THURSDAY, 4 JUNE 2020
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
PRAYERS
SPEAKER: Because today is the 50th anniversary of the treaty of friendship between New Zealand and Tonga, and the fact that we will miss Tongan Language Week because Parliament will be prorogued for the election, I've asked Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki to say the prayer today in Tongan.
ANAHILA KANONGATA'A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Ke tau lotu. 'E 'Otua Māfimafi, kuo mau ta'imālie 'i ho'o 'ofá. 'Oku tuku homau lotó ka mau hū atu. Ke ke malu'i 'a e Kuiní, mo tataki mai mu'a 'emau ngāue 'i Fale Aleá. Ke fai'aki 'a e poto faka-'Otua - 'a e 'ofá mo e 'ulungāanga malu, ko e 'uhí ko e mo'uí mo e nofo melino 'a e fonuá. Pea 'oku mau kole 'a e ngaahi me'á ni 'i he Huafá ho'o 'Aló ka ko homau Fakamo'uí. 'Ēmeni.
SPEAKER: Before I ask Chris Hipkins to give the statement, we currently have some very strict rules as to attendance in the gallery, and it is reserved for a security officer and current members of Parliament only, so I'll have to ask my old friend Rick Barker to leave.





BUSINESS STATEMENT
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): The House will adjourn today and will next meet on Tuesday, 16 June when the Budget debate will be concluded. Other legislation to be considered in that week will include the second readings of the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC 2021) Bill; the committee stage of the Arms Legislation Bill; and the third reading of the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill. The Government intends to extend the sitting of Tuesday, 16 June into Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, 17 June, there will be a general debate in the afternoon followed by a members' day.





ORAL QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Prime Minister
1. Hon NIKKI KAYE (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by Cabinet's decision not to consider lifting alert level 2 restrictions and moving to level 1 until 8 June?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: The premise of that member's question is, sadly, incorrect; in fact, by choosing a decision date of 8 June, Cabinet decided to bring it forward from 22 June. The member should be happy with the parties of this Government in that they are cooperating to move as fast as we can on this important matter.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Does she stand by her Cabinet paper that alert level 1 controls are predicated upon there having been no new cases from community transmission for at least 28 days?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, most definitely, excepting that was only one of eight conditions set down at the time. I'd invite that member to read the full paper before coming to this House with a not complete idea of what she's talking about.
Hon Nikki Kaye: When was the last case of community transmission in New Zealand?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Thirty-four days ago.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Does she stand by her statement yesterday that the criteria for decision making on alert level 1 includes trends in the transmission of the virus, and isn't the most significant trend the fact that there has been no community transmission in over a month?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, to the first question, most definitely stand by that statement. As to the second issue and question raised by the member, it is only one of the criteria that are being considered by Cabinet on 8 June.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Does the Government have confidence in our border controls to enable the country to move to level 1?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister—and, I dare say, the Minister of Customs and others here—we've done our best to secure and ensure that our borders are safe. That means it requires us to be extraordinarily vigilant; it requires us to cooperate with other countries as well. We have done everything we can, I believe, to ensure that when we come to make the decision, the security of our borders will not be one where we will be concerned about any failure or omission there.
David Seymour: Why has the Deputy Prime Minister failed to persuade her to move to level 1 immediately?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister is one of the most persuasive people I've met.
Hon Member: Answer the question.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: However—I'll answer the question, sunshine, when I get to it, all right? But the reality is that we belong to a coalition where cooperation and debate and discussion, sometimes heated, nevertheless leads to better decisions—not some discordant one-man band where the leader and the supporters are the same person. 
SPEAKER: Order! Order! Before the member answers, I let it run and then I've sort of thought about it. I know that the term "sunshine" is a term of endearment, but it's probably not an appropriate one to use in the House.
David Seymour: It's all right, grandpa. Is she aware of the reasons why after calling for an immediate—
Hon Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As the Minister for Seniors, I object to the ageist phrase that that member just used before he started his question.
SPEAKER: Did the member use an ageist phrase?
David Seymour: As you said earlier, it's a term of endearment.
SPEAKER: The member heard a warning as to the inappropriateness of using terms, even if they were of endearment. If he deliberately used a term of endearment, then I'm striking the question out.
David Seymour: Oh, Mr Speaker, it wasn't deliberate.
SPEAKER: Well, if the member ignorantly used one, I'm striking it out as well.
David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You frequently allow other members to ask their question, even after cautioning them about their conduct. To take a question away on that basis is grossly unfair and it undermines this House being able to hold the Government accountable.
SPEAKER: OK, the member will resume his seat. The member, through an arrangement with another member, has had double the questions that he normally has had this week, and if he is serious about holding the House to account, he will—especially after a warning's been issued—stay within the Standing Orders and Speakers' rulings. He deliberately flouted them, and for members who deliberately flout them, there are consequences. And for members on both sides of the House, as both whips will indicate, I do regularly take questions from parties who deliberately breach the rules—or ignorantly breach the rules, as that member did.
David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. 
SPEAKER: I'm not going to have this subject debated again. 
David Seymour: A fresh point of order, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: On a different issue?
David Seymour: Yes. I seek leave to ask an additional supplementary question.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There is.
David Seymour: Oh, he doesn't want it.
SPEAKER: All right. The member will leave the Chamber.
David Seymour withdrew from the Chamber. 
Hon Nikki Kaye: Why are we not at level 1, when her Cabinet paper states that there is no need for restrictions if there is no community transmission for 28 days and we have confidence in our border controls?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Again, the reality is, and I set it out, that there are eight criteria, not one. Now, thus far, in all these supplementary questions, I have heard of two of the pathways of judgment, not the other six. But if we wait here long enough maybe I'll get one on the other six as well.
Hon Nikki Kaye: What is the reason the Deputy Prime Minister gave her for wanting to move to level 1 over a week ago?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister came along and said, "We have a two-cycles target. We're going to meet that. There are other things that we are going to have to focus on, such as border security and a range of other matters as well, including the effectiveness of an app and community awareness and cooperation." But the Deputy Prime Minister, above all, stressed that it was the economy and its turn-around and recovery that were so critical in his thinking, and that was put before her as the Prime Minister.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Is one of the reasons that she has not moved the country into level 1 the reason articulated by the Hon Willie Jackson about alert levels—that another week is not going to hurt?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, no, it's not that at all. But the Prime Minister, you recall, just three days ago, was listening to another leader of another party who said he didn't and couldn't take a position on alert level 1 "because he isn't the Prime Minister." Now, I don't know where that member is getting her leadership from, but that's what the then and now and new National Party leadership said.
Hon Chris Hipkins: Does she believe that there would be an increased risk of community transmission taking hold in New Zealand again if we moved to reopen the border with urgency to countries like China, as advocated by the Leader of the Opposition?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, that is an extremely good question because it demonstrates how dangerous the thinking of some people is, because if we were to do that, then who would know—according to one of the eight criteria laid out—how sound our border was. I was actually astonished when I heard it and I still don't believe that someone honestly could have put it forward as a sound addition to the Tasman bubble—that proposition.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Does she agree with either Willie Jackson or Wellington pub owner Matt McLaughlin, who says his bar Danger Danger is still in a world of hurt at level 2?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, of course the Prime Minister sympathises with every businessman and woman who, because of this outside intruder, has suffered so much. Everybody on this side of the House understands that and that's why we are doing our best to get back to normalcy as fast as we possibly can, and possibly two weeks earlier than was originally projected. But here's the real point: we are not going to use the misery of people caused by some outside influence for which none of us are responsible just to try and advance our miserable political careers.
Hon Nikki Kaye: Why did she not listen to her Deputy Prime Minister and the thousands of businesses across New Zealand that are hurting as a result of not being in level 1?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, she almost had me there—but I've got to say that it is a decision to be made by all of Cabinet, and all of Cabinet will be listening to the country at the same time.




Question No. 2—Research, Science and Innovation
2. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What recent announcements has she made about funding for the Research, Science and Innovation sector?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting the Institute of Environmental Science and Research campus at Kenepuru to announce over $400 million in funding for the research, science, and innovation sector from Budget 2020 and the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. Crown research institutes will receive $196 million in additional funding so they can retain talent and continue their key research. A $33 million fund will enable Māori to determine and make further investments in research, science, and innovation priorities, and $150 million has been made available for a loan scheme helping R & D - intensive firms retain critical capability and talent and maintain their important research. This Government recognises the critical importance of a strong and well-resourced science sector and has stepped up to the plate with funding that will see that necessary work continue.
Dr Deborah Russell: How will this funding boost support the post-COVID economic recovery?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Scientists have been at the coalface of the immediate COVID-19 response, and their critical capability will need to be maintained as more research is undertaken into the virus itself and as global efforts coalesce in the hunt for a vaccine. These investments will support the production of high-value products, knowledge-intensive high-paying jobs, and help New Zealand make a strong recovery from COVID-19. It will provide certainty to our entrepreneurs, innovators, and researchers that this Government backs them and their work, and we will not repeat the mistakes of the past, particularly following the global financial crisis, by cutting funding to the sciences in response to an economic downturn.
Dr Deborah Russell: What other announcements has the Government made to assist entrepreneurs, innovators, and researchers in response to COVID-19?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government moved swiftly to establish the $25 million COVID-19 Innovation Acceleration Fund, designed to accelerate the deployment of rapidly standing solutions in response to the threats posed by COVID-19. The ingenuity of the applications has, to date, been impressive and I look forward to seeing how these solutions can be utilised in our ongoing response and recovery. And, of course, the Ministers of foreign affairs, health, and I also recently announced a vaccine strategy for New Zealand, which will see $37 million of Government funding provided for the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments for COVID-19, as well as participation in international efforts and support for our Pacific neighbours.




Question No. 3—Finance
3. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his statements and policies?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context they were made and delivered, including my statement welcoming the Opposition's stated policy of "moving away from the non-specific 'do you stand by all your Government's policies and statements' questions.", and my later statement at 11 a.m. this morning expressing regret that the member missed the memo.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he stand by his response to my question on Tuesday, which asked how much additional spending he had so far planned to announce before the general election in September, "As the member knows, the Government has been very flexible all the way through our response to ensure we meet need as it arises, but I don't have any specific plans in that regard."?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I stand by all of the statements I made in that answer, and I think the member's impression wasn't too bad just then.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: How did he not have any specific plans for new spending on Tuesday and then have his Government announce $400 million of new spending on Wednesday?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The basis of that spending was in the Budget and the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund announcements we made.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why can't he give a straight answer to the question of how much additional spending he has planned to announce before the election when he clearly has large spending announcements planned for virtually every day?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I do find it difficult to give straight answers—sometimes, anyway—for obvious reasons. Only you and I are getting this joke, Mr Speaker, but it's good that the two of us are sharing it anyway. We've been very clear that we've announced $30 billion worth of spending from the response and recovery fund. The remaining $20 billion is available for spending as necessary. It doesn't mean it won't be spent, but it doesn't mean that all of it will be spent either.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think he can just dismiss questions about his intentions for billions of dollars of spending?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, and I haven't. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Can he assure New Zealanders that he'll keep a substantial part of the $20 billion spare from the COVID fund as a contingency in the case of a later outbreak?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I, in fact, talked exactly about that when I announced it on Budget day. I note that the member and his party have already tried to spend about $10 billion of it in the last two weeks.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: How long is he planning to keep up his average of announcing $200 million of new spending a day since the Budget, and how does he think New Zealand will pay for it?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would have to go back and look at the figures that the member has just put forward there. What we have done throughout the last 2½ months or so is what New Zealanders wanted us to do, which is cushion the blow of this virus on both our economy and our society, and we will keep doing that.




Question No. 4—Transport
4. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: What is in the text of the email from the office of Rt Hon Winston Peters to him on Auckland light rail, and will Auckland light rail be considered by Cabinet before the pre-election period begins on 19 June 2020?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): My office received an email from the office of the leader of New Zealand First on Auckland light rail, as part of coalition consultation. It's not in the public interests to disclose cross-party discussions during the Cabinet decision-making process. And to the second part of the question, that is my intention.
Chris Bishop: Did the email contain an attachment, and did that attachment contain a letter on ministerial letterhead?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I actually haven't seen the actual email myself, but my staff have dealt with it. So I can't answer that member's question.
Chris Bishop: Sorry, is he saying that the office of the Rt Hon Winston Peters, in his capacity as the leader of the New Zealand First Party, has sent him an email about the Auckland light rail project and he hasn't seen the email?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: So the email was sent by staff in the leader of New Zealand First's office. It went to my staff, and it's been dealt with accordingly.
Chris Bishop: Given the importance of Auckland light rail—in his own words—to the Government's programme for Auckland, why has he not seen the email from the office of the leader of New Zealand First relating to that project?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because Ministers have staff who deal with these things, and I've been briefed by my staff on what's in the email.
Chris Bishop: When was the email sent to his office?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The email was sent on 29 February.
Chris Bishop: Would it be fair to say that the email, albeit that he hasn't seen it, was a contributing factor to Auckland light rail not going to Cabinet in February as was agreed by Cabinet in June 2019?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No.




Question No. 5—Social Development
5. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent information has she seen on the impact of the wage subsidy on employers?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I have recently seen preliminary findings on a survey of businesses receiving the Government wage subsidy. The survey had high engagement, with over 90,000 respondents—around a 25 percent response rate. The survey asked 13 questions on the following topics: the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, the efficacy of the wage subsidy, awareness and uptake of the supports and services available to them through Government, and likely future support needs. It has been heartening to hear the positive responses of businesses that have seen the wage subsidy as a crucial lifeline, with 79 percent of respondents saying they have benefited a lot from the subsidy. 
Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What are some of the other preliminary findings from the survey? 
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: One of the highlights has been seeing that the vast majority of respondents said that the wage subsidy had a positive impact on cash flow, 94 percent; staff retention, 83 percent; and being able to keep operating for the foreseeable future, 89 percent; over half—62 percent—also said that support for wages has helped employers address other non-staff overheads. It was also a positive sign that only around 6 percent of respondents were expecting to make staff redundant over the coming months. In saying that, I acknowledge that larger firms indicated a higher likelihood of staff impacts than small to medium sized businesses. These results show that for the vast majority of respondents, the wage subsidy is achieving its intended purpose with broader positive benefits, and we look forward to how we can use these insights to support businesses into the future. 
Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How will the findings of the survey support the Government's response to COVID-19? 
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The final survey results will include important demographic information such as industry, regional spread, financial turnover, revenue from tourism, and whether the business identifies even as a Māori or Pacific business. This will be useful as we try to understand the broader impact of the wage subsidy, particularly on small businesses across regions and industries. More than this, it gives an insight into what businesses are thinking their next steps might be and where the Government can improve our support, moving forward—for instance, the preliminary results show that there was less awareness around some of the other supports available to businesses, like non-government business support from councils and chambers of commerce. Over the coming weeks, we hope to learn everything we can from this feedback, and we expect to be able to share a more fulsome range of findings when the final results are available next week. 




Question No. 6—Health
6. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement that "no Government had ever set up a national contact tracing system. The steps forward in terms of the IT solution that supports that is going to be incredibly valuable as we move into the future"?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Yes.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, is it concerning to him that half the country's district health boards, including those in Auckland where the biggest outbreaks occurred, are not using his "incredibly valuable" IT solution?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: What I can confirm is that all of our public health units (PHUs) are, for the first time, using digital platforms for contact tracing. Up until the creation of the National Close Contact Service and the National Contact Tracing Solution, many PHUs were using manual systems. The first priority was addressing that and ensuring we could gather accurate and timely national data on contact tracing; that has been achieved.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: When Dr Ayesha Verrall stated in recommendation 6 of her rapid audit report that "The Ministry of Health should give [public health units] access to the [national contact tracing solution].", would it have been her expectation that public health units actually use it?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: She's probably best to speak to her expectation, but it is the case that all of the PHUs have access to the data in that solution.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, is it the Minister's expectation that having spent $55 million of taxpayers' money on a technology solution, that technology should be used by all public health units?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: It is my expectation that, over time, those public health units that are not currently connected directly into all features of that system be integrated. I think the member would be both surprised and impressed to know that a technology solution has been set up in a matter of months to achieve this, that everybody has connection to it, and, in fact, that the historic under-investment in our health system has been rapidly rectified because this is a Government that is committed to public health, in contrast to the prior Government, which cut public health funding by a whopping 26 percent.
Hon Members: What!
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: A whopping 26 percent cut in public health funding. We have invested in solutions which are ensuring that everyone is digitally connected and can get the data in a timely fashion.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Was the Prime Minister correct when she said in the House that compliance is a factor considered for the move to alert level 1, and is non-compliance with the Verrall report recommendations one reason we're not already there?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: In answer to the first part of the member's question, yes. In answer to the second part of the question, of course, all of those different PHUs are connected into the system, they are able to access the data, and they are required to report into the central solutions. At the moment, it is rather easy to read the zeros in the spreadsheet, and that is thanks to the good efforts of New Zealanders who've made considerable sacrifice along the way, but it's also thanks to the efforts of our public health staff across the country—our doctors and nurses and others who've contributed to this extraordinary success. I think the member would do better to congratulate them and thank them, rather than talking down their superhuman efforts.




Question No. 7—Health
7. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: How much of the $455 million for the Government's new frontline mental health service announced in Budget 2019 has been spent to date, and how many of the 22 delivery sites identified in his ANZAC Day press release were providing these services before the Government announced its new frontline mental health services in Budget 2019?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): As the member knows, the $455 million investment in Budget 2019 was over four years, with spending ramping up over time as new workforces are trained and new services are developed. I'm advised that as of 30 April, approximately $20 million has been spent, despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. This is part of the continuation of services that were previously being trialled at 22 sites, giving them certainty of funding for the first time. It also includes some funding for the next stage of the roll-out, which is seeing new services established in 100 new sites by the middle of next year, serving a population of 1.5 million people. As the member will be aware, additional funding was also allocated and spent for the psychosocial response to COVID.
Matt Doocey: So is the Minister telling the House today, after announcing almost half a billion dollars in Budget 2019 for his new flagship front-line mental health service—
SPEAKER: Order! Order!
Matt Doocey: —he has only—
SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The member will ask a question. 
Matt Doocey: Is the Minister telling the House today, after promising almost half a billion dollars, he has only spent $20 million to date?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The flagship policy is of course rolling out over five years, as I explained to the member both in the Budget—it's in the Budget documents—and also recently in debates in this House. There are now services being delivered in around 40 practices across 11 DHBs, with more to come. It's quite impressive how quickly these things have rolled out. By the middle of next year, 1.5 million New Zealanders will have access to these services, and that's on top of the other new programmes that this Government has delivered, including Mana Ake, which has helped more than 5,000 primary- and intermediate-age children in Canterbury and Kaikōura; Piki, which is providing free mental health and wellbeing support to 18- to 24-year-olds in Wellington and Wairarapa; more nurses in schools, and so on. A number of new services have also been stood up as a part of this Government's response. This is a Government that takes mental health seriously.
Matt Doocey: If the Minister is impressed by how quickly the service has been rolled out, how come he told the House today that the 22 sites his mental health service is being delivered for were being delivered before his announcement—so, in the last year, he has delivered a net gain of zero new sites?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The member might want to look more closely at my answer. By the middle of next year, 1.5 million people will have access to new services. Currently, there are 40 sites delivering those services; that is not a net increase of zero.
Matt Doocey: If the Minister allocated just under $50 million for the first year roll-out of the new flagship front-line mental health service, why is he so proud in the House today that he's only spent $20 million of that?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Of course we want to continue to build on what we're doing, but, unfortunately, our mental health services were sorely neglected under the previous Government. We have built new services with Mana Ake in Canterbury and Kaikōura. We have built new services for young people with Piki. Also, during the COVID period, there were of course some delays—but not a great deal—and so some of those services that were delayed because of the COVID situation will continue to be rolled out in the next couple of months.
On top of that, new services—psychosocial responses and online services—that were not previously anticipated were rolled out during the COVID period, including the Getting Through Together website, which has had 34,000 unique visitors to the end of April; the Sparklers at Home website, which has had 47,000 unique visitors to 23 April; the Mentemia app, which has had 35,000 downloads; the Melon Health app, which has had over 1,000 people signed up to it in its first two weeks of operation; and the Staying on Track e-therapy course, developed by the Wise Group, which has also had over 1,000 people registered in its first three weeks of operation. No doubt more have signed up to those services since, but during the COVID period we stood up additional things that were in addition to those other flagship policies which continue to roll out. 
I'm very proud of the work that our mental health services people are delivering for New Zealanders after years and years of neglect. This Government is absolutely committed to improving mental health and wellbeing of New Zealanders, and we stand by our record of growing services and working towards a free service that will be available in five years for all New Zealanders.
Matt Doocey: Does the Minister agree that spending only $20 million of the announced half a billion, a net gain, today, we hear, of only 20 new sites, is not the level of service New Zealanders were promised by the health Minister a year ago?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I think the member misunderstands the Budget documents. The plan was not to spend the $500 million all at once in the first year when there were no workforces available to deliver it; it was to spend some in the first year to build up workforces and capacity in the sector and to continue to build. We're building a whole new workforce because the previous Government ignored mental health—the previous Government ignored mental health. We have had to start and build a new workforce because we believe it is important to take mental health seriously and build a free service that all New Zealanders can access. It's a shame that the previous Government is criticising that effort and talking down the efforts of those people who are working hard to deliver that new service for New Zealanders.
Matt Doocey: Does the Minister agree with Newshub Nation reporter Simon Shepherd, who said after the Minister's interview on Anzac Day about its announcement for the flagship front-line mental health service, "This has got a slight KiwiBuild flavour about it if they haven't managed to roll it out yet and it's a year after actually announcing it."?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I haven't seen that quote, but the truth is that there was a huge period of neglect for mental health services under the previous Government. If that's what the housing record's about—because the previous Government's housing record was shocking, too—then I can see where he's coming from. But what I would say is that we're absolutely committed to a new mental health service and to putting right the historic wrong where mental health was disregarded by the previous Government; where they canned the Mental Health Commission—just got rid of it; and where they failed to fund the growing demand in mental health services and left it on the backburner. They opposed the review of mental health services. We had He Ara Oranga and put that in place. We built new services even while that review was going on, in Mana Ake in Canterbury and Kaikōura in response to the earthquakes. We built new services, in Piki, for our young people. We've put nurses in schools across New Zealand. We will continue to build our mental health services because for this Government it is a priority. This Government is taking mental health seriously, and we're very proud of that.
Matt Doocey: In response to the Minister's answer about He Ara Oranga, the mental health inquiry recommendations, what does the Minister say to the Mental Health Foundation, who, after Budget 2020, said that they had concerns there was "No resourcing or implementation plan for the recommendations of He Ara Oranga—without a plan we are concerned that progress will stall and drift."?
SPEAKER: No, that does not relate to the original question.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The very essence of the Budget 2019 allocations that Mr Doocey's primary question was related to was in response to the recommendations of the very report that he mentioned in his supplementary. I can't see how it can't be related.
SPEAKER: Well, the member in his original question and in his supplementaries referred on a number of occasions to the 2019 Budget allocation and the spending of that. He then shifted to the 2020 Budget. Now, I'm actually just about prepared to change my mind and ask the member to say the question again, but I will say that I have been watching Mr Woodhouse in particular getting unhappy with the lengths of the answers that have been coming from the Minister at the moment. But I will say that when a very political question is asked, and there have been a long series of these from this member, one can expect extensive and political replies.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: Well, I've dealt with the point of order and I'm about to let—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, you made a description of what was going on in my head, and I think I have the right to at least contextualise that by saying—
SPEAKER: That's fair enough.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: —that if I was sufficiently unhappy with the way in which that answer was going, I would have drawn it to your attention, and I did not.
SPEAKER: Well, that's—I apologise. I was reading the member's repeated body language.
Matt Doocey: My supplementary was: what does the Minister say in responding to the Mental Health Foundation's comments about the Budget 2020 announcement? When the Minister referenced He Ara Oranga, they went on to say, "No resourcing or implementation plan for the recommendations of He Ara Oranga—without a plan, we are concerned that progress will stall and drift." It doesn't add up.
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I respectfully disagree, because an extensive Government plan has been outlined. We have continued to invest in mental health services, even those beyond He Ara Oranga, and all of those psychosocial responses I've outlined in my earlier answers, in the responses during the COVID period, and also in the additional moneys that have been set aside—now, I believe over $300 million per annum in the mental health ring-fence. That number continues to grow year by year as we put record amounts into our DHBs for strengthening specialist services as well. There has been a long, long period of neglect. We have planned carefully as a Government because we take mental health seriously.




Question No. 8—Education
8. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What action is the Government taking to pave the way for a fully qualified early learning workforce?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): As part of Budget 2020, we are restoring the 100 percent funding band for teacher-led early childhood education services that employ fully qualified and registered teachers. The funding band was scrapped by the previous Government in 2010. The new 100 percent funding rates will apply from 1 January 2021. This takes the Government's drive to improve the quality of early childhood education another step forward. Reinstating the 100 percent funding band is one of the top action points in the 10-year Early Learning Action Plan that the Government has released. 
Jan Tinetti: Will this change support the sector to manage the financial impact of COVID-19?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, it will. This funding boost comes at a time when there's likely to be lower demand for early learning services. The new funding band will encourage centres to use fully trained teachers and to keep the fully trained teachers that they have in work. As we respond to the challenges of COVID-19 and rebuild together, it's vitally important that this sector, who work with our youngest New Zealanders, is funded properly. A decade of underfunding has had a significant impact on the sector, which is why early childhood education was our top education priority in this year's Budget.
Jan Tinetti: What response has he seen to the restoration of the 100 percent funding band?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The New Zealand Kindergartens has said that "This is just so exciting for us and has been a long time coming. It's such good news on the back of what we've been going through with COVID-19 and a great boost and recognition for our staff who have been working so hard during this time to support our tamariki and our community." The Early Childhood Council has applauded the Government for reinstating this band, saying "We're delighted to see two sizable investments within a week after several years of ECE under funding". It is with great humility that I saw the comment from the New Zealand Educational Institute, who said, "The Minister signed a pledge before the last election to restore this funding, so we're really pleased to see him follow through and make early childhood education a top priority after a decade of neglect that's gone before."




Question No. 9—Justice
9. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua) to the Minister of Justice: Has the Government done enough to help support commercial landlords and business owners meet the costs they have incurred from COVID-19?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): The Government is implementing a far-reaching plan to respond, recover, and rebuild from COVID-19 in a way that supports business. Treasury has forecast up to 140,000 jobs saved as a result of that plan, and employment growth of 370,000 jobs over the next four years from our range of measures, which includes the wage subsidy, the small-business loan scheme, a record investment in infrastructure, tax measures, and so on. This is the Government of small business and we are the party of small business. In relation to commercial landlords and tenants, this morning I announced the second stage of our support package in the commercial lease space that will support Kiwi businesses to resolve commercial rent disputes and seek rent relief by amending the Property Law Act and providing up to $40 million for access to arbitration. So in summary and to answer the member's question: yes.
Andrew Bayly: Why has it taken 69 days since lockdown for the Government to announce its policy, when tenants and landlords have already had to agree to three cycles of rental payments covering April, May, and June?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I'm not sure that tenants agree to rental payments, apart from when they reach their lease agreement, but nevertheless, the coalition Government put together a proposal roughly five weeks ago, which has been the subject of intense scrutiny by the partners in Government, and we have reached agreement and announced our policy today.
Andrew Bayly: What advice has he received on the financial impact—
SPEAKER: Order! Start again. I won't punish the member. I've received no advice, Mr Bayly.
Andrew Bayly: What advice has the Minister received on the financial impact on mum and dad investors who own a large proportion of commercial property in New Zealand when they're required to reduce their rent following a disputes process?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The package that we've announced today actually deals with the situation of businesses that are owned by mum and dad investors, as he describes it, and who are tenants and who are having difficulty reaching agreement with their landlord on rent relief during a period where their businesses have, effectively, been closed down and they've lost all their revenue. But the package also applies to landlords who might be described as "vulnerable landlords," who are small mum and dad investors but with big corporate tenants and whose corporate tenants have said, "We're just not going to pay rent anymore." So they will have access to this process through a compulsory arbitration arrangement where they can get some justice.
Andrew Bayly: Rather than offering a $40 million policy that, effectively, pays arbitrators to run a disputes process, why didn't he simply give small businesses cash?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It was important that—when you understand the nature of small business in New Zealand, which is that it is highly diversified, highly variable—we put in place a package of measures that enables tenants and landlords to come to terms dealing with the extraordinary range of situations and circumstances that they have. This does not call for a one-size-fits-all solution.




Question No. 10—Police
10. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Police: Does he expect that police will enforce the rules relating to the COVID-19 alert levels?
Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I expect police to apply the discretion that they are given under the law when undertaking enforcement activities.
Brett Hudson: What advice, if any, has the Minister requested on the enforcement of the COVID-19 restrictions in relation to a tangi held on 30 April in Dunedin and events in the days leading up to it that saw dozens of patched gang members travel within the district in breach of level 4 conditions? 
Hon STUART NASH: None. 
Brett Hudson: Does he believe that this tangi and the events in the nine days leading up to it broke the rules set down to assist New Zealand's COVID-19 response?
Hon STUART NASH: It's not what I believe, but I do have confidence in the Commissioner of Police to ensure his officers enforce COVID-19—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Soft on gangs.
Hon STUART NASH: —sorry, Dr Smith?—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Soft on gangs.
Hon STUART NASH: —oh, turn it up, you bloody loser—restrictions appropriately.
Brett Hudson: Why are police willing to issue warnings to members of the public for suspected breaches such as having a cup of tea at the end of their respective driveways with neighbours but not gang members who clearly breached COVID-19 rules?
Hon STUART NASH: Police have no record of any reports or complaints being made with regard to the incident that the member alluded to.




Question No. 11—Women
11. GARETH HUGHES (Green) to the Minister for Women: What has the Government done to address period poverty in schools?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Tēnā koutou, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Government will begin providing free period products to 15 schools in the Waikato, following the Government's $2.6 million investment announced yesterday. The roll-out will be expanded to all State and State-integrated schools on an opt-in basis in 2021. Periods are a fact of life for half the population, and access to these products is a necessity, not a luxury. 
Gareth Hughes: Is it acceptable in modern New Zealand that according to a KidsCan survey from 2018, one-third of 15- to 17-year-olds who responded said they'd missed school because they didn't have access to period products? 
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: No one should miss school because they have had their period and don't have access to the products they need. We know that nearly 95,000 nine- to 18-year olds may stay at home during their periods due to not being able to afford period products. By making them freely available, we support these young people to continue learning and participating at school. 
Gareth Hughes: Will reusable products be available, and how will this initiative consider the environment? 
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I'm very happy to say that environmental sustainability will be considered in the programme. While the pilot will start with disposable pads and tampons, they will be plastic-free, and there may be scope to include other types of reusable types of products in the programme in the future if there is high demand for them. 
Gareth Hughes: Has the Minister seen reports of families choosing food over period products for children, and is the Government acting now as part of its focus on child poverty? 
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yes, and no family should have to choose between food and period products in a wealthy country like Aotearoa New Zealand. Ensuring that every schoolchild has the period products they need is another step towards our goal of eliminating child poverty. I'm pleased our Government is finding ways of helping children and young people at a time when every extra bit of assistance makes a difference. I also want to thank the researchers and the campaigners who have highlighted the issue of unaffordability of period products for some families and the subsequent absence from school for some children and young people. This was a win for those campaigners. 




Question No. 12—Corrections
12. SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga) to the Minister of Corrections: Is he satisfied with the decisions and actions made by the Department of Corrections during COVID-19?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): Unlike many other countries around the world, here in New Zealand we were able to keep COVID-19 from breaking out in our prisons. That was due to the strict health and safety measures we put in place, and the ability of corrections to implement measures like social distancing in what is a very, very complex environment. I made clear from the outset that my expectation was that a prisoner's lawful rights were to be upheld, regardless of the situation. In seeking further assurance around this matter, I asked Corrections to undertake a national review of their compliance with the minimum prisoner entitlement of one hour of daily exercise. This found that 96 percent of people in prison had received their minimum entitlement or more. In the other 4 percent of the cases, decisions were made in line with prisoner operation manual guidance.
Simeon Brown: How many offenders have had release conditions varied or discharged by probation officers whilst the Epidemic Preparedness (Epidemic Management—COVID-19) Parole Act 2002 and Sentencing Act 2002 Notice 2020 was in force?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, that's a very specific question. Corrections doesn't have the ability to release prisoners—that is either up to a judge when they're hearing bail conditions, or the Parole Board, or a prisoner reaches the statutory release date.
Simeon Brown: How many offenders had community service hours remitted by probation officers whilst the epidemic preparedness notice was in force?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, it's very difficult for offenders in the community to do hours when they're in lockdown, so the situation was made so that they could do their hours post-lockdown.
Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What effect, if any, did COVID-19 have on the Minister's goal of reducing the prison population safely by 30 percent over 15 years?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, no matter how you look at it, the prison population is safely reducing, meaning we are well on track to achieve our goals. Last week, the Ministry of Justice released its updated prison population projections. In 2017, under the previous Government, those projections showed that in 2020 the prison population could reach over 12,000. The 2019 projections show that number dropping to around 10,000. The actual number of prisoners is, today, 9,530. That is down from a peak of 10,820. We did say that we would try to safely reduce the prison population by 30 percent over 15 years, so just to be crystal clear—because the member opposite got a little confused between projections and actual numbers last week—projected numbers of prisoners have dropped by around 2,000. Actual numbers of prisoners have dropped by 1,290.
Simeon Brown: Supplementary on the actual question. Is he telling the House that the COVID—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! I think what I'm going to rule is that there were offences on both sides, and I'm going to ask the member to start his question again, without the additional comment. I'll say that members on the Government side—if they hadn't interjected, it would have been the end of the question.
Simeon Brown: Is he telling the House that the COVID-19 lockdown was for everyone except for those who had their release conditions varied or community service sentences remitted?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: No.
Hon David Parker: Is the Minister able to confirm that the justice system, including Corrections, went to a great deal of effort in order to ensure that parole hearings still took place during the COVID lockdown period using audiovisual facilities?
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes, I can confirm that. I mean, as I said in the answer to my primary question, it was a very, very complex situation. Corrections has done a fantastic job in making sure that prisoners' and offenders' cases were still heard and that justice was seen to be done.
 





BUDGET DEBATE
Debate resumed from 3 June on the Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): It is a great time to be a New Zealander. When you look at what is happening around the rest of the world, New Zealanders can be rightly proud of how we have tackled COVID-19. We only need to look at some of our friends across the Ditch, but even further afield in the United States, in Italy, across Europe, and in the UK to see the devastation that COVID-19 can cause. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Order!
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thousands of deaths, health systems overrun, economies shut down for a prolonged period of time—that is a fate that we have avoided here in New Zealand.
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. I'm going to start his speech again because of consistent ignoring of my requests for members to be seated.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It is a great time to be a New Zealander. As we look around the world, we can see the devastation that COVID-19 has inflicted on other countries. We look at Italy, we look at the UK and the US, we look across Europe, and we see what an impact COVID-19 could have had on our country if we hadn't gone hard and gone early, as we did as a country. We banded together as a people by staying apart and staying at home. We are now one of the best-placed countries in the world to recover economically, because of the sacrifices that New Zealanders have made and because we have driven COVID-19 out of our country. We didn't do it as a Government; we did it as a team of 5 million. I want to pay tribute to every New Zealander and the sacrifices that every New Zealander made during that lockdown period.
I do not believe, as the National Party have argued, that New Zealanders are suffering from Stockholm syndrome—as argued by the National Party health spokesperson, Michael Woodhouse. I do not believe that New Zealanders took this action and made the sacrifices they made because they somehow felt manipulated into it. I believe that New Zealanders did that because they saw how serious the situation was—because they saw what kind of impact COVID-19 could have had on New Zealand. They saw how our health system could have been overrun, how thousands of our fellow Kiwis could have lost their lives, and New Zealanders agreed, New Zealanders took action willingly, because we didn't want to see that happen here in New Zealand. It was a very selfless act on the part of New Zealanders. 
I can understand why the National Party, whose primary foundation is based on appealing to people's self-interest, might have some difficulty in understanding why New Zealanders behaved in that way. New Zealanders behaved in that way because they believe in a fair society where we look after one another, and that is exactly what we have done in recent months. We can all be, very rightly, proud of that. Now is the time when we need to continue to act with caution. We need to make sure that the sacrifices that we've made as a country are not made in vain. We do not want to see COVID-19 get a foothold here in New Zealand after we have successfully driven it out, and that is one of the reasons why all action around the border needs to be taken with great care. 
Let's consider what that might look like if there was an alternative Government—if, somehow, on becoming leader of the National Party, Todd Muller had also become the Prime Minister of New Zealand. He said he would have moved with urgency to reopen the border to countries like China. He would have moved with urgency to open up the trans-Tasman bubble. We have said as a country, as a Government, that we do want to see a trans-Tasman bubble at such time as it is safe to do so, but let's look at some of those statistics, and let's see whether it's safe to do so now. We've talked in the House today about whether or not we've got community transmission in New Zealand. Our testing results would suggest we don't have community transmission in New Zealand, because where there have been positive tests in recent weeks, we've been able to identify how those people who tested positive got COVID-19 in the first place. 
Let's look at what's happening, therefore, in Australia. Let's, first of all, say they have 490 active cases in Australia—358 in New South Wales and 90 in Victoria. But let's look at the community transmission statistics in Australia. They have published, the Australian Government have published, the number of days since there was last a detected case of community transmission—that is, a new positive test result where they don't know how the person got it, which means they picked it up from someone who hasn't otherwise been identified as having COVID-19. Within the last 48 hours, the state of Victoria has reported new cases of community transmission. Within the last seven days, the state of New South Wales has reported new cases of community transmission.
We have to proceed with caution when it comes to reopening our border. Of course we want to open our border to our mates in Australia as quickly as we safely can. There are benefits for both countries to do that. But we should not throw caution to the wind in doing so. We should not play Russian roulette with the health of New Zealanders by saying, as the National Party have been arguing, that we should simply get on with it and reopen the border. All of the sacrifices New Zealanders have made in recent months would be in vain if we simply said, "Come one; come all. Come across the border, and bring COVID-19 with you." That's not the sort of risk our Government is willing to take, but it is clear from the comments of the new Leader of the Opposition that that is exactly the sort of risk that he would be willing to take. He would be willing to put New Zealand back—right back to the start, before lockdown, as we saw the number of COVID-19 cases in New Zealand escalating day by day. He would go back to that in the name of reopening the economy to the rest of the world and reopening the border. 
That's not something we will do on this side of the House. We will proceed with caution. We will make sure that we lock in the gains that we have had, because we do not want to see all of the sacrifice New Zealanders have made over the last month go up in smoke through premature action like reopening the border. It is vitally important that New Zealanders, as we get back to a life that looks a lot more like normal, can lock in that. We don't want to go back. No New Zealanders want to go back to lockdown—to level 3 or to level 4. We as a Government have a responsibility to take actions that are sensible, that are cautious, and that ensure that doesn't happen.
I want to acknowledge the particular contribution to our COVID-19 effort that is being made by employers up and down New Zealand. I know how difficult it is for them. I know how many small-business owners will be lying awake in bed at night thinking, "What happens when the wage subsidy ends? How will I continue to support my staff?" I know that that's happening now and that those people take their responsibilities to their employees incredibly seriously. And I know that they will have sacrificed a lot. There are people out there now—small-business owners—who have mortgaged their own homes to keep their businesses going during the COVID-19 period. I want to take my hat off to them, and I want to say thank you for the sacrifice that you have made. As our team of 5 million has demonstrated, we can do this if we are unified, if we work together, and if we support each other.
My message to all New Zealanders is now is a great time, as restrictions continue to be eased, to explore your own backyard for a period of time. If you've never been to Queenstown, go. If you haven't taken your kids to see the geysers in Rotorua, go now. Go and explore New Zealand and see what's on offer. It's going cheap at the moment, and now's a good time to holiday locally. Have that weekend away that you've been thinking about for a long time. To our retired New Zealanders, many of whom spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year going and exploring the rest of the world, explore home for a little bit. Grab a campervan and go on a trip around the South Island. There's campervans going cheap at the moment as well. We spend billions of dollars a year as a country going and exploring the rest of the world; let's spend that money locally. Let's support our local businesses. Let's get that cash flow through their door so that they can thrive even despite the fact that we've got border restrictions in place.
Let's also continue to back the businesses that are taking on and training the future workforce of New Zealand. I really want to acknowledge those employers who have worked so hard to keep their apprentices on board during lockdown. What we saw after the global financial crisis is that apprentices were often the first ones to go. They were the first ones to be laid off. We are working very, very hard as a Government to ensure that that does not happen as a result of COVID-19. We want to keep every one of those apprentices in work if we can. That's why we've abolished the fees for people doing trades and vocational education—whether it's on the job or off the job—in those areas where we've got critical skill shortages, and we're going to have more announcements very, very soon about providing additional financial support to those businesses that are taking on new apprentices or who have apprentices in the early part of their apprenticeship, because we know that those people are the ones who are most at risk because they're the ones that employers have to put the most work into. That is a big sacrifice for them, and we want to back them as they continue to do that. 
We don't want to see what we saw after the global financial crisis, where apprentices were laid off and we suffered the effects of that as a country over the next decade as we continued to experience critical skill shortages. We want to make sure we keep our apprentices on board and that we actually are building the workforce up that we need for the future of this country so that when it comes to infrastructure development and all those other things, we can get on and do it because we've got the skilled workers here in New Zealand that we need to make those projects happen. New Zealanders have done an incredible thing over the last three months, and we can all be proud of our collective efforts.





Rt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): Mr Speaker, before I comment on Budget 2020, I want to comment on the total rubbish that has just been spoken in this House by the Hon Chris Hipkins. This Government never went hard and never went early, and it doesn't matter how many times Labour members come down to this House and argue that they did. Let's follow the disease: first discovered late December in Wuhan, China, spread throughout China through January and to the rest of the world. I'll challenge any member on the other side to find in the media one single comment from a Labour Minister on COVID-19 through January, because you won't find one. They were busy on holiday and didn't realise the threat that was developing. There was a pandemic developing, and New Zealand was asleep at the wheel.
Darroch Ball: They're bad on that side.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: We had a competitive advantage, Darroch Ball. We're an isolated island, a small population, and we're sparsely populated. We had an opportunity that was missed. Then we see the Prime Minister in early March coming out and saying, "There's a challenge here; 30,000 to 40,000 New Zealanders could die." That's the fear the Prime Minister created. But what did she do about it? Absolutely nothing. We left the borders open, and we invited tourists to come into New Zealand and then expected them to voluntarily isolate. How naive was that, to think that a tourist backpacker would come from Germany for three or four weeks and voluntarily lock themselves in a hotel room for the first two weeks? Absolute naivety. And then the Prime Minister told us, "Don't worry, the police are checking up on these people.", and then we found later that—
Michael Wood: It's a leadership bid.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: No, it's not a leadership bid, Michael Wood. I'm out of this place after six more caucuses and delighted to go, but I'm fed up with hearing rubbish from that member day in, day after, saying that they went hard and they went early, because they did not go hard and they did not go early, and we lost that opportunity. We lost a huge opportunity because that Government sat on its hands and wasn't prepared to do what had to be done. What had to be done is we had to quarantine the borders, get away from the rubbish of expecting tourists to come to New Zealand and voluntarily go into a hotel room. It was never going to work, Mr Wood.
Forget coming into this House, time and time again, attempting to tell New Zealanders that we went hard and we went early, because we were soft and we were slow. And consequently, that's why we've continued to have to stay in level 2 for substantially longer than we needed to.
What we've got after a leaked Cabinet paper yesterday is the Prime Minister finally taking the shackles off the economy. She could have done it yesterday, but no, what we got was another lecture from the Prime Minister and 10 more rules about washing your hands, and going to a doctor if you're sick, and, the final one, be kind. Well, it's time the Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government was kind to New Zealand businesses. It's time they were kind to New Zealand businesses, because businesses are struggling. [Interruption] I know Michael Wood doesn't bother getting out of his electorate. He doesn't want to show his face inside any business because he knows the abuse he'll get, and, frankly, he deserves it. It's a time for a bit of humility, Mr Wood—not arrogance, but I suspect you don't know the difference between those two words. Don't continue with the mantra that this Government went hard and it went early when it did not.
Now if I could get back to my comments on the Budget, and I want to acknowledge that it can't have been an easy Budget for Grant Robertson to prepare. He will have spent most of his Christmas holidays preparing one that was going to be totally focused on Labour re-election 2020. Then, as the COVID situation developed under his nose and he was panicking, he realised he had to deliver a Budget that attempted to cope with COVID-19.
But again, I have been here and delivered probably 26 Budget speeches. I have never spoken about a Budget that's so big on expenditure and so light on detail. Frankly, I don't know how it meets the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act; I doubt that it does. But what the Government's done is given itself, through this Budget, a $20 billion spending spree between now and 19 September. That should have had some detour to it. But we know where the money will go; it'll be spread here, there, and everywhere in an attempt to buy votes at the election. What it will leave is huge indebtedness that, probably, my generation won't have to face—
Darroch Ball: Cheer up.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: —and, probably, Darroch Ball's generation won't have to face—but my kids are going to end up tidying up the mess created by this Budget.
Looking through the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, I don't even think the figures are realistic. Look at some of the figures around tax revenue going from $86.5 billion to $82.3 billion. That's not credible. When you've got businesses that are completely shut down, when you've got one sector—international tourism—shut, and shut for the foreseeable future, I don't believe that tax revenue won't decline by a lot more than that. You've got GDP predicted to go from 4.6 percent into recession for next year and the year after, coming back into growth in 2022. I don't believe that figure, either; it's over-optimistic.
What we've got here is a Government that simply doesn't understand how the economy works. I listened to Mike Hosking on Tuesday morning, and the Prime Minister came on—
Hon Member: There's his first mistake.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Mistake? Well, no, the only mistake was made by the Prime Minister in an interview she gave to Mike Hosking when she said, "The economy is back." That's what the Prime Minister said Tuesday. I didn't make the mistake listening to Mike Hosking, the Prime Minister made a mistake when she's so out of touch that she thinks the economy is back and running again.
What I say to the Prime Minister is: come out of level nine of the Beehive, just wander 200 or 300 metres down Lambton Quay—new experience for her. She might get the opportunity to see how few people are on the street and why the businesses are suffering. She might actually get a feel for how tough it is—
Michael Wood: They'll recognise her.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: —out there. Sorry?
Michael Wood: They'll recognise her. No one will know who Todd Muller is.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: They'll recognise her. They'll recognise her, then they'll be able to tell her, knowing she's the Prime Minister, how severely their businesses are suffering. That'd be a good idea, Michael Wood. You can go with her, and then you might get some recognition in this place. You might get better known in Wellington on Lambton Quay than you'll ever be in your own electorate.
This election will be a difficult one for everybody. We're still coming out of the restrictions of level 2, we assume by next Wednesday, we'll be in level 1. But it will be an election like no other, because the future of this country depends on significant improvement in economic management than we've seen in the last two years. It's easy to spend money. And we've got the ridiculous situation we had in the House twice today—once from the bike rider, the Hon Dr David Clark, and once from the Hon Chris Hipkins—talking about the neglect of the last nine years. Well, if there was neglect for the last nine years, how can Grant Robertson keep coming into the House time and time again, saying that this economy is luckier than all our trading nations because of the fiscal disciplines that we inherited from the National Government? Labour can't have it both ways. They've been talking with forked tongues for the last 2½ years—
SPEAKER: Order!
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: They've been talking—
SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. He knows very well he's not allowed to use that expression, and he won't again.
Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: They have been talking with two messages: one of nine years of neglect and one about the fiscal stability of this country. You can't have it both ways.





RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's a proud moment for me to speak in support of Budget 2020 in this Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill. 
I want to address the member who just resumed his seat, the Rt Hon David Carter. He claimed that this Government never went hard and we didn't go early. Well, that flies in the face of the team of 5 million Kiwis up and down this country who, for the past three months, have rallied together as a nation, communities, all of us, to keep out COVID-19 and to protect our communities, protect our nation, and to ensure that we are able to bounce back. But we had to keep COVID-19 at bay, and I want to acknowledge our outstanding leadership from our coalition Government under the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and the Cabinet for the incredibly credible, decisive action that they've taken throughout this whole episode. It's been a one-in-100 year shock, a one-in-100 year global shock to our society and our economy, and, you know, we have lived through it.
I do want to acknowledge the whole nation, all of our whānau up and down the whole motu, who have kept COVID-19 out, and we have the proof—we have the proof. We haven't had any cases for some 12 days now. We have come through the most severe restriction level—level 4—and, all going well, level 1 will be beckoning soon, and we've done that all together. Underpinning it all has been the decisiveness and the economic decisions that our Cabinet has made through this Budget. And right from the get-go, right from when this COVID-19 hit, we responded through wage subsidies, through targeted support for our small businesses. We needed to cushion that blow. 
We've had many supports right through our key infrastructure, whether it's through our health system, right across the board, and now we're continuing that with a focus on jobs and infrastructure and our environment through this Budget. So that is continuing with strong investments, whether it's in our training and apprenticeships, which are most desperately needed. We know that our tourism industry has been greatly impacted by COVID. I know. I've travelled around my electorate since we've been in level 2, right from Blenheim all the way down south, all the way to Queenstown. I've spoken to business owners. They are actually very appreciative of the decisive measures that our Government has taken. They have utilised the measures such as wage subsidies and other supports that have been made available to them. They're very grateful for that. They know that it's been tough times, but they're also very grateful that we have kept COVID at bay. 
One just has to look at the devastation that's wreaking havoc around the whole world. The last thing we need as a nation is for a second wave of COVID to come and invade our shores and for us to go back. And that's what we're not doing. That's why I want to acknowledge our Government—the wise decisions that they've made, weighing up so many difficult decisions, the risks that are out there. We have slowly but steadily and surely seen the way forward as we've come down these restriction levels. We're seeing it again through this Budget: record investments. Yes, we have had to make record investments. There's a $50 million COVID recovery fund, and that is desperately needed. This is a one-in-100-year shock, as I mentioned, and those investments are going on across the board. As I've mentioned, record investments into our health, into training, into employment, into jobs, support to all directly impacted sectors such as tourism. Māori have been huge beneficiaries too, and I'm sure my colleague who is to follow will be covering the support, the great support, that Māori have received under this Budget. 
We know that despite the sacrifices that we have made over the past few months with COVID, the people across the country know that this Government has been fantastic in its leadership of our waka as we've gone through these tough times, and we're looking forward to going ahead into the future. Kia ora tātou.





Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, ngā mema katoa o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. As a custom in my culture, when we've come through a major event, it's to acknowledge those that we have lost. So e ngā mate huhua o te motu kua wehe atu i te pō, haere, haere, moe mai rā [to the multitudes of this land who have gone to the night, go, go, rest in peace].
Māori work best when we work together, and over the last few months that's exactly what we've seen right across the motu. As a team of 5 million, we've done well to fight COVID-19, and I want to support the previous speaker, my colleague Rino Tirikatene, in his acknowledgment of those across the motu that responded in the appropriate manner. I want to just briefly touch on all our essential workers, our NGOs, iwi, hauoras DHBs, police, our health professionals, supermarkets, and particularly the generosity of our local food producers who came to the fore right throughout my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. That generosity has given us the resilience to rebuild and recover over this time. 
I am pleased to speak in the Budget debate in support of the Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill. I want to touch on how this Budget—I describe it as the "Jobs Budget". Jobs—this is what this Budget is around, helping the recovery. It puts the commitment of this side of the House on creating, protecting, and growing jobs in our regions. I want to talk about the $200 million Māori employment package. I want to talk about the $121 million investment in growing, expanding, He Poutama Rangatahi. I want to talk about the $50 million that's going towards Māori trade training, part of the $900 million Māori-specific budget of this coalition Government. I'm telling you, sharing with this House, what the feedback was from throughout Māoridom on this side's commitment to Māori, at a time when we really need it—$900 million. Today, we had the Hon Megan Woods talk about another $33 million towards Māori research and development opportunities. We support and acknowledge the huge investment that's gone on under this Government and towards all people of the nation, but particularly Māori. 
This is on the backdrop of $1.1 billion, environmental jobs; $1.4 billion, trades and enterprise. On top of that, there is $200 million towards kōhanga reo, and the $136 million that has gone to Whānau Ora. Can I acknowledge the Whānau Ora commissioning agents up and down the country, who was one of the first agencies that set up and supported our vulnerable people up and down the country. It is exciting to be part of a Government that has put investment into our regions and is growing the jobs. I've touched on it briefly. There's so much more in this Budget that I'm really proud of. 
I want to acknowledge the strong leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. In fact, when we returned to this House, I was given clear directions from my aunties from Pakipaki and my aunties from Manutuke to go and give that Prime Minister of ours a hug and thank her for keeping us safe—thank her for keeping us safe. Of course, they're all fan—I shouldn't call them fangirling; they're fan-auntying on Dr Ashley Bloomfield. They want to actually get his signature. But, in all jest. I want to say in great humility that the way that communities rallied together in a real time of need is mirrored by the commitment of this Budget, that we're debating here. It touches the very points that we need in our regions. It is around creating and growing jobs. It is around working in partnership with iwi and Māori, who own multiple assets. It is investing in our small-business sector.
I want to acknowledge my colleague in front of me, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, and her agency that moved very, very quickly around the wage subsidy and how they got that out the door. Those actions show that we weren't only talking about acknowledging the hardship of many of our communities but we were backing it up with actions. I'm really proud of this Budget—the Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill—and I commend it to the House. 





DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's a pleasure to speak in the Budget debate today and I want to start out on a positive note. I want to start by acknowledging the Government and the public of New Zealand for the response to COVID-19; in particular, the health response. So we've had no cases for 13 days. We've had 34 days of no community transmission; 92 percent of New Zealanders agree that the Government's approach to the health crisis has been beneficial. So, look, I just want to acknowledge that—it's my olive branch to that side of the House—and on this side of the House we think that that is evidence of why we should be in level 1 immediately. So we do call on the Government to go to level 1. Let's get back to business and get our economy moving.
But this Budget, that we're here to debate today, was about jobs. It was about the economic response to COVID-19. Somebody's mentioned in the House it's a jobs Budget—that it's a Budget that is about rebuilding together. That is what I want to spend my contribution on here today, going down into the details with that, because we do face a significant economic crisis throughout our community. 
In communities what it means really is lost jobs, lost incomes, and lost livelihoods, and that economic cost—that is very real in my community of Northcote where just yesterday the Warehouse announced that it's closing a longstanding store in my community that's going to force 40 staff, potentially, to lose their jobs. So we understand that we are entering tough times and that this Budget was all about the economic response. 
However, I don't have faith that this Government or this Budget delivers the economic response that's required to get our economy back on track. All they've promised is more debt, going up to 54 percent of GDP in the next few years, more spending, but no real plan to drive private enterprise and drive our economy forward. As my colleague David Carter mentioned, all of the assumptions that the Budget is based on are very rosy and we have significant concerns about the downside effect if those assumptions don't hold up. 
Really, there is no plan to get the thousands upon thousands of people right across New Zealand back into work and earning good incomes and no plan to actually deliver for New Zealand. Let's be clear: the people in New Zealand realise the Government is weak on delivery. Need we say more than KiwiBuild, light rail, and a very close project to my heart, the SkyPath project? So what makes us believe that this Government, after 2½ years of virtually delivering nothing, will deliver on the economic response that's required to get our economy back on track, and what confidence do we have that they will spend the $20 billion extra that they have allowed in an effective way to get our economy back on track? That's the question that we have and we have no faith in the answer to that. 
Let's dive down into some of the actual Budget announcements that were made. Apprenticeship support—that's fantastic. I did an apprenticeship a few years ago. It took me 2½ years, but 140,000 unemployed people in New Zealand are not going to go and do an apprenticeship for 2½ years. What about education and training? Well, this Government had a fantastic report that it was sitting on: the Productivity Commission report into the future of work. How many recommendations did they pull out of that report? Zero—oh, and I was ambitious for this Government to actually do something in that area. 
What about the wage subsidy, which we've heard a lot about today? Well, that wage subsidy, yes, that does help, but it's not enough, and after months of no delivery on things like commercial rents, the Government announces something today to that effect. Well, that is too late and it is not enough for those hard-working thousands of small businesses out there that need support now. What about mental health? This Government's talked up a big game in mental health. Well, in my community of Northcote, we've received no extra funding for mental health in our community under this Government.
Dr Duncan Webb: Have you got nurses in schools?
DAN BIDOIS: So, what else should I say? Let's talk, Duncan Webb, about the shovel-ready projects, shall we? Let's talk about those shovel-ready projects. Well, tell me how many jobs that's going to create tomorrow because unless that side is able to tell me, then that is not going to be sufficient to get our economy moving. 
So, all we see is a massive amount of throwing money at things willy-nilly, getting us more into debt without a significant plan—without a significant plan—of getting our economy moving. What are some of the massive effects? Well, unemployment—under Treasury's scenario, nearly 10 percent; I think it's going to be higher. We've got debt going up, lost incomes, and I think just a contraction of our economy over the next few years. 
So now we come to what National would have done. What would we have done differently than this Government did? Well, firstly, we would have got us back to business earlier. We would have taken us to level 1 earlier, as the Government's own advice indicates—that we should be, in fact, in level 1, getting our businesses back together. 
The second thing we would have done is focus on real private sector investment and making it easy to hire new staff. That is why the leader of the National Party announced JobStart, which is a fantastic thing and, actually, we hope the Government adopts it. JobStart provides $10,000 for a business to take on a new worker.
Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Ah, chucking money at the problem.
DAN BIDOIS: "What about a GST refund?", I hear you say, Iain Lees-Galloway. Well, we're going to give businesses a GST refund. We're also going to give businesses who invest the chance to write off the depreciation of their assets. What we need in this House is a Government that is focused on enabling the private sector to deliver jobs, because they aren't delivered in Wellington. The jobs are delivered by the private enterprises and the people who go off and invest their hard-earned cash and not the sector in Wellington. 
What else would we have done? We would have again focused on massive infrastructure spending but more targeted to that effect. Again, we had 12 roads of national significance 2½ years ago. Labour cancelled those projects; they were shovel-ready. They were shovel-ready. Now what have they done? They've put them back online.
So let me come back to what this is all about, which is that our economy is going to be facing some really tough challenges. I believe that with the right plan, with the right vision, with the right team, New Zealand can come through this well and position our country successfully for the post-COVID-19 world. But I don't see that in this Budget today. I don't see the team that has the private sector nous to deliver for New Zealanders with respect to a greater and more prosperous economy. I see that team on this side of the House: small-business owners, farmers, investment bankers, the creators of our economic growth and our economic agenda heading forward.
My colleague David Carter talked about the election. This election is going to be fought on who is best-placed to deliver for New Zealanders where it matters most. We acknowledge the Government's done a fantastic job on the health crisis. Yes, we can pull apart and say, "You know, here they should have done things better." But on the economic side, they will fail. They will fail because they lack the team, they lack the plan, they lack the vision to deliver for New Zealanders. That's what National's going to do and I look forward to campaigning for the National Party vote in September.





Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It goes without saying, and everybody knows that this year's Budget was delivered during exceptional times: a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands around the world and caused every economy in the world to face a significant crisis, a slowdown of economic activity, unemployment, and a withdrawal from investment around the world. But New Zealand went into this in a strong position because successive Governments have known that as a small country highly reliant on global trade and highly reliant on global investment, we have needed to keep the Government's books in order. 
I remember during the global financial crisis Bill English saying that that was the rainy day that the Government had been saving for—of course, it was the Government of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen who saved for that period—and the National Party, when they were in Government, in response to the global financial crisis, borrowed. Debt went up. That was the right thing to do to stimulate the economy. But they were careful. They didn't let Government debt get to the same levels as we see in the UK or the US or in many European countries, or Japan, and when we came into Government again, we continued that focus on getting debt down. Debt was lower as we went into this crisis than it was when we came into Government, and all of that work over decades has put New Zealand into a strong position to be able to weather this international crisis. 
We have also benefited from the strong and unwavering leadership that we have had from our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the focus that this Government has had on suppressing the COVID-19 virus here in New Zealand—things like closing the border and things like moving to alert level 4; going hard, going early; and not being tempted into moving too quickly back down through the levels. It's not just important for the health of our nation and for the people here in New Zealand that we are cautious about the way we come down those levels; it is important for our economy as well. It is easy to forget, given the success that we have had here in New Zealand in suppressing the virus and in limiting the number of people who have been affected by it and the number of people who have, tragically, been killed with the virus—because we have been so successful here in New Zealand, it is easy to forget what is still going on around the world. If you look at other countries, you see second waves, you see restrictions coming back on, or you see no end in sight of restrictions of both social activity and economic activity, because other countries may not have gone hard enough soon enough in their response. 
So as important as the health response is—and I think we all recognise that maintaining the health and wellbeing of our citizens and everybody who lives here in New Zealand has been important to focus on—that response has been important for the economy as well, and so we now have some of the loosest restrictions of any country around the world. We see more domestic economic activity happening in New Zealand than we see in many other countries, but that is not to suggest for a second that we are not facing challenging times. We really do need to recognise the effort of the team of 5 million and the sacrifices that people have made. Businesses have forgone income, workers have forgone wages, and people have remained at home in order to make sure that that effort was a success, and it was in that context that this year's Budget was delivered. The initiatives contained in that Budget are purposefully designed to help us move quickly back to the levels of employment that we saw before the crisis, and the levels of economic activity. 
So we have had targeted wage subsidies to support businesses to keep people in work, because we know of the scarring effects of people being made redundant and people losing work. They often don't return at the same level of employment and the same level of income, so we want to keep people engaged with their employer so that now that we're at the point where restrictions are lifting, people are able to get back to work. Of course, in this Budget we have ensured that businesses that are suffering a 50 percent revenue loss for the 30-day period prior to applying versus the same period last year will be eligible for the extension to that wage subsidy to be able to support people to stay in work. There is an additional $400 million of investment specifically to help the tourism industry to recover from the shock of the COVID-19 virus. 
We have focused on small businesses. Small businesses have already applied for almost $1 billion in interest-free loans to provide them with the working capital that they need to be able to get their businesses back up on their feet. More than 55,000 small businesses have applied for that loan, and 95 percent of those applications have been approved so far. We've supported small businesses to grow digitally via e-commerce and supported them to be able to do more contactless delivery of their goods so that they've been able to operate within the restrictions, and, indeed, to set them up for the future. Many businesses will be pivoting towards a more digitally based approach to working as a result of the experience they have had during this pandemic. 
There is practical assistance to help exporters seize international growth opportunities and to look at diversifying their markets so that they are perhaps not so vulnerable to shocks in the future. We're incentivising innovative research and development to grow new ideas, because we know that it is tech-heavy, research-heavy businesses that are more likely to be higher-wage and higher-growth and more likely to be able to weather a shock like we have seen in this last period of time. 
But there's an opportunity here as well to focus on things like the environment, so we have set funding aside in this Budget to create 11,000 jobs focused on the environment, and we're launching regional environmental programmes to create local jobs. Projects include upgrading walking tracks and wetland restoration and pest eradication, and it's also supporting tourism operators to employ local staff to redeploy people who have recently been made unemployed or people who are underused or underutilised as a result of the economic shock caused by the pandemic, and of course training is absolutely central to this. 
We have a large number of people who have been employed—perhaps particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors—who, in order to be able to gain meaningful work into the future, are going to have to train to support themselves to be redeployed, and, of course, an absolutely central component of this is the announcement of 2½ years of trade training—2½ years of free trade training—so that people can pick up apprenticeships and be able to pick up the jobs that are in demand. They actually pay extremely well, and it will help set people up for a strong future, with meaningful work for many of those people and the opportunity even, potentially, to own their own business into the future, off the back of that trade training. 
So all of these things contained in this year's Budget are designed to assist people to weather the current storm and to seek the opportunities and to make use of the opportunities that are going to become available into the future, because, ultimately, that's what we have to focus on. It is putting people at the centre of everything that we do. 
I just want to use the last minute to point out, again, that it can be tempting to talk about getting down to level 1 sooner. It can be tempting to talk about the economy and the health response as though they are two separate things. All of these things are absolutely intertwined. We need to acknowledge that a strong economic recovery is founded in keeping our people well, keeping our people safe, and ensuring that we are not too cavalier in trying to get the economy going again before we are ready, before it is safe to do so. But that is why this Government has based its decisions on science and based its decisions on the very best advice, and it is why the world is looking at us and holding New Zealand up as the example of success, both in our health response and in our economic response. I think New Zealanders can be very proud of what we have done collectively, and I commend this Budget to the House. 
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.





ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the cover of this year's Budget is rather different to the one that we got last year; a somewhat safer option of a beautiful landscape with snow-capped mountains, I suppose in an attempt not to have a repeat of that family who moved to Australia for better opportunities and better pay—somewhat embarrassing for the Government. But it's a pretty good lesson that when New Zealand starts to slide backwards, people look across the Ditch for better opportunities, and it's relevant now more than ever, when we compare the Australian recovery to our own in a post-COVID world.
We've all seen the statistics: 43,000 jobs lost so far, 37,000 in April alone—a thousand a week. This year's Budget had the opportunity to chart a great long-term recovery plan, but unfortunately all we've seen is a "borrow and hope Budget" with a $20 billion slush fund with absolutely no detail. Actually, I need to correct myself there; I apologise. There is detail; it's just not detail that the finance Minister is going to share with the rest of New Zealand. Instead, he's preferring to announce $200 million worth of spending every day like some kind of pre-election Advent calendar—except, instead of a delicious chocolate treat, you get a $200 million surprise which may or may not be informed by Labour Party polling. Remember last year when Minister Robertson couldn't get his hands on a capital gains tax? Remember that? So he snuck round the other side to try and get hold of the nation's credit card to put his expensive election promises on tick. Well, this year we've handed our credit card over to him; it's got a $20 billion limit. We've got no idea what he's spending anything on until we get the statement in the mail. It's an eye-watering amount of Kiwis' money that is completely unaccounted for that will be spent in the lead-up to an election.
To top it all off, that certainty and relief that businesses were so desperate for was not delivered in this Budget. While we languish in level 2 for another week, businesses are getting closer and closer to the wall. But, hey, according to Willie Jackson, what's another week, huh?
But I want to turn my attention at this point to the environment, because last month's Budget was massive—tens of billions of dollars borrowed. But the focus was on returning to normal, business as usual, and Kiwis expected more than that for the amount that we're spending. Money wasn't a problem in this Budget; the problem was a lack of vision, especially a lack of green vision. While the Government divvied up the Budget funds in May, they chose not to look to a greener future. Yes, there were, as Iain Lees-Galloway pointed out, millions and millions in environmental expenditure that was appropriated in the Budget for environmental jobs. While I'm sure there are many people out there who are champing at the bit to shoot a wallaby or pull out a wilding pine, as one commentator points out, this feels more like a work programme to curb unemployment and would be better spent on transitioning our economy to a greener future.
To that point, there was no mention in the Budget of the Green Investment Fund. What ever happened to the Green Investment Fund? This was heralded as a big win for the Greens in the post-election negotiations. It was established to accelerate low-emissions investment in New Zealand. Nearly three years on, not a single cent of that Budget has been handed out. Massive talk, big announcement—which they love to do—zero delivery, and whenever we mention it to James Shaw, he clams up. Minister Shaw reminds us continually about the urgency of climate change, the crisis, while he sits on $100 million of climate mitigation funding for three years. There is, once again, for the third time running, zero mention of the promise these guys made to electrify the Government fleet. As always, big on talk, no delivery. On top of this, they vetoed the Waitaha small hydro scheme on the West Coast that would have provided power to 12,000 homes.
What about this Government's commitment to kauri dieback? They can't even sign off that money. Cameras on fishing vessels? That's gone out the window. A thousand vessels in the fleet, 28 boats still have cameras, and we all know why that is—thanks to Winston Peters and his lot. There are no cameras on fishing vessels and 14,000 sea birds a year continue to perish. Urban water quality? Tackling our massive waste problem? I guess, in the end, the cover of the Budget was another gaffe. A beautiful environmental scene with snow-capped mountains—the lack of any transformational green spend in this Budget makes a mockery of that. If New Zealanders are going to pick up an $80,000 bill per household in debt, we should get something that we are proud of, and this Budget is not that.





MATT KING (National—Northland): Oh, it's a pleasure to speak on the Rebuilding Together Budget. I call it the "borrow and hope with no plan Budget". They're going to borrow eye-watering amounts of money—eye-watering amounts: $50 billion to $100 billion worth of debt. That is serious debt. Now, to borrow that kind of money, they're actually going to print money. This is what they're doing. The Reserve Bank is buying the debt of the Government. So this is called quantitative easing in other parts of the world, and it has never been done in the history of our country—it's never been done. Even during the depths of the global financial crisis, we did not engage in quantitative easing, but this is what this Government is doing. If you continue on that path, we're going to be like Zimbabwe—inflation through the roof. 
So we all agree—[Interruption] You laugh. That's exactly what we're doing—we're printing money. That is exactly—the Greens laugh. They probably don't understand about that, but they actually called for that a couple of terms ago—they called for this money printing—and it was boo-hooed by the rest of the parliamentary colleagues then. But that's what we're doing now.
So I'll give them credit—I'll give the Government a bit of credit. They have done a good job of fighting the health crisis, I'll give you that—in part. They shut the castle, but they left the drawbridge down and the gates open. So there was no Trojan horse needed because the virus just came in through the border. Now, I remember in the early stages of lockdown, you walked around the streets—and you see pictures of the streets like an Armageddon movie: no one around—and it was it was eerie, in fact. But at the same time that that was happening, travellers were coming in through our borders and they were not locked down. They were given a brochure or a pamphlet and told to self-quarantine or self-isolate. What a joke. Someone coming here as a tourist is not going to go and spend a couple of weeks in a motel in self-quarantine. They're not going to do that. They're the highest-risk people, those travellers, and this is what this Government expected. 
So no quarantining and no testing—what a no-brainer. Why was that happening? I questioned that. I put a post up on Facebook. I could not believe that they were not even testing at the border and they were not even quarantining. So we've got these impregnable borders of sea, and they were just letting them in. 
Go hard and early—that's another myth. You say it often enough; it doesn't become true. They did not go hard and early. A little bit like the nine years of neglect: they say it often enough; doesn't make it true. So the reason I can describe why they weren't going hard and early was because days before we locked down, the Pasifika Festival was going to be held and the Christchurch memorial ceremonies were going to be held, and they were only put off at the last minute. So we were not going hard and early.
The Prime Minister said if we did nothing, we were going to have 80,000 deaths—80,000 deaths is what they scared the hell out of us with. That modelling has been thoroughly discredited. We were never going to have 80,000 deaths. But, you know, to be fair, we were going to suffer some deaths, and the actions of locking down we agreed with, and we supported that, that we had to do that. 
But you know what? They didn't even have enough personal protective equipment. We had private individuals chartering planes to bring it in. In the early days, we had 10s and 20s for tests in a day. I can remember them standing up and saying, "We've tested a dozen people today." I mean, that was incredible. Even my daughter, she got really sick and had all the symptoms of COVID-19—the sickest I've actually ever seen her. I was very worried about her. She went along and tried to get a test. She had all the symptoms of COVID-19, and that was denied. They said, "Nah, you haven't been overseas. We're not going to give you a test." 
You know what? Australia shut their economy down, but they didn't shut it down to the extent we did. They've still carried on. Construction's still carried on. You can still get a haircut. You can still get takeaways. And you know what? Their results are remarkably the same. The same death rates, the same recovery rates as ours—remarkably similar. But the Government don't like to talk about that. 
I can remember also some of the decisions that were made about not having greengrocers and butchers open, yet in my town of Kaikohe, we had five dairies open with people coming and going, and two supermarkets, but the greengrocer and the butcher couldn't open. I mean, these decisions were, like, incredible. But that just shows me that this Government has no business nous, and I can see it when I look across the House there. There's only a handful of them that have ever run a business before, so they don't know that the pain is palpable. People are suffering out there. It is painful.
We acknowledge that austerity doesn't work, but we've got to get back to business, and I've being calling it all along—we've got to get back to level 1, get back to business, and try and save some jobs and save some businesses. A "borrow and hope Budget"—they've got no plan.





TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the Budget debate, of which this is absolutely a Budget with a plan, and it's a necessary Budget because we've just come out of an unprecedented situation, a very heavy situation where New Zealand was put in a place that we had never been before. Worlds were turned upside down and New Zealand was calling on the Government to be able to help, now, during, and certainly well into the future as well.
Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge all of those people who passed during the lockdown. It's been a very tough time for the families of those that had passed away during the lockdown—the very strict parameters around tangihanga and funerals. I want to acknowledge all of those that passed during that time.
What I acknowledge also was the working together of the Government and also our Māori communities. It was a delight to see our iwi health providers talking with our DHBs, trying to get results, trying to get supplies, trying to get information and resource out to those remote Māori communities that really needed support at what was quite a tumultuous time. I want to acknowledge the work that the police did with our iwi and our Māori communities as well in terms of some of the community stations that were set up and primarily with the goal of looking after these small communities that hadn't seen any impacts from COVID and didn't want to see that either. So I applaud the police and I applaud those communities that worked constructively with the police during that time.
Not to mention our job as Māori MPs. We were contacted daily, many times daily, from our worried constituents—worried about their safety, worried about their health, and we swung into action as well. That partnership is something that continues to this day and will continue well into the future as well—a partnership that is led by our tremendous, our awesome, our amazing Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, our Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, who's come up with this Budget; this Budget which is going to help us a lot.
When I go back into my community this weekend and they ask me what the Budget is doing for Māori, I'll be able to look them in the eye and say, "This is one of the best Budgets that Māori have ever had to benefit from." The unprecedented, targeted spending that has been apportioned in this Budget is going to be great for our communities. The amount of money that we've apportioned to Whānau Ora—$136 million, building on the good work that they put out during the lockdown: their care packages, the love and attention that they gave to people that needed it at that time. I want to acknowledge them for their work. There is $200 million for our kōhanga reo. They are our language nests, they are the future of our language, they are a gift from our ancestors, and that appropriation is the biggest that that movement—the kōhanga reo movement—have seen in a very long time.
I also want to acknowledge that in the post-COVID world that we find ourselves in there are a lot of Māori that will find themselves without jobs. Whenever we talk about the unemployment rate, the Māori unemployment rate is always double what the general unemployment rate is, and we need to make sure that we as a Government are doing as much as we can to be able to support people back into jobs. So the announcement around the apprenticeships—getting rid of fees from 1 July, scrapping those fees so that people can retrain and become commanders of their own destiny in whichever field they want to take up. I want to applaud our Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, for the work that he's done in that space, also my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson for his work in reaching out to our nephs on the couch, reaching out to our young Māori that need some support through He Poutama Rangatahi, through Mana in Mahi—that's been expanded into our big cities as well and I want to acknowledge that.
But one of the best apportionments that I saw in this Budget was the $7 million that went to one tourist organisation in the Bay of Plenty, in my home town of Rotorua—it went to Te Puia, and it went there as part of a special arrangement. We have master carvers and master weavers at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute, and it was feared that they would end up at the Ministry of Social Development in the dole queue, and we couldn't see that, we couldn't take that, we had to do something about it. I was pleased when the Prime Minister, the Minister of Tourism, and our Minister for Māori Development all came to Rotorua a couple of weekends ago to make that announcement. We've still got a long way to go but we're going in the right direction. We have got a plan and we've got the right people leading us.





MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe. Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I would like to start my contribution in this debate by acknowledging all those in our team of 5 million who have worked so hard to make sure that we could get on top of, and stay on top of, this virus. Minister Hipkins, in fact, started off this debate today by thanking the businesses for what they have done to ensure that they did the best by their staff and their businesses. But there is one group in all of the speeches that hasn't been singled out yet for a big thankyou and those are union delegates. 
Now, a large part of being a delegate is standing up for your colleagues and for their rights, and it includes ensuring that certain disputes may not escalate. It makes the person who stands up for their colleagues often more vulnerable, because they speak up where others stay quiet. And they often put their own interests behind anyone else's, because they look at the greater good and their colleagues' wellbeing and manaakitanga. 
So over the last month, the jobs of these union delegates have become increasingly pressured because over the lockdown we had issues with regards to the wage subsidy, leave provisions, sick leave, health and safety, and many times it is the delegates that have been supporting their colleagues in those difficult circumstances, often in the same circumstances that they were facing: redundancies, restructures, and losing their jobs.
Now, I know that at the moment in Air New Zealand there are several working really hard with the company, because Air New Zealand has to cut 3,500 staff off their books. That's a really tough thing to do. I was in the same position in 2009, having to go through that kind of exercise, but it was nothing compared to now. The scale of this is absolutely heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, and my heart goes out to the people that are helping their colleagues, doing what they can to work through that.
Now, union delegates are our unsung heroes and it's great to see that in the latest birthday honours. If I can just mention Marianne Bishop, she was recognised for her services to the union movement and the community, and she is an absolutely deserving woman, working with Kristine Bartlett during the equal pay claim. 
But back to the Budget. We have, of course, started with the wage subsidy to ensure that we would protect as many jobs as possible, give businesses the opportunity to work through their options and find out ways to keep their businesses viable, and that started paying out straight away. But in five days, I believe, the first cash was rolling out and it has immediately helped businesses, and over 1.7 million people have benefited from that. 
A couple of comments that I've received recently from businesses—now, there's one here: "I would like to say thank you to the Government for helping me with the opportunity to keep my business afloat. Regardless of the final outcome, the Government provided me with a $48,000 wage subsidy, which at least gave my business a chance." And this one from a Rodney business: "Over the past 12-week period, we've had a 60 percent drop in revenue with expenses remaining the same. We have 14 staff and are proud we've been able to keep them all employed at 100 percent of their wages." And this is a living wage employer; I know that: "Without the Government's quick offer and payment of the wage subsidy, we absolutely would have been reducing wages and making redundancies." So this is really great stuff and there are lots of big ticket items in this Budget that we've heard people talk about. But also there are many detailed, smaller, much needed investments that we haven't heard much about because they're tucked away in the Treasury's detailed Budget documents. 
One of those I'm thinking of is the funding for the Coastguard and Surf Life Saving New Zealand, where volunteers, of course, are doing that crucial work to keep us safe. In the northern region, where I'm based, that means that the places between Mangawhai and Ōrewa, from Red Beach to Muriwai, are benefiting from that. 
Bringing back night classes is the other really great one that we get so much feedback about. People really, really love that. I don't know why that was cut in 2010 by the previous Government, but that was absolutely well received. We are having a $12 billion New Zealand Upgrade Programme. Projects like Penlink are finally coming through; one that our Government has committed to where the previous Government only ever really talked about it without funding it. 
So the silver lining that our Minister always talks about is there. We need to rebuild and we need to build back better, because the pre-COVID economy certainly wasn't one that we want to go back to. So we are creating new jobs, training people to have the skills that they need for the jobs that they're going into, and we are supporting people to either keep their jobs or go back into work. That's what this Budget does. It's a great Budget. I thank the Minister and I commend it to the House.





MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I recall, when the Minister of Finance was delivering his Budget speech, he talked to us about rebuilding social infrastructure. He said that this Budget would pave the way for a better tomorrow. So how does a Government create a better tomorrow? Well, I'd argue that they do that by making today the absolute worst that it could possibly be. Today has become a nightmare for workers. It's become a nightmare for businesses and communities, and this Government is racking up debt at a rate that this country has never considered ever in its history. 
He also said that other countries were a lot worse off than New Zealand. I guess that we can wonder why that is. I would argue, very strongly, that it's because, when we had the last major financial disaster in this country, the global financial crisis, we actually had a Government—a National Government—that maintained control and disciplined financial management. 
We were criticised by the current Government members, when they were in Opposition, for not throwing more money around and for being too controlled, but, while being disciplined, we also knew where Kiwis' money was best spent. We also were cognisant of the fact of who would have to pay that money back. We kept a focus on reducing debt, and that meant making some sacrifices, and there were some wage rounds and some capital expenditure that was pushed out. But things still didn't stand still, even in those days. Decisions were balanced against the need to continue to grow this country, against the financial discipline of maintaining a really low debt level for New Zealand and its future. 
A couple of the major infrastructure spends that were spent in West Coast - Tasman were the new two-lane bridge between Hokitika and Greymouth or the Te Nikau Hospital, that is about to open in Greymouth—major infrastructure spend. But a further example of sensible investment that happened during those tough times was the rollout of high-speed internet across this country—the very infrastructure that allowed this country to continue to operate during our recent lockdown. It's kept kids in education, it's kept people in entertainment in their homes, it's kept communications open between families, and it's even kept business and Government ticking over. Thanks, National. 
That rock star economy set us up well, but it took discipline. In the middle of the pandemic lockdown, what discipline did we see from the very person who was meant to be fronting the health response in this country? None. He was too busy driving to the beach or driving to the bike trail so he could go for a bike ride. If Kiwis are looking for financial discipline, they will not find it on that side of the House, and that's glaringly clear with the financial rabbit-hole we are heading down.
Some of the wasted spend that's going on in this Budget is almost eye-watering, and I'd like to turn my attention to $1.1 billion that went to the Department of Conservation (DOC). DOC is going to use $1.1 billion to cut down wilding pines, pull out some weeds, and get rid of some pests. But it's a oncer. It has no financial return to this country. If we're going to destroy and shoot pests, why aren't we making use of that? We've got a local abattoir that would value the carcasses. Why don't we work with the local industry so that we can put that product through and actually generate some income? Merinomink is one of the best products and best fibre mixes that we've got in this country—possum and merino wool—beautiful product. But, no; these animals are going to be shot and left to rot in the bush. Pulling weeds—well, a problem with pulling a weed is you turn your back and it grows back again. It's pouring money down the drain. This country needs disciplined financial management. It's not going to get it from that side of the House, I'm afraid.
I'd like to bring up one other point of spending. We were told how much the primary sector played a part in getting us through this pandemic and generating income. But what did it get? Less than 1 percent of new money. How valued do the primary sector feel with that level of investment in the very backbone of industry that has kept New Zealand afloat? This is a dreadful Budget. New Zealand is heading down the drain.





PAULO GARCIA (National): We have heard that these are exceptional times and they are unprecedented times, which calls for exceptional focus, exceptional understanding, and exceptional effort to help New Zealand survive the effects of this pandemic and survive economically. The question really has been, and continues to be, what is best for all New Zealanders. 
When the lockdown had occurred, our Government immediately made available wage subsidies, and wage subsidies have been the topic of other members' talks as well, on both sides—both sides giving evidence that they believe that the wage subsidies have worked, in hearing accounts from both sides. Clearly the desire on both sides of the House is to make sure that we do all we can for all New Zealanders. It's just that the evidence that they have presented on the wage subsidy, for example, and evidence that we have, like my own personal meetings with businesses and asking them about the wage subsidy, just come up with different accounts. The wage subsidy has been very useful for employees, but the businesses have not found this useful for them, to deal with the ongoing costs that they've had.
At some point through the lockdown, the Government also came up with the suggestion to businesses to go to their banks and the offering of Government guarantee. At some point, when the businesses continued to be declined by the banks, the Government then went on to say that they were unhappy with the unsatisfactory performance of the banks, which then led to a Government loan programme of $10,000 for a business, which would be interest-free if paid in 12 months. Businesses continued to tell us, on the other hand, that taking on additional loans and taking on more debt that they knew they couldn't pay over 12 months was just not an option for them. Then, again, continued meetings with businesses, restaurants, medical practices, bakeries, small businesses employing maybe one to five people—the response that I have received personally has been that the wage subsidy, while it has been good for employees, has not been good for them. 
Getting down to level 1 is indeed a move that should be based on science. I add to this discussion that, coincidentally, I have two daughters who live in overseas countries—one in Sydney, one in Taipei—and both countries had a much lower grade of lockdown compared to New Zealand. In particular, I was quite amazed with the fact that Taipei, which is 23 million - plus people in one-seventh the land size of New Zealand, had actually performed better in terms of dealing with the pandemic. So there is science to be discussed about what really should be and how fast level 1 should be allowed.
What is hard and early? This phrase has been repeated many times. I think it will be borne out by global facts at some point. What is good about history is that the facts will be borne out, and as they happen in point in time, and I look forward to what is hard and early.





MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): As we stand here today debating Budget 2020 in New Zealand, with one active case, with several weeks of new cases on a daily basis, with an extremely low mortality rate, and with the real prospect of the elimination of COVID-19 in New Zealand in sight, it is very easy to forget that a global pandemic still rages around the world. That there are thousands of people dying every day; tens of thousands of new cases; over 100,000 dead in the United States—a country that now has an unemployment rate of around about 25 percent—that our nearest neighbours, our cuzzies in Australia, still have hundreds of cases of COVID-19, with new outbreaks happening most days. The first thing that I want to say in this contribution is that we cannot take for granted or overlook the enormity of what our team of 5 million here in New Zealand have achieved together in beating back COVID19. Under our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, we have had a decisive health response to beat back COVID, and that is what gives us the opportunity now for an economic recovery to rebuild and to give New Zealanders the wellbeing into the coming years that they deserve.
That wasn't by chance. It didn't just happen. It wasn't easy. People made sacrifices at every level and in every sector of our society, and it ill behoves members of this House to write that off, just to say, "We've got a big moat," as I heard earlier on in this debate from across the House, "So of course, it was going to be easy for New Zealand." People stayed at home. People shuttered their businesses. Some people lost their businesses and their jobs. Kids didn't go to school. Churches, mosques, and synagogues didn't open. People came together in the spirit of solidarity to save the lives of their fellow New Zealanders. What is so important about the approach that New Zealand has taken—and our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, have said this right throughout and throughout the Budget—is that the best health response was also the best economic response. We did not say, as countries like Sweden did, that we'd, effectively, sacrifice lives. We said we would not do that because not only is that the wrong thing to do—New York City, let me give you an example of that. In the over-75 age group in New York City, one in 60 people have died. That's what we face, potentially. So not only have we saved lives and done the right thing, but, because of that decisive action, because we did go hard and we did go early, because our lockdown was strong—and, yes, I say to members on the other side of the House, it was stronger than most other places, and that was the right call—because we did that, we are in this position where we have substantially beaten back COVID, where we're on the cusp of elimination, and we now have amongst the freest economic and social conditions in the world, with the serious prospect next week that we might be able to free things up further if the evidence continues to stack up. That is a significant achievement for New Zealanders, and it is also due to the decisive leadership of our Prime Minister and of the Government.
This Budget is a Budget which now gives us the opportunity to rebuild and to recover. I've got to say a word about the utter incoherence of the Opposition on this today. We've heard a line that they've been parroting over the last week or two since their leadership transition. I think their focus groups told them that their criticisms of the Government's public health approach were not sticking because they were plainly so wrong. So they start everything by saying now, "Yes, we give the Government credit for managing the health situation well." They then follow that up by undermining every single public health measure. A member of the House on that side who spoke within the last half hour compared social distancing to Nazi Germany. At every step along the way, whatever level we've been at, they have agitated and undermined and said that we need to go faster and make things more loose. Then, when we do, because we've got the results and done it at the right time, they just go to the next level. That's what we're hearing today in the constant petty baying at every single step to just go down a level, regardless of what the evidence says. Well, that's not the approach that we're going to take on this side of the House.
It's the same in terms of their analysis of this Budget and their analysis of the economic path to recovery. Because what we've heard from those members today is: there's too much debt, we're spending too much, but also we're not spending enough, and we need to give businesses more. So let's take the policies that they've announced over the last couple of weeks. The policy to give $10,000 for every new employee—regardless of whether that person lasts for a week or not, the employer gets it. There are so many holes in it, it's just absolutely incredible. It's been costed by a credible economic commentator at between $8 billion and $10 billion to create the number of jobs they say it will. But they're saying we should be spending less and have less debt.
They say in their speeches that Government doesn't have a role in stimulating the economy and can't create jobs. But then, in the very next breath, tell us that we need that policy, and we need their GST policy to support businesses and create jobs. It is an incoherent mess. And it is no surprise to me that a party that cannot govern itself isn't capable of putting together a credible plan to help New Zealand recover and rebuild from one of the greatest economic and social crises that we have faced since the Second World War.
I am incredibly proud of the Budget. There's been a lot of focus on the big stuff in there—the wage subsidy scheme, over $11 billion that supported 1.67 million workers to retain their jobs through COVID-19 and will extend for a couple of months to come; the work that's gone into providing cash flow to small businesses, $3 billion coming back into businesses through the tax loss carry-back scheme; $1 billion of interest-free loans to help those small businesses keep moving; the $1 billion investment in environmental jobs, giving people jobs while also making environmental improvements in our country; the massive investment in trades training. As Grant Robertson said in his Budget speech, this Government won't do what the National Party did at the depths of the 1991 recession and leave our young people on the socio-economic scrap heap. We will give them jobs and skills and training and opportunity. That will support those young people and their wellbeing, and it sets our country up for greater productivity in the future as well. I'm proud of the fact that, in this Budget, we are funding 100 percent qualified early childhood education teachers because, while we are dealing with the crisis of COVID-19, we're not going to take our eye off the ball of the things that make a difference for New Zealanders, and few things make a bigger difference in our society than quality education of our young people.
But as well as that big stuff, I wanted to touch on some of the smaller initiatives in the Budget that haven't got so much limelight, but I think really speak to the character of this Budget, of this Government, and of the recovery that we are building—an inclusive recovery for all New Zealanders. There's $3.5 million in here to improve walking access for people, because we believe that it's important that New Zealanders are able to experience the incredible beauty of this country. There's $5 million dollars in there for National Animal Identification and Tracing because, yes, as members of the Opposition have said, and I completely agree with them, we've relearned during this crisis the critical importance of our primary producers. So we're going to support them to make sure that we have integrity and safety within that sector. We've increased the screen production grant seriously, because not only do we want to support the arts and culture and see more New Zealand stories on screen, it creates jobs for people in the creative sector. We've supported the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra because our cultural institutions shouldn't go to the wall because of COVID-19. Bread and roses. We've put more money into the Commerce Commission for them to be investigating misconduct and deterring misconduct, because when we come out of recovery, we want a flourishing economic scene that's based on fairness and good competition between businesses, not the big guys rorting the system, as has happened in the past. We've put money into the innovative courthouse in Tauranga, because we believe that we do need to change our justice system so that people who have got alcohol and drug dependency problems and mental health issues get the support that they need to get their lives back on track. The final one I want to touch on here is one that we are all so proud of on this side of the House and is such a totem for the difference between this side and that side, and that is the investment in restoring adult and community education. When that Government on the other side faced an economic crisis 11 years ago, they slashed it. They killed it. They cut it. One of the important bits of social fabric in our country. This Government is investing in people. This Budget recognises that, because of the decisive health response led by our Prime Minister, we have the opportunity to rebuild and recover, to bring people along with us to build an inclusive economy and society. This is a Budget that is about rebuilding together. I am proud of it and I commend it to the House.





ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it was pleasing to hear that Michael Wood has been listening to us on this side of the House. He quoted a number of our concerns articulated by my colleagues earlier in the day. That's one good thing. What he needs to do now is go and listen to what New Zealanders also have to say. New Zealanders want to get to level 1 yesterday, to quote the Deputy Prime Minister. That is an important issue: to be listening to those constituents that we represent. It's all very well saying that we should be doing this or that because Michael Wood thinks that is in the best interest, but we represent New Zealanders. We reflect what New Zealanders want, and they want level 1 yesterday.
That's actually quite a simple way of resolving this, and there's actually more members in this House who would like to be at level 1 than who do not, given the Deputy Prime Minister's words over the last week. It would be very simple for him to move a motion, and he might find that it would pass, if that was to be the case. Nevertheless, I'm not going to talk too much about the levels, and that's been well-traversed. 
I'm concerned about a couple of things in the Budget. The first thing is the quality of the policies that have been put forward—the quality of the policies—and I'm talking about, as my colleague Paulo Garcia mentioned earlier as an example, the policy where the bank fronted up 20 percent of the loan and the other 80 percent would be guaranteed by the Government. Well, the bank was still at risk for 20 percent of the loan. They were concerned about the people who they're lending to—so concerned about the prospects of that borrower that they didn't want to lend the money. The banks didn't want to lend the 20 percent that the Government wished them to lend. That is concerning. That policy failed, and the Government replaced it with a 100 percent loan from the Government—from the taxpayer; remember, this is taxpayer money not Government money—to businesses. The Government has to question why the banks didn't want to lend the money in the first place. Why should the taxpayer replace the bank in this example? Well, it's because a lot of businesses are at risk, clearly, and will go down the toilet. They will fail. So why are we talking about putting good money after bad? I'm concerned that the questions have not been asked of some of the policies presented by this Government—not all the policies; the basic wage subsidy policy is one that is repeated around the world, and it appears, in my view at least, to be a good one.
The wage extension is another example of a policy that has not been thought through. If a business is down 50 percent of revenues over the previous 30 days compared to a year ago, they are able to access taxpayer money. But you've got to ask the question: if the business is that far in the balance sheet weakness or income statement weakness, why is the Government putting good money into a business which is, basically, insolvent—taxpayers' money. Remember, Government members, it is taxpayers' money you are dealing with. So my concern is around the thinking of the policies.
The second concern I have is the fact of this almost incomprehensible slush fund of $20 billion. When Shane Jones had $3 billion of slush fund in his Provincial Growth Fund, we, and a lot of public up and down the country, were concerned about the quality of the spend of the $3 billion—where the money was going. It was propping up mills that should never have been propped up and nurseries that should never have been subsidised—money wasted. Quite rightly, we were holding the Government to account on that $3 billion. But now we've got a $20 billion slush fund—$20 billion. No one knows where it might be spent, except perhaps the Minister. That is of a real concern to me: the accountability, or lack of it, around a $20 billion fund of taxpayers' money unallocated. And we heard the wish list from Michael Wood of some of the things that he is advocating for and some of the things that have been allocated to. So I'm concerned that the wish list of the left is being granted by the Minister of Finance, using this disastrous economic situation to take advantage to deliver Michael Wood's wish list.





Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I've been listening to the Budget debate and the analysis, and predictably enough the Government are talking it up, the Opposition are pointing out the pitfalls and so it needs to be. This is the biggest economic disaster in at least a generation. We all have to pull together to make this work. We've got through pretty well on the health crisis side of things but there are many, many of us—and in my North Shore community I'm hearing it all the time—who feel that we are too slow to move on and to get out of it.
My colleague who's just resumed his seat, Alastair Scott, spoke of the $20 billion slush fund. There is so much room for manoeuvre and wriggle room here and not properly targeted to help small businesses. We need to open up. Our strong view is that we should do it as quickly as possible. So in my North Shore community, for example, we rely a lot on international students. We have among the finest schools in the country—if I may make that boast—on the North Shore: 55,000 New Zealanders have job opportunities as a result of that international student block. Why are we not getting them back up and running by the second semester?
Helping small businesses with direct cash into their hands is the other thing that is completely absent in this Budget. For small businesses who are already struggling, why would they want to take on more debt? Why would they want to borrow more? It's not an appealing prospect. They need to have the money in their hands and there has not been enough from the Government to give them guidance and direction on that.
National would act very differently in this situation. We need to open up the economy. We need to back New Zealanders to be resilient. We need to back ourselves to get out of this challenge and to confront it. So international education is one thing; tourism is another. Queenstown has gone from being one of our most buoyant and really profitable, if you like, business-oriented economies; now it is in dire straits. We need that trans-Tasman bubble to open prior to the Australian school holidays so that that can really enable Queenstown and the businesses there to help themselves. We need to give people opportunities to work. National has suggested giving back GST to businesses—that would encourage them to take on more staff. That would encourage them to expand in a meaningful way, and not just to prop up businesses that perhaps may not really survive.
Firing up private sector investment is also something that we are keen on doing, and also we need to continue to invest in quality infrastructure. North of the Auckland Harbour Bridge we need to make some commitments around having another harbour crossing. The good old bridge isn't going to be able to sustain very much for the future. Certainly the clip-on and the ability of the SkyPath to deliver on bicycles is a great idea, but at that cost in these times—is that really what we want on an already outdated bridge that probably can't bear the weight?
We do have to look at the ability of this Government to deliver in the way of retraining and re-equipping. It's all very well to say in the Budget they're going to be spending $1.6 billion on apprentices: "Let's spray the money around. Let's not actually target and focus." There's no detail; there's no plan, and in the meantime the whole sector's been turned upside down by reforms that say more about dogma than anything else.
So as we face this extraordinary crisis as a country together, I believe that we need to protect the vulnerable more than we are doing. I think that the focus as we've seen internationally is that older people, people with disabilities, people who are isolated and at home, are not able to help themselves in the way that they need to be helped by us. So we need to step into that breach as a Parliament. This Government has not done that in this Budget. Targeting the needy and the vulnerable and ensuring that they have the support that they need to get through what is going to be, I suspect, a very grim and fearful winter for them. For older New Zealanders who have already been in lockdown for longer than 2½ months, they are looking down the barrel of a wet, cold, miserable winter, alone, without really efficient, targeted help. And I know that Tim Macindoe has spoken on this and really tried to draw attention to the people who we need to remember and not to forget. I think that keeping seniors safe is a glaring omission in this Budget.
So we have seen JobStart from National, which would create job creation, which would make meaningful jobs occur and help us start to build up. GST refunds—again, there are many disappointments in this Budget when you look at it from a strong economic lens. New Zealand can do better. This Government can certainly do better. And I think that what Todd Muller said at the beginning of his tenure as our leader is that there are three people at the top of that party and 17 empty seats. This is not a Government that is capable of delivering in these bad economic times.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move, That this debate be now adjourned.
Motion agreed to.





LAND TRANSPORT (RAIL) LEGISLATION BILL
Second Reading
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I move, That the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill be now read a second time. 
I am very proud of this Government's record on rail. In less than three years, we've invested $4.6 billion in the rail network, which is considerably more, by the way, than the former Government did over nine years. When we came into Government, one of our priorities was to revive the network, which under the previous Government had been in a state of managed decline. And I want to acknowledge colleagues in the Green Party and in New Zealand First—all three governing parties are strongly committed to rail as the sustainable backbone of this country's 21st century transport system. 
The aim of this bill is to implement a new planning and funding framework for the heavy rail track network. I want to begin by thanking the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for the time and effort that they've put into this bill and for the amendments that the committee has recommended, which I support. I also want to express my appreciation for the time and effort that submitters put into providing input into the bill. The committee received 87 written submissions and heard 24 oral submissions from a range of submitters who reflect the interesting and diverse range of people who care about rail in New Zealand: from the freight and commuter sectors, from the commanding heights of our export economy, through to those who strongly believe that rail can contribute to the big goal that we have in our cities to move more people with fewer vehicles. 
The vast majority of submitters were private individuals who wished to express their support for the intent of this bill and our goal of a resilient and reliable rail network. As a result of feedback from submitters, the committee has recommended a number of changes to the bill to provide better alignment with regional views and longer long-term planning for rail, and I commend the committee for their work on the bill and the improvements they've made in that regard. 
This bill is not just about financial investment. We also need to change the legacy approach to planning and funding rail. The existing framework for planning and funding the rail network creates uncertainty for rail as a result of annual Budget processes, and it separates road and rail investment decisions. It means that proper integrated decision-making that is mode-neutral, whether we're talking about moving people through our largest cities or shifting freight efficiently through the country—these decisions currently are made in isolation from each other. The new planning and funding framework follows a partial integration model. Ministers will retain their decision-making rights over rail investment, and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency will be responsible for giving Ministers advice on the rail network investment programme. 
The committee heard from a number of submitters who believed we should go even further and fully integrate rail into the land transport framework. However, while the Government is seeking to restore the rail network and revive it, it's critical that Ministers are accountable for and have oversight of the investments in the rail network outside of those made through the National Land Transport Fund and have oversight for that funding as well as its commercial assets as the shareholders of KiwiRail. The benefit of partial integration will be that Ministers will take integrated decisions across the rail system and across the transport system on the investments that we need to restore rail. We recognise that we need to increase Crown funding to rail to enable KiwiRail to operate as a commercial business and to ensure that the public benefits are realised for the wider rail network.
Now, while funding for the rail network will come through the National Land Transport Fund, this will also require funding from the Crown and contributions from track users, and the ability to establish track user charges by regulation under the Land Transport Act and to pay these into the National Land Transport Fund is a core part of this bill. While maintaining partial integration, there are a number of important changes that the select committee has recommended as a result of feedback at the committee.
The first is that the bill requires KiwiRail to develop a rail network investment programme that is submitted to the Minister of Transport for approval. KiwiRail is also now required to submit relevant parts of the programme to the Auckland and Wellington regional transport committees, where rail plays such an important role in urban rapid transit. The purpose of this is to improve coordinated planning for the metropolitan rail networks in those cities. This can be extended to other regions by ministerial approval if needed in the future—and that's a good thing because there's a lot of work going on right now in places like Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty and in the Waikato about how commuter rail could play a part in their transport systems. 
Now, the bill gives Waka Kotahi the role of giving advice to the Minister on the programme. And this is important to allow Waka Kotahi to apply its robust investment advice framework and knowledge of the broader land transport system. The transport agency is a highly skilled and powerful machine that measures, assesses, and prioritises a myriad of transport projects through the system, and their discipline and focus will be brought to bear on rail investments as a result of this.
As a result of feedback from submitters, the committee has also recommended a number of other important changes to strengthen the rail network planning process. The planning period for the RNIP, the rail network investment programme, was too short at only three years. The bill will now align with the six-year planning period of the National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) and the regional land transport programmes. However, funding will remain at three years in line with the NLTP. This takes into account the significant investment and long-term focus of rail infrastructure.
KiwiRail will also, under this amendment, be asked or expected to take into account the purpose of the Land Transport Management Act and the Government policy statement on land transport as they develop the rail network investment programme. The committee has also helpfully recommended that in giving its advice on the rail network investment programme, Waka Kotahi also provides advice on whether the programme takes into account any relevant regional land transport plan to ensure that there is integration at both the regional and national levels. This was a key theme of many submissions. KiwiRail will work closely with Waka Kotahi to make clear those interdependencies between rail and road projects as well as enable them to work with regional councils. Collectively, these changes from the select committee are important to enable a more effective and robust long-term planning framework for rail as an integral part of the land transport planning system. 
So, in conclusion, we need to take a better long-term, more joined-up strategic approach to rail planning in this country. This bill will secure rail's ability to continue to deliver benefits for New Zealand, whether it's freight or whether it's moving people in our largest cities. And it will ensure that we continue to have a rail network that keeps people and markets connected. I commend this bill to the House.





CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Madam Speaker, thank you very much, and I thank the Minister for his contribution to the debate. I had the privilege of serving on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that considered this bill, and we did do a thorough job over recent months in considering this bill. This bill is actually quite an important one in the way it makes changes to the funding and planning framework for rail, and it can't be divorced from the Government's wider changes around rail in New Zealand: the development of a New Zealand Rail Plan, and huge increases from Crown coffers to rail via both direct Crown contributions but also the much-criticised—but much-loved by the other side—Provincial Growth Fund.
Let me make four points. The first is that the National Party, in Opposition, supports rail in New Zealand; it's a very important part of our transport system—
Paul Eagle: Hear, hear.
CHRIS BISHOP: —as the Minister has noted. I hear my colleague Paul Eagle from Wellington saying "Hear, hear." from over the side of the Chamber, and he will know, as my colleague sitting next to me on these benches, Nicola Willis, knows, and other members from Wellington know, it plays an important role in Wellington in terms of allowing people in the Hutt and Porirua and Johnsonville—not so much out in Mr Eagle's neck of the woods, although, if the Greens have their way, we'll have a slow tram running out past the hospital to the airport at some point in 2080 or 2070—
Nicola Willis: They want better buses.
CHRIS BISHOP: Nicola Willis points out that they want better buses. They absolutely do want better buses, but rail means that—I mean, everyone who jumps on a train from the Hutt or from Johnsonville is probably not in a car, and of course that reduces congestion on our roads and that's a good thing, and it's the same in Auckland. It was National that started the City Rail Link in Auckland, of course, and that's a project that has been somewhat controversial in the House over the last decade or so, but the simple reality is that will add huge capacity to the Auckland rail network, and that will of course help commuters in Auckland and help make Auckland the city that it should be: the 21st century, livable city where people have a variety of different transport choices in order to get around the city.
So we do support rail, and one of the things we heard during the select committee process was a constant refrain that the previous National Government had put KiwiRail into a system of "managed decline"—I think was the exact phrase used—and we would take issue with that. In fact, we did during the committee process, and I repeat that now, because the simple reality is that, if you look at the numbers, the last National Government rightsized KiwiRail after it was nationalised by the previous Labour Clark Government in 2008. It was called back then the "sale of the century". The Crown paid Toll Holdings, I think it was, $690 million and the then chief executive of Toll Holdings was on the record as saying, "You know, you only get one Michael Cullen in your life."—which, of course, is a paraphrase of Kerry Packer's quote about Alan Bond after he did the dirty with him on the sale of, I think it was, Fairfax Holdings back in the 80s: "You only get one Alan Bond in your life." And, of course, that was true about KiwiRail as well. So that was a controversial decision back in 2008, but the previous National Government put a lot of money into KiwiRail to invest in the Main Trunk and to run lines that were economic and profitable—and that's the critical point.
I do want to come back to the point about economics, because there are challenges with the economics of rail in New Zealand, and we need to be upfront and clear about those challenges. New Zealand is a long, thin country with a small population base, and rail makes sense to transport quite a few goods—bulky goods, logs, other goods—and in the golden triangle of Waikato and Auckland and Tauranga, it makes a big contribution. Down the West Coast, as Maureen Pugh would tell me, there's a real role for rail. But we need to be pretty clear-eyed, I think, about the challenges that rail presents in other parts of the country, and I want to come back to those comments. So we need to be realistic. But rail is very important, particularly in our metro centres.
Second point is about planning and funding. The Minister talked about this in his contribution. We do believe that there does need to be better coordination and better planning around rail in the transport system. We do accept that. We do not believe that this bill, essentially, establishes that. We do not believe that the bill does what the Minister says it does on the tin, so to speak. Actually, this was pointed out in contributions to the select committee by a variety of submitters. The Minister noted in his contribution that the Government's gone for what's called a partial integration framework, and we heard submissions at the select committee that that doesn't offer all the benefits of full integration and it creates real complications for what the Government has decided to go for. So, as the New Zealand Automobile Association (AA) pointed out, for example, the Minister's tasked to sign off the KiwiRail plan.
Forward that to the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), who have to include it in the National Land Transport Programme, but this approach doesn't allow for the consideration of trade-offs between the modes, as NZTA's board, while retaining their decision-making authority of which road projects proceed, has no influence over the rail projects. So that's actually a really good point made by the Automobile Association and actually directly contradicts what the Minister said, which is that we need to have clear transparency around the trade-offs between the modes and we need to be mode-neutral. But, of course, that's not actually provided by the bill. That's not what the bill does, and we think that's a problem. We think, and we noted this in our minority view on the bill, that there are a variety of non-legislative tools and solutions that could be used to do that. Don't have all the answers for that right now, but we think that is certainly the direction we should be going, and that's the direction that the next National Government will take it.
Third point is about the ability for KiwiRail to access the National Land Transport Fund, and this is the core objection that the National Party has to this bill. What this will mean is that road users, who pay road-user charges and petrol tax to fund the roads that they use, will end up funding rail. And we do not believe that is appropriate. And, as the AA and other submitters put it, this disrupts the social licence that's existed around road funding. And, actually, it was Annette King, a former Labour Minister of Transport, who set up the clear hypothecation that the money that road users pay through petrol tax and road-user charges goes into the National Land Transport Fund and that's spent on roads. Now, is it true that some of those funds are spent on other things? Yes, of course. But they're spent on those things for the benefit of road users.
So there is funding from the National Land Transport Fund that funds the operating subsidies and some capital improvements for metro rail, and of course the justification and the rationale for that is a good one, which is that if you improve the stations and you operate good railway lines, people will jump on the train rather than use their car. So of course that benefits road users, for the reasons I mentioned at the start of my speech. But this fundamental change, that truck drivers and trucking companies will pay more to cross-subsidise their competitors, is wrong and we don't believe it's appropriate, and that's our core objection to the bill. I just want to repeat that. Trucking companies will end up paying road-user charges and fuel tax to cross-subsidise their competitors, to cross-subsidise rail. And that's not right.
The fourth point is that we believe this will lead to the opening of uneconomic lines, wealth-destructive lines, and I'll just point you—
Hon Member: It's already happened: Northland.
CHRIS BISHOP: Well, that's a classic example of it—99 percent of freight in Northland, Mr Eagle, travels by road, as Matt King, I'm sure, will point out to the House. And why is that? The reason it travels by road is because it's fundamentally more economic to transport those goods by road. And my point, Dr Webb, is that if the people who transport goods around Northland want a rail service, they will be prepared to pay KiwiRail, through the charges that KiwiRail charges, to open those lines. That's the whole point of the economics of the system.
And so I just point you, in closing, to the example of the Napier to Wairoa line, and this was opened by the Government through the Provincial Growth Fund—$6 million to restore that line and everyone said, "Oh, there'll be two trains a week going down that line." Guess how many trains have gone down the line since they opened it! One—$6 million, and one train's been down the line. Is that a good use of taxpayer money? I don't think so, and that's exactly what will end up happening. We'll end up opening uneconomic railway lines because we have a nostalgic view that rail is the answer. It is the answer in some respects, but often it isn't. Thanks very much.





PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Madam Speaker, thank you. Obviously, it's a pleasure to hear the lovefest about rail—heavy rail, that is—because it's always good on a Thursday afternoon before we adjourn to hear that it's the Transport and Infrastructure Committee once again bringing love to the House around heavy rail. It's great to see on that side of the House their love affair with it, despite a few ups and downs. They like trains, just like us, but with $4.6 billion invested there and entrenching rail as part of an integrated transport solution for Aotearoa New Zealand, it can only be good. 
Look, we'll hear many more of it this evening, this afternoon, but I just do want to end on a very short call. 
Hon Members: Oh!
PAUL EAGLE: We don't need to talk too long, with all this love in the House. You're talking for me.
Can I just end by saying that it's great to see KiwiRail integrated into our metro rail lines in the Wellington region, and I know that that's going to be a great thing for rail. Long live rail.





ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill. I was just slightly disappointed that that member who just sat down, Paul Eagle, didn't take the opportunity to espouse the benefits and merits of this bill, especially as he is a member based in Wellington. And, as alluded to, and as Mr Chris Bishop directly quoted, he is in an area that relies heavily on rail, and I would have thought he would have taken the opportunity to take us through some of the details of this bill, because it seems to be one that the Government and his party in particular, the Labour Party, seem hell bent on pursuing.
So the bill—we've had a quite good summary of it from the Minister, and I think the big thing is, as my colleague also highlighted, that National is very supportive of rail and we always have been. In fact, I have a personal involvement. Before I came into politics, I was involved in the purchase of the electric multiple units that came into Auckland, so I saw some of the difficulties and the workings of working with Auckland Transport, as it was, and also the Ministry of Transport and also the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) during that process. But of course, where I represent now, the electorate of Hunua, which covers Pukekohe in particular, this is an area that has not had money spent on it in terms of providing a good rail service between Papakura and Pukekohe, even though it has been planned for a long, long time and we've had a Government that keeps waxing on about how they're going to invest in rail. But I've got thousands of people who travel up the Southern Motorway every day. I think, from memory, about 120,000 people travel the Southern Motorway, yet the Government couldn't see its way to actually speeding up and putting some investment into that southern part of the rail network where it is really required, because the people who are the most likely to get on a train, as I used to, as I commuted to Auckland Central regularly—to get on a train—but if you can't get on it easily or it stops at Papakura and you have to wait for the next train, it's all a disincentive.
And the other thing we're waiting for with bated breath is the triple-laning between Wiri and Westfield so we can actually see some trains passing, so we can actually put in some commuter trains that actually might be able to go through at a much-increased speed so that you can actually have speed or services that deliver people to Auckland Central in a much shorter period of time. But of course, it's nearly three years and it's all been talk, talk, talk. 
But let's just return to the bill, because I know the Speaker is showing a lot of interest in the bill. I think the issue is—one is around the rail network investment programme, and there's some good stuff in the bill. Obviously, moving the planning phase out to six years is very much important. But I must admit, I find it an argument that's sort of weird to be having, because every council does what is called an AMP, an asset management plan, and that is a 10-year plan. So for a long-term infrastructure investment like rail, you would have thought that that actually is an absolute given, that you extend the planning programme for KiwiRail. And obviously there is a difference between investment planning and also the funding, which, as the Minister noted, is still based on a three-year funding model. 
The role of NZTA under this new arrangement is interesting, because on one side KiwiRail's required to do some plans, put it into the mix, and then NZTA is meant to opine on it. And there's this disconnect between what actually happens at regional level, even though they're meant to be trying to make that happen. I think there's an element of lacking clarity in that part of the bill.
But I think the other thing about this bill is the issue around KiwiRail actually being able to access this wider national land users fund, which is this fund that is created, and, as my colleague Chris Bishop said, hypothecated, which in other words means targeted—or is related to where the money is gained or where it's sourced from, it is spent in that area. What this bill does is it starts to cut aside that whole principle, which is a really fundamental principle. And, as Mr Bishop quite rightly pointed out, it seems absurd that truck drivers and trucking firms will now end up, in effect, subsidising rail, which is their major competitor. So that aspect of the bill, I think, is a bit of a slippery slope, and I'm so glad that the National Party was clear, and has been clear, about our position, because I think if we get into power on 20 September, that will be something that many people will be focused on from our party to make sure that we've got clear principles. We don't confuse them, and we don't use cross-subsidisation as a principle, because there has been a longstanding move towards not allowing for cross-subsidisation. And of course, that provision in the bill is a major issue. 
The other bit I want to raise is the status of KiwiRail. And as KiwiRail is a State-owned enterprise (SOE)—and it's one of about 22 SOEs, I think, from memory—they have a clear line of responsibility. They have clear objectives. And you can go to Schedule 2, which lists all those entities and the involvement of Ministers in terms of how the oversight of all those—and KiwiRail has had a pretty clear line of sight of what it's meant to be doing and how it's to operate. What is slightly disturbing is during the course of this bill, increasingly the issue of how KiwiRail is to be managed has been raised, and I think moving away from an SOE model brings about an added complication. 
I just want to note during the course of today that this is an issue that we'll be monitoring very closely. Basically, it follows a revaluation undertaken by the Government that basically inflated last year's surplus that the Government reported, and that revised valuation related to how the assets of KiwiRail were considered or viewed by the Government. Basically, using a public-good approach to valuation methodology resulted in—I think it was—an increase of $4.6 billion, and that was why there was a major surplus reported last year. 
Of course, it's just a book entry. It means nothing. But merely because the Government instructed that the valuation of KiwiRail should adopt a public-good basis rather than a business basis, we had this massive inflated figure that was captured not only in the way of KiwiRail's asset or in its balance sheet but also in terms of the Budget surplus reported, which of course is great for a Government when it's trying to talk as if it's doing very well. 
I think the move towards this public good is starting to claw at this whole concept of KiwiRail being an SOE. And I'd just like to suggest to you that let's hope that the Government does not pursue this line of thinking with this asset. It is an important entity for New Zealand. It does carry many thousands of passengers, as we all know, not only in a tourist sense but also commuters, but also it's got the tourism aspect of it and also the freight which ferries carry, crossing the Cook Strait. So those four aspects are all part of KiwiRail's mix. It's important that it is given proper funding. It is important that it is properly governed and managed. But we're starting with this bill to claw away at some of the clarity around that, and I think that's a dangerous slope to be heading towards.





Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do rise on behalf of New Zealand First to say this is a great day. This is a great day. This is a great day, to finally see a piece of legislation—we're having lots of great days over this side of the House. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in select committee this morning, talking about a multitude of great days for the Defence Force just rolling one after the other. But this is a great day, and it's going to be a great day tomorrow as well. If anyone's in Whenuapai, just come along.
I've got to say, the reason it's a great day is because, finally, we're seeing a Government that's taking a pragmatic approach to communications and networking throughout the land—basic communications infrastructure, because that is what rail is. It's part of that wider communications network, whether we're talking road and rail or whether we're talking the information highway—which I do find interesting. 
I'm listening to some of the arguments right now, and I'm looking at my ol' mate across the road, the former president of Local Government New Zealand. We used to be, actually, on the same team, local government, trying to knock sense into the last National Government because they would not listen to provincial New Zealand and the concerns about the communications network. We would talk about the lack of funding. 
There's Mr—what's his name; King, is it, from Northland. Labour put him in that seat. That man should get down on his knee and thank Labour every day of every week of every month, because without Labour pulling the votes off Winston Peters, that man wouldn't be there. But I digress a tad. That man wouldn't be there. He's what we call, in New Zealand First, the beneficiary MP. He doesn't do any work. He just hoovers up "gimmies" and freebies courtesy of Labour.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Back to the bill.
Hon RON MARK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I couldn't resist a clip at him, because he's so used to it.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Or even start talking about the bill.
Hon RON MARK: Thank you. 
I do recall the days when we talked about communications. We talked about the difficulty of local government funding roading networks with an ever-growing number of trucks on the roads. We would come along to—in those days it was—the Hon Nick Smith, who was the Minister of Local Government, and try to help him understand the pressure that local government was under. Our diminishing number of rural ratepayers could not fund the repairs and maintenance, let alone the growth, of those rural networks of roads. 
One of the solutions we always talked about was getting trucks off the road, getting product on to rail, and getting it through to the port. Now, whether that meant going up to Napier, up through Mr Yule's part of the woods, to the port at Napier, or getting it down through the Wairarapa into Wellington, into CentrePort, we always said: why don't you put more money, Mr National Government person, into rail so we can, one, alleviate the pressure on our ratepayers, and, two, alleviate the pressure on the roading network to commuters who were driving over the Remutaka hills stuck behind logging trucks—truck after truck after truck? But the answer was always, well, we're not putting money into rail, and rail's a State-owned entity and it's got to make its own way, and it's not the Government's responsibility to be putting money into rail. 
I heard Mr Bishop just a moment ago—the fundamental objection that today's National Party in Opposition has to this bill is because of cross-subsidy. Get it? I've got that. I understand it. But that totally belies what that Government stood for a few years back when they went into coalition with New Zealand First and they flip-flopped—they flip-flopped. See, we used to have cross-subsidy, where road-user charges, all that transport funding, went into the consolidated fund, and it was used for education—cross-subsidy—under Robbie Muldoon and Jim Bolger. Mr Bishop, the reason your party changed it is because New Zealand First and Peter Brown made you—in coalition negotiations made you.
So quite happy to accept cross-subsidy on one day and argue against it on another day. In those days, it was essential. In those days, you couldn't put 100 percent of the money gathered off of roads into roading because that was just appalling. How would we pay for education, they said. How would we pay for health, they said. We can't put all the money into roading. Now they're saying, "Oh my gosh. We can't take the road-user charges and put them into rail."
Hon Member: You're lost in the past.
Hon RON MARK: "Lost in the past." Well, for that new member, freshly promoted—congratulations—if one doesn't learn from history, one is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and that, in one flippant little chip across the House, sums up the problem on that bench—sums it right up. Denial, denial, denial. 
Here's the other point: over the hill and far away, in a beautiful valley called the Wairarapa, people are applauding the fact that we will have more trains running commuters in and out of Wellington to the Wairarapa. The local mayors—
Chris Bishop: We did that. That was us.
Hon RON MARK: No. Minister Twyford has made that announcement—about $200 million into double-tracking in the Hutt area.
Chris Bishop: That was us.
Hon RON MARK: Mr Bishop, there was never any funding or any appropriation or any commitment when I was the Mayor of Carterton from that Government to double-tracking, to improving the lines, to more rolling stock, to $98 million in one hit. About $200 million from this Government into the Wairarapa line—that's new. In fact, Mr Bishop, weren't you there in Upper Hutt when we made the announcement? Well, the former National Party man who is now the Mayor of South Wairarapa is applauding this decision.
In fact, it was Adrienne Staples—Her Worship the Mayor Adrienne Staples, from South Wairarapa, former National Party president—who got tired of banging her head on the desk trying to say why doesn't the Government use money from the Land Transport Fund to support rail. Guess what! Her former Worship the Mayor of South Wairarapa was saying, "Well done, coalition Government. Nice one. Thank you very much." 
Stuck in the past, Nicola Willis, I understand you are. You are stuck in your past rhetoric, in your past ideology, of all that little "The money has to be in this jam jar and only spent on Weet-Bix, and the money in this little jam jar is for the rent, and nothing can shift between the two of them." That's why families get into trouble, because there's no pragmatism, there's no balance, and there's no looking at the wider holistic policy.
This decision is a brave decision. New Zealand First has been adamant that we must rebuild rail. We need to get trucks off. The comment that 99 percent of freight in Auckland goes on the roads is absolutely correct, Mr Bishop—absolutely correct. I've got family in the logistics distribution network. I know how important those trucks are. We've got Palmerston North, just across the hills from us, right—a centre, a hub, a logistics hub. We know what's going in and out of there. 
The question is, given all the money that was poured into the roads of national significance and what the last Government was going to do—Mr Yule's smiling, I know. Don't smile; you'll get in trouble. All the money that we know was going to be put into the one-road network by the last Minister of Transport, who was going to lose? Rural New Zealand. And what was that doing? That was propping up unbridled immigration, more and more cars on the roads, more and more trucks, billions of dollars going into Auckland, Mr Bishop—Auckland—at the expense of the Wairarapa, Hawke's Bay, and Manawatū. 
The question is: is that sustainable? Can we continue to promote that sort of greenhouse gas emission? Can we continue to have that many trucks on the road? Can we continue to build so many roads? Why wouldn't we expand our rail network? Why wouldn't we find alternate ways of funding it? And, of course, it may only be one train on the Wairoa line up until right now, but build it—and, if what you've said is true, then kei te pai. But I'm one of those optimists; I'm a pragmatist. New Zealand First believes build it and it will come. Build it. With the population growth in this country exploding, we have tripped over the 5 million mark at lightning speed, and that has got to be a concern. And the future will not be in building more six-lane highways at the huge cost that the last Government poured into those roading networks—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired.





MATT KING (National—Northland): Oh look, that speech from Ron Mark was a comedy routine if ever I've heard one. I've got to say it was mildly amusing about him saying that I should be thanking Labour for not doing an electoral deal with New Zealand First to get into Northland. I beat your leader by just sheer hard work and door-knocking by a newbie, in 40 years, and I—you know, just the good, old-fashioned way of knocking on doors. That's how I did it. 
But I've got to admit, he had 2½ years to show everyone that he was going to do absolutely nothing in the North, so this bill, in a nutshell, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I'm sorry, but we've just got to talk about economics here, and you talk about this cross-subsidising. Why should the people that use the roads and pay their road-user charges be subsidising people that use rail? 
I'll give you the Northland example—I'll give you the Northland example. New Zealand First, in order to try and win the Northland seat, are pouring money into rail in Northland, OK? What I can tell you about why—and it wasn't managed decline. That's like saying "Nine years of neglect.", or whatever other words that you guys use all the time, and they just keep saying it over and over again as if it's going to be true. 
In Northland, they built the rail up there when they had a heavily regulated trucking regime, so rail could compete with trucks only because the trucks were hampered in doing what they had to do. So they put rail up there, and in the whole time that they've had rail in Northland, it has never ever paid its way. It's never paid its way. So what happens is commercial operators vote with their feet. 
I myself ran a business where I had to get stock up from warehouses in Auckland. There is no way that I would use the train to get it up there. I needed it overnight, point to point. I needed it, and there was no way that the train would ever compete with a truck. I'm just one guy that owned a shop, and there are thousands of us business people with a bit of nous that vote with our feet, OK? 
So I know that for trains to compete with trucks, they have to have bulk and they have to have distance. That's how trains compete. So if you've got bulk and distance, trains can compete head-on with trucks. In Northland, we've got neither. There is nothing bulk in Northland that will go down that Northland line. 
There are logs from scattered forests all over Northland that have to get on a truck to get out of the scattered forests. Even if there was a train track near the forest and the train track went all the way to Northport, where the logs go, it is still uneconomic to unload the logs off the truck and put them on the train and send them there, and that is just pure, basic economics. That is why rail will never work in Northland. 
I sit there and I watch these announcements, these sod-turnings, these staged things with a KiwiRail train on a track, and they're putting a spade in the ground, and millions, if not billions, of dollars of taxpayer money is going into buying the Northland seat. This is just money that we are throwing away, and I think, in their heart of hearts, New Zealand First members know it. I think they do, because I've spoken to some of the people involved in Northport and they have told me that. They have told me that Winston Peters said that "National's got the roads of national significance. We're going with rail. I know it's a loser, but we're going with rail." That is what I heard. 
So in Northland, we've got money being poured into an uneconomic train track that will never ever be economic, and they might argue that "Well, OK, we're going to shift the port. A port shift could justify an upgraded train track." Yeah, in 20 or 30 or 40 years, or whenever this potential port shift's happening. Yeah, maybe an upgraded train track will work, but in the meantime, we need a four-lane highway—that's the first thing we need. That's what we need first, and guess what! It got cancelled by this Government. Oh! It broke my heart—it broke my heart. But on the flip side—this is not comedy, Ron Mark, so you shouldn't be laughing. This is not comedy. It broke my heart—it broke my heart. 
So, using the road-user funding, we're building Pūhoi to Warkworth. We're building it now. So I was campaigning on the campaign trail, when there were 400 or so workers building that highway, and your boss—Winston Peters—was saying that not a sod had been turned. I said, "Actually, you can go online and watch drone footage of it being built.", when we were on the campaign trail. 
He also said that we were not building the bridges, and there are the Matakohe bridges—two beautiful bridges—and the Taipā bridge. So the only thing of infrastructure—
Hon Member: Taipā Bridge? Come on.
MATT KING: That's a $14 million, beautiful Taipā bridge. It's a beautiful double-lane bridge. It's open—I was there. I was there. That was us—that was us. But I tell you what, if these guys get this bill through, which they no doubt will—they've got the numbers; the Greens are jumping on board—they're going to pull money out of that fund, so we're going to have less roads and less bridges, and they're going to pour it into uneconomic train tracks. Uneconomic train tracks. 
So we announced that we were going to start building from Whangārei to near Northport—that's what we were going to do—because it makes sense to build from both ends to get that motorway under way. We announced that in 2019, and this Government cancelled that road. They cancelled it. So all we got was a roundabout in Whangārei. At the top end of it in Whangārei, we've got a nice roundabout, so yep, we'll give you that—that's being built. But we got that—that bit of section of road, that's been cancelled. But—hello—in 2020, we need some shovel-ready projects, and there are none, so they're going to have to go back and revisit the council projects of National. 
So now they've told me that they are possibly going to build that road. It might be during the campaign. Now, Ron Mark might come up there. New Zealand First is going to hit Northland, and I can see it now. I can see all their MPs there. They're going to hit it—I can feel it. They're going to throw everything at it. They're going to throw everything at it to try and win a seat to keep alive. 
They've announced that, oh, they're going to reinstate that road, so everyone in Northland thought, "Oh well, at least they're going to do one of the roads of national significance that are National's projects.", but when you read the fine print, there's not going to be a sod turned until 2024—2024. There are two elections to go, and I'm thinking, what are the chances of New Zealand First surviving for two more elections? 
So I'm telling Northlanders, look, these guys have made promises up the wazoo. They have made promises up the wazoo: a $3 million fund; $300-and-something million actually hit the bank accounts of the people. 
But I've been to so many sod-turnings with funny little spades with Shane Jones. I've never complimented him. Despite what he's said, I've never complimented him, but I've been to all his openings. In fact, for one roundabout in Waipapa that's not even started yet, I've been to two openings. I've been to a dawn blessing and then a sod-turning, and I managed to get a spade. I got one of the spades. Shane Jones allowed me to have a spade, so I was involved in that sod-turning. 
Quite frankly, that's a good roundabout, and it is just up the road from his house. It is up the road, to be fair, but, you know, we're going to another sod-turning on Tuesday for a roundabout just down from his house. So just north of his house, we're doing one roundabout. That's just about to start, although nothing's been shifted yet, but it's just about to start. Then, a few kilometres south, another roundabout—a good roundabout. I really like it. I'm glad it's happening. But I'll be, hopefully, getting in on a sod-turning with Shane Jones there, and so that's what happening. 
But this thing—I mean, they spent $6 million on upgrading a track somewhere down south. I don't know if it was in Napier, or somewhere? 
Hon Member: Yeah, somewhere round there. 
MATT KING: Yeah, $6 million upgrading it, and that was going to take trucks off the road. What is it, one or three trains—I don't know—
Hon Members: One. 
MATT KING: One—one. I thought it was three. That was done in January, and there's been three trains on it. So—
Hon Members: One. 
MATT KING: Oh, one—oh sorry, one. Oh no! 
So, anyway, up North, all we've had is plastic sticks—so we've got beautiful plastic sticks going down the middle of our highway—and there's been a couple of areas where they've widened the road a bit, and that's it in three years. In three years and all these announcements and all this money, we've got some plastic sticks and a slightly wider road, and just starting on a roundabout is what we've got for all the promises that this Government's made in the North. 
I understand. I heard that to get approved for the Provincial Growth Fund, you had to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony just before the election, and it—[Interruption] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the criteria were for it to be in Northland—that's the big plus. If it's in Northland, that's a real big plus—tick—or Tai Rāwhiti, I think, is the other thing, but Northland's great, and then, cutting the ribbon just before the election. Can we do that? Can we do that, and can we say it creates jobs? If you've got those three, then you're away—that was what I heard. 
So, anyway, this is a disgrace of a bill, and we do not support it. 





GARETH HUGHES (Green): Mr Speaker, kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. In the midst of the worst economic shock and health crisis in nearly 100 years, in a country with a horrendous road toll, a country who's been steadily declining down the economic rankings for decades, a country with some of the most car-dependent citizens on the entire planet, at a time when we see skyrocketing emissions from the transport sector since 1990, this country cannot afford the idiocy, the siloed thinking, and the waste of that party.
Now, I've come down at the last minute to speak on behalf of my colleagues, and I've been listening to the debate, and I want to steer some points of fact, some points of rationality into this debate, because what I'm hearing is just the siloed thinking that we need to keep rail over in a corner, constantly going to the Government cap in hand, yet fund the rest of the transport system entirely separately—this does not happen in other countries. This is incredibly rare and unique. Other countries, modern countries, sensible countries, rational countries, don't fund transport like this. They don't put rail in a corner and make it beg to the Government with a begging bowl. They have a transport funding system. What this legislation does is allow rail, which is a critical transport network, to be funded from the National Land Transport Fund. I can't believe that National is opposed to funding rail with the other transport networks in the National Land Transport Fund. It is simply ridiculous, it's siloed thinking, it's wasteful, and this country can't afford it.
Now, I want to respond to some of the points—some of the, I think, inaccurate arguments that have been raised in this debate. Now, what we heard was the last member, Matt King, talked about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Look at the history. Rail has been robbed for decades and decades in this country. Rail has been underfunded. I remember my home rail line in the East Coast between Gisborne and Napier. For want of $2 million in rail maintenance we lost an entire network—a network which cost 13 men's lives, a network which was the backbone of the transport infrastructure for this region. For want of $2 million, that rail network fell over because we didn't have enough money for the maintenance under that Government. It would have cost—if we could get it up and running—tens of millions of dollars to get it up and running, because it was underfunded.
Now, people say that network was uneconomic. You know what? When I talk to local business owners in Gisborne, they said they wanted to use that rail line, they had stock they wanted to put on those carriages, but you know what was lacking? The carriages. There were not enough wagons and carriages to put the freight and stock on it to move it. It was deliberately, systematically underfunded, de-invested, and I would actually say sabotaged by that side who has an anti-rail ideology; they would rather put on a pedestal their mates in the Road Transport Forum New Zealand and their profits over an integrated, smart transport network.
And I'm angry about this because we know we've got an incredibly high road toll in New Zealand. I've had whānau that have been killed because of truck accidents on our road, and what we see is too many trucks on our road that could be more safely carried on rail, more efficiently carried on rail, more sustainably carried on rail. This is good legislation because it's simply putting them on a level playing field with the roads, with the trucks, and the motorways through an integrated land transport network.
Now, I read the National Party minority view when I came down to the House on this legislation. They said we need to be realistic about rail. If we're going to be realistic about it, let's be realistic about the history: the history of privatisation, under-investment, defunding, and making the rail network come to the Government asking for specific pots of money. We heard from Mr Bishop that rail was uneconomic—only uneconomic under their old-fashioned paradigm. I mean, it's like these guys have been in a time machine to the 1950s, and then in that time machine, in a cave, they're still putting their hands over their eyes and fingers in their ears. It's not normal what we do in New Zealand. If you look anywhere around the world, you see Governments investing in rail, you see countries using rail, you see citizens and freight being moved on rail. Rail isn't uneconomic; it's only their old-fashioned paradigm.
Now, this must be a party that's never heard of economic externalities. Rail is the poor cousin of our road network because we don't count the costs. We don't count those negative economic externalities. We don't measure the impact of the pollution with having such a truck- and car-dependent society. I heard another member say that it was bad for truckies. Now, who in Gisborne was one of the most passionate advocates for reopening the rail network? Well, it was a truck company: Weatherell, trying to get a logistics and freight forwarding centre, because smart truck owners know the less cars, the less trucks you have on the road, the less congestion there is to actually move the freight which has to be on the road. Now, if we had a fair economic system—and we're doing that with this legislation which is giving a fair, level playing field for transport funding—you are going to see economically rational decisions being made, but it hasn't been an economically rational level playing field to date.
Now, while we're talking about the economics of our transport network, I will not be lectured by that party: the party that literally borrowed billions for their roads of National Party significance with such dire, dire benefit-cost ratios. I remember the Pūhoi to Wellsford: the first independent benefit-cost ratio that was estimated for that. Guess what it was! 0.3. You know what that means? For every dollar the Government was borrowing to fund it, we were losing 70c on the original independent estimate. Now, I acknowledge it did increase somewhat marginally in later estimates, but my God, I'm not going to be lectured on economics by that party with such a terrible, terrible track record. Look what's happening with Transmission Gully and the mess that they've left us with the public-private partnership when it comes to that. I will not be lectured on transport and rational economic decisions by that party.
So I'm proud to be part of a Government which is supporting smart, integrated, connected transport policies, that is significantly investing in rail. We're spending record amounts on new ferries in the latest Budget—a Government that's actually reopening rail lines. Now, for our communities—and National often says they like to talk for provincial communities, but they are so out of touch with New Zealanders who know the heritage of rail, who treat it as a taonga and know how important it is. This Government is investing a huge amount in rail; it's investing in the future. That party's stuck in the past.





MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill today—not that it would surprise the members on the other side of the House. Now, just to be really clear, I am not opposed to rail; in fact, it does have a place in making sure that we do have the relevant modes of transport in this country. In fact, I've got quite a history in connection with rail in my own backyard on the coast. Even as a really small child—and that was a few summers ago—we would be driven out to the end of the line where my dad would pick us up in an old steam train. He was the fireman on a steam train. And I've got no slack on my pants as a result. But he would pick us up there as kids and he would put us in the steam train and we would travel back to town where we'd get picked up again at the other end. And so I have really fond memories of riding in those heaving beasts with the unique smell that is really hard to explain. But there was a uniqueness about those machines back in those days.
Of course, they were shifting bulk lots of coal and product out of the West Coast when the place was still being built, and a great support to the coal industry it was in those days. And Sunday nights, our treat on a Sunday night was to go over to the sheds—and they were just called "the sheds". A bit like Thomas the Tank Engine, I guess, they were all lined up along the back of the shed. Our job was to go in and light the fires in the boilers so that the steam would be building up overnight and so when the drivers came along in the morning, the trains were all warmed up and the fires were all chugging away nicely. 
So I do have a real soft spot for rail, but I also have a soft spot for being economically responsible. Now, on the West Coast, we have a great dependence still on the rail network, so I'm not even suggesting for a moment that we do not support it. For instance, we've got at the moment around 1.5 million tonnes of coal coming out of the West Coast by rail and that's going into places like dairy companies, hospitals, and schools all around the country to keep their boilers going, and 50-plus wagons of milk powder and product going off out of the local dairy company, and there is nothing more exciting than sitting there waiting on this train to go past when you're at the railway crossing and you've got 50 wagons. I call it the cash train, as it leaves town taking all this product away and creating wealth for the West Coast. We also use smaller volumes of logs going off the coast as well, and rail is an efficient way of moving all of that stuff, but it is in tandem with the road freight industry as well.
Now, if you think about the rail network and particularly the one that I'm familiar with, I have used that my whole life as a passenger. Back in those days you could get a one-way trip in the "Press car". The "Press car" used to leave Christchurch about 2 a.m., and its sole purpose was to deliver the Press to the West Coast, and you could get a ticket on that for about $3 back in those days.
Hon Member: Sure it wasn't £3?
MAUREEN PUGH: Three dollars—three dollars. But again, it was there for a specific purpose, but I doubt very much that that service generated very much profit for New Zealand railways back in those days. But when you think about the terrain that we also have our rail network in—and you know, the one that I'm most familiar with is the Ōtira line that is from Greymouth to Christchurch, and it passes through a mountainous area. The whole country, of course, is long and skinny and, you know, we're called the Shaky Isles for a reason—and that's because we've got the massive Alpine Fault on our side and other faults that pop up around the country. Because we've got so many mountains, it means we've also got a huge number of tunnels. It makes the network very vulnerable to natural events, and so it is going to be one of those networks, I'm afraid, that when the Alpine shift does decide to happen, that it is going to be a mode of transport that will be years and years, even decades, before, or if, it is ever rebuilt. 
A classic example is last year when a small slip started moving just north of Greymouth and it compromised the rail line. That line was out of action for six weeks—massive disruption to the freight service, but it sat in partnership with the road freight industry and so we still managed to get the product out. So we cannot have one over another. 
But I do have some concerns about this bill. There is no question that we need long-term planning for things like this and things like the rail network. But I would suggest that the industry is probably better placed to work on those long-term plans, because we know what happens when politicians get involved in making decisions and long-term investments in things like this: we end up with a line like the one from Napier to Wairoa that's cost over $6 million—and one train. And I would even hazard a guess that for every individual piece of freight that was on that train—if there was any; if it wasn't just a trial run—it would have been cheaper to have put every little individual piece into an individual helicopter and fly it to its destination, because this line is so inefficient and such a waste of money. So let the industry guide where it wants to head and leave the politicians out of it and be the enablers of these things, not the decision makers where they are not actually the experts. 
But any decision that is made has to be economic. It has to make sense. And you cannot force change upon an industry unless you are going to have levers. And these are the things that I would have most concern about, because what are those levers going to be? Are road-user charges going to go up, because that's the only way that this cross-subsidy can happen between road freight and rail freight; road users and rail users. So if we've got an inefficient system on one side and an efficient system on the other and you want to blend the two together, of course, there's going to be cross-subsidy. And if you want to reinvest or further invest in the inefficient system, then the road system has to be able to increase its fees in order to make that cross-subsidy happen. 
Or will another lever be that we'll simply let the roads run down to a point where it is not efficient for trucks to use them? And it's not just about letting them run down so that we can't even drive our cars on them, but for trucks to use roads there are small issues that can happen: camber, it can be small slumps that happen. They may not bother you in a car, but when you've got 40 tonnes of freight on your trailer and you're hitting those and punching those out, it actually causes problems and damage on the vehicles. So will that be a lever that is used? And of course, one of the other levers that the Government has already used is to cancel some of the big and crucial roading projects, and the 5 million people that we have in this country are continuing to be mobile and you cannot force them into change. So we have to be really careful about the decisions that are being made by this Government. 
I will just very quickly turn my mind to the support that we actually do have in rail. We know that we are the best economic managers in this Parliament. National has a track record of being economically and fiscally adept. But what we don't want to do is to condemn this country to a network that it will never be able to afford, that the users of it will be constantly topping up in terms of financial contribution, and we'll get to the point where we have sabotaged our truck networks, our freight companies—to the point where they are no longer efficient. And perhaps that is another lever that this Government is anticipating using. I do not support this bill. They can't deliver on light rail—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired.





JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a brief call on this bill—this exciting piece of legislation that is an enabling bill for rail.
There's a lot of confusion, over the other side, on this matter. Let me give an example: the Hamilton to Auckland passenger rail service is about to get going. The Opposition railed against that for years, and then I'm at the sod-turning and I look out and I see the Hon David Bennett at the sod-turning—I almost dropped the spade! That's just one example of the confusion that we're hearing from the Opposition; we've got clarity on this side. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Chris Penk—five minutes.





CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill. Like my colleague Maureen Pugh, I feel somewhat of an emotional connection to railways. I think a number of members in the House have grown up with experiences, whether it's relatively prosaic in the manner of transportation or some have been fortunate enough to have had family members involved in and to have the privilege of driving these magnificent beasts. Like my colleague Chris Bishop, I do see the value of rail, including in relation to my own electorate. I won't take up the entire time that I've got allotted to make a contribution by putting a shout-out for the case for rail to be better employed and an existing line to be more suitably used in the Helensville electorate, the north-west of Auckland, but I can't resist an opportunity to say that, in fact, it does make sense in some parts of the world, and my part of the world is one of those.
So let it not be said that this side of the House does not believe in rail, full stop. In fact, we believe in it where it is appropriate. I'm reminded of that saying in response to a person asking if something was going to be popular: for people who like this kind of thing, they'll find this is the kind of thing they like. Rail makes sense where it makes sense and not more and not less.
I think, in many ways, both sides of the House are in danger of violently agreeing with each other that we should have a mode-neutral approach to transport in this country. I think there's, broadly speaking—if I've understood correctly, and without having had the benefit of the debates at the select committee level—consensus in that as an ideal. Where the parties differ is, in relation to this bill, whether we believe that it is, in fact, promoting the concept of mode neutrality or if, perhaps, the finger is on the scales of one and not the other.
There are a couple of ways in which we can discuss that—in particular, the way that funding makes its way into the National Land Transport Fund, and I'll get into that to the extent that I'm able in the next couple of minutes. But I also think it's worth noting—again, on that overall theme about the value of rail being the best mode of transport where it is most appropriate—that this side of the House does believe, as we've stated in the minority view deriving from the select committee, that we are not averse to the idea of a New Zealand Rail Plan. Indeed, we think that that development is to be supported. But the particular New Zealand Rail Plan that has been generated is not necessarily the right one to proceed with.
So it is that we can see that, in some cases, it will be sensible to allow for the transportation of heavy, bulky goods and to reduce congestion where population density and topography allows that. Auckland, where I hail from personally, and where I have the pleasure to represent a part thereof, is famously difficult to arrange public transport for—in particular, terrestrial, being an isthmus and, therefore, difficult to build networks that make sense in ways that countries overseas with better geography and topography, or more suitable geography and topography, and population density make that much more possible. So it's easy to make comparisons with dense cities such as Singapore, London, New York. But we live in the city of sails, those of us who are blessed to call Auckland home, and I'm not sure that I would trade the wonderful Hauraki Gulf, or, indeed, the Kaipara Harbour, or the Manukau Harbour, either of those three jewels in Auckland's crown, for the benefit of such transport systems, even as those great cities enjoy.
We've talked about the fact that there is a mixed model, if I were to put it kindly, whereby the proposal is that KiwiRail would remain as a State-owned enterprise but the planning and funding functions would move under the Land Transport Management Act. It's neither fish nor fowl, and, while KiwiRail would remain an enterprise that is owned by the State, it would not be a State-owned enterprise in the sense that we've come to understand that word whereby accountability and funding align closely. So for that reason, as with others on this side of the House, I cannot support this bill.





GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am very proud to be able to speak on a most excellent Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill. The reason why we reinvest in rail is not just because it's a good thing, particularly in places like the Hutt Valley, to get people to and from work without emissions but also because it creates jobs—like the 80 jobs in the Hutt railway workshops. So it's a good thing, and it's a great bill, and I commend it to the House.





ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you very much. I've just had some encouragement behind me to speak for a fair amount of time, because, I think, I do have a lot to say on rail and I do have a lot to say on roads, and I'd like to—
Nicola Willis: This'll be good
ANDREW FALLOON: —if I could, get into that. Thank you for your encouragement as well, Nicola Willis. Look, it is a pleasure to take a call this evening on the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill, but I do rise to oppose the legislation. Those reasons why have been outlined by a number of my colleagues on this side of the House, but I'll run through a few more.
Now, my fundamental reason for opposing this piece of legislation is actually quite simple, and that is that the guiding principle of the National Land Transport Fund should be to pay for roads, should be for road maintenance, and should be to benefit road users. The reason for that is actually remarkably simple. It's because the National Land Transport Fund is funded by road-user charges and by petrol taxes. Of course, road-user charges and petrol taxes will be going up again on 1 July this year, as they did last year and as they did the year before. The question I have for the Government is: actually, what are road users getting for that? They're getting more taxes and, actually, a lot less for it.
But what this bill does is it ensures that road users who pay for roading improvements will actually end up with fewer roading improvements—and this bill undermines that. This bill undermines that principle that roading upgrades should be paid for by road users. It says that the National Land Transport Fund should be used for rail, that road users should be subsidising potentially uneconomic rail projects. A colleague across the House—Gareth Hughes—has questioned some of those, I suppose, economic metrics, and yet he didn't come up with any economic metrics of his own to describe how those, in many cases, projects that have very low benefit-cost ratios could in any way—in any way—be regarded as economic under whatever metric he proposes. 
Now, like colleagues across this side of the House, I'm not anti-rail, as some on the Government benches would like to suggest. On numerous times, I've taken the Northern Explorer from Wellington to Auckland—it's a fantastic piece of rail infrastructure—stopped off a number of times at National Park. I just want to echo the comments from Chris Hipkins earlier in the day, for Kiwis to get out and enjoy your backyard, because it is a fantastic trip; National Park is a great place to stop off. I also recommend the TranzAlpine, going across the West Coast—where my colleague Maureen Pugh is going to win the election later on this year—and, of course, the Coastal Pacific, which travels down the east coast of the South Island as far as Christchurch.
The reason I mention that—"as far as Christchurch"—is because, for the last two years, I've been asking the transport Minister, Phil Twyford, about plans for passenger rail between Christchurch and Dunedin. We used to have a passenger rail network from Christchurch to Dunedin. I travelled on it, as a young lad, from Ashburton many times. The train used to stop at the Ashburton Railway Station, which, again, was a wonderful piece of infrastructure until it, finally, was removed several years ago. But I've been asking the current Government about that project for one very simple reason, and it's this: that the previous National Government put $50,000 into a feasibility study in 2017, asked for by the Canterbury Mayoral Forum, and yet this Government has gone completely silent on it. We don't know the status of that feasibility study. I've asked the Minister for it several times. He claims that he hasn't received it. He claims he hasn't read it—actually, Nicola Willis, a bit like that email he's received from Winston Peters about Auckland light rail, which, of course, he hasn't read either. So he hasn't seen this feasibility study on passenger rail between Christchurch and Dunedin. It must set some sort of record for being the longest feasibility study that I'm ever aware of, because, obviously, it was funded in 2017; we now find ourselves in 2020, and yet the Government's gone completely silent on passenger rail between Christchurch and Dunedin. 
What I strongly suspect is that they'll remain silent on it until a few weeks out from the election, and then a politician from the other side—probably a Green Party politician—will jump up and say, "We're going to do this if we're re-elected." Of course, they won't; it will be the same as it was in 2017 when Phil Twyford and Jacinda Ardern said that we're going to build Auckland light rail, and they haven't moved a muscle on it.
I worry about this bill and what it means for transport infrastructure in this country, because this isn't just a bill about rail; this is a bill about what the effect will be in terms of funding for other important projects around the country. We've already had this Government remove more than $5 billion from the State highway network—more than $5 billion from the State highway network—to, instead, invest in Auckland rail and cycle projects; again, that light rail project which they haven't moved a muscle on. 
The cost on regional New Zealand has been extremely high—extremely high. You've had important roading upgrades up and down the country, but particularly in regional areas, that have been shelved, that have been cancelled, or—in the words of Phil Twyford—"reprioritised". There have been important safety upgrades like the one at the Woodend Bypass, which my colleague Matt Doocey has been campaigning for for a long time. It's off the table. It's gone. It's an important safety upgrade that that community has been screaming out for because of the safety concerns about highway traffic going through that community. 
Of course, the Northland motorway has been put on ice, and it's simply out of spite. We had a colourful contribution earlier today from Ron Mark, in terms of what the Government's doing in Northland and, of course, what Matt King is doing in Northland. Yet, they're promising to do things like move the port. They're promising to do things like rail, but the biggest project that Northland actually needs is the Northland motorway, and the only reason they won't do it is because it was National's idea. If it was Shane Jones' idea, he would have cut ribbons on it—he would have cut three ribbons on it by now, I'm sure, as he's done for roundabouts around this country—and yet he hasn't done it because it's an idea that's come from this side of the House. Winston Peters—it remains a shame that he lost that seat of Northland to my good friend Matt King.
Now, those concerns have been reflected on the select committee. I don't sit on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which considered this bill, but I have been through a number of the contributions that interested parties made on that, as I'm now the, I think, associate spokesperson on transport, which is a far more grand title than I think I deserve. However, I did go through some of those submissions and they were quite remarkable in terms of the warnings that they gave to the Government and to this Parliament about what this bill would mean. I just want to pick up on a couple of those.
The first one of those is from the Road Transport Forum, who, of course, represent a lot of the trucking organisations and companies around the country and others. They said, "This bill sets in place an opportunity to reduce funding available to support roading improvements." So they're very clear that this bill is aimed at one thing, and one thing alone, which is to move money from roading projects into rail projects, to fund rail projects at the expense of roading projects.
I just want to come, now, to the contribution by the Automobile Association, because they were very, very clear about what that would mean if we take money out of roading projects and put it into rail projects. They said, "If road construction or maintenance is decreased or delayed, this impacts road safety." It impacts road safety in those communities that I've mentioned. It impacts road safety in places like Woodend, it impacts road safety in places like Northland, and it impacts road safety in places like the area that I represent, South Canterbury, and particularly that road that runs from Ashburton to Christchurch—now the second most dangerous stretch of highway in the country.
So I worry about this bill and I worry about the effect that it will have on road safety.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I'm sorry to interrupt the member, but, members, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 June.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 6 p.m.