Volume 692 Week 51 - Wednesday 21 August 2013Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 692 Week 51 - Wednesday 21 August 2013[Sitting date: 21 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12659. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 21 August 2013Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.ObituariesWilliam GeraldTolhurstMr SPEAKER: Honourable members I regret to inform the House of the death on 18 August 2013 of William Gerald (Bill)Tolhurst who represented the electorate of Wanganui from 1969 to 1972. I desire on behalf of this House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the late former member. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect for his memory.Honourable members stood as a mark of respect.Points of OrderGreenhouse Gas Emissions 2020 Target—Leave to Move Motion Without NoticeDr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to acknowledge the unconditional targets for 2020 of the European Union and Switzerland of 20 percent of Norway of 30 percent—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is objection. [Interruption ] Order!Questions to MinistersState-owned Assets Sales—Meridian Energy and Benefits1.Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri)to theMinister of Finance: What progress is the Government making with its share offer programme to help New Zealanders diversify their savings away from property and bank deposits?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):Yesterday the Government announced that it expects to complete the partial float and sharemarket listing of Meridian Energy by early November subject to market conditions. This is the second offer in the Government’s share offer programme. Listing up to 49 percent of Meridian Energy will give New Zealanders the opportunity to invest in another big New Zealand company. Many people recognise the value of diversifying their growing savings away from property and bank deposits. As with Mighty River Power the Government remains committed to having 85 to 90 percent New Zealand ownership after the Meridian Energy offer which will include the Government’s 51 percent shareholding.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What are the main advantages in proceeding with the share offer programme?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There are several. The companies themselves will benefit from a broader shareholder base and being stronger from the rigour and transparency that a sharemarket listing brings. The companies will be able to access capital to grow in more ways than they can as 100 percent taxpayer-owned companies. From the taxpayers’ perspective the share programme will free up between $5 billion and $7 billion to invest in other Government capital. That means the Government can get the money off New Zealanders while providing them with an investment opportunity rather than borrowing off foreign bankers which our opponents prefer to do.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What is the estimated cost to taxpayers of the retail instalment scheme for the Meridian Energy float whereby investors pay for 60 percent of the cost of the shares at float and pay for 40 percent 18 months later; if he has no estimated cost why not?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No we do not have an estimate. The reason is that we cannot know—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! There were two parts to that question. I want to hear the second part to that answer. [Interruption ] Well then the member will ask his colleagues to be a bit quieter.Hon BILL ENGLISH: We cannot know the final share price and in any case purchasers of those shares may well take it into account and therefore bid just a bit more for the shares which would offset the cost.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Given that the Minister has announced the float and does not have an estimate of the costs could he give us as he has done in the past his best guess?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No I cannot. I think what the member is more concerned about is that the Government could end up with several billion dollars’ cash in its bank account which we would then be able to use to invest in schools hospitals prisons and other capital projects that the New Zealand public supports. And we will be able to do it without borrowing the money off foreign bankers.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What are some of the features of the Meridian Energy share offer to encourage everyday New Zealand investors to consider buying shares?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has confirmed that it will use instalment receipts which allow investors to pay for their Meridian Energy shares in two instalments. The first instalment for around 60 percent of the share price will be paid when investors apply for shares. The second instalment will not need to be paid for another 18 months. Between the two instalments investors will receive full dividends paid out in that period. Instalment receipts are common overseas and were used by the Government in the float of capital properties in 1998. Another feature of the offer is that there will be a share price cap for New Zealand retail investors giving them more certainty about how many shares they will get when they apply to buy shares.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Did the Minister provide Cabinet with any estimate of the cost of the retail instalment scheme; if so what was that and did he further provide Cabinet with any notion of how such costs would be funded?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No estimate was provided. [Interruption ] Well for the reason that the member mentioned before—it would just be a guess and that would not be satisfactory.Hon Kate Wilkinson: How will the proceeds from the share offer programme be invested in new public assets through the Future Investment Fund?Hon BILL ENGLISH: As noted in a Cabinet decision in June 2012 Ministers agreed that all new capital expenditure over the next 3 or 4 years will count against the Future Investment Fund. This means that Ministers wanting access to the fund need to follow the normal Cabinet process to draw down from it and establish appropriations. A large proportion of this capital spending will be for schools and hospitals but not exclusively. For example we have earmarked $1 billion for modernising schools as part of the Government’s 21st Century School Building Programme including I think 14 new schools in Christchurch. Those children will know they are going to a school funded by New Zealand investors not foreign bankers.GCSB Review of Compliance—Investigation into Leak and Release of Data2.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour)to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes.Grant Robertson: In light of his statement to this House in answer to question No. 3 on 31 July about the Henry inquiry “I had issued terms of reference for the inquiry” what responsibility does he take for those terms of reference being the reason that David Henry asked for and was given Andrea Vance’s swipe card access records?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I set the terms of reference and I think those terms of reference were reasonably clear. I am not going to go into the other details because it is a matter before the Privileges Committee.Grant Robertson: Does he think that there was adequate oversight of his inquiry given the evidence today that his chief executive was surprised that Andrea Vance’s swipe card records were accessed that David Henry thought he was entitled to access them and no one seemed to know what the powers or the parameters for the inquiry were?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not going to comment because the matter is before the Privileges Committee. What may well occur as a result of the committee’s hearing is that there may be better protocols that are formed and that would be a good thing if that is the case.Grant Robertson: Does he agree with Judith Collins’ statement today that it was “chilling” to discover that the Henry inquiry had treated the privacy of Ministers’ metadata information in a “contemptuous way”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I would not want to comment on a full quote that I have not seen but what I can say is that as Prime Minister I put out the terms of reference and if any Minister did not like them they were happy to complain about it.Grant Robertson: Does he agree with AndrewKibblewhite the Chief Executive of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet who said today that there are circumstances in which journalists’ swipe card access records could be made available to an inquiry?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The matter is before the Privileges Committee. It is not helpful for me to wade in at this time.Grant Robertson: Is he satisfied with how David Henry undertook the inquiry he issued the terms of reference for?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The matter is before the Privileges Committee and it is not going to be helpful for me to do that. But I would be a lot more satisfied with David Henry than I would be with David Shearer hanging up a couple of snapper in the House.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Grant Robertson: Thanks for that Bob Hope.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order!Grant Robertson: Does he not think that given the privacy issues that clearly arise in respect of metadata which Judith Collins raised today and the other concerns raised in the committee he owes New Zealanders the respect to listen to their concerns about the protection of their metadata and stop the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill today?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. I think the bill should pass because it will strengthen the important role that New Zealand needs to play to protect our citizens. For the record sonny I might be Bob Hope but you’re “Grant Hopeless”.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! [Interruption ] If the Hon Annette King has a point of order she is welcome to raise it.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Are you going to say anything other than “Order!” to that answer to a question?Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I ask the member to reflect on how the remark came about in the first place. It was a remark from—Hon Trevor Mallard: He started it.Mr SPEAKER: It is not helpful to determine who started it.Hon Member: Yes it is.Mr SPEAKER: Order! It just goes to show the disorder that is created when smart remarks are provided by either the questioner or the person answering the question.Resource Management Act Reforms—Planning Frameworks3.CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National)to theMinister for the Environment: What recent announcements has the Government made relating to the improvement of planning frameworks under the Resource Management Act 1991?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):Just over a week ago I announced that the Government would be undertaking the most comprehensive set of reforms of the Resource Management Act since its inception over 20 years ago primarily around improving the quality and effectiveness of our planning system. The reforms will address this by simplifying the planning framework and providing greater central government direction and consistency leaving local decision makers to focus on how those frameworks should apply in their communities. The reforms will be focusing decision making around proactive planning and enabling councils to get on with delivering those plans and making councils more accountable to their communities on how they are meeting all the needs of their communities. All in all this will address the huge wastage of time and money that currently occurs and that costs every one of us either directly or indirectly.Claudette Hauiti: Why has the Government identified planning as the key area for reform?Hon AMY ADAMS: It must always be remembered that the Resource Management Act is not just about environmental protection; it is also our planning law. It not only has to deal with managing the water in our catchments and the quality of our air but also has to deal effectively with providing for the functioning and development of our cities and our towns including public infrastructure like roads and schools. In this respect it has not been serving us well. When it costs more to get the consent than it does to do the job you have got a problem. Fundamentally these reforms are about providing greater certainty for communities to plan for and meet their areas’ needs in a way that reduces the unacceptable costs and delays that have become the norm.Economy—Impact of Tīwai Point Smelter Subsidy4.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour)to theMinister of Finance: What cost/benefit analysis was done to justify the $30 million subsidy payment to RioTinto and what would the effect have been on electricity prices had the payment not been made?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):The Government has set out what it considers are the benefits of this one-off payment which secured agreement between Meridian Energy and New Zealand Aluminium Smelters after protracted negotiations. These benefits were greater short-term certainty for the Tīwai Point smelter workers and medium-term certainty for the business the wider Southland region and the New Zealand electricity industry. In answer to the second part of the question that depends on the response by the parties to the negotiation and more widely by the electricity market. We were not in a position and no one is to speculate on that.Hon David Parker: Why did he not request or obtain any job or employment commitments from Tīwai Point beyond a very short period before handing over $30 million of taxpayers’ money to RioTinto?Hon BILL ENGLISH: We dealt with that issue a couple of weeks ago. It was never the Government’s intention to provide an ongoing subsidy to the electricity prices or to the business and it was never the Government’s intention to try to run the business. We made a clean simple one-off payment to secure finalisation of the commercial agreement. That is what happened. It would have been a bit different I suggest if that agreement had not been completed; then the member would be telling us off for not doing enough to save the jobs.Hon David Parker: How could the Minister decide whether or not it was wise to pay a $30 million subsidy payment to RioTinto if he did not have any estimate as to what would have been the effect on electricity prices and therefore the effect on other businesses and consumers had that electricity been available on the New Zealand market?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well because the electricity price in 5 years’ time if RioTinto left was not our top consideration. I am surprised that it is his. I suggest that he go to the smelter and tell the workers that actually their jobs are much less important than the electricity price in 5 years’ time if the smelter goes. Actually no one can really know what that would be.Hon David Parker: Has the $30 million subsidy to RioTinto had the effect of facilitating the sale of the shares in Meridian Energy?Hon BILL ENGLISH: It has I am sure created more certainty where there was uncertainty among investors. That was one of the benefits of the arrangement that we came to with RioTinto but I am still a bit unclear as to whether the member is proposing that the Government did too much that the smelter should now be shut and that the 700 highly paid jobs do not matter. I am not surprised about that bit because the Labour Party—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That answer was quite sufficient for the question.Dr Russel Norman: Does the Minister stand by his previous opposition to picking winners and how is his opposition to picking winners consistent with the $30 million payment to RioTinto?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes I think Governments have to be very very careful about picking winners but at least we pick some winners. The Greens just try to pick—in fact they do not even pick out; they just stop everything. We wish they would pick something—Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a very straight question. It was not about Green Party policy. The Minister started his answer by attacking the Greens. It has nothing to do with the Greens. He should answer the question.Mr SPEAKER: I think that the question has been answered and the Minister does not need to continue with his answer.Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can you tell me how the Minister has possibly answered the question by simply attacking the Green Party?Mr SPEAKER: Because the member asked if he would like to look at his question whether the Minister stands by his previous position of not picking winners and the Minister went on to explain why he still stands by that. He does not want to pick winners etc. but he explained why on this occasion jobs were more important.Question No. 5 to MinisterDr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I seek leave to move this question back to the Minister of Finance.Mr SPEAKER: We have discussed this before. The Government has every right to transfer a question unless it is an opportunity whereby I do not believe that an answer would be adequately given.Rt Hon Winston Peters: He’s not arguing that.Mr SPEAKER: Would the Hon Winston Peters please stop interjecting while I am on my feet. On this occasion there is simply no point in putting the question of leave because the Government has already made its decision. If the Government wanted to seek leave it could do so—I doubt whether it wants to—but for the member to seek leave for the Government to do something is not acceptable. Does the member want to continue with the question?Dr Russel Norman: Point of order Mr Speaker. I—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Before the member starts I just want to check that this is a fresh point of order.Dr Russel Norman: This is in relation to your ruling.Mr SPEAKER: Is the member now questioning my ruling?Dr Russel Norman: No I am not questioning your ruling Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Then the member will proceed to ask question No. 5.State-owned Energy Companies Shares—Instalment Scheme for Meridian Energy5.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green)to theMinister for State Owned Enterprises: Did officials provide the Government with an estimate of the cost to the Crown in foregone interest of allowing retail buyers of Meridian Energy shares to pay for their shares in instalments; if so what was that estimate?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises):No because any such estimate would be affected by many factors particularly the share price which has yet to be set. Our commercial advice is that instalment receipts will increase demand and widespread New Zealand ownership. Investors will as the Minister of Finance said take this into account in terms of price and demand.Dr Russel Norman: So is the Minister telling us that this policy is uncosted that Treasury provided no band as to what the cost of these interest-free loans may be and that the Government is going to proceed down this path despite having no idea as to the cost?Hon TONY RYALL: As I explained in my primary answer and as the Deputy Prime Minister the Minister of Finance said in his answer the reason why there is no estimate is due to the myriad of factors that would support this. As the Minister of Finance says investors will take this into account in terms of price and demand as I am sure New Zealanders will take into account the fact that this provides them with an opportunity to invest in a very long-term business and to release cash that can be used to invest in important social infrastructure like schools roads and hospitals.Dr Russel Norman: If the Government has no idea as to the cost of this policy how could it conduct a rational benefit versus cost analysis of this policy if it has absolutely no idea as to the cost of the policy?Hon TONY RYALL: Of course what the Government measures this against is our oft-stated policy about the mixed-ownership model programme and the benefits that will flow to New Zealand from that in terms of wider New Zealand ownership deepening the capital markets and providing revenue and capital that can be used to invest in schools roads and hospitals. I have to say that as I travel around NewZealand people are excited about the opportunities to have more capital to invest in social infrastructure.Dr Russel Norman: Can he confirm that large retail investors like the 400 that bought an average of a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of Mighty River Power shares will effectively be getting a $100000 interest-free loan under this policy which is effectively a gift worth about $8000 to $10000 to them from the rest of New Zealand?Hon Craig Foss: No one’s bought anything yet.Hon TONY RYALL: As Mr Foss says no one has bought anything yet because the shares have yet to be floated. But what I can tell the member is that instalment receipts will provide an opportunity for New Zealanders to take a potentially bigger stake in Meridian Energy than they might have previously. What it will do for all New Zealand is free up cash that we can make available through the Future Investment Fund for important infrastructure like schools roads and hospitals. In my other ministerial portfolio I am very pleased that there will be over $420 million for the Christchurch city hospitals.Dr Russel Norman: What is the ethical or moral basis for a policy in which ordinary New Zealand families who are struggling to save to buy a home for example are forced to contribute gifts to wealthy investors who can afford to stump up with $250000 to buy shares in this company? Why should ordinary New Zealand families have to gift these people $10000?Hon TONY RYALL: I do not think the member should consider that this is gifting anything to anybody. The member seems to have the basis that everything has to match a certain group of people. Well actually the $426 million going into Christchurch Hospital will benefit 10 percent of the population but the other 90 percent are happy to make that social investment because it is part of building our nation’s infrastructure. We are on the side of nation-building not destruction like that party is.Dr Russel Norman: Does he dispute any of this summary of the asset sale programme to date: first Treasury warned that there would be no significant economic gains from the sales and they would permanently increase the Government deficit; then Solid Energy turned out to be unfit to sell Mighty River Power sold for less than was expected and only half the New Zealand buyers who were forecast to show up—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! The member will resume his seat. The member needs to refer to Standing Order 377 as to the content of questions. That question is now becoming very long—a summary of a lot of events—which breaches the Standing Order. I invite the member to curtail his question and ask a question that is in line with the Standing Orders.Dr Russel Norman: Does he dispute the summary of the asset sale programme which includes a number of matters of failed policy on the Government’s behalf and ends with this Government now forking out over tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in a desperate bid to bribe people to buy Meridian Energy shares?Hon TONY RYALL: Yes.Electoral Legislation—Reform and Online Registration of Party Members6.Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future)to theMinister of Justice: Why were the Electoral Act 1993 and the Electoral Regulations 1996 excluded from the provisions of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice):A number of Acts and provisions were deliberately excluded from the Electronic Transactions Act when it was passed in 2002 under another Government. The Electoral Act and the Electoral Regulations were among those exclusions. The reason for their exclusion was the importance ofmaintaining a very high level of integrity and public confidence in our electoral system. I accept that things have changed since 2002 and there is now a greater expectation for information to be received and stored electronically. We engage in electronic transactions and communications constantly with online banking purchasing products and even ordering passports. I agree that the time has come when we should also be looking at a greater use of electronic data for all aspects of our electoral system. I have asked my officials and the Electoral Commission to consider ways in which this can be achieved while maintaining the very necessary high levels of security and public confidence in the system.Hon Peter Dunne: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It was quite difficult to hear the last couple of sentences of the Minister’s answer. I wonder whether she could repeat them please.Mr SPEAKER: If the member had trouble hearing the last couple of sentences they will be repeated. But it just goes to show that it is not helpful when members are dissatisfied with the answer they are hearing to then let out a lot of interjection that makes it difficult for any member who particularly wants to hear the answers that are being given to hear them. Would the honourable Minister repeat the last two sentences.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The last two sentences: I agree that the time has come when we should also be looking into the greater use of electronic data for all aspects of our electoral system. I have asked my officials and the Electoral Commission to consider ways in which this can be achieved while retaining the very high levels of security and public confidence in the system.Hon Peter Dunne: Does the Minister’s answer mean that she is prepared to look in the context of the forthcoming rewrite of the Electoral Act at changes to the law to ensure that where parties register members online those memberships will be accepted as valid?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes.Hon Peter Dunne: Is the Minister also prepared to consider as part of that review or changes to that legislation looking at providing for a mandatory audit by the Electoral Commission of all parties’ membership once every 3 years?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I have not given that matter any thought but it is a matter that I could always discuss with the Electoral Commission.Housing Affordable—First-home Buyers Mortgages and Reserve Bank Intervention7.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū)to theMinister of Finance: Why did the Government through its memorandum of understanding agree the Reserve Bank could introduce loan-to-value ratios without an exemption for first home buyers?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):Because we have read the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act and support the independence of the Reserve Bank neither of which the member seems to have done. We do not agree with how the member is characterising the memorandum of understanding. The Reserve Bank has always had the independent power under the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act to use macro-prudential tools including loan-to-value ratio restrictions. The purpose of the memorandum was to put in place a proper process which included consultation with the Government and others if the bank was considering the use of such tools. There is no question of the Government agreeing or not with the bank’s decision or any exemptions to it. The Reserve Bank operates independently. This question is another example of Labour’s gradual move away from an independent—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That has nothing to do with the question.Phil Twyford: What guarantee can the Government give existing homeowners that their mortgage interest rates will not rise as a result of higher loan-to-value ratios?Hon BILL ENGLISH: This again shows a front-bencher of the Labour Party asking the Government about how it is going to set interest rates. We do not do it.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Given your new strict approach to the co-leader of the Green Party I want to ask you whether Standing Orders 383(2)(b) and (c) apply in this case.Mr SPEAKER: They do. I am going to invite the member to ask the question again and I expect the Minister to simply address the question.Phil Twyford: Does he stand by his statement that if it were not for loan-to-value ratios interest rates would have to go up for everyone—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is now slightly different question to what was asked.Phil Twyford: It is slightly different.Mr SPEAKER: I invited the member to repeat—[Interruption ] Order! I invited the member to repeat the question he asked.Phil Twyford: What guarantee can the Government give existing homeowners that their mortgage interest rates will not rise as a result of higher loan-to-value ratios?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government can give no guarantee because the Government does not set interest rates. I know under the Labour Party that is where they are heading away—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister has no responsibility for Labour Party policy.Phil Twyford: How will his KiwiSaver policy which frees up just $5000 help first-home buyers when his new loan-to-value policy means Auckland first-home buyers may need a deposit of $90000?Hon BILL ENGLISH: In case the member still does not understand independent Reserve Banks the loan-to-value ratio policy—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am going to ask you whether in this case Standing Order 383(2)(b) applies.Mr SPEAKER: It certainly does apply as does Speaker’s ruling 176/3 which says that members should not start the answer with a political attack on the questioner or the party that the questioner comes from. Would the member like to re-ask his question? [Interruption ] Order! Phil Twyford can repeat that question.Phil Twyford: How—Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You said that members—Ministers—should not start out with an attack on the questioner. That is what you just said which I understood was precisely Mr Norman’s point earlier on this afternoon when you sat him down and everybody else who wanted to contest you said the same thing.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member should go back and look at theHansard . He will note then the type of question that was asked by Dr Russel Norman. If members ask a loose question with a lot of inference and a lot of political stick they are likely to get something back as well.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would just like to support the comment made by Winston Peters. I think there were two areas where you intervened on Mr Norman. I think you are confusing the two.Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the member is now starting to question my ruling I will take a very dim view of that and the member will not be here for much longer. I have asked Phil Twyford to repeat his question.Phil Twyford: How will his KiwiSaver policy which frees up just $5000 help first-home buyers when his new loan-to-value ratio policy means Auckland’s first-home buyers may need a deposit of $90000?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member’s assumption is wrong. The loan-to-value ratio policy is a policy of the Reserve Bank. In New Zealand under the Reserve Bank ofNew Zealand Act our Reserve Bank is independent. The member may not understand that but that is how it is.Phil Twyford: Why did the Government set a 10 percent deposit requirement for a Welcome Home Loan and the KiwiSaver first home deposit scheme when most first-home buyers have no chance of scraping up a 10 percent deposit to get a mortgage?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government made a set of decisions around KiwiSaver and the Welcome Home Loan scheme that would mean that if the Reserve Bank brought in restrictions then first-home buyers would get a better go than would otherwise be the case. Then the Reserve Bank took into account the Government’s policy decisions. So the Government’s policy decisions had to balance off the opportunity for first-home buyers to be able to get an opportunity to buy a home under a pretty restricted environment on the one hand but on the other hand respect the fact that the Reserve Bank was signalling very clearly it felt that low-deposit loans represented a risk to financial stability. That is in the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. The Labour Party used to know what—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Jami-Lee Ross: Has the Minister received any reports in support of loan-to-value ratios?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well as I have made pretty clear it is not a matter of whether the Government or anyone else supports or otherwise the loan-to-value ratio restrictions. That is a matter for the Reserve Bank acting independently. However I have seen examples from some other organisations. One person said: “We support loan-to-value ratios. We have been calling for them for ages as part of reforming monetary policy.” That was Phil Twyford.Phil Twyford: Does he stand by his statement—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order!Phil Twyford: Does he stand by his statement that if it were not for loan-to-value ratios interests rates would have to go up for everyone and given that BNZ put its rates up this morning citing loan-to-value ratios has he missed something?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have pointed out the argument the Governor of the Reserve Bank has made which as I understand it is that he does have a range of ways of cooling the housing market. One of them is to put up interests rates. He has stated a preference that he would rather not do that. As it turns out New Zealand is one of the fastest-growing developed economies in the world and if it is the first country in the world to put up interest rates it could have a big effect through the exchange rate on our economy. That is one reason among others why he prefers the loan-to-value ratio tool.Housing Affordable—Development Contribution Reform8.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National)to theMinister of Local Government: What changes will the Government make to the Local Government Act 2002 to improve housing affordability?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Local Government):We will make changes to constrain the way councils charge developers for new sections. Some councils currently use development contributions to help pay for new art galleries botanic gardens and aquatic centres which leads to new home owners paying disproportionately for these facilities. We will now narrow the scope of development contributions to focus on the essentials such as network infrastructure and reserves that are directly associated with the new developments.Paul Goldsmith: Why do development contributions need to be constrained?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: The previous Government expanded the scope of development contributions which saw these charges rise significantly over the last 10years. Development charges now average $14000 per section and can be up to $65000. In at least six provincial councils the average development charge is 10 percent of the average house price. These charges of course are passed on to homebuyers who pay a higher price as a result.Paul Goldsmith: What other changes have been announced as part of the development contribution reforms?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: We will improve the transparency of development contributions and introduce an independent objections process. In addition we will expressly enable the private provision of infrastructure through development agreements. The changes to development contributions are part of a package of initiatives that prove that this Government is strongly focused on improving the affordability of houses for Kiwis.Trans-Pacific Partnership—Investor-State Dispute Provisions9.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First)to thePrime Minister: Is he confident that his Minister of Trade’s actions in regards to the Trans-Pacific Partnership are in the interests of New Zealand?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister):Yes.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he believe that investor-State dispute settlements are beneficial to countries and their Governments; if so why?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes they can be. New Zealand has negotiated investor-State dispute settlement provisions in a number of free-trade agreements that have been supported by this Parliament including the ones with China and with ASEAN and Australia and the primary reason for that of course is that they also support and protect New Zealand investors when they invest offshore with other countries that have similar provisions.Rt Hon Winston Peters: How will New Zealanders benefit from their Governments being able to be sued by foreign big businesses when nearly $1 billion has been paid out by foreign Governments to overseas investors in these disputes brought under Trans-Pacific Partnership - like agreements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly I cannot comment on whether the Government can or would be sued. It would depend under the Trans-Pacific Partnership on whether investor-State dispute settlement provisions are provided for in the final agreement. But what I can say is that the New Zealand Government will not sign anything unless it is in the best interests of New Zealand. Secondly as we have done so historically in the past there have always been caveats within those dispute settlement provisions that allow us to carve out certain areas to protect New Zealand’s best interests.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If in OECD States the average legal cost for Governments involved in these disputes is NZ$10 million but frequently rising to more than NZ$40 million would he abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it provided foreign companies with unfettered power to—[Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the Hon Steven Joyce please stop the continual barrage while the member is asking his question and would the Rt Hon Winston Peters commence that question again.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If in OECD States the average legal cost for Governments involved in these disputes is $10 million per dispute but frequently rises to as much as nearly $40 million would he abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it provided foreign companies unfettered powers to sue the New Zealand Government; if not why not?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Let me reaffirm what I said earlier. Firstly New Zealand is not going to sign up to any free-trade agreement and that includes the Trans-PacificPartnership unless it is in New Zealand’s interest to do that. Secondly the major provisions within the Trans-Pacific Partnership are currently being worked through. The third thing I would say is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership as the member may or may not be aware is a negotiated agreement between 12 different economies. In one of the pieces of research I saw recently it is estimated that it could be worth between $2 billion to $4 billion a year for the New Zealand economy. So I would say that that is fairly strong evidence that it well may be in New Zealand’s interest to do the deal.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question having given the facts was whether he would abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it provided foreign companies unfettered powers.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I listened very carefully to the question. I listened very carefully to the answer. The only part I think the Prime Minister could be asked to address is whether he will abandon the negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not want to question your ruling but I think I have answered that question. I said New Zealand will not sign something unless it is in its best interests to do so.Mr SPEAKER: I do not actually think that does answer specifically the question. I think it is a relatively easy question to answer but I am not responsible for the quality of the answers that are given by any Minister. If the Prime Minister wishes to add any more he is welcome to; if he does not so be it.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well try this one: if it is good enough for the US Government to provide the up-to-date text to members of Congress why will he not make the up-to-date text available to New Zealand’s Parliament and MPs?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well try this one: that is not the way we do it here.Rt Hon Winston Peters: What reason has he got for shutting out MPs and the New Zealand public from all knowledge of this secret deal if he has not got something significant to hide?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There is nothing to hide. We are in the process of negotiation. To the best of my knowledge that is the way things have always happened. In the fullness of time assuming a deal was concluded—Hon Damien O’Connor: What are you hiding?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: My underwear.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Interjections bringing the Speaker into the debate on two occasions are unacceptable. Does the Prime Minister wish to complete—[Interruption ] Order! Does the Prime Minister wish to add anything further to the answer? I do not think so.Snapper 1 Fishery—Policy Proposals and Public Consultation10.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn)to theMinister for Primary Industries: Does he stand by his public statement yesterday that the Snapper 1 Policy proposals are not “too controversial”?Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):Yes in the context in which it was given. There is nothing controversial about ensuring the sustainability of our most valuable inshore fishery. I do acknowledge that some aspects—in particular the option to reduce the bag limit to three—are controversial. But that is why I have publicly stated that that option is unlikely to proceed and why I will be taking any decision I make to Cabinet.Hon David Cunliffe: Given that answer would the Minister like to tell the House how many emails and submissions he and his office have received to the nearest 10000 and say why he is not listening to either them or the thousands of angryfishoswho have turned up in places like Tauranga Thames HamiltonWhakatāne Kaikohe Whangarei Warkworth North Shore Bucklands Beach—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think we have all got the gist of the question.Hon NATHAN GUY: I am listening. That is why on Friday when the consultation period closes my officials will be summarising all the submissions with some advice and then I will make a decision.David Bennett: What comments has the Minister seen on Snapper 1 policy proposals?Hon NATHAN GUY: I have seen a range of comments on this consultation proposal including: “I congratulate the Government for running their policy on this as well as putting out a review.” That comment was from David Shearer last night at a public meeting in Auckland. I thank Mr Shearer for acknowledging the process that the Government is going through.Hon David Cunliffe: In seeking to hide behind the argument that he has not yet made final decisions is he aware of section—[Interruption ] Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the member again ask the question without the inference at the start.Hon David Cunliffe: Given that the Minister is using the defence that he has not yet made final decisions is he aware that paragraph 5.12(f) of theCabinet Manual requires that all discussion documents must be taken to Cabinet prior to their release or consultation or does he think that John Key his Cabinet colleagues and backbenchers like Scott Simpson David Bennett—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! The question is substantially too long. It has now been given and can be answered by the Minister.Hon NATHAN GUY: No decisions have been made.Hon David Cunliffe: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister has not begun to address the question which was—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon David Cunliffe: I have not made the point of order yet with respect—Mr SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. If the member wants a specific answer then he can go to his office and do a far better job at drafting a question than he did on that occasion.Te Ururoa Flavell: Kia oratātou. Has the Minister investigated the impact of the various options on Māori families in area 1 whose traditional lifestyles are sustained by the fish they catch as recreational fishers; if not why not given that the seminal Treaty fisheries claims and the Sealord deal resulted from a previous Government’s failure to consider the impacts of the fisheries management changes with the introduction of the quota management system on Māori fishers in that same area?Hon NATHAN GUY: I can assure the member I will be taking into account the impact of any decision that I make on families in the particular area including the impact on Māori families. The member makes a very good point about ensuring that those whose lifestyle depends on catching fish can continue to do so for generations to come. This is what the consultation is all about.Brendan Horan: In considering the Snapper 1 proposals has the Minister consulted with the Māori Council; if not why not?Hon NATHAN GUY: I specifically have not consulted with the Māori Council but I cannot answer whom my officials have consulted with.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I asked “if not why not?”.Mr SPEAKER: Order! No I think the question has been adequately answered. The Minister said he has not but he was not sure whether his officials had done so. Clearly he is saying he did not think it was at his ministerial level.Hon David Cunliffe: Why did he not consult Cabinet when theCabinet Manual required him to under paragraphs 5.12(a) 5.12(b) and 5.12(f) which include for discussion documents on any matter that is significant or controversial?Hon NATHAN GUY: It is important for the member to realise that this is just one fishery stock assessment of 17 that are out for consultation at the moment. In the last decade under the Labour Government as well there have been on average 20-odd fishery stock consultation documents a year that have been released. These are very technical and routine and I would be very surprised if many of those went through Cabinet.Hon David Cunliffe: I seek leave to table theCabinet Manual 2008 —Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] TheCabinet Manual is available and has been well referenced.Hon David Cunliffe: Point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Supplementary question. [Interruption ] Order! Is there a further point of order coming from the member?Hon David Cunliffe: Yes. I seek leave to table a series of transcripts of interviews with National MPs including—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] They will all be freely available to members if they wish to go and search for them.Brendan Horan: In considering the Snapper 1 proposals what is the cost-benefit value of recreational fishing to the New Zealand economy including cars boats trailers tourism bait tackle accommodation food drink and all associated economic activity and jobs?Hon NATHAN GUY: I do not know that that evidence has been provided to me right down to the level of cans of Coke and packets of chippies but what I can say is that when it was last looked at the estimated value of recreational to commercial was very similar.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not ask what it was compared with commercial—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now trifling with the Chair. That question was addressed satisfactorily. If the member is not happy with the answer that is his problem.Resource Management Act Reforms—Commentary11.EUGENIE SAGE (Green)to theMinister for the Environment: When she said “… I think we can point to any number of ways that we are making our environmental safeguards more effective and more stringent” was she referring to her proposed changes to the Resource Management Act 1991?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):I was referring to the number of matters that I had just listed by way of examples.Eugenie Sage: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a fairly straight question. It was on notice. I did not hear the Minister answer yes or no.Mr SPEAKER: Well I think it was included in the answer the Minister gave.Eugenie Sage: Is the Minister saying that the Law Society was wrong when it called her proposed changes a “watering down” of the Resource Management Act principles which was “likely to create considerable uncertainty” and “likely to increase the costs as parties and decision-makers re-open long-settled debates”?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well if the member is referring to the quote in the primary question no because that was not the context of it.Eugenie Sage: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption ]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! I have a point of order from Eugenie—[Interruption ] Order! If Andrew Little wants to stay for the balance of question time I invite him to cease his barrage. [Interruption ] Order!Eugenie Sage: It was a question requiring a yes or no answer and the Minister did not give that.Mr SPEAKER: On this occasion I am going to invite the member to repeat the question but can she repeat it in such a way that it is without the part that is unnecessary to the question. What the member is wanting to know is whether the Law Society was right or wrong. Ask a simple question and I can help the member get a simple answer.Eugenie Sage: Is the Minister saying that the Law Society is right or wrong when it calls her proposed changes to Part 2 of the Resource Management Act a “watering down” of the Resource Management Act principles and is the Law Society right or wrong when it says that those changes are “likely to create considerable uncertainty” and “likely to increase the costs as parties and decision-makers as people re-open long-settled debates” about what matters of national importance mean?Mr SPEAKER: I invite the Minister now to answer the question but I will not take a point of order from the member questioning the answer she is given when she was invited to ask a simple question in line with the Standing Orders and chose to make such a lengthy question.Hon AMY ADAMS: I do not agree with the Law Society.Eugenie Sage: Is the Minister saying that 99 percent of the 13277 submitters on her February 2013 discussion document on the Resource Management Act are wrong when they opposed or expressed serious concern on most aspects of her proposed changes to the matters of national importance or is she not going to listen to them and simply push ahead with her changes to the Act?Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Amy Adams—either of those questions.Hon AMY ADAMS: First of all I would have to point out that more than 12000 of those submissions were form submissions elicited on what I would consider some fairly mischievous information from the organisations seeking them. Secondly the submissions were in respect of the discussion document and as a consequence of the feedback on that document we have made changes. Thirdly if she is asking me whether I honestly think that 99 percent of submitters were opposed to us adding in natural hazards as a matter that needed to be included no I do not think they meant that.Eugenie Sage: Does the Minister think that it is wise given the international spotlight on New Zealand’s clean green reputation to be making changes to the Resource Management Act when the architect of that Act Sir Geoffrey Palmer says that they “will significantly—[Interruption ]Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order from Metiria Turei.Metiria Turei: I am sorry but I simply cannot hear the question effectively with the barracking that is coming from behind me on this side of the House.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption ] Order! I do not need any assistance. That is a very reasonable point that has been raised. I am going to invite the member to repeat the question but after question time could I ask Metiria Turei to help her members provide supplementary questions that are of a reasonable length which can we hope get a reasonable answer.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I accept your invitation to discuss—Mr SPEAKER: What is the point of order?Metiria Turei: —this with you but I would ask you as a matter of providing more advice to the House whether you would look at theHansard and consider whether these questions are indeed too long or whether they are actually quite reasonable in the context of questions. Would you do that for me?Mr SPEAKER: Order! I would have thought that any member in the House would realise by the number of times I have risen to my feet today questioning the length of questions that I am suggesting that the questions are substantially too long.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It may well be that the time has passed for this but during the first of the points of order from the co-leader of the Greens there was barracking of her while she was on her feet including from the Deputy Prime Minister the Prime Minister and Steven Joyce.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I thank the member for his assistance. I did not actually notice it at the time but it is a reminder to all members that points of order should be heard in silence. We are going back to where we were which was asking Eugenie Sage to repeat her question but if she could manage to curtail it I for one would be very very grateful.Eugenie Sage: Does the Minister agree with Sir Geoffrey Palmer the architect of the Resource Management Act when he said that her changes to the Act “will significantly and seriously weaken the ability of the RMA to protect the natural environment and its recreational enjoyment by all New Zealanders”?Hon AMY ADAMS: No but what I do agree with Geoffrey Palmer on is his quote where he says: “the proposals directed towards reducing and simplifying planning documents have considerable merit. So do the proposals for a fixed time limit for the processing of straight-forward non-notified consents and to improve transparency around costs and fees. … many of the [process proposals] will deliver improvements to the current processes [under the RMA] with limited impacts on environmental protection”. I do agree with that statement.Employment Relations—Legislative Reform and Effect on Collective Bargaining12.DARIEN FENTON (Labour)to theMinister of Labour: Does he believe that collective bargaining will increase or decrease as a result of his employment law changes in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour):Neither.Darien Fenton: Given that he says he will listen carefully to submissions will he change the legislation to strengthen collective bargaining if the evidence confirms the advice from his own officials that under his changes fewer collective agreements will be concluded?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: We are strengthening the collective processes and I will be listening.Darien Fenton: Has he seen OECD advice that the New Zealand labour market is one of the most deregulated labour markets in the developed world with one of the lowest rates of collective bargaining; if so why is he proposing law that will make collective bargaining harder than ever?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: No I have not but of course we also have a relatively lower unemployment rate when compared with other developed countries as well so it is possible there is a connection.Darien Fenton: Is he aware of advice from the industrial relations centre at Victoria University of Wellington that collective agreements increase wages for workers on individual agreements as well; if so why has he put up proposals to weaken collective bargaining which will have a knock-on effect for all workers?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: We simply are not going to be doing that. The fact of the matter is that what we are doing is avoiding ineffective and unnecessarily protracted collective bargaining. That is good for everyone concerned.General DebateHon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises):I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business . What an Opposition in complete disarray from one end of this House to the other. They are floundering. They are snappy. They are really really in some distress. They are showing signs of desperation and division while on this side of the House we are focused on what matters. I have got to say that that is a party opposite that seems to be run by the three “S’s”. They are making up spy stories. They are sneaking up to meetings without telling each other. They are swinging dead fish around the Chamber. Well frankly they stink. And that is what we have seen from the Opposition. Are they focusing on getting our finances in order?Hon Members: No.Hon TONY RYALL: Are they focused on building a competitive growing economy?Hon Members: No.Hon TONY RYALL: No. Are they focusing on better public services for families?Hon Members: No.Hon TONY RYALL: No. And are they focusing on rebuilding our economy providing opportunities for New Zealand families? No. And I actually see every day that our nation’s newspapers and websites show New Zealanders are not interested in these distractions. They are seeing through the intensifying grandstanding of the Opposition parties and they understand how well New Zealand is doing in a world where so many nations are struggling. So today I am going to talk about the things that matter to New Zealand.One of those things that matter to New Zealand is growing our debt avoiding international borrowing and investing in our nation—controlling our debt avoiding borrowing and investing in our nation. That is what we are going to talk about because this Government is focused on what is necessary. Every day those parties opposite rail against our Government controlling our nation’s debt. They rail against our Government controlling our nation’s debt. Yesterday the Prime Minister the Minister of Finance and I announced the next stages in the float of Meridian Energy. The Mighty River Power float has been very successful for New Zealand. Almost 80000 were first-time shareholders. That is the largest register of shareholders on the New Zealand stock market a majority New Zealand ownership and that is despite the economic vandalism of the parties opposite. Yesterday we announced details of our float programme.Look I have got to say that I think instalment receipts are a great part of this strategy. They are a great part because they are going to provide opportunities for more New Zealanders to take a bigger stake in this company if they want to. It is pretty orthodox. These sorts of instalment receipts have been used in the past—Westpac Trust Capital Properties PGGWrightson a number of companies. They are part of our plan to control debt and invest in the New Zealand economy. We will be taking that money including the $1.7 billion in cash that we got from the sale of 49 percent in Mighty River Power putting it in the Future Investment Fund and helping build our nation with roads schools and hospitals. That is $1 billion in 21st century schools including as in the announcement yesterday $15 million into Tarawera High School in Kawerau. What a fantastic investment by Hekia Parata the Minister of Education.We in this party are focused on that and we are focused on better public services for New Zealanders. In health we are providing more services for New Zealanders fasterand with better access—providing the services they need. We are also focusing on that big priority of rebuilding Christchurch. It is a huge focus for our Government and it is a really good example of how all our policies have been working together to benefit the people of Christchurch. The proceeds from the mixed-ownership model can be invested and are being invested in rebuilding our nation’s second-biggest city. Just look at Christchurch Hospital—we are going to invest $426 million from the mixed-ownership model. That is money that has come from—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):This Government is engaged in a consistent attack on basic democratic rights. It is a Muldoonist-type Government which is something I said back in June. Since then pretty much a week does not go by without proving me to be right.I think it was very useful thatThe Economist gave an editorial about democracy andmajoritarianism in June this year. I quote fromThe Economist  which said: “Majoritarianism—the credo of an expanding group of elected but autocratic rulers around the world which holds that electoral might always makes you right—is not true democracy”. It is one of the fundamental principles of this Government that all it needs to do is get a single-vote majority in this House and it can ram through anything whether it is asset sales against the will of the vast majority or whether it is mass surveillance under Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation which the Government will be attempting to pass this afternoon. A single-vote majority is enough for it to force that legislation through.Butmajoritarianism the idea that “electoral might makes you always right” is not true democracy asThe Economistpointed out. Independent courts and free media are a critical part of that and yet this Government has consistently attacked those basic democratic rights and freedoms. Think about the Prime Minister’s response to the Human Rights Commission when the Human Rights Commission dared to threaten the Government’s GCSB legislation. The Prime Minister threatened to cut its funding. That is the reality of modern-day democracy in New Zealand. The Prime Minister said: “If you disagree with me I’ll cut your funding.”Think about the Henry inquiry. The Prime Minister’s inquiry went after the records of journalists’ movements in this building. The Prime Minister’s inquiry went after Ministers’ email records and got them. The Prime Minister’s inquiry went after journalists’ records and got them. This is the kind of Government that we have. It is engaged in consistent attacks on democratic rights and principles.Think about the right to access the courts. In a deep democracy a resilient democracy people would have the right to go to court to challenge the lawfulness of the Government’s actions. This Government is consistently removing your right to go to court to challenge them. If you think about the carers’ bill that was purposely put in place so that those people can no longer go to the courts to challenge whether the Government is acting in a lawful manner. The independent judiciary has not been abolished by John Key; he has simply made it inaccessible to the citizens so that they can no longer get there.The Government has done a similar thing with the Environmental Protection Authority—or really the “Environmental Pollution Authority”. It has removed the right to access the Environment Court. Instead problems end up at the Environmental Protection Authority which simply rubber-stamps it all. Think about the Government’s actions in Canterbury—and this was before the earthquake—when it removed the right of Cantabrians to elect their regional council. The reason it removed that right was that the elected regional council was doing too much to protect the environment and wasinsufficiently pro-irrigation. That was the reason why John Key removed democracy for the people in Christchurch and Canterbury.Think about the Government’s actions in removing the right to protest at sea—the Anadarko amendment. That was an amendment that came after Simon Bridges’ meeting with the oil industry. That is removing people’s right to protest at sea. Think about the history of nuclear-free New Zealand. How did we end up with a nuclear-free New Zealand? It was because of people like that protesting at sea against the US submarines and frigates that were visiting our country. The Government is consistently and persistently attacking basic democratic rights like the right to protest.Think about the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The Government is refusing to release the text or any information about New Zealand’s position to the New Zealand public even though that information is being made available to the other Governments with which New Zealand is negotiating. Those other Governments know more about the negotiating position of the New Zealand Government than New Zealand citizens themselves.Think about the MMP review. MMP won in the referendum and there was supposed to be an independent review by an independent umpire the Electoral Commission. The commission came back with a series of recommendations. The National Party and John Key rejected every single one of them for purely partisan political reasons—because it did not suit them to actually improve MMP as was recommended by the independent umpire.And of course then we come to the GCSB legislation. This legislation enables the GCSB to engage in mass surveillance of New Zealanders. The Government pushed it through under urgency and this afternoon it will try to push it through again. This Government has a consistent approach. It attacks democratic rights at every turn.Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):When I first came into this House it did not surprise me that I came across robust debate and people taking reasonably coloured positions on various issues. But I have to say that in recent weeks and months I have been appalled by the level of debate and the level of deliberate twisting and misrepresentation of what is going on in this country merely to score political points. Our Opposition has become so desperate and so aware of its irrelevance and its failure to connect with the New Zealand public. It knows that our agenda of getting on and getting things done making life better for New Zealanders creating jobs and creating opportunities is talking to what New Zealanders want to hear. So Opposition members come into this House they go to the public they go to the media and they keep repeating statements that are so wrong and are designed solely for scaremongering simply to push their own agendas.To hear the last speaker Russel Norman describe the Government Communications and Security Bureau and Related Legislation Bill as allowing mass surveillance is an appalling misstatement of what the bill does. The bill is about tidying up an inefficient inconsistent law passed by the Labour Government in order to make it clear that the way our agencies work together can continue lawfully as it has done for the past 10 years. We know that no more than nine New Zealanders a year on average are subjected to warrants that would allow their communications to be looked at. More important we know what it is about: it is about protecting the security of my family the family of everyone in this Chamber and the family of everyone in New Zealand. I think that New Zealanders care about the security of their country. I think they know that our agencies do a fantastic job of supporting it and I think that is why you are seeing a complete disconnect between the rhetoric being driven by a few and the reality of what is going on.It is appalling to see Opposition members who simply seek to denigrate everything and anyone who does not agree with their world view and the last speaker’s speech was riddled with it. How he can stand there and denigrate independent decision makers like the Environmental Protection Authority simply because he does not like the outcome is an appalling misuse of his position and how dare he describe the actions of this Government as an attack on democracy. It is our job as a democratically elected Government to ensure that the processes deliver for New Zealanders and when they do not we have a duty and an obligation to step up and step up we do.Let us just remember that when central governments are elected the turnout for those elections is more than double on average the turnout for the local body elections—more than double. All the power that local government has devolves from central government. We are statutorily obliged to consider and review the way that local government performs its functions. We must and we will because this is a Government that is not afraid of taking action to do what needs to be done. I have very little time for the people who would play fast and loose with our international reputation which underpins the security and the economic future of all New Zealanders. They would play games with our international brand reputation merely to score points. That is appalling. It shows a serious lack of patriotism in my view.We are a Government that is about getting on with things. We are about delivering jobs to New Zealanders. We are about getting rid of the wastage in the processes in our system. I have heard the Green Party recently criticise changes to the Resource Management Act as being just about getting quicker decisions. Well yes they are. I know that the Greens have never met a process they did not want to drag out but on our side of the House we do not want to see people having to spend $3500 to get a resource consent to remove a dangerous chimney. That is appalling it is unnecessary and we are going to change it. I have heard every party in this House—except possibly the Greens—talk about the need to improve the Resource Management Act. They accept that it is not working well but which one of them has ever had the fortitude to get in and actually do it? None of them—none of them.It is the National-led Government that is now delivering the third stage of Resource Management Act reforms which will stop hundreds of millions of dollars year after year after year being wasted on lawyers consultants and planners and will let that money go instead to things that New Zealanders care about—having cheaper homes having jobs and having communities that work well as well as protecting our natural environment. That is why this Government is committed to reforming the Resource Management Act. We are going to ensure that we get better planning outcomes. We will continue to protect our environment.This is the Government that cares about everything that matters to New Zealanders—natural social cultural economic and environmental. That is what you will get from a National-led Government.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū):We had a rare candid moment from the National benches when the Hon Tony Ryall was speaking. He told the House that the National Government’s priority was “growing the debt”. We on this side of the House really appreciate that level of honesty. We appreciate the National Government’s finally coming clean and admitting that it is in fact the gold medallist of debt. It has borrowed more than any Government in New Zealand history. It is doing it week after week after week—billions of dollars put on the credit card for future generations to pay. I only wish that we could look forward to that kind of candid honesty from the National benches when it comes to housing because this is an area that New Zealanders care deeply about.As theNew Zealand Herald commented a few days ago the National Government’s policy on housing is “as ill-directed as it is insipid.” That is theNew Zealand Herald . The National Government is floundering around. It has no idea what to do about the housing crisis that is afflicting our nation. First-home buyers are being locked out of the housing market in ever-growing numbers. Our rates of homeownership are going through the floor. We used to pride ourselves as a country on our rates of homeownership but in Auckland recently the homeownership rate dropped below 60 percent for the first time in a century. It is a curious thing to see a Government actually seeming to deliberately make matters worse for the people for the community that we are here to serve but you can take only that interpretation out of what is happening for first-home buyers under this Government.I want to make some comments about this issue of loan-to-value ratio limits on mortgage lending orLVRs as they are commonly called. The Reserve Bank finally announced a few days ago that it is instituting these so-called speed limits which will have the effect of putting limits on home mortgage lending. The effect of it is that 90 percent of new home mortgage lending by the banks will be required to have a deposit of 20 percent or more. That is a massive reduction in the size of the home mortgage market. It is going to mean that first-home buyers and low-income home buyers are going to be disadvantaged. It is the speculators and the well-off who can leverage their assets who will not be affected by this. In fact the speculators and the well-off will be advantaged by this policy because they are no longer going to have to compete with so many first-home buyers.I want to remind the House that in question time the Minister of Finance Bill English tried to shrug off the responsibility for this policy when in fact in May the Government had negotiated with the Reserve Bank a memorandum of understanding giving the Reserve Bank the powers to use these so-called speed limits on home mortgage lending. The Reserve Bank Governor’s own words said that the bank negotiated a memorandum of understanding to agree with the Government that it would be able to use these powers and to say how those powers would be outlined. Yet we saw the Minister of Finance shrugging off responsibility and saying: “No it’s nothing to do with the Government. It’s the independent Reserve Bank.” Well what a load of rubbish.This is the Government’s policy. It negotiated an agreement with the Reserve Bank. It is going to damage the interests of first-home buyers in this country and it was only after John Key had negotiated that memorandum of understanding with the Reserve Bank that he had an afterthought and started publicly musing about having an exemption for first-home buyers. Well it is too late. Once that memorandum was in place the Reserve Bank Governor did not have to worry about that. The Reserve Bank understandably is more concerned about financial stability and it is not good enough for National Ministers to come to this House and cry crocodile tears about first-home buyers. They handed a loaded gun to the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank has pulled the trigger and now the Government is offering band-aids to the first-home buyer who is lying on the ground bleeding. It is offering tinkering changes to Welcome Home Loans and KiwiSaver. It is an absolute joke.The Government has stuffed up the management of this issue. First-home buyers are getting it in the neck and it is the Government that has responsibility.This Government’s policy on housing can be summed up by saying that it is to trust the market and blame the councils. It has nothing to offer Kiwi first-home buyers unlike Labour which will crack down on speculators and build 100000 affordable homes.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura):On Friday at 2.30 p.m. on 16 August a 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck the top of the south effectively under LakeGrassmere.This is on top of a 6.5 magnitude earthquake 3 weeks earlier which has totally turned the rural communities of Seddon and Ward upside down. I had to make a dash to Seddon to support those who were distressed and traumatised. The emergency response team out of Blenheim set up a welfare centre at the primary school. The Red Cross team out of Christchurch set up a very well-equipped support truck. They set to work to support those who were being affected. The Minister of Civil Defence Nikki Kaye along with Gerry Brownlee the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery began to make their way down to Marlborough to show their support for and their solidarity with the people who were so gravely affected.It was my wife’s and my own privilege to be able to spend a night with those affected at the welfare centre to give support and comfort. It is worth bearing in mind that the aftershocks were raining in at a tremendous rate. They were measured at forces of between 5 and 6 magnitude and were adding to the already fearful situation. Over the night we were well supported by the Red Cross. They did a wonderful job and people took great comfort out of that. However when we woke up in the morning the situation was considerably worse. Heavy rain had set in and that was adding to the difficulty of the situation. The next morning was even more depressing than the night before considering the amount of shock that came with the beginning of the earthquake effects.Large teams however of the civil defence volunteers reported in under the control of the Marlborough District Council under its response manager DeanHeiford and that was quite heartening to see those people moving around. Ministers Kaye and Brownlee were also very positive and had a very uplifting effect on the spirits of those who were present. It had been announced that there would be a public meeting at the school assembly hall and the community turned up to hear and be reassured. We have been well recorded with the photographs in theDominion Postand throughout theMarlborough Express showing the damage that occurred between Ward and Seddon. The enduring memory will be of those photographs that were shown in theDominion Postyesterday with regard to the railway line in that area just illustrating the force and magnitude of that earthquake.I would like to acknowledge the contribution that the Ministers have made in assuring the community that all will be done within the Government’s power to put things right. That is very very important. But in saying that we recognise the limitation that will apply to that putting right. You can certainly put the buildings and the infrastructure together and make that right but the human toll of anxiety fear distress and resulting depression will need ongoing monitoring and support.So I would like to take the opportunity to express the community’s heartfelt thanks to those who came along to support it during its hour of need. The police who got out very very quickly checked all the rural roads and all the bridges. A number of those bridges had popped and were anything between 150 millimetres and 200 millimetres above the road level and needed to be corrected so that if there was going to be any movement it could be done safely. The road between Ward and Seddon was closed. I want to say a special thankyou to the police for letting me through at the Ward end. It was quite an eye-opener to see the cracks and the undulations in the road as the consequence of those shakes and we have had many many more since then. So thank you to the police.Thank you to the Red Cross for coming up from Christchurch with that well-equipped truck and also the Marlborough Red Cross the civil defence volunteers who came along with the plywood and the tarpaulins the fire brigades at Seddon and Ward for the building supplies and the tarpaulins the tradesmen the plumbers the carpenters and the electricians and of course the engineers. It is good to report that the Earthquake Commission is out on the ground at the moment working along with thetradespeople. We just want to put a message out and put it on record that all New Zealand supports the efforts in Marlborough and Seddon. Thank you.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):There are two things that this Government will go down for in recent times. There are many others to add to the list but in the near future one will be allowing the Government Communications Security Bureau into Kiwis’ homes. The second however will be reducing the chances and the ability of Kiwis to even have a decent home that they can either rent or own. That is a situation that has patently become much much worse under this Government. That will be just part of its dark legacy. We know that homeownership in Auckland alone is now at levels below 60 percent. That is the first time ever that we have become that distant from what used to be a part of the Kiwi dream in New Zealand and it is happening right now in the city in which I live. Prices in Auckland under this Government have gone up by 30 percent. It is no wonder that people are finding it so difficult to get into homes.Maggie Barry: Have you got a home yet?JACINDA ARDERN: This actually is not about the ability of Kiwis to get into their quarter acre dream. I am being asked by a member of Parliament whether I have a home yet. Most politicians on this side know that this debate is not just about themselves and their own personal interest but about the ability of New Zealanders to own a home or rent a home. That is something that is becoming much more difficult under this Government. I am appalled that the Government would want us to reduce this down to our own trivial examples in light of what other people are facing out there.The flow-on effects of what is happening in the market at the moment are hitting the rental market. That is something that I want to talk a little bit about today. We are 30000 homes short in Auckland—30000 homes. Anyone who is trying to rent in a city like Auckland right now knows that that means they are facing higher rental prices and frequent rental reviews and as a consequence they are much more transient than they have ever been.Ultimately that means that children living in Auckland are suffering the consequences of our housing market. Why is that? Well 70 percent of children in poverty in New Zealand are living in rental properties. They are the ones who are living in families who are paying a high proportion of their income towards the cost of having shelter. Even though we as a country continue to pour $1.2 billion into accommodation supplements those are essentially getting sucked up by these increases in rental prices. The consequence is that as people get more desperate they are renting homes that are barely inhabitable. We are paying the price of that via the health of our children. Annette King is likely to touch on this more but diseases like rheumatic feverbronchiectasis infectious skin diseases and meningococcal are all illnesses that are worsened by poor-quality housing.Maggie Barry: Rheumatic fever we’re doing something about. Immunisation we’re doing something about. Your Government did nothing.JACINDA ARDERN: I have mentioned rheumatic fever and swabbing for rheumatic fever Ms Barry does not fix the problem. Anyone who works in this field knows this. Any MP who is doing their job who walks around our streets would know this as I found out recently in one of our poorer neighbourhoods. I saw houses that were literally raining from the inside—such is the poor quality of the housing that some of families are living in. If a child suffers from something like a respiratory disease it is ludicrous to hospitalise them for a few days and then send them back to the damp dingy home from which they came when it costs about the same amount just to insulate that home as it would be to keep them in hospital.The Government’s solution to all of this is to allow the council to bypass consent processes not to build affordable houses but just to build whatever house the developermight want to build. The second thing is to open up KiwiSaver a little. Eventually I am waiting for this Government to say that the next option is for us to live in shipping containers or zeppelins in the sky.What we need is step change. That is why Labour is supporting building 100000 new houses bringing in a capital gains tax having a healthy home guarantee and ending overseas speculation. What we need for our renters for our first-home buyers and for kids in this country is a vision and step change and that is something that this Government knows nothing about.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not want to interrupt the speech and it was well handled but I think you may have noticed that a member shifted from her seat and more or less constantly interjected from the moment that she shifted. That is against the rules and it seemed to be an indication of an excessive lunch.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Maggie Barry: Point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: No there is no need to speak to the point of order. I certainly do not agree with the member that there was continuous and excessive interjection. There was certainly some interjection. This is the general debate. It is a robust debate. I suspect that although the member to whom you are referring has moved and I accept she has moved it is possibly because she is going to make a contribution to the general debate. I find that absolutely acceptable. [Interruption ] Order!Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future):When the co-leader of the Green Party spoke earlier he made reference to the Electoral Commission as being the independent umpire. It reminded me that when the commission was established in 1993 in the lead up to MMP that was indeed the intention—that it would be the independent umpire that would oversee the administration and the running of our electoral system. But a couple of recent incidents have demonstrated that it has lost its way in that respect and it is time for reform.Dr Norman referred to the MMP review. When that review was completed and the recommendations of the Electoral Commission were put forward they came with a rider from the commission that its changes were designed not so much to facilitate the administration of the electoral system which would have been within its brief but to stop the proliferation of small parties in Parliament. Some might argue that that is desirable. That is a legitimate political point but it is not the role of the Electoral Commission to seek to design the electoral system in such a way that determines the choices that voters will make. If the voters of New Zealand want to elect 120 small parties to Parliament each having one member that is their prerogative. It is not for the Electoral Commission to say they cannot do it.There were similar overtones of the Electoral Commission overstepping that brief of being the independent umpire in the way that it handled United Future’s re-registration process. I want to draw some of those to the attention of the House this afternoon. The most ludicrous one of all is that under the Act as it stands at the moment parties seeking to register or to renew their registration have merely to sign a statutory declaration that they have the requisite number of current financial members. The Electoral Commission has no power at all to verify whether that declaration is correct. It simply relies on the word of the parties concerned. So if a party filled in an incorrect declaration there is no power on the part of the commission to take action. But when as happened in our case we said we were not able to comply at that time and we needed a period of grace the commission simply said “We will deregister you.” So the penalty was for being honest.When I said to the president of the commission Justice Williams that this was an absurd situation and that if we had simply signed the declaration no one would havebeen any the wiser he said: “But Mr Dunne that would have been the wrong thing to do.” I said: “Absolutely precisely—that is the point that I am making.” And he said: “But you would not want to be party to a dishonest action.” The point that he failed to get and that his commission failed to get was that the penalty for actual honesty is quite perverse.The second area where the commission showed that it is completely out of touch with contemporary reality was the matter that I raised during question time today. Since 2002 we have had legislation in New Zealand providing for the recognition of electronic transactions. Across a whole range of commercial and Government activities there is now provision for the recognition of the validity of such transactions. Indeed at the very height of our dispute with the Electoral Commission the Government released its own policy advocating greater use of electronic technology for transactions within Government agencies. But the Electoral Commission said: “No we are not interested in that because we are not bound by the Act. We will not accept online memberships as being legitimate. You have to provide memberships signed with quill pen and on parchment before we will accept these as being legitimate.”The implications of that go well beyond our particular case. They go to every political party in this House because I have checked all their websites and every political party in this House provides for online memberships. Be warned that if you ever get into a situation where you are going to be challenged by the Electoral Commission those memberships will count for nothing.I was talking to a senior member of the Labour Party recently. We were just recalling the days—and I am sure my colleague Annette King will remember—when we used to go around and sign up members with a little card. The person who signed someone up—if I signed Annette King up for instance—would be the person who signed the membership card. There was no requirement for her to do so so that membership even then would be invalid in the eyes of the Electoral Commission.The point I am making is that recent events have shown that far from the claim of Dr Norman that the Electoral Commission is an independent umpire it has ceased to be that. It has actually become a rather rampantly disturbed player in the game. Its powers need to be curbed. The Electoral Act needs to be brought into line with the original intention. I was one of those on the Justice and Electoral Committee way back at the time that it was promoted. I think the Hon Murray McCully and I are two people responsible for the Electoral Commission ever being established. We wanted it to be an independent umpire. It is time it returned to its roots. It is time the law was updated to make sure that common sense prevails in the way that the commission runs our electoral system because otherwise we will get to a point at some stage where the entire integrity of our electoral process is questioned because of its absurd behaviour.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):Yesterday I think we saw a couple of the best own goals that this country is probably ever likely to see. One of them I saw on the network news and was by a Peruvian soccer team. By fate as it were the teams were coloured one in red and one in blue. There was a cross to the midfield right in front of the goal. The player in the red shirt as fate would have it turned to his own goal and faced with only his own goalkeeper kicked it immediately into his own goal not realising of course that it was in fact his own goal and that what he had actually done was score a goal for the opposition. That was held up as probably one of the greatest own goals in history.But I think we can ask ourselves whether it really was because as fate would have it on that very same day in this very House we saw the Leader of the Opposition one David Shearer kick what could be considered only to be an amazing own goal of his own. That was when he stood and had a very similar brain fade standing in front of hisown goalmouth. He stood and confidently asked of the Prime Minister whether he or any of his staff had asked him or other members of the Labour Party to engage in broader conversation about or to seek support for the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. The Prime Minister leaping to his feet and no doubt feeling sorry for the Opposition leader who was standing in his own goalmouth about to kick his own goal said “Do you seriously want me to answer that question?” or words to that effect to which David Shearer rose back to his feet and even more confidently asked exactly the same question. That question was answered by the Prime Minister when he said “Well actually yes I have done. We met after I invited”—Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s a lie. That’s a lie.MIKE SABIN: Stand up and say that. Mr Shearer himself conceded later in his speech actually that that was exactly the case because he then went on to ask about the conversation that he denied having in the first place. So anyway standing in front of his own goalmouth he asked the Prime Minister “Have we ever had any conversations?”. The Prime Minister said “Absolutely we did. We snuck up the stairs to avoid your brothers in arms Russel Norman over there and the Green Party.” They made their way up to the Prime Minister’s office and had a 30-minute conversation in which time the Leader of the Opposition Mr Shearer said “Let us just keep this on the down low because it would not be a good look and I would not want you Prime Minister to be shouting it out around the House.” Then he comes into this House and asks the Prime Minister whether that conversation has ever occurred.I think when it comes to own goals there can be no greater own goal there can be no greater example of brain fade than that of that member who would have himself be the Prime Minister of this country but who cannot even recall having a conversation with the Prime Minister about something. At least the Peruvian soccer player actually had the dignity to publicly apologise for what he had just done and what he had got so wrong whereas the Leader of the Opposition David Shearer went straight out on to the black and white floor stared down the barrel of a camera and said “Oh I told the Prime Minister to keep that secret.” It is strange that because he was just asking a question in the House 20 minutes earlier about that very same thing. If there has ever been an own goal that was a very good one.While this is all going on of course what is this side of the House getting up to? Well we are doing what we were elected to do what Kiwis placed their faith in us to do and that is to manage the Government’s finances to ensure that we are building a more productive and competitive economy to deliver better public services and to rebuild Christchurch. We are making fantastic progress across all those scores. What we see from the Opposition is Grant Robertson who seems to be the tail wagging the dog—Dr David Clark: Worst economic record in 50 years.MIKE SABIN: Come up with a different line—come up with a different line. You are going to have to renew the material Mr Clark—you are going to have to renew the material. Mr Robertson is all about the conspiracy theory around the Government Communications Security Bureau and Andrea Vance. Kiwis care not—Kiwis care not about that. What they are seeing is the manufacturing sector improve. What they are seeing is this economy growing at a faster rate than any other economy in the world. What they are seeing is economic performance. That is what they want to see.Meanwhile Mr Shearer is out there. His latest is snapper. He comes in here with a bit of show and tell—a couple of dead snapper. Well I have got news for Mr Shearer. He should not be concerned about snapper because it is not the snapper that is dead in the water; it is that member and that member’s party—dead in the water.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. During the speech from Mr Sabin a member of the Opposition was using some terms that clearly are unparliamentary. Can I ask that you consider asking him to withdraw and apologise to Mr Sabin.Mr SPEAKER: I know the remarks the member is referring to. On this occasion he was not accusing anybody of being a liar; he was simply saying “That’s a lie.” It is a robust debate. I do not think that on this occasion it was out of order.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):We have had the truth of the week today. We have had the moment of truth today. In fact we have had the quote of the week and it came from Tony Ryall. For the members opposite who did not hear it Tony Ryall said: “We are focused on growing our debt.” That is what he said. He said: “We are focused on growing our debt.” Yes and he is absolutely right. He is focused on growing our economic debt our social debt and our moral debt. That is what this Government has been doing.Let us start with housing. What a slap in the face for New Zealanders. What a boot in the backside for the first home owners who received this Government’s feeble pathetic and belated attempts at trying to put housing policy in place. It had 5 years to look at housing policy in New Zealand but in the last year it has been floundering around trying to find a policy. For 5 long years in Government National could not give a damn about first home owners in this country. For 5 years it was not interested in affordable housing for New Zealanders. In fact it was not interested in healthy homes for low and modest earners in this country.We heard excuse after excuse. We were told that there is no housing crisis. Well that was said many times about Christchurch after the earthquakes—“There is no housing crisis.” Of course that is ostrich-like behaviour because now National has had to pull its head out of the sand and admit that there is a housing crisis in Christchurch and now it is belatedly trying to find some ways to address it.Then we had the Minister of Finance saying low interest rates mean that New Zealanders are getting into more homes. Well we have fewer homes being built in this country and fewer people getting into homes because of the so-called low interest rates.Hon Craig Foss: That’s a lie.Hon ANNETTE KING: Yesterday was the final insult to first home owners Mr Foss—and you would know a lot about it being a lie. You would certainly know about that with your background. But you would want to know what this Government finally did to first home owners yesterday. It is prepared to subsidise wealthy New Zealanders with enough spare cash to be able to buy shares in assets that they already own while opposing a policy that would assist the building of more affordable homes in New Zealand underKiwiBuild.The Government can subside the wealthy to get shares in an asset that all of us own and God knows how much this subsidy is because what did we hear today? No costings have been done. Ministers take a Cabinet paper to Cabinet with no costings of what this subsidy is for the wealthiest New Zealanders who are going to buy shares. The Government has no idea what the poor hard-working taxpayer is going to stump up with so that some people who have got a bit of money in their pocket can buy a share but the Government denies that we need a policy in this country to build more affordable homes.Well it has been called the “Harvey Norman”—pay now no interest. Of course they are even going to get two or three dividend payouts before they have to cough up with all the dough for the shares that they are getting. Well I think I agree with BrianGaynor. BrianGaynor whom National members like to quote when it suits them said itis desperate. He called it a desperate policy—buying votes. But National is not prepared to help those buying houses.The biggest joke of all today was hearing Tony Ryall saying that he is on the side of nation-building—he is on the side of nation-building. He is not on the side of building houses. We need to build some warm dry affordable homes for New Zealanders. If this Government is really interested in having warm dry affordable homes why not put it in legislation that they all must be insulated and they all must have heating? Why is that not part of its agenda? No it is all fluff for the Government. It is all blatherskite and there is no substance. There are lots of pieces of paper lots of little meetings lots of little committees but when it gets down to the hard detail National is not prepared to have homes built that low and modest income New Zealanders—Hon Craig Foss: All State houses insulated under National—it’s called nation-building.Hon ANNETTE KING: This will not worry Mr Foss who has probably got many homes—a millionaire. It is of no interest to him. All that he can do is interject. But it is time that this Government took housing seriously and it certainly does not.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore):Well New Zealand is not at all well served by its Opposition members. What a woeful lot of wallies they turned out to be. They flounder they snap they carp and they work their way round the sidelines but they do not deal with anything important. We as a Government focus on what really matters which is the economy which is families which is housing and which is jobs. We are a Government that is getting on with the job and I will give you some examples.We just need to look at the environment and conservation. The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act is a particularly fine example. This is a piece of legislation that has been passed. Unfortunately of course for 9 long years the Labour Government propped up by its buddies the Greens did absolutely nothing while 46 wells were drilled with absolutely no legislation and absolutely no protection for the environment whatsoever. Then what did it do? It compounded the problem. When we put through the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act which was a piece of legislation designed to fill that gap Labour blocked it. It tried to stop it. It argued against it. So it has absolutely no moral high ground whatsoever around this and I am very very proud that we put that legislation through despite its pathetic opposition.The Minister for the Environment Amy Adams said earlier that the quality of debate in this House has gone downhill in the time that she has been here and listening to the quality of the debate from the opposing benches today I can see why she says that. But why is that? Are the members deliberately misinformed and malevolent? Are they just politicking? Or are they woefully ignorant? I am tending to think with the Resource Management Act reforms that they are absolutely woefully ignorant. We have created a system with the Resource Management Act reforms that creates more certainty. It is less costly it enables growth and it protects core environmental standards. It is fantastic. The Resource Management Act is A-OK. That is what we think. The Opposition says “Not at all.”Opposition members are obviously not well-informed. In April Statistics New Zealand’s Business Operations Survey cited that the Resource Management Act led to uncertainty which in the past 2 years alone—Hon Trevor Mallard: She’s reading the research unit notes.MAGGIE BARRY: I am reading from the statistics. You would do well member to actually inform yourself and read a bit more because you speak constantly from a position of ignorance. For 2 years the cancellation of projects worth potentially $800million has occurred. What was the uncertainty that led to the cancellation of about two-thirds of these projects put down to? The Resource Management Act and its costly cumbersome reforms which do not work.The way that the system works currently needs to be changed. A dangerous brick chimney—one of my favourite examples—is an $800 demolition job basically but requires in terms of its resource consents more than $3000 worth of costings. This is the kind of stuff that actually has to stop. Some businesses would you believe have spent up to 25 percent—a quarter—of their total expenditures on just applying for the resource consents. The most damning of all I suppose in the business survey is that only 3 percent of businesses that were surveyed said that the current Resource Management Act enhanced their business. It does not work.Our record is a proud one. When it comes to water we introduced the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. We committed $340 million to cleaning up some of our most iconic rivers and lakes. We also introduced a national objectives framework. We have done more to clean up our waters to make good the problems from past generations than Labour ever did. In fact we have spent more than five times the amount that the Labour Government spent so it is simply farcical for the Greens and Labour to assume that we are not doing the right thing in this space. We are and they should be ashamed of themselves. They have gone a bit quiet which is a refreshing change.When we look at waste management—which is something they ought to know a lot about because they have wasted a lot of time with their mismanagement—this Government invested $43 million on 82 waste minimisation projects across the country in 2009. When it comes to contaminated sites we have spent $5.65 million on cleaning up those contaminated sites. Environmental reporting has been much improved under this Government and under the able leadership of our Minister for the Environment Amy Adams. When it comes to hazardous substances there was no movement in this area from that failed Labour Government and its buddies the fruit loop Greens. When it comes to the compliance of hazardous substances we have done excellent work in this space. Thank you.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker.Tēnā koutou e te Whare. “100% Pure New Zealand” is a goal worth fighting for and I urge this Parliament to take every opportunity to play its part in making this real not only in terms of regulation but also in terms of supporting an industry to innovate and clean up its act. This can be done. “100% Pure New Zealand” seems to be 100 percent ambivalent in this Parliament.I want to address a specific opportunity to support a clean-up of a river. We have just heard the previous speaker Maggie Barry say that it is all happening but I challenge this Parliament and every party. What about our rivers? What about the “black drain”? The “black drain” is a name of shame because of this country refusing to deal with an issue that has been going on since 1955. You ask the tangata whenua of theMātaatua waka what they think about their river being called the “black drain”. Above Kawerau imagine a sparkling waterfall from a river that disappears underground for several kilometres from Lake Tarawera and comes out at Kawerau in a sparkling waterfall. That is as close as “100% Pure New Zealand” as we are possibly likely to see. This beautiful river full of fish and life is clean and oxygenated until you reach Kawerau and below the river it is brown. For many many years it was black and covered in contaminated foam and now it is brown and still very very dirty.It is not the only option. We can work towards that “100% Pure New Zealand” by taking the modern opportunity to clean up and work with companies to use new technology not by allowing the courts to give people 25-year consents to contaminatebut to actually stop this kind of gross pollution. I have a bill the Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill that would do that and I challenge the members of this House who are in doubt about their position on this issue to support my bill. I know that National and ACT have no ambivalence; they are simply going to oppose it. I am calling on the other parties. Do the right thing. Show some courage and recognise that the people of the Bay of Plenty and the environment of the Bay of Plenty deserve more than rhetoric about investment in jobs. They deserve to know that that mill will continue and that my bill will protect them from having to clean up for another 25 years and then some. In actual fact there is something we can all do here—those of us with the will and the courage—to clean up that river so that we can make this “100% Pure New Zealand” closer to reality.But will we? Do we have the willingness and the courage to stop gross pollution in the 21st century or are we going to keep going with allowing the name “black drain” to be a shame on our national reputation? I challenge people to work with the mills of the Bay of Plenty to stop the idea that they have to close. They do not have to close; they have to modernise. They have to take those 25 years to invest in clean technology. We do not hear them talking aboutbiochar and activated charcoal. We do not hear them talking about modern filtration. All we hear them saying is “Do not push us. Don’t draw a line in the sand.” Well we are drawing a line with this bill. The Green Party is drawing a line and saying that we know you can do better. We will work for the “100% Pure New Zealand”. We will work with you to do better but we need the other people in this House to support an opportunity to make positive change.Our rivers are not just about a slogan and they are not just about visitors; they are about a commitment to future generations to tamariki and mokopuna. They deserve a clean environment and rivers that sparkle and are full of life. Rivers are not drains. I believe that industry in the 21st century does want to invest in turning rivers into drains. I believe—and that is why I have put my bill up—that there is an opportunity to clean up the anomalies to support the very few that are still abusing and that the courts have not addressed by changing the exceptional circumstances clause and giving them plus their consent another 5 years. That is fair and that is reasonable. I challenge New Zealand First and Labour in particular to step up to this opportunity and support industry to do its best for our environment for the sake of everybody.I would like to mihi to the tangata whenua whom I have worked with for many years on this issue. He mihi nui. Kia kaha. Although it appears that we do not have many days left to keep this alive I know that you are fighting hard. I know that you want this done. I know that you are looking to this Parliament to stand up and start working—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The time for this debate has expired.Mark Mitchell: Mr Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Oh I am sorry. I apologise. I call the honourable member Mark Mitchell. I am excited about what is coming next Mark.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney):I would like to talk about something that has been in our media a lot over the last few months and that is our national security. In 2006 in AnNasiriyah Iraq a supply convoy carrying food for coalition troops was attacked by al-Qaeda. During the attack al-Qaeda operatives took a satellite phone from a dead driver. Before the account was cancelled there were over 200 calls made. The calls were spread around countries like Saudi Arabia Yemen the UK some European countries the United States and 14 calls were made to New Zealand. Why were terrorists who were attacking and killing our allies in Iraq making calls to New Zealand? That is why we have agencies like the SIS and the GovernmentCommunications Security Bureau (GCSB)—so they can find out who and why and so they can protect us.Mr Shearer said yesterday that when he was the victim of a terrorist attack he witnessed the death the human suffering and the carnage that that brings. I am sure he has played over in his mind many times how that attack might have been prevented or stopped. The quickest way to invite a terrorist attack is to become complacent and to say “It can’t happen to me. Why would anyone attack us?”. Is that what happened to Mr Shearer? Was he a victim of “It can’t happen to me.”? Had complacency crept in? Mr Shearer indicated yesterday that he had to witness death and suffering before he became serious about security. Well our Prime Minister has shown that he cannot and will not wait for people to die before he becomes serious about our security. He takes our security seriously right now.We are incredibly lucky in New Zealand that we have the most transparent and open political system in the world which allows us to debate and challenge ideas and legislation. The GCSB legislation has been a classic example of this. The legislation has had the full blast of sunlight on it for all to see. It has been debated until the cows come home. It is good legislation which has created certainty and clarity where there was none. It provides rigorous checks and balances and multiple hoops to jump though before any information is able to be obtained by the agencies tasked with protecting us.Finally I would like to share some of my own observations. I do not want to be an alarmist but on the other hand I do not want a malaise to become part of our psyche—a malaise that tells us that somehow we have become immunised against the threats that the global community faces. We have not. For a decade I witnessed the pain suffering and fear that come with terrorism. I was forced to deal directly with groups like al-Qaeda al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Sometimes they are brutal and unsophisticated in the way they operate. At other times they have the use of the best and the most sophisticated technology available. Sometimes terror attacks are planned sitting on a dirt floor in a shanty town in Mogadishu. At other times they are planned in a penthouse in a European city. But one thing they have in common is a desire to defeat security measures that Governments put in place to protect their people. They can sniff out weakness and complacency at a thousand miles.I would like to acknowledge our Prime Minister who is making sure that we are not an easy target and who is taking the steps necessary to ensure that someone like Mr Shearer does not become a victim again. Thank you.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment BillInspector-General of Intelligence and Security Amendment BillIntelligence and Security Committee Amendment BillThird ReadingsRt Hon JOHN KEY (Minister responsible for the GCSB):I moveThat the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Amendment Bill and the Intelligence and Security Committee Amendment Bill be now read a third time . This is essential legislation that has attracted a lot of debate much of it alarmist. It is one of the strengths of our country that people who oppose legislation have the opportunity to do so. That is their right whether or not they understand what the legislation actually does. Some people are fundamentally opposed to the work of the intelligence agencies. Those critics opposethe agencies almost on principle. As Prime Minister I am not one of those people. That is because I have access to evidence that shows that without the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the SIS our national security would be vulnerable. There are threats our Government needs to protect New Zealanders from. Those threats are real and ever-present and we underestimate them at our peril. New Zealanders are entitled to expect that their security is something that the Government takes seriously. We do and we take it very seriously. But we cannot say that we take it seriously and then not make the tools available to allow our security services to do their job. That is the opposite of taking security seriously and that is something that I will never do.Over the past 4½ years that I have been Prime Minister I have been briefed by intelligence agencies on many issues some that have deeply concerned me. If I could disclose some of the risks and threats from which our security services protect us I think it would cut dead some of the most fanciful claims that I have heard lately from those who oppose this legislation. But to disclose that work publicly would in some cases jeopardise it and so I cannot. I can only assure New Zealanders that the GCSB is a necessary and valuable contributor to our national security just as my predecessor Helen Clark said when she said much the same thing a couple of weeks ago.Today as the House debates this legislation I think it is important that we all know why it is needed. It is not a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations. It is not about expanding the powers of a mysterious intelligence empire. It simply makes clear what the GCSB may and may not do and it fixes an Act passed under the Labour Government a decade ago that is not and probably never has been fit for purpose. So it is a great shame to see Labour now running away from sorting out the problems it created. But here in the National Government I recognise the importance of national security and I am pleased that John Banks and Peter Dunne do too. I acknowledge Mr Dunne and Mr Banks for their efforts to strengthen this legislation. It is better legislation for their input.The legislation makes clear theGCSB’s three functions. These are information assurance and cyber-security foreign intelligence and assisting other agencies. The first of these functions allows the GCSB to help protect Government organisations and important private sector entities from cyber-attacks. This is a growing threat that targets our information and the intellectual property of our best and brightest. Already this year the number of logged cyber-attack incidents is larger than it was for all of last year. TheGCSB’s specialist skills can help protect departments and companies and this legislation gives it a clear mandate to do that. A lot has been said about this so I want to be clear about a few things. Firstly cyber-security is about protecting our secrets. It is not about spying. The legislation requires the GCSB to get a warrant from the independent Commissioner of Security Warrants and me before it can intercept a New Zealander’s communications. That warrant must be issued for a particular function—in this case cyber-security. The clear intention of the function is to protect not to spy.The legislation also allows for conditions to be put on warrants and I intend to do just that. I will not allow cyber-security warrants in the first instance to give the GCSB access to the content of New Zealanders’ communications. There will be times when a serious cyber-intrusion is detected against a New Zealander and the GCSB will then need to look at the content. That is why the legislation allows for that but that should be the end point not the starting point. So I intend to use a two-step process for warrants requiring the GCSB to come back and make the case for a new warrant to access content only where the content is relevant to a specific threat. I also expect the GCSB to have the consent of the New Zealander involved unless there is a very good reason not to.The second function of the GCSB is as I said collecting foreign intelligence. That by the way is the largest proportion of the agency’s work.The third function allows the GCSB to assist the police the New Zealand SIS and the Defence Force. This is something it has been doing for more than a decade including under the previous Government. At all times the GCSB believed that it was acting lawfully as did the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and successive Prime Ministers. This is because the Government Communications Security Bureau Act said that it could assist others but it also stated that it could not undertake surveillance on New Zealanders. No agency should operate with such an ambiguous legal framework. TheKitteridge review identified just 88 cases of assistance over 10 years at an average of under nine people a year so this is not and never will be about wholesale spying on New Zealanders.The truth is that the GCSB has unique capabilities and it makes no sense to duplicate those when they are so rarely used. Instead we will make it clear that the GCSB can assist only those three agencies and only when they are able to show that they have the lawful authority to undertake the surveillance themselves. Nothing in this legislation allows for wholesale spying on New Zealanders—nothing. The legislation actually tightens—it does not widen—the existing regime.I also want to be clear about another issue in the legislation and that is metadata. There have been claims that this legislation offers no protection for metadata and that it allows for the wholesale collection of metadata without a warrant. None of that is true. Metadata is treated the same in the legislation as the content of a communication. So when the GCSB wants to access metadata it is treated with the same level of seriousness and protection as if the GCSB was accessing the actual content of a communication and there are protections around that.The legislation is good legislation and it is necessary legislation. It fixes the problems with the current Act and clears up the ambiguities that Labour passed into law a decade ago. It puts in place a robust review of the intelligence agencies in 2015 and every 5 to 7 years thereafter. It requires more transparency through open public hearings for the financial reviews of the intelligence agencies. It requires the GCSB to tell New Zealanders how many times it has assisted other agencies and how many warrants and authorisations have been issued. It gives the GCSB a set of guiding principles. It acknowledges the importance of human rights independence integrity and professionalism. It puts in place a stronger oversight regime which will go some way to rebuilding confidence in the GCSB.Let me finish by saying this. I have rarely seen so much misinformation and conspiracy about a subject as has been perpetuated about this legislation. That has some citizens agitated and alarmed which I regret but my regret about this would be nothing compared with the regret if this measure was not passed and New Zealanders were harmed because of the gap that currently exists in our security arrangements. This legislation is being passed today because its provisions are needed today. They are needed right now because there are threats against us right now. Others may play politics with the security and lives of New Zealanders but I cannot and will not do so. That is why I commend this very good legislation to the House.DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition):I start by first thanking the Prime Minister for coming to the House and explaining to us what his Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation is in fact going to do and may I recommend that next time the Government puts the clauses into the bill rather than having to rely on a third reading.Today we confront a challenge that countries around the world are grappling with: how we keep our countries safe from cyber-intrusion and terrorism. That threat is veryreal and I have experienced it at first hand. I absolutely understand the critical importance of national security and we in the Labour Party take that very seriously. But just as important is how we balance that with the need to protect our freedoms and our right to privacy. That is our challenge.We are living in an age dominated by everything digital and developing at a pace without equal in humankind. Just a few short years ago we communicated solely via letters in the mail. That is a dying trade these days. Instead the internet dominates our lives and we use it to educate ourselves and others to create new innovations to communicate and to do business at home and around the world. With it and other technology almost anything can be found out about anyone at the touch of a button: where someone lives and works what they do in their spare time whom they talk to and what they say—every detail of our most private moments that we hold sacred. In the wrong hands this technology can be used as a weapon to pry into our lives in a way that we all find abhorrent. We cannot completely prevent that kind of abuse by individuals and organisations with malicious intent. The power of the Government and its security agencies can play their part to combat that threat but we must have confidence in those agencies we must be clear about the limits and we must trust the oversight that has been given to them.The legislation being passed today was the perfect opportunity to be a world leader in addressing this area. The revelations of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have created global disquiet but the sad fact about the GCSB legislation is that all that it has achieved is to fuel fear about the State’s ability to pry not about those threats that we may face. That has been because of the way the GCSB legislation was written and rammed through Parliament.We could have seized the chance to thoroughly investigate how our intelligence sector works in an increasingly global environment. We could have robustly debated the rights and responsibilities of the State and when and how it should deploy the tools at its disposal for our national security. We could have based the legislation on the findings of a full and independent inquiry. We could have been a world leader confronting these dilemmas and charting through a path that would act as a model for other countries. We have been a leader in the past. We led in giving women the vote in the 19th century and we led in having a nuclear-free New Zealand in the 20th century. This was our opportunity to lead again. That would have been a great starting point for restoring Kiwis’ confidence.Instead this legislation is about simply getting across the line. It is about finding a quick remedy to a political hangover. John Key tells us that people do not care about this issue. Well we know that that is not true. Thousands of New Zealanders have marched in the streets and gone to rallies and there have been debates in workplaces homes and communities right across the country. They might not understand John Key’s confused and complex explanations about how sections 8A and 8C relate to section 15 or section 14 or whatever or the two-stage warrant process that he would be sure to put in place as Prime Minister. But they do not find this legislation at all reassuring. They have no faith that we have got the balance right or that we have fully thought through the consequences of this law.Labour was open to negotiations from the beginning. We had a principled position that we needed a thorough inquiry right across our entire intelligence network because that was fundamental to getting the solution correct. John Key did us the courtesy of listening but he made it crystal clear that he was not interested in any compromise. He did not want to deal with Labour or anyone else because he already had Peter Dunne in the bag. He had the single vote the one vote that he needed to pass this legislation today. I find that deeply deeply disappointing. This issue strikes at the heart of oursociety our sovereignty and our rights and freedoms as citizens of this country. It is too important to simply bring it back to a numbers game to a situation where you have a willing buyer and a willing seller.This is a sad day. We are passing legislation that is ad hoc that ismickey mouse and where you have to have a third reading to explain exactly what it will do. It will do nothing to reassure New Zealanders that their private lives are safe from the prying eyes of our spies. Right up to the last minute the Prime Minister has been forced to clarify what the GCSB will actually achieve whether it will be able to read your emails how many warrants it needs and what foreign powers it might share that information with. New Zealanders deserve much better than that. They deserve better than bad law. They deserve better than the loose law they are seeing in front of us today the law that leaves them looking over their shoulders. New Zealand could have led the way in responding to an increasingly digital age and got the balance right between keeping our citizens safe and our personal freedoms intact.There is hope though. The next Government a Labour-led Government will take a different path. We will act on day one in office to commission the full review that we have promised. We will seek agreement across this Parliament for terms of reference. We will involve New Zealanders at every step of the way. We will replace this law with a world-leading one that is based on the findings of that comprehensive inquiry because the only way we will ever win back people’s trust which has been so sadly lost right across this country is to get an enduring solution that works in the best interests of this country. Thank you.Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister):Well I think I heard in that speech a reference to a piece of legislation that “strikes at the heart of democracy”. You would think that if this Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation that we are debating for the—who knows—fifth or sixth time in this Parliament struck at the heart of democracy the Leader of the Opposition could have told us how but he did not. In fact he pointed out that he needed a third reading speech from the Prime Minister to understand the legislation and show what was in it. That is negligent of his duty as the Leader of the Opposition because uniquely among the issues a Government deals with security issues are the ones in which the Leader of the Opposition participates. He participates. He is briefed not on every issue but on anything that matters actually. He ought to know what is in this legislation before he gets to the Prime Minister’s third reading speech at 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon after 12 months of debate about this legislation.That is what we have heard from the Opposition members. What we have heard is a whole lot of leftover half-warmed rhetoric about democratic rights and none of the attention to the detail the law and the balance that this issue deserves. They simply have not contributed—Hon Hekia Parata: At all.Hon BILL ENGLISH: —at all—to settling the issues that they say are so important. That makes some of us question their intent on this piece of legislation.What this debate which has been so shallow has done is it has told us more about the state of the Labour Party and the Green Party than it has about security law. Security law of course is a bit complicated. That is why we are here—because the Labour Government got it wrong 10 years ago. It got it wrong.Grant Robertson: Who voted for it Bill?Hon BILL ENGLISH: We voted for it.Grant Robertson: You voted for it.Hon BILL ENGLISH: We voted for it—yes we did. And I think that is exactly the point. We voted for it because that regime was better than the one that was there before.There was a late change made to it that did not suit us politically but we supported it because we believed that better security and intelligence law was important for New Zealand. What did this Labour Opposition do? Those members sat around in their student politics common room discussions and said: “Why don’t we try to score some political points?” and now they have learnt a harsh lesson.The Greens are much better at scoring political points. The Greens believe that there are no threats to New Zealand’s national security. They believe that terrorism is a figment of the capitalist imagination. They are consistent—they are consistent. They score their political points. All the political benefit of opposing this legislation has gone to the Greens.The Labour Party has deserted for the first time in a generation its longstanding role as trusted stewards of security and intelligence issues in the New Zealand Parliament. As the days go by we have become more appreciative of the balancing and sensible impact that people like Dr Michael Cullen had on that Labour Party and to her credit on this issue the Rt Hon Helen Clark who in her whole career—and I have seen it unfold for 25 years—was always strong and clear on these security issues.The Labour Party has shown that it is unsuitable to be a trusted Government on this issue not because it raises some issues but because it shows a complete inability to deal with and resolve those issues. That was what was required here. We could have had an in-depth informed debate about the details of this legislation that would improve it. We got that from Peter Dunne the man who has been on the sharp end of privacy issues. We got it from Peter Dunne. He made suggestions that illustrated that he understood the rules understood the threats and understood the seriousness of the issues and the Government adopted a number of those suggestions because they were sensible.This piece of legislation was described in detail by the Prime Minister in a way that our political opponents have made sure the public did not understand. It is more cohesive legislation. There is much more transparency.Andrew Little: What about the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission and the Privacy Commissioner—they didn’t understand it either?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well the Human Rights Commission did not read it either. The Human Rights Commission did not read the legislation. More cohesive legislation more transparency and more accountability—it is pretty simple. No activity can be conducted under this legislation without a warrant—no activity without a warrant. Secondly there can be no warrant without scrutiny of that warrant. You cannot just issue it; it has got to be scrutinised. Thirdly there can be no scrutiny of that issued warrant without independence—that is independence from the people who signed the warrant. That is the core of this legislation and nothing we have heard from the Labour Party today makes one single suggestion about any change to that legislation that improves the balance.Labour has taken the position of someone who has no idea what they are doing. “We’ll have a review. We’ll have a review. We’ll talk to everybody.”—that is the Labour Party which has been intimately involved with New Zealand security and intelligence issues since the day it became a political party. In recent years it has been fully briefed in Government and in Opposition as it did to us. When it comes to rewriting the law with a whole lot of public interest in it Labour has got nothing to say—nothing. That is because it chose the shallow easy short-term political point-scoring on which the Greens have not justoutpointed those members but knocked them out. The Greens have not justoutpointed them; they have knocked them out. I have to say that that has been a disappointment—a real disappointment.It is possible that because the Labour Party has given up that role as a responsible leading political party this legislation—it is possible—could have been better. It couldhave been better but those members could not be bothered because they had listened to Grant Robertson who said to his leader who has decent and sound instincts on this stuff: “No take the short cut. Get the political points scored.” Well Russel Norman dealt to that strategy.We probably will not have to do security and intelligence legislation for a while because this legislation is much better than the last legislation and the last legislation—the legislation passed by Helen Clark—was better than what existed before it. Before that the GCSB had no legal framework whatsoever and she rightly thought that that was a bit much and that there needed to be some framework. We have now intensified that framework in terms of accountability cohesion and transparency. That is why the National Government stands behind this legislation.We are taking the responsible act of a Government that has been entrusted with the security of New Zealanders. We have improved the legislation. More people can see what is happening and that is good. It is legislation that will stand the test of time. Do you know what I think? I think that if the Labour Party ever got to be in Government and did a review this is what would come out at the end of it. I just wish that Labour members could have taken the bother to think it through this time and contribute to the debate but they did not.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):New Zealand is a country that has been built on the values of democracy independence and transparency. We value our security. We value our privacy. A lecture from Bill English about the importance of security and independence when it is his Government and John Key who have undermined New Zealanders’ confidence in our security and intelligence agencies is something we on this side of the House will not take. The politics that have been played here have been played by John Key demeaning and diminishing any opposition to this bill and arrogantly dismissing agencies like the Human Rights Commission the Law Society MarieShroff who is the Privacy Commissioner Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Sir Bruce Ferguson—all of them dismissed out of hand by an arrogant out-of-touch Prime Minister John Key. We will not take that from this National Party.As we stand here today this Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation undermines those core New Zealand values of democracy independence and transparency. It damages our democracy and the Labour Party opposes this legislation absolutely. It has been driven through by John Key and a National Party that has lost touch with the concerns of New Zealanders—the thousands of New Zealanders who have marched up and down streets across New Zealand the 1500 or 2000 who showed up at the Auckland Town Hall and the 50000 who emailedCampbell Live . John Key dismisses those concerns as being wrong and irrelevant. He has lost touch with New Zealanders on this issue. He has lost touch and arrogantly dismisses all of the concerns raised by genuine people who say to him: “You John Key are destroying the trust and confidence of New Zealanders in their security and intelligence agencies.”John Key is not taking New Zealanders with him on an issue that is so serious for our future. He is relying on a one-vote majority to fundamentally expand and change the powers of the GCSB—a one-vote majority that the person giving it has acknowledged was bought; willing buyer willing seller. That is what changes the law today to expand the powers of the GCSB. The loss of confidence in New Zealand’s security agencies lies at the feet of John Key. It started with his evasions around Kim Dotcom his inability to front up to New Zealanders. He had to have every detail dragged out of him about that illegal spying and then when it emerged that there was more illegal spying the details of that had to be dragged out of John Key. He tried to cover it up for months.He loses touch with New Zealanders and he loses their trust and confidence when he does that.Then he appoints his childhood friend to run the GCSB. He pretends he did not contact him and then it emerges that he did contact him. He was the only person interviewed for the position Mr Key. That is not consistent with the values of New Zealanders. New Zealanders know it is wrong to appoint your mate to a job like that. That is so serious and important for New Zealanders and that is what reduces the confidence and trust of New Zealanders in our security agencies.Then John Key loses touch with the international events that are going on. We are not living in a vacuum here. There are things happening all over the world around the security of citizens and around how their privacy is treated. This was as David Shearer said an opportunity for New Zealand a moment for New Zealand to say: “We understand how much the world has changed in a decade. Yes this legislation needs to change and we’ll do that on the basis of the values of New Zealanders—on the basis of democracy on the basis of independence on the basis of transparency.” But John Key did not take up that opportunity. He did not take New Zealanders with him. If there had been a review that would have been an opportunity for a conversation with New Zealanders about what they want from their agencies. It would have taken New Zealanders with them and rebuilt that trust. But John Key ploughs on trying to put a Band-Aid over the political wound that is the GCSB and he does that at the expense of our democracy.The Government and John Key have failed to make the case for this legislation. He threw out the al-Qaeda threat onBreakfast withSi and Gary . We had him stand up in the House today and say: “I can’t tell you about all these terrible things that are happening but by the way when I was talking toSi and Gary I threw Yemen in.” That is how much respect John Key has got for this Parliament. He puts that out there toSi and Gary but he will not come to this House and be upfront with us. The work has not been done to build New Zealanders’ confidence and trust into this bill.John Key and Bill English have both said today that this bill does not expand the powers of the GCSB. That is wrong. It fundamentally does. It includes a brand new function for the GCSB. John Key chose to come to the House today and reinterpret section 8A inserted by clause 6 of the legislation. He tells us today that he can define how warrants will be put under that legislation. Well I say to Mr Key: “Put it in the law.” Put it in the law if that is what you believe because section 8A deals with something that New Zealanders are very concerned about—the question of whether or not the content of their emails and their communications can be looked at. It is clear that there is no clause in this legislation that provides that protection.John Key says that section 8A is about protection. Well how is he going to provide that protection? He is going to provide that protection by using the powers of the GCSB to spy and therefore New Zealanders deserve to be protected. But you know what? New section 14 inserted by clause 12 of this legislation which allegedly protects New Zealanders applies to only one of the three functions of the GCSB. It does not apply to section 8A. So New Zealanders are not protected in this legislation when it comes to the cyber-security and information assurance function. Today in the Privileges Committee Ministers from the National Government were horrified when they discovered that their metadata was suddenly going to be looked at. They were appalled by this. Well if they are appalled by that why will they not provide those same protections to ordinary New Zealanders whom they are so worried about? My colleague David Parker will talk more about that in the future.I also want to refer to another expansion of powers that John Key will not admit to. Section 8C inserted by clause 6 allows the GCSB to cooperate with other agencies andprovides support to them. Once upon a time when that power was in the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 it was limited to the safety of any person and the prevention or detection of a serious crime. Those criteria those provisos have gone. They have gone. Section 8C says that the GCSB can support the SIS the New Zealand Defence Force and the Police in any of their functions. Anything that they do the GCSB is now able to work in that space. Remember that section 8C is not covered by new section 14 which protects the rights of New Zealanders.This was an opportunity to improve the oversight mechanisms. A lot has changed in a decade in this country. We do need to improve the oversight mechanisms that were in the 2003 Act but instead there is a tinkering around the edges that concentrates all the power in the hands of John Key the very man who has ensured that New Zealanders’ trust and confidence has disappeared from our security agencies. There is still an opportunity for a member of National to show some conscience and get up and cast their vote against this bill. John Banks could do it. He could listen to the libertarian part of his party—the ACT Party—that is telling him and saying to him that this is wrong and against the ACT Party’s principles. He could vote against it. Peter Dunne could actually come good on his word when he said this: “New Zealanders will never be spied on.” That is what he said. He said: “I would never vote for that.” but today he votes for that. He could turn it round.What we need in this House is for MPs to stand up for New Zealanders’ values of democracy and independence and transparency. The Labour Party is standing up for those values by opposing this bill today. When we are in Government we will get rid of this law and we will replace it with a law that will restore the confidence of New Zealanders in their security agencies. It will get the balance between security and privacy and it will support the values of New Zealanders. Labour will stand up for those values; today National trashes them.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on the third reading of the “Big Brother Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill”. As the moment of truth approaches on this legislation there will be 121 people in this House who will have to make a decision on how they feel about freedom. They have to make a decision as to which way they are going to vote about freedom. Are they going to vote for freedom—for liberty? Or are they going to vote against it? That fundamentally is the decision that everyone in this House—the 121 of us here—have to make.This legislation is a fundamental constraint on freedom. It fundamentally restricts our freedom of expression. It reduces our freedom to live free from State surveillance. In that respect it is legislation that reduces the freedom of New Zealanders. This is the moment of truth. This is not just an issue for New Zealand because the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) which this legislation considers is part of a global spying network called the “Five Eyes”. I think the global context is absolutely essential when considering this legislation.A few days ago theGuardiannewspaper revealed that it was forced by the Government of the United Kingdom to physically smash up the hard drives of its computers. We had the Government of the United Kingdom which prides itself on being the home of freedom and liberty to some extent forcing theGuardiannewspaper people to smash up their computer hard drives in the basement of their newspaper offices. That was because those computer hard drives contained information about the “Five Eyes” global surveillance network—the documents that were released by Edward Snowden.Those documents have revealed to every citizen on planet Earth that the “Five Eyes” network of which New Zealand is a member is engaged in a global surveillanceactivity where it is spying on all electronic communications that it can possibly get its hands on which is a pretty complete set and is analysing them and storing them in a very large database.Beyond that the partner of one of the journalists who has been intimately involved in exposing this global surveillance network that the United States and the “Five Eyes” network have established was detained without an arrest warrant for 9 hours under anti-terrorism laws as he passed through an airport. He was detained for 9 hours under anti-terrorism laws without any kind of arrest warrant. All of his information devices were taken away from him and copied.The reason why this is relevant to this legislation in particular is that the GCSB is New Zealand’s contribution to the “Five Eyes” network and the global surveillance State. The way that New Zealand and New Zealanders whether they realise it or not whether they consent to it or not participate in this global surveillance State is through the GCSB. What we are seeing is that the States that have prided themselves on their commitment to liberal values and a commitment to freedom of expression are now leading the world in cracking down on those very values themselves.The veil of liberalism which all of us I would hope believe in is slipping and what we are seeing is that the kind of State that has emerged now in the United Kingdom and in the United States is the kind of State that would have Edmund Burke spinning in his grave. This kind of global surveillance State is the exact antithesis of what those who led revolutions through the 19th century in particular believed in when they believed we should extend citizens’ freedoms rather than constrain them. They believed that citizens should be free of mass surveillance by the State and that was a fundamental value that many fought for and many gave their lives for over the past couple of centuries in order to establish those basic principles.But here today we find ourselves once again fighting for those basic principles. This legislation significantly extends the power of the GCSB the New Zealand branch of the “Five Eyes” network. I read to you from the Law Society’s submission on the bill—the Law Society which the Prime Minister has very sadly denigrated over and over again. The Law Society says: “The Bill changes the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) from being a foreign intelligence agency to a mixed foreign and domestic intelligence agency. The Bill empowers the GCSB to spy on New Zealand citizens and residents and to provide intelligence product to other government agencies in respect of those persons”—those persons being New Zealand citizens and residents—“in a way not previously contemplated and that is inconsistent with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBIRA) and with privacy interests recognised by New Zealand law.”All of the leading law professionals who presented to the Intelligence and Security Committee came to the same conclusion yet time and again we have had this Government in a way that is very reminiscent of other authoritarian regimes denigrating anyone who dared to differ with the Prime Minister on this issue. It is a very sad day in this Parliament when it would appear that there is a majority of a single vote in favour of progressing this law at a time when the global debate is exactly around these issues—about protecting our freedom in an environment where security is being debated.It is easy to say that you believe in freedom and liberty in abstraction. But when it comes down to it and we have the debate about freedom and liberty within the context of the Prime Minister screaming hysterically about al-Qaeda and various other things that he introduces randomly into the debate I think that is when it gets hard to have the debate around freedom and to protect freedom. What it requires is that we have couragein our values courage that those who came before us stood up for something that was important and that our job here in this House tonight is to stand up for those values once again.What is important I believe is that although we have the somewhat bizarre commentary coming from the other side of the House it is none the less important that we defend the rights of freedom of speech that we defend the rights of expression and that in the House we vote against this bill. We are not obviously confident that we will get that result today but none the less I think it is important.What we have seen with the debate around this bill is that the Government has consistently tried to confuse people and actively tried to confuse people. The Prime Minister went onCampbell Live and said that the GCSB would not have access to the content of people’s emails under the cyber-security function. That was completely false and the Prime Minister was required to correct his answer to that later. Either the Prime Minister does not understand the legislation which is why he gave a false answer on live television to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders or the Prime Minister purposely set out to deceive New Zealanders. Whichever interpretation is correct—that the Prime Minister set out to deceive New Zealanders or he simply does not understand the legislation—it does not fill us with confidence.I would also point out that we in the Greens have consistently attempted to amend this legislation and have put up a series of substantive amendments which the National Government has voted against. For example we put forward Supplementary Order Paper 316 to make sure that metadata was included in the definition of communication so that it was abundantly clear that any protections around communication applied to metadata as well. The National Party United Future and the ACT Party voted against that because of course they want access to your metadata.We put up Supplementary Order Paper 317 which said that we should return the GCSB to just its foreign intelligence objectives rather than the spying on New Zealanders objectives that this bill introduces. Again the National Party the ACT Party and United Future voted against it. We moved to tighten section 8B so that the information that is gathered about New Zealanders cannot be passed offshore. The Government says it does not want to pass this information offshore. So we sought an amendment on exactly that point—to prevent the information gathered about New Zealanders from being sent offshore. This was Supplementary Order Paper 315. The Government voted against it. National voted against it once again.We moved a whole string of amendments to this legislation to try to protect freedom from the depredation of this Government and this Prime Minister or future Governments and future Prime Ministers who would seek to constrain the freedom of New Zealanders in order to facilitate this global surveillance State which we now know exists and is coordinated by the United States. The National Party United Future and the ACT Party consistently voted against every attempt to tighten this legislation to protect freedom. The Green Party will stand up for freedom and liberty today. We will vote against this legislation.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not interrupt Dr Norman’s speech because I did not think that was fair but the Attorney-General used an extremely unparliamentary comment—a word that has been ruled out of order numerous times. I am not going to repeat it. He knows what it was. It was in reference to the leader of the Labour Party and I would ask that he withdraw and apologise.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):I was simply repeating what Mr Mallard had said about the Prime Minister.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I never heard it but all members here are honourable and their word is their bond. If the member did use an unparliamentary term I would require him to stand and withdraw.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Why are different standards applied to members other than the special case Mr Mallard?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member will be seated. He is now challenging my ruling and I am asking the member—all members are honourable; their word is their bond. If he used an unparliamentary term I am asking him to stand and withdraw please.Hon Christopher Finlayson: I withdraw.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you very much.Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):I am pleased to take a call in this very important debate. This legislation formerly part of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Bill is more constrained is more transparent and offers more scrutiny than the previous legislation. I want to particularly acknowledge the Prime Minister’s comments earlier in this debate. He talked about the fact that many people have been unduly alarmed because of the scaremongering associated with this legislation. There are always people in our communities who think their activities are of such interest that some Government agency is monitoring what they are doing and we saw that from a number of people before the Intelligence and Security Committee which considered this bill. But let us be quite clear here. This legislation came to Parliament because the legislation that was introduced in the 2000s was not fit for purpose. It was not sufficiently focused and it created a level of legal uncertainty that required the Government to take the action that it has. I do also want to associate myself with the comments that the Deputy Prime Minister made.Actually the issue is an indictment on the Opposition. You know that an Opposition party is ready for Government when it behaves like a Government-in-waiting a Government-in-waiting that accepts that it has not only a responsibility to secure its own election but also a responsibility to the security of the realm. It has a responsibility to take these issues seriously and responsibly and to act in the better interests of the nation and allow the politics to be run by the smaller parties which people expect will behave on the fringe as the Green Party has done. But the Labour Party as the party in Government that introduced this legislation in the 2000s the party that had Prime Ministers who acted under the authority of that legislation would have taken a far more responsible role. And I think the former Prime Minister Helen Clark was right in her subtle criticism of the Labour Party when she appeared on television and alerted the nation to the fact that these powers were needed—these powers were needed. She understood that. Actually I think senior members of the Opposition are aware of those issues and they are aware of their responsibilities but this tension playing between the parties of the left meant that those who wanted to play politics in Labour got to have the greater say in the position that that party opposite had.This Government is responding to the concerns raised in theKitteridge report and to the issues that were raised before it in the Intelligence and Security Committee and that is why we have brought this legislation forward. The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) can act under this legislation in three key areas: information assurance and cyber-security foreign intelligence and thirdly assisting other agencies. I would just like to go through each of those. In regard to information assurance and cyber-security this legislation is giving the GCSB power to render assistance to Government agencies and key private sector infrastructures in order to protect their information infrastructures. It is not about delving into the information; it is about protecting their structures. I think as the Prime Minister has said it is more of a swept-up version of NortonAntiVirus which we all have on our computers at home. It is not filtering. It is not sort of reading all of our emails. It is protecting our infrastructure protecting our communication systems frommalware and outside attack. That is the GCSB responsibility there in terms of that area.The GCSB has specialist skills in this area that can help protect departments and companies and what is more we have made it very clear in this legislation that we now have principles and descriptions of how those responsibilities should operate and that is a new addition. Cyber-security is about protecting people’s information infrastructure protecting their secrets. It has got nothing to do with spying. In fact if any action needs to be taken in respect of that overseas attack coming into a New Zealand computer system and we need to access that system in order to help protect infrastructure then any of that needs to involve warrants and that is very very important. Secondly as the Prime Minister has detailed he will have a two-step process in respect of those warrants if there is any necessary part of that and I think that that is really good.The second function of the GCSB is in respect of foreign intelligence and that is the largest part of the agency’s work. That is very much set out in the purposes of the legislation and it makes it very clear that the agency’s purpose is in respect of foreign intelligence in respect of foreigners not New Zealanders and it is very restricted and very clear in the legislation. The third function of the GCSB is to use its centre of skill in this area to assist other Government agencies. In the previous legislation it just said “other Government agencies” and that is actually very wide but as a result of the select committee process members on this side have narrowed that down to three agencies: the New Zealand Police the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the New Zealand Defence Force.We have restricted that ability to assist other agencies down to those three and here is the rub. The GCSB cannot act or support those agencies under its own volition. It needs the warrant of those other agencies to be legitimately obtained in order for it to provide support and assistance. So it can do nothing in support unless one of those three agencies is acting under their lawful powers and then the GCSB must give that information to the retention of those other agencies. That information goes to those other agencies because the GCSB is acting in support of those agencies. It is restricted by the mandate of the warrants of those other three agencies. It cannot go outside the mandate of the warrant of those three agencies. This means we do not need to have the specialist capacity in the GCSB replicated in three other agencies. In a nation the size of ours 4.5 million people we should not expect to have to go through the expense and in fact I do not know whether we would even be able to replicate the skill of the GCSB in those particular areas in those other agencies.So it is pretty clear that this legislation is about greater transparency greater restraint and greater scrutiny. It does provide for annual appearances before the Intelligence and Security Committee and for reports on the use of theGCSB’s powers in the various warrants. It now gives the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security additional people whom he can consult with. We never had that before so that is going to be very important as well.Can I also raise this issue of metadata. This legislation goes further than the members opposite think it does. It does not allow any differentiation between metadata or any other information. It is not allowed to make that separation.Hon David Parker: Then why not say that?Hon TONY RYALL: Because that is in the legislation. The legislation defines communication in such a way that says communication is what metadata is. It does not allow for metadata. Metadata cannot be separate. There is no ability for the GCSB to get metadata and not communications without a warrant because the only thing it can get iscommunication with a warrant and that includes metadata. So it needs a warrant. There is all this stuff about how it can go and get the metadata—and I can understand people’s concerns with all the stuff that has been going on in this Chamber about it—but it cannot access metadata without a warrant because it is not separated from communication.I think this is a very important piece of legislation. It tidies up the issues raised in theKitteridge report. It does provide greater transparency it does provide for greater scrutiny and it does provide greater restraint on the powers of these authorities and their granting officers than there previously was.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):The Government is all over the place with this legislation arising from the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Initially it was interested in collaboration on it and we in New Zealand First would have been willing to play a constructive part but then the Government bought Peter Dunne’s vote. Suddenly then there was no need for collaboration any more. Then the Government said that the public did not care and then it saw that the public in fact did care and therefore all of a sudden Government members show up in force here today to defend the indefensible. With that one vote of Peter Dunne the Government will still rush through this defective and ill-considered piece of legislation.There is an inherent conflict between the freedom of speech and privacy of information on the one hand and national security on the other. The public are concerned about a creeping loss of those freedoms of speech and the protection of the privacy of information. In fact as we have seen from recent reliable I think polls 75 percent of the New Zealand population is concerned about those things to some degree. In the age of electronic communication this highlights the conflict between personal rights and the national interest. Greater care is required to ensure the protection of those freedoms while at the same time giving sufficient powers—but no more—to enable national security needs to be met. This needs to cover especially external and internal terrorist activity internet terrorism major illegal drug importation operations money-laundering and other serious crimes.But New Zealand First’s thrust in these matters has been for greater control in three areas. The first is the grounds for authorisation and what must be in a warrant or authorisation. I see that the new and amended section 15D(1)(e) inserted by clause 14 of the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill now refers only to “the purpose of the warrant or authorisation:”. But we think that is too low a standard. It needs to require justification not just some airy-fairy concept of purposes in terms of the functions of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) as set out in new sections 8A and 8B inserted by clause 6.We think the need for justification is at the core of the issue because that is where the balance between the national interest and the public’s right to freedom of expression and privacy of information lies. This section needs expansion as to what that justification would need to be. We in New Zealand First would like to have had the opportunity to discuss that very issue with the Government but that opportunity was removed from us. What we have therefore is something of a blank cheque in this section as to what the purpose is rather than what the justification would be.There is a case for some information sharing also. That is our second issue as to who the information can be shared with. We think the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill is still too wide concerning ministerial discretion on where the information may go. I refer to new section 8B(1)(c) which says that the function of the bureau is “to provide any intelligence gathered and any analysis of the intelligence to—(i) the Minister; and (ii) any person or office holder (whether in NewZealand or overseas) authorised by the Minister to receive the intelligence.” So the Minister may send information to anyone he likes whether in New Zealand or overseas. We said at the beginning that this was too wide but nothing has been done about that issue. There is as I have said a case for some information sharing but this legislation to me needs to be much more restrictive on the who and why concerning overseas recipients whether they contribute funding to the bureau or not. New Zealand First would have wished to discuss that issue with the Government too.Thirdly a much more robust regime of oversight on the issuing of warrants and authorisations is needed. This is the biggest issue for New Zealand First. New Zealand First sought much better engagement on the content and was prepared to help. We thought clause 33A of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Amendment Bill had potential. It inserts new sections 15A to 15F which provide for an advisory panel and advice to the inspector-general. The panel could also report direct to the Prime Minister. New section 15C states the panel is the inspector-general plus two others appointed by the Prime Minister one of whom must be a lawyer.But this does not fully meet our requirements. The problem with it is the lack of independence of the panel because of appointments by the Prime Minister alone. It is far too much power in the hands of the Prime Minister acting alone. The appointments need to be made by Parliament and the panel also needs teeth—that is the power to recommend rather than just advise on the cancellation of warrants or authorisations. We would have liked to have pursued this also direct with the Government in a collaborative process to produce legislation with much wider parliamentary support. But once Peter Dunne sold his vote so cheaply the rug was pulled out from under New Zealand First’s feet and it was left out in the cold. It was left trying to make amendments through the process that we have just been through.Consequently New Zealand First’s proposed Supplementary Order Paper 323 now defeated by the Government and Peter Dunne was what it required before it could have considered supporting the new legislation. That Supplementary Order Paper provided for a review panel to ensure that warrants and authorisations are clearly justified. It would have inserted a new section 15G into the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill. It required a review of every warrant or authorisation within 15 working days and the panel could have recommended cancellation the addition of new conditions or the amendment of existing conditions. The panel would have been of three people—former and therefore independent members of the judiciary police and the military. That Supplementary Order Paper would have achieved the balance that I have spoken of—national security versus freedom of speech and protection of privacy. That is what is so clearly lacking in these bills and what fully justifies the deep concerns felt by so many members of the public today.If the changes sought by New Zealand First had been agreed to Labour’s commission of inquiry would have been simply unnecessary. If the legislation had not been so rushed if the process had been much more collaborative if New Zealand First’s requirements or something like them had been adopted and if more time and effort had been put into the development of properly balanced and carefully drafted pieces of legislation which is not the case then cross-party support may have been possible. Peter Dunne saw to it that it was not possible. He sold out cheaply and the Government was eager to buy.In doing so the Government has caused considerable public disquiet over the GCSB. None of the parties in this Parliament want that. We all want the GCSB and the Government’s agencies to have full public support. We want the proper balance to be achieved. That is not what the Government has done. It has followed a bad process. It has got technically bad pieces of legislation and it has lost the support of the public.How could you better define a failure in terms of legislation? It is being put through on the strength of one vote and one vote only.Finally the Prime Minister gave a public assurance that his Government would see that there was no spying on New Zealanders without their consent. That of course was untrue. He should now say that he was wrong about that. The Government has clearly resolved to tough it out and with Peter Dunne’s vote obviously it can. But I predict that the damage done will be remembered all the way to the next election and this Government deserves nothing less.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):That was a very disappointing contribution from that member of New Zealand First Denis O’Rourke because there is no substitute for substance rather than rhetoric. Take for example the issue of review of the legislation. The proposal in the legislation provides for a mandatory review of among other things all the relevant pieces of legislation not once as suggested by the Labour Party but in 2015 and thereafter on a regular basis. The review provisions provide a very sensible way of making sure that this legislation is kept under constant surveillance and scrutiny.At the end of the day for all the hyperbole the waffle and the incoherent and the disturbed contributions this debate really boils down to one central question: do new sections 8 to 8D inserted by clause 6 in the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill represent an expansion of the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)? Only one person on the other side of the House has canvassed this matter with any rigour and that is Mr Parker. Although I disagree with him on some of his conclusions at least he spoke to the legislation something that other speakers on the Labour side were incapable of doing. That is why I respect him as a parliamentarian because these are important issues. But the answer to the central question to the critical question is no. Labour’s 2003 legislation contains an imprecise and an inconsistent statement of the functions of the GCSB.It is important to deal with the facts. The 2003 legislation is the aberration not this bill. It does not matter who is speaking about the bill—whether it is the Law Society the high and mighty like Dame Anne Salmond or the Green Party—if people do not start by acknowledging the fact that the 2003 legislation was fundamentally inadequate then perhaps it is easy to see how they reach the conclusions they do. But those conclusions are wrong. The 2003 legislation should never have been passed in the form that it was.Let us look at the present section 8 in the 2003 legislation. It gives the GCSB three functions: foreign intelligence information assurance and cyber-security and cooperation and assistance to other entities. Section 14 codifies the basic premise underpinning theGCSB’s operations which is that it is not to conduct foreign intelligence activities against New Zealanders. However the way the basic premise was incorporated into the 2003 Act meant that it applied not only to foreign intelligence functions but also to its other two functions. Helen Clark never intended to limit theGCSB’s ability to assist the SIS or the police as it has always done. We know this because she has gone on record in recent weeks saying that she signed warrants for non - foreign intelligence matters. That is how she had been advised and that is what she understood to be the role of the GCSB but under her own legislation she was wrong.This defect in the legislation has resulted in a growing number of difficulties and it is restricting the bureau’s ability to carry out its other two functions. This amendment bill does nothing more than address that issue and increase the safeguards that sit over the GCSB—I emphasise “increase the safeguards”. The unsatisfactory section 8 is replaced with a simplified and clearer version contained in what will be new sections 8 to 8D. At the same time we have been able to provide for significant limitations andrestrictions on the powers of the GCSB which were all lacking—all lacking—from the 2003 Act.So what does new section 8 contain? Well we have heard some pretty wild claims about it. New section 8 does not change the three functions of the GCSB—they remain information assurance and cyber-security foreign intelligence and cooperation and assistance to other entities—but as I said greater restrictions surround all three functions. This is tight legislation. It provides numerous safeguards—safeguards that were not present in the 2003 Act.I want to address some of the claims we have heard about the new section 8A. That section confirms theGCSB’s existing ability to assist with information assurance and cyber-security. To claim that it gives the GCSB the power to spy freely on New Zealanders is wrong. It is wrong especially when one considers the wording of the provision. That would be so far out of the scope of new section 8A that it is simply scaremongering to suggest otherwise.I have to say that the Law Society’s contribution to the debate has been disappointing. Its initial submission asserted that the bill represented an expansion of powers—it hurts me to say so—but omitted to describe how the legislation actually did so in light of the problems with the existing Act. The society’s representative then claimed that the bill provided greater powers to assist other agencies but even thebloggers understood that was not true. So then Dr Harrison decided to claim that new section 8A represents an expansion of powers. It is not true that we have not allowed for enough time to craft good legislation but maybe we have not allowed enough time for the rate at which Dr Harrison can get to grips with this legislation.There have been a number of contributions from outside this place but I want to single out three. The first is that of the former head of the GCSB Sir Bruce Ferguson. Let us not forget that despite his recent attempts to reinvent himself as a political commentator many of the problems we are dealing with today in this legislation occurred on his watch. Secondly there is Sir Geoffrey Palmer who allowed the GCSB to operate with no legislation at all when he was Prime Minister. Sir Geoffrey has claimed that this legislation is rushed. Well it is not. It received a full time in the Intelligence and Security Committee. It received very full debate in this House.Hon Phil Goff: It did not. It reduced the time and they couldn’t even hear from the GCSB.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As the Prime Minister said yesterday if we want to talk about rushing something I say to the sad Mr Goff let us have a look at the debate on the State-Owned Enterprises Bill in 1986 when he was a junior Minister when Sir Geoffrey forced the House into urgency to deal with the second reading the Committee stage and the third reading in 1 day. These days he has managed to recast himself as the guardian angel of constitutional propriety. He is not. He is deeply partisan deeply political.But the worst contribution—the worst contribution—has come from Dame Anne Salmond. Let us consider some of her shrill and unprofessional comments: that one cannot attend Anzac Day commemorations if people support this bill comparisons with McCarthyism and comparisons with Nazi Germany. Those comments are disgraceful. On this last point I say this: I stood in the guardhouse at Auschwitz-Birkenau in January I walked under the “Arbeitmachtfrei” sign and I signed the book of remembrance on behalf of New Zealand. I know people who suffered at Auschwitz. For someone who considers herself a professional historian to trivialise that period of history in order to engage in political point-scoring reveals a lot about the nature of the woman. It was a disgraceful attack and she ought to consider just what exactly she was hoping to achieve by using it.The 2003 legislation is the problem. This legislation is the fix. Perhaps it is no surprise that the Labour Party refuses to acknowledge its mistake in passing the 2003 legislation. Admitting error is not its style but it is time that we addressed what exactly is going on here—the corrective action that is being taken the promise of not just one review but ongoing review the promise of great additional safeguards. This legislation clarifies the powers of the GCSB. It does not expand those powers. I commend the legislation to the House.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):Most New Zealanders would not have known it from that speech but that man Mr Finlayson is the Attorney-General of New Zealand whose sworn role is to uphold the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. What did we hear from the Attorney-General? We heard the entire 10 minutes taken up with a speech that denigrated many prominent and respected New Zealanders. He attacked Dame Anne Salmond. Dame Anne Salmond Mr Finlayson was voted unanimously as the New Zealander of the Year earlier this year. Dame Anne Salmond is a respected historian. He attacked Dr Rodney Harrison. You know Dr Rodney Harrison is a QC. So is the Attorney-General but the difference is that Dr Rodney Harrison earned his QC; he did not give it to himself. He did not give it to himself.Hon Christopher Finlayson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That member is misleading the House. Under no circumstances did I give that rank to myself.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: There are other prominent people in the New Zealand Law Society like Austin Forbes who have spoken out against this Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation. Sir Geoffrey Palmer is regarded as the foremost constitutional expert in this country but he apparently was wrong as well. Sir Bruce Ferguson used to run the GCSB; you might think he understood a little about it. But what we have seen that will alarm New Zealanders most in this debate is the absolute arrogance of the Government which at no stage—at no stage—has listened and at no stage has sought what traditionally a Government would seek in legislation of this nature which is to earn cross-party support.The Prime Minister—well-qualified in law as we know—criticised the New Zealand Law Society as knowing nothing about the law. He then criticised the Human Rights Commission. Mr Finlayson is it not true that the role of the Human Rights Commission is to uphold as the watchdog of human rights the rights and the freedoms of New Zealanders? Yet what did John Key do? He threatened the funding of the Human Rights Commission.Then there was the Privacy Commissioner. I knew the Privacy Commissioner for a long period of time as the Secretary of the Cabinet in New Zealand for more than a decade. Her role also Mr Finlayson is to uphold the rights and the freedoms of New Zealanders. She said that this legislation is not ready it is not appropriate and it needs a proper inquiry before it is proceeded with and that the last thing that should happen is that this legislation be rushed through.Then there was Mr David McDowell. Mr David McDowell was the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He warned also that this legislation does not provide adequate safeguards to stop the GCSB from abusing its powers. I say to Mr Finlayson: that is a group of people with considerable expertise and experience and they are well-respected by New Zealanders. By denigrating those people all the Attorney-General has succeeded in doing is increasing the concern of New Zealanders that this legislation does not find the balance between security and the protection of rights.You know I said before that normally with this legislation the Prime Minister of a country reaches out across the House and says: “Here is an agency that has powersunique in a democratic society to intrude into the freedoms of New Zealanders and the privacy of New Zealanders. Here is an agency unique in the fact that it is not subject to openness transparency and accountability because of the nature of what it does. I would like to bring the House together to find a way of getting the balance between security and the rights of New Zealanders.” This Prime Minister came into the House and said correctly that Grant Robertson and I had met with the deputy head of staff of his office. And we did. We told her Labour’s position. Labour’s position is that we accept that there is a need for security agencies. We accept that they need to have the powers to do the job but we also believe that before you give extended powers to these security agencies there must be a full independent inquiry. Paula Oliver his deputy chief of staff said that yes that is exactly what the Australians did. That is what she said. Paula Oliver said that that is exactly what the Australians did.We are asking for nothing more than what our colleague democracy across the Tasman said was necessary before they gave their powers to their security agency. We said that we need to have proper scrutiny of how those security agencies work. Dr Coleman you will know that in the United Kingdom and in Australia Ministers are not allowed to sit on the intelligence and security committees that have oversight over security agencies. In the United States there are two committees neither of them controlled by the executive—the presidency—that exercise scrutiny over its security agencies. New Zealand is unique in the democratic world where it has a Prime Minister that is in charge of the committee meant to exercise scrutiny over the GCSB and where the Minister who should be scrutinised is actually on the committee and chairs it. He sets the agenda. He restricts the times that that committee can meet.How many times Mr Finlayson has that committee met outside of the needs of this legislation? Rarely and briefly and chaired by a Prime Minister who shows absolute contempt and arrogance for the process by not contributing to it when he is present. I know that because I have sat on the committee Dr Coleman. I know that when a Minister is in charge of an agency and you are scrutinising that Minister that Minister should be appearing before the committee. He should not be chairing the committee.Then Mr Finlayson will say: “But we have recognised that problem and what will happen is I will chair it.” I will chair it says Mr Finlayson. I have no confidence on the basis of your speech Mr Finlayson that you would do anything other than ingratiate yourself with the Prime Minister—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That member is repeatedly bringing the Speaker into the debate—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am listening. [Interruption ] Order! I am on my feet. I am the determiner of that.Hon PHIL GOFF: The fact is that this Prime Minister and this National Government have arrogantly decided that they will impose their will on this House on the basis of only their own party’s support and the support of two members of Parliament who are discredited and disgraced in this Parliament. My challenge to Mr Dunne is this: Mr Dunne said 3 weeks ago that under no circumstances would he support this legislation which gives the GCSB the power to spy on New Zealanders—under no circumstances. That man has broken his promise to New Zealand. That man was sacked by the Prime Minister because he leaked the GCSB report. The other man is John Banks who told the country that he did not know anything about the $50000 donation from Kim Dotcom which he picked up and took when he was personally flown by helicopter to Kim Dotcom’s mansion in Helensville—the Prime Minister’s electorate. That was not the truth. That was a lie.Both of those members—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member must withdraw that comment.Hon PHIL GOFF: I withdraw Mr Speaker.The fact of the matter is that this is legislation that does not provide adequate scrutiny. Mr Key said in the course of an interview onCampbell Live that the GCSB would not be allowed to look at the content of communications when conducting its cyber-security functions. That is wrong. That is wrong. And yet that man came into the House and said the Opposition did not understand the bill. You know his answer to that? Not to change the law to prevent it but to do his “King John”—that is before the Magna Carta—by saying: “But I will not allow them to do that.” If you do not want the GCSB to do that Mr Finlayson put it in the legislation.New Zealanders have no confidence in this Prime Minister. He appointed the head of the GCSB. He did not disclose the fact that it was a long-time personal friend. He said he hardly knew him when he had been having dinner with him. How can we have confidence in that Prime Minister to actually do the right thing when his scrutiny of the GCSB is not open and transparent? If you have safeguards against the abuse of power by the GCSB you put it in the legislation.TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Kia oratātou katoa. OnMonday night 1500 or so New Zealanders gathered at a public meeting in the Auckland Town Hall and came together in opposition to this legislation arising from the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill.I was not there but that does not mean that the issues and concerns raised have not been expressed already by the Māori Party. I understand that speakers at that event talked about this legislation as a threat to fundamental freedom. I am told that one of the challenges put to the hui aside from digs at Dr Rodney Harrison QC was that according to him through this bill the nation was “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”. That was his quote from his speech. Today the Māori Party stands as we have at every single stage of this legislation to oppose the virtual nightmare in its absolute entirety.While the crowd was gathered in Auckland I was with representatives ofwhānauhapū and iwi atTūrangawaewae. I know that you arrived there not long after I arrived supporting them in I suppose the seventh-year celebration of the famouskoroneihana—the coronation—of KingTuheitia. Just for a second I would like to acknowledge the incredible organisation the devoted commitment and the inspirational momentum that that hui represents to the heart and soul of tangata whenua. If you did not know since 1858 theKīngitanga—the Māori King Movement—has stood strong to survive intense challenges wars land confiscation poverty and destitution. It has endured two major global conflicts and several bouts of severe economic crises.It is the Māori Party’s submission that the introduction of mass surveillance must surely be seen as yet another injustice that our iwi have had to withstand. Tangata whenua are saying today in this House that we will never ever agree to submit to surveillance by the Government’s spy agencies. Each of our iwi have horrendous stories to tell of the experiences that we have been put through in the name of colonial rule.I have listened to whatTūhoe leaderTāmati Kruger has said about the impact of this bill.Tāmati told the nation thatTūhoe know all too well about injustice resulting from Crown suspicion as highlighted by their fraught historic relationship. It was his advice that extending the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) will only fuel the Crown’s suspicions of New Zealanders and contribute to further injustices. Indeed according toTāmati if the legislation is made lawTūhoe and by default all other iwi must find ways of protecting themselves by being vigilantas their privacy is no longer respected. I have seen logs of surveillance on innocentTūhoe people. TheTūhoe raids are a blight on New Zealand society.TheMāori Party has put out there from the moment that this legislation was floated that we will oppose it because it is intrusive and it lacks justification for what we believe is an extraordinary extension of theGCSB’s powers. This is absolutely consistent with our vigilant opposition to all of the other variations of legislation that have paved the way to this legislation. In 2011 we opposed the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill which was being pushed through under urgency and called for all of our constituents and the public to make submissions. It was such an issue of importance yet New Zealanders were given 24 hours to have their say. We also opposed the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Act 2007 introduced by Labour which was passed post - Operation Eight to justify and validate the actions of the police during Operation Eight.The Māori Party believes that this latest legislation is inconsistent with the rights of freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable search or seizure under our law and that it will merely validate actions like those of Operation Eight where some police actions were also deemed illegal. As this House knows full well the Independent Police Conduct Authority report on Operation Eight found that in some areas police had acted “unlawfully unjustifiably and unreasonably” during those raids. All that this legislation does is increase the powers of the GCSB and it makes it easier to spy on New Zealanders. Last year we opposed the Search and Surveillance Bill for similar reasons because we believed that the search powers vested in police officers under the bill were too broad and we were concerned that they did not require a search warrant. That bill allowed more Government agencies to carry out surveillance operations changed the right to silence and allowed judges to decide whether journalists can protect their sources or not.Earlier this year theKitteridge report revealed that 88 New Zealand citizens were subjected to surveillance by the GCSB. In the interests of transparency the Māori Party requested that these names be revealed. However this request was declined. I think this is one of the key issues of concern for all of us in the Māori Party and indeed forMāoridom generally. Why on earth Māori would believe that the State through its agencies would act honourably when history suggests otherwise is a little bit beyond me.I want to conclude this debate by referring to an issue I spoke of earlier in the second reading debate and that was the claims made in 2004 in a newspaper article by Anthony Hubbard and Nicky Hager. Their claims were that SIS spies were investigating Māori activists perhaps me and others and Māori in general including the Māori Party. The articles revealed the campaign coded Operation Leaf in which the SIS was told to gather intelligence on internal iwi business negotiations finances and Treaty of Waitangi claims as well as inter-tribal communications. The article went further to suggest that agents were instructed to watch for dirt on Māori leaders and that computer geeks had been hired to plant bugs in the computers of Māori organisations.I think it is important to further describe the context of the time. This was the heyday of Don Brash and his infamousŌrewa tirade attacking special treatment for Māori. My co-leader Tariana Turia crossed the floor in abject opposition to the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. The mighty Māori Party was born and took four seats at the 2005 election. Then to cap it off an ancient charge of sedition was taken out by Labour against Tim Selwyn a young man accused of throwing an axe through Helen Clark’s electoral office in protest at the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. Selwyn was later charged under the Crimes Act for the act of sedition defined as “speech writing or behaviour intended to encourage rebellion or resistance against the government”. Selwyn was charged with thepublication of a pamphlet his crime being the opportunity to incite procure and encourage violence lawlessness or disorder through the publication of that said leaflet. It was the first prosecution for sedition in at least 75 years and drew considerable controversy. I took us back to that history lesson on a decade ago because the Māori Party has an extremely powerful objection to any such power of the State. We believe that all that these Acts do is invite abuse of our rights to freedom of speech.To conclude let me put two facts on the record. Firstly as a result of the extreme agitation in Māori communities about Operation Leaf Tariana Turia called for an independent inquiry writing to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. Her statement at the time was that an inquiry was needed as New Zealanders take for granted that our freedom to live in an open democracy is a basic standard of living for our nation. In April 2005 the official investigation overseen by Justice PaulNeazor concluded that there was nothing to suggest that the allegations around Operation Leaf were true and the SIS director of the time Richard Woods assured Mrs Turia that there was no cause for concern. The second development was that of the crime of sedition—inciting insurrection against the State. This was eventually thrown out by Parliament in October 2007 by an overwhelming majority of 114 to seven. The only party to vote against it was ironically New Zealand First.This history is a vital backdrop for the GCSB legislation that we are debating today. We do not need to waste time on fixing something that is not worth salvaging. It is for that reason that we came out yesterday and declared our universal opposition to amendments put up by parties. We will never contribute to an environment in which a surveillance and siege mentality is overall. We must be free to associate with whomever we want wherever we want whenever we want. This legislation threatens our basic human rights. It is invasive and intrusive and we will never support it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand that the next call is a split call. I call the Hon David Parker.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):And a 1-minute bell?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Yes a 1-minute bell.Hon DAVID PARKER: I want to respond to some of the statements made by earlier speakers on the part of the National Party. It is now a matter of record that John Key said onCampbell Livethat no New Zealander’s email content would be looked at. He has since admitted that that is not correct in respect of the cyber-security function of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Then he has come to this Parliament today in the third reading debate on the GCSB legislation and now said despite him having it wrong onCampbell Live  in an interview that the media said was par excellence: “Trust me. I know what I’m doing. I am not going to put the protection in the law but I am not going to give a first-round warrant in respect of section 8A cyber-security warrants that allows the GCSB to look at the content of emails.” But he will do it on second-round warrants. He will do it on second-round warrants.In any event there is no protection in this legislation against the content of emails being looked at by the GCSB in respect of new section 8A investigations into cyber-security. I would have thought that that in itself would be enough for the National Party and its support parties to be saying: “Whoa looks like the Prime Minister got that wrong. We shouldn’t be voting for this.” But no they continue to vote for it.The next issue is that the Hon Chris Finlayson—in response to a contribution I made in respect of new section 8B which is inserted by clause 6 and which is the intelligence-gathering function not the cyber-security function aspect of this bill—rightly pointed out in his response at the Committee stage that new section 14 inserted by clause 12 says there is some restriction on the bureau’s function in new section 8B in respect of intercepting private communications.What he did not address was the Law Society’s concern that the definition of private communications is narrower than the definition of communications. So when Tony Ryall in this debate said that concerns around metadata were irrelevant he was bypassing the concern raised by the Law Society that the definition of “private communication” is narrower than the definition of “information infrastructure” which includes any communication. There is a difference between those two definitions and there is an argument that is being put by some that metadata is not the sort of communication that is a private communication. One of the amendments that the Greens put forward was to try to clarify the fact that that metadata was in effect private communication by removing that ambiguity that the Law Society says exists.We have today seen in the Privileges Committee how that metadata can contain very private elements. We know that within a 2-week period the metadata that was disclosed probably wrongly by the Parliamentary Service to the Henry inquiry showed that there were 86—[Interruption ] Well it might actually have been accessible under the Official Information Act but it was wrong for the Parliamentary Service to hand it across. But that showed 86 emails between Andrea Vance and Peter Dunne in a period of less than 2 weeks. It is very unusual—very unusual—to have 86 emails like that and there have been various innuendoes that have been put around as to what that signified. I am not perpetuating those innuendoes by this contribution; I am making the point that the privacy considerations of a quantity of emails are in that metadata.Secondly that metadata disclosed by the Parliamentary Service in the Dunne instance included reference to a meeting which was in the subject line of the email rather than in the body of the email and it thought that that was metadata. Arguably if the Law Society is right that might be the sort of communication that is not a private communication as opposed to the body of an email and that is not clarified by this legislation.The oversight by the Intelligence and Security Committee—the Hon Phil Goff has already spoken about that. I will make one additional point. There is an express prohibition on that committee. The functions of that committee do not include inquiring into any matter that is operationally sensitive including any matter that relates to intelligence collection and production methods. So that is no great solace either. This legislation ought not be supported.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):I rise to speak to the third readings of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation. These bills collectively are an arrogant unjustified and fundamental extension of the ability of the State to intrude into the private lives of ordinary New Zealanders. These bills pre-empt a very necessary and long-overdue robust and genuinely independent inquiry into all aspects of New Zealand’s security and intelligence services.Something between 75 and 90 percent of New Zealanders say that they are concerned about the direction of this legislation. We are told this through some polling. So even on a more conservative figure if National MPs or Peter Dunne or John Banks listen to their constituency and their own conscience and vote against this GCSB legislation then we can have that independent robust inquiry now ahead of legislation that can actually address the realities of need and civil rights and the expectation of privacy that is so strong among New Zealanders. New Zealanders have jealously guarded democratic rights and freedoms and it is anathema to those rights and freedoms to support this legislation. I implore one of the 61 MPs who have previously supported this legislation to change at this vote and allow a full inquiry first.The Government has failed to provide a real justification for this fundamental attack on our democratic rights and freedoms and the legislation facilitates the legal establishment of a surveillance State in New Zealand. The total State access tosurveillance is of the kind that was previously imagined only in fiction—Nineteen Eighty-Four  for example. However this previous fiction has now been revealed as a reality in the US with the revelations of mass surveillance activities by theGCSB’s “Five Eyes” partner the USA’s National Security Agency. The Waihopai spy base is the face of the National Security Agency and the GCSB in New Zealand. I want to acknowledge Bob Leonard who passed away just over a week ago aged 74. Bob visited the USA GCSB Waihopai spy base albeit from the perimeter fence more often than any one member of Parliament or possibly more often than all of us put together.Bob moved to New Zealand to escape the Reagan era and threats of nuclear war. In 1987 Bob helped found the Anti-Bases Campaign when the Waihopai spy base was first announced. Bob knew of the links with the military and the USA’s big business. A true gentleman and advocate for peace to the end Bob Leonard was also the “Uncle Sam” for the street theatre at many of our protests. Bob Leonard foundedPeace Researcher in 1983 which he edited and wrote extensively for. Bob Leonard wrote all of the Anti-Bases Campaign’s submissions some of which are remarkably topical such as the one on the Government Communications Security Bureau Act which is now being replaced with these bills. He fronted up at parliamentary select committees including—well it is not a parliamentary one—the Intelligence and Security Committee. He spoke at public meetings around the country and gave innumerable media interviews. Bob Leonard was a great example of those people and groups dedicated to true democracy justice civil rights and the environment. These dedicated people and groups are all the more likely to besurveilled by John Key and his schoolmate the Director of the GCSB using their new powers and “Five Eyes” international spy agency resources to spy on New Zealanders.This legislation allows economic well-being to be considered as a target around the spying. Does that actually mean academics and environmentalists such as Mike Joy and BunnyMcDairmid or champions of social justice who might dent the profits of this Government’s friends? Mass surveillance such as the surveillance that the USA GCSB Waihopai spy base is part of would have a very corrosive effect on the kind of free and democratic country that generations have fought for. The Green Party will be opposing these bills. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was seeking the call and I was up before the honourable member.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Well I have called the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Defence):That contribution from the Green member—Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask whether you could indicate whether you had given sufficient consideration to Standing Order 103.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Business Committee determines the business under Standing Order 77. It has not allocated any time to you to speak in this debate and I have called the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman.Brendan Horan: Point of order. Yes Standing Order 77 does give—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I have ruled and that is the end of the matter. I am calling Dr Jonathan Coleman.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just noticed that we are very close to the dinner break and I am just wondering whether the clock will be restarted at the start of my 10 minutes because—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No you will start—Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well I did not even get my mouth open.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): You will start now.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: OK. Well listening to that Green contribution shows you what a threat that party would be if it ever secures the Treasury benches because Steffan Browning quite clearly does not believe that there is a need for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in New Zealand. That is what you would expect from the lunatic Green fringe but I expected much more from the Labour Party and it is very disappointing that through this debate the Labour Party with the notable exception of David Parker has failed to—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.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: As I was saying this is vital legislation which needs to be passed. It is in the very best interests of the nation’s security it is in the very best interests of the New Zealand people and it is legislation that I am not surprised that the Green Party is not supporting although I am very very disappointed with the comments of Labour members here tonight. Those members over there should know better and they do know better but they have chosen to play politics with this issue right throughout this debate. What they realise and Grant Robertson fully understands it is that the Government is just tidying up the flawed legislation of 2003—legislation that the Labour Government brought into being. There was an inherent contradiction in that law. It allowed the GCSB to act on behalf of Government agencies that had a lawful basis for carrying out surveillance activities but at the same time that legislation stipulated that the GCSB could not spy on New Zealanders.This legislation that the House is going to pass tonight provides a clear and consistent statutory framework for the GCSB as well as greater oversight. It is absolutely important that the public understands that because this does not widen the powers of the GCSB—Andrew Little: Yes it does.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —as the angry man from the Koru Club is claiming. What it is actually doing is narrowing the powers of the GCSB and providing greater oversight. I can tell you that as technology moves forward the nature of the national security threats that we face will continue to evolve.The new section 8 as set out in clause 6 of the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill sets out and confirms that the GCSB has three functions. Chris Finlayson covered those very well in his speech but just to reiterate they are foreign intelligence; cyber-security; and assistance to police the New Zealand Defence Force and the SIS. In light of the modern threats to New Zealand’s physical and economic security each and every one of those functions is vital. I think it is disappointing that no one from the Labour side has actually discussed the substance of the bill apart from a little bit there from David Parker. There needs to be a far greater contribution from Labour members. But the time has passed. The debate is virtually over.It is also critical that the GCSB has proper oversight and operates pursuant to very clear legislation. This bill achieves all of those critical requirements. On the matter of foreign intelligence the function of the GCSB is largely unchanged but the law is made clear and simplified and it adds protection for New Zealanders inadvertently caught up in incidentally obtained intelligence. That is a very important point.In regard to the cyber-security function the bill gives the GCSB a clearly defined and limited role. As we know cyber-attacks are a growing and ever-changing threat and this law needs to be updated in response. For that reason the bill sets out a veryclear mandate for the GCSB to help Government organisations and private companies prevent cyber-attacks thereby protecting our economic well-being and our intellectual property. The threat from those cyber-attacks is very real. The damage that they can inflict from theft of intellectual property through to damage of critical infrastructure is a threat that New Zealand faces on an almost daily basis. Those who suggest that New Zealand should not empower our security agency to protect the country from those types of threats are frankly being both very reckless and extremely naive.Left-wing critics of this bill are effectively saying that New Zealand should refuse to provide cyber-security protection to New Zealand citizens and businesses. Doing so would not be a grand act of principle; it would be the single most reckless security decision that any New Zealand Government has ever taken. No serious political party would ever consider abolishing the police and leaving New Zealanders vulnerable to internal criminal threats. No serious party would consider abolishing the New Zealand Defence Force and leaving New Zealand unable to protect itself from external threats or to pursue our interests overseas. So no serious political party could seriously suggest kneecapping theGCSB’s cyber-security function—New Zealand’s single biggest defence against a new and insidious form of attack that is more than doubling every year. But Russel Norman explicitly spoke out against the GCSB. He spoke about a global surveillance State. He called New Zealand under the National Government an authoritarian State. I believe that is misleading and untruthful. But what it does show is that the Greens do not believe that the GCSB has a function in New Zealand and quite frankly that is reckless and irresponsible and just demonstrates that they are unfit to ever be part of a Government. I think the Labour Party should bear that in mind.The bill also provides the GCSB with the legal framework needed to ensure that it can provide a vital level of protection to New Zealand and the oversight to make sure that it does so lawfully. In terms of its assistance function this bill makes it clear that when the GCSB assists another agency it is subject to the same limitations oversight and restrictions that the requesting agency is subject to. As Minister of Defence I am directly aware of just how important the assistance of the GCSB is for keeping our people safe when they are overseas on deployment. Although we cannot talk about the operational details it has to be put on record that the work of the GCSB saves New Zealand lives when our people are on deployment in theatre. There is no question that that has happened. So I am very disappointed actually that Phil Goff has not shared some of the knowledge that he has from his time as Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade and instead has decided to play petty party politics.It is also true that theGCSB’s resources are absolutely vital for assisting the SIS and police. It would be beyond stupid to try to replicate those functions independently across all three agencies. That would drastically increase costs and decrease effectiveness. Of course there has been a lot of talk during this debate about oversight of the GCSB but increased oversight is exactly what this legislation enables. It provides a clear and consistent statutory framework under which the GCSB will operate.The Labour Party has done a good job of pretending to be constructive during the debate but its demands for safeguards have pretty much been hollow political posturing. The safeguards are already there in the legislation. They are probably the most extensive safeguards that exist in any New Zealand legislation. Labour has called for limits onwarrantless powers. Thewarrantless powers in its 2003 legislation are severely restricted by this legislation which will pass tonight.Labour has also called for the inspector-general to be given more powers. That has already happened. The inspector-general will now be one of the most powerful independent officials in New Zealand and further they will have an advisory panel to back them up. Under the old legislation the Inspector-General of Intelligence andSecurity was a one-person band with limited powers. Under this new legislation the inspector-general will be supported by staffing resources a deputy and a two-person panel. The inspector-general will also be able to undertake on-the-spot surprise audits.Labour has called for a review of the legislation. This legislation requires not only that an independent review occur before 30 June 2015 but that subsequent reviews be held every 5 to 7 years. It is already there in the legislation.So for all the hyperbole the debate has boiled down to the simple question of whether new sections 8 to 8D represent an expansion of theGCSB’s powers. Everything else has been noise. This bill provides a vast array of further checks and balances. New limitations have been added such as the requirement that warrants must be issued jointly by the Minister responsible for the GCSB and the Commissioner of Security Warrants and that privileged communications cannot be targeted. The GCSB will have to report annually on the number of warrants and authorisations issued and the number of instances where it provided assistance to the three agencies. Further public hearings will be held and there will be an independent review of the operations and performance of the GCSB and the New Zealand SIS in 2015 and then every 5 to 7 years afterwards. Those changes have improved the legislation enabling greater transparency and stronger independent oversight.There has also been plenty of scrutiny and debate around process. There were 122 submissions. The Prime Minister chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee which considered those submissions and I would ask the public to consider this: in what other country in the world could someone like Kim Dotcom come into Parliament and harangue a Prime Minister? That is exactly what happened there. So to say that we have not been upfront and open about the legislation is totally misleading. Anyway I think we have outlined comprehensively the case for the GCSB. We have described the three functions. This is vital legislation for New Zealand. It is intrinsically tied up with our security. It is good legislation. It should pass. I commend this legislation to the House.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):Given the importance of this Government Communications Security Bureau legislation I seek the leave of the House and of my colleagues to make a very short 5-minute contribution to this debate.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): This is a time-limited debate. There have been 12 speakers. The member can seek leave but I just remind the member that there have been 12 speakers and it is a time-limited debate. If the member wishes to seek leave he can.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think one of the problems with the leave will be if a member seeks it for a short time because that of course is as short or as long as a piece of string. If the member sought leave for 5 minutes then certainly the Labour Party would not object.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The House can decide. There is a point of order from Brendan Horan.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):I seek leave for a 5-minute contribution.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):Given the long-term ramifications of this legislation I seek the leave of this House and of my colleagues to make a 4-minute contribution.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no. You sought leave and leave was denied. It is your right to seek leave. It is the right of the House to determine otherwise.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): If the member is trifling with my rulings—Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I will hear this one more and if it is like the other ones the member will have to go.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. When I was unceremoniously dumped from New Zealand First in this House—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is not a point of order. [Interruption ] Order! The member will sit. That is not a point of order; it is a matter between you and that party.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member will sit or he will leave. The member will sit or will leave.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is a new point of order.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No the member will leave the House. The member will leave the House now.Brendan Horan withdrew from the Chamber.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Amendment Bill and the Intelligence and Security Committee Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bills read a third time.Inquiries BillIn CommitteeLOUISE UPSTON (Senior Whip—National):I seek leave for the Inquiries Bill to be taken as one debate with all questions put at the conclusion of the debate.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):Before that leave is taken I want to make two things clear—that we are not going to limit the number of speeches that individual members make and that closures are not going to be put. If that is the case we will grant leave. If is not we will not grant leave.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I will ask the senior whip to respond.LOUISE UPSTON (Senior Whip—National):My understanding is that in the Committee stage the maximum number of calls per speaker is four and that will stand.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I will object then.Louise Upston: That’s fine.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think what the member just said is that there is going to be a limit of four speeches and what that does is cut out three-quarters of the ability or in fact 80 percent of the ability of members to make speeches. If that is what the National Party wants to do we will not grant leave.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): OK are we very clear on the matter? Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.Part 1 Preliminary provisionsHon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):This is an interesting start to a bill because within the preliminary provisions there are some relatively important points. Within that part there is the purpose clause. I must say that it is a very well-drafted purpose clause and I want to compliment the work of the Government Administration Committee on that and the Hon Rick Barker—Grant Robertson: Annette King as well.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well in fact I was going to go right back to Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Shall we get the history right as to how this purpose clause got here? Annette King asked Sir Geoffrey Palmer to do some work. He gave that work to the Hon Rick Barker. It was introduced into the Parliament before the 2008 election. It was sent to a select committee and had its consideration during 2009.Grant Robertson: On 20 November it came back.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: It came back on 20 November 2009. I think it is fair to say that unlike the legislation that we have just been dealing with this is something that has the broad support of the House. The Labour Party after 4 or 5 years in Government realised that there was a gap—a pretty massive gap—in the inquiries function and the ability to run inquiries. To make it clear for members who are not across it a commission of inquiry or even a royal commission of inquiry is an enormous undertaking. They are exceptionally formal. There are a lot of requirements around them. They are expensive and they are slow.At the other end of the scale we have arrangements that can be made between the Prime Minister and the State Services Commissioner. I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of issues that happen within the State sector generally can pretty easily be handled by inquiries that are set up by the State Services Commissioner at the request of the Prime Minister. But there is an enormous gap where things go wrong in the private sector or where there are issues in the private sector that have to be dealt with and ministerial inquiries find it very hard where there is not cooperation where there is not transparency to get at facts and to make conclusions.Therefore it became clear to those of us involved in the previous Government after 4 or 5 years in Government and the experience of a number of issues that it was important that we got something that covered that gap. We thought: “What is the right way of doing it?”. Could we take the approach that the current Government takes to the Government Communications Security Bureau and just sort of make it up? Or could we get a decent organisation to have a good look get a coherent piece of legislation coming back from that organisation get it into the House and try to get broad support for it? What we decided was that we would ask the Law Commission which was at that time headed I think by Sir Geoffrey Palmer—someone whom most people in New Zealand think is a—Grant Robertson: Except the Attorney-General.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well the Attorney-General seems to think that Sir Geoffrey Palmer has an inferior legal brain to his.Hon Annette King: He thinks everybody does.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No I disagree with my colleague about her cousin. I think her cousin knows he has an inferior brain to Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s and probably that of every other Queen’s Counsel in the country and as a result of that we have some of the attitudes that flow through into the House.Hon Member: Inferiority complex.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes an inferiority complex; there are a number of other expressions that could be used. But I am told by the deputy leader of the LabourParty that it is probably inappropriate to use those descriptions of the current Attorney-General.But what became very clear to the previous Labour Government was that there was a gap and that we needed to fill it. So what we have done here is something that is designed to do that. It goes to questions around how the inquiry is going to be set up and how the members are to be appointed to it.The actual detail of that comes in a later part of the bill. It goes to the powers and the duties and the privileges of the inquiry and the immunities that apply to the inquiry and to its members. That is something that is quite important. It is exceptionally important in some cases. If I was David Henry at the moment appearing before the Privileges Committee I would be getting pretty anxious about the lack of immunities that I had been granted by the Prime Minister in that particular case. When you have senior Ministers—Gerry Brownlee I understand; Judith Collins; and Anne Tolley—turning on the Prime Minister’s man my view is that he will be looking to some of his immunities and some of the protections and some of the resources that he has got because it is pretty clear that he has overstepped the mark and I am relatively certain that the immunities that he would require are not properly in place. There are questions that go to the protection available for witnesses and counsel appearing before an inquiry.Later on when we get to clause 15 I will be putting forward an amendment. I do want to acknowledge and thank the Minister who is in charge of this bill—and I will just say that last night there was a bit of confusion as to who is in charge of this bill. Last night we had Nathan Guy move the motion on the bill. The bill was printed in Nathan Guy’s name but on the Order Paper it said it was in the name of Chris Tremain. I have been informed by the learned Clerk that in fact it is the Order Paper that counts and for good reason. When a Minister of Internal Affairs has been—who was the first one? Was that Worth? Was he a Minister of Internal Affairs?Hon Annette King: He was.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: So we have had a bit of a churn—not a good history for Ministers—Hon Annette King: They’ve had lots of affairs.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Internal affairs? Well there is not a good history. They lost Richard Worth. They were almost certainly going to lose Nathan Guy a short period after he was the Minister of Internal Affairs. And frankly Chris Tremain—in matters that are going to become clear to people as to what is going on in Napier and in issues of corruption around dams—is himself unlikely to be a Minister by time of the end of this Government.Iain Lees-Galloway: Or an MP.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Or an MP. Well I think it is fair to say that he will probably make it to the end of next year but that will be the end of it. But the point I am making is that in clause 15 which we will get to later—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Well not now.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: —there are some protections and I mean to put forward an amendment. But I can refer to it because I am referring to clause 3(2)(c) which refers to “the protection available for witnesses and counsel appearing before an inquiry;” because this relates to that particular area. The Act does go to the 1908 Commissions of Inquiry Act and repeals—Grant Robertson: Were you here when that passed?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well I can remember talk of it and I have been subject to I think three or four lectures from the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer on the question of the Commissions of Inquiry Act its benefits and its problems. My advice to younger members—members who unlike me are not at the midpoint of their career butare a way off it yet—is they might want to get that lecture from Sir Geoffrey Palmer because it is pretty informative. It does go to some of the things relating to performing ministerial duties in an appropriate way which are really important.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):I am sure my colleagues will soon be able to take a call on this important Part 1 of the Inquiries Bill. Mr Mallard in an interesting exposition on Part 1 covered the material around exactly what this part does. It establishes the purpose of the Inquiries Bill and in particular it runs through a set of the changes to the Inquiries Act that are set out for how an inquiry can be established.I think it is quite clear that across the House there is an enthusiasm for a range of different inquiries. As Mr Mallard said at the moment we have the royal commission the bigkahuna of inquiries at one end of the spectrum and we have ministerial inquiries at the other. In the middle there is a grey area that needs to be filled and is filled by the public inquiry function and the ministerial inquiry function that are established under this bill.There has been no better recent example for me of why the purpose clause of this bill is needed than the David Henry inquiry. Today in the Privileges Committee we were treated to an absolute circus. We had David Henry himself the person who allegedly was undertaking the inquiry telling us what he thought his powers and parameters were.Hon Trevor Mallard: Well he was more than allegedly undertaking—GRANT ROBERTSON: Well he was undertaking—Hon Trevor Mallard: —he was actually undertaking.GRANT ROBERTSON: He was undertaking it under terms of reference set by the Prime Minister which Mr Henry was quite clear enabled him to for example get Andrea Vance’s swipe card records. But then moments later we had AndrewKibblewhite the chief executive of the Prime Minister’s department and WayneEagleson the chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s office come in and say that this inquiry’s terms of reference did not give Mr Henry that power. Or in the case of MrEagleson he said that he had not contemplated that it might give that power. There was complete confusion. It appeared that nobody knew what the parameters of this inquiry were.Of course the inquiry itself was fundamentally undermined by the fact that it did not have the powers that are given through the purpose clause here which is the power to call witnesses and to call them under oath. Had Mr Henry had that power we might actually know for sure today who leaked theKitteridge report. As at today we have an accusation that Peter Dunne leaked theKitteridge report but we have no actual proof of that—Hon Trevor Mallard: He denies it.GRANT ROBERTSON: —because Mr Dunne denies it quite categorically denies it.Iain Lees-Galloway: Who else might it have been?GRANT ROBERTSON: Well that is right. My colleague Mr Lees-Galloway asks who else it might have been. If an inquiry was established—Hon Trevor Mallard: Hey hey Grant some of the others have history.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes we will come back to that. If an inquiry was established under the purpose clause here in Part 1 which we are debating it would have a range of powers and duties and privileges as outlined in clause 3(2)(b) and that includes the ability to call witnesses on oath. That ability was not there.Today in the Privileges Committee David Henry was asked—in fact it was Kennedy Graham who asked him actually—“Why didn’t you go back and get some more powers? You were charged with finding out who did this who leaked theKitteridgereport so why didn’t you go back?”. I do not think he answered the question. I certainly do not recall a definitive answer from him. That raises a number of questions about when Ministers call for inquiries. Sometimes they do not really want to know the result and it may be that John Key did not really want to know who leaked theKitteridge report.Today what we have is an inquiry that was unable to fulfil its function. Its function was to get to the bottom of who leaked theKitteridge report. Under this piece of legislation that inquiry would have significantly wider powers or the ability to have significantly wider powers including calling people on oath and for that reason alone this bill is worthy of support.I want to raise a couple of other points. I am not going to speak for much longer because I know that my colleagues are very keen to. But I want to raise another point within this part and that is in the interpretation clause clause 4. It is the question of who the appointing Minister is and who the appropriate Minister is. In the Henry inquiry—let us just be absolutely clear—John Key was what would be under this clause the appointing Minister. I believe that the appointing Minister of an inquiry has some responsibilities to actually ensure that the inquiry takes place in the way that it is meant to. I think that that is what is meant by the wording here. Unfortunately John Key fell well short of that. I hope that if he is part of any future inquiries established under this legislation he will actually take a more active approach and ensure that those inquiries are dealt with properly. But Part 1 is a reasonably good part.HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Inquiries Bill. Part 1 of course as has been noted by my colleagues sets out the purpose of this bill which is essentially to reform and modernise the law relating to inquiries. We absolutely support this in the Green Party because the existing legislation governing the conduct of inquiries is over 100 years old and well in need of modernisation and updating.I think that what this bill reflects is the fact that we need the ability to have different types of inquiries for differing situations. There are essentially two different kinds of inquiries that routinely get carried out. The first is an inquiry that seeks to get to the bottom of a particular issue or incident and find out what happened what went wrong who was responsible and so on—the most topical example of course being the Henry inquiry into the leak of theKitteridge report. That has provided much fodder for consideration in this debate and I will talk about that a little bit more in subsequent calls on other parts of the bill. Another example would be the Fonterra botulism crisis which has prompted the resurrection of this bill from the bottom of the Order Paper in a sudden burst of enthusiasm from the Government to pass this legislation because it realised it would have been quite useful to have it in place for that particular inquiry. There are many similar inquiries that are undertaken to determine what has caused a particular event.The other type of inquiry is a broader kind of inquiry and that is an inquiry that examines particular issues of national significance makes recommendations and often results in cross-party adoption of those recommendations and major change and steps forward in public policy. Some examples of those would be the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power Generation in New Zealand which was set up in 1976; the Royal Commission on the Electoral System in the early 1990s which resulted in the adoption of our MMP electoral system; and of course the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification about a decade ago. Those kinds of broad public inquiries are very important as well.So this bill provides in Part 1 in the purpose clause for two kinds of inquiries both of which could be established to inquire into any matter of public importance. Itprovides for Government inquiries which are established and led by Ministers and it provides for public inquiries which are established by the Governor-General and are independent of the Government and within the scope of public inquiries can exist royal commissions of inquiry. In practice it is likely that the first type of inquiry the ones that try to get to the bottom of something some particular incident or issue will be largely Government inquiries—those initiated by Ministers and with the terms of reference essentially driven by Ministers. The latter the general inquiries will be the public inquiries. But of course it does depend on the context on the seriousness of the inquiry and on the gravity of the situation. So there is flexibility within the bill for those to be applied flexibly and either could apply in either situation.Part 1 outlines how the remainder of the bill provides for basically the establishment and powers of those inquiries. So it talks about how the inquiries are set up the membership of those inquiries and the powers duties and privileges that the inquiry will hold. It talks about the protection for witnesses and the principles that will govern the inquiry and it talks about the sanctions that the inquiry has available to it if people do not cooperate. All of these powers will be extended identically to both the public inquiries and the Government inquiries that are established under this bill. That is a key difference between this bill and the existing rules. At the moment the equivalent of the Government inquiries that will be enabled under this legislation are ministerial inquiries—those inquiries driven by Ministers. But at present ministerial inquiries have no power to compel witnesses to appear or to provide evidence before the inquiry as we have indeed seen with the example of the Henry inquiry which was before the Privileges Committee this morning.Because of that this is quite a fundamental change that this Government is making—to extend in the future to Government inquiries which will be driven by Ministers the power to compel witnesses to disclose evidence. It is a big change and it is an important one which the Committee should take seriously. It is a big difference between what has existed under the existing legislation and what will exist in the future. As we have seen from the very topical example of the Henry inquiry it is a very salient point as to whether a ministerial inquiry has the ability to compel witnesses to disclose information particularly if it is the source of a journalist’s story if it is a private communication between an MP and another person or if it is indeed privileged information under parliamentary privilege.In my contribution to the second reading debate last night I raised a number of questions about these concerns and I outlined the fact that the Green Party was abstaining on this legislation at the second reading because of concerns about these protections and whether they were adequately protected under the legislation. I am pleased to say that upon closer inspection we are largely reassured here on the Green Party benches that the appropriate protections are in place in the bill. They are not outlined here in Part 1; they are found in Part 3. So when we get up to Part 3 I will speak more about the particular provisions that I think provide the adequate protection that will allow us to support the bill because we are very much in favour of modernising the law governing inquiries.But I want in this contribution on Part 1 to emphasise the importance of the Committee taking seriously the fact that we are now extending to Minister-led Government inquiries the power to compel witnesses to provide evidence. That is a big change and it does have a material impact on the very example that we have all been thinking about today—the Henry inquiry—because if that inquiry was held under the new legislation David Henry would have had more powers to compel evidence from those appearing before him. So then a question of parliamentary privilege arises and that question is whether things like Peter Dunne’s email records Andrea Vance’s swipecard records and the phone records between the two of them are covered by parliamentary privilege. Parliamentary privilege is still protected under this legislation along with all other kinds of legal and professional privilege.If the Privileges Committee rules that those things are privileged information then they will be protected in future inquiries but it is not yet clear that that is the case because it is a live issue before the Privileges Committee. So I think it behoves the Committee of the whole House to have in mind when considering Part 1 and subsequent parts of this bill that we take very seriously the fact that we are giving more power to Government-driven ministerial-led inquiries—which one would like to think would be apolitical but which in reality often are not entirely apolitical. So it is very important that we have that in mind as we consider Part 1 and subsequent parts.In my future calls on subsequent parts of the bill I will outline in more detail why we think the protections are in place to address some of the concerns I raised last night and why we are comfortable now to support this legislation going forward. But I would like the Committee to have in its mind as it continues with the Committee stage the fact that we are making quite a substantial change to the powers of ministerial-led inquiries so that we think carefully about the appropriateness of that.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of this very important piece of legislation the Inquiries Bill and really to continue on from where the last speaker Holly Walker left off which was to note the distinction between what we have now where we have a law relating to commissions of inquiry and inquiries appointed under the authority of the Governor-General and the existing situation with ministerial inquiries which do not have the same status or standing or certainly gravitas perhaps as commissions of inquiry under the Commissions of Inquiry Act. This bill and subclause (3) of clause 3 in particular repeals section 2 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act which confirms that commissions of inquiry under that Act are convened under the auspices of the Governor-General.This bill once enacted will give a similar status to ministerial inquiries to that which currently applies to commissions of inquiry. As Holly Walker has noted that is a big step but I would say that that is a good step. In addition to the many other enactments that provide for various inquiries—standing commissions of inquiry such as the Independent Police Conduct Authority and Acts that allow inquiries to be established—this bill allows at least in relation to those matters of important public interest that arise from time to time and that fall well under a Minister’s bailiwick the Minister to act with some haste to establish an inquiry that has some authority and that can get to the bottom of those matters.There is no question that as the complexity of Government administration grows mistakes do happenmisjudgments happen and catastrophes happen and the public needs to know that if those sorts of circumstances arise then we have the means and the machinery to ensure that an appropriate inquiry can be established the causes of a particular incident or event can be established and the public confidence can be restored. So that change in subclause (3) of clause 3 the repeal of section 2 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908 is a very important one.I might say that it is quite coincidental that the Government introduced new legislation today for incorporated societies. The Incorporated Societies Act is another piece of 1908 legislation that has stood the test of time. There are not many pieces of 1908 legislation that remain on the statute book. The Trade Unions Act—Louise Upston: This is getting a bit bloody desperate.ANDREW LITTLE: —is another one. These are very important pieces of legislation that have stood the test of time—more than 100 years—and yet here we are repealing these important provisions. I think that reflects—and I think Louise Upstonunderstands and agrees with me—that after more than 100 years circumstances change and that it is important to consider modernity and what we need to do to modernise these pieces of legislation.The other point I wanted to comment on was clause 4 “Interpretation” and the definition given to core participant which actually appears in clause 18 which is in Part 3 of the bill but is referred to in clause 4 by reference. I just want to make this point. I think that that is a worthwhile development—to give an inquiry that is set up under the aegis of this legislation once it is passed to allow the inquiry a ministerial inquiry included to establish who the critical people are whom it needs to talk to so that they are given an immediate standing in terms of participation in the inquiry. I think that will enable inquiries once they are called and set up to get under way very quickly and to get the people who need to be involved quickly involved as well. If there are other participants other people who consider that they ought to be called upon of course they can register their interest and the person who is called upon to conduct the inquiry can very quickly make a judgment about whether those other perhaps slightly more peripheral people should be called upon. But in the meantime it is good that we have core participants identified who can be called upon to make submissions and to give evidence to an inquiry.Of course that goes along with the power that is provided for in this bill set out in clause 3—the new power to compel people to participate in an inquiry as required. That would also obviously include core participants. So these are good and important measures when it comes to restoring public confidence in the Government.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Inquiries Bill. I want to begin just by commending my colleague the Hon Annette King for instigating this bill in 2008—some 5 and a bit years ago. The driving force for that instigation was the frustration that many people felt as has been explained by other contributors in this part of the debate and that many of us felt about the lack of ability of inquiries to really get to the basis of the truth. That is a really important point for the Committee of the whole House to consider because the reason that inquiries are called for whether it is at the instigation of the Governor-General or at the instigation of a Minister is that from the public’s point of view there is some information that we do not have and the public of New Zealand quite rightly expect that information to be made available to them.These are about serious matters. We have had two very serious inquiries over recent times in New Zealand. The first one was in relation to the Pike River tragedy and the Minister in the chair the Hon Simon Bridges is very familiar with the recommendations that flowed from that. I certainly hope that the focus on health and safety particularly in the mining area continues. What a massive tragedy we had to suffer before that focus was given but it is there now. But once again we know that the families on the West Coast are frustrated about the lack of complete information that they have and that is primarily because of the inability of the inquiry because of its terms of reference to get that information for them.In my own town of Christchurch we have had similar situations with inquiries. In the royal commission of inquiry into the collapse of Canterbury buildings we have seen in the example of the collapse of the CTV Building an extraordinary series of faults. People have acted irresponsibly people have acted beyond the scope of their registration and their ability and people have cut corners and lied about things being safe or otherwise and as a result of that series of errors we lost 115 lives in one building. There cannot be a greater call for the right of the public to know what happened in the first instance and the right of people to be confident that Parliament will address the causes of tragedies such as the two I have just outlined so that the public ofNew Zealand—our citizens—can be sure that we know the facts and we address them in order to make sure that such situations can never occur again.That is not the current situation with inquiries. For a variety of reasons there are often frustrations for either the person leading the inquiry—or in my view more important—members of the public who are waiting for the information that is so critical for their ability to understand the situation and perhaps if it is appropriate to move on in their lives. The ability of the terms of reference to be set in a way that satisfies that public interest is not in the current law. In 2008 Annette King recognised that. She got a very good report from the Law Commission and this bill was a result of that. It was reported back to Parliament by what I understand was an excellent Government Administration Committee. It was chaired at the time by David Parker. Our deputy leader Grant Robertson sat on that committee. He has contributed—Hon Trevor Mallard: He was a junior member at the time.Hon RUTH DYSON: He was a junior member of the committee at the time. That is how long ago it was—2009. And here we are some time later 4½ years later—actually 4 years and 9 months later—looking at this with some urgency.I want to go on later in this debate to the reason for the urgency but I just want to briefly allude to it before I move back to the other questions about the scope which are dealt with in the primary purpose of this legislation. The Government has brought this Inquiries Bill back to the House suddenly with such huge pressure for a very serious reason and that is the Fonterra issues of contamination in our exports. I do not think that there is a single member of this House who would not confirm that in relation to potential contamination of any of our export products the safety of consumers particularly when those consumers are children is paramount. So I want to say to the Government that despite its total inability to manage its legislative programme which has left us looking at this bill in August 2013 when it was reported back to the House in 2009 and also the inability of its management this evening demonstrated by an extraordinary proposal by the senior whip on a bill that we all agree with and which is now going to take a little longer than perhaps may have been envisaged because of a lack of willingness to listen to what other people say work out what their concerns were and get the bill progressed I do not want anyone to be in any doubt of my view and the view I think of every member of this House. In relation to the Fonterra issue and the need for a robust inquiry there would not be a single member who does not say that the safety of children and other consumers in relation to our exports is paramount. That is why I certainly support this bill progressing.I heard the member Holly Walker the Green Party member express the Green Party’s original concerns about the potential for overuse of some of the powers given in the bill. I appreciate those concerns and I think they are very valid. I guess our awareness of those sorts of concerns is heightened given that just a little while ago—almost an hour ago—the Government rammed through the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation which in any ordinary time and with a Government that was considerate of the rest of Parliament and indeed of its citizens would have received much more collaboration discussion and thought and received if not the unanimous support the overwhelming support of Parliament because of the nature of the process that would have been put together to address any changes. That is often the sort of work that an inquiry would do. An inquiry can step aside from the politics of the situation examine the circumstances that people have identified as being a problem or an issue that needs examination and make independent recommendations to Parliament. I think it is the responsibility of this Parliament to behave more like that on a lot of issues but particularly in regard to issues of national security. It is exactly the opposite of how the Government behaved this afternoon andthis evening in relation to the passing of the GCSB legislation. So I think the concerns that Holly Walker raised were absolutely correct to be raised and I am really pleased that she has found that the amendments as outlined and further consideration have given her party the ability to support this bill.How the membership of an inquiry panel is set up what powers it has what duties it has and what privileges it has—these are all set out in the changes outlined in Part 1. The ability to call witnesses to require witnesses to attend an inquiry and for the witnesses to testify on oath is a big change. Certainly had that been the situation with the David Henry inquiry into the leaking of theKitteridge report the outcome for Peter Dunne and his ministerial post—and perhaps the outcome in terms of other people who have fallen victim; who have been used as scapegoats actually by the Government in my view—in regard to the leaking of theKitteridge report may have been entirely different. I do think that when you are talking about people who have very little ability to speak in this House in defence of their position and to defend their own personal integrity or where you have people who might lose their Public Service positions and who have no ability for a comeback from that in the future—Wellington is a village; we all know what happens in those situations—it is the responsibility of anyone in a position of power and the National Government certainly is in this regard to maintain a position of absolute integrity and independence from the situation and from the judgment and from the ramifications. That has not been the position in regard to either David Henry or the other people who have been involved in the subsequent fallout.I was stunned actually to hear tonight the stories of the National Party members of the Privileges Committee—that is the Hon Gerry Brownlee the Hon Judith Collins and the Hon Anne Tolley—and the way they turned on David Henry in that Privileges Committee hearing in a way that I am not sure I recall having occurred before in my time in Parliament. I heard of the disrespect the abuse of a powerful position and the total undermining of the fact that that man was appointed to do a specific role and did his job not just to the best of his ability—I do not know him at all but he was appointed by the Prime Minister because of his ability—but also within the mandate of the inquiry that he had. So I think that when we are looking at the way that people run inquiries we have to recognise that until this bill becomes law they are restricted by the mandate by the terms of reference by the scope and by the law of the inquiry that they have been tasked with. I do not think that Mr Henry has been treated by Government members on the Privileges Committee in a way that is appropriate and I do not think that it has been a fair reflection of the role that he was asked to undertake and that he took within the scope of that inquiry.So because we do not have as this bill makes obvious—in Part 1 we change all the rules—the scopes for inquiry and because we currently do not have that ability or the power to call witnesses and to require witnesses to appear on oath we still do not know who leaked theKitteridge report. As a result of the fallout not only has a Minister lost his position but also we have had the amazing exposure of information about the fact that the Prime Minister’s political chief of staff can get access to the phone records and swipe access cards of members of Parliaments and members of the press gallery which tell people—other people who are inquiring into something that might be irrelevant—which parts of the building we have accessed. Many of us might think in response to the naive comments that the Prime Minister has made that if you do not go anywhere that is a bother then you should not have a concern about it. Well I reject that. I reject it because my right to privacy and my right to security as a New Zealand citizen should be reinforced by the Government not undermined by it.We have not had just the example where WayneEagleson from the Prime Minister’s office is able to put pressure on various parts of our parliamentary system to get accessto information about our movements; it is information that we could not get through a normal process of inquiry. I hope those sorts of—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Just come back to—Hon RUTH DYSON: —in Part 1—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No. You will have to do better than that.Hon RUTH DYSON: Clause 3 the purpose of the bill is to extend the ability of inquiries to get this sort of information openly and with accountability and transparency compared with what we have seen done with skulduggery and political pressure in the last little while in New Zealand.I want to finish by just going back to the Fonterra inquiry. Our exports are of fundamental importance in terms of our reputation internationally in terms of our economy and in terms of how we relate to people and nations around the world. That reputation has had a number of dints in recent times and one of the driving forces for this bill coming back to the House now is to ensure that the Fonterra inquiry is able through its enhanced scope and powers to give not just the public and the citizens of New Zealand but those who will shop for and hopefully buy our exports from the shelves in many countries the confidence that we were as concerned about contamination in New Zealand as they were and that we got the full truth about the situation aired that full truth and made sure that what we learnt from that contamination was addressed so that it could not happen in the future. The security of our exports and the safety and security of consumers are of critical importance.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):I was not going to take a call in the Committee stage of the Inquiries Bill but as it seems everyone else is now in favour of the bill it may be useful for me to take a short call. I have a letter from the Speaker guaranteeing me the same rights and privileges of any MP within this House and I was speaking on that before I was foully given a yellow card earlier this evening—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! The member may not refer to a matter that was in a previous bill. That ruling has been made and done. If the member is going to use this opportunity to redress that I will terminate his speech.BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I was not able to talk in those second and third readings and not able to do anything about that but I will not seek to take more than a proportionate time of this Committee.Last night when the House was considering the second reading of this Inquiries Bill I was in Auckland at a meeting of 300 to 500 people concerning Nathan Guy’s Snapper 1 snapper review. Parliamentary business takes many forms—the swans in Hyde Park as Paul Swain recalled in his valedictory speech and in August 2013 being able to catch a feed of snapper. But this morning arriving back from Auckland I caught up with theHansard from last night and learnt that Holly Walker and Metiria Turei had expressed the concerns that I had.This law change is being passed after languishing on the Order Paper since November 2009 having made absolutely no progress since the Government Administration Committee reported on it. The issues with it have been well canvassed and I do not need to repeat them. I could deliver a dissertation on the benefits of the Government having a well-managed legislation programme instead of a logjam on the Order Paper of sometimes 50—and often 60—Government bills. Then yesterday a substantial revision-tracked Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 330 appeared in the name of the Minister of Internal Affairs having presumably being expedited through Cabinet and departmental processes in the past week or two.I take my purpose and responsibilities as a member of Parliament scrutinising legislation seriously and I do all I can within the resources and the hours available to me. I make the effort to consider my vote on every bill and my vote opposing thesecond reading was based on caution—based on the knowledge that those who legislate in haste often repent at leisure.When I first read this bill I immediately found a spelling error. At first I thought it was self-depreciating humour and it is appropriate that that member the Minister of Energy and Resources is in the chair beside you. I thought it was humour of the stuttering bumbling administration of the Snapper 1 proposals of the Crown minerals bill and other bills that have passed through this House.But I am today still concerned that the revision-tracked Supplementary Order Paper a document of some 25 substantive pages has changes to the bill on 15 of those pages—60 percent of the pages have changes. I do not know what devil may lurk in that detail. I was not able to look at every page but I know that some parties have been negotiating with the Government have been looking at the detail and have been making progress. That is their right and their duty and that is good. However I believe that it is good for there to be time available for interested parties to be able to look at proposed changes. What would the Law Commission the Law Society or indeed others think of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper with changes on 60 percent of the pages? We simply do not know because there has not been time.I would draw two matters to your attention. Some time ago the Minister of Justice of the day brought the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 3) to this House. I would like to quote from Doug Graham’sHansard from 29 February 1996 moving the second reading of the bill the equivalent of what is now the first reading after changes to Standing Orders. In moving the bill he said: “It tidies up a printing error that occurred in the Office of the Clerk during the preparation of the assent copy of the Electoral Amendment Bill (No. 2). Members will recall that in passing section 79 of that Act the House agreed that the threshold figure and the definition of national donation in the new section 214f of the Electoral Act would be $10000. Unfortunately when the Clerk’s Office came to prepare the assent copy a zero was omitted from the figure so that it mistakenly became”—CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National):I move that the motion be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I am not accepting that—you have not used the right words.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):So “ … a zero was omitted from the figure so that it mistakenly became $1000.” I remind the House of this not to embarrass but to point out that stuff happens.Then I ask the Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources to turn his attention to schedule 2 of the revision-tracked Supplementary Order Paper 330 to the Inquiries Bill and the proposed new paragraph (ha)(i) of the definition of “official information” in section 2(1) of the Official Information Act which refers to “anymattter subject to an order”. Yes the word is spelt “mattter” with three “t”s. It is not self-deprecating humour because it has been there since 2009. How can anybody support this bill when there are these obvious mistakes these errors? I suppose this Government in its haste will just turn to Standing Order 312 and rely on the Clerk of the House to correct typographical errors. But that is not good enough and I cannot support this bill.I must say it is interesting that in earlier times in this House this Government was in such a rush that it would deny this member opportunities to speak in first readings second readings—not for 5 minutes not for 4 minutes—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I have cautioned the member. We are on Part 1 and that is what he should be referring to.BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I cannot trust that this bill does not have any more errors in it and therefore I will not be supporting it.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel):I moveThat the question be now put .Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes119New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.Noes1Independent: Horan.Amendments agreed to.Part 1 as amended agreed to.Part 2 Establishment and membership of inquiryThe CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): This is the debate on clauses 6 to 9.Hon Ruth Dyson: Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Are you seeking the call?Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Mr Chairman that has got to be the first time that people have thought that I have spoken too quietly. This is extraordinary. I think that is worth recording inHansard this evening.I am wishing to take a call on Part 2 of the Inquiries Bill. As you have quite rightly pointed out this covers just clauses 6 7 8 and 9 and they are pretty operational in a way but there are just a couple of points that I want to bring to the attention of the Committee. The first in clause 6 relates to the “Types of inquiry”. This was discussed in relation to the purpose of the bill as well but it is obviously relevant to Part 2.The purpose of this legislation is to look at the sorts of inquiries that we are able to set up in New Zealand the scope of them their rights their privileges their ability to call witnesses etc. This part Part 2 goes further into that area. Let me give you an example. It specifies the types of inquiries that can be undertaken under this bill: “Royal commissions established under the authority of the Letters Patent constituting the office of the Governor-General”; “public inquiries which are established ...”; “government inquiries which are established ...”; “The Governor-General may by Order in Council establish a public inquiry for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting on any matter of public importance”; and a Minister can just by aGazette notification establish a Government inquiry again for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting on any matter of public importance.I know that there are a few jokes about different political parties and about the number of inquiries that some parties might like or the number of royal commissions that other parties might call for but from my perspective I actually think that it is a really important part of our democratic process. That is why this bill and in particular the specificity that is outlined in Part 2 are so important to the operations of our democracy. If people see a situation that happens and feel that it is something bad—it could just be something quite minor but bad or something really really serious and tragic and bad—in a robust democracy they want to know what happened and why.Often that is not possible through our standard parliamentary processes. A select committee for example may institute an inquiry but again we do not have within the select committee process the ability either through expert witnesses or references—orthe ability to call witnesses and require people to come under oath. Select committees may not be the appropriate bodies to get that element of truth. Of course I think that it is still quite unfortunate but it still happens that despite our MMP environment select committee inquiries sometimes become opportunities for political grandstanding. I think that is actually a rather disappointing outcome of an inquiry because they really should be the opportunity for members of different parties to look at a particular issue of concern hear the facts and work together to see if a problem can be resolved or information can be brought to light and shared for the betterment of our citizens.In that first section in Part 2 clause 6 it talks about those different types of inquiries that can be instigated under the Inquiries Bill. Then in the next clause clause 7 it talks about the specific matters to be specified in the instrument establishing the inquiry—so what sort of matters can be discussed and what sort of inquiry would be appropriate. Then the rest of this part is primarily operational. It talks about whether a member of a public inquiry can be removed from that office and under what circumstances and what happens if there is a vacancy if somebody resigns or if for some other reason they cannot continue. I think that this is a really important part of the bill because it does really explain how the purposes in Part 1 are going to be operationalised.I was reflecting on the earlier contribution about why this bill has taken so long. We know the serious and good reason that it has come before the House right at this very time and that is because of the Fonterra issues. I am totally supportive of the light being shone on all aspects of that concern so that we can give ourselves and people overseas buying our products complete confidence about the safety of our exports. But I did wonder what the cause of the delay has been between 2009 and now. I might be a little suspicious. It might just be the political part of my nature unusually coming to the fore but I do think that the reason that the Government has delayed this bill being progressed for so long is that there have been so many issues in the last 5 years of the National-led Government that deserve an inquiry where people in this Parliament people outside of this Parliament and members of the public—voting thinking challenging and respected citizens in our society—have said: how can this happen in our country? Why can we not have an inquiry or more important why is an inquiry not being considered? Any of these forms of inquiries outlined in Part 2 would have been appropriate.One that is a very recent occurrence is the deal that the Government did over Skycity where there are all sorts of unknown elements where there are stories about the deal that the Prime Minister did with Skycity over dinner and where a lot of my constituents I know say to me: “How is that possible? How is it possible that the laws of New Zealand would have been traded away over a dinner—a casual dinner—and next thing we have legislation being pushed through to change our laws in response to a deal?”. In many countries and in comparable situations that action would have triggered an inquiry of some sort. I have to say that I doubt whether it would be a ministerial inquiry.I very much doubt whether the Minister of Internal Affairs—who I think is responsible actually for this very legislation even though last night I know there was some confusion. Nathan Guy was speaking to the bill—Hon Trevor Mallard: He thought he was in charge.Hon RUTH DYSON: He thought he was in charge and then the Hon Trevor Mallard drew to the Committee’s attention the fact that when the bill had been published it was in the name of another Minister the Hon Chris Tremain. So then the Hon Nathan Guy apologised and said: “Well it is in his name so I’ll speak on his behalf.” But then the Chairperson notified the Committee that actually the bill was in the name of the Hon Nathan Guy who had not noticed that.Hon Trevor Mallard: But he still notwithstanding that should have said “on behalf of Chris Tremain”.Hon RUTH DYSON: Well if he should have said “on behalf of Chris Tremain” I think we may need an inquiry into who is responsible for this legislation because I am completely puzzled. I am very confident that it is not the Hon Simon Bridges who is in the chair because if he was in charge of this bill he would know something about it. He would have taken a call. He would have contributed to the debate I am sure because he is not short on coming forward on these matters as I have noticed in other debates in the House.The instance of the Skycity deal where our legislation was basically traded away by the Prime Minister over dinner with representatives of Skycity means there is a convention centre being built in Auckland but it is in exchange for hundreds more pokie machines being allowed in Skycity against our current regulatory regime. In some situations the Deputy Auditor-General actually looked at that issue and said that the contract to build the convention centre was flawed it was not transparent it was not even-handed and it established and demonstrated deficiencies on the part of both Ministers and officials.That is quite serious stuff and in some countries I know that there would be a call and it would be responded to for an independent inquiry. No such inquiry has been triggered by the Government and I think that is a shame. The whole country knows that that was a shonky deal but we do not have a process where that sort of debate can be triggered.So I think in fact that even though this is good and well-considered legislation—legislation instigated by the Hon Annette King and introduced to this House by the Hon Rick Barker which went to a select committee chaired by the Hon David Parker with Grant Robertson as the junior member from Labour on that committee—I would like to hear from one of the members of the then Government Administration Committee or the Minister in charge of the bill whoever he may be. I would like to hear whether any of those members consider that this bill deals adequately with what I see as a deficiency in the public accountability of the Government and the transparency of deals—Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources):I want to take a very brief call because I think as members all across the Chamber have acknowledged the Inquiries Bill is a non-controversial bill. All parties I think have indicated that they are voting for it.I really just want to address the valid concern that the member Ruth Dyson has just raised and address that square on. I probably will not take up all of the time. What the member said was that—and I think the Independent member Brendan Horan also asked questions on this—well OK the original law is from 1908. Even the older members of this House were not in Parliament at that time. I think they remember it from listening to earlier calls. They were not in the House. Of course the history has been relayed. In 2006 the Law Commission had a look reviewed the law and recommended a new law. Of course it is only now that we really get to the final stages. I think an interesting question asked is why it has taken this much time. Well the simple matters are that as the member Ruth Dyson has said of course the whey protein incident and the issues around that—which I think the member has talked eloquently about—absolutely lead to the desirability to expedite this law and to pass it. As the member said I think no one in this House would argue against that.What is also true though and what has not been talked about this evening is that the law was also quite consciously put on hold by the Government from 2010. The reason for that is very simple. I think Ruth Dyson talked about both the Pike River royal commission—obviously an exceptionally serious situation which we still deal with andwhich I as Minister of Labour deal with on a nearly daily basis—and of course also the Canterbury earthquakes royal commission. Again we in this House all understand very well the issues associated with that. As a result of those royal commissions a conscious decision was made by the Government to put this law on hold to enable us to review really the lessons learnt from the chairs and from the members on those commissions so that we—I was hesitating to say the word “learnings”—Hon Trevor Mallard: What changes were made as a result of those?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well I can go through them. I am actually not going to. I have notes on those. There were a series of changes—procedural changes. I think even the member the Hon Trevor Mallard would acknowledge changes in Supplementary Order Paper 330 on this part I think it is that are sensible and that are uncontroversial. Of course later on there will also be Supplementary Order Paper 332 from the Hon Trevor Mallard which this side of the Chamber will be supporting. I suppose it is proof that even a broken clock is right twice a day. We will be supporting that—Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh now you’ve just added 12 hours to the debate!Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well it is an oldie but a goody. It is an oldie but a goody. The truth of the matter is that I have explained the time frame for this bill and why we are where we are today. There are some Supplementary Order Papers that I think deal with the findings of the royal commissions and improve this law quite considerably. I just thought it was worthwhile explaining those matters to the Committee.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Notwithstanding what the Minister of Energy and Resources has just said to the Committee about the reason for the delay of this Inquiries Bill being brought back to the House I do think it is rather ironic and it should be pointed out that this Government has had a constant refrain of deriding Opposition parties that have called for inquiries on various important matters over the last 4½ years. And here we have an Inquiries Bill being brought to the House in rather a rush in order to ensure that an important inquiry can take place. The other point to be made following on from what the Minister said is that it would be quite good to see a list of those lessons that have been learnt from the royal commissions that have been undertaken and that we are seeing included as part of this bill.I have got a couple of points to make tonight on Part 2 “Establishment and membership of inquiry”. I just want to make the point that this bill being brought before the House does actually provide for—and it is important to remember also that it was originally a Labour bill—the establishment of both public and Government inquiries. I want to talk a little bit about some of the principles that can lie behind particularly public inquiries and what that can mean in terms of the evolution of inquiries carried out through this Parliament in New Zealand. There are some very important principles—and the Minister actually just alluded to the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 332 which has been put forward by my colleague Trevor Mallard and which I am sure will be discussed as we go through this Committee process—around open justice and why that is so important as a principle for allowing the public of New Zealand to get a sense of and build more trust in the Government in the way that inquiries in particular take place.I want to talk a little bit about that principle because I went and did a little bit of work on looking at where that principle came from. It goes back even further than but certainly from 6 July 1189 which was the date that King RichardI’s accession to the throne occurred and also around the time of his father King Henry II whom he succeeded. It is a common law principle that stretches back to the very beginning part of common law. There was an interesting speech given in the UK a couple of years ago around a vision for open justice in the 21st century which I thought I might allude to here.Andrew Little: By Richard I?CLARE CURRAN: Well no it was not Richard I actually; it was a lord—Lord Neuberger. What he talked about was that in the era of television the internet and social media the workings of every institution were exposed to far more public opinion than before and that with greater scrutiny comes the need to adapt and evolve. I think we all know that and we probably all agree with that. The law is no different. His principles around open justice referred to the court process but these principles can also be applied to the inquiry process. I think they are important to note because the perception is—and I certainly think that it applies to Parliament as well—that the law is frequently out of touch with society. The principle of open justice allows the principle that democracy requires that justice not only be done but is seen to be done.There are three points that he made that I think are worth noting. He talks about the importance of communication accessibility and transparency. Judgments should be as short as possible there should be better use of technology in those matters and justice being held in open court should be very carefully considered. I think Trevor Mallard’s amendment actually goes to that last part in particular. When you think about the sorts of inquiries that should have been held in the last 4½ years of this Parliament—of which there are many and I will not dwell on all of them—there is a particular issue that is of interest and has been of interest for several years. Those are the issues of electronic data safety and privacy which do relate to Part 2 and the establishment and membership of the inquiry. There is a member’s bill before this House that proposes to create a special commission of inquiry into all of the privacy breaches that have happened in—Hon Trevor Mallard: Whose name is that in?CLARE CURRAN: Well that actually happens to be in my name Mr Mallard. It is a very serious issue. I think every member in this House would say that this is a serious issue. How we propose to deal with it has been perhaps at odds between the different sides of the House. What I wonder is whether this bill before the Committee today the Inquiries Bill would actually make such an inquiry easier and whether it would provide the ability for the public to have more of an input into whether such an inquiry took place. That inquiry in terms of its membership is proposed to consist of three members who would be appointed as a special commission by the Governor-General on the nomination of a Minister. But I think that it would be interesting to consider how that inquiry would actually fit under the bill that is before the Committee today and whether or not that could actually occur more quickly particularly in regard to the nature of all of the breaches that have happened and that are continuing to happen which are giving New Zealanders such cause for concern.There have been thousands actually. I think we are up to around 150000 New Zealanders who have had documents containing sensitive information about their lives either downloaded by a member of the public or somehow made visible. Those include things like medical invoices documents about children in the care of Child Youth and Family documents around ACC breaches and Inland Revenue Department breaches breaches that have exposed holes in the Ministry of Justice’s website and further breaches from Work and Income. There is just a litany of these breaches that has gone on and on and on.We know that people make mistakes but there is a difference between making individual mistakes and the systemic issues of privacy that do require a further look right across the whole of Government. Unfortunately the current Government’s response to this has been to say that there are no systemic issues.Andrew Little: Buried their heads in the sand.CLARE CURRAN: It has buried its head in the sand. It has said: “Oh no. We’ll deal with it on an individual basis and we’ll just throw a little bit of money here or thereand pretend that we’ve done something about it.” What an inquiry would achieve as is proposed to be achieved in the Fonterra inquiry is that it would actually look right across to see what the issues are and what are the underlying systemic issues that can be improved upon. So under the current law which is where this bill has come from Ministers have two alternatives: the commission of inquiry which could take too long or a ministerial inquiry. This third alternative sets up a Government inquiry to carry out an investigation in any way seen as appropriate and is in the current circumstances important but what is probably more important is that it is something that has actually sat on the books for such a long time. There has been a myriad of reasons as to why there should be other inquiries taking place. Unfortunately many of those inquiries have not taken place and the issues are sitting there as issues that the public remain extremely concerned about. We believe that anything that casts sunlight on—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Three to pick from eh? Oh I will have to go for seniority. So in that case I want to call the Hon Trevor Mallard.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):Thank you Mr Chairman—Iain Lees-Galloway: Andrew Little is higher-ranked than Trevor Mallard is.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well that was an indication of someone who does not want to speak in the House for the rest of the year. Do not bother bringing a question to our procedures committee. I wonder whether the member wants to withdraw and apologise now. You know I might move a bit slowly on occasions but like an elephant I do not forget.My view is that Part 2 is a relatively simple part of the Inquiries Bill. It has been improved by Chris Tremain and his work—and I do want to welcome the new Minister in the chair Mr Borrows to the chair. I do not want to inquire as to what he has done wrong. I mean everyone else who has been involved in this—Mr Tremain has local government problems and is likely to have an inquiry as to his behaviour in the Hawke’s Bay. We have got Mr Guy whose lack of ability to run a ministry and the problems with Fonterra are going to be the subject of another inquiry. We have had Simon Bridges who will no doubt eventually be embarrassed into setting up an inquiry into the forestry industry.But I actually thought that of all the Ministers the Minister currently in the chair was in the clear and maybe that is why he is in the chair. Maybe he is in the chair because the Government has been so embarrassed by all the Ministers that it has had involved that it is getting in a clean Minister and he is one of the few who can do that.I think there have been some language changes in this part but I think probably the most important difference is in the new clause 7 of the bill set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 which replaces the old clause 7 of the bill. Thesubstantive change is the ability to set up an inquiry with an inquirer—with a person who is going to be either the sole inquirer or the chair of the inquiry or even have other members as well—before the terms of reference are done. That is the essential change in here. I think it is a logical change. I think that on occasions people will want to get some things under way but not the hearing of the evidence. It does not allow for evidence to be heard but it means that there can be some more substantive consultation with those people who are going to be involved in the inquiry around the terms of reference and the details therein. So it is logical.I also think and I do not want to by any means criticise my colleague Grant Robertson but I think that over a period of 4 years the language has improved. It is easier—Grant Robertson: My language has improved over 4 years.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well my language has probably deteriorated. But the language of the bill has improved. It is easier to follow it is easier to read and it flows more logically and for that I am sure we thank officials rather than Ministers.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National):I moveThat the question be now put .CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):It is a great pleasure standing to speak on Part 2 of the Inquiries Bill. As others have talked about the bill’s long gestation I do not really intend to cover that but I intend to look particularly at the matters contained in Part 2 “Establishment and membership of inquiry”. That includes the type of inquiry the matters to be specified in the instrument establishing the inquiry and then various matters to do with the removal and vacancies of membership.It interests me because I have to say that I have had very little experience of parliamentary inquiries that what this part says is that there will be three kinds of inquiry: a royal commission established under the authorities of the letters patent; public inquiries which are established by Order in Council—the bill states that “The Governor-General may by Order in Council establish a public inquiry …”—and Government inquiries which would be established by a Minister by notice in theGazette . One of the things that I am quite interested in and I am sure that many others in this Chamber who have much more experience with inquiries would be able to tell me is the difference between the last two: a public inquiry established by the Governor-General by Order in Council and a Government inquiry established by notice in theGazette by a Minister.But in both cases those latter two—a public inquiry and a Government inquiry—are established “for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting on any matter of public importance.” We all know that there are many matters of public importance that the public of New Zealand would be very interested in having inquiries into because the behaviour of this Government has been little short of shonky it has been underhand and it has been failing to take account of the views of New Zealanders. We have had many pieces of rushed legislation and many matters have been ignored.That leads me to look at whether a public inquiry established by the Governor-General by Order in Council or a Government inquiry established by notice inGazette by a Minister would be important in relation to a matter that I think is of great public importance. That is the issue of fringe lenders those people who prey on vulnerable New Zealanders and their families. I want to say why I think that is a matter of public importance. I think it is a matter of public importance because we have an issue that every member of this Committee knows is a problem. We all know there is a problem with fringe lenders. We all know that there are predatory lenders preying on vulnerable New Zealanders and their families. We all know there is a problem. The community knows there is a problem. The issue has been a live one.There was a review commenced in 2007 which continued with the change of Government but was then delayed by that new Government and put on the back-burner because another piece of legislation was seen as more important. That other piece of legislation the Consumer Law Reform Bill still languishes on the Order Paper. Meanwhile every day in this country more and more people are being hurt by predatory lenders. This is why I think that either a public inquiry or a Government inquiry is needed here. We are seeing people in spiralling cycles of debt we are seeing families lose property we are seeing people under enormous financial stress and this is all something that the Government could and should have done something about. This is why it is a matter of great public importance.The Government not only delayed the review that the last Labour Government set up and deprioritised legislative reform but also then went into the last election cynically saying that it was going to get tough on loan sharks. In November 2011 Simon Powersaid: “We’re getting tough on loan sharks.” There was a constant stream of National Party backbenchers referring to that in their speeches after that election. Not a single thing has been done to get tough on loan sharks as yet—not a single thing. That is an outrage and surely must be a matter that should be inquired into through either a public inquiry or a Government inquiry.Let me tell you that budget services throughout New Zealand are saying that the overwhelming majority of people they see—in the 90 percents—are burdened by high-interest debt. They are saying that the level of debt of those people is more significant now. They are saying that the complexity of those cases is much more difficult for them to deal with yet nothing is being done. There must be an inquiry into why the Government is allowing some of the most vulnerable New Zealanders to get into this spiral of financial hardship and debt. It is just unbelievable that a party could allow that to happen.DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I am happy to take a call on Part 3 of the Inquiries Bill. I know that my colleague is looking at me over there—Tim Macindoe: Part 2.DARIEN FENTON: Oh sorry we are on Part 2. I am very happy to talk about Part 2 which is about the establishment and membership of an inquiry.Tim Macindoe: Part 3’s fine by us.DARIEN FENTON: That is right. It is a very very important part and it talks about the kinds of inquiries that will be established and the matters to be specified in the instrument establishing an inquiry. I want to talk in particular about the types of inquiries that we could have under Part 2. I am sorry that the Minister of Labour Simon Bridges is no longer in the chair because I want to talk about—Hon Ruth Dyson: No don’t say that about Chester.DARIEN FENTON: No look I am really really happy that Chester is in the chair. He is a very competent—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order!DARIEN FENTON: —Minister. Yes all right. Well I am getting to that.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The full name of the member.DARIEN FENTON: Oh the full name.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Chester Borrows or the honourable Minister.DARIEN FENTON: Chester Borrows. OK the Hon Chester Borrows. I am very happy that he is in the chair but it would have been better if the Hon Simon Bridges had been there because what I wanted to talk about was the potential for an inquiry that could be established under Part 2 into safety in the forestry industry. Labour the industry—the forestry owners the forestry contractors and in fact everybody in the industry—and everyone who is associated with the industry such as the families and others have been calling for an inquiry into the industry which could be established under Part 2. It seems to me that under Part 2 would fit very very nicely a forestry inquiry for the family members of workers who have been killed in the forestry industry not only in the last few years but in this year in particular. I think we are now up to six workers killed in the forestry industry. There could be an inquiry established that would be very fitting under Part 2.I am very keen to hear from the Minister in the chair about why that particular inquiry cannot be established under Part 2 of this bill and why we have everybody in the entire industry—the workers the forest owners and the forestry contractors—calling now for an inquiry into an industry that has obviously got some problems. Sure the Minister of Labour has continued to say that he has set up a code of practice and thatthat has got all the answers. He says that he has all the answers but obviously in this industry there is a systemic problem that needs to have an inquiry.I think that it is very good to have a discussion about the potential of inquiries. I know that my colleagues have talked about a range of other inquiries. Carol Beaumont has talked about inquiries into loan sharks and I know that my colleague sitting here next to me Iain Lees-Galloway would like to talk about other inquiries. An inquiry into the forestry industry would seem to me to be a priority. In fact right now the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has a petition in front of it calling for an inquiry. Who has that call come from? It has come from the family members of those who have been killed in the forestry industry over the last few years. We are up to as I said before six people killed in the forestry industry this year. That is one a month and something like 28 over the last 5 years so it really is a serious issue.I think what people are struggling with understanding is why there is so much resistance from the Minister of Labour to an inquiry into the forestry industry and forestry safety when you have everybody saying that it needs to happen. The petition I referred to earlier is on behalf of Caroline Callow who is the mother of a worker who was killed in the forestry industry. Families have lost loved ones and they have written to the select committee and told their stories about what it has been like for them to lose a son a husband or a partner in terrible accidents in the forestry industry. It seems to me that since Part 3 requires that inquiries “must act independently impartially and fairly” it would be absolutely fitting for this Parliament to be thinking about an inquiry into forestry.Let us talk about the forestry industry and what an inquiry might uncover. Forestry in New Zealand is twice as dangerous as in Australia and up to seven times as dangerous as in the UK. What is happening here? The industry is fragmented. There are nine major forest owners who use up to 300 contractors. All of this information could be uncovered under Part 2 of this Inquiries Bill. It is a really important sector Mr Chair and I know that you want me to go back to Part 2—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It is not an inquiry about forestry.DARIEN FENTON: Well it is actually. Part 2 does give the opportunity to talk about exactly what the establishment and membership of an inquiry could be so let us talk about that. Let us talk about the establishment of an inquiry into forestry. Who would that involve? Well it would obviously involve the Forestry Industry Contractors Association and the Forest Owners Association. They are saying already that they think there should be an inquiry. It would involve the Council of Trade Unions. The families have also been calling for an inquiry. The only outstanding parties at the moment are the Government and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—Iain Lees-Galloway: That’s often the case.DARIEN FENTON: —it is often the case; that is true—or the Department of Labour as it used to be called. They were in denial about this but I think the people who would be involved in that inquiry are pretty clear. All we are waiting for really is for Simon Bridges the Minister of Labour to accept that it is time for an inquiry into this industry.Part 2 would fit extremely well in terms of the establishment and membership of an inquiry. It also talks about the matters to be specified in the establishment of the inquiry. In fact there is plenty of evidence around what the matters may be. For example clause 7(2) states: “The matters are—(a) the matter of public importance that is the subject of the inquiry;”. What other matter of public importance could there be other than that six people have lost their lives this year? Have we not learnt anything? Well according to this bill apparently we have learnt something from the Pike River Mine commission of inquiry and that was about 29 workers losing their lives.The bill then goes on to talk about not only matters of public importance but who is going to be appointed to be members of the inquiry and the events or matters that are relevant to the inquiry and so on. The good thing about this piece of legislation is that it actually makes it easier for the Minister of Labour to set this up. It takes away the excuse that he has had so far which is that there does not need to be an inquiry because he has got all the answers and that he has set up an approved code of practice which is just a rewrite of something that Max Bradford did in 1999.If the Government was serious about this Inquiries Bill which of course we support because we want to see more inquiries it would say that safety in the forestry industry is an appropriate inquiry to be held under Part 2 of the Inquiries Bill. I hope that we will see with the passing of this bill that the Minister of Labour will be a little bit more open to the idea. I do not understand what his reservations have been. I do not understand what the problem is about opening something up and saying “What’s the problem because we clearly have a problem with people dying in the forestry industry?”. What is the problem with actually opening it up and asking people for the answers or asking people to give evidence and information? But he seems to have a problem with that because he thinks he has all the answers.However as I said I think Part 2 is a very very good platform for the establishment and membership of an inquiry into safety in the forestry industry which people are calling for which everyone is calling for—the families the forestry industry the owners the contractors the public and so on. It is time—The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to Part 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Part 3 Duties powers immunities and privilegesDENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):New Zealand First will support the Inquiries Bill which updates the law concerning inquiries because we feel the new amendments are certainly needed. But one concern we have relates to reporting. Clause 12(2) states “The final report of an inquiry must set out—(a) the findings of the inquiry; and (b) any recommendations of the inquiry.” but it does not provide for the reasons for the findings and the recommendations. Probably that is implicit so I have not sought to make any amendment to that but it would have been preferable if you are going to say those other two things that the reasons for the findings and recommendations must be stated as well. However I am satisfied really that it would be implicit and would be included. I could not imagine a report that did not have reasons for findings and recommendations as well as the findings and recommendations themselves. So that is OK.I note that clause 13(1) provides specifically for an inquiry having the power to request the appointment of counsel to assist it but in doing so it must consider effectiveness efficiency and fairness amongst other things. This will allow for legal assistance to inquiries but it must be justified by these provisions and would not be automatic. I have some concern that inquiries may feel unduly constrained by this but I do not think they should be because the amendment to clause 13(2) as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 says: “The Solicitor-General must if requested to do so appoint counsel to assist an inquiry but in doing so must—(a) have regard to the matters specified in subsection (1)” including those that I have referred to. I think that this is as it should be a good balance between the right of the inquiry to have legal assistance but really only if it is justified in those terms.Under clause 14 witnesses can be required to give evidence in both public and Government inquiries and so they should. Under the amendment to clause 14 as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 the inquiry is required to comply with the principles of natural justice especially if an inquiry proposes to make a finding that is adverse to any person. If it does do that it must make that person aware and give the person an opportunity to respond to the matters that the inquiry intends to raise about that person. That is also as it should be. The power to require the giving of evidence as is necessary I think is properly balanced by natural justice requirements.Clause 15 “Power to impose restrictions on access to inquiry” is a very important provision that we ought to pay particular attention to. Before making an order the inquiry must consider the risk of prejudice to public confidence. On the other hand under subclause (2) it must consider “(b) the need for the inquiry to ascertain the facts properly; and (c) the extent to which public proceedings may prejudice security defence or the economic interests of New Zealand;”. I think that is a good balance too. But I do think that it is proper for New Zealand First to support Trevor Mallard’s typescript amendment to add a new subclause subclause (2)(aa) of clause 15 that says “the benefits of observing the principle of open justice;”. I think that is particularly apt when you consider that these days there is a great public expectation in favour of transparency. I think that amendment would ensure that those public expectations are met.I turn to clause 19 and legal assistance for participants. It can be recommended of the legal aid agency “that funding be granted for the purpose of providing legal assistance to 1 or more specified persons—(a) who wish or who are required to appear before the inquiry; or (b) who have an interest in the inquiry.” New Zealand First is particularly pleased to see this but our concern is with subclause (3) which says: “If a recommendation is made under subsection (1) the chief executive may” grant legal aid. We think this should be “must”. We think it is the inquiry that should have the discretion not the legal aid agency.It is unclear to me whether the legal aid income and capital thresholds for legal aid would apply if the legal aid agency has a discretion in this way because of the use of the word “may” instead of the word “must”. I think that is one of the things that will challenge the thinking of the agency. Perhaps it is dealt with in the legal aid agency legislation but I doubt it. If that is the case legal aid could be declined perhaps for that reason. This is a concern to us and something that perhaps the Government might want to have a look at. It might be so even if a person is summoned to appear before the inquiry. Such people should have a right to legal aid despite capital and income thresholds because those thresholds are severe and I do not think it would be fair for persons to have to bear the cost of their own legal representation if they are just within what we would normally regard as ordinary income and capital wealth rather than those who would have to comply with the legal aid thresholds.So with those I think quite significant reservations New Zealand First will support the bill which overall is a good one but we regret that we think there are still one or two little glitches in it which we would like to see improved.HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am pleased to take a call on Part 3 of the Inquiries Bill. In my contribution earlier I mentioned that there were some assurances that the Green Party had sought since my contribution in the second reading last night. In this part I want to focus on those and talk about those because in my contribution to the second reading last night I outlined a number of concerns that the Green Party held with clauses in this part of the bill mainly clauses 21 and 23 which are about the powers to obtain information for inquiries under the new legislation and the disclosure of evidence. Just to remind the Committee those powers are quite extensive. Underclause 21 an “inquiry may as it thinks appropriate for the purposes of the inquiry—(a) require any person to—(i) produce any documents or things in that person’s possession or control or copies of those documents …” and under clause 23 an “inquiry—(a) may on its own initiative or on the application of another person order any person to disclose to any person participating in the inquiry any specified document information or thing that the person has produced before the inquiry;”. So those are quite extensive compulsion powers and they are new because they will now apply to Government inquiries as well as commissions of inquiry.Last night we abstained at the second reading because we had a number of concerns about this. We were concerned that on a face-value reading at least the powers in those clauses could have required for example journalists to disclose their sources or MPs to disclose their private communications with their constituents. I outlined these concerns to the House last night. I think we had in the House quite a helpful response from the Hon David Parker who made the link between this legislation and the Evidence Act via clause 28 which gives witnesses and other participants in inquiries the same protections as would apply to civil proceedings under the Evidence Act. That was a helpful contribution from the Hon David Parker. But the privileges alone that he listed in his contribution last night were not enough to allay the concerns that we had.So I took a closer look at the Evidence Act this morning and I did find it reassuring regarding the two specific concerns about the protection of journalists’ sources and the protection of MPs’ communications with their constituents because the part of the Evidence Act that applies in this situation to this bill includes section 68 of the Evidence Act. Section 68 of the Evidence Act explicitly makes clear that a journalist cannot be compelled to disclose the identity of their sources in any civil proceeding. Because this bill treats an inquiry in the same way as a civil proceeding would be treated that gives a clear indication that journalists’ sources would be protected and would not be compelled to be disclosed by an inquiry under this legislation. That was the first assurance that we sought and we are reassured by that.Similarly section 69 of the Evidence Act which also applies via clause 28 of this bill provides protections for confidential communications not to be disclosed including the protection of particular relationships and including protection for the free flow of information. Our reading of clause 69 of the Evidence Act is that this would also cover MPs’ communications with their constituents. That is very important because although in the Green Party we absolutely support greater transparency both in the conduct of inquiries like public and Government inquiries but also more generally in terms of the coverage of the Official Information Act which we believe should apply to the Parliamentary Service it is very important that confidential communications with constituents are protected in both scenarios so that people can contact MPs with the confidence that the information they share with us will not be disclosed publicly. So we are again reassured by the application of section 69 of the Evidence Act that these concerns are adequately dealt with under this legislation as well.The other area of concern that I canvassed last night in the second reading relates to parliamentary privilege. We in the Green Party had a question about what would happen if the Henry inquiry into the leak of theKitteridge report into the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was held under the new legislation. What would have happened in that situation? Under the current law ministerial inquiries have no power to compel witnesses to appear before them or to disclose evidence but under the new law the equivalent new Government inquiries will have those quite extensive powers outlined in clauses 21 and 23. So we have to be quite careful in teasing out what this means in practice to make sure we are not inadvertently inappropriately extending powers that could impinge on parliamentary privilege. We were concerned about thepotential misuse of that power in ministerial-driven inquiries to compel the disclosure of information like email records like phone records and swipe card records. After all clearly in the case of the Henry inquiry some compulsion was felt by the Parliamentary Service to disclose that information even though there was no power of that inquiry to compel the disclosure of that information. So our concern was that if that is what happens in a situation when the inquiry had no power to compel that disclosure what would happen in an equivalent inquiry if that power did exist? We were quite concerned that that could involve the compulsion of the disclosure of information that is subject to parliamentary privilege.This does come down indeed to the question of whether such communications are protected by parliamentary privilege. If they are they would be protected under this bill because along with all the other kinds of privileges that are protected under clause 28 parliamentary privilege is protected. So the nub of this question really is whether those communications we saw in the Henry inquiry are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is our view in the Green Party that they are and that is why my co-leader Dr Russel Norman indeed wrote to the Speaker inviting him to consider that matter and that has resulted in these matters being referred to the Privileges Committee. Clearly they are now the subject of a live inquiry by that committee the hearings for which took place today. Ultimately the Privileges Committee will rule on whether privilege applies in these particular types of situations. It is our view that it does but that is a matter for the Privileges Committee to decide.Indeed we may eventually see parliamentary privilege legislation coming before the House in order to clarify these matters. In our view it is very important that these matters of privilege are clarified. We do still have a concern that if those matters of privilege are not clarified the powers of compulsion granted under this legislation could be applied inappropriately by ministerial inquiries and we could see encroachment by the executive into the territory of the legislature in terms of breaching parliamentary privilege. But we are satisfied that according to the letter of this law parliamentary privilege is protected under this legislation and what we have to ensure is that it is adequately understood and respected by ministerial and Government inquiries in future and is not encroached on in the way it was in the Henry inquiry.I want to also acknowledge and thank MinisterTremain’s office. It turns out he is in charge of the bill and I want to thank him for the response he gave us—Grant Robertson: Today.HOLLY WALKER: —indeed today—on these matters which confirm this interpretation of the sections of the Evidence Act on the matters of parliamentary privilege. I am pleased to be able to tell the Committee that the Green Party will be able to support the legislation. We will no longer abstain but it is good that we have had the opportunity to put these concerns on the record and have them considered by the Committee of the whole House because they are very important. They do go to the heart of principles about democracy and although it is needed—the current legislation needs to be modernised and has been on the Order Paper for a long time—we are concerned that this legislation is being rushed through quite quickly in the space of this week. So it is important that the Committee takes the time to consider these matters seriously and I thank those members who have taken our contribution seriously and responded to it both in the second reading and the Committee stage. I think it makes for better lawmaking and hopefully in the end a better understanding of how these important matters of privilege and confidentiality will apply under the new Inquiries Act.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a pleasure again just to make some comments on Part 3 of the Inquiries Bill. I just want to draw attention to some clauses in this partbecause I think the provisions in this part are really the meat of this legislation and they could stand us in very good stead in what could be some very important inquiries some of which have already been alluded to this evening.I note in clause 10 the principles that any inquiry must abide by in conducting itself and I was interested to note the words that the members must act “independently impartially and fairly.” The last time we heard those words was actually in a speech by Richard Nixon after he had just sacked JohnEhrlichman and John Dean his White House counsel to set up an inquiry into the conduct of certain matters to do with Watergate. But there we go—that was an inquiry that had all sorts of ramifications not the least of which were for Richard Nixon himself.I want to draw attention to clause 11 which limits the scope of an inquiry. It is very important that inquiries of the nature contemplated by this bill as indeed with commissions of inquiry are about getting to the facts of the matter so that there can be an improved understanding about the cause of an event or events and so that public confidence can be restored if indeed public confidence has been shaken as a result of an event or an incident. The bill makes it very clear that an inquiry convened under the aegis of this legislation is not to determine civil criminal or disciplinary liability so that people who are participating in it and certainly people giving evidence in it cannot be held to be criminally or civilly liable or made to face any particular disciplinary action. It does not mean of course that recommendations cannot be made that further action be taken by other bodies. But it is very important to note that an inquiry itself cannot have a civil criminal or other disciplinary effect.The next clause I want to draw attention to is clause 14 and that is the natural justice clause. The original bill as drafted had a clause 17. That has gone and the natural justice provisions appear in subclause (2) of clause 14 and also in subclause (2A). That is very important too and that is simply to ensure that if any adverse finding is likely to come out of an inquiry those against whom those adverse findings may be made will have an opportunity to respond or to comment before those are published.Clause 15 is very important. This is about whether or not an inquiry during its conduct can close itself to the public or suppress evidence. I think that Trevor Mallard’s Supplementary Order Paper 332 is apposite. It starts with a presumption that inquiry hearings will be open but it provides a protection if it is felt that the interests of individuals may be compromised if it goes public. I note in that regard that when an inquiry is considering whether or not to suppress information or keep its hearing private one of the factors it must consider is whether or not it would interfere with the administration of justice including any person’s right to a fair trial.I draw attention to all those matters because the Government has an opportunity—in fact I actually think it now has a duty—to open a full inquiry after tonight’s broadcast on TV3 which concluded only 15 minutes ago about the latest revelations on Teina Pora and on Malcolm Rewa. The Government has the opportunity to open a full-blown inquiry. It can do it and under the principles of this bill when it is enacted it will be able to do it without compromising any criminal procedure or indeed civil or other disciplinary procedure. But the case for inquiring into that matter is now compelling and it must happen. I am sure there will be plenty of comment on that in the days to follow because the revelation tonight is an absolute bombshell—that the police knew the identity of Malcolm Rewa as a rapist after the first rape in what was a series over 7 years. The police knew it. It is time for an inquiry and this Government is derelict in its duty if it does not have one.I want to make one final point and that is about legal assistance. I note that the legal assistance provisions allow what is described as the relevant department to grant legalassistance. That is not the Ministry of Justice. It is either the Department of Internal Affairs or any other department that is administering the inquiry and that gives—The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to Part 3 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to clause 15 be agreed to:insert in subclause (2) the following paragraph after “criteria”:(aa)the benefits of observing the principle of open justice; andAmendment agreed to.Part 3 as amended agreed to.Part 4 Sanctions and miscellaneous mattersThe question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to Part 4 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 4 as amended agreed to.Schedule 1The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to schedule 1 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.Schedule 2The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to schedule 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Can I just seek clarification. Are we doing clauses 1 and 2 of the Inquiries Bill together or are we doing them separately?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): You can do both together but there will be two separate votes.Hon RUTH DYSON: I am happy to seek leave that clauses 1 and 2 be taken as one debate but with two separate votes.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is none.Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh that was pretty speedy progress in a resolution. I would recommend that to other members of the Committee who tried putting procedural motions before the Committee earlier this evening. Mr Chairman ordinarily you do not miss a thing that goes on this House. You are one of the most careful followers of procedures. I just want to draw to your attention that a little earlier very recently in the Committee I tried to get a call on Part 3 and you missed it. So that is the second timethis evening by two separate members who have been sitting in the Chair. The first one asked me to speak a little louder which caused great amusement not only to me but—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Maybe the member should get two calls this time.Hon RUTH DYSON: —other members of the Committee but then you missed my call altogether so I take particular note of that.There were actually some specific queries that I had in relation to Part 3. I am disappointed that I was not able to raise them. They related to things that I am actually genuinely interested in and I think other members of the Committee are in regard to the way that the inquiries will be amended under this legislation—obviously the Inquiries Act 2008—which will come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. Those are the two clauses we are discussing at the moment.In respect of the previous debate on Part 3 which I was not able to participate in clause 12 refers to the reporting requirements of different inquiries—a public inquiry which is reported to the Governor-General compared with a Government inquiry. Then clause 12(3) states: “The final report of a public inquiry must be presented by the appropriate Minister to the House of Representatives as soon as practicable after the inquiry has reported”. I was going to ask a question to the Minister in the chair the Hon Chester Borrows even though he is not the Minister in charge of the bill. I know that he is quite fussy about responding to questions in the Committee. It is a trait of his that I particularly enjoy. I was going to ask him actually when the Government inquiries have to report to the public. So if the Minister for Courts would not mind passing that on to the relevant Minister and if he could refer to it in his third reading speech and answer my question which the Chairman did not allow me an opportunity to ask then I would really appreciate it.The other comment that I want to make is that I was really concerned about an earlier contribution from the New Zealand First member Denis O’Rourke in relation to clause 19(3) where he talked about the chief executive of the legal aid authority being able to determine whether an inquiry set up under this Inquiries Bill was able to get legal aid funding. My understanding of what the member Denis O’Rourke said was that the legal aid agency rather than the inquiry itself would make the determination. I had some discussions with colleagues about that because I was concerned about that alerting that the member had drawn to the attention of the Committee of the whole House.My understanding is that in that clause it is actually the chief executive of the department who is responsible for the inquiry under this bill. So it is either the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs or if an inquiry set up under this bill was for example the inquiry that my colleague Darien Fenton was referring to an inquiry into health and safety in the forestry regime well it may well come under the Labour Group within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment or at the end of the year it would come under the chief executive or the chair of the board of the new health and safety agency. I think that the member Denis O’Rourke was not correct in his interpretation.There is another thing that I think would be useful for the Minister in the chair to refer to the Minister responsible for the bill. I still feel a bit of a need for an inquiry into the particular question of who the Minister responsible for this bill is. Is it the Hon Chris Tremain or is it the Hon Nathan Guy?Either way I think that between the two of them they should be very satisfied that the particular amendments put up by members tonight from both sides of the Chamber from the Government side and from the Opposition side have been supported. I am pretty sure that the amendments have passed without exception. That is a good indication of careful consideration of the bill. My colleague Trevor Mallard put in anamendment that I actually wished had been considered under the earlier legislation that we were discussing the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation because his amendment inserted a subclause about the benefits of observing the principle of open justice. Well we would have supported that in the GCSB legislation but I do not suppose that the Government members would have.Just going back to the clauses that we are debating at the moment we know that the legislation is unamended. This is the bill to amend the Commissions of Inquiry Act. It is the Inquiries Bill so the primary Act will be the Inquiries Act 2008. This bill before the Committee now was introduced in 2008 by the Hon Rick Barker under a previous Government. It has been a long time coming to this point. Fortunately the commencement date which is the other part that we are voting on—the Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent—cannot come soon enough.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I will report this bill with amendment.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I would just like to draw your attention to a discrepancy or an apparent discrepancy between the clocks that are currently in here. I know that members have been carefully timing their speeches for 9.55 p.m. which is the time when you have to report progress. But I note that it says 9.55 p.m. now on the clock that you are looking at but the one that I am looking at says 9.54 p.m. I would invite—Grant Robertson: From my angle it actually is 9.54 p.m. there.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Is it? Do you think so? Fifty-four 55 56? I think it is probably appropriate to have an inquiry. I am sure that when it does get to 9.55 p.m. you will interrupt my point of order in order to report progress because that would be your obligation under the rules. The question is whether you are looking at the clock just in front of you or the one up there or the one over here.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I will report this bill with amendment.House resumed.The Chairperson reported the Inquiries Bill with amendment no progress on the Resource Management Reform Bill and no progress on the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill.Report adopted.The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.