WEDNESDAY, 24 JUNE 2020
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers. 
ORAL QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Prime Minister
1. TODD MULLER (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she agree with Auckland University School of Medicine Professor Des Gorman that not all of the 2,159 people who left managed isolation between June 9 and 16 will probably be tracked down, and "we have to make the assumption these people have re-seeded the infection in the community"? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I understand Professor Gorman is an expert in occupational health at Auckland University rather than an epidemiologist. However, of course, I acknowledge the role that he has played in the medical community. I note, though, that Auckland University infectious disease specialist Dr Siouxsie Wiles says the chances of—[Interruption] 
SPEAKER: Order! I'd like to hear the answer to this, and I will say to people who are barracking from my left that this question was corrected to make it accurate by me. 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I note Auckland University infectious disease specialist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said the chances of someone leading to community infection after leaving an isolation facility are "very low" and that "If people had gone on to develop symptoms, the testing and the isolation of those around them would have kicked in as well. So we're very unlikely to see anything happen from those, and if we do it'll be very, very minor." 
Todd Muller: How can she say that when, in the absence of testing, she can't know that none of those people had COVID-19 when they left managed isolation? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, as most countries around the world have implemented, the 14-day isolation period is the most important thing that any country can do to manage cases coming in at the border. That is why, when you pan around the world, most countries are opting for isolation and quarantine as opposed to a simple testing regime, with the reason for that being, of course, that because of the different time periods at which COVID can manifest, the early stage is the most likely stage when you shed infection, and the high rate of false negatives can be produced. As Dr Siouxsie Wiles says, "That two-week isolation is the really important bit, not really the testing—the isolation." 
Todd Muller: If she is so confident Professor Gorman is incorrect, why did her Minister of Health announce a ramped-up testing regime yesterday? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I would dispute that I would consider that ramped-up. We did that on 9 June—9 June was when we absolutely had a very clear expectation, at the time of moving into level 1, that the foundation principles continued to be quarantine, but that we wanted the added reassurance of testing. I say again in this House, we were the ones that set that expectation, wanted it to be met, were assured that it had, and moved decisively when it wasn't. But I would note in this House, we are one of the few, if not the only country in the world that has both quarantine and isolation and mandatory testing. 
Todd Muller: Is Otago University Professor Michael Baker correct that National's criticism of her Government's health response is justified because this is—and I quote—"a matter of life and death."? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This is an issue we, of course, take very seriously. This is why we moved to bring in the defence force to ensure that our expectation of testing twice during quarantine was being met, and of course that is the reason we have some of the most stringent border controls in the world. Only Australia, that I can see, practises the same method of using Government-approved facilities, but we are the ones that are mandating testing as well. 
Hon Chris Hipkins: Does the Prime Minister believe that adherence to the testing regime would be more or less reliable if management of quarantine and isolation facilities was devolved to tertiary education providers—who don't believe the border should've been closed in the first place—as proposed by the Opposition? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member does make a good point. Our regime demonstrates our view that this has to be very tightly controlled and managed. I have seen proposals suggesting that we, essentially, contract out quarantine and isolation to providers who wish to operate international education opportunities and manage their own isolation. We are concerned that such suggestions at this point would be irresponsible—and I make that point to the member who seemed to support that. 
David Seymour: If such a suggestion would be irresponsible, did the Prime Minister ever ask Ashley Bloomfield, "Those people being released early from quarantine—you're testing them, right?" 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That was the stated policy. 
David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister think it acceptable that one of my constituents, advised by Healthline to be tested, had to wait four hours at the St Lukes community-based assessment centre in her electorate of Mt Albert? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, but I would point out that yesterday we had a record of more than 9,000 individuals tested—9,000—and the positives, of course, that we had were at the border. So that does demonstrate that at that raft of testing, we may have some congestion. I don't consider that to be an acceptable wait. I am happy to follow up on the member's concern, but it does demonstrate the suggestion from the member that we have an issue with community transmission to date, and our testing is not bearing that out. 
Todd Muller: Why do we repeatedly see examples of what she says is happening in the border response on the ground actually not happening? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, I refute the broad premise of that question.
Todd Muller: Why does the Ministry of Health still not know how many of the 2,159 people who left managed isolation—whether they have received a test? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The director-general did share data that he had available today in his 1.30 press conference. 
Todd Muller: How many people have left managed isolation without a test? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The director-general would've talked today about the fact that 2,159 left from 9 June to 16 June. They were all in quarantine or managed isolation for 14 days. They all had a medical check. None of them had symptoms at departure. The majority—1,249—had been tested. 
Todd Muller: When she said of New Zealand's contact tracing capability on 28 April—and I quote—"You'll remember, of course, the Director-General pointed to his view that we have reached a gold standard.", have the events of the past week proved that this was probably nonsense? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, I wouldn't say that that would be the case. Again, we're actually talking about individuals who have completed—and the member would do well to reflect on this. Every single person that that member is talking about has spent 14 days in quarantine or managed isolation. As one of the few countries in the world who mandates it at our border, and now one of the only countries in the world I can find that requires every single person coming into the country not only to isolate but to have a test, that makes us the strictest. 
Hon Grant Robertson: Can the Prime Minister confirm that over the last 14 days there have been more than 50,000 tests undertaken in New Zealand and that there have been no reports of community transmission? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes; in fact, Professor Michael Baker actually points out his view that the reporting of our results should differentiate between those cases that are at our border, because that is very, very different than what the member across the aisle is trying to imply is happening in New Zealand. 
Todd Muller: Can the Prime Minister confirm for the House: was it her expectation that those 2,159 people who left managed isolation would have had a test before they left? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely—which is why I brought in the defence force. 




Question No. 2—Prime Minister
2. TODD MULLER (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Is it correct that on 20 May, daily COVID-19 situation reports, including the New Zealand border response, sent to Ministers, ended; if so, why? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): No. 
Todd Muller: After 20 May, did she ask to regularly receive the sort of detailed information about the border, quarantine, and managed isolation which she had been receiving prior to that date? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: To the best of my knowledge, the daily reporting the member is referring to is the Ministry of Health daily situation report, which was circulated to a wide range of recipients. To assume that that was the only information received by the Government and Ministers is wrong. We received daily isolation reports that included information around individuals in quarantine and isolation. The COVID daily case reports—so, obviously, the cases that we had in New Zealand and testing numbers—I note for the member that that is also made publicly available each day, and of course Cabinet received weekly COVID dashboards reporting on things like lab capacity, testing results, PPE, and cases in New Zealand and the number of people in managed isolation and quarantine. 
Todd Muller: Did her regular reporting include how many tests were being carried out and how many tests needed to be carried out to ensure full coverage of those in quarantine and managed isolation facilities? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There was daily reporting on testing numbers. At one point, we did directly query the fact that our testing numbers were declining. You'll recall yesterday in this House, for the member's edification, I talked about our office seeking information of testing at at-risk places. That prompted the Ministry of Health to reconfirm to my office on 5 June that daily testing was occurring for day three and day 12 of those at the border—including everyone at facilities—starting from 8 June. 
Todd Muller: Did her regular reporting include confirmation of people who are leaving managed isolation with testing, as per her requirements of 8 June? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I have said, we queried directly from the Ministry of Health what was being undertaken at the border. I note for the member that we did that before the protocol was even meant to be in place. They reconfirmed that it was occurring. If the member is trying to suggest that somehow we knew something was not happening, that is patently and factually incorrect. 
Todd Muller: Was it a fact of the information being provided by her officials to her request for information that was incorrect? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I say, we were advised that the testing was happening twice during the period of quarantine, that anyone that came in after or before 8 June would be tested before leaving the facility, and, of course, the director-general confirmed that in public statements made, from my recollection, on 9 June as well. 
Todd Muller: Is she saying she has been misled by her officials—essentially, they reported to her things that were happening that simply weren't happening on the ground? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This is not a revelation or new information. We've consistently identified that there was a failure to act in practice on what was an expectation of Cabinet. But our responsibility is to fix that problem, which we have. 
Todd Muller: Is she essentially saying that from her perspective, the Government's instructions were clear: officials had a job to do and they were left to do it without Ministers asking any regular questions or receiving regular reports? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I again reject the premise of the question. As he will have heard me say in the House yesterday, we directly, again, queried with the Ministry of Health the testing regime to be in place—and that of course included the border—and received a response confirming the testing we had an expectation would be happening starting from 8 June. I think this is an opportunity for me to mention to the House, though, that since that time, we've had over 5,000 tests happening across our quarantines and managed isolation. 
Todd Muller: Does she accept that this comes down to two scenarios: either her officials misled her, or she and her Ministers haven't been doing their job and haven't been asking the right questions? 
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This comes down to a scenario of the fact that we still have—still have—some of the most stringent requirements in the world. We still have cases contained at the border, and in a world where we have record COVID cases being reported daily—record cases—we are still in a position where New Zealanders should feel rightly proud of the work they did to get us here. 




Question No. 3—Finance
3. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on Government initiatives to support businesses through COVID-19? [Interruption] 
SPEAKER: The Hon Grant Robertson—and I'd just say that just because one member makes an unfortunate noise, it doesn't have to be repeated from the other side. 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I've seen a huge number of reports from affected business owners who have contacted the Government to emphasise the difference the support measures have made to their businesses over these difficult past few months. One woman wrote to say, "The wage subsidy has been a huge help to us. My husband is a self-employed builder and we would have been in serious trouble financially without it and the mortgage holiday which we had to access as we have not long taken on a mortgage for our new house. It would have been a very worrying time for us without this help. My work has also accessed the fund and hopes to make it through, and so far there have been no job losses for us." Just one other example: a business owner said, "Twelve weeks ago today, we received the wage subsidy to help us maintain our staffing during the tough times. I have to admit I had a lump in my throat when I explained the prospects to our staff at the end of March. You all know how the last 12 weeks have played out, so I thought it prudent to offer my sincere thanks. We are now back on our feet, and have even taken on a staff member laid off from a related business." 
Dr Deborah Russell: What other reports has he seen on the impact of Government initiatives to support businesses through COVID-19? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: One Canterbury business owner wrote to the Government saying, "I just wanted to say a heartfelt thankyou for not only offering New Zealand businesses the wage subsidy package but also for the ease of applying and prompt payment. As a small business, without these financial assistance packages I doubt we would have survived, and up to 17 people may have lost their jobs." A Waikato business owner said, "Without the Government support provided, the business would not have survived the lockdown, and 36 staff would have lost their jobs. We're not out of the woods yet, and with a tough May we will be relying on the wage subsidy extension to pull us through, but we are hopeful and optimistic that the company will survive. The remainder of the year will be tough but we believe we can do it, but only thanks to the Government support we received." 
Dr Deborah Russell: As of today, how significant has the Government's investment to support COVID-affected businesses been? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We continue to provide a wide range of support initiatives for businesses dealing with the fallout of COVID-19. The original wage subsidy scheme provided over $11 billion to support 1.7 million jobs. As of yesterday, the extended wage subsidy has provided just over $1 billion to 80,591 businesses, supporting 251,000 employees. In addition, the Government has lent nearly $1.4 billion to 83,392 businesses under the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme. We have always been clear that the road ahead will not be easy, but that is why we are continuing to provide the support for businesses across New Zealand as they work hard to recover and rebuild over the coming months. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has the Minister seen Hamish Rutherford's report that New Zealand First have pulled their support for the COVID commercial rent legislation regime, and two months after he announced that help was going to be on the way soon for small businesses struggling with rental costs, nothing has arrived? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, I have read that report. 




Question No. 4—Finance
4. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: What advice has he received, if any, on the number of jobs that could be lost over the next three months or 12 months if New Zealand fails to create "the world's most intelligent border" that he spoke about on 4 June? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The member is referring to a hypothetical scenario that includes a number of assumptions that could lead to a range of outcomes. The advice I have received through the main forecast in Budget 2020 assumes border restrictions are not fully lifted until April 2021. Of course the Government is continuing to work to be able to safely and progressively lift border restrictions as and when it is safe to do so. In terms of the impact on the number of jobs, as I said yesterday, advice on job losses and creation is continuing to evolve. The advice I have received in Treasury's main Budget forecast is for the number of people in employment to, in fact, rise by 14,000 over the next three months—that being between the second and third quarters of 2020. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has Treasury advised him that failing to test people before being released from quarantine does not in any way, shape, or form represent the world's most intelligent border? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In terms of specific advice, no. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that opening up our borders safely to get Kiwis trading again and to import skilled migrants, tourists, and international students is critical to saving jobs? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I believe that ensuring that our border works well and that our border restrictions are put in place are incredibly important, and I invite the member to remind his leader of that as he makes promises to various sectors to open the border up. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: So how will Kiwis working in the tourism, hospitality, and international education sector keep their jobs if their fellow Kiwis aren't confident that this Government can be trusted to open the border safely? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I believe that, actually, the New Zealand public have a lot of confidence in the way this Government has managed and handled COVID-19, and I remind the member that on this side of the House we've taken these decisions seriously and carefully. We haven't undertaken knee-jerk reactions and we haven't done things that would have seen us in a situation that we see across the Tasman, where we see infections rising again and actual community transmission—not the imagination of the Leader of the Opposition. 
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has anyone advised him that while his Government's ambition is for the world's most intelligent border, the reality, sadly, resembles much more KiwiBuild and the light rail down Dominion Road? 
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. The advice that I continue to receive is that New Zealand, compared to most countries in the world, finds itself in an incredibly privileged position where our economy is largely back operating, where we're able to move freely around, and where we do not have community transmission—those are the actual facts of the situation. 




Question No. 5—Housing
5. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Housing: What examples, if any, is she aware of where people in managed isolation have mixed with other guests at the facility during their 14-day stay? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Housing: Like that member, I've seen media reports of returnees mixing with other returnees. Returnees are given clear guidance about the rules for keeping 2 metres' distance from other guests, and prominent signage reaffirms this throughout facilities. There is an element of personal responsibility expected from returnees to adhere to those rules. We've introduced an additional layer of assurance with day three and day 12 testing, as well as lockdown procedures when a case is confirmed, which includes reviewing CCTV footage. It's important to remember that during alert level 4, when COVID-19 was in the community, many of us continued to go grocery shopping, where we came near other people, so it's important that we don't fearmonger regarding this. Putting that aside, what we've seen hasn't been good enough, and that's why we have brought in the New Zealand Defence Force to manage these operations. I take any concerns about mixing in these facilities seriously, and I'll continue to relay my clear expectations that there is strict adherence to the rules. If any member has credible information about mixing, they should supply it and it will be followed up. 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Given that answer, why is it that when a COVID-positive test occurs in a managed isolation facility, the whole facility goes into lockdown? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There are a number of things that need to happen, including cleaning, for example. Very, very strict protocols have been put in place to ensure that where there is a positive test, the appropriate steps are taken to ensure that it doesn't spread to anybody else. 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Has she been made aware of a birthday party that took place in a managed isolation facility, bringing multiple people together who should have been isolating separately? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I did see that report on the media. I can confirm that there were no homeless people at that event. 
Hon Grant Robertson: In light of that question and answer, can the Minister provide any examples, or, in fact, has he been provided with any evidence of homeless people mingling with others in managed isolation? 
SPEAKER: Yeah, "she"—but other than that, yes. 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I have seen allegations that a homeless person was housed in quarantine for two weeks. That report has been rigorously followed up, devoting a significant amount of officials' time, and it's thus far proven to be nothing more than an urban myth. 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: In respect of that answer, if it was such an urban myth, why did the Government spend "hundreds of thousands of dollars" investigating it? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because, on this side of the House, we believe members of Parliament should be taken at their word. 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, you don't. 
SPEAKER: Order! 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Has she been made aware that the Chief Ombudsman had to cancel a prison inspection because the staff doing it found out they were mixing with people supposed to be in managed isolation? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the Chief Ombudsman's comments on this are of public record. Those comments were made at least a week ago. 
Hon Grant Robertson: Has she received a response to the letter that she wrote to the Hon Michael Woodhouse asking him for evidence of his claim of a homeless man joining a managed isolation group? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: On behalf of the Minister, I'm advised that no such evidence has been forthcoming. 
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the reason that testing is now so important because she has no confidence that people are isolating effectively within the isolation facilities? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. Testing is important because it gives everybody confidence that people leaving managed isolation will not have COVID-19. 




Question No. 6—Health
6. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Health: What recent announcements has she made regarding funding for our health and disability system? 
Hon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Health): This coalition Government is lifting the support available to New Zealanders with disabilities with the largest funding boost for disability support services ever. As part of Budget 2020, the Government is investing an additional $833 million over five years to ensure people with disabilities are part of an inclusive recovery for our team of 5 million. This Government is committed to the wellbeing of all New Zealanders, and this follows on from the funding increase for disability support services in Budget 2018 of $211 million and an increase of $348 million in 2019. I'm proud to be part of a Government that puts people at the heart of its decisions. 
Angie Warren-Clark: What support will the additional funding provide to disabled New Zealanders? 
Hon JENNY SALESA: This funding will ensure we keep up with the rightful expectations of the disabled community to live good lives as other New Zealanders do. Disability support services provide access to much-needed support for personal care. This increased funding is to ensure better access to support for showering and hands-on care, and it includes accommodation for disabled people with high needs, equipment for mobility and access, and respite for whānau carers, as well as rehabilitation for people following a serious illness. We've also invested an additional $12 million towards transforming the disability support system so that disabled people and families have greater choice and better control over the services that they access. 
Angie Warren-Clark: What feedback has the Government received on this boost in funding? 
Hon JENNY SALESA: This funding boost has been well received by the community, who agree that it is well overdue. Dr Garth Bennie, chief executive of the Disability Support Network, said—and I quote—"The Budget has lifted support for the disability community to record levels. This will make a real difference in people's lives after years of funding falling behind the cost of delivering disability support services." We know there are many outstanding issues in the disability sector to address. However, this is a monumental step forward in the right direction in terms of the services and support for disabled New Zealanders. 




Question No. 7—Economic Development
7. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he stand by his statement yesterday in the House, "construction projects are an important part of the Government's response to the recession caused by COVID-19"; if so, when will projects identified by the Infrastructure Industry Reference Group that he announced with the Minister of Infrastructure, be announced? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): To the first part of the question, yes, and, as the member identified in her question, the announcement she referred to was made with the Minister for Infrastructure, who, along with the Minister of Finance, are the Ministers responsible. These Ministers will make announcements in due course. 
Hon Judith Collins: Does he agree with Auckland mayor, Phil Goff, when he said, "We want and expect the Government to decide as soon as possible the projects that will be included in the 'shovel-ready' programme."; if so, when will the Government announce them? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I don't think it's a matter of agreeing with the Mayor of Auckland on that statement that he made. He made the statement; it's up to him to stand by it. 
Hon Judith Collins: Then how does he rationalise publicly urging Waikato councils to invest in infrastructure alongside the Government in order to develop the economy, when he has yet to publicly commit to any of the projects identified by the Infrastructure Industry Reference Group? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as I've explained to the member now multiple times, it's not for me to agree with projects that were identified by the industry reference group. That's a matter for the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Infrastructure. 
Hon Judith Collins: Then why did the Minister have his name on their press release? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because I and the Minister for Infrastructure were tasked with commissioning the industry reference group to solicit those projects. That's why the press statement was released. 
Hon Judith Collins: Is he saying that despite announcing, as Minister for Economic Development, the process to select infrastructure projects, he now has no say in those decisions? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: As I've said repeatedly, the decisions on those projects are being made by the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Infrastructure. 




Question No. 8—Agriculture
8. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Agriculture: What action has the Government taken to support jobs in the dairy sector? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): This Government recognises how important our dairy sector is to our economic wellbeing, and we're backing it for the long term. We want to connect people with a rewarding life in the dairy sector and, more broadly, the primary industries. Today, we've announced that we've joined with DairyNZ to give a $3.5 million boost to their GoDairy initiative. This is a programme that has successfully recruited and supported people into careers for the past 15 years. We are happy to support DairyNZ and this initiative. 
Kiritapu Allan: How does this work fit in with the wider Government employment strategy? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: This complements the work being done to place 10,000 New Zealanders into primary sector jobs by rapid retraining and absorbing workers displaced from other sectors. We've committed $19.3 million as part of the $1.6 billion Trades and Apprenticeships Training Package. We've also got as part of our $1.1 billion commitment to create 11,000 jobs in the regions—that will help many of the farmers across dairy and other sectors. We've got a $100 million worker redeployment package that will create other opportunities. The primary sector is a wonderful place to have a career, and we're helping New Zealanders move into that space. 
Kiritapu Allan: How has the Government worked with the sector to inform this support? 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: We have regularly engaged with industry groups at both agency and ministerial level. I know that many good MPs on this side of the House have been out talking to farmers to get feedback. Part of the process has been to reassess how we currently approach attracting people into the sector and ensuring that our training programmes are fit for purpose in the current environment. It has included a collaborative consultation process. We have made some adjustments to ensure that, firstly, we have focused marketing to get to the right people, effective training to lift their skills, and rewarding career opportunities. 




Question No. 9—Transport
9. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by his statement, "one of my first actions as Minister will be to have officials advised on how quickly we can start, and how soon we can get it built. I would expect Queen Street to Mount Roskill within four years as a minimum. If we can do it faster, we will", and when does he expect construction to begin on Auckland light rail? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Yes, in the context it was made. I expect a time line for the start of construction will be outlined by the Government after the election, after it considers options developed by Treasury and the Ministry of Transport. 
Chris Bishop: What are the reasons for Auckland light rail not progressing until, allegedly, after the election? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because the three parties in Government were unable to agree on the way forward. 
Chris Bishop: Has he seen the statement from the Green Party this morning "Green Party welcomes new approach to delivering light rail", and does he agree with it? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I have seen the statement, and I agree that Cabinet's move to delegate the progress of the project to the Ministry of Transport and Treasury will allow a public sector - led approach. It will allow more engagement and collaboration with stakeholders like Auckland Council and Auckland Transport. 
SPEAKER: Order! Before the member comes in, I know that Nicola Willis has recently moved closer to my hearing, but I do want to warn her that she's not allowed to make noises while her colleague is asking questions. 
Chris Bishop: What were the estimated costs of the NZ Infra and New Zealand Transport Agency proposals for Auckland light rail? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Those costs are still subject to commercial probity, so I'm unable to release that information at this time. 
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Can he confirm that Auckland light rail, city centre to Māngere, is a priority confirmed by all parties in this Government, in both the Government policy statement on transport funding and the Auckland Transport Alignment Project, and that that work will now be continued by the Public Service, including the local authorities in Auckland? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I can confirm all parts of that question. 
Chris Bishop: Has he received advice about whether the Crown will have to pay compensation to NZ Infra as a result of today's announcement on light rail? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I have. 
Chris Bishop: What does that advice say? 
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We do not. 




Question No. 10—Health
10. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What recent action has the Government taken to strengthen our COVID-19 testing and protect New Zealanders from the virus? 
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): This week, on behalf of the Government, I announced a renewed COVID-19 testing strategy. Under this Government's leadership, the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, DHBs, front-line health staff, scientists, and lab workers stood up a COVID-19 testing programme in short order that has served us well to date. It was a key tool in eliminating community transmission of the virus, and with over 350,000 tests done to date, we have the highest rate of tests per confirmed COVID-19 case in the world. But the COVID-19 pandemic is getting worse elsewhere in the world. Clearly, the greatest risk for us now is the thousands of New Zealanders coming home from global hotspots, so our new testing strategy will focus on our border, while maintaining surveillance of our communities for any sign of the virus. 
Dr Liz Craig: How will this new strategy keep New Zealanders safe? 
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Most of the international travellers arriving on our shores right now are New Zealanders returning home. The vast majority of them will be COVID-19 - free. Nevertheless, we need to be able to welcome them back confident they won't inadvertently reintroduce the virus into our communities. That's why we'll continue to test new arrivals on around days three and 12 of their stay in managed isolation and quarantine, and a negative result is required from the day 12 test before people are allowed to leave. We also need to minimise the risk that those who come into contact with them during their travel and their arrival and during their managed isolation or quarantine do not contract the virus, and, if they do, that we quickly detect the infection and take appropriate action. Our new testing strategy features regular health checks and asymptomatic testing of all border-facing workers, and regular testing of quarantine-exempt people such as New Zealand - based aircrew. 
Dr Liz Craig: So does the focus on our border mean we're scaling back testing in the wider community? 
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Absolutely not. Today, a record 9,174 tests were carried out. Across the wider community we will continue to test all close contacts of confirmed or probable cases. Testing will continue to be available for anyone presenting to primary or secondary care with any type of COVID-19 symptom. To ensure our surveillance testing is appropriate and equitable for New Zealanders, no matter who they are or where they live, DHBs are now required to regularly review and take action to increase testing in population groups if there is significant variation to the national average in their region. This Government is prioritising the safety of New Zealanders with our testing approach. We are adapting this testing strategy, where required, and we are making sure it has the resources to do the job, with an additional $89 million in funding for the next six months. 




Question No. 11—Defence
11. JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) to the Minister of Defence: What recent announcements has he made regarding the replacement of the C-130 Hercules fleet? 
Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): On 5 June, I was proud to announce that the coalition Government had approved the long-overdue purchase of five new Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft. Generations of New Zealanders have grown up and, in my case, grown old with the 1960s-era Hercules. They know these aircraft have always been an essential first line of response at home and in the Pacific during natural disasters, times of crisis, and in support of our—
Hon Grant Robertson: Thanks to the Minister of Finance. 
Hon RON MARK: —military operations around the world. The new aircraft will fly further, faster, and with a greater payload—I say to the Minister of Finance—than the current Hercs. The $1.5 billion project will also deliver a flight simulator and supporting infrastructure. 
Jenny Marcroft: How do our new Super Hercules compare to others in service around the world? 
Hon RON MARK: They compare very well, actually. Each aircraft will be fitted with additional specialist capabilities outside of their standard build, including wide bandwidth, high-speed satellite communication systems, and electro-optical infrared cameras. This equipment will make our new Super Hercs amongst the most capable in the world. The satellite communication systems will allow imagery, video, and data to be streamed in real time, and the camera allows for the conduct of aerial surveillance operations at the same time that the aircraft is undertaking transport missions, which will be particularly useful in humanitarian aid disaster assessment and relief, and search and rescue operations. 
Jenny Marcroft: How does this decision complement other air force capability decisions made by the coalition Government this term? 
Hon RON MARK: Some people in the defence force are now describing this period as the golden years for defence procurement, stating that in one short term we have, effectively, revamped the major capabilities of the entire New Zealand Air Force. In addition to the Super Hercs, this Government has procured four new P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft; purchased a new simulator for the NH90 helicopter—it's being installed right now—signed a contract for the lease of four new King Air 350-Bs for about $150 million, with two fitted specifically for maritime surveillance—
SPEAKER: All right. Order! Order! 
Hon RON MARK: There's a lot more, Mr Speaker. 
SPEAKER: Well, none of which is a recent announcement. Even 5 June hardly qualified. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the Minister what possible excuse has he got that we've had to wait all these years to modernise essential military and humanitarian equipment? 
Hon RON MARK: Mr Speaker—[Speaker gestures for Minister to resume his seat]
Rt Hon Winston Peters: What's wrong with that?
SPEAKER: It's not his responsibility.Question No. 10 to Minister—Amended Answer
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to correct an answer that I have given to question No. 10 today. 
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none. 
Hon Dr David Clark: A colleague has drawn attention to the fact that I said in my answer that today a record 9,174 tests had been carried out. In fact, that was yesterday that a record was set. Today we do not have the results in yet. Question No. 11—Defence
SPEAKER: Going back to the point of order, because I cut him off.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My point of order is that Mr Mark could have explained that it's taken him 2½ years to get to the point where he wanted to get to, or he could just plainly say that his useless predecessors didn't do their job, but either way—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member is the most experienced member of the House, and he knows that donkey drops to bash the Opposition with are not allowed by way of supplementary question. 




Question No. 12—Customs
12. SIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Customs: What steps has she taken, if any, to ensure Customs staff are prepared for the increase of New Zealanders returning home? 
Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister of Customs): That's a really good question from the member, and I can confirm that I have worked constantly with the Customs Service to ensure they have adequate resources in place, which enables them to facilitate any increasing numbers of international passengers arriving at the border while continuing to perform their important border protection functions. I've also sought assurance that customs is continuing with its best-practice health and safety measures to ensure New Zealand customs staff are protected while working at the border. I believe the results speak for themselves. Since 3 February, when the first border restriction measures were implemented, 521,381 people have returned from overseas to New Zealand. To date, there has not been one single confirmed case of COVID-19 with any of our customs staff. However, if any issues are brought to light, they will be investigated and addressed immediately. 
Simon O'Connor: How can she share all of that with confidence, when, little under five days ago, an Official Information Act response obtained from her office has revealed that staff in customs have undertaken absolutely no new training to prepare for these changes? 
Hon JENNY SALESA: What I can say is that from the very beginning, we've had public health officials actually walk through and ensure that our customs staff know how to actually wear personal protective equipment (PPE). Customs maintains physical distancing, and the use of masks and gloves is something that customs do. As I say, the result speaks for itself. None of the customs staff have been tested as COVID-19 - positive; they have been tested, though. There's also been high participation of customs officers for volunteering for testing. One of the things that customs has done is it's redeployed a lot of its staff to ensure that they also help out with contact tracing. As I say, the result of customs not having had any COVID-19 cases is one thing that we can look to in terms of their adherence with PPE and with health and safety measures. 
Simon O'Connor: Does the Minister not appreciate that training of customs staff is not simply for their health and safety but for the health and safety of the thousands coming through our border and the 5 million New Zealanders here already? 
Hon JENNY SALESA: I absolutely appreciate that for customs staff, one of their first and foremost tasks is to ensure that the borders are secure. They actually have done that. In terms of how they—customs staff—work at the moment, as soon as international passengers get off the international planes, they are escorted by customs staff and police right through, now, to eight places where there are health officials. Now, health officials ask all of these detailed questions for all of the symptoms, and if there are any folks, as they come through, that exhibit symptoms, they are then referred to public health nurses. There is actually a really rigorous process at the international airport, and then what happens is there are two places. So for those that actually have any symptoms, they go through one place, where they do not mix with other passengers, and then they go out a different door, straight to a shuttle and straight to quarantine. I say this because I myself, as the Minister of Customs, visited—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! I'm getting cries of "Enough" from my left, so I think we'll leave it there. 






GENERAL DEBATE
Hon NIKKI KAYE (Deputy Leader—National): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. 
This is a Government that has failed at every level to deliver for our country, whether it is light rail, whether it is KiwiBuild, or whether it is keeping New Zealanders safe. Five million New Zealanders did their job to keep our country safe, and what we found out is that managed isolation, quarantine, testing, and tracing are all an epic failure. We know this. I stood outside the Stamford Plaza as I spoke to residents who hadn't been told that they were going to have their facility as managed isolation. Dr Ashley Bloomfield goes on television and says it's already an isolation facility. Well, it's not. We then find out that they claim, and the Government claims, that there wasn't ever any plan for Stamford Plaza. Meanwhile a group of people are landing at Auckland Airport and are diverted to Rotorua. The reality is that whether it's isolation or quarantine, this is a Government that has failed. 
We also know, and we heard from the Prime Minister, that world-leading border security involves border management, testing, and tracing. When it comes to testing, the Prime Minister did a dance when she claimed that we were COVID-free, but when it comes to testing we've found out that 51 out of 55 people who left for a special exemption haven't even been tested. And then in question time today we have found out that only 1,200 out of 2,000 people have been tested in our managed isolation. 
The reality is this is a Government that has failed in terms of COVID. We accepted and applauded the flattening of the curve, but at every world-leading response you need to have testing, you need to have traceability, and you need to have decent managed isolation. This Government cannot be trusted to keep New Zealanders safe on border security and they can't be trusted when it comes to 19 September.
If we look at their other failures—KiwiBuild. They promised us affordable housing. The reality is they promised 100,000 houses. How many were delivered? Three hundred and ninety-three. When it comes to light rail, they promised us that we'd have light rail in Auckland. The reality is the project's been cancelled as of today. When it comes to infrastructure, they promised us shovel-ready projects, they promised us roading, and what's happened? Eleven out of 1,900 shovel-ready projects have been agreed by the Government.
This is a Government, as Todd Muller has said, that has 17 empty seats. The reality is that the Prime Minister can have the best public relations campaign in the world, but if her Ministers can't deliver, then nothing happens. Whether it is our health system and David Clark who should have been sacked, whether it is Phil Twyford, the Minister for Auckland issues prior to the election, who has failed on light rail, whether it is Phil Twyford on KiwiBuild, New Zealanders have got nothing from this Government. The best PR campaign in the world doesn't ensure delivery.
So it is only a National Government that will be able to deliver on housing. It will only be a National Government that will be able to deliver on transport. And it is only a National Government that can keep New Zealanders safe, because we have a policy which is around testing, tracing, and decent managed isolation. We've got an economic plan that will see the country with 150,000 people in jobs. The reality is we are facing the largest economic crisis in a generation and even in the good times Labour couldn't deliver anything. So why would we leave them in charge of our country in the bad times? They haven't been able to deliver, with the most significant amount of funding ever anything in housing, transport, infrastructure, or border security.
We will campaign at this election on smart policies that will enable us to recover. That means ensuring that we do some things to keep our small businesses afloat but it also means on border security that we do some basic things well. That means testing. It means traceability. It means managing isolation better. It means quarantine. It actually means that Ministers do their job. This is a party that has a team of people that will be able to deliver on September 19, compared to a row of empty seats, a party that came in with huge aspiration but has ended up not delivering on every single major area. Light rail is a fail, KiwiBuild is a fail, border security is a fail, and ultimately the Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for the fact that her group of people have not delivered for New Zealand in border security, housing, transport, or infrastructure. Bring on a National Government.





Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): There have been a lot of firsts lately, but I never thought I would find myself sitting here thinking, "Actually, Paula Bennett was quite good." But I did during that contribution from Nikki Kaye. 
In New Zealand right now, as humanity around the world finds itself in a very difficult time, it is a fantastic time to be a New Zealander, because our team of 5 million has done something truly remarkable. Through a collective team effort, we managed to squash COVID-19, we managed to stop community transmission in this country, and we are one of the best places to be in the world right now. 
I am very proud to be part of the Government that led New Zealand through that process with clear, decisive leadership and with good communication, and managed to get New Zealanders to the point where we understood the risk of COVID-19 and where we made the sacrifices we needed to make voluntarily because we knew that that was the right thing to do. We need to now bring that same focus, that same resolute leadership, to the recovery effort that we brought to fighting the virus in the first place, and that is exactly what the members on this side of the House have to offer, because there is no rulebook here. This is new territory for New Zealand, and the leadership that this Government has shown has brought us this far. We have a plan to see New Zealand through recovery, and we have one of the best-positioned countries in the world to do that. 
Let's compare our Government's response to COVID-19 with the previous National Government's response to the global financial crisis. This Government has boosted Government capital spending so that we can keep our economy moving, versus the National Government, who cut capital spending in a time of an economic downturn and made that downturn worse as a result. This Government has boosted apprenticeships and put extra money into keeping apprentices on the job, versus the last Government, who saw thousands and thousands of apprentices lose their jobs during the global financial crisis, and that slowed down the recovery afterwards. 
We will not repeat the mistakes that they made after the global financial crisis. This Government is focused on building assets for New Zealand. The last Government sold assets when New Zealand last had an economic downturn. The sound judgment that this Government has shown will help to get us through this very difficult period of time. 
Let's contrast that with what's on offer on the other side of the House. The new Leader of the Opposition—
Hon Grant Robertson: Who? 
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —Todd Muller; I know. Todd Muller: if you haven't heard of him, one of his first declarations as Leader of the Opposition was that he would move with urgency to reopen the border between New Zealand and Australia, and between New Zealand and China. Those were among his first promises as Leader of the Opposition. 
He's then gone on to argue that we should devolve the management of the quarantine of international students coming back to New Zealand to the universities—bear in mind that the universities don't think the border should be closed in the first place, and they've actually put that in writing. The stated position of the universities is that there was no justification for closing the border, and the Opposition wants to hand over management of quarantine to them. They are willing to play Russian roulette at the border and put all of the gains that we have made through the sacrifices of 5 million New Zealanders at risk, and that is not something that this Government is willing to do. 
They have flip-flopped around all over the show. First, they wanted more compassion when it came to compassionate leave to go to funerals and tangi and weddings and other things, and then they said, "Oh no, we were too generous, and there shouldn't have been that." They cannot make their minds up on anything. They argued that shops, building and construction, and a whole lot of industries should have stayed open during alert level 4 when we know that in the countries that did that, they have not been anywhere near as successful at stamping out COVID-19 as we have been here in New Zealand. And let's not get on to the ACT Party, National's junior coalition partner, who want us to be like Sweden, where thousands and thousands of people have died as a result of COVID-19. 
New Zealanders have done a remarkable thing in recent months. The hard work and sacrifice of New Zealanders has been worth it. Its position does well for recovery. It came about because New Zealand was incredibly well led during that process, and that's the sort of leadership that we will bring to the recovery. 





Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, whether it be in the community, the nation, or the world, the women and the men of the New Zealand Defence Force are proving to be, once again, our greatest asset, and continue to demonstrate their value as they support our people here at home and our friends and neighbours abroad, whenever and wherever it matters. It doesn't matter whether it's floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—here at home or abroad—humanitarian assistance, disaster relief operations, search and rescues, they are there 24/7, at the drop of a hat, when necessary. They never go on strike, they never ask for more; they simply focus on delivering loyally and faithfully to the people of New Zealand. I'm proud that this coalition Government has recognised that.
I'm proud that this coalition Government has done something that no other Government has done in the last—crikey—I think we've got to go back 40-odd years, and that is invested so heavily in the women and men of our Defence Force who contribute so much in areas people don't think about. Whether it's air dropping supplies to Department of Conservation staff in the Kermadecs, whether it's patrolling the Southern Ocean, keeping an eye on things like whaling operations, keeping an eye on what is happening in our environmentally protected area, keeping an eye on the illegal fisheries operations, or providing surveillance and information and data that enables successful international prosecutions of poachers, that work is done by the women and the men of the New Zealand Defence Force—army, navy, and air force—working collaboratively together.
But these things do not happen by accident; they happen because they're planned. They happen because people train to the highest levels of professionalism that they possibly can. The only thing they ever ask of a Government is that they be supported—they be supported with the appropriate training, they be supported with the appropriate equipment and platforms that enable them to compete in the international environment with what are proven to be some quite innovative tactics and strategies by those who would deplete our resources, and attack our environment. It is those people who we are the first to deploy when things like tropical cyclone Harold hit and ravage the Pacific Island nations, who are already suffering the effects of climate change on a size and scale that many countries around this world are still not recognising. But there is a group of people who do recognise it, and they are the women and the men in the New Zealand Defence Force. They are the people who deploy, whether it's a tsunami or a cyclone, and help put people's lives back together—be it our pilots, be it our engineers, be it our medics, be it any of them.
That's one of the things that I'm so proud of—the way in which at the same time they've been doing all this, the Defence Force has leaned in to support all Government agencies through COVID. Special recognition to Air Commodore Digby Webb, who was already in there providing such amazing assistance and planning, along with a broader team—and I'm thinking of Tony Miller right now—who have been providing the planning and logistics support and advice to other Government agencies. I'm pleased now that that advice and professionalism has been recognised and that Defence has been given a greater role and command and authority, particularly on our borders. I know—I know—that their professionalism will enhance the safety and security of every New Zealander right now and will make sure that the gains that the team of 5 million made are not undermined or destroyed.
There is so much that we could talk about on our Defence Force people, in the 57 seconds that I've got left. Where do I start? I'm just going to finish by saying this: the Hercules are often challenged, but people need to remember that our biggest military deployment is Antarctica, and it's the Hercules that provide the donkey work. They are the heavy lifters that make it possible for our scientists, for our engineers, and for our people who work in Antarctica, who do such valuable work studying climate change and studying the environment. None of that is possible without the women and the men of our Defence Force. 
A big thankyou also to those people who have been heavily engaged in repatriating the thousand-odd people back just recently into Vanuatu—job well done, loyally and faithfully serving the people of New Zealand. I congratulate all of the women and men of our Defence Force and thank them very much. And, don't worry, we've got more positive announcements on the way.





Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Well, National might have changed its leadership, but it hasn't changed its negative rant, its negative questioning. Instead of celebrating what this team of 5 million has achieved with the COVID pandemic, instead of celebrating the leadership that our Prime Minister and this Government has shown, it keeps harping on and being negative—undermining the confidence this country has in our recovery. That is typical, because how did National respond to the global financial crisis? It slashed investment. In conservation, it slashed funding. It cut hundreds of jobs. How is this Government responding? With a nature-based recovery—investing in nature; investing so that $1.1 billion can provide 11,000 jobs over the next three to four years. We have an investment in our environment because we recognise that our people won't survive, our people won't be healthy, unless we have healthy nature. 
I was very proud to stand alongside fisheries Minister Stuart Nash today and announce new measures to protect Hector's and Māui dolphin—unlike National. When they were in Government, you had a Clayton's sanctuary. You had Simon Bridges opening up the West Coast North Island Marine Mammal Sanctuary to oil and gas exploration and seismic surveying. 
In this Government, we are doubling the area of our marine mammal sanctuaries, extending the west coast North Island sanctuary up to Northland, down to Wellington; the Bank's Peninsula sanctuary south to Timaru, up to Kaikōura. We are putting in place over 1,300 square kilometres extra of exclusions from set-netting, both recreational and commercial, to better protect this taonga species—to better protect the Māui dolphin, which are down to the last 63 adult dolphins. We are proposing to ban seismic surveying and seabed mining within these sanctuaries so that they are real protection for these dolphins—not like National. 
It stood by even when the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee, Dr Jane Goodall, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature called for greater protection for dolphins. National ignored that. It has taken a Labour - Green - New Zealand First Government to respond to the 15,000 submissions from New Zealanders and the 78,000 people who signed a petition to put in place real measures to protect the dolphins. I pay tribute to all of the school children around Aotearoa who have written in and said that they support better protection for dolphins. 
So it's this Government that is delivering that, in the same way that our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been to ensure that we eliminate the virus in New Zealand, that we work really hard on that, and that we take measures to ensure that businesses across Aotearoa are supported through the $11 billion that has gone into the wage subsidy, through the major investment that we're seeing though the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Conservation, Land Information New Zealand, and the Ministry for Primary Industries in projects like wilding conifer control. This Government is serious about controlling pests and weeds: $100 million is being invested through Budget 2020 and the COVID recovery package to provide people with jobs, to ensure that people who are guiding in Franz Josef—whose jobs have gone, through no fault of their own, through the redundancies that have been associated with the closure of our borders to protect our country and the drop-off in tourism—can work. They've moved from Franz to Springfield, Arthur's Pass and are working now on protecting the landscapes, protecting our tussock grasslands. It is a sign of this Government's commitment to investing in people, investing in Papatūānuku, so that we have a healthy future. 
National should look out, in terms of 19 September. The Hon Nikki Kaye can give a rant in this House. Chlöe Swarbrick is going to give her a run for her money in Central Auckland. She looks forward to ensuring that all those voters in Central Auckland can vote for a member who will represent them to advance people and planet—to ensure that the Greens are a heart of the next Government, continuing to strengthen the protection for our native species and continuing to respond to New Zealanders who want us to care for species like Hector's and Māui dolphin. This Government is going to be re-elected in September and come back with stronger measures to invest in the environment, to invest in people and planet. 





Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Do you know, the member who's resumed her seat, Eugenie Sage—she and her party are always consistent. They're consistently getting done over by New Zealand First, day in, day out, and I see the member from New Zealand First having a quiet smile, enjoying that one, and it's absolutely true. Light rail, cameras on fishing boats, waka-jumping legislation, commercial leases, the Kermadecs—and Ihumātao is the latest thing I heard. I've heard there was a big fight last night about it and an early election was threatened.
Hon Tim Macindoe: Three strikes.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh, yes, and three strikes too. But they did the right thing, in that case, New Zealand First, and they supported us on that one.
Out in the electorates, people who are our constituents are wondering why it is that the Government has been so good at putting out press releases and so bad at actually delivering on those. We've seen today in the House that the Hon Phil Twyford yet again has a press release in his name, announcing infrastructure projects, but unfortunately, apparently, he's not responsible for those projects being delivered—or even announced. Come the end of September, what we're going to be left with, when we take over in Government, is a whole lot of press releases from the previous Government and nothing much else. We've got transport, we've got light rail, we've got roads that have been stopped, roads that have been started again, and then stopped again. We've had the East-West Link stopped in Auckland. We've had Mill Road stopped, now starting again. We've got safety and security around the border. What we know is that, despite the fact that hardly anyone's coming in across the border, we still can't keep track of them—or at least the Government can't.
We have a Prime Minister who loves to talk about kindness, and on our side of the House, we'd actually just like to see some competency. We'd like to see a competent Prime Minister, not one who wants to be kind all the time and talk about "Let's just be kind."—being kind and letting people leave their quarantine or managed isolation without being tested for COVID-19, or being tested and not having the results back as they're put on a road trip to Wellington. We have a Prime Minister who's OK with people not performing on these very crucial tasks of keeping our border safe, of keeping New Zealanders safe. We have a Prime Minister who is very good at talking about what she's doing but very bad at getting the jobs for people that they need, and the best way of keeping jobs for people is not just a wage subsidy—which is a good thing but it's not enough—but actually creating an environment where businesses can survive, businesses can stay in work, not just setting up new businesses but keeping the businesses we have already.
And what I'm hearing in the community is a tremendous amount of anger. People feel that they have not been told the truth about what was happening in those quarantine facilities. They feel that they have not been told that was actually happening to people who have COVID-19 or who could have it coming into New Zealand. People heard about the Prime Minister wanting to have a little dance about this wonderful COVID-19 situation in New Zealand. Well, I don't see her dancing now. I don't see her dancing now, and I don't see the Minister of Health in charge of an issue that he was in charge of. Instead, what I see are 17 empty chairs in Cabinet—17 empty chairs of people who are incapable of doing their jobs, whether it is in immigration or whether it is in health. We've got a health Minister ranked No. 20 in Cabinet. That tells the health ministry staff that their Minister is the least influential member of that Cabinet. That tells them they don't have a Minister. They've got someone in the job who is simply keeping the seat warm for Michael Woodhouse when he takes over. That's what we've got at the moment.
People are angry that their Government has been very keen to talk up what they're going to deliver and then deliver actually nothing. Where are the roads? Where's the light rail? Where have the jobs gone? Where is the commitment to New Zealanders that we were told was coming? What we've seen is a commitment to photo opportunities, a commitment to press releases, and a commitment to nobody—other than staying in power.





Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. One of the unusual experiences of alert level 4—the lockdown, as we all called it—was queueing up outside the supermarket. I imagine most members of the House would have had to have done it over some point in time, being sent out to do the grocery shopping, bring supplies home, and it was actually—whilst it was an unusual experience—a very good opportunity to catch up with constituents and see what was on their minds. Almost every single time I queued up outside the supermarket, people would just want to say "Thank you", they'd want to say "Please tell Jacinda how much we appreciate how hard the Government is working to protect us, to save lives, and to make sure that New Zealand gets through this." What I suppose I've found a little bit surprising is that that's exactly the same sentiment that's out there right now. You go to the supermarket now and I'm having exactly the same conversations with people—they just want to say how much they appreciate the work that's being done. 
I think every one of us, especially Ministers in the Government, would really appreciate that sentiment, knowing the long hours, the hard work—the effort that's being put in by public sector officials to produce all the policy papers, to help us make the difficult decisions to get New Zealand through this—is appreciated. But what I always say to every single one of those people who want to express that thanks and gratitude to the Government is that we need to thank the people of New Zealand, the team of 5 million who came together and, through our collective action, have supressed COVID-19 here in New Zealand. 
It is easy to forget, given the privileged position that we have all created for ourselves—that everybody working together has created—that when you look around the rest of the world we are seeing 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 every single day; every single day, 100,000 new cases, and people, tragically, are continuing to die with the virus all around the world. It's no wonder that the number of people wanting to return to New Zealand, or to just come here for the first time, continues to increase. We have to manage and support and facilitate people being able to come to New Zealand, because they see us as a safe, progressive nation where they have the opportunity to thrive—because of the work that the team of 5 million have done.
What they tell me they don't want to see is a rush to open the borders. They don't want a bubble with China. They can certainly see the advantages of a bubble with Australia, but only if we get there carefully and cautiously. They certainly don't want to see universities running quarantine facilities for students—because what people want above everything else is for us to be able to maintain that privileged position, we can move freely around the country, we can socialise with our friends and our family, where our economy is getting moving again and we're actually creating new jobs. 
I had a marvellous opportunity, just on Friday, to go and visit an employer in Palmerston North, my constituency, where they are working with the Ministry of Social Development to employ people who have recently lost their jobs because of COVID-19. I got the opportunity to speak to two people, in particular, who had been in long-term employment and had lost their jobs because of the lockdown—because of the impact of this global pandemic that we are facing. They had to go to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)—Work and Income—for the first time. And they were not people who were used to having to go to a Government agency and ask for support. And, frankly, they both said that they were nervous about having to do that. But then, they also said how wonderful the staff at MSD were, how supportive and thoughtful they were, and how quick they were to help them redeploy into new work that was available and fitted the skills, and experience, and attributes that they had. I got to go and see them whilst they were in induction in their first week at a new job, still in their hometown of Palmerston North. 
That's the kind of work that people expect from the Government, and that's what we are delivering—whether it be through support for apprentices; not only providing the apprenticeship for free but also subsidising the employer to take on that apprentice and to pay them as an employee in that role the opportunity to create skills for the future, and that's what this Government is dedicated to doing. We've got through the initial health crisis. Now we have to make sure that people are able to thrive with an economic recovery. 





Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a difference a week makes. It was only this time last week when I revealed that the story of the two women who travelled non-stop from Auckland to Wellington may not have been all that we had been told. The Minister was in denial and the ministry denied it, and then several hours later, on the evening of last Wednesday, came the admission: it was true. And even then they spun it. Even then, they were going, "Oh, yes, there was contact, but the contact was brief. It wasn't a cuddle; it was just an arm around the shoulder."—I'm not quite sure what the difference is. Then they started throwing people under a bus, and the first person they threw under the bus was the member for Hutt South, my good friend Chris Bishop, when the Hon Chris Hipkins scurrilously accused and inferred—or implied; I'm sure the Speaker will—
SPEAKER: He implied; you inferred.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: He implied—I inferred—that he had something to do with the fact that these two were released from isolation without a test. That is an outrageous slur on Mr Bishop's character. Eugenie Sage says to this House that the Opposition have been playing dirty pool. Mr Hipkins should shake his head in shame. That was a terrible accusation.
But he was only the first of many that had been thrown under the bus.
Hon Chris Hipkins: Tell us about the homeless person.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The member—I will get to that, Mr Hipkins, don't worry—for Palmerston North speaks so effusively of the officials, only it's those officials, who have worked so hard in difficult circumstances because this Government hasn't given them the appropriate rules of engagement at managed isolation facilities, that went under the bus as well—it wasn't the Minister's fault. I'm not even sure which Minister Winston Peters was talking about last Thursday. The Minister of Health, the Minister of Housing, the Prime Minister—doesn't matter. It wasn't their fault; it was the officials' fault. It was the staff's fault. It was the security's fault. It was the hotel staff's fault. That is an unacceptable slur on the effort that not only the team of 5 million have put in but their public sector staff have as well.
The big question is: what's been happening to testing? The media asked the director-general how many people let out of self-isolation between 8 June and 16 June did not have a test—he couldn't say. The following day: couldn't say. Nobody could say, and this afternoon the Prime Minister now tells us that of the 2,200 people who were let out of isolation, nearly a thousand of them had no test—none whatsoever. Nearly a thousand, by my maths, and that's not the worst of it, because of the 55 people who were let out early—the people who were probably most at risk—51 of them didn't have a test. How do we know that right now? Not because they had any great data-matching service—they had to get Healthline to pick up the phone and call them and say, "Here, it's Healthline. Did you have a test?", because they have no knowledge of what testing has been going on.
Now, managed isolation started on, I think, 8 April, and so any positive tests from people in quarantine and managed isolation would've been caught up in the case numbers that were announced daily until we got to zero in the third week of May. So what we have is people in isolation being tested, testing positive. From the third week of May to 16 June, nobody tested positive in managed isolation, and then in the last seven days, 12 positive cases, and the public, the team of 5 million, are saying that is completely implausible. That's why Professor Des Gorman, who is another loyal public servant under the bus today, said the likelihood of community transmission is much higher as a consequence of that failure.
Now, the director-general talked about COVID definitely coming up like weeds on the lawn. What he would not have in his wildest dreams imagined was that the Government was going to throw those weed seeds on the lawn themselves, by their inactions. So we had the Auckland to Wellington incident, we had the Wiri Prison woman who was released after a test was made but before it was confirmed as positive—and by that time, she had got to Palmerston North—and we had an anecdote of a homeless person. And do you know what? Rather than go and find out how many tests were done, this Government spends an inordinate amount of time checking CCTV—
Hon Louise Upston: Witch hunt.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —1,706 records, on a witch hunt; that's right, Ms Upston. They're running down rabbit holes before they're actually doing the right thing, which is keeping New Zealanders safe. It's scandalous.





RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm proud of our country. I'm proud that our team of 5 million banded together. We rallied and we broke the chain of community transmission. We all made those sacrifices, living through the different restriction levels, and we stopped the virus. 
I'm proud of our country and I'm proud of our coalition Government. I'm proud of the actions that we have taken, and I'm especially proud of our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, with her world-leading leadership that has guided our country through this one-in-100-year global pandemic that is causing havoc right around the globe. I'm proud of the actions that we have taken as a Government to ensure that our people are safe. 
Now, the other side, the venom and the vitriol that they're flinging about—it's so negative and it's so desperate. Desperate to try and—I don't know. They're trying to fling whatever they can to try and discredit the work that we've been doing, but they're disrespecting the people of Aotearoa—the team of 5 million—that have worked so hard and that have been all committed to ensuring that we beat this virus. 
So I want to acknowledge all the people around New Zealand and thank them and acknowledge the sacrifice and the commitment that they've all had, as we have been in this united team. I'm proud to be part of that team. 
I'm also proud to be a member of this Government with outstanding Ministers. I want to speak as the member for Te Tai Tonga, the largest electorate in Aotearoa—the whole of the South Island, all of Wellington, and many other islands that are flung far and wide—and say that I have been across my electorate and I have heard the acknowledgment and the kudos that we are getting as a Government and the appreciation from the many whānau out there for what we have achieved, not only in terms of the public health response in dealing with COVID but also our response in Budget 2020 in ensuring that we have that springboard for growth. 
We have cushioned the blow that has hit our businesses, particularly in affected sectors like tourism and hospitality. Over $11 billion has been paid out in wage subsidies to protect those jobs and to protect those businesses and to ensure that they have those resources in place. We've coupled that with our Budget to ensure that not only do we have those supports; we have other small-business measures, and, most importantly, as we are transitioning now, we are wanting to do more emphasis on training, on skills, and on apprenticeships. I'm looking forward to seeing the roll-out of what we have heard today in terms of redeployment of those Kiwis that may have lost their jobs into the much-needed jobs that are required in the dairy sector, right across the rural communities of New Zealand—plenty of jobs going there. 
In fact, while the Opposition tries to talk down everything to do with our country, the good news is that our primary sector exports, which are the backbone of our economy, compared to last year, are up—we're up. In the face of all of this COVID that we have been dealing with, primary sector exports are up across the board by 4 percent. I'm sure Mr McAnulty is very pleased with that, and I acknowledge the great people of the Wairarapa—those real heartland people. 
So whilst our Opposition might be all venomous and nasty, the good people of New Zealand are going about their business. Our farmers, our horticulturalists, and our people working right across our service industries, they're going to work, they're working hard, and they're making sure that they're selling our great products, goods, and services and earning foreign exchange, which is powering our economy. But we know there's further work to be done, and that's why our Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, and our wider team are ensuring that we have the supports there and that we will be able to cushion the blow and smoothen the road for the many businesses that are affected. 
A case in point is the tourism industry. I'm very proud of the support that the Hon Kelvin Davis has given to our iconic Whale Watch Kaikōura business. That business, which actually was started by my uncles and relations of mine, transformed that small town into a global tourism destination, and not one job has been lost at Whale Watch Kaikōura in the face of COVID. Thanks to the support of our wage subsidies and our tourism recovery package, not one job has been lost. There is joy and absolute elation right across that community that they will be reopening their doors come 4 July, and that's what will be seeing right across our country. 
Thank you, sir. I'm proud of our Government and our country. 





CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Mr Speaker, thank you very much. Well, today, the country learnt what we in the National Party have known for weeks and what has been an open secret around this Parliament: light rail is dead. This is an utter humiliation for Phil Twyford and the Government. Let's be very clear about the significance of this. In 2017, in her first act as Labour Party leader, the putative Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, "We will build light rail to the airport and we will build it from the Auckland CBD to Mount Roskill by 2021." We're now in mid-June 2020, 80-odd days out from the election, and where are we? Absolutely nowhere. 
In fact, you can mount a plausible argument that light rail has actually gone backwards from where it was in 2017 when the Government changed. This is KiwiBuild 2.0. This is a failure, it is a broken promise, and Government members over the next few days and in the lead-up to the election are going to have to reflect on what they say on the campaign trail about light rail and why it has failed. And they are going to have to explain to Aucklanders why Aucklanders have paid an extra 10c a litre in fuel tax and why the whole country has paid an extra 12c or more a litre in fuel tax to fund a project that doesn't exist, that in fact has gone absolutely backwards in the last three years. 
Let's also be very clear about whose responsibility this is. It is not the fault of New Zealand First. It is not the fault of the Green Party. It is the responsibility of Phil Twyford as the Minister of Transport. No one forced the Government to take the existing Auckland transport proposal off them and give it to the New Zealand Transport Agency. That was one of the first things they did—February 2018. No one forced them to do that; that was their decision. No one forced the Government to take the proposal from the New Zealand Transport Agency and then put it into this weird twin-track process against the quixotic unsolicited bid from what's called NZ Infra, which is the Canadian pension fund, and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. No one forced them to do that. No one forced them to be bedazzled by the six PowerPoint slides that got presented and that attracted so much apparent love and adoration from the Government. No one forced them to do that. This is on the Government. The train wreck of the last three years is the responsibility of the Government. 
Right from the start, there's been a lack of clarity about the objectives. What is the purpose of Auckland light rail? Where does it go? Right from the start there has been an uncertainty about what exactly the Government has been trying to achieve. We know that even as late as nine months ago, officials were saying to Ministers, "You actually need to be clear about what you're trying to achieve." Just an extraordinary situation. 
Questions have abounded the whole way through. What's the cost? How much is it? Two billion dollars is in the Auckland transport alignment programme, but the latest estimate that's been made public by the Deputy Prime Minister is that it's somewhere between $6 billion and $8 billion. There's no idea about the route. Does it go to the airport or does it not? How many stops are there? Is it a mass transit system in which there are lots of stops along the road or is a rapid one in which there are very few? What even is the rail? Is it heavy rail or is it light rail or is it a combination of the two? Does it go underground? Does it go over ground? We don't know.
It's just extraordinary that almost three years into this Government's time in office, we don't have any clarity around those questions. Let's remember, Aucklanders have paid for this. They're paying for it right now. Every time they top up at the pump, every time they put more petrol into their car, they're paying extra for a rapid transit system and for a light rail system that they're not going to get and that the Government says they're going to take to the election.
Phil Twyford said in October 2017, "If we can do it faster, we will." If we can do it faster, we will! Well, if this is fast, I'd like to know what slow means. It's just extraordinary. This is the new KiwiBuild. This is a totemic, emblematic policy for the Government. This is something they campaigned on as their first election promise. And it will be consigned to the history books and emblematic of this Government's utter ineptitude and total failure to deliver on their promises and in particular, their transport commitments to this country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.





JO LUXTON (Labour): This is my first opportunity to speak in a general debate this year, and can I say I'm immensely proud to be able to speak in this debate on the other side of the COVID-19 health crisis that we have seen the country guided through under the strong, decisive leadership of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. I want to also acknowledge the team of 5 million New Zealanders who all made sacrifices in one way or another, who banded together and knuckled down, hunkered down in their homes in isolation to help fight COVID-19. And we have been successful in that, if not the most successful country in the world to date. I want to push back on some of the comments that the Hon Nikki, um—
Hon Chris Hipkins: Kaye.
JO LUXTON: —Kaye said. She talked about the fact that this Government has failed in terms of COVID. She said isolation and quarantine has been an epic failure. I'm not quite sure she understands what an epic failure is. I'm sorry, but when we can have our businesses reopening, our schools reopening, we can socialise more with our families and our friends, when we've got the economy back up and running, that is not an epic failure. An epic failure is sewage in our hospital walls. An epic failure is children living and having to do their homework from a car. An epic failure is people living under a bridge. An epic failure is selling off our State houses when our most vulnerable people need them. So we have been hugely successful. This country of ours, we went hard and we went early and we are seeing the fruits of that and the fruits of the sacrifices that every New Zealander has made in one way or another.
We must remember, as the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and the Hon Chris Hipkins have mentioned, there is no playbook for this. We have not seen anything the likes of this before. What is most important is, whilst there are bound to be things that crop up from time to time, because there is no playbook—[Interruption] Jacqui Dean, there is no playbook, there is no rulebook, and we are going to see things crop up from time to time. And what is most important about that is how we react to those things that crop up from time to time. We have seen decisive and swift action from this Government to deal with the issues that have cropped up in the last few days.
What we know is that this COVID-19 disease is getting worse overseas, and we are bound to see more cases at our border as Kiwis come home. And why wouldn't they want to come home? New Zealand is the envy of the world in the face of this disease, absolutely. In fact, I do recall seeing an article recently from—I can't think where I saw it. I read it online, that we had actors here in New Zealand; I think Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst. They said that they felt very lucky to be in Aotearoa during the COVID-19 pandemic. So we are absolutely the envy of the world.
I just wanted to make mention also of the wage subsidy. That has been a lifesaver. We've had members opposite saying, "Oh, you know, the wage subsidy is for the employees, not the employers, not the business owners." Well, actually, that has allowed the business owners to continue to keep people employed so when we got to the position to be able to get our businesses back open, they were able to have their staff come through those doors and carry on business as usual. There is no point in giving somebody $5,000 when they come to a job and then $5,000 when they stay on a bit longer if there are no jobs left. So by giving the wage subsidy to employers, we have ensured that there are still jobs available for those employees when we were able to come back to work from this crisis. So I commend the Government on its response.





Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's always a joy to follow a contribution by that member who has just resumed her seat, Jo Luxton, and her impassioned defence of the wage subsidy. Yes, we too did embrace the wage subsidy, but where we part company from that member and that Government is that we confirm our very strong belief that the wage subsidy certainly has allowed employees to stay in their jobs but it has done very little to support businesses. I invite that member to go down to Wānaka, to go down to Queenstown, to go up to Tekapō—go up there and talk to some of the businesses, particularly in hospitality and accommodation, and ask them how they feel about this Government's support for business. Ask them how they feel about how this Government has responded to their needs post-COVID crisis.
You know, earlier on in this general debate, when the Hon Eugenie Sage got to her feet—the Minister of Conservation—I thought, great. Here is the time where a Minister of some integrity gets to her feet and addresses the burning issue of the day within her portfolio post-COVID. That burning issue has got to be support for concessionaires who undertake their business and their recreation and their commercial activities on the Department of Conservation (DOC) estate with a concession. Did we hear a single word from that Minister about support for business, about support for concessionaires, or about people at all? Not one comment came from that Minister.
Hon Member: Zero.
Hon JACQUI DEAN: Yes, my colleague so very finely puts it: zero. Nothing from that Minister about people. I thought it was the people. I thought this was the Government of kindness and transparency. It's not, because here we have a Green Minister of the Crown getting to her feet and talking about the very worthy issues of species protection and management. Yes, we all agree with that, Minister. But what about the people? 
Well, I can tell you this Minister's track record with the people. On 24 April of this year, the Minister said that there would be financial relief on the way for recreation and tourism businesses operating on public conservation land. What a welcome message that was. Eugenie Sage: "This is a difficult time for all businesses, and, in particular, for tourism businesses." She went on to say, "I have asked DOC to explore what support can be provided to concessionaires. Officials are assessing a range of potential options, including refunds for concession fees which have been paid in advance, extension to payment terms,"—and so on. Well, what a breath of fresh air coming from this Minister at a time of great need to those people who are doing their business on Department of Conservation land.
Imagine my surprise when, in an answer to a question which I received on 23 June, eight weeks later, the Minister was forced to acknowledge that no concession fees have been waived to date. How is that caring for the people who operate on the DOC estate? How is that caring for the businesses who operate on the DOC estate? I have asked. She says in her answer to my question, the Department of Conservation to explore waiving concession charges for tourism related businesses operating on public conservation land affected by COVID-19—two months later. She's asking two months later? This Minister has made the usual—the usual—Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government trick of announcing much and delivering nothing. Furthermore, and the most egregious part of this Minister's behaviour, is that in a further question, answered on 23 June, eight weeks later, she concedes: "Any instances of financial hardship are considered on a case by case basis."—well, in this case, none. No businesses have received any financial relief. "Concessionaires can request up to 90 days extension. After this, the department may consider writing off the debt, particularly if the concessionaire is insolvent or no longer operating their business concessions." Big deal—big fail, this Government.





ANAHILA KANONGATA'A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. It's an absolute privilege to be the 12th speaker in today's general debate. My speech today is going to be full of gratefulness and full of thankfulness. But I want to ask one question: how did we get here? How did we get here that our team of 5 million is COVID-free? How did we get here that COVID-19 is only coming through our borders? How did we get here? I tell you this: the answer relies on leadership. When we're talking about a Government that is compassionate and that is caring, well, the details of what demonstrates that is what the people receive.
I want to thank the leadership of our Prime Minister and of our Director-General of Health—that we are world leading, where it's normal to go alert levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. Where did you get that from? I'll tell you what: the people were at the centre of this health response. It was at the centre of this health response that we needed to go hard and we needed to go early. Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, that's so common now, but that came from somewhere. It derived from a place of caring.
In a time where to be informed can save lives, our communities needed to rise up and to recover. This year's Budget provides our team of 5 million, our community, with opportunities; an opportunity to provide; an opportunity to care; an opportunity to empower our own; an opportunity to recover; and an opportunity to rebuild.
I heard the member for Papakura, the Hon Judith Collins, really giving up—defeat. It was her defeat that she was already commenting on what the next Cabinet would look like—what a Labour Cabinet would like. That is an indication of defeat already. What that side is already starting to say is, "We'll lose" and they're starting to say what the next Labour Government is going to look like. That was an indication of defeat. Not once did I hear the voices of the community.
I want to acknowledge that the wage subsidy is so important. To walk the mean streets, the caring streets, of Papakura, I want to acknowledge Alvin, the owner of Aoyama Sushi in Papakura. I like to dine out, supporting our local businesses. I asked him "What do you think of the wage subsidy, did that help?" Arms up, he jumped up and he said, "Tell Jacinda that I said thank you. It saved us." That itself is a business. I think the member, who just sat down, Jacqui Dean, spoke about what we don't do for business. Alvin said, "The wage subsidy saved us. The loan to small and medium enterprises saved us. Tell the Prime Minister thank you." I also spoke to Bun at Satay Noodle House in Papakura, and I asked him about the wage subsidy. He said, "Thank you. Thank you to the Prime Minister. That helped us." So these are the voices of businesses. When we are talking about businesses, please, the other side of the House, include small to medium enterprises, because they are the people who will make up the majority of what we call businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I did say before that the time of information is important and saved lives in these times. I also want to thank the Hon Phil Twyford, because, in Papakura—nobody actually talked about what's happening—we're at full steam ahead with the Papakura to Drury State Highway 1 upgrading. Nobody said thank you. Thank you for that, Phil Twyford. We are full steam ahead with the Papakura to Pukekohe electrification of rail—nobody said that.
I'd like to end this by acknowledging the many thanks from the principal of Papakura High School, John Rohs, and also the principal of Ramarama School, Tania Campbell. The funding that they received for the school infrastructure improvement—there were things that they wanted to do but they couldn't do, so they asked me to convey their thanks to the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, for that, because with that they are able to provide a covered outdoor assembly area at Ramarama School and a covered walkway for the students in this time of winter; next year, they'll be warm and dry. Thank you.
The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.





STANDING ORDERS
Sessional
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the following rules be adopted as a sessional order: 
COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE ACT 20201InterpretationIn these rules,—the Act is the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020section 11 order is an order made under s 11 of the Act.2Examination of section 11 order(1)The Regulations Review Committee must examine each section 11 order and report to the House no later than 12 working days after the day on which the section 11 order was presented to the House, unless the Business Committee determines otherwise.(2) No motion under section 16 of the Act relating to a section 11 order may be moved until after the earlier of the following:(a)the presentation of the Regulations Review Committee's report on its examination of that section 11 order:(b)the day fixed for the presentation of the Regulations Review Committee's report on its examination of that section 11 order.(3)If the Regulations Review Committee recommends that a section 11 order be amended, then paragraphs (1) and (2) do not apply to an amendment to that order, or a further section 11 order, that is made only for the purpose of incorporating the committee's recommendations.(4)Standing Order 322 does not apply to a notice of motion under section 16 of the Act relating to a section 11 order.3Disallowance or amendment of section 11 order(1)This rule applies to a notice of motion to disallow or amend a section 11 order only if that notice of motion is given by a member who, at the time the notice of motion is given, is a member of the Regulations Review Committee.(2)After a notice of motion to disallow or amend a section 11 order is given,—(a)that notice of motion must be dealt with by the House no later than the sixth sitting day after the day on which the notice of motion is given:(b)if that notice of motion has not been dealt with by the House within five sitting days, it is set down on the Order Paper for the next sitting day as the first item of business after general business. (3)If more than one notice of motion to disallow or amend a section 11 order is available for consideration on a sitting day, then those notices of motion are set down as a single order of the day and are debatable together, with their questions put separately.(4)Standing Orders 67, 68, 71, 72, 76, 100, 321, and 323 are read accordingly.4Repeal or continuation of ActNo notice of motion under section 3 of the Act (relating to the repeal or continuation of the Act) may be moved until after the earlier of the following:(a)the presentation of the Finance and Expenditure Committee's report on the inquiry into the operation of the Act:(b)the day fixed for the presentation of the Finance and Expenditure Committee's report on the inquiry into the operation of the Act.
On 13 May, the House passed the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, which gives the Government some wide-ranging powers to react quickly to suppress COVID-19. The purpose of this motion is to ensure that the orders made under section 11 of that Act receive the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. These orders can be made by the Minister of Health or the Director-General of Health. They can control or limit travel, social distancing, social gatherings, isolation, quarantine, contact tracing, and other actions that have become very familiar to New Zealanders as we have been engaged in this fight against COVID-19. These powers are exceptional, and it's important that processes are put in place to allow Parliament to exercise its responsibility to scrutinise the executive by putting in place a sessional order that describes the process that will take place as Parliament does that.
Section 14 of the Act provides that any section 11 order is revoked if it's not approved by a motion of the House within a certain period. It's proposed that each section 11 order must be examined by the Regulations Review Committee no later than 12 working days after it's been presented to the House. This is a significantly shorter time frame than the one that members of the House will be used to as part of the regular regulations review process. It specifies that no motion approving an order may be moved until the Regulations Review Committee has reported back to the House. This is a much quicker process than laid down in the Standing Orders for an affirmative resolution procedure. For this reason, the sessional order will disapply Standing Order 322.
The motion also proposes a procedure to disallow or amend a section 11 order that's considerably stronger than that that is currently laid down in the Standing Orders. It proposes that any notice of motion lodged by a member of the Regulations Review Committee to disallow or amend a section 11 order must be dealt with by the House no later than the sixth sitting day after it is lodged—so, in reality, within two sitting weeks. This is considerably shorter than the 21 sitting days specified as the period after which a regulation lapses if it's not dealt with by the House. Section 3 of the Act specifies that the Act is repealed unless it's continued by a resolution of the House within 90 days of its commencement. Rule 4 of the sessional order states that no motion relating to the continuation or repeal of the Act may be moved until the Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported on its inquiry into the operation of the Act.
This recognises that the urgent circumstances of the global spread of COVID-19 meant that a faster than normal process to pass the bill was necessary, but that the Finance and Expenditure Committee's examination of the operation of the Act is a way of giving the Act scrutiny that it wasn't able to receive before it was initially passed by the House. So this provision ensures that the House makes any decision about continuing the Act in the knowledge of the committee's findings.
Our team of 5 million has done a magnificent job in fighting COVID-19. The provisions of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act have played a very important role in that battle. We're privileged to be back to living a life that is a lot closer to normal than the vast majority of countries around the world, and all New Zealanders have played a part in helping us to get to that point. But the global threat that's posed by the virus remains with us. It remains active around the rest of the world, and the powers given by the Act have to remain in place for the time being. So it's important that this House has the ability to monitor and to scrutinise those powers for as long as that is the case. That is what this resolution will achieve.





Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure to take a brief call to confirm that the National Opposition will be supporting this motion. I just want to make three or four points. 
The first is to actually commend the work of the Regulations Review Committee, because it's one of those ubiquitous organisations within Parliament that nevertheless does an extremely important job. Those who are appointed to that standing committee often get a bit teased—
Hon Tim Macindoe: Pinnacle of my parliamentary career!
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —by their colleagues, certainly on my side of the House. That's right. Mr Macindoe says it was the highlight of his career. He says it flippantly, but I bet there were things that were done pretty much behind the scenes that nevertheless were very good from a scrutiny perspective. 
I would remind the House of the excellent opinion and letter that was written during the lockdown about the questions that were rightly asked about the section 70 notices under the Health Act that were issued and the question of both process and whether they were ultra vires, effectively. Now, that triggered an interesting sequence of events in the Epidemic Response Committee that doesn't bear relitigating here. But, nevertheless, I found that a very thoughtful and important contribution to our thinking about the appropriate response which all parties wanted to support. But, as I have said in this House a couple of times, the rigour that we put to the executive's regulation and lawmaking power is most important in these times of challenge and crisis, as they are in any other time. 
The second point I would like to make is that of the time frame. As the Hon Chris Hipkins has pointed out, these are departures from the current Standing Orders for the reporting back, but they are appropriate. We have had very good examples of where a quite detailed scrutiny of things passed necessarily quickly can still nevertheless be done, and I have every confidence that the Regulations Review Committee will do that.
The third thing I would like to actually ask the committee just to check in their examination of the orders that are made is that it has been brought to my attention that it is possible that a couple of the orders made under section 11 might not have been consistent with the notice period and manner that is set out in the primary legislation. Now, I haven't had a chance to go and check the veracity of that. So, as is my way when I make comments like that—I caveat them appropriately that the source is reliable, but at this stage it's an anecdote. But it does, I think, behove the committee to just have a quick check, a belt and braces check, that, for example, the order that was signed by the Minister of Health on Saturday—interestingly, on a Saturday in Dunedin, and that's the nature of these things; it's often necessarily a swift process—nevertheless met the requirements for gazetting and publication that are set out on the principal Act. With that, we're very pleased to support the motion. 
Motion agreed to.





URGENCY
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the remaining stages of the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, the Imprest Supply (First for 2020/21) Bill, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill, the Racing Industry Bill, the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill, the Resource Management Amendment Bill; and the first reading and referral to select committee of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill; the second readings of the Education and Training Bill, the Public Service Legislation Bill, the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran's Pension Legislation Amendment Bill, the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill, the Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Commercial Video on-Demand) Amendment Bill, Te Ture Whenua Maori (Succession, Dispute Resolution, and Related Matters) Amendment Bill, the Urban Development Bill, the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill, the International Crimes and International Criminal Court Amendment Bill; and the third readings of the Privacy Bill and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill; and the remaining stages of the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill.
The restrictions placed on the House while we were at COVID-19 alert levels 3 and 4 resulted in a very significant reduction in the number of hours available to the Government to progress its legislative programme, and that has caused delays to many of the bills that I have just mentioned. With the House soon to be out of action again for a couple of months during the campaign, there is a need to ensure that much of the legislation on the Order Paper is progressed without any delay.
The urgency motion includes 21 bills. Six of those will go through their committee stage and will immediately then receive a third reading. Two of these bills need to be enacted in the next few days if they are to take effect, as was intended prior to the COVID-19 lockdown. They include the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill and the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill.
It's also essential, of course, to pass the Supplementary Estimates and the Imprest Supply legislation before the start of the new financial year. The other three bills in this category make important reforms in their areas. For example, the Racing Industry Bill has been awaited by the racing industry for many, many years, as members on the other side of the House have noted—potentially decades. Much of the bill was scheduled to commence on 1 July, and it deserves to be delayed no more than a few weeks.
The other bills that are part of the motion will pass through only one stage. For most of them, this will be the second reading and then there will be an interval where there is a need for any other amendments to be considered if they are required. It's important to note that, for the vast majority of these bills that I have put forward for this urgency motion, the process is in no way being truncated. The effect of the urgency motion is simply to extend the number of hours that Parliament is sitting.
The areas of New Zealand life that are covered by these bills—
SPEAKER: Order! I think the member is required to give brief reasons; he's done that.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Fair enough then.





A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 56
New Zealand National 55; Ross.
Motion agreed to.





APPROPRIATION (2019/20 SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES) BILL
In Committee
Debate resumed from 23 June.
Clauses 4 to 8 and Schedules 1 to 3 (continued)
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): The House is in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I remind members that in the committee stage of an Appropriation (Supplementary Estimates) Bill, only the Minister's amendments and any amendments to them are considered. I also remind members that the House has agreed to the trial of the removal of the four-call limit in the committee stage. I encourage you to keep your contributions focused—five minutes is not a target—and relevant to promote good interaction with the Minister in the chair. We have the ability then to take short calls and have a series of questions and answers between members and the Minister. You can be confident you will get a number of short calls. When we were last debating the bill, we were considering the question that clauses 4 to 8 and Schedules 1 to 3 stand part.





ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Madam Chair, and very useful that you just reminded us of this quick interaction between the Minister and ourselves. This time I'd just very much like to hear the views of the Minister around the media package that's—it's very significant, isn't it, Minister? From what I can see there are two broad parts of it. There's the COVID-19 transmission and other fees, on behalf of media organisations—$7.7 million; and then there's another $11.4 million under the COVID-19 media sector response and recovery.
The first question I wish to ask is: is that it? Is that the full package—$20 million? That's very significant. I suppose it does raise the issue of why such a large and specific allocation has been made to the media, and it would be useful to have a background on why the Minister has made this special provision, and also the types of organisations that it's going to be applied to—that would be very useful.





Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member Andrew Bayly very much for his drawing the attention of the committee to this package. He may recall that during the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown period, there was a lot of concern about the future of the media sector in New Zealand. Media outlets were finding it extremely difficult to find advertising revenue, and obviously, I believe, to quote myself—briefly—this was a patient with pre-existing conditions as well, in the sense that the media sector did not come into this COVID-19 situation strong, in any way at all. In fact, it is a sector facing significant realignment.
So the Government worked on a package, and, in fact, we covered this material in some depth today in the Social Services Committee Estimates hearings with Minister Faafoi. We worked with the sector on a package; this is the first part of it. It's a $50 million package—so because of the nature of what we're doing, I don't want to go back through what I had to with the member last night; we're talking about the 2019-20 bit. There is of course more that will be spent in the 2020-21 year, but that was focused on ensuring that broadcasters in particular could have some cash flow. That was done by, in one case, in one part of this, remitting some of the fees that they need to pay both in terms of New Zealand On Air but also in terms of physical broadcasting through Kordia. So those were two parts of it.
The second part of the first part relates to Government advertising and ensuring that Government advertising both continued but also could be brought forward in terms of the payments for that in order to, again, supply cash flow for the media sector. Obviously, during this period of time, we saw some private media outlets not able to operate any more, others reducing staff, and, as we discussed this morning at the select committee, also even Television New Zealand as a public broadcaster having to do that as well. So this is one of the many sectors affected by COVID-19. This was the first portion of the $50 million that was announced for that.





Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I just want to return, Minister, to the short debate we were having last night around the small business cashflow scheme and, in particular, the ratio between the $5.2 billion capital expenditure, which is the loans—potentially up to $5.2 billion—and then the $3.44 billion initial write-down, which is to say it appears, on the surface of it, that the Government is saying that it's going to lend out $5.2 billion to small businesses and expect that, ultimately, it will only get $1.5 billion or $1.6 billion back, because most of it will be written down. I just wanted to get a sense of how that's arrived at. Obviously, there's the cost of zero interest if people pay it back within one year, but there must be also a very significant expectation that the loans won't be paid back in a significant set of circumstances. So I just want to get some clarity around that first.
And then I'm also keen to understand why—given the fact that he appears to be preparing to spend $3.4 billion, in effect, on that scheme—he didn't give consideration to some simpler method of getting cash into the hands of those small businesses during the lockdown period to help with such costs such as rents and other overheads. I note that more than two months after he announced that he was going to do something to help those businesses, today we've heard that their final policy that they finally announced has fallen over as well, and so nothing has happened on that front.





Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Madam Chair, thank you very much. In terms of sort of picking out the middle of those three points, we gave consideration to a number of options for how to provide support for fixed costs beyond wages. Obviously, you know, wages are the largest bill within those businesses, but we were acutely aware that there were other costs in front of us, so we actually did assess a range of options, including grants, alongside the possibility of loans. What we focused on was how we supported the vulnerable but viable businesses. So these are businesses that have a future but have particular issues around cash flow that were holding them back in terms of their fixed costs. 
We came to the judgment that the best way of supporting that was through a loan scheme. It's not any old loan scheme. It's interest-free for the first 12 months. No repayments are required for the first two years. It has an interest rate at 3 percent for a five-year term, which is more generous than one would find any bank offering. So it is a different loan, which, in part, helps answer the member's first question—which we covered last night—as to why the fair value write-down would be what it is. 
As we have talked about in the student loan scheme, just as with this loan scheme, it actually appears as an asset on our books. It's capital expenditure, but, of course, you have to have some kind of estimate. As we discussed last night, these are Estimates—it's in the name. 
Obviously, the proof is in the pudding. So far with the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme, it is tracking at around $1.4 billion. I suspect it will continue to be drawn down upon as businesses understand more about the trading environment they now find themselves in at level 1. 
In terms of the last point the member raised, those negotiations around that particular bit of legislation are not ones I am involved in directly. I can obviously, though, say that Cabinet took a decision to deal with those particular aspects of commercial leases that had not already been dealt with by the landlords and the tenants themselves. By and large, those arrangements have been made, but we, obviously, made a Cabinet decision that the final legislative outcomes of that are the responsibility of another Minister. 





Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I suppose the difficulty that I have is that the Minister is saying that the scheme is focused on vulnerable but viable businesses, and yet the scheme is, effectively, set up to write off two-thirds of the money that it loans out. Surely that can't all be accounted for by one year of interest free? If it's being lent out at the percentage that the Government's able to borrow, I can't see where the loss is coming from. So it must be based on the assumption that they're expecting a lot of those loans not to be repaid. So how does that square with a scheme that's supposed to be targeted at vulnerable but viable businesses?





Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In addition to the question of interest-free and the normal write-off provisions that you would have with any loan scheme, there's obviously also—and we can get a little bit more information to the member around this, around the use-of-money cost to the Government. So, when Treasury look at this, they always look at what else the money could be used for at a particular time and how that affects the Government's overall expenditure. So I can get him more detail, but it is the nature of a loan scheme given out this way. We have to put into the books a fair-value write-down. It's certainly not something that the Minister of Finance does; it's something that Treasury do. It is their professional judgment, and the Inland Revenue Department—it is their professional judgment—that leads them to do this. I think what we can all say with some confidence now is it is highly unlikely that that will be the amount of money that is written down, because the uptake of the loan does not appear to go towards the levels that were projected. That's the nature of putting a scheme such as this in place.





The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 513 in the name of the Hon Grant Robertson be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Amendments agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clauses 4 to 8 and Schedules 1 to 3 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Clauses 4 to 8 and Schedules 1 to 3 as amended agreed to.
House resumed.
The Chairperson reported the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill with amendment.
Report adopted.





Third Reading
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a third time. 





A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Bill read a third time.





IMPREST SUPPLY (FIRST FOR 2020/21) BILL
Third Reading
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2020/21) Bill be now read a third time. 
Bill read a third time.





ELECTORAL (REGISTRATION OF SENTENCED PRISONERS) AMENDMENT BILL
In Committee
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): The House is in committee on the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Part 1  Amendments relating to disqualification of sentenced prisoners for registration as electors
Hon Tim Macindoe: Madam Chair?
Simeon Brown: Madam Chair?
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): You guys work it out.





Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologise to my colleague. There's been a bit of a misunderstanding between myself and the whip. But I am pleased to take a call. 
I sat on the select committee throughout the entire process of hearing the submissions on this particular bill. Subsequent to that, I have left the Justice Committee because I've had a change in my portfolio responsibilities within the National Party, and so I regret that I haven't had a chance to do further work on it.
Hon Chris Hipkins: What brought that about?
Hon TIM MACINDOE: What brought that about? Well, I'm sure you're well aware of that, Mr Hipkins. Given that it resulted in a small promotion for me, I'm very happy about it. But, anyway, thank you very much for his interest in the furtherance of my career. I'd like to get back to the bill, because I'm sure that's what the Chair would like me to do.
I do want to draw attention to the fact that there were some very significant compelling submissions, both in favour and against the bill, and so I acknowledge those. I regret that I was unable to speak about those submissions last week in the second reading of the bill, and the reason for that was that the House was sitting under extended hours while my new select committee was sitting, and I was required to be in an Estimates hearing. So I didn't get a chance to speak about those submissions, but I do want to acknowledge those who submitted both for and against the bill, because I think that they brought many compelling thoughts to bear. It was particularly interesting to hear from a number of those who have formerly been through our penal system. We don't often hear from prisoners or former prisoners on bills and their implications, and I listened to them with particular interest and was glad that they took the time to submit. The interesting thing was they weren't all unanimous in their views on this bill either. 
But I do want to say how outraged I was—and I made a big noise about it during the time—that our select committee was required to do that work while the country was in lockdown, having been given an assurance by the Leader of the House, who is in the House, at the time, that there was no public interest in non-urgent matters being dealt with while the whole country was in lockdown and the House was adjourned. I for one would probably not have supported the motion to adjourn when we did had I known that the Government would renege on that very significant commitment that they made. So I did raise my objections, all the way up to the level of the Clerk of the House, and I wasn't particularly satisfied with the way the whole matter was resolved. But I just put on record that I do not think that the average member of the public supported the fact that the select committee was dealing with that bill at that time. 
In fact, we asked many people who were submitting whether they were aware of this opportunity long before they were given the chance to present via a Zoom meeting, and they said, no, they weren't. Clearly, many of them had been contacted by members of the Labour or Green parties and urged to put in their submissions very quickly because they were getting caned in the early stages of the select committee's hearings. The fact of the matter is, overwhelmingly, people I have spoken to said, surely, at a time when the country was focused on COVID matters—a very serious issue—Parliament was suspended, and the country was unable to operate as would normally occur, that was not the time to be dealing with any non-urgent matter. In particular, getting to the point where now, under urgency, we are rushing through a bill to give prisoners the vote suggests very warped priorities on the part of the Government. 
It's not so much, therefore, the principle of the bill that I object to but the practicalities of the way it has been managed. I feel that the Government misled the Parliament and misled the nation in moving the adjournment and suggesting that no non-urgent bills would be covered and then they did. I feel that members of the public are right to feel outraged about the fact that they didn't know that it was happening, as a result of which many of them who would have submitted on this bill didn't, because they were ignorant of it. Now, that's outrageous in a democracy when you have people who really would have a strong interest in a bill not having the ability to know about it. We asked them whether it had received much media attention in their areas, and the vast majority of people asked that question said, "Absolutely not. We've heard nothing about it whatsoever." 
So I put on record my strong criticism of the Government for the way in which they are putting this bill through the House. I understand the reasons for it, and I certainly understand the reasons against it. In particular, I hope that the Government listen to the strong concerns of victims of crime who felt yet again that this was an insulting slap in the face for their concerns, particularly during the lockdown, because we heard many distressing stories from victims who felt deeply aggrieved and insulted by this bill's consideration.





CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Just before I call the next member, could I just remind the committee of the whole House of the resolution of the House to remove the four five-minute call limit on committee stage contributions. The idea behind that was to encourage an interaction with the Minister. So we would have shorter calls—not necessarily shorter, but there could be far more shorter calls and a conversation with the Minister. So, in order to encourage a conversation, you will really need to try and have a question in the contribution from the members.





SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the committee stage of the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I just want to thank the Hon Tim Macindoe for the contribution that he made and the points that he outlined around the sham of the process that this bill has gone through. Yet again, here we are, under urgency debating this legislation. If you were to look back over the history of this legislation, it is chequered with a sham of a process on a significant piece of legislation going through Parliament.
I want to focus a couple of questions around clause 5, which amends section 80 of the Electoral Act, which includes the definitions of those who will be qualified to register under this piece of legislation. It says "a person who is detained under—(i) a sentence of imprisonment for life; or (ii) a sentence of preventive detention; or (iii) a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 3 years or more:". I want to focus on the definition there: a sentence of imprisonment for a term of three years or more. Those people remain disqualified for registration, but those who are sentenced to imprisonment for a term of less than three years will now be qualified. And I ask the question to the Minister as to how many people this will apply to, how many prisoners will be qualified under this legislation and what it intends to do? Then I ask the Minister also if he can outline a number, or give some examples potentially, of some of the offences that some of those people have committed in order to get those sentences. I'd like the Minister to potentially even answer this question, which is to tell the committee how many, on average, convictions are required by an offender to essentially end up in jail? What's the average number of convictions? I guess this is the question: what is the average number of convictions that a sentenced prisoner has in our prisons in New Zealand? Because—
Darroch Ball: What's that got to do with it?
SIMEON BROWN: Well, what does that have to do with it? Because, Mr Ball, and I know you're supporting this, New Zealand First is not on the side of victims here, because this is a conversation around the victims of crime. Those people in prison, they go to prison and they lose some of their rights whilst they're in prison, and that includes their right to be able to vote. That is one of the rights that they lose when they go to prison, and they break the social contract, and they have some of their rights taken away from them.
Darroch Ball: Why was it a member's bill?
SIMEON BROWN: If Mr Ball wants to stand on the side of prisoners rather than victims, that's his choice. But we won't on this side, and I look forward to the Minister's answers.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. In the spirit of the conversational exchange—which I think the current rules now promote—let me respond. I might just respond to Mr Macindoe's points. I understand the passion and enthusiasm that he brings to the submissions that he makes, except to say that, while Parliament itself and the House did not operate during lockdown, select committees continued to meet and to do their business; it wasn't a holiday for MPs. Every MP, as far as I know, the stories I've heard, continued to work, supported and engaged with their constituents, and supported and engaged on important topical issues, including this one. I do point out that the select committee received 2,578 written submissions on this bill, 78 percent of which supported the bill, and I think we should bear that in mind.
To Mr Brown's points, and I know he repeated the issues about process and urgency and what have you, but to turn to clause 5 and the new section 80(1)(d), he asks how many would it apply to. Well, according to officials, between 1,800 and 1,900 prisoners currently. And I think, to put that into context, there are roughly 9,600 people in prison; 36 percent of them have the right to vote, because they're remand prisoners—they've always had the right to vote, they'll continue to have the right to vote, and under National, they did—and this will add between 1,800 and 1,900. And just to allay the fears that members of the National Party might have: if they are so concerned about 1,900 other people getting the vote, they are in worse shape in the polls than we have hitherto thought they were. So I wouldn't get too concerned about that.
In terms of the other two questions that Mr Brown raised, the first of which was the examples of the offences it would apply to and how many, on average, convictions does it take to end up in prison, it is simply not possible to give a single answer to those questions. Because, in the end, sentencing is the job of judges, and they look at the offence, they look at the track record, they look at the circumstances of the offending, they look at how the particular offender has responded—have they pleaded guilty early, have they taken responsibility for their actions, has there been some sort of response in terms of the victim? All of those factors get taken into account. There are some offences that are eligible for a prison sentence but do not incur a prison sentence on the first conviction—there might be multiple convictions before it does; so that doesn't help.
In the end, what this comes down to, as the National Party agreed in 1993, when they reinstated the right of prisoners with a sentence of less than three years the right to vote—they considered that somebody sentenced to less than three years is generally at the lower end of offending, they are going to come out, and the National Party then supported the principle, as this Government does now, that even if you are in prison at the time of one election but sentenced to less than three years, you are going to be released back into the community and the democratic principles suggest that you should have the right to have a say on who's leading the country that you're going to be released free into. This is not an open slather, every prisoner gets to vote; it is knowing that some prisoners would be out before the next election and they must have a right to have a say on who's going to lead their country.
To the argument about victims, that this is anti-victim, well then, the members opposite will have to argue that, actually, once sentenced to prison, you should permanently lose your right to vote, even if you're released on parole or you've finished your sentence. That's the logical extension of that argument, and that is why the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal have all rejected the National Party argument, and I might add this too: if they are so convinced that taking away the right of prisoners sentenced to a sentence of less than three years is somehow going to have some massive rehabilitative and ameliorative effect, why is it, since 2010, that the prison population went—under their Government—from 7,500 to nearly 11,000? This didn't make a difference.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Before I call the Hon Mark Mitchell, can I apologise to both previous speakers; I pushed the button at one minute, forgetting I wasn't to do that in committee stage. My apologies to members, and thank you for ignoring it. 





Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, can I address one of the comments that the Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, made in his response, when he said that the National Party must be concerned about the election result this year as we were trying to prevent 1,900 prisoners from voting. So I would assume by that statement that the Minister feels that those 1,900 prisoners are going to vote for Labour. But I think that's very unfair—I think that's extremely unfair, because Darroch Ball, he deserves his share; New Zealand First, they deserve a share of that 1,900 vote. So, Minister, I would say to you that if you're making the assumption—and it would be fair to say that that's the assumption—that the 1,900 prisoners that are going to get the vote at the general election this year are going to vote for Labour or for New Zealand First, I put it to you that it's probably highly likely—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Could you put it to the Minister, please.
Hon MARK MITCHELL: —that the victims are going to vote for—well—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Could you put it to the Minister, not to me.
Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, Madam Chair. I'd put it to you, Minister, that it's highly likely that the victims—and, by the way, there are far more victims—are likely to be voting for the National Party this year, because we unashamedly stand up and always will speak on the right of the victims and we always put victims at the heart of any of our criminal justice policies. Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to address that point, because it wasn't strictly part of the bill.
The question that I've got for the Minister is this: if you truly stand by your values, if you truly stand by the—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Could you please address the Minister rather than the Chair. Break a habit of a lifetime.
Hon MARK MITCHELL: If the Minister truly stands by those values, why are they not passing a bill that gives every prisoner the right to vote? Why are they restricting it to prisoners with a term less than three years?
And, by the way, could the prisoner take—sorry, not the prisoner; could the Minister—ha, ha!—please stand and explain to me one thing: how are they going to apply this rule when you have a prisoner that may come in with a less than three years prison sentence, offends while in prison—which happens often—and he has a new sentence which extends him beyond that three-year period? What happens if a prisoner has got a five-year sentence and actually has it reduced because he completes his rehabilitation, training, and courses, and so he's actually going to come out before the end of his sentence? How is the Minister going to deal with that? How is the system going to respond to that? Those situations are going to arise, and to me it appears that you're going to immediately have inequity within a process and a system that you're passing through this bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to my good friend the Hon Mark Mitchell. Look, in relation to who prisoners might be voting for, I agree with him that they could be voting for anybody. I think, as my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins pointed out, many of them are entrepreneurs; they just happen to operate in the black market not in the legal market. They're often self-directed and certainly self-interested, so many of them will be natural National Party supporters.
I just want to make this point, too, about who stands for victims. The party that stands for victims, or the Government that stands for victims, is the one that's beefed up the police force and given the police the personnel, the numbers, and the tools to actually do the job of getting on top of gangs, getting on top of illegal firearms, and actually keeping the community safe. That's what prevents more victims, not this sort of nonsense. 
Anyway, to answer the question about why not extend it to every prisoner: for the very reasons I pointed out, this is about accepting the principle that there are some prisoners who we know between elections will be released—and it might be a month after the election, it might be six months after the election; they're back in the community for 2½ years. They ought to have a say on who the Government is that is running the country that they're going to be released into. 
The member asked: what if the sentence is changed? That is catered for. If there is an appeal—if, for example, the Crown appeals a sentence on the grounds it's too short and it is extended beyond three years—that prisoner comes back off the roll, has to come off the roll. If the sentence is originally longer than three years but the defendant appeals and their sentence is reduced, Corrections has to go to that prisoner and work on the process of getting them back on the roll. That's the way it operates. So the system is able to accommodate changes in sentence even after initial sentencing.





CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Chair. It's good to have the opportunity to participate in this discussion in the committee stage in relation to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I have a number of questions for the Minister that are clustered around the idea of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I can do that probably in reasonably short order, but please bear with me. I'll get all those out, sort of, in one hit, so to speak, before perhaps going on to other topics.
We heard from a number of submitters who made good, compelling submissions in favour of the bill but with a reservation around the fact that there appears to be inconsistency internally whereby prisoners being denied the right to vote are said to have had their rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act curtailed. The argument was that there was somewhat of an arbitrary line between prisoners who had been sentenced for less than three years and three years or more. I acknowledge that the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little, has outlined an argument in respect of prisoners being able to vote, effectively, on—one step removed, but let's say voting on the laws of the land that will apply to them after they're released, the argument being that they're voting for those who will in turn make the laws of the land.
But I think that it's worth addressing, and I'd like to have on record the Minister's thoughts about a situation where a prisoner is imprisoned for more than three years but doesn't have the opportunity within their last three years prior to being released. I think that might be part of the intent underlying the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in the name of the Green Party member who's put one forward, and I look forward to hearing from her on that subject as well. I'm curious to know, in the first instance: is it the case that one of the bases for amending the law that the Minister has brought to the House is inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and, second, whether he intends therefore to support the SOP in the name of Ms Ghahraman, and, finally, on a related point, what he would anticipate his response would be when, inevitably, this matter is brought before the senior courts again, they again declare the law to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? Would he anticipate changing the law or seeking that Parliament change the law at that time? Thank you.
Golriz Ghahraman: Madam Chair.
Hon Andrew Little: Madam Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): The Hon Andrew Little.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I just thought we were trying to keep this conversation—because I have seen it working quite well, even in contentious legislation. So my apologies to my colleague Golriz Ghahraman. 
To Mr Penk, he is right: one of the reasons this bill is here is because there is a slather of judicial findings that the legislation as it is currently is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I'd just point out that for someone sentenced to more than three years, the bill does still set up a requirement on the Department of Corrections to assist that prisoner at the point of release to enrol if they wish to do so—to proactively provide that assistance. 
Now, the member asked will we be supporting the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Golriz Ghahraman. No, we won't be. We made the decision on the principle I've pointed out, but also the fact that the law that had been in place since 1993—and, in fact, actually, it had been in place earlier, for a longer period of time—we thought struck the right balance in terms of our electoral law. We know that for those who commit offences and offend against society and social mores to the point where they are incarcerated and lose their freedom of movement and freedom of association and all those sorts of freedoms but where that is a short-term sentence and they're going to be out before the next election, they ought to retain the right to vote. 
We know it is an arguable point—and it is in communities around the world—as to how many citizens' rights and civilian rights, or civil rights, you take off somebody sentenced to prison. You automatically lose your right to freedom of movement and your right to freedom of association and you have a huge curtailment of the right of freedom of speech. Should you lose other rights as well, and, look, that's a fertile debate. But, actually, for New Zealand it was reasonably well settled until what I think was a pretty gratuitous political act in 2010. Under a member's bill, no less, the law changed, and this Government does not think that that was a savoury thing to do. We think there is a principle underpinning this. 
It may well be that in a subsequent hearing, the law as changed by this law change may also be found to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and I know there were submitters who said that. There is judicial reasoning from previous cases that actually upheld the 1993 law as being consistent with the 1990 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So that remains an arguable point. I think the balance is struck well here, and it's the right thing to do. 





GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I relish the opportunity to enter this conversation at this point, I think, given that two members who have spoken previously have referenced my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 518 to amend this bill further to extend the right to vote to all prisoners. The reason for that is that New Zealand is a proud nation that upholds and protects basic human rights even when the absolute worst has happened. I think the criminal justice system is the absolute testing point of our willingness to adhere to basic human rights and, in particular, as lawmakers, to uphold those rights without prejudice.
We've been told—and other members have referenced this—by all the courts of the land, right up to the Supreme Court of New Zealand and the Waitangi Tribunal, that the ban on people in prisons from voting is a breach of those fundamental rights. That's really important to notice, because human rights are universal. That is the core and essence of our basic rights. We don't have human rights because we're good but because we are human. It's important to notice that, because it's a slippery slope. If we are to take away human rights based on arbitrary moral judgments, what's next? Do we take away the right to healthcare from our prisons? Do we take away the right to be free from torture? 
And on that, in terms of balancing people's human rights as against the restrictions that we can put upon them in a lawful society, I do a little bit have to disagree with the Minister respectfully, because I don't think it is a live debate in terms of the right to vote, not in any legal sense. We heard from the Human Rights Commission in select committee, where they outlined it really clearly. We can take away people's rights in the criminal justice system where there is a valid criminal justice purpose. So, in the Sentencing Act, for example, the purpose of sentencing someone to prison comes back to things like keeping the community safe, rehabilitation, successful reintegration back into the community, and none of those things are impacted by taking away that one vote that the prisoner has. The community is not kept more safe; victims are not restored. In fact, everybody noted—who had the expertise or experience to note—that the purposes of rehabilitation and successful reintegration back to the community are actually damaged by disconnecting prisoners from that community.
Now, to come back to who we're actually talking about in terms of those impacted by this ban, by this breach of fundamental rights, we are a Government who has looked at the research and we acknowledge that our criminal justice system is racist. It disproportionately targets Māori, other communities of colour, and lower socio-economic communities. So who are we taking away from our democracy? Who are we banning? Who are we disenfranchising further and further when we ban prisoners from the vote? Because we already know that Māori, for committing the same act, are far, far more likely to be convicted and sentenced to imprisonment than anybody else. The Waitangi Tribunal told us that that's not OK.
Coming back to victims and the rights of victims—how are they impacted? Well, I fear that in this Chamber we often talk in terms of being tough on crime, with rhetoric that does nothing for victims. Instead, we could support victims and uphold fundamental human rights in our justice system. We could provide for mental healthcare. We can provide for a better healthcare system, for housing, for things that actually keep our communities connected and secure. While that side of the Chamber speaks about the rights and wellbeing of victims, victims of violent crime who went to hospital for the last nine years were lying in hospitals where the walls were rotting. That's not what we are about. Let's actually take care of victims and let's uphold the integrity of our justice system by upholding fundamental rights. New Zealand should be a place where, proudly, universal suffrage happened. It should be a place where arbitrary moral lines aren't drawn by a Government to disenfranchise communities—in particular, not Māori and our most vulnerable communities. So please vote for my SOP.





SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Chair. You chose the much better of the two to take a call. I just wanted to reflect briefly on the fake news from the Green Party, where they talked about the walls of Middlemore Hospital. Well, that one has been debunked well and truly, and so it's fake news. But let's get back to what this bill is actually about.
The Green Party here is actually saying—and I must commend them; principled, principled—let's give all prisoners the right to vote. That's the essence of the Supplementary Order Paper and the argument getting put forward. I just want to acknowledge that that is a principled position to come from. It's a principle that I don't agree with, but at least it's a principled position. Unlike the Minister's position, which is to stand up in the House and say, "Well, at this stage, we'll allow prisoners who have been sentenced to three years or less, but who knows what might happen in the future." We might get a Human Rights Tribunal decision or something might get challenged in the courts. He's passing other legislation around inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and all the rest. So we might just see what happens. Will we be having this conversation again, that we might extend it to six years or nine years or 10 years? So where does the line get drawn?
The Minister has said, "Well, three years is kind of around about where we think it's right." But I challenge the Minister: you can't have it one way or the other; you've got to be principled about this, principled as to whether it's all prisoners who have been sentenced—
Darroch Ball: National passed the Electoral Act in '93! Where was your principle then?
SIMEON BROWN: —or whether it's no prisoners who have been sentenced. And the National Party stands on the side of principle and says—
Darroch Ball: Answer the question, Mr Brown!
SIMEON BROWN: I'm asking questions here.
Darroch Ball: Answer the question!
SIMEON BROWN: This is the committee of the whole House stage, Mr Ball. If you'd like to take a call, feel free to ask the Minister a question. But I'm putting a question to the Minister around—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm happy to invite the member for a call when he stands and calls, but in the meantime, just carry on.
SIMEON BROWN: —thank you for your support, Madam Chair; it's much appreciated—what the principle is around why it is three years. Because I've heard lots of reasons and lots of "We'll see what happens." But I have not seen a principled decision from the Minister as to why people who commit offences which get sentenced to up to three years are going to be given the right to vote but those convicted to a sentence of over three years will not be.
The question does come back down to victims of crime, because there will be many, many people—many thousands of people out there—who have had their rights taken away, who have been hurt, who have had criminal acts, assaults, a whole range of criminal offences taken against them. There are victims of crime who have had—whether it's their livelihood or whether it's other aspects of their human dignity destroyed or damaged by these criminals, and this piece of legislation has nothing for those people. This is by people who are sentenced to sentences of less than three years. There are people who have had criminal acts taken against them, where they've lost life, they've had personal injury, they've had assaults, they've had financial loss—a whole range of different things taken against them—and this bill has no recognition of them in it. So the question to the Minister is: where is the principle as to why it should be three years and less, and not all prisoners, or none?





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I'm just trying to tease out the contradiction in that member's argument, and I'll just put it there. So he wants the right for all prisoners to vote regardless of the length of sentence, but he thinks it's an affront to the victims, and actually no one should have the right to vote if they've gone to prison. So if the member comes to the House with a story, it should be a straight story. Let's be consistent.
Let me respond to some of the points he made. So he's a bit worried, as I understand it, as I infer from his contribution, that if there is a future court ruling perhaps on this law that says it's still inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, therefore, what are we going to do. I'd just make this point: the laws of this land are in the hands of this House. The laws of this land are in the hands of this House. This House will decide. And even under the declaration of an inconsistency with legislation that we've got going through the House at the moment, it is very clear. Courts may well declare laws to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it will come back to this House and this House will decide. And one of the decisions the House might make is it's going to carry on, for the very good reason that at a political level we decide that inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is one that is tolerable. So there is no further risk there. 
The member asked: why three years? I've laid that out. It is about the right of those sentenced to a short sentence who know that by the time of the next election they will be out and therefore they're going to have a period of freedom and their right to have a say on who's going to govern the country that they're going to be released into.
I might just say this about victims of crime, because I know the National Party trots that out as if they're somehow the champions of the victims of crime. They're not. They ran down the police force. We saw a rise in crime, a massive increase in the prison population under their time, a lot of victims as a result. They did nothing about trying to improve the outcomes for prisoners to reduce their offending. They just carried on putting more and more back into prison. But I make this point too: actually, the majority of those in prison are also victims of crime. They've been victims of child abuse, child sexual abuse. They've been beaten and treated and also badly assaulted and harmed. Most of those people in prison are victims of crime. So when the members opposite are trying to trot this out as though they're mutually exclusive; they're not. And if we have a system that's doing its job, it's actually recognising that and working on stopping the criminal habits and the criminal attitudes to change those behaviours.
In any event, I go back to the point I made before: members who were in the previous Government voted for this. It might've been a member's bill, but the National Party unanimously supported it when they were in Government, as a member's bill, and in 2010, when the prison population was only 7,500, the law change at that time that they supported did nothing to stop the prison population rising to nearly 11,000. So taking away that this right to vote for this small proportion of prisoners does not make it better for victims, does not reduce the number of victims. So let's not kid ourselves that that somehow is a magic answer to the problem of victims of crime. 
There are other things that need to happen. What victims of crime most want is a strong voice in the system. They don't want to be ignored any more, because they've been papered over for so long. So that's where we're looking. That's the support that we're providing. We've started in the last couple of Budgets and we will continue, if we're given permission to do so, after 19 September.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): If the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little, had actually listened to the voice of victims, he would've taken a very different perspective, because, at the select committee stage of this bill, we heard from numerous organisations representing victims saying, actually, part of our criminal justice system is about freedom. When you are locked up in a prison, you lose the freedom of association; you lose the freedom of movement; you lose the freedom to be able to have imparted information; and, equally so, you lose the right to vote. In the eyes of victims, actually, this Government is far more preoccupied with the rights of criminal offenders than it is with those that are the victims of crime.
Now, the Minister also made reference to the legislative principles around this bill. His problem is that this bill does not resolve the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues, that, actually—and the Labour Party, in submissions at the Justice Committee, argued that every offender, every person in prison, should be able to vote. In fact, a number of branches of the Labour Party appeared before the committee. You could take it to the logical extreme where the appalling offender who has subsequently pleaded guilty to the killing of 51 people in the grotesque act that occurred at the Christchurch mosques—and the puritans in the Labour Party argue that that man should be entitled to vote in our elections. We say no, that's incorrect, that people who are in jail are in jail for a reason.
I also want to move away from the Minister's sort of idealistic position that those in prison are somehow—they've committed one offence, you know, they made a bit of an error and we shouldn't hold it against them. For goodness' sake! We heard at the select committee that the average—
Brett Hudson: They're not there for stealing a Moro bar.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That's right. I say to my colleague, our spokesperson for police—soon to be Minister of Police—that, actually, 24 offences, that's the average number. It's not like these people haven't been given a second chance. In fact, the law, which this party agrees with, is that prison should be the last resort, not the first resort, for judges when they're dealing with criminal offenders. The honest truth is those that are in jail are people that have committed multiple offences against the law of the land, and we heard evidence at the select committee that, in fact, 24 criminal offences is the average number for—
Rt Hon David Carter: The average?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That's the average. We had one guy before the committee where it was over 120 offences—
Rt Hon David Carter: And they want to give them the vote—they want to give them the vote?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —and they say that those people should be entitled to vote. I say to my good friend and colleague David Carter: they are desperate for votes. They have, for 2½ years, been chasing the votes of criminals. They don't care about the rights of victims. They don't care about the basic standards that we expect in our community. It is simply a crude grab for power, by which they think they can score a few thousand more votes. The political strategy is flawed.
I particularly want to refer to the New Zealand First Party. The New Zealand First Party—just go on Facebook; they are horrified. If they look in the mirror on 20 September and they want to know why they have been ejected from this place, they need look no further than their support for this bill. This is anathema to the hard law and order approach, and I invite those New Zealand First MPs opposite to talk to their party members about what they think about giving votes to prisoners. What it shows is not just with this part but an overall approach by this Government that is soft on crime.
The last bit I want to address in this part is the practical issues for our prisons in providing for the right to vote. I was privileged for a period to be the Minister of Corrections, and at that time it was actually really difficult, practically, to provide for prisoners to vote. For instance, only MPs are allowed within the premises of prisons. So is it fair in a democratic system that members of Parliament, the incumbents, can go into prisons and campaign for votes but not candidates who are seeking the support in those particular electorates? I think that's a pretty fundamental right, that all candidates have a fair crack. I also believe that a really important part of the political process is being able to ask questions, to receive information, to have free access to the internet and read all the different ranges of political opinions, because what will flow from this bill is, next minute, you will have criminals appealing: "Well, I've got the right to vote; well, I should be able to on Facebook. I should be able to express views on laws. I should be able to impart freely information." Well, look, I know—and you only need look at the mess that occurred when the man who's pled guilty to the Christchurch mosques was able to freely write letters. It speaks volumes of the attitude of the current Government: all about the rights of criminals and not about the rights of victims and the important part that, actually, punishment plays in our criminal justice system.
I do raise a real question about the practicality of serving prisoners being able to vote given the degree to which we, logically and properly, extensively restrict the freedoms of those people. Now, there are jurisdictions around the world—the bulk of them in the United States—where, if you are convicted of a felony, you never get to vote again in your life. Now, National is absolutely of a view that that is wrong. We are of that old-fashioned perspective that says if you do the crime, you do the time; when you've done your time, you regain all your rights as a citizen. That is the proper, balanced position that this National Party has taken for many, many years on this issue.
Darroch Ball: How many years—how many years?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I reflect—well, I reflect on the vast bulk of New Zealand's history, to New Zealand First. The bulk of New Zealand's history—
Darroch Ball: In fact, that member was here in 1993 when the Electoral Act was voted for this legislation.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I'd love New Zealand First to take a call. I'll make a bet with my mate David Carter: New Zealand First will not take a call on this bill, because this bill is a suicide note from the New Zealand First Party. I cannot find a New Zealand First supporter anywhere from Invercargill to Bluff who has said, "I like prisoners being able to vote. I want to be soft on crime. New Zealand First's mandate is to be soft on crime and to vote for a bill that will give prisoners the vote." I say to that New Zealand First member of Parliament: prepare for and enjoy your last few weeks in Parliament, because your support for this bill is one of the reasons that your party is so low in the polls and is going to be rejected by the people of New Zealand on 19 September.
You see, we do support prisoners, having done their time, being able to get easily back on the roll. I actually indicated at the select committee that there is a sort of an academic argument as to whether the practical mechanism is that you allow prisoners to stay on the roll but not be able to exercise that voting right while they are in prison, rather than this business of actually tossing them off the roll and then going through the bureaucratic process of putting them back on. I actually think the practical provisions of our electoral law would actually have them remaining on the roll but, while they are serving time in prison, for those practical and principal reasons that I've set out, not being able to cast a vote. That's the law in the mother of all parliaments, in the UK; that is the case in many jurisdictions around the world; and we actually think it is the practical, balanced perspective, that if you offend the laws of the land and you can't respect them, you surrender your right, for your term of prison, to actually be able to practically participate in the enormous privilege we have to be part of this democracy in New Zealand. That is why National opposes Part 1 of this bill.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I know that that member who has just resumed is struggling to come to terms with the new spirit of the committee of the whole House stage, where it is more conversational and questions are posed; that's why the limit on the number of calls has been completely removed. In any event, let me assist the member, if only to assist him with history, because I know that member also struggles with history. He certainly struggles with facts, but he definitely struggles with history. And here is the point: the law changed in 1993, under a National Government. The National Government in 1993, of which he was a part, changed the law to allow prisoners serving a sentence of less than three years to vote. That member voted for it. He might have forgotten, but he voted for it.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Would the member yield to explain that very point?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No, I've taken my call. The member had eight minutes—that member had eight minutes to make his point. I know he's full of excuses; next to his slim grasp on facts are his excuses for what he has and hasn't done. And I know he brings considerable experience to this debate, not only because he voted for this very law change himself in 1993 but because he's been through the criminal justice system, because he has a conviction for contempt of court. So we know all that. So he brings that experienced insight; we know that. But here's the thing here: when he says that National has stood by this principle for many years, it's actually not that many years, because in 1993 they voted for this very thing. They allowed this. If he was so concerned that maybe they shouldn't be taken off the roll, they should be just denied the right to vote. He, by 2010, was a very, very experienced MP, a Minister, and he did not make that change. He did not propose that. They just let it go through because it was expedient, because they thought there were a few points in it, dare I say a few votes in it. That's why they did it.
Here's the other point. He did make an interesting point, but, unfortunately, so devoid of evidence, which is that there's a practical question for Corrections. And I say to that member: no, there isn't. Because, of the roughly 9,700-odd prisoners at the moment, 3,400 have the right to vote—3,400 have the right to vote. The Electoral Commission has to work with corrections to make sure those 3,400 prisoners get to exercise their right to vote, and this bill will affect between 1,800 and 1,900 extra prisoners. Nil extra effort required from the Electoral Commission, nil extra effort required from the Department of Corrections. The member is simply wrong.
Now, he quite correctly pointed out the right of sitting MPs to have access to prisons, and they do that; it's one of the checks and balances on what is happening in prisons, and so they do that. But the member has never raised any issue for candidates talking to the 3,400 remand prisoners before. I mean, the last election was about 3,100. It's gone up since then, but the member's never raised that before. The reality is: remand prisoners in the last election, the election before that, and no doubt the one before that exercised their right to vote; they got access to information, they'll continue to get access to information, and that will continue under this bill. But it is not correct to say that, without this bill, no one in prison gets the right to vote—36 percent of the prison population now currently has the right to vote. This will make a sensible adjustment, as it was made in 1993, on a principled point that those who are in prison now who will be released into the community before the next election must have a right to have a say on who is leading the country that they're being released into. That is the principle.





MICHAEL WOOD (Senior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.





CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to resume on that subject of the practical aspects of the bill, more particularly the administration that is involved not only in the campaigning side of things, which has been the subject of a little bit of discussion so far, but also the mechanics of voting and the practical challenges that are faced for those who are detained at Her Majesty's pleasure and soon to be given, in the case of those who are there for up to three years, the ability to vote. The implication, I would hope, for all members of this House, and indeed all candidates across the land, is that there is a deep and obvious connection between the right, which we could also phrase as the "responsibility", to vote and the right—and, again, responsibility—to be informed such that a vote can be meaningful. 
So I have a couple of specific questions in that regard, but also I'm just interested in assurances that the Minister of Justice can give about the way that he would envisage the law being given effect to. I do want to acknowledge that I'm not asking the Minister to say anything that would be inappropriate from the point of view of directing the Electoral Commission. We've got an important constitutional point that legislators don't direct the specific operations of that body. It's quite right that they be able to conduct their important role in a way that's free from interference. But, having said that, of course it's the responsibility of this House, and of course the Minister in whose name this bill appears before us, to consider whether it will be possible for them to carry out the role that they already have, which I would like to acknowledge as being done by them in an exceptional manner, as compared with, of course, the provisions of the bill. 
So one of the issues that I've become aware of is exercising my right—and, again, responsibility—as a member of Parliament to visit prisons. I have Auckland prison within my electorate, commonly known as "Pare" colloquially in the area—the maximum security prison. I was aware, visiting that establishment, that there are very serious demands for security, which relate not only to the desire—the understandable desire—of many prisoners to escape their confines but also in relation to issues such as the potential for self-harm; so that the material that comes through the wire, so to speak, is severely restricted, even to the point where flakes of paint need to be restricted. 
So I wonder how the Minister would envisage campaigning by candidates, MPs or otherwise, in a context where the literature that they might produce, pamphlets or collateral, however you might describe it—whether that would be made available to prisoners; noting the difficulties of them receiving, basically, anything physical at all. Of course, as others have pointed out, and I think the Hon Dr Nick Smith asked the question about the ability to communicate the other way, so to speak—prisoners to communicate with candidates—and, of course, how that interacts with the restrictions that are quite rightly placed on prisoners in terms of interacting with the outside world. 
So that's sort of a broad set of questions. But I did want to specifically—please, Madam Chair, if you could invite the Minister to answer that particular point about the physical material that's associated with campaigning. I also would be interested to know, and I ask this probably foolishly, but I ask this question because I don't know the answer; and I know that might sound a bit silly to be making it a novel point, but my question to the Minister is quite simply: is it the case that, under our electoral law, that qualification for being a candidate for election includes the basis that one is on the electoral roll, and, therefore, is it the case that by virtue of this legislation, a prisoner who is incarcerated for less than three years will be able to be a candidate at the election as a result of this legislation? Now, I appreciate the answer might be no, or it also might be yes, but in any case, I would genuinely be interested to know that point from the Minister. Thank you.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I'll try and deal with the latter point first. It is correct that, in order to be a candidate, you have to be enrolled and to meet the citizenship and residency requirements. Whether that means you could be a candidate—if that is the case, it is the case now. A remand prisoner—if the law is correct that you are enrolled and you have a right to vote and it is correct that you can also be a candidate, remand prisoners can be candidates now. So this wouldn't change that if that is correct.
Brett Hudson: They didn't put that on the tin, though.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That's a saving grace for Mr Hudson, obviously. He's obviously planning his future that he can do it from prison.
On the first question—and I know Mr Penk drew from his experience of Pāremoremo—I'm not sure how many inmates in Pāremoremo have been sentenced to sentences of less than three years. My hunch would be not many, because it's a maximum security prison. But, in any event, the substantial question is: can election material go into the prisons? I guess I would talk to candidates of the last few elections and see what steps they took to get their advertising material into prisons, trying to secure the prisoner vote.





MICHAEL WOOD (Senior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Motion agreed to.
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 518 in the name of Golriz Ghahraman to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 512 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 8
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 112
New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Amendments to the amendments not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Part 1 agreed to.





Part 2  Amendments relating to registration of sentenced prisoners as electors
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I don't intend to speak for long, just to introduce this part of the bill. So this is very much the mechanics of the changes here. It allows the gathering of information by Corrections from prisoners and the conveying of that information to the Electoral Commission.
There is one part that has changed compared to the bill that was introduced and went to the Justice Committee, and that is in relation to prisoners who are seeking to go on to the unpublished roll. The original draft of the bill suggested or implied or made it pretty clear that that would be an automated process; it was never intended to be. This has changed that so that any prisoner applying to go on to the unpublished roll stands in the same position as any other citizen applying to go on the unpublished roll, but the Department of Corrections will have a role in assisting the prisoner to fill out the application. But, in the end, the decision on whether or not a prisoner goes on to the unpublished roll once they're released is a question entirely for the Electoral Commission, applying the test and standards that they apply to any other citizen.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Part 2 of this bill specifically provides for provisions around prisoners being able, and prison officers being required to ensure those serving sentences be able, to go on to the electoral roll. I want to respond a little bit to the history and the debate which I have had with the Minister of Justice in order to clear that history up. As is so common with Mr Little, the moment anybody challenges him, he reverts to sort of attacking the integrity of members, rather than dealing with the issues. 
So let me set out very clearly the history. Up until 1975, New Zealand electoral law did not provide for prisoners being able to vote. The Labour Government of 1972 to 1975 amended the law and provided for all prisoners being able to vote in 1975. It was a law that was promised to be repealed by the incoming National Government, and that was done in 1976. 
The Minister made reference to the issues that occurred in 1993, which was when the distinction was made about the issue of the three years—where prisoners were serving a sentence of less than three years, they would be entitled to vote—and I want to inform the Minister in the chair as to how that occurred. I did serve on the select committee at the time. It was the will of the National Government under Prime Minister Jim Bolger at the time of the massive MMP reform and the writing of the 1993 Electoral Act to, as much as possible, build consensus around electoral law. It is a remarkable achievement, Andrew Little, and something that you should reflect on that with both that Government and the subsequent Key-English Government, every amendment to the electoral law was advanced with cross-party support. 
So while Andrew Little has prosecuted the argument and said that somehow—
Michael Wood: Except when they abolished voting in Canterbury. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —I was unprincipled in 1993, it was a compromise. I know that Michael Wood, who's chirping in—who moves closure votes, but hasn't taken a single call—would not understand the constitutional significance of electoral law. Mr Michael Wood thinks it's OK for the Government of the day to screw the electoral scrum to make it easier to win re-election. Now, we don't think that's right. So in 1993, when the complete Electoral Act was rewritten, there was a genuine compromise between Labour's position, which is that all prisoners should vote, and National's position. I voted for that compromise, and I'm proud of it—absolutely. 
Darroch Ball: So you voted for it. Where's your principle? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: New Zealand First says, yes, I voted for it, and let me tell you what the principle is: electoral law should not be being advanced on simple, narrow majorities. I said to the Minister of Justice in the chair at the beginning of this parliamentary term that my door was always open to working on a cross-party basis. 
There were seven electoral amendment bills advanced during the period of the English-Key Government. Every one of those bills under Simon Power, under Judith Collins, under Amy Adams—every previous Minister sitting where Andrew Little is sitting went to huge effort to consult with Opposition parties and try and build a consensus around electoral law. This is the fifth electoral bill that the Minister in the chair has done without any discussion at all with the Opposition. In fact, he's had the appalling approach of introducing legislation and passing it on the same day without any sort of consultation, and that shows a disrespect for New Zealand's constitutional norms and for the need in that area. 
The second area I want to pursue under Part 2 of this bill is the issues around the unpublished roll. These issues are important, and when the Minister introduced the bill to the House, supported by New Zealand First, the bill had criminals able to have access to the unpublished roll more easily than law-abiding citizens or victims of crime. That's what the original legislation said, and I raised that issue in the first reading. The Minister said that it was untrue and that I was wrong. His officials came in at the select committee and said, indeed, that that's exactly what the bill, unamended, says. It says that there is no legal threshold. In new section 115 in clause 8, what it says is that a criminal has an absolute right to be on the unpublished roll, but if you are a victim of crime, you have to apply and you have to meet statutory tests. 
Now, what is it about the Labour, Green, and New Zealand First parties that somehow they think it's OK that convicted criminals have more legal rights than those who are victims of crime or those who are law-abiding citizens? I'd love the New Zealand First member, who hasn't taken a single call on this bill, to explain to me why he voted at first reading for new section 115 in this bill, which says that if you are a convicted rapist or murderer, you'd get more legal rights to be on the unpublished roll than if you were the victim of a murder or rape. Would the New Zealand First member care to explain that? 
Well, the member for New Zealand First has been asked to explain why his party supported the rights of people who have criminal convictions to be on the unpublished roll to be greater than law-abiding citizens or victims. It was something extraordinary. We've pointed it out at first reading. The Government said that no such thing existed. The officials came to the select committee and said that we were absolutely right, and thank goodness there is a Supplementary Order Paper to fix that abhorrent provision in this bill, which members of National will support. We will never ever support laws that give rights to criminals that are greater than those of victims or law-abiding citizens. You could not send a worse signal than that provision, as introduced by this Minister and by this Government. 
The final point I'd like to make is this, and maybe New Zealand First—maybe this is the explanation for their support of this bill. But what this part does is allow a person in prison to stand for Parliament. Maybe it's the "Clayton Mitchell provision", given where the Serious Fraud Office—maybe Jami-Lee Ross has a great interest in Part 2—
Michael Wood: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would put it to you that that was an improper reflection on the motivations of members who may be voting for this bill and also an improper reflection on a member of this House, and that is out of order. 
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you. Yeah, I kind of agree, actually. The member has through his contributions through this debate been very close to there, as I've commented on previous contributions. The member should not do that, and I actually think the member should withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I withdraw and apologise. New section 86A in clause 7 of this bill and in this part allows a person with criminal convictions serving time in prison to stand for Parliament. Now, do we really think that that is sensible? 
Hamish Walker: Soft on crime. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, soft on crime, and I do note that there are members of Parliament facing serious criminal charges under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and maybe they do have an interest. Maybe that is why they are so enthusiastic. 
I would love the member from New Zealand First to take a call and explain why a person who is serving a sentence in prison—why it should be reasonable or practicable for them to be able to stand for Parliament. We think—
Hon Poto Williams: Repetition—repetition. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, the member says it's repetition. I think it's because she doesn't like it. I'd love the member who's interjecting to get to her feet and explain why it is sensible law to allow a person who a judge has decided to send to prison—that that person should be able to stand for Parliament. 
Here's the bit I'd love them to explain. I'd love them to explain how does a member of Parliament fulfil their constitutional duties if they are simultaneously serving a sentence in prison. I would love to reflect on the change in the Standing Orders that it would require, and the former Speaker of the House—his mind is boggling around how we might be able to have a—
Rt Hon David Carter: He or she could Zoom in on a regular occasion. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, they could Zoom in. They would be able to Zoom in from Pāremoremo prison as the member of Parliament for, probably, the Green Party or the Labour Party or, more likely, the New Zealand First Party—
Rt Hon David Carter: I think that's right. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —I think it's in there; it's the New Zealand First Party—and I say, man, we need to be a little bit practical. Is it sensible, I would ask the Minister, for us to amend the law and to allow a person who is serving a criminal sentence in prison to be able to stand for Parliament? 
Darroch Ball: This is ridiculous. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, the member says it's ridiculous. Can the Minister in the chair confirm it's true? Can the Minister in the chair confirm that new section 86A, which we're currently debating, would allow a person to stand for Parliament? 





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chairman. The member who has just resumed his seat, Dr Nick Smith, has made some interesting points. He did point out that his door was open, but, of course, we all know that it's not just your door that has to be open, it's your mind as well, and we know that his mind isn't. I acknowledge his criticism of me as someone who made some comments that were personal about others, and he's demonstrated how to address the Parliament in a way that doesn't personalise issues. I make this point: I know that member lives in a weird world—in a weird, strange world that is divorced from reality. But here's the point: if the member looked at the Electoral Act, all of it, he would see that the law as it is at the moment, as passed and approved by this Parliament under his Government, allows remand prisoners to be candidates in the general election. In that nine years they did nothing about it. They passed the law in 2010 allowing remand prisoners to be candidates—did nothing about it. He has no moral stance to take on this.
But here's the other point: if somebody, under this bill, if it is passed, nominates to be a candidate, there's a few hurdles they have to get through. They've got to get nominations, they have to pay a deposit—all difficult when you're behind bars. But here's the other thing: they then, in the most unlikely event that that would happen, and, secondly, that they'd get elected, have to be able to take up their seat in Parliament, and if, by a certain time they don't, they vacate that seat. Those are the practical implications. Now, most of us—possibly all but one of us in this Chamber—live in the real world. We understand how the world works. We take a practical approach to the world. We look at rules; we see how they apply in the real world. Not Dr Nick Smith. He lives in a fantasy world—in a fantasy land—which informs his arguments, which makes it entertaining, but doesn't help us to understand the law in front of the committee that we're trying to debate at the moment.





HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to make the point from a previous speaker Dr Nick Smith, a very hard-working and logical MP from Nelson—who's going to take the seat this year with a record-winning majority—new section 86A. And we heard from the Minister. The Minister said he lives in the real world—"You've got to have the door open. You've got to have your mind open." But, Minister, the real world Kiwis—do you think a Kiwi wants a convicted person, a prisoner, do you think they want a person that's committed a serious act—take, for example, the lovely lady, I won't mention her name, but she came and saw me in my electorate office two weeks ago. She was raped. They found the person that raped her. He was sentenced; 18 months' jail time. But she described to me the horrible, horrific act that this person did to her. Minister, if we talk about the real world, this shows how out of touch this Government is when it's more focused on giving prisoners the right to vote as opposed to the victims.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): So I've given the member 1½ minutes to get to Part 2, and the member really needs to link his comments to what he's saying and be relevant to Part 2, which he has not done yet.
HAMISH WALKER: So, if we just go to the enrolment process in new section 86A, that's around remand prisoners and whether or not they have the right to vote. I was fortunate enough, when I was 18 years of age, to work two years as a police jailer—a humble temporary constable. In that role, you get to know some of the prisoners, and talking to them they want consequences for their actions. When we're talking about new section 86A, around enrolment, what sort of consequence is it if you commit rape and you then get the right to vote? That's not right. And I look at the other side and they're all looking at the ground; they know it's not right. Jan Logie knows it's not right. You've been doing some wonderful work lately, Jan Logie. I acknowledge you and I look forward to seeing you taking a call on this. Darroch Ball knows it's not up to play. He hasn't taken a call.
If we want to live in the real world, why are we giving people like rapists the right to vote? It makes no sense at all. My colleague Simeon Brown, in his contribution before around enrolment, made a very good point that, during lockdown, 130 hours of prisoners' probation time was cut off while we were in lockdown. But I'd like the Minister to answer: why should someone who's committed an act like rape have the right to vote?





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I'm happy to answer that question. First of all, somebody convicted of rape, described in the terms that that member described them, does not get 18 months; they get a sentence way longer than three years. So I do not believe the member when he said that. Here's the point: this is about people sentenced to sentences of less than three years. 
One of the things that judges have to do when they're sentencing an offender is look at levels of culpability. So, as we know, there can be two people who are convicted of the same crime. Differences in culpability and differences in track record can lead to completely different outcomes. Somebody might not be sentenced to prison at all; somebody might be sentenced to prison; somebody might be sentenced to prison for less than three years; somebody might be sentenced to prison for more than three years—and all will have a different result. It will look quite arbitrary in terms of those kinds of civil rights.
But this law is the same law that the National Party supported in 1993. In my view, and this Government's view, it strikes the right balance between ensuring that those whose offending is at the lower end of the scale—not those who commit rape or cause serious harm, because they get much longer sentences than that, much longer sentences than that. No one convicted of rape is getting 18 months; it's just totally wrong. This strikes a balance between those whose offending is at the lower end of the scale, those whose culpability is at the lower end of the scale but sufficient to justify going to prison, but knowing that they will be out in the free world before the next election, having the right to have a say on those who're governing the country that they're going to be released into. That's the principle. It is a correct principle; it is not an open slather to any prisoner allowed to vote.
There are some prisoners whose conduct is so evil, so wrong, so egregious that they are sentenced to long periods in prison, and I maintain the view that it is an arguable proposition about how much of your rights you lose when you go to prison. But for those who offend most seriously, there is a justifiable contention that they lose the right to vote. There are judges who have made determinations to that effect in the last 20 years. That is a live debate, but this bill draws the balance, I think, at the right point.





BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I'd like to take up, if I could, some points or the principle that my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith raised about there being under this bill greater or different rights afforded to prisoners than to victims and other law-abiding citizens—actually, the point he raised about the ability to have one's details kept from the public electoral roll. I'd just sort of make this point that I understand there's a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) here that will change that. But until that SOP is actually voted on, we have no idea whether or not it will in fact be accepted, but the bill before us does have those provisions that do allow that prisoner to have their name kept off the public record. Presumably the Government, the Minister would have been happy for the bill to have passed without amendment had that not been raised as a matter in the select committee. 
So my question to him is: on what basis does he think it is appropriate that a prisoner might be able to more easily—in fact, with no justification, really—have their details kept from the public roll when there are actually very tight conditions applied to non-prisoners seeking to have their details not on that roll? That could still be what passes through this Parliament, and so I think he should justify that. [Interruption] I'm not finished yet, Minister. 
The other thing I've noticed, though, on the point of different rights is my understanding—and, look, we can all be wrong in some things in our life. My understanding is that an eligible voter has a legal obligation to enrol. We're not required to vote, but there is a legal obligation on those eligible to vote to enrol. This bill does not apply that obligation. This bill gives the prisoner the right to decide whether or not he or she wants to go on the roll, because the prison officer has to ask them if they want the prison officer to forward their details on to the Electoral Commission. The only deduction that can be made for that, because there is no other provision, even inferring something different in this bill, is that if the prisoner decides they don't want the prison officer to pass their information on, then they won't be on the roll. How, in fact, will that then sit with other electoral legislation? Because the overarching legislation is if you're eligible—and this creates eligibility—then you must enrol. But this bill says you have eligibility, but you don't have to enrol if you don't really want to.
Look, I can see officials looking, so I'll do the courtesy of just pointing out that we're here in Part 2, where that is—obviously, in clause 7, inserting new section 86A(2) and then it's repeated in new section 86B(2) as well. Yeah, that's correct; so those two. So if the prisoner then doesn't want their enrolment details sent to the Electoral Commission, they won't go. So we have a situation under this bill where a prisoner has the right, despite being eligible to vote, to not actually go on the roll, and I'd like the Minister to respond and justify why that is acceptable, because while we're not going to argue it's a greater right than other law-abiding New Zealanders have, it is a different obligation. And I think that warrants some scrutiny and some response from the Minister. So I look forward to that.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Just turning to the first bit, I know the member Brett Hudson and his colleagues are desperate to create a picture of something that doesn't exist. So the bill, when it came to the House, had a provision that on the face of it allowed prisoners to elect whether or not to go on to the unpublished roll without meeting the same tests and standards that every other citizen has done. That was wrong, it shouldn't have happened, submitters made that point, and it has been changed by me—the Minister. So I know it's good sport for the member to dredge that up because they've lost that argument and they want to beat the Government over the head with that big sort of stick, but it just doesn't exist—the thing doesn't exist. It is what they call a "straw person".
I know it makes the member feel good because he hasn't got much else to feel good about, but, actually, the law's very clear now in the Supplementary Order Paper: if a prisoner wants to apply to go on the unpublished roll, the Department of Corrections can assist them to make the application, but they stand alongside any other citizen making the same application with the same standards and tests that must apply.
In relation to the obligation to enrol, the member has to read that in context. So if he has a look at clause 7, new section 86A(1)(b), having, under paragraph (a) advised the prison they're entitled to enrol and all the rest of it, then they ask the prisoner whether they want their enrolment details sent to the Electoral Commission to facilitate their registration, and then under subsection (2), if the prisoner wants their enrolment details sent to the Electoral Commission to facilitate their registration as an elector, then a subsequent section applies. It may well be that the prisoner does not want the Department of Corrections officer to do that. A prisoner might want a family member to do that. A prisoner might want somebody else to take over that role of doing that. Just because the Department of Corrections has a duty to inform prisoners if they can be on the roll, to assist in facilitating that doesn't mean to say that it is the Department of Corrections that has to physically provide the information to the Electoral Commission.
The bill gives the power for the Department of Corrections to do that and for the Electoral Commission to receive that information from the Department of Corrections, because, if it wasn't in the bill, the Electoral Commission could not receive that information from the Department of Corrections. But the prisoner has another option. They can ask a family member or a friend to convey an enrolment form to the Electoral Commission on their behalf.





SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take a call on Part 2. I just want to refute a piece that the Minister said before, where he was responding to Hamish Walker's comment about a constituent of his who'd been raped and the offender had been convicted to a sentence of only 18 months. The Minister stood up and said "I don't believe the member.", well, I suggest that the Minister have a chat to the member before saying he's going to just simply reject—reject—something which he comes into the Chamber in good faith and says here in the Chamber.
I do want to just ask some questions here around clause 7, new section 86C, and the process that prison managers are to go through to collect and send enrolment information to the Electoral Commission. The Minister's just talked about the process and how Corrections can send the forms, or a family member, essentially, or a friend who, I guess, is visiting can collect those documents.
I do want to just ask around Supplementary Order Paper 512, clause 7, new subsection 2A, which is in regards to whether a prisoner wishes to apply for a direction under section 115, which is the unpublished roll, and the prison manager there must "assist the prisoner to prepare an application accompanied by supporting information". I'd like to ask the Minister to explain to the committee what involvement is required on behalf of Corrections or the prison manager to assist the prisoner in making that application. And I'd like to ask him in regards to what the process is they would go through. Is that in regards to finding supporting information, preparing it, putting it together for the prisoner in question? Is it around advising them around what they should be writing? Because there is, I believe, an application process; they have to give good reasons. So what would be involved in that process? Would it be obtaining any files that the prisoner doesn't have on hand and providing that so that it can be part of the information and part of the reasoning that goes into that? 
Because, I guess, the question here—and I acknowledge that the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper 512 essentially removes the sort of automatic right to go on the unpublished roll and restricts that to simply being an application which the prisoner is able to apply for. But I do want to understand what the Minister envisages by this process around how much time will be involved, how much involvement will the prison manager have in this process, and how much assistance will be given. Because, you know, I do bring this discussion back to the point that when I or any other member of the public goes to request to be put on the unpublished roll, you'd be given a form, told to go away and fill it out, and send it in. I'm not sure how much assistance is given to those.
And then I do want to make the point on top of that: what about the victims of crime? What assistance are they given if they're wanting to have their names put on an unpublished roll to protect themselves, potentially, from someone who's been sentenced to prison for less than three years? Are they also given some form of assistance? Because I don't see that in this piece of legislation—to assist them in the process of preparing an application. I think that's something which should be considered—actually giving victims of crime that assistance. If it's going to be given to those who have offended, broken the law of the land, convicted of serious offences worthy of imprisonment, then surely there should be some sort of assistance given to people who are victims of crime, who have had harm done to them by someone who's now in jail. I ask the Minister to explain that to the committee.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): On the point about the role of the prison manager to assist the prisoner, bearing in mind that for some prisoners, or I might say for many prisoners, they are illiterate—at least, they're not functionally literate—they struggle with filling out forms. So assistance will be expected to be provided for that. There may be some assistance in reading the requirements that a prisoner has to meet in order to get on the unpublished roll. What a prisoner has to do to acquire support and information will be up to the prisoner. But, obviously, you'd expect a prison manager or their delegates to ensure that letters requesting information are facilitated in and out of the prison. 
I would ask the member and members opposite to bear in mind this. There are some prisoners who are in prison who, notwithstanding their offending, do provide assistance to the authorities, to the police, to Corrections, and put themselves at risk in doing so. One of the reasons to get on the unpublished roll is because your safety is at risk, and you don't want to prevent them from making that application when actually some whose safety is at risk do so in order to assist the authorities. So there is that.
In terms of the member's second point, which I didn't note down—he's going to quickly shout it out to me.
Simeon Brown: It's in regards to the victims of crime.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The victims of crime. So the victims are given assistance and certainly victims of serious crime whose safety is at risk. They meet, on the face of it, the criteria to go on the unpublished roll. Victim Support, sometimes victims' court advisers, and that network of advisers support victims to make those applications, and I've met people who have been assisted to do so. There are people who live in fear of their lives and they need to be given assistance, and Victim Support services does that.





JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I'll take a very brief call on this and speak to the Green Party's support for this legislation. I do, in the context of that, need to respond—this is around enrolment to vote—to the comments that were made by a previous member, bringing in a case where I was asked to stand and speak in response to the experience of rape victims. I am just noting that I've had a message from Louise Nicholas herself, who's been watching this debate and is absolutely appalled at that member's contribution and the misrepresentation of a situation of a rape case. There are sentencing guidelines in four bands, and the minimum for rape is six to eight years and goes up to 20. That was a mischaracterisation for political purposes. That is exactly what we do not need when it comes to sexual violence in this country.
This is also one of the reasons that the Greens support this piece of legislation. We are continually hearing from survivors that what they want is for people to be held to account. They want people to be supported to change. Often, in the majority of cases, these are people that are close to them. It does not serve them to vilify rapists as monsters out there who deserve the absolute worst. We have to restore their connections to our society to help them rehabilitate. Hold them to account, keep victims safe, make sure victims are heard, but provide a pathway to rehabilitation. This piece of legislation is actually—surprisingly for some people, perhaps—part of doing that.





MICHAEL WOOD (Senior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.





ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wasn't planning on taking a call, but I just wanted to follow up on a question that my colleague Brett Hudson asked earlier, which I don't think the Minister of Justice perhaps quite understood, or, at least, if he did, then his answer created more questions for me than it did answers. It comes back to Part 2, clause 7, new section 86A, in relation to the requirement of a prison manager to inform the Electoral Commission of a prisoner's intention to enrol to vote. My concern, I suppose, comes to the Electoral Act 1993, off the top of my head, which has in there fines or punishments for people who choose not to enrol, because, of course, we do have compulsory enrolment in New Zealand. My recollection is that the fine is $100 in the first instance and then $200 for subsequent offences. My question to the Minister is: if a prisoner does not give that instruction to their prison manager, what other feasible way does a prisoner have to enrol; and, if they don't give that instruction, would that be sufficient for them to be fined under the Electoral Act if they are subsequently not enrolled and given a fine of $100 or, as I've said, a fine of $200 for a subsequent offence? I don't intend to take any more of the committee's time. I just want an answer from the Minister on that.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I'll try and make it as clear as I possibly can, for the benefit of Mr Falloon. The obligation is on the prison manager to advise an eligible prisoner, so a prisoner who's 18 years or older or will achieve the age of 18 in the foreseeable period, of their right to enrol—their obligation to enrol, in fact—and, where agreeable, to take information or assist in filling out a form. 
The bill gives the power of the Department of Corrections to collect that information and pass it on to the Electoral Commission, because if the Department of Corrections does not have the statutory power to do so, they cannot do so. But using the Department of Corrections and its channels and its people is not the only way that somebody in prison on a sentence of less than three years can convey information to the Electoral Commission. They might hand it to a family member on a visit or to a friend on a visit to convey that information to the Electoral Commission. So this is permissive for the Department of Corrections and their managers and their personnel, but it is not exclusive to the Department of Corrections to assist a prisoner in enrolling to vote.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Chris Penk—Chris Penk.





CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I apologise if I didn't quite catch my name being said by you. Thank you, sir, for the opportunity to continue this discussion. My question was just to the Minister of Justice about the subject of remand versus other prisoners—versus sentenced prisoners—in the fact that the legislation before us, including in Part 2, talks about those who have been received into a prison to serve a sentence of imprisonment for a term of less than three years, and so forth. The significance of that is that a person who is merely a remand prisoner has not, in the case of remand prisoners awaiting trial, been determined to have committed any crime at all. So while I acknowledge that some of the issues that I've raised in practical terms relating to the difficulties of communication and the physical importation—if that's the right word—of election material, some of those arguments or those questions, do apply to a prisoner whether he or she is remand or otherwise, in relation to the more fundamental question of whether it's appropriate for a prisoner to be able to vote, I would submit—and be interested in the Minister's response—that it makes all the difference in the world to whether a person is a remand prisoner awaiting trial or a prisoner who has indeed been sentenced to serve a sentence of imprisonment.
Of course, the fundamental basis for that proposition is that the New Zealand law—and, indeed, the criminal law of other jurisdictions with which we like to compare ourselves favourably and from which our own system has been derived—
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member, but it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The committee will resume at 7.30 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Members, when we rose for the dinner break, we were considering Part 2. Chris Penk had the call and has three minutes, six seconds remaining should he wish to take it.
CHRIS PENK: Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know if I surprise and/or disappoint you, but I do indeed wish to take at least some of the remaining three minutes and six seconds that have been allocated to me.
I won't repeat all that I was saying before the dinner break, obviously, but just briefly, by way of recap, I was just drawing to the attention of the committee the distinction between a remand prisoner and a sentenced prisoner for the purpose of Part 2 and, more particularly, the discussion that we've ended up in as a committee about the implication of the legislation, whereby we're saying that it might be that if a person who is in prison for less than three years is able to be on the electoral roll and thereby qualify to be a candidate for office—if I've understood that point correctly, and I say openly that I'm not 100 percent confident that's the case. But I think I've understood correctly that that might be the case. The Minister responded somewhat reasonably—I think genuinely wishing to point out that, potentially, if that is indeed a problem, there would be a problem also with the fact that a remand prisoner could also be a candidate for election. But I think it's worthwhile distinguishing between remand prisoners who are awaiting trial and therefore should be presumed innocent in the absence of a trial in which to establish their guilt or otherwise and, of course, remand prisoners who have been found guilty at trial but not yet sentenced.
The case of a prisoner on remand is somewhat like Schrödinger's box. They're, in a funny way, potentially both guilty and not guilty, except that the law, of course, determines someone to be not guilty until such time as they've proven otherwise. But the case of a prisoner who has been found guilty but not yet sentenced might, in another distinction, be sentenced to a period of greater than three years or a period of less than three years. So the fact that the law treats those differently from sentenced prisoners in this bill is quite correct. I think it's appropriate, for example, that new section 86A, in clause 7 of what is currently the bill, talks about prisoners who are serving a sentence of imprisonment for less than three years as opposed to those who are detained for a period of less than three years at the relevant time by virtue of them being on remand. 
So I just wanted to bring that distinction to the attention of the House. I don't know how clearly I've articulated it, but no doubt the Minister understands it. I don't have a question so much as just seeking a response and acknowledgment from him, for the sake of the record, about that distinction that I think is worth highlighting in terms of the ability to become an elector and therefore to become a candidate in an election should such a person choose.





Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I know the member who just resumed his seat, Chris Penk, said he didn't have a question, but I do have a response, and that is a couple of things. He draws a distinction between remand and sentenced prisoners, but he should be reminded, of course, that remand prisoners have been assessed as being a risk to the community. So in that respect, they don't share a lot of difference in characteristic to sentenced prisoners.
In the end, this bill is about voting, and it doesn't actually matter whether you are a remand prisoner or a sentenced prisoner sentenced to less than three years when it comes to voting. Remand prisoners have a right to vote right now, and there are processes set up to enable that right to be facilitated. This bill will extend the right, or restore the right, to those sentenced to less than three years.
The issue about standing as candidates in election: if the members can produce to me evidence of the last time either a remand prisoner or a sentenced prisoner was nominated to be a candidate in an election, let's hear the evidence. But, otherwise, let's not make up fantasies as somehow being a compelling argument about the bill before the House. The rest of us live in the real world. The rest of us live in the practical world—the world that everybody else lives in and makes their judgments by. The reality is there are not many prisoners sitting there thinking, "Right, how am I going to increase my voters in the next election? I'll talk to members of the Labour Party because they're so good at it."—which is why we're in the situation that we're in at the moment. They're not doing that. Most of them, as we know, are probably National Party voters, because we know they're self-interested, greedy, and they do all those sorts of things. They're probably going to look to the National Party for advice. But the reality is they are not lining up to be candidates in elections. This is about the right to vote—restoring the right to vote to a bunch of people who had it unceremoniously taken off them by the National Party in 2010. This is the right thing to do.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I, firstly, want to clarify the position of which the Minister of Justice challenged the National Party, the issue of principle in Part 2 of this bill around remand prisoners. National's position is very, very simple and clear, and it's both principled and practical. And that is that a person should not lose their right to vote while they are a remand prisoner and not convicted by a court of law. The argument that the Minister the Hon Andrew Little has made in the chair that somehow there's some inconsistency—actually, that is an absolute principled position. We are a party that believes a person is innocent until proven guilty, and that it is entirely appropriate to treat a remand prisoner who a court of law has not found guilty differently to the prisoner who has been convicted by a court of law. As we heard in evidence to the Justice Committee, the average number of convictions for a person sentenced to prison in New Zealand is 24 convictions.
The member Greg O'Connor has talked about fantasy. I have felt that there has been some degree of fantasy from members opposite who pretend that people are going to lose their vote because they make a small mistake and end up in prison. The reality and the law in New Zealand is that you do not go to prison unless you have committed both a serious offence—and it is actually not the first sort of punishment. Our criminal justice laws make plain that the judges should view prison as a last resort and not a first resort for prisoners.
The second rebuttal we've had from the Minister is "Don't worry about the fact that we are passing a law that enables prisoners to stand for Parliament. We shouldn't worry about that because it's just academic." Well, we should remind ourselves that a pretty serious criminal Arthur Taylor, took issues of prisoner voting all the way through the system, all the way to the Supreme Court. The idea that we as legislators should not be considering robust law, and we shouldn't actually be passing laws that have got holes in them—and if it is legally possible for a prisoner to stand for Parliament, I actually think we make a mockery of this institution and we make a mockery of our democracy, and that, actually, the right to vote is far more than just filling out a form.
A democracy is far more comprehensive than that. It's about meeting candidates. It's about watching leaders' debates. It's about imparting information on modern tools like social media and Facebook. It's about receiving pamphlets and brochures and all those things that go with election cycles. It is just impractical for members of the Government to argue that somehow people serving a sentence in prison are practically able to fully participate in democracy. Just in the same way as we limit the rights of those that are serving sentences, we limit their rights to freedom. They don't get freedom of movement. They don't get freedom of association. They don't get freedom of imparting information. It is perfectly legitimate and right that the British Parliament and so many other parliaments around the world say that if you've committed a serious enough crime to end up in prison, for that period that you are in prison, your rights to vote are suspended. When you're done and you've finished your sentence, we are, as a political party, of the view that you've done your time, and at that point it is absolutely proper that you are re-enrolled and able to fully participate in society.
The last thing I'd want to draw to the attention of the committee on this part is somehow the sort of academic ivory tower view that the Government seems to have, that by prisoners having a right to vote, it will support their rehabilitation. Now, I have to say, I wish members opposite and the Minister had listened to a number of the submissions from real people—people who had spent time in prison who had committed offending. They literally laughed, as one of my colleagues just did, and just said, "That is ridiculous. The last thing that's on the mind of a serving prisoner is that somehow the right to vote is an important part of their rehabilitation." Lots of things are. We were disappointed the Government would not, for instance, make rehabilitation plans for prisoners compulsory. If we're really serious about rehabilitation, we'd do something quite different. Let's not be cute. This is simply a bill being rushed through under urgency, with a shortened select committee process, so that Labour thinks they can bag a few more votes on 19 September and save their bacon on election day. That's wrong, and that's why we oppose this part.





KIRITAPU ALLAN (Assistant Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 56
New Zealand National 55; Ross.
Motion agreed to.
The question was put that Golriz Ghahraman's amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 512 to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 518 to Part 2 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 64
New Zealand National 55; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9.
Amendments to the amendments agreed to.
The question was put that the Minister's amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 512 to Part 2 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Amendments as amended agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Part 2 as amended agreed to.
Clause 1
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Clause 3 agreed to.
House resumed.
The Chairperson reported the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill with amendment.
Report adopted.





Third Reading
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
I'm pleased that this bill will now very soon become law. This is long overdue. The law that this bill seeks to change is a law that should never have changed, in 2010, the way that it did. It was a nasty, insidious little thing. It does nothing about prisoner rehabilitation. It did nothing about reducing the numbers of victims of crime. It was just a silly, stupid, meaningless gesture. A member's bill, admittedly, but which every member of the National Party at that time in Parliament—including some members opposite—voted for. It has done absolutely nothing for prisoners, or for victims. Whichever side of the debate you think the sort of mindless, dichotomous debate is, it does nothing for any of them.
This law will restore the right to vote of those sentenced to less than three years, because of a very simple principle. At the time of an election, for somebody sentenced to less than three years, they will be out before the next election. It might be in a month, it might be in 18 months, but they will be out before the next election, and they must have a right to have a say on those running the country that they are about to be released free into. It's not an attack on victims, as some members have tried to argue. If they were really serious about victims, they would have done a way lot more than they actually did in Government. They would have had a Chief Victims Advisor that wasn't working two half-days a week, but working full time, as she now is. They'd start putting together a package of reform for victims, strengthening their voice in the system, of which they are a bystander at the moment. 
But they did none of that. They beat their chests, but they don't mean it. But this is about restoring some integrity to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and to the idea that voting is important, and that when you are free—or going free into a country, being released free into country—you have a right to have a say on those who are running the country for you. There are members opposite, I know, whose track record on democracy and voting is absolutely atrocious. The Hon Dr Nick Smith introduced legislation—and saw it pass—that took away the right of Cantabrians to vote for their regional council. And he stands up here and lectures us on democracy. That is the outrage—that is the outrage.
But here is the important point. Here is the important point: people do wrong and they cause harm, and sometimes those who do wrong and cause harm wind up in prison. Now, judges make a judgment about the level of culpability, and there are those who wind up in a sentence of less than three years. There are some people who might commit the same act and are sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, but for doing the same thing. It's a point that, actually, Andrew Geddis and Graeme Edgeler pointed to in their submission on this bill—the arbitrary nature of these sorts of judgment calls. 
In any event, for many years, and at least certainly from 1993, when the then National Government—a way more progressive lot than the current bunch sitting in the Opposition benches—passed the law that gave prisoners sentenced to less than three years the right to vote, that was the settled position, for a long time—until the National Party backbencher in 2010 thought they'd try and score some points and earn their stripes. That person lasted one term, so it didn't do them any good. They passed this law, and we are now changing the law back. The members—sorry, one member at least, says, "This is going to screw the scrum, it's riding roughshod, and it's going to give Labour extra numbers." And I just repeat again: if the Hon Dr Nick Smith is so terrified of a potential 1,800 to 1,900 extra votes all going to the parties in Government, then they are in more serious trouble than we've given them credit for. I didn't think their margins were that—I know Nick Smith's margin is 600 or so, so he's got something to worry about. But they won't all be voting in Nelson—I think we can give them that reassurance—they won't all be voting for Nelson. But it was never an argument. The reality is more than a third of the prison population have the right to vote now and a small number consistent with the principle established by the National Government in 1993 will now continue to get the right to vote.
The bill does a very important thing. It also allows the Department of Corrections through their prison managers and prison personnel to facilitate the right of those prisoners who will have restored to them the right to vote—the process to get on the roll. It will enable the Department of Corrections to convey the relevant information to the Electoral Commission. And for those who are seeking or apply to go on the unpublished roll, it will allow prison managers and their delegates to assist a prisoner to make that application. They've got to meet the same criteria as anybody else, but we know that there are some in prison who are subject to safety risks when they get out, and just like any other person in the community who fears for their safety by having their name published on a public roll, then that person can have that considered as well. So all of that is provided for in the bill and it will be a good thing that it passes and restores some integrity to the totality of our Electoral Act. 
I was very pleased when I saw the number of submissions coming in on this bill. I know members opposite thought that, you know, because of the COVID-19 lockdown, nobody cared. Actually, they did. More than 2,500 people made submissions on this bill and 78 percent—78 percent—supported it. What an amazing number. What an amazing majority supported it. And when I get around the community and I talk to people about criminal justice, you know, the overwhelming message is—you know what: we know that most of the people in prison have something wrong with them. Why don't we focus on fixing what's wrong so we stop their offending so they can lead a better life and put something back into the community? 
That's how most New Zealanders think now. They're not into the mindless chest beating of the National Party. They want to do something constructive and meaningful. And so I'm very pleased that this bill has got to the point where it has. I look forward to the remaining debate in the House, but this bill will be a very important measure. It will restore just a little bit more integrity to our Electoral Act, which is a very important piece of legislation. We've made a few changes to it, just like the party opposite when they were in Government making changes without any agreement with the Opposition, as they did when they passed the change that we are now reversing. No consensus there. I know Nick Smith tries to retell history, but that's all right, because there are people around here to correct him—and to correct him and to tell the truth as it actually is. This bill will do very good things for New Zealand and restore that little bit more faith. I commend the bill to the House.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): This bill is bad law, it's bad process, and it's bad principles. The Minister has made a complete hash of the law, and let me explain. What occurred during the committee stage is that the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) got gutted. Let me explain what a nonsense of a law we are now debating on the third reading that just explains why we should not be passing electoral law in a mad rush under urgency.
Now, in Part 1 of this bill, we limit the right to vote to extending it to those that have been sentenced to a term of three years or less. Right-o! So we've established in Part 1 under this Government bill that if you are in prison for a sentence of less than three years, then you are entitled to vote. But in Part 2 of the bill, with the amendments that have been supported by the House, we now have—and I'll read the provision very specifically. The prison manager must, as soon as reasonably practicable, advise the prisoner of his right to enrol and must ensure those enrolment details are passed on. Except in Part 2 of the bill, there is no distinction between those that have served more than three years than not. We now have a bill that requires a prison manager to act illegally.
Now, the Minister has understandably abandoned the House. The Green Party—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The member has been here long enough to know that he can't refer to the—sit down, please. The member has been here long enough—even longer than me, for goodness' sake—to know that he cannot refer to the absence of a member. He will withdraw and apologise and then recommence his speech.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I withdraw and apologise. In the Minister's speech of the third reading, the penny had not even dropped that half his SOP had been gutted by the Green Party and converted this law into a nonsense and into bad law. Can the next speaker in the Labour Party or Government please explain the shambles? We know we've got a shambles on light rail. We know we've got a shambles on the border. We know we've got a shambles in respect of KiwiBuild. And now we've got a shambles in our electoral law where this very bill says something in Part 1 and something very different in Part 2. I invite parties opposite to take responsibility for the shambles of a Government between the coalition partners that can't even write decent electoral law.
Here's what's further: there was a provision in Part 2 of this bill. It said that if a prisoner had their sentence extended—let's say someone's doing time, a trial is held for a further crime, and the length of their sentence is extended beyond three years, they shouldn't be voting under the Government's policy, but now they will because the Green Party gutted that part of the bill as well. That is the extent of the mess that we now have from this bill. And that is why I say it is bad law.
But I also want to say it's bad process. Let's just go through how appalling the process has been around this jiggery-pokery by the Government parties with New Zealand's precious democracy. The first thing that occurred is that we have a longstanding convention that Government bills are consulted in electoral law with other parties. That is a convention that applies to the 1993 Electoral Act, the MMP Act. That is a convention that was consistently applied by Minister of Justice, Simon Power, by Judith Collins, and by Amy Adams, and all credit to them for having the respect of New Zealand's democracy that the governing party of the day does not get to screw the scrum on the next election and make it easier for their re-election. Zero consultation on this bill.
But here's the second thing: why is it, only 11 weeks from the general election, under urgency, that we're changing the electoral law to allow prisoners to vote? Why wasn't it done in year one? Why wasn't it done in year two? This is an issue that's been around since Adam was a cowboy. If we go all the way back to 1974, Labour changed the law to allow its prisoner criminal mates to be able to vote, and that was repealed in 1976. This is not a new issue. There is no justification for the rush that has gone with this law.
Here's the third thing: why was this bill rushed through by select committee chairman over there, Meka Whaitiri, and her mates from the Labour Party? Why was it rushed through when this country was in the biggest civil emergency in the lifetime of every parliamentarian? Why was it that the select committee delayed dealing with sexual violence legislation? I'm sorry, rape victims, you're not important. We delayed legislation to provide greater protection for first responders—that's our policemen, that's our Corrections officers, that's our ambulance officers. Hang on a moment, their rights aren't important. Damn the ambulance officers, damn the cops, damn those people who every day put their life on the line to make our country decent. This Government is focused on the rights of criminals and rushing it through. I found it horribly offensive that not just one day, but 12 days of the lockdown, rather than helping my constituents with the dozens of problems that occurred through the COVID emergency, their attention, their needs, had to be put second-rate, because the Labour Party felt that the most important issue facing the country during the COVID emergency was giving the right to vote to prisoners. That was offensive and that was wrong.
But it was worse than that. The normal process for a bill is it goes to a select committee for six months. This bill spent less than half of that at select committee. And I draw this to the House's attention: the Electoral Commission last year said that if there were to be any changes in electoral law for the 2020 election, they need to be passed by this Parliament at least six months before the election date. Here we are, under urgency, eleven weeks out from a general election, and this Government is playing jiggery-pokery for some small electoral advantage.
The last part I have to say is that it was insulting to New Zealanders—insulting to New Zealanders, victims of crimes, and others—that they had to make submissions on this bill while they were in lockdown. Where their very basic freedoms were being compromised, they were being forced to make submissions on this bill after the Government had given assurances to this Parliament that, for the period we were adjourned, for the period of the emergency, we'd only be dealing with urgent COVID-related legislation. How can any member look this Parliament in the eye and say that this legislation was in any way related to the COVID emergency?
The last bit I want to come to is the matter of principle. Members on this side of the House say that when you go to prison, you are there to lose your freedoms. You lose your freedom of association, you lose your freedom of movement, you lose your freedoms of access to information. It is absolutely proper that while somebody is serving their time in prison, they do not have the right to stand for this Parliament or to participate in our election. It's actually more than just a matter of principle, it's actually a matter of practice, of just practical reality. Only MPs are allowed in prisons. So what about the candidate who is not a member of Parliament? How do they campaign for the votes in prisons? I have spoken to so many prison officers, the practical people who work in our prison system, who strongly believe, as does the Corrections Association, that this is unprincipled, poor law.
I want to rebut two points that were made very cheaply by Minister Little. The first, he said, was: how could I talk about democracy when I had made a decision as a Minister to suspend Environment Canterbury? I remind you, Helen Clark suspended the Auckland Area Health Board. This Government has suspended local authorities when they have been in difficulty. It is a complete red herring, and my passion for democracy and good electoral law is as strong as anybody's. Then the last thing the Minister said was: well, what would I know about elections with my own electoral record? I'll compare my electoral record with Mr Little's any time you like. Mr Little has stood for Parliament in a constituency seat three times and been rejected three times. I've stood in a constituency seat 10 times and won all 10 times and continue to have the mandate of my community. I'm not going to have a lecture from Mr Little about the principles of democracy.
This is bad, botched law. This is bad process. This is bad principles. This is nothing other than the Labour Party stitching up a cheat electoral law change that they think will give them a few more votes.





Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa.
I'm proud to belong to a coalition Government that, first and foremost, acknowledges the trauma of victims of crime. We've taken real action in terms of extra police. We've talked about modernising our court facilities up and down the country, and we've also put in place legislation that tries to avoid re-victimising victims of sexual crimes. It'll be interesting to see which side that party votes when that particular legislation comes to this House.
I'm pleased to support the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. Essentially, it has rehabilitation at the heart of this bill. I want to acknowledge all those submitters that came before the Justice Committee. There have been statements in this House that the process was rushed within select committee and that we didn't give due consideration. I would say 2,500 written submissions—just over 30 from organisations; so a majority of them were individuals. I would say 18½ hours of select committee hearing is not taking this piece of legislation lightly. So I do want to acknowledge those that came and presented their views in front of the select committee.
In the second reading of this bill, I actually wanted to acknowledge the number of young people—the young people—that appeared before the select committee and talked about the human rights challenges in this country and for us as a nation to preserve human rights, when submitting on this particular bill. Of course, they also drew reference to the recent Waitangi Tribunal report. The report was called He Aha I Pērā Ai? The Māori Prisoners' Voting Report, where the tribunal found that the current disqualification of sentenced prisoners was a serious breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and disproportionately affected Māori. We've heard that the prior legislation on prisoner voting rights, that was changed under the last administration in 2010, actually increased Māori's disproportionate participation in voting in this country by a whopping 11 percent. Prior to that, it was something like 2 percent. So as a Māori electoral MP, I'm pleased that this bill goes some way to addressing the disproportionate impact it has on Māori prisoners and the ability to vote.
I'm really pleased with the time that we gave to scrutinising this particular bill to ensure that it comes to the House with those views. Although the committee could not agree, that's more a reflection on other members of the committee. I've got to say, I listened intently to the submitters. I also listened to members of our select committee from the National Party. Apart from regurgitating the victim mentality by giving prisoners voting rights, there wasn't anything more substantive that members could actually articulate in the scrutiny of this bill. It, seriously, came down to: if we give prisoners the vote, we are re-victimising victims. There was absolutely no correlation whatsoever. 
We had young people come to the select committee. I think the young gentleman's name was Mr Harris, who talked about working in the UK and working with prisoners.
I want to also acknowledge prisoners themselves who came before our select committee, and I want to especially acknowledge Eugene Ryder, who's a well-known individual through Wellington but through the nation. His view is that voting would actually help prisoners rehabilitate back into the community, back into their whānau, as they take on the responsibility to exercise their right to have a say on who should govern this country. I want to acknowledge people like Eugene, in their submission on this bill. 
It is, like I said, a real sweet, simple, and sensible piece of legislation that is fair and that is based on retaining the human rights of prisoners that are sentenced and also ensuring that we are addressing the disproportionate impact on Māori prisoners. The Minister has outlaid the purpose of this bill. This side of this House, we completely support it, and I recommend it to the House.





Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Firstly, I want to acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee, Meka Whaitiri. Secondly, I want to point to the fact that the first statements and comments she made were around the rights of victims. To me, I think there's a high degree of sensitivity on the Government benches at the moment because they realise that they absolutely have ignored the wishes of victims on this bill. I can be very clear and tell you that, through the submission process, every victim that appeared in front of the select committee was very clear about the fact that they didn't want prisoners to have the vote returned, they felt like there should be some consequences for their actions, and they feel like, actually, some rights are taken away, and one of those rights is the right to vote. We supported them on that wholeheartedly.
I want to come back to a little bit of the history behind the passage of this bill. It's been well debated in this House, but as this will be my last call on this bill, I just want to do a quick recap on that. As we moved into level 4 of the COVID-19 response that this whole country has made a huge commitment to—and, largely, just about every Kiwi in New Zealand has tried to be as compliant as they could with the rules that the Government put down to try and flatten the curve with COVID-19—one of the commitments that was made to us as Opposition—because of course we wanted to support, of course we wanted to do the right thing, but we were clearly told, and made a commitment by the Government, that we would not sit on select committees and deal with any legislation that did not relate directly to COVID-19. We took them on their word. What happened within weeks of that is that we were told that we would be sitting on the select committee to hear submissions and to start advancing the prisoner voting legislation through the select committee process as quickly as we could. 
The Minister of Justice, in the committee stage, said, "Oh, well, what's the problem? MPs were just sitting around, doing nothing." MPs on that side of the House might have been sitting around doing nothing; I can assure you that MPs on this side of the House certainly were not—they were responding to their constituents. I can tell you that in my own constituency of Rodney, we made sure that my staff—and I want to acknowledge them and the enormous effort that they put in through level 3 and level 4—were set up in their home to be able to respond to constituent inquiries, and they did that and I did that. Some of the things that we were having to deal with were the enormous stress on businesses not being able to get access to a wage subsidy; Kiwis caught overseas, and us having to make interventions on their behalf; massive confusion and stress around how parents that were co-parenting apart were going to be seeing their children; senior Kiwis locked down by themselves, and the issues and the support that they needed.
I had a woman—if I can give you one graphic example of me having to schedule a Zoom committee meeting when I was contacted by a lady that was in lockdown with a violent partner, who had had her arm broken 10 days previously. She had contacted me out of desperation. She had self-splintered. She'd been dragged around the house for 10 days. She said, "I know I can't leave the house. What do I do?"—"What do I do?" I had to try and deal with that, get the police there, make an intervention, make sure that we got her safe because she was so fearful—she was more fearful of breaking the rules around the lockdown than she was of a partner that was being violent to her every day. Instead of dealing with that, I had to come on a Zoom call and a committee meeting to deal with giving prisoners the vote. To me, it was obscene and offensive. I take great offence at the Minister standing in this House and saying "Oh, you know what? MPs were sitting around, doing nothing." Maybe on that side of the House; I assure you not on this side of the House.
Can I just highlight and say this: Golriz Ghahraman has come to this House as a member of the Green Party and she has stood by her principles—I'll at least give them that. They have stuck by their principles, and their principles are quite simply this—and I agree with them—if you're going to stand up here, and the Government's going to make speeches in the House and your Minister's going to make speeches in the House in terms of a Supreme Court ruling or a breach of bill of rights and say we're going to give these poor prisoners the vote—oh, but by the way, we won't give them all the vote, only those that have got a sentence of less than three years—why not stand by your principles? If you feel like they should have the vote, why not give every prisoner that's in prison the vote? Quite simply, what Golriz has done is she's come down to the House and she stood by her principles.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Use the member's full name, please.
Hon MARK MITCHELL: Golriz Ghahraman—sorry. She's come down to the House and she's actually just stood by her principles. It doesn't mean that we agree with them, but, I tell you what, I respect her for doing that. She's put a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward and the SOP's been successful. So what that means now is that because the Government has engaged in a rushed process—
Dan Bidois: What does that mean, exactly?
Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, what it means now is that we've got a terrible, horrible, botched piece of legislation that is going to put our Corrections officers and our managers—and the interesting thing about this is that the chair didn't address it; she didn't mention one word about that SOP. She didn't mention one word about the legislation. I'm hoping that there are other committee members that are going to take a call.
Greg O'Connor, whom I have a lot of respect for, he's got a lot of experience in this area. I'm looking forward to Greg O'Connor standing up and taking a call, and I want him to talk to this. I want him to talk us through it and walk us through it and explain now what the implications are, because I tell you what: he's stood in this House many times, as a past detective, and he's explained that he knows the intricacies of the law, he understands how it's applied, and he's in the detail. Now he's got a great opportunity to get up and talk us through this and explain to everyone just how poor this piece of legislation is, just how botched it is, and how embarrassing it is.
I feel sorry for Kiritapu Allan—another person I have a lot of respect for. She's rushing around the House. She's out there making calls. She's talking to the Minister's office. She's trying to work out how to deal with this. She's trying to work out what their lines are. They are scrambling. So it's going to be very interesting to hear what the next speaker has got to say.
Well done—well done—to the Green Party. You stood by your principles, you're a partner inside this coalition, and you've made a change to the bill on a principle that you believe in. But, actually, what's happened is it's botched it.
What are New Zealand First going to do? Poor Jenny Marcroft. Jenny Marcroft is like a possum in headlights. She will be on the phone. She will be working it out, because they have a deal. We're in the third reading now. What an awful position to be in. Oh, the Hon Tracey Martin is here. The big guns have been called down to the House. Well, well, well. Let's see who's going to take the call. Let's see who's going to respond to this. They're in an awful position now, aren't they? What are they going to do? Are they going to support a terrible, botched piece of legislation that will be all over the media tomorrow?
Look, these guys are making so many mistakes that the media don't even know which ones to go for now, right? So they're going to have to figure out actually what they're going to do with this. So let's see who's going to stand and take a—oh, James Shaw is in the House. It's getting serious. Even the bigger guns are arriving to try and sort this out. So we'll wait and see who's going to take the call on this. There's a huddle going on over there. They're going to work it out.
It's a terrible piece of legislation. It is now a botched piece of legislation—horribly botched piece of legislation. The reason for that is because we had a Government decide to rush this through—decided to rush it through when we were in COVID lockdown, when the whole country was doing the best that they could to flatten the curve and try and beat this. Instead, they had the Justice Committee meeting to advance a rubbish piece of legislation to give prisoners the vote back. We ignored legislation that would give additional protection to our first responders, the people that were out there during lockdown who were essential workers putting themselves at risk to help and protect the rest of us. We didn't pick up the legislation that would give them more protection, did we? We didn't pick up the piece of legislation that would provide more protection and make the court process easier for the victims of sexual crime. No. What did the Government decide to do? It decided to pick up a piece of legislation that would give 1,900 prisoners the vote.
Do you know what the most twisted thing about this is? It's that in the committee of the whole House stage, we had the Minister stand up and say, "What's the National Party worried about? Are you worried that you're not going to win the election because we're giving 1,900 prisoners the vote?" By making that statement, it was very clear that the Minister was making the assumption that those 1,900 prisoners were going to vote for Labour. So if anyone wants to sit down and look in the mirror and ask themselves what their motivation is for bringing a piece of legislation like this into a committee, when we're supposed to be dealing with a national emergency and what was a national emergency, then, actually, it's that side and it's that Minister that should be looking in the mirror. Thank you, Madam Speaker.





JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's always a pleasure to stand and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First, and on this particular bill, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. And it is, indeed, a pleasure to take this bill seriously, as we are doing on this side of the House, because that is our job. That is what we are in this House for, is to take care of legislation in a proper manner—not playing games, silly games, like the other side of the House is doing this evening with this particular piece of legislation. The mucking around that we are seeing from the other side of the House is unacceptable. We are parliamentarians, and it is our job to do what is right and proper.
This bill will overturn a silly rule, pre-2010, that the National Party bill removed the voting rights of all sentenced prisoners. So this bill will restore some dignity, it will restore some humanity, and it will uphold the ability for reintegration to society, engagement back into society, for those who are in prison with less than three years. I am proud to speak to this bill, because the Supreme Court takes this seriously, the Waitangi Tribunal takes this seriously, and the Government, on this side of the House, takes this seriously. Rehabilitation is at the very heart of this bill; so I'm very proud to stand and say New Zealand First supports this bill, and I commend it to the House.





SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was a shocker of a speech by Jenny Marcroft, a member of the New Zealand First Party, who's had to swallow a very, very, very big dead rat tonight. She stood up in the House and had the audacity to tell New Zealanders that this Government takes a proper manner and doesn't play silly games when it comes to legislating. Well, why are we passing this bill through urgency? We wouldn't have these sorts of amendments being passed without the Government scrambling to try and find ways to fix it up if we weren't here in the middle of urgency. So there's no proper manner in the decisions by members on the other side of the House. 
What we've seen happen tonight with this prisoner voting, or the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, is symbolic of the sham of a process that it has had right from day one. I just want to remind members on the other side and people viewing from home that the process is an absolute sham that this Government has pursued. They've had 2½ years to bring this piece of legislation to Parliament, 2½ years to consult with New Zealanders, and 2½ years to actually make sure it's well-thought-through. But, no. The first reading was done during extended sitting hours of the House. The select committee process was rushed during lockdown. While New Zealanders were fighting for their lives and uniting to fight COVID-19, the Government was uniting to give prisoners the right to vote, trying to give the people in lockdown the right to have their right to vote. That's what they were prioritising, and then, on top of that, they were letting all those people serving community service sentences time off on their community service sentences as well. 
The second reading was done during extended sitting hours of this House, and here we are, at the third reading. The final debate on this legislation, and here we are in urgency, passing a piece of legislation in here around prisoner voting. Why are we doing this in such a rushed manner? Why are we doing this through urgency? Because the Government believes it needs these votes of 1,900 sentenced offenders on 19 September, and it will stop at nothing to pass this piece of legislation through the House. 
Tonight, we've seen what happens when you rush legislation through Parliament without having due consideration and without following the procedures of the House, which would have allowed the Government to get its act together properly. We've seen a Supplementary Order Paper from the Green Party, essentially, white out half of the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister, and he didn't even know it was happening. He just looked like a possum in the headlights, scrambling his pieces of paper. We've had members of Parliament running into the Chamber trying to fit things back together. 
We've now been given a lecture on due process by the Government, and I just say to the New Zealand First members opposite that I hope you're going to do another deal if you're going to vote for this. There must be some other deal that you've struck in the last five minutes—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm not doing any deals with anyone, Mr Brown. 
SIMEON BROWN: New Zealand First members—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Please don't find the Mark Mitchell habit contagious. 
SIMEON BROWN: Oh, thank you. Well, look, you know, COVID-19's very contagious, and I don't want to catch everything. But I would say to New Zealand First members opposite that I expect you've done a deal, just outside, to secure your votes to get this legislation through, because that's how—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Mr Brown, would you mind having a seat. I haven't done a deal and I'm not intending to do a deal, but I'm tempted. Please don't bring me into the debate. Thank you. 
SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party is opposed to this piece of legislation, which gives prisoners who are sentenced up to three years in prison the right to vote. This piece of legislation does not put victims at the heart of criminal justice; this piece of legislation puts criminals at the heart. People who have committed offences, people who have broken the law, and people who have done crimes against other people are the ones who will be getting the privileges which, currently, they do not get under this piece of legislation. 
We heard during the select committee process that an offender who is sentenced to prison, on average, will have committed 24 offences—24 offences. People convicted of sentences of up to three years aren't convicted of petty crime. We're talking about people who have committed serious assaults, people who have committed robberies, and people who have committed family violence and sexual offences. These are not light-hearted, petty crimes which have been committed; these are serious crimes, and on this side of the House, we believe that there are consequences for one's actions and that when someone commits crimes worthy of being sentenced to prison, some of their rights are taken away. In New Zealand, when you go to prison, you lose some of your rights, and one of those rights is your right to be able to vote. 
As we have been debating during the committee of the whole House, we have a piece of legislation here which gives prisoners the right to vote if they've been sentenced to less than three years. They've also got the right, it would seem, to stand for Parliament. They've got a right to be able to stand to be a representative in this House, and I think that would be something which New Zealanders would find even more shocking. 
We have questions around how these prisoners who are going to now have this right to vote are going to be able to exercise their democratic right to seek information and to impart information in relation to their right to vote, to be able to hear from candidates, to hear from members of Parliament, to be able to watch the electoral debates, and to be able to engage in the democracy, because when they're in prison, they have their freedoms curtailed. They don't have the same freedom to information that we have. They don't have the ability to simply tune in to a Facebook Live, and they don't have the ability to ask a question of a candidate in their electorate. They don't have the ability to turn up to a public meeting to be able to put across their view and ask a question. People in our prisons have had rights taken away—rights which would actually limit their ability to be able to fully engage in our democracy. 
But I do want to finish by bringing this back to the point around victims of crime. Last year, according to statistics produced by the New Zealand Police, there was a 9.6 percent increase in victimisations in New Zealand—a 9.6 percent increase in victimisations. That is a sad and sorry statistic. As we know, behind each one of those numbers is a person, a family, and a community who have been affected by crime in our country, and this piece of legislation doesn't say to those victims of crime that we're there to support you. It doesn't say to those victims of crime that we're going to stand up for you and what has happened to you. It says that instead of addressing crime and instead of addressing the causes of crime and instead of ensuring that there are strong deterrents in place and that there is a corrective part of the sentence or the response to that crime, what we're going to do is we're going to give more rights to those people who committed the crimes. That's the priority in this piece of legislation. 
That's the priority by members on the other side, and I say this particularly to the members of the New Zealand First Party. Their entire next three months will be spent travelling up and down the country, talking about how tough they're going to be on crime, because that's what they like to campaign on—how tough they're going to be on crime. Well, I just want to remind everybody watching and New Zealanders who think that the New Zealand First Party is a tough-on-crime party that they are not. They are voting tonight to give prisoners the right to vote and to give them—
Hon Member: A party with heart—a party with heart
SIMEON BROWN: They've got no heart over there, on that side. They're voting against victims and they're voting for criminals. 
I'm proud to be on the side of Parliament where we stand on the side of victims, and that's where the real heart is in this issue: standing up for victims of crime and standing up for those who have been affected by crime. So I'm proud to oppose this bill. A shambolic process by this Government—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: A shambolic law. 
SIMEON BROWN: —a shambolic piece of legislation that—and thank you, Dr Nick Smith. It's a very shambolic piece of legislation, and I am proud to oppose it. 





GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a proud moment, standing here in our House of Representatives tonight. New Zealand is a proud nation of universal suffrage. We stand for human rights, we stand for democracy, and we stand for equality—and tonight this House makes headway toward that. We stand here reversing a change to our law that was passed in the dead of night, under urgency, with no process at all, by a member's bill, by a bare majority, taking away fundamental rights. We've been told that by the New Zealand High Court, by our Court of Appeal, by our Supreme Court—who almost never intervenes with the affairs of this House—by the Waitangi Tribunal, by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, the guardians of our human rights.
We, in this House, in the past Government, breached fundamental rights. We degraded New Zealand's justice system. That's not what we're here for. That is why we're restoring the right to vote. It's not, I might remind that side of the House, extra rights. There's no such thing as extra rights. We all have rights; they are universal, they are indivisible. That means you can't have a democracy when some people don't have the right to vote. We don't have human rights because we are good but because we are human, and starting down the slippery road to taking away basic human rights based on arbitrary moral judgments by individual Governments is degrading to all New Zealanders.
Our system of justice is there to protect our communities. There is no punishment allowable in our system of justice that takes away basic human rights without a valid criminal justice purpose, without the purpose of protecting communities, rehabilitating prisoners, and reintegrating them successfully back into the community, and taking away the right to vote has none of those purposes. We've been told that by every juris, by every expert, by the community. We have no right in this House to do what breaches fundamental human rights without a valid purpose.
So tonight is a night of celebration for New Zealand, because we do stand for democracy, and we do need to talk about victims. So let's protect victims. Let's really protect victims. Let's do what will rehabilitate prisoners; let's do what will help them to reintegrate more successfully into our community. I've been in those parole hearings, and they always require the prisoner applying for parole to prove they remain connected with the community.
Now, why would we have law that disconnects prisoners from their community, that disenfranchises them, that tells them that they are less than human in this society, and then ask them to show that they're connected with their community? The evidence shows that that is the only way that they will remain safe once they re-join our community, the only way that they will successfully get a job and successfully live in that community without resorting to crime. Why would we do something that undermines that in this House? For vengeance? We have no right to do that. We have no right as the representatives of that nation to take away basic human rights. It actually undermines the safety of our communities. Just to make ourselves look tough on crime? That doesn't protect victims.
So let's talk about victims. What about investing in mental healthcare for victims? In hospitals, in homes, in jobs—why not invest in victims? They didn't do it.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes, we did. You took it away.
GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: They did not do it. They did not do it, and they did what would make them look good. It's callous. We won't be doing that.
Marama Davidson: It's dangerous.
GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: It's dangerous; that's right. And let's talk about who we are disenfranchising when we take away the right to vote from prisoners. Let's talk about the fact that, on this side of the House, we look at the evidence, we look at what we know is the truth: that Māori are disproportionately targeted by our system of justice, that other communities of colour fare far worse in our system of justice, that poor people fare far worse in our system of justice for doing what anybody else has done. That we have a higher rate of Māori being spoken to by police, when spoken to by police of being charged, when charged of being convicted, and when convicted of being sentenced to imprisonment, than other people and—let's not mince words—than Pākehā. So that's who we're disenfranchising. That's why the Waitangi Tribunal stood up against this law. It is a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi; it is a breach of our work toward equality and decolonisation in this House.
So, when we talk about a Treaty, when we talk about shared sovereignty, when we talk about land and resource and language that was never ceded, and then we talk about who we imprison in a colonial system, and then on top of that we take away the right to vote, it is abhorrent, and it doesn't help victims. It has always been Green Party kaupapa to stand for democracy and for fairness.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is that why you stood up for genocide?
GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: So we celebrate tonight. We celebrate tonight because we know that, in our system of justice, where everyone has a right to a defence—we've just heard from the Hon Nick Smith, by the way, that he opposes the right to defence in a justice system, because he equates defence counsel with those who stand for a crime. That is the danger; that is the slippery slope—he's just demonstrated it. When they talk about taking away the right to vote, they also mean the next step is the right to a defence. They want to take away our justice system and our human rights altogether; isn't that right, Mr Smith? Isn't that abhorrent? Isn't that backward? That's not what New Zealand's about; we're a modern democracy, and almost no modern democracy abolishes the right to vote in their justice system. No modern democracy has members of Parliament opposing defence counsel acting legitimately in a trial. Can you imagine? I can't imagine.
On this side of the House, we're focused on fixing our system, on fixing our society and our communities, so that crime actually goes down, so that victims are taken care of. We are not concerned with making ourselves look tough on crime at the expense of New Zealanders and our fundamental human rights. So tonight we celebrate, because it is Green kaupapa that's come to the House as part of my member's bill on strengthening democracy that's just been adopted in the House, and we're not going to stop there. We will continue to strengthen our democracy because, come September, when that side of the House has shrunk to just a few seats, we won't have to debate whether defence rights are even a thing. We won't have to debate whether universal suffrage is a good thing or not, because we live in the 21st century, and we stand for human rights, we stand for inclusion and equality. Thank you, Madam Speaker.





CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Sometimes in this place, it's hard to know if we're in a parallel universe because things might have gone differently or if some members indeed are on another planet. The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill has been a wild ride. Others have talked about the select committee submission process; I may have talked about it myself at the second reading speech, which was the appropriate place to do so. We heard from people who have been intimately involved in the justice system, including some who have served time behind bars, and they had interesting perspectives, on both sides of the argument, incidentally.
We also heard interesting discussion about the fundamental nature of democracy, which is the way that I would phrase it, in relation to who it is that writes law in this country and this constitution. I'll get back to that a bit later in relation to our response to the senior courts and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but, roughly speaking—and spoiler alert—the good news is that MPs write the law. The bad news is also that MPs write the law, because we've seen something quite extraordinary tonight in relation to a law that has been affected by the passage, or, rather, half of the passage, of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—and, again, I'll return to that.
The submitters to the Justice Committee ranged from the very young to the less young, and I thank them all for their contribution, as have other members of the select committee. The victims' perspective was almost universally, or perhaps universally, that they were perplexed by the fact of this bill being passed, not only in the sense of the priority relative to the legislative programme of the Government but also in relation to the way that they felt that their place in the criminal justice system and society was adversely reflected by what this bill represents.
I do want to say that I think that the arguments that we heard in relation to the Waitangi Tribunal were well made by many submitters, and I think that we should take in this House very seriously the challenge that we face as a nation whereby there are adverse and disproportionate outcomes. But as I've said in previous stages of this bill, I believe that the appropriate place to address those very real and legitimate concerns is other than in the consequence for prisoners who have been sentenced according to the law of the land.
The starting point that one comes to this House with in relation to the bill makes all the difference to the way that one will view it and, ultimately, vote. From those who take the point of view that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the apparent inconsistency, the declared inconsistency, indeed, by the senior courts—if that is one's starting point, then, inevitably, one says, well, then prisoners should be given the right to vote. We can have an interesting discussion, and in the next six minutes we will have a discussion—whether it's interesting or not we will see—about the threshold of the three-year mark. But in any case, roughly speaking, in principle, the human rights perspective, as discussed specifically in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, would lead one to the conclusion that prisoners should be allowed to vote.
However, having said that the perspective is understandable when one starts with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the whole affair is nevertheless inexplicable from the point of view of those who say—whether victims' advocates, victims themselves, or others who share that point of view—that those who have repeatedly offended against the rule of law and, indeed, broken specific laws should not be given more opportunities than they currently enjoy to participate in that process, at least until such time as they have served their period of detention.
Let's then pass to the detail in the bill—because, of course, as always, the detail matters—and the fact that a particular line in the sand has been drawn at the three-year mark indicates that the compromise that was reached even before tonight's events was one that was political in nature rather than legal or, indeed, logical. The reason I say that is because we heard a number of very compelling submissions about the arbitrary nature of the three-year mark to determine whether someone should be able to vote or not. The argument from the Minister of Justice and others of that perspective was that a person would be able to vote on the basis that they would be affecting the law of the land by electing representatives in the three years before they were released, and therefore when they came out of incarceration, then they would be subject to those laws. Well, that's all very well, except that a prisoner who is incarcerated for longer than three years isn't given by this bill the right to vote in the last three years. So the logic of that is not internally consistent, and that's a challenge to what it is that we're expected to pass, or indeed being asked to pass, tonight by the Minister and the Government, even before we ask ourselves: what is the purpose of having a three-year time frame in the first place?
The principled position, surely, is that if voting is a human right—and I think on one level it is, or at least it's a civil and political right—then it should apply to all and not those who have committed a particular degree of offence. As I say, I believe that a political compromise, as opposed to a legal or logical principle, has been at play there.
The discussion about the restrictions of rights has been pretty well thrashed out, actually, in different stages of the bill, and I think that there's some merit in the perspective that, really, to be incarcerated in the first place is a restriction of rights. So it's somewhat of a nonsense to say that we should not restrict people's rights in not allowing them to vote because they are imprisoned, because it's precisely because someone has done something worthy of imprisonment that we should at least consider curtailing various rights. So I think that sort of absolutist approach that we've heard from the Green Party member earlier tonight doesn't particularly stack up.
The question then becomes, of course, well, what restrictions on rights do we place? How can we justify restricting some and not others? The answer, I think, must surely lie in the nature of the penalty. We lock people up so that they are no longer a danger to others for a certain period of time and also themselves. We also have the opportunity to rehabilitate them and so on. So what, then, is the justification, for restricting the ability of such a person to vote? The answer is surely that with, almost invariably, multiple offences against the criminal law, law to which they have to have offended at least to a standard of beyond reasonable doubt, with the onus being on the other side to have proved it and so on, we don't lock people up lightly—that's the short point. To have reached a point where, on average, a person who is incarcerated, perhaps incarcerated for three years—I forget the detail, but in any case, an average of 24 convictions before a person has got to the point of losing their right to vote shows that the social contract has readily enough been torn up by that person. Why it should be a matter of logic for the other side to say that they should be allowed to continue to participate in a process which they've already withdrawn from, to their own benefit, seems to me entirely baffling.
We also have talked about a number of different practical issues with the bill. The Hon Dr Nick Smith pointed out the illogicality of the fact that someone who is a member of Parliament has the right to visit a prison at any time, and a candidate, on the other hand, doesn't have that ability. So an election campaign is naturally tilted towards incumbents. I'd perhaps even go a step further and say that if the member of Parliament is going to visit the prison as a member of Parliament, then he or she shouldn't be visiting as a candidate, because the visit as a member of Parliament is to check on welfare and processes and so forth, as opposed to being there to campaign. So even for members of Parliament who are candidates, let alone other candidates, the situation does not make sense, because they shouldn't be—and in other cases can't be—in there actually actively campaigning.
Let's finish on the bizarre situation that we faced tonight whereby an SOP from a Government member was partly successful, meaning that we've got a real anomaly in the law. Once upon a time, getting 50 percent was a pass mark, but you can't be half right in these things without causing a lot of difficulty. So we've now got an absurd situation where prison officers, as defined, I believe—or I'd call them Corrections officers—are required to tell all prisoners that they are entitled to vote, but only some of those, those serving up to three years, will actually be entitled to do so. It's an absolute shambles, so from a legal, moral, and practical point of view, we cannot support this bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The following call is a split call.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I seek leave of the House, under Standing Order 74, for a motion to discharge the bill and for it to be referred back to the select committee. It is openly acknowledged now that this bill has an internal contradiction. It is unworkable law. It would require our prison officers to act illegally. The correct way for the House to ensure that we're not passing law that puts our prison officers in that impossible position would be for us to discharge the bill and refer it back to the Justice Committee. The Standing Order would normally require for that motion to be moved earlier in the legislative process, but I am seeking leave of the House to be able to put that resolution, because the bill as it stands is now unworkable law.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): So I'm not trying to trick you on words; I'm just getting it clear: you're seeking leave, which, in effect, is to leave aside the Standing Order, which deals with proper process.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Correct. The Standing Orders provide a process by which a motion can be put to the House. It's a non-debatable motion. It requires the bill be discharged from the House and referred back to the Justice Committee, and that is the motion I am seeking leave to put to the House, given the pretty extraordinary situation we're—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is. The following call is a split call—Jo Luxton.





JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. If it was up to the members opposite, we would see every single criminal thrown into jail—throw the key away, never to see the light of day again. Unfortunately for them, on this side of the House, we think that everybody deserves a second chance. If we want people to integrate back into society, we do need to give them some rights. One of those rights is the right to vote. But what we've seen from the National Party this evening has become symbolic of what we see from them all the time: flip-flop, can't make their minds up, playing politics, playing games, and political point-scoring. We're here as politicians to make sensible legislation, and what do we see? The Hon Nick Smith running around, laughing, playing games, making fun of the fact that they're supposedly the party for victims, and all they've done is play games with the victims here tonight. So it's very disappointing—somewhat disgusting—to see them behave in that way. I commend this bill to the House.





DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I've been listening to the debate in this House and I've heard not one justification—not one justification—for the inconsistency on the law that's just been passed from Golriz Ghahraman's amendment. That inconsistency, essentially, requires the prison managers to break the law. This law is a botched law; it is a shambles. It is a law that reflects poor process and it is a law that reflects poor priorities on this Government.
I've been part of the select committee on this process, and I must say that in the urgency of lockdown, when constituency MPs have faced extraordinary challenges in their own electorates with dealing with constituency issues, here I was and here were other members on this side of the House dealing with complex issues, but also having to deal with giving prisoners the right to vote—in lockdown. That reflects, I think, the poor priorities of this Government that we have such deep challenges going on in the community, and all that side of the House worries about is who has the right to vote in prison.
We do not support this law, but don't take my word for it, take Chris from my own electorate of Northcote, who said, "The moment they decide to live outside the law of New Zealand, prisoners lose the right to vote." That is the first principle on which we oppose this law. If you do the crime, you do the time, and that means having your rights as a free and fair system of democracy taken away—whether it's the right to vote, the right to freedom of association, or liberty rights to go with that.
What about the role of our justice system? Well, we on this side of the House care about the victim—we do. Unfortunately, the bill that's going forward has a lack of centeredness on the victim, and we heard about this in the select committee—victims who have had deep challenges with sexual violence, rape, and, unfortunately, that has been escaped from the process.
A third reason why we oppose this bill is around the role of rehabilitation and reintegration. Of course this plays an important role in making sure prisoners reintegrate into our society, but we can do that in prison in a safe way, and that is through educational means. And I've talked about previously, already, other complex skills training that's provided for prisoners in New Zealand prisons.
But what I think typifies the law that we're about to vote on today is the Supplementary Order Paper that was passed less than an hour ago, which, essentially, requires prison managers to break the law, and it's a shame that that side of the House didn't want to refer it back to select committee for deeper consultation.
This election is a stark contrast between Labour and National on the issue of crime and prisoners. On that side of the House, we've got a party that is soft on crime, a party that has poor priorities in Government, and a party that doesn't care about the democratic process—
Simeon Brown: Or victims.
DAN BIDOIS: —or victims that we have in New Zealand. But on this side of the House, we are tough on crime. If you do the crime under a National Government, you will be put away. And we have very clear priorities—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope I won't.
DAN BIDOIS: Madam Speaker, if the prisoner or the offender does the crime, they will do the time. We have very clear priorities: make our communities safer.
Lastly, we care about the proper democratic process of our parliamentary system, not a half-baked system to get it done for the next election. So we oppose this law in this House, and we hope that we have some justification for the changes that have been made today. This is a terrible law and we do not commend this bill in the House.





DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this shambles. You know, there was a great Chancellor called Otto von Bismarck, who said that people who love public policy or legislation and love sausages have one thing in common: neither of them should watch what they love being made. That's very much the case here tonight. This is the biggest legislative screw-up by this Government under urgency for, oh, about four weeks since we accidentally passed the wrong law and unwittingly legislated a $2.5 billion business loan scheme because the Government couldn't put the right bill on the Table.
So now we have a situation where prisoners are going to be enrolled regardless of how long they are sentenced. But it's not clear whether being enrolled will actually allow them to vote or whether by enrolling them to vote means the prison warden will have actually committed a crime. You think about the difficulty of that. The prison wardens are supposed to look after the people that are committing the crime, but this Government is making the prison wardens criminals in themselves. This is the kind of mess that that we're getting into with this kind of lawmaking. You know, Sir Geoffrey Palmer once said that New Zealand is the fastest lawmaker in the West, and this Government seems to have done a line of smack and decided to go even faster. I think that's a real problem, because actually this is quite a serious issue. Before I discovered what had transpired earlier in the evening—because I'm a busy leader of a small but growing political party—I was coming down to record the ACT Party's thoughts about this very serious matter.
First of all, we have a major problem in this country with recidivism. We don't send more people to jail; we send the same people around and around and around. You know, half the people that get out of jail are back within four years—a disgrace. We have the fourth largest imprisonment rate in the OECD, behind countries like Czechoslovakia and Mexico and the United States. We need to do a lot better. We actually need to do a lot better with policies like ACT's, that if you learn to read in prison and you get educated, we'll reduce your sentence. That's the kind of smart thing we need to do. But this Government's trying to tell us that letting prisoners vote is going to substantially help to rehabilitate them. There's no evidence for that. That's the first area where it falls down.
The second area where we have a problem is this vexed issue of human rights, because notwithstanding the omnishambles of legislation tonight, the intent of the bill is that you have this human right of voting if you have been sentenced for three years or less. Well, if the Government had the courage of its convictions, it would say human rights are indivisible, and every prisoner should have the right to vote. Rapists and murderers are still human and should be able to vote. But oh no, no; it's only people on sentences of less than three years. So it's not even principled by its own standard. It actually says that those people are less than human because they don't deserve human rights. Then Jo Luxton, the member for a place called "List", which is apparently near Rangitata, said that the Government is playing—playing—with prisoners. Well, what's playing with prisoners is this law that says you're going to be enrolled by the warden, but you can't actually vote. That's playing with them. So it fails on a human rights basis.
We actually, to be serious, take away part of the bundle of rights New Zealanders have when we imprison them—freedom of association, freedom of movement. Very important rights in the Bill of Rights are withdrawn. On the other hand, the right to vote—well, I, like many people in this House, have lived overseas. I lived in Canada for five years. I couldn't vote there. Why would you want to? Because there's no ACT Party in Canada to vote for. But I didn't feel that I'd lost all my rights. I don't think it's a serious human rights issue. That's why the ACT Party is opposing this bill, aside from the fact that it's an absolute shambles.
I'd also say that this Government's priorities—the fact it's been willing to put so much capital into this non - human rights issue—tells us that this Government is not thinking hard about the real needs of New Zealanders. If I had some more time, I'd give some better examples of what they should be thinking about. But for now, the ACT Party opposes this shambles.





GREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): For anyone watching this that thinks that somehow this is about crime and soft on crime, as is being espoused by Nick Smith and his high-pitched little clone Simeon Brown, it is not. What this is is simply about entrenching some legislation. Actually, funnily enough, nobody on the other side has mentioned one of their finest members, the Hon Chris Finlayson, who was opposed to the legislation when it went through in 2010 and remains opposed to it. What this is about—in fact, as touched on by the previous speaker, David Seymour—is victims of crime. It's about future victims of crime. As someone who, as an undercover police officer, lived among criminals, the one thing I'll say is the common denominator among criminals is complete alienation from mainstream society. Voting is not going to be a panacea. It's not a cure all. But, as the previous speaker said, it is going to be a stepping stone into becoming part of mainstream society.
Just before I finish, there's a huge irony tonight that that party opposite, who opposed this legislation all the way through, tonight voted for an amendment that the public should know results in all prisoners now having the right to vote. Thank you, National Party, for all prisoners now having the right to vote. I commend this bill. [Interruption]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Goodness me. 





ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was going to give quite a brief contribution tonight, but I can't resist, actually, after hearing from the member opposite, Greg O'Connor. We've got a bit of a saying on this side of the House, and certainly amongst the class of '17, which is, "Never go full Greg—never go full Greg.", and we saw a little bit of that tonight in some of the observations he made. The first one, he started out—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full names.
ANDREW FALLOON: Yep, sorry, Madam Speaker. He started out by referring to Nick Smith—our honourable colleague on this side of the House—and that Simeon Brown was his clone. Well, perhaps, Greg O'Connor, you might need a different prescription on your glasses, because they are in many ways similar, but in that way not. He then went on to say that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010—that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010. Well, of course, he didn't. He voted for the bill; he voted for that piece of legislation. If the member opposite is seriously suggesting that if an Attorney-General comes up and says that something is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that means that they oppose it, well tell that to David Parker and all of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act inconsistencies that he's come up with in this Government. If that member is seriously suggesting that David Parker, the Attorney-General, opposed those pieces of legislation, I suggest that he's going to have a call from the Attorney-General David Parker later on tonight.
Now, I do want to move on to more of the substance of this bill, rather than just Greg O'Connor's interesting contribution. I was here late this afternoon and into the evening when we had the committee of the whole House stage. I do want to make a few observations on that, because several questions during the committee stage were put to Andrew Little, the Minister in the chair, and I do want to congratulate him on taking many questions and answering most of them. But there were a number of questions in relation to the consistency of the bill as to why the Government have drawn the line at three years, where people who are imprisoned for a sentence of less than three years are able to vote, and those who are sentenced to imprisonment for a term of more than three years are unable to vote. Golriz Ghahraman and, prior to her, Chlöe Swarbrick have put forward what I think is a very consistent position that all prisoners should be allowed to vote.
Now, I have some sympathy to that argument. I don't agree that all prisoners should be allowed to vote, because, as I've heard through numerous contributions on both sides of the House, when somebody is imprisoned, they give up a number of rights: the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of association, and, as this Parliament has determined a number of times, the right to vote. I don't think, actually, that the Green Party are suggesting otherwise, because I don't think they do think that people should have the right to freedom of association or freedom of expression when they're in prison, but, of course, they do think that people should have the right to vote. But at least that is consistent that we give prisoners—all prisoners—the right to vote rather than draw some arbitrary line at three years, which is exactly what this Government is doing.
Ms Swarbrick in an earlier contribution in, I think, the second reading debate made what I thought was a very valid contribution, which was: why do we draw the line where some prisoners are given the vote even though they might have committed the same offence as somebody who commits the same offence but receives a different sentence? Again, that is a position that I have some sympathy with, which is why I was so surprised to hear that the Greens are going to continue to vote for this bill tonight, because it does exactly what Ms Swarbrick railed so eloquently against in the second reading debate. It says that prisoners should be treated differently based on the sentence that they're given. If someone's given, let's say, two years and 11 months in prison, they'll be able to vote. But if someone's given three years and one month for the same offence, they won't be able to vote. So despite that inconsistent position, the Greens are going to vote for this bill anyway. I guess that is where their consistency ends.
Then we come to the issue that I struggle with even more, and that is that in an earlier contribution Clare Curran said that the threshold of a three-year jail sentence means that those prisoners will be able to vote on the Government that will be in power when they are released, and that's true. That would be a very fair point if it weren't for one thing: that it would be true for any prisoner who is given a sentence of more than three years, in the last three years of that sentence. But there's been no amendment, there's been no amendment from the Green Party, and there's been no amendment from the Government to fix that issue.
Perhaps in recognition of that error that the Government's made, we had Minister Andrew Little earlier in the committee of the whole House stage coming up with a brand new reason. We hadn't heard it before; it was a brand new reason just for the committee of the whole House, where he said that people who he would like to see vote are those convicted of lesser crimes. That ignores that those convicted of lesser crimes on their first offence actually go to prison very rarely. To make it to prison on someone's first offence, they actually need to do something pretty serious; not a lesser offence, as described by Andrew Little. Actually, all you need to do is pick up the court news of any provincial newspaper in the country and you'll see exactly that. It can be very, very difficult to be sentenced to prison in this country.
But my biggest problem is the matter of priorities, because yesterday it's been confirmed that we had more than 50 people released from mandatory isolation without being tested. We've got businesses up and down the country going out of business. In the last 24 hours in Ashburton and Timaru, more lay-offs have been announced, and, unfortunately, tens of thousands of Kiwis are now out of jobs. And yet tonight, in this Parliament, under urgency, the Government aren't putting forward any remedy to that. They're not putting forward anything that will create new jobs. Instead, they're seeking, under urgency, a priority of theirs to give prisoners the vote.
The reason I say "under urgency" is that brings me to perhaps the most bizarre of points that we've seen this afternoon and this evening in this Parliament, where Golriz Ghahraman put up her Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), her amendment to extend the vote to all prisoners, which, as I've said, is a perfectly valid and consistent position—something that the Government themselves don't hold—and part of that SOP was passed. Nick Smith has laid out in a far better way than I could how bizarre that makes this piece of legislation. It makes a mockery of the fact that, under urgency, we're passing electoral law, which I would argue is one of the most important pieces of legislation we can amend in this House—the Electoral Act—because it actually defines this Parliament as a democracy. And here we are, under urgency, passing a bill that makes a massive inconsistency in the law, where prison managers are required to advise and assist prisoners to enrol to vote, and yet it remains illegal to do so.
Now, Grant Robertson screws up his face across the House. I'm not allowed to say he wasn't here, but perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and says—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, don't say it.
ANDREW FALLOON: Perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and asks what happened earlier in the debate, he'll find out what happened. He'll find out what this Parliament actually voted on, because half of Golriz Ghahraman's SOP passed, it's in the bill, and it will not be voted on in third reading, I presume it will be supported by members opposite; it will not be supported by us. But it does make a mockery of the urgency process when we have legislation that was rammed through select committee, where submitters were not able to present in Parliament their concerns and their views. We have in this Parliament now committee stages and third reading truncated into one evening, rammed through under urgency, and this is why we have such fundamental concerns with this legislation, because they've made a mistake. That is one of the perils of urgency. Urgency should only be used in extreme or rare circumstances.
I'm old enough to remember, actually, that the Green Party used to rail against the use of urgency, and here they are supporting changes to our electoral law—the fundamental basis on which we all sit here and of our democracy—a change to the law which makes a mockery by inserting an inconsistency into the Electoral Act. We will not support it.





Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was in this House when the bill that was passed that is now—the effect of which—being overturned by this legislation was put up by Paul Quinn as a member's bill. It was a mean, petty, and glib piece of legislation that was passed by a member who is best forgotten from this House, and supported by a party whose politicking on issues of electoral law is well known. 
I have only two things to say in my contribution. The first of those is that, other than the Ministers of Corrections, I would venture to suggest that I've probably spent more time visiting prisons than any other member of this House; because, as is on the public record, my father spent time in prison. And one thing I can tell you—and Greg O'Connor mentioned this briefly in his contribution—we send people to prison in New Zealand as a punishment, not for punishment. When they're in prison, what we attempt to do is support their rehabilitation back into our society. One element, albeit a small element of that, is for prisoners—in this case, for the proposed bill—who are serving a term of three years or less to be allowed to vote.
There has been a consensus on that across political parties over decades, until Mr Quinn's glib, petty, mean piece of legislation was passed in this House. Those members opposite who think that maybe tonight they've had some great little politicking victory, I say this to them, and especially to Dr Smith: the greatest commitment you can show to democracy is when you uphold the rights of people that you despise, or people that you don't like, or people who have done things that you don't agree with. That's when you show your commitment to democracy, Dr Smith, not some little political trick, not some glib bill, but when you uphold the rights of those who you may not agree with, that is a commitment to democracy, and that is what this bill does.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 63
New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.
Noes 57
New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.
Bill read a third time.





GREATER CHRISTCHURCH REGENERATION AMENDMENT BILL
In Committee
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): Firstly, I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one debate.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.





Part 1  Early disestablishment of Regenerate Christchurch and termination of powers
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): Thank you, Madam Chair. If I could start with some opening remarks, and then, enjoying this new committee process, I welcome taking questions from the floor. 
This is a bill that seeks to amend the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act. There are three main parts to it—the first, to revoke the powers given by section 71. Section 71 is a special part of the legislation which allows for amendments to be made to planning rules, which provide for streamlining or fast-tracking of particular processes. The second main amendment would be to disestablish Regenerate Christchurch from 30 June 2020. This is a year earlier than was originally anticipated, and I'm mindful of the fact that we are talking about a group of people for whom they've had the regeneration of our city at the heart of the work that they have been doing. So I do want to pay particular acknowledgment to them at this time. The third proposed amendment is to extend the powers for the reconfiguration of the land contained within the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor. That will allow Land Information New Zealand to continue the work in terms of the reconfiguration and the transfer of titles. And one other piece: it repeals the requirement to make annual reports with regards to the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act. 
I want to thank the select committee, ably chaired by Dr Jian Yang, who brought the piece of work quite expeditiously back to the House. They did make a couple of amendments to the bill as it was introduced. The first, really, is with regard to the powers under section 71. Because of the shortening of the actual piece of legislation, the powers under section 71 were required to have a transitional provision within it in case a proposal was made under this particular section before the end of the bill on 30 June. The second was with regard to the description of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor, just to allow for appropriate reconfiguration to occur, and the inclusion of a map within the bill. 
Just with those points, I do want to thank officials and the Parliamentary Counsel Office and, again, the select committee—the Governance and Administration Committee—for bringing this back to the House in a timely way, and I'm happy to take questions.





Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. National supports this bill of course, but we do question the urgency of passing these amendments when there was a sunset clause in the original Act. The Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act expires in June 2021, and this bill just speeds the process up. 
Part 1 of this bill is about disestablishing Regenerate Christchurch. Now, Regenerate Christchurch was the agency that was created to manage regeneration plans in the city, and for the past four years Regenerate Christchurch has developed those plans, working with the other stakeholders for various parts of the city. But the majority of their work has been done in the redevelopment of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor. This space will eventually become a fabulous people-friendly community space, and I believe it will be a real asset for our city, because it goes right from the centre of the city right down to the shore. So you'll be able to bike, walk, and travel all the way from our city to our beaches. We're all keenly awaiting the opening up of this area and we're just hopeful that, with the disestablishment of Regenerate Christchurch, the progress in this area doesn't slow down. 
So, for Part 1, we support Part 1. We support the disestablishment, but we are concerned that the work that they have been doing should not slow down. We need it completed as quickly as possible. Thank you, Madam Chair.





Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): If I could just respond to that—thank you for that question—I think one of the overriding ambitions for Christchurch has been the restoration of local leadership, and this is what this bill provides: the ability for local leaders to make decisions that affect Christchurch. We've heard for a significant period of time from Christchurch leaders, particularly from Christchurch City Council, that they wanted the ability to make decisions that affected Christchurch going forward, and I think that Christchurch is ready for that.
I am mindful, though, that this does disestablish Regenerate Christchurch and it does mean that people who have worked in this space and done a great job, really, in identifying regeneration plans and the opportunities—particularly in the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor—will be losing their jobs. I do want to send my really grateful thanks to them for the work that they do, but also acknowledge the fact that the work that they have completed in Christchurch and in Canterbury is forever within the DNA of that space. But the overriding concern, really, is that Christchurch now is able to conduct its own affairs and make its own decisions.





Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, National does support this Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill, but I do have a question for the Minister, if I may. It just seems that the local authority or authorities involved or captured in this bill don't seem to have taken up the opportunity that was presented to them when this bill was enacted back in, I think, 2016, from memory. I might have that slightly wrong, but I think it was about 2016, 2017. While there was a great deal of cooperation across the House and a number of agencies in the development of this bill, the opportunities don't seem to have been utilised. I understand there are a couple of plans, regeneration plans. But for a piece of legislation which tackles such a huge issue, I wonder if it has been underutilised. I am interested in the opinion of the Minister in charge, Hon Dr Megan Woods, about whether Christchurch City Council, for example, could have taken a more proactive approach to utilising the mechanisms in this bill for the good of Christchurch.





Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): Thank you—I thank the member for that. I just want to quote something that I think the Hon Gerry Brownlee said at the first reading of this, that the opportunity to use the legislation for regeneration plans perhaps wasn't used as it was envisaged when the legislation was written. However, that is the decision for proponents of regeneration, and now I think it's absolutely the time for any of those decisions to actually be returned to local councils. But, as I say, it's easy to look back in hindsight and say perhaps we could've used the legislation—a bespoke piece of legislation for Christchurch—in a particular way, but it would've required people to propose plans. That didn't happen; it's no longer really a requirement. Those decisions are now able to be sheeted back to local leadership, and I think that's entirely appropriate.





Dr JIAN YANG (National): Now, Part 1 of the bill, the Governance and Administration Committee, actually, basically agreed to all the clauses. The key amendment in this part is the amendment to clause 10. Clause 10 amends section 121. Section 121 established Regenerate Christchurch and provides that it continues until it is disestablished on the close of 30 June 2021; the amendment changes that date to 30 June 2020—that's one year ahead.
So other changes are largely inconsequential amendments. In terms of Part 1, we think that it is basically there. This particular bill itself, of course, made changes to the principal Act—that's the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act. The Act itself made some achievements. Now, there is a list here, according to officials, and that is that under this Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act, Regenerate Christchurch has developed the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Plan, and that, I think, is the key achievement. There are some other minor achievements, but, overall, it appeared that the Act itself did not really achieve a lot. 
In 2017, there was a review, and the review found that the Act was in effect for a purpose but then, later on, it became clear that the Act started to become redundant. For that reason, particularly in the 2019 review, it was noticed that it was necessary to repeal the Act and move some clauses ahead, and that is why there is this particular bill. While we agree that it is necessary to move ahead, we still have some concerns regarding some implementation—for example, because this Act itself still involves a large sum of taxpayers' money, we would still like to know some details, such as whether regeneration will take place in a timely fashion and when we will see the detail of what is going to occur within our own Ōtākaro River Corridor. These specific questions, we still need to really consider, while we agree, in principle, that Part 1 of the bill is largely fine. Thanks.
Matt Doocey: Madam Chair?
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call—Matt Doocey.





MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): That's right! Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Late in the night—late in the night.
MATT DOOCEY: It's very good—a great choice, I thought.
Hon Member: Who are you?
MATT DOOCEY: Thank you very much for—
Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: It's Todd Muller.
MATT DOOCEY: —for granting me permission to—just a shorter version, ha, ha! So to start off with the Minister in the chair, we are talking about the regeneration of Christchurch post-earthquakes, and we are building one of the best small cities in the world. And what we know about the city of Christchurch and the region of Canterbury—intrinsically linked is our rugby history. We do know we are one of the best rugby regions in the world. So I just want to start off by acknowledging the Crusaders' win over the Hurricanes on the weekend—39:25—which was a historic win, beating the mighty Canes. So my first question is to the Minister. I'll be interested in her view.
Ian McKelvie: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Surely that's out of order. Ha, ha!
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It's certainly nothing to do with the bill.
MATT DOOCEY: Thank you, Madam Chair. Back to the bill. As I was saying—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): You haven't got to it yet.
MATT DOOCEY: The regeneration of Christchurch is intrinsically linked to our rugby history. So my first question to the Minister was, with the Crusaders playing the Chiefs, our first home game of Super Rugby Aotearoa, this weekend, I'd be interested to know whether she had a view on who would be winning that game this weekend. 
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That's nothing to do with the bill.
MATT DOOCEY: My second question to the Minister as well—we've talked about the regenerate entity being disbanded. And as the Minister will know, there's real concerns in Christchurch of ensuring things carry on with pace. One of the responsibilities for Regenerate Christchurch was looking at the cathedral precinct and Cathedral Square. So I'd just be interested from the Minister in how we ensure that projects like that continue, because, of course, it's all very good handing back responsibility and local decision-making. But equally I think, as we've seen in the House for almost decades since the earthquakes, Parliament has stood behind Canterbury and has served the people well from all parties, ensuring that there is legislation that ensures Christchurch rebuilds. I feel there is some concern with areas like the cathedral precinct, not necessarily the cathedral itself, but of course the land around it that Regenerate Christchurch were previously drawing up plans for. So that is my second question. The first one, the rugby score; the second about the issue of disbanding Regenerate Christchurch as an entity. 
And then, just my third question, I'd be interested in the Minister's view—you know, we are handing back responsibility to local decision-makers and I would be interested to know—I'm just noticing the Minister is seeking advice from the advisers, so we might be getting some sort of result on the score there; maybe not. But what I was interested in is also looking at the red zone area, because what we do know is that is an important area. The Minister will know it covers quite a bit of her electorate as well. How does disbanding Regenerate Christchurch ensure that, when we hand back the responsibility to local decision-makers, whether that be Christchurch City Council, Waimakariri District Council, Selwyn District Council, Environment Canterbury, and Ngāi Tahu, projects will carry on and progress well?
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The Minister is able to answer questions two and three, but question one is completely out of order—being a Chiefs supporter.





Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): It may be out of order, but I think the member will know that the Crusaders will be victorious on the day.
Thank you. I just want to reply to Dr Jian Yang that this is within the—and this also will speak to the question that the member has just posed—part of the council's 30-year plan. We have confidence that the council now has got the plans in place to take this forward. We all know that, from the discussions that we've had over quite a few months now, the council's view of this is that the Avon Ōtākaro—I always get it round the round the wrong way—the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor is a huge opportunity for us in Christchurch in terms of the significant work that it will do, not just regenerating the red zone area itself, or what we have formerly known as the residential red zone, but the opportunity to really activate those suburbs that sit alongside the corridor, and also a particular favourite of mine, actually drawing people through right out to New Brighton.
The establishment of the advisory groups to look at transitional land uses, for example, has already sparked quite a bit of interest, and people are keen to submit ideas to that particular group about what may happen. But we already know that part of the corridor will be used for potential mitigation of sea level rise and climate change effects. There are some opportunities in terms of flood mitigation and the like, but the overriding opportunity for us in that area is to create great recreational space, opportunities for activity, and opportunities to really link up the city and the eastern suburbs of Christchurch.
Just in terms of the other question, the cathedral really doesn't come within this piece of legislation; there is another piece of legislation that was shepherded through by the Hon Nicky Wagner that really takes care of that piece of work. But I do thank the member for raising that as a concern going forward.
Part 1 agreed to.





Part 2  Limited extension of powers for dealing with land
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That brings us to Part 2, which is debate on clauses 19 to 30 and Schedules 1 to 2, which is the limited extension of powers for dealing with land.
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): Thank you. If I could make just a couple of comments, this is really around the ability to reconfigure to assist Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), really, in the reconfiguration of the title—some 5,500 land titles for that particular precinct—and allow for the extension of time, should that be required in order to do that. I think the date is extended out to 2023—yes, here we go—just to allow for that work to be conducted by LINZ for the successful transfer of land. As I indicated in an earlier contribution, the Governance and Administration Committee were very useful in identifying that the reconfiguration required some wider definition to include some of the council land that bordered the area, and they were very helpful in providing a map for that particular function.





Dr JIAN YANG (National): Part 2: this is the Part where we made some recommendations or amendments. I think these amendments are well considered—for example, this clarification of the area covered by the bill. We had a submission basically suggesting that the geographical area that the extended land powers were applied to—by now referring to the bill itself. In the beginning, the bill identified the geographical area the extended land powers were applied to by referencing the specific purpose—that is, the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor. So it's a specific purpose zone described in Appendix 1 of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Plan. But then it was noted by a submitter that this could be a concern because the definition was not particularly clear. Also, it lacked certainty, and that it was undesirable to attach a definition in an Act through a reference to a plan. So then officials, of course, considered the submission—the committee considered the submission—and therefore made some changes. I will say this is a very good change or amendment, because we clearly defined the area with a very specific map so there would be no confusion. For that particular reason, I will say that this amendment is very, very useful.
Then, of course, the committee then added transitional provisions for section 71—powers and plan processes. There are some specific amendments, of course, here—particularly on page 7 of this particular bill—basically, saying that because of the changes to the bill itself, we need some other change to make sure that some powers will continue even after the disestablishment of Regenerate Christchurch. For example, if the city council received an amendment, or suggestion for amendment, to a Resource Management Act document and could not finish before deadline, the city council could continue their work as if that section were still in force—so, similar cases, not only to the city council but also to the Ministers. This would really improve the bill, and I believe these major amendments—some would say they were minor amendments, but I would say these are quite major amendments—would improve the bill. Thanks.
Part 2 agreed to.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 1A agreed to.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clauses 1 to 3
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 agreed to.
House resumed.
The Chairperson reported the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill without amendment.
Report adopted.





Third Reading
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): I move, That the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
I've made it very clear that I'm committed to this transition back to local leadership in regeneration in Greater Christchurch and, for that reason, I am so pleased to be standing here in this House today for this third reading of the bill. Early repeal of the section 71 power and earlier disestablishment of Regenerate Christchurch are both key in returning regeneration matters to local leadership. They are important pou on our transition pathway to local leadership in my home, while the extension of a limited set of land powers to ensure there is a backstop, if required, for land title reconfiguration work in the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor will help solidify Christchurch's strong position from which to progress regeneration.
The bill illustrates the accumulation of a lot of hard work by central and local government politicians and officials. It has only been possible given the progress made on regeneration in recent years. I think, to many outsiders, these will sound like quite technical amendments. But for those who live in the areas of Greater Christchurch, they will see these as very important milestones. It is over a decade since the first of our earthquakes that we experienced in our region, and this is a very important occasion of returning back to a normality, where locals lead, where locals make the kinds of decisions that they do in other parts of the country.
I'd like to acknowledge, as we have this third reading of this important piece of legislation, the work of previous Ministers for Christchurch: the Hon Gerry Brownlee and the Hon Nicky Wagner. It was a long road after the 2011 earthquakes, but the dedication to the work and the vision shown has helped to get us to this point. I'd also like to acknowledge Christchurch's and Canterbury's local government leaders. The mayors and councillors of not only Christchurch City Council but of Environment Canterbury and Selwyn and Waimakariri Districts, and not forgetting the crucial role played by Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu in the progress made across all of Greater Christchurch.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge every member of this House who has represented the Greater Christchurch region over this decade. There's actually not many left in the House who were there at the time of the first of those earthquakes. The Hon Ruth Dyson, of course, who will be retiring from this House at the end of the year, is the only one left on our side who was there at the time. Of course, on the other side of the House, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, the Hon Nicky Wagner, and the Hon Amy Adams were all there at the time of those earthquakes, and it has been a long haul.
I want to make special mention of some colleagues who were there who have left. One who always springs to mind first to me is the Hon Jim Anderton and the work that he did representing people through that period in the early days after the earthquake. I, as the candidate for Wigram at the time, worked alongside Jim and saw the tireless work that he, like MPs right across Christchurch, did for the people that he represented. We've also had many other members who have left this House, one of whom has gone on to be the Mayor of Christchurch City, in the Hon Lianne Dalziel. But then, we also have those of us that have entered Parliament afterwards. I myself entered in that year, 2011. At the end of that year, Poto Williams came in, Matt Doocey came in, we've had a steady stream of new representatives of our region, and we've all played our part. And Duncan Webb has entered. I'd like to acknowledge all these people.
The early repeal of the provisions to be made through this bill is a clear sign of the success that all these people have made. The approval of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Plan and the signing of the global settlement agreement, both completed last year, signalled significant progress in reducing the Crown's role in Christchurch. The approval of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Plan was also the final step in the biggest piece of work undertaken by Regenerate Christchurch. With this bill bringing about the early disestablishment of Regenerate Christchurch, I want to take the opportunity to also acknowledge the work it has undertaken in its four years of operation. Every project it undertook, reviewed, or contributed to has contributed to Christchurch being in its current position. So I'd like to thank all the board members and the staff who have contributed in all the ways they have to this work completed.
I note that there are still things to be done. Certainly, this bill does not signal that the Crown has finished its work, but it does show that local leadership is the best way forward on regeneration matters. I'd also like to note the organisations and members of the public who took the opportunity to make submissions on the bill and thank the chair and members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their consideration of this bill. The process is critical to ensuring the best outcomes are achieved through any piece of legislation. I appreciate that having to consider it within a truncated time frame and through the COVID-19 response restrictions complicated matters. However, getting this completed before the election was key to being able to give Christchurch that reassurance about the institutions and planning in place for regeneration in the longer term. None of this would have been possible without the committee completing its part of the process in good time and along multipartisan lines. So I thank all members of that committee. We are living in such uncertain times; being able to provide clarity of institutions and planning is highly valued. While the people in institutions of Greater Christchurch know resilience better than most, having lived through uncertainty, clarity is critical.
I know there is plenty more for us all, and for me, to get on with in Christchurch, but I do celebrate my home town. It is a wonderful city, and I think it has come a long way in the decade that we have been working towards this. I am proud and pleased to stand here and that this bill will provide the next steps towards the next steps in our journey and towards local leadership. I commend this bill to the House.





Dr JIAN YANG (National): Any Act has its purpose, and this Act, the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act, had its purpose; it's no exception. Passed in April 2016, the Act itself was trying to help resolve some long-term issues facing Christchurch after the earthquakes. The earthquakes happened a decade ago, they caused hugged damage to our Garden City, and after resolving some immediate issues, the long-term issues emerged—for example, in terms of land, some land was no longer deemed suitable for the purpose it had, and also it appeared that there was opportunity, basically, for development through amalgamation of titles or via amendments to originally zoned purposes. So, to do that, we would need some fast-track process, and the Act itself was supposed to do that and to achieve that particular purpose.
At the same time, of course, people would see some opportunities for urban renewal after the earthquakes. So, to do that, we would need some extraordinary measures to fast track the whole process. For that reason, it would need some alternative measures, or extraordinary measures, legislative or institutional arrangements, to make sure that this could happen. So the Act itself was trying to somehow help fast-track the process to rebuild Christchurch after the earthquakes. So the Act itself, the GCR Act, was trying to enable local and central government to deliver a focused and expedited regeneration process. Also it was a genuine cross-party effort in terms of designing the Act, and also it enjoyed cross-party support—what was unanimous support for this particular Act. So the Act itself did work well, to some extent, and, as I said earlier, there was the annual renewal process, and in 2017 it was noted that the Act worked reasonably well, it was fit for purpose, but gradually it became clear that the Act had started to become redundant, and that is why, in the 2019 review, it was noted that it was necessary to somehow simplify the coordination of agencies, and to do that we may need to somehow disestablish Regenerate Christchurch. So, basically, that is what we call—you know, the bill itself served some purposes but, as time goes on, of course, we would like to make some amendments.
Now, it was also noted that, while the Act itself makes some achievements, there was also some kind of reluctance in the local government, the Christchurch City Council, to work with central government in working on some plans. So, in the end, it is necessary for us to move ahead, to move on. Now, for this reason, I would thank all the officials for their work. I thank all the submitters and all committee members for their commitment. As the Hon Megan Woods mentioned, we did have committee meetings during the lockdown, and actually it was quite a long process, and also, in the end, we moved very fast to make sure that this bill could be reported to the House without going beyond the deadline. So also I would like to thank the committee staff for their efficient work, and also I thank other colleagues, like the Hon Gerry Brownlee, Nicky Wagner, and also Matt Doocey. They're from Christchurch. They made their own contributions. So the committee all worked collaboratively. That's why we say this bill itself really enjoys support from all parties, and also I would like to make sure that this bill itself will continue to be an example for cross-party work in various committees.
We made some amendments, as we mentioned earlier, that are largely to clarify the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor and also to add some transitional power to some sections. But, basically, we believed that these amendments have improved the bill itself. We do have some concerns regarding the bill, largely because implementation of the bill—we want to make sure that the taxpayers' money is used wisely.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow.
Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)