of their school buildings?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No I am not aware that they have necessarily made that request although I would point out that nearly all management of school facilities has some form of private sector involvement so I am not sure that the matter would have necessarily come up.Catherine Delahunty: Were all stakeholder groups directly involved with education in those communities including the Aranui Community Leadership Group notified before yesterday’s announcement that tenders would be sought from businesses wanting to manage their school buildings?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I cannot answer that question directly but again I would say that a simple fact of the situation is that most schools have a form of private sector involvement in the management of their facilities. It would not come as a surprise. We generally do not have armies of Government builders—although we might if Labour and the Greens got in—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The question has been answered at the start.Catherine Delahunty: Will she rule out allowing international companies to run or manage parts of the New Zealand public school system through a public-private partnership?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No and I would not see why the Associate Minister would. The whole purpose of this is to try to reduce the cost and deliver savings over traditional procurement by the ministry. It is rumoured to be between 2 percent and 8 percent. We will know that through the process. That allows us extra money to spend on the actual education. If the member is saying that it is more important not to have certain types of companies involved than to get a good school facility built and to have more money for education well good on her.Catherine Delahunty: How many other schools have been identified for possible selection as potential public-private partnerships as suggested in the Cabinet paper released yesterday and does that mean she will consider existing schools and buildings for private management?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not aware of any specific cases in that respect although I am not sure that it would be a shock horror or probe to suggest that we are always looking at ways in which we can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the management of school facilities which is very expensive and we would prefer to have more money to spend on education than on the maintenance of buildings. If we find better ways of doing that I cannot see there is a problem with it.Child Health—Preschool Nutrition and Exercise Programmes11.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to theMinister of Health: What investment is the Government making in improving nutrition and exercise for pre-schoolers?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): Thousands of Waikato preschoolers are now benefiting from a healthy nutrition and activity programme Under 5 Energize developed with $1.1 million of Government anti-obesity funding. Around a hundred early childhood centres in the Waikato are now involved with the Under 5 Energize programme which supports healthy eating and the development of fundamental movement skills for children. It is part of a wider programme investing in maternal and newborn nutrition as recommended by Sir Peter Gluckman.Paul Foster-Bell: What changes have centres involved with the Under 5 Energize project made?Hon TONY RYALL: Last week I visited Fairfield Kindergarten in Hamilton with David Bennett and Tim Macindoe which has been involved with Under 5 Energize and there has been a marked difference in the types of food coming in with the kids. The staff were also able to identify that their children felt restricted by bad weather when wanting to play outside so the kindergarten has now purchased wet-weather gear so that the kids are able to play outside in bad weather. They are also bringing fruit to kindy to share and drinking water is encouraged. It is a very good effort—I am looking forward to the evaluation—and another investment under this National-led Government.Prisoners Rehabilitation and Rate of Reoffending—Drug and Alcohol Treatment12.JOANNE HAYES (National) to theMinister of Corrections: What steps has the Government taken to improve access to alcohol and drug treatment for prisoners?Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Corrections): I am very pleased to advise the House that there has been a rise of almost 1500 percent in places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes since 2008 for prisoners in public prisons. This financial year over 3700 prisoners will have access to treatment for their addictions rising to 4700 next year. This compares with just 234 prisoners having access to that same treatment in the final year of the previous Labour-led Government. This Government has expanded the number of specialist drug treatment units in prisons from six to nine and has significantly increased the capacity of these units. In addition we have also introduced new brief and intermediary programmes in all prisons to ensure those prisoners who need treatment for their drug addiction receive it.Joanne Hayes: Why is the Government focused on increasing alcohol and drug treatment in prisons?Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Alcohol and drug addiction is a major driver of crime. Over half of all prisoners have addiction problems when they enter prison. If we can get them off the drugs and give them some job skills and education to find work on release we reduce the risk of them going on to commit further crimes. That is why this Government is focused on increasing the drug and alcohol treatment in our prisons as part of our plan to reduce reoffending by 25 percent. This work is delivering results with a reduction in reoffending of nearly 12 percent since 2011 meaning nearly 8700 fewer victims.General DebateHon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. What a week for David Cunliffe. What a week for the Artful Dodger over there the Leader of the Opposition. Let us see where he started the week. He started the week with poll numbers that frankly made the David Shearer days look like the golden age of Labour. If he thought that was a bad starting point it was all going to go from bad to worse for “Tricky” David Cunliffe.The question on everyone’s lips this week the question that everyone is trying to get their heads around is who is David Cunliffe? Who is he? Which of the many faces of David Cunliffe should we believe? Is it the “Politics of Envy” Leader of the Opposition who tried to tell New Zealand that he lived a very middle-of-the-road middle existence in his little doer-upper in the suburbs when of course it turns out that he is one of the very wealthy in New Zealand and lives in a mansion in what can only be described as one of the most exclusive suburbs? Is it “Mr Doublespeak” who promises to the unions that they can expect that they are on their way back to the good old days of the 1970s or is it the guy who turns up in front of the businesses and the boardrooms and promises that all will be all right under the free market Harvard graduate going back to Milton Friedman?No I do not think it is any of those. Perhaps it is “Devious Dave” who came out with his child payment policy and promised New Zealand that it would apply to nearly 60000 families and then had to quietly correct it to say: “Oh when I said 60000 I actually meant more like 30000. But it is all in the numbers—just a small error.” Interestingly enough he tried to blame staff for that one as well but he had to accept responsibility for that. Perhaps it is “Dodgy Dave” who New Zealand is now learning funnelled his donations through a secret trust. Is that not interesting? This is the same David Cunliffe who was part of the Labour Government that reformed the electoral finance laws in relation to donations and railed about transparency and honesty and accountability. But when it was his turn what was the advice he took? It was: “Let us have a secret trust so we don’t have to tell the public who is really backing us.” Is that not interesting?You have got Shane Jones who is quite prepared to be open with the public. Even Grant Robertson did not mind telling the public who was behind him. So what is it with David Cunliffe? Why is it that he could not be straight with New Zealand and tell them who was funding him? You have to wonder. Now he has come out and when a bit of pressure comes on he is prepared to name three of the donors. He was quite happy to take the money of the other two quite a substantial amount thousands and thousands of dollars—he was happy to take it—but now that the heat is on he would rather just give it all back and make it go away. Well I think New Zealand wants to know who they were. Who were they? Maybe it was Kim Dotcom. Maybe it was his union mates. How will we know? This doyen of transparency and reform of electoral finance law is now suddenly “Shady Dave”—“Shady Dave” who does not want to tell us anything. You have to say that since David Cunliffe became leader of the Labour Party it has been gaffes galore. It has been one shipwreck after another.That is only the start of them. Who remembers his electoral law breach during the by-election when David Cunliffe broke the electoral laws breached the rules and said “Oh sorry it was an error.”? We are hearing a lot of excuses. I think we have heard “It was an error.” “It was a mistake of judgment.” and “In hindsight it was a bad call.” We have heard “technical glitch” we have heard “oversight” and we have heard “That was my staff. I didn’t know it was happening.” Just this week he managed to throw one of his own MPs under the bus when he let them take the rap for his own office’s disclosureof draft policy to us. His own office disclosed the draft policy and he was quite happy to throw one of his MPs under the bus. So we can add another one: he is also “Disloyal Dave”. He is “Disloyal Dave” as well as everything else.He came out of course after the Grammys and congratulated Lorde. He could not spell her name right withdrew the congratulations and blamed it on an error. He could not get his CV right. That was a mistake all of that padding and stuff that he had forgotten he had not actually done. He copied Grant Robertson’s candidacy announcement—another glitch. He misled the public on Shane Jones’ stance in the leadership contest. I think the thing is this. What New Zealand knows is that if you cannot run a party and you cannot run your own affairs you sure cannot run a country. We do not want any part of “Tricky Dave”.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party in Government will put children at the heart of every decision that we make at the heart of all of our policies and at the heart of all our work. What did we discover last week? The Government has been masking hiding the number of children who are living in severe poverty in this country. It missed out on 20000 kids last year—20000 children and their families were ignored by this Government. The Green Party will not ignore those children. We will work to bring them out of the poverty that they suffer. Let us just have a think about the legacy of John Key. John Key since he has been Prime Minister has seen 45000 more children living in poverty than before he came to power. There are 45000 more children and their families in poverty under John Key. The Green Party will change that if we get a chance to be at the heart of a progressive Government after this 2014 election.This Government is failing New Zealand’s children and it does not need to be that way. We can make a difference for each of the 285000 children in poverty. We can change the lives of each of those children and their families. This is how we can do it. The Green Party will put children and their needs at the heart of all our decisions. We have already come up with three major sets of solutions to help address the poverty that our kids are suffering. Step one is to bring about a living wage for families to raise the minimum wage and to make sure that working families have enough money to get by on. Not only will we do that; we will raise benefits because we know that most of the kids who live in poverty are from benefit-dependent households and that is because benefits are too low. Given that work does not solve poverty actually under this current Government we must also raise the minimum wage move to a living wage and make sure that benefits are decent enough for families to live on.We will make sure every family has access to a warm and dry home for their kids through our Home for Life programme for progressive ownership so that ownership of their own home really is within the grasp of young families. We will make sure there is a warrant of fitness for all rental properties—not just a few like this Government has done but all rental properties. We know that most of the children who live in poverty live in cold damp homes. There will be security of tenure so those who are the most vulnerable in their housing including State house tenants know they will be able to live in a home rent that home and have some security for themselves and their families when times get hard.Finally there will be school community hubs. Schools are at the heart of their communities and we can make sure they can support their communities and their kids better by relieving teachers and principals of the social obligations if you like and the social difficulties that families face. We will have a full-time facilitator in every low-decile school a dedicated school nurse a free school lunch fund for those schools and free after-school care for those families. We know that so many kids miss out on extending their education because their families cannot afford after-school care and programmes.We will build 20 new community-based childhood education centres not private but not-for-profit on school grounds. I have talked about this before. I know a young woman really well who has two kids—one at preschool one at school—with no money and no car. When she has no food where can she get help? Well she will be able to get help at the school. She will know that her younger child can go to early childhood education there and that her older child will get a great public education at that public school. It is close by so she can walk to it. The children will be fed through a national lunch fund that the Green Party will put in place when we are in Government. We can make a difference for every single one of those children who live in poverty. We will make that difference when we are part of a progressive Government after this election in 2014. Thank you.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): In the last week or so we have been watching the unfolding of a Shakespearean piece of work on the other side of this House. I am still unable to work out whether it is a tragedy a drama a thriller a comedy or a documentary or all rolled into one. It all centres on the leader of the Labour Party.The good news about having been in this House for a long time is that you actually get to a point where you think you cannot see anything new under the sun. But there is something new and I want the Labour Party members to listen up. It goes like this. I have never seen ever in the history of the New Zealand Parliament a political leader of a party who was not voted to that position by his own team. I have never seen that—I have never seen it. In fact I do not know of any country around the world that has a political leader of a party who did not enjoy a majority. So Mr Cunliffe I suggest to the House starts from behind the eight ball. That is what you would say in the old vernacular. He starts from behind the eight ball where less than one-third of his team actually wanted him.One of the things he could do is win support. He could get out there and have some real big hits. Can Labour score some hits? Yes it can. Shane Jones has shown that. Shane Jones has shown how to have a really big hit. He has done it. Oh and guess what? He did not brief his leader on it and did not discuss it with his leader. Wow! That is team playing for you Mr Jones—that is team playing for you.But Mr Cunliffe’s tragedy cum drama cum thriller cum comedy keeps unfolding. In any other sport be it baseball softball or whatever even in some of the legal things with regard to offending we all know of a thing called “three strikes and you’re out”—“three strikes and you’re out”. No wonder Mr Cunliffe did not support the “three strikes and you’re out” policy because I was actually going to get up to give this speech saying that he has had his three strikes. There was “baby bonus - gate”. We all remember “baby bonus - gate” where he badly screwed up the announcement of that. Then there was “leafy suburb - gate”. We all remember “leafy suburb - gate”. He is an ordinary common man of the people and then it turns out that he is earning in the top 0.1 percent of 1 percent of income earners and lives in a house worth more than most of us put together. That was fine. But then we got “trust-gate”. “Trust-gate” I thought was a real clincher.But there are some more. I have had something handed to me just today. Poor Clare Curran has been blamed—has been blamed—for the leak of the information and communications technology policy yesterday. It was her fault—that is what we were all going to say. It was her fault. Poor Clare Curran. But I have just been told that David Cunliffe’s chief press secretary Simon Cunliffe—a relation I presume—Chris Hipkins: That’s a bit low.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: What is wrong? Did you hear that? “Chippy” over there says that it is a bit low to say that he is a relation. Is he that bad now that youdo not want to even claim that you are a relative of the guy? How bad is that when he does not want to even say he is a relation of his? That is bad.Let us go to “trust-gate”. What was “trust-gate” about? It was about getting money into the coffers for your leadership challenge and not telling anybody where it came from—and not telling anybody where it came from. Well we have got some speculation on this side. We think it was Kim Dotcom. We think there is almost no doubt but we do not know you see. They go “Oh no no.” but we do not know. We do not know where that money came from. It could be from Kim Dotcom. It could be from Owen Glenn—it could be from Owen Glenn.Hon Member: Putin.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No no. My friend up there got carried away and said it was Putin but that is not right. It could be Matt McCarten. There is a really good one. The Unite union got him into power because the caucus did not want him. The caucus did not want him. They still do not want him. They want him out.I want to tell that Labour Party that you have got to be very careful when you are on the slippery slope. One of the bits of history that I remember was 1990. In 1990 Labour’s then leader its then Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer just was not cutting the mustard. I used to talk to Labour backbenchers and they used to say: “Jeez I don’t know what we’re going to do here.” Well do you know what the Labour Party did? Six weeks before the general election it said: “We can’t go on with him.” and it cut him. It went to Mike Moore and do you know what? The old adage of “Cheer up; things could be worse.”—well they cheered up and sure enough things got worse. Labour went out on a slippery sliding hiding to nothing.This leader is gone. He is dog tucker. He has had his three strikes and he should get out.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): Sunday was Children’s Day. To celebrate the day we went out and asked Kiwis just what their dreams were for Kiwi kids. The responses were not something to celebrate. The responses were in turn heartbreaking and infuriating. It was a hard lesson in just how tough it is for New Zealanders and their families and just how tough life has become for so many under this Government. It is like this response from Eleanor a teacher who claims that kids fall asleep in class because their house is so cold that it keeps them awake. Or the response from another Kiwi who dreams of a day when “I take my kid to the supermarket and he wants a lollipop or chocolate and I can get it for him because I have got enough money and a good job. I want to see him happy and not crying because I can’t afford it.” Those are New Zealanders’ dreams for their children under National’s New Zealand—to be able to afford a lollipop when they take them to the supermarket.This response is from Angela who wants kids simply to have clean waterways green grass and parks to enjoy the Kiwi lifestyle. Another person dared to dream of a New Zealand in which kids could “have their parents around not working all hours just to make ends meet.” It is like the woman in Papakura whom I met a few weeks ago who works 16 hours to support two teenage boys and who has not had a pay rise since Helen Clark was the Prime Minister. She is on less than $14 an hour. Shame shame shame! Or this from Byron who wrote: “I have nightmares about being able to afford my son’s education and pray that I will be able to help build the finance.”Then there are the endless endless dreams of warm houses of kids not going hungry and of parents with decent jobs: “I want to be loved fed and secure. I want my kids to have their basic needs met. I want a family that I can feed and raise. I want breakfast lunch and dinner; warm clothes to wear; a full tummy; a warm dry home; nourishing food; warm clean clothing; and parents who have time. I just want to be valued.” That is where National is taking New Zealand—to a point where making our kids warm andfed and safe is not a policy it is a dream. Even more damning is the fact that under National so many of those dreams will continue to be unfulfilled as the gap between the haves and the have-nots gets wider and wider.Let us not forget that in the last fortnight we found out that another 20000 New Zealand kids are living in poverty because the Government got its numbers wrong and that it knew about it before it declared it to this Parliament. There are now 285000 children living below the poverty line growing up in poverty—more than the populations of Dunedin and Hamilton combined. It is a disgrace that so many children and their families are in poverty and left dreaming of meeting the basic needs of life because this Government has washed its hands of them.Well Labour has not walked away. We have a dream that we will make a reality. It is one that we share with Curtis and many other kids who have written to us. We stand for kids being able to follow their dreams no matter where they are or how much money is in their parents’ wallets. Both the Prime Minister and I had those kinds of opportunities but the difference is that his Government is pulling the ladder up after itself while we are extending it for all New Zealanders. That is why we will be extending the number of jobs out there and making sure New Zealanders in all our regions have the opportunity for better jobs and higher wages. That is why we introduced the Best Start package for children.I note that National is yet to attack the substance—I wonder why. It is yet to attack the substance because either it would like to do it or it does not want to be seen arguing against the principle of feeding our kids. Giving $60 a week to the families that wrote in here will make a difference—so will paid parental leave so will early childhood education and so will decent care for the mothers. We want a future for all New Zealand’s children not just for some.LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): In the months ahead the New Zealand public get to see two teams lining up toe to toe. They will see the A-Team clearly led by a very strong confident optimistic positive Prime Minister John Key. We are delivering for hard-working New Zealanders every day a stronger economy more jobs higher wages safer streets and communities higher levels of achievement in education and of course better access to health care. And then we have the B-Team—or should we say the C-Team? Actually that is probably a bit generous. I think it is the D-Team—D for David. Or is it “Tricky David”? Or is it “Clumsy Cunliffe”? Or is it “Which-way-is-up Day” today? Because New Zealanders right now—actually do not even worry about New Zealanders because the members of his own caucus do not know which way he is heading. They do not know what he stands for and therefore they do not know what they stand for.In terms of talking about standing it is really interesting to see that we have seats in Timaru—for example the seat of Rangitata. Only a few months ago David Shearer was saying that Labour was clearly going to retake the provincial seat of Rangitata. Well actually you cannot even get a candidate so in terms of trying to get members on your team you are obviously struggling—so good luck with that. At the end of the day they have to be able to hold the ball and not drop the ball and not drop it more than twice in one day.It is really interesting if you talk to and listen to constituents on the street. [Interruption] Do not mind me Mr Robertson—just have a little tête-à-tête across the House. Hard-working New Zealanders have got things that they are interested in hearing about. One of them is jobs. We talk a lot in the House about jobs and I want to talk about some of the things that this Government is doing in provincial New Zealand. Dream on—actually we should add to David Cunliffe’s title “Dream Chaser” or todayit was the “Chief Fantasy Officer” in terms of some of the things that he is dreaming up.In hard-working rural and provincial New Zealand in a seat like Taupō what counts is jobs and the things that this Government is doing to create jobs. It is attracting major international events and keeping them in provincial New Zealand like the Ironman New Zealand competition which celebrated its 30th anniversary through the Major Events Development Fund which supports these sorts of activities. There has been an $8 million extension to the Cycleway Fund which helps to maintain significant infrastructure in places like Tokoroa Pūtāruru and Tīrau where jobs are created as a result of the Waikato River Trail. The fact is that there are tourists and visitors who come into that area who have never come before. If you look at the new soon-to-be-opened Great Lake Trail in Taupō—Sue Moroney: How many jobs?Hon Annette King: How many jobs do you get from an Ironman?LOUISE UPSTON: —that is another thing that brings visitors into our towns and creates jobs. You are asking about jobs. The number of jobs that came from people who were previously unemployed in the south Waikato who got jobs because of the Waikato River Trail is a record that I am proud of. I am proud of people who come off unemployment benefits and go into work. That is what this Government is doing and it is delivering on it every day.Just last week I was in the electorate with Minister Paula Bennett and we were in one of the local Work and Income offices talking about one of the challenges that they are hearing. Do you know what that challenge is? It is that organisations are saying that they do not have the same number of volunteers they once had because some of the people who were volunteering before now have jobs. They have got jobs they need to turn up to. So I think that is a good problem that we have as a country. There is silence from the other side now because they do not like the fact that we are talking about jobs and that we are talking about getting people off benefits and into work. Whatever job it is we think that it is important. This side of the House values work. We think it is important that we are getting people off benefits and into work. I for one am proud.Next month at the velodrome the home of cycling—in Cambridge not in Hamilton as was reported by one of the daily newspapers—we will welcome the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Not only is it for high-performance sport which this Government is funding a large number of the people who will use that facility are the community members who are learning to ride. It backs up another initiative that this hard-working Government is delivering instead of the dreamers on the other side.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): There is a reason that theCabinet Manual has strict rules in place about the declaration of conflicts of interest. It is because New Zealand taxpayers expect that when Ministers go about their business particularly when they go overseas they will do so in a way that is fair that is good value for money and that will not in any way advantage them or anyone they know. It is my view and I believe it would be the view of most New Zealanders that Judith Collins taking a trip paid for by the taxpayer to the Shanghai office of a company in which her husband is one of only three directors going to that office having her photograph taken and having that photograph appear on the company’s website and that website saying she was endorsing their products constitutes a breach of theCabinet Manual. It constitutes a conflict of interest that John Key today says is no problem to him. Well I say to him to release that advice. Release that advice today because for most New Zealanders Judith Collins’ actions are a clear conflict of interest.It is not as if this visit to the Oravida office in Shanghai is Judith Collins’ only action in this regard. She also opened the Auckland office of Oravida in 2013. Her husbandwent on the board in 2012. Oravida is also the organisation that donated over $55000 to the National Party in 2011.Dr David Clark: How much?GRANT ROBERTSON: It was $55000. So Judith Collins knowing all of that goes to that office and promotes the products of that company. That is a conflict of interest. Judith Collins is not above the rules. She is not above the law. This National Government might be arrogant enough to think it is above the rules and above the law but it is not. New Zealanders want to know that when Ministers go overseas it is taxpayer money well spent. What they have seen here is a Minister prepared to flout what a conflict of interest is to most people.This company is not one that just Judith Collins has a deep involvement in; this company is also one that reaches far into the National Party. I will table at the end of this speech further information from the Oravida website that makes clear that when Oravida sponsored a group of business people from China to come to New Zealand in 2012 they met with Peter Goodfellow who was identified by Oravida on the website as the “National Party chairman” to discuss the exciting opportunity of extensively developing a foundation for bilateral collaborations. That is Peter Goodfellow as the president of the National Party meeting in that position—not in his role as a businessman apparently but as the president of the National Party—to help extend the relationship with this company Oravida. What I can also tell the House is that Mr Goodfellow’s company Sanford supplies fish products to Oravida. So we now have a situation where the president of the National Party—meeting in that position; giving an endorsement effectively to the relationship between that company and New Zealand—is also supplying products and benefiting from that.Here we have a company where a senior Cabinet Minister’s husband is on the board. He is going about his business as a director in a way that will benefit him and will benefit that company. The Minister goes to China appears in photographs has a statement that she is endorsing this company and opens its office. We have donations to the party. The National Party is in donkey deep with its cronies once again here and there are questions to answer for Judith Collins and John Key about whether they think it is acceptable to have this level of conflict of interest.Hon Annette King: What about Pansy Wong?GRANT ROBERTSON: This is Pansy Wong all over again.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): What a dreadful start to the year it has been for the beleaguered Labour Opposition and its oleaginous leader du jour Mr David Cunliffe. No wonder the heads were down on the Opposition benches. Those members could not even pretend to be interested or supportive as he was putting questions to the Prime Minister this afternoon. This is the “Member for Herne Bay $2.5 Million Do-uppers” who is trying to pretend to the nation at large that he is a man of the people that he has got the interests of the public at heart and that he understands the common man or whatever the term might be these days. Half of the Labour Opposition looked to be suffering severe pain while he was speaking and the other half looked like possums trapped in the headlights. Most of those members did not want him. You have got to give them credit for that—at least they understood that. They tried to tell Labour’s members and they tried to tell the unions but those other parties in Labour’s overall cluster said: “No we know best and you have got to have him.” and he is proving to be even worse than they feared he would be.Let us see what that veteranNew Zealand Heraldcolumnist John Armstrong who has been around for a long time and who knows the scene had to say today. Under the headline “Two Cunliffe mea culpas in four days smacks of clumsiness” John Armstrong wrote: “That he cannot seem to stop his fingers hovering over the self-destruct button is no surprise to anyone who has watched him for any length of time.” What a devastating comment that is from a man of John Armstrong’s experience. He goes on to say: “It is a great mystery why someone overly blessed with essential political attributes gets it wrong with such frequency. Maybe it is overconfidence. Maybe it is an inability to see the line between being bold and being foolhardy. He got away with it when he held lower ranked positions in the Labour caucus. The role of Leader of the Opposition offers no escape from the spotlight.” and so it goes on. A devastating critique—devastating because of its unbelievable accuracy.This is a leader who relies on dodgy CVs a leader who relies on secret trusts and a leader who relies on blatant bribes for voters with promises that do not stack up and could not possibly be afforded. He is so desperate to win support from a few of his caucus that he is promising them a bonus if they would just go forth and multiply. How ridiculous it is to suggest that the new benchmark for poverty in this country is just a little bit more than a backbench MP’s salary. Boy that is going to be a winner on the hustings this year! It is about as credible as suggesting that a $2.5 million home in Herne Bay is just a modest do-upper in middle New Zealand. Yet it is consistent with all the other nonsense that has been coming out of a party that is hopelessly divided hopelessly bereft of sensible or constructive ideas and hopelessly out of touch with the electorate.The Labour Party hopes to convince New Zealanders later this year that it was not responsible for getting this country into the recession when it was in Government and yet somehow it has also got the best policies for continuing to lead us out of it. Well as the Prime Minister noted in question time today our economy is the envy of most other countries and commentators in the developed world. Why is that? Well the National-led Government’s programme to build a faster-growing economy with more jobs and rising incomes is being shown to deliver.Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs?TIM MACINDOE: There are lots of jobs being created in my electorate and I invite you to come and see it. In fact a lot of the jobs are now in your electorate because Haier has just announced 65 new jobs in Dunedin. Yet your leader that rather confused Mr Cunliffe was opposed to something that has actually turned out to be very good for your own electorate.I would like to put on record a few of the contrasts between what we inherited from the Labour Government and its record and what we have got now. The current account deficit when National took office after 9 years of Labour was 9 percent of GDP. Today the current account deficit is 4.3 percent of GDP. Net external debt under Labour blew out to 84 percent of GDP. Today it is down to 71 percent of GDP. It is still too high and we are getting it down and we must continue to do so. Inflation was running at more than 5 percent under Labour. Today under National it is 1.6 percent. Mortgage interest rates averaged nearly 11 percent. Today they average about half that amount. And so it goes on. These are the important things that matter to New Zealanders these are the things that we can campaign on this year and these are the things that New Zealanders want us to continue to deliver.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I said that I would table a document at the end of my speech so I seek leave to table a document from the Oravida website—it is not easy to obtain—from June 2012 about a visit from the Shanghai municipality to New Zealand—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think the document has been described. I suspect it is actually relatively easy to source but I am in a very generous mood. I will put the leave. Leave is sought to table this particular document from the website of the company. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.DAVID CLENDON (Green): We heard earlier this afternoon in question time about some improvements in the delivery of drug and alcohol treatment to inmates in our prisons and that is a good thing. I suspect that it will not be sufficient but it is a step forward and I acknowledge that this Minister of Corrections has made some genuine efforts to improve the situation around imprisonment and incarceration. It is too little but at least there are some good ideas and some good initiatives being seen.Sadly in the overall picture however we have a very long way to go. I believe that some New Zealanders would be disappointed and surprised and even ashamed at some of the events and some of the conditions that are observable in some of our prisons. We have had two recent documents from watchdogs independent bodies with no political axe to grind that are very clearly and very graphically outlining some of the appalling conditions that people are being subject to in our prisons—something that is way below the mark for a country that prides itself on respect for human rights and the rule of law.A report from the Human Rights Commission in DecemberMonitoring Places of Detention talked about the dreadful conditions in at least two of our prisons to which segregated prisoners are being subjected. It talks about particularly bad living conditions for segregated inmates at Auckland and Mt Eden prisons. It refers to accommodation for prisoners currently undergoing periods of segregation as being “well below standard and could be considered cruel and inhumane for the purpose of the Convention Against Torture.” I believe that it would shock and disappoint many New Zealanders that we are subjecting inmates in our prisons to conditions that could be considered cruel and inhumane under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. It is simply not good enough and it is something that we need to pay some real attention to.There were general shortcomings found in the whole matter of segregation in that document in that report. We are told that part of the solution is a rebuild of the maximum security wing at Pāremoremo prison but that will not begin until some time later this year. I ask the question: when there is such a patent need for decent humane accommodation for these inmates why has that work at Pāremoremo not been advanced ahead of the $900 million white elephant currently being constructed at Wiri?The second document the second report from just a few weeks ago is a special investigation into the management of a prisoner by the name of Arthur Taylor at Auckland prison. Again this finds that Mr Taylor was initially put into segregation for a period of 14 days for the possession of a cellphone which yes is something he ought not to have had. That 14-day segregation was extended to 8 months. For 8 months this man was subjected effectively to 23-hours-a-day lockdown. He was deprived of association with and the company of other inmates. He was deprived of basic minimum requirements that ought to be provided to every inmate. Those findings come from our own Office of the Ombudsmen which I would argue is beyond dispute in terms of its observation. For 8 months the Department of Corrections failed to follow its own rules. There was a complete breakdown in its checks and balances. Decisions were made in advance of information being presented. There were process failures which have been noted by the ombudsman. There were failures to provide even minimum requirements. For many days and indeed weeks at a time this inmate had no access to exercise in the outside.This situation needs a response. It is no light matter. I have signed a letter along with others including a QC and barristers asking the Commissioner of Police to consider whether criminal charges ought to be brought against the management of Pāremoremo prison and indeed against the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections fortheir failure in their duty of care to inmates. They are legislatively obliged to ensure that the inmates in our prisons are treated decently and humanely. According to the evidence of the ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission they failed in their duty of care in ways that could well put them in contravention of our Crimes of Torture Act. We have asked the police to investigate that. We need to do a great deal better in our prisons. It is not good enough and we look to a better time with a more progressive Government. Kia ora.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): Fifty years ago in 1963 in a small town in Te Aroha in the North Island one David Richard Cunliffe was being born. Sitting on one side of the bed was the good fairy. The good fairy blessed David Richard Cunliffe with charm intelligence and good looks—a leader in the making. Unfortunately sitting on the other side of the bed was the bad fairy who made him out to be the plonker that he is today. The other side of the House knows that the bad fairy won out on that day because it is having such a tough time doing any good work and trying to get up in the polls.Across the House I see Grant Robertson smiling. He is smiling because he knows that he is next in line. He is next in line. Chris Hipkins is smiling too I can see—sitting on the other side of the Leader of the Opposition’s seat—because Chris Hipkins knows that he was right. Chris Hipkins knows that when he said that David Cunliffe could not be trusted he was absolutely right. The Labour Party has had a heck of a year. It is going backwards it is not going forwards and it knows that it is not going well.Hon Annette King: You got here because of Pansy.JAMI-LEE ROSS: During question time Annette King who is calling out right now—also Parliament’s most famous landlady superannuitant and someone who has been here longer than I have been alive—called out “Shambles.” She used the word “shambles”. She used the word “shambles”. I want to expand on that. I want to use the term coined by the British political scene’s most famous spin doctor Malcolm Tucker. He would call what the Labour Party is going through an omnishambles. It is going through an omnishambles right now—an omnishambles where it just cannot get things right.Its leader is tricky. Its leader was blessed by the bad fairy. Donations are being kept secret when those members are the ones who try to say that donations need to be brought out into the open. Leaked emails are coming out of the Labour Party left right and centre. Poor old Clare Curran got blamed for it then a staff member got blamed for it and then we found out that it was actually through David Cunliffe’s own office. Do you know that David Cunliffe—I was looking him up on Wikipedia today—is actually an honorary fellow of the Institute of IT Professionals? An honorary fellow of the Institute of IT Professionals who does not know how to use email properly! What does that say? What does that say? It says that the Labour Party is having an omnishambles.It started off with the baby bribe earlier in the year. Labour members were going out there telling New Zealanders that all these people were going to get $60 a week. It turns out they were wrong. It turns out that another staff member got blamed again. It turns out that only half of those people were going to get the baby bribe. The electoral law breaches last year are also interesting. How can we have a Leader of the Opposition who does not even know that he cannot campaign on election day?Jacqui Dean: He knows.JAMI-LEE ROSS: Actually he probably does know; he is just being “Tricky Dave” once again.This Government is delivering for New Zealanders. That side of the House is going backwards in the polls. This side of Parliament has delivered 66000 new jobs in the lastyear. Forty thousand people every year are getting elective surgery—more than what was happening when Labour was in office. Seventeen thousand people have come off a welfare benefit in the past year. Ten percent more kids are leaving school with National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2. New Zealanders have a Government that is delivering. New Zealanders see on the other side of the House an Opposition that is tricky that is having a nightmare of an election year at the moment and that is going backwards in the polls.I just want to finish off by saying that this side of the House thanks the bad fairy because the bad fairy is delivering for the Labour Party what Phil Goff never could. Phil Goff could only get to 27 percent. Mr David Cunliffe—David Richard Cunliffe—is going to deliver a result for the Labour Party that is even further south than that.This Government is delivering for New Zealanders. This side of Parliament is getting the support of New Zealanders because we have got a leader who knows what he is doing. We have got a leader who is high in the polls because he is delivering for New Zealanders. He is honest he is trustworthy and he is not tricky like the other side.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It will not have escaped the attention of anyone in the House that Jami-Lee Ross came into this House when Pansy Wong had to resign from Parliament in disgrace because of dodgy business dealings in China involving members of her family. That is how we ended up with Jami-Lee Ross in the House in the first place. Now we have got another Minister in the gun for dodgy dealings as well—that is Judith Collins.I want to know whether the National Party will walk the talk that it has been talking today. Will it fess up and reveal where all of its donations came from? The money that it filtered it laundered through the New Zealand Free Enterprise Trust the Holland Memorial Trust the Southern Free Enterprise Trust the Waitematā Trust the Ruahine Trust and—my favourite—the Nationalist Trust of Timaru? All of those trusts were being used to launder money by the National Party. Millions of dollars—not a couple of thousand but millions of dollars—was laundered through those trusts. If those members are not willing to name all of the individual donors who put money through those trusts then they are hypocrites—hypocrites—and no other word will describe them. That is exactly how they can be described because they used trusts to filter millions of dollars—millions of dollars.While we are on the subject of trusts will John Key fess up and admit that he did not tell the truth when it came to his own blind trust? This is his own blind trust that he supposedly does not know anything about when in fact this blind trust was the trust that took care of the shares in his vineyard which he personally buys wine from every year to give away as his PM’s Pinot. He claims that he does not know whether he owns those shares or not despite the fact that John Key has perfected the art of establishing a look-through blind trust so that he can keep an eye on where all of his shares are going. He bought those shares in Highwater Vineyard just before the election and since then he has used—Grant Robertson: And Tranz Rail.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh let us not get started on Tranz Rail. He repeatedly lied to the public of New Zealand when it came to his shareholdings in Tranz Rail. He did not tell the truth. He told porkies. He was caught on television telling porkies and the whole country knew that.So is the National Party willing to walk the talk? Is it going to walk the talk? Will it reveal its anonymous donations? No. Will John Key now fess up and admit that he lied when he said that he did not know about the shareholdings of his supposedly look-through blind trust? And will Judith Collins now admit that she was involved—embroiled—in a dodgy deal to further her husband’s business interests?It is not just her; the whole National Party is donkey deep in this Oravida scandal. Judith Collins’ husband was appointed to the board immediately after large donations were made by that company to the National Party. The Auckland office opening of Oravida was crawling with senior National Party figures from Jenny Shipley down including Peter Goodfellow who of course is one of the suppliers of fish products to Oravida. He met with Oravida as National Party president to discuss New Zealand Government endorsement for its products. And of course John Key is involved in this as well because it is not just Judith Collins lining up for photo opportunities with Oravida. John Key played golf with the director of Oravida and had his photo taken and we know that that photo is being used in China to promote Oravida products. It is the Prime Minister right up there with Judith Collins endorsing Oravida products—the company that Judith Collins’ husband is a director of. This is the National Government looking after its mates. It is crony capitalism at its best—the National Party’s dodgy dealings.So will Judith Collins do the honourable thing and follow Pansy Wong? When Pansy Wong was caught out she had the decency to go. She had the decency to resign from Parliament. Will Judith Collins have that same level of integrity? Given her answers today somehow I doubt it—somehow I doubt it. I am not going to be holding my breath waiting for Judith Collins to do the decent thing.This is a Government that is not willing to walk the talk. It is not willing to walk the talk when it comes to setting high standards. John Key promised us a new threshold a higher bar for ministerial accountability and ministerial standards and yet every year that he is Prime Minister the threshold gets lowered. The standards get lowered. He is willing to have Peter Dunne knowingly leak documents lie about it and try to cover it up. He is willing to have Peter Dunne as a Minister in his Government. He is willing to have that crook John Banks as a member supporting his Government and he does nothing about it.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I actually want to acknowledge the member Chris Hipkins. For a guy who got absolutely knifed by David Cunliffe he just stood up and gave a very impassioned speech in his defence—ironic. But I have to hand it to the member. The trouble is that leadership is all about credibility—leadership is all about credibility. It is one of the biggest determiners of whether people will follow you and elect you to Government. This Government has been absolutely committed and relentless in the four key priorities that have got us to where we are now. The Northland electorate is a very good example of that. The Northland electorate has seen six quarters of economic growth. We are now the fastest-growing region in the country with 2.4 percent growth over the last quarter. We are investing in infrastructure—the Pūhoi to Wellsford ultra-fast broadband. We are doing our best in the Treaty settlements. There is some really good work being done there. Onshore and offshore gas minerals—that is all under way. We are boosting our primary sector and doing the most we can to grow productivity. That is one small example of what New Zealanders actually expect from a Government.The trouble with what we are seeing with the Opposition and the Labour Party is really the difference between being trustworthy and being tricky. Credibility is so important and what we know is that David Cunliffe has lost the trust. He has lost the trust within his caucus—he probably never actually had it—and he has lost it with the New Zealand public as well. In fact a poll on Stuff today even highlights that fact. David Cunliffe’s trickiness has now developed a life of its own. The Cunliffe narrative is now about his trickiness. In that Stuff poll in terms of his leadership performance 10 percent said it was good 15 percent said it was good or bad—I am not sure what that means; somewhere in the middle—but 74 percent said it was bad. That is now thenarrative. That is now the story. It is about David Cunliffe’s lack of credibility. His propensity to show a lack of judgment also known as misleading people until one gets caught out is now turning David Cunliffe into “David Cunningmyth” and the New Zealand public have woken up to that. He is too tricky for his own good.I just want to read a little excerpt from Duncan Garner who has been in this place for many many years as an experienced political voice and is certainly not always a great friend of the National Party. He says this about David Cunliffe and his messiness over the trust: “[H]is apology is more than odd. He said: ‘I don’t think in hindsight that a trust structure fully represented the values I would like to bring to this leadership.’ ” Duncan Garner said: “That is weird and simply doesn’t stack up. It looks like a fake apology to me. I actually don’t believe him.”—I actually don’t believe him. “Values don’t just appear issue by issue. Values and principles are things that guide you in your everyday life. Surely Cunliffe would have known”—Hon Annette King: Say it to the Prime Minister.MIKE SABIN: —listen—“by now that having a ‘trust’ represented his values. And a trust structure completely represents who David Cunliffe is.” That is from Duncan Garner. What a condemning statement. And now the stories are all about Mr Cunliffe and his lack of credibility. We have seen three issues. We have seen the baby bonus bluff: “It must have been my staff—oh no it was me!”. We have seen him backtracking and dilly-dallying around and trying to dodge the fact that he owns a very very nice house in Marine Parade—a $2.5 million house. What is wrong with actually being proud of what you have worked for to achieve in life? I do not know why but that is another example of him trying to mislead until he cannot do anything else. Then we have seen the debacle around the trust.The point is that you cannot just pick and choose what your values are; the values are what they are in you and when you try to please everyone by sidestepping the issue you run into the problems that he has. He has brought in Matt McCarten to help solve the problem. What an extreme irony—that the marriage of the left and the extreme left is there to help solve them. Matt McCarten is no friend of “David Cunningmyth”. My goodness has Matt McCarten had some things to say! When that marriage of inconvenience blows up we are going to see a supernova of trickiness. We on this side of the House—and I suspect probably the media—are waiting with bated breath for that. The damage is already done. The damage is already done. David Cunliffe has been the master of his own demise. The “Anyone But Cunliffe” club was right and the media has woken up to that. What we are hearing now the noise coming out of the Labour Party is: “Let’s just minimise the damage. We’re not going to win in 2014 but at least it’ll give us a chance to get rid of David Cunliffe.” David Cunliffe has become “David Cunningmyth” and is soon to become just another urban myth.CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to talk about leadership. I want to elaborate on what leadership looks like to me. I was part of the 1975 “Not one acre more” land march that Whina Cooper started from Te Hāpua. We looked upon her as a great leader who could shift us and move us from a state of unbeing to a positive place. That 1975 land march was actually started while there was a Labour Government. I was also part of the hīkoi that came down to Wellington with Pita Sharples because Māori were not able to go to the High Court to test their case for the seabed and foreshore. That was also under a Labour Government. I was also part of a media group that worked on the Tūhoe raids when the police raided Tūhoe and that was also done under a Labour Government.So what we found when we came into office under this John Key - led National Government was that we had inherited an account deficit of 9 percent of GDP. We inherited external debt of a whopping 84 percent of GDP. We also inherited inflation of1.5 percent and mortgage rates of 10 percent and food prices were up 11 percent. But because of our great leader the Prime Minister John Key we have moved from that state to a better place where we see over 135000 homes in which a lot of Māori and Pasifika whānau live now insulated. We have also seen over 100000 B4 School Checks mainly on our Māori and Pasifika tamariki in South Auckland. We have also seen $2 million go into whānau and community Te Reo development.We have also seen very very strong leadership come from our Minister of Education who has moved us from very uncomfortable ground. It was uncomfortable ground because under the previous Government we were not able to aspire to educational heights. What we have seen under this Minister of Education Hekia Parata is 25400 Māori completing BA degrees or higher. We have also seen 76 percent completing tertiary studies and 59 percent of Māori are achieving National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 up from 44 percent. What we have seen from this Government is results for Māori results for Pasifika people and results for New Zealand.But here is the cruncher you see: 47 Treaty settlements. In 1975 because they were moving to the land march there was a song and one of the lines was “Freedom from oppression to live our rangatiratanga.”—freedom from oppression to live our rangatiratanga. That is 47 Treaty settlements today. The Māori economy is worth $38 billion with 37 percent of the fish quota owned by Māori 36 percent of the forestry assets owned by Māori 12 percent of the sheep and beefs units owned by Māori 10 percent of the dairy product owned by Māori 10 percent of the kiwifruit production owned by Māori and 30 percent of land production owned by Māori and there is an estimated forecast of $12 billion per annum to New Zealand’s GDP. That is what Māori have returned to New Zealand thanks in large part to the 47 Treaty settlements. That is what we call kotahitanga. Māori because they have been allowed to exercise their rangatiratanga have returned these assets to New Zealand and that is what we call kotahitanga.Thirty years ago a song came out because there was a 1975 land march and the lines were “There is a movement on the street. Hear them talking—talking on the street”. Well Māori are talking on the street. They are talking about the Treaty settlements they are talking about the developments that are happening within their communities and they are talking about the developments that are happening in the rural sector as well as the urban sector. We know that there is so much more to do. We know that that is not the end of the story. We know that we can do more. We know that we will try to do more by Māori by Pasifika people and by all New Zealanders. This John Key - led National Government is full of great leaders who are leading our country to a better brighter future.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment BillFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 20 February.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): In relation to the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill firstly I would like to acknowledge and appreciate the input from engineer John Scarry. Over the last week or so since starting with my speech Mr Scarry has provided some very good and considerable input into this issue. Secondly I would like to provide the definition of an earthquake-prone building. It is a building that “will have its ultimate capacity exceeded in a moderate earthquake”. If itshould “collapse in a moderate earthquake the collapse would be likely to cause—(i) injury or death” or “(ii) damage to any other property.” It can be constructed from any material. Further a moderate earthquake under that definition is an earthquake that is one-third the strength of but the same duration as the code-specified earthquake for a new building on the same site.The findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Building Failure Caused by the Canterbury Earthquakes are variable in quality which is understandable given the enormous task the commission was confronted with. Its recommendations with regard to earthquake-prone buildings must not be considered to be without flaw. The best evidence presented to the commission on the performance of strengthened and unstrengthened unreinforced masonry buildings in the Christchurch earthquake was provided by Mr Jason Ingham and Mr Michael Griffith. This clearly showed that strengthening to even 50 percent of new building standard has little effect on the performance of a building in an extreme code-level seismic event. Only strengthening to a minimum of 67 percent of new building standard does that. Strengthening up to 50 percent did not prevent complete destruction but that was in earthquakes that had short durations of intense shaking not 40 seconds or more as could be expected close to the main alpine fault line or in Wellington.This Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill is not about life safety in a code-level earthquake event. The performance of unreinforced masonry buildings in the Christchurch earthquakes shows that particularly in earthquakes with a long duration of intense shaking even buildings strengthened to 50 percent of new building standard suffered heavy or major damage or were destroyed. Therefore what is expected to be gained in a major earthquake if the level of strengthening required is only just above 34 percent? The term “new building standard” really applies only to the percentage of code loading. The assessment of existing buildings’ seismic strength in accordance with the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering “Red Book” of 2006 is done on a much less conservative basis than that used for the design of new buildings. This means that a building that is at 34 percent of the new building standard has only about 25 percent or less of the strength of a competently designed new building. If we require a new building to have the equivalent of 100 percent code performance in order to achieve its life safety function in a code-level seismic event what performance can we honestly expect of a building that has its strength equivalent to only 25 percent of current code performance?This bill clarifies that once a building is classed as earthquake-prone it need be strengthened only to be marginally above 34 percent of the new building standard to no longer be earthquake-prone. So why would we even bother? One of the very few useful aspects of the Building Act 2004 was a much more realistic treatment of earthquake-prone buildings. The one-third new building standard cut-off was used then as a means of identifying the most at-risk buildings and it was then to be up to the local authority to determine what level of strengthening was required. The building stock that this bill is meant to deal with is enormous and varied—a very large number of buildings of extremely varied type use and location. These buildings were in the main designed without the slightest regard to seismic loading and have materials and structural details that are the worst possible from the point of view of achieving robust seismic performance.The value of this building stock is enormous the cost of strengthening or replacing it is immense and the resources required to assess and strengthen it are formidable. It is essential that the Minister for Building and Construction and the Local Government and Environment Committee which is dealing with this bill not go through the motions to simply rubber stamp it but rather to treat every submission on its merits in order tolead to an Act that has the scope and flexibility to deal with the diversity of building stock throughout New Zealand.Main streets throughout New Zealand will be greatly affected by the measures in this bill. The effects on provincial New Zealand will be huge. Many building owners simply will not be in a financial position to undertake the required upgrades. Main streets all over the country will literally be driven out of existence. What will that do for our provincial economies? Has full consideration been given to a reasonable compromise to help protect lives in the event of a sizable earthquake such as for instance initially concentrating on checking and strengthening verandahs over pavements which is where many people died in the Christchurch earthquake? Also has the Government looked into the likes of tax concessions and other subsidies to support the landlords who will be required to strengthen these buildings? This will impose a huge cost to New Zealanders throughout New Zealand in terms of commercial and other buildings. This could be crippling for the economy. We New Zealand First are concerned that perhaps the Government has not thought this through fully and that main street New Zealand particularly in small towns and small provincial areas will be up for a huge cost.With regard to the Government’s scheme to contribute 25 percent to leaky building repairs it was widely stated that this could have cost the Government $1 billion if this had been taken up in full but by the time GST direct PAYE and company profit tax were considered the actual cost to the Government was almost nil. That was without considering all the GST and tax as a result of the economic multiplier that came from the economic activity from fixing the leaky buildings. Similarly New Zealand First is of the view that if we are going to go down this track and require landlords throughout New Zealand to bring their earthquake-prone buildings up to a higher standard there must be some compensation to landlords there must be some concessions and there must be some way that the Government would support this going on because the economic effects and the work that will be generated as a result of this will be considerable and therefore the tax that results from the PAYE GST company taxes and other aspects will be considerable. The Government needs to take that into account.The 4 September 2010 earthquake in Christchurch may have acted as a safety valve by damaging and making off limits many earthquake-prone buildings that would have otherwise caused numerous fatalities on 22 February 2011. However it is a fact that over 70 percent of the fatalities on 22 February were caused not by the collapse of earthquake-prone buildings but by the collapse of two earthquake-risk buildings namely the CTV Building and the Pyne Gould building which were rated later to be at 40 percent and 50 percent of the new building standard respectively. Therefore New Zealand First urges that we do not try to impose something across the whole of New Zealand perhaps as a result of what happened in Christchurch but we look at this as it goes to the select committee and that the Government does indeed listen to the experts in this matter so that we do not go down the wrong path and impose huge costs on the whole of New Zealand.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Jacqueline Dean.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you very much. I get called that when I am being particularly bad which is not often to be fair. The issue of managing earthquake-prone buildings is quite acute down in the Waitaki electorate and in particular in my home town of Ōāmaru which is well-known and nationally recognised as having particularly beautiful heritage buildings. None the less we absolutely accept the recommendations of the royal commission finding into earthquake-prone buildings. We have to listen to those recommendations because history has told us in the most cruel of ways over the last couple of years that buildings can indeed be deadly. That iswhy I fully support the intent of this Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill which is to put in place a regime for assessing and monitoring buildings against national criteria and for requiring those earthquake-prone buildings to be brought up to a necessary level of safety so that both public safety and also people in their homes if they live in multi-storey buildings can feel safe in the event of a bad earthquake.This is a good bill. I support it to the select committee.RAYMOND HUO (Labour): It is no problem for me to take this call to support this Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. I do agree with what the Minister for Building and Construction and earlier speakers said in their earlier contributions in that this bill is seeking to strike a balance between public safety and the costs to be incurred by those individual or corporate owners. The bill is designed to improve our legislative system for managing earthquake-prone buildings but there are several issues that we must address in order to enact a piece of legislation that will have the scope and flexibility to deal with the diversity of this type of building stock and the problems that presents. Before I start I would like to thank the submitters who raised valid points during the review of the earthquake-prone building policy the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission and the stakeholders professionals and experts whom I have spoken to particularly the structural engineer Mr John Scarry.The first issue is what level of strengthening is required. Under section 122 of the primary legislation namely the Building Act 2004 a building with a seismic performance strength that is less than 33 percent of the design standards is defined as an earthquake-prone building. It is also known as the so-called one-third rule. The Christchurch City Council had earlier expressed a view in its submissions on other bills that the test should stay the same for the next 5 years while the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011 is in force and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority exercises powers under that Act. In the Canterbury region the seismic loading factor changed in May 2011 and more buildings will now be classed as earthquake-prone without any change to the 33 percent test. For example a building that had a strength of 34 percent in 2009 that is undamaged and in exactly the same condition in 2012 as it was in 2009 is estimated to have a strength of only 25 percent of the 2012 code requirements.This bill requires that once a building is classed as earthquake-prone it needs to be strengthened to be marginally above 34 percent of the new building standard in order to be no longer earthquake-prone. But the performance of unreinforced masonry buildings in the Christchurch earthquakes shows that even buildings strengthened to 50 percent of the new building standard are likely to suffer heavy or major damage or be destroyed particularly in earthquakes with a long duration of intense shaking. Therefore what is expected to be gained in a major earthquake if the level of strengthening required is only just above 34 percent?The Building Act 2004 provides a more realistic treatment of earthquake-prone buildings. The cut-off of one-third of the new building standard was used then as a means of identifying the most at-risk buildings and it was then up to the local authorities to determine what level of strengthening was to be required. Wellington City Council’s current policy on earthquake-prone buildings for instance states that the council wants strengthening to at least 67 percent of the new building standard and that any strengthening less than that will not prevent the council demanding further strengthening in future should the council get the power to do so.Having said that I note that we now have two identical but different terms to define the buildings in question. One term is “earthquake-prone buildings” and the other is “at-risk buildings”. We can learn a huge lesson from the 4 September 2010 earthquakebecause it is still a fact that over 70 percent of the fatalities from 22 February 2011 earthquake were caused not by the collapse of earthquake-prone buildings but by the collapse of two earthquake-risk buildings the CTV Building and the Pyne Gould building which were later rated to have been at 40 percent and 50 percent of the new building standard respectively. The very large and modern Hotel Grand Chancellor was only seconds away from collapse. So from these examples we can see that this bill does nothing to require earthquake-risk buildings—that is those rated at between 34 percent and 67 percent of the new building standard but containing critical vulnerabilities—to be strengthened at all. Therefore any claims that this bill is about life safety in extreme seismic events is to some extent misguided.The other side of the coin is the social economic and environmental impact this bill may have on the building owners. A survey by Wellington City Council last year indicated that around half of earthquake-prone building owners had difficulty getting insurance and that many faced premium increases of more than 50 percent. We do not want to see businesses go belly up nor do we want to see community character and heritage interests overlooked. Submitters at the policy review stage were also eager to communicate that a lack of insurance impacts on the building owners’ ability to obtain a loan in order to pay for the strengthening work to be done and that this process sadly can be a costly chicken and egg situation. Submitters such as the Heritage NZ trust board noted that although many heritage buildings are privately owned these places are often of value to society as a whole yet private owners are shouldering these costs single-handedly. I urge the affected parties and stakeholders to make their submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee and have their voices and concerns heard.One idea that has been floated among affected and concerned parties is about tax concessions and subsidies. With regard to the Government scheme to contribute 25 percent to leaky building repairs it was widely stated that this could have cost the Government $1 billion if there had been full take up. But according to some experts—and this point has been addressed earlier by New Zealand First MP Mr Andrew Williams—by the time GST direct PAYE and company profit tax were considered the actual cost to the Government was minimal. Whether or not it is a good idea for us to deliberate with regard to tax concessions and subsidies I think the affected and concerned parties should seriously consider this option and make their views known to the committee because as I said this is kind of a chicken and egg situation and many private owners or even corporate owners in this situation who may have similar problems as well have issues with insurance companies and with their banks. So to conclude we have no problem in supporting this bill at this stage but we urge the affected and concerned parties to make submissions to the committee and to make their voices heard. Thank you.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): The purpose of the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill as others have outlined is really to strike that balance between making sure that buildings are safe against earthquakes and also that they are not terrifically expensive for the people who have got the buildings. There are a number of complicated issues around it many of which I see on a weekly basis in my own North Shore electorate.In Devonport we have a number of earthquake-prone buildings that need to be restored to heritage level and the integrity of the architecture has to be preserved. So as you would imagine that presents a number of challenges—many of them rather expensive challenges as well. So what needs to happen is we really have to clarify for the people who own these earthquake-prone buildings the threshold for defining what exactly an earthquake-prone building is. Is part of the building earthquake prone? Doesthe whole building need to be earthquake strengthened? These are the kinds of issues that people are grappling with and need some leadership on.The timing of course is contentious. Should we be doing this within a time frame of within 20 years or pushing it out to a longer limit? There are a number of various viewpoints you could take into account on that one and I guess affordability comes into play but again we must keep in mind that very important aspect of public safety. This is a very significant issue and it has a high level of public interest.It is estimated that between 15000 and 25000 buildings across New Zealand could be earthquake-prone. So it is something that we really need to do very carefully. We have to make sure that there are no unintended consequences and that people are not unfairly penalised but also that public safety is paramount. So by doing this we need to move to a system that has a significantly greater role for central government particularly in terms of providing leadership and direction. We need to make better use of the capability and resources of central and local government. In other words we all need to work together to make this bill the good piece of legislation that it is. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I recognise the Hon Damien O’Connor this is to advise the House that this is a split call.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I will speak briefly on this Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. This is a very important bill for provincial New Zealand. There are many many building owners and business people out and around there in New Zealand who are fearful of what this bill might deliver for them. It could be termed the “Risk Management Bill” because as the poor people in Christchurch know full well you cannot guarantee anything absolutely. We are in a country known as the Shaky Isles. It is inevitable that we will have earthquakes in the future and we have an obligation as a Parliament to try to reduce and if possible prevent any harm occurring in the event of another major earthquake.It is however virtually impossible to do that. Speakers before me have raised the issue of balance and my good colleague Raymond Huo has spoken about this on numerous times. The bill as the Government has presented could potentially cripple many hundreds and thousands of small businesses up and down this country. I am speaking to them on a regular basis. Greymouth and Motueka are two towns in particular where we have many many buildings that are way below code. They are occupied by people who are battling away to try to survive in business. They are confronted with internet purchasing. They are confronted with the big chains that have built brand new buildings—coming in riding into town and of course squashing opportunities for those people to survive. The last thing they need is to be confronted with an unaffordable situation around their tenancy.I spoke to a person who is closing down a business a sports store in Motueka. They have got 18 months still to run on their lease and they have to try to find someone to sublease to. It is in a building that needs a lot of work done to ensure that there is protection for the people who come in to buy and for the staff in that building. It is a real dilemma and there will be as I said thousands of people around the country like that. We have to trust that the Local Government and Environment Committee—and I am sure that the Labour members from this side will do their very best—will get the right balance. I know that that will be important.I would like to take the opportunity to just mention the heritage buildings. There is one in particular in Hokitika and that is St Mary’s Catholic Church. I have to mention it because I had the very sad occasion of the funeral of a dear friend and a stalwart Jim Keenan. He was a stalwart also of the Catholic Church and one of the greatest I guess losses for him was his inability in his last months to attend Mass at St Mary’s CatholicChurch because it has been deemed by the Catholic Church in Christchurch to be unsafe and unfit for service. It is a beautiful building. I am not sure how the passage of this legislation will affect the Catholic Church’s ability to do up that church and restore it to a usable building. It is a heritage building. It is magnificent. But we now have the tensions between building owners with a responsibility to people who utilise the building and then the huge costs facing an organisation in this case a big one. In many other cases around the country small landlords or individual business owners are faced with a real dilemma. So I hope that the select committee does the very best it can to find that right balance.I guess this is a word of warning. The National Government has not been very good at sorting out the leaky homes situation. I hope it does better at the shaky homes situation. That is what we are facing here. Councils up and down the country clearly need direction from central government. They are doing their best and using their own initiative to delay some of the implementation time lines that have been laid down. But they are not sure what legal liability would then occur if there is a terrible situation of another major earthquake in any one of those towns.We need clarity for the councils and we need clarity for the building owners but more important we need some security and protection for the business people who already have their backs to the wall in terms of provincial New Zealand. They need to know that they can carry on safely and that they can do so without having to pay ridiculous fees and costs of upgrade. So we wish the select committee all the very best in its considerations.HOLLY WALKER (Green): It is my pleasure to take the second call for the Green Party on this bill the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. I want to start by saying that the Green Party is very much in support of a programme to systematically earthquake strengthen buildings in New Zealand but as my colleague Mojo Mathers has outlined in her substantive contribution to this first reading debate we are at this stage opposing this bill. We are doing so on human rights grounds and that is human rights grounds on the basis of access to buildings.As we know this bill although it sets out the parameters of a strengthening programme for buildings around the country gives building owners the possibility of being exempt from meeting fire access and disability access requirements when they undertake that strengthening work on their buildings. That is a real problem from our point of view in the Green Party because what that does is lock people with limited mobility out of buildings. We are talking about a significant number of buildings—potentially between 15000 and 24000 buildings—around the country that require earthquake strengthening and that could potentially be made inaccessible long into the future by exempting building owners from the responsibility to upgrade the accessibility of their buildings when they undertake strengthening work.This breaches several international human rights covenants that New Zealand is a signatory to and it is an issue of extreme concern to the disability community as outlined by Mojo Mathers in her speech earlier in this debate. It affects not only those with impairments but also many other parts of the population. Parents with strollers—which is something that I have experienced myself recently—as well as older people with limited mobility all face being locked out of buildings if we do not take the opportunity that arises when buildings are earthquake strengthened to improve their access.We in the Green Party think that with an ageing population this is a significant missed opportunity because a very significant portion of our population will have mobility impairments in the future and they have a right to access buildings around the country. This could be an opportunity to make sure that that access improvement takesplace alongside the required strengthening work and we are missing that opportunity if we allow the bill to pass as it is currently drafted.At the moment earthquake-strengthening work is one of the only triggers in the Building Act that requires an upgrading of access and if this is removed it means that some buildings in our built environment may never be made accessible to those who need to access them. We do recognise that in a small number of cases it may simply be impossible or completely impractical to make certain buildings accessible. This is the argument that the Minister for Building and Construction has advanced to defend the exemption that he is proposing but we consider that this is already covered by the fact that in the existing Act you can be exempt from making those access upgrades on a ground of reasonable practicality. We think that is perfectly fair and would continue in the future. So for this reason we cannot support the bill as it is currently drafted. We would very much like to support it in subsequent stages if the Local Government and Environment Committee can adequately address these concerns. We will work constructively with all parties on the select committee to try to ensure that this happens.Aside from the access issue which is the substantive reason for our opposition to this bill at its first reading there are some other elements of the bill that we would like to explore in more detail in the select committee. I will briefly touch on these now. They include asking the Government to consider the cost implications of the bill. As we have heard from other speakers the cost to building owners of doing this upgrade work could be substantial and there is a case to be made that the Government needs to come to the party with some measures to assist. We would also like to see that if some buildings are going to be given an exemption from carrying out earthquake-strengthening work there should be criteria set out in the Act to set out who qualifies for those exemptions and why. That is missing from the bill as currently drafted.We think that there could be opportunities taken when improving access to look at ways to make buildings greener and more sustainable. Again it is another potentially missed opportunity in the bill as currently drafted and is worth some consideration by the select committee. We want to address the issue that Raymond Huo raised in his contribution earlier about giving building owners some certainty that once they have undertaken strengthening work they do not need to do so again for a decent period of time as the code changes over time. These are examples of some of the issues in the substance of the bill that we would like to get into in more detail in the select committee and we look forward to working constructively to address those and the fundamental issue of access. Thank you.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): National is ensuring that earthquake-prone buildings are dealt with in a timely manner by way of a nationally consistent system through this bill the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. There is no magic here. Building strengthening like access work costs a lot of money and there are real-life trade-offs involved. Buildings could be abandoned businesses closed and jobs lost. On the other hand we are very concerned about greater public safety. These are very difficult trade-offs and this legislation is trying to provide a context for doing that in a rational and consistent manner.I do want to draw attention to the work that has been done before bringing in this bill. After listening to feedback during the consultation period the time for strengthening or demolishing has increased from 15 years which was originally proposed to 20 years from the legislation taking effect. There have been special provisions written in for heritage buildings being given potentially another 10 years and we do look forward to the Local Government and Environment Committee drilling down into the details of that over the next couple of months. On that basis I do commend this bill to the House.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.Ayes106New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Noes14Green Party 14.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.Environmental Reporting BillFirst ReadingHon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): I moveThat the Environmental Reporting Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. In New Zealand our economy is dependent on our environment and our environmental protection efforts rely on us having a strong economy. Of course we all as New Zealanders care about whether our popular swimming spots are clean enough to swim in or whether the air we breathe is free from pollution and we all want to look after our oceans and protect our rich biodiversity. But at the same time it is also true that we want a high standard of living; we want affordable houses power and food; and we want to see jobs created and the economy growing. In order to protect our environment while encouraging economic prosperity we need to be able to have an honest debate about the interactions between the environment and the economy and have a clear picture of what trade-offs and opportunities there are and of the impacts that the choices we make have. Any argument that seeks to present only half the picture does little to advance our understanding.The Environmental Reporting Bill before the House represents the Government’s commitment to a step change in the way we monitor and report to the people of New Zealand on the condition of our natural environment. It complements other work we are doing on regulation around fresh water and the marine environment and around reform of the Resource Management Act. Collectively our programme of action will lead to the most significant improvement in our environmental regulation framework since the introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991. To date environmental reporting on a national scale has been patchy and inconsistent. We are one of only a few OECD countries not to currently require independent reporting on the state of our environment. This bill changes all that.The bill creates a national-level environmental reporting regime that is regular and robust. It contains measures that will ensure that environmental reports are independent fair and accurate. The public will have confidence and certainty about the scope timing and quality of New Zealand’s environmental information. That means we can shift the debate from frustrating arguments around data quality to discussions on the issues and long-term trends that affect our environment. The scope of the reports will be comprehensive going beyond the programme of Environmental Indicator updates that the Ministry for the Environment has produced in recent years. The reports will not cover just the state of the environment; they will also describe the pressures driving the environmental trends and the impacts of these trends. This approach is in line with international best practice.Better information is critical if we want to make better decisions on environmental issues. The pressure state impact approach means we will have a broader view of issues affecting our environment and this will lead to a more informed debate and better options for the public. Every 3 years the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician will be required to publish a report on New Zealand’s environment as a whole entirely at arm’s length from the executive of the day and from political interference. This synthesis report must describe the state of New Zealand’s environment pressures that may be causing or have the potential to cause changes to the state of the environment and impacts that the state of the environment or changes to it may be having on ecological integrity public health the economic benefits derived from utilising natural resources and culture and recreation. It must also describe changes to the state of the environment over time and how the state of the environment measures against national and international standards.The bill stipulates that the first synthesis report must be published by 30 June next year. As well as synthesis reports the bill requires the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician to publish a domain report on one of five environmental domains every 6 months. The domains specified in the bill are air atmosphere and climate fresh water land and marine. Each domain must be reported on at least once every 3 years. The topics that will be reported on in each domain report and the synthesis report will be prescribed in regulations. Prescribing topics in regulations will ensure that environmental reporting provides necessary evidence for policy making and will improve clarity across the wider system about information needs and data improvement priorities helping to focus investments in improvements.Although Ministers will set the topics topics simply provide a high-level outline of what domain reports will cover. For example the topics for the air domain could include population health impacts. Statistics will be selected and applied for each topic by the Government Statistician. For example statistics for population health impacts could include those due to exposure to particulate matter. Rigour is a focus throughout the bill. Topics must be selected on the basis of significance statistical rigour and evidence of a strong connection to an environmental state. Reporting must draw on the expertise of the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand to ensure statistical integrity and robustness. The bill focuses on reporting the best available data and does not include a requirement to generate information that is not currently in existence. Over time the certainty provided by the bill will drive improvements in monitoring and data collection.A key element of the new environmental reporting system is independence from the Government of the day. This is achieved through providing clearly defined roles for the Minister for the Environment the Minister of Statistics the Government Statistician and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has a crucial role to play in assuring the public of the performance of the environmental management system as a whole including the quality and balance of the environmental reports. The bill affirms the role of the commissioner to provide independent commentary on environmental reports and the processes that produce them. Importantly the bill does not constrain the commissioner’s ability to report on any matters she considers important as is consistent with her role as an independent Officer of Parliament.Regulations will set out the topics to be reported on at a high level and these are to be developed following consultation with the Government Statistician and the commissioner in accordance with the framework in the bill. The Government Statistician after consulting the Secretary for the Environment will determine the statistics to be used to measure each topic and must ensure they accurately represent therelevant topic. The Government Statistician has sole responsibility for deciding the procedures and methods that are to be used in providing statistics for each report. The Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician have a duty to act independently. They must ensure that the results give a fair and accurate representation of what is being reported on.As well as defining roles a further measure has been included in the bill that strengthens the independent preparation of environmental reports. A request to disclose information or analysis that will be or has been used in an environmental report can be declined if the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician are of the opinion that disclosure would compromise the independence of the report or if the information or analysis is integral to significant findings or conclusions in the report. This clause covers requests made under the Official Information Act and requests made by Ministers and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.The bill marks a significant change in the way New Zealand will report on its environment. It will ensure that New Zealanders have comprehensive robust reliable environmental information that allows us to debate and respond to the environmental issues that affect our country. This bill represents a significant step forward for environmental law in New Zealand and it is with much pleasure that I commend the Environmental Reporting Bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): It is with great disappointment that Labour will not be supporting the Environmental Reporting Bill at the first reading but I do want to thank the Minister for the Environment Amy Adams for providing a copy of the bill beforehand. I reiterate to her that we are very committed at the Local Government and Environment Committee to doing whatever we can to allay the concerns that we have. Minister Adams and I actually had a conversation about it where we talked about some of the issues I was having. I said to her that the purpose of the bill looked great and I did not think there would be any issues. Unfortunately when we went through the detail of the bill there were a number of fish-hooks that popped up which meant that on balance—and I am not going to pretend it was not a line call because it was—our concerns about independence and particularly the role of Government Ministers in choosing what the topics are meant that we felt we could not support it at the first reading. But we are very committed to working constructively on this bill at the select committee to address some of those concerns.We also ran it by some outside stakeholders who agreed with us that these fish-hooks were very real. But this is not at all a slagging of this bill because I am very pleased to see an environmental reporting bill before the House. Hopefully we can end up with a credible robust independent environmental reporting system that will inform generations to come of the state of the New Zealand environment.I just want to go into a few of the issues that I think we are going to need to deal with at the select committee. The first is the issue the Minister referred to about the release of information. I understand that with the use of tier 1 statistical reporting there are certain rules around how some of that information can be used which is absolutely appropriate. We are going to need to do the kind of pointy-headed stuff that select committees are good at. We are going to need to do some work around that tier 1 reporting to make sure that tier 1 statistical reporting is compatible with the way we do environmental reporting. There may be some areas where it is not but I think those of us who are geeks and like doing that sort of stuff look forward to getting into the detail of that at the select committee.I am sure we can find a way through to ensure that the information that is currently in the public domain—and I think that is where some of the concern has come in—stays in the public domain. A lot of this environmental information from the National Instituteof Water and Atmospheric Research and other such organisations is already in the public domain and we would hate to see it being taken out of the public domain. I accept the Minister’s assurance that that is not the intention of the bill and that there may be instances where that information is sensitive but I was very pleased to have the assurance of the Minister that there is no intention to remove from the public domain information that is currently there. We will just work through the details of how that appears in the legislation to make sure that that is the effect of the bill.I want to come to the substantive area of our concern. As I said when I read the purpose of the bill which is to create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent fair and accurate I agreed 100 percent. I agreed 1 million percent. That is absolutely what we want. My fear is that the way it is being implemented does not meet the purpose of the bill—in particular around clause 18 “Regulations” which states: “The Governor-General may on the joint recommendation of the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics by Order in Council make regulations prescribing—(a) topics to be covered in synthesis reports relating to—” a range of measures and topics to be covered in the domain reports.My concern is with the level of ministerial involvement in choosing what the topics are. I understand from the Minister’s comments in her speech that we will get more information at the select committee about what those topics are and therefore what the risks are in having Ministers so heavily involved. But with the greatest of respect I get very nervous when I see things like this being put into regulation particularly in a bill where independence really is kind of at the core of what it is about—ensuring that these statistics are not seen to be being swayed in any way by the Government of the day whatever political stripe that Government happens to be. I have always felt that it is much better if we can get as much as we can in primary legislation so that it is Parliament’s decision and Parliament’s bill not simply topics decided by a National Government or a Labour Government that a National-led or Labour-led Government would then have to go back to Parliament to get permission to alter in any way. They should be topics decided by the New Zealand Parliament. That is not to say that you cannot have regulation to ensure flexibility around some of the finer detail of that but to have the topics set entirely by regulation and by Government Ministers could I think undermine the credibility of the system.As I said when we get to the select committee we will see how real that danger is but it was something that jumped out at me right away. If you are going to have any kind of credible environmental reporting system then the topics are going to have to be consistent over time. You cannot be constantly changing the topics that are to be reported on because then you are not going to have the trend data that you need. The very basis of a system like this is that you are going to be measuring the same things over a long period of time and that there is going to be very little change in the way you measure things over a very long period of time. If having this done by regulation is an indication that we expect to see a lot of churn and a lot of flux in the things that we are measuring then I do not think that is going to lend itself to a particularly credible environmental reporting scheme or system. If we know now what the topics are—if the counterfactual is true and we actually know what these topics are that are going to be put into regulation they are not going to change a lot over time and there is not going to be a lot of churn and flux around those topics—then why not have them in the primary legislation?So it seems to me that the worry is that this is indicating that those topics are going to change and we are not going to have consistent reporting or we are going to be reporting on different things because if not then why would we not put it in theprimary legislation? Why would we not make that stuff as clear as possible? These are the long-term things that we are going to be reporting on and these are the topics and they are not going to change over time because if they did that actually undermines the integrity of trend data. So that is where my nervousness over clause 18 comes in.Again with the greatest of respect I also have to say that I appreciate the assurances from the Minister that these regulations are going to be used for the good of the environment. We were given those assurances on the exclusive economic zone legislation as well. We were told that things would not be done in regulation that would take away a community’s right to have a say on offshore exploratory oil drilling for example. And then what happened in fact was that—it is interesting that Minister Adams is sitting next to Mr Phil Heatley; I would love to hear that conversation—Minister Heatley actually promised that communities would be able to have a say through the marine consent process but that was taken away under regulation.So I guess this is a case of not looking just at the bill but looking at it in the context of the kinds of behaviour we have seen from this Government around regulation. We have been burnt. We were very burnt over the exclusive economic zone regulations where promises were made we were told that these regulations were minor and technical and would only ever be used to ensure the easy running of that regulatory framework and in fact the regulation was used to seriously undermine the regulatory framework. That is another reason why we would like to see as much of this as possible locked down in primary legislation and as little as possible left to regulation which I actually think is good parliamentary practice as well—as little left to regulation as possible.There is just one other interesting thing which again jumped out at us that I am sure we will look at in the select committee. Clause 7 covers the introduction of economic benefits in a bill that is about environmental reporting. One of the things that will be reported on—and I note that this actually is in primary legislation so this is not being left to regulation; we have been quite up front and clear that the Government wants this to be reported on—is the economic benefits derived from utilising natural resources. I would question how appropriate it is to have that in this environmental reporting legislation.Those are our concerns with the bill as it stands. As I said we will work very constructively in the select committee to address those concerns. Hopefully we will end up with a bill that we can support because environmental reporting is something that the Labour Party has supported for a long time. But those issues of ministerial guidance over what topics should be covered is an area of deep concern because again with the greatest of respect to the Minister I think this has been one of the worst Governments for the environment in living memory quite frankly—one of the worst. I can completely understand concerns that the general public have that when the data comes out the Government will use its influence to sway what is actually being reported on. That is why this must be seen to be completely independent.Maggie Barry: Think back to your own administration—36 wells dug without any kind of permits. Disgraceful Moana.MOANA MACKEY: Let us go through it shall we. The exclusive economic zone legislation you want to gut the Resource Management Act not listening to the Land and Water Forum mining on conservation land giving the Minister of Energy and Resources the right to have a say on mining on conservation land the introduction of economic benefits tests for mining on conservation land that no one else gets—the list could go on and on and on and on. This Government has been an appalling Government for the environment—absolutely appalling. So it is really really important that an environmental reporting scheme is seen to be completely independent. I do not see howa scheme that has Governments deciding what topics are going to be reported on can be seen to be completely independent.We will work very very hard at the select committee to make this better and we will work constructively as we always do. Environmental reporting is important. But let us not do it in a half-hearted kind of way. Let us do it properly. Let us get this absolutely right—absolutely right—so that our communities individuals NGOs Governments and MPs of all political stripes can have confidence that there is no Government influence on what is being reported on and they can have absolute confidence in the credibility of the statistics provided.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I stand to support the first reading of the Environmental Reporting Bill. I was intrigued by Moana Mackey’s discourse saying that the Government is in some way interfering with the process because it is deciding what areas are going to be reported on. As it happens we have decided that the areas to be reported on are air atmosphere and climate fresh water land and marine with biodiversity as a theme across all the domains. What we have decided is that it will cover everything. I am not sure whether the Labour Party is upset because we have missed out the spiritual realm we have missed out the fourth dimension or we have missed out outer space. We are not reporting on outer space. It is true that Amy Adams has said the environmental reporting will be on the five environmental domains. It covers everything—air atmosphere and climate fresh water land and marine. I say sorry to the Green Party that it does not include the spiritual realm it does not include the fourth dimension and it does not include outer space but apart from that it does in fact cover everything.This bill creates a national-level environmental reporting system—which incidentally the Labour Party never had in the 10 years it was in Government—reporting on the environmental condition of these five domains on a regular basis. It will be independent and trusted by the public as independent fair and accurate. I am glad because the reality we have seen in the past particularly with the Green Party over the last 5 years is that it will bring statistics from here statistics from there statistics from elsewhere and anywhere in the world when that might suit its argument but very rarely does the Green Party use statistics from New Zealand. I will give you an example from the oil and gas industry. The Green Party never holds up New Zealand’s oil and gas industry’s track record because that is so very very good. What it does is it picks out isolated incidents that might occur elsewhere in the world however rare. It always does that. It never talks about Taranaki and how successful that has been environmentally. It decides to pick out what has happened elsewhere in other parts of the world.I would like to thank Amy Adams for bringing this particular piece of legislation forward because it fulfils a key commitment made in our 2011 environment manifesto. It provides comprehensive mandatory and independent environmental reporting. New Zealanders will be better informed about the state of our environment and they will get the information regularly. The plan is that reporting on each of those five domains—fresh water land marine air and atmosphere and climate—along with biodiversity will happen at least every 6 months. Every 6 months there will be a release on one of those domains and then at the culmination of a 3-year period there will be an overarching report on the five of them and how they interact with each other. So 3-yearly we will get a comprehensive report on each of those five and their interactions and that is a huge step up from the environmental reporting that has occurred previously particularly under previous Governments. So I thank Amy Adams for bringing this bill forward now as part of our policy manifesto going into the 2014 election.I know that a considerable amount of work has been done. I thank the Green Party for its support on the bill. It is supporting it. I am disappointed in the Labour Party. It is not supporting any of National’s good stuff. I am not sure why. I think it just wants to make a point but the Green Party sees the environmental benefits of us doing this. The Labour Party does not. The Labour members are just sort of opposing it for the sake of it—good for them. The signals they are sending out there to the electorate are a bit unusual—they are kind of a bit all over the paddock—but there is a game plan in there somewhere. There is a game plan in there somewhere. I do not know whether the leader has been consulted on their stance.Hon Member: Which one?Hon PHIL HEATLEY: I do not know whether David Cunliffe has been consulted on their stance—sorry Mr Cunliffe the press secretary. I do not know whether either of them has been consulted but it would be a good idea if Trevor Mallard got off his seat ran upstairs and told David Cunliffe what is going on down here. The Labour Party is voting against the environment. The National Party is voting for it. The Green Party is voting for it. I understand that New Zealand First is voting for it. Every party in this House is voting for the environment today except the Labour Party and I do not know why. I support Amy Adams. Thank you Amy.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am pleased to be able to follow that member the Hon Phil Heatley and hopefully I will be able to fill in the blanks that he has left in some of the conversation about the Environmental Reporting Bill. The purpose of the bill if I can quote out of the general policy statement is to “create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent fair and accurate.” I have no doubt that the Minister for the Environment’s intention is to deliver on that policy statement. I understand that she thinks that this bill will deliver on it. I think that is her intention. I do not think that she would have signed off a general policy statement that set such a clear vision about public reporting if she did not believe that it would happen through this legislation.I know that some of my colleagues will say that that is not what other people say about her. I know that is true. Guy Salmon who is a strong contributor to the Bluegreen space in the National Party was quoted on television saying that Amy Adams is the first Minister for the Environment who has taken environmental standards backwards—the first ever Minister for the Environment to do that. That was a pretty hard line actually from a strong National Party person. Leaving that aside I do not believe that that is the intention of either the Minister or the legislation.I support the purpose of the bill. The difficulty that I have and the reason Labour is voting against this legislation at this stage is that reading through the details of the legislation I do not believe that it delivers on that purpose. This is occasionally the case. Generally the purpose is what determines the voting of a party on an issue. But in this case if you read through the specifics of this legislation it is weak it leaves itself quite open to political manipulation and it does not have the robustness or the clarity that we would expect to deliver the vision—which is a good one. Independent fair and accurate reporting on the state of the environment is hardly an objective that anybody could argue against. If the targets are not in the primary legislation how can we as a Parliament have confidence in the independence of those targets? Well actually we cannot. The Minister has said that we will deal with that in regulation. We have been tricked before actually by that approach. If you are talking about a state of the environment report that the whole of Parliament should support there is no reason at all to not have the targets in the primary legislation. It would make sense.It is very interesting that there are some targets in the primary legislation including the economic benefits. Why in an environmental reporting bill would the economic benefits be determined as a target in the primary legislation but the actual environmental standards be left up to regulation? That is a real puzzle and I hope that the deliberations at the Local Government and Environment Committee enlighten us as to how the Minister came to the conclusion that economic benefits in environmental reporting are so important as to warrant inclusion in the primary legislation whereas other targets do not warrant being included in the primary legislation.Hon Amy Adams: Oh you mean like ecological integrity is not in there?Hon RUTH DYSON: The Minister should speak up. She has already apologised to me once today. There are very few things that have given me such pleasure.Hon Amy Adams: I have not.Hon RUTH DYSON: It is on the public record. I heard her. I have even tweeted it.Hon Amy Adams: It was on behalf of the Minister.Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh of course—it was on behalf of Minister Gerry Brownlee who suddenly had urgent public business to attend to somewhere else. He announced a winter heating programme for Christchurch. That was very good. He left it up to his poor hapless Associate Minister to apologise on his behalf.The problem with this legislation is that it is not clear that it can deliver on the vision. There is certainly some confusion about why there would be targets like economic benefits in the primary legislation but there would not be environmental targets. There are other confusions which are made even more puzzling by the lack of clarity in the legislation. For example if we are going to have independence and accountability to the public as mentioned when we are talking about water quality is the standard that is going to be reported to the public on a regular basis—as was mentioned by the Minister and by the Hon Phil Heatley in his contribution—going to be on individual waterways or is it going to be on an average across the whole country? That actually makes a huge difference to whether it means a toss or not—whether it means anything at all—or whether it is just a spin document to make the Minister of the time look good.Frankly regardless of which party is leading the Government I do not have any time for that sort of approach. We should have a whole-of-Parliament consensus about what the targets are and how they are measured and then get agreement so that the trends the accountability and our progress on the environment—because I am sure everyone wants to make progress on environmental standards—can be very clear. It has long been a practice of this Parliament—and I am a little surprised that the Minister who was a pretty well-regarded lawyer has not seen the tradition of this Parliament as appropriate for this legislation—to have as much as possible in the primary legislation and as little as needed in regulations. Again why would that approach be taken in something that requires targets to be independent and consistent?Our side will be proposing strongly at the select committee—and I have no doubt there will be a large number of submissions along the same lines—that the targets are debated agreed and included in the primary legislation. If a Minister in the future then says: “That target’s not looking too good; I think we’re getting into a bit of bother here.” the Minister would have to come back to Parliament to have that target changed not quietly change it in regulation so that when some less than favourable reporting was due it would not come to the public’s attention. So that will be one of the things that we are looking at having changed in this.As I said at the beginning nobody could argue with the approach that I think the Minister is committed to and that is for the first time to have in legislation a national-level environmental reporting system that is independent fair and accurate. Theprinciple of this legislation the vision of it is well supported by Labour. What we do not have confidence in is whether this legislation in its current drafting is able to deliver on that vision. It leaves us very vulnerable to political manipulation. It leaves us vulnerable to the Minister of the time—and I am not accusing the current Minister of having this as an intent at all; I do not think that she has. But it leaves a vulnerability that we could use this opportunity to remove and to ensure that the targets are in the primary legislation that they are agreed to by the whole of Parliament and that they are the things that we as representatives of our communities think are important. If we are going to have independent reporting then it should be reporting to Parliament and it should be on the targets that are agreed to by Parliament.There is a tendency of Ministers to set targets that they know in the future will not be problematic politically and I can understand individual politicians’ vulnerabilities on those points but it is not a robust process for independent reporting. It is not an accountability that would be to Parliament; it would be an accountability to the political party that is leading the Government of the time. This is long-term stuff that we are talking about here. We are not talking about short-term measures. When you are talking about environmental standards it often takes a long time to change a particular standard and consistency in the standards that are being measured the monitoring and then the reporting is the most critical thing so that we as a whole Parliament can look at the trend and say: “Well clearly we are doing the right thing. We are heading in the right direction.” or if we are not we would as a Parliament determine action that was appropriate to address that.I think this is an issue where the debate is something that New Zealand is up to. New Zealanders care passionately about their environment. I know that New Zealanders will want to see the independence the robustness and the accountability that this legislation could deliver. It is actually something that has been missing on our legislative frame for some time and I want to commend the Minister for picking it up. She has done a good job on that. I agree with the vision. I do not think that this legislation will deliver it but hopefully changes at the select committee will allow us to support it in the future.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the Environmental Reporting Bill. New Zealand has lagged well behind international best practice because we are the only country in the OECD without an ongoing commitment in law to regularly monitor the state of our environment and that is why the Green Party is supporting this bill being referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is a welcome step towards that and towards catching up with the rest of the OECD. But the Green Party has some quite significant concerns about the bill and our position beyond its first reading will depend on how those concerns are dealt with at the select committee and whether they are actually addressed.We certainly need to make sure that regular and independent reporting on the state of the environment is guaranteed by law because our history has shown that Governments can manipulate environmental data if it suits them. It was in 2008 that the Green Party revealed that the then Labour Government had suppressed the final chapter in the 2007 state of the environment report. The suppressed chapter suggested that increased car use dairying intensification and over-consumption were driving environmental decline. That chapter concluded that regulation was needed to protect the environment and New Zealand’s clean green reputation.The Government of the day did not want to hear this. It did not want New Zealanders to hear that so the chapter was suppressed until the Green Party found it and released it. That highlighted the need for this bill and independent state of the environment reporting. But there is an even more acute need for this bill because of what this Government is doing. It has declared war on the environment on a number of fronts. Wehave seen the outstanding values of the Denniston Plateau opened up for mining; an attack on our key environmental law the Resource Management Act; and big subsidies for irrigators.So certainly I congratulate the Minister for the Environment on bringing this bill into the House—it has been long promised by National—but what we have got in this bill is a lot less than what was promised in terms of independence. One of the major concerns we have is that the regime that is being proposed is not fully independent. What we are getting is the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics choosing what topics the reporting should cover the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand doing the work and Parliament’s watchdog the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment being able to comment once the report is published.The problem is that the bill gives the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics very wide regulation-making powers to set the topics that would be covered in both the occasional domain reports which are done on a rotating basis every 6 months and the 3-yearly synthesis report. If we are to have credible and robust environmental reporting it needs to be independent and if we are to have a really independent system we do not think that Ministers would need the substantial regulation-making powers that are set out in clause 18. Those powers include prescribing the topics to be reported on the pressures that are changing the state of the environment and the impacts the changes are having. So that gives the Ministers the power through regulation to interfere with and restrict the matters that are being reported on and the type of information that will be relevant and it is another example of the very centralised decision-making that has been a hallmark of this Government.We are particularly worried because it has been under this Government that we have seen regulation used under the exclusive economic zone legislation to deny the public the ability to have a say on very risky applications for deep-sea oil drilling. We have seen regulation being used again—this is currently out for comment—to deny the public the ability to have say on things like marine dumping and seabed dredging and to make some of those activities permitted.Not only have we got those regulation-making powers but also we have got the changes that the Government made to the Resource Management Act last year where the Minister can direct councils and determine what indicators they should be collecting information on to feed through into state of the environment reporting. If we are to have a credible system Ministers need to be hands-off. That means that those regulation-making powers in clause 18 need to go and the topics should either be set by the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment or be set in the primary legislation by Parliament. So we will be very interested in the submissions on this point of the bill.The second major flaw in the bill is that it enables both the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician to withhold any environmental information or analysis that will be or has been used in an environmental report if it is integral to that report or if its release could compromise the independence of the report. The thinking here appears to be that the environmental reporting will be similar to the tier 1 statistics with things like GDP but one of the problems is that this non-disclosure clause covers the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It cuts across the powers that she has in the Environment Act to request information from Government agencies. So it is undermining the whole independence of reporting and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s powers by ensuring that this non-disclosure clause applies to her as well as to Ministers.Our concern is that it potentially would allow the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment to block the release of quite considerable environmentaltrend and state of the environment information that will be being collected to prepare things like the synthesis report. It will also make it potentially impossible for researchers to question the accuracy of published environmental reports and the conclusions that are drawn if they cannot request this information. The bill says that the non-disclosure clause applies “despite any other enactment.” That means there has been a deliberate decision to override the Official Information Act which is the commitment to open government and freedom of information. That also means that there is no opportunity for the Ombudsman to review the non-disclosure decisions.The other major area where we have a problem with the bill is that it requires reporting to describe the impact that the state of the environment and changes in it may be having on “economic benefits derived from using natural resources:”. Under a progressive Government that might include an analysis of the financial damage that our polluted rivers are doing to our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand and our marketing platform but National’s economic policy with its focus on resource exploitation makes that sort of analysis unlikely. Our concern is that this provision risks being used to legitimise further environmental degradation and the trading off of environmental quality against short-term GDP and job benefits from big new irrigation dams and increased water takes.Those three major flaws are what we will be particularly interested in at the select committee and in terms of the submissions from the public. We support the bill going to the select committee because it is a step to give a statutory base to environmental reporting. But we do not see it as being fully independent and fully robust because of that provision for the Minister to set the topics in regulation and because of the way in which the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s powers to request information have been eliminated with that non-disclosure provision. They are quite significant shortcomings in the bill which we hope can be addressed through the select committee. The Minister has indicated that on the non-disclosure provision there will be some discussion but we definitely want to see that provision changed. Thank you.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I am very pleased to speak in the first reading of the Environmental Reporting Bill and very pleased to see that the Greens are supporting the bill but mystified as to why Labour has chosen to oppose it. I did actually listen to Ruth Dyson’s speech which was a bit like somebody dancing on the head of a pin as she tried to justify Labour’s opposition to what is actually a pretty good bill and justifying it on the grounds of it being weak and lacking robustness and clarity. That is when that member lost any clarity in her argument because quite simply I did not hear any—any—robust argument as to why Labour would oppose such a useful and sensible bill. It is quite beyond me so I will be very—Maggie Barry: It’s just politics.JACQUI DEAN: Well it is just politics. Is it just politics? Well it just seems a shame that Labour is prepared to use the environment which is something that apparently was dear to the party as a political pawn. Well that is Labour’s call. Its performance is being judged by a lot of people around New Zealand at the moment.Maggie Barry: And found wanting.JACQUI DEAN: And found wanting—thank you Maggie Barry.I am pleased to see that the Greens are supporting the bill at the moment. Again I guess it is how you look at things is it not? You know either the glass is half full or it is half empty. They talk about irrigation as if it is the Devil’s work—you know irrigation is the Devil’s work. Yet if they took the time to come down to South Canterbury and have a look at the Ōpuha Dam they would see not only the economic benefits—absolutely economic; bring it on—but also the environmental benefits in terms of water quality water clarity and how our plant and animal ecosystems are all thriving becauseof the Devil’s work irrigation in theŌpuha Dam. So I do wish that some of the Green members would perhaps—I cannot expect it from the Labour members because they cannot be doing with agriculture anyway. They hate farmers. But I would have expected the Greens to show a little more sense.The concerns of the Green members that I do take a little bit more notice of are around the robustness of the reporting so I just want to go through very quickly the process in this environmental reporting. The Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics will be responsible for recommending regulations that set out topics to be reported on. So where is the conspiracy there? I am not seeing it yet. That will be done following consultation with the GovernmentStatistician—that is the numbers guy or the numbers person—and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The left loves the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The left side of the House thinks she is the best thing since sliced bread but suddenly she is not being seen as independent. I believe that those members have completely lost their heads actually. Well here is the thing. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has a robust role under this legislation in checking on the efficacy of these reports—Hon Amy Adams: She likes the bill.JACQUI DEAN: —and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment likes the bill. So please please Labour members get up dance on the head of a pin and tell us just why you are opposing the best environmental reporting regime ever in New Zealand.Of course they do not have a very good record on the environment. I remember only too well back in 2007 attending a major water industry conference where a guy from the Ministry for the Environment under the then Labour Government got up and talked about Labour’s water plan of inaction. So given that history and given that record no wonder Labour is all at sea with this very good piece of legislation.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): The matter before us might come as a bit of a surprise to the National Government in that New Zealand First likewise is not supporting this legislation the Environmental Reporting Bill. It is surprising that perhaps the National Government has not sought to ask our views about this before—Hon Amy Adams: I did. I wrote to you and asked for them.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Yes and I did not provide them.Hon Amy Adams: No exactly but I did seek them.ANDREW WILLIAMS: But you assumed that we supported it and we did not provide them. So like the changes to the Resource Management Act last week where the Minister for the Environment was reported as saying that we were supporting those changes again that was incorrectly reported. We do support some streamlining and some tweaking of the Resource Management Act but certainly in terms of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act we do not support it. That is certainly not the position of New Zealand First.It is interesting when you look back through this. We looked at the Cabinet paper that Nick Smith presented to Cabinet on 4 August 2013 to the Cabinet economic growth and infrastructure committee. It says in that paper in paragraph 10: “This proposal also reflects the National Party 2008 election manifesto agreement ‘to introduce a new Environmental Reporting Act requiring independent five-yearly State of the Environment Reports as a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’.” That is what the National Party was saying in 2008—that there would be a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Sometime in the interim period between then and 2011 it changed that—because I do not think it was getting quite the right answers from the Parliamentary Commissioner for theEnvironment—and decided that it would do something a little bit different that it would take some of this outside the realms of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and put it under a different bit of legislation so that the Minister can pull the strings and dictate how he or she wants it. The independent commissioner reports to this House to Parliament—they do not report to the Government—as do the ombudsmen and as does the Auditor-General but the National Government decided that it would politicise it and move it more under the Minister’s control.I will just read out the functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. When you are listening to these functions ask why this would not simply come under the Parliamentary Commissioner. “These functions are drawn from the Environment Act 1986 … and the Commissioner has wide discretion to exercise them. They include: Review the system of agencies and processes set up by the Government to manage the country’s resources and report to the House of Representatives; Investigate the effectiveness of environmental planning and management by public authorities and advise them on remedial action; Investigate any matter where the environment may be or has been adversely affected advise on preventative measures or remedial action and report to the House; Report on a request from the House or any select committee on any petition Bill or any other matter which may have a significant effect on the environment; Inquire on the direction of the House into any matter that has had or may have a substantial and damaging effect on the environment; Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—I will repeat that: “Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—and lastly “Encourage preventive measures and remedial actions to protect the environment.”The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has considerable powers and powers of recommendation to this House in relation to the environment. So why would you not if you have already got this Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment build or expand that briefing to provide the 5-yearly reports? In 2011 a discussion paper from National proposed that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment would produce a major report on the state of the environment every 5 years. So here we have got a situation where in 2008 National put out its manifesto saying: “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring this in.” Then in 2011 it put forward a discussion document saying that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will produce a report every 5 years on the environment and that is what we will have.Then what happens? It all changes and between 2011 and 2013 National goes away from that and says: “Oh no no no! We’re not going to give all this responsibility to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We’re going to do it under a separate part of legislation and we will ask her for some input and some auditing and some advice into this reporting but it will not be the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s sole discretion to provide this information to the Government and to Parliament.” Why is that? The reason is that this Government does not trust the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to independently report both to this House and to the Government because the Government will not get the answers it wants—it will not get the answers it wants.So what this is doing in our opinion is basically undermining the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It is taking away the functions from that very independent office and it is making sure that this is done where the Minister can pull the strings and get these 5-year reports according to how the Minister will want them. We have already seen the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith getting involved with the Ruataniwha Dam. The Department of Conservation put forward a report which he did not like the look of and it went back to be altered so that the Minister got thereport in terms of the Ruataniwha Dam that suited the Minister. This is a very dangerous area. Ministries are supposed to advise. They are the civil servants. They are supposed to give independent advice to Ministers that is full impartial and accurate. In terms of the Ruataniwha Dam the department was supposed to submit on the basis of its best advice on the matter. The Minister intervened and the report got watered down and changed.I can see the same thing happening here in this situation where the Minister for the Environment will determine every 5 years which of those air fresh water and various other elements will be reported on and if they do not like the look of how the reports are scrubbing up we are certain that they will want to manipulate them and change them because they would not want the reports to reflect poorly on the Minister or on the Government. If the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was to do the reports and also commission the statistics and do the various other things required under this bill she would operate on the basis that she is an independent Officer of Parliament. She has wide-ranging powers to investigate environmental concerns and being independent would mean that she is independent of the Government of the day in her reports to Parliament. That is pretty simple.Therefore New Zealand First—and we have considered this and we have looked at this—says: “Well why did the National Party over a period of 5 years when it was in Opposition say it was all very well to work with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment?”. It is all very well when you are in Opposition and you are sitting on the benches over here but once you are in Government and you want to start manipulating things so that the reports look good you take it away from that independent function and you take it down this track. We are very suspicious because in hearing from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment over the last few years it is very interesting how that office has had to go very quiet in this whole area. It has basically made minimal comment in terms of how this is going. We believe therefore that basically that office has been constrained in terms of any comment on this and it would be very interesting to know what pressure has been borne on it.We have seen the Prime Minister of this country already threaten the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. He has already threatened and said that the funding might be pulled from the Human Rights Commission if this Government does not get the answers it wants or if the Human Rights Commission puts out reports that the Government is not very happy with. You cannot deny it—you cannot deny it. There were threats made by the Prime Minister in relation to the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and to forward funding for that commission. The same has happened here I am sure where there has been an underlying situation where the reports coming out of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have not necessarily all been how the Government wanted them and therefore this Government is moving to ensure that it does not have that commissioner independently able to advise this House and all members of this House in an independent manner.So New Zealand First will be studying this at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We are sure there will be a huge number of submissions. Will the Government listen to those submissions? Who would know? But at the end of the day this is about reporting to Parliament not to the Government.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): I rise with great pride to speak to the Environmental Reporting Bill. I think that what it does is it provides independence fairness and accuracy. These of course are completely alien notions to the member who has just resumed his seat Andrew Williams and to the Opposition parties in general.As Minister Adams said at the outset this is a significant change to the way that we report on our environment. I have to express surprise and disappointment at the way the Opposition parties’ members have questioned the integrity of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and who have also said that the Government Statistician is biased. These people ought to think very carefully about what they say. I think it is appalling to judge these two individuals and these two departments in the way that they have.We need to look at the track record of Labour. The exclusive economic zone is one of the great moments of shame amongst a tsunami of shame that Labour has been responsible for in the environment. I am astonished at how many people believe the myth that Labour is on the side of good environmental reporting or good governance of the environment because it manifestly is not. To give but one example—in the time that Labour was in Government for 9 long years 36 wells were drilled without any controls whatsoever. There was no attempt to put any checks and balances around it—no protections no governance no regulations. Labour members proceeded to make it even worse by voting down our exclusive economic zone legislation and they look likely to do it again with this Environmental Reporting Bill.I will put to the people of New Zealand that Labour the Greens and New Zealand First are not at all interested in the environment. This is a piece of legislation that will protect it and I commend it to the House. Thank you.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. I am privileged to take a short call on the Environmental Reporting Bill. I heard comments from across the House that members were not clear on Labour’s reason as to why we are opposing this bill. Can I make it really clear that we are opposing it because it needs strengthening we are opposing this piece of legislation because it falls well short and it is our role as parliamentarians in this House that when we feel that legislation is weak at the knees we need to apply our might to strengthen it.The purpose of the bill is to create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent fair and accurate. I join with my learned colleagues the honourable Moana Mackey and the Hon Ruth Dyson in their contributions on this bill. From our end the key parts that they raised in terms of their concerns with this bill are quite clear. On reading the bill I want to add my weight in highlighting those critical areas that I believe need strengthening. Like Moana Mackey I also want to say to the Minister for the Environment that national reporting national standards need to be commended but the rubber hits the road when we go to implementation. That is one of the concerns I have in reading this bill and also in looking at the behaviour of the National-led Government in putting across similar bills.Can I highlight a couple of areas that previous speakers on this side of the House have raised. When I look at the purpose of the bill again we talk about requiring “regular reports on the state of New Zealand’s environment as a whole:” and I have got no issue there. We “require regular reports on the state of the air atmosphere and climate freshwater land and marine domains:”—again I have no issue there. To “ensure that producers of environmental reports act independently and produce fair and accurate reports:”—well I start worrying about how independent those reports will be.The other point we talk about in the purpose of this bill is that it is to “ensure that the expertise of government departments is utilised in producing environmental reports:”. Again we have seen in this House particular ministries—the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment—being shut down by this National-led Government around the Tukituki catchment proposal. Again I doubt that we willhave that true independence and contestable advice from those particular Government departments.Of course the fifth part of the bill’s purpose clause talks about affirming “the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in reporting on environmental reports and the processes that produced the reports.” Again having been witness to the report that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has provided on water quality and land use where that goes to one can only guess but there are some clear recommendations that she has made and I have yet to see them surface via this National-led Government.When I look at the parts of this bill the bits I want to focus on that give me grave concern are when we talk about the synthesis reports. The Minister for the Environment mentioned them in her opening address. In terms of both the synthesis reports and the domain reports what I have a particular issue with is the use of the words “reasonable efforts”—“reports information that cannot be obtained by using reasonable efforts.” I think you can drive a truck through that terminology—“reasonable efforts”. Again colleagues on this side will work at the Local Government and Environment Committee to strengthen this. That is one area that I would like strengthened—“reasonable efforts”. We should not allow that discretionary clause because this is a serious matter in terms of protecting our environment.The other area in this bill talks about national and international standards. I have yet to see any standards or targets in this bill when it comes to the environment. Of course we are still waiting with bated breath for freshwater quality management but I am sure the Minister is dealing with that in due course. Again these are the concerns that I have when I look at this bill. Is it strong enough? Does it give us the protection of our environment that it so deservedly needs? Again I wait on the performance of this National-led Government that the proof is in the pudding and I think there is still a lot more that can be done to this bill.The other concern that I have in reading the bill is around the role of both the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician. I actually know the current Government Statistician. She is a lovely woman by the name of Liz and I have worked with her previously. The concern is not about the person but again it is around the over-interference by Ministers on their chief executives in identifying those target areas. Again if we are to be true to setting robust legislation in this House this independence not only has to be seen to be delivered but has to be delivered and I have grave concerns about Ministers directing chief executives in setting these targets. Like I say I am joining this side in saying that if we work at the select committee level to strengthen that I am sure that would abate that concern I have.Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the 2nd GLOBE Climate Legislation Summit in Washington DC. I have actually just got back in the early hours this morning after a 26-hour flight. For the purpose of this House can I read out what the global organisation is about: “The Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) is an international organisation comprising national parliamentarians from over 80 countries” who are committed to finding legislative solutions to the challenges posed by climate change and sustainable development. GLOBE supports legislators in over 40 national chapters which provide economic political and policy capacity to develop and advance legislation as well as monitor its implementation. One of the key points that came out of the many learned deliverances at this conference was that it is not the quantity of legislation that countries produce; it is the quality of legislation.So I stand on this side of the House and say that we cannot support this bill but we will work hard in due course when it gets to the select committee. Kia ora tātou.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I am very disappointed to hear that Labour will not be supporting this excellent bill the Environmental Reporting Bill. I worked with Simon Upton many years ago when he was Minister for the Environment in 1997 or 1998 when we produced the first state of the environment report. I remember a great bit fat—Hon Trevor Mallard: He was known as Hansel at the time. Ruth was known as Gretel.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes well it is good to see the father of the House over there reminiscing about those days. It was a great big telephone book and a very powerful piece of work that was. We had high hopes and merry hearts that it would be the start of rigorous state of the environment reporting in this country. Of course history records that Labour took over afterwards and there was a lot of talk and very little action. When Labour finally did do something there were concerns about interference.This bill is about getting into the legislation and making it very clear that New Zealanders have credible robust independent environmental information set down in legislation so that we know where we are. Once we have a decent basis from which to work we can improve the quality of our environment. This is a party that actually does this stuff on the environment. Rather than just talking the talk we walk the walk. On that basis I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Well we have heard a lot of faux outrage from the Government benches. I just want to say to Maggie Barry and her colleagues: drop the attitude—drop the attitude—and get used to the fact that we are debating this legislation. If those members want our side to vote for the bill then it has to reach a certain minimum level of credibility. To be quite honest this bill the Environmental Reporting Bill does not pass that test. This bill does not pass that test.As Moana Mackey said in the opening salvo from the Labour team we support the stated intent of this bill. We support the intention to establish an independent comprehensive environmental reporting system. That is all fine. There is no problem with that. But this bill does not pass muster. It does not measure up in terms of the independence that the bill purportedly seeks. It falls below the minimum level of credibility and that is why we are not supporting it. I say to members on that side of the House: you can drop the attitude and just get used to it.We will as Moana Mackey said work at the Local Government and Environment Committee to try to improve the bill because we believe that we do need some decent environmental reporting. What the members on that side of the House do not seem to be able to get their heads around is the fact that if this environmental reporting system was set up truly as a creature of Parliament lifted above the day-to-day political differences in this House and taken out of the clutches of the Minister of the day then it would have the credibility and the independence that is needed.If you look at the bill clause 18 “Regulations” says: “The Governor-General may on the joint recommendation of the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics by Order in Council make regulations prescribing the topics to be covered in synthesis reports …”. That is the point. That is the argument that we have been making which National Party members do not seem to be able to comprehend. The very parameters of the report are going to be determined by two of the Ministers of the day. That is what makes this a political creature. If the National Party was truly intending to establish a report that had independence that was above party politics and that would be a creature of this Parliament then it would not have that clause in there. I think that if—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.PHIL TWYFORD: Let me continue with my attempt at an explanation for the benefit of the members opposite as to why Labour is not supporting this Environmental Reporting Bill at its first reading even though we support the stated intention of the bill to establish a comprehensive and independent reporting regime on the environment.Our concern is that this bill is like so much of what this National Government has brought to the House over the last few years in the environmental area. It is basically window dressing and it falls below the minimum credibility level that we would need to see if we were going to support this bill even at its first reading.Where it falls down is in clause 18 where it mandates the Minister of Statistics and the Minister for the Environment to basically decide what topics the report will deal with and that is obviously pretty fundamental. Labour would like to see that kind of decision making taken out of the hands of the Minister of the day and this reporting regime made a true creature of Parliament. I think that if we look at the success of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment if we look at the Office of the Auditor-General we can see that our democracy is strengthened by this institutional machinery that is part of Parliament rather than more politicised structures that are open to manipulation by the Minister of the day.In the whole area of measurement and reporting if we see how this Government has tackled reporting and measurement in the social sector how it has weakened the social development reporting while it has been in Government how it has refused to agree on an official measure of poverty and how in fact it has undermined and challenged Statistics New Zealand’s measure of homelessness we can see how—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry—your time is all used.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Green Party loves New Zealand and we want to look after our precious places and our people. New Zealanders know that we all benefit from clean rivers that our kids can swim and fish in. We all benefit from clean air. At the moment air pollution contributes to our high rate of respiratory disease in this country. We in New Zealand all benefit from our “clean green” brand particularly businesses that are selling goods and services overseas. Our “clean green” brand has underpinned our competitive advantage and the success of some of our biggest exports including our dairy exports and our tourism. If we do not look after our environment we will not be able to look after our economy and we will not be able to look after our people.As any small-business owner knows what you measure is what you care about. So it is incredibly important that we measure the right things and that we report them transparently and independently so that we can make changes to ensure that we continue to look after our natural environment which is so critical to the success of our economy.The Green Party will be supporting this Environmental Reporting Bill at least at this first reading. We have serious concerns and misgivings about the bill. Of course the goal is a mandatory state of the environment reporting regime and it would be wonderful if that was achieved in a way that actually guaranteed transparent reporting that is independent from Government interference. As we have found it is not unusual for Governments to manipulate environmental data if the data does not suit them.In 2008 the Green Party revealed that the Labour Government had suppressed chapter 13 of the 2007 state of the environment report. The suppressed chapter had suggested that increased car use dairy intensification and over-consumption were driving environmental decline. It concluded that regulation was needed to protect the environment and our clean green reputation. Of course the Government of the day did not want to hear this because it was not convenient and it would mean changing thestatus quo to get a better outcome in the long term in the future. The Green Party is here to look after the long term to look after our planet and our people in the long term. Of course because the Government of the day suppressed the chapter and did not want New Zealanders to hear about it the Green Party found it and released it.The need for independent reporting of the state of the environment is even more acute with this current Government because it has consistently made decisions that are not in the interests of our long-term environment. Just a few examples of its poor record on the environment include the gutting of the water provisions in theNational Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011. Of course the Green Party fought hard to get the Land and Water Forum to come to conclusions. It made some great recommendations but the Government did not take them up.For climate change the Government set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Of course its own departmental data shows that by 2028 we will have increased our greenhouse gas emissions threefold over our 1990 net emissions.This is a Government that talks a lot about the environment but the reality is that it is undermining the environment at every turn. So we have great reason to doubt whether it is actually proposing a bill that will lead to true independent reporting on the state of the environment that is not subject to manipulation from the Government.Our specific concerns which we will be watching very closely through the House include the fact that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s role has now been reduced to one of simply commenting rather than her office being funded to actually do the state of the environment reporting. We have concerns about the potential chilling effects of the non-disclosure provisions and the potential for political influence because the bill requires the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics to set out through regulation the topics to be reported on. Reporting on impacts on the state of the environment must include an assessment of the economic benefits derived from resource use which will of course privilege resource use over protection of the environment. And statistical measures promoted by Statistics New Zealand for reporting may not be the best indicators of the state of the environment.So the Green Party will as always be watching this bill very very closely as it progresses through the House and we will be standing up for our natural environment which underpins our economy and looks after our people. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Environmental Reporting Bill be now read a first time.Ayes78New Zealand National 59; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes41New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) on behalf of theMinister of Energy and Resources: I moveThat the Energy (Fuels Levies andReferences) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Commerce Committee to consider the bill.This bill amends the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Act 1989 in order to provide a sustainable funding source for New Zealand’s International Energy Agency oil stockholding obligations. The bill also realigns existing funding mechanisms so that oil consumers rather than general taxpayers are apportioned the cost of stockholding. As a member of the International Energy Agency this country has a treaty obligation to contribute to global oil security by holding oil stock equivalent to 90 days of net imports. New Zealand is too small to mitigate international oil supply disruptions on its own. The collective arrangement under the International Energy Agency is this country’s best choice for coping with such disruptions. Release of the global stockholding during disruptions also helps protect New Zealand from significant damage to its economy from extreme oil price spikesCommercial inventories held by oil companies in New Zealand contribute to part of this International Energy Agency obligation. Domestic oil production helps to bring down the level of the obligation. In this regard the work of the Government in progressing its Petroleum Action Plan has not only benefited the upstream producers for the benefit of all New Zealanders but also will have a positive impact on New Zealanders through lower International Energy Agency obligations. The Crown presently meets the remainder of its oil stockholding obligation by entering into ticket contracts with oil companies and traders in other International Energy Agency countries. Tickets are an option in return for an annual fee to purchase specified quantities of stock at market prices in the event of an International Energy Agency - declared oil supply emergency.New Zealand has remained in compliance with its International Energy Agency obligations using tickets since about 2006. As announced in May New Zealand successfully tendered for tickets for approximately 150000 tonnes of crude oil and refined petroleum products. In 2012 the Government initiated a review to determine whether tickets were still the most appropriate mechanism to meet our oil security obligations. This review confirmed that tickets are still the most cost-effective way of meeting these obligations and the review also determined that a fuel levy that can be adjusted in regulations provides better flexibility to meet uncertain ticket costs going forward.The bill therefore introduces a new purpose for the petroleum and engine fuels motoring levy and that is to fund New Zealand’s International Energy Agency stockholding obligations. By including the International Energy Agency stockholding obligations in the purpose of the levy we are ensuring that we continue to meet our stockholding obligations in a fiscally sustainable way.To this end the bill also introduces greater flexibility in the setting of levy rates. Rather than having a set rate the rate will be calculated based on forecasts of ticket costs with some adjustment based on previous overspend or underspend. To enable this increased flexibility levy rates will be set in regulations. The regulations will also prescribe which fuels the levy will apply to and I expect that these new regulations will come into force later this year. Finally the bill introduces a number of technical amendments to the Act. Although we are introducing a new purpose for the levy that will enable a more sustainable collection mechanism for the purchase of International Energy Agency oil tickets we are continuing to investigate ways to put downward pressure on these costs. So for example over the last year we have secured two new Government to Government agreements with Denmark and Spain and these increase the pool of potential suppliers New Zealand can look to tender for tickets with. We are also investigating which other countries may be appropriate to approach for thispurpose and as I understand it the officials have reviewed the existing tender process and have streamlined it so as to give New Zealand the best chance of achieving competitive and compliant tender bids.I am grateful to the officials and the submitters whose contribution to this work has helped to shape and improve this legislation. The bill is yet another element in a raft of measures this Government is pursuing to improve New Zealand’s oil security and I commend the bill to the House.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): We in the Labour Party agree with the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill in the sense that we obviously believe that New Zealand should live up to its treaty obligations. We see that the need for stocking oil in sufficient amounts is important although we would prefer this to be held in New Zealand rather than offshore in Japan. Nevertheless that is beyond the remit of this bill. We do realise that that is an important part of our obligations under the Agreement on an International Energy Program—to contribute and hold within New Zealand a 90-day stock of oil. The forecast costs of the current method of meeting New Zealand’s International Energy Agency stockholding obligation the ticketing regime will not be fully funded by the existing vote appropriation. In the absence of further intervention New Zealand would therefore become non-compliant with its International Energy Agency obligations and we do not want to do that.This bill provides for the purpose of the existing petroleum or engine fuel monitoring levy to be extended so that that levy revenue can be used to meet the costs associated with the Crown’s compliance with that agreement and it removes the present maximum levy rate and provides for the levy rate on fuels to which the levy applies to be set in the case of regulations by Order in Council. Although we agree with the need for New Zealand to be compliant with our treaty obligations and we recognise why that treaty is in place and why that treaty exists in order to ensure we have stability in oil an essential commodity on which our economy and our lifestyle depends—on which pretty much every function of our life depends—we do not agree with the way that this will be collected and I want to go through the points one by one.At the moment the way that this levy this additional cost will be collected is effectively by charging motorists more at the petrol pump. There will be an increase in the amount that motorists will have to pay as a result of this levy. We just explained that having a stockpile is important to enable our ability to protect ourselves against these spikes and changes that can occur around the world. That is because we are talking about not just cars. We are talking about cars and we are talking about buses trains aeroplanes boats and everything else that oil products contribute towards. But what this Government is doing is focusing the levy solely on the motorist.Many people are finding it very difficult to fill their petrol tanks up right now. I can guarantee that there are people watching this debate tonight who will be saying: “Well it costs me $120 $130 to fill my tank up when I go to the petrol station and that is what we need to be able to do.” Well add a few more cents on to that again. This Government has continued to hike the price of petrol up. This Government has hiked the price of petrol up in order to meet its Budget surplus. It did that just before Christmas last year—in case Government members sitting over there have forgotten what actually happened. So here they are again wanting to change and shift the goalposts so that it will cost New Zealanders even more to fill their tanks up rather than funding this obligation through general taxation which has actually been the case for the last—well who knows how long. Traditionally that is how it has happened.The second reservation that we have is that it allows the energy Minister to change that rate pretty much at will. Whereas at the moment there is a maximum rate the billgives enormous flexibility to the Minister to change the rates. Therefore we do not have the scrutiny that we once had.Thirdly—and I find this sort of unbelievable—actually this levy also applies to biofuels. Why are we putting the same levy on biofuels which are part of our energy future in terms of what we want to try to be which is to be independent of the current fossil fuels?The Labour Party recognises that this bill is likely to go through and it is likely to go to the Commerce Committee. We look forward to the debate and to hearing from the industry shareholders about exactly what is going to happen. But I come back to that same point: oil is an essential commodity and we would like it to be less essential. We would like to be less dependent on it and over time we will want to transition away from fossil fuels and on to renewables. That is certainly from the point of view of the Labour Party where we want to be headed. We want to see New Zealand being 100 percent reliant on renewable energy. Certainly internally within New Zealand we believe that by 2020 we could be 90 percent there and by 2030 or 2035 we could be 100 percent focused on renewable energy in terms of what we achieve.That will go hand in hand with the developments that we will see in the future around an increasing number of electric cars and what we hope would be a roll-out of more efficient public transport that would take the reliance off cars. This Government certainly has not been supporting that. In fact the Government has embarked on an enormous road-building project rather than try to support the idea of more efficient public transport. It is for that very reason that in Auckland for example the rail loop has been put out to 2020. The year 2020 means that we will pay up to $500 million more for that rail loop and that when electrification comes on stream this year—something that the Labour Government initiated and I am pleased to see that this Government has continued with it—our trains in Auckland will be so chock-a-block that they will not be able to function because of the absence of a circular rail loop that would enable more efficient use of public transport in Auckland. So to say that this Government is behind the efficient use of public transport is obviously wrong.Coming back to the point that I started with here the way this will be funded is through an increase in people’s petrol prices. They will be paying more for the petrol that they put in their tanks. When they go to the petrol station and as many people do now they hold their breath and they get their petrol in $20 or $25 lots because they cannot afford to fill their tank right up they should remember that this Government is responsible for increasing the price of petrol in their tank again—again one more increase. Well it might not affect the people whom those members choose to represent but it does affect the people whom the Labour Party stands for. We believe that where we are going with this is wrong. Giving the Minister of Energy and Resources increased flexibility around putting the price up whenever he might choose to do that is wrong. The fact that the levy applies to biofuels an industry that we want to see more of in New Zealand is also wrong as well.Although we agree with the overall intent of the bill and we agree with the fact that the treaty obligations are important and we stand by those treaty obligations we cannot support the bill as it currently stands which is to rack up people’s petrol prices and give an energy Minister far more ability to rack prices up even further at will. We are willing to listen and to debate this in the select committee. We are interested in hearing from the various shareholder and stakeholder groups that are involved in the industry to see what they have to say. But right now as it stands we cannot support this piece of legislation.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Well that was not a bad attempt from my colleague across the House here David Shearer. I would have thought that he would make a fine leader of the Labour Party and perhaps it should reconsiderthat. The Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill is a small but also very important bill. The modern world relies on a vast energy supply to fuel everything from transportation to communications to security and to health delivery systems. Energy plays an important role in the national security of nations all over the world. In any given country energy is used to power the economy.There are a number of members of the International Energy Agency—28 members in all—who have an obligation and a commitment to one another to ensure that they have a minimum of 90 days of their oil imports that they can access in order to bring stability in energy security around the world which in the end brings economic and political stability as well. New Zealand being a small country does not have 90 days of fuel supply here within our own jurisdiction so we enter into contracts with overseas jurisdictions to supply oil to us if there was ever going to be an emergency around the world regarding oil supply. That is very important because that brings the sort of stability that is needed. The normal commercial inventories held by oil companies in New Zealand contribute to our nation’s obligations but as I said the remainder of the obligation is met through the Crown entering into as the Minister said these ticket contracts.There is going to be an impending rise in the ticket requirement principally due to a forecast decline in domestic oil production which we anticipate in the medium term. However due to the large extent of oil exploration that has taken place and is taking place at the moment we anticipate that the domestic production of oil will increase in this country. That is one of the reasons why the levy system that is proposed in this bill can be changed by Order in Council so that it can be increased or decreased as is necessary to work in conjunction with the domestic supply of oil that we retain here in the country.It is important as the previous speaker said that we do have a vote provision to pay for these ticket contracts but that provision is not going to be adequate. A levy-based system where essentially it is user-pays is going to be the way in which we fund that. Over a 3-year period it is going to be approximately $20 million. That is going to be around about 6c per 60-litre tank of fuel. What that offers New Zealand is stability around our oil reserves and supply which brings stability to our economy and national security because right around the world disruptions to energy supply are major impediments to the stability of nations.One of the options of course was to just renege on our obligation and not comply with this obligation. The Government would not do that because that would be an irresponsible level of commitment to those treaties and agreements we have. It is a little bit like if a household comes under a bit of pressure and you decide that you are going to quit your insurance policy. Although that might ease your cash flow it does not do anything to bring confidence to your bank manager who might hold your mortgage. So it is important for us in terms of our international reputation and credibility to maintain our funding to pay for these provisions. All of these are very very important in order to be a nation that carries its responsibilities internationally in the best light.I am very happy to stand here and commend this bill to the House. It is not a large bill but I think it is an important one. It brings about the change that we are shifting to a levy-based system as opposed to funding these ticket contracts out of general taxation. So for all of those who ride their bikes well you know they can be happy. For those who drive our cars we are paying our part for stability in our supply of energy and our economy. Thank you.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to make a contribution at the first reading of the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. As previous speakers have noted this bill is only a fewpages long. It does not have a big subject matter but it does have quite an impact on New Zealand families. As Mr David Shearer mentioned in his contribution on this side of the House we have no issue with New Zealand meeting its international treaty obligations. Our reputation internationally is very important so maintaining 90 days of oil supplies to our country primarily through ticket contracts is something we must uphold as a country. We have no issue with that. We do have an issue with the targeted approach in this piece of legislation. It will be targeting families. Ultimately it will lead to increased costs for families at the pump. I know from travelling around my vast electorate that if you go to places like Kaikōura or Mr Deputy Speaker down to Invercargill in Southland the cost of filling up is a significant cost for already stretched household budgets. This legislation unfortunately will add to that cost because the oil companies which are the importers of petroleum of our fuel will be paying an increased levy through to the Customs Service.I want to focus on the actual appropriation for maintaining our treaty obligations. That is currently around $3 million a year and I think that the projections through to outer years over the next 3 4 or 5 years are that it will go up to about $10 million a year. So there is a big shortfall there. There is a big shortfall and that is largely due to the forecast decline in our domestic oil production. To meet that shortfall the Government has decided to go for this targeted approach but based on those predictions the levy rate which can be modified by Order in Council can be modified at whim and who knows how big this liability will be to actually maintain our obligations through the purchase of these ticket contracts. I was fascinated to learn that of course maintaining 90 days of oil supply for the country in case there was a disruption worldwide to oil supplies is a means of securing that for our economy. We know that our whole economy is dependent upon the power that drives everything. Although we want to see a transition to more renewable sources of energy we know that at the moment fossil fuels are the primary source of fuel that powers our primary production our export sector our tradable sector. So it is very important that should these shocks eventuate—and we certainly hope they do not—our country through its agreement with its partners is able to open up those supply lines and cash in our ticket options so we can get those supply lines secure. We can keep the fuel pumping hopefully not for as long as 90 days so that we can keep our economy moving.The point I want to make is that the Government had a choice. The Government had a choice to have a targeted levy to target the motor vehicle users people who actually fill up at the pump or to stick to the status quo and raise the relevant appropriation from general taxation. The Government chose the former but here on this side of the House we think it is fair that it should continue to come out of general taxation because it is a public good. It is a public good that everyone benefits from that we comply with our international obligations. We certainly hope a worldwide disruption to oil supplies does not eventuate but we certainly hope that if it does arise that we need to call in our emergency supplies and make sure that we can get those 90 days of fuel then those supply lines are available to us. So yes we regret that the Government chose to take the targeted route. I know that the Government consulted various stakeholders in the industry principally the oil companies. I guess they already pay their levies to the Customs Service in terms of importation duties and the like and so this probably will not upset their business in a way. It will just add an additional cost that we know they will immediately pass on to the end consumer.I return to the point that from Invercargill up to the folks in South Auckland and right throughout the country this is going to mean an increase at the pump. Families have seen that significantly over the past year and in years prior and it is definitely not going to be a shot in the arm but a strain on the household budgets particularly for thosefamilies out there. We know that a significant number of our population are doing it tough. Whether they are a working family or one of the non-working beneficiary-type families who are out there everyone is doing it tough. It is a luxury for many people to have a vehicle but again they will be thinking twice about whether they will be able to afford to fill it up. So in one sense yes sure we want to encourage more use of public transport and other greener ways of getting around but ultimately we do not want this to impact on our economy. Who knows—this is going to mean increased costs right the way through the supply chain of all our industries and ultimately it is going to be an increased cost. We know that fuel cost is a significant cost on every business so it will be interesting to see what the ultimate impact will be and whether maintaining our obligations in this way will impact on our business performance particularly across those sectors that are highly dependent on fuel costs.Another final issue I want to raise is that the Government has spoken a lot about New Zealand adhering to its international energy agreement obligations and that it is our reputation that is at stake. But I think it is quite ironic that the Government is so concerned about our international obligation to maintain emergency supplies of oil. I guess that is an international obligation but I would not think that it really rated in terms of other international obligation that we have particularly around climate change. I just find it ironic that the Government is so preoccupied and is going to all this great expense and effort to bring about this piece of legislation to introduce this targeted levy when it has done nothing about our international reputation for our clean green image and also about action on climate change.I know I have got other colleagues who will be adding more contributions in that area but I wanted to just make that final point that it seems that the Government is focusing on what are perceived to be little things. In the scheme of things it is a $3 million cost at the moment. We are going through all of this to basically load on to the end consumer an increased cost of fuel for what is only a few million dollars. I think that when you look at the grand scheme of things our international energy agreement obligations do not really rank up there. I know that Australia has not met its obligations. It is about to get a rap over the knuckles but it is not the end of the world. So we oppose this bill.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. Late last year I had the privilege of touring the Marsden Point oil refinery near Whangarei. It is a significant piece of New Zealand infrastructure. It is where the bulk of our diesel comes from and a significant amount of our other liquid fuels like jet fuels and petroleum. It is a point of entry for our fuel. I am a big fan of going to gigantic steel structures and seeing some of that industrial New Zealand such as the Tīwai smelter down south. Seeing that refinery and the huge flows of oil that come through it makes you think about the vulnerability if that oil stopped flowing of our wider economy. But there is also the impact of that fuel coming to New Zealand being combusted and contributing to climate change as the member Rino Tirikatene just mentioned.The price of fuel at the moment is about $2.20 a litre. The energy contained in a litre of oil is the equivalent of an average person working for about 4 to 6 weeks. Can you imagine employing someone—I know that some National members would probably like to employ someone for 4 to 6 weeks’ work for only $2.20 in payment. What you can see is the fantastic stored energy contained in oil. The stored sunlight that fell on the Earth literally tens of millions of years ago is harnessed but it has also come with a corresponding impact which is climate change.There is also the huge dependence on this substance by society by our communities and by our economy. I am too young to remember the carless days of the late 1970s and the 1980s but I know about the huge shocks that put us and other developed economies and developing economies through that.Denis O’Rourke: It wasn’t so bad.GARETH HUGHES: It was not so bad? Really? It was not so bad? Tell that to the New Zealanders who had to struggle with that Mr O’Rourke. I think it was a significant shock to the New Zealand economy and it stimulated some of the research we have today.I know that that side of the House likes to rubbish it whenever there is mention of peak oil. But what we are seeing right now in New Zealand and around the world is the peaking of conventional oils. Global oil production at conventional sources has plateaued since 2008 and what we see with the rush to extreme forms of extraction like deep-sea drilling fracking the tar sands in Canada and the methane hydrate exploration in Japan and in New Zealand is peak oil in action. We are going to evermore extreme lengths to get our fixes of oil. That is why this bill is important.Our economy at the moment is incredibly dependent on oil—and I hope it is not into the future—and what we are seeing is pervasive high oil prices. When you look at the graphs that I put before the House last term they show the spiking of oil prices since 1970. Each significant global recession in the last four decades has been preceded by an oil shock. What you can see is the close correlation between a spike in oil prices and the impacts on global economies. In fact in New Zealand we did some analysis last term that showed that every US$1 price increase for a barrel of oil shaved $40 million to $60 million off New Zealand’s GDP. So it is right to be prepared for and concerned about oil shocks.It is right to have oil stocks in reserve because New Zealand is incredibly vulnerable. We are one of the most oil-dependent economies on the planet. Our vehicle fleet is over 11 years in age. We drive some of the longest distances with some of the fewest passengers. We are incredibly dependent on oil and we have some of the oldest cars in the world. I would like to echo the concerns of Z Energy in the regulatory impact statement which said: “There are some concerns storing our 90-day stocks offshore particularly where the vast bulk is stored in Japan.” Z Energy I believe is correct to question whether in the event of a significant and severe oil shock that oil would actually be released to New Zealand. Obviously we have good relations with Japan but I believe that for peace of mind—and the officials advised that the extra costs would be only around $3 million—storing the oil in New Zealand is something that should be given more consideration. I hope we can explore that in further depth in the Commerce Committee.We are supporting this legislation unlike some parties in this Parliament because we think it is high time there should be the ability to adapt the fuel levies being paid. We know that oil prices fluctuate a considerable amount so we think the Minister having the ability by regulation to increase that is a smart idea. We believe in fairness and equity and we think the costs should lie where they are born. I do not think it is an equity issue to say that a marginal increase in the price of fuel is going to impact everyday New Zealanders because what I want to see is the costs lying where they fall. If you are a New Zealander who is privileged or has the infrastructure to walk or cycle to school or if you have got a SuperGold card and you take the bus to work then you are not burning oil. I believe it is unfair for you through the general Crown accounts to be paying for that. I believe we are sending the wrong signal to New Zealanders who are lucky enough or have the inclination to go oil-free by saying that they should payfor the oil stocks. I believe that those people who use their cars and use the roads should pay for the oil supply—the security of having those 90-day oil stocks.I believe it should be transparent and I believe we are seeing an increase in that now. For the first time we are not going to see the costs simply go out of the Crown’s general account. What we are going to see is a targeted levy transparent to New Zealanders. I believe it is going to encourage the alternatives because although I admit that the $20 million cost over 3 years is pretty marginal in the $8 billion fuel import bill of this country I believe sending a price signal at the margins will have some effect. What I want to see is this Parliament and this Government encouraging alternatives such as better public transport safer walking and cycling and innovative solutions like electric cars and sustainable biofuels.An issue I want to follow up in the select committee is again another of Z Energy’s concerns which is that biofuels might be covered under this levy. I find it patently ridiculous and counter-productive that this levy should be applied to sustainable biofuels. People who invest in a sustainable biofuel plant or put biofuels in their cars are doing a good thing for the climate a good thing for the country and a good thing for our economy. They should not be punished. I hope the Minister in regulation can make sure that biofuels are exempted as well much like bitumen and liquefied petroleum gas currently are under advice from the officials. I think that is smart.The big picture in New Zealand is that oil is one of our most significant economic challenges. We are importing $8 billion worth of oil annually. That is roughly the size of our nation’s deficit. What we are seeing is a huge risk to our economy and a huge impost upon New Zealanders. Unlike many councils businesses militaries and Governments our Government has no oil reduction plan. In fact it does not even have a plan to start planning. All it has is an oil production plan and an oil dependency plan. You can see that in the more than $14 billion it is putting on the credit card with the so-called roads of national significance. They should be called the “roads of National Party significance”. That is $14 billion that is making our country more dependent on oil and is giving Kiwis fewer choices to get around. You can see it in the deep-sea drilling cheerleading the Government is doing. It is literally rolling out the red carpet with $46 million in tax breaks and $25 million in direct subsidies to the oil industry. As the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment rightly points out our oil production is declining. So all the Government has on the face of it is an oil production plan. What we need is an oil reduction plan and that is what the Green Party is about.We want to give Kiwis choices because in the last oil shock in 2008-09 many Kiwis found that the alternatives just were not there. There were not enough rail carriages in Wellington. They literally went to the museum to pull out rail carriages to put on the tracks. We saw that people wanted to cycle to school or work but could not because there was no infrastructure and they did not feel safe. Manufacturers and exporters who wanted to put their things on the rail line found that the National Government was closing rail lines like the Gisborne to Wairoa line.What Kiwis want is choices and what they are not getting under National is choices. All they are getting is more roads and more oil wells and no solutions. What we need to do and what is of benefit to the country and the economy is to provide Kiwis with choices—choices to get around faster through things like a central business district rail link and infrastructure like light rail and better buses for Wellington. Ironically this is what we are going to see will be the big benefit to motorists. Less-congested roads when people use public transport in our big cities means there is more road space for carpenters plumbers and the people who need to use the roads to get around. It is a huge economic opportunity for New Zealand to look at the alternatives like electric vehicles and biofuels. The Bioenergy Association estimates we could see30000 jobs created and become entirely self-sufficient in liquid fuels simply by using wood waste.At this election the choices when it comes to oil are clear. Under National you are going to see more cars more dependency more oil imports and more risky deep-sea drilling. Under the Greens you are going to see more choices such as the central business district rail link light rail clean energy jobs for New Zealanders and better macroeconomic opportunities for our country. Kia ora.Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier): I certainly agree with the Green member Gareth Hughes on one point and that is that New Zealanders do have choices going into this election and are faced with a very positive choice going forward with some of the best news that we have seen in the economy not only in years but in decades. This is an economy where consumer confidence is at its highest in 20 years if not 30. This is an economy where business confidence is at its highest in 30 years. This is an economy where unemployment is now coming down to 6 percent. We will be into the 5 percent range I believe in this year alone. This is an economy where we are seeing tax growth and we are seeing expenditure control. This is just great news and this bill the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill is another small step in the progress of this country towards achieving the economic growth that now puts us as one of the leading countries in the world.It is interesting to reflect upon the choices that Kiwis have as Mr Hughes put up just before particularly given that for a number of years the Opposition cried that this National Government did not have a plan. It cried that this Government did not have a plan to achieve the growth that we are currently seeing before us. The Business Growth Agenda which the Prime Minister and the Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce rolled out came out 3 years ago. We are now seeing the latest update of that theBusiness Growth Agenda Progress Report 2013 which has literally hundreds of initiatives that we are continuing to tick off in order to achieve the type of future that this side of the House believes is going to be fantastic for our entire nation.Within this Business Growth Agenda we deal with the six factors of production. I know that is going to be difficult for some members on the other side of the House to understand but they are actually the things that drive an economy. These factors are around our export markets our capital markets our innovation and our skilled workplaces. They are around investing in our people investing in our infrastructure and very importantly investing in our natural resources. In that respect oil is a key factor of production in driving our economy. There are two parts to that: one growing our domestic production of that supply and two ensuring our security of supply. In terms of domestic production we have seen a season like very few others in the last decade in terms of the exploration that has taken place to improve domestic production and to improve the difference between what we are importing and what we are exporting. That is a positive thing. The second thing that we are doing goes to the heart of this bill and that is improving the security of supply.This bill the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill takes some small steps to do that to ensure that if there are future fuel crises we have a 90-day supply. It may not be stored here in New Zealand but this provides the methodology to achieve that. Without going any further I think this country is heading in a very positive direction. We continue to take small steps to drive wonderful economic growth and a very positive future. This bill delivers in that respect. Thank you.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. Before I actually speak on the bill I would like to bring it into context by referring to the tax cuts of 2010 that this National Government brought in giving something like $2 billion back to the 10percent who are the wealthiest people in this country. The likes of John Key got $1000 a week back in tax cuts. The likes of Paul Reynolds from Telecom got $5000 a week back in tax cuts. If we put that into context this Government then puts this report out that says that it cannot take this out of general taxation and it cannot cover this out of the general funds because it cannot afford it but it can afford to give $2 billion back to the very people who can afford not to have those tax cuts because they are the National Party’s mates.So in this respect what we are seeing with this bill is a situation where once again the low to middle income earners in New Zealand—the people who can least afford it—will be paying more for their petrol on a daily basis through the pumps to once again prop up this Government and to prop up this Government’s books. At the present time for instance we pay on average $2.20 per litre for petrol. The Government takes in the order of 64c a litre in tax—64c a litre out of $2.20. That is nearly 30 percent. So when New Zealanders are filling up just think that nearly one-third of what they are paying is tax. Of that 64c which excludes GST 53c goes to the National Land Transport Fund 9.9c goes to the ACC motor vehicle account 0.66c goes to the local authority’s fuel tax and 0.45c goes to the petroleum or engine fuels monitoring levy. So the Government is already taking significant funds.In addition GST is collected on the overall price of fuel including excise. The GST excise amounts to approximately 8c per litre. Every time of course the cost of fuel goes up the amount of GST taken goes up. In effect the Government is quite pleased when it sees the price of petrol going up because it sees its GST booty coming in at even greater levels.In addition to that and most New Zealanders would not realise this 1c per litre is taken to pay for the emissions trading scheme that this Government signed up to. So money is going offshore to be paid into this emissions trading scheme. It started out at something like $23 or $24 per unit and has now absolutely slumped down to $2 or $3 a unit. Again New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to sign up to it. This Government wanted to be one of the leaders and all that sort of thing. Again it took all of that money to commit this country and basically the scheme is an absolute falsehood.In that particular situation of the emissions trading scheme basically New Zealanders’ hard-earned taxes and money that good hard-working New Zealanders have earned is going overseas to traders and brokers and people who are making money out of our money. I can understand why this Government wants to get involved with this as well because John Key was a money trader and a money broker. So there are many of his mates around the world who are involved in these schemes. I can see why in this legislation it says: “Meeting the stockholding obligation by building government-owned stock or by placing a mandate on industry to hold stock were considered as alternative options for meeting the stockholding obligation. These options were rejected because holding stock contracts is a more economical way of meeting the obligation.” That is a very important phrase: “These options were rejected …”. In other words it was rejected that we should keep our own stocks or put pressure on the oil companies to ensure that they had sufficient arrangements to have stocks—whether it be onshore offshore or wherever they have their stocks—because it was determined in the legislation that holding stock contracts is a more economical way of meeting the obligation.Who will be holding those stock contracts? Well it will be international brokers and it will be international agencies that are holding these contracts and they will be making money out of them. They are not doing it for the fun of it. They are not doing it for the love of New Zealand. They are doing it to make money. So once again while goodhard-working New Zealanders are paying more through the pump to fill up their cars their trucks their buses and everything else people around the world will be making money out of this. This Government prefers to do that.This Government prefers people around the world to make money out of these contracts to make money out of the emissions trading scheme internationally because the leader of the National Party comes from that background. He comes from a background of dealing in money trading in money and being a broker. So I would not be surprised if there are many many brokers and friends around the world who will do very nicely out of this arrangement.In the last year the Government has also advised that New Zealand motorists are going to have increases in the fuel tax—going up 3c a litre per year over the next 3 years. New Zealand First opposed this last year when it was brought in. We asked right then why people in Invercargill Gore on the West Coast and down in Pātea—everywhere—should be paying for the roads of national significance when the vast majority of those roads are north of Taupō. There was the odd road in Wellington there was the odd road in Christchurch but the vast bulk of them were north of Taupō and particularly north of Hamilton and into the Auckland area. Why should people in the South Island be paying for all the Auckland and Hamilton roads? Why should the fuel tax be increasing every year by 3c a litre to pay for that?Again this National Government does not care about the provinces. It does not care about the rural areas. Obviously it does not care about its own farming supporters Federated Farmers and all the farmer supporters around New Zealand because it is quite happy over the next 3 years to end up charging another 9c a litre for fuel so that the roads of national significance—or as we have heard the “roads of National Party significance”—can be built. So once again good hard-working Kiwis are going to pay through the nose and it is going to cost them more.New Zealand First has had enough of this. We have had enough of this. This Government is a Robin Hood Government. In this case it takes from the poor and the middle-income earners and it gives to the rich. It gives the tax breaks to the wealthy. It gives the deals to the wealthy. It gives the concessions to the wealthy. It thinks nothing about giving a couple of billion dollars back to the wealthy. But when it comes to making sure we have security of supply of fuel in this country it says: “No let’s go after Joe Average in New Zealand and let’s charge him. Even though he is already paying dearly at $2.20 a litre and paying 64c a litre in tax at the present time to the Government let’s go after him as well because he is the easy target.” They have got no choice in it. They have got no choice in it. Another 3c another 4c another 5c—they have got no choice in it and that has got to come to an end.New Zealand First does not support this bill. We will be following this bill closely through to the select committee and we hope there are a huge number of submissions on this because once again the Government is gouging. It is tax gouging and it is taking advantage of good average hard-working Kiwis.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): It is my pleasure to take a brief call on the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill and to support this bill. It is very difficult to continue after listening to that load of rubbish from the previous speaker Andrew Williams so I commend this bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Even for that member Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi that was a ridiculously short speech. If he really thinks that what Andrew Williams was saying was so wrong maybe he could have taken a bit of time to earn his $140000 a year salary and to actually put the counterfactual to it rather than saying: “That was rubbish. I commend this bill.” Unfortunately that is the quality of debate we have cometo expect from the National members. Labour will be opposing this piece of legislation. What we have seen—Hon Todd McClay: A racist comment.MOANA MACKEY: What was that Mr McClay? I am sorry. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take deep offence at being told by Mr McClay that I am being racist.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Did the member say that?Hon Todd McClay: Speaking to the point of order—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I am asking the member a question. I did not hear it. Did he use those words?Hon Todd McClay: Not directed at that member no.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Did you use those words?Hon Todd McClay: But—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well the member will withdraw and apologise.Hon Todd McClay: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was talking about something someone else said. It was not directed at that member. She should not be so—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not care. Would the member please sit down. If the member was using those words in the House it was inappropriate.MOANA MACKEY: As I said Labour will be opposing this piece of legislation the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. We do agree that it is important that we uphold our international obligations of which this is one but there were a number of options on the table for the Government in terms of how it meets those obligations.The user-pays approach that has been chosen is enormously regressive. Currently it is funded out of general taxation. The benefits of being signed up to this International Energy Agency agreement mean that all of New Zealand benefits. I have heard Ministers speaking and say that this protects our economy from price shocks there are reasons why we do this and we are hugely reliant on oil in this country. Well that to me says that this is a public good. This is not just about people who drive cars; this is actually about our entire economy. As such I do not think it is unreasonable therefore that the funding for this—and the funding is increasing and does need to increase—comes out of general taxation.Whenever we in the Labour Party see something like this we like to pass what is called an equity ruler over what we are doing. This will hit people who have no alternative to driving their car to work. I am thinking of the shift worker who lives in a part of provincial New Zealand where public transport is not very widespread and it certainly does not run at night. Even in the cities there are limitations on when public transport runs. They have a car because walking or cycling that late at night when you are doing shift work is not an option. Well this bill will put the price of their petrol up. It is regressive. It is incredibly regressive for the poorest families. It is the same thing that we saw with GST—again a very regressive approach.But in fact the benefits of having these stockpiles are there for all New Zealanders. It is ridiculous to say that it is only people who drive cars who get the benefit of this. I tell you what if we ended up in some really big oil price shock people with cars would be the first people being told: “You can’t drive them. Actually these reserves are going to be used for running other things in our economy.” You know if we think about the carless days back when we had the last price shock we know that it is actually the people who drive the cars who will be the first to be asked to stop using oil. So why are they the ones who are then going to be paying for it? From our perspective in the Labour Party we cannot understand the arguments for burdening a small group of NewZealanders when the benefits are actually applicable to all especially when at the same time the Government is also doing nothing about the apparent price-gouging that is already happening in terms of the price of carbon.We heard evidence at the last Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee from Gull which has to purchase its fuel from the other four big oil companies that it is being charged carbon prices hugely in excess of what the market is currently pricing carbon at and that there is no transparency around that. As long as they do not say that they are charging something different they are perfectly entitled to make a profit off carbon. This Government has sat on its hands and done nothing about the increases in electricity prices and fuel prices that are a result of that price gouging and that has hurt some of the poorest families as well. So from our perspective this is a national good. Having this energy security is a national good so it should be general taxation that covers it not a levy targeted at people who drive cars.There have been two points that Government members have made. One is that this is about our international reputation and we absolutely agree. We cannot be reneging on these kinds of agreements. Why is it though that National members care about our international reputation only when it comes to how much oil we are keeping in the country? When it comes to our polluted waterways when it comes to our complete inaction on climate change and when it comes to the consistent undermining of our clean green image they are nowhere to be seen. International reputation does not matter then but God forbid it gets pointed out that we do not have enough oil in the country. Then suddenly those members are all about our international reputation. A little bit of consistency from National members would be nice when they are considering our standing on the world stage and how we are viewed in that respect.So the second point that Government members have made has been that this is why we need more oil and gas exploration. This is based on our net imports so the more that we export the cheaper these levies are going to be. But if you read the regulatory impact statement there is another alternative: we could stop using as much oil. We could reduce the need to import as much oil. We could support the biofuels industry. We could develop alternatives that would give us energy security in our own right in New Zealand—far more energy security than we have currently being hugely reliant on a product that we overwhelmingly have to import. But the Government’s plan is that we will just keep trying to find more oil and as we have seen so far this is a high-risk area.There are no guarantees that we are actually going to find commercial yields of oil but we do know that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit there in biofuels and alternative energy sectors that we could be capitalising on right now. I say to National members that you could do both. This does not have to be an either/or. You could do both. If the Government was to do both then that would reduce the cost of these levies so it comes down to the question of why oh why we are taxing biofuels as part of this bill. Why are biofuels one of the energy sources that are going to be levied? It is extraordinary. How are we going to incentivise the production of biofuels if we make them more expensive by levying them to pay for more oil? Why would we not exclude biofuels when they actually help us reduce the cost of these levies and reduce the amount that we need to import into the country?That beggars belief especially when you see just how many exemptions there already are under this particular levy. So at the moment jet fuel for domestic use is not targeted and other petroleum products are not targeted. Let us be quite clear: we use oil in this country for a lot more than just energy. Most of our world is made of oil. So this is not just about energy but none of those other applications or uses of petroleum are going to be targeted by this levy. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is not going to be targeted by this levy and neither are bitumen solvents or as I said jet fuel fordomestic use. There are all these exemptions so why can we not exempt biofuels? I want the next National Party speaker to answer that if we can exempt all those other things.And let me remind you that in the regulatory impact statement the Government said that the lack of exemption is because at the moment there is not a lot of biofuel production in New Zealand so it is very small. Well there is not going to be any production if we keep taxing it out of existence to pay for more oil. Interestingly enough the reason given for why LPG production is not included in this particular levy is that the size is so small as to not be worth it. That argument can be rolled out for other fossil fuels but for biofuels no they are included and they are taxed despite the fact that they actually help us reduce the amount of oil that we need to import which would ultimately reduce the levy that needs to be paid.Finally I want to come to another worrying part of the bill which is that it introduces a regulation-making power that would give the responsible Minister the ability by Order in Council—so without having to come through Parliament—to actually increase this levy. At the moment the fuels that can be levied are specified in the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Act as is the maximum levy rate. The proposal is that the Act be amended to provide for the Minister of Energy and Resources to make regulations that specify the fuels that can be levied and the levy rate. At the moment there is a maximum levy rate there in the legislation. This bill is going to be doing away with that. So I predict that we will see more levy rate increases in years to come more targeting of one group of people whilst exempting a whole lot of others for no good reason more levies put on biofuels—one of the very industries we want to support—and once again no move towards energy independence or energy security for New Zealand as a whole.So yes we do need to do something about this. No one is suggesting—that I am aware of—that we renege on our international obligations but there were options open to the Government that could have reduced the impact on the poorest households and recognised the public good for everyone of energy security and therefore have it come out of general taxation rather than a targeted levy. Those options could have supported our biofuels industry rather than adding another tax to it which will make it harder for the industry to develop and for us to achieve the kind of energy security we need in this country. That would support our international reputation not just in terms of how much oil we have stockpiled but in terms of how much we are doing to live up to our “clean green” and “100% Pure New Zealand” brands. This bill does nothing to achieve that.Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to support the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. This bill is related to a few key words. Firstly security—this bill is about oil security and oil security is closely linked to security generally. Secondly sustainability—this bill attempts to fund our oil security in a sustainable way. And finally reputation—New Zealand is a good international citizen and this bill will enable us to meet our international obligations. So I commend the bill to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five minutes Dr David Clark.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I understand that it is going to be a 10-minute call not a split call.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well the member should inform the Speaker before the moment.Dr DAVID CLARK: We found out literally this minute and I nearly was distracted enough not to—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right. I will accept the member’s late announcement.Dr DAVID CLARK: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I am very pleased to speak to this bill the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill because it raisesmore questions than it answers. It is an opportunity to ask what is really going on here in terms of the oil stocks and why this is such a priority for the Government. We can speculate a little bit on what the answers are. Why are biofuels included in the levy for example? We do not see this Government jumping up and down when it comes to our other international obligations. I think immediately of our climate change obligations.In a past life I worked briefly in the parliamentary environment to learn a little bit more about politics. I worked in Treasury as well for a longer period of time working on the emissions trading scheme. New Zealand was the first country in the world to adopt an “all gases all sectors” emissions trading scheme. That is a proud record indeed. But how sad it is now to observe that same emissions trading scheme having been watered down to the point where it is now the subject of international ridicule. New Zealand can no longer hold its head high and say that it is doing its bit in the world movement to try to address the worst effects of climate change.Those Government members over there are very quiet and well they might be. They might well hang their heads in shame at their record of winding back this piece of legislation. We should as a country be able to shift to renewables thus reducing the kinds of obligations we are trying to address in this bill far more easily than almost any other country on the planet. We have an abundance of natural resources. We have an embarrassment of riches of wind geothermal and solar resources. Our wind resources are close to our main cities we are only just beginning to tap into our geothermal resources in any kind of meaningful way and solar energy of course is an applicable resource certainly in Dunedin where we have an abundance of sun.Ian McKelvie: Ha ha! When did you have any?Dr DAVID CLARK: Perhaps not so in Mr McKelvie’s electorate but that may have more to do with the clouds that hang over this National Government I suspect. There are plenty of things that could be done to address the fuel needs that our country has and this Government seems to be sitting on its hands as it is in general around the issue of power.Of course the example that springs to mind—we have seen it just today actually—in terms of power prices is that David Shearer has put out a statement asking why we do not have a transparent arrangement. He has got a member’s bill that would address this issue. Suddenly the Electricity Authority is on board and good on it. Good on it for following the lead of this very sensible policy. But where is the Government? Nowhere to be seen. Of course we know that Simon Bridges thinks that the current market works perfectly fine. It has got a few hitches he said and it needs a little more “time to bed in” if I can quote him—it needs just a little more time to bed in. We have had the current market for 15 years Mr Bridges. A little more time to bed in is hardly a plausible answer.This is an electricity market that has failed New Zealanders. Increasing power prices and price gouging have been the norm. The Wolak report of course found that over 5 years there was $4.3 billion worth of price gouging in the New Zealand market. That was Professor Wolak’s best estimate as the world’s leading modeller on energy markets. He found that there was a lack of competition. Since that time the Government has done nothing—nothing—to address it and power prices have gone up and up and up. Occasionally it has done the odd thing to prop it up. It has given a bit of a subsidy to Rio Tinto a bit of corporate welfare here and there to help out its mates without any real request that jobs be preserved. But this Government has done nothing to address the concerns of ordinary New Zealanders.By contrast—by stark contrast—we have the Labour Party’s NZ Power initiative which will see ordinary folks see their power prices drop by about $300 to $500 a year which will make a very real difference in the household incomes of those people whoare struggling the most. It will also mean lower power prices for small businesses often around the 5 percent mark. I know that if most small businesses could get a 5 percent saving they would be pretty pleased with that. But this Government says that no the market is fine and that those profits going offshore with all the asset sales is just fine. There is no objection from this Government. You will not hear it making a peep. Even the Electricity Authority is ahead of it. It is no lightning bolt.Labour has also got other policies that would help save energy in this country. The KiwiBuild initiative which Labour has launched will see 10000 houses built in partnership with industry every year to address the housing crisis in New Zealand. In that policy we have also promised that we will make sure that warm homes become the norm for rental properties. Phil Twyford’s bill has been drawn from the ballot. We know that warm homes require less energy and that they also contribute to keeping the health of New Zealanders going. They contribute towards productivity and they contribute therefore towards the economy of New Zealand and to preserving the quality of life for our citizens.Of course the economy is something else that is drawn into question here because when we are talking about oil when we are talking about energy the main uncoupling has not yet happened between economic growth and energy supply. This Government is again showing its lack of vision in not looking to build the biofuels industry. It immediately rolled back the biofuels sales obligation when it came into office although it would have cost nothing at all but would have helped provide the security for those people out there taking the business risk trying to develop new technologies and new forms of energy.We saw the Government roll back the ban on baseload thermal generation although we know that it is not necessary in New Zealand and although we have seen none since. We know that this Government has done everything it can to oppose development in the energy sector. That is of course because it has a cosy relationship with the status quo. But it is not New Zealand’s future and it is not the right future for the world either.We need a Government that does have a vision for taking New Zealand forward and growing wages for New Zealanders. We need a Government that does have a vision to allow more money in New Zealanders’ pockets at the end of the week when their power bill gets paid. We need a vision for a country that does have warm dry homes for every New Zealander and when we compare National and Labour in this Parliament we can see that that vision is being supplied by the Labour Party and by the Labour Party only.We have seen plenty of other areas where the Government lacks vision. The Government will not bring in a capital gains tax. It says it is not interested in pro-growth tax reform; it is just interested in inching along. It will not address a universal KiwiSaver although a capital debt problem has been a problem in New Zealand for decades—for absolute decades. It is ostrich economics from National. I guess that is why since World War II there have been much lower growth rates for National-led Governments than there have been for Labour-led Governments. Labour has the prouder record on managing the economy although National will try to spin it otherwise.I wish that this Government would look more seriously at the issues raised by this bill. I wish that this Government would restore our country to a country where a full day’s work will cover the basics in terms of expenses—a country where there are more jobs and where wages catch up with prices; a country where New Zealanders pay for what is fair whether it is their power bill their tax bill or their grocery bill; and a country where every single child gets the opportunities they should have and gets the opportunities to start learning early and to fulfil every bit of their potential.That is the New Zealand we should have—a New Zealand we can all be proud of an economy that works for all New Zealanders a fair and just society where all NewZealanders can live in dignity and an environment we can protect. Instead we have this nonsense where we have concern for one part of our international reputation when it comes to oil and no concern for our climate. We have no concern for our environment for our children or for economic growth that shares its gains fairly with every single New Zealander and makes sure that every New Zealand child has the opportunities to get ahead—the opportunities we would all want for our children.That is the New Zealand that the Labour Party wants to build. We on this side of the House oppose the Government’s attempts to keep its head in the sand to take New Zealanders down and to manage decline in New Zealand and a shift of our residents to Australia.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): The member for Dunedin North who has just resumed his seat is sadly deluded. He is a nice enough fellow but he seems to think that if he keeps blustering for long enough he will talk himself into believing that what he is saying actually has a grain of truth. Sadly however he is also determined to try to delude people who might vote Labour later in the year. So let me just put on the record that Labour’s policies will do enormous damage to energy supplies in this country and Labour’s and the Greens’ policies will drive up prices for consumers without doubt. There is no question of that and those who vote for Labour or the Greens this year need to realise that they will pay considerably more through their power bills for their mistake should either of those parties be in a position to drive their policies through Government.Fortunately this Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill is not about the dopey initiatives of the Labour and Green parties; it is a very good bill about good initiatives that will work for our country and I have great pleasure in supporting the bill.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.Ayes77New Zealand National 59; Green Party 13; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes41New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Commerce Committee.Victims of Crime Reform BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 11 February.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): This bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill is an omnibus bill in four parts amending the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 the Parole Act 2002 and the Sentencing Act 2002. The proposals will strengthen existing legislation for victims of crime. Agencies working with victims will be made more accountable and responsive to victims’ needs.This bill supports the Government’s work programme to reduce the impact of crime on victims. This programme includes our Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill the Parole Amendment Bill the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill and the Harmful DigitalCommunications Bill—all of which will put victims first. Our Better Public Services targets also focus on identifying victims who are at high risk of repeat victimisation and providing them with specialist services and support to help keep them safe.This Government continues to work on a range of initiatives to provide additional support to victims. We have introduced the sexual violence court victims adviser service in courts around New Zealand and the offender levy which funds 15 entitlements and services for victims of serious offences and have enacted the Crimes Amendment Act (No 3) to strengthen offences related to violence against children. A victim centre has been established in the Ministry of Justice to purchase services and support for victims of serious crime oversee victims’ rights and services and act as the Government’s central point of coordination for victims’ issues.I commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for its thorough consideration of this bill and the sensible amendments it proposed. The committee received 34 written submissions and heard 12 oral submissions. A number of the oral submissions were from victims of crime and their families and I want to thank those people for their courage and their willingness to share their experiences with the excellent committee chaired by Mr Scott Simpson MP.I note that most submitters supported the bill stating that it marks a positive step forward for advancing victims’ rights. Some submitters thought that it did not go far enough to address victims’ needs in the criminal justice system. Others commented that further changes are needed to the system itself.It is important to note that New Zealand has an adversarial system. The Crown prosecutes the accused in a fair and open court to ensure just convictions in the interests of society. The bill appropriately preserves the requirement for a balanced and independent prosecution while acknowledging the need for a system that is more transparent and responsive to victims’ needs. The Victims Code required through the bill and the victim impact statement guidelines being developed will help manage this balance and will clarify victims’ rights and entitlements.The committee made a number of recommendations to widen the support provided to victims and to improve processes to better address victims’ needs and wishes. Part 1 of the bill amends the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 to ensure victims are better informed of their rights improves the functions of the victims notification system and widens the scope of what victims may say in their victim impact statement.Improvements to victim notification will increase requirements to ensure agencies have up-to-date information to notify victims. Further amendments recommended by the committee will improve notification for victims of crimes committed by perpetrators who are detained in facilities other than prisons. This will ensure that victims are informed when the perpetrator reaches a stage in their treatment that involves reintegration into the community.Part 2 of the bill amends the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 to ensure that victims’ rights in the adult criminal jurisdiction are applied in the youth justice jurisdiction. A core feature of this is increasing the support of victims at hearings of Youth Court which is currently a closed court. The Justice and Electoral Committee also recommended that victims and their representatives be entitled to bring support persons to Youth Court hearings rather than having to seek prior permission from the judge.Part 3 of the bill amends the Parole Act 2002 to ensure that victims are informed about an offender being considered for release on parole and about how they can participate effectively in the parole hearing process. The bill will restore rights and entitlements that were inadvertently removed by the Parole Amendment Act 2007.Part 4 of the bill amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to enable victims to be compensated for losses not covered by ACC and to provide more opportunities for victims to participate in restorative justice. Restorative justice provisions have been improved to focus on the wishes of the victim. Evidence shows that restorative justice can result in positive outcomes for victims and offenders and it is a further opportunity for victims to actively participate in proceedings. However restorative justice will not be appropriate or desirable for some victims and it is important that individual needs are taken into account. The committee recommended that the victim’s wishes be specifically included in any inquiry into restorative justice.I believe that the amendments recommended by the committee effectively acknowledge the concerns raised by submitters. Once again I would like to thank the committee members and their chair for the work that they have done on this bill. I commend this bill to the House.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): The issue of victims’ rights in our criminal justice system has been a subject of much debate over many years now. Much of the victims’ rights legislation that we have has been the product of previous Labour Governments because Labour has always taken that issue seriously unlike the present Government. This issue has been presided over by the laziest Minister of Justice we have had in 40 years—the laziest Minister of Justice we have had in 40 years. This bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill is just another example of a Minister of Justice who once again fails to get to grips with the real issue at hand. She is quite happy to go tripping off to Shanghai supping up tea with her husband’s mates endorsing their products and breaching theCabinet Manual. She is quite happy to do that but when it comes down to sitting down and taking seriously the issue of victims’ rights she will not do it. This is yet another piece of victims’ rights legislation from this Government that is piecemeal that is ad hoc that lacks coherence and that is just doing bit by little bit by little bit. It is time that we actually had a Minister of Justice—such as is usually supplied by the Labour Government—who takes the issue seriously and is prepared to look at the issue as a whole and come up with a set of solutions that actually address the problems that victims are talking to the Government and indeed all MPs about.I should say notwithstanding our support for this bill—because after all something even a little something is better than nothing—that this bill clearly does not go far enough. This bill does not go far enough. It is interesting that the Minister should proudly boast about the new aspects in relation to restorative justice but let us see what it says in clause 6 of the bill about restorative justice. In new section 9 to the Victims Rights Act 2002—another fantastic piece of Labour legislation—it says that “A member of court staff a Police employee or if appropriate a probation officer must if satisfied that the necessary resources are available refer the request …” for restorative justice. There is no guarantee to victims of crime that they will have access to restorative justice. It all depends on somebody else being available to deliver it or some other resources being available in a ministry and in fact in an entire Government bureaucracy that is slowly being crimped scrimped and squeezed and that has no money to do anything. That is a hollow promise. This bill provides a hollow promise to victims of crime who would like to pursue the avenue of restorative justice. That is hardly surprising when you have a lazy Minister of Justice who passes this legislation through her consideration and through Cabinet without hardly a by your leave. No further consideration was given by the Minister on this. She just lets it sail through with a hollow promise to those victims of crime who want to seek a restorative justice response.She talks about compensation for costs for victims. There is a limited scope in this bill at the sentencing stage for some reparation of costs but that is not the issue. Whatvictims have been calling for is some advocacy assistance to negotiate the criminal justice system from the outset. From the time that they suffer a crime or are the victim of a crime and they are interviewed by the police or come into contact with the police because a family member or a close friend is the victim of a crime what they want is someone to assist them through the machinations of the criminal justice system. That is not provided for here. What they need to know is that if they have to go to court either to witness and observe it or to be a witness at it they will have their reasonable costs met. That is not provided for or at least not guaranteed in this bill. This bill is inadequate when it comes to reform of victims’ rights.The promise that Labour makes is that we will have a comprehensive cohesive and coherent piece of legislation covering all victims’ rights so that a victim of crime knows that the minute they become attached to the justice system through no choice or fault of their own they will have assistance they will know what the mechanism is and they will be led through. It is great to have some of these things here to have improvements in terms of victim impact statements and to know that you can present your victim impact statement with limited ability for it to be amended curtailed or indeed shut out at all. That is all good stuff. But actually what victims most need is to understand how the system works and to understand why it is that a defendant can get access to criminal legal aid whereas they as the victim might not get any assistance at all. They need to know that. Actually they need to know that they can get some assistance if they are out of pocket for having to go to court to hear or watch the defendants of the crime that they are part of put to justice. That is not guaranteed in this bill.So although this bill does some things although it helps in terms of victim impact reports and although it helps in terms of those appearing in the Youth Court it does not go anywhere near far enough. It is time that we actually have a Minister of Justice who is prepared to deal with the real problems when it comes to criminal justice and the place of victims in it. We have to do more than just more incremental change. We actually need to have a Government that listens to victims. We need to have a Government that listens to victims. It is all very well that in relation to perpetrators of crime and those who are convicted of it this Government has done some things in that regard. I am not sure how much consultation it had with the Sensible Sentencing Trust in that regard because it does not talk much about when it talks to the Sensible Sentencing Trust. But when it comes to victims—when it comes to victims—this Government is big on words and is big on promises but actually it is just little by little. In fact it is far too little and often far too late. We need to see something that is a lot more and a lot better.The issue for most victims is that they do not choose to be part of the criminal justice system; they are there because of the actions of another. The biggest deterrent to crime as we know is detection and bringing people before the courts. Victims need to know that when that happens—when they have been burgled assaulted violently harmed or indeed when they are the family member or close friend of somebody who has been killed at the hands of another—they can get the means to understand the system be assisted through it and have any cost that they unfairly face or reasonably face properly defrayed.We know that as this bill went through the Law Society expressed some concern about the courts system and particularly sentencing turning into a free-for-all and we need to know that the voice of victims is going to be heard but that it will not compromise the efficacious and good running of the criminal justice system. But let us go back to the critical point. It is high time after 20 years of debating and making incremental change to victims’ rights to come up with a comprehensive and cohesivepackage. Nothing less will do. This Government will not do it. Labour will do it because it is needed and it is overdue. We will hear in the rest of this debate about some of the most serious victims of crime—that is the victims of sexual crime. Their needs are very special and need to be heard and understood and other members from Labour will talk about that. We will pass this bill but we will build upon it and come up with something good for all New Zealanders and all victims of crime.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the second reading of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill in the name of the very hard-working and best Minister of Justice we have had in many many years the Hon Judith Collins. “Too little too late” was the slogan they used in New Plymouth at the last election and we have heard another “too little too late” speech tonight from the member across the House who has just resumed his seat Andrew Little. In New Zealand we are rightly proud of our criminal justice system and although we must preserve its excellence we also need to make sure that the system is not immune from the need to modernise and to change as requirements change in society.This is a Government that is very proud to put victims first in our criminal justice system. For too long the victims have been bystanders in a judicial system that they have not really felt party to or connected to in any meaningful way. One thing that the previous speaker did mention was that victims are not there in our criminal justice system voluntarily and indeed they are not. For too long our system has not placed enough focus or emphasis on victims and this bill seeks to change the law relating to the victims of crime and give victims a much greater voice within our criminal justice system.This Government was elected to improve the justice system amongst many other things and so a major focus of the work that this administration has been doing in terms of improving public services has been in the justice sector. Victims of crime absolutely do not choose to be participants in the criminal justice system. They are at best reluctant participants. They are there by definition because they have suffered an inconvenience as an absolute minimum but more often far worse suffering has occurred. This is a Government that puts victims first and we are not embarrassed or ashamed by it. We are not soft on crime.Exactly what does this bill do? Well it expands the rights of victims who have been subjected to serious criminal offences. It gives victims a much greater opportunity to be involved in the system rather than just be mere bystanders. Victims will be much better informed about their rights and their ability to be active participants within the system. Most members of the public would be I suspect astounded if they went and visited a court because until recently until this Government started meaningful and real reform and modernisation of our court system people observing a criminal court process would have seen a rigid complicated user-unfriendly workplace. Under previous Labour administrations they would have seen a culture that seemed to tolerate waste delay and frustration for victims. Those people who suffer most from those failings have of course been the victims and they suffered most during what was an already traumatic event or period in their life. This bill expands their rights and it does so appropriately and accordingly.The Justice and Electoral Committee came up with several recommendations to improve the scope of the support provided to victims and I am very pleased with the work the committee did. It was another example of the select committee process working to the advantage of the New Zealand public in terms of producing I think a better piece of legislation. One of the areas that is most worthwhile is the area of impact statements where matters such as photographs drawings and other visual representations will now be able to be included in an impact statement and I think thatis a very progressive and forward aspect of this bill. I could go on for a great deal longer but I do not want to further take the time of the House. I commend this bill thoroughly to the House and suggest that it be adopted forthwith.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I rise to speak along with my colleagues in support of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill in the second reading. This bill as others have said is a step forward albeit incrementally. This bill has been a long time in gestation shall we say—and I will come back to that in a minute—but certainly there is no sense that any of the reforms in this bill will be harmful. They will improve the situation for victims of crime to a greater or lesser extent.As my colleague Andrew Little has said however a future Labour Government will want to look at changes that are more than just incremental. There is a need for victims to have a greater role in the criminal justice process because there is a lack of a visible complaints process at the moment and a lack of oversight of victims’ rights. As we would all agree in this House victims of crime did not ask to be put in that situation. They are not responsible for that situation. They often have to go through very gruelling processes and we would want to support them. In fact it is fair to say that the changes that have been put in place for victims of crime have actually all happened under Labour Governments so it is important that all those who get into the rhetoric of being tough on crime and all of those things actually look at the facts.This particular bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill actually arose following an inquiry that the Labour Government of the time put in place. It was actually the Justice and Electoral Committee chaired by Lynne Pillay that did an inquiry into victims’ rights in 2007 and highlighted some of the issues that are now being addressed in this bill. She noted at the time—and I think that it is actually quite an important point to put on the table—the need for a bipartisan approach on the issue of the interests of victims of crime. I think that is a point that is well worth thinking about. Certainly tonight I am sure we will find across this House agreement for the changes that are in this bill.You would not think that caring for victims of crime was a priority as those across the other side of the House are saying given the way this bill has gone through this House. This is another thing that is disappointing. In fact I had almost forgotten that I had spoken on the first reading of this bill which took place in October 2011. That is right; October 2011 was when the first reading of this bill took place after being introduced in August of that year. It was then referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee which presented a report back in June 2012. Since that time this bill about helping victims of crime has languished on the Order Paper so it does not actually give a real sense of any real priority. There are a number of pieces of legislation—Tim Macindoe: I think the member has the date wrong.CAROL BEAUMONT: Is that right?Tim Macindoe: I think so.CAROL BEAUMONT: Well I will check that. But anyway we get a sense of what the Government’s priorities are that a bill that was introduced—and this is correct I say to the whip across the House—in August 2011 and referred to the select committee in October of that year is having a second reading—Tim Macindoe: The House wasn’t sitting because there was an election campaign happening.CAROL BEAUMONT: There has been quite some time since that election. However it is not the only example of things that should have been a priority that have been delayed by this Government. Let me give you another one. What about legislation to try to restrict the activities of those who prey on families vulnerable families by predatory lending practices—those people also known as loan sharks? The Government was going to get tough on them in 2011 as well. There is still no legislation through thisHouse on that issue either. It says a lot. Who is it whom this Government governs for? Well it is not the victims of crime and it is not the people being harmed by loan sharks. Those people are often in low-income areas. Truck shops—if you happen to see them in low-income areas you will know the damage they do. That is another piece of legislation that has languished after a very long process to even get it introduced into the House. What I am asking is who it is whom this Government prioritises. Well it is certainly its corporate mates and not ordinary New Zealanders and that is something that will be very different under a Labour Government.The legislation itself actually does some things that are useful. It strengthens the existing general provisions. It expands the rights of victims in serious offences. It gives victims more opportunity to be involved in criminal justice processes and ensures that they are better informed of their rights and it increases the accountability and responsiveness of Government agencies that are providing services to victims of crime. So that is useful. But as my colleague Andrew Little said there is more that needs to be done and we would take bolder steps.Our adversarial criminal system does not really serve the interests of victims well and it is possible to make modifications that do not damage the fundamental nature of that system. Certainly there are issues like advocates for the victim which would not violate the balance inherent in the adversarial system but would give greater protection to victims of crime and greater support to them. Another issue is around providing greater support for and recognition of Victim Support which does a good job with very limited resources. These are some of the areas that this bill does not go near and that need to be addressed.I want to move on to the issue of a particular group of victims of crime and that is those who are victims of sexual violence. There have been some horrific examples in recent months. There has been a lot of coverage in the media. There has been a lot of public outcry quite rightly. There was a series in theSunday Star-Times called “1 in 100” because 90 percent of sexual offences go unreported. Of those that are reported about 10 percent actually lead to a conviction. The victims of sexual violence are among those who have the hardest time in the criminal justice system because of the nature of the crime committed against them and because often they are the key witness as well as the victim of that crime.What is the Government doing? Well actually the Government is doing nothing. There are things that should be done immediately which include support services for those who have been victims of sexual violence and funding those organisations properly. That could be done now while the select committee does the work of looking at sustainable funding. We do not have to wait until the outcome of that select committee work to provide some interim support now. What about rape prevention education? Less than 50 percent of the schools in Auckland have any sort of rape prevention education. It would really make a difference. If we could reduce the level of sexual violence in this country which is very high and if we could make sure that issues like respect in relationships healthy relationships and consent are issues that we deal with and have a culture of change about then that would make a difference. That would reduce the number of victims of sexual violence. But the Government is doing nothing to deal with those issues.There are also changes that could be made now to the way that our police officers deal with sexual violence and sexual crimes. There are things about them playing a greater role in prevention. We are still awaiting results from the review of the way that they handled the Roast Busters case but certainly there is a need for improved behaviour and work by the police. This is not to undermine the fact that there are some good initiatives there.There are changes that need to be made in terms of the Crimes Act—for example issues around the legal definition of consent and looking at that whole issue. But I know that most people listening to this will know that the victims of sexual violence have a very very hard road in dealing with the crimes against them and dealing with the aftermath of them. The costs—the personal costs—of those crimes on the individual on their family and on our communities are huge. We need to make sure that we are doing more.It is also the economic costs of those sorts of crimes. There are estimates that each incident of sexual violence costs the country $72000. It makes sense for us to be doing more in this area but the Government is failing to act.DAVID CLENDON (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take I think my first call on this Victims of Crime Reform Bill. This bill has lingered a while. The dates of the previous speaker Carol Beaumont were quite correct according to my records as well. I did not sit on the Justice and Electoral Committee but it is a bill the Greens will be supporting because it does some good but only some. I would not go so far as to say it also does some harm but there are provisions in this legislation that will be at least problematic particularly around victim impact statements and I will say some more about that later.Essentially the bill is a very incremental approach. It is a bitser approach. It adds a little here; it takes away a little there. It is not the comprehensive look at victims’ rights and improving our justice system generally that is really what is wanted and I am afraid I cannot share Mr Simpson’s glowing opinion of our justice system. In international terms yes it is very robust and it has some excellent qualities but it is far from ideal. There is a great deal more we could be doing and indeed should be doing.I was pleased to hear Mr Little say that the Labour Party is committed to a comprehensive review of all of the issues around victims and indeed the dispensation of justice. I will hold Mr Little to that when we have a new Government next year. I recall in 2005 the passing of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act which the Greens supported with a sunset clause on the reassurance that it would lead to a comprehensive overview of victims’ rights. Sadly that did not occur and still has not occurred. So we look forward to the time when we will be able to initiate that to have a clean-sheet look at how we can do better in terms of dealing with offenders and ensuring that victims are given the best possible treatment.This legislation talks a lot about victims’ impact statements—giving people the right to say their piece in court to express their views and their feelings and to address the offender directly and speak to them in terms of what the offending has meant to that person who is the victim of that offending. On the face of it that is a good thing and for many people it will be cathartic. But it can also be quite a frustrating and also quite a limiting experience. If a person is there delivering their statement looking at an offender who might be giggling pulling faces or clearly not in the least bit moved or concerned about the statement that will not be helpful for the well-being of the victim. So the impact statements although at one level at a superficial level are a good thing they are somewhat more complex perhaps than this bill would have us believe or indeed than is reflected in the text in the provisions of the bill.I note that there was some concern from the judges or from some elements of the judiciary about the original drafting of the bill which almost seemed to indicate that the judge should listen carefully and respond to the victims’ comments about sentencing. Of course it is up to the judges to the judiciary to make sentencing decisions and the judges were very nervous about the idea that somehow the victim might believe that they have an opportunity to influence the judge’s sentencing.On that note I think some of the commentary we got at the time that was given to the committee by Kim Workman from the Rethinking Crime and Punishment organisation was quite helpful and quite insightful as ever. In that contribution there is a reference to an assumption—what Mr Workman calls a flawed assumption—that there is an imbalance between offenders’ rights and victims’ rights and that in order to restore the balance between victims’ and offenders’ rights it is necessary to reduce offenders’ rights. That is a very muddled set of thinking but that thinking is very prevalent and we see it constantly and dare I say it we saw it today at the committee hearing commentary from some of the submitters. The correct move of course is to advance the rights of victims and do all we can for them. It is not a trade-off. We do not have to be so-called tougher on crime or tougher on offenders in order to ensure that victims get a good outcome and a fairer outcome.There is a lot of reference in this bill to the rights of victims to do such things as be informed about sentencing and about the potential release on parole of an offender. If an offender absconds or indeed dies in prison or is about to be released the victim has a right to know that according to this legislation. That is a good thing. There is also reference to a code for victims so that we can be assured that victims are told their rights and legal processes. But somehow a lot of that feels like events have overtaken the legislation. Most of that is common practice now and one wonders almost at the necessity for this legislation. Perhaps it simply codifies best practice or current practice. I am not really sure on that. But it does seem to have been overtaken by events a little bit.I guess one of my concerns about this legislation is that to some extent it almost seeks to define the victim as a victim rather than as a person who has been offended against. There is a difference in that. We do not want people to be trapped into this self-awareness or this perception that they are a victim and will remain so for ever and ever. Yes people are victimised by crime but it is important that that does not become the defining characteristic of their self-identity. I think some of the—well-intentioned perhaps—provisions in this bill actually take us down that road. I am fortunate; I have never been the victim of a serious crime. Probably the nastiest thing that has happened to me is that I had a motorcycle stolen that I had invested quite a lot of time and money into. I was seriously concerned about it for an afternoon. Capital punishment for motorcycle thieves just briefly seemed not a bad idea. But I got over that; I was not defined by that crime against me. In all seriousness even for people who do suffer and who are victims of very serious offences they ought not to have that as their defining characteristic of them as people.I referred to Mr Kim Workman’s contribution and I am a great fan of Rethinking Crime and Punishment. It talks about restorative justice and this is at the heart of the Greens’ approach to justice and justice processes: to seek to restore both the offender and the victim because working with both together in the context of a community is likely to generate much better outcomes and longer-term outcomes and restorative justice processes are proven everywhere in the world to reduce recidivism often by as much as 20 percent. I am sure we all agree that that would be a positive move here.I think we need to move away as much as we can from the adversarial system. The Minister of Justice when introducing the bill did make the obvious comment and affirm that we have an adversarial system and I think that is something in the longer term that we need to think through. Is that the best way? But in terms of resolving these issues to the extent that they are adversarial there is always a winner and a loser and I think we need to move away from that. The heart of restorative justice is about the offender taking responsibility for their offending feeling a degree of shame and contrition and committing to doing better in the future and to not reoffend. It isimportant that the victim of the crime feels that they have been somehow redeemed and that they have an acknowledgment because again the research tells us that people typically are not looking for compensation in a material sense; they just want somebody to take responsibility and to recognise that people have done some harm and then they can move on and get on with their lives hopefully in a context where they are unlikely to be revictimised either by another offender or indeed by the judicial system. That is a very real danger. The justice system can actually have the effect of revictimising people if we are not very careful about how we do that.Finally I quote Mr Workman and his submission at the time. Talking about the belief that decisions in relation to conviction and sentencing should be determined more upon an objective view of offending than a subjective view of the victim he said it is unwise to allow victims in the heat of the moment to make law. That is our task. It must be objective it must be done with integrity and I look forward to a time when we can have a comprehensive look at victims’ rights and get it right. Kia ora.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Pō mārie. I will take a very brief call on this bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill because I think it has been very well explained and well canvassed by the member introducing the bill the Minister of Justice the Hon Judith Collins and also by our excellent and diligent chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee Scott Simpson who went into some detail about the provisions within the bill.I do feel that I should also rebut some of the suggestions from the Opposition that we do not take victims’ rights seriously because that could not be further from the truth. If you look at the work that this Government has done including introducing the offender levy of $50 which contributes towards programmes that support victims and other measures including the introduction of public protection orders and other changes that we have made to legislation there has been consistent and continual improvement over the last few years of this Government in terms of the treatment of victims in the justice system.I want to focus on a particular part of this bill that I think is most important and very welcome which is the way that victims are defined. Mr Clendon referred to the definition of victims but I think it is very important that the change involving domestic violence be introduced. That is children who are not necessarily the personal victim of an attack but who witness their mum being beaten by their dad or a child who is in a household where domestic violence is happening will be allowed to receive the support that the victim of another sort of a crime might receive.Another part that will be particularly useful for those younger and more vulnerable victims is the ability to submit photographs drawings or visual representations as part of a victim impact statement. There are few things more heart-rending or moving than seeing a crayon or pencil or felt-tip drawing made by a child to explain the impacts of the offending against them by an offender particularly in cases of domestic violence. This is a very good bill and I commend it unreservedly to the House.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The Victims of Crime Reform Bill amends and improves the Victims’ Rights Act 2002; the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989; the Parole Act 2002; and the Sentencing Act 2002 to better provide for victims of crime generally; to “broaden the rights of victims of serious offences; provide more opportunities for victims to be involved in criminal justice processes; ensure victims are better informed of their rights; increase responsible government agencies’ accountability and responsiveness to victims”; and to “apply consistent victim rights in adult and youth criminal jurisdictions.” These are very good objectives.The Justice and Electoral Committee has made some sensible amendments to the bill as it affects the Victims’ Rights Act 2002. It has amended the definition of “address” inclause 4(1) to remove the reference to text messaging and that makes sense. It is difficult to confirm that a text message has been sent and received and text messages can be intercepted by other people. Cellphone numbers change frequently and may be reassigned. For all those reasons it is unwise to allow text messaging as an electronic means of sending notices. Clause 10 of the bill is also amended to ensure that reference to all of a victim’s contact details in court would be restricted to ensure their privacy and they will appreciate that. In clause 12 a new section 17 will now require the prosecutor to find out from any victim all relevant information about the victim’s injuries property loss or damage and other effects of the offence so this can be taken into account for the purposes of the Act and in particular under new section 21 inserted by clause 15 for consideration of those matters for sentencing purposes. That is of course as it should be.There are also several worthwhile amendments and improvements to this Act in the requirements for notice to victims where offenders are released from detention abscond are released on bail are recalled are convicted of breaches of bail or die. In clause 21 section 37(2) of the principal Act will now specify that a victim of crime committed by a person or offender who is compulsorily detained in a hospital or facility must be given two notifications about a person’s leave—firstly the first unescorted leave of absence outside the grounds of the hospital or facility and secondly their first unescorted overnight leave of absence. I think that is an important amendment that ensures that victims would be informed when a detainee was reaching the stage where their treatment is involving a transition back into the life of the community. Victims need to be aware of this and should not have to find out through the news media or some other informal source.Moving on to the amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 one welcome amendment to that Act is clause 38 which amends section 329 to allow victims and their representatives to bring in “any 1 or more support persons (subject to any limitation on numbers imposed by the Judge)” to Youth Court hearings as of right without having to seek the permission of the judge. Section 329 has been a disincentive to victims having the support they have so often needed and there has been no purpose in the consent of the court having been required so that is a good new provision.Another important change to the Act is the new clauses 38A and 38B. Clause 38A requires victims of offences committed by a child or young person to be notified should that child or young person abscond. Clause 38B requires that victims of offences committed by a child or young person be notified should that person die in a youth residence. Again it would be most unsatisfactory if a victim had to find out about things like that from the news media or some informal source.With regard to the Parole Act 2002 the committee—very necessarily I think—amended Part 3 of the bill to restore the victim’s rights and entitlements that were incorrectly removed by the Parole Amendment Act 2007 so these will be reinstated as to victims’ participation in the parole hearing process. Victims will therefore be informed about the process and how they can participate. They will be informed of their right to be interviewed and so on. All of those I think are very important things to reinstate and it is strange that they were ever deleted in the first place.Lastly amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002 are aimed at improving the restorative justice process. Clause 44 inserts a new section 24A requiring the court to adjourn proceedings to allow an inquiry to determine whether restorative justice is an appropriate thing to do in the circumstances of the case. I agree that it is important that consideration be given to whether a victim wishes to participate in a restorative justice process because they do not always wish to do that. The amendment now explicitlyincludes “the wishes of the victims” among the matters that the inquiry must consider. You would have thought that was common sense to do but it did not used to happen and now it will.Overall New Zealand First sees this bill as another very welcome step forward in the emerging movement to do more to support and to consider the rights and needs of the victims of crime. The one area I think we have possibly not thought about enough is where nobody is convicted of a crime but where there is a victim and where there has certainly been a crime. Perhaps we need to give more thought to how we support people in those circumstances. But at least this bill provides some very welcome and very positive steps forward. The committee received and considered 34 submissions and heard 12 submissions. It has been a good process and this will be a good piece of legislation as a result. For all those reasons New Zealand First unreservedly supports it.ALFRED NGARO (National): Kia orana Mr Assistant Speaker. I thank you and I rise to take a call on the Victims of Crime Reform Bill in its second reading. I want to acknowledge our colleague over there Mr Denis O’Rourke and his comments. As he said he unreservedly supports this bill. This is a good bill. A Minister and a chair and a committee worked hard to ensure that we heard the submissions that had been made.One of the points that Mr O’Rourke raised which I think is quite important is that Labour members on the other side did talk about the fact that in 2007—Lynne Pillay was the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee at that time—when they made the Parole Amendment Act 2007 there were inadvertent unintended consequences so we are amending those. Although we have talked about the things that they have done this is the thing that we are changing. I think that is important because what it does is ensure that victims are informed about their considerations and about prisoners’ release on parole so that they can participate effectively in the parole hearing process.Just one other thing that I think is important about this bill is the code for victims. I want to acknowledge David White who was in Parliament today and who spoke at our select committee. He is one of the many victims of crime and as they share their stories we see that it is important to get this right. This Government has worked hard to do that. The select committee has worked hard to ensure that victims are at the heart of the justice system so that they can be participants rather than bystanders. I support this bill in its second reading in the House.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to the Victims of Crime Reform Bill as a relatively recent member of the Justice and Electoral Committee—in fact so recent that I was not on the select committee when this bill was first referred to it. I have been on that committee for only the best part of a year perhaps—or perhaps less than that—but that points to one of the issues that I do want to raise about this and that is the tardiness with which this bill has come to the House.It was introduced on 18 August 2011. It was then referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee and the report was presented on 27 June 2012. After the date of introduction and then of course there was the first reading it sounds to me as if the Justice and Electoral Committee proceeded in a suitably thoughtful but timely way as is the habit of the chairperson to consider this bill. The report on it was presented on 27 June 2012 and here we are on 5 March 2014. What is it I wonder that has suddenly provoked the Minister of Justice to resurrect this piece of legislation? Why has it suddenly become a priority when it has not been since 27 June 2012?Kris Faafoi: Do you have a theory?Hon MARYAN STREET: I do have a theory on this as it happens. I do have a theory. I think it has more to do with knee-jerk reactions to polls than it has to do with anything else. I think it is also to do with the things that the Minister considers important and she considers them important only when there have been dramatic andaffecting headlines in the newspaper that would cause her to say: “Gosh! Don’t I have a bill about this somewhere in my back pocket? Perhaps it’s time I brought it out because we can get a lot of sympathy votes—a lot of sympathy votes—if we start parading a piece of legislation that talks about the victims of crime.”I do not want to detract from the merit of the bill at all. We support it. It has some very good measures in it and as other legislation in this area has done it incrementally improves the response of our judicial system and our court processes to addressing the needs of the victims of crime. But I do wonder whether this Government is ever motivated by anything other than cynicism—anything other than simply putting its finger in the wind trying to find out which way the polls are blowing what are the critical issues and then suddenly deciding: “Gosh! It’s time we rescued this from the bottom of the Order Paper because then we can make a fanfare about all the things that we have done for the victims of crime.”One is inclined to say “5 long years” about this because in fact it comes out of work that was originally done by the Labour Government in 2007 when the select committee at the time decided to do a review and an inquiry into victims of crime and the assistance that they receive. The National Party took that and made fun of it boycotted its activities and poured scorn on it. But in fact it now has the temerity to pull it out of the bag—out of Minister Collins’ handbag—and present it now in advance of an election simply so that first of all National can get a sympathy vote and support from people who have been victims of crime. That is perhaps the worst form of cynicism that a Government can display.Secondly this is so that it can parade to the electorate that it is being strong on law and order because one can bet one’s bottom dollar that law and order is starting to emerge again on the National Party’s polling radar as an issue of importance.Kris Faafoi: That old chestnut.Hon MARYAN STREET: So that old chestnut as my colleague says is being trotted out once more in advance of an election. I wish that things were not thus but they are. I have to say that the Minister of Justice who is in charge of this bill is probably the supreme master—second only to Nick Smith I imagine—for escalating issues in response to polling and to some external driver rather than anything internal like thinking that this is the right thing to do. Nick Smith has started to behave in his typically manic way around housing and housing affordability only because it is high up on the National Party’s polling radar. National knows finally—after 5 long years—that housing affordability is a critical issue. Well this is getting the same litmus test as that.Although it is a shame that this is the kind of thing that motivates the Government can I say that as a relative newcomer to the Justice and Electoral Committee I have had a look at the report of the select committee I have had a look at the notes surrounding this bill and we will support it. It does the kinds of things that we prepared the Government to do right back in 2007. It was introduced in 2011 4 years on from the 2007 work of the select committee and now in 2014 it is finally coming to fruition. Thank you.JOANNE HAYES (National): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to support this bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill because it places victims of crime at the centre of the justice system and provides proposals to further enhance the rights and services provided to the victims of crime. This is an excellent bill presented by and led by a hard-working—and might I add an excellent—Minister of Justice.RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Crime affects society and in that regard everybody else but it is the victim who is on the receiving end who pays the ultimate price. Any member who has been exposed to media reports should support this bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. It is regrettable that the good work of the previous Minister ofJustice the Hon Simon Power has not been continued in an effective manner. It is disappointing that it took more than a year and a half for the bill to get to its second reading after it was reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee. In 2007 under the Labour Government the Justice and Electoral Committee conducted an inquiry into victims’ rights. The inquiry highlighted some of the issues that have been eventually addressed by this bill.There are some problems with our justice system. Our adversarial criminal justice system is bipartite and the problem is that it seems to recognise only the accused and the prosecution. It is not fair to the victims and their families. Victims feel marginalised by the court system and their anguish is often exacerbated by the justice process and the adversarial criminal justice system. Victims and their families have to deal with their ongoing trauma and often they have to deal with that long after a crime has faded from public memory. Borrowing Mr Power’s words: “With the State prosecuting offenders on behalf of victims and the community victims can feel sidelined.” He said: “Victims can find the criminal justice system bewildering and have expressed frustration and a sense of helplessness in the face of a system that is slow and unresponsive to their needs.” We have been exposed to a number of such reports in the media.At the moment victims of violence and other serious offences must ask permission from the judge to read out victim impact statements. They are often banned from mentioning a range of details and some victims have been left upset after the police or the judge have heavily edited or censored their statements. The victims were also critical of the limitations they faced in the courts when preparing the victim impact statement. They believed that victims should have the right to say whatever they felt in the victim impact statements. The bill will give victims more freedom to express their feelings in their own words. The bill makes it an automatic right for victims to read a statement before sentencing. The victims of a crime committed by a child or young person can now submit a statement to the Youth Court and attend a hearing.A victims code will be established which the police the Department of Corrections the Ministry of Justice the Ministry of Social Development the Labour Department Crown Law Office etc. will all have to adhere to. After hearing that all these different organisations and ministries are not synchronised in any way it does make sense that this bill seeks to set up a victims centre as a one-stop shop for services. I agree with what the previous Minister of Justice Mr Simon Power said which is that we could never legislate away the pain and suffering faced by victims. However the reforms introduced under this bill will help ensure that victims are not re-brutalised by their participation in the process.JAN LOGIE (Green): I hope I get through a few words before the end of the evening. The Green Party will be supporting the Victims of Crime Reform Bill primarily because it gives victims more opportunity to be able to participate in the justice system and gives them a stronger voice in the process and that is something that we very much support. There are some specific ways that it does that.I do really want to join my voice though to the voice that has been coming from Labour tonight in saying that we do not believe that this bill is enough. It is a piecemeal and very small measure in fact. With it being 4 years in the process I do also question why this is only now coming back to the House. I notice that the Minister of Justice has said that domestic violence is now her No. 1 priority. It is a shame that she did not come to that earlier and that our legal aid system is no longer supporting women to be able to access protection orders without going into extreme levels of debt. It is a shame that the Family Court process and the justice process overall—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m.