WEDNESDAY, 19 MAY 2021
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
KARAKIA/PRAYERS
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.





PETITIONS, PAPERS, SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS, AND INTRODUCTION OF BILLS
SPEAKER: Members, no papers have been presented. A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.
CLERK: Petition of Daniel Roberts requesting that the House urge the Government to recommend that Waka Kotahi install a roundabout at the intersection of State Highway 2 and Sharp Road in Katikati.
SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee. A select committee report has been delivered for presentation.
CLERK: Report of the Justice Committee on the Family Court (Supporting Children in Court) Legislation Bill.
SPEAKER: That bill is set down for second reading. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.
CLERK: Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill, introductionMaritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill, introductionMedicines Amendment Bill, introduction.
SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.





MOTIONS
Recognition of the State of Palestine—Leave Declined
GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House to move member's motion No. 8 in my name on the recognition of the State of Palestine without debate. 
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There is objection.





SPEAKER: I do want to remind members of the processes involved in seeking leave for notices and that is—and it's been ruled on a number of times now—that members are to, before the House sits, ascertain whether leave is to be received or not for those notices, and to seek leave to move something when a member knows permission is not going to be given is disorderly. It's not a debatable matter.





ORAL QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Prime Minister
1. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government's statements and actions?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the decision to invest $1.4 billion in New Zealand's COVID-19 vaccination programme to ensure every New Zealander can receive a free vaccination. The COVID-19 vaccination programme is key to securing our economic recovery. We'll continue to face uncertainties over the coming year, as COVID-19 spreads and evolves globally, and it's critical we keep investing in our health response to keep New Zealanders safe. We've sufficient doses to vaccinate every New Zealander for free and support our Pacific neighbours. Additional vaccines deemed safe and effective can be deferred for later use and further donated to support regional recovery.
Hon Judith Collins: Will all New Zealanders be able to get a COVID vaccine by the end of this year?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Certainly, based on the arrangements that we have with Pfizer, we will have vaccines available in order for all New Zealanders to be able to access a vaccine this year. What we all have a duty to do is encourage New Zealanders to do so. We have seen—and this is really heartening—a decrease in the hesitancy. We continually keep an eye on what's happening with New Zealanders' perspective of the vaccine, and over time, as people are being vaccinated, we're seeing a decline in that hesitancy. But you see globally, even in countries who have been very early adopters with their roll-out, a little bit of plateauing in that vaccination uptake, and we hope that's not something we experience here in New Zealand.
Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with the Local Government Funding Agency chief executive, Mark Butcher, warning new centralised water entities will face higher borrowing costs than councils as they seek to invest up to $185 billion in new water infrastructure?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This was actually the analysis that I spoke to yesterday, and it's one of the reasons that we have been undertaking the three waters reforms. It was instigated by the fact that we had a community who was devastated by such a significant failure in the provision of safe drinking water, and when we then took a look across the water infrastructure across the country, we saw consistent lack of investment—for a number of reasons, but consistent lack of investment. The current local government investment rate is about $1.5 billion annually, or $45 billion over the next 30 years, and as the member has just highlighted, analysis suggests that over the next 30 to 40 years, it could need to be between $120 billion and $185 billion.
Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to Mayor Phil Goff's 13 May letter to her and other Ministers that states, "Thank you for your letter received 5 May 2021 about the proposed three waters service delivery reform. I am not convinced that the proposed governance arrangements will improve efficiency for Auckland. Auckland has worked cooperatively with DIA; however, the current structure proposed is unlikely to find favour with Auckland and its council."?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We continue to work alongside Auckland Council because we take a different view. Obviously, we have to look at water provision and infrastructure through a national lens; Mayor Phil Goff, of course, looks at it through an Auckland lens. Our perspective is that, regardless, actually, there are benefits to Aucklanders by being a part of the three waters programme, but some of the issues that, for instance, Mayor Goff has raised are whether or not he wishes to sit alongside the provision and infrastructure investment of the likes of Northland, whereas, of course, if you take a "New Zealand Inc." approach, we all need to see healthy drinking water across the country, no matter where you are a ratepayer.
Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with Mayor Phil Goff that the Government's proposal that "The governors' representative group will comprise representatives ranging from four to six local authorities, and up to 50 iwi. Gaining consensus among all the parties is likely to be a time-consuming and expensive undertaking."?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The alternative is that we continue with the current arrangements, where, as I have just identified, we have significant under-investment in the infrastructure we all rely on. I would point to the fact that, actually, by and large, we have significant support across local government. There are a few cases where we have some mayors who take an alternative view. We are working closely alongside them, but, by and large, Local Government New Zealand and many mayors and councils recognise that we have a problem and that we need to work together to find a solution.
Hon Judith Collins: Can she rule out a water governance structure for the upper North Island where elected representatives are not a majority?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We've made no final decisions on the shape of arrangements for a more consolidated approach to governance, but what I can say is that, to date, the member's claims around some of these discussions have been patently incorrect. The member, for instance, put out a press statement on Sunday claiming, of course, that there would be ownership of assets by, for instance, Ngāi Tahu. That is wrong. Ngāi Tahu refuted it themselves. So I would say to the member again, if you want to join the debate, I would encourage you to. Firstly, a conversation with representatives from Local Government New Zealand would be a helpful start.
SPEAKER: I will go to the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, but I would remind the Prime Minister that when she addresses "you", she means me.
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Is the Prime Minister aware of reports in Auckland where stormwater overflow going into beaches in Auckland makes them unswimmable, and that, in effect, is another reason why there needs to be change?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely, and I would also recognise in recent times, of course, significant draw on Waikato River. This is where we need to recognise that, actually, we are frequently crossing over simple territorial boundaries, so it makes sense for us to be having these conversations at a much wider level.
Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with Mayor Phil Goff that "Without elected representatives able to ensure real accountability, the organisation runs the risk of becoming self-centred, with very highly paid executives not hearing public concerns."?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I disagree with that.
Hon Judith Collins: Will all of the new water entities have iwi co-governance; in which case, how will that look?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, we have not made final decisions on the governance arrangements for the water entities. However, again, the member may wish to start her conversation with Local Government New Zealand. They themselves, and in many regions and districts, have instigated conversations directly with iwi representatives as they work through these issues. It only seems to be the member herself who views that as a negative thing, when Local Government New Zealand has been a part of it.
Hon Judith Collins: Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table a copy of a letter on the Office of the Mayor of Auckland's letterhead dated 13 May 2021, to which I have referred in my questions.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that letter being tabled? There appears to be none. 
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Point of order. I seek leave to table a response to Mayor Goff on 23 May, in relation to the letter being tabled.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that letter being tabled? There appears to be none.
Hon Judith Collins: Speaking to that point of order, Mr Speaker. How can the member seek leave to table a letter dated a day that hasn't actually occurred yet?
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Sorry, my apologies; I misquoted the date. But can I seek leave to table the response to that letter that is being tabled in the House?
SPEAKER: Has it already been tabled?
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: No. No it hasn't.
SPEAKER: No, OK. Is there any objection—I think we can sum it up pretty easily. Is there any objection in tabling the Minister's response to the letter referred to by the Leader of the Opposition? There appears to be none.
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.




Question No. 2—Finance
2. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister of Finance: What are the Government's priorities for Budget 2021?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government has three priorities for this term that are reflected in Budget 2021: keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19; accelerating our recovery and rebuild; and tackling our foundational challenges, including housing affordability, climate change, and child wellbeing. Of course, not all manifesto commitments can be delivered in one Budget, but Budget 2021 should be seen as step one in a package of Budgets this term to be delivered to meet the Government's goals.
Arena Williams: How are the Government's wellbeing objectives being reflected in Budget 2021?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Every initiative that comes through the Budget process is assessed against the wellbeing objectives, project readiness, and value for money. The wellbeing objectives for Budget 2021 are enduring from the previous two Budgets. They are a just transition to a low-emissions economy; enabling all New Zealanders to benefit from the future of work; lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities; child wellbeing; and physical and mental wellbeing.
Arena Williams: What's the economic context for Budget 2021?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Our economic recovery is on a sound footing. Many economic indicators are showing better than expected results, and this reflects the resilience of New Zealand's economy and the confidence in the Government's recovery plan. The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is still being felt all over the world, reminding us that we are still in a volatile global economic environment. While our economy is doing well, we are also mindful of the borrowing that we've undertaken to support New Zealanders through COVID-19. Budget 2021 will reflect a balanced approach, emphasising spending to areas and people where it is needed most, alongside careful fiscal management.
Andrew Bayly: Has the Minister considered rethinking his priorities, given the report today from Baker Tilly Staples Rodway, which showed that 71 percent of New Zealand companies are unhappy with Labour's post-COVID strategy and 68 percent believed it was poorly managing the economy?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the first part of the question, no. The Government is committed to the plan and strategy that we have. It is one that has seen businesses in New Zealand thrive and our unemployment rate come in at one of the lowest in the OECD.




Question No. 3—Health
3. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response) on behalf of the Minister of Health: Yes.
Dr Shane Reti: Can he confirm that the $197.9 million annual free health check for seniors will be cancelled tomorrow, as he suggested in his Budget letter to the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'm presuming that the letter the member refers to is the letter that he had in his press statement yesterday, which was a draft letter prepared by the Ministry of Health. It is not a letter that the Minister of Health sent to the Minister of Finance. And as for what's in the Budget tomorrow, the member just has one more sleep to wait.
Dr Shane Reti: When he wrote in his Budget letter to the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson—
SPEAKER: Order! I'm just going to remind the member that he's been given a direct rebuttal of whether the letter which the member's been quoting from is in fact a letter that's been sent to the Minister of Finance. I think if the member referred to the ministry draft, he might well be allowed to ask the question.
Dr Shane Reti: When he wrote in a ministry draft—
SPEAKER: No, no—no, no.
Dr Shane Reti: —or in a ministry draft to the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, that he was seeking 20 mobile dental clinics and a $200 million Pharmac boost in Budget 2021, how much more could he have done if there were not costs associated with restructuring the health system?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I just refer the member to the previous answer that it was a draft prepared by the Ministry of Health. The Minister of Health did not agree with much of what was in the draft and it was never sent.
Dr SHANE RETI: When he cited a draft letter to Grant Robertson saying he could seek less funding in Budget 2021 by reducing specialist services at provincial hospitals, how does he explain that to rural communities who rely on their local hospital?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Those rural communities can have confidence that the Minister of Health did not agree with the contents of the draft letter, rejected it—never sent it!
Dr Shane Reti: In the draft letter he refers to, to Grant Robertson, saying he could seek less funding in Budget 2021 by changing the eligibility for aged residential care and disability related services, does he stand by those statements?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the biggest challenge we have here is a comprehension one. The letter was not the Minister of Health's letter. He did not write it, he did not agree with what was in it, and he did not send it.
Dr Shane Reti: He signed it. How could he not send it if he signed it?
SPEAKER: Order! Very clear statements from the Minister. 




Question No. 4—Prime Minister
4. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement that "Inequality has progressed almost as rapidly as development"?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, I stand by my full statement, which was made at a United Nations - related event in September 2019 where I was talking about the global context. The full statement was: "The world has changed immeasurably since then. … Inequality has progressed almost as rapidly as development. But thankfully some values endure. In Aotearoa New Zealand, we have always tried to look out for each other, and do [the] right [thing] by one another. Our track record of striving for equality, and our values of compassion and fairness are sources of national pride. But that hasn't always translated into the progress and gains we need."
David Seymour: Does she agree with the statement of Jacinda Ardern that 40 percent of New Zealanders having 3 percent of the country's wealth is a "marker of political failure"?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would refer to the fact that even as an international community within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, there is specifically a reference to trying to see a greater speed of growth in the incomes for those who are on the lowest 40 percent, and whilst we want to see growth in people's incomes generally, we need to see more rapid growth at that end if we are able to do something about inequality. In New Zealand, we haven't seen the same pace of growth in that lower quartile, and that's been a consistent issue for a number of years. It's something traversed and picked up on by Bryan Perry in our household income surveys. It's something that we continue as a Government to try and address.
David Seymour: What, then, does it say about her Government that, under its time, wealth inequality has increased and now 50 percent of New Zealanders hold just 2 percent of assets, according to the latest household economic survey?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Whether or not you look at, for instance, what we're trying to do in the housing market, or whether or not you look at, even, things like the reason that we were so focused in our recently released pay guidance to lift those who are on the lowest incomes at a faster rate—that is all about the work we're trying to do to deal with inequality in New Zealand. No one on this side of the House is sitting on our laurels saying that we have made all of the progress needed. Our view is we haven't. As I've said, that has been a consistent problem right through from the 1980s through to more recently. So it is something that we are working hard to address.
David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister tell the House and the people of New Zealand when her policies will start working to reverse the growing wealth inequality under her Government?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, I would point to the child poverty indicators, which are an indication of both relative poverty and also inequality, because they are measures, by and large, of the number of people living on 50 percent or less of the median income in New Zealand. And we have seen, against our baselines, a decline in poverty across those nine measures. It hasn't been at the pace that we would like, but we are starting to see the difference our policies are making. Our view is we just need to keep going.
David Seymour: Does she accept that many middle-income New Zealanders are feeling squeezed; and will Budget 2021 provide any tax relief to those who rely on earning money to provide for themselves and their families?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: To that I would say the Budget is tomorrow and people will make their own assessments.




Question No. 5—COVID-19 Response
5. Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What investment has the Government made in New Zealand's COVID-19 vaccination programme?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): The Government is investing $1.4 billion in New Zealand's COVID-19 vaccination programme to ensure that every New Zealander can receive a free vaccination. Our health response has been strong and successful so far, but we are taking nothing for granted. Setting aside $1.4 billion for vaccines and for the infrastructure associated with that means that New Zealand is well placed to meet our COVID-19 challenges head on. It is a massive investment as we continue to support what is the biggest single undertaking the health system has faced.
Dr Gaurav Sharma: How does the investment specifically contribute to New Zealand's vaccination programme?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Of that $1.4 billion, $964.3 million of that is for the advance purchase and the COVAX facility purchases that will support equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines; $66.3 million covers the cost of specialist vaccine equipment, including syringes and related vaccine storage facilities and transport; the remaining $356.9 million has been allocated for technology to support the roll-out, funding for DHBs, ongoing support for Medsafe, and to stand up community immunisation centres. 
Dr Gaurav Sharma: How is the investment already supporting the vaccination roll-out?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: This investment means that we can continue to scale-up our vaccination programme across the country as extra vaccines arrive in the country. As of midnight last night, we have so far delivered 474,435 doses of the vaccine across New Zealand. Within that, more than 152,000 New Zealanders have received their second doses, meaning that they are receiving the maximum protection from the vaccine. Just yesterday, we delivered 14,000 doses nationally, and we expect to hit the half-million doses mark within the next 48 hours. We know that the COVID-19 vaccination programme is key to securing our economic recovery, and that the effect of an ongoing vaccination of the community will unlock additional economic opportunities and allow us, over time, to safely reopen our borders.




Question No. 6—Finance
6. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of the statements he has made in his past Budget day speeches?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context in which they were made, which includes the fact that there has been a global pandemic in the middle of them. In particular, I stand by my statement in the 2020 Budget speech that "Our recovery and rebuild will be based on getting New Zealanders back to work.", given the latest unemployment numbers from Statistics New Zealand show that the unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in the March quarter.
Andrew Bayly: Does he stand by his 2017 mini-Budget statement that the first-year tertiary fees-free programme would be "one of the most transformative policies for productivity of the New Zealand economy.", given that enrolment numbers have decreased in every year since 2017?
SPEAKER: Order! I'm going to give the member another crack at doing it. The primary question is about Budget day statements.
Andrew Bayly: These are direct quotes from Budget day speeches.
SPEAKER: No, the member said it was from a 2017 mini-Budget. The Budget in 2017 was done by Steven Joyce.
Andrew Bayly: This is the mini-Budget 2017 that the Minister gave.
SPEAKER: Well, the member resumes his seat when I stand up. That's one of the basic things. I'm going to let—you know, in the interests of being a bit flexible—[Interruption] Who said that? That member will leave.
Nicola Willis withdrew from the Chamber.
Hon Simon Bridges: Hey, that's my job!
SPEAKER: And it's not even Thursday, Mr Bridges.
Hon Simon Bridges: Point of order. I can't do it on Thursday; it's Budget day.
SPEAKER: The member knows every day is a day he could be kicked out if he wanted to be. Now, I'm just going back to Mr Bayly. He's been quite inexact in his approach to this question. A mini-Budget is not a Budget day. Members know that the Budget process is one which is well set out in Standing Orders and in the traditions of the New Zealand Parliament, and it's important to get things right. While I'm on my feet, I will indicate to him that last Thursday, when he repeatedly told me that the Australian Budget was on Wednesday, he was wrong; it was on the Tuesday. I'll just say that I have been listening to the Australian Budget for about 35 years, so I do know which day it's on. Now I'm going to let the Minister answer the question.
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We're very proud of the fact that the fees-free policy has seen many people enter post - secondary school education who wouldn't have before, and we are very ambitious for all New Zealanders to get that opportunity.
Andrew Bayly: Does he stand by his Budget 2018 statement that his "ambitious Kiwibuild programme" will "deliver 100,000 long-overdue affordable houses"?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I stand by this Government's commitment to making sure that we provide affordable housing for all New Zealanders. I stand by the fact that this Government has tried our level best to support the building of affordable houses across New Zealand. The member knows that the KiwiBuild programme has been reorganised since that time.
Andrew Bayly: Does he stand by his Budget 2018 statement that the Green Investment Fund will "kickstart investment in [the] assets and technology to reduce carbon emissions", in light of New Zealand currently importing a record amount of coal?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I certainly stand by that statement.
Andrew Bayly: Does he stand by his Budget 2020 statement that by "providing $670 million of support and services [for] tenants" he would "improve affordability [and increase] the supply of houses," given rents have risen by $40 per week since he made that statement?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It was hard to deduce the question among the quotes, but I stand by what we're doing to support all New Zealanders to live in warm, safe, dry, and affordable housing.




Question No 7—Arts, Culture and Heritage
7. HELEN WHITE (Labour) to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage: What recent reports has she seen on the arts and culture sector?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): Last week, I released the latest forecast by Infometrics, which shows that the arts and culture sector is performing better than predicted. The updated forecast shows a decrease in the number of available jobs in the sector of just over 1 percent and an increase in cultural sector jobs from 2022 through to 2026. The sector has benefited from our Government's strong focus on securing our recovery. It reflects the impact of our $374 million COVID recovery programme for the sector and our continued focus to keep people in work.
Helen White: How did these forecasts differ from previous forecasts?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In April 2020, Infometrics provided a forecast of the economic impact of COVID-19 on the arts and creative sector. This included a job losses forecast and a sector GDP forecast. This forecast predicted an 11.7 percent reduction in employment and a loss of around 11,000 jobs to March 2021. In February 2021, Infometrics provided a new sector forecast to March 2021 which showed a decline in employment of 1.2 percent, a loss of 1,157 jobs. This forecast decline is significantly lower than the April 2020 forecast and is a positive sign that our Government's interventions are helping to secure our recovery.
Helen White: What other reports has she seen on the arts and culture sector?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: A separate report by Colmar Brunton aimed at understanding audience participation in the cultural sector shows that people are keen to return to shows, museums, art galleries, and other cultural events. The report found that only 12 percent of people attended a New Zealand music event as of late 2020, 41 percent say they would attend an event in the next 12 months. This is both pleasing but also important, because the arts and culture sector contributes nearly $11 billion a year to GDP and is a workforce that employs over 90,000 people.
Simon O'Connor: Is the Minister comfortable with taxpayers shelling out thousands of dollars for multiple Te Papa personnel to attend the funeral of a turtle, or has she asked them, somewhat ironically, to get a move on and personally pay it back?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I think that question is an indication or a reflection of how seriously that side of the House takes our art, culture, and heritage sector.




Question No. 8—COVID-19 Response
8. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What advice, if any, has he sought on the Controller and Auditor-General's report Preparations for the nationwide roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine, and what is his response to the comment in the report, "I am not yet confident that all of the pieces will fall into place quickly enough for the immunisation programme to reach the level of vaccinations required for the Government to meet its goals"?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I've asked the Ministry of Health to provide me with a further update on progress on the recommendations made by the Controller and Auditor-General. I've already received several verbal updates from the Ministry of Health on their response to the report, and they released a response yesterday to all six recommendations on their website. In response to the second part of the question, this is the largest vaccination programme in New Zealand's history. There are undoubtedly going to be challenges as we scale up the pace to deliver a two-dose vaccine with unique cold chain storage requirements. I am confident in the progress that we've seen to date and that the planning for the scale up is going well. The delivery by district health boards is ahead of targets and, coupled with good planning, design, and consultation, the preparations for the second half of the year are going well. 
Chris Bishop: Is he aware of why the ministry was not able to provide the Auditor-General with a copy of an immunisation strategy despite Cabinet inviting the ministry in August 2020 to produce one?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Auditor-General's primary focus with regard to this report was to look at the readiness for the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination. In terms of wider questions around immunisation, I don't have ministerial responsibility for those.
Chris Bishop: Why did he say this morning, responding to the Auditor-General's report, that the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out would, in his words, "roll on into next year if Kiwis fail to show up when they should", when Kiwis have been showing up on time only to be turned away at vaccine stations through no fault of their own?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: What we're seeing around the world in those countries that are well ahead in their vaccination campaign efforts is that demand is starting to plateau at around 60 percent of the eligible population. If that does happen in New Zealand, then that is the sort of thing that would push our vaccination campaign into the new year. We're working very hard to avoid that, but, ultimately, those administering the vaccine have a limited degree of control over that. All New Zealanders need to come forward and get the vaccine when they are offered it.
Chris Bishop: Does he believe the COVID-19 vaccine programme has the full public trust and confidence in light of New Zealand being ranked second bottom in the OECD in terms of speed of vaccine roll-out?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The biggest constraint on the speed of our roll-out, as I've said many times, has been getting vaccines into the country. It has been supply rather than the roll-out that has been constraining that. We made the decision in January to adopt a Pfizer-based campaign. Pfizer were very clear at the time that that meant the bulk of our deliveries would be from July onwards—generally, in the July through to September period.
Chris Bishop: Did the Ministry of Health supply to the Auditor-General a copy of the illustration of volumes and timing of the vaccine roll-out graph, which can no longer be found on the Ministry of Health website and which he says is only illustrative and approximate?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: My understanding is the Ministry of Health provided to the Auditor-General whatever information the Auditor-General asked for.




Question No. 9—Foreign Affairs
9. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What support is New Zealand providing to the Pacific to help them recover from the impacts of COVID-19?
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Earlier this month, alongside Associate Minister Aupito William Sio, we announced that we would be providing COVID-19 vaccines to cover at least 1.2 million people in the Pacific over the coming year, and that we're supporting the Pacific region with an additional $120 million in official development assistance to support the Pacific economies to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. We know COVID has had a significant impact on the Pacific, which is why we are supporting the health and wellbeing of Pacific whānau, and helping them to recover and rebuild from the impacts of COVID-19.
Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: Where is New Zealand focusing its attention for the vaccine roll-out in the Pacific?
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: We are working with Australia and other partners on the roll-out, and together our goal is access to safe and effective vaccines for all eligible people in Pacific Island countries, at the earliest possible time. New Zealand is focusing on our Realm countries and Polynesia, with the roll-out to the Cook Islands beginning this week. Next month, we expect to start the roll-out to Niue, and planning is under way for Tokelau. We are also working with the Governments of Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu on New Zealand's vaccine delivery support. Outside Polynesia, we're working with UNICEF and the COVAX Facility to access and deliver vaccines. In addition, Fiji has taken up the offer of AstraZeneca doses for 250,000 people, donated by New Zealand, subject to Medsafe approval.
Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: How will Pacific Island countries be using the additional $120 million in official development assistance?
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The grant financing will be provided as direct budget support, allowing Pacific Governments to respond flexibly and rapidly to the challenges they are facing, in line with their own objectives and interests. This funding approach recognises that each country will have different priorities for their return towards resilience. The funding will be used by Pacific Governments to support their economic stimulus and recovery plans. The budget support will also be used to continue the social protection programmes that countries have in place to support those negatively impacted by the pandemic, including support for small and medium sized enterprises, and vulnerable workers and households.




Question No. 10—Education
10. CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT) to the Minister of Education: Does he agree with the Prime Minister, who said in relation to New Zealand history being taught in schools, "This Government is committed to a better New Zealand that we can all be proud of and which recognises the value of every New Zealander"?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes, that's why the draft curriculum content embraces the histories of all people who live in Aotearoa New Zealand, and encourages schools and kura to develop a local curriculum that reflects the histories of their communities.
Chris Baillie: How will one of the three big ideas in the draft history curriculum—that Māori history is the continuous history of New Zealand—recognise the value of every New Zealander?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I say, as a Pākehā New Zealander, I do not feel the slightest bit threatened by Māori history being taught in our schools, and it is something that I hope my kids will have the advantage of learning about.
Chris Baillie: What does he say to teachers who believe that another of the three big ideas—that colonisation continues to influence all aspects of our society—is incorrect and divisive?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I want to ensure that young people in New Zealand understand all of our history—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and a recognition of the fact that we have passed down, through generations, discrimination that has led to some New Zealanders being disadvantaged in their educational journey, some New Zealanders not receiving the same opportunities as others. If our young people leave school with an understanding of that, that will be a damn good thing. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member—he's catching the Simon Bridges disease.
Chris Baillie: Does he agree with the Royal Society that major topics are missing from the draft curriculum, including economic change, constitutional issues, and New Zealand's role in international relations?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I would point out that the New Zealand histories curriculum is not the only thing that we will be teaching in schools. We will continue to teach economics, we will continue to teach social studies, we will continue to teach geography—all of those other subjects that we want our young people to learn. But I would say to the Royal Society of New Zealand, who have made a submission, that that is the appropriate thing to do. We are in a consultation phase at the moment. This is where we want to hear from New Zealanders about what they want to see reflected in our histories curriculum.
SPEAKER: Question No. 11—
Chris Baillie: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: No, I think the member—
Hon Member: Yeah, he's got another one. 
Chris Baillie: Thank you. How will he ensure that the New Zealand history curriculum gives an honest—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry, the member's party has run out of supplementary questions; I apologise.
Rawiri Waititi: Oh bugger, I wanted to hear the rest of that.
SPEAKER: Was that Mr Waititi?
Rawiri Waititi: It might have been Simon Bridges.
SPEAKER: I can—
Hon Simon Bridges: Look, if you want to kick me out.
Rawiri Waititi: He's your Thursday man; I'm your Wednesday man. 
SPEAKER: I'll only let Mr Bridges go if he does a haka on the way. 
David Seymour: Point of order. If I recall, ACT have 13 questions available, used five yesterday, four on question No. 4 today, three so far; one more remaining. 
SPEAKER: You used six yesterday?
David Seymour: It didn't feel like it.
SPEAKER: It's hard to say what I think—whether I thought the member had more, or less. 
Hon Marama Davidson: What value does the Minister feel that New Zealand history in schools will bring to harmonious relations in Aotearoa?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think understanding the wide variety of cultures and views, the diversity of New Zealand, the different journeys that have brought people here to this land, I think, will be hugely valuable. But, again, I want to reiterate what I said in my last question: I think an understanding of the fact that not everybody starts life with the same opportunities as everybody else is something that young people should understand.




Question No. 11—Social Development and Employment
11. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Does she believe the welfare system should aim to alleviate hardship or eliminate hardship?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): All of us in this House would like to see the elimination of poverty and hardship in Aotearoa, but every Government understands that there are no overnight solutions to achieving that. As a Government, we've been clear about our commitment to addressing income adequacy for those in work and those on the welfare system. But more than that, we have made significant progress in this area. We are the first Government to measure child poverty and hold ourselves accountable to addressing it. In our first 100 days last term, we invested $5.5 billion into our Families Package to boost the income of low- and middle-income families. We have since lifted main benefits and indexed them to wages, raised abatement thresholds, and invested significantly into supporting people into work. We know we have much more to do, but we are very much committed to doing the work. We have a programme of work which we are conducting on the back of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's report. New steps will come out of this work, as outlined in the Cabinet paper, and any announcements will be made in due course.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Is she aware a single person over 25 years old will only receive an extra $8 per week as a result of their recent increases to benefit levels, which is not even enough to meet the average cost of a block of cheese?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: A single person over the age of 25 would have benefited from not only the $25 increase to benefits but also the indexation of benefits to wages. I do need to speak to the indexation of benefits to wages. That's an enduring change that will mean that benefits go up year on year, more than what they would have previously. I will also say that we've been very clear there's more to do in this space and we're very much committed to doing more.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Is $315 a week enough for someone on a jobseeker benefit to live with dignity, given the increased cost of living and sky-rocketing rents?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I'm not going to pretend that living off $315 a week is easy. We do need to reflect on this country's history, and it goes back to the cuts that were made under National in the 1990s. We've never been able to catch those figures up. We've made significant progress, to date, with regards to making our welfare system fairer, but there certainly is more to do.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she agree with Helen Robinson, the head of the Auckland City Mission, who said this week that benefits needed to go up by $200 each week to allow people to live with dignity?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: There are many great people working across social services, working in our city missions, and many of them have come forward saying what they think needs to happen with regards to benefit increases. We also have the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's report, which was really clear on what they thought needed to happen with regards to benefit increases. We said in our manifesto that we would address income adequacy in our welfare system this term, and we're very much committed to doing that.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she agree that because of rising living costs, the benefit increases recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group two years ago would not be enough for people to live with dignity today?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As I have already said, we have committed to addressing income adequacy in the welfare system, work is already under way, we have made some significant changes, and we plan to make some more significant changes this term.




Question No. 12—Education
12. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education: What is the Government doing to promote bullying-free environments in schools?
Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education): This week is Bullying-Free NZ Week in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Government supports this nationwide initiative that encourages student-led action on bullying. Evidence shows that successful bullying prevention and response requires a whole-school approach and a cultural shift. The initiative has been running for five years and, in conjunction with the Bullying-Free NZ online resource hub, aims to raise awareness of what school communities can do to address bullying and provide safe, inclusive learning environments for all learners.
Angela Roberts: What other support is available to schools and students to encourage positive behaviour?
Hon JAN TINETTI: In addition to the free resources and activities that have been tested by students, we also offer a free student survey called Wellbeing@School, that helps schools and boards of trustees understand students' experiences so their voices can be heard and addressed. Other Government programmes include the Positive Behaviour for Learning suite, which, as a former educational practitioner, I can vouch for its effectiveness. Learning support specialists and resource teachers for learning and behaviour, or RTLBs, also provide on-the-ground support to schools to address behaviour and bullying challenges. This Government has also passed the Education and Training Act 2020, which ensures schools are developing safe and inclusive learning environments free from racism, discrimination, and bullying.
Angela Roberts: What other plans does the Government have to address bullying in schools?
Hon JAN TINETTI: We know bullying is a significant and ongoing issue for young people and can be a barrier to learning. Last week, the first annual report for the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy was released, and showed that 5.9 percent of secondary school students reported very regular bullying. We know that if students don't feel they are in a safe, positive, inclusive learning environment, they will struggle to learn. That is why bullying prevention and response is part of this strategy, and includes working towards the outcome of children living free of bullying. We've made good progress under this Government, but there is more work to do. I look forward to providing further updates to the House on this work as we continue to deliver for New Zealand schools.
 





URGENT DEBATES DECLINED
COVID-19 Vaccination—Controller and Auditor-General Report on Nationwide Roll-out
SPEAKER: I've received a letter from Chris Bishop seeking to debate, under Standing Order 399, the report of the Controller and Auditor-General on the preparations for the nationwide roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine. This is a particular matter of recent occurrence. There is no ministerial responsibility for the report of an Officer of Parliament because they are the responsibility of the Speaker—Speakers' rulings 201/6, 202/1, and 202/2. However, the Government including the ministry's response to such a report could be the subject of an urgent debate application. Unfortunately, that request was not made. 
However, it may be some consolation for the members to know that when considering an application for an urgent debate—or whether it's relevant—it is relevant whether there are other parliamentary means of discussing the subject. In this instance, the member lodged an oral question, his leader asked supplementaries on it, and there is the opportunity in the general debate to raise it. The Budget debate commences tomorrow and is very wide ranging; it will offer the member an opportunity to debate the report and the Government's response to it. For those reasons, the application is declined.





GENERAL DEBATE
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. 
We go into Budget 2021 with an extraordinary tailwind as a country: record low interest rates worldwide, terms of trade with the milk price higher than it's been in a long, long time, and we are an island nation on a pandemic planet. These are enormous advantages for any country to go into a Budget with, and yet we face enormous difficulties. We see rising asset prices that have dramatically increased inequality under a Labour Government. We see a country where interest rates won't be low for ever, and that's a real problem when the Government has rising public debt because its response to COVID-19 has been based on public debt and borrowing to stimulate the economy. And then there's the COVID situation, which risks becoming dramatically more complex, for four reasons: there is going to be vaccination that will change the parameters of the virus—its infectiousness and virulence; there'll be variants of that virus that may well make it a vaccine buster; there are new technologies, like finger-prick testing for immunity; and then there is public fatigue—public balance sheets and just people being a bit over it. All of that means the world is going to move on from COVID, and is New Zealand ready?
So far it's been simple to stay back behind, in our walled garden, isolated from the world, protected by the Pacific and the Tasman, but the COVID situation will become more complex as the world opens up. And what has this Government done to prepare for that eventuality and facing New Zealand's long-term challenges in general? Well, we are starting to see that our COVID response hasn't been special; our country's positioning in the world has been special. I even asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response "Did any country have more natural advantages going into COVID?" He couldn't name one, but that advantage is slowly evaporating as we find we're second to last in the OECD for vaccination.
Then we start to ask: what of the longer-term problems? What about productivity? What is this Government doing to make it easier for people to invest in their firms and their farms, to provide for their friends and their families? Well, this Government bans just about everything, taxes more and more each year, and then increasingly and onerously regulates the property that it hasn't taxed off productive New Zealanders. That's why we have tradies flocking to Australia because the Government makes it so hard to be productive with all of its taxes and regulations. They've no initiative to make business easier. The Minister of Finance gave a pre-Budget speech; 3,000 words, mentioned business twice. That's why we have a productivity problem.
And what about making it easier to build homes? A problem that both National and Labour Governments have failed to solve: too many people chasing too few homes. But what did this Government do? Well, surprise, surprise! A tax. That's right. Their housing policy was actually a tax policy disguised as a housing policy. That's before we talk about getting kids to be at school, learning, equipped with the skills for the 21st century. They prop up the system that's failed generations, especially of poorer kids, especially of Māori kids. They won't do innovative things like charter schools to make sure they learn.
So we go into Budget week on the crest of a slump, with huge tailwinds, massive advantages of terms of trade, low interest rates, massive public borrowing—it's all there—isolation in a pandemic, all of those advantages eroding and a Government that's done nothing for business, for productivity, for skills, for making it easier to build homes, leaving New Zealand with a whole lot more debt and all of the same problems that this Government found. That is what we face on Budget day. There's got to be a better way than this Government.





Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Associate Minister for Māori Development): I want to begin by acknowledging our Government team, and in particular my fellow Labour Māori MPs, who continue to represent the aspirations of Māori in this House. Minister Davis spoke in this debate last week and referenced the Leader of the Opposition opening up the National playbook and scrolling down through Don Brash's footnotes—jeez, talk about a blast from the past. It's clear that when all else fails that side of the House reverts to the politics of division, trying to sanitise history, and ignoring obligations set out under the Treaty of Waitangi. This is an interesting tactic, and if we look at the poll in weekend, it shows that that old playbook still isn't working. New Zealanders do not want to go backwards. 
The Opposition has stepped backwards from the days of the Key/English Government. The weekend poll showed that John Key is still rating higher than the current Opposition leader as preferred Prime Minister, and it's no surprise. Key and English didn't shy away from their Treaty obligations. They didn't try and sweep things under the rug, yet Judith Collins wants to turn back on the Treaty and she wants to turn back on how far we've come as a nation. She wants to ignore how much more there is to do.
National previously embraced their Treaty obligations and the concept of partnership. Just look at some of the legislation that they passed in their time: Te Urewera Act 2014, which saw co-governance and, in fact, eventually moving to Te Urewera being the main governors in their rohe. Then there is the Waikato River Authority, an independent statutory board, enabling co-governance and co-management frameworks to work between the Crown and river iwi. The Act that established the Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau Authority is an Act that transferred ownership of 14 tupuna maunga in Tāmaki-Makaurau to 13 iwi to be able to co-governed. Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park provides for co-governance. Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island is where Ngāti Manuhiri with the Auckland Conservation Board have a co-management plan. Even Nick Smith saw the merit of partnership when he said about He Whare Āhuru, the Māori housing strategy at the time, that "The Government acknowledges the ambition of Māori and iwi to lead improvements in housing for their people, their desire to build on papakāinga land and the value they place on better housing and homeownership. It recognises that improving housing is a part of a long-term vision for Māori to control their own affairs and provide a better future for whānau now and for future generations."
These Acts were good for National when they were in Government but they don't want to have anything to do with it now that they're in Opposition. Oh, my, how the worm turns. This Government understands that working in partnership with Māori helps to lift outcomes for Māori and indeed society at large. When Māori do well, everyone does well, and we do this on a daily basis. What we see are the benefits of a partnership in practice—Māori providers mobilising to respond to COVID-19, iwi responding to natural disasters to support our wider community, Māori advocating for the long-term intergenerational wellbeing of the environment, and, indeed, do I say, fresh water.
There is so much that we have done and it's important to highlight that in the remaining time we have got, because tomorrow's Budget is on its way. I want to commend the hard work of our Minister of Finance. So let's go.
What have we done to date? We've invested in kōhanga reo to improve pay for kaiako and upgrade buildings. We're improving access to healthy, affordable homes, through investing in papakāinga and housing repair programmes. We're investing in employment and skills training for Māori through He Poutama Rangatahi, Mana in Mahi, and Māori cadetships. We're setting a goal for 1 million New Zealanders speaking te reo Māori by 2040. We're introducing Matariki as a public holiday, and making ratings changes to allow councils the ability to wipe rates arrears of whenua Māori. We're supporting councils to introduce Māori wards. We're introducing a social procurement target to lift Māori enterprise and support the Māori economy. We're supporting whenua Māori development, supporting marae restoration, establishing Te Arawhiti, and continuing to work through the Treaty settlement process.
We've unveiled a statue of Dame Whina Cooper to recognise her contribution. We're making sure that New Zealand history is taught in all schools and kura by 2022. We're providing record investment into Whānau Ora, because we know it works. There is so much more to do. On this side of the House, we're certainly looking forward to the Budget, for all New Zealanders, because we're moving forward, not backwards. We know that partnership works and when we do things with others, with Māori, with local government, with community, so much can be achieved.





DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to speak about the National leader and her campaign to incite white hysteria, the politicking of fear, and make it clear that Te Paati Māori recognises her agenda for what it is—a desperate, radical agenda to gear up hysteria against bombing polls—and affirms to this House we will continue to call it what it is: conscious, deliberate, blatant racism.
We, like many tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, know this isn't about "preserving democracy" or "asking the hard questions people don't want to hear". Do not insult our intelligence. This is about a fading leader using an old trowel used by many monsters on these walls, before relying on the politics of fear, which causes people to suspend their reason and vent in a vile, destructive way. This is about a racist using her platform of privilege to spread fear—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I know that the Speaker's ruling I made a week ago, roughly, was one which is provisional and I've asked for advice on it, but I have made it clear that I'm not prepared to overturn that part of Speaker Kidd's ruling which prohibits members being described as racist in the House. The member will cease use of that word when applied to a member.
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: This is about a person who is anti-Māori and using her platform of privilege to spread fear in a way that no vaccine could ever hope to wipe out—that's what anti-Māori people do. 
Let's not kid ourselves that this is about discussing policy process, because, if that indeed was her agenda, she knows full well investing in future liabilities, taking targeted approaches, is the right thing to do. No, she has deliberately created hysteria because she wants people to act in a way they never would if we'd had a rational conversation. 
If, indeed, we took ownership of the very inequities that tangata whenua are confronting and showed courageous leadership, here we have a chance to adopt a new norm, to reclaim a position that respects tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti—a calm, reasonable way forward that has data, years of research, recommending the way that makes not only political sense, but humane sense. Instead, she constantly and consistently uses the most anti-Māori, dehumanising language—segregation, separatist, apartheid—denouncing Te Tiriti and, indeed, its intent to build a strong, united Aotearoa for all. She attacks large iwi who have worked hard with multiple Governments and shown the nation how strong Tiriti partnerships become relationships for the future.
No, what we have witnessed and seen allowed to thrive in this House is a National leader who has incited anti-Māori and invited vile attacks into every Māori home. We are prepared to get kicked out for calling her out every time, as it doesn't affect those who have the resilience to armour up, who can use platforms like ours to fight back and call her out. It affects those who are vulnerable, who we often don't see or hear in the House: our tamariki in communities; our rangatahi trying to find themselves in a country debating their culture norm, their identity; our kaumātua who get up off their seat to manaaki our tangata Tiriti elderly. This affects those that are in employment as minorities, those fighting every day against race profiling, parents teaching their children to be proud to be Māori. 
Māori are dying seven years earlier than Pākehā in a system run by people like her, a system they're too scared to use—can't understand diagnosis, don't have jobs which allow them flexibility to get treated, won't reach out for mental health support, don't have marae and hapū around them. Māori, who are less likely to get screened or referred for secondary care specialists, less likely to get the cultural services they need, and who endure poverty and are too ashamed to ask for help. She has no idea what it is like growing up with a racist profile, living in an area deliberately targeted with tobacco shops, alcohol outlets, gambling. 
Race-baiting is racist, and "Judith Coloniser", this is exactly what she is—anti-Māori. What Judith has done is long-lasting, and I intend to use my privilege to fight and have it documented that at no stage will we accept it. White supremacists are emboldened by Judith. It's irresponsible—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! I'm going to remind the member that when she's referring to that member, she can refer to her as Judith Collins or the Leader of the Opposition, but not by first names.
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: My apologies. White supremacists are emboldened by Judith Collins' irresponsible leadership, and we are not prepared to have that behaviour go in here unchecked. We didn't ask what it would look like in a united Aotearoa. I watched as we sat there with tangata Tiriti, like my mother—75 years old—ashamed to hear that tangata Tiriti aren't respected and valued, one that doesn't want to see Pākehā demolish relationships. We have tangata Tiriti with tangata whenua stand on the front line against Māori wards. We all want to work hard to stop and cancel out the culture that has become about blame and shame, instead of walking forward. We encourage those that are continuing to bring policy and legislation that will grow and enhance this country for a stronger Aotearoa. Kia ora rā.





Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I heard the ACT leader, David Seymour, say that no progress had been made in housing, and I'm going to spend my five minutes, in ahead of tomorrow's Budget, to disabuse him of his ignorance.
I do a weekly TV show on TV3 with Duncan Garner and Simon Bridges. Simon Bridges has started asking me questions as to whether the Labour Government's doing enough to solve the housing crisis. It's interesting, because anyone with a memory of longer than three years can remember that for the prior nine years, the National Party, leading Government with the support of the ACT Party—David Seymour—refused to acknowledge that we even had a housing crisis in New Zealand. Yet in the three decades from the 1990s till now, our house prices saw the highest growth after inflation—real growth—in the OECD: they went up 266 percent in real terms, to the point where a house in Auckland cost 10 times the median household income, which was plainly unaffordable for many.
So having denied the housing crisis, they left us with a country where they had sold off State houses—they sold more than they built new ones. They leased in a few, but of course they leased houses that already existed rather than building them, decreasing further the private sector stock, as well as the public stock. They allowed the workforce to wither, post - global financial crisis (GFC), and after the GFC we had fewer people in apprenticeships, so that when things came right after the GFC, we didn't have the people who could build houses.
Now, what have we done? We've done a huge range of things, and it's working. We banned foreign buyers. We updated the national policy of existing homes. We updated the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, to require councils to make room for growth, up and out. We're fast-tracking consents. We've got infrastructure funding that includes grants, but we've also got new financing facilities that enable subdivisions to be able to be financed without adding to council debt burdens. We've changed tax rules to interest deductibility, to change who can pay the marginal price for the next house purchase of an existing house, and we've had to do that because, as David Seymour says, interest rates are really low—but that's not the fault of Government; that's what's happened to interest rates around the world post-COVID.
Instead of the number of people in training going down, we've got 100,000 extra people in training since COVID hit. Of those, around 20,000 are apprentices in the building trades. A lot of the other people will have micro-credentials, and the like. What's happening? Well, we're also funding public houses. We're funding 18,000 public and transitional houses by 2024. Now, that's a big enough number. You compute that down: it's more than 5,000 a year, it's more than 100 a week, it's more than 15 a day, when you exclude Sundays. Fifteen houses extra a day makes a difference, if you do it for a while—which we are.
What happened to the total number of houses being built? The number of consents to build houses in New Zealand last year, the stats out a couple of weeks ago—it's 41,000; more than 40,000. In 2017, it was 30,000. That's a massive increase in the number of houses being built, and we're now building more houses than population growth needs, and this year is going to be just as good if not better than last year.
What's it like in Auckland, where the problems have been most pressing? House builds have gone up, from 10,800-odd in 2017, by 60 percent to over 16,000. Where's the growth happening? Well, this is what I find really interesting. Apartments have gone down—that's because we've banned foreign buyers, because they were being predominantly purchased by foreign buyers. That building effort is now going into semi-detached townhouses, flats, units, and other dwellings. The number of single houses is roughly flat, but the number of town houses, flats, units, and other dwellings has gone up from 2,200 to 7,200 a year—a 300 percent increase in the typologies of smaller houses that people can afford to buy.
We are making a difference here. I think that we are turning a corner. We hear this statement that rents are going up astronomically. They're not. They're starting to even out as well, and I reckon within a year's time, with the additional support that we'll see coming through this Budget, people can be confident that we've got this under control.





MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last week in this House, I mentioned the issue, the crisis, of cyber-security and ransomware threats to New Zealand and what a big impact that it was actually having on New Zealand, and it seems like the Government really haven't paid much attention to this.
Now, more than 435,000 New Zealanders—that is nearly 10 percent of New Zealand's population—are without adequate access to healthcare in the Waikato region. Their sensitive health data, their personal details about their healthcare needs, are still being held to ransom as we speak. It is the patient records, their health information, the digital medical tools, and even the phone lines have been down, and we're not hearing when it's going to be fixed. It may still continue to happen well past this weekend, and that is a shame. That is an absolute shame and it's an absolute disgrace, because it could have been avoided by this Government.
As the Minister responsible for cyber-security policy under this Government, Minister David Clark has failed the people of New Zealand. In his answer to my written parliamentary question, he said—and I quote—"As Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, neither I nor my officials have given any advice to district health boards regarding cybersecurity."—and I quote again—"As Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, neither I nor my officials have given any advice to district health boards regarding ICT operations."
Hon Louise Upston: None at all?
MELISSA LEE: Nothing. The Minister actually has officials across Government, including multiple Government agencies including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. This means that CERT New Zealand, the Computer Emergency Response Team, did not provide any advice to the DHB, according to the Minister. That is the answer that he has given me. That means that the DIA scam prevention and digital safety team did not provide any advice, according to the Minister. This means that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's National Cyber Policy Office did not provide any advice, according to the Minister. 
Either the answer the Minister had in fact provided to me is wrong, and he is accountable and will have to come back to this House to explain himself, or the lack of action is a damning indictment on this Government's cyber-security priorities. That means the Minister—
Hon Louise Upston: What's he done?
MELISSA LEE: The Hon Louise Upston, to your question "What has he done?": nothing, it seems. He has not done anything to prevent these kinds of cyber-attacks. 
Last week, as I alluded to, the Health Research Council of New Zealand was brought to their knees because of the hacking, and this Parliament's ability to scrutinise them during the annual review process did not happen. All the information that they were supposed to provide for their annual report was lost because of a hack.
The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee is currently undertaking a briefing into cyber-security. As soon as this news hit about the Waikato hack, I have written a letter to the committee, and I would hope that the members in that select committee will looking into it seriously, because it is a question of openness, it is a question of transparency, and it is a question of public accountability. I call on the Government's Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, the Hon David Clark, to take responsibility and apologise to the people of New Zealand—oh, that's right, he did not. He hasn't, and it reminds me that he is in fact, or was, the Minister of Health who during the COVID lockdown decided to break the rules and went cycling. He went to the beach when everybody else was doing the lockdown. 
Simeon Brown: Oh, that's right. 
MELISSA LEE: Well, yeah, it just tells me that this Minister has no sense of responsibility, and I don't expect any apology from him. I think that—[Time expired]
SPEAKER: Order! Order! 





JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call in this general debate. I just wanted to note that I'm pretty sure that the Minister responsible for the GCSB is Minister Little, not Minister Clark.
Melissa Lee: No, I said "digital economy and communications".
JO LUXTON: Oh, fair enough—fair enough. Well, thank you for that. Tomorrow is Budget day—Budget 2021. Now, it would be remiss of me, as a former early childhood teacher and an early childhood centre owner, not to mention the pre-Budget announcement that Minister Hipkins made very recently, with a $170 million package for the early childhood education (ECE) sector, increase in their funding, in order for centres to be able to pay their ECE teachers who are not kindergarten teachers on a collective agreement, in order to pay them to be able to reach pay parity. We know that many of our early childhood teachers are paid around $16,000 less. So this is going to mean so much to so many in our early childhood sector, and it is something I am so proud to be able to stand here and talk about.
Mr Seymour mentioned that the COVID response here in New Zealand has been nothing special. Well, I wonder if he's been watching television and seeing what's happening overseas, to see just how successful, to date, our response has been. We have so many more freedoms than people overseas have. When I was recently sitting in ICU with my mum on life support, and I was holding her hand, I was thinking this has been pretty damned special—pretty damned special that we, as a country, can do this when so many people overseas are not able to be with the ones that they love, when they desperately, desperately want to. So I think that our response has been very, very special.
But on to the Budget. This Budget is all about—well, we know that we are dealing with the pandemic still. As I said, you only have to see overseas that it is rife, but we do need to focus on securing our economy and continuing to invest in the wellbeing of New Zealanders. We are doing many, many things in order for that to happen. And one of the things that I did want to make mention of was what Minister Parker mentioned, around the success in our trades apprenticeships. Well, I just wanted to mention the fact that Venture Timaru, in my electorate, was successful in securing $4 million worth of funding for the regional apprenticeship scheme. Now, they anticipated that over a hundred apprenticeships would be available over a 12-month period. Well, that has been so successful that all those spaces for apprenticeships—100—have been filled within five months. That is a real success story, in my mind.
Now, we know that there are many regions who have suffered more so than others throughout COVID, and that could be dependent on where they are and what their local economies are made up of. My electorate, I have to say, has been one of the very lucky electorates, whereby we are, largely, a primary producing electorate, and during the height of our lockdown, etc., over 70 percent of our workforce were able to continue working. So we have fared better than many of the other areas around the country. So I think it's really important to acknowledge our rural sector and the work that they were able to continue to do to ensure our economy kept going in the way that it did. But that's also not to take away from the fact that there were many, many other people working in essential roles throughout our lockdown. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge them as well.
So I am looking forward to tomorrow: Budget 2021.





CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Look, I want to talk today about the Government's three waters reforms, because while we as the National Party are very much aligned with the Government around water management in this country—we started off the three waters review back in 2017—we fundamentally agree that there is a case for change and that we need to do something more than the status quo. We believe fundamentally that our infrastructure investment is suffering and that we've got ageing infrastructure. We know we've got to upgrade it. We've got to seriously do something about it. We've got challenges with safety standards. We've seen that with Havelock North, we've seen it with lead in Otago, we've seen boil notices across small towns all across this country, and we understand that there's a need for us to do something about that. We know that there is risk to our environment. We've got burst pipes in Wellington, we've got leakage in Auckland, we've got overflowing sewage on the beaches in Auckland. We've got a lot of things to do. 
So we want to make it relatively clear that we are here to be aligned with the Government on the problem that exists around water management. But I have to say that's where it now stops, because that alignment is lovely at the beginning, and it's wonderful that we can agree on the problem that's here in this country, but we fundamentally believe that this is a Government that doesn't execute well. It talks a good game but it doesn't actually get the job done. It loves to talk about what it's going to do but it never gets it done. It talks about $1.9 billion in mental health, and yet we have a 41 percent blowout in wait times to get access to those services. It talks about spending the most that's ever been spent in the history of this country per pupil, per student, secondary or primary, and yet we can't get the kids to school and we've got the worst maths, reading, and science scores that we've had for some time. It has a unique ability, this Government, to spend more but to actually get less for it. So we're looking forward to Budget day tomorrow, because I think we're going to see a lot more of the same as we go forward.
The challenge when you start to think about the three waters reform is that it's all going to come down to implementation and execution, because it's complex and it's hard and it's broad and there's a lot for us to do. Essentially, what's happening: you're taking 67 councils that provide those three waters services today and looking to amalgamate and push them into four big multi-regional entities or water entities. There's quite a few issues in the execution. We could start on lots of things, but I want to talk about one thing in particular. I could talk about financing. I could talk about whether it's voluntary or mandatory. But what I really want to talk about is the fact around governance structures, and that's the issue I'm going to spend the most time on today, because we are now talking about proposals across the country that are creating really complex governance structures. 
There's one person that we really need to listen to very, very closely, and that is Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff. You've got to understand, this is a Labour Mayor of Auckland. He is the great man from this House that was here for 22 years. He was the leader of the Labour Party for three years. He was a very experienced Minister. He's very good friends with many of the people in this House. I often wonder whether Minister Wood is his son—that's the sort of thing I wonder about. But he is very, very close to this party, and he's a great man of Government. He's one of the great leaders of the Labour Party, and he's incredibly close and he's deeply embedded with this Government, so we should listen to him incredibly closely, because I think Phil Goff gets it. I really think he understands this one. I think he gets it really well. 
He wrote to Minister Mahuta and he wrote to his good friends the Prime Minister and Minister Robertson and Minister Wood just six days ago, and this is what he said. It starts up nicely enough—I mean, he really opens the letter really nicely. He says, "Tēnā koe Nanaia. Thank you for your letter received 5 May about the proposed three waters service delivery reform."—nice enough. Good start. You sit there and go, "Thank you, Phil. We're off and running." 
Then he puts the car into first gear and he starts sort of cutting to the chase of what his actual issues are and what he wants to talk about. So here we go: "I am seeking your explanation of how DIA's proposed amalgamation will address any shortcomings in Watercare's management or governance. I do not understand why Watercare needs to be amalgamated and removed from Council's governance to achieve management efficiencies". 
He goes on to say, "I am not convinced that the proposed governance arrangements will achieve the efficiencies modelled, nor am I convinced that the change to remove the proposed water supply authority from democratic governance and oversight will be positive."—I mean, ouch! 
I mean, that's quite something, isn't it? You've opened nicely, you're then sort of getting into the first point—pretty clear. 
He starts to crank it up. He starts to really get into top gear when he starts to talk quite damningly about the governance complexity being created. He says, "The Governor's Representative Group will comprise representatives ranging from four to six local authorities and up to 50 iwi. Gaining consensus among all [those] parties is likely to be a time consuming and expensive undertaking." 
Hon Louise Upston: And he would know. 
CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Now, he would know—right?—because he was a very effective Minister. He was a great leader of the Labour Party, he's been an outstanding Mayor of Auckland, and I think we need to listen to Mayor Phil Goff. Minister Wood, he's a wise man; I know you take his tutelage all the time. It's fantastic. But I think he points out an issue that we've got to do something about. 
So I just want to encourage all those members, as we go into Budget day tomorrow, listen to Mayor Phil—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member's time has expired. 





TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Mr Speaker, thank you for letting me have a five-minute shot at being able to talk about some of the awesome stuff that's happening over on this side of the House, and steer away from some of that negativity that the "Leader of the Opposition" is talking—oh, sorry, not yet. He's not the Leader of the Opposition just yet, but if you believe everything that's going on in the media at the moment, well, it's not far away.
I'd like to first of all acknowledge the strength of our Māori Ministers that are inside our Cabinet and out there on the front line every single day, fighting for Te Ao Māori every single day, up and down the country. So having somebody like the Hon Kelvin Davis in charge of reforms around Oranga Tamariki, reforms around the Department of Corrections and making sure that Māori that are trapped inside that system are looked after the best that they can. Historically, we haven't done well by looking after those particular cohorts, the young people in Oranga Tamariki and all of our people inside the corrections net—I'll say "net", and I'll say that purposefully as well.
I want to also acknowledge Minister Nania Mahuta for the work that she's doing—our first Māori Minister of Foreign Affairs, and isn't that a great thing? But on top of that, she's also leading reforms that Christopher Luxon, the previous speaker, alluded to: the three waters reforms that—
SPEAKER: I'm just thinking Winston Peters.
TĀMATI COFFEY: Oh yeah. The first female Māori Minister of Foreign Affairs—there you go. But also, just talking about the leadership that she's showing in the three waters reform. 
The Hon Peeni Henare: what he's doing in Whānau Ora, making sure that our grassroots organisations that are out there at the coalface are being looked after as well. 
Our Minister for Māori Development, the effervescent Willie Jackson—he is a character, but he gets the job done. This time around, he's doing some great stuff, and I'm looking forward to those announcements tomorrow as they come out in the Budget. 
I want to finish by talking about the Hon Kiri Allen, who is one of our team, and we're sending her lots of love at this time. We know that she'd love to be here, but she's on a journey of her own, and she's got all of our support back here. 
The Hon Meka Whaitiri, Rino Tirikatene—the work that they are doing is also to be held up and to be used as an example. 
Last year, we delivered the Labour Māori manifesto, talking about what we were going to do, and in the six months since the election, we've done a lot. I know I've only got a short time left, but I'm going to try and peel through some of this stuff. The number one thing that I go home and talk to the whānau about is the establishment of a Māori Health Authority, an independent voice to grow kaupapa Māori services and improve the health of this and future generations by providing effective leadership and partnership right throughout our health system. It's long overdue. 
I also want to acknowledge Minister Nania Mahuta's bill to remove the 5 percent poll provision, which was a barrier to councils being able to create Māori wards. I hear—hot off the press—that Hamilton have decided to enter into Māori wards, so congratulations to them. Tomorrow, the Whakatāne District Council get to have that decision, and I look forward to a positive result there. On Friday, back home, the Rotorua Lakes Council will also be having that discussion, and again, hopefully, we will be creating these opportunities to have Māori at the decision-making table. We've done that because we've been focused on changing the outcomes for Māori, which is a huge part of Budget 2021, making sure that we're continuing the good work that we're doing, supporting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities. 
This is going to be a balanced Budget, it's going to be very much a COVID Budget as well. We're not out of the woods on that front yet. We're still dealing with the effects of COVID-19, and the pandemic still looms large over all of us. But we agree that the first response is to look after the health of our people, and, for that reason, New Zealanders are behind us on this. They were behind us when we made the decision to open the borders to go to Australia, they're behind us as we've opened the doors to go to the Cook Islands, and there'll be more opportunities coming in the near future. 
As well as lifting Māori and Pacific income skills, opportunities, we're also going to be making sure that we're moving towards a low-emissions economy, we're reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing, and also supporting physical and mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders and keeping COVID-19 out of our communities. Budget 2021 will still be a COVID Budget but also a recovery and a wellbeing Budget. It's for that reason that there is going to be much to celebrate tomorrow, and there's only one more sleep to go. As we keep telling the Opposition, who are desperate to hear what's in the Budget, they just need to wait one more sleep, because tomorrow all will be revealed. 
While we have our own tikanga and our own processes around what Budget looks like here in Wellington, all around the country the Budget affects everybody. So tomorrow is a day for all of New Zealand, and I look forward to being here and being part of it. Kia ora. 





Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Budgets are all about priorities—what we as a community, as a team of 5 million, think is important—and I think we all showed last year, through this COVID pandemic, that it is really important, the health of our people, how we work together and look after one another, and the Green Party is very clear about our priorities, what we think needs to happen in the Budget tomorrow. 
In fact, I think the priorities of the Green Party align really well with the priorities of New Zealanders. I just want to quickly refer to the highlights from the Infrastructure Commission's Aotearoa 2050 digital engagement. That got over 23,000 responses, which is a pretty good sample of New Zealanders: 92 percent of New Zealanders ranked not always having safe drinking water as a very important issue, 92 percent ranked a lack of recycling as a very important issue, 85 percent of New Zealanders want to produce less waste—they want the Government and local government to be enabling them to live more sustainably—80 percent of New Zealanders want investment in our water network, something that has been neglected over many decades. 
Overall priorities: more so than jobs and people, the planet was the most important area that New Zealanders want us to prioritise when thinking about the future, because they know that without a healthy planet we have no future. Climate change is the single-most important issue facing all of us, and it's really easy to focus on the short term, to focus on COVID, but in fact we have very few years right now to make the changes that we need to to secure a safe, stable climate for ourselves and for our kids and their kids. 
So, in the recovery to COVID-19, climate change and climate action has to be central to that. It has to be central to everything we do: the future of food production, how we get around, how we build our buildings, how we produce our energy, how we use our energy, all of that is going to need to change. I know the Government have indicated a strong willingness to move in that direction. The question is are we going to move fast enough, because we can't just tinker around the edges. Everything needs to change. 
Our economic system has to change. It has driven, it has been fuelling, the destruction of ecosystems, the loss of species at a faster rate than we have probably ever seen, and the overheating of our climate, and, of course, our economic system hasn't just done that to benefit all of us. It isn't benefiting all of us. In fact, for the last 30 years or so, our economic system has benefiting a smaller and smaller group of people. It has fuelled inequality, and, again, this is something I know the Government has on their radar. The question is: do they have the courage to move fast enough to make the changes that need to be made in order to truly deliver an economic system that is going to benefit all people, that's going to lift children out of poverty, that's going to protect and safeguard our natural environment, something that New Zealanders absolutely hold dear and prioritise? That's what we need. 
So, in the Green Budget, what would we see? We would see an overhauling of our welfare system. We know that's the only way to end child poverty in this country. We need to massively lift benefits. We need to make it fairer and easier to access. We need jobs that really employ people, OK, not just machines. There is this huge investment in infrastructure to create jobs. Yes, we do need infrastructure—we absolutely do—but we also need jobs that look after people. We need more nurses. We need more midwives. We need more early childhood education (ECE) teachers. We need better subsidies for early childhood education so that parents don't have to wait until their child is three if they want to go back to work. We need the subsidies to be higher, and we need the ECE teachers to be very well paid. I know there was a pre-election announcement. I don't think it goes far enough. 
We can afford to do this. When it comes to the infrastructure that we need to see tomorrow, we need substantial investment in regional rapid rail. We are so far behind on passenger rail and sustainable freight options in this country. 
Public transport: in fact, in the Infrastructure Commission's survey, they said 75 percent of New Zealanders want public transport improved and less than 30 percent said we needed to spend more money on roads. So the money needs to be shifted to public transport, rail, and safe cycling in our cities. The vast majority of New Zealanders said that's what they want. The question is: will this Government deliver it? Well, the Green Party will be here to hold them to account and to call for the action that we need to protect our people and our planet now and into the future. 





TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It's a privilege and honour to be able to enter this debate in anticipation of Budget 2021 tomorrow. I firstly want to acknowledge one of the pre-Budget announcements around cervical screening and the breast screening announcement made by Minister Verrall. Unfortunately, we all know someone who has been affected by cervical or breast cancer, and so to see this investment by this Government into women, into wāhine, is a game-changer, really and truly. This is going to mean—
Hon Member: Life-saver.
TERISA NGOBI: Yes, absolutely, it's lifesaving. This is going to mean many more Māori and many more Pacific but women in general are going to live longer—we're going to survive. So that's just one of the very many game-changers that I can see and I'm hopeful will continue in this recovery and wellbeing Budget. 
Another real game-changer for us, and while we are talking about women's health, is this Government's investment into another step in achieving a reduction in poverty, including child poverty, around the free period products in schools. Now we know that's another massive investment, another step towards this Government making sure that we reduce inequality and poverty by making sure that our young kōtiro, that our young rangatahi, can go to kura during that time because they can now access free period products, where before this they were having to stay home. So that also moves into, of course, this Government's absolute focus on education for all and making sure that especially our more vulnerable and Māori and Pacific kids—making sure that they also get that opportunity to access education. So again, another game-changer from this Government. 
While we are talking about education, I'd like to also note another game-changer again—here we go, No. 3—from this Government, and that is the free school lunches in kura. So again, another way to reduce inequality and poverty for our tamariki but it also goes further. Those free school lunches in kura also help our families with our budgets. I know many people who have said even with one child that's almost $50 they're saving in their family's budget per week—again, another game-changer because they can use that on other utility bills that are important. 
But it goes further than that. We were really lucky to have our Labour Party conference on the weekend in the mighty and beautiful Ōtaki electorate. I must say it was raining that morning. Everyone came and the sun came out, and it was an amazing weekend with some really great policy, great robust speakers, and kōrero around how we can continue to make Aotearoa better with this Government. 
But one of the things we did have, and we were able to do, is we were able to have the same people who do the free lunches in schools do our lunches, because I thought it's important that this Government, when you're going to put out a policy like that, taste the wares of what they put before our tamariki. So we had exactly what they would have for lunch, and I can tell you it was nutritional, it kept us up for some of our amazing speakers in the afternoon so we didn't fall asleep, it fed our souls, it fed our brains, and that's what those free lunches do for our tamariki in kura. It feeds their souls and it feeds their brains. But, more than that, we also make sure that it's nutritional and that we're saving money for their families, but we also had—lucky enough—our economic tamariki who came along to support Hamish and his team who do the free lunches in schools. They also talked, or their kaiako talked about how it goes further than that. They are also making sure that they support local. They support the local businesses when they buy the local produce to be able to make sure that we feed our tamariki in schools. So, again, can I just say, is that No. 4 or 5—I can't even keep up—of a game-changer that this Government continues to make sure that it invests in all New Zealanders. 
Lastly, they also talked about the business aspect and being able to keep some of those businesses in business while we go through COVID. I know we haven't got much time and there's so many things to talk about, but can I just say the last part is around the amazing work of our Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, who continues to manage our coffers so well that we are now looking at a 4.7 percent unemployment rate. Amazing—and, again, our Ōtaki electorate has benefited from those jobs in our rohe as well. 
Can I just say, well done to Horizons Regional Council, who voted in Māori wards. Kia ora. 





SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Look, I rise on behalf of National as the member of Parliament for North Shore. Today I want to highlight the workforce crisis in healthcare in this country. During the Estimates process in March, I asked the Minister of Health, "What was the size of the workforce shortage across the health sector?", and you know what? He could not answer. But I've got the answer. I've got the answer right here, and I'm going to talk through that today in my short call here.
There is a saying: that there is no healthcare without the workforce. I can tell you here and now that I know that the numbers on this piece of paper are big. There are big shortages in this country. It is a big number, and it is a number that is growing. In DHBs alone, there are over 4,183 vacancies today. Over 1,600 of those vacancies are nurses alone. Nearly 1,000 of those vacancies are allied health professionals, and in one district health board alone, in the Waikato—the DHB that is crippled by a cyber-security incident, that has no plan in order to deal with it—they have over 450 nursing vacancies today.
But what is hidden by these hard numbers are the human lives and the human stories. This workforce shortage is highlighted in the media continuously. It is impacting our most vulnerable, our elderly. We are seeing people waiting in corridors, and long waiting times, nurse burn-out, GP fatigue, including in my home electorate of the North Shore. My personal experience of these human stories comes from working within two of the largest district health boards in this country, and in a clinical capacity, front line, as an ambulance officer with St John. My observations of this problem tell me this problem is important but it is also real. The workforce shortage is also a cause of our vaccination programme that is progressing at the pace of a turtle. This is leaving our country vulnerable and is constraining our growth.
This Government is just making this problem worse, and let me give you a few examples. What effect will the public sector health pay freeze have on this problem? Well, I'll tell you what: it will make it worse. What will the effect of the immigration changes announced by this Government have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. What will the effect of the restructuring of our health system have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. Focusing on changing the structure within our health system without changing the root cause of the problem is not solving the issue, which is that we have a health postcode lottery of outcomes in this country, and that is made worse by the health workforce shortages across this country as well.
Lastly, I will refer to our aged care sector in this country. These are the people that are working with our most vulnerable, our elderly within our community, those that do not have a voice, those that need our protection. The aged care sector has confirmed to me today that they have, they estimate, between 300 and 500 registered nursing vacancies in this country alone. That is on top of the 4,183 vacancies that I've already quoted. But wait; there is more. There are over 300 additional vacancies of healthcare assistants, those people that are working with our elderly population within our rest homes every single day.
We have a significant crisis on our hands, and this Government has no plan to resolve it. We need to fix this problem and get on with resolving the workforce shortages within this country.





Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): [Uses New Zealand Sign Language] Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to start my short call by following on from my colleague Terisa Ngobi, first, in saying, as I stand here beside the desk of our colleague Kiritapu Allan: wāhine, Smear Your Mea—may I just say that now and wear that and tautoko that. Support your women to do it because it is so important. I am so delighted that this country's Government has actually taken the step of doing something that is going to save women's lives with the investment in cervical screening. That is what a Budget that puts wellbeing into a crucial place looks like.
I want to talk about another of those initiatives that this Government used last year that is making a real, measurable difference to the lives of tamariki all over New Zealand. I want to talk about the difference it is making to lives in my home town in Whangārei.
On Monday, I was at a little primary school on the southern outskirts of Whangārei, a place called Ruakaka School. It has about 250 kids. It is growing extremely rapidly. They have 60 staff doing an amazing job. When I went out there to talk to the principal and to talk to the staff, I asked them about the school lunch programme. Principal Marilyn Dunn said to me, "I'm almost tearing up here. The programme is fantastic." What they have done is they have four people from whānau in the community locally who have been employed on a part-time basis to make school lunches for those 250-odd kids every day. I went to visit those people and I saw them in their workplaces and I saw an awesome selection of salad and ham sandwiches, blueberry muffins that were delicious, and I heard about the difference it is making to the kids' attention span; to kids who previously did not last the afternoon, who now maintain mood and behaviour throughout the day, and who are able to keep learning; to whānau who are now employed, who previously were not. I saw the pride and the commitment on the faces of those women at Ruakaka School on Monday and how well they are serving their community, our community, and our tamariki.
I heard of the stories at Tikipunga High School, another low-decile school in my community, and actually the high school I went to. I went and spoke to the principal there, and what he talked to me about was the fact that demand is such that they have had to put on an extra lunch sitting to cope with the kids who want to come and have their healthy lunches—again, provided within that school by a local mum who has now got a job thanks to this Government; talk about doing double duty.
I want to talk about what it is meaning for the providers who, rather than the schools employing people directly, they are the schools—and many of them, 22 out of the 40-odd schools in Whangārei, are getting school lunches; about 15,000 kids over Te Tai Tokerau. The other way we are doing it is we are employing businesses within the community. One of those businesses is an outfit called Food for Life. This is a Hare Krishna outfit run by a gentleman called Buddhi. I had spent some time with Buddhi before this programme was announced, and what I know from him is that he was providing, with volunteers and donations and fund-raising, 1,000 healthy school lunches to schools in Whangārei before this happened. They were awesome schools, they were awesome lunches, I have been there and helped him dish out. He is doing 3,000 lunches now, and rather than a handful of volunteers working daily and wondering whether they are going to be able to afford what they are doing for the kids who need it, he is now employing 10 staff above minimum wage in Whangārei. That is 10 people who didn't have jobs before, and 2,000 extra kids who are getting healthy lunches every single day.
That is what it looks like when a Government puts its people first when it is making its financial decisions. I am so looking forward to tomorrow's Budget and continuing the good work that we are doing to support our people in the recovery of this—not just from COVID but of our country.
The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.





SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise on behalf of the National Party and as the MP for North Shore to take a short call on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), third reading. National supports this bill. There should be a level playing field for all types of overseas investment in New Zealand, regardless of whether this investment is on a farm, commercial enterprise, technology start-up, or in forestry. This bill works to reduce the burden that the Overseas Investment Act imposes on investors and the regulator, and this is a sensible approach. We are pleased that the Government has finally started to recognise the importance of reducing the arduous administrative red tape that is around investment, red tape that is costing our businesses growth and productivity—red tape that reduces New Zealand's attractiveness to investment necessary to support a productive and sustainable economy. 
Having spent over 20 years of my career working in financial services and global banking and markets, it is clear to me that making New Zealand a more attractive place to do business and a destination for overseas investment needs to be and should be a significant priority, particularly around reducing the burden of regulation. The National Party supports the amendments that have been made to this bill through the select committee process, and I thank those members on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their contribution. One of those particular amendments was around loosening the requirements around unproductive farmland, which, likewise, otherwise could be repurposed for commercial use, industrial, or residential developments, and I guess this makes sense. So we're pleased to see that. 
What doesn't make sense is the fact that this Labour Government has not used its powers to remedy the carve-out for forestry, and that is disappointing. But we've still got time. I'm only the ninth call this evening, so we might see a change in decision on that before we finish. 
In my electorate of the North Shore, we have many bright and hard-working people with real ambition to be best in class, and telling our story and promoting the attractiveness in the North Shore as a destination for foreign investment is important. It's important for our technology incubator businesses that are operating within healthcare and also looking at climate solutions, so anything that this House can do to reduce the burden of regulation on our business, reduce red tape, and reduce cost should be a priority and should be something that we continue to do at pace. I commend this bill to the House. 





URGENCY
SPEAKER: I call on—
Hon Chris Hipkins: Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: —the Hon Chris Hipkins.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Normally you would say, Mr Speaker, "The time for the debate has expired." That's what I was waiting to hear. But, anyway. I move, That urgency be accorded the passing through all stages of the Medicines Amendment Bill. 
The need to pass this bill under urgency has been widely canvassed. It follows a High Court decision yesterday about processes to grant provisional consent to some approved medicines. The ruling draws into question the approval process for, among other things, two contraceptive medications; two flu vaccinations; the COVID-19 vaccination; and an electrolyte solution, which is used in our hospitals. The bill removes the ambiguity that the courts have drawn into question. It means that those things can be continued to be used, and it ultimately addresses the issue for the future.
SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Motion agreed to.





MEDICINES AMENDMENT BILL
Procedure
KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): Point of order. After consultation with the other parties, I seek leave for the first reading of the Medicines Amendment Bill and the third reading of the Medicines Amendment Bill to be read without debate.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that process? There appears to be none.





First Reading
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I present a legislative statement on the Medicines Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I move, That the Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.





Second Reading
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I move, That the Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a second time. 
This bill proposes to amend the Medicines Act 1981 to clarify the appropriate use of provisional consents to sell and use medicines in New Zealand. The bill also validates existing consents. The bill will ensure that New Zealanders continue to have timely and safe access to effective medicines through this channel. Section 23 of the Act allows medicines and vaccines to be provisionally consented for early access if there is a significant clinical or public health need. Importantly, that clinical need must be weighed against the risks as prescribed in section 22(1) of the Medicines Act.
The bill removes the requirement for provisional consent to be granted on a restricted basis for the treatment of a limited number of patients. In doing so, it should be clear that this provision, perhaps referencing concerns about orphan drugs, did not protect safety. That was always achieved through the risk assessment prescribed in section 22(1).
The amendments in the bill are consistent with the policy intent of section 23, which is for New Zealanders to have timely access to safe and effective medicines where there is a public health need. The Medicines Act is an outdated piece of legislation that has not kept pace with international regulatory practice. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an urgent need for amendments to the Medicines Act.
As can be seen from Part 2, there are a number of other situations where timely access to safe and effective medicines is important—other pandemic vaccines, medicines where a class is affected by supply shortages and alternatives are needed rapidly. I would also note that the Therapeutic Products Bill, which the Ministry of Health is currently working on ahead of introduction to Parliament next year, will repeal and replace the Medicines Act and address wider issues with its relevance and application. The amendment today brings forward some of those planned changes.
The bill does not affect existing requirements related to safety, quality, and efficacy of the medicines in assessment of the therapeutic benefits and risks. Also, the bill does not affect the ability for conditions to be imposed on the use of a medicine where these are justified and consistent with the reasons for granting provisional consent. The bill will validate existing provisional consents, including the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Validation will ensure that medicines currently granted provisional consent continue to be available to New Zealanders where there is deemed to be a clinical or public health need. I commend this bill to the House.





CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was momentarily taken by surprise. I thought the Minister was going to spend a little more time outlining what is a reasonably unusual bill, as the departmental disclosure statement notes. We are retrospectively dealing with something here. I refer members to page 8, paragraph 4.3 of the departmental disclosure statement: "The Bill has retrospective effect and … [impacts] on matters that are subject to" a prospective court decision. So the Parliament is going to do two slightly unusual things here, two things that we don't like to do, as the Attorney-General will agree, I'm sure, which is legislate retrospectively or legislate with the effect of having a retrospective effect, but also at the same time legislating for matters that are currently before the courts. There is, as the regulatory impact statement notes, a prospective court decision. Now, it doesn't mean Parliament can't do it, and actually we in the National Party agree with doing it. But I am slightly surprised we didn't hear slightly more from the Minister. Perhaps we can get into that in the committee of the whole House stage.
National agrees with the need for this legislation and we'll be supporting it, and we agree with the urgency for which it needs to be passed. The reason why we're debating it, of course, is the decision of Her Honour Justice Ellis delivered yesterday in the High Court in relation to relief sought by applicants essentially trying to stop the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine. Members may want to refer to paragraph 75 of the judgment, which is, I think, the key one, which is the paragraph in which Her Honour notes that it is "reasonably arguable", her words, that provisional consent granted to the Pfizer vaccine was ultra vires the Medicines Act 1981.
I've got to say, having read the judgment and considered the legislative schema, it's hard to conclude that she's wrong, because on a plain language reading of the Act, the now very old Act or at least 30-year-old Act, "a limited number" of patients can't really be described as the whole country. That, basically, is what the case turned on, because the Government has granted the Pfizer vaccine for everyone over the age of 16 who wants one, and we agree with that. That's a good thing. We want everyone to go and get the vaccine. But, of course, it's provisional consent, purportedly granted for a limited number of patients. 
The argument is very simple. If you're granting the vaccine for everyone, that's not a limited number. When you want 3.5 million people to get it out of a population of New Zealand, the 5 million, that's not a limited number of people. And I've got to say, you know, you read the legislation and you think, well, that makes perfect sense. Notwithstanding, as the Minister for COVID-19 Response has noted, that has been the practice for successive years, not just in relation to the COVID vaccine and vaccines, plural, but in relation to other things as well. But a plain language reading of the Act, I think, essentially dictates the outcome that Her Honour reached in the court case. 
I was always taught at law school that you start with the plain ordinary meaning of the statute. You look at the ordinary meaning of the words, and the ordinary meaning of the phrase "a limited number of patients" can't mean 3.5 million people. That's not "limited" by definition. That is not.
So I think, frankly—
David Seymour: How many people are there in the world?
CHRIS BISHOP: Well, indeed. I think the judgment is correct. It's hard to escape the logic of the judgment. But I also think it's worth noting Her Honour's conclusion at paragraph 73 around the margin of appreciation given to the Government is the right one as well. It's quite an elegant judgment in the sense that basically Her Honour says, "Applicants have a point. It is probably true that the granting of provisional consent is ultra-vires the Act, but I'm declining to order relief that they have sought"—which is basically stop the roll-out—"because of the massive impact that would obviously have on the country." We're well under way, or at least tolerably well under way, in terms of the Pfizer vaccine roll-out in New Zealand. The last thing, I hope everyone in Parliament will agree, is that we have to stop doing that, and so Her Honour declined to order relief. I'm sure that constitutional scholars out there watching, like Dean Knight from the Victoria University law school, are going to love the idea that the margin of appreciation has yet again been entered into the High Court register of cases. 
We agree with the bill and we agree with the need to act with urgency, and we'll support it, but I do want to make a couple of points. I want to know from the Government, and perhaps we can get into this through other speakers and potentially in the committee stage: firstly, what was the Government told about the chances of this happening? And, secondly, when did they get told? Because I've got to say to you, when you read the Act, it is pretty obvious when you read the Act that "a limited number of people" is not going to be the adult population of New Zealand, and any plain language reading of the Act dictates the outcome that Her Honour Justice Ellis reached yesterday.
I'm willing to suggest that the Government got some advice at some point telling them that. And frankly, if they didn't get advice telling them that, someone is not doing their job properly in the Ministry of Health and/or Crown Law. Because I would have thought a sensible, competent Government would have gone to the officials and said, "We're really keen to get the Pfizer vaccine rolled out as quickly as possible. It's very important for New Zealand. What's the best way of making that happen?" And they would have been told, "Well, the Medsafe process is this and it's ABC and X, Y, Z, and Pfizer has got to apply and then they've got to get provisional approval." I'm willing to bet at some point the Government was told there was a chance that that might be illegal. I'm willing to bet that that was the case. And it either came from the Ministry of Health lawyers or it came from Crown Law, probably the latter, and that would have gone to Ministers. 
I also reckon Ministers were told the way to make this absolutely clear, to avoid any doubt, is to quickly pass a bill through Parliament to make it clear that that can happen, that what has happened, which is the roll-out of the provisional consent for the Pfizer vaccine—quickly pass a bill through Parliament to make it clear that can happen. So basically what we're doing now, which is tidying up the mess that's been created, we could have done back in October or November or maybe even September—or maybe not September, because we weren't sitting before the election, but maybe straight after the election. I'm willing to bet Ministers were told that. 
The question for the Government is: were they told that? I reckon they were. And if they were told that, when were they told that? Because if they were told that in August maybe, when we started talking about the vaccines, or maybe September or October when the first contracts were signed with Pfizer and the other companies, then I've got to say that we'll support the legislation, but that's untidy. You know, we're now in May 2021, and if Ministers were told in September last year, "Actually, there's a chance that what you want to happen in the next few months is not going to work out for you legally. You should probably fix that up and you should probably go and legislate.", that is untidy. It's not going to bring the Government down. I'm not claiming that, you know, the world is coming to an end and that Labour's massive majority is suddenly going to capitulate and crumble. No one's claiming that; I'm certainly not. I mean, God knows, if only it did—but that's not going to happen. But it's untidy and it's bad lawmaking, and, frankly, it's bad governance. It really is. If you're told as a Government that it would be tidier to make sure that the law is in place to expedite the roll-out and make sure it's all legally done according to the law and you don't do it, that's untidy.
I want to know from the Government what they were told and I want to know when they were told. And I would encourage the Government in relation to its legal advice to waive privilege if required, because it's in the public interest that I think we know that. I've asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response for the legal advice in relation to this, and he's declined to give that to me on the grounds of legal professional privilege. That's the Government's right, but it's also up to the Government to waive that privilege. I see the Attorney-General is here and I'd encourage the Attorney-General to waive that privilege. We need some answers from the Government.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to. 





Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I rise to take a call on the second reading of the Medicines Amendment Bill. Can I thank the Opposition parties for their support for the bill. I also want to make a few comments about this. Can I endorse some of the comments that have been made in respect of the careful way in which Justice Ellis went about her work. I thank her for that. I think this is a good example of the different branches of Government showing respect for each other in respect of what are important issues.
The member Chris Bishop is correct that the judgment, whilst it makes no finding that the decision was illegal, because there has not yet been a substantive hearing of that point, suggests that the Government looks at the issue because, as Chris Bishop has said and Minister Verrall has also acknowledged, there is a doubt as to whether the plain words of the existing Medicines Act, which only allows provisional approvals for a limited number of patients, are sufficient to cover the breadth of vaccination that is intended in respect of the COVID roll-out. 
The court suggested that we look at this despite the fact that the Medicines Act has been in place for decades, and similar broadly used vaccines have been given provisional approvals previously, perhaps also with a question mark over at least some of them. I found the analysis of Justice Ellis interesting in her comment that the evidence on the affidavit, evidence in front of her in respect of the application for injunction, showed that often provisional approvals don't specify the number of patients who are going to be treated by a proposed new therapy, not always vaccines. But in a lot of those cases, it's self-evident, because the class of people who would benefit from a medicine that's been introduced for a small class of people is obviously for a small class of people, or a smaller class of people.
The legislation that we have before us today, effectively, changes the provisional regime to remove the "limited number of patients" part of the rules relating to a provisional approval. It does that not just in respect of the COVID vaccine, but in respect of the other medicines that are listed in Schedule 1AA, which include the annual influenza jab that is widely used and has been approved under this methodology for many, many years, under successive Governments. 
A number of medicines have been granted provisional consents over the years, under both National and Labour Governments, and it's clear that the provisional approval or consent power clearly has value for New Zealand. And, again, the reasons for that are discussed in the judgment, including the fact that under a provisional consent, further information can be required to be provided by the provider of the medicine as a condition of the provisional consent, in a way which is not as clear in respect of final consents, and, therefore, it is often desirable that a provisional consent be granted on those terms because it can't be granted on those terms for a final consent. That, obviously, is something that probably she looked at more broadly, and already the Minister of Health has made it clear that there will be a new Therapeutic Products Bill introduced to replace the Medicines Act, which will look at that more holistically. 
In the meantime, we're left with a provision in the drafting of the Medicines Act, which the judge described as "inapt"—that was her word. We've taken the advice, essentially, that was given by the court that we look at this urgently, and as a House we are. 
In respect of the question that the member asked in respect of legal advice, I'm not going to give him legal advice or waive legal advice, but I can confirm in the House, which would have consequences for me were it incorrect, that Ministers were not provided with that advice as to the issue that the member seems to think that we were alert to earlier; we weren't. This first came to the attention of the Government upon the filing of the court proceedings, not before. The member might be correct to ask whether it should have been, but I can confirm that that wasn't brought to the attention of Ministers earlier. 
The other point I would make is that the court's decision yesterday confirmed that Medsafe did a robust and comprehensive evaluation of the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, and that Medsafe's decision is consistent with decisions that have been made in other countries, including Australia. I would also note that this is working out very well with this vaccine in other parts of the world, where many millions of doses have already been administered.
The court said that Medsafe's processes for analysing the COVID-19 vaccine went above and beyond what is normally required. I was pleased to see that recorded. The court commented that "… it is difficult to see how the assessment process could … have been more thorough.", and that New Zealanders can have confidence. I believe that all New Zealanders—on the basis of those comments and because of the confidence that we have and the care that has been taken by New Zealand's medical authorities—can have confidence in Medsafe's decision to approve the COVID-19 vaccine. So the COVID-19 immunisation programme will continue to be rolled out here, as it is in other parts of the world, and I, of course, for one—and I'm sure I'm joined by other members in this House—am so pleased about that, because it's such an essential part of enabling New Zealand's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and keeping our people safe. 
So, in closing, I would just again note that this is a very simple bill. In effect, it takes the words out—"limited number of patients"—from the provisional approval criteria. It does that prospectively, but also retrospectively, in respect of the decisions and in respect of the provisional consents that are validated, set out in Part 1 of new Schedule 1AA, and listed in clause 1(1)(a) to (f). And, as I say, it includes the H5N1 influenza vaccine. I endorse this bill to the House. 





Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a short call on this bill, which we are clearly supporting. And just to remind ourselves—we find ourselves in this situation because, as compared to other countries, we don't have an EUA, an emergency use application, which the US and, certainly, the UK and other countries have. So we've had to rely on a section 23, provisional consent. If we imagine the initial intention of an EUA-type procedure, it actually came out of the 1980s with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, where we needed to move really quickly to progress medicines that we believed had core net-benefit over disadvantages. And that whole decade of needing HIV medicines brought us to the 1990s.
I think, in the early 2000s, the Food and Drug Administration first approved an EUA for anthrax for military staff and then in 2009 it became available for civilians for H1N1—Tamiflu, I believe, is what it is. So we find ourselves in this position because we're trying to jury-rig a section 23, provisional consent, into what other countries have used as an EUA.
I want to support what my colleague, Chris Bishop, was saying about wondering when the Government was first aware that a section 23 may not be suitable. We were certainly querying other mechanisms; I'm looking back at written questions in March around section 29, whether there was something there. So we know that for many months, we've been raising the question around section 23 and, as Chris Bishop said, if the Government had some concerns then, then let's see it. Let's hear what action was taken.
I think, if I look at this, I'm just interested to know if this has been futureproofed in any way. So I can see the elements in the bill that are going to be carried over into this new amendment. I see the sodium chloride, I presume that's the diluent that goes with the Pfizer vaccine. I can see some oral contraceptives as well. My question is: if we run out, for whatever reason, of Pfizer vaccine, are we coming back to do AstraZeneca in a new amendment? Is that what we're needing to do?
And I'd be interested to hear any discussions around whether we've considered the merits or otherwise of futureproofing this bill, both for other coronavirus vaccines that may be required or, indeed, to make it clear that the routine flu vaccine is covered by this. I do understand that the Therapeutic Products Bill will fix all of these issues and this redundancy, but that's going to take a lot of time. If we do need to move quickly, if we do run out of Pfizer vaccine and do end up moving to AstraZeneca or an alternative, again, I come back to that point: are we coming back to the House?
So I'd be interested to know if this is being futureproofed, but our support is very clear on this and we commend this bill to the House.





Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party will be supporting this bill. Many of the earlier speakers have outlined the reasons why it needs to happen under urgency. I just want to really briefly go through the background to all of this. Obviously, COVID-19 has been devastating for the countries that have had uncontrolled outbreaks, including the country of my birth. Huge numbers of people have died prematurely due to COVID-19. Many, many others, some who didn't even experience the illness in a serious way, have had ongoing health impacts from the disease, and it's unclear what the lifetime impacts will be from that. So the rapid development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 has been fantastic and is something the Green Party welcomes, and it is going to save lives.
The mRNA vaccine, of which Pfizer is one, has been shown to even reduce ongoing symptoms of people who have already had the illness, and the severity of those symptoms. So not only is it preventative but it can actually help people who have had those ongoing health impacts, and so the Green Party is very, very supportive of the Government's plan to roll out the Pfizer vaccine to all New Zealanders. This is something that means that people won't have to live in fear of getting COVID-19 and having those really debilitating ongoing impacts or, potentially, dying prematurely.
Of course, one of the really terrifying things about COVID-19—and I know someone who was in this situation in the United States, where they initially caught the illness early on in the pandemic and were relatively fine, and over a year went by and they caught it a second time, and they actually were severely ill, and two of them died the second time they got it. So this is a really bad illness, and I am aware that there are people who are out there fear-mongering about this vaccine. I can tell those people, or anyone who might hear from them, that those people have no idea what they're talking about.
Any potential negative side-effects that have been observed with the vaccine are minuscule and tiny compared to the illness itself, and so we are far better off getting this vaccine, and we're quite lucky to be in this situation, to be in a country that has been safe from COVID-19 for most of the past year. We're in a situation where we are able to afford and to get the vaccine. There are some countries in the world that desperately need this vaccine, and they're not getting it. There's not a plan to roll it out to all of their citizens, which I think is a problem and something that we as a global community need to work on, because we're all better off if this illness is not running rampant around the world. 
So there has been much discussion about the technical reasons. What this comes down to, the reason for the legislative change today, is ultimately that the Medicines Act 1981 is out of date, has been unable to keep up with rapid advances in technology and medicines, and it's actually something that, when I was health spokesperson for the Green Party, was constantly raised with me by people who had different forms of cancer. They weren't able to access some of the most cutting-edge treatments because our process for approving medicines is actually very, very slow and doesn't allow for that widespread, rapid uptake of something. So it is important. This is a quick fix to that. It's not the long-term fix, which is to move to the Therapeutic Products Bill, which I know has been a complicated piece of work that has taken a long time, especially given that we had to face the pandemic.
But just to read from the judgment, to reassure anyone who might be concerned about why the Government is changing the law, it is because the provisional consent was only—in the law, it said it could be approved for use for only a limited number of people, and, obviously, we're not doing this for a limited number of people; it needs to be for everyone. But "it must be recognised"—and I quote here—"that the process gone through here was not an orthodox provisional consent process—it went above and beyond … it is difficult to see how the assessment process could, in the circumstances, have been more thorough."
So there isn't risk that people need to be worried about. This was a thorough approval process. Both my parents and most of my friends in the United States have already been vaccinated, most of them with the Pfizer vaccine, and they're all doing really, really well and are hugely relieved to have received the vaccine. We're looking forward to the roll-out, widespread, of the vaccine here in Aotearoa New Zealand.





DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Medicines Amendment Bill. I've got to say it's the most fantastic time to be alive. Thanks to the twin miracles of capitalism and science, the same company that gave us Viagra has now given us a vaccine that will end this epidemic. What a time to be alive. I think it is absolutely critical that we roll it out and make it widely available so that we can get our lives back. I also want to tell you, echoing what Julie Anne Genter has said, that just last Friday, ACT's deputy leader, Brooke van Velden, and I were vaccinated. We thought a bit about jumping the queue. We were worried about that perception. I want to make clear we answered the call from the Minister for COVID-19 Response. We considered the fact he was acting on behalf of the Queen and we thought it is our duty to be ceremonially vaccinated in front of the TV cameras for the country. We did it with no fear and I apologise to our political opponents—and particularly the Minister for COVID-19 Response, who asked us to get it done—neither of us have died; we haven't turned into crocodiles—
Hon Simon Bridges: Well, you don't know that.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Simon Bridges says I don't know that. Maybe I have died and this is parliamentary heaven. I have to say, if those were the circumstances I think things would be a little bit different. 
Hon Simon Bridges: Run us through that.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Simon Bridges asked me to run through that. I can say Simon Bridges would be here and he'd never get kicked out. But seriously, this is a very serious matter. It is important that we actually have access to this vaccine. And I think, actually, a little bit of levity is the right response to some of the objections that have been made to it. I mean, let me give you the—not a medical opinion, but just a humble electrical engineer's version of how it works, for people who may be concerned. 
Messenger RNA is inside us; it's everywhere. It's the way that our body internally communicates, stimulates ourselves to create proteins. And the way that this vaccine works is that it takes some of the messenger RNA that is in COVID-19, or at least identical to it, that stimulates the growth of the spike proteins. And when that mRNA enters the cells of a human, as it entered mine last Friday, the immune system of the human says, "Hello, hello, we've got something here like this. I'm going to generate a response to destroy it." And the immune system learns to destroy those spike proteins. Now, within a few days, all of the mRNA that came in the vaccine is gone. It's very unstable. That's why it has to be refrigerated at minus 80 degrees. The spike proteins that your cells produced upon receiving the mRNA have been destroyed by your immune system. The only thing that remains is a memory in one's immune system of what it's like to fight something that looks like COVID-19 and if COVID-19 spike proteins do appear in your body, your immune system's ready to fight them. I actually think that's pretty cool. But it also shows that you have absolutely nothing to fear because all you're left with is the memory of how to fight it. I just ask the good doctors on the other side of the House if that's roughly what happens and they say, yes, that's actually a pretty good description. 
I'll make a few other comments. This whole saga has led me to ask: why on earth does New Zealand have Medsafe? And some people might say, "Oh, you've got to have Medsafe." Well, let me ask the question: has Medsafe ever assessed a medicine that's been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and by the Australians, by the British, and said, "Oh, no, no, the rest of the world's got it wrong. New Zealanders can't use it." Has that ever happened? I don't think it's ever happened. And the question is: is it necessary for New Zealand to have its whole process and rigmarole, which has brought us into this House tonight to retrospectively change legislation, in order to delay the access of New Zealanders to pharmaceuticals that were funded offshore long ago? You see, the sad fact is that, due to low productivity growth and an aversion to putting funds into medicine, we actually are usually at the back of the bus, the last in the queue, to get new pharmaceuticals. So by the time we get them, they've already been signed off by a bunch of other countries' similar authorities. And I just wonder if we shouldn't be automatically accepting their approval. It's not that humans are substantially different in New Zealand from humans in other countries—not as far as I'm aware. So, that's the first question, but it's particularly acute in the case of this particular issue. 
Now, we're here changing the law in order that the COVID-19 vaccine and some other medicines can be used in New Zealand. And where are we? Well, we're at a stage where many other countries have reached 60, 70 percent vaccination rates. We are just getting started and the Government's only just found out that its scheme for approving pharmaceuticals under the law that it had was actually illegal. The Attorney-General got up earlier in this debate and he said, "Actually, we were given no advice that this might happen." Two questions: number one, what were the officials—Crown Law and the Ministry of Health—doing that they didn't tender the advice that maybe this would be a problem? And number two, what were the Ministers doing in a governance capacity if they never thought to ask the question? You know, this whole vaccine thing, which is basically our strategy to get out of lockdown, to open up New Zealand, and to end a pandemic, or at least an epidemic within New Zealand—you know, that thing—is it legal? Did any Ministers think to ask that question? It would have been a pretty smart question to ask but none of them bothered to ask it. That's why we're here doing it under urgency.
But indeed, the vaccine roll-out has been so shambolic and chaotic that we heard in question time today that we are now second to last in the OECD for the roll-out. And why is that? It depends which week you ask which answer you get from the Government. One week it's because we decided to be kind and let other countries have it. And then the Government is asked, "So was that actually a conscious decision that was made?" "Oh, well, not sure. It's just good that we're here now." OK, and then we're told—this was Stuart Nash on ZB this morning—"The pharmaceutical companies decided not to give it because other countries needed it more than us." Oh, really? So that was the conversation and the Government accepted that? "Oh, well, we're not sure about that." And then the answer is, "Oh, well, you know, we have it, but we don't have the capacity to distribute it. We didn't think to ask pharmacists to be vaccinators." This Government literally can't organise a vaccination at a pharmacy. So then it's "We've got the vaccine, but we don't have the distribution network." It depends which week you ask which answer you get. 
This latest legal snafu is just the latest in a series of mistakes where we have chaos and disorganisation in the roll-out of a vaccine. And the reason that this is such an egregious breach is that vaccination is New Zealand's exit strategy. It's the only way that New Zealand has to get out of locking people out and locking people down because we have no other response. We had to go into lockdown, fundamentally, because our healthcare system couldn't handle any greater outbreaks. We've had to close the border because it's so risky to let people in because our contact tracing and our testing aren't up to it. The vaccine was the last line of defence, and yet even the roll-out of the vaccine has been so shambolic and chaotic we either don't have it, can't distribute it, or we're just being too kind to take it off anyone else because we're so great—depends which week you ask which answer you get. And yet now we also find out the Ministers didn't even think, "Hey, this big strategy we've got, is it even legal?" No, and so, of course, people went off to court, tested their rights, and now we're here in Parliament retrospectively changing the law. 
I have to say the ACT Party, much like National, is happy to support the change. It's something that should happen. It has to happen in this circumstance. But like so many circumstances in which this country and this Parliament have found themselves throughout the COVID-19 response, it is a Government that is fundamentally reactive and never proactive, always on the back foot, fixing the thing that happened two weeks ago, instead of actually treating New Zealanders like adults, taking us into the confidence and the honest conversation about the future of the COVID response so that we can all be part of it. That would be a better way for this Government to respond but, instead, here we are under urgency cleaning up another mess. Despite that, the ACT Party commends this bill to the House. Thank you very much.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for committee stage forthwith. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Medicines Amendment Bill.





HOUSE IN COMMITTEE
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House in committee on the Medicines Amendment Bill.





In Committee
Part 1  Amendment to provisional consenting provision
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House in committee on the Medicines Amendment Bill. Members, we now come to the committee stage of the Medicines Amendment Bill. This bill will be debated in parts. We come first to Part 1, which includes the debate on clause 4, the amendment to the provisional consenting provision. The question is that Part 1 stand part.





DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a fairly simple question for the Minister in the chair. New Schedule 1AA, inserted by clause 6, Part 1 clause 1(1) states, "The following provisional consents must be treated as having been given under section 23", then lists a series of, I think, six medicines that are consented. Now, of course, we're doing this under urgency. Parliament's been taking up its time, not doing any other business, to get this right. Due to the, sort of, fast-moving and fluid and, dare I say it, haphazard nature of the process, can the Minister just assure everybody that in this list of six pharmaceuticals, these are the only ones that need to be treated in this way? It would be terrible to wake up to the news tomorrow and find that, actually, there was some other medicine or some other category of medicines that were caught so that we had to then go and do all this all again, especially on Budget day.





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): Yes, I can assure the member that these are the medicines that need to be treated in this way—though, of course, we've amended the Act so there is an opportunity for prospective applications for new medicines that fit the criteria for provisional consent to be made. It might be helpful for me to describe what the basis for other medicines listed there are and why they fit the provisional consent criteria, because I think it's illustrative of what the provisional consent avenue seeks to achieve. 
So the first one, labelled "(a)" there is, of course, the COVID-19 vaccine that we're discussing. But there are five further ones: item (b) and item (e) are both oral contraceptive pills. And I think this is a really interesting illustration, because we experienced both issues with manufacturer problems with supply, and also supply chain disruption in the last year. That meant that there was a realistic possibility of there being no oral contraceptive pill available. Now, if we were only to have an emergency medicine authorisation process, I'm not sure if that would meet the definition of an emergency. But there is certainly a clear public health need for that. Both of those medicines were approved in other jurisdictions, and on that basis, and the basis of other data that was able to be provided to Medsafe, they were approved. Item (d) and item (f) are both influenza A vaccines, suitable for use in a pandemic, and they have both been subject to conditional approval since 2012—obviously with the two-yearly renewal of that status, as is required by all conditional approvals.





CHRIS BISHOP (National): I note that we're talking about the schedule to the bill. So I seek leave for all parts to be taken as one debate.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.
Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 to 3
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister for her answer to that previous question from my colleague.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Sorry, Chris Bishop. Just procedurally, I need to put—the question is that Part 1 stand part [Interruption] No. The question is that Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 to 3 stand part.
CHRIS BISHOP: Madam Chair, thank you. I was just trying to be helpful to the committee. Clearly, maybe not! 
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, very helpful.
CHRIS BISHOP: Oh thank you, Madam Chair, very kind. Thank you to the Minister for that answer to my colleague's question. Following on from the comments from the Attorney-General in the second reading of the bill, I note his response to my question through my speech, which was basically two questions: what was the Government told and when were they told it? His answer was the first the Government knew about the possibility of a legal challenge to the roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine was when the court proceedings were filed which produced the judgment that has prompted this case, which begs a series of other questions, the irst of which is: did the Government ask for advice in relation to the legality of the Pfizer vaccine roll-out prior to the court proceedings being filed; and, if not, why not? 





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I'd be very—just not sure if that is a question in relation to this bill, and I'm sure this will be canvassed thoroughly at future question times, when the Minister responsible will be available.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Point of order. Madam Chair, I think the Opposition have been very gracious and quite generous. We could be doing three readings and debating a committee stage on the parts, was it not for the fact that the Opposition have agreed to actually truncate this debate so that the Government can get more of its business done later in the day. Now, I wonder if you might consider asking the Minister to be a bit more candid in answers to her questions in return for that.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. On that point of order, it was my view that the question asked by Chris Bishop was in order; however, it is not to me, not up to the Chair, to determine the quantum or the quality of the Minister's answer. And Mr Bishop has further opportunities, as does every member in this committee stage, to probe the Minister on that question.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National): Madam Chair, I think it's a very serious question that my colleagues Chris Bishop and David Seymour have put to the committee. We have an unusual situation where we have a court ruling and we have the Government using the powers of this Parliament to overrule that court process. In many instances that I have seen Parliament do this, often it's said that you would allow the benefit of the individual that's taken the court action to get the benefit of that, and that is just unconscionable in the public health situation that we have in the world and in New Zealand, and that is why National is choosing to be so cooperative in what is a pretty extraordinary exercise of parliamentary power to override the decision of the court.
So I want to go back to the very real question that my colleague Chris Bishop has asked, and that is that—and our Government experienced similar such experiences when dealing with the earthquakes, both Kaikōura and—and had to take extraordinary action. And when we did, as I'm sure you would in a corporate, if I look at my colleague Chris Luxon—is that you're dealing with a crisis and you'd be saying, "What's the legal advice? How do I get the skills in place?" And making sure we've got all the ducks in a row.
Now, when I look at the court ruling, it seems blatantly clear that to use a provision that was intended for a relatively small group of people to be able to receive access to a medicine—to, effectively, provide for the authorisation of the vaccine—surely somewhere in the bowels of Government, in dealing with the big-list public policy issue that our nation's faced at one of the biggest crises in our country's history, somebody asked the question: is the vaccine lawful and the process proper?
So I go back and would ask the question that has been asked both by David Seymour and Chris Bishop. It does need to be addressed by the Government. Did the Government Ministers ask the question of the officials as to whether the provisions in the Medicines Act—that we're seeking to amend—were adequate for a national roll-out of a vaccine as important as that for COVID?





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I think you've heard from the Attorney-General already today that Ministers learnt of this problem at the time of the court action, and our view is that the ministry obviously believed that it was acting legally and in accordance with earlier practice, and you can see that from the fact that going back to 2012, other pandemic vaccines have been approved in this way.





Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's a measure of the age of the legislation that, if one reads section 23, it's very masculine—it talks about how the Minister may give "his" provisional consent, and on giving his provisional consent the Minister may do lots of things. Well, we have a female, the Associate Minister of Health, who has that power, and I think the Medicines Act certainly does need updating, if for that reason alone. 
But one of the other things that I think—and we're not going to be able to do it in the time that requires us to make lawful the question that the High Court has determined, but I read with interest in the judgment that Pfizer were asked by the ministry, in addition to their provisional consent, to actually table a full consent under section 20 or 21. Now, that raises the perception, and clearly the authorities believed that a provisional consent wasn't sufficient to satisfy all of the questions that it had regarding—certainly—efficacy, because, of course, with the vaccine roll-out, one wouldn't know the efficacy of the vaccine until the end of the product. But it also talked in the court judgment that Pfizer were also asked to continue to provide other information, including that around safety. Now, this raises an interesting question of the degree to which the lifting of the limit on the number of people, the class of people that could benefit from a new medicine, is then going to mean that any vaccine may never get full consent under section 21, because we now know the seasonal influenza vaccine has probably been captured by the court judgment. 
So I want the Government, even if the Minister can't answer the question today, to consider the degree to which there may need to be a new process for vaccines and inoculations more generally, because the risk is that if there's a two-year window, the likelihood is that a new assay, a new type of vaccine, is going to be required, at least to be updated, and then new provisional consent needed. In fact, that's a question that I would have of seasonal influenza vaccines, because we're now gazetting them under, I think—yes, H5N1 influenza vaccine is notified in the Gazette 2018-go576. So we've now got the situation where we could be in this endless loop of provisional approvals for vaccines that are continually changing. At some point, I think it's either necessary to say that–to confirm that—or say that that requires a different process. It may be that, and I will go to the right clause—ah yes, it is sections 20 and 21, that isn't appropriate for the vaccine.
So I would encourage the Minister to think about whether or not theirs is necessary—almost like a third way, a third pathway for the approval of medicines that for proven patent medicines, that for provisional experimental medicines, which section 23 was designed to cover, and then a third class now for the perpetual approval of things like influenza and COVID vaccines, because I think we're going to be doing this for years. And if the virus is going to act in the way that we think it is—it's going to mutate, it's going to need a new vaccine, we're probably going to need booster injections in a couple of years—I worry that if the authorities felt that it was necessary for Pfizer to do a full application on this, they now don't need to do that. Well, one could argue that by the time that's complete, a new provisional approval will be necessary for a new vaccine.
I hope I've made myself clear on that; it's a bit jumbled in my thinking. But I do think there's some homework for the ministry and for Medsafe to do.





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): Thank you, that is a really important point for us to keep in mind as we develop the therapeutic goods bill. I think, just to be clear, the two influenza vaccines in the Schedule are pandemic influenza vaccines. The H5N1 is a bird flu vaccine and the other is a generic influenza A pandemic vaccine that does allow for that and it is currently, I understand, agnostic as to which specific strain of influenza A it is, so it can be updated. To me, it seems like that is an appropriate use of the provisional consent, which, of course, is time-limited. But I take the member's points and concerns on board, and I'll certainly raise them as we do the policy development around the next Act.





Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just reflecting on the point that was raised by the Hon Michael Woodhouse, I would ask the Minister to confirm my understanding, if I've got it right, which comes from both the general policy statement and the explanatory note, which is that the effect of the amendment is, essentially, to remove the words from the current section 23 that the use has to be for "a limited number of patients". This is made clear by considering the existing section 23(1), which says "Notwithstanding sections 20 to 22 [of this Act], the Minister may, by notice in the Gazette, in accordance with this section, give his"—as the member has said—"provisional consent to the sale or supply or use of a new medicine where he is of the opinion that it is desirable that the medicine be sold, supplied, or used on a restricted basis for the treatment of a limited number of patients."
That's replaced in this new bill by clause 4 of the bill, which replaces that section 23(1) with this subsection (1), which says, "Notwithstanding sections 20 to 22, the Minister may, by notice in the Gazette, in accordance with this section, give provisional consent to the sale or supply or use of a new medicine if the Minister is of the opinion that it is desirable that the medicine be sold, supplied, or used." So other than making it gender-neutral language, the only change here is to remove the reference to "a limited number of patients". That is the change, in effect, as I understand it, and that change is not just for the benefit of the listed consents that are being retrospectively validated; it also applies to other applications for provisional consents in the future, should they be made. Of course, that could all become overtaken eventually by the replacement in the therapeutic goods bill, but we don't need that in order to have a functioning mechanism in respect of provisional approvals for new vaccines or other medicines. That was a question to the Minister as to whether my understanding is correct.
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I can confirm that is my understanding.





Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank both the Minister and Mr Parker for that observation, which I agree with absolutely as a prefacing comment, although I would add that it wasn't only the words on the treatment of "a limited number of patients" that's being deleted. It's sold, supplied, or used on a restricted basis, and so the legal framework was intended to restrict the dispensing of medicines under this section compared with those approved under sections 20 to 22. 
I think my central point remains that there is a risk that we get into a potentially perpetual cycle of approvals under section 23 if the vaccine changes to such a degree that a new application is warranted. Therefore, we may never—that's a slightly far-reaching sort of conclusion—actually approve a COVID vaccine under sections 20 to 22, and that was never the intention of this section. It's an unusual situation, I think, where because of the potential rapid mutation of a virus, the medicine itself changes to such a degree that it's no longer applicable to dispense it under the gazetting under section 23. I simply raise it as a policy question for the ministry, because it may well be that we need a third path of approvals.





CHRIS BISHOP (National): Sorry, I thought my colleague Andrew Bayly was seeking a call, but, in fact, he's skedaddling. So two questions following on from my previous remarks, and they relate to Part 1, or New Schedule 1AA, which amends Part 1 in relation to the validation. The first is, when the Cabinet was considering the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the Pfizer vaccine in relation to the Cabinet papers, did those Cabinet papers identify any legal risk and was this prospect identified as a legal risk? And secondly, when did Cabinet first turn its mind to the possibility that the legislation that we're debating might be required?





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National): I just want to reinforce the importance of the Minister in the chair answering the essential question, because here is the part that has me dumbfounded: you would not need a law degree to say that when section 23(1) of the Medicines Act said it was to be used for "a limited number of patients", and you were proposing to roll a vaccine out for 5 million New Zealanders, that you've got a mistake, that—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. Order! Order! Not me.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That's right; the Minister in the chair. It would not require a legal degree or a great deal of sense to realise that when section 23(1) requires that it may be used for "a limited number of patients", and the Government was intending for a vaccine roll-out in the biggest public health crisis in a century, aiming it for 5 million people was never going to pass the legal test of a limited number of patients.
So the question that my colleague Chris Bishop asks is a question the Government must ask because it goes to the core of the competency. I want to remind the committee that we are overruling a court decision. We're applying this law retrospectively. It is an issue that goes to the heart of the biggest issue that New Zealand has faced in many years: that there is a high expectation of a level of competency within Government. So we do require an answer to: how was it possible for a Government to be so incompetent to believe that it could approve a vaccine when the provision on which it was approving it explicitly said that it could only be used for "a limited number of patients"? That question needs to be answered by the Government.





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): In response to the member Chris Bishop's first question, the answer is no, and to the second question, the answer is: last week. I think the last member to speak, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, asked a number of rhetorical questions about how this is possible. Well, the answer must be the same for this Government as it was for the Government in 2012 that approved two similar pandemic vaccines—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: We weren't rolling out a nationwide vaccine.
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Well, why did you approve something you didn't think—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The Minister will not bring the Chairperson into the debate.
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: My apologies, Madam Chair. So this has been the practice in this area for some time—that conditional approvals have been not considered to be restricted with respect to people—and our legislation today updates the Act in order to make it reflect practice, and international best practice.





CHRIS BISHOP (National): So summarising all of that from the last half an hour, 40 minutes or so, plus the second reading, is it reasonable to say the following: the Government was never told that there was a chance of a legal problem about the rollout, the Cabinet papers did not identify any legal risk in relation to the roll-out, no one in the Government asked for advice about any legal risk to the roll-out, and that the first time the Government started to consider legislation to respond to any negative court ruling was last week?





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I think the member has my answer about when consideration of this matter was initiated by Cabinet, which was in response to the court ruling. And no, I disagree. I think legal risk has been considered throughout the vaccine roll-out overall.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National): I wish to question further. The Minister has said that—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I call Dr Nick Smith.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister's answer actually requires further explanation. Earlier in the committee stage, the Minister indicated the Government knew that the Medicines Act was outdated. In fact, the Minister has said that the Government's work programme was concerned that the Medicines Act was outdated. Now, the Minister has just said legal risks were assessed. Well, I'm sorry, the Minister has to give some explanation as to why, if legal risks were assessed and section 23 said that the vaccine could be used for only a limited number of patients, when the Government's intent was to roll the vaccine out for 5 million New Zealanders—how could the legal risks have been assessed, when a person without any legal qualifications could see the mismatch between the law and the Government's intention?





Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): As I've mentioned, the ministry obviously believed it was acting legally and in accordance with practice.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 to 3 stand part.
Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.





House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The committee has considered the Medicines Amendment Bill and I report the bill without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.





Third Reading
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I move, That the Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.





OVERSEAS INVESTMENT AMENDMENT BILL (NO 3)
Third Reading
Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): I present a legislative statement on the Overseas Investment Bill (No 3).
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time.
The last year has certainly been one for the history books. While our economy has proven resilient, unemployment is not nearly as bad as what was initially predictive, and we've collectively weathered—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Budget day tomorrow.
Hon DAVID PARKER: —COVID-19—beg your pardon?
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Sounds like the Budget speech.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh, "it sounds like a Budget speech"—no, it's not actually; it's about the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), but thanks for making me a bit more interesting.
There is considerable long-term uncertainty about how COVID-19 will affect global and New Zealand economies. That remains. What is clear is that, as with New Zealand over the last couple of hundred years, productive foreign investment will continue to be important for our economy. It is also true that we need a screening regime to protect New Zealand so that whilst we get the capital we need, we manage the risks that foreign investment can pose, including investment by third parties and media companies and, at times, other sensitive land asset classes that have long been screened under the New Zealand screening regime.
Recognising this, the Government has, over the last few years, made some quite significant changes to the Overseas Investment Act. In 2018, I think those were probably the most significant changes because if those changes hadn't been made in 2018, they couldn't have been made after the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) came into effect. Those changes made sure that our screening regime could, in the future, under any Government, screen, either strictly or lightly, investments in residential land and in forest registration rights under the Forest Rights Registrations Act, which is an alternative way that forest investors can invest rather than buying freehold or leasehold property rights. Previously, there were no screening provisions covering those classes of assets, and if those changes had not been made at that time, no Government would have, in effect, been able to make those changes in the future, because it would have been in breach not just of CPTPP but in respect of earlier agreements that obtained the benefit of those provisions through the most favoured nation clause relating to investment protocols and early agreements, including the China free-trade agreement. 
So in 2020, the next changes were made. These were in response to the most uncertain economic and health conditions facing this country in nearly a century. At that time, we introduced a national interest test and a temporary emergency notification regime to ensure that investments were able to be screened. Again, at the time we did that, we thought things were going to be a lot worse than they've turned out—although in some sectors that have been heavily hit, it has been very, very hard for them, including in the tourism sector. 
But simultaneously with that, we put a longer-term bill into select committee, and today, with the support of the National Party and the Green Party, we deliver on that bill, which is the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). I'm pleased that it has had such broad support, because I think it really shows that we are delivering a stable and enduring overseas investment regime that balances the need to manage risk against cutting unnecessary red tape, and that, of course, sets New Zealand up well for the future. I'm going to cover some of the main steps of this bill. 
How do we cut red tape? Well, the bill ensures that up to 30 percent fewer transactions will need to be reviewed, and when those that are remaining to be reviewed are reviewed, the screening process will be simpler, because some of the unnecessary provisions that weren't really necessary to protect New Zealand's interests are being stripped out. For example, rather than requiring consent for small incremental investments in a listed company—or an unlisted company, for that matter—the bill is targeted at those transactions that grant an investor greater effective control over our most sensitive or larger assets. 
We are also no longer to screen a range of short-term leases of land or land that is subject to the current regime only because it sits next to land that we hold additional concern for. For example, under the existing law, until this bill is passed and comes into effect, if someone buys a commercial property that is adjacent to a reserve—and it could just be an industrial site in Auckland—the fact that it sits next to an arm of an estuary deems it to be sensitive land and it is screened as investment land, even though we don't really have a worry if that particular warehouse passes—which is often the case—into the ownership of somebody else. So we are not going to screen those sorts of things in the future. Neither are we going to screen investments by what are fundamentally New Zealand companies, even if they are more than 25 percent overseas-owned—we are not going to catch those in the same way as they are currently caught by the Act.
For the transactions that are left, we made another number of changes to prove the way—for example, repeat investors that have already demonstrated that they are fit and proper people; they are not going to have to re-satisfy the fit and proper person tests every time they invest. I was pleased to hear that we are getting the near-unanimous support of the House for most of these changes, recognising that overseas investment has supported New Zealanders' wellbeing for generations.
We have also improved the benefit to New Zealand test, which is, again, a mechanism for reviewing investments in land. We have simplified and clarified the test requirements whilst maintaining the test focus on the investment's benefits consistent with the outcome of a High Court case last year and recognising the important role that the broader regulatory system plays in ensuring investment is not harmful, such as the Resource Management Act. I've been resistant to calls from some people who say that we should have a bigger environmental test sitting in the Overseas Investment Act, when, in actual fact, we need decent environmental rules applying to everyone, whether they are overseas investors or New Zealanders, and those tests arrived under the Resource Management Act and don't need to sit in the Overseas Investment Act.
The bill also delivers improvements to provisions passed in last year's Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Act. This filled some critical gaps in our regime to ensure that some of our most sensitive assets can be protected. There is a national interest test now that carries forward for ever strategically important assets like ports and airports. 
For some of the infrastructure that has monopoly characteristics that is really important to the functioning of the wider economy, we think it is right that the Government be able to have a look at those investments and think, whether in a time of global financial crisis or something, it is better that those assets sit in the ownership of New Zealander owners aligned to the fortunes of the New Zealand economy, rather than owned by overseas people who might prefer the capital investment needs of their assets and other countries' in their home country rather than New Zealand. 
Also, there are sometimes monopoly issues that will always be present. I have a view that sometimes monopoly assets are best kept in the ownership of New Zealand investors, because, using monopoly theory, there will always be some level of monopoly rent extracted and why would you want to export that overseas if you're not capital constrained in your own country? In any event, they are now subject to rigorous review and can only proceed if the investment isn't in our national interest.
I also note that investments in media companies are now included within the purview of some of the new tests that are being introduced in the Act, and, again, I think that is necessary. I think countries should be able to control foreign ownership in media companies—they won't always want to but sometimes they will.
This review was really aided by submitters and the good work that the Finance and Expenditure Committee made. I thought they made some really good contributions, particularly in respect of farmland. This legislation does put into primary legislation the controls that we have on overseas investment in farmland, land of more than 5 hectares. I think that's good to do.
We've sorted out a very, very confused set of regulations, which this legislation replaces. Those regulations have competing tests, which, really, you can't sort out rationally, because they head in different directions and how successive Governments have managed the somewhat confused nature of those regulations is by way of a directive letter from the Minister of the day to the Overseas Investment Office. Those letters have changed from Government to Government, which has made for regulatory uncertainty. And, as well as that, in respect of such an important issue, it is not right that that can be changed by way of ministerial fiat, and that sort of important provision should sit in primary legislation.
So we've elevated into the primary legislation a better set of principles, and if any other party wants to stand on a platform that says we should sell our farmland to overseas buyers, they are going to have to stand on that and convince New Zealanders to vote for that as a proposition. So those provisions are now codified and made more rational.
I was surprised to learn that, until now, the advertisement that you had to give to the public before you could sell overseas could be given after you entered the contract to sell, which was nonsense.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.





ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): What an exciting speech from the Minister on this issue of overseas investment. It's a pleasure to be talking on this. National will be supporting this bill, and we've made that position clear throughout, although I would say there are certain aspects of the bill that we still have concerns with, and I'll deal with that in a few minutes. 
I think it's worthwhile just reminding ourselves that this bill is seeking to change the urgent changes that were brought about as a result of COVID, and there were a whole lot of changes that were made that basically granted the Minister, and the Minister's just spoken, very Draconian and wide-ranging powers to basically limit any overseas investment into New Zealand on the premise that as a result of COVID we were going to have lots and lots of New Zealand companies that would fail. We'd have all these international buyers coming in, swooping up and buying them for a dollar when they had previously been worth a lot of money. At that point, when the legislation was passed under urgency by the Government, we had significant concerns with that and certainly had a view that they should be only very temporary of nature. This bill is about getting back to normality and trying to put in place some provisions and conditions that have longevity around them. 
I think the issue around this piece of legislation—and the Minister has done a pretty good job of sort of going through it, but there's sort of three key issues. The first one is around the issue of sensitive land and how that's dealt with, and I'll pick up on that in a moment. The second one is around a transaction involving so-called foreign entities. And the issue we've got, if we think about a company like Fletcher Challenge, which grew up and was owned and was established in New Zealand, is because it's listed overseas in the Australian market, it is technically under the current rules deemed to be a foreign entity. Because it's more than 25 percent owned by foreigners and because it's a listed company, that's what happens. 
The rules change under this bill to have a couple of tests around that. One is if one person, one foreigner, has the ability to control more than 50 percent of the people that are put on the board or governance arrangements, then that person and that company is now deemed a foreigner. So it gives a bit of latitude from that perspective. 
The other one is whether there's more than 10 percent of a company's securities who—means that they control, again, the 50 percent test, but actually means that what it does is gives flexibilities for those listed companies to actually be able to operate without being deemed foreigners. And from that perspective, I think we've got quite a good sort of basis in terms of determining what is foreign ownership going forward from now. 
The third element relates to leases. Previously, leases were captured. What the bill sets out is if the lease is less than 10 years' duration, it's actually not captured now, under the bill. That's a good thing, because if you think about the viticulture industry, leasing of land by wine companies—often they will be deemed to be foreigners. They are leasing the land, so they're not buying it, obviously. If they have a lease for less than 10 years, it means that they can continue and it's sort of the current way that they operate in New Zealand without being subject to undue scrutiny, and I think that's a pretty good aspect to it. 
The issue around the assessment of transactions—the bill introduces a couple of provisions. The first one is around this test around whether, in fact, the land is sensitive, and the Minister alluded to that. There's now very clear rules set out in the table around whether, if you buy a business or even if you buy a very small plot of land, it's deemed to be sensitive because of being a neighbouring or contiguous with another piece of land, such as a marine area or even a coastal area or a river or whatever it might be. That, under the previous rules, would have been deemed subject to overseas investment. So that sort of clarifies that quite significantly, and I think that's a pretty good aspect to it. 
The other aspect is the definition of, if you're going to go through and assess a transaction, whether in fact—under current rules, we used to have what was called the counterfactual—if a foreigner bought it, would that foreigner do even more than a New Zealand investor? And the test, the counterfactual, was that they had to do more in terms of either growing the business or employing more people, or bringing further environmental impacts. The test now is a little bit simpler, and it's a before and after test. Related to this is the issue around advertising, which means that this transaction will need to be subject to some form of advertising. That is the test to make sure that the New Zealand interests or New Zealand component of that test is actually properly understood and quantified. 
The other aspect to it is a proportional approach. So if the land is of a really sensitive nature because of the scale of it, then the proportionate approach is, in terms of the decision making, the benefits will need to be proportionately higher if it is to pass and be approved. And I think, again, that's a pretty good approach to dealing with the issue of certainly sensitive land. 
I think some of the other areas that we talked about in the committee, and I think it's been quite useful discussion, is the one around investment by sovereign wealth funds. At the moment, we have a lot of foreign sovereign wealth funds. These are entities that professional habitual investors—they may come in and buy shares, those types of things on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. They do not necessarily automatically need to be now subject to a national interest test. There may be occasions when they should be, if the ownership or control of those sovereign funds is unclear. 
The other aspect is a call-in power, which the Minister now has. This is when the asset or transaction involves something that is strategically important to New Zealand. So this is an issue that's pretty important in terms of how it's exercised by the Minister. The Minister spoke before about ports and airports and other such assets. The call-in power is quite a significant issue and power and needs to be exercised judiciously, and we are hopeful that we've got the right balance in the legislation for that to occur. 
But the big issue that we're unhappy about in this bill is that the issue of land which is subject to forestry cutting rights or could be acquired for forestry rights—we are concerned that this is the only major issue that was not dealt with in this bill. So just to give backdrop to this, forestry land or forests in New Zealand are currently owned in excess of 70 percent by foreigners. So that means that less than 20 percent, or less than 30 percent actually, is owned by domestic owners. 
That level of foreign ownership of our forests is something that we should be concerned about. Under the direction of the former Government, a very special dispensation was made, led by Winston Peters, to make sure that foreign companies could come in and buy up to 999 hectares, provided it was going to be used for forestry use or forestry cutting rights. We were very concerned about this at the time. We thought that to have a 5 hectare limit for farmland but a 999 hectare right for foreigners buying forests was disproportionate and actually an unwelcome arrangement.
This is one of the issues that we think this bill does not adequately address. We put up a Supplementary Order Paper yesterday to try and deal with this issue, because we want to make sure that we do not allow foreigners to come and buy our forestry assets without sufficient scrutiny. That's not to say that they shouldn't be buying them, but they should be subject to the same amount of scrutiny that other land acquisitions are under. We're disappointed that that's not in the bill, but it's recognised that the bill is going to be passed. 
I'd just like to finish off by thanking all of the officials for the help during the course of working through this bill.





Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. It's a pleasure to stand on this third reading of this bill, on the overseas investment regime. It's good to see that we've got pretty much consensus around the House on what is an important piece of legislation seeking to protect New Zealand's interests. The position of the National Party in respect of the forests is noted, and it was raised at committee—I want to absolutely recognise that. 
But I want to step back a moment, if I may, and just look at the underlying philosophy of this, and I think when we do that we'll see why the suggestions of the National Party weren't adopted, because I think this is not about creating some kind of fortress New Zealand—quite the opposite in fact. This bill, in particular, is looking at fine tuning. You know, we're on the third Act, and there's reasons why we've got three of them, but fine tuning our overseas investment regime to make good investment easier and to make it harder—to make the system more sensitive, to pick up important situations which require far more scrutiny around what is sensitive and what is strategic.
If we look—as Mr Bayly rightly notes, I don't know the numbers, he perhaps does, but large amounts of our forests are owned, cutting rights and the like are owned, by overseas investors. And that seems to be working. This isn't a situation where we see some skewing of the market or the loss of a critical strategic asset of New Zealand, rather—whilst I do absolutely recognise recent supply chain issues with timber and the like, by and large our timber and forestry industry appears to be working well and foreign investment in it does not seem to be problematic in any way. Having said that—and we heard Mr Parker, I think it was only yesterday, say that keeping this area of the law in shape is important—it's not out of the question that at some future date that may be revisited.
But the real point here is that this is a piece of legislation which says we want to attract high quality investment and not just the capital, because capital is only one part of the picture, but investors who bring particular expertise. We heard about the benefit to New Zealand test and essentially the abandonment of the counterfactual test, because the counterfactual—and it pops up in various areas of the law, including competition law, but it's always a bit fraught, because it's a "What might happen if we allow it and what might happen if we don't." And so your counterfactual is, by definition, hypothetical. So it is a bit of crystal ball gazing, whereas you've got a much more concrete test now—the before and after test—which asks the question, "What is the status quo?" and then asks the next question, "How will the status quo be improved if we allow this overseas investment?" You have to show, ultimately, a benefit to New Zealand to do that.
I guess the real point here is that when we're doing that, when we're asking what the triggers are for this, we want to have a proportionate approach. One of the big complaints to date, and I want to say it's a legitimate one, is that people who are looking to invest in New Zealand had a regulatory burden that was too high. So while we're not burning the regulations, we're absolutely seeking to make them a lot more workable in terms of having things like standing consents. We want a proportionate framework. So in this before and after test, which is much more workable as part of it, and also a framework where you won't have to, every time, go through the entire process of ascertaining the credentials of the investor and the nature of the investment and so on and so forth. So we see that as a really important part of it. The before and after test will now simply ask the question, "What is it now? How will it be improved later?"
I do want to touch on the other aspect of the benefit to New Zealand test, which was very much robustly discussed in committee—and I want to recognise the Greens for raising this—the question of whether you simply ask what's the benefit, what are the pluses that we can see, and what are the direct economic costs, or whether you have a much more open enquiry and ask what are the wider detractors for New Zealand. As you'd expect from the Greens, quite rightly, they identified the bringing into account of environmental issues. Now, I guess the point to be made here is that, whenever we're looking at any activity within New Zealand, any, for example, use of land, any activity on conservation land, any of those kinds of things: there is a thoroughgoing regime. And any person who is making an application—whether it be to run a tour through Milford Sound or mine in Waihī, they have to go through a rigorous and robust process. That's a process which occurs after approval has been given. So there's two quite separate questions. One is, "Is there a benefit to New Zealand?"; the second inquiry—still an important inquiry, absolutely, but it's not one you should have to do twice, you should only have to do it once—do the benefit to New Zealand enquiry for overseas investment, first, do the environmental enquiry or whatever other enquiry is important, do that one next. They're still there, and it's not appropriate to conflate those and, essentially, have a resource management hearing in an overseas investment context. So that was really important. 
I guess the other thing that cropped up in there was relatively straightforward, but the idea that investments go up and down. There are some situations where that's not problematic, and we know that, by dint of company law, there are some thresholds that are important. The 25 percent threshold is important, the 50 percent threshold—where effective control exists, the 75 percent threshold, and of course total control at the other end. Within those boundaries, creeping or shifting, creeping sounds nefarious, it's not nefarious, but shifting shareholdings or ownership interests on something like—we mentioned, the Fletcher group of companies, which is an overseas company, although has strong New Zealand roots, it's not invidious at all. So we don't need—simply, if there's an additional 5 percent being purchased, for example, it doesn't cross a threshold. We don't need a special Overseas Investment Act inquiry into that. So I thought that was sensible and a good tidy up. 
And, of course, around farmland—I think the tightening up around farmland was really good. Minister Parker just identified the bizarre situation where you could enter into a contract for the sale of farmland and then advertise later. Now, that is truly strange. I think the point there being farmland is important to New Zealanders, both economically and culturally. And if farmland is there on the market, it should absolutely and genuinely be put on the New Zealand market so that a New Zealand person can buy that. So that's a really good idea. Of course, along with that, things like leases for less than 10 years, the committee had a really good discussion around that and, you know, to be fair, we had people coming in arguing that it should be 35 years—which is the extent of the longest consent you'll get under the Resource Management Act—and various other articulations, depending on the particular interest held. But, at the end of the day, I think 10 years is a pretty long period of time. You can get a good economic return on your land in 10 years, but it doesn't kind of creep to that point where it approaches a much more significant holding, almost approaching a freehold ownership.
Look, we did some other tidy ups, and one that I thought was important was fees and levies. There are fees and levies charged, as you would expect. There was a change so that the levies could look backwards and forwards up to four years, and I was concerned that that looked kind of like revenue gathering. It was a really good inquiry around the framework and whether it was appropriate to kind of have overs and unders over a long period of time—for fees and levies. Sounds technical, but nevertheless important. I was assured, and I take that assurance from officials, that this was really only a cost recovery framework, but smoothing out some of the longer-term projects that they have. So look, I guess, on closing, that shows that it was a technical bill, but a really important one. I'm very happy to commend this bill to the House.





NICOLA WILLIS (National): National supports this bill. It's one of those bills that we support with a clear understanding that it's far from perfect, that the Act that remains could also be better, but that this is a step forward and an improvement on the status quo.
From a principled basis, the National Party supports foreign investment that creates productive, sustainable economic growth. We believe that foreign investment can lead to increased jobs and increased innovation and can help generate wealth for New Zealanders. We think it's important that the law around foreign investment strikes a balance between screening for risk and ensuring that any investment accrues benefit to New Zealanders while also ensuring that in setting out that law and setting out those requirements, we don't create such an intolerable compliance burden that New Zealand essentially becomes a closed shop. 
Of course, the reality is we are living in a hyper-competitive world where capital has many places it can go. We are an economy that is constrained by capital, and there have been many reports written on the impact this has on our productivity levels and on the opportunities we have for innovation and growth. So it is important in that context that we remain a place where the world's capital wants to come to invest in projects that can drive better opportunities for New Zealand and can drive innovation and job creation. We have to get the balance right.
This bill is a step forward in that it does reduce the regulatory burden around some types of foreign investment. Some of these changes are small and specific but very important to the people who interact with this regime. I want to acknowledge in this speech the select committee process and those who submitted to us about their experience of interacting with this piece of legislation and the practical effects it has. Our select committee heard from a broad range of submitters; everyone from Federated Farmers through to Woolworths, through to people involved in property investment—all sorts of people talking about what the regime has meant for them in practice. There were stories of significant delays, months of process, and huge legal fees, and so any steps that we can take that reduce that regulatory burden so that money actually goes into the right things are steps forward. 
An example of that is removing the screening requirement for non-residential leases. Another example of that is streamlining the consent process for subsequent investment for overseas investors who've previously been screened. So they've already gone through the whole process of being analysed, being looked at, and they don't need to be taken through all of that again. This bill is a step forward in that regard.
It is also a bill that, I think, benefited from the select committee process, because issues were drawn out that are reflected in this final piece of legislation. In particular, I want to draw attention to this issue around productive farmland, because what we had discussions about at the committee was the fact that sometimes land that is zoned as rural land or land that is zoned as potentially productive or farming land is actually land on the outskirts of a city or a town that is much more likely to be used for commercial or residential development. As National's spokesperson on housing, this is an issue that is close to my heart. It is certainly my view that there is a lot more land that in the future needs to be able to be made into housing. So it is good that this bill gives the Minister the ability not to use stricter approval criteria if farmland is likely to be used for residential development. That is an important improvement, an important piece of discretion.
Members throughout the debate on this bill have pointed out that we still have an Overseas Investment Act regime that doesn't create a level playing field, and I do want to focus on that. In a world where we allow foreign investment but we do so subject to quite strict caveats, we need to be very careful that we're not incentivising one form of investment over another to the detriment of our communities, because that is, in fact, a situation that will lead to perverse outcomes, and, as it stands, our Overseas Investment Act does tilt the playing field. It makes it much easier for overseas investors to purchase sensitive farmland if they're going to convert that land into forestry. So what we are seeing around the country is that while foreign investors may have difficulty buying productive farmland for the purposes of keeping that land as a productive farm, they have very little difficultly in purchasing land that has been productive farmland for generations and converting into forestry. 
We in the National Party have no problem with forestry—forestry can be a good thing—but we do have a problem with a regime that favours forestry conversion over other forms of investment, because this is having a perverse impact throughout our rural communities. We are seeing that the economic and social characteristics of many parts of New Zealand are changing very quickly. There has been an immediate response to this Government's decision to tilt the playing field toward forestry in that screeds and hectares of land are being bought up for conversion into forestry, and that has meaning for communities. There are few jobs because forestry doesn't require as much labour and manpower and womanpower on a day-to-day basis, and in some communities it's also having pretty significant environmental effect. These are very human stories. These are people who no longer are able to have enough kids at the local school, because what have always been productive farms are bare pine forests. People no longer have enough people for the rugby team. It's the changing face of rural communities. 
Of course, our rural communities have changed and have been resilient and have withstood a lot of change, but that is only change that is for the positive if we can see that it's actually happening on a level playing field. Our current regime does not allow that. It incentivises foreign investors towards one form of investment, and we, the National Party, have raised our concerns about that. We have noted that while this bill is a step forward, there is every opportunity for Labour members opposite to amend the Act further to remedy this imbalance. It's an imbalance that was born out of a coalition agreement with the New Zealand First Party, and it's my understanding that even the Green Party oppose it now. 
So we have one set of defenders of this unbalanced playing field, and that is the Labour Party. I want to take this opportunity to say to those in the rural communities across New Zealand who have spoken to me and my colleagues about this issue, that National has their back. We understand how important this is. We understand how urgent this is. We understand the changing face of your communities, and it is abundantly obvious to us that while the Labour Party has time to make pages and pages of changes to the Overseas Investment Act, it has chosen not to take this opportunity to remedy the major challenge for our rural communities right now. If those people in those communities want to know who has their back, it is National, and we will continue to advocate on that issue. Thank you, Mr Speaker.





BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Fa'afetai tele lava, Mr Speaker. It's a real pleasure to be finally at the third reading of this bill, a bill that aims to improve the efficiency of the Overseas Investment Act and regime while ensuring that New Zealand still remains open for business and to protect our assets, especially our farmland. The bill is a culmination of the Government's work to reform New Zealand's overseas investment regime and to ensure that we can continue to attract productive overseas investment that's sustainable and inclusive while also protecting our taonga.
As the Minister outlined earlier, these changes have been in train since 2018. The first Ardern Government made some key changes to the Overseas Investment Act to address the concerns of Kiwis that too many of our homes were being sold to overseas investors and the protection of our forestry rights. With the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreement on its way through, the Government at the time realised we had to be able to futureproof, to have the ability to screen so we could protect our assets. Previously, there were no restrictions on these assets, and if we had not made this change, there was no way we would be able to protect them once the CPTPP came through.
A big part of this work is that the Minister, in his second reading, referred to the ability to protect our assets when COVID hit our shores last year, in 2020. Although we are in a better position than we initially thought back in 2020, I can recall, very early in January last year, that the first piece of regulation as a Government official that we had to deal with was the fisheries quota—rock lobster quota. Normally, every year, our rock lobster industry has to send rock lobster over to China for the Chinese New Year, and at the time, because COVID had hit China, fisheries officials were incredibly concerned about the impact on businesses if those orders ran dry, because that's exactly what was happening. Chinese New Year celebrations were being cancelled in China; so our rock lobster industry sought the assistance of the Government to be able to put in regulations to not have to catch the particular rock lobster or, for those that they could catch, be able to carry over that quota. They were really concerned at the insolvency that may come from the stopping of the sales.
So, again, although we are in a better position, at the time Government officials moved really quickly, and the Government supported the advice that was coming through. So we had to act; hence the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill, now the Act. The Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Act gave the Government the backstop tools needed to manage significant foreign investments, because the concern was that businesses, to stop themselves getting into insolvency, would sell their assets or sell their businesses to overseas investors. So we introduced a national interest test and a temporary call-in power to ensure that investments in our most sensitive assets, including our critical national infrastructure, were protected. But we needed to look ahead to the future, and we were conscious that, once we came through the worst, we needed to be able to balance making it easier for foreign investors to be attracted to come to New Zealand, to want to invest in New Zealand, but also have those protective measures to look after our special assets. So this bill builds on those changes made in 2020 urgent measures Act, and makes the most significant cuts to red tape since our rules were introduced in 2005.
This bill will reduce the number of transactions that require consents by around 30 percent. It's a real balance for the Government to be able, again, to attract that overseas investment while protecting our taonga. Key changes include no longer screening investments in certain pieces of land simply because they sit next to each other. These were a number of issues that we dealt with during the select committee process, and again I'd like to thank the submitters who came and submitted on the bill. The changes included no longer screening very short-term leases and approved investors that are making small increases in an existing holding. So, again, it was a balance between compliance costs as well as ensuring that we have attractive investment.
The bill also simplifies the approval process for most transactions to ensure that limited resources are dedicated to reviewing transactions that are most likely to pose risks, such as critical infrastructure, as I've spoken to again. The Minister referred to it as that investors of proven good character would be able to access a fast-tracked approval, and the test for acquiring land will be simplified, reducing the number of considerations from 21 to seven and making the threshold for consents clearer. The national interest test will also be better targeted, no longer automatically applying to investments by State-linked pension funds, similar in nature to the New Zealand Super Fund, that operate at arms' length from the Government. And, as I mentioned in the previous reading, part of the call-in powers was to make sure that there were particular exemptions that were available through the bill, and again the select committee made those changes in order for us to get to a better balance.
The bill complements the further changes to the urgent measures Act because it makes sure that the changes do not serve as a barrier needed for development such as housing on less productive land, giving the Minister the flexibility to not apply the higher threshold in such circumstances.
If I can go back to embedding a higher threshold for farmland, which the Minister touched on briefly. While the Minister said it's critical that we do everything we can to attract valuable investment, this cannot come at the expense, again, of protecting our taonga and our values. This is why the bill maximises New Zealand's chances to be able to protect farmland in two ways, as the Minister touched on. First, it codifies that foreign investors cannot acquire farmland unless they bring substantial benefits, such as new technologies or jobs to New Zealand, again, balancing the need for attracting productive investment as well as protecting our taonga. Secondly, the bill ensures that New Zealanders have a genuine opportunity to purchase farmland by requiring it to be publicly advertised before an overseas person can buy it. I remember during the select committee we had a really good discussion around advertising, and it was something that we didn't want to be just a tick-box exercise; we wanted it to be genuine advertising, on various platforms. I remember having that conversation with officials, saying, "Well, is an ad in the paper sufficient for advertising?" And we came to agreement that, no, it wasn't; there had to be some genuine advertising, a genuine trying to attract Kiwis to be able to invest into this land. And if it didn't, then we were OK; we would go through the process with the Overseas Investment Office.
I think the Minister ran out of time to be able to thank officials in his speech. I want to pick that up, having been a Government official who worked in the last term, going through the changes that we did for COVID. The Minister and the select committee would like to thank the staff of Treasury, would like to thank the staff on the overseas investment bill, who not only worked really long hours last year to get that urgent measures Act through but also, as soon as that Act was through, had to start working on this particular bill. This bill was only made possible because of their work and their long hours. Again, to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we were absolutely well served by those officials, and we cannot take that for granted, particularly in this time when, having gone through a whole year of policy development, that they continued on.
So, again, I go back to the main point of this bill. This bill is about improving the efficiency of the overseas investment regime while ensuring New Zealand assets are protected, that our taonga are protected. This is a culmination of our Government's work to reform New Zealand's overseas investment regime and to ensure, again, that we can attract productive, sustainable, and inclusive investment that we need to boost economic growth and protect our taonga at the same time. I'm proud to commend this bill to the House.





Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I'm pleased to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I start by taking issue with some of the comments by Nicola Grigg—
David Seymour: Willis.
Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —Willis, sorry; thank you, Mr Seymour: Nicola Willis—in terms of the fact that the National Party supposedly is very supportive and has the back of the rural community. One of the first things that the Government did in the last term was amend the ministerial directive to the Overseas Investment Office in relation to rural land. Under the former National Government, the provisions in the overseas investment legislation around a requirement for screening and consent for rural land above 5 hectares had so many loopholes that you could drive a truck through them. One of the key loopholes was that the ministerial directive by the former National Government was that the substantial and identifiable benefit test only applied to large farms, which could be several times larger than a standard dairy farm. The previous Government sent a directive to the office for the overseas investment changing that. What this bill does is embeds those provisions around rural land in the legislation so it's not just relying on a ministerial letter, and it means that any future Government will need to come back to this House, rather than the Minister of Finance simply changing a letter. 
As other speakers have noted, one of the other key changes in the legislation is around the counterfactual test. That counterfactual test arose from the courts in the Crafar cases. It was built, really, on the analytical framework that the Commerce Commission use when assessing anti-competitive behaviour. A counterfactual test is quite hypothetical, because the decision makers under the Overseas Investment Act had to consider what would be the benefits to New Zealand of the status quo and what would occur with the investment and without the investment. It got to be quite hypothetical and somewhat divorced from reality. This bill, in simplifying the test to what it will be before the potential overseas investment and what it would be after the proposed overseas investment is actually a clearer framework and a clearer criteria for Ministers and the Overseas Investment Office to make decisions on applications.
So that is a significant improvement, as is, rather than having over 20 factors to determine whether there is a benefit to New Zealand, shrinking those down and making them much clearer. We can have overseas investment in Aotearoa New Zealand if it provides a substantial benefit to New Zealand; if it creates new, productive assets; if there aren't significant impacts; if there is significant participation by New Zealanders; and if there is a significant increase in added-value processing. So it's those sorts of issues that then are front of mind, and that's one of the reasons that the Green Party is supporting the bill. 
It's also supporting the bill because there have been changes around where an overseas investor is applying to take water for water bottling or extract significant quantities of water, where, in that instance, because of the public concern about this issue, there has to be an assessment of sustainability. Other speakers might say that those issues are normally dealt with under the Resource Management Act, but, in terms of water, it is a common asset; there is significant public concern about overseas water-bottlers taking our water and exporting it; and there is no resource rental, so there's no commercial return to New Zealanders. 
There's also additional consideration of Māori cultural values and what impact the investment would have on those.
One of the areas that we're disappointed in is that Government did not see fit to support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I put forward on behalf of the Green Party around forestry to make sure that forestry was on a level playing field with other applications to purchase land by overseas companies. We've seen significant investment by overseas companies—over some decades now—in the New Zealand forestry sector. In fact, about 70 percent of the forestry industry is overseas owned. 
We are not objecting to forestry per se—the National Party says the same, but it does seem to be objecting to forestry as a land use. What we wanted was that those forestry companies, when they are buying farmland, have to establish that there was a significant benefit, and that might be that there was significant added-value processing requirements around supplying timber to processing companies in Aotearoa New Zealand rather than so many of our logs sitting on our wharves and being exported in raw form. 
I hope that the Minister does ask officials in Treasury to look more closely at that so that we are not seeing the overall alienation of farmland for significant forestry investments.
One of the other changes that is of benefit is the fact that the good character test has a lot more clarity around it. It goes to factors around things like criminal offences. There's also an ability to take into account an applicant's tax payment record and, if there has been unpaid tax, to take that into account. So there's quite a lot of enhancement around tax disclosures.
The other changes that Dr Duncan Webb noted were around the issue of where there are changes in the level of ownership—shareholder creep, I think it's been called—so that where the shareholding just increases slightly, that is no longer a factor which triggers an application under the Act. Instead, it is where that ownership by overseas persons passes defined thresholds, which match those in the Companies Act in terms of the ability of the shareholder to block resolutions and the like—25 percent, 50 percent, and 70 percent. That provides greater clarity and will mean that the office is not burdened with considering applications that it doesn't really need to. 
One of the other key measures is around the urgent measures test, which Barbara Edmonds talked to. It was really helpful that this legislation was going through as a backstop to the measures which Government had to put in place around urgent measures in relation to COVID because of that concern that we would get vulnerable New Zealand companies—because of the impacts of COVID: loss of business—being bought up by overseas interests, putting in place a strong regime around national interest and greater ministerial assessment. This bill, in following along behind, has allowed that regime to be adjusted, still giving the Government the power to screen some of those transactions where they breach our national interest thresholds. So while we are disappointed by the lack of the forestry SOP, there are a number of other changes which have significantly improved the legislation, and the Green Party will be supporting it.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m.





ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break, we had just completed the sixth speaker on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Would some member like to seek the call. 
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I don't like to trifle, but I don't think it's fair to say we'd "completed the sixth speaker"; I think the sixth speech had been completed. I'd hate to see the House "complete a speaker". That would be—well, I'd hate to think what that would look like.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): So helpful. 
DAVID SEYMOUR: But having dealt with that minor matter, I arise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Let me just say a few things, first, about the importance of foreign investment to New Zealand. 
It's possible to tell the history of New Zealand as a history of foreign investment. Kupe showed up with a waka hourua and a couple of kunekune pigs, and we've been importing foreign capital to New Zealand ever since. We've never looked back, and it is absolutely critical that we don't rely purely on the savings of New Zealanders to capitalise the businesses, the farms, and the firms that make New Zealand prosperous. A little while later, after Kupe's arrival, Sir Joseph Ward, the then finance Minister, later Prime Minister, had to go to London and beg for favourable terms for credit so that New Zealand could actually expand and capitalise its infrastructure. 
These are the stories of our history, all the way from the arrival of the first person we've been importing foreign capital, and long may we continue to do so. I know there's some people who don't like it much. There are some people who don't like foreigners very much. I personally like foreigners. There's a lot of good people in the world. Many of them live in other countries. Good jokers and good joker-ettes live in New Zealand and elsewhere, and I think we should actually embrace them. But even people who don't like foreigners should be in favour of foreign investment. Let me explain why that is. 
Immigration is when foreigners come and live here, potentially next door to you. Foreign investment is when they stay home and just send you money. What a great thing is foreign investment, essential to New Zealand's economic future, and, unfortunately, New Zealand has a history in recent times of being one of the most fortified against foreign investment, and people want to send money to New Zealand. Recent example: Microsoft, a well-known software company from the United States, wanted to send money and know-how and capital to New Zealand to establish a data centre in Auckland. What a wonderful thing—our friends around the world wanting to invest in New Zealand, providing the capital, the know-how, the infrastructure for New Zealanders to do their work—and yet, oh no, no, we have the Overseas Investment Act to make it harder and delay and slow them down in getting their capital here. In fact, we've been ranked fourth-worst in the OECD for openness to investment. So there's an awful lot of work that could be done by a Government that wanted to improve our legislation. 
What does this overseas investment bill do? Is it worth supporting? Will it help reinforce New Zealand's tradition of foreign investment? Will it tear down some of the barriers to foreign investment that we've recently erected that impoverish us by making it hard to get foreign capital? Well, it says it's "embedding a higher threshold for acquiring farm land, and ensuring that farm land is advertised in a way that best ensures New Zealanders have a chance to acquire it". I heard the Minister responsible say, "We don't want to sell our farms." Well, let's just think about what that means for a moment. I mean, first of all, "our farms"—what is he talking about? Has New Zealand secretly become a sort of North Korea of the South Pacific with one big collective farm that's for sale? No, actually, New Zealand individuals own farms, and it's up to them to decide who they sell them to, not up to someone else to decide. But it turns out that, actually, if you want to sell your farm to one of those terrible foreign people, then you have to advertise that you're doing it in the paper.
"Enabling decision-makers to consider the effects on sustainability of investments that involve water bottling or bulk water extraction"—now, isn't this interesting? The Minister got up and said, "I don't know if there should be environmental considerations in the Overseas Investment Act because, actually, we have the Resource Management Act, we have environmental regulations in New Zealand." Now, if we need environmental regulations for foreign investors, are we saying that we don't mind if local investors damage the environment? Well, of course we're not. We have a robust environmental regulatory regime for people who are using land, such as bottling water, all up and down New Zealand. Why would it matter who the person was? It's pure politics. 
Then there's "requiring investors to disclose information relating to their proposed investment structure and tax treatment to Inland Revenue". Well, there you go, yet another hurdle, another burden where people find themselves having to justify themselves to bureaucrats whose greatest power is the ability to say no, to stand athwart progress, yelling "Stop!" 
Then it says, "better recognising Māori cultural values. For example, the bill would require decision-makers empowered by the regime to take into account an applicant's plans to protect or enhance wāhi tūpuna, wāhi tapu areas, and Māori reservations." Well, really? I mean, why is that actually different from the regulatory regime we have for land use in the rest of New Zealand? It's only if you're a foreign investor? We could argue about the level of commitment we have to preserving and upholding Māori culture, but why would we have a different regime for people to do that if they don't happen to be born in New Zealand? Surely, we would want to have a regulatory regime to protect Māori culture—if, indeed, it needs protection by regulations—that applies to everybody. 
Then it goes on to say, "the Government intends to reduce the burden that the overseas investment regime imposes on investors and the regulator. The bill would achieve this by: no longer screening non-residential leases of less than 10 years"—I'm sure there will be some benefits in that. "Allowing investors that have previously been screened and approved to use a streamlined consent process for future investments"—well, that sounds like something that should have been done years ago, so that's not such a bad thing. "No longer requiring a large range of low-risk transactions to get consent. For example, the bill would no longer require consent decisions on investments in less sensitive land that is only screened because it adjoins sensitive land"—well, these are sensible but minuscule, minor changes. 
So the question is whether to support this bill. Well, there's two problems here. Number one is that to justify a change in legislation, you have to justify all the imposition of the uncertainty and disruption that you put on people used to doing business. That's a threshold that there has to be some substantial improvement, and, unfortunately, overall, when you look at the overall amount of restriction on investment of the people trying to send money to New Zealand—a process we're so hostile to for some reason—you'd have to say this is a mild step backwards. That doesn't justify a change, so the ACT Party can't support the legislation.
What the Government could have done, and should have done, is gone back to first principles and asked: what is the purpose of the Overseas Investment Act? Well, surely it is to stop people who would do harm to New Zealanders—people who might, for instance, want to have a military installation, people who might want to acquire land for strategic purposes, or people who might want to somehow use their ownership to leverage New Zealand politics. Those might be good reasons to actually prevent people investing in New Zealand because they wanted to do harm to New Zealanders. That's what a good regime would look like—so you can invest so long as you're not doing harm. 
But instead, we have this regime where we have to prove that an investment has net benefits to New Zealand. Well, just a minute—how can anybody truly know? Which New Zealanders? What's a benefit? 
Surely, the fact that you have a willing buyer and a willing seller already tells you something. The person who owns the property values the money offered more than the property they own. If that test doesn't make it net beneficial to New Zealand, what will? We end up with a situation where in order to sell your property and get investment, you have to contort yourself for a process of pure politics, deciding what a valid benefit for New Zealand is. That, unfortunately, is pure banana republic stuff, and until the Government is prepared to go back to first principles and ask what the role of Government and regulating foreign investment is and actually genuinely makes it easier for people to bring capital to this country and choose how to sell their own land and who to sell it to, the ACT Party will not support legislation such as this. Thank you, Madam Speaker.





HELEN WHITE (Labour): It's a pleasure to rise to talk about a bill in its third reading, particularly after that speech from ACT. It's always actually something that really reminds me of my job, because the view of that party is so different from my own, and I stand with a party I'm really proud of, because it has come a long way since those ideologies dominated this House. We're actually in a situation where everyone else is in consensus—other than ACT—on this to a large extent, and that's because we can all see the value in leadership in the parties in this House actually doing their jobs, which is to make sure that the interests—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will come back to the bill. 
HELEN WHITE: Sorry. It is absolutely about this bill, because this bill is about the parties in this House doing their job and making sure that, actually, our—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! 
HELEN WHITE: Sorry. 
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I've invited the member to return to the bill. This is a third reading speech, and I'd ask the member to confine her comments to what is contained in the bill. 
HELEN WHITE: Thank you, ma'am. Actually, today I got a letter that was about this bill. It was a letter that came in after the last speech in this House, asking a specific question, and it made me realise just how important something like this is to very, very ordinary New Zealand citizens. We tend to think about a bill like this as actually being about big business, but it's not. It's actually about ordinary citizens and making sure that they get what they need out of a society. 
This legislation is a balancing act. It is something that, in 2018, was set out in its objectives. The objectives of the Act were not to discourage investment but to channel it into the right places. So it was about encouraging investment, but it was also about constraining it when that might actually pose a risk to New Zealand. My letter, from a person in Auckland, was simply about her worry that a property that she was involved in in a rest home might actually go to an overseas investor without comment. Of course, it won't do that, because if, in fact, overseas people or companies were to take over ownership, this legislation would actually make sure that there is sufficient constraint on that. 
Just let me go through what this bill does. In 2018, we had a strategy that was to build up our constraint on overseas investment, and that was with the dual purpose of encouraging investment and controlling investment where there was risk. It's going to control the investment over sensitive assets like fishing quota and sensitive land, and, actually, just assets that matter a lot. In 2020, that became extremely important because we had a crisis in this country, and it was very real as a possibility that there would be a dramatic drop in the share price of a lot of our companies and those companies would be subject to takeover by overseas investors. If that had happened, we would have lost a lot of our taonga, a lot of the things that matter to us. You've heard my colleague Barbara Edmonds talking about that specifically affecting something like crayfish. 
In that time, some of the rules were put in place, but they were put in place in a way that really needed review. So part of the job of the Finance and Expenditure Committee was to review those changes as well as look at the new ones. The submitters gave us a lot of good feedback, and we have struck a good balance here. 
So what we have now is we have an investment regime which, for example, curbs the call-in powers. So the call-ins will be in places where the Minister can block or impose conditions on acquisitions where there is significant vulnerability, and it will be constrained to that. It is going to mean that things like ports or electricity or investments that would actually do some damage if they went overseas into foreign ownership could actually be protected and stay within New Zealand. We heard the Minister talk about his rather deep thought about how monopolies happen in this area and how important it is that those monopolies really sometimes happen within the constraints of our country and we don't lose control of those. 
We have made changes with regard to farmland. It does sound like a little thing, but it was kind of absurd to hear in the select committee that people were advertising farmland after having sold it, and the objection of some submitters was that what we would do if we changed this would be to stop that process and that this would be just, somehow, red tape. We concluded it wasn't red tape; it was exactly what the purpose of the bill was: to give New Zealanders an opportunity to actually buy that land, to actually allow the people selling it to realise its true value, but within New Zealand hands if possible. 
We had a change with regard to leases. Now, that one was one where we really struck a really good balance, I think. We've gone for controlling leases that are over 10 years, and that includes the right of renewal being within that time. It would be possible to lease land without really engaging if it's on those sort of short-term bases, but it will stop the kind of perpetual leases and long-term leases that really alienate that land from New Zealanders. 
With regard to foreign ownership and foreign control, I thought that was another situation which really was a good example of striking the balance, making sure that the investment was going into the right places. We now have a rule that says that foreign control, if it's over 25 percent, will need to be screened, but we really distinguished between control and passive investment. The real valuable money for us is in things like, as my colleague Mr Bayly talked about, sovereign wealth funds, the super funds, the buybacks of CEOs. Those things will all be able to be done without red tape, and my colleague Barbara Edmonds made the point that this is intended to mean that there's a 30 percent reduction in the applications needed under this Act. That's a huge streamlining that's going on. 
With regard to adjoining land to sensitive land, again, there's been an easing there. Because it's not really a worry, that adjoining land, there isn't the need for people to go through the process. There's also a streamlining over fit and proper persons, so that once you've actually got that approval and you've been through that rigorous process, it doesn't have to happen in the same way again. 
With regard to non-productive land, I thought this was a very interesting one in terms of the values of the Labour Party. Non-productive land on the edges of cities which could be used for housing is one area where we heard from submitters on rent-to-buy schemes, and they talked about how that land was land that they really saw as potential in terms of them building houses. We also heard from a lot of the rest homes with regard to that land. That is a priority for this Government, just making sure that there are houses for people and affordable houses for people. So there's been an easing up with regard to that too. 
Finally, I wanted to just go back and thank the people we heard from, because it was an extraordinary range of people. I am new to this House, and what I was extremely impressed by was the skill of those people, the fact that they were willing to share at a level which was not just about protecting someone's interests; mainly it was actually about sharing a vast deal of knowledge. They very much came often from a point of view—particularly the law firms—of actually trying to make this country a better place and trying to make sure that we were actually getting that balance right, we were actually encouraging investment where it should be, and we weren't stopping people at the door if they wanted to pour money into this country, but we were making sure also that we weren't alienating things that are taonga from New Zealand. I really appreciate the insights I got from them, and it made a big difference in that process, so thank you. 
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): A five-minute call—Simon Watts.





RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I'm delighted to take a call in this third reading of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). I note that a certain party of two in this House have chosen not to participate in this debate, so I'm more than delighted to take this opportunity to support this bill and support the good work of this Government in progressing and improving our overseas investment regime. That's what this bill is about: the leadership of the Hon David Parker, with our Government, ensuring that we have a COVID recovery that is boosting our economy and ensuring that, particularly, our productive sectors maintain their competitive edge internationally and can be a productive, sustainable, and an inclusive economy.
Just today, just as an example, I was driving through my vast electorate of Te Tai Tonga, an area which—
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Which bit?
RINO TIRIKATENE: —the Hon Gerry Brownlee would know well. The beautiful Canterbury Plains, Kā Pākihi Whakatekateka o Waitaha. As I was driving all the way from Christchurch down to Timaru—mighty Timaru—just the vast landscapes that we have there. Productive, world-leading, arable farming landscapes, farming systems, world-leading systems, whether it be in dairy—some wonderful dairy processing facilities dotted throughout the landscape as we go. I could go on and on through the great island of Te Waipounamu, to the West Coast, to Southland, to Otago. We know how important our taonga lands are to us as a country to maintaining our competitive advantage and earning a living in this very dynamic and challenging world that we live in, in this COVID environment, so overseas investment is critical to our economy. 
This bill makes a number of very welcome changes to ensure that we are protecting our taonga especially, and I know this is very dear to Māori up and down the country. Mind you, Māori, in general, are very welcoming of overseas investment. We have been so since the Treaty. Since before the Treaty, we were very welcoming. It was just unfortunate that once we did sign the Treaty, things did sort of go awry somewhat. 
But overseas investment has always been necessary for our economy. It has always been necessary to improve the productivity, right across our productive sectors especially, and we have overseas investment happening every day and in every sphere of our economy. Whether it's in the tech space or our businesses being purchased and interest in businesses being bought and sold, there are investments happening across the board, but we want to ensure, through this bill, that we do protect our taonga—productive land. Therefore, ensuring that the directive which the Minister gave to the Overseas Investment Office, we are codifying that into legislation to ensure that there has to be a demonstrable boost and productive improvement to those land assets to ensure that the investment is justified. So it's a very high bar now that applicants have to meet and that is very welcome, because we want to ensure—and I certainly do, as I continue to drive around the great big island—that we maintain our sovereignty as Kiwis but we also welcome that investment that will help to enhance and grow the wealth of our provinces and our region and our nation as a whole. 
There are also a number of very helpful improvements through this bill. I want to acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee for all their helpful contributions that they made in their consideration of this bill. Some very helpful improvements have been made to ensure that those applications which do meet the tests and which are going to add and enhance our businesses and their profitability and their productivity—those applications will have an easier time to ensure that they can get processed quicker, and there's a whole host, a suite, of sensible improvements in that regard. 
So, on the whole, this is an excellent piece of legislation. I thank the members and the parties for their support of this bill. This is, once again, ensuring that we can continue our COVID recovery and boost our economy. Kia ora tātou. 





GREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): In speaking to the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), I'd just like to go to the heart of the bill, just for anyone who's maybe watching at home or listening and who's just not quite sure. I think if one goes to section 17 in clause 9, we're really talking about the beneficial test factors, and this is where the heart of it is. [Interruption] It's probably a little bit too detailed and complicated for some of the members opposite, but I have much more faith in the comprehension skills of those sitting watching at home and those sitting on this side of the House. 
It goes to the economic benefits, and I'm sure we can all agree that that's why we're here. We want to do things that economically benefit this country and also things that benefit the natural environment. These are things that are in the bill, and they continue or enhance access by the public within or over sensitive land. 
Now, I'd like to speak to that one. I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm in a farming community, and access to land was never an issue. If I wanted to go somewhere, go and shoot a deer or goat, I just rang up the next-door farmer, and it was always a matter of making sure you had permission, but it wasn't an issue. I grew up with full access to the whole area of the Buller, really, and it was only when I moved to the North Island and went to a town in the middle of a lot of farmland, I suddenly realised what it was to grow up without access to any farmland, where actually you had to, basically, do a 15-minute car drive before you could get access to any land, with that being a forest. That sort of sowed a seed in me. It is pretty necessary that people in a country do have access to that land. 
Now, you could go to the extent that the Swedes go. The Swedes have a thing called every man's right. I'm not sure if they've made that every person's right now, in light of the changes in our society, but that means that, essentially, as long as you don't go within 10 metres of a dwelling, you can actually wander anywhere around Sweden. Well, no one's advocating that, and I'm certainly not advocating that, but it's just the extreme of understanding of how important it is that New Zealanders do actually have access to this great land of ours. 
So continuing down section 17(1)(e), there is also "give effect to or advance a significant Government policy:". Again, it's inserting that whatever the Government of the day is, it's important that this legislation does protect and give any Government the ability to ensure that they can enhance and that they are not prevented from introducing policy because they haven't got control of significant access to significant land—again, an important part of that.
Again, when I've spoken on this before, there are those—and I've heard speakers opposite, particularly from the ACT Party—saying that nothing is strategic about land, nothing strategic about ownership. When I've spoken on this bill before, just those of us here who are—well, we've all come from somewhere, whether it be in 1200 or latterly. Certainly, my ancestors came from Ireland. Now, if anyone wants to know how strategic ownership of land is important—this goes right back to section 17, and I'm very careful. I know, Madam Speaker, that you like to ensure that we are narrowly on the sections. Let's go to section 17, coming back to ensuring the strategic asset. 
So at that time, there were about 8 million people living in Ireland, and they lost control of their land—it was taken over by the English. Then a famine visited that land, and the population reduced to less than 2 million in a very short time. The problem was that the locals had lost control of their land strategically, and at that time, while the population was starving, those that owned the land were actually still exporting food. So if one looks for an example of losing that strategic asset, or losing strategic ownership of your land, that is a very good example, and there's not very many people here who have come to this land, wherever their ancestors come from, where there won't have been a similar case of loss of control, usually to another country. The extreme of that, of course, is by invasion, by warfare. It's something that we'd all prevent, because the first thing any invader does is take full control of the assets. 
Now, we balance that—again, I agree with one of the previous speakers saying that overseas investment is absolutely necessary. We only need to look for North Korea and some of those regimes to see where they turned off the overseas tap altogether and the effect that had on the population of those countries. So coming back to section 17, which I know you're very keen for me to do, Madam Speaker—I keep going back to it. But these are very good examples of why this bill has become so important. 
Of course, it is the second part of a piece of legislation. The original legislation was the urgent measures, which was brought in around the COVID recovery, and that was, again, being referred to by other speakers, when we talked about where there was a danger that our economy may have collapsed. It wasn't that long ago that farms in New Zealand, in the late 1980s—it was probably with a little bit of regret that I didn't whip in and buy a farm at the time myself, because they were very hard to give away at the end of the 1980s because of other decisions made. So it would have been a real shame that we end up losing control or ownership. 
Now, again, there'll be those who say it doesn't matter whether we lose control, because the money comes in. The problem with that, though, is once a piece of land in New Zealand has actually gone to overseas ownership, it remains in overseas ownership. So if we get a Hong Kong corporation that owns a large chunk of Mr Brownlee's favourite area of Canterbury, well, that's fine. That money, when it's originally sold, will remain in New Zealand. It'll be reinvested in other things. However, that corporation in Hong Kong that then onsells that to a corporation in New York—tell me, there is actually no benefit of that, because that money is, essentially, a transaction that takes place offshore, and the benefit will accrue all offshore. So other than perhaps the transaction costs that will accrue to New Zealanders, there will be no benefit. So, again, it's very, very important that we look at what is strategically the intent of this bill. 
Going through the bill, one of the things also I was going to look at was water—actually, water extraction. Now, that's one of the things that often New Zealanders become passionate about: why we've lost control of our water—well, our water rights. It's not the water. That's what the commodity is, and, of course, much of that has gone. The Waiwera water, I think, is owned by a Russian conglomerate over there at the moment. So that is the one thing, often, when New Zealanders generally are concerned and lamenting a loss overseas of a local asset. 
Water is actually specifically mentioned in the bill. Ministers can consider whether the transaction will or is likely to result in a positive or negative impact on water quality and sustainability—again, very sensitive. It won't actually, currently, affect the rights of those that are extracting water. It won't be turning the tap off, so to speak—if you excuse the analogy—but what it does do is that where the use of that water by foreign companies does look like it's going to have an impact on New Zealand, either by way of its quality or sustainability, then there is the ability for Government to act. 
Again, one of the other important parts—and I am sort of starting to run a little bit out of time; hopefully, one of the following speakers will talk about this—is the ability of overseas companies to own. Again, I'll look at probably the best example—that is, managed funds or the managed investment schemes. There are two categories here. If they are unlisted and the manager or trustee is an overseas person and more than 25 percent of the value of the scheme's investments are invested on behalf of overseas persons, then they will come within the parameters of this bill. Also, if they are a listed company and overseas persons own 50 percent or more of the value of the scheme's investments, again, they will come within the purview of this bill. 
This will not stop transactions—this is not going to turn us into North Korea. This will ensure that there is still the ability to attract overseas investment, which we need, and I think every speaker here has agreed we need to do. It's just ensuring that we understand that, strategically, in New Zealand, the Government of the day is able and has the ability to ensure the decision making it has around strategy, around safety, around water quality, and that it actually is able to do these things and that we don't become a country where it's too late, essentially, to turn around and try and make long-term, strategic decisions for the benefit of those that come after us because the horse has bolted. So I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.





Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Having listened to the last four Labour speakers, I was momentarily wondering to myself why I was supporting the bill. Then I realised that we were supporting the bill on this side of the House because we know what it does; they on that side of the House clearly don't. 
We had the extraordinary comment made by the first of those speakers, telling us that this bill was all about the Government's priority to get New Zealanders into houses. Well, all I would say to that is, if the Government's priority is to get New Zealanders into houses, don't have too many priorities, because it is not going very well at the moment, and there is nothing in this bill that will make that current situation any better. 
Then, we had the wonderful traverse across the Canterbury Plains from Rino Tirikatene. Now, I've got to say that I thought he is the first Labour speaker I've heard in this House say anything positive about the rural community, the first Labour speaker in this House that I've heard actually supporting the work of farmers in this country, and the first Labour speaker to recognise that it is the investment in horticulture and in agriculture in this country that is so important to our export mates. And guess what! A big chunk of that export income that holds up all of the social services provided in this country, that eventually will manage some of the extraordinary debt that we're going to see in front of us tomorrow, will come from that sort of investment, and this is a small step—a very small step—towards recognising that New Zealand has always been a country that has had significant foreign investment, whether it was, once upon a time, our main streets of our post-Treaty towns owned by banks and insurance companies that were domiciled in the British Isles or in some other part of Europe, or today, where we have a range of different nationalities owning some parts of our CBD, some of our farmland, some of our forest land, and some of our industrial and other productive sector, as well. It is no different. 
The reality is that in a world that is flush with capital at the moment, it can go anywhere. If we are to be a country that remains competitive internationally, that does have the opportunity to keep its interest rates low, and, over time, to massively increase the incomes of New Zealanders—something that has not happened in the last four years and is now, actually, by a decree from the Government, for a big chunk of New Zealanders not going to happen in the next three years. But if it is to happen, then we will need to have ongoing investment in various activities around New Zealand, and some of that will come from foreign sources. 
The interesting thing about this is the fear that clearly comes through in this bill from the Government. It is timid—very, very timid. Look at some of the main provisions that are in this bill. Firstly, it says the bill will grant the Government powers to effectively manage the risk posed by foreign investors. Well, how is it that you've got a bill that enables foreign investments that then focuses on the risk of those investments? Why isn't there simply the opportunity for those investments to be made? Immediately, anyone looking at it gets a degree of "Not welcome here." 
Then, we look at introducing the higher threshold for acquiring farmland. It ensures farmland is advertised in a way that ensures New Zealanders have a chance to acquire it before overseas investment is involved. Remember all the furore over the Crafar Farms? Massive furore—people up and down the country upset that they were being sold to Shanghai Pengxin, a Chinese company. People ignored the fact that the animal husbandry on those farms was appalling and ignored the fact that the investment in those farms as productive units was non-existent, and now people will be able to go and look at those farms and see what happens when you get good quality investment in farming activities in New Zealand. It brings everybody else up with it. 
It should also be recognised that it is the quality of that investment that also determines the price that ultimately gets paid for the product produced. So I can't understand why people can celebrate the fact that it is still going to have to have a ministerial flick over it when, in fact, there is no chance that that farmland can be wrapped up, packed up, put in a container, and taken away. It remains here. 
Anna Lorck: But the profits can. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is a question simply of the activity—no. Hang on, I'm not talking about the vineyards. I'm not talking about the vineyards and the product from them—best the member doesn't get into any of that discussion. I just think that allowing decision makers to factor in sustainability and water quality in investments involving water bottling and bulk water extraction is also a very interesting thing. 
Look at the situation that exists down in Canterbury, where a former wool scour had an enormous right to take water to wash out the various contaminants in the wool—and we all know what they are—and then to send that contaminated water down the local river, no worries whatsoever. Now, of course, the plant has ceased operations because some of the people, like those on the other side of the House, thought that it was far better to wash dirty wool and send the by-product down the river than it was to put that pristine, clean water into a bottle and recover funding for this country from its sale, and a fraction—just a fraction—each year of what would normally be flushed down that river would be sold at a benefit for the entire New Zealand economy. 
It's the attitude that we're seeing over there. They're all getting excited over there at the moment. You'd swear they wanted to go out and bottle that filthy water after it's been through a wool scour. I can't understand their attitude. 
Yes, there can be standards. That's why you have a Resource Management Act that puts those standards on it—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will come back. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —and that is why this particular provision—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —in this bill is of absolute concern to this side of the House. 
Then, there is the idea—and I think that David Seymour covered this extremely well—that you have to put into the bill some protection for better recognition of Māori cultural values, including taking into account plans "to protect and enhance wāhi tūpuna, wāhi tapu areas," and then it says, "Māori reservations". Well, why wouldn't that just be a natural condition for any investor in this country? No, it's got to be specified here as some kind of overlay because a whole lot of your cultural pirates are likely to land in New Zealand and want to buy up some of our land. 
Let me just take you to a part of the bill that the previous speaker, Mr Greg O'Connor, didn't manage to; that is, section 17 in clause 9 of the bill. It talks about the aspects that would be focused on where there is consideration of the sale of land to foreign entities. Why is it that anybody coming into New Zealand can buy perfectly good farmland, productive farmland, promise to put it into a forest, and not have to go through a process? Why is it that we have a foreign investment amendment bill that still means that if anyone wants to come and buy that land for productive purposes—annual productive purposes, job-creating productive purposes—they can't, without a massive number of hoops to go through. But if they turn up and they say "We're going to plant it, the whole 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 hectares, formerly beef and sheep and whatever else might be produced on that land, and we're going to plant it in trees." and the answer is "Go for your life.", that's the sort of convoluted logic that, unfortunately, the Government presents all too often. 
So, while we are supporting this bill, it is with the caveat that it is a bill that is only taking baby steps to the sort of investment this country is going to need if we are to get through the extraordinarily difficult times likely to be ahead of us, given the heavy load of debt that we will all see exposed in the Budget tomorrow. 





ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak as the last person to speak on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) and in doing so, I'm thrilled to say this is the fourth time in a row that I have spoken on a bill where the National Opposition have been supporting the work that we do. In doing this, I think this just shows me that the hard work that we do in select committee is working.
There are so many parts of this bill that demonstrate that New Zealand is open for business. This bill works to reform New Zealand's overseas investment regime to ensure that we can continue to attract the productive, sustainable, and inclusive investment we need to boost economic growth, and yes, grow jobs. But in doing so, it's also protecting our assets and, particularly, our farmland. By improving New Zealand's business access to the investment we need to thrive, this bill supports our recovery and sets us up for continued economic success.
Now, I just want to talk a little bit about the farmland and where National sits on this, because over nine years, while the National Government was in, they made the overseas investment regime more and more complicated while taking a lax approach to protecting valuable New Zealand assets, like farmland, from foreign ownership. So the ministerial directive letter was sent by the Government to the Overseas Investment Office in 2017 and put a high bar on the foreign purchase of land of greater than five hectares. Now, in this bill, we're incorporating that letter so that if a future ACT and National Government was ever to come into power and wanted to sell off New Zealand's farmland, then we would make sure that we have got the protections to stop them from doing what they did in those 10 years.
Now, I want to put on the record now that we've heard from the other side of the House how they backed farmers tonight. And I can say that there were hundreds of hectares of rolling, productive farmland sold to foreign investment over those 10 years.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! This is a third reading speech. It is to be a summary, if you like, of the bill at hand. Occasionally, it can stray into other related matters, but commentary on what another party may have done is not within the scope of this debate.
ANNA LORCK: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So this bill will embed a higher threshold for foreign investment in farmland. Farmland has significant economic and cultural value, and New Zealanders are world leaders in the primary sector. Reflecting on these factors, this bill embeds a higher threshold for the acquisition of farmland. In general terms, this means that farmland cannot be acquired by overseas persons unless they offer substantial benefits to New Zealand, such as the creation of jobs or the introduction of technology. Farmland must also be publicly advertised before entering into an agreement to sell, to maximise the chance of a New Zealander being able to acquire it. 
Now, I want to talk about this particular part, coming back to Hawke's Bay, where it's been very important in making sure that in this bill we make sure that we have the advertising prior to the land being sold. Some of the submitters, when they raised questions about applying this to having zoning around farmland, we also talked about the reasons for making sure that this wasn't so stringent in the bill. For example, there is very high productive farmland around urban fringes in my area of Hawke's Bay. Submitters talked about wanting there to be the opportunity not to have to advertise on areas of 40 hectares or less, but in places like Hawke's Bay, where there is land around those fringes, that's been important. So in this bill, we decided it was more important to keep the advertising over and above that for all productive farmland. 
I want to talk a bit about forestry. Now, there's been a lot of talk tonight about forestry and it asks—in here, we need to highlight this as part of the bill. In 2018, we brought forestry rights into the Act for the first time. Prior to this, overseas investors could invest in forestry rights without scrutiny, although they did need a consent to acquire the freehold and leasehold land. Now, I want to say that there's been a lot of talk tonight in this third reading of the bill about forestry. I want to say, "Farmers, foresters, and conservationists all share the objective to plant more trees in the right places, whether to diversify farm incomes, stabilise erosion-prone hills, increase wood supply for processing, or create more permanent indigenous forests for biosecurity or recreational use." I use that quote from the Minister of Forestry, Stuart Nash. Now, "Forestry is the third largest primary exporter by value, so it's important we keep innovating to support regional development, drive economic growth and meet our climate and environmental [standards]. … Forestry [is] a key part of our climate change response." Now, that's why it's important.
There's another question I would like to leave in the House tonight. If the National Party—who have raised this time and time again tonight—continues to say what they do, I'm asking the question: is the National Party going to tell farmers who they can sell their land to? Is that what this National Party is asking? Do they want to legislate?
Hon Gerry Brownlee: That's what the bill does! That's what the bill does!
ANNA LORCK: No, no. Do they want to legislate, and is that what the National Party is doing? If that's what the National Party is doing, then I would like to know that. I commend this bill to the House.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time.
Ayes 108
New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 12
ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.





PLANT VARIETY RIGHTS BILL
First Reading
Debate resumed from 18 May.
TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate that. Yes, we were interrupted last night. This was the last item on the agenda, and I'm happy to be picking it up today. This is an important bill that we are talking about, the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I'm incredibly supportive of this, and so is the Waitangi Tribunal, who, back in 2011, put together a report called Ko Aotearoa Tēnei. In that report, they noted that Māori have a special right and privilege to be able to access taonga, and we consider taonga to be things like plant varieties as well. Now, as we traverse into this space, know that this conversation has been around for a long time, so for people out there that may be listening to this debate tonight, they will be seeing it as incredibly welcoming. 
The stakeholders in particular that are interested in this particular plant varieties bill and the whole regime: aside from iwi and hapū, you've also got plant breeders, both local and foreign; distributors of new plant varieties, both locally and foreign bred, and products harvested from them in New Zealand; and also users of new plant varieties protected by plant variety rights (PVRs), including farmers, orchardists, and growers.
Now, once upon a time, new plant varieties and the research and development into them was absolutely the domain of Crown research institutes. They used to do the lion's share of this kind of work, but, more and more, as time has gone on, they've been doing less of it, and there's been the introduction of commercial companies that have been coming in looking to stamp their mark. 
Actually, Māori are part of that equation too. I want to take a moment to tell the House—and yourself, Madam Speaker—about a real good-news story back home in the Bay of Plenty, where I live— 
Angie Warren-Clark: Our mighty bay.
TĀMATI COFFEY: —where we live! There is a collective of Māori food producers, and the one that I'm referring to is an organisation, a collective, called Miro—M-I-R-O. What they do is they make berries. 
Now, the miro berry is a traditional berry here in New Zealand, very favoured by the kererū. Although don't eat it—not those ones anyway—because you will get very sick. However, the new innovative people at Miro, the collective, have actually embarked on their own little blueberry. Now, what makes this very special is that they have managed to develop the IP and they own the IP. When I say "they", I mean the 20 Māori trusts iwi entities that are scattered all across, from the top of the North Island to the top of the South Island, from the East Coast to Taranaki on the West. There is a collective of Māori land trusts and incorporations that are currently growing Miro berries. 
I was fortunate enough to go for a visit to one of their sites in Te Teko, of all places. It's a hearty place, old "Texas", and if you blink, you miss it, but you definitely know when you're driving through it. But, actually, if you just take a couple of roads off to the side, you'll end up in what's been transformed from what was an empty paddock with very meagre returns to, suddenly, a Miro berry orchard. And, obviously, the returns are set to be exponentially larger than what they had in those paddocks before. 
I want to acknowledge the Miro collective and talk about them and the journey that they're on, but they will be very pleased to hear about this—to know that, actually, when it comes to Māori rights and interests over our taonga species, this bill is actually looking after that. And, of course, it was off the back of the Waitangi Tribunal report—Ko Aotearoa Tēnei—in which they talked about the PVR, plant variety rights, regime. In the Wai 262 report, they recommended that the regime be amended to include the ability to refuse the grant of a PVR if this would affect kaitiaki relationships with taonga species—number one. It's incredibly important, because one of the fears was that, actually, through any kind of revision of the plant variety rights regime, Māori interests would not be looked after. They will be very pleased to hear that that has been accepted and incorporated into this bill. So if kaitiaki do feel as though they are having their rights impinged upon, then they are actually able to raise concern, and they can do that through the second recommendation from the report, which was the establishment of a Māori advisory committee, in which they could advise the commissioner of PVRs on that matter.
Over the course of this bill and its different iterations and the various consultations, we've actually made sure that that committee—that Māori advisory committee, which will deal with any kinds of infringements or any kinds of concerns that kaitiaki raise as a concern—will be dealing with that. We've given them, through the bill, decision-making powers rather than just advisory powers as well, which is also a strengthening of that relationship and, again, another example where the Crown is being a good partner with Māori. 
This is part of it, actually. Consideration around this has been around the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti, and our obligations in relation to the plant variety rights regime but also, as some speakers have already mentioned on this particular topic, our obligations under the CPTPP—there are a lot of Ps in there. Obviously, we have certain obligations in that as well. Now, the current regime—the plant variety rights regime—is currently over 30 years old. So when you look at our obligations under Te Tiriti, our obligations under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and also our need to address a 30-year-old bill that needed to be hauled into the new century, that's the bill that we're discussing now. 
I'm very glad that Māori rights have been considered in that. As I said, the organisation that I talked about earlier, Miro, you can better believe, with a strengthening of rights for that relationship between Māori and our taonga, will be preserved well into the future so that other organisations just like Miro will continue to be able to help realise the aspirations of their lands. Yes, it's OK if you want to have maize on your section; sure, it's nice if you want to put some corn on there; but, actually, there are some high-value horticulture products that are just as accessible and just as feasible to have on Māori land blocks all across the North Island, with the right conditions.
Under the last Government, we also invested in this through the Provincial Growth Fund. Our Minister for—at the time—employment, skills, and development, the Hon Willie Jackson, went to Morrinsville, and he helped to launch this programme and helped to also announce the funding that we were going to put into it to help them get on their feet. I hope, well into the future, that organisations like Miro and the other "Miro" companies yet to come will absolutely take advantage and appreciate the work that's gone into this, the Plant Variety Rights Bill, that we're discussing at the moment. I have no problems recommending this to the House. Kia ora.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Five-minute call—the Hon Michael Woodhouse.





Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don't think I'm going to need that time, all of it, to make a few short points in support of the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I find it slightly ironic that the previous speaker talked so glowingly about the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), because he was part of a party in Opposition that fought tooth and nail against that.
Hon Damien O'Connor: No, we didn't—we signed it.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh, he signed it, he says. Oh, no, that's right. They didn't fight the CPTPP; they fought the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA)—as if that made a blind bit of difference to the substance of the agreement. Damien O'Connor is one of the experts in rewriting history. Lions in Opposition, something else in Government. One of the things that they opposed, ironically, was the undermining of our obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, notwithstanding that there was a lock solid built-in protection for Treaty rights under that trade agreement. That should be remembered.
But this is a good bill. It's important that we maintain those obligations under both the Treaty and our free-trade agreements, but I think the Government and Tāmati Coffey, who has just resumed his seat, could reflect, actually, on one of the iconic indigenous crops, which is kūmara. Kūmara was nearly wiped out in this country due to a blight, a black rot in the 1950s, and was rescued and propagated and improved by a Chinese immigrant refugee and his wife, Joe and Fay Gock​. It's a great story. I think the moral of that story is that in our efforts to provide protectionism and the property rights of certain plant varieties, we don't overlook the fact that there is contribution that can be made, from any number of people, to improving that stock.
This is a really important bill, and I look forward to it going to the committee. I'm not sure—is it the Māori Affairs Committee who are going to consider it?
Dr Duncan Webb: Economic development.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Economic development? Well, they will have, I think, an excellent dialogue with submitters, and I look forward to hearing the results of their efforts.





Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Look, very pleased to rise on this bill in light of the fact that Te Paati Māori has chosen not to speak on this bill or, indeed, any other bill tonight. And I'm particularly surprised that they're not speaking on this bill given that it's implementing the Wai 262 report and, in fact, making sure that New Zealand adheres to its Treaty obligations in respect of plant variety rights.
I mean, plant variety rights are, in fact, a property right. They're an ownership right to exclude others from the use of plant variety rights. This is a significant step forward to recognise intellectual property rights, plant variety rights, and the fact that they may be held by Māori in respect of their traditional plants and that they can exclude others from registering plant variety rights.
So look, I'm very pleased to stand on this bill. I know the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee will do a very good job on it. I certainly hope that the Māori Party take the opportunity to sit on that committee, because they haven't spoken on this bill, and I know the committee will do a lot of work on it. I'm absolutely sure that our caucus members who sit on that committee will look at it very carefully, and I'm sure members from the other side will do the same. So I'd invite all parties in this House to participate in the legislative process, particularly on things that relate to the constituency they claim to represent. Kia ora.





ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, thank you. I take the opportunity to rise and talk about the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I wasn't in the House last night when this bill started to be discussed, and so I did, when I realised I was speaking tonight, think, "Gosh, what am I going to talk about?" and took an opportunity to have a look at the previous speeches, which I can only comment to—some of them are somewhat distressing to listen to. Nevertheless, I'm actually going to focus tonight on what this bill actually does.
I went through some of the definitions in the legislation, because I was kind of looking at it and it said "UPOV convention" and I wasn't sure what that meant. So, the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants was signed in 1961, revised in '72, '78, and '91. Our piece of legislation that we're bringing through tonight is adding a modern focus, which also includes the Treaty of Waitangi in that aspect. So it is simply, clearly something that has been left alone for a long time and needs to be modernised.
I thought to myself: "Well, why is this important?" And then I realised the connection that we, as people from this country, have with our plants, particularly our indigenous plants. I would hate to think that someone out there was able to take a taonga species—say, the silver fern, which we have here in Aotearoa—and take it overseas and use it. So I was kind of thinking, "OK, what's our connection?" And, certainly for me—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Talk us through the kiwifruit story!
ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: I'm going to bring my kiwifruit story to the fore in a second, but, first of all, I wanted to talk about a personal connection to a plant that I have, and a story about that.
I'm a Zontian. I belong to a group called Zonta, and we have what is called the Zonta rose. Now, that was bred in 1983 by the—and I'll just read this out—Harkness Roses of England. They cultivated and gifted a rose to Zonta International. Now, Zonta International, this beautiful yellow rose, was an idea that New Zealand came up with. Val Webster, who's, sadly, passed away, created this concept, and it became a worldwide symbol, and it was gifted to us. It's important to me to talk about this because this rose is—the Zontian day is 8 March, which is International Women's Day. So I think, when we talk about the sort of esoteric intellectual property rights of plants, we also talk about the connection that we, as people from Aotearoa, people from this country, have with different plants. So I just wanted to raise that, and then here is my kiwifruit story.
Of course, you may know that I am from the Bay of Plenty, based in the Bay of Plenty, and we have this fabulous kiwifruit industry, where 80 percent of all kiwifruit that is grown in this country comes from the Bay of Plenty. We have 2,792 grower/producers. We have 150 million trays, and our trade is worth $2.967 billion per annum gross. So this is something that both has emotional connection, from my own community, but it also has that hugely important financial benefit. So, thinking about plant variety rights, this is about the protection of the exploitation of our rights with plants.
It is important to remember that people can still experiment, home growers can do the things that they want to do, but this is about the intellectual property that protects and maintains some of our trade industries, but it is also particularly important to remember that we also look at taonga species. We also look at the rights under the Treaty of Waitangi around the kaitiaki rights. So where we have particularly some of our plants that are what we call our taonga species—an example of that may be the kauri tree—where we have that, someone might take some seeds, create a kauri tree and then take that genetic detail, that genetic breed, overseas and claim it as their own. That is something that we in this country do not want to have happen.
So the bill itself is quite detailed. It's quite thorough in its exploration of these terms—what a breeder means; all sorts of things like that. I think it is going to be a particularly interesting time in the select committee, one of which I won't be sitting on, unfortunately. But I do think that we are particularly going to have a good and useful conversation, and I think, when we talk about taonga species, the rights of kaitiaki, when we talk about the way that we as a group of New Zealanders come to understand our ownership of plants or our protection of and our connection with plants, I think it's a conversation well worth having.
Like I say, 1991, when this was last looked at—I'm really pleased to see that, in fact, we will be having a good conversation, a conversation that, hopefully, people can take the politics out of and talk about how we as a nation need to protect our rights for business, our rights for breeding, and our indigenous rights to our own genomes, in terms of our plant species. I commend this bill to the House.





Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National): Plant variety rights doesn't sound like the most invigorating subject to be debating on a Wednesday night, but, actually, I want to make a point, whether it is for our economy, whether it's for our science sector, and I also want to give a very strong example for the environment as to why this bill is important. It's really easy for members of Parliament to give speeches about the importance of innovation and all of that, but, actually, it's about getting good laws that provide the right incentives for people to invest in research and help New Zealand secure high future living standards.
The two focuses we should have in this bill are, firstly, making sure that property rights for those that innovate are secure, and, secondly, that we keep the costs and the bureaucracy down, because over and over again we see members opposite talk the talk of wanting to innovate but then create barriers and red tape that will harm innovation and our economy.
I come from a region of New Zealand that generates billions of dollars of wealth in horticultural products. The part we need to understand about New Zealand horticulture is that we're not able to compete on price. We have to compete on innovation and quality. The cost of getting our apples, our kiwifruit, our hops, our berry fruit to other parts of the world is so much more than for those that are close to the major markets of North America, Europe, and Asia. Our labour, rightly, is more expensive than what it is in many countries, and so the whole future of our $6 billion a year horticulture industry relies on innovation and how we protect plant variety rights. 
I don't think New Zealanders appreciate the degree to which those plants variety rights are so important. Take an industry like apples and the development of the Braeburn apple, then the Envy, and then the Ambrosia: every one of those new varieties gives New Zealand apples an edge for a period of between five and 10 years before other markets catch up. Exactly the same is true of kiwifruit and the work that is being done around gold kiwifruit that is the key to it being competitive.
Now, the good part of this bill is in terms of the implementation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and members on this side of the House strongly support it. And I have to say members on this side of the House are not fair-weather friends to trade rules; we are consistent friends. I just look at members opposite who ran up and down the main streets of Christchurch and Nelson raging against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), changed its title, and then said it's the best thing since sliced bread. Well, I'm sorry; that is so flaky and really does show the differences. The interesting part is that this Parliament was only able to ratify that significant global trade agreement because the National Party was not prepared to play politics over New Zealand's trade interests and actually gave members opposite—
Hon Stuart Nash: Oh, what!
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I say to Mr Nash: how did the last Government get the numbers to ratify the TPP—because the Greens wouldn't vote for it. The only reason it made it through this Parliament was because the National Party put the interests of the country ahead of those of the politics. I can recall Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson marching up main street Auckland—Queen Street—and raging against that agreement, and here we have a law that is implementing it and doing so, and I am pleased that we are part of that agreement. I am pleased that we're in this agreement. Why is it so important? Because plant variety rights in domestic law have no value unless they are internationally recognised. International agreements are required to protect that sort of intellectual property. It is a significant change that in this bill we are increasing the plant variety rights out to the period of 25 years. 
I've spoken on what is good in this bill. I now want to express some concern about what is wrong with this bill, and that is with the new Māori Plant Varieties Committee effectively having a veto, a decision-making, not advisory, role in relation to anybody who wishes to register a plant variety right. The reason that is of concern and goes beyond the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal in the Wai 262 claim is that it creates significant uncertainty. 
Let me just give a practical example. Members opposite talk about indigenous species being kaitiaki for Māori. Will members opposite tell me which of New Zealand's 10,000 algae have kaitiaki rights? There are 10,000 different varieties of algae. Section 6 of this bill says that all those algae are covered by "plant varieties", interestingly, the way that "plant" is defined. Members might say, "Well, why does that matter?" Well, let me tell you why it matters. Every member of this House would know that one of the most significant challenges we face is climate change. Equally, this Parliament knows that one of the biggest challenges of that is that about half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, and one of the most interesting scientific projects that offers us hope of a solution for our agricultural industries is the work that is going on on Asparagospis armata, which is an algae that has the capacity to reduce agricultural emissions by 95 percent. 
Now, there are private investors that are putting millions of dollars into understanding how you might grow, how you might attract the proteins, how you might be able to safely feed that to animals and solve one of the biggest scientific problems our country has: how do we grow agricultural products without greenhouse gases? But here's my question. How would the investors in that project know whether the Māori Plant Varieties Committee, that's being established under this bill, will determine that it's a taonga and so they can't get plant variety rights over all of their investment? There is just no understanding from members opposite of the level of uncertainty that is created when you provide that sort of veto. Why would people invest when the extra uncertainty is added? I don't think there's a member of this House that would be able to tell me which of our 10,000 algae species might meet the test that is required in this bill.
The problem with this Government is that they give lip service to the issues of innovation. They block the development—
Hon Stuart Nash: Oh!
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I ask Mr Nash, why is it that this Government will not review the biotechnology laws as has been recommended by officials?
Hon Stuart Nash: We've invested more into science, research, and technology than that Government did in nine years.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: He doesn't want to answer the question. It is legislative uncertainty of the sort that is proposed in this bill that is actually going to undermine investment in the sort of innovation that's so critical in an area like plant variety rights. The truth is that National has no difficulty with a Māori advisory committee that is able to provide advice. But the decisions about which plant varieties are registered, and the property rights that are respected, should treat all New Zealanders equally, and those decisions should be made by the Government. Of course, Māori should have an opportunity to have a say, but there is an enormous difference between having a say and having a veto, and when I give an example like the use of native algae for the purposes of an issue like greenhouse gas emissions, actually, it's in the interests of not just our economy but of our environment and of science that we're able to create greater certainty. 
This bill is a classic example of this Government not understanding the impacts on business, on investment, on both the economic and environmental issues that this country challenges. They are so carried away with their rhetoric that we get bills of this sort that need to be repaired, and my hope is that at select committee we may be able to reconsider some of the provisions in this bill that are flawed.





NAISI CHEN (Labour): Madam Speaker, you can say that I've been on quite the journey in the last 48 hours. When I found out that I was going to speak on this bill, to be honest, this is quite a subject matter that was foreign to me. So I started to read all of the notes and I realised what we were doing as a party, as a Government, was something that was so fundamental in the structure that we see plant variety rights in this country. But then it wasn't until this afternoon, when I was ready to come into this House for this debate, that one of my friends, Jaxon, stopped me in my tracks to tell me his story to this bill. I was quite shocked that we had someone in this building who actually had a personal connection to this bill, and let me tell you his story.
His family are all plant breeders and so actually their siblings—I think, if I remember correctly there are three—each has a plant variety named after them. So his name is Jaxon, so he has the Jaxon Blue plant named after him—and I think that is so neat.
What happened was that under the current plant variety rights system at the moment, their family applied to have their variety and their intellectual property (IP) protected, but it was so complicated that they had actually to engage an agent to do it for them. But what happened was that that agent actually tricked them and then put his own name under the ownership of IP of that plant variety. So when I hear colleagues on the other side of the House say that we are hindering innovation, that's just absolutely untrue. We're hoping we're helping plant breeders in this country to truly protect their IP in this industry by modernising the regime so that it is up to a 21st century standard so that the digital system and the digital registry that we will hold will actually make it easier for every single plant breeder in this nation to protect their IP, to keep innovating, and to have the confidence in the system we have in this country to stand by it and to do well in this industry. 
It gives me great pride to be part of a party that protects our plant breeders' rights and it gives me great pleasure to stand in support of a bill which actually makes everyone's lives a little bit easier. Right now, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, as a migrant, how proud I am that this bill will support our Te Tiriti obligations. I often get asked by my community why, as a migrant, we should be so passionate or why am I so passionate about tikanga Māori. My reply has always been that Te Ao Māori, the world views that Māori people have built up on this land, are so rooted on the land that we stand on. They have wisdom built up from generations to teach us how to interact properly with this land that we stand on. And so through that wisdom, we're able to make the best of this land, but also we are able to best protect this land as well. That's something as a migrant community we need to do, but I believe all of New Zealand needs to be able to do as well. And so through the inbuilt mechanism of this bill and the authority of the commissioner that we will set up and we will continue to support, they will be able to have the legislative—and also the authority to make rulings on which plants we do need to protect in line with tikanga Māori and I think that is something so incredibly precious to our country. 
Finally, I just wanted to end on the fact that I think it's really, really important that we have the support of industry. As a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, I really look forward to hearing all the submissions because I believe there will be lots and lots of submitters who are absolutely passionate about what they do in the sector or in the line of plant breeding. I really look forward to seeing a lot of the products that they have come out with—absolute ingenuity. Some of them will be quite humorous. I look forward to all of the different names. I look forward to a lot of different types of plant breeding and all the beautiful plants that they will be able to show to us. But what I will end on is a quote from the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association in regards to this bill. They say that "Plant breeders are pleased to see the Plant Variety Rights Bill introduced into Parliament this week. The current legislation is some 34 years old and dates back to 1987." So I really look forward to working on modernising this regime and look forward to working with the select committee and all of our submitters.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the Plant Variety Rights Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 110
New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Maori 2.
Noes 10
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Plant Variety Rights Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.





HOLIDAYS (INCREASING SICK LEAVE) AMENDMENT BILL
Third Reading
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. 
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. 
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
I am very pleased this evening that with the third reading of this bill, and, God willing, its passage before the end of the night, this Government will be delivering on one of its election commitments. That is the commitment to make sure that workers across New Zealand have a decent and adequate entitlement for sick leave for themselves, and their dependants, of 10 days per year. 
Having come out of the year of COVID, one of our learnings has been about the need to make sure that people have adequate sick leave, and I'll speak shortly about why that is so important. I want to start off, though, with a brief comment about why this bill is so important in the context of the Government's broader agenda for workplace relations. It is my vision as Minister—and this Government's policy—to achieve workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive, and to build up a framework across our workplaces in which those principles are mutually reinforcing. We don't see that those things conflict against each other, as has sometimes been the case in our past. We believe workplaces in which workers are treated fairly will be workplaces in which it's safer for everyone and will be workplaces in which it is more productive, as well. This piece of legislation fits very well within that context because it's about recognising the fundamental needs of workers to look after their health and recognising that there are benefits in that for the broader workplace and for the business that is concerned, as well. 
Over the course of this debate, we have seen the differences in approach between the two sides of the House, and this came out most forwardly in the committee stage of the debate yesterday when we heard from the National Party a very negative, backwards-looking, low-road approach to employment relations. We were told that with the passage of this bill, workers en masse, apparently, will look to rip off the system and take sick leave up to the maximum, regardless of whether they are sick or not. We were told that employers en masse, apparently, will discriminate against women and people with dependants if this is passed. Well, on this side of the House—I said this yesterday and I'll repeat it again—we have a much more optimistic view of the way that employees and employers treat each other in this country, and our ability to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and to have productive workplaces all at once. As I say, we don't see those things as being in contradiction.
In fact, yesterday we saw from the National Party a Supplementary Order Paper that would have actually cut—actually cut—from the current legal minimum of five days the sick leave for part-time workers who have less than 2½ days of work per week. What kind of thinking leads you to that after a year of a global pandemic like COVID-19? I can't even imagine.
But for us, as I said, this is about making sure that we have adequate sick leave entitlements for the benefit of workers and of workplaces, and for the broader public health interest. For workers, this is simple and this is so important that it bears repeating: this is about people being treated with sufficient dignity that when they are unwell, that when they are sick, they are able to take sufficient time to get well again. That they don't feel forced into coming into work. That they don't feel pressured into coming to work. They are able to stay at home and recover for their health and their wellbeing. I will go on to talk about some of the broader benefits and the productivity enhancements that we believe do flow from this bill, but, at its core, there is something here about how we treat people. I believe that people who are sick should be afforded the ability to be at home, within reason, so that they can recover.
This is also about the broader workplace. It's about the fact that, again, after the year of COVID—how many times do we have to learn and relearn this? We don't want people who are sick coming in to work, not just for their own benefit but for the health and wellbeing of the people that they work with. People who are sick spread illness to others in the workplace. 
I reflected yesterday in the debate that we are beginning to build up evidence on record that over the course of the year, many workplaces have had reduced sick leave need because people have been staying at home. It's very simple: this is about looking after the worker who is sick and their workmates, and, more broadly, this is also about the public health interest. In an era in which we are acutely aware of how communicable diseases can spread, it is surely more important than ever that we move past that old-time culture of just toughing it out, because if we continue with that, then we put ourselves at risk, not just at the workplace level but at the level of our communities and our society, of the spread of illnesses like COVID and other illnesses. We cannot possibly want that. The long-term implications of that not just for individuals and community and their wellbeing but for our economy are profound. So this is so important that people do have the right to adequate sick leave. 
I said in my first reading speech that that culture of toughing it out is quite embedded. It's certainly something that I've done and I'm pretty sure that other members around the Chamber have done, but, increasingly, I think New Zealanders and employers recognise that it is not the way ahead. 
I've been encouraged over the course of this debate by how many people recognise the value of this policy. Of course, there have been people who have a different view. That happens whenever we have a change. But I recognise people like Michael Barnett from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, who said that this is not just better for employees' wellbeing, but it's better for the workplace as well. He encouraged opponents of the bill to look at the long term.
There was an excellent comment from Jane Kennelly, a director at Frog Recruitment, and she spoke about her experience in her business of offering not just 10 days' sick leave per year but unlimited sick leave, flexible sick leave. She said when she offered unlimited sick leave in her business, "people thought staff would take leave willy-nilly. But quite the opposite happened. We were well below the average just because there was an element of trust.", and that's right—isn't that the thing? When we treat people with trust and respect and when people don't have to worry about whether they'll have enough sick leave to get through the next illness that they have or their dependants have, you can build more trusting relationships between the employees and the employers, and that's where we want to take it. 
The Government will be there as well. We've stepped up over the last year to support employers and employees with the COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme and the COVID-19 short-term absence payments. We're not leaving employers and employees to their own devices; we will be there to support them where necessary, but let's make sure that, fundamentally, people have adequate sick leave in the first instance.
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in the passage of this bill so far. To those members of the select committee, who ran a very good select committee process; to the officials who have worked hard over the last six months on their piece of legislation, noting that this was one of the first pieces of legislation introduced by the new Government when we came into office at the end of last year; and to all of those people who have submitted and given their views on this bill, whatever those views were, I respect and thank them for that contribution.
The bill that the select committee sent back to the House and that we are considering today is a simple bill. It increases the entitlement from five days to 10 days per year for employees. It's a bill in which we have tried to retain a balance. We have listened to the voices of employers, who have asked us to make sure that any changes that we do make are able to be implemented with a reasonable time frame. Therefore, the commencement of this bill will occur two months after Royal assent and the increases to entitlement will occur on employee anniversary dates—not all at once in one go—and that will enable payroll systems to adapt to the system. So we have tried to take a balanced approach to make sure that these provisions can be efficiently implemented.
As I move towards closing my comments this evening, I return to that broader vision that we have for workplaces in New Zealand—that is, workplaces in which we have fairness, safety, and productivity and in which those things rest upon one another and reinforce one another. The Government has a much broader agenda that I am very proud of and that we will be making progress on over the course of this term. We've announced fair pay agreements recently. We'll be moving forward with making sure we have an adequate health and safety system to keep people safe in the workplace. But this reform early on in our term speaks to those values. It speaks to valuing people, making sure that they have the dignity to be well in their own lives. It speaks to looking after other people in the workplace. It speaks to the broader benefits of making sure that illness doesn't spread, reducing productivity and causing carnage, potentially, across our communities and our societies.
I am very proud that our Government so early in our term has kept our commitment to follow through on this piece of legislation. It speaks to our values. It speaks to our vision with the employment relations system. It speaks to some of the lessons that we have learnt over the course of COVID-19. I thank everyone for their contribution to this important piece of legislation, and this evening I am very happy, as a promise kept, to commend this bill to the House.





Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I've listened carefully to the Minister's contributions at several stages of this legislation now, and, as I did the first time I heard him, I remain utterly unconvinced of his argument. This is a bill that he has correctly identified as being an election commitment made by the parliamentary Labour Party, deeply connected to the trade union movement and their influencers. He speaks about the future and a bright and rosy nirvana for industrial relations in this country, but the unions want to take us back—back to a time when there was conflict and when there was disharmony and when there was even lower productivity than we have now. 
What the Minister didn't speak about at all was the cost and who pays. So the cost has been estimated by his own officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to be a billion dollars a year.
Christopher Luxon: How much?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: A billion dollars a year, Mr Luxon. So that's a billion dollars a year, or nearly 1 percent of the nation's total payroll, that this Government is foisting upon business in a way that produces nothing more. So the Minister talks blithely about a view of the world that is rosy and bright but doesn't match reality.
Last night, we heard him in the committee of the whole House speaking about the world that he saw. Well, he clearly has no understanding of how business operates or how some people and some employees operate. I don't think there are many—in fact, they usually roll out one, the only member of the Labour Party caucus who is a business person. It's a small business somewhere in the South Island. They roll this person out very regularly, and then the rest of the time it's the trade union delegates that get up and speak. So what happens is that you have a Government party that is utterly and totally disconnected from the reality of the commercial world and totally disconnected from the reality of day-to-day pressures, particularly on small businesses trying to cope already with the challenges that the last 12 months and COVID have provided.
That brings me to another point. The rationale for this legislation has actually been COVID. This is a bill that's been brought in under the cover of COVID. Actually, if it was supposedly the cover of COVID that this bill was set to achieve its objectives, then surely it would have made sense for this bill to have a finite and limited time frame. But, no, this is the Government using COVID to introduce long-held views about employees and trade union objectives, long held and long sought by their influencers. Now, I don't think that that's going to deliver for New Zealand employees, it's certainly not going to deliver for New Zealand employers, and it's going to be, ultimately, bad for productivity, and we already have a huge problem with this.
Greg Harford is the chief executive of the Retail New Zealand organisation, and they represent thousands of businesses, and literally tens of thousands of people work in those retail businesses. Greg Harford came on behalf of his organisation to select committee and said that up to 20 percent of people working in retail are actually part-timers. That whole issue about part-timers has been a crucial element of debate and discussion and an unresolved issue in relation to this bill, and it relates to what's referred to as prorating. So this bill seeks to give people who are employed an extra five days a year of sick leave. Now, that may be well and good for people who are employed on the old-fashioned 40 hours a week, five days a week kind of concept that the Labour Party's rose-tinted glasses seem to think that most New Zealanders are still employed by. The reality is, of course, that employment and economic circumstances have changed, and the way people are employed has changed as well.
Greg Harford from Retail New Zealand points out that a lot of the people who work part time do so because they want to, because it suits them, or because it fits in with their lifestyle and what they want to achieve. So for an employer now who employs somebody one day a week, they're going to have to give that one-day-a-week person 10 days' annual sick leave—10 days. So if a person works one day a week—arguably, about 50 days a year—10 of those days can be taken as sick leave. But here's the rub: if that person then has another job for a second day of that week with a second employer, they get another 10 days of annual sick leave—another 10 days of sick leave. If, heaven forbid, they work for five different entities over five different days, then you do the maths.
So the reality of this has yet to sink into the Government. They just don't get it, and they don't get it because they're not connected with the reality of day-to-day business, particularly small businesses. They simply don't have any understanding of it. So this lack of ability to prorate is already a problem, but it's exacerbated massively by extending this to 10 days a year.
So we come back to the issue of what is a prudent, careful, responsible employer going to do when they start to look at candidates for a new job. Last night, the Minister rejected my saying this because he seems to think that everybody lives in peace and harmony and sweetness, and light descends upon everything. Well, the grim reality is that that is not the case. That is not the case for all employers and it's not the case for all employees, and so what the Government is, effectively, asking business people to do is to, essentially, underwrite the good health of employees' children.
The reason for that is simple. It's because, often, sick leave is taken in support of dependent children, and that happens with quite frequent regularity. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but when an employer is looking at two candidates and one candidate for a new job has no children and one candidate has a number of children, that employer is going to be thinking in their head, "What is the risk to my business and to the productivity of my business, the profitability, to the competitiveness of my business if I take the candidate with multiple children versus the one that doesn't?" —that assumes, of course, that those are candidates of the same background, the same experience, the same talent, and the same ability to do the job.
I put it to the Government that, actually, businesses will do what they need to do to remain competitive and to remain profitable, and they will structure their business affairs in a way that achieves profitability and competitiveness. In some businesses, what will happen—and this is the case that Retail New Zealand have made and other submitters made to the select committee. What they will end up doing is actually not employing part-timers as frequently or in such numbers as they used to do. That will have a negative effect on people who want and seek part-time employment, but it also means that in terms of changing the way they do business, there will be businesses who simply automate out of their business a whole range of jobs. 
They will do that, and we've seen that in so many business sectors already, and when what Governments like this Labour-led Government do is just foist more cost, more red tape—
Christopher Luxon: A billion dollars.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —upon businesses—Mr Luxon says a billion dollars, and we shouldn't forget it. It's a billion dollars a year of added cost. They foist that upon businesses. Well, the Government can't reasonably expect, then, businesses not to react in a way that is going to adapt and adopt their business to remain competitive and profitable, and that will be the outcome. It will actually be fewer jobs—particularly for part-timers—and it will be less opportunity, particularly for those employees who seek jobs if they have dependent children.
So these are the practical realities, and it's got nothing to do with a jaundiced view of the world, as the Minister likes to characterise it. It's a simple reality of business, of commerce, and of human nature. So I make no apology on this side of the House for us opposing this piece of legislation. 
If the Government was genuine and sincere about using COVID as their cover for introducing this legislation—and remember, this legislation was introduced under urgency, sent to select committee for a truncated select committee process over a summer period, and it has represented the very worst of process and the worst of doctrinaire, ideologically driven, centralised thinking from a Labour Government, socialist at heart, trade union in their history, in their politics, and in their view of the world. We on this side of the House have a fondness for business, for creating jobs, for creating opportunity, and for creating employment for New Zealanders who want to work and be productive.





JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Well, my goodness me, Mr Simpson. Why on earth is it that that member has so much disregard and distrust for the working people of New Zealand? To stand there and assume that because we're increasing sick days from five days to 10 days, employees are going to be so distrustful and they are going to rip the system something shocking—I honestly cannot believe it. I cannot fathom that Mr Simpson is stuck in his 1950s' world view of employees.
Now, as an employer and a small-business owner, I welcome this change. I welcome this change because, quite frankly, I would far rather have staff members staying away when they are unwell than coming into work, spreading their illness—
Chris Bishop: At least you have some experience.
JO LUXTON: —which, in turn—Mr Bishop—means that more staff take more time off, therefore costing more in productivity, and there is the financial cost to the employer if all staff members are heading away on sick leave all the time. Just because sick leave is increased to 10 days per annum, it does not mean that every staff member is going to take their 10 days' sick leave all at once, all in the same week, all on the same day. However it might sound, I just can't comprehend what it is the Opposition are trying to say. What this does is it allows—
Chris Bishop: Why don't you listen?
JO LUXTON: Well, if the member has something worth listening to, then I would listen, but there is no argument worth listening to from that side of the House. What this does is it ensures that employees will not come to work sick, spreading their bugs, and therefore affect the productivity of the business. 
In fact, if you think about it, we compare ourselves quite often with Australia, and they actually, over there, provide 10 days' leave per year for workers. We're probably one of the few countries in the OECD that do not. 
So I stand here very proudly as a small-business owner from the South Island supporting this piece of legislation. I think it is fantastic. It is perfect timing, and I commend the Minister for bringing this piece of legislation to the House.





TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's an absolute privilege to take an unexpected call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.
Now, I can kind of understand the rationale for this. The Government wants to improve the sick leave approach and give people an extra five days, doubling it—yeah, OK, I understand that. But it's really easy to pass a piece of legislation imposing cost on someone else, and this is one of the biggest issues I have with the Government, with their raft of legislation they've been putting through. It is the unintended consequences, and when you have a business community that are having to step up to the plate here because, quite frankly, it is only businesses who will be picking up this cost—$1 billion a year of increased costs on businesses. We've been through an incredibly challenging period over the last 12 or so months with COVID and there have been businesses that have really struggled through that period. Some haven't made it. Others have done really well, but, actually, it has been an incredibly challenging time for business owners. Regardless of their particular industry or whether they've done well or not, the uncertainty created by COVID has been incredibly stressful. Alongside that, we've seen, firstly, last year, an increase in the minimum wage, and then again this year, a further increase in the minimum wage—
Hon Members: Whoo!
TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —and the other side are saying, "Great, fantastic!" Well, yes, but who's picking up that cost? It's not the Government covering that, actually; it's businesses having to pick up that cost.
This is the fundamental point the Government just don't seem to understand—that businesses do not just have an endless bank account. There are hard-working business owners all around the country struggling every day to make a real go of their passion, of their interest, in whatever industry it is. They've had the innovation, the entrepreneurship, the drive to go out and create their own piece of paradise in New Zealand, and good on them for doing that because we are incredibly lucky to have such a strong business community in New Zealand. I think they'd really appreciate a bit more support from this Government. This sort of legislation bringing in an extra five days' sick leave is just a step too far on top of all those other measures that I've just mentioned, including now we're hearing about another public holiday as well, and that's a direct cost straight to business owners, as well. It'd just be great if we could see from this Government a bit more consideration for the impact their legislation has on business.
The consultation period, as well, through this bill was very poor. Like we've seen on a number of pieces of legislation, the select committee process hasn't been adequate. There hasn't been sufficient opportunity for New Zealanders to actually have their say, to engage in the democratic process and share their views, because, quite frankly, we don't have all the answers here in Wellington. We rely on the likes of those business owners to share their views on what the impact is for this sort of legislation, and when the other side of the House arrogantly says "No, we know best. We're not even going to have a select committee." or "We're going to have a truncated select committee process"—and we've seen that many times already over this parliamentary term—it's simply not good enough.
So my concern is that there are going to be unintended consequences from this, and look, I have absolute confidence that there are, by and large, across most businesses fantastic relationships between the employer and the employees. That leads to a successful business and, as a previous business owner, I can understand that. We have those solid relationships. That is the foundation of a good business. But there are times when those relationships get exploited, and the risk here is that that is pushing additional cost directly on to business owners, and, quite frankly, it's disappointing to see that from the Government.
So we are not supporting this. We would have liked to have seen a very different approach to it, but, unfortunately, the Government has the numbers. They'll push it through as they see fit, and my concern is how many businesses are going to look at this along with the other minimum wage increases, the additional public holidays coming, the extra cost of compliance, and regulatory changes, and just say "Actually, this is all too hard. It's too hard to be a business owner in New Zealand.", and that, for me, would be the real tragedy. So I'd really encourage the Government to consider that with their subsequent pieces of legislation and see if they can actually give business owners in New Zealand a better deal. Thank you.





IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this short call to speak on this very, very important bill. But before I do so, I just want to comment on Mr Simpson's statement that this is something that's being pushed by a trade union movement. This Government, from day one, made it clear that it's going to support hard-working New Zealanders, and this is where it's coming from. When he talks about the union movement in a way that's so dismissive, he's talking about 400,000 New Zealand employees, and it's a shame that he's talking about them in the way that they're some sort of—I don't know.
I also want to thank Minister Wood for the good work that he has been doing not just on this bill but the good work that he's doing to support the hard-working Kiwis. Thank you, Minister, for everything that you're doing, because this is the message that I'm getting from every hard-working cleaner, security guard, caregiver—they can't thank you enough. Please keep up the good work. 
A lot has been said about the sick leave increase. We've heard a lot of compelling testimonies and evidence from workers' unions and the stakeholders, and a lot are in support. We also heard some counterarguments as well. That's something that we respect. About 400 people have submitted on this bill and we thank them for that.
Our hard-working people have been undermined for the last nine years of the National Government. There was a lot of frustration and a lack of support. But, thankfully, this Government has stepped up and rolled out the COVID-19 wage subsidy, and a lot of them managed to stay home when they were sick, when they were unwell, or they managed to stay home when their loved ones were vulnerable.
This bill is not designed to only support the working people; it also will benefit businesses. Employees turning up to work when they're sick is going to infect others, and that's a loss for the employer, as well.
I will share one story about myself. In 2012, I was working at Victoria University as a cleaner, and I was sick with a bug. I called the supervisor to tell him that I was sick, and he said, "You don't have enough sick leave and you have to come to work." I don't blame him, because it's the rule—it's the law. I ended up coming in. The next day, three people were off. They were sick, and that was just from my team. There were other people from other teams as well. This is a real story. I have no reason to lie about this.
All businesses are doing this already and they are happy. Things are productive for them and things are working for them. Various studies show that having healthy and happy and valued employees is good for business. In fact, the Australian survey suggested that the healthiest workers who use sick leave when they need it are up to nearly three times as productive, and they're less likely to take time off than the least healthy.
I just want to ask people who are opposing this—I caution. I just want to ask them if they ever have a family member who is staying in a care facility who is being looked after by caregivers, and then I want them to ask that worker if their loved one supports that worker having enough sick leave, or 10 days' sick leave, is good or bad. I will just leave it there, because the answer will be quite obvious.
Preparing for this, I've been talking to a few people, and one of the people that I have talked to was Lulu, who is a proud E tū member and a cleaner. Lulu has got a sick son who needs a lot of care. She doesn't have enough sick leave. If she is sick, she has to turn up to work, because if she does not, she's not going to get paid. That means she can't afford food and she can't afford medication for her son.
Inequality levels in this country have been getting worse every day. Hard-working Kiwis have been undermined, they have been forgotten: people like Shirley, people like Helen, people like Elizabeth—cleaners, security guards—people like Rosella, who's a caregiver. These people deserve better than this. This will make a difference in their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Let's tell them thank you for the good work that they have done for us last year and that they continue to do. The least we can say is thank you and allow them to stay home when they are sick or when their family members are sick—this is the least we can do for them. On that note, I commend this bill to the House. 





JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm really pleased to rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party for the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. I have been following this through the House, and I've got to admit that I feel slightly conflicted today. On one hand, extending sick leave to 10 days as a minimum is just so long overdue, and we've been hearing the evidence of the harm of limited sick leave in terms of people turning up to work sick or actually forgoing the income because they take unpaid sick leave, and struggling to pay their rent, and the stress that that's put on families and communities. We've also heard of people not having enough sick leave to be able to care for their children when they're sick and they leave their jobs as a result of that, which is harming our workplaces as well as our families and our communities. 
This is so overdue, and when I hear from the Opposition about the cost to employers around this, one, I just don't hear them understanding that, actually, there's a cost to employers of people coming to work sick or having to leave their job because they cannot manage their sickness and their employment because they don't have enough paid leave. I don't hear the modern employment approach coming from that side of the House around having understanding and trust in a workplace and how you create a positive workplace. That is none of what they're saying. All we're hearing is union bashing and a complete distrust—
Hon Member: That's right.
JAN LOGIE: —of people, and I'm hearing their confirmation of that. The evidence is there are a lot of people who have 10 days' sick leave, who have five days' sick leave, or who have unlimited sick leave who do not take their full entitlement. That, I understand, is the norm rather than the aberration, which tells us that, actually, the norm is people do not exploit these provisions. They are exploited where there is a low-trust environment, and we actively need to work to change that, and that is one of my points of disappointment with this piece of legislation. 
I do not believe and the Greens do not believe it goes far enough. We wanted to see the provision in the Employment Relations Act return to how it was before National built in this deep mistrust of employees, of enabling employers to require proof even after one day off work, without reasonable grounds. We want, if somebody is going to require you to have a sick leave, a medical certificate—that's the word—that, actually, they have reasonable grounds for believing that that person wasn't actually sick before we burden our health system and demonstrate that we don't trust our staff. We do not believe it's constructive for that to be the norm.
We also wanted to clarify that we heard in submissions around a sense—and I know case law doesn't necessarily support this. But people were telling us, around accessing sick leave for mental health reasons, that, actually, people feel that there's a barrier to that—that it's not evident that it is covered by sick leave. I think that also then speaks to the fact that we don't have a purpose or a clear strategy around why we have sick leave, but, actually, sick leave is an essential part of our health and safety system. We should be recognising that when people come to work impaired due to sickness, it creates a risk in the workplace, and that when people are getting sick more often, then it can also be a sign of overwork, burnout, and stress that should be being monitored in our workplace, and employers should be accountable within the health and safety system for that. Now, none of that thinking, unfortunately, has been done, and I really think it is a challenge for us as a country, if we are wanting to improve productivity, and if we are wanting to support people to be safe in their workplaces, that we should be doing that thinking, broader than just the extension of the days. 
We were also disappointed at the delay in the introduction so that some workers, while we're celebrating these 10 days and talking about the importance of it really passionately in the House—at least on this side—won't be able to access that until around July 2022, and that, I know, for a lot of the people I've spoken to, feels a really long way off. We have to acknowledge that people will be leaving their jobs, they will be turning up sick, and they will be feeling deeply conflicted and worried about the care of their kids for another year or more because of that balance that we heard about tonight. The Greens think, actually, that our kids and our families and the wellbeing of everyone in the workplace comes first, and we would have liked to have seen the 10 days come in right from the beginning. 
We also weren't supporting the provision in the bill—and sought to amend it—that will reduce the number of unused days that can be carried over. At the moment, you can carry over 15 days, and this bill reduces that to 10 days. It keeps the maximum total the same, but it reduces what people can carry over in real terms, and we didn't see the need for that trade-off. If somebody hasn't been using their leave, it's pretty clear that they're not going to be ripping anybody off. Sometimes, though, when somebody has accrued that much, it means they've been there for a while, and if they experience a really serious illness, having that up their sleeve for them or their family can make all of the difference in keeping somebody in unemployment and regaining their health unhindered by the additional stress of financial worries, which can have a real impact on people's healing from sickness. 
I did just then, finally, want to talk to the point, before my final point, to just address my real concern at the narrative coming from the National Party about this legislation leading to employers discriminating against women because they will see women with and they're comparing to, I think—what was the phrase? If they're being asked to underwrite the health of their employees' sick children, then when considering two job applicants, one with children and one without, the employer will choose those without children. That is, to my mind, a deeply, deeply irresponsible narrative that is justifying and validating illegal discrimination. 
In this country, you are not able to discriminate against people on their sex or their status, and to be saying that that is what is going to happen is de facto endorsing it and that is, I think, an appalling failure in leadership. It also doesn't make sense to me when so many of our big companies have unlimited leave and actually have a lot of women employed. They've looked at those applicants and they've still chosen the best person for the job, and that has not been out of fear that that person will take unlimited leave and will exploit sick leave provisions or that children will be a burden on their workplace, because they've looked at the skills of the person and what they can contribute. I really, really just think the National Party needs to catch up to the fact that we're no longer in the 1950s. 
So in a final point, again, to go back to the positive of this, I want to just recognise, again, those people who right now have used up their sick leave through sickness, cold, flu, not going to work because they have not wanted to spread that to their workmates. Our experience over the last year is we've seen the risk of people turning up to places sick, and that is a selfish act. But when somebody is doing that because they cannot afford not to, then that comes back on us as a society to make the changes necessary to enable them to stay home when they are sick, to keep all of us safe. The Greens, on that note, are very pleased, if slightly disappointed, to support this bill.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.





CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to take a short call in opposition to this bill. The saying "Flogging a dead horse" springs to mind, but there are a couple of things that I'd just like to mention. This bill has definitely divided people into two camps: those who think businesses can afford all of the new added costs they've had to endure over the last few years, and those who just know they can't. I've read and listened to those on the other side of the House say that if businesses can't afford it, they shouldn't be in business. That sort of lack of understanding comes across quite strongly.
Just last week, a business on Oriental Parade had to close its doors after 16½ years in business. On the door was pinned a note that said, "Government policy has seen our costs go up significantly over the last year, and we expect this to continue."
The submitters to the Education and Workforce Committee were definitely divided into two camps. We had business owners who put themselves on the line, taken the risk, and employed people. They were concerned that they just wouldn't be able to afford these additional costs. The employees who submitted were varied. Some thought they needed four weeks' sick leave; not just two. A number of employees submitted and said that they supported the bill but that it wouldn't really affect them, as they had a great relationship with their employers. What is the problem that we're actually trying to solve here?
The mention of pro rata was just brushed off as if it meant nothing, but it is a very real argument. If I employ one person every Sunday, they are entitled to 10 days off—10 weeks off. That's just a fact—that's just a fact. The suggestion that employers may just watch who they employ a little bit more carefully was dismissed. It was suggested the other day that that's going back 60 years, which is pretty close to when fair-trade agreements were around.
The suggestion that employees might abuse the extra leave and just treat it as annual leave was just brushed off, as well. But that shows an amazing inability to understand how business works and it shows that members opposite actually don't speak to business owners. 
We compare ourselves with other countries when it comes to minimum wage, but ignore the most important factor—that is, New Zealand has much, much lower productivity than all of the countries we compare ourselves with. I haven't actually been able to find the research that Minister Wood talks about that shows there is a higher productivity. I'd be interested to see it, because I can't find it. To think that paying people more, giving people more holidays, and increasing sick leave will increase productivity shows a poor understanding of business.
Employees were looked after during COVID, and rightly so. Businesses were assisted in getting a loan if they needed it. Businesses had to go into debt in order for employees to have a job. This was the support that they got.
The timing for this bill is very poor. Obviously union-initiated and pushed through under the cover of COVID—a solution looking for a problem. Businesses need a break and at least some security in what's going to happen next. ACT opposes this bill.





ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): I'm really humbled—really humbled—to stand and take a call on this really important piece of legislation that supports workers. Now, workers are also employers, and I'm really proud to support this piece of legislation that actually addresses some of the concerns that have been raised by the other side of the House. It is absolutely wonderful to hear so much from the other side of the House about their concerns that this bill might lead to discrimination against employees. They're concerned that workers will be discriminated against: women, people who have dependants—not just children, but parents, aunties, sisters, brothers—and caregivers. So it's heartening to hear that the other side of the House is worried about this potential discrimination. But I call on them to have a think about having an element of trust in employers that they are actually capable of making sensible decisions about how they look after and invest in their staff, and about how they can run their businesses effectively and productively.
It's really interesting that they talk about discrimination, because what this does is it frees so many of our workers up from discrimination, because, at the moment, the law as it stands, with only having five days, discriminates. The cost is borne mainly by women. When you only have access to five days and you are the person more likely to be doing the caring for sick children or dependants, it is because you are a woman, OK? So the discrimination with that five days, that pressure that adds when you have to decide whether or not to take unpaid leave, to quit your job, send your kids to school sick because you will not be able to pay the rent—that is a cost borne by women. 
It is a cost borne by those who dominate public-facing service industries: those involved in health, education, and care; home support workers—80 to 90 percent of them, women. Those who are in those public-facing industries are more likely to have close contact, more likely to pick up infections and more likely to pass on illness, not just to their co-workers, but to the vulnerable people that they care for in their classrooms, in their hospital wards, in their doctors' surgeries, and in vulnerable people's homes. This cost, currently, with only five days, is borne by our children. They are sent to school unwell because their parents cannot afford to take unpaid leave or to quit their jobs. Kids get dosed up with the old Pamol—"You'll be right, I'll pick you up at 3 o'clock."—and everyone crosses their fingers and hopes for the best. Because of the cost that is being borne by these families, it is a financial cost, it is stress, and it is something that is borne by a part of our society.
So those children go to school and they pass the bugs on to their classmates, to their teachers, and, of course, the teachers—you know, it is exacerbated by them not staying home and getting well quicker and avoiding passing those germs on. I know of young people, teenagers, who have had to take time off school at the cost of their education because they've had to stay home and look after siblings or their grandparents because mum or dad has had to go to work because they have no sick leave. 
It is currently our most vulnerable members of society who are bearing the true cost of the public health interest of people staying at home as we shift from the tough-it-out way that we've done things to being supported to make decisions that keep us all safer—their families and their fellow workers. The Minister has talked about having a fair, safe, and productive workplace, and I would add trust and good faith as something that the Opposition should be comfortable with. 
I need to thank the Minister for his leadership in helping us to work towards becoming a place globally that is seen as providing world-class pay and conditions. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Ian McKelvie—five minutes.





IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, as with my colleague Tim van de Molen in the chair next door, it is somewhat of a surprise to be taking a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. I've got to say I'm a little staggered at some of the comments coming from the Government benches, mainly because I've been an employer for much longer than any of them have—quite obviously—and not only have I been one for longer than them but I've had quite a lot of experience of this sort of thing.
I think one of the things that concerns me about the result of this bill and where it gets to—there's a couple of things that concern me and I'll get on to them. One of the things that concerns me is the more we regulate the labour industry, the more we stick to the regulations. I think that's a real challenge for this whole sector in New Zealand, because if we impose regulation and legislation on industry, employers, and employees, then those regulations are going to become more and more stuck to and more and more rigid, and there'll be no tolerance left in the business—and I think the point's been made a couple of times tonight already. A lot of the business of employing people and working with employees relates to tolerance and the ability to let people get on with their own lives and make sure they make the best of it. As I said a minute ago, the more we regulate and legislate, the more likely we are to stick to those legislative parameters and cause some problems.
The other thing that concerns me about this bill and a number of other bills that are in the pipeline, and certainly the result of this bill as it comes to the House for its third reading, is that it's all very well to go to 10 days' sick leave and to extend the holiday that people are able to take, but the problem is all of that cost goes on to the employer. If there was another way of doing that, it may well be acceptable, but the problem with New Zealand is we have such a lot of small businesses. We've heard a bit tonight about the productivity levels of New Zealand, and this is just going to add some further stress to the productivity level. Employment opportunities, I think, are going to get much tougher, and I think tomorrow, between 2 o'clock and 3 o'clock, we'll see why that's going to be, because there is a lack of confidence in our business community in New Zealand at the moment and they are nervous about what might happen. I think tomorrow will prove, probably, the reason for that nervousness. 
So if you lose the confidence of the employer sector in New Zealand, you'll find that the number of jobs in New Zealand drops quite quickly and quite dramatically and that would be a tragedy for New Zealand for a couple of reasons, actually. One is we'd probably lose a large number of our employees to Australia—and I think that's quite likely to happen—and the second is our unemployment levels may well rise. Now, I'm not saying they will, but the more pressure you put on employers, the more likely that is to happen. I'm all for supporting employees and making sure they have the best possible chance to have a decent life. I listened to one or two of the speeches from the other side of the House tonight and, frankly, I think the description they gave is very unfortunate, and, hopefully, it is isolated to a very few businesses around New Zealand. 
So the purpose of this bill is to increase the availability of employer-funded sick leave for employees. The reason for it—and I guess you could think about COVID and blame COVID for it, or say that COVID was responsible for it. We're going to blame it for everything for the next 20 years in New Zealand, I imagine, but I guess it's an example of that. It'll be very interesting to know the number of people that actually take more than five days or need more than five days' sick leave a year, and whether this bill changes what's historically happened very much at all. Only history will tell us that, but it will be very interesting to see where that takes us to and the result of that as we move forward.
So I think that, as I said earlier, the more we get involved in regulation and legislation around employment relations, the more intolerant those relationships become, and it worries me that we'd be moving down that path. In fact, I think we're going back to a time in history when, and, again, I'm one of the few in this House that will remember, every summer holidays when you wanted to go to the South Island, the ferries were on strike, and the world stopped—I didn't actually go on the ferry on holiday, because I never had holidays in those days. But it is a challenge for us and I think it's something we need to seriously consider. The issue that we've really got is that there aren't many people in New Zealand who remember those days when we had labour relationships in New Zealand that were far from satisfactory, and I just hope that this sort of bill doesn't take us back there. So thank you, Mr Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Helen White—five minutes.





HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise very proudly to speak in support of this bill. I have been a business owner, I've also acted for lots of businesses, and I've acted for employees, and I have been worried about the lack of sick leave and our attitude towards sickness in the workplace for a very long time. I am absolutely thrilled to see this.
The reality is that our businesses can't afford not to have a provision like this around sick leave, because this is the very sort of thing that stops pandemics spreading. This is the very sort of thing that stops the flu spreading, and the flu actually kills a lot of people every year. If an employee comes to work and they are sick, then they pass it on to others. Other people pay the price as well in that situation. They pay a financial price and it is risky, so I am absolutely thrilled to see this.
I do note that the arguments that are being used with regard to discrimination also just don't equate with my experience of employing. I have employed people and I've employed them on boards and various things, and I've never considered their sick leave entitlement, because what you're looking for is the best person for the job and we're employing human beings, not machines. It is not just a statistical exercise. I know lots of good employers, and I know that they would be appalled if you thought that that was their motivation.
Finally, I just wanted to say that the impact of this bill is not actually on most of us in this room, because most people in this room, if they were employed, were employed with 10 days' sick leave. It is our poorest workers—it's actually our non-unionised workers—who have these provisions in their Act, and that is where we should be targeting. These are the very workers who need our protection. I commend this bill to the House.





RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): I rise to take a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. First, I want to thank the Minister for introducing this bill into the House. I note that this legislation was signalled in the Labour Party's 2020 election manifesto. It was an honour to chair Labour's policy council leading into last year's election, and it is wonderful to be able to stand alongside my colleagues tonight and deliver on a promise made.
In New Zealand, we have a culture of being staunch and toughing it out when we are sick. I recall, in my 20s, some of my friends proudly stating that they had never taken a sick day. It wasn't that they had never been sick; it was that they had bought into a culture that said that if you stay home when you're sick, then you're somehow less productive or not as capable. I know that I've turned up to work when sick, partly because of pressure on myself to complete a task or project or not wanting to appear weak. 
Amongst supermarket workers, I often had workers concerned about letting the team down if they didn't go into work when they were sick, especially at busy times of the year. This was the culture that was allowed to permeate throughout the retail industry, with many workers reporting to me that they would be quizzed by their employer about why they couldn't go into work. They'd be asked for great detail about what was wrong with them. They'd be told they didn't sound sick—never mind that they might have had a serious splitting migraine or terrible period pain. They were pressured to come into work when they were sick, and this used to happen an awful lot. 
What we saw last year with COVID was, finally, a recognition that when we are sick, we actually need to stay home. Our culture of sucking it up has actually changed, and that's a good thing. Going to work when you're sick, which was once a common occurrence, is no longer acceptable.
In a previous speech, I spoke about the lowering of sick leave levels—which my colleague Helen White has just mentioned—when people do stay home. I mentioned this little tool, and I have a graph—I haven't quite figured out how to do A3 printing in this House yet. I have a little graph from the Ministry of Health's flu tracker survey. What it clearly shows is in 2019, we had very high levels of reported influenza symptoms. In 2020, when people stayed home, those symptoms dropped right down. Again, in 2021, because the message has got through to stay home when you're sick, these rates are continuing to track along the same trajectory as last year, which is a really, really good thing. 
Our experience over the last year has shown that when people stay home, it stops the spread of illnesses through workplaces, on public transport, in schools and supermarkets, at churches, mosques, and synagogues, and at movie theatres; and at events. Increasing sick leave provisions supports those workers who do the right thing by staying home from work when they are sick and by ensuring they don't lose income from doing so. 
Now, the other side of the House has implied that those with dependants or of a certain age or of a certain gender may miss out on employment opportunities as a result of this law change. I remind those members opposite that that is illegal. As the Minister said during the committee stage of the bill last night, on this side of the House, we have a view that most employers actually strive to be good employers, that they value diversity, that they value the wellbeing of their employees, and that they treat their employees with respect. That is the vision we have of employment in this country, a vision of fairness and of good faith between employers and employees; not one where we legislate for the lowest common denominator. That's not aspirational.
Some of the people bemoaning tonight that the sky is falling criticise this legislation because of the risk that some workers will treat sick leave as an entitlement and will fake their illness. Now, there will always be a small group of people who abuse the good faith that their employers show them in all aspects of employment. But, again, we don't legislate for the lowest common denominator. There is good case law that shows that if people abuse sick leave, they can justifiably be dismissed, and I want to put on record tonight that that is the correct thing to do if people misuse their employment entitlements. 
I want to end the speech tonight by thanking all of those workers who have lobbied and campaigned for sick leave improvements for years, and I want to particularly mention one of my good friends and the delegate at Pak 'N Save Richmond, Jenny Wells, who has lobbied hard for the workers of Pak 'N Save Richmond in my electorate of Nelson. They will in a couple of months' time be receiving 10 days' sick leave a year. 
This is an excellent piece of legislation. It is an overdue piece of legislation. It signifies a big improvement to minimum employment entitlements that are needed in New Zealand. The change we are making tonight shows respect for workers, their families, and our communities. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.





Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): This is a Government that may not deliver on infrastructure, it may not have delivered on the slow tram down Dominion Road, it may not have delivered on houses, but it has delivered for the unions—there's no question about that. So those union members can be very happy that this is a Government very much focused on their concerns and their desires.
I suppose the point I'd make first is that we're here one day before the Budget, and we'll be interested to see what the figures are tomorrow. We look around the world where the US economy is at boom-time growth levels likened to the roaring 1920s, we see the Chinese economy expand a record 18 percent in the first quarter in an annual rate, the UK is growing faster, and a number of countries around the world have economies that are booming. We'll wait and see what New Zealand is doing, but my fear is that we are only coming out of COVID quite slowly and there's enormous pressure on the New Zealand economy, notwithstanding the fact that this Government is borrowing at a faster rate than any Government in our history. They're borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars every week in order to pump up the economy—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is not a Budget speech. Come to the bill.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: You're quite right, Mr Speaker. I'm just giving the context to this bill, which is to say that we're in a time when we're facing real economic challenges, and what do we get from this Government? Do we ever get any legislation through this Government focused on enabling the economy to grow faster?
Stuart Smith: No.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No—no. Is there anything, any legislation, that is focused on growth and expanding the productivity of this country? No. What we see, week in, week out, is more legislation focused on redistribution and on extra regulation, forcing businesses to pay workers more. Now, in perfect world, of course the whole purpose of Government policy is to have higher wages—that's what we're all about. Everybody on both sides of the House, all sides of the House, wants New Zealanders to earn better wages and higher incomes.
Hon Phil Twyford: No, you don't. You never do.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Of course we do.
Hon Phil Twyford: No, you always argue to reduce labour costs.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I'm not going to take lessons from the deliverer of the slow tram down Dominion Road for three years. You might not have delivered your slow tram, but you've delivered for the unions.
Hon Phil Twyford: Reducing labour costs—that's what you stand for.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Both of you—when you say the wrong pronoun, you mean me. Cut it out.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: You're quite right, Mr Speaker. The point I was trying to make before I was rudely interrupted by "Mr KiwiBuild" was that we are all focused on increasing incomes. But if you want to increase sustainable incomes in this country, you have to have a stronger economy, and, if you want to have higher incomes for New Zealanders, we need to be more productive and generating stronger things. So you can force employers to pay people more, as this Government has done with very, very rapid increases to the minimum wages and changes to entitlements—you can force employers to do that, but you can't force an employer to stay in business if their business is no longer profitable. You can't force an individual to say "I'm going to put my money at risk in a business and keep employing people." if they're not able to make it happen.
So, when we think about this bill, I think of a woman in the Epsom electorate who I know well, who has a small business in Mount Eden and employs a number of young people—primarily part-time students—and they'll, typically, work one day a week, so they might work 50 days a year. One of the interesting kinks of the sick leave entitlements is that they're not prorated in any way. So that means that, even if you work only 50 days a year, you're still entitled to the full five days' sick leave a year. This bill introduced by this Government doubles that to 10 days' sick leave a year, and it's still not prorated in any way, shape, or form, so even if you've actually only worked one day a fortnight—so you've only worked 26 days a year—
Hon Michael Wood: Like the National caucus.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —then, like the Labour Party caucus, you only work one day every fortnight, or 26 days a year. Or perhaps the Labour Cabinet only work one day a fortnight. So you only work 26 days a year, but you're still entitled to 10 days' sick leave.
The reality is that we all, of course—of course—work on the assumption that everyone is focused on the best interests of whatever enterprise they're working for, but the reality in life is that some people don't. The experience of this lady who employs people in Mount Eden is that her young employees know the rules, know what's entitled, and they see sickness leave as an entitlement, and they take the full five days. Her worry is that if they take the full 10 days and she's only employing them for 50 days a year, that becomes quite an impost on her as a business. She is struggling to survive, and she wonders, in combination with the higher minimum wage and various other entitlements that have been passed through, how she's expected to stay in business.
The members on the other side just mock and are full of scorn and don't care about this. They think this is just ridiculous concerns of centre-right parties. It's not. It's concern for the reality of life for these small-business people, who are struggling to stay afloat and look after themselves and their families. 
Any responsible Government would take this seriously and recognise that at a time when small businesses are struggling to go through a difficult period in our economy and when we have great uncertainty as to what's going to happen. The rest of the world, as I have said—the UK, the US, China—may be growing rapidly this year, and we may or we may not, because we don't know when the vaccine will roll out—and I'm not going to stray too far from the topic at hand—
Hon Phil Twyford: Triple A from Standard & Poor's.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, that's right—triple A. Well, the complacency that we see on the other side of this House about the New Zealand economy is something to behold. I just hope that their complacency is justified. But when I look across the world at the challenges that we face, the immense borrowing that's been brought on, the immense amount of money that's been printed by the Reserve Bank, the incredibly low interest rates, and the massive inflation in asset prices that we see, I see that there are real risks on the horizon.
So where do we get our growth and where do we get our increasing productivity from? We get it, ultimately, from people being prepared to risk their money to invest in new businesses and investing in better plant and machinery—investing in their businesses to become more productive. But who would make those investments right now, when there is so much global uncertainty and then so much domestic uncertainty from a Government that keeps changing the rules all the time? That is the risk.
So it's not compulsory for people to risk their money in new investments and to start new businesses and to employ people, and this is the mistake that this Government makes time and time again, in so many areas. It's the same in housing, where we've got a real crisis around rental property. They seem to miss the basic point that it's not compulsory for people to rent out houses, and if you make it too difficult, too expensive, and too risky, people won't, and then the supply will shrink. The same thing with employment: if you make it too risky, too difficult, too challenging, and too expensive, then fewer people will take the risk, and that means that fewer young people, in particular, in New Zealand will have the opportunity to have a job.
The proposition on the other side right now from Michael Wood, the Minister—he's got it all under control—is that "I can double costs in this particular area and many other areas, increase costs significantly, and it will have no implications or no consequences for businesses. Everything will be fine." Well, that is your proposition. I'd be very interested to see how it works out. But my concern for employers and employees across this country is that what we're doing right now is making it more difficult for those people who are trying to stay in business and provide opportunities both for their customers and for their employees.
While everybody would like to have as much sick leave as they possibly can, and in a perfect world there would be no questions asked at any point about sick leave and people could have all the entitlements that they want, we also recognise that we live in a world where New Zealand businesses are struggling to compete globally, and we should take that seriously. The impression I get from that Government in this bill is that they are not taking those concerns seriously, and that—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. E noho.





MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, and thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a real privilege to be the last speaker in the third reading of the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Isn't it wonderful that Mr Paul Goldsmith has found back his mathematical skills and he has found out that two times five is 10, and everything else that he managed to add up in this particular speech that he did.
This bill is, of course, about delivering on our commitment to increase statutory sick leave from five days to 10 days. As we have heard from the Minister, that is a promise kept. By increasing sick leave to 10 days, what we are doing is we are supporting our workers and we are giving more flexibility to working families. Not only that, as we've heard all the way through the debate, but it is something that the Opposition has closed their ears to—but when staff stay at home when they are sick, this will benefit businesses. We heard it time and time again: workers that stay at home when they are sick don't spread their bugs and don't make the rest of the workforce sick. Hence, people are more productive and, not only that, but happier and healthy in the workforce, and that carries a cost.
On that aspect, I would like to also correct the member Scott Simpson on his simplified version of the cost involved in this exercise. Yes, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment did give an estimated cost of increasing sick leave, but what it did not take into account in that cost increase is the fact, of course, that there are plenty of benefits as a result of fewer illnesses being spread through workplaces and the resulting fewer absences, and also the increased productivity from a healthier and happier workforce. So all of that needs to be added up.
But, really, what I would like to say is that it would be great if the Opposition would take some lessons and talk to Christopher Luxon, who can tell them a little bit about how unions and how businesses can actually work together. They don't have to be pitted against each other. They don't have to hate on workers. They can actually work constructively and collaboratively together, and, in that way, achieve some really great things. In fact, Business New Zealand's 2019 Workplace Wellness Report said that a lift in absence rates may be an acceptable price to pay for an overall happier, healthier, and more productive staff.
So, with that, I'd like to thank our submitters and I'd like to thank everybody who supported this piece of legislation but a big thankyou also to the honourable Minister Michael Wood for bringing this bill to the House as one of the first items of legislation that he brought to the House. This is legislation that shows the importance that this Government puts on keeping workers safe, hence keeping New Zealand safe. Thank you, and I commend this bill to the House.





A party vote was called for on the question, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.





FAIR TRADING AMENDMENT BILL
Second Reading
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) I present a legislative statement on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published on the Parliament website.
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I move, That the Fair Trading Amendment Bill be now read a second time. 
The Government is committed to protecting New Zealand businesses and consumers from unfair commercial practices. Last term, under the watchful eye of the Hon Kris Faafoi, we reviewed consumer credit laws, strengthened responsible lending, and capped interest and fees that can be charged on high-cost loans. Perhaps it was coincidental or maybe it was the universe foreshadowing what was to be in the future, but last year I was the member who presented the first reading of this bill on behalf of Minister Faafoi when I was all care and no responsibility for matters of commerce and consumer affairs. And now, of course, I have both—all care and all responsibility.
This bill addresses business behaviour that goes beyond what is commercially necessary or appropriate, where big and powerful firms take advantage of their position to take advantage of smaller businesses and consumers, and it is important that the Government addresses this kind of behaviour. 
The bill itself introduces three key changes. It prohibits unconscionable conduct in trade, it extends protections against unfair contract terms for business contracts under $250,000 a year, and it legally empowers consumers and businesses to tell uninvited sellers to leave their property, including through the use of "Do not knock" stickers, with penalties proposed at $10,000 for individuals and $30,000 for businesses who ignore these invitations not to knock. 
There are many stories of small businesses who've been bullied by suppliers or business customers. Some of the ones that were collected during initial consultation prior to the bill include things like photographers being threatened, verbally abused, and blacklisted after asking for payments that were due; supermarkets penalising suppliers for promotions run with other retailers, by demanding compensation for perceived losses caused by other retailers' promotions and deducting it from payments to suppliers. 
Another example is that of a lender repossessing and dumping the personal effects of borrowers which it knows to be of little value. The purpose of the repossessions was not to recover the unpaid debt but, rather, to send a message to the borrower to pay. Aggressive sales tactics are another thing that came up in consultation—for example, a trader who used aggressive sales tactics to sell expensive skincare products in shopping malls. A number of the targets were elderly or otherwise vulnerable, for example, two people with autism were charged $10,000 for their purchases. The list goes on. Unfortunately, the abuse of power by large businesses either in contracts with consumers or with smaller businesses is something that does need to be addressed.
We know that these unfair terms cause stress. They present barriers to growth for firms, and as far as the consumer goes, they can put people in very unfortunate financial positions. That is exactly why we don't want New Zealanders in this position as we recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19 and why we need to plug the gaps in our existing infrastructure.
I want to thank the submitters on this bill. Feedback is a crucial part of the process and in particular because submissions on this bill were made during the level 4 COVID lockdown. I want to thank the former chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, the Hon Jonathan Young, who led consideration of the bill. I also want to thank other members of the select committee last term, including deputy chair Tāmati Coffey, Poto Williams, and Deborah Russell. They received 51 submissions. They heard 20 orally, either in Wellington or via Zoom, and while they did not get a chance to report back, they did consider the submissions made and also, the department, in its departmental report, considered the submissions. While many submitters supported the bill, there were indeed suggestions for change, and I intend to make changes through a Supplementary Order Paper during the committee of the whole House stage of this bill.
Some submitters wanted a definition of "unconscionable conduct" to aid clarity, and, as it stands, the list of factors in the bill provides a principle-based approach and we believe that actually the courts are best placed to make assessments, because what is unconscionable depends on the circumstances involved. In Australia courts have said that conduct is unconscionable if it goes against conscience by reference to the norms of society, and they've said that those norms include honesty and fairness.
Submitters had mixed views on whether the unfair contract terms extension was appropriately targeted. It only applies to standard form contracts which aren't subject to effective negotiation, and that recognises the fact that what we're talking about here is those smaller firms who don't have the bargaining power and don't have the resources to apply to unfair terms, to identify them, and to argue their corner. So the protections only apply to trading relationships with an expected value of $250,000 a year or more. While submitters argued for a higher or lower cap, we think $250,000 strikes the right balance to capture a range of contracts involving vulnerable businesses while allowing larger strategic contracts to be negotiated in the traditional fashion.
This Government's goal is to create a productive, sustainable, and inclusive economy where the interests of businesses and consumers are protected, and that is arguably now more important than ever. This, I believe, is the first time we have had a legislative statement for the second reading of a bill, so we're setting some history here. That lays out the most important aspects for interpretation in the law, and so I will end my contribution here. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 10.01 p.m.