Parliamentary debates: Thursday, 20 August 2026

09:00

I would like to just make some introductory comments on this part, and remind the House that at the moment, Disability Support Services (DSS) operates without a dedicated legislative framework, which means that important decisions about support, funding, and service delivery don’t have a level of legal clarity, transparency, and certainty that disabled people and taxpayers should expect. The disability support system must be fair, consistent, transparent, and sustainable. Disabled people and their families should be able to understand how Disability Support Services works, and to have the confidence in how the decisions are made. Once this bill becomes law, the system will have clearer rules and greater certainty straight away.

I do want to give some thanks to the parliamentary staff, particularly to the accessibility advisers; and I want to give significant gratitude to the Social Services and Community Committee for the significant work they put in, and in particular the chair, Joseph Mooney, for the work that you did in the process of this bill, and in recommending changes that make it clearer.

Although I have not watched the submissions, I’ve paid significant attention to them, read many of them, and my team have paid close attention. I also want to thank the team at DSS, who have worked incredibly hard to ensure that the reflections, considerations, and suggestions by submitters have been incorporated. Thank you to the team.

During this time, I’ve also met with disabled people, organisations, and providers to make sure that we did address the issues that they had presented, and I wanted to touch on a couple of them. I do want to very clearly clarify that the bill does not broaden family responsibility. The bill says that DSS makes a contribution to disabled people, and families do that where it’s appropriate; that is exactly what happens today. We do know that families’ role and contribution sits alongside the contribution and support from DSS.

I also want to make very clear that at no time did I ever make any comment about disabled people being a financial burden for the State, and I find that offensive. The point is that the lack of clarity without the legislative framework has created litigation, and the potential for system-level financial risk. The bill does create a deliberate legislative framework to support clarity and transparency, which are things that the disability community has been asking for for many, many years. Over the time I’ve been the Minister, that has been the clarion call: to have clarity, transparency, and consistency.

The bill ensures that a Minister and officials are unable to make arbitrary decisions that impact funding for services. That is a massive improvement on the past. The bill requires consultation before approved support programmes are changed; it requires decision makers to have regard for statutory principles; it requires consideration of outcomes for disabled people. Actually, the bill provides a clearer and firmer basis for how future decisions are made than exist today. I will say it again: the bill does not change eligibility, entitlement, or support that people receive. The bill is not changing supports; it is about establishing the legal framework that sits underneath these supports. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the work to strengthen DSS stops here; quite the opposite. It allows us to make very, very important improvements in the foundation on which those further improvements can be made, which, of course, benefit disabled people and their families.

09:04

I wanted to start with clause 3, “Purposes of Act”, and I wanted to, first of all, test the language on clause 3(c). This is “mitigate litigation risk, and related fiscal risk, to the Crown”. The reason why I wanted to focus on this is that throughout the submissions, we have heard a lot from carers, particularly, and disabled people who they look after, on the reality that they see this provision—the purpose of the bill—which was to prevent further litigation risk, as preventing carers, particularly, from fighting for additional rights in the courts, which they can then secure, and obtain greater rights, and greater—basically, care.

I wanted to ask the Minister, to begin with: when it comes to the purpose of the Act, and her intention to mitigate litigation risk—related to fiscal risk—why would she be wanting to, potentially, prevent carers from being able to obtain further rights through the courts? If we’re to take a rights-based approach, why would an avenue be taken away from them to be able to secure the rights that they may be deemed to be entitled to—for example, being greater in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or just employment matters? She did make, in her opening remarks, the comment that she finds it offensive that she sees disabled people as a financial risk, but in the purpose of the Act, there’s some very explicit language here that one of the purposes is to avoid related fiscal risk to the Crown, but if we are to interpret that “related fiscal risk to the Crown”, it’s actually greater resources for carers or disabled people, right? Because where else would this fiscal risk be coming from, if it’s not litigation relating to the very same rights, support, or resources to carers and disabled people.

I wanted to ask what kind of litigation risk would she be wanting to prevent? What are the things that she wouldn’t want carers to be able to fight for in the courts? And what are some of the related fiscal risks that the Minister could foresee that could come about with carers, for example, being able to litigate and win additional rights or resources within the court system? Ultimately, what this looks like to me is cutting an avenue for rights to be won through the courts. If she’s going to cut that, I would like to know: what are the things that she would have foreseen carers could have additionally fought for and won within the court system, that could have resulted in so-called fiscal risk to the Crown, as opposed to potentially rights being earned by carers through the court system? That’s my first question.

Secondly, what would she say to the people who had court cases that are outstanding in relationship to these matters—in relationship to these provisions—does she have a message to them? The purpose of the Act only notes one Supreme Court case, but we know that obviously there are people that would have wanted to fight this in the courts, or who would have been getting ready to fight this in the courts. If she has any message for those groups of people, in relationship to the purpose of the Act, that would be great. Thank you.

09:08

I thank the member for his question, and I think it is a really good opportunity to clarify what is intended here. There is a longstanding challenge where carers have felt undervalued and underpaid, and that’s why one of the really important parts of this legislation, which we will no doubt address later, is support programmes. One of the first ones that I envisage will be worked on is a carer support package, to resolve some of the challenges that carers face today.

Where the fiscal and legal risk comes from, I want to see—and I would have thought that every member in this House wants to see—funding that’s allocated to Disability Support Services going to disabled people, their carers, and families, as opposed to going to lawyers, and fighting things in the court. That is very simply what is meant by fiscal and legal risk, and that is why clarity is required.

The decisions around funding sit with the Government. There’s been a lot of work that’s been done around making sure that now there are assessments done across the country that are consistent. Every needs assessment and service coordination (NASC) provider uses the same assessment process. For the first time ever, carers are now considered as part of that assessment. Is it perfect? No, it’s not. We’ve still got more work to do, but that is clarifying the fact that we want to ensure that funding that is available is going to disabled people and their carers, rather than being spent in litigation and court fees, and to make it clear that there was never an intention that the Ministry of Social Development would be the employer of family carers. That was never the intention, and that is why it is important to address that. The question was raised about those that are currently in a legal process. They are under way, they have been saved, and those processes are under way and working through the court process at the moment. But I do want to say, the fact that there has been no legislative framework is what creates legal uncertainty and therefore legal risk. When there is legal risk, it creates fiscal risk, which is of course something we should all be awake to.

09:11

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to add a question to the line of questioning that Ricardo Menéndez March has embarked upon, and I would like the Minister for Disability Issues to clarify this. Can the Minister confirm—so the Minister said, just now, something about them being saved, the people who are going through the court processes at the moment, if I heard that correctly? Can the Minister confirm that this bill will extinguish 40 employment-related claims that are filed but haven’t been determined or resolved at the introduction of this bill to the House—that is my first question to the Minister—and whether she can share, for the benefit of the House, what the fiscal cost is of those 40 claims?

I’d like to go right back to the start of Part 1, clause 3(a), which, as the Minister said in her opening remarks, the aim of this legislation is to provide a legal framework for Disability Support Services funding. Literally nobody argues with the need for a legislative framework, not through submissions and not on the side of the House, but it is the form of this legal framework that we’re here to test, today, at committee stage, with the Minister. The Minister has said, in this House, that there was consultation with disability communities prior to the introduction of this bill, and I would like some clarity from the Minister around that—when she said that MSD has consulted—because, time and again, we have heard from disabled people, carers, and their representative organisations that there was no specific consultation on this legislation prior to its introduction. So is the Minister then referring to consultation that was held in February and March 2025, during the review process of Disability Support Services (DSS), and then used that to inform the drafting of this legislation? So I’d like, for the sake of clarity, and for those in the sector as well, for the Minister to confirm or clarify that.

My second question around the purpose and the framework for DSS-funded disability support services is—I think all of us in this House know that politics is about choices. There are different ways in which this framework could have been drafted. The Minister has chosen to codify and legislate, as she has said, what currently happens when it comes to DSS funding, and I have a few questions around that. The first is, the Minister will be aware that the previous Government had work under way which was to transform the disability support services - funding landscape. It was literally called the DSS Transformation Bill, and it was working towards actually implementing the principles of Enabling Good Lives when it comes to the way that DSS funding is disseminated to disabled people. That would have transformed the type of services that disabled people and carers could access through this funding. There was also $100 million ring-fenced for that. I would like to know why the Minister has chosen to codify DSS funding that is disseminated in a way that, for years, disabled people have said does not work for them, instead of transforming the system when there was a framework there that she could have built on, and money that was ring-fenced to be able to achieve that transformation.

The Minister has said that there’s been a clarion call from disability communities for a legislative framework—that is true—but there has been an even stronger clarion call from the sector to transform DSS funding, and she has chosen not to do that in this legislation, and I would like her to clarify why.

I do have one more quick question that I’ll get in there. The Minister has said in her opening remarks—and many times—that her aim is to improve certainty and transparency for disabled people through this legislation. If that is the case, why is there so little information in the primary legislation, with extensive focus on ministerial programmes through secondary legislation that nobody has been able to see when submitting on this bill? How does that improve either transparency of decision making or eligibility or access of this funding or certainty for disabled people?

09:15

There’s quite a lot to go through this, so I just hope I will get through all of them. So the first thing is that in terms of any of the claims that are currently lodged, they are saved. So once the legislation is passed, there will be no further ability for new claims. They are well under way—the existing claims—in terms of being settled or resolved.

In terms of consultation, one of the challenges has been, you know, first the work around stabilising. That work to the Disability Support Services (DSS) has been done, and then we moved after that to look at what strengthening DSS looks like. The team from DSS have done significant consultation with disabled people directly, and with organisations, and over the time that I’ve been Minister, I’ve had similar engagements, where the messages around consistency, transparency, simplicity, and fairness are all kind of values and principles that came through loud and clear.

The other thing that came through really loud and clear is how much DSS needs to improve. The member referred to the Enabling Good Lives principles, which were established back in 2014-15, and that has very much been a focus of how the bill has been established so that further improvements can be made. It’s hard to improve things if you don’t have the foundations in place, which is why this first bill is very much about just laying out what the current state is. Then, one of the challenges has been the lack of understanding about how the current state operates. What we’ve heard in the consultation is, “lack of transparency, lack of understanding; it’s too complex; it’s not simple enough”. So trying to deal with, in the first stage, getting those foundations in place, and having a foundation on which things could be improved for DSS, has been really important.

The member raised the areas around transformation, and I would say that the improvements that we have made to flexible funding, that were announced in September last year and came into effect on 1 February this year, really is an example of what an improvement looks like—so having a consistent assessment around the country that is transparent, where carers are considered, but really importantly, individual needs of individual disabled people are taken into account in their assessment. That has been a significant improvement—some would say transformational—to at least have, everywhere around the country, consistent, because it was grossly unfair to have disabled people in one part of the country getting a much wider range of supports and much greater funding than others. That’s exactly what we heard in consultation. That’s exactly what I heard in meetings: that it was unfair, people didn’t understand it, and it wasn’t transparent. So that’s why it is important that we have this legislation.

I want to address the member’s question about why more wasn’t put into primary legislation. Why is it in secondary legislation? There’s this really important balance, because one of the things that is really special, that needs to be protected in the disability support system, is the fact that it is very individualised. The improvements we made to flexible funding are an example of just how individualised it is. You want to protect that flexibility, so one of the first support programmes that I envisage will be done, which is through secondary legislation, is to lock in the gains in the flexible funding changes that were announced. At the moment, without any protection, they can be changed overnight again. That’s why the intention was to get the balance right of the foundations in primary legislation but also of the support programmes in secondary legislation. In the secondary legislation—so the support programmes—there will be extensive consultation that relates to that particular support programme. We want to be able to lock in those improvements. If they’re put into primary legislation, it actually makes it harder and slower to make improvements. That is the balance of ensuring there is maximum flexibility but still having the core foundations in primary legislation.

I accept that was another area that, perhaps, wasn’t communicated well enough at the start, but following many of the conversations I’ve had, particularly with disability organisations in the last couple of weeks—

She just keeps blaming them.

—they understand that clarity—look, I’m trying to answer the questions that you have raised because I think you’ve raised really important issues and I do want to communicate why things have been put in secondary legislation. If you don’t want me to answer, that’s fine.

Madam Chair.

Madam Chair.

OK, I’m going to take Priyanca Radhakrishnan because I feel like there’s a supplementary here, then I’ll come back to you.

09:22

Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I do appreciate your answers. I do want to hear why you’ve made certain decisions, and I know that others do out there as well. Just on the primary versus secondary legislation decisions here, I take your point that there needs to be a balance between the two, and I’m not arguing or I’m not asking why everything is not in primary legislation, but I have looked at this legislation versus the Social Security Act, for example, which, again, has some level of discretion—not as much as the Disability Support Services. I take your point around that, but I think the question that disabled people have and are asking is: why wasn’t there, for example, eligibility criteria? The high level of who can access disability support services funding hasn’t changed from 1996, so if you are codifying the current state of play in legislation and since you’ve been quite clear that you don’t intend to change eligibility criteria, why couldn’t then some of the bones of that—who can access disability support funding, how can they access disability support funding? You have talked about the assessment and allocation tools that you have brought in for consistency—and I’ll come back to that in a minute—but those sorts of things are not going to change through ministerial programmes, from what you have said. Why could those not have been in primary legislation to give disabled people more certainty around who can access this funding?

The second point is around things not being able to be changed so much now through secondary legislation. I seek some clarity around comments that you made prior to the select committee hearing of consideration of this bill, where you had said that they won’t be able to change in the way that they did in March 2024, because Cabinet would make decisions around secondary legislation and it would be gazetted. All of those processes don’t involve any sunlight or consultation with disability communities at all. Therefore, Cabinet passed the changes that happened in March 2024. Sure, they weren’t gazetted, but the gazetting process only becomes public information after the process, so what happened in March could have happened again, except that disabled people came out in force at select committee and said that they need to be consulted when secondary legislation is passed. Select committee has recommended that, and I understand you have accepted it and will make those changes through the committee stage, which is good, but I would like on the record, Minister, to hear what you meant when you said that the Cabinet and gazetting process would have resulted in a different outcome to what the sector saw happen in March 2024. I’m keen for you to respond to that.

09:25

Firstly, starting from where you finished in terms of consultation around support programmes, those changes were made in the select committee, so the bill we are considering now has those changes in it already. I just wanted to make that clear. One of the challenges has been that without legislation—if you look back over many years under Governments of every stripe—somebody within the department, a senior official, or chief executive, let alone a Minister, can make decisions at the stroke of a pen, and those changes take effect. That is why having legislation and having support programmes is really important. The support programmes, with the additional consultation requirements, will mean that consultation is required in the creation of a support programme.

Just let me give you some examples, because it links to your comment around eligibility. You will be aware, today, that there is no black and white eligibility in disability support services. That’s a good thing because it is hugely flexible, and one of the things that we must protect is the flexibility of disability support services. When you look at individual funding programmes—let’s say, for example, hearing aids; there is eligibility for hearing aids, right? So one of the things that I was clear about is that I didn’t want to have black and white eligibility for disability support services in primary legislation. That is not what happens to date, that is not the current state, and so it would not have been suitable for it to be included in the bill. Whereas if you look at support programmes, that’s where the question of eligibility to do with a specific support programme can and should be considered, and that is where that is important.

There will be consultation, as you said, but the consultation will be related to that support programme. If we’re dealing with hearing aids, not every disability organisation and every disabled person will need to be consulted regarding hearing aids. That is why the language in the bill is carefully drafted so that the disability community don’t think they’re going to be in consultation overload because they’re going to be involved and need to be involved in every single support programme. That is not what is intended. As I said before, there is a really difficult balance here and, I think, a balance that we have struck correctly in the foundations in primary legislation but maintaining maximum flexibility. I had advice—very, very strong advice—from people in the disability community not to make it tight and defined like the Social Security Act, because that would have had, or could have had, significant impacts. It’s been a delicate balance to walk.

09:28

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I just want to pick up on some comments from this contribution and the one prior that I wanted to take a call on. First of all, I find it really hard to stomach that the Minister could even raise matters of consultation overload where one of the reasons the select committee process was so heated was that there was a lack of consultation. I’d love to understand what the Minister could even define as “consultation overload” in her eyes, when quite the opposite has happened throughout the process of this bill.

This takes me back to an earlier comment she made prior to Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s call, which is that she heard in consultation, in relation to people receiving greater support than others—how extensive was that consultation? As far as I understand, there wasn’t a lot of, if any, consultation prior to this bill coming through. I just find it concerning that I keep hearing from the Minister these claims of consultation happening when submitters, across the board, have told us that they felt like they weren’t included and had full participation in helping design this bill.

I think the other comment in relation to her language is—she talks about the disability community; singular, right? I would like to challenge and test with the Minister whether she accepts that there’s no such thing as a monolithic “disability community”, which has led to a lot of the issues in the design of this bill, which is this kind of assumption that one organisation can provide a voice for a broad range of disabled people, which may not be part of it. That’s my first question.

The second one is just bringing it back to the purpose of the Act. One of the things that I wanted to get the Minister to outline was around the process that she intends to use in the design of secondary legislation. Yeah, we’ve had a lot of back and forth about what should and shouldn’t be in secondary legislation. I accept that the Minister has a view on what should be included in secondary legislation. I’m interested to know whether she has already made decisions on the level of resourcing that will go into the adequate consultation and co-design with disabled people in the provisions that will be in the secondary legislation.

For example, I want to know whether she has considered around the fiscal implications and requirements that she would like to ensure are there to make sure that there’s full participation from disabled peoples around what that secondary legislation should look like. What assurances can the Minister give us in relationship to how extensive the consultation will be in the design of secondary legislation? Has she learned from the errors of the design of this bill itself? Far and large, one of the key pieces of feedback we received in the Social Services and Community Committee was that there was no co-design, no adequate consultation, and that people felt aggrieved—rightfully so—because of it.

Can she give us a guarantee that she and her Government will ensure that there is a co-design process in any secondary legislation processes; that it will not repeat the mistakes that were found in the design of this primary legislation, where disabled people, far and large, felt excluded? If she is going to take a co-design approach, can she guarantee us that she will not treat disabled people as monolithic and assume that perhaps, for example, consulting with a service provider will count as consulting with disabled people and users of those providers, who may not formally be part of those organisations or bodies that provide those services?

I’m also keen to understand, for example, what adequate consultation or co-design could look like in the makeup of secondary legislation. I say this quite seriously, because one of the key pieces of feedback, as well, that we received from disabled people throughout the submission process has been that not all disabled people feel represented by the feedback given from service providers—and that’s OK. Again, there’s no kind of monolithic voice within disabled peoples. I want to understand what will she do to cost the resources—whether she’s already sought commitment from Cabinet on, for example, any sort of costs that could be incurred in the design of secondary legislation, so that disabled people listening to this debate can be reassured that the same mistakes of the design of this legislation won’t be repeated.

09:33

This is quite wide ranging and, if the House will allow, I will go further than the bill just to make some of the future expectations clearer. The first thing the member raises—absolutely, disabled people have a wide range of needs and wide range of views. So when we talk about the “disability community”, absolutely, they don’t all have the same opinion, they don’t belong to the same organisations, and they don’t all have the same views, which goes back to my comment before about the need to protect at all lengths the flexibility that we are trying to achieve with primary legislation and secondary legislation.

As I said before, the Disability Support Services (DSS) team engaged in a significant consultation, with over 1,500 individuals coming to a variety of meetings over a 12- to 14-month period. They heard the same messages that I did around consistency, flexibility, transparency, simplicity, etc., which is why we have built those into solving some of those challenges with this legislation. I accept that, as a result of those sessions, it may not have been clear to people that the intent was to create legislation, but as one of the other members who has asked a question before has stated, previous Governments have had the intention of legislating for DSS and providing a legislative framework. So it shouldn’t have been a new concept. I accept that the link between the consultation and the need for legislation wasn’t made clear enough, but I can say both the ministry and myself have not just met disability organisations and service providers, we have met with disabled people. There have been open forums for people to participate. There have been discussions with providers, as well as discussions with the Disabled People’s Organisations as the formal mechanism for consultation.

The other thing the member asked about was the consultation envisaged around support programmes. One of the improvements in the bill—

Secondary legislation, more properly.

Well, secondary legislation support programmes. I’m trying to explain to people who are listening, and I will give a further example of that in a minute, if the member would like me to. One of the improvements that was made in the select committee was the extension from three years to five for the support programmes to be put in place.

My intention would be to draft a discussion document that would go out next year that would then lay out the areas these support programmes would be created in, and to allow feedback from disabled people and organisations and providers to then assist in the prioritisation of those support programmes. As I’ve said, only two are at the top of my list: one is around flexible funding and the other is around carer support package.

Let me use the carer support package as an example. There have been high-level conversations so far. A formal process will kick off with carers’ organisations and disabled people about what a carer support package would look like to then make decisions that would then be formalised and consulted on through the support programme. I do want to reassure the House, and I do want to reassure disabled people and their families that that is what is intended as the next stage. I would envisage that that would also then mean a second bill, which adds some more of the detail and also picks up some of the concerns that were raised in this bill around complaints, around reviews, and around safeguarding, which is a parallel piece of work in response to the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State care.

09:38

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister about the implications of the purpose clause, clause 3(b)(i). That talks about the response to the decision of the Supreme Court in Fleming v Attorney-General, and it claims that what this bill does is clarifies the nature of the relationship. Also, in this contribution, I am going to be talking about and asking questions about paragraph (c) of that same clause, which is that one of the purposes of the legislation is to “mitigate litigation risk, and related financial risk, to the Crown”.

My questions are about a case that was hard fought, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. My understanding of that case was that it clarified that people looking after their disabled relatives do have implied contracts and that overnight care counts as work. When they are doing that work, it is something that we must actually attribute to financially, and that there is a human rights alignment in this interpretation of the Supreme Court that is directly aligned with the purposes of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Those are heavy and weighty things that the Supreme Court has done and they are not in alignment with this piece of legislation, and so the first question I’ve got for the Minister is: does she agree that they are not in alignment and that the Supreme Court has gone in a completely different way on this?

To suggest that this law clarifies the nature of that relationship is simply wrong. It doesn’t clarify it. We need to be honest about what’s happening here. We are deciding what the nature of the relationship is, and we are not deciding it in alignment with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and we’re not deciding it in alignment with what the Supreme Court says would make sense in terms of our employment law. We have things like a minimum code, we have minimum rates of pay and leave entitlements, and we have a definition of work which covers home-care workers, and none of that is in alignment with what we’re doing here. So does the Minister accept that this is not a clarification of such things?

Then I want to ask about that purpose clause, at clause 3(c), in relation to this particular point. It says that the purpose of this legislation is to “mitigate litigation risk, and [the financial] risk, to the Crown.”, and so what I want know here is what the litigation risk was. There were a whole lot of people, as I understand it, who were told that they would be able to take a case based on their circumstances and the work that they were doing in the home, and this bill stops them in their tracks and denies them financially. What is the risk to families—and I ask whether the Minister had advice on what that meant to other families looking after their disabled relatives—and what is that related financial risk to the Crown? I’d really appreciate hearing some really specific answers—what were we looking at?

Sometimes we make law because we simply cannot afford the alternative, but I would like to know what that was, because what I’ve heard is the Minister stand up and say that we are doing this to create a framework and that it is a neutral thing. We are trying to shore up something that’s been a bit floating, and there have been some advantages to that process, from what I’ve heard the Minister just say, because we can be bespoke. We are doing this to create a framework which always should have been there, and that’s a neutral thing and we’re not taking away anything—but we are, aren’t we? We’re taking away potential claims by litigants that are hefty in their financial weight and that would make a big difference to families who have presumably paid a huge financial cost in their pursuit of looking after their relatives. So I’d really like an answer about that financial risk.

I also would like to know about the undermining of trust here. We’ve heard a lot from my colleagues formerly about the consultation and how that rattled people, but stopping people in their tracks when they are in the midst of litigation and when they’re pursuing their rights also causes issues with trust, and these are people who work really hard. They do jobs I don’t want to do myself. I am lucky enough to be able to be here because I don’t have that kind of responsibility at the present time, but it could happen to any of us.

What does she say to the issue about the trust of those people and could she please explain whether she got any advice on that, or whether she acknowledges that, in fact, for people, this will have contributed to the kind of emotional submission we got in our listening to the submissions, and I did listen to those submissions. We had people who were howling—they were crying in the corridor. So can she talk about that trust issue and about whether she got any advice on it, either before she made the decision she made or during that process? Thank you.

09:44

I’m not going to go over territory that I’ve already covered around the purpose, but I do want to just reiterate that in terms of the savings of cases that have been settled or determined, that is taken care of in this legislation. Any that haven’t entered that process, obviously, won’t be able to or have not been concluded. As I’ve said before, there was never an intention that the Ministry of Social Development would be the employer of family carers, nor that the courts would set employment terms and conditions for individuals.

09:45

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am rising merely to put something on the record in terms of our position relating to Crown Law’s advice on the bill, and I do have a question for the Minister for Disability Issues connected to that, as well.

One of the rights that Crown Law was concerned about was the procedural right in section 27(3) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which relates to every person’s right to bring civil proceedings and to defend those proceedings. The Attorney-General in this case didn’t issue a section 7 report, indicating that, in his view, there was a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Instead, what was made public was Crown Law’s advice that found that while there were prima facie rights issues, both in relation to discrimination and also procedurally, those were justified.

My reading of the Crown Law advice is that there are two flaws in the assessment, particularly relating to the section 27 advice. Firstly, there is no pure assessment of the retrospective application of the bill and how that affects those procedural rights. I would have expected that to be assessed as part of whether it was or wasn’t considered reasonable under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The second issue is that within paragraph 38 of the advice, there’s a comparison with section 70E of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2013. That was a previous bill that had a broader bar, as it also barred future litigation. My view is that the assessment that needs to be made under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—so whether it is reasonable or not—is an assessment against the current circumstances and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act itself. It’s not a matter of saying that because this bill is, effectively, less worse than the 2013 bill, it therefore meets the threshold of being reasonable. I think that the methodology, or the logic, of that reasoning is flawed.

I want to put this on the record because I think there’s an irony that the intention is partially to mitigate future litigation when, to my mind, this invites public law litigation and, potentially, an application for a declaration of inconsistency. I’ve called bills like this boomerang bills in the past because I expect that the House may well see them returned to the House, should a declaration of inconsistency be found by the courts, and I suspect that should that case proceed, then that particular paragraph in terms of procedural rights would be raised. So this is an invitation, really, for the Minister to comment on her view of that justification of reasonableness and whether the appropriate comparator is the 2013 legislation—the less worse comparator—or whether the appropriate comparator is the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act itself. Thank you, Madam Chair.

09:49

I’m not going to challenge Crown Law advice, but I just will put on record for the House that the Attorney-General did do a consideration of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and found that this bill is consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act of 1990.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m mindful that people may still have some calls on the purpose of the bill, but I just briefly wanted to move to paragraph (a)(i) and (ii) of the definition of “disability support services” in clause 4. But, again, other people may want to traverse stuff that—

No, that’s fine. We’ve sort of covered up to clause 3, and so it is time to move forward. So feel very comfortable to do so.

Thank you. I’m not privy to new material that others may bring, but in my case, I just wanted to focus on the interpretation clause. In the definition of “disability support services”, it talks about “goods, services, and facilities—(i) provided to disabled persons for their care or support or to contribute towards enabling them to live”—and this is the language I want to test—“their everyday life;”. It also says, in subparagraph (ii), “provided for purposes related or incidental to the care or support of people with disabilities or to contribute towards enabling them to live their everyday life;”.

I’m really interested in understanding the Minister for Disability Issues’ interpretation of the quality of life that this guarantees, because to live your everyday life could just be to be alive. It does not guarantee a full participation—

Or a good life.

Or a good life—that’s right. Enabling Good Lives solves that, which disabled people have been telling us we should actually try and follow. I’m genuinely curious, because the Minister talked about another piece of legislation, which she compared this to—she wanted to avoid creating some of the issues—which, of course, is the Social Security Act. For example, in the purposes and principles of the Social Security Act, there’s language that permeates decision making, which is to “alleviate hardship”. That is some of the language that is used. For example, that is often used to justify giving someone a $20 food grant as opposed to what people actually need to live well.

When I see language here that says “live their everyday life”, it’s deeply unclear what that means at a practical level and the test that will be applied to know whether the disability support services and/or secondary legislation that is designed alongside that actually supports disabled people to live good lives, to fully participate in their communities, as opposed to, for example, designing secondary legislation and the provision of services that simply keeps people alive but living miserable lives. There’s nothing stopping, as far as I’m aware, in terms of the language—and I am not trifling with this issue, because I’ve seen how that plays out when we design, in the Social Security Act, language that actually sets the bar extremely low. It does create conditions for front-line service managers to justify leaving people without enough to be well—for example, someone needing to gain weight for a surgery, and therefore needing additional support for food, not being granted that because that’s not what the interpretation of the Social Security Act is.

I’m really concerned about the fact that we’ve set the bar so low in the interpretation that it simply means “to live their everyday life”. It’s hard for me to know whether that means that the Minister is committed to ensuring that disabled people can live good lives and that they can fully participate in their communities. I am really interested to test with the Minister how she interprets the quality of life that is guaranteed to disabled people through disability support services in clause 4, paragraphs (a)(i) and (ii). I think this particularly matters. I know that when people end up testing this further—in, say, the courts or through any reviews or through advocacy—this language will, I think, be key, and it will be used time and time again to justify inadequate provision of services, because the Minister can just claim, “Well, you know, they’re alive. They’re living their everyday life. They’re still alive.”

I want to understand what the bar is and the expectations of the quality of life that should be guaranteed to disabled people on Disability Support Services, when the legislation just says “to live their everyday life”. I am very serious about this, because I do think this has been one of the key things that has also come back from feedback from submitters. If the Minister is able to articulate what she means by that and the quality of life, that would be deeply useful.

09:54

The bill does use the language of “everyday life” because it focuses on supporting people in the realities of their own lives, their own circumstances, and their aspirations. It comes back to what we talked about before: that there is maximum flexibility, an individual assessment of the disabled person’s needs, and that’s how it should be. It’s also consistent with Enabling Good Lives (EGL) and mirrors the EGL principle of ordinary life outcomes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of things, just to draw a line under the questions that I’ve asked around primary versus secondary legislation, the sequencing of ministerial programmes, and so on and so forth, I’d just make the point that I guess what we disagree with is the sequencing of it. And I’ll leave it there. In terms of the consultation that the Minister for Disability Issues pointed to, I would just like on the record that what disabled people and carers have been saying to us is that that consultation was around what the Minister has called “stabilisation” of disability support services and wasn’t about the legislation. That’s the issue that has been raised; that feedback from that consultation for something different—related but different—has now been used for something else, and that is the issue that people have.

I would like to ask the Minister a question around her response to my question around eligibility criteria. The Minister said that there is no eligibility criteria and that is why there is no definition or interpretation of it in this bill. However, when you go to the Disability Support Services (DSS) website, her own ministry’s website, it basically tells you how to access support. It says, “Check if you’re eligible for DSS-funded support”, and there is a whole list there of criteria that one must fulfil to be able to be eligible for any DSS support funding. I don’t understand why the Minister said there is no criteria. Also, part of that criteria is a confirmation that one must have at least one of the following: physical disability, intellectual disability, sensory autism. Now, autism was introduced by a Cabinet minute in, I think it was, 2013 or something like that. That’s partially what’s led to an issue, because the Government at the time didn’t increase funding to include this expansion of autism into the expanded disability criteria.

All of that points to the fact that there is disability criteria. It was set back in 1996, and there have been changes through Cabinet minute. I would have thought that if the Minister’s primary objective, as stated in documents supporting this bill, was to increase certainty and transparency, at least that level of criteria, eligibility, and so on, could have been in the primary legislation. I want to get a response from the Minister as to why she said there is no eligibility criteria, and, if there is criteria, then why wasn’t at least that bit that isn’t changing in the primary legislation?

I’ve got a couple of other questions to get into the details of the role of families and means testing—two areas that were raised time and again by submitters—and I have some specific questions around those two, but just before I move on from the foundational legislation design questions, I would like to know why the Minister decided to club the two together. There were, obviously, options in the regulatory impact statement to separate this into two pieces of legislation: one that responds to the Supreme Court ruling and then one that lays out Disability Support Services funding. The Minister has decided to join the two together, which I personally think is unhelpful, but I would like to know from the Minister why she decided to go down that route rather than having two separate bills. Was it just easier or was there something else that underpinned that decision?

09:58

The first thing I want to clarify is the consultation that I referred to earlier with the 1,500 individuals that participated, that was not about stabilising; that was about strengthening. The first piece of work, in the first 12 months, was about stabilising. The consultation that took place that I referred to earlier was about strengthening, and the bill is the kind of foundations of that.

In terms of eligibility, the member’s reference to a Cabinet minute changing eligibility is exactly why we need primary legislation and secondary legislation—so it is clear. The fact that literally overnight something could change like that is, you know—in that way, it was the inclusion of autism. Imagine if it had been the exclusion of something that happened in the Cabinet minute. That would be horrendous. That would be absolutely horrendous. That is exactly what we are trying to prevent with this legislation. That’s why it is important that there is greater clarity through primary legislation or secondary legislation, as I referred to, in terms of support programmes.

09:59

Thank you so much. I just wanted to pick up on the response the Minister gave me in relation to clause 4 (a)(i) and (ii). Again, I cannot reiterate how important the language in this is. It’s great to hear that the Minister interprets this clause as disabled people being able to meet their aspirations. I just want to put it on the record that I can see, now, that disabled people and their carers could test this with the Government in relation to not just living their everyday lives but being able to meet their aspirations. This is quite important, right? If disabled people want to challenge anything through the courts or any reviews, they can go back to the Hansard and also note that the Minister has interpreted “live their everyday lives” as disabled people meeting their aspirations. That is really critical because we often do rely on, for example, the Minister—or the Government of the day—clarifying how they interpret these definitions of what the disability support services are.

I wanted to give the Minister one more chance because, again, this language will likely be continuously tested, and if she has any other language that she would like to add on what an adequate everyday life looks like, that would be useful because this, again, is one of the key pieces of feedback we received—that people just feel like the bar has been set so extremely low that they just don’t feel like the services will be adequate if it’s simply just there to keep you alive. Is there anything beyond “meeting your aspirations” that the Minister would like to add to her interpretation of this clause and that would give greater guidance to disabled people, carers, or, actually, decision makers, when it comes to funding, of what her interpretation is of this clause? Again, I cannot stress enough how much the language in this particular clause, clause 4, will end up mattering when it comes to the design and when it comes to discretionary decision-making and/or disabled people wanting to challenge any decision that is made.

10:02

Madam Chair, I would like to ask some questions specifically around the role of families as defined in this legislation. The overarching concerns that have been raised were partially responded to by select committee recommendations and the changes made in this iteration of the legislation but not entirely. If I were to summarise submissions—the few thousand submissions—to select committee, most of them made mention of this point and the anxiety that people were feeling because of the role of families being codified into legislation.

I will preface that by saying that I take the Minister’s point that her intention is for this legislation to reflect the status quo and what currently happens, and that is that families, in the first instance, do contribute to the care and the wellbeing and the support of their disabled family members. I understand that. However, the collective outcome or result of the definition of “family” in this bill—that is in clause 4, under the “Interpretation” section—under “family member”, there is a long list. That’s under 4—

Yeah, we can see those on page 4, We can see that list.

Yes, on page 4. It’s quite an extensive list. I’m not going to read out the whole list; it’s very extensive. It goes right from a person’s spouse through to a person’s first cousin and niece and so on. That, alongside the fact that, in a later part of the bill—and I’ll get to that in greater detail later—initially, the wording in this bill led people to read it, quite rightly I feel, that families had to step in and support, in the first instance, right down to their first cousin, the disabled person before funded support by the State would kick in. That is also then further compounded by wording in this legislation that states, quite clearly, that Government-funded support is contributory. All of those were then read by disabled people—again, I think, quite rightly, because that was the letter of the legislation being passed—to mean that a disabled person has had to exhaust all of those various avenues of family support before they could then get Disability Support Services (DSS) funding, which is a massive shift from what currently happens. The Minister has said that that is not the intention of this legislation, but the question that I would like to ask—select committee could only get a few changes across the line, in terms of softening that language a little bit, to basically state that that was not the case but that families do have a role to play and that it’s contributory to State-funded supports.

The discomfort for me and for many disabled people here is that the legislation still doesn’t have wording in it that gives them a clear guarantee that family support is complementary to DSS-funded support.

The member’s transitioning into Part 2 at this point.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

In Part 1, we just have the list.

Yeah, true. All right. I will save the substantive bit of this question for when we get into Part 2, but perhaps the Minister could clarify why the list in the definition of “family member”, in the first part of this bill, is quite that extensive? Does it have to be detailed so that these family members can be paid, as in part (b) of the “paid family carer” definition in that same clause? Or were there different ways to give disabled people some comfort that they didn’t have to rely on their first cousin before they could get support?

10:06

Thank you so much. Further to that—and please stop me, Madam Chair, if I’m approaching into Part 2 territory—

We will.

—because that’s not my intention. Just following on the family member matter, can the Minister clarify whether she intends for the list of family members, outlined on page 4, to be treated as a resource as well?

To the previous speaker’s point, the issue around whether—and I kind of take a different angle here around whether they should be treated as resource when it comes to definition, because, then, a resource is then treated, subsequently, as something that gets measured against for eligibility criteria. Is that her intention? Submitters often talked about the need to take a rights-based approach when it comes to funding decisions. People don’t see family members as something that should get in the way of having a rights-based approach. I’m interested to know whether that list is also intended to provide decision makers with a list of the kind of people that would be treated as a resource, as per the clause we were discussing earlier, for the design of secondary legislation. When it comes to the eligibility criteria that will be set out in secondary legislation, can she guarantee to us that the list of people included in this definition will not be treated as a resource for the purposes of the design of secondary legislation as per the previous clause? I think that’s really important because that was, again, like I said, a really key theme that came through disabled people who want to see a rights-based approach.

Secondly, when it comes to the “paid family carer” definition, I just wanted to take the opportunity to understand whether the Minister intends to do further work on ensuring that paid family carers are supported in a way that keeps up to pace with other improvements in employment policy, or whether part of the reason why there’s that sort of cutting off of further litigation is to prevent paid family carers from being able to further their rights and other means.

10:09

I’m conscious I’ve strayed outside the bill, so I will keep it very tight now. I know that members have questions about Part 2, and I’ll address them then.

In terms of the questions around a “family member”, the definition and the list is to enable payment for them under a support programme, and recognition that disabled people need to have choice around who they might choose to be a carer and, therefore, supported through payment under the support programme.

10:11

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will now get into the question that I asked previously around family care. I won’t traverse all of the detail. The Minister said she’s read some submissions. I’m sure she’s heard loud and clear what the concerns are that many submitters have raised. It’s basically that family circumstances are very varied depending on where one lives; proximity to other family members; abuse that can also take place and that disabled people are more susceptible to, as evidence shows; relationship breakdown; and carer health needs. All of those things have been shared by disabled people, organisations, and carers.

I guess that the question is twofold—one is: why does it even need to be in the legislation? If the State’s view is that families need to step in and need to provide care to disabled people and, therefore, that the State’s contribution is contributory—it’s only part of the support and the care—families already do this. This has been raised by many people. Families, by and large, if they can support their disabled family member, will do so. Why does the State need to legislate for it? Why does it even need to be in this legislation? That is my first question.

My second question is: if it needs to be legislated for, to fully represent the status quo, then will the Minister consider an amendment that clarifies and provides disabled people and carers with a guarantee that family care and support will be complementary to State-funded support? There is then no shadow of a doubt that disabled people will need to exhaust their family’s ability to care for them before they can get the support that they need from the State to be able to live with dignity and independence, which is at the heart of the Enabling Good Lives vision and principles. I’ll leave it there for now, but I’ve got a couple more questions around this.

10:13

I want to just put on record the considerable concern and alarm that the wording in the bill, as drafted, created, and I apologise for that. There was never any intention for the role of families to be expanded from what occurred. I just want to put on record my thanks to the submitters and to the Social Services and Community Committee for coming up with wording that better reflects what happens in the current state. The member asked about whether or not it needed to be included at all, but, because this is describing the current state, it does.

I think it’s also worth recognising that many of the organisations that were involved recognised that the change to the language around families’ responsibilities, where it says, “responsibility in the first instance”, replaced with “a responsibility to contribute to”, and recognising that it’s “as well as” instead of “instead of”. There’s not an expectation that families exhaust their resources first. That was never the intention. As the member raised in her comments before, in some circumstances, family support isn’t available, or, actually, it’s not appropriate and it’s not safe. That’s why I think the language that we have in the bill, now, better reflects what the current state is and recognises that family do have an important role, but it is alongside Disability Support Services.

10:15

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. On Part 2, clause 8(2), I wanted to also focus on the language around “families, whānau, and other culturally recognised family groups,”. One thing that she did not address in my previous contribution in Part 1—but I think it actually is quite suited to be debated in here, as well, and I just want to repeat it because I didn’t get engagement—is whether she intends for the provisions in here to, then, if families are deemed to have responsibility for the wellbeing of their members—

Sorry to interrupt the member, but to my right, there are a lot of conversations going on, and I hope that the Minister can hear the questions because I’m actually struggling a little bit to hear them myself due to the conversations. If you want to have a conversation, go in the lobby.

Maybe they have some questions for the Minister, too—I don’t know. Look, I just wanted to test with the Minister whether that responsibility will be translated—or is it her intention for that responsibility to be translated—as family members treated as a resource for the purposes of eligibility of those very same services? This is key to have engagement, in answer, from the Minister on, because, as I said, submitters have often talked about the need for a rights-based approach. The moment that you treat the responsibility of family members as a resource for the purposes of eligibility criteria, you create the conditions where care stepping in actually undermines disabled people’s ability to access some of those disability support services. That is exactly what we want to prevent—or I want to prevent, and the Greens want to prevent.

A rights-based approach should not then deem family members stepping in—because they want to—as a negative for purposes of any eligibility criteria. I just want to have stated by the Minister what her intention is on how those family members stepping in is going to be treated in that secondary legislation. The other sort of unintended consequence, if the Minister does treat family members stepping in as a resource, is that if that then prevents people from accessing other types of disability support services, you could see what you see in the welfare system, which is that families feel like they have to almost try and present a breakdown in the family for the simple purposes of accessing support. I don’t think that honours the care and the interdependence that people have to one another, the interdependence that family members have to disabled people they care for, and the interdependence that disabled people have with their families as well. That’s my first question, that has not been addressed, and I think it’s really, really key.

I go back, now, to page 6. This is clause 8(2)(b)(ii) around the language of a “person’s safety and dignity”. Now, I was quite interested in the language around dignity. I’ve always talked about how we should treat everybody with respect and dignity, but one thing that I note is missing is full participation. Again, this is language that really matters because full participation means, for example, that a disabled person isn’t just supported to stay alive or to live with dignity, but full participation means they could be resourced to participate in, for example, going to the movies, which sounds trivial, right? But it is actually that enablement of fully participating in the communities that they are part of. That includes recreation, which people should have a right to access as well. Can I test with the Minister whether the choice of the word “dignity”, on page 6, includes, for example, access to full participation in the communities through recreational activities to the things that just make someone feel like they’re fully part of the physical spaces and relationships that they want to be part of and belong to, and, if not, does she think that the omission of language around full participation is an unfortunate omission? I just wanted to test how she interprets the term “dignity” for the purposes of, for example, the design of secondary legislation when it comes to eligibility criteria.

10:20

We addressed some of the member’s questions, or intent behind the questions, in answering in relation to everyday life. In terms of that particular statement around an eligible person’s safety and dignity, I did touch on that in my answer to the previous speaker’s question—that, yes, it is a contribution, yes families are considered, but there will be some circumstances, for a range of reasons, where a disabled person doesn’t want to have the support of their family, or it’s not safe for them to have the support of a family member, which is where the individual circumstances of the disabled person are paramount. That won’t change under this bill.

10:21

Given that the Minister has said that this needs to be reflected in the legislation because it reflects what’s currently happening, would the Minister then consider amendments to change the wording from “obligation to contribute”, in a sense, to reflect that that is what families currently do—that many families, as and when they can, already contribute to the care and support of the disabled person. Also, I point to particularly the submission by Enabling Good Lives (EGL) MidCentral, where they’ve said that ideally what this legislation should do is reflect the intent—so not just the language, because the select committee has made changes to include the language of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the EGL, but to go beyond that: to include the intent of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and to say that this is an obligation, or that it’s an option that families already do this, and many, when they can go well beyond, will do so. But as the Minister has said, in certain cases where there are issues around safety, that is not an obligation there. Can the legislation be a bit more explicit about this and the fact that family support is complementary and not assumed?

Does the member want to refer to her tabled amendment on this issue?

Yes, I think my tabled amendment is currently on its way, on this issue.

No, we have it.

Oh, do you have it?

Yes.

OK. I would like to refer to my tabled amendment that I do not have in front of me, but—thank you.

Well, it has been tabled, so perhaps one of your team could go and get you a copy.

Yes, yes. I have got a copy now. That is, in essence, the crux of the amendment: to ensure that care is complementary and not—[Memberturns to the Hon Jo Luxton] Can you find my actual amendment, please? Thank you.

The other question that I’ll ask in the meantime is specifically related to clause 8(2)(b)(iv), and that is around “families, whānau, and other culturally recognised family groups, where appropriate, have … a responsibility to contribute”. There’s a bit in subparagraph (iv) that says, “where appropriate, the eligible person’s resources;”. This is, basically, what Needs Assessment and Service Coordination agencies (NASCs) and others have to take into account when determining the families’ contribution. What is being raised by NASCs and others is who determines appropriateness, and how is appropriateness determined? That is the worry that many others have raised as well: that the disabled person may not consider their family support to be appropriate to them, but that the decision maker in this equation might. So then who makes the ultimate decision there?

I do point to the changes in terms of including the choice of preference of the eligible person when it comes to determining the provision of Disability Support Services support, and that was a good change that the select committee has made, and a meaningful one, and also to include the eligible person’s safety and dignity.

That then takes me to the other point. The Minister said that details around safeguarding complaints mechanisms and appeals processes will come in later legislation. But the decision not to include those provisions or those guardrails in this legislation is what has led to a lot of the anxiety as well. So it’s not just the language, which, you know, is partially changed, in the situation of the bill, but it’s the lack of safeguarding as well. So can the Minister clarify her decision not to include those, when this piece of legislation makes it so clear that families have a role to play to contribute to the care. So saying that the safety of an individual will be taken into account is different from having mechanisms to enable that to happen.

10:26

I want to clarify in terms of this legislation covering the current state. There are currently complaints reviews and safeguarding that already occur. I don’t want anyone to think that they don’t occur, but in terms of this particular bill, we have kept the scope of it narrow, and my expectation is, particularly around safeguarding, with the work that’s going on in parallel with the royal commission into abuse in State care, that there will be further improvements to what the current state is, which would be captured in the second piece of legislation. I hope that clarifies it.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and, again, I’m mindful that the member who spoke prior to me, the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan, may have questions on clauses 9 and 10. I just wanted to talk about clause 11, and particularly, I want the Minister’s commitments on how she intends to use the existing income-based and asset-based criteria. One of the things that people have raised concerns about is whether there are further or additional limitations to it. But I wanted to, first of all, just test whether the Minister believes in a rights-based approach, because income-based or asset-based criteria goes against that. So I wanted to just test whether she interprets the approved Disability Support Services programme criteria that may be specified to be taking a rights-based approach.

Secondly, on the income-based criteria, I wanted to just test whether the income and asset base that could be used for any eligibility requirements would be just the disabled person’s income and asset base or whether any family member’s income and assets could also be included, in the way that the legislation is written. Again, it’s not just the family members that do the care work and could be treated as a resource that I’m concerned about; it’s the family member’s income and asset base, that could also be treated as a resource for eligibility criteria, that I am worried about. So I just wanted to check with the Minister how she interprets that to be.

I wanted to ask her on clause 11(3)(ga), which states “eligibility for an entitlement card issued under—(i) regulations made under section 437 of the Social Security Act 2018; or (ii) regulations saved as if they were made under section 437 of the Social Security Act 2018;”—a community services card, for the right person. I wanted to get a sense of why this was added. You know, we were reassured that no additional limitations would be put in, but we’ve got this additional bit that clearly spells out additional limitations that could be put on to the criteria that may be specified. This seems contrary to the reassurances that we’ve been given. I mean, this is one of the key criticisms that has come from disability justice advocates across the country, when the Minister came out after the select committee stage trying to reassure us.

I will just wait for the whip and the Minister to stop talking—I’ll just pause for a second. OK, cool; I’ll resume.

The issue I have here is that the language in clause 11(3)(ga) seems to hint at a new criteria that could be applied to the provision of services. How is that consistent with the comment that she made post the select committee process? I have heard a disability advocate question whether her comments after the select committee were actually factually correct when those provisions are still in place. So I wanted to test whether they’re correct in their assessment of her follow-up comments on concerns on further restrictions to access.

To recap—and I know we have a new presiding officer in the Chair—I’m really interested in the income and asset testing and whether that could be expanded to the income and asset base of family members as well. Does the Minister have any hints around, for example, how broad in range the income- and asset-based criteria that are specified here will be? I know that she said that she does not intend to further those, but I’m just curious as to, at least as the legislation is written, what a future Minister is able to do with these provisions. This bill will endure with her as Minister, and I want to know what she thinks a future Minister could do with it.

10:31

As I have said previously, this is just documenting the current state in terms of means testing. There are a limited number of programmes that are related to, for example, the community services card, so that doesn’t change. In terms of what a future Minister may or may not do, that’s a different matter that I can’t crystal-ball into, but I have said on the record, and will say again, that there is no intention for me as Minister to introduce or change anything related to means testing.

10:32

Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s exactly what I want to get into, because why would she create legislation that still allows for a future Minister to further restrict access to disability support services? You know, all it takes is a Cabinet reshuffle after another leadership challenge for a future Minister to be in her place and do exactly what she said she wouldn’t do—like, literally the way the bill is written does not guarantee disabled people that no further restrictions will be added. So why would she not have clarified that no further restrictions will be made in primary legislation? Why does she not add those safeguards in primary legislation, not just have disabled people have to take this current Minister at her word but actually safeguard any future Government from being able to add additional restrictions?

Perhaps if their coalition partner gets to secure her ministry in the next term, what is to say that they may not want to add further restrictions into this? Does she accept at least that the way that the bill is written does leave it really open for a future Minister to cause harm to disabled people by restricting access to services by tweaking and changing the income- and asset-based criteria?

Does she accept the concerns that have been raised by submitters and by advocacy groups, that the way that the bill is written leaves disabled people and carers very open to a future Government choosing to harm and actively restrict access to disability support services? I just want her to at least be able to be upfront not just about her intentions but that a bill cannot just stand on the current measures and intentions; the bill has to stand the test of time when it comes to the protections that are afforded to groups that have had to fight for their rights in the courts and in the streets and in Parliament. So, again, does she accept that a future Minister could just, because of the way she’s written the bill, further restrict access to disability support services; and if so, why did she not deem that primary legislation would be a better place to actually add further safeguards?

I know the Minister has talked about engagement with some of my previous comments, but the one that I haven’t had engagement with—and I will just reiterate that I’m really interested in having a bit of engagement on it—is whether family members will be treated as a resource. That is a simple question I’m asking for engagement on—whether they will be treated as a resource for the purpose of eligibility criteria.

10:34

The irony in the member’s question is that yesterday or the day before, for years in the past Ministers have been able to make decisions at a whim. So by the time we have this piece of legislation and support programmes in place, that will be consulted on with disabled people and the communities and families. Those support programmes will ensure that changes can’t happen quickly.

That period, admittedly, we’ve now extended from three years to five years to enable the support programmes to be established, and my expectation is that with a discussion document early next year, disabled people and organisations and carers will signal where the priorities are for those support programmes to be established. This does not change anything around means testing. It simply states that they exist already in a very limited number of occasions, and it would not have been accurate in describing the current state in the legislation if that had been ignored.

10:36

Following up on that exchange, the Minister often talks about not changing things that are already there, but isn’t part of the issue that we’re finding ourselves in that disabled people have talked about how the status quo isn’t good enough? So when she says, “Hey, look, we’re not changing anything.”, does she concede that that speaks volumes of the fact that inadequate consultation with and input from disabled people has been taken on board when it comes to the fact that even the current income- and asset-based criteria doesn’t adequately uphold the dignity of disabled people? So I just wanted to test whether the Minister actually thinks that the current settings, including lack of safeguards that have already presently existed, are fit for purpose. I think that just saying—

We’re discussing this bill. Which clause are you speaking to?

Clause 11(3)(f) and (g), and (ga) specifically—just following up on the Minister’s answers.

The key thing that I want to test with the Minister is that she is saying she’s not changing anything. Does she think that the current settings, then, actually reflect the voices and the feedback of disabled people, or is she just simply conceding to the fact that not changing anything just means that things are well and fine and no one needs to worry about them?

I will move on to clause 11(4), which is about the things that the Minister is required to do before approving and establishing a programme and the fact that the Minister needs to take into account the purpose of the Disability Support Services and the likely outcomes for disabled people of approving and establishing that programme, and any other matters that the Minister considers relevant.

I have a series of questions on this one. For the purpose of interpreting how the Minister will likely execute these provisions in the bill, would the Minister outline some examples of any other matters that the Minister may consider to be relevant? Has the Minister already thought of matters that have previously been considered or that she intends to consider? The second question I have is, when it comes to the likely outcomes for disabled people of approving and establishing the programme, how will those outcomes be measured? Will it be through extensive engagement and co-design with disabled people and carers? Will it be just through sort of consulting Government officials? And what happens if inadequate engagement has happened for the likely outcomes for disabled people? This takes me to clause (4A), which says, “the Minister must also consult such representatives of disabled persons as the Minister considers appropriate.”

I’m keen to understand—and I know there’s been a lot of questions, and I am happy to traverse further engagement if the Minister’s not capturing it—what does the Minister consider to be an appropriate level of consultation, as per clause 11(4A)? If there hasn’t been adequate consultation, should any programme be approved? That is one of the key things that disabled people have noted—that there are no protections that safeguard disabled people from a programme that disabled people may deem inadequate from being rolled out despite these requirements being in place. There’s no sort of, like, that you “must” have adequate consultation. It kind of just leaves it to the Minister. So, you know, it would be useful at least for the Minister to clarify what in her view “appropriate”, as per (4A), looks like in practice, so that maybe disabled people have a bit of reassurance of how much resourcing will go into ensuring that there’s a “code assigned” process with disabled people, or whether she thinks that maybe talking to one service provider will be enough to be deemed appropriate consultation over clause 11(4A).

I’m really interested, and I will have some further engagements on this, because I know that this has been one of the key pieces of feedback that has come—particularly post our comments after the select committee stage, around disabled people’s feelings of sort of inadequate safeguards on consultation. And also, that sort of retraumatising process and feeling of the errors of the bill process being then mirrored in the rolling out of these programmes, because of that lack of faith that disabled people currently have with the way that the—well, what I would say is with the Minister and the Government, due to the legislative process and the lack of faith therefore being extended to how particularly clause 11(4A) will be rolling out.

10:41

I did traverse some of this area in the earlier part, which I acknowledged at the time went beyond the bill to explain the process that would go beyond this. The example that I used at the time was in terms of consultation; if the support programme was around hearing devices, for example, the consultation and the organisations and the representatives of disabled persons that would be considered appropriate would be very different for a support programme around hearing devices as it would be around residential care. So that is what is intended there. It is important that disabled people directly—as well as disabled people’s organisations, as well as those who provide services—are involved in that process. As the member himself raised in an earlier part of the debate, the disability community is not an amorphous group and they don’t have the same views or agreements. That’s why the consultation here will be important, but it won’t be the same for every support programme.

10:42

I’ve got a few more questions that are related to clause 8 and the various things that Needs Assessment and Service Coordination (NASC) agencies, for example, will need to take into account when making decisions around who gets Disability Support Services (DSS). My first question is related to clause 8(2)(b): “decisions about the provision of DSS-funded disability support services to an eligible person should be made taking into account—” all of the rest of the things that are laid out underneath it. I want to ask the Minister for Disability Issues why the wording there is “taking into account”, which to me is rather vague and not as strong as it could be, for example. I’d like to refer to my tabled amendment that recommends or suggests changing that to “give effect to”, which is stronger legal language. So that’s the first part of my question.

The second is related to clause 8(2)(b)(iii), and that is that people who are making these decisions around DSS access, or eligibility to support funding there, must take into account “the eligible person’s immediate, and long-term, needs and circumstances;”. I’d like to know what definitions would be used around that? What are the parameters that must be considered around the immediate and long-term needs? What circumstances will be in versus what will be out?

And then going down to clause 8(2)(b)(iv), “where appropriate, the eligible person’s resources;”—is that related to income and assets that the eligible person may hold? If not, what is the thinking behind including “eligible person’s resources” in there, and what does that actually mean?

The next part of that, clause 8(2)(b)(v), “any support that is available to the eligible person from other publicly funded sources;”, given that the whole point previously of Disability Support Services transformation towards an Enabling Good Lives (EGL)—and the Minister made a comment earlier on that she had heard from the disability communities that various different assessment tools, allocation tools, and decisions were being made around the country, where one disabled person in one part of the country would get more support than somebody else, and that’s why she’s brought in the assessment and allocation tools, to bring in consistency, and this legislation is the next part of that work. I would put to the Minister that that has lowered, potentially, the access or the types of services that disabled people can access. Because what we were trying to do was to transform the other way around, towards the EGL sites and the ways in which funding was disseminated by EGL sites. Instead, everything’s been brought back to how NASCs, previously, were doing things. So I would put that to the Minister.

But the other issue that’s been raised around this is: when the changes were made back—some of the subsequent changes to the initial ones made in March 2024, where, for example, children and schools couldn’t use their DSS funding for things like writing for the disabled, because the Government’s view at that point, the Minister’s view at the time, was that education should be funding that, not DSS. Whereas previously—and the transformation of the moves that we were wanting to make in the previous Government was that the person was central to the types of services and support that they could access. That is, in essence, the EGL vision. This legislation just imports some EGL language, but not the intent or the vision of the Enabling Good Lives approach. So is that what is now being captured in legislation, in clause 8(2)(b)(v), Minister, where if there’s support that comes out of the education pot, or the transport pot, or the housing pot, this will be—my fear, and the fear of many, is that this will lead to the further fragmentation of the type of support that disabled people can get and not a better, more cohesive package of money that actually transforms a person’s life and makes it better. So I’ll leave my questions there for that.

10:47

I keep getting into trouble with going further than outside the bill, but let me just—in terms of the questions that the member the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan asks, the principles of Enabling Good Lives (EGL) are absolutely reflected through the section here. If you think about the eligible person’s immediate long-term needs and circumstances, one of the things that we do want greater consideration of is investing early. So the social investment approach, which might mean, when considering a disabled person’s long-term needs, actually there might be different assessments made around what support is available now. An example of that is the powered wheelchair research that’s under way at the moment.

In terms of your question around other Government departments and support that’s available, that is also one of the EGL principles, about mainstream access. So access should be equally available to health for disabled people—

That’s not what it means.

No, no—let me explain. So health should be accessible and available to disabled people, and, clearly, there’s improvements that we need to make across the board there. The changes that were made to flexible funding—that started 1 February—took away all the guidelines, took away all the rules around flexible funding, to maximise disabled people’s choice and to ensure that they are able to access the services and supports that they require.

10:49

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to dig down on the wording in clause 8, which is about “where appropriate”. My colleagues touched on it, but I want to kind of dig down into this issue as it arises in clause 8(2)(b)(iv) and (vi). So my major concern would be with the first of those, but it is a principal question.

Here, we have a clause that says that one of the criteria is “where appropriate, the eligible person’s resources;”, and then we have another which says, “where appropriate, any other support that is available to the eligible person, including from—(A) their family, whānau, or other culturally recognised family group; and (B) their community.” Now, that looks to me like there’s a lot of capacity there to decide what is appropriate. What I’d like to know is, what is meant by “where appropriate”? When would it be appropriate and when would it not? What kind of restrictions are there on the Minister for Disability Issues changing what that criteria is through that pathway of just simply deciding that it is now appropriate, and moving a lot away from the status quo into something that is much more burdensome on both that person’s resources and their family and community?

For example, we had the Minister talk about how that wasn’t her intention at the moment. She was categorical in the House that her intention was that there would be no means testing beyond the point it is now, but does she accept that that particular wording is permissive? What kinds of constraints has she put in place to hold firm to her assertion in the House that that would not be happening under, at least, her watch? What kind of constraints has she put on others in this piece of legislation if it is her intention that this is not the beginning of an increased use of means testing or becoming overly burdensome on family and community in a way which actually means that people are being asked to do something that’s simply burdensome to the point of becoming dysfunctional?

One of my portfolios is community and voluntary. I appreciate that the community steps up so many times in this area, but I also appreciate that it often fails in those situations because of a scarcity of resource, often from, actually, Government funding, but also because it’s hard out there and there just isn’t the money to support the organisations the way they were. We’re seeing a dip in giving, so we do not have those kinds of resources available in the community anymore. I’m also aware in areas that are well beyond the scope of this bill, things like in the—

Then we won’t be talking about it.

Well, no, it’s important because it does relate—I promise, Madam Chair. We have a situation in something like Oranga Tamariki, where there is a pushing out to whānau and pushing out to community when that resource is not there, and it is known not to be there. That can happen in a situation where we’re trying to stop the burden coming on to the State. We can push to these places that just don’t exist.

I am aware that, in these situations, it’s a problem that’s systemic that we push out, and we can say it’s appropriate when it’s actually just simply factually impractical. I would love for the Minister to tell me what is the constraint on the use of that beyond what is actually really appropriate? What kind of stop has she put on others misusing this, even if she has made a binding commitment in this House to it not being used in that way? Those are my primary questions. That use of the language, “where appropriate” —did she have advice on that? That really concerns me, that there is so much wiggle room in it, even if the Minister is bona fide trying to do the right thing. What was the purpose of using that wording? Why does it need to be so wide?

The member’s time has expired. Before I take the next call, I’ve been in the chair a short time and I believe we have thrashed subclause 8(2), so I am looking for new material please.

10:54

Thank you very much. Just a question on definitions in the bill, and this will be very brief stuff, and I note your comments, but one thing that I wanted to note that seems to not be defined in the bill is there’s a lot of definitions for what “family member” is—

Under what clause?

This is my final contribution on clause 8, so I will move on immediately after, but I just wanted to note that there is quite an extensive definition of what a “family member” is considered as, but there seems to be no definition of what a “community” is for the purposes of this bill and Disability Support Services (DSS) funding. I’m concerned that we have this kind of thing where “community” is just left out and not really defined, and I wanted to get the Minister for Disability Issues’ views on what interpretations she will be giving, or wants to give, the term “community” for the purposes of, for example, whether front-line decision makers could be using, “Well, you belong to a church that runs Sunday programmes and that counts as a community stepping in for you.” Would it be like, “Hey, look, in your neighborhood, there are volunteer-run programmes that exist, say, three blocks away from where you live. That counts as a community for the purposes of the resources that exist.”? Could it be that, in small rural areas, just somewhere in your whole township that provides some sort of support is considered “community” for the purpose of eligibility criteria? Because we have quite an extensive definition of who is and is not a family member, but I’m concerned about the fact that “community” just doesn’t have that.

The reason why I think this is quite important is that if we look at other Acts where, for example, people are asked to look outside for support that could be met—for example, the Social Security Act—we often have case managers saying, “Well, have you checked out this food bank that exists several neighborhoods away before we give you assistance?” It’s really fraught, how, for example, in the Social Security Act, those provisions cover “Have you checked for other support first before we give you support?” I am really concerned that “community” is just left out so broadly. I am none the wiser as to how that will be interpreted when it comes to the DSS-funding decision-making. If the Minister would like to elucidate on what her definition of “community” is and how that could be used to the detriment, if at all, obviously, of people, I’d love to know, because I do think that that is really, really, really important criteria.

Now, moving onto clause 11—and to signal to the chair that the only reason I would go back to clause 8 is if I don’t get engagement from the Minister on the “community” definition—but on subclause (4A), on page 8, something that the Minister did not engage with in my previous comments was just on a reassurance that no programme will go through without adequate engagement and co-design with disabled people. Because, again, that’s one of the key tensions that has existed post select committee stage in the reassurance that the Minister has given. I note that the Minister has apologised for, say, the process and the hurt for what has occurred in this legislative process, but this subclause (4A) on page 8 is, in my view, the place in which those mistakes could be redressed by giving a reassurance that no programme will go ahead without an adequate co-design process. Otherwise, what we have heard from the likes of Dr Huhana Hickey, from CCS Disability Action, and others is that the Minister can just claim, “Well, I talked to one service provider and that is good enough.” I know that the Minister said in previous comments, “I’ve already addressed that, and I agree with Ricardo that community is not monolithic and there are many views.”, but that doesn’t really address or engage with the matter of whether programmes could still go ahead without a high bar of consultation.

If the Minister could engage with subclause (4A) specifically, and what bar and standards she wants to set before any programme gets rolled out in terms of the level of co-design, and what, for example, “representatives of disabled people” means. “Representatives of disabled people” could be someone who’s not disabled. You could literally talk to a bunch of able-bodied people who are not disabled and who deem themselves as representatives, and the programme could then be rolled out. Could she please set the standard that she wishes to use for the purpose of subclause (4A), and, to recap, what does she define as “community” for the purposes of—

The member’s time has expired. Just to reiterate the point—this is my second warning about repetition—even though I did make that clear before the member stood up, he has repeated two items that were previously answered by the Minister—

It’s new material on those items.

Please don’t argue with me, Mr March. I am explaining myself. Repetition is not getting us anywhere. You are going to get the same answers to the same questions.

11:00

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is my first call in the entire debate—I’ll just point that out. This is new material that the Minister has not addressed. I am anxious to give it because it does relate to the definition of “community”, which is the clause 8 that you’re warning us to move on from, but it is relevant to the points that I also want to make about another section. I hope that the Chair can give me the ability to do this, because what I am wanting to raise here is the lack of any reference in this legislation to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the impact of these legislative changes on Māori.

I’m referring in particular to a submission from Te Ao Mārama Aotearoa, who represent tāngata whaikaha and their whānau and who in their submissions point out how disappointed and how upset they are that they were not consulted at all in the development of this legislation. They have concerns around the wide definition of “community” and the impact on concepts and tikanga like whanaungatanga that are important in terms of clause 8. They also have concerns around the lack of consultation in the development of this bill. Talking to clause 11(4A), it says the Minister must consult, and yet we didn’t see that consultation happen in the development of a very significant piece of legislation—a huge change in a generation, essentially—with no references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and no engagement with the representative body of tāngata whaikaha and their whānau.

Te Ao Mārama Aotearoa point out that the Crown is obliged to engage with them directly under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and many other conventions that we are part of, and the Crown did not. They also said that when it comes to conscription of whānau in clause 8—I just want to read the submission and see if the Minister has any response to this. They say: “The communities with the most expansive conceptions of collective responsibility, our communities, carry the heaviest statutory expectation, while the Crown that drafted the clause carries none: no duty to assess whether the presumed support exists, is safe, is sustainable, or is consented to by the whānau or by the disabled person; no training, no respite guarantee, no income protection; no limit in scope or duration; no point at which the obligation is fulfilled.” The point they make is that “Whanaungatanga is a taonga. It is not fiscal infrastructure for the Crown to draw down, and aroha is not a substitute for the State meeting its obligations to its disabled citizens.”

In terms of clause 11(4A), “Before approving and establishing a programme under subsection (1), the Minister must also consult such representatives of disabled persons as the Minister considers appropriate.” Does the Minister consider Te Ao Mārama Aotearoa, the representative organisation for tangata whaikaha me ō rātou whānau [disabled people and their families] appropriate to engage with? Why did she not engage with them in the development of this legislation? Will she engage with them under that particular clause, and will she reconsider the fact that they do not have any reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in this legislation and, as these submissions point out, what the need for that is?

11:04

I’ve answered questions around consultation in the creation of the bill; I’ve answered questions around consultation going forward, and I’ve answered questions about family.

11:05

I would like to ask the Minister some questions around clause 10, and that is the ability for the Minister to give the ministry binding directions. This is the section of the legislation that allows the Minister to create, through secondary legislation, ministerial programmes or support programmes, which basically contains all of the detail that disabled people and carers are interested in and wanting to see.

I will note the Minister’s comments earlier on in this debate; we did have a back and forth on decisions around the line between primary and secondary legislation and why so much of this detail the Minister has decided to put in secondary legislation instead of primary. I won’t traverse that bit, but what I do want to ask the Minister is, given that the authority to make secondary legislation is both by convention and through the Legislation Act, from memory—the guidelines around that are to be really careful about the level of detail, technicality, and complexity that Ministers put into secondary legislation. If I look at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s own website—and I’m looking at this because in clause 10(3)—it basically says to “(see Part 3 of the Legislation Act 2019 for publication requirements).”

This is to the Minister’s previous point, where she stated that her decision to include all of the detail around support programmes in secondary legislation rather than a mix of primary and secondary is to give people comfort that things can’t be changed very quickly. I’d like to tease that aspect of the Minister’s comments out through this particular clause. The guidelines are basically that substantive policy shouldn’t be in secondary legislation, but it should just be, for example, the amounts or the thresholds that need to be changed that should be in secondary legislation. But the specific types of support programmes that people can access should be in primary legislation so that they cannot be changed quickly and without the oversight of Parliament. Can the Minister give us some clarity around that later part of that point?

Disabled people who have been submitting to this, who have been listening to debates in the House around this, don’t feel a level of comfort, because it’s easier to change secondary legislation than primary legislation. I also understand that there is specific language that the Minister could have used in this legislation, in this particular clause, to require the Regulations Review Committee—and I understand that my colleague Arena Williams would like to speak to that a little bit further. That could have then given people some comfort that changes cannot be made to support programmes quickly. Can the Minister clarify why she said that, given that secondary legislation is easier to change than primary legislation?

11:08

We have traversed this in the earlier conversation around flexibility as one component. The other thing I would point out here, in terms of clause 10, that the member is referring to, is that this is also about how the ministry performs its duties. Without traversing history, I think there are many examples of how it was previously set up—that it didn’t perform those duties anywhere near well enough.

11:09

Thank you. I would like to talk about the employment provisions here—so I’m looking at clause 13. I have a background in this area, so it is of great concern to me when I see clauses like clause 13(2), which talks about “If A is a party to, or covered by, a written agreement with the Crown stating that A is an employee, the agreement is conclusive proof that A is an employee of the Crown.” My problem with this is that employment relationships are a matter of fact. We have some very strong rules about what those things look like in the real world, and we also have a long-term relationship here, just like many employment relationships, and things morph—they changed significantly in that time—and employment law has always recognised that reality versus anything that’s written down. I’m concerned that, here, we have a very dangerous—it’s not really a precedent because it’s also being done with contractors—idea that writing overrides reality.

In these situations, we have a whole lot of people who are working their socks off, and we are deciding what they are, as a matter of signing the document, when, in employment law, we recognise that the reality morphs over time. We also recognise that there is a power imbalance in these situations. I couldn’t think of anything more likely to have a power imbalance in it than this particular relationship, where people are trying to look after their loved ones. They really don’t have a lot of choice in what they sign at that point. They are actually in a position of deep moral quandary.

And so, I wanted to know from the Minister, what she looked at when she looked at that issue of the consistency of our country’s moral approach to work and the issue of power imbalance, which is built into our Employment Relations Act. It recognises that straight up, and then all these other things hang off it, but we don’t recognise a power imbalance in this relationship. Why not? That’s what I’d like to know. And I’d like to know what safeguards there are, with regard to that power imbalance. In other situations—for example, the contractor situation—we have, often, a reliance on independent legal advice. Is there anything going on here like that?

Then I have an issue with regard to that relationship choice: were there other options about the way we could handle this relationship that would not have excluded this community from the employment paradigm entirely? If there’s a dispute, what happens? What happens in that situation, if there’s a dispute about the way that people are treated? We have a whole scaffolding in employment law around that. What’s going to happen to these people if there are issues that emerge in terms of the way that they are treated?

I also asked questions about this when we were in the select committee—about the issues around their employment treatment and the savings that were associated with excluding this group of workers from that scaffolding of employment. I asked questions about how much the Government would save, and I’m asking you those questions now.

I don’t answer.

Sorry, Madam Chair. I’m asking the Minister to talk and be transparent about how much money the Government saved in this circumstance, but also how much there is an unintended consequence of people simply refusing to do this work in these conditions and that work being bounced into institutional care or other frameworks for care because they cannot do it. Is there a risk of economic impact with regard to that, and did she do some work on that? Thank you.

11:14

I spoke about this earlier, in terms of one of the priority pieces of work being the future carers support package, which basically would resolve many of the issues the member raises.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll take a brief call for the Minister. I just want to ask her about her comments that the directions will allow her the flexibility—it’s the other way I want to ask about. Why is it formal and formally recognised as secondary legislation when the option for her was, obviously, then, policy, which would not be secondary legislation? The directions in this bill are similar in nature to the old system. I commend the Minister for this framework, which, as she, quite rightly, points out, didn’t have a legislative basis before, so the directions were more akin to the immigration instructions, in that they didn’t have a legislative effect but they were something more binding than departmental policy.

The amendment in the name of the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan that we have suggested to clause 10, after (3), would make these confirmable instruments, which would give them the same status as confirmable instruments, which are a more commonly used tool to give ministerial directions. When the Regulations Review Committee confirms instruments, its only check is that they are made in line with the purposes and objects of the Act. That is what this clause 10 purports to do, but there is no check that the directions do, in fact, realise the objects and purposes of the Act.

My question is: if it is her intention to make the directions secondary legislation, then what is the check and balance to ensure that that secondary legislation is made within the purposes of the Act, and that it’s not ultra vires to the Act? Policy can be extra to the legislative framework; this is not policy, so the choice here to make it legislative, in effect, binds the Public Service in a way, which you’re only able to do at this level—at the parliamentary level—if it is in line with the legislative intent. We’re having a debate right now about what the legislative intent is, so it’s also useful to be clear about what the checks and balances are to keep it in line with that intent. The alternative, then, is that it’s meant to function more like the immigration instructions.

11:16

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions to the Minister on clause 11, and they are related to tabled amendments of mine as well. This particular clause brings into the debate issues around income testing, means testing, and asset testing, and that is another area that many have expressed significant levels of discomfort and anxiety around. I’d like to test a few things with the Minister with regard to this. I won’t go into the details, but it’s across the various parts of clause 11.

The Minister has said, many times, that the inclusion of income- and asset-based criteria in this clause is only meant to reflect where it’s currently taken into account, and that is in very few circumstances. I would ask the Minister to consider my tabled amendments to remove these criteria completely to give disabled people comfort that they will not be means tested before Disability Support Services (DSS) support is made available to them. In the event that the Minister does not want to take it out completely, because it is currently criteria for specific things, I would draw her attention to my tabled amendment that is to replace, in clause 11(3)(g), after “criteria”, to then be specific about what this current criteria for income and asset testing refers to—specifically, the community services card for hearing aids, home modifications, or vehicle modifications. From memory, those are the only areas that the Minister has said is currently means tested. If that is not the case, I would like the Minister to clarify what other areas are currently means tested, and I’m happy to include those in my amendments as well. That will then give disabled people absolute surety and certainty, which is what the Minister wants to achieve out of this legislation—that it will not then be used to means test further types of disability support funding that they can access, because those changes can be made, through clauses 10 and 11, in future support programmes.

My next question around criteria for the Minister is reflecting on a previous discussion as to why eligibility criteria, more broadly, as laid out on her own Ministry’s website, is not included in primary legislation. The Minister said, firstly, that there was no such thing but also that her decision there was to ensure a maximum level of flexibility.

Now, reading clause 11 in its entirety, it occurs to me, and I’ll put this to the Minister—I would like her to either confirm or clarify that her decision not to include DSS eligibility criteria in primary legislation is so that it can be changed for various types of support, which is, again, a departure from current practice. Currently, if you are a disabled person and you meet some of the criteria that is currently listed on the ministry’s website—you have specific types of disability—the Needs Assessment and Service Coordination (NASC) organisation will assess what particular supports you need based on your disability and then give you a support package that will allow you to access the support that you need to be able to live an ordinary life—presumably.

Not including that in primary legislation but saying in clause 11 that there will be different types of eligibility criteria for different types of disability support is anxiety-inducing, because at this point, although the Minister has repeatedly said that this legislation does not change current eligibility or entitlement today to DSS support, this indicates that it will change. This indicates that the Minister, through secondary legislation, can change the criteria for, say, community-based support versus residential support or flexible funding. The Minister is shaking her head, which is good—if that is not the intention—but can she please clarify how else anyone is meant to interpret this legislation other than the interpretation that I have just put to her?

11:21

We’re going over the same ground again, so I’m not going to traverse that. In terms of means testing, it would not be an accurate reflection of the current state if it had been excluded from the legislation. That is why it is included, and it has been amended to make it clearer as a result of the select committee.

This is my final warning on repetition. We have traversed up to clause 12, and we are moving on.

11:22

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to speak to Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s amendment, tabled at 9.13.07 a.m., which hasn’t been spoken about yet, so bringing some new material to it. This is the deletion of clause 11(4B)(b)—and I haven’t spoken about new subclause (4B) in clause 11 myself yet; I don’t think anyone has. So, on (4B), and particularly looking at paragraph (b).

First of all, I want to know what the Minister’s justification is to have the ability to basically override the provisions in new subclause (4A), which is about consultation—basically, to say that there’s a “must also consult” with disabled people, but, actually, in (4B), failure to comply with those consultation requirements does not affect the validity of any programme. Can she see why (4B)(b) doesn’t give any teeth to the provisions in (4A), because, basically, why would the Minister have a requirement to consult and then have a provision that says, “Well, actually, but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t really change anything.”?

Can I get a sense of the Minister’s intention for having a provision in (4B)(b) to say that “Look, at the end of the day, if you do not comply with any of these consultation requirements, the programme can go ahead anyway.”? Which takes me to the point that, you know, if the Minister is genuine about having a requirement to consult, why wouldn’t she support Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s amendment that seeks to delete clause 11(4B)(b)? If she doesn’t support it, I’d love to know what her justification is for just simply scrapping those constitutional requirements.

That takes me to my final point, which I haven’t had engaged with the Minister, which is whether the term “representatives” actually includes disabled people or whether it can include non-disabled people, or whether the Minister would be satisfied if she only consulted with able-bodied people that seek to represent disabled people for the purposes of (4A). Again, I just don’t understand why you would have this interaction between (4A) and (4B)(b), which seems to just sort of allow the Minister to ignore disabled people or their representatives anyway. Any comments, justification, or indication of support—not “or”, but “and indication of support”—for the amendment would be very welcomed.

11:25

Where there’s a minor, in effect, issue that wouldn’t be consulted on—for example, it could be where there is an increase in a rate, so you wouldn’t go out with wide consultation where a rate is being increased. Clearly, if there were changes the other way, which would not be minor and which would have an impact, that would require consultation. So that is an example.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 8(2) to replace “take into account” with “to give effect to” be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 8(2)(a) to insert words after “members” be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 8 to insert new paragraph (c) into subsection 8(2) be agreed to.

The Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 10 is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 11(3) deleting paragraph (f) be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 11(3) deleting paragraph (g) be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 11(3)(f) restricting income-based criteria for matters relating to community services card be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 11(3)(g) restricting asset-based criteria for matters relating to community services card be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s tabled amendment to clause 11(4B) deleting paragraph (b) be agreed to.

11:35

Thank you. I have a couple of quick questions for the Minister on this part, and all of it relates to clause 17 and the review that will need to be undertaken at the conclusion of five years. I also, I guess, take the Social Services and Community Committee’s recommendation to shift the transitional period from three years to five years to enable for the consultation that is now required in this bill to take place, although the Minister had said she was going to consult anyway—but now she has an additional two years to do that.

My questions, though, are related to clause 17(1)(a) and the review of the operation of this Act. I would like to ask the Minister what she envisages that review to include. Will it just be whether this Act is working, which is how I would interpret that particular part of this clause. Given that the bulk of the detail is in the secondary legislation, will the review also include whether those support programmes are working, bearing in mind that the Minister’s intention is to have that, or at least some of them, concluded, presumably by the end of that five-year period. Or will it be all of the support programmes concluded via secondary legislation at the end of that review period? I’d like some clarity around what the review will actually include.

I would also like to know whether the Minister intends for there to be consultation with disability communities in that review process as well. The reason that I ask this is because I would like to know whether the review, and the report that results from that, will include a reflection on whether this legislation—given that the intention of the legislation is to provide a foundational framework for Disability Support Services funding, but, ultimately, it is to ensure that disabled people and carers are supported to be able to lead, in the words of this bill, everyday lives. Will that be included in the review? Will it actually look at whether this legislation is working for disabled people, carers, and the disability community more broadly, rather than just whether the letter of the law is functioning in an operational sort of manner? So that’s my main question to the Minister.

I’d also like to know in clause 17(1)(b), where it states that there should be consideration as to “whether any amendments to this Act are necessary or desirable;”, whether that will also take into account secondary legislation as part of that review.

11:38

Madam Chair, I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for their work, particularly on this part, which created the inclusion of the review of the legislation after five years and increased the transition period from three years to five. Clearly, a review of any legislation would need to consider if it is acting as intended. I think that’s particularly important because there hasn’t been legislation in this space already. My expectation is that it would of course review or include in its scope support programmes that are secondary legislation. Not all of them would have been in place for long enough, so it perhaps wouldn’t make sense to review all of them, but any of them that were in place would make sense.

The other thing that I had indicated, which admittedly is out of the scope of this legislation, but I had talked about an intent that there would need to be a second Disability Support Services Bill to look specifically at some areas that have been raised. A second bill would also mean that if there was anything in this piece of legislation that was clearly not working already, it could be picked up at that stage. But what is the intent behind this legislation? What is the intent behind support programmes, specifically the ones I’ve talked about in terms of flexible funding and a carers support package? It is absolutely to make Disability Support Services better than it is today. Why do we care about that? Because we want to improve the lives of disabled New Zealanders, their carers, and families. So, yes, that would be part of the review. The law clearly wasn’t going to be working as intended, unless disabled people, their carers, and families were seeing an improvement in their lives.

11:40

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions relate to clause 18, and the consequential amendments. First, as a more general question to the Minister, she was helpful in her elucidation about the purpose of the review, and the answer might be “the review” to this question, but this is a devilishly complicated piece of legislation in the way that it deals with secondary legislation and confirmable instruments that exist within the system. That’s the purpose of the legislation: to deal with all of the things that have grown up that are regulatory-like within the system. The consequential amendments clause seems light, and I want to ask her what advice she has had from officials that the consequential amendments are the whole suite of legislative changes which will be needed to be made to other Acts. What has been her process to ensure that we are capturing those people who have already had a decision under the law that is a legal decision now, but under her new law will not be a legal decision and will rely on outmoded legislation? So that’s the first question.

The second question is particularly about the ministerial directions. I think that her new clause 10 makes ministerial directions that have happened prior to the commencement of this Act secondary legislation. My question is: does this Act amend secondary legislation by giving directions which were policy now the status of regulation, or is it the case that she will need to reissue all of the ministerial—what are now directions, but were policy? To give you an example of this, programmes that the ministry would have been responsible for before are now secondary legislation. Do they automatically count as new law now, or do they need to be reissued? In which case, shouldn’t they be in the consequential amendments part? Should there not be amendments which list out all of those pieces of what is now secondary legislation? The reason I ask this is because the real-world impact is that somebody’s house that is partly funded under health and partly funded under the new system will rely on a ministerial direction that didn’t have the status of secondary legislation until this Act is in force. It’s useful to understand, for those people who are carrying over from the old system to the new system—it’s good that they now have a new system which is legislative—but how do the directions now become legislative?

11:43

There are no ministerial directions.

Back to the review—and I thank the Minister for her responses there, that the review will look at the impacts, or the effects, of support programmes as well, and not just the primary legislation alone. I would then like to ask her who will carry out the review. Will disabled people lead that review, or will they be part of that review? I would also like to know whether the terms of reference for that review will be made public before it’s undertaken, and whether they will comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well. I would also like to ask the Minister how she is going to measure improvement. If this is foundational legislation, we don’t really have a baseline, I guess, of how it’s working for disabled people outside of what they tell us, and even that is not codified in terms of a baseline. Given the Minister has said that her intention through the review process, and the report, is to improve the lives of disabled people and carers, how will she measure that?

11:44

I would expect that the terms of reference for the review include the disabled people’s organisations, similar to the consultation around support programmes. There are other pieces of legislation that have been reviewed, and I would expect that this would follow a similar course.

My question to the Minister is—I understand that her answer is that there are no directions because the directions are a creature of her new clause 10. What I’m asking her is—and I’ll put to her a real-world example of a constituent of mine, for things which operated like the directions under the old system. I understand why you’re doing this, Minister—that we need a legislative framework for the sorts of instructions that Ministers need to give for the programmes and the systems, for disabled people to access the services that they require. This is a good piece of legislation, in that it at least does give legislative form to what are, appropriately, laws. In a situation that my constituent had, they were trying to use funding that they were entitled to, for a trip, which was rightly funded within the rules and instructions.

The question that ended up going all the way up to the top level of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) was whether the sort of trip that they were asking for was within the remit of the policy intent. All of the instructions said that they could have this kind of trip—for their wellbeing, for their mental health—because it was within their special interest, and because they were someone who was entitled to support for that kind of thing. All of the policy requirements were met, but the question that ended up being needed to be determined at the very highest level of leadership of MSD was whether they were entitled to use it for this particular kind of trip—and, rightly, whether that was within the full scope of the legislative design of the programmes. Those didn’t have precedential value before, where a Minister or chief executive was being asked to sign off on a particular policy question where all of the policy intentions were met for someone’s programme and for someone’s funding, but does this particular example sit within the scope of the legislative intent, that is, rightly, law; you are making it law. Do those decisions in the old system now have precedential value? Are they like law? Or are you going to, essentially, reissue all of those, so this person who was able to go on a cruise would not be able to in future?

11:47

Madam Chair—Mr Chair, my apologies.

It’s the year 2026.

The member—from the circumstances that she has outlined—refers to the flexible funding policy, and my intention would be that the flexible funding policy would be one of the first support programmes because of the improvement we’ve already made. There are no rules, there are no guidelines now, around flexible funding. Where there is overseas travel, there is kind of a check and balance, which I think people would expect, but there is no intention to change what the policy is currently, but it is going to be important to put it into a support programme. That’s one of the first that I want to be in a support programme, because we have made improvements from a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, and I want those improvements to be protected.

11:48

Thank you, Mr Chair. Further to what the Minister has said around the review, and I note that she has not responded to how it will be measured—how improvement will be measured—so if there is a way in which it will be measured, it would be useful to hear that. I also want to know what happens in the meantime. This review—the transition period has now increased from three years to five years. The Minister has said that at the end of the five-year period, when this legislation and its effects are reviewed, some support programmes will be completed and in a position to be reviewed, whereas there will be others that will not. That makes sense, but in the meantime, if there is harm that is caused as a result of some of those support programmes, what, then, is the mechanism for feedback and change, particularly given that some of those won’t be part of the review?

Also, would the Minister consider amending this portion to include a requirement for Ministers to implement the report? Currently, as the legislation is drafted, the Minister conducts the review—presumably—the Ministry conducts review, and there is no requirement for it to be informed by disabled people. I wonder whether the Minister would consider including that amendment in this legislation. Also, the requirement then is to consider whether there are any amendments necessary, prepare a report, and then to just present that report to Parliament. Would the Minister consider some sort of binding amendment there to require a Minister to implement the report once it’s published and presented?

11:50

I just want to clarify then the inclusion of support programmes in the five-year review would be—within the transition, my expectation is that all of the support programmes will be drafted and in place. But at the end of five years, there might be one that’s only been in place for three months, for example, so it wouldn’t make sense to include that in the review, because it hasn’t been in place long enough, right? I just want to be clear about that.

I will ask the Ministry of Social Development to put some early consideration into what the starting point might be, in terms of being able to measure those outcomes in five years’ time—I think you raise a good point there, so I will ask for that so that we can make sure we’ve got a starting point. As I said before, the review of the legislation—because it is about reviewing whether or not the legislation has delivered as intended—would of course include disabled people in that. To me, it would make sense in the first stages of that, which includes confirming what the terms of reference for the review would be—I don’t think it’s useful for me in this Chamber now to dictate how that review would work, who would be involved, over what time frame, etc. I would have thought any member in this Chamber and any Minister who’s responsible at that time, given that there is a very strong interest by all of us in improving the lives of disabled people, their carers and families, would want to make sure that those changes are made.

11:52

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Schedule 1 stand part.

11:56

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank members and the Minister for quite a wide-ranging back and forth today, but it’s clarified a fair bit as well. The title of this bill is the Disability Support Services Bill, and it’s reasonably vanilla, but I would include, in brackets, after “Services” and before “Bill”, “(Just the Status Quo)”. This is the “Disability Support Services (Just the Status Quo) Bill”, because the Minister in the chair had the opportunity to transform the Disability Support Services landscape and she has chosen not to. She has outlined her reason why, and that is: “We have a difference in approach.” That’s really what it boils down to.

On this side of the Chamber, we were in the process of transforming Disability Support Services to such a point where the starting question to access services is not “What support you need?” but “What does a good life look like to you?”. Then transforming the processes and the systems that sit behind the funding lines and funding streams to be able to then deliver a package of support that would make meaningful difference to disabled people, carers, and the disability communities more broadly and to ensure that disabled people have more choice and control over the services and supports that they access and that they are supported by the State to live with dignity and independence as far as possible—instead of us as a society moving in that trajectory, all this bill does is codify a system that is fragmented and not working for disabled people and carers. Therein lies my disappointment with this legislation. When we have an opportunity in this Chamber to make things better, all we are doing is legislating for the status quo that we all know doesn’t work.

That is the crux of why I feel that this bill should be titled slightly differently. It could also equally be the “Disability Support Services (Not Transformational) Bill”, because, ultimately, it doesn’t achieve any sort of transformation. The Minister’s point is that once we’re done with another five years of, then, putting into secondary legislation the detail of what is currently available, then we can get to a point of transformation. But I would argue that disabled people have been waiting a very long time for that change—it’s been twenty-odd years since Enabling Good Lives, as a uniquely New Zealand approach, was developed to deal with some significant failures in the sector, in terms of disability support services back then.

Here we are today, where we could also argue that this the “Disability Support Services (Actually Taking us Backwards) Bill”, because the assessment and allocation tools that the Minister has talked about in this committee stage today takes us back to the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t progress us. She has talked about it in terms of increasing consistency—and I would probably agree with her that maybe it does go some way to increasing consistency—but it increases consistency and certainty not in the way that we would have liked, not in an aspirational way to improve lives, just to ensure that everyone gets access to basic supports that don’t actually make a huge difference. Well, not that it doesn’t make a difference to them; it does. It is important funding, but it could have been better. Instead, we’re legislating to bring it down to the lowest common denominator, and that is very disappointing.

I will take the Minister’s point that there are certain changes that have been made, and the select committee supported some changes because of the significant pushback from disabled people—

Pressure.

“Pressure” is a good way to put it. There was significant pressure from disabled people, who had not been consulted at the start of this process. That has now led to some changes that are good, but they don’t go far enough.

I just note that that was probably a third reading speech and that any other contributions won’t be given quite the same largesse as that one was given.

12:02

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve got a question for the Minister for Disability Issues on the commencement date. Does the Minister think that the commencement date is fit for purpose, based on the feedback that we have received from disabled people, who have felt excluded throughout the process and have only had limited ability to give input in the select committee stage through oral submissions?

I ask this because the commencement date in and of itself could give the Minister an opportunity to say, “Let’s pause this. Let’s potentially continue hearing from disabled people”—not just through the select committee stage, which disabled people have talked about; how it was insufficient because it was a truncated select committee process. I’m curious to know whether the Minister is satisfied that the commencement date as it stands adequately takes into account the feedback that she has thoroughly received from disabled people, advocacy groups, and carers that they haven’t been able to co-design this bill with her. Would she be open to amendments to the commencement date to give her a bit more time to adequately engage with disabled people and carers, who can then give input on whether the provisions in this bill actually reflect their aspirations?

Ultimately, I know that, throughout the debate, she dismissed a lot of the concerns by nature of just saying, “Well, nothing is changing.” But that’s kind of the point, right? Disabled people and carers have told us that the status quo isn’t working for them. To simply keep things the same, in my view, does not adequately reflect the feedback we’ve received from disabled people. I am just concerned that the way in which we’ve got this commencement date and this bill and the rush with this process reflects more an aspiration from the Minister to be able to create a legislative framework from disability support services as opposed to actually honouring disabled people’s and carers’ voices along the way.

I’m curious to know if she would be supportive of any tabled amendments we propose in this moment to act in good faith and honour the feedback we’ve received on actually co-designing this bill. As has been noted by both the Green Party and the Labour Party, our commitment has been to scrap it and sort of start the process again, but we don’t have to—we could just delay the commencement date, go back as much as we can to the drawing board, and perhaps refer this back to the select committee and actually do it justice. I guess my question is: why the rush? Why the rush when disabled people have told us that they’d rather us take the time we need to design this well.

For me, I think that would prevent what has happened, actually, which was the Minister coming out of the select committee process and apologising for the grief she had caused to disabled people. Disabled people had a right to be upset about this. I would loathe for the Minister to have to come back and apologise—for example, for ongoing or unintended harm that this bill may be causing to carers and disabled people. So, on the commencement date itself, I just want the Minister to put on the record as to why she thinks there is a rush, despite a multitude and a variety of disabled voices telling us that the process has been fraught from the get-go.

I want to reiterate that I am by no means claiming that there’s a monolithic voice in here, but I would say that I have met National Party, Labour Party, Green Party, and the odd - New Zealand First and ACT Party voters who are disabled who have not supported this process. I don’t think this is so much a partisan sort of issue as it is about a community that has, through its multitude of voices and experiences, told the Government this process is fraught. Why not at least end this legislative process, delay the commencement, so that we can actually, then, potentially go back to the select committee or adequately canvass disabled people’s voices so that whatever comes out of it is fit for purpose.

I just don’t think that, so far, where we’ve got to adequately reflects disabled people’s voices and aspirations. Even if we look at some of the previous parts of the debate, we did not even get adequate engagement—or any engagement—on, for example, how the Minister could ignore the need to consult disabled people’s representatives in the design of disability support services. So, in good faith, I’d asked the Minister to offer us any reflections on whether she’d be open to delaying the commencement, to do this bill right.

12:07

Point of order. Thank you, Mr Chair. I wanted to draw your attention to Speakers’ ruling 127/3, on page 127 of the Speakers’ Rulings—just in relation to your guidance, which I understand wasn’t a ruling, but it leaves us in some trouble here, because we have a number of engaged spokespeople from the Opposition who wish to give concluding remarks on this bill.

Speakers Hartley, Robertson, and Tisch have all affirmed the latitude of the Opposition, in making speeches on the preliminary clauses at the end of a debate which summarise and make concluding remarks about a bill, about the issues that they have raised within the committee’s consideration of a bill. I just wanted to clarify, given that it’s a new practice in this Parliament for the chairs of committees to give not rulings but sort of guidance to members, which is by and large helpful, whether your guidance there is that spokespeople from the Opposition should not give concluding sorts of remarks in the committee stage.

Say, in the 2004 example, where Speaker Hartley affirmed that position, that was in a debate where the Government had called repetition on members after 18 calls that the Opposition had made in concluding remarks around a preliminary clause. I just want to clarify the level at which you’re giving that guidance and whether it is, in fact, a ruling which disagrees with the remarks of Speakers Hartley, Robertson, and Tisch.

Absolutely not. Any wise and experienced speaker will ensure that if they are speaking to the title and commencement, they will make more than a passing reference to it at different stages during a five-minute presentation. There is always some latitude. Also, the amount of repetition—if a series of speakers stand up and say the same thing. Each presentation will be taken on its merits, but any wise speaker, especially when they’re the third speaker in the series, would make some fairly constant reference to title and commencement, or to invite a closure motion.

12:09

Mr Chair, thank you. I would like to speak to the title of this bill, the Disability Support Services Bill. It should be titled the “Enabling Good Lives (Constituting and Reforming the Legislation) Bill”.

I’m proposing to the House that that title should have been commensurate with what was in the bill, because this bill should have given effect to the policy that is transformational and would have impacted the lives of disabled people in Aotearoa and was something that New Zealand could have been proud of on the world stage. But, in fact, this bill does the opposite of that; it reverses the policy that disabled people have been calling for for 20 years. I would suggest to the committee that this is the stage that it should vote with the Opposition to not only change the title of the bill but also reject the rest of it, because this is a bill that changes New Zealand’s framework for the better but introduces a policy that is all wrong.

I find it difficult to talk about this bill. This is a bill which is not in my specialist area. I commend the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan for her work in this area. It is not my area, but this is the area of Government reform which I find the hardest to see and hear in this House, because I think it is all in the wrong direction. I think if there is one thing that should be bipartisanly agreed in this Chamber, it is that disabled people should be able to live with dignity in a country like Aotearoa and that when they do not have the means to provide for themselves, the State should step in. That is a fundamental belief of mine, and it should be carried forward in any country that likes to call itself one where people have equitable and equal access to rights as citizens. This is more fundamental than any other change, I believe, that this Government has made, because this says that we are moving from a system where disabled people and our most vulnerable can rely on a social safety net—one that was agreed after war in the 1940s in most liberal democracies that we like to compare ourselves to—to one where they cannot, where there is uncertainty in the law regarding the sorts of services that they will be provided with, and where there is almost entirely ministerial discretion. It will come down to “first in, first served” and the most in need gets it without any kind of fundamental relationship to the idea that people with disabilities and their families should be able to rely on a fundamental standard of dignity with which to live their lives.

I walked out on to the street in Manurewa the other day. It was about 12 o’clock, and there was a chap there—his name is Hone—who was waiting for a taxi to pick him up. He used a crutch, and he had a small carry-on suitcase with him for the things that he needed to go about his day. When I walked out again after my meeting at about 1.20 p.m., he was still waiting there. I had a conversation with him about why he was waiting. He said that the taxi won’t pick him up and that he’s spoken to the taxi driver twice, but because of the changes to Total Mobility, he understands why the driver won’t pick him up. He understands why the driver has other jobs to do, he understands why it’s not profitable for the driver, and yet he waited an hour and 20 minutes.

The changes that are happening in this system mean that people like that are living worse lives. This bill does that. This should be a different bill. This should be a bill which outlines the New Zealand Government’s long-term commitment to people with disabilities. It should outline our bipartisan long-term intentions to enable them to live lives with dignity. It does not do that.

No question. Third reading.

I hear the Government asking “What is the question?” My question is: where is the humanity in this bill? Where is the commitment to the principles that the National Party espouses and will be espousing on the campaign stumps? We will hear them say that they have compassion for people in Aotearoa. We will hear them say that they believe in the kind of future for young people where they want to stay here and build good lives. This is it too. It’s not just about the people who can afford to provide for themselves, it’s not just about the people who can aspire to own a home and live the kind of life that we would all want them to, and it’s also about their brothers, their sisters, and their kaumātua and kuia who cannot provide for themselves. At the end of the day, if they cannot rely on the State—whichever colour it is; blue or red—to fight for those people and to advocate for them and to stand in when they cannot provide for themselves, then that is a fundamental change in the way that we do things here in Aotearoa. This is that bill.

Ms Williams, you’ve taken a liberty. I’ll take a—oh, honourable Minister.

12:14

We won’t be changing the name and title of this piece of legislation. We will not be changing the commencement date, and I want to explain why. It’s because the lives of disabled people in New Zealand are frankly not good enough. They are not served well enough by not just the Disability Support Service but Government agencies across the board. That’s why it is important that this legislation is passed so that continued improvements can be made to the lives of disabled people, their families, and carers. In terms of the principles of Enabling Good Lives, they are very much at the heart of this legislation, which is why it is important it is passed and that it commences. Significantly, some of the improvements that have already been made by this Government in increasing funding over both Budget 2024 and 2025 in areas of flexible funding, where there are now no rules and no guidelines, that are having a significant improvement over the lives of disabled people—this is important that we pass this legislation and we get on with the improvements that disabled people deserve.

12:15

I move, That debate on this question now close.

12:18

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill and reports that it has made progress on the bill. The committee has also considered the Disability Support Services Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

12:19

I move, That the Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

As I’ve said before, our Government believes that the welfare system should be a safety net for those who need it most. It should be there to support people when they generally need assistance, while encouraging those who can support themselves or who can reasonably be supported by their families to do so. New Zealanders deserve a welfare system that is firm, fair, and simple, and that’s what this bill does.

The Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill amends the Social Security Act of 2018 to support fiscal sustainability in the welfare system by better targeting financial assistance to those most in need. As I outlined in the first reading, the bill has two policy components. Firstly, the bill tightens the eligibility criteria for jobseeker support and the equivalent emergency benefit for 18- and 19-year-olds by introducing a parental assistance test. When this initiative is implemented, young people will need to meet the parental assistance test criteria before they can access or continue to access one of those benefits. The initiative will reinforce the expectation that young people who are not in employment, education, or training should be financially supported by their parents instead of relying on the welfare system.

There has been an increase in benefit dependency among young people. As of 2017, modelling has indicated that 18- and 19-year-olds on jobseeker support were projected to spend an average of 12 future years on a main benefit. However, more recent modelling indicates that this estimate has income. However, more recent modelling indicates that this estimate has increased to an average of 21 future years supported by a main benefit. That is why our Government is building a more active welfare system that supports more young people into work. Going on welfare when you’re young is a trap, and it’s not the future our Government wants for young people.

To meet the parental assistance test criteria, a young person will need to demonstrate that they have a support gap with their parents, meaning they cannot reasonably be expected to rely on their parents for financial support and/or their parents’ incomes fall below the income limit. The support will be there for those who need it under this test.

Secondly, the bill targets the accommodation supplement more tightly for some homeowners. It increases the minimum weekly contribution some homeowners must make before they are eligible to receive the accommodation supplement.

I would like to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its careful consideration of the bill and to those members of the public and organisations who provided both written and oral submissions. The select committee received a number of submissions that commented on the parental support gap for jobseeker support. To be clear, the parental support gap test has been designed as a safety net to ensure that where parental support is not available or cannot reasonably be relied on, those young people will remain eligible for support. This test allows for a young person to provide relevant evidence to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to determine a parental support gap.

Some submitters raised concerns about the lack of details in the bill around the parental support gap test, and I acknowledge those concerns. The detail will be set out in secondary legislation, as provided for in the Social Security Act. This will be gazetted and published in the House to set clear and consistent guidelines for verification of parental support gaps. The secondary legislation will include the types of evidence that MSD can accept, criteria for who can verify a supporting statement, and the circumstances when MSD can nominate someone to verify a parental support gap.

There were concerns about the impacts of the policy on those with disabilities. Firstly, impacted young people will continue to have access to supplementary payments from MSD, such as a disability allowance, where they are eligible for support. I want to make it clear that the Supported Living Payment is not in scope of this policy. This means no parental assistance test is required for young people who have a health condition, injury, or disability that permanently and severely restricts them in their ability to work.

Rather than being on the jobseeker support, young people will have better future outcomes if they remain close to the labour market. To do this, the parental assistance test will apply to all grounds of jobseeker support to encourage young people into employment, education, or training.

For the accommodation supplement entry threshold change, many submitters were concerned that older and low-income homeowners may be impacted. I want to reassure the public that the entry threshold increase is not applied to New Zealand superannuation, the veterans pension, the Supported Living Payment and emergency benefit equivalent recipients or their partners. Our Government acknowledges that the circumstances of these recipients are less likely to change and they are likely to require longer-term social assistance. Generally, homeowners with the highest accommodation costs and those with the most support will not be affected by the entry threshold change.

Several technical amendments were agreed through the select committee stage, and these provide greater clarity and ensure the legislation operates as intended. After its consideration of the bill, the Social Services and Community Committee has recommended the bill proceed.

This bill ensures that financial support is targeted to where it is needed most. It encourages young people to move into work, study, or training. We will continue to support New Zealanders who have no other means of support available to them, but when individuals or their parents are able to provide that support, our expectation is that they should do so, not other taxpayers. I’m confident that these changes will lead to better long-term outcomes for 18- and 19-year-olds and to support being provided to homeowners who need it the most. I look forward to seeing this bill through the remaining stages of the parliamentary process, and I recommend and commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed.

12:26

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. The Minister for Social Development and Employment in her contribution talked about it being firm and fair, and statements like “a more active … system that supports young people into work.” Labour opposes the Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill. This bill is yet another attack on people who are doing their best but are struggling to get by because of this Government’s choices and that this Government is doing nothing to help them. Every day this Government is in power, their choices make it harder for people. Instead of helping New Zealanders get ahead, we’ve got Christopher Luxon promising to fix the cost of living while his Government continuously makes choices that are making it worse, and this bill is one of those bad choices. We’ve already seen National slash temporary additional support and make it harder for emergency housing, and this week we learnt that thousands of pensioners and veterans lost access to their winter energy payment because the Minister was in such a rush to put through that legislation and make life harder for people. Now we have this bill.

I focus on the impacts of this bill on young people, but I want to note how detrimental the changes to the accommodation supplement will be for low-income earners in a cost of living crisis as well. But turning to young people, young people are suffering because there are no jobs for them. According to the Salvation Army, in the year to September 2025, the number of young people not in education, training, or employment was higher than it has been in 20 years. Many of these young people need jobseeker support to get by, and this Government wants to take that support away.

So what does this bill do? This bill makes it harder for rangatahi aged 18 to 19 years to access jobseeker. These are young adults stepping out into the world and trying to make independent lives for themselves, but this bill cuts them off at their knees and undermines their ability to exercise their own agency and develop as adults. Many have already had a lot of negative experiences in their lives. Moving into independence is a crucial step, but this bill undermines it.

I want to point out for the House the Government’s own document that summarises this situation well, and I want to read into the Hansard because I think that every member of the House should hear this. The regulatory impact statement says, “In terms of impact on young people and their families, the costs will significantly outweigh the benefits.” That’s not the Labour Party saying this; this is the Ministry of Social Development that is saying this, and the Government proceeds anyway. We oppose this bill.

The Minister for Social Development and Employment acknowledged those that had taken the time to make submissions and highlighted some of the issues and concerns in those submissions. Well, I note for the House today that 933 submissions were in scope and received by the select committee; only one supported the bill—one. That’s not a close call; that’s a verdict.

Let me tell the House what some of those submissions said, because they deserve to be heard, even if this Government chose not to listen and to dismiss those concerns. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, who represent over 370,000—

Ha, ha!

Ha, ha!

Oh, look at the laughs and the eye rolls on the other side because I mentioned that dirty word “union” to the other side. Well, they represent over 370,000 workers, and told the committee plainly that the bill will not achieve the stated intention of reducing benefit dependency among young people. In fact, they highlighted that youth unemployment has risen significantly. Oh, Minister for Youth over there—maybe you might want to listen to this. But what they were at pains to point out is that this is not because young people have suddenly become lazy or uninterested in working; it’s because they are trying to find work and there are just no jobs.

On top of this, young people generally have fewer skills and less experience simply because of their age, and the work that they are trying to find is concentrated in industries like hospitality and retail. Well, what’s happened in hospitality since this Government came into power? They have been some of the most hardest hit industries in the economic downturns.

I want to turn to the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, who also detailed the changes for young people finding work. Like we’ve heard across the submissions, they pointed out that this bill will lead to increased financial hardship among whānau who become financially responsible for young people unable to access work. Their first recommendation was simply this: do not proceed with it. Did the Minister listen? No.

What about the Salvation Army? They have worked for over 140 years, supporting around 130,000 people every year. They told the committee that this will only add complexity into what is already a highly complex system for vulnerable people to have to navigate and will make life harder. They also pointed out that this will reduce young peoples’ access to the very services they need to get jobs—that is employment support and training, things like helping with literacy and getting a driver’s licence, which we know are the reasons that stop young people from getting work in the first place. So the Minister in her contribution said that this will be about a more active system that supports young people into work, but what submitters told us is that if they are not on the jobseeker benefit, then they have no access those very supports that they need to help them get into these jobs or “ghost jobs”, because where are all the jobs, Minister?

Then we have the Citizens Advice Bureau. In their submission, they referred to the Government’s stated aims, which are to reduce benefit dependency, and they showed how this is at odds with the reality. Most young people who receive jobseeker support are already actively seeking work. They gave an example of Maia: “Maia had a job she enjoyed in hospitality, but the business closed due to the recession and she lost her job. She has been looking for work, but due to limited opportunities, she has enrolled to study. She has run out of funds and with no work needs to apply for support.” So the Citizens Advice Bureau emphasised what other submitters said: “The young people who come to CAB are not choosing benefits over employment. They are navigating insecure labour markets, rising housing costs, increasing food prices, transport barriers, mental health challenges, and limited opportunities.”

I also turn to the submissions that we received for the impact that this will have on Māori. That was from Te Hunga Roia Māori—the Māori Law Society—and Pou Tangata on behalf of the National Iwi Chairs Forum. In Te Hunga Roia Māori’s submission, they talked about how this had been developed once again without any meaningful engagement with Māori, despite the foreseeable impacts on Māori communities. As they state, this is “inconsistent with the Crown’s obligations under Te Tiriti … Meaningful engagement requires Māori participation at a formative stage of policy development”, not after things have already been settled. They submitted that the bill should be withdrawn. We agree with that—the Government didn’t.

Pou Tangata also said that forcing rangatahi to legally declare their parents cannot support them places an undue burden on whānau relationships, creating internal friction and shame within households already under financial duress, and ignores the reality that Māori communities face under the national employment rate, which is that the Māori unemployment rate is double that of the rest of New Zealand—the general unemployment rate.

The Minister talked briefly about the impact on people with disabilities, and that came through again strongly in the submissions. Just like she ignored the submissions in the previous bill, she’s ignored them here too. These are some of the reasons why submitters and Labour oppose this bill. The most effective way to support young people into employment is education, training, and tailored employment services; not punitive income tests, not parental means testing. We would invest in young people on this side of the House. This Government is divesting from them. So 930 submitters told this committee the bill should not proceed. Labour agrees with them, but that side of the House just ignored it.

12:36

The National Party is all about breaking the basics and ruining the future for young people. This bill is just the latest example of their ongoing beneficiary bashing attacks on the poor, while they cut thousands of jobs and leave children growing up in poverty with worsening material conditions. That is not my view; that is a fact. The Government has been told that as a result of decisions that they have made, more children are growing up in households where they do not have enough to meet their basic essentials.

Tell me how cutting benefits for thousands of sick, injured, and disabled young people fixes the basics. Tell me how pretending that sick and injured and disabled young people who have been deemed by Work and Income to not be able to work full time will just magically be able to transition into training or education. Tell me how a young person who is seeing a hiring freeze on our public healthcare system will be wanting to go into a healthcare profession, only to find themselves with a massive student loan and no job to go into. None of the provisions of this bill help address the basics, which is that we’ve got a Government that has been focused on cutting jobs, rather than creating them; that has been focused on worsening material conditions for students, rather than improving them; that has been focused on stripping the sick and injured and disabled people of the support that they need, instead of improving it.

The Minister, in her previous speech on the previous bill, conceded that disabled people have it hard. Well, then, why cut thousands of sick and injured and disabled peoples’ income support as part of this bill? Thousands of people on jobseeker, health, injury, and disability benefits will be affected as part of this bill. For any member of the Government who will say, “Oh, they can just go on the supported living payment.”, I urge you to go out to the streets. Talk to a single bloody beneficiary for once. Talk to them about the challenges that they face getting on the supported living payment. Talk to them about the fact that they face humongous hurdles trying to get into a benefit that has huge barriers, not just because it requires you to be able to afford the cost of going to a GP—it requires you to go to a GP that, for example, will actually be cognisant and competent on disability issues. And it requires Work and Income to choose to not challenge a doctor—a trained medical professional—with a board that can often have people who haven’t practised for years to, basically, decline the comments from a doctor. It should come as no surprise that we’ve got members from the ACT Party, for example, further wanting to restrict access to the supported living payment.

I’ll tell you who exactly is having their incomes taken away from them. This is coming off the select committee’s own documents. We’ve got people who are facing psychological or psychiatric conditions—that’s almost 70 percent of the people who are on jobseeker, injury, health condition, or disability benefits. So much for a Government that cares about our youth mental health crisis. We’ve got people who are facing cardiovascular disorders, who have faced accidents that have left them unable to work, complications of trauma, pregnancy-related issues, congenital conditions including cancer, infectious and parasitic diseases, muscular skeletal system disorder, respiratory disorders, genitourinary disorders, blood and blood forming organs, skin disorders, digesting system disorders, nervous system disorders, immune system disorders, metabolic and endocrine disorders, intellectual disability sensory disorders, and other conditions.

Tell me how cutting the benefits of people who are facing those conditions does anything to fix the basics rather than ruining their lives. Cutting income support for people who are sick, injured, and disabled worsens their health conditions. I find it so galling and telling that the Minister, when I’ve asked her in question time about this very same serious issue, she goes, “Oh, well, people can still access hardship grants for food”. You’re telling families that they should go and line up at food banks and Work and Income to continue to survive while their kids are sick, injured, or disabled? What kind of safety net is that? What kind of future are we trying to provide for young people who are unwell? Their health conditions and their injuries will not improve as a result of cutting that very same income support. You will worsen them.

It doesn’t take an expert to know that if you’re injured or sick and you deprive people of that support, you’ll be leaving them worse off. Then the Minister talked about “Oh, well, don’t worry, there’s a parental income test”. How much is the parental income test? It’s $67,000 total as a household. That means that if you’re deemed to earn as a household over $67,000—that means, for example, two parents’ combined incomes—you won’t be eligible for a benefit. Tell me what family in this cost of greed crisis can actually afford their basic essentials with two parents, perhaps two children, with a total combined income of $67,000. Not many. It just shows that this Government is completely out of touch with the lived realities of working families. Putting more pressure on parents who are simply trying their best while also stripping those parents of the support that their children would have been eligible for before they turn 18—it just does not make sense.

If we look at some other components of the bill that cut the accommodation supplement for low-income homeowners, it tells you exactly who this Government is serving. They have rushed legislation to support property investors, but when it comes to low-income people who have maybe finally saved enough for their first home—yep, we’re stripping them of support. How much? On average, $40 a week. That $40 a week for a low-income family is actually the difference between being able to keep the lights on or put food on the table. The people who they’re cutting support from include people who are in work—in fact, the large majority of people who are affected by this, of a single group, are non-beneficiaries. They’re not just targeting people on the benefit: they’re targeting working families.

It also includes solo parents, who perhaps finally managed to build a life, to get a home, and are just trying to pay the mortgage off. It includes people who have become injured or sick as well and have had to go on a benefit temporarily. We’re not talking about the 18- and 19-year-olds who the Minister continuously and erroneously claims that they’re going to be—she kind of presents it as 20 years continuously on the benefit. We’re talking about people who may just need support for a handful of months while they get better. But I guess it’s OK because, at the end of the day, the Minister says that she’s targeting support to those who need it while claiming $50,000-plus of accommodation benefits herself. That is not serious. You can’t take a Minister seriously when she says, “We’re targeting support to those who need it the most.” while she cuts income support for those who actually needed it, and she claims tens of thousands of dollars to pay for a property that she does not have debt on.

Shame on this Government for showing us who they’re serving, which is not everyday working families. Those 18- and 19-year-olds on a benefit, yeah, they’re supported by and large by working parents—working parents whose lives this Government is choosing to make harder. Again, I just cannot see how Government members on the other side can give us their 10-second contribution telling us that this is a bill about fixing the basics and building the future, as though it was a ChatGPT-produced speech, when they’re doing the exact opposite. They cannot even tell us how exactly this bill will reduce the number of years that someone spends on a benefit, other than by just simply taking that benefit away. It’s not because they’ve created better employment outcomes, and we know that. Young people are applying for countless jobs; we’ve got news stories of jobs that have had hundreds, if not over a thousand applicants.

We know that in this economic system, unemployment is baked in by design. No matter whether it’s Labour or National in Government, unemployment has been a fixture of the economy. You will not tell us that you’ve got a National Party that wants to reduce unemployment to zero. It’s not correct. They don’t want to—they never wanted to. They have never, ever stated that their intention is to reduce unemployment to as close to zero percent as is possible. They have always intended to have a group unemployed, living below the poverty line, and desperate to take any job no matter how poor the conditions are. When you compound that with a legislative agenda that has worsened conditions for low-income workers, it tells you that this isn’t a Government that is ruling for working families but instead for their mates, who are actually benefiting from the policies that they’re putting forward—whether it’s people in the fossil fuel industry, or whether it’s property investors.

The Green Party is committed to repealing this legislation and building a safety net that actually provides tailored support for young people who want to go into education, who want to go into training, who want to get a job—and a safety need that honours the dignity of people who are injured, who are sick, and who are disabled, rather than taking those very benefits away. I dare for those members of the other side to justify taking benefits away from cancer patients or people who are struggling with psychiatric conditions. Justify it. Look at the select committee report and tell me that you don’t know that you’re actually taking the benefits of thousands of people who are sick, injured, or disabled away. Tell me that you don’t know. Justify it—I dare you.

12:46

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Firstly, in response to the previous member Ricardo Menéndez March’s comments, this bill does not take away the supported living payment for those with the likes of cancer and a lot of the conditions that the previous member spoke about, or the disability support. There were submitters that came to us who had been whipped up in a fear that this would happen by, quite honestly, members from that side of the House. That is not what is happening with this piece of legislation.

We cannot unlock the potential of the next generation if we say that it’s OK to be at home and not in education or work. That is completely not acceptable. This side of the House and the ACT Party has way bigger ambitions and goals for our young people, and we will not allow them to just sit at home. If you’re a student and you’re in education, your parents’ income is tested before you get student allowance. How is it fair that an 18-year-old could get the jobseeker payment and that not be income tested?

We are not saying that you can’t go on jobseeker if you don’t have parental support; we are merely saying that if you do, and you’re living at home, and you’re with your parents, you have to have that income tested. I think that is actually fair and reasonable, because we can’t have people not in education and not in work. They still have the other supports that the Ministry of Social Development offer around helping getting young people into work, which I think is a really important thing to note: CV help, matching them with employers—all of that still exists under this legislation.

When it comes to the accommodation support, yes, the criteria has changed, and that means that some people who own their own home may have a reduction or will have a reduction in the amount that they get for their accommodation support. But think about the people who don’t own their own home—the ones that are way far behind. They’re going to be receiving an extra $30 a week, I think it is.

No, it’s like $12.

Well, I think it’s between $10 and $30, depending on who they are.

You’re taking $40 away.

Well, we can clarify that. But they will be receiving an additional payment in the next coming months. I think that is really important to acknowledge that nothing has been cut here. We’re actually redistributing money to those that really desperately need it, and we are not going to incentivise staying on a benefit if you’re 18, because we actually care about the next generation. We want to unlock their potential, and we’re not going to do that if they’re sitting on the couch and playing PlayStation at home with mum and dad. I commend this bill to the House.

12:49

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table pages 12 and 13 of the advice given to us by the Ministry of Social Development that shows that there are thousands of people with health conditions affected by this bill.

As a select committee document, that is readily available to all members.

Not to ACT, by the sounds of it.

I’m not aware if it’s been published, but it seems like they’re not aware of it.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection?

Yes.

There is.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill. One of the first priorities for New Zealand First is the employment of New Zealanders. That is, in our planning, a priority and one of the first things we think about as a party in this Government.

I was able to sit on the Social Services and Community Committee for this. We heard 87 oral submissions, and over 935 submissions in total. I do agree with the Minister: the welfare system is a safety net, and the first priority here is looking at the jobseeker—it’s about the eligibility criteria for jobseeker support and the emergency benefits for those aged 18 and 19 years old. In the first reading speech, I talked about our young people being our future, and they are the people that we want to see, firstly, in work, or education or training. That’s the principle here—that we want to see our young people either in work and, if they can’t find work, in education and training. We do not want to see our young people on jobseeker benefits and becoming dependent on benefits. What we learnt and have learnt is that if young people start on benefits at a young age, their dependency can be up to decades. As a country, we want to be a productive country, and to be a productive country we need our youngest and brightest people to be in training, education, or they need to be in work. So it’s a very simple process from this side of the House.

The second part of this bill was the entry threshold for the accommodation supplement. Again, it was very clear that this hadn’t been reviewed since 1993. Obviously, the threshold here is increasing from 30 percent to 40 percent, but, proudly, New Zealand First want to highlight that it will not impact New Zealand superannuation and it will not impact those on the veterans pension.

This is a very common-sense update to this bill, getting our young people into work. That’s what we strive for in this country and on this side of the Government. Hearing from the Opposition, it sounds like they want everybody on the couch and going to the ATM every week to get their money. On that, I commend it to the House.

A five-minute split call—Oriini Kaipara.

12:52

I give rise to the voices of those who are looking after rangatahi on the front lines, especially in Tāmaki-makau-rau. The question is, where do they go? The Minister and their Government still cannot answer that. When an 18-year-old has no job, no income, this Government is asking, “How much do your parents earn? How much do mum and dad earn?” I’m asking something very different: “Are you OK? Are you safe? How can I help, and what can we do right now to stop you from being homeless?”

That’s the difference between this bill and my youth homelessness prevention bill. At first reading, I warned this House about the assumption sitting underneath this very policy: that every rangatahi has parents who can support them, that every home is safe, that every whānau has money to spare. Well, guess what! They don’t. A parent’s income on paper isn’t a home, it doesn’t mean there’s a spare bedroom, and it doesn’t mean that relationship is safe. In Tāmaki-makau-rau, where whānau are already stretched by rent, food, power, transport, medical and dental bills, even school costs, it certainly doesn’t mean that there’s money left over to support another adult.

When you take income away from one rangatahi, where are they supposed to go? If they end up on nan’s couch, you haven’t solved benefit dependency. If they end up sleeping in a car, you haven’t created independence. If they end up in emergency housing or, worse, out on the streets, you have not saved the Crown money. If they end up on the street, every single one of us in this House has failed them.

That’s why I introduced my youth homelessness prevention bill, because I refuse to accept that we have to wait until our rangatahi is homeless before the State acts. My bill starts earlier. See the warning signs, step in, keep them housed, connect them to community, and then help them into education and into training, and then into mahi—into work. That is prevention. That is what social investment should actually look like, not removing a young person from one Government spreadsheet and declaring success, because getting someone off a benefit isn’t the same thing as getting somebody into a job, and it sure as hell isn’t success if we get them into homelessness.

I’m putting this Government on notice. At committee stage, I will ask this House to remove the parental income regime and, if the Government refuses, I will move amendments to protect our rangatahi. If taking away their income puts them at risk of homelessness, they should keep their support. If the Government says they can go home, prove that home exists; prove that it is safe, prove that it is actually available to them. And if the Minister genuinely believes that that this policy will improve young people’s lives, measure what happens to them. Tell us how many enter into work and how many leave work. Tell us how many enter into education and leave successfully, and tell us how many end up needing emergency housing or homeless, because there’s something seriously wrong with the direction that we are heading in. This Parliament is considering laws that make it harder for some rangatahi to access income when they bloody need it, and laws that make it easier to move people on once homelessness becomes visible in our public places. You think about that: make it harder to stay afloat and then, if they end up on the street, move them on. That’s not a pathway forward.

We offer one. It exists in this House right now. Don’t wait for homelessness; prevent it. House our rangatahi, back our whānau, and intervene early. Give our rangatahi, our young people, enough stability to get back into mahi—to get a mahi—

Now, the member’s got one minute left. She should refer what happened at select committee, which is the real purpose of the second reading.

I’m nearly done, Mr Speaker, thank you. Get them into mahi, education, and training, and stop measuring success by how many people we can remove from a benefit. Measure success by how many rangatahi never become homeless in the first place. And to every member preparing to vote this bill in, when a rangatahi loses their income, when home isn’t safe, when mum and dad aren’t an option, where do they go? If you can’t answer that question, you have no business taking their safety net away.

Just reminding that member that a second reading speech is required to make reference to what happened at select committee, as well as other contextual matters. Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day, and the House is adjourned until 2.00 p.m. today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.58 p.m. (Thursday)

This early draft is automatically published - it is not yet complete and reviewed.

14:00

Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King 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.

14:01

Next week, the House will consider more portfolios in the Estimates debate, and make progress on the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill.

On behalf of the shadow Leader of the House, just wondering if there will be a members’ day next week? Can we have confirmation of that, please?

The members’ days will be progressing as planned.

14:02 · to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs

Will he introduce legislation to prohibit the supermarket duopoly from charging excessive prices, like Australia has done; if not, why not?

The Government agrees that New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. The question is what to do about it. Banning excessive pricing sounds attractive in theory, but working out what constitutes an excessive price is much harder in practice, as the Australians are discovering. Our focus is on the underlying problem: too little competition. We have taken significant steps to remove barriers to entry and to strengthen competition, and we have undertaken detailed analysis of structural reform. The analysis continues to inform the Government’s work to deliver greater competition.

Has this Government managed to attract a third competitor to significantly disrupt the market, by pleading to overseas investors, yet?

This Government continues to work on removing those barriers to entry. The good news is, as the Annual Grocery Report released by the Commerce Commission detailed, there is competition in the market—not adequate, but it’s growing, when you look at the arrival of mid-sized supermarkets, when you look at the arrival of Costco, and when you look at the arrival of various online options.

Does he think the excess profits made by the supermarket duopoly, as described by the Commerce Commission, are fair?

We believe that New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. That’s what we’re focused on fixing; that’s why we’re looking at competition; that’s why we’re turning over every stone, right throughout the sector; and that is why the Minister for Economic Growth continues with her analysis and cost-benefit analysis work, which she expects to report back before the end of the parliamentary term.

How are supermarkets making excess profits, as reported by the Commerce Commission, if not at the expense of consumers, who are paying excessive prices?

As I said previously, we as a Government believe New Zealanders are paying too much for their groceries, and that is why we are focused squarely on getting a better deal for New Zealanders. We’ve opened up fast track to supermarkets, we’ve created a nationwide building consent pathway, and we’ve made it easier to replicate supermarket designs. We will continue the work, and already we are seeing some good progress being made.

Supplementary.

Supplementary question. He’s had three.

The Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Thank you very much.

Sore loser!

Don’t be jealous, honey.

Please, don’t refer to me in those endearing terms. That’s not going to—

Get out—get out!

That’ll do; we’ll carry on.

Go home, honey.

See, there he goes again. Does the Minister consider—[Interruption]

One person speaking during a question.

Does the Minister consider it wise public policy to charge a fee for charging too much when that regime requires years of resolution in the courts before anybody might see any benefit at the checkout, if at all, and is the Minister aware that a serious political party has a full-scale policy to break up the supermarkets to fix excessive prices—namely, the policy of New Zealand First?

I am aware of different policy propositions that have been put forward around excessive profits, particularly from the primary questioner, and many commentators have said their policy is simply unworkable.

How can he credibly claim that in areas like Auckland or densely populated areas across the country, new supermarkets will be able to spring up when there’s already a saturation of the duopoly in many neighbourhoods with little physical space for new competitors?

As I’ve already articulated, and as was reported dutifully in the Annual Grocery Report released in the middle of the year by the Commerce Commission, there is a lot of work to do, which we are committed to doing. But, more importantly, we are seeing some positive signs—some positive signs—of competition, when you look at another Costco coming into South Auckland, when you look at mid-sized supermarkets competing, when you look at Chemist Warehouse and how that competes on certain categories, and when you look on increasing options around online offerings for New Zealand consumers.

Point of order. I seek leave of the House to table a letter of exchange between Chlöe Swarbrick and the leader of New Zealand First where the former asked the latter to adopt her supermarkets policy, and the latter said that while we have long advocated eating greens, on this occasion they should consider adopting a full-scale policy to break up the supermarkets and adopt our policy. These are the documents here; can I table them, please?

Well, that’s up to the House. It’s unusual because they’re already in the public record.

No, they’re not.

Leave is sought. Is there any objection to that course of action?

Yes.

There is none.

No, there was—there was.

Well, speak up; I didn’t hear.

I was right here.

Well, this would be one time in nearly three years that I haven’t been able to hear the member. My apologies, but we’re moving on.

Are supermarket profits more important than helping struggling families to put food on the table by urgently legislating to put a cap on excess prices?

As I have articulated clearly enough, we think New Zealanders pay too much for their groceries. That is why the Commerce Commission has consistently pointed to the lack of competition, and that is the area this Government is resolutely focused on. But the good news is we’re seeing some positive signs, and that is including grocery prices increasing just 1.9 percent in the year to 31 July. We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s a big improvement from where we were at three or four years ago.

14:09 · to the Minister of Finance

What recent reports has she seen on New Zealand’s capital intensity?

14:10

Machinery, equipment, technology, and other capital assets are hugely important for economic performance, as more capital per worker means higher productivity, higher wages, and higher living standards. I have seen a recent report from the OECD confirming that New Zealand has a low rate of capital per worker compared to other advanced economies. That fact has long been known, but this Government decided to do something about it. In Budget 2025, we introduced a tax incentive for businesses to purchase new machinery, equipment, and other capital assets—that is the Investment Boost policy.

What are the benefits of Investment Boost?

The Treasury and Inland Revenue advised that Investment Boost would lower the cost of capital for businesses by around 5 percent, increase investment in business assets, and reduce the tax impost on domestic capital investment for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Over the next 20 years, it is expected to increase GDP and raise labour productivity and wages. Officials advise that Investment Boost was likely the most cost-effective tax policy available to support growth, productivity, and living standards. Robyn Walker, tax partner at Deloitte, said of Investment Boost that, “Overall, this is a really positive change for businesses.”; and Russell McVeagh said that Investment Boost is a credible demonstration of the Government’s focus on driving economic growth and investment in New Zealand infrastructure.

How much is the reduction in tax for New Zealand businesses?

Well, Budget 2025 documents show that, in the current fiscal year, Investment Boost is expected to reduce taxes on New Zealand businesses by $1.6 billion. Next year, it is expected to reduce businesses’ taxes by $1.7 billion, and the following year by $1.3 billion. That means that any policy to scrap Investment Boost would be an increase in tax on New Zealand businesses. Worse, it would be an increase in tax for businesses who are doing exactly what the country needs them to be doing, which is investing in the machinery, tools, farm equipment, vehicles, industrial buildings, and other productive assets that will raise wages for New Zealand workers; workers that some parties in this House claim to represent.

For how long has Investment Boost been running?

Well, Investment Boost began on 22 May last year, so it’s been running for just over a year, and the impacts are expected to build up overtime as firms make long-term investment decisions. But we will get an initial snapshot of how Investment Boost has been used after the 31 March next year when businesses will have filed their tax returns for the 2025-2026 tax year. I’ve seen a statement from Robyn Walker, who is a highly respected tax expert, saying, “The proposal to repeal Investment Boost before there has been time to properly evaluate its effectiveness is disappointing … The ongoing history of political flip-flopping on tax settings will continue to negatively affect New Zealand’s ability to be seen as a stable location for investment.”

14:13 · to the Minister for Energy

Is it still his intention that the Government signs a contract with a provider for an LNG import terminal before the election?

on behalf of the Minister for Energy: Yes, it remains the Government’s intention to sign a contract with a provider before the election on the basis that the contract meets the Crown’s requirements and delivers value for money for New Zealanders. We are progressing this because in 2024 this country saw exactly what a dry year does when there is no backup: wholesale prices went up above $800 per megawatt hour, the aluminium smelter cut production, businesses closed permanently, and thousands of New Zealanders lost their jobs. You obviously cannot run an economy on a weather forecast. Since we announced in February that we were proceeding with liquefied natural gas (LNG), I am advised that the wholesale future electricity prices at the end of July for 2028 and 2029 have already fallen from $170 to $125 per megawatt hour, a nearly 30 percent reduction in wholesale electricity prices. This is the market responding to certainty. A dry year occurs every four years on average and they are difficult to predict. I am advised that LNG is the fastest, cheapest, and most flexible way to keep the lights on, protect jobs, and take pressure off power bills, and this Government is getting on and delivering it.

Why is he pressing ahead with an LNG import terminal when advice the Ombudsman forced his Government to release showed it may not reduce power prices—indeed, could increase gas and electricity prices—and may not be needed to maintain security of supply?

Well, what I can infer to the member that will increase electricity prices in this country is banning oil and gas and stopping gas flowing to make electricity. The reason why we are in this position is we do not have sufficient gas to be able to make electricity in a dry year. This Government has taken the leadership to put in place the fastest and cheapest mechanism in order to produce electricity in a dry year, which is the importation of LNG, and that is what we’re doing. Why? Because we care about Kiwi households and businesses, and we are taking action for the failed mistakes of prior Governments.

What specific evidence or advice has he received that counters Concept Consulting’s conclusion that LNG may not lower electricity prices, could raise gas and electricity prices, and may not be necessary for the security of supply?

Well, I answered the point around the necessity for having gas molecules to make electricity in the answer to my primary question. What is clear is that, without gas, we cannot make sufficient electricity to keep the lights on in this country and to keep businesses employing people, including manufacturers to produce goods we export. Without gas, we cannot do that, and that is because the banning of oil and gas has put us in that situation. As a result of that, we have taken the decision to allow importation of LNG, which will provide us the mechanism to make electricity, and that is the action that we’re undertaking as a Government.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a very straight question: I asked what specific evidence or advice the Minister had received to back up the opinions that he’s been giving in this House. He has said that they don’t need to follow the Concept Consulting official advice that was supressed by the Government, so what counter advice has he got? He failed to even address that in an answer.

With all due respect, I don’t think he did. Firstly, he doesn’t have to respond to an outside organisation’s report.

Why has he not published the all-in consumer and taxpayer cost of the terminal when his own modelling shows LNG does not consistently reduce average wholesale prices and can increase them in some scenarios?

Because the negotiations in regards to the importation terminal are obviously commercially sensitive. Those negotiations are currently under way, and that is why we’re not releasing that information.

What exactly has National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Limited (NIFFCo) been directed to do: assessing financing, negotiating commercial terms, allocating risk, arranging Crown support, or preparing commitments for the Government?

Well, NIFFCo, alongside a range of other Government agencies, including the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, are providing support and advice to Government in regards to this very important issue. New Zealand is facing an energy crisis that was completely foreseeable because we do not have sufficient gas to be able to make electricity. As a result of that reality, we are taking action to solve that. That is appropriate because the lack of gas has had an implication on the New Zealand economy of a loss of economic growth in the region of $5 billion. That is completely unacceptable. That is what we inherited; we’re taking leadership to fix it, and we will get it fixed.

Will he commit to releasing NIFFCo’s advice before any contract is signed?

I answered that question in the context of what is—we’ve got commercial negotiations under way, and, obviously, we’re not going to release commercially sensitive information while negotiations are under way.

Will he take any proposed commercial arrangements back to Cabinet before any contract is signed, and, if not, why not?

Obviously, with the scale of investment involved in putting in place an importation terminal for LNG, I would expect, as would be sort of common knowledge, that Cabinet would be involved in that decision-making process. Look, again, I reinforce the point—and maybe this is the problem—that without gas molecules you can’t make electricity. We’re in this position because we banned oil and gas. As a result of that, Kiwi businesses paid the price in 2024.

Why should New Zealanders trust him to sign an LNG deal only weeks out from a general election when the Ombudsman found his Government refused to release evidence that the public had a right to see and that modelling showed it could push up both gas and electricity prices for New Zealand households and businesses?

Quite simply because, on this side of the House, we are focused on protecting New Zealanders, to ensure we have economic growth and to ensure we have affordable, abundant, and reliable energy in this country. We are in this situation because of failures by prior Governments. We’re taking leadership to get this fixed. We will get it fixed, and that will benefit all New Zealanders.

Just before I call question No. 4, it has been pointed out to me by the Clerk that, while leave was sought to table some documents earlier, the House does have to take the word of the member who said there was an objection. My proposal is to put that leave again. The Rt Hon Winston Peters wanted to table some documents that talked of an exchange between himself and Chlöe Swarbrick. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection?

Yes.

Then it won’t be tabled. That’s fine. We move on to question No. 4—Tākuta Ferris. [Interruption]

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

Tākuta Ferris—and no one else.

14:21 · to the Minister of Housing

Does he stand by his statement that “Social housing is a high-cost intervention and should be targeted to those who need it the most”?

14:22

on behalf of the Minister of Housing: Yes, social housing is a relatively high-cost intervention compared to some other Government housing supports—for example, a new social housing place costs, on average, $45,000 per year, and an existing place, on average, around $22,500 per year; compared to the accommodation supplement, with average costs of around $6,000 per year. On top of this, once someone is in social housing, there has been very little follow-up to check whether the circumstances, socio-economic or whānau, have changed and whether or not they still need a social house. That’s why it’s imperative that we build the right house, in the right location, with the right support for those most in housing need. That’s what our work reviewing the social housing system is trying to achieve.

If social housing is to be targeted to those who need it most, how does he justify the sale of 403 homes and properties in Te Tai Tonga alone in the year to August, when 17,463 whānau nationally are assessed as being in priority A on the housing register?

There have been disposals by Kāinga Ora of social housing over numerous Governments. Kāinga Ora—and previously, before that, Housing New Zealand—has both sold and bought land and housing in order to provide social housing for communities. That continues, because often, if you sell some land that is not suitable any more, you can actually reinvest that money and create more houses.

Does the Minister accept that it is about time Government devolved responsibility for identifying housing need and delivering solutions to iwi and Māori housing providers, considering there are 8,300 Māori on the housing register, the highest need of any community nationally?

On behalf of the Minister of Housing, there has been considerable support—nigh on half a billion dollars over the last three years—to support Māori and iwi providers to build housing for people in housing need. Not only that, there have also been efforts over time to work with iwi, like Ngāti Toa Rangatira, who are currently managing nearly 1,000 social houses that have been previously under the management of Kāinga Ora out in Porirua—a great place, if anyone wants to go there one day. There has been collaboration, and I encourage that collaboration further. We just announced this week 823 places to be funded by the Flexi Fund, and many of those places were actually being built by iwi and Māori housing providers, whether or not it’s Waitomo Papakāinga up in the great northern capital of Kaitāia, or right through to the East Coast, where Tūranganui a Kiwi is going to be building more houses under the Flexi Fund, or indeed places like Hamilton, where Te Rūnanga o Kirikiriroa is building housing—a great place, city of the future.

How does the Minister reconcile his position that social housing should be targeted to those who need it the most with the fact that in West Auckland, more than a thousand people are living in uninhabitable housing and more than 2,000 people are experiencing severe housing deprivation or homelessness?

On behalf of the Minister of Housing, I acknowledge that there are some people who are doing it really tough in the housing space, and that’s why we’ve continued to invest over $400 million in very short-term reactive measures. For example, the Housing First 300, which we announced last September—Minister Bishop and I—that’s seen over 700 individuals go through the Housing First kaupapa, the Housing First delivery, and there continue to be places up and down the country, including in Auckland, where housing is being built, whether or not that’s affordable rentals, social housing through community housing providers and iwi housing providers, and others. We continue to focus on those areas with the greatest housing deprivation—for example, Northland, Te Tairāwhiti—Toi Rāwhiti—South Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, and other places.

Will the Minister commit to providing additional social housing that is needed for West Auckland whānau, or does his characterisation of social housing as a high-cost intervention mean that the 200 whānau in temporary accommodation and more than 500 sharing someone else’s dwellings will continue to go without?

On behalf of the Minister of Housing, what we have seen over the last three years is a range of different supports that the Government has given to the building of housing across places like West Auckland. You only have to go and ask Lisa Woolley over at Visionwest, whose community housing provider—a very successful one—is building houses as a result of the community housing provider 1,500 homes that were endorsed in Budget 2024. We continue to support a range of providers, including people in urban Māori organisations who have been building social housing over the last three years, and we’ll continue to do that.

14:27 · to the Minister for Media and Communications

Is he considering implementing a streaming tax?

No, we are not, and we think Zealanders pay enough tax already and we don’t need another tax.

Has he seen any New Zealand films that required a streaming tax in order to succeed?

No, but I do recall seeing Tinā last year, a highly successful film, earning more than $10 million in the international box office, and one of New Zealand’s most successful films. It did draw on the extensive support of the New Zealand taxpayers, but it didn’t need an extra tax.

Has he seen any other examples of investment that don’t involve a streaming tax?

Well, I did go to the opening night of the New Zealand International Film Festival which screened Big Girls Don’t Cry, a New Zealand film—excellent film, great film—which received a lot of support from New Zealand taxpayers, and collected through current taxation. The observation, as I was listening to and watching that film, was that we didn’t need another tax to go on top of all the other taxes that we already pay in order to enjoy great film and great TV series in this country.

Supplementary.

Oh, right. OK.

What commentary has he seen about a streaming tax?

Oh, well. Well, I have some interesting commentary. I saw one member say, “We will implement a streaming levy as early as possible after the election”—

Just recall—I just remind the member again about Speaker’s rulings 181/3 and 181/4, so it might help him with the progress of that—

Would you like me to consult that?

I would think that if he hasn’t consulted it after I recommended it the other day, then there’s no point in reading it now.

Well, Mr Speaker, that was an administrative oversight on my part and I apologise for it. But what I can say is that there’s been much to-ing and fro-ing, but on this side of the House, we’re absolutely clear: there’s enough taxes paid in New Zealand already, and we don’t need another tax.

14:29 · to the Minister for Māori Crown Relations

Te Arawhiti: Does he stand by his statement at the Iwi Chairs Forum that “we haven’t got it all right”; if so, what haven’t they got right?

14:30

I recently attended the Iwi Chairs Forum in Tāhuna—Queenstown—alongside Minister Willis, as representatives of the National Party. However, I will respond to that in light of my other responsibilities. One area where I think we could have communicated better is the immense tax relief that the Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, offered all New Zealanders, including an estimated $400 million to whānau Māori in Budget 2024. Another area where I could have communicated it a bit better, and we could have communicated it a bit better, was the extraordinary work of the regional development Minister with the Regional Infrastructure Fund, and, indeed, collaborating together with these people—these honest, hard-working people—on this side of the House, in delivering more marae support funding than any Government in history, more Māori language broadcasting funding at the baseline than any Government in history, and more money into kapa haka than any Government in history, and also I could have articulated more transparently about the parlous state that a previous Government had left two-year-olds’ immunisation rates for Māori in this country. I take my hat off to Minister Brown for his good work to get those immunisation rates up, from 64 percent to over 70 percent—kia ora.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister is spinning stories. I don’t like to say it, but that’s not true, what he’s saying in terms of funding for marae. It’s not—[Interruption]

No, wait—sorry. Don’t interrupt a point of order. Start again.

The Minister is spinning stories in the House. He is saying that this Government has spent more money on marae, more so than any other Government. Minister Shane Jones and myself, and Labour, spent $100 million on marae, and that was more than any other Government—

Yeah, look—good. So far, you are listing a series of debating points, but it’s not a point of order.

But the point of order is that the Minister—I don’t like saying it, but—

Well, if that’s the case, then—

—he’s telling a lie.

—you know there are other remedies.

He’s telling a lie.

There are other remedies open to the member. He’s been here for quite a long time and he knows what they are. Is there another supplementary?

Responding to the point of order—

No, I’ve just dealt with it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister believe that Nicola Willis got it right when, at the Iwi Chairs Forum, she said that “We are proud of our belief that iwi and communities deserve more power over their own resources.”; and if so, what example does he have where more power has been provided to Māori over this term?

It gives me great pleasure to remind all members of this House that this Government has invested over $200 million into marae over the last three years. That is perhaps double the amount of money that the member has mentioned about a previous Government that he may have been part of, but it’s important to get our maths right—don’t be so fuzzy. In relation to devolving and collaborating with iwi and Māori over doing things at a localised level and a regional level, a great example is the half a billion dollars that this Government has co-invested and collaborated on with Māori and iwi housing providers. As a result of that, we expect nearly a thousand more houses to be deployed across various iwi and Māori organisations and the land that they own. I could rattle off a number of examples, but how much time do we have, Mr Speaker?

Does he believe Minister Goldsmith got it right when he ordered officials to remove te reo Māori greetings and references to Aotearoa New Zealand in an official invitation to Matariki; if not, did he ask Minister Goldsmith why he chose to do that?

As you know, Minister Goldsmith is a very hard-working and busy Minister with a variety of portfolios, but it is not my role, as the Minister for Māori Crown Relations, to get into the mind and the head of Minister Goldsmith. It’s my role to ensure that we deliver on the promises that we have made, particularly around the Nelson Tenths legislation, which went through its third reading this week—something that the previous Government was never intending to do.

Is the Minister aware that the Iwi Chairs Forum have put their interviews online and that the Greens have had 1,000 views, Labour’s Willie Jackson has had 8,000 views, National have had 16,000 views, and Winston Peters has had 44,000 views, while Te Pāti Māori have two people waiting for their premiere tonight?

I understand that Minister Peters, the rangatira here in the parliamentary precincts, was very much appreciated and adored by many of the iwi chairs and the young people conducting those interviews.

Did he think that Minister Upston got it right when she mucked up the winter energy payment for thousands of kaumātua when she was told about the problem 10 days before by Labour?

There are things that we don’t get right, but the difference between ourselves and the member is that we get on and deal to them. We don’t leave them hanging—like the Ōrākau lands; like Kororipo; like, of course, the Nelson Tenths and 15 settlements that Mr Goldsmith has currently curated over the term of this House. I absolutely applaud Minister Goldsmith’s effort over in Wharekauri recently, where we reached the deed of settlement with Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri. Again, two ticks to his résumé, and I hope that they’re blue.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I was talking about Minister Upston, and the Minister wasn’t mentioned once. I was talking about the Minister mucking up payments to kaumātua although she was told 10 weeks beforehand by Labour about this. The Minister didn’t address the question at all.

Yes, he did. He said she fixed it.

I didn’t pick that up—I didn’t pick that up. You sure?

Very sure.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I didn’t pick that up, but I’ll take your word for it.

Oh, thanks very much. Very generous of you.

Why should iwi Māori have any trust in this Government when all iwi see is their settlements are being breached, te reo Māori is being removed, Treaty clauses are being removed, and the Māori-Crown relationship has gone backwards?

There’s a degree of hyperbole in the member’s comments and the member’s questions, but he is clear and consistent. We are absolutely focused on doing things with Māori, not just dropping inconsistent and unclear aspirations and propositions and, sometimes, statutory provisions. That’s the role of Government: to make sure that we effectively deliver on the services that we have, and we ensure that legislation that is presented to this House is done in an appropriate manner. I absolutely applaud the mahi that the agencies have done, the mahi that the Ministers and the members of this Government have done, and the mahi that we all do to try and improve the oranga and the ōhanga of Māori communities and Māori societies. That’s why I’m so for the mahi around fast track, because when you look at some of the fast track—

Yeah, yeah, that’s good. You’ve done well. Is there another question? Question No. 7—Mike Davidson.

14:38 · to the Minister for ACC

Has he read the report, The Legacy of PCP and its Dioxins in Aotearoa: An overview of human rights concerns; if so, does he have a response to it?

Yes. My response is that the Government is committed to ensuring that the accident compensation scheme covers people who suffer from injuries, including work-related injuries. That’s why this Government recently updated the list of work-related diseases in the Accident Compensation Act after more than 15 years, and that’s why there is also a clear process for injured people to seek cover.

What does he say to Kereama Akuhata, who said, “Most of us who were poisoned at work do not get ACC, and ACC continues to refuse to acknowledge the varied range of illnesses which exposure to PCP and dioxins have caused”?

I would say that ACC remains, as it always has done, available and open to receive claims from any New Zealander who seeks to apply for compensation. That process is open, ready, and available.

Does he stand by his statement that, “I acknowledge the experiences of former sawmill workers and their families.”, and does this include acknowledging the fact that they are sick and dying without access to ACC, despite being poisoned at work?

Like the member who’s just asked that question, I am not a medical expert and I do not seek to profess to be one. That’s why, as Minister, I rely on the professional advice of medical experts. As I’ve stated previously, ACC remains available and open to receive—

Applications.

—applications, yes—cases from people who feel that they may have been affected. That process continues and it’s available.

As the Minister said in a previous answer that the ACC schedule has just been re-looked at, did this include pentachlorophenol, which has been identified as hazardous to workers’ health almost 50 years ago?

There were a range of matters considered by the panel. From memory, I think there were 12 new conditions that were added to Schedule 2. The process is now formalised that a further review will occur, commencing in five years’ time, and that process will actually, probably, start in the next Parliament, but that is a process that this Government set in place, and it had not been reviewed for 15 years.

Has he asked or does he intend to ask for any advice on extending Schedule 2 to cover pentachlorophenol exposure; if not, why not?

Upon reading the report that I received earlier this week, I have asked for further information and advice.

How many former sawmill workers exposed to pentachlorophenol have died while waiting for the Government to provide a practical pathway to compensation and redress, and how many more will die while no action is taken?

That’s not information that I have access to or is available to me, but if the member would like to, perhaps, put a question in writing, I would seek to attempt to provide an answer.

14:42 · to the Minister of Education

Does she agree with educators who described the draft curriculum as “potentially damaging to learners” and showing “a total lack of understanding of our disciplines”?

No. As the member notes in the question she asked, this is draft material for the senior secondary curriculum that is currently out for consultation—not the final content currently being written by 350 New Zealand subject matter experts borrowed from schools around the country. I’m proud of the new curriculum. It represents work from across the sector with hundreds of submissions from teachers, school leaders, subject experts, education organisations, and New Zealanders across the country. I will note some comments around the fact that there is too much material in the drafts. We’ve always been very clear that it was our intention to start with more and settle on content that the sector tells us will set Kiwis up for success.

If climate change was never removed from the curriculum, why has she ordered officials to put it back?

Well, I’ve already answered this in the media. While the term “climate change” did not appear—

And you don’t answer it.

Yeah, and that’s what we’re getting here: an answer.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. While the term “climate change” didn’t appear in the curriculum content, students learn about how climate systems work, why climate change happens, and its impacts through the social sciences curriculum. I’ve already instructed the ministry to explicitly include and signpost the words “climate change” in the years 0 to 10 curriculum, and I would note that climate change science is included in the senior secondary curriculum.

How can she claim that climate change remained in the curriculum when education professor Chris Eames says that in the curriculum, the causes are not connected coherently or even attributed to humans?

Well, I’ve already answered that question. This is the junior curriculum, levels 1 to 4. The content around climate change is included—how climate systems work, how climate change happens, and its impact—in the social sciences curriculum. As we move up into the senior secondary curriculum, a lot more of that content is included, as appropriate, because some of the science behind it is quite high-level and aimed at students who are in senior secondary.

Why is she now blaming unnamed curriculum writers for the omission when she personally reviewed and approved the final curriculum before its release?

Because I am not the final determinant and decision maker of the content—[Interruption]

Carry on.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—I’ll start again. It is not the job of the Minister to go through the content as it is set out before it goes out. I do a final look through, but I’m not a teacher, I’m not an expert, and I don’t go through—[Interruption] I don’t go through, nor should I be expected to, nor is it my job to go through and make changes. I just have a final look at it before it goes out, and I trust the process, the officials, and all of the subject matter experts from around New Zealand who wrote and approved the content.

Can she confirm that climate change appeared explicitly in the draft curriculum, disappeared from the final version she signed off, and is now being reinstated only after public criticism?

There were multiple drafts of the curriculum that came through. I didn’t see them all. I signed off the very final one. All I know is that the curriculum writers have now been instructed to go back and signpost exactly where climate change is mentioned in the curriculum. As I’ve already said, students learn how climate systems work, why climate change happens, and its impacts on humans through the social sciences curriculum. I’ve instructed us to make sure that we’ve signposted with the words “climate change” exactly where that happens.

Does she accept that signing off a curriculum that removed climate change, denying it had been removed, blaming the writers, and then ordering officials to put it back just demonstrates to New Zealand parents exactly why curriculum decisions should be left to education experts and not politicians such as herself?

Well, I’ll say this really slowly and clearly for the member so she understands: writers write the curriculum; the Minister signs it out at the very end—[Interruption]

Some of that noise is coming from your own side. Please carry on.

It is not the Minister’s job to write curriculum information or to change it. It is up to the curriculum experts and the writers employed by the Ministry of Education who make those decisions. They are the ones who put in the curriculum climate change; they are the ones who omitted the words “climate change”; I’ve just asked that it goes back in the curriculum to signpost the fact that it is included and always was included in the curriculum.

14:47 · to the Minister of Transport

Is the Government considering introducing a ute tax?

on behalf of the Minister of Transport: No.

What impact would introducing a ute tax have on farmers, tradies, and other New Zealanders who need a vehicle for work?

Well, for farmers, tradies, contractors, and small businesses, a ute is a tool of the trade. Increasing the cost of those vehicles means increasing the cost of doing business. Whether that is getting tools to a worksite, towing gear, or working on farms and forestry roads, those costs do not disappear. They will be passed on to consumers through higher prices. The Government won’t be reintroducing a ute tax, because we don’t want to make it more expensive for New Zealanders to get on with the job.

Who would bear the cost of introducing a ute tax?

Well, that’s the fundamental unfairness of a ute tax. It’s the people who bear the cost of it who are the very New Zealanders who have the least ability to avoid it: the farmers, the tradies, the lower-income New Zealanders who have limited practical alternatives, while it subsidises households that are already in a position to buy a new electric vehicle (EV) or hybrid. In rural New Zealand, there would be no practical alternatives, so they would be forced to pay the extra tax for wealthy EV owners in the cities. The Government does not believe it would be fair or sensible to do so.

What policies are the Government pursuing to reduce transport emissions without imposing additional costs on motorists?

We are focused on making lower-emissions choices easier and more practical rather than taxing people into changing their vehicles. That includes accelerating the roll-out of EV charging, backed by public and private sector co-investment. We have also removed unnecessary consenting barriers for EV chargers and are improving smart charging settings so people can charge at cheaper times. The Government’s approach is to expand choice, build the infrastructure people need, and let New Zealanders decide what vehicle works best for them.

14:50 · to the Associate Minister for the Environment

What recent announcements has he made?

Yesterday, I announced the Government’s decisions on how we will reform the freshwater farm plan system to make it simpler and more practical for farmers. We will bring in regulations that are proportionate. They will ensure that the work that farmers put in their farm plan focuses on genuine risk and improves water quality but doesn’t bury the kitchen table underneath a mountain of paperwork. I announced the risk thresholds which will trigger the need for certification and auditing. This is a much more proportionate approach than everyone having to be certified and audited, as in the previous system.

What other changes is the Government making to freshwater farm plans?

We are cutting the waffle out of the system. We are removing unnecessary mapping requirements so that farmers are focused on what actually creates risk; simplifying catchment context documents so that they give farmers the information they need and no more; and simplifying the grading approach for those that undergo audit, by moving to a pass/fail assessment and away from letter grades. As part of developing this policy, I took the opportunity to have someone come and do a certified plan under the new system on my own farm. What I found, and what farmers will see, is that having to do a farm plan should not be onerous. Most farmers are already managing their farm in a way that deeply cares for the local environment, and farm plans will be a way to validate and demonstrate that.

What announcements has the Government made about Waikato’s Plan Change 1?

Yesterday, Ministers Bishop, McClay, Jones, and myself announced that the Government will stop the restrictive elements of Plan Change (PC) 1 from applying during the transition to the new resource management system. Plan Change 1 is a feature of a law that is on the cusp of being replaced, and farmers would have faced consenting and farm-planning requirements that may not be required under the new framework, which cuts red tape and is based on property rights. I acknowledge the work put in by a range of players to get through the 14-year PC1 process, including the agricultural industry, and that work will be taken into account when the new natural environment plan for the relevant catchments is developed.

What announcements has the Government made about Plan Change 2?

The Government also announced yesterday that it would stop farmers and growers being caught between two sets of rules by making changes to the implementation of Plan Change 2 in the Horizons region. This is an issue I’m pretty familiar with as a Manawatū farmer. I’ve spent years dealing with Horizons’ One Plan. The Government will remove the harsh nitrogen reduction targets that farmers would have had to meet under Plan Change 2. Under these targets, it would have made it virtually impossible for Horowhenua’s vegetable growers to be able to carry on producing the fresh veggies this country requires. Farmers and growers want to keep doing right by the land, but they shouldn’t have to meet the requirements that are about to disappear and were poorly thought out to begin with.

14:53 · to the Minister of Justice

Does he stand by all his statements and actions in relation to the Electoral Amendment Act 2025; if so, why?

Yes, in the context in which they were given and taken.

Why did he claim that the official count for the election could be up to five weeks when the Electoral Commission modelling shows that his changes will only save three days?

Well, as I recall, what I said was that the advice I got when I took over was that the elections always used to be able to be counted in two weeks and then Labour made a change to allow same-day voting and it went to three weeks. The advice I got was that if we did nothing, it would be longer, heading towards four weeks, and my guess was that if we did nothing over an extended period of time, it would just keep working its way up—the number after four is five, and so that was the logic of my explanation.

Does he have any evidence to support the contention that he just made that it would keep going up indefinitely?

The evidence that I had in mind was the primary driver of taking it longer to get a final count is the growth of special votes. Special votes occur when somebody hasn’t been enrolled by writ day, or is voting outside their particular area. Those special votes take 10 times as long to process as normal votes, and there’s been an exponential increase in special votes.

Now, the main driver of that was the previous Government’s decision to allow same-day enrolment—the problem there was it muddied the message, because the message that the Electoral Commission has is that everybody should get enrolled and it is the law to be enrolled. But if, at the same time, they’re saying get enrolled, but, in the mean time, don’t bother because you don’t have to because you can just rock up on election day and vote, well then that was a mixed message and so there were more and more people not enrolling, and that was leading to more and more special votes, and if you followed the graph, there’d be more and more special votes and it would take longer to count.

Was speeding up the election count, by an estimated three days, worth disenfranchising a projected 55,000 voters?

We are not disenfranchising any voters. What we are doing is placing a perfectly reasonable requirement on them to be enrolled. I can tell you right here, right now, it is the law to be enrolled. The other thing I can say is that in Australia, they require people to be enrolled about 30 days before the elections. I am confident that New Zealanders are, if not more capable, certainly as capable as Australians, and I’m very confident that we can do it. My message to New Zealanders is: if you look, you will see the ads, the ads are out there everywhere you look. Get enrolled before 25 October so that you can have a vote.

Why has he made it harder for young people to enrol to vote, when only 54 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled, and the official count is likely to be no faster than the last election?

Unlike that member, I have confidence our younger New Zealanders, I’ve got every confidence that they can follow an instruction and get themselves enrolled.

Does the Minister think it somewhat underestimates New Zealanders to suggest that they would find it too difficult to enrol to vote in advance of an election?

I certainly don’t like the implication that New Zealanders are somehow slower than Australians. On this side of the House, we think we can be equally as capable as Australians.

Camilla Belich and no one else.

Did he ask the Electoral Commission to model a middle ground where enrolment closed on voting day but remained open during early opening period; and if not, why not?

The advice I got from the Electoral Commission was that if we changed it by one day, it would make insufficient difference in order to have a real impact. The advice I got was that if you’re going to do it, you should go to before voting starts in 12 days, and that will have a difference because it will allow more votes to be processed before election day, and then counted.

Will the almost 115,000 people currently on the dormant roll be able to cast both their electorate and their party votes on election day?

Like everybody else, you need to be enrolled before the date, the day before voting. So my message is just a simple one; I don’t want to complicate people with dormant rolls and other rolls. New Zealanders are out there and they need to be enrolled at a certain time so that they can have a vote. It’s not hard; it’s not complicated: get yourself enrolled by 25 October.

Point of order. Mr Speaker, that was a very specific question relating specifically to the changes that the Minister has brought in about the dormant roll, not about people being enrolled, and I don’t feel he addressed the dormant-roll element of that question.

He can have another crack at it.

I said I didn’t want to go into all those details, and I have a simple message for all New Zealanders, which is: if you want to vote, get yourself enrolled.

14:59 · to the Minister of Education

How is the Government improving student outcomes through investments in school infrastructure?

Well, great news, the Government is investing a further $31.3 million to create calmer, less destructive learning spaces in more than 600 classrooms, at nearly 90 schools across the country. This includes Redoubt North School in that members electorate of Takanini. The latest funding builds on the $10 million allocated to 40 schools last year. We’ve already completed projects at six schools, with 32 further projects to be completed by the end of the year. It’s a practical, targeted investment that makes a real difference for students and teachers.

Why is the Government putting walls back in open-plan classrooms?

As I’ve said before, this is about closing the door on the failed experiment of open-plan classrooms over many decades, including the previous six years—

Yeah, but you required it; gave them no choice. Talk to the schools that didn’t want it.

—under the Labour Government who failed to change it either. There is no convincing evidence that large open-plan classrooms support good learning outcomes.

Tell Hekia she was wrong.

Sorry, hang on. Does the member need assistance or something? Because that constant noise is not acceptable.

Open-plan classrooms are often noisy and create stress and are distracting environments for students, particularly those with additional learning needs. Every child deserves a classroom where they can focus, take part, and succeed, and every teacher deserves a space that lets them do what they do best. We’re taking a staged approach so that simpler projects can move quickly, while design and planning get under way for the more complex works. This is a practical, targeted investment that makes a real difference.

How has the Minister been able to deliver so much in the last three years? [Interruption]

No, no, come on. I suspect that if we keep going down this track, the Electoral Commission are probably going to start charging political parties for the parliamentary time given that we’re in the three-month period. Make it a very brief answer. It is an opinion that you are able to give, but it should be brief—very brief.

In education, we’ve done this by reducing average classroom construction costs by using standardised designs and off-site manufacturing, fast-tracked $413 million of investment for maintenance, and we’ve created a stand-alone school property agency. What we haven’t done is have to resort to more tax to do it.

What other investments has the Government made—[Interruption]

Sorry—sorry.

What other investments has the Government made to support students, teachers, and schools?

Putting walls back into classrooms is just one of the many things our Government has done to support schools. Just last week, the Minister for Energy and I announced that 500 schools have been selected for solar technology as the Government’s $30 million Solar on Schools programme rolls out, which will cut schools electricity use from the grid, reduce emissions, and lower their power bills at the same time. We’re also investing $21.7 million to expand the highly successful on-site school training programme. We’re delivering $750 million in learning support, the biggest investment in a generation, so that every single school, years 1 to 8, has a learning support coordinator by 2028. Again, all of this was delivered without increasing tax for education by a single cent.

That concludes questions for oral answers. We’ll take 30 seconds while people who need to leave the House to do so quietly.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill.

15:04

Good afternoon, members. The House is in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill. The Government has indicated that the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice, the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, and the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will be available today to speak to their portfolios.

In leading off the debate, the chairperson of the relevant select committee should take care not to be overly political and should ensure that their call gives a fair reflection of the committee’s report on the Votes relevant to the portfolio. This debate expires after 11 hours, at which point questions will be put that the Votes stand part of the schedules and on the provisions of the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill. All parties have time allocated proportionally. The Estimates debate should be relevant to the Government’s current spending plans as contained in the Estimates of Appropriation.

The question, again, is that the Votes contained in the Estimates of Appropriation for 2026/27 stand part of the schedules. Members, we start with the Minister of Education. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

15:05

Thank you, Madam Speaker. On behalf of the Education and Workforce Committee chair, Katie Nimon, I want to thank the committee for the work that they put into the Estimates on education. I also want to thank the Minister for the ongoing investment in education as detailed in the Estimates report—in particular, the school property component as detailed on page 12. As the MP for Whanganui, I want to use an example of that being the condition upgrade at Te Paepae o Aotea. I note that this property investment has extended to the recent announcement, as well, of the 500 schools turning solar into savings across the country and, on page 13, the investment into specialist schools, noting the new specialist school in Gisborne—the first in 50 years.

The investment in Vote Education in Budget 2026 also funds property projects like walls going up in classrooms across the country, enabling classrooms to calm down. In addition, I want to highlight the investment in industry-led subjects, as detailed on page 13, aimed at bringing industry and classrooms closer together.

Finally, learning support continues to receive focus and investment, as detailed on page 7, including an $844 million allocation for the three main learning support services. It would be appreciated if the Minister could further detail how Vote Education will continue to fix the basics and build the future.

15:07

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to know, from the Minister, about the cost of the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART) from the Budget. I’d like to know: what has been the total cost to date of developing and rolling out the SMART tool, and also how much is forecast to be spent on the SMART tool over the remaining forecast period?

15:08

Following on from that question—we just got the post-hearing questions back as well—in the summary of initiatives on page, I believe, 27, the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART) programme is supposed to be extended to year 11, which we’d heard, in the select committee, is going to go to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority instead. We are still puzzled, despite the post-hearing questions, at why, between the approval and the printing of the summary of initiatives to the select committee hearing, there has been a change of the use of SMART for year 11 students.

In addition to understanding what the cost is of the Student Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Tool (SMART), I’ve also got some questions in and around the intention of its use. In the initial papers that we got from Treasury, in the assessment, it’s very clear that there is language that shows that the Government intends to use this as a single tool for assessment—a “light touch”, all the language the Minister uses. But there’s been quite a change recently to say, in more recent documents, that there’ll always be a second tool, which is the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) there. I’d really like to understand, from the Minister, why there’s been a shift in language from documents that were issued earlier in the term, from when she took office to now, as to whether or not the SMART tool will be the only tool and, if it is not the only tool and if she is still intending to have PAT, which she has said, why did she spend approximately $170-odd million on the SMART tool? A lot of the rationale in the business case is that that’s the only tool.

I’m interested in the cost of the SMART tool, whether she can confirm it’s going to be, why the investment was justified if it’s not the only tool, and then confirm why she’s provided additional funding for the PAT testing run by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Why is that second lot of testing getting additional funding if the SMART tool has already had a substantial amount of funding?

Also, I’d be really interested to understand why she thinks there’s been an increase in schools using the PAT tests when they have to pay for them and when the SMART tool is available for free. That project cost—I’m guessing; I’ll wait to hear—approximately $170 million. There’s now another tool that’s being funded by the Government for approximately $300,000, and the schools are using the one that’s not the one that we’ve spent, as taxpayers, $170 million on. Why is there low use of the tool, given the fact there’s been substantial Government investment?

15:11

The reason that we have invested—and I’ll come back to the member with the exact figures, because we want to get them exactly right, and we don’t have them right to hand at the moment around the exact amount invested into the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART), but we will come back with that.

The reason that we’ve done that is that we are one of the only countries we compare ourselves to that doesn’t have a Government-backed and paid for tool. The one that we do have currently is completely out of date; it is no longer useable—we’ve made that really clear. It has to be replaced, and we’ve chosen to do that with the new SMART tool. It is a freely available tool for schools to use. We’ve had incredible uptake—over 300,000 that were registered into it—more than we had expected in the first year.

It is important for us to be able to have choice in the system with a freely available tool, and if schools choose to use the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) and pay for that, like many of them have been doing for a long time, then that is a choice that they can make. But it was always very important to us to have a freely available tool. What we have noticed is that many schools are using both. They’ve continued to use PAT, and they’re using SMART as a trial as well—noting that it is going to take us until next year until we have that SMART tool completely fully computer adaptive while we’re building up the number of questions that sit in the data bank.

It is important to us to have a freely available tool, and I can confirm that there will continue to be choice in the system. Many schools like using PAT, and I’ve made it very clear that we want to continue having that choice. I don’t want schools to have to pay for something if they don’t have the money in their budget, and we are creating a tool that is a world-leading tool; it does all the things we need it to do, and we’ll continue to refine it as we get really good feedback from the sector.

15:13

Can the Minister explain, then, why, in the initial business case and the reports issued by Treasury, the wording indicates that the justification for such a significant investment—whenever we find that figure—is on the basis that this is a movement towards the use of a single tool? Those words are used in the documents to justify such a significant investment. I’m really interested to understand from the Minister what has caused a change in direction, from her and her Government, away from the use of one single tool to now saying that not only are there two tools, but the Government is funding that second tool to the tune of approximately $300,000. I’m interested to understand that.

I’m also interested to understand, we know that there’s been a number of issues with the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool—whether it’s the artificial intelligence function, whether it’s been the data breach. I’m interested to understand from the Minister, is there a formal or a complaints system where schools are able to register their concerns when things aren’t working as they should be?

15:14

We have already sent out our team to do meetings and webinars all across the country. The programme director has been busying racking up his air miles, because he has been out talking to schools—from small, rural, and isolated schools from the bottom of the South Island to the top of the North Island—to get feedback. We’ve already gone back to schools and said, “Hello, thank you very much for your feedback. You’ve told us this, and now here are the changes we’re making.”

I think you can reasonably expect that with any big, new technology tool, there will be improvements to be made. There was nothing in this that caused us concern other than small tweaks along the way that we were able to fix up, as in any big project. It’s the same with e-asTTle when it was very first launched as well; it went through a number of iterations after getting really good feedback from the sector. I’m looking forward to the tool next year, when it will be fully computer adaptive, and it will be one of the best tools available in the world.

15:15

Madam Chair, thank you very much. I have an Official Information Act (OIA) request, actually, which is asking the Ministry of Education for how many complaints or concerns regarding the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART). The response to that OIA is that there is no formal system for that to happen. They say, in this response, we know that the Ministry has not formally tracked complaints, “and we further noted that sector inquiries have been received through many different communication channels”. They’ve got lots through lots of channels, but there’s no formal tracked complaints process for the SMART tool.

I’m just wondering—and I can give you the number of the report if she wishes; it’s GEMS-49441—does she think it’s acceptable to New Zealanders that for an investment of approximately $170 million that has had some significant concerns with data breaches and concerns with how many schools are actually using it, there is actually no formal complaints process available for those schools to lodge their concerns?

15:16

No. Look, I’m not concerned because, as already said, we have a process where we’ve been going out to schools and reaching out. We also have a number of ways that schools can reach out to us, like they do with all of the issues and concerns that they have. They’ve got leadership advisers; they’ve got many staff in the regions all around New Zealand in order to raise their concerns with us.

I wouldn’t characterise some of the things the member has mentioned as being significant. There are some things that we can change and upgrade, as we did with e-asTTle—it was exactly the same—and we are doing those things. We’ve already gone back out to the sector and said, “Here are the changes we’re going to make”. In fact, I was at a school, and I was asking some of the children, what were some of the things that they wanted to see, and they gave me some great feedback as well.

There is a range of different ways that schools can get in touch with us—and they are—but the great thing is that we are responding to them. We are making changes to make sure that the tool is one that is fit for purpose and that is going to get us, for the first time in our country’s history, really good data all the way through from year 3 to 8—which we’ve not had before—so the Government knows whether or not we need to invest more in certain areas, and where to direct our investment and resource; so that teachers know what the next steps for learning are and can moderate their teacher judgments in the reports to parents; and also, importantly, so that parents can know by strand how their children are doing and how they can help at home, which is exactly why we’ve built the parent portal tool, so that parents can log in and use some of those resources to help the learning at home.

15:18

Does the Minister have any intention to introduce a formal way of recording concerns or complaints? I appreciate she’s made the point that there are various different mechanisms for a parent or a school to make a formal complaint around data being used or the way the system isn’t working. But does she not think that it’s inappropriate for an investment of $170 million to say “We don’t know how many complaints we’re getting, and we have no formal mechanism for recording those complaints”—no risk register, no understanding of where they’re recorded? I don’t know if that’s fiscally responsible for such a significant investment in children’s data and when there’s already been a breach, that you have simply no system for recording and holding and responding to complaints.

Furthermore, I’d like to know from the Minister whether New Zealanders have a right, a transparency right, to understand the number of complaints that have been received about the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool.

15:19

Well, I’ve been advised that there is a risk register, and I will follow that up with the Ministry of Education.

I find it really rich from that member to talk about accountability for spending, because when I became the Minister of Education, I went through a Budget process—the very first Budget process—where I said to the Secretary of Education, “Can you please tell me, what are all the things you spend money on?” and they went away, and they dutifully came back with a list of things. Then I said to them, “Well, what do these things do?” and they dutifully went away and came back, and they described what those things do. Then I asked the killer question: “What are the outcomes for all of these things that we spend money on?” Do you know what the Secretary for Education said to me? “Minister, we don’t know”. For the previous six years, nobody from the previous Government had asked them, “What are the actual outcomes for the money that we are spending?” “We just get new money and we spend it.”—because that’s how the previous Government operated. We are bringing a level of transparency and accountability and outcomes for the money that we spend, so it’s very rich for that member to get up and say, “Oh, well, it’s very important to account for the spending.” Well, you know what happened in the last six years in Government, because we spent $20 billion in education and things went backwards under her watch.

15:20

I’m still waiting to hear whether it is $170 million—we haven’t heard that yet. We would like to know, if she’s really big on transparency: how much has this Government spent to date on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART)? How much is it projected forward? I have documents showing it’s approximately $178 million. I’d like her to confirm how much has been spent to date and how much is yet to be spent to date. She can also tell us what the length of the contract is with Janison, if that would be helpful, but I’m also interested to understand why she has provided additional funding to progressive achievement tests (PAT) and changed the messaging to say there’ll be two when the very reason underpinning the significant investment in the business case outside of the usual Budget cycle was because we wanted a single tool, and this was the reason we had to. Why $170 million when there’s investment into something going on? It indicates that there’s something wrong with the SMART tool. If we’ve spent that much on it and we’re still investing in a backup system somewhere else, what’s happening for the fact that schools are picking up PATs faster than they are the tool that we’ve all paid $170 million for? Wouldn’t you think it would be nice to have a copy of the risk register—now I understand that exists—and shouldn’t there be transparency around the teething problems that’ve caused children’s data to be leaked?

Can I just remind the member that the Minister of Education addressed the question of the cost and said that when the figures come through, she will let the House know.

15:22

Point of order. Madam Chair, thank you so much. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the questions around the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool. I want to just seek clarity from you, Chair, before I go on. The Minister in the seat, the Hon Erica Stanford, is not the Minister who usually oversees areas like early childhood education and charter schools. Can I just check I’m able to still ask questions to that Minister, noting that officials are here and able to provide support? I just want to check that clarification first. Thank you.

My understanding is that that’s fine.

Great, thank you.

15:23

Thank you, Madam Chair. Is the rate of use for the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) as expected, higher than expected, or lower than expected? So that one, just to recap: is the rate of use for the SMART tool as expected, higher than expected, or lower than expected—multi-choice. There have been some reports that some schools won’t use the SMART tool at all. What work has been done to understand why that is, and is that the case? Have any teachers or schools reported that the SMART tool doesn’t meet their needs, and, if so, why is that the case?

There was also, as we’ve already discussed and raised, a highly publicised incident regarding the SMART tool data and data leak. It has since been revealed that the SMART tool was only certified three days before being rolled out, and the ministry raised concerns and Treasury raised concerns. Interested to know: was the Minister of Education pressured to roll out the SMART tool before it was actually ready? Were the Government security checks ahead of the roll-out adequate, and, if so, did this breach occur if they were? The privacy impact assessment seems to indicate that there was still work to be done there. Is the Minister confident in all of that work in relation to the certification for privacy being in place early enough for those protections to be in place? I’d be also interested to understand how much was spent on cleaning up the data breach, and what assurances she can now give that it won’t occur again.

Finally, also interested to know: how many complaints have schools or teachers made about the SMART tool, and is that information collated in the risk register or is it not?

15:24

Feels like some of those questions have been asked and answered already, which is good—that cuts down the time we have, to answer this one at least. We always wanted choice in the system. There were lots of discussions very early on about being able to keep e-asTTle up and running—turns out in the end we’re not able to do it, because the technology was just too old. We have invested in the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. We’ve given them some money to upgrade one of their assessments, because we want choice in the system, and it’s up to schools which ones they choose; I’m not going to predetermine or tell schools which tool they have to use.

We didn’t have an expected rate of people picking up the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) this year. We have three tools available this year, including the freely available e-asTTle tool as well. We expect over time that as we make improvements, especially next year when it becomes completely, fully computer adaptive, we will have more pick-up. I do know that schools are hedging their bets at the moment. Some of them are continuing to use progressive achievement tests (PAT) and are considering SMART, because it is free, and some schools are using both. But I would expect that all tools have had an uptick given that not all schools were using an assessment tool: not all schools were using PAT, not all were using e-asTTle, and certainly nobody was using SMART because it didn’t exist. But we have mandated, for good reason, twice-yearly assessments so we can track data, as has been brought up and requested by the Education Review Office for about 10 years. It is important that we have that data.

So, yes, we expected that there would be an uptick across all three tools, and there was. We didn’t have any particular expectations around SMART, but when we did see that 300,000 users had been registered, that was something that was really exciting for us. We’ve already discussed about the fact that there is a register, and I am confident and the ministry were confident that the SMART tool was ready to roll out.

In terms of the small data breach that occurred, we’ve already been through that process. It wasn’t, of course, ideal, and we’ve gone through those schools that were affected. It was a very small issue, it was solved almost immediately, and that particular issue can’t happen again.

15:27

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just wondering, seeing that the Minister of Education has her Secretary for Education and deputy secretary: between the three of them, do you think she’ll be able to tell us how much the Government has spent on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) to date and how much is projected forward? I think between the three women there, they could clearly provide that information today—not in a week. I’m sure that information is available, and people would like to know that.

My next question is: why has there been an increase of schools doing progressive achievement testing (PAT) when the SMART tool has been available?

So two main questions: what’s the number, and why has there been an uptick in PAT when the SMART tool is available for free?

Look, before I give the Minister of Education the call, can I just remind the member that repetition is a problem. These questions have been asked many times already. The numbers are still being worked on. I’ve just checked with the Minister: the numbers are being worked on in the back office; they’ll be here as soon as they can collate them. But in terms of asking the same questions, I think it’s time we moved on to a new topic. Lawrence Xu-Nan.

15:28

Sorry—point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Education was just about to stand up and answer what I asked, which was: I want to know how much money’s been spent on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool. This is the Estimates; we’re looking at the Budget. That’s a fair question—

Yes, it is.

—and she was just going to answer but you interrupted. So I’d really like her to answer that question.

What I was going to say was that my officials behind me are working on getting the exact dollar amount as we speak, as has already been mentioned to that member. I was going to answer her question—again, the same question she asked already—about why there were upticks in usage of progressive achievement testing. It was exactly as we expected: there were upticks in usage of every tool, because we made it mandatory. Every school had to use it; every child had to use it. The great news is that, now, parents got mid-year reports that were so much more detailed, in many cases, within the strands of mathematics, for example, so that they knew exactly how their children were progressing and what they could do at home. It responded to the Education Review Office report, which said for the best part of 10 years that it’s really important we have consistent tools, or a tool, to make sure that we are measuring this. The Auditor-General said the same thing.

15:29

Thank you. Just signalling to the Minister and also the officials, I’m going to ask some questions around the curriculum and I’m going to move on to learning support after that. Around the curriculum, I want to start with the science curriculum for year 0 to 10, which has just been announced. Now, the Minister has mentioned before in oral questions that climate change is going to be added in, but climate change or climate is in the curriculum. I did have a look at the science curriculum. The word “climate” is not in the year 0 to 10 curriculum at all. It’s mentioned sporadically and is to do with, essentially, the weather system but not when it comes to human-made climate changes or climate changes being exacerbated by human activities. Can I just check with the Minister that that whole complexity around exacerbation of climate change by human-made activities will be in the year 0 to 10 science curriculum?

And just also on the science curriculum, can the Minister please elucidate for the committee who is Theophrastus, and why should five-year-olds know who he is in the draft year 0 to 10 curriculum?

I could continue on and talk about the social science curriculum.

You want another call?

Yep.

Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Thank you. When we’re looking at the social science curriculum, could the Minister help the committee understand why Te Tiriti o Waitangi isn’t taught until year 7 and 8? Other things are taught, but why is Te Tiriti o Waitangi specifically not taught until year 8 of the junior social sciences curriculum, while Pompeii is taught in year 2 and Egypt is taught in year 4?

With that, will the Minister please elucidate for the committee on what does AD stand for and what is the difference between hieroglyphs and hieroglyphics?

15:32

I’d be interested to understand from the Minister if she’s budgeted for the increased teachers needed to implement year-by-year curriculum. As she’s no doubt aware, there are many classrooms around New Zealand that have more than one year in one classroom. This presents a clear problem for teachers if they’re having to deliver a year-by-year curriculum. So where is the allocation in the Budget that provides for additional teachers to implement her year-by-year curriculum and when will this be available?

My next question is in relation to that. Does she have a plan to increase staffing to all schools that have composite classes so that they are able to implement her year-by-year curriculum? Or is she going to build some more walls? No. Or is she going to redesign the curriculum to cater for year 1 to year 3 schools where single year groups are not possible? So recap: is there a budget for increased teachers and does she have a plan to increase staffing to all schools that have composite classes?

My next question is: does she know what proportion of the spend on maths workbooks was used for the books that teachers actually find useful and are using? Does she have any feedback from teachers? She’s indicated she gets feedback on the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool). Any formal feedback on the maths workbooks being used and that teachers are actually finding them useful?

15:33

In terms of staffing, the staffing is driven by student numbers; it is demand driven. I appreciate the member may not know that, but importantly for the first time ever in secondary school this year, I’ve made sure that the ministry knows where the gaps are in secondary schools. So previously we’ve known where there are teacher shortages in primary and secondary. When we came in, we made it by region as well, and now we’ve also asked for really good data on where we are short of certain subjects. That’s not something that any Government previously has ever asked before until we got here, because we’re interested in data and being able to then make sure that we are directing resource to those particular areas.

I’ve made some announcements around the School Onsite Training Programme—upping those numbers to 705 teacher trainees every single year from 2028, and 650, I think it is, from next year. That has been a phenomenally successful programme. What we will be able to do in the future, when we get these numbers in which particular subjects we’re short of, we’ll be able to use that data alongside the School Onsite Training Programme to direct resource into getting more of those, for example, biology, physics, chemistry teachers that we might need.

Going back to the member’s question around the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool), I’m advised the whole-of-life cost for SMART over 10 years is expected to be $177 million.

Briefly around the member’s question earlier about a certain scientist mentioned in the science curriculum, what I would suggest that the member does is go and look at the final curriculum; it’s very different than the draft. We took quite a lot of feedback from the sector on content and exactly the thing that the member has just mentioned—whether or not certain things are required. When we put out a draft, you’ve got to remember, we put it out at about what I’d determined to sort of be 80 to 90 percent correct—well, not correct, but where it needs to be—because we want feedback from the sector. We took thousands of pieces of feedback from the sector. When you look at the new science curriculum that has now been put out—the final version—it is quite different than the one that you are mentioning in your questions today, and that is because of that great feedback. So if you just get the up-to-date document, that will clarify things for you.

In relation to some of the other questions that you mentioned, the climate change - related content is in the social sciences curriculum. I understand, since this has been mentioned when talking to my officials, that climate science is actually quite complicated and sits up in the senior secondary curriculum and it is there. But when you are doing junior science—and you’ve got to also remember that our primary school teachers have to teach everything; mathematics to science to music to English to art and everything—the science that we provide them, and for children as young as five, it is very basic science. Increasingly complex up to year 8, but we really hit that complex climate science in the senior secondary curriculum.

Look, in terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, you are conflating two things. There is world history, and I’m really proud of the fact that we are teaching children about the history of humanity and New Zealand’s place in the world, and, yes, we are teaching the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks and Romans. I’ll tell you why we’re teaching Pompeii, because for little five and six-year-olds, we’re saying to them, “What is it that Māori children play with? What did they play with? What did the settler children play with? What do you play with? Guess what? In Pompeii, we’ve seen buried in ash what children back then played with as well.” So we’re bringing in something that children understand, which is toys when they’re six years old, to understanding about the concept of time before, after, present, and drawing in Māori children, settler children, youth, and children who lived a really long time ago to give them that sense of history and our place in the world. We’re doing it in such a way that we’ve had really, really good feedback on that. I understand there’ll be some members in the House who think we should only do New Zealand history; we just have a different view. We think we should understand about where we came from and our place in the world as well as New Zealand history. Also, I do want to point out that we are introducing Waitangi Day and the origins of it really early—in fact, it’s as early as year 1 and it builds up over time.

Who’s going to call?

15:38

I just had a follow up. Thank you so much for that figure of $177 million—I’m very appreciative. But could you tell me how much you’ve spent so far and also what’s left? So out of that $177 million allocated over a 10-year period, how much of that has been spent to date? I’d be really interested to know that. That’s in relation to the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool). I wanted to know also, has there been any calculation within the ministry when you add up things like the contract Learning First, the contract of SMART tool, the overseas curriculum development and curriculum materials such as the maths workbooks—so there’s been quite a shift into contracts going to providers that are not New Zealand providers. Has there been any kind of analysis of the total amount spent on outside contractors at the expense of New Zealand, and is that an exercise that the ministry does?

15:39

One of the things that when I was in Opposition I spent a lot of time doing was learning about the education sector and going around and visiting schools and understanding what worked well for them. I was in a lot of schools that used resources that they were able to fund themselves through their operational grants or through board funding. I saw the inequity in the system and the fact that they were able to use resources where other schools couldn’t and they were getting really great results where other schools were not able to because they couldn’t afford those resources.

When we implemented the maths curriculum, we knew that the silver bullet to improving maths achievement was not just a curriculum. It had to sit alongside teacher learning and development—professional learning and development (PLD). It had to sit alongside assessment and making sure that we’re investing in those children who are falling behind through our maths intervention teachers, but we also needed to make sure that we were providing the resources consistently and equitably across the country, because it’s not fair that so many schools were able to access them and so many weren’t. We didn’t make it compulsory—they didn’t have to order them, if they didn’t want to—and we didn’t prescribe how they had to use them. But what we did know was that teachers were spending hours and hours and hours finding resources, creating resources, and going to Twinkl Box and going on Facebook, trying to find resources to teach mathematics. What we wanted to be able to do was say to them “Actually, here is a resource that’s aligned to the curriculum and that has all of the practice pages that you need, alongside a teacher guide that, should you require it, will help step you through, lesson by lesson.”, and we’ve funded that across the sector.

When we went out for the request for proposal (RFP), we opened it up to everybody—

With te reo Māori funding?

Interestingly, we also did it in te reo Māori, as well. The pāngarau resources have been fantastic. I notice that the previous Government didn’t do that, but we have because we’re equitably resourcing a bilingual education system.

All of those things together are raising maths achievement. When we went out to the RFP, we opened it up to everybody, but we had criteria that meant that you needed to meet a certain number of things, which meant that the textbooks, the workbooks, and the teacher guides had to meet the new curriculum, and for changes that we made, they would need to be met again. The people that met that criteria were the ones that were selected.

We don’t make it compulsory, as I’ve already said, for schools to use them. Schools use them in all different manners. Some schools use them religiously every day and stick to the programme; others use it as a tool when they’re doing maths practice, and that’s exactly what we’d expect. It’s a flexible resource, but the key thing is that every single school across the country has access to these free resources, which are available in both English and te reo Māori, and the great thing is the fact that now we’re starting to see results. It is not only the hour a day for maths books, the PLD, the new curriculum, the assessments, and the intervention when children are starting to fall behind, but now we are starting to see an improvement in mathematics for the first time in a really long time. In fact, in every single year group, there was an increase in the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, but particularly at year 6, which is usually where we see a big drop-off.

While I understand where the member is coming from, this was all about creating consistency and equity across the sector to make sure that everyone has access to the same high-quality resources. New Zealand companies are equally able to vie for any of those.

15:43

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to the Minister of Education, and continuing on the curriculum, with the new social science curriculum there is no budget in 2026 that’s specifically for additional funding for the junior curriculum for social sciences. Where will the funding for the implementation of the social science curriculum come from?

The senior science curriculum that was given was around $18 million a year, to 32,000 secondary school teachers. That’s, roughly, about $580 per teacher. Per teacher, what does the Minister intend the teacher to get out of that $580 per teacher for the secondary curriculum refresh?

Continuing on with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, I do like the idea that children should be exposed to different cultures, but we do also have an obligation in Aotearoa around upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. With that, what is the Minister’s response to the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 3553 memorandum-direction on pausing the changes to the curriculum and implementation of the curriculum, and, finally, if it is the case that the Minister is responsible for Māori-Crown relations, then how would the Minister respond to the disestablishment of Ngā Poutoko Aromatawai Māori from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority?

15:44

In terms of the junior curriculum resources for professional learning and development, we already have budget existing that we are using for that. We didn’t need to have anything in this Budget. We’ve got plenty already in existence.

In terms of the split, yes, I agree that we do have an obligation to teach New Zealand history and the foundations of our country. We also have an obligation to teach children about the history of the world. We are doing both and we’re doing it really well, and, actually, the feedback I’ve had back on this new curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, there are a couple of things in there around signposting the climate changes, but overall it’s been phenomenally successful.

In terms of the Waitangi Tribunal, I acknowledge the request that they have made. My obligation is to make sure that next year, teachers who are required to teach social science and science have the information that they need as quickly as they can possibly get it. That’s why those curriculum documents and others will be released to give teachers plenty of time to be able to get to grips with the new content and understand it, but when that ruling does come in, we will certainly consider it seriously.

15:46

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve actually got the memorandum from the Waitangi Tribunal in front of me, which was dated 7 August, where they ask the Minister to specifically consider deferring the release of all updated New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa content until after the Waitangi Tribunal’s stage 2 report has been released. Now, the Minister has previously said in the House how important the Crown-Māori relationship is to her and how important Te Tiriti o Waitangi is and her obligations under Te Tiriti, and yet she is ignoring the request of the Waitangi Tribunal to defer the release of those documents. Whatever her answer just then, that overrides it, and that’s far more important.

I point out that in their memorandum, they actually said that they are concerned, along with the removal of school board’s Treaty obligations, that the Crown’s curriculum reforms may dilute prior emphasis on the importance of incorporating local content from te ao Māori into school teaching and learning. It also shares the concerns that the parties have with the flaws in the curriculum content, which may be symptomatic of insufficient engagement and input from Māori and the education sector. So the question about whether the Crown has satisfied its Treaty obligations of partnership and active protection of taonga Māori is a matter we are taking seriously.

Thirdly, they also said that they consider that the views that came up in that around overall feedback being received during consultation, that concern that there’s going to be insufficient time between the conclusion of the hearings, the proposed release of the report, and the curricula for any meaningful feedback to be incorporated in the curriculum documents. So, Minister, given that you’ve said you take your responsibilities under Te Tiriti so seriously, why are you just ignoring the Tribunal?

15:48

Thank you. As I’ve already pointed out, of course I’ve said back to the Waitangi Tribunal that we will consider their findings when they come out. Also—

Oh, token.

If you want to hear the answer, I suggest you just zip it for a bit, because this constant barrage is not helping you or anyone else, frankly.

Well, actually, it helps me completely.

As I’ve already said, we will take any findings seriously, but it is important that I’ve got competing interests that I have to balance. I’ve got competing interests of thousands of teachers who are going to be required to teach the new curriculum, being able to teach the new curriculum, being able to see the content as early as possible—and I would note from that side of the House that they have made comments around the speed and we have to give teachers more time; that’s exactly what we are trying to do. In short, we are putting out the final documents so that teachers have plenty of time to be able to—

But you didn’t properly consult on it or develop it.

Also, in relation to, again, the continuing barrage across the House, when we were developing the curriculum, we went out to hundreds of experts and teachers and academics, including Māori as well, who helped us to develop not only the New Zealand Curriculum but Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. I’d really make the point that we have written curriculum documents and Te Marautanga that never existed before. There are dozens of new curriculum areas that are now available that weren’t before, and we’ve done that in consultation with Māori.

I’d also make the point that the Waitangi Tribunal have made their initial findings based on old curriculum documents, not the up-to-date ones. So if we haven’t already, we will be providing them with the new curriculum documents so that they’ll be able to make their findings. I’ve already said that we will take those findings very seriously when they come in. I know that the tribunal knows our time frame, and they are working quickly to make sure they can get us their findings based on the new curriculum documents. I’ve already told them that we’ll take their feedback seriously, and I expect that their position may change a little bit, because the curriculum has changed so much since the drafts were put out.

15:50

I wanted to give my colleagues a good run at the guts of that, but the Minister of Education has intimated towards equitable funding across kura. I know that Budget 2026 allocates $310 million to the expansion of the school property portfolio. The Minister’s made a $62.5 million announcement for the same infrastructure investment into Te Waipounamu, which, of course, includes Te Tai Tonga, but there is really yet to be any clarity around how much investment the kaupapa Māori portfolio will get in terms of what’s required to bring its infrastructure just up to being on par with what I would call the bottom rung of the mainstream sets of infrastructure.

Of the $310 million - odd that are proposed for developing school property, what proportion of that is being committed to the kaupapa Māori field? I say kaupapa Māori field and its delivery modes to include kura kaupapa Māori, kura ā iwi, bilingual, and full-immersion delivery, and kura auraki in mainstream schools—not to silo them out. Also, of the $62.5 million that was invested into Te Waipounamu, none of that was directed towards any of those kaupapa Māori delivery models. What can Te Waipounamu and Te Tai Tonga expect in terms of investment into our kaupapa Māori education models that have languished behind for many, many decades now—what can they expect to see coming their way?

I think we’ll just leave it there for now, but this type of kōrero—and it slots straight in there with the kōrero about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and your bringing in the equity and distribution of funding type take [topic], Minister—at the core, really, of improving, growing, and expanding kaupapa Māori education. What we know in the South is that demand outstrips supply, and has done for a long time, and is increasing. If you take a look at the Te Tira Hou report, it states that only 2.9 percent of Māori students in Te Waipounamu are in either Māori medium education or kaupapa Māori education—so any one of those three delivery modes that I mentioned—yet the demand for that is much, much higher. If you can give some advice around that, that would be great.

15:53

Thank you. As I said earlier, we have a commitment to equitable resourcing of a bilingual education system, and I mean that. Everything that we have done, we have made sure that we’re thinking about Māori resources, Māori property, Māori professional learning and development, Māori teachers exactly the same, at the same time. We are starting from very different standing points, though. We have a lot of ground to make up. I think you’ve already noted that so many of those kura kaupapa schools have been placed into schools that have been abandoned or sites that are not fit for purpose, and we have got a really big backlog.

In the last two Budgets, we ringfenced $50 million in funding. We are still using that funding. In this, while there was funding for Ngāringaomatariki, up North, which we are moving off the site that they’re on into a completely new site, which has already started, and they’re getting solar as well, we still have funding available to do all the projects that we’ve got in the pipeline. But, no doubt, in future Budgets there will be more that will be required.

The thing that I’m really proud of is the fact that we are the first Government ever to include kura kaupapa education, not just Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa (TRN) but also Ngā Kura ā Iwi o Aotearoa, in network planning. We’ve never considered that before, and here we are doing that now with a really good relationship with Tūmatakahuki, who are going to help us work out where the demand is, because what I’m afraid of is that we build places in, for example, primary school, yet we don’t have early childhood education provision to be able to feed up into it. That’s why I’ve asked them to work out where the need is, where we have lumpy provisions, so that we can create that kōhanga reo all the way through to wharekura and we can even it out. We’ve never done that before in a proper network planning way and involve Māori to help us do it, and that’s what Tūmatakahuki are helping us to do.

I am really proud of the work that we’ve done in Māori property. We moved Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Hawaiki Hou out of a bank vault. They were in a bank vault for, I think it was, 8 years—they were in a bank in town. We’ve moved them out to Cobham. We’ve re-done all of their classrooms. [Interruption] I don’t understand why the Opposition is sniping about this. This is an amazing thing. Actually, frankly, under your Government they were waiting for it, and you didn’t do it. I know it hurts, the fact that we’ve done it and you didn’t, but you know what? I actually care about tamariki Māori.

I wasn’t responsible, Minister.

Sorry. Not only that, yes, we’re moving Te Whānau Tahi into a new site in the South Island as well. Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna, just across here in Wellington—full school redevelopment. When I went there to tell the young students that they were getting a library for the first time, they were over the moon. Also, Ngāringaomatariki up North as well—the only kura kaupapa in between Auckland and Whangārei—moving them to a whole new site. I was in Whakatāne the other day—it wasn’t a kura kaupapa, but it was an immersion school that is a special character school who worked with us. They had a bespoke design, and we went back and said, “Actually, we can deliver something at half the price.”—well, a lot cheaper; it may not have been half the price but in half the time. We delivered them almost a whole school rebuild as well. They were absolutely over the moon about it.

Because we’ve been able to reduce the cost of building, we’ve been able to deliver more, and that $50 million each year that we’ve ringfenced into Māori education has been able to go further, and we are still using it. I am really, really proud of the relationship that I have with not only TRN and Ngā Kura ā Iwi but Tūmatakahuki as well, working towards making sure we’ve got really good network planning, so there is kōhanga reo all the way through to wharekura provision. That has not always been the case, and we do have a long way to go before we get there, but we are investing every single year into making sure that that happens.

15:57

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I would really like to know, given this is the Estimates debate and we have the Ministry of Education in here and the Minister here, how much of the $177 million allocated has been spent to date. The purpose of this debate is to understand the Budget. I’ve asked a pretty clear question; you’ve given me $177 million for 10 years. We would like to know—I would like to know; New Zealand would like to know—how much of that $177 million on the SMART (Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool) has been spent to date.

If the Minister and the ministry are unable to answer that question, that is a sad indictment upon the New Zealand democracy and even Public Service—if we’re unable to produce the figure of how much you’ve spent on a tool, while we’re in the committee of the whole House with the specific purpose of examining the Estimates. Before the time is up, I would love to hear how much of the $177 million allocated for the SMART tool over a 10-year period has been spent to date.

15:58

I’m advised by my officials that we’ve budgeted to spend $25 million in 2025-26 and $13 million in 2026-27, and we can confirm actual spend in the annual review later this year.

We’ve got time for one quick question—Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just noting, in the Budget, that there’s been cuts to Positive Behaviour for Learning and there also hasn’t been any increase to Incredible Years. What is the Minister of Education and the Government doing to address the issue of racism in schools?

A final couple of questions: on charter schools, we see a boost to charter schools funding. Can the Minister elucidate for the committee what is the average class size of a charter school?

15:59

Just in response to the member’s first question, around Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L), the core of PB4L still exists—it has not been removed. There are some pilot programmes that were around it that were still in pilot that we’ve removed. One of them was because the local iwi weren’t interested in working with us in that particular pilot any more, and others weren’t achieving the outcomes. We’ve taken that funding and put it into other initiatives, but the core of PB4L still exists in schools for the purposes that you mentioned.

Look, in terms of charter school enrolments, I don’t have that exact number to hand—the average class size—but what I do know is that numbers have risen by about 18 percent. There has been really strong demand, and there are some new schools that are going to be opening that I know there will be strong demand for. I know Dane from Autism New Zealand has had an application that has been accepted.

Those are the types of schools that are going to really change the landscape and change outcomes for some New Zealand students who need a different type of environment or different type of school to be able to thrive. That’s the whole purpose of charter schools: to offer choice and something different. I can tell the member—I’ve just been handed something—that number of charter schools currently open is 19, and the total enrolled students, the latest figure I have, at July 2026, is 1,732.

Members, the Minister’s time in the chair has come to an end. We now have the Minister of Justice.

16:01

Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak on Vote Justice as the chair of the Justice Committee. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge my predecessor, the Hon Andrew Bayly, who chaired the committee through the Estimates process and the hearings held on 18 June. I became the chair on 2 July, and I thank Andrew for his work leading the committee’s consideration of these Estimates—and James Meager for his prior chairing as well. It has only gotten better over time.

The Justice Committee has recommended that the appropriations for Vote Justice be accepted. In 2026-27, the total appropriation sought for Vote Justice is approximately $1.087 billion, an increase of 4.9 percent on the estimated actual expenditure for the year 2025-26. During our consideration of the Estimates, we heard from the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Nicole McKee, and the Hon Karen Chhour, along with officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence.

The committee explored a wide range of issues, including legal aid, Te Au Reka, the overall justice pipeline, firearms reform, adoption and surrogacy legislation, and efforts to prevent family and sexual violence. We heard that Budget 2026 includes additional funding to address demand pressures in legal aid, with legal aid continuing to be one of the largest components of Vote Justice expenditure. The committee also discussed the role of technology and improving efficiency across the justice system.

The Estimates also provided for substantial capital investment, including approximately $251.5 million in capital expenditure. Alongside that, Budget 2026 includes funding for significant justice sector infrastructure projects, including two new courthouses in Rotorua, as well as wider law and order investments such as new police stations in Greymouth, Madam Chair, and Whanganui, Mr Bates.

The committee also considered the implementation of the Arms Bill and noted the Budget provision of $44.9 million over four years to establish the new firearms regulator, modernise firearms ICT systems, and establish a firearms licensing review committee.

Overall, the committee’s examination highlighted ongoing investment in justice services, legal aid, community justice support, court modernisation, and justice infrastructure. These appropriations help ensure that New Zealand’s justice system remains accessible, effective, and capable of meeting future demand.

16:04

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister of Justice for being here. I just wanted to first of all ask a procedural question: whether there would be any other Ministers attending—for example, the Attorney-General, as a result of the connection of that portfolio to the Justice portfolio?

My understanding is that the Minister for Courts and Associate Minister of Justice is available right here, so any questions relating to her areas, she will be able to answer.

Thank you, that’s very helpful—that was going to be my next question, but the Minister jumped up, so thank you very much, and we will just indicate, I suppose, if there’s a particular—

Yes, and the member will speak from their seat.

Thank you so much. Well, my first question is to the Minister of Justice around the effects of the reductions in staffing at the Ministry of Justice. We heard during the Estimates programme that “great progress” had been made—that’s a quote, not an opinion—in relation to the reductions of staff at the Ministry of Justice. I wanted to ask the Minister what progress has been made in determining, since the Estimates hearing, and if he can give us more details on the roles that will be implemented; also, the timeline for this, whether there’s been consultation, and, if there has been consultation, whether this has concluded or not.

16:05

Thank you. Well, since we came into Government, of course, right across the board, we’ve been having a real focus on restoring financial sustainability across Government. We’re borrowing, still, a huge amount of money in each Budget—including this Budget. This Budget is borrowing over $11 billion. We as a Government have set a path back to surplus in the next three or four years, which is very important, because we shouldn’t be sending the bill to future generations.

Justice has had to play its part in finding those savings and getting back to a reasonable level. We included a range of updating of fees and collections in Budget 2024, which brought in some extra revenue. This time, approximately $10 million per year in savings were delivered—in 2024, sorry—and I’m looking forward to a further $7 million in savings expected from reductions in back-office roles as part of the ministry’s reprioritisation to manage within baselines in this year ahead. How they do that, in terms of the exact numbers of fulltime-equivalents, is something for the chief executive to manage. I don’t have any exact figures to hand at this stage, because I think it’s still under discussion.

16:07

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got a number of questions for the Minister in Vote Justice particularly about the Electoral Commission, and particularly about youth enrolment. First of all, I just want to ask the Minister if he’s made it easier or harder for youth to enrol to vote?

I’ll just seek advice from the Chair in terms of—is the Estimates debate supposed to be on the Estimates and what we’re spending on or has it got a full remit across any policy sort of element?

We’re just checking it is Vote Justice, but we’ll see.

Oh, it’s definitely Vote Justice. We fund the Electoral Commission through Vote Justice, and we continue to Vote it.

The question is in order.

Ah, right—OK. Well, as I recall the question, it was about whether it makes it easier to vote or harder to vote. My response to that is that it is very easy to vote in New Zealand. If you look at our requirements and expectations, they are very light indeed. We don’t require people to bring ID or anything like that to vote. What we do have is a simple requirement that New Zealanders who want to vote should be enrolled. The Australians, of course, expect people to be enrolled 30 days before the election. We are expecting people to be enrolled by the day before voting starts, and that is two weeks before election day.

Election day, for people tuning in on their crystal sets to this debate, is 7 November, where we have a choice between going forward or going backwards as a country, and I’d encourage people to go forwards and give their party vote to National. That’s on 7 November.

Minister, can I just remind you this isn’t a party-political broadcast.

Well, thank you. I’m just giving people some advice on this matter. Early voting starts on 26 October, so people need to be enrolled the day before.

16:09

I actually asked whether he’d made it easier or harder, not whether it was absolutely easy or hard. I just would like some reflection on whether the Minister of Justice thinks a four-year allocation of $80.6 million—which is intended to improve and modernise election processes, it’s intended to improve enrolment and communications—is enough. Has he been chasing the Electoral Commission, when, actually, compared to 2023, we have got 5 percent fewer youth—18- to 24-year-olds—enrolled to vote, and the line is stagnant? And worse—as the Minister clearly explained the cutoff date, 14 days before—13 days before, depending on how you calculate the enrolment and the date—means that we will not get this 10 percent boost in the 18- to-24-year old age group. Would the Minister also agree that 18- to 24-year-olds have their life ahead of them, and will be hugely affected by the choice of Government in 2026?

16:10

Yes, I do believe that young people will be greatly affected by the outcome of this election, and that’s why it’s so important that the current Government is returned so we can carry on the good work, have a strong, vibrant, growing economy, that we stay strong on law and order, and a host of other things—so I welcome that question. The only point I would say in relation to enrolments—the latest advice I’ve had on enrolments is that 89.5 percent of people entitled to vote have enrolled at this stage. That is slightly ahead of the previous election, at this stage of the cycle, so that’s good news. The member would have seen, like everyone else in New Zealand over the last couple of weeks, the advertising campaign that has kicked into gear, encouraging people to get enrolled.

I’ll remind people who are listening: it is the law to be enrolled. Citizens and people who are entitled to vote are required to be enrolled, and to update their details each election. So that is the process that we’re going through. Of course, the group that will lag behind is the youngest group, when people are voting for the first time—and that’s why there is a huge amount of effort being put into encouraging young people to get enrolled. I even heard, today, some reference to there are even adverts in some games that people play online in New Zealand—you can be playing a game and an ad will be coming up encouraging you to get enrolled. The Electoral Commission is being very thorough and very creative in their efforts to encourage people to enrol.

16:13

Point of order. I just want to raise it as a point of order because I don’t want to lose questioning time, but you did warn the Minister of Justice about talking about who he believes that the electorate should vote for, and he didn’t adhere to your kind request. I just wondered if you could remind the Minister again that we do have some serious questions around the electoral changes, and we’d prefer not to hear his personal opinion on who people should vote for every time we pose one of those to the Minister.

It wasn’t actually my advice to him, I was just pointing out this is not a party political broadcast, but I take your point. I will kick him under the table if he says it again!

Point of order, Madam Chair. I seek leave to table this graph, which has been compiled by our wonderful library staff. It is not publicly available, and I think it shows very clearly the gap between the election three years ago, and the election this year.

You’re seeking leave for that?

Yes.

Leave is sought for that purpose—

The gap in youth enrolment.

I’m putting in the leave. Is there any objection?

Yes.

16:14

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on my colleague’s point about the Electoral Commission, and then I do have some other questions for the Minister of Justice. Of course, accepting the fact that every Budget allocation is a choice, I reflect back on the Minister’s comments during question time today when answering questions on this very issue, and he made the very good point that his understanding was that if we do nothing, then we hit a particular circumstance. The current Budget allocation under the heading “Integrity Improvement to Electoral Services” includes a package of things. One of them is the reduction of that enrolment period. There are other measures in there, including trying to facilitate automatic enrolment over a longer period—so not for this election, but, essentially, for the 2029 election. Arguably, the better choice, in terms of facilitating democracy and dollar spend, as opposed to putting money into the first function, would be to put a larger percentage of that financial bucket—or the entirety of it—into the second function: ensuring that there are automatic enrolments.

So just wondering, in terms of the Budget allocation, whether the Minister would comment on that financial choice, especially given the fact that the Electoral Commission themselves advised against putting funding into that first option. I’d be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation or otherwise of this: my understanding of their view is that the problem we hit is not for the 2026 election, in terms of the spend; the problem we hit is the 2029 election and being able to count the votes within the period of the writ.

Now, if the Budget allocation were to go towards automatic updates, as opposed to changing the registration day, we could then meet the problem identified by the Electoral Commission. It would be a sound spend of Budget finances over the coming three years—instead what it looks to me is that we have a very heavy, front-loaded Budget that’s focused on the registration issue, and then that peters down. The question for the Minister is: firstly, am I correct that that is the issue we face in terms of the count, which has justified this spend, and that the issue is 2029 not 2026; and if that’s the case, is the better spend not put into updating the roll?

The second question is in relation to something that’s not in the Budget, but I would ask the Minister whether he considered contingency funding for this—because he was aware that there would be a report coming out from the Law Commission on hate crimes and proposed changes that they made. The report was given to the Minister on 23 June, which is well after the Budget was announced, but, again, significant proposals—if the Government were to go ahead with the proposals, it would mean changes to the systems and processes in both the Police and the Ministry of Justice, in terms of their case management, so there would be budgetary allocations. It would have been possible for the Government to allocate contingency to ensure that they could respond to those proposals. Is it the Minister’s intention that the Government would take that work programme forward; and if so, because there isn’t a contingency, does that mean there wouldn’t be any action on this before the next Budget? Or has the Minister got any other views on that? I might leave those two there, but I do have a few others that I’ll stand to later.

16:18

Just in response, the Budget did include extra resources for the Electoral Commission, and we fund it on a sort of a three-yearly basis, but we put some extra resources in following the feedback from the previous election, where there was a good deal of disquiet about some mistakes that were made. I recall some votes being lost and then found, and some mistakes had been made, and so there was a concern around the rigour. When we think about elections, there are three things in particular that we’re focused on. One is the integrity of the system, which is fundamental to our democratic consent; secondly—the integrity of it—the timeliness of the vote is relevant and important; and the accuracy of the vote is also important. That’s why we’ve put some extra resources into that. How exactly it is allocated and used is, obviously, the independent writ of the Electoral Commission, and we don’t interfere in that.

16:19

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m interested in asking the hard-working Minister of Justice: there’s been a continuous intention described about putting victims first in both our budgeting and where this budgeting goes to. Minister, I’d like to ask you to please explain some of the ways that these intentions have materialised through the Budget so that the Government can continue to put victims at the heart of most of its spending with respect to justice and being forward-looking. How do you anticipate this will further help the number of victims of violent crime go down, as we have been seeing? Minister, I’d like to hear about that. Thank you.

16:20

Thank you, Rima Nakhle, MP for Takanini—a great place in Auckland. A significant part of the justice budget is for policy advice. There are different elements of our justice system in terms of how we achieve our overall goal as a Government to restore law and order, and fix the basics in law and order, so we can build a future where New Zealanders feel safe in their community. The particular measure that we had in mind is to reduce the number of victims of crime. In other parts of the Government response, there’s the Police for example, so we’ve put extra resources and extra police on the beat.

In terms of justice, one of the most powerful tools that we have is our legislative framework, which is why the policy budget section of justice is so important. It is through our laws that we send messages. Our message is that we want to have fewer victims of crime, and to do that, we want to restore real consequences for crime, and we did that through changing our sentencing laws—when you have three strikes.

Then we also have the insights—and I would be interested in people’s observations on this—but a good place to start, if you want fewer victims of crime, is to focus on that very small group of New Zealanders who create multiple victims over and over and over again. A case in point of that, of course, is gangs, who are not just like Rotary or the Lions or some community group; they are less than a quarter of 1 percent of the adult population, and they are associated with 20 to 25 percent of the violent crime. That is why we’ve changed the law to give Police extra powers to deal more effectively with gangs, and we’ve worked our way through that as well.

We’ll focus on sexual violence: that’s why we brought in legislation around stalking, that’s why we’ve done away with permanent name suppression for convicted sex offenders—all these things were aided and abetted by the policy function of the justice ministry. That’s why we continue to fund that, and there is much, much more work to do in that space.

The good news is that the primary measure that we use on that is the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey, where 185,000 New Zealanders reported that they’d been a victim of serious violent or sexual offending in the 12 months before, which is a horrendous figure, when we came to power. We set a goal of reducing that by 20,000, down to 165,000. The good news is that the most recent figure available has it down by 46,000, and so that’s 46,000 families who have not had to go through the pain and trauma of being a victim of serious violent crime. Now, it’s still too many, but it feels like we’re making some good progress.

16:23

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a follow-up question to the question around the restructuring at the Ministry of Justice, and I know that the Minister of Justice said he would try and get some answers on that. Specifically, we raised with him, during the Estimates process, the reason for those reductions, and he did state that there will be reduced staff due to technological advances that would be occurring in the financial year. I just wanted to see if there was an update from the Minister on that specifically.

Another question that I had related to the questions around the Electoral Commission, and they are being raised now. As the Minister said, in relation to the increases in funding that came about as a result of the changes to the Electoral Amendment Act 2025, the decisions around the spend in that were up to the discretion of the Electoral Commissioner. However, I wanted to know specifically: is he aware of the amount that the Electoral Commissioner has specifically utilised in order to advertise the change of electoral enrolment deadline that was put in place as a result of his changes to the Electoral Amendment Act? I would be grateful if that specific figure around additional spending as a result of that change by the Electoral Commission could be obtained.

I’ve got another question, just if the Minister is getting advice on that. He did speak to some of the legislation that the Government has passed. One of the pieces of legislation that the Government has passed is the Crimes Amendment Act, which has recently been passed and had policy work undertaken during the year that the Estimates relate to. The Crimes Amendment Act has some controversial elements, including citizen’s arrest powers. I wanted to ask the Minister—with those citizen’s arrest powers, there was a bit of confusion in one of his recent interviews around the age group that that would apply to, so I wanted to ask him: do those arrest powers apply to children of any age, and do those associated mechanical restraints also apply to children of any age?

16:26

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right, here we go—Vote Justice. Justice’s sector leadership and support appropriation, Minister, covering the ministry’s coordination role across the justice sector, rises only marginally from $16.653 million to $16.909 million for 2026-2027. Just a few figures here, Minister, for May. Community legal assistance falls from $66.414 million to $16.186 million in this Vote. Not one appropriation line in Vote Justice is identifiable as dedicated funding to reduce wāhine Māori disproportionality. Just more to that to that point: wāhine Māori make up 44 percent of police proceedings, 66 percent of women remanded in custody, and 71 percent of women sentenced to imprisonment.

As of April 2026, Minister, wāhine Māori are 65 percent of the total female prison population. Wāhine Māori are incarcerated at nearly 11 times the rate of non-Māori women. The Minister will know the Ombudsman warns that “without meaningful interventions, there is a risk the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for wāhine Māori will be embedded in the projected prison population growth.” The last point in this particular piece is that the Justice Committee has been told the woman’s prison population has almost doubled under this Government and is projected to rise 63 percent over the next decade.

The issue is there is a system response issue; it is not an offending severity issue. The majority of women in prison are not charged with violent offences. The Ministry of Justice’s own research, Minister, shows the system responds more seriously to wāhine Māori, with disproportionate amplifying at every single stage. The Ombudsman, again, identifies survival-driven offending, such as shoplifting—right, to provide for families—as a key driver of wāhine Māori imprisonment.

My questions, Minister—because these are concerns for Māori women, they’re concerns for their whānau, and they’re concerns for their hapū and their communities in which they reside—from me: what measurable reduction in the number and proportion of wāhine Māori in prison is the Government committed to achieving over this term of Parliament? If there is no such target, how can Parliament assess whether current spending is working—question one. Question two—I’ve got five, but I’ll go with the first two, because my minutes are going to be up shortly. The Ministry has told the Ombudsman it is establishing a Reducing Māori Disproportionality programme, with wāhine Māori as the initial focus. Minister, which appropriation in Vote Justice funds this programme and what dollar amount is allocated to it in ’26-’27?

These are real issues, Minister, and, sadly, in what we’ve listened to and what we note in the Vote, it seems that wāhine Māori are not thought about, cared about, and understood in this Vote, in any real and serious way. The numbers tell us—the numbers tell us how incarceration rates are rising, and that’s a systems issue; that’s how Māori woman are dealt with. And yet, the response to those, which should be a good and careful, considered response, is poor. I’d be interested—very interested—as many of our community in Te Tai Tokerau would be, to your response to those questions. Thank you.

16:30

Well, I thank the member for the questions, and it is a real issue that she raises, and a long-standing issue in New Zealand where wāhine Māori—Māori women—are disproportionately represented throughout the justice system. They are over-represented as victims of crime as well as in the prison system.

In direct response to the question, we don’t have prison population targets. The previous administration did have a target to reduce the prison population by 30 percent across the board. We all want to see fewer New Zealanders in prison, but it’s our view that that needs to follow a reduction in crime. What we saw in the last Government was a fall in prison population, but at the same time an increase in violent crime. We don’t think that is an appropriate thing. We’re not prepared to risk public safety in an effort to reduce the prison population. Our focus is not necessarily on reducing the prison population but on reducing the number of victims of crime. Given that wāhine Māori are more likely to be victims of crime, they are more likely to benefit from that focus.

Nevertheless, there has been a lot of research done on the disproportionality of wāhine Māori being both sentenced and having longer sentences, and I have studied that information quite closely. A certain amount of that difference can be explained by the offending being a more serious offending leading to more serious outcomes, but it is true that the research shows that there is a gap there which is unexplained, and it continues to be a big challenge to the sector. I mean, obviously, I can’t comment as Minister of Justice on judicial decisions, because the judiciary are independent and accountable.

I would say that there are thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, many of them are Māori of course. I don’t agree with the proposition that it’s a very simple thing to say there is structural racism within the system, because I think that’s offensive to the people who are working in a system doing their very best to deliver for all New Zealanders. I back and support the many thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, as I say, many of whom are Māori, who are wanting the best outcome for all New Zealanders, including Māori, but there is still this gap there, and it has been there for a long time.

We do invest enormous sums in a range of programmes designed to reduce that gap. I can point to Te Ao Mārama court processes, which are designed to have much greater use of particular Māori tikanga and views of how to handle the situation. There’s been a big expansion of those Te Ao Mārama courts. The previous Government, of course, had a massive expansion planned, and we, quite rationally, said, actually, we’re going to do five or six, so let’s take stock to see if it’s working effectively or not before we keep on rolling out the expansion, and we’re in the middle of that process at the moment.

I would just draw attention to one thing that the member said where she referred to survival-driven crimes such as shoplifting. I’m sorry, I just don’t accept that. We need to send a clear message as legislators and people in this Parliament that there is no excuse for crime—people are accountable. We have in this country one of the more generous welfare systems in the world. New Zealanders do help those who are in need, and there are many ways that people can access help if they need them. There is never an excuse to steal food or to shoplift. That is our view, and we will stick with it.

16:35

Madam Chair, tēnā koe. I also have questions relating to Māori in prisons, and especially wāhine Māori. However, I appreciate that answer, although subjective. What Budget initiatives, if any, are dedicated to ending the overrepresentation of Māori in prison, especially considering that Māori men are now more than six times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori men, and Māori women are now almost 11 times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori women and are 70 percent of the remand population? That is one of the many questions I have around this report by Ināia Tonu Nei.

Does the Minister of Justice dispute that over 50 percent of all prisoners reoffend within two years of their release because these institutions were never designed for rehabilitation? Have there been any unforeseen fiscal and social costs associated with the implementation of the three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Act? Does the Minister recognise that Māori are imprisoned at higher proportions and rates than others, and does he agree that this is a problem? What impacts have three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Acts had on the over-incarceration of Māori? And lastly, to put this to the Minister because, as we all know, Māori are unjustifiably overrepresented in the justice system, and this inequity is continuing to grow as a result of the socio-economic consequences of raupatu and this Government’s active decision to prosecute and imprison more people for low-level drug offences, crimes of poverty, homelessness, and even the clothes that they wear.

The final question for the Minister is this: does he agree that prisons fail to deter crime and to address its causes and other issues such as mental health and addiction and that, ultimately, they trap our people in lives of violence and poverty?

16:37

Well, I thank the member for the questions. I can’t see her, because she’s hidden behind the Hansard—

She’s moved.

Thank you. I think it’s worth remembering that people are sent to prison in this country and it’s not easy to be sent to prison in this country. The long-term insights into the prison population in New Zealand did make the very clear and strong point that the vast majority of people who are in prison in New Zealand are there for serious, either sexual or violent, offences. That is the bulk of the prison population.

There’s a number of objectives that we have when we send people to prison. Yes, it may be that they may be rehabilitated to change their ways when they come out; yes, it may deter people from carrying out the act; but there are other very significant roles of imprisonment, and one is to keep the rest of the community safe, and I go back to the proposition that our Government has focused on reducing the number of victims of crime. As I said at the beginning, there’s a small group of New Zealanders who create fresh victims over and over and over again, and the extent to which they are taken out of circulation and held responsible for their actions for longer means that they are unable to create fresh victims for a period of time. Now, of course, eventually they will come out, and that is why we focus on rehabilitation.

The other purpose of sending people to prison is to denounce the act. It is society saying that we denounce that act, and that is why there’s been so much frustration, particularly in the sexual offences space, where cases are often difficult to prove. People go through the whole process, which is a traumatic process, through the court and a conviction has been attained, and then people have been concerned that there have been very light consequences sometimes passed through, and that is why we’ve toughened up the consequences. We’ve sent a message from Parliament that we don’t think that being sentenced to a period of time on PlayStation at home denounces a sexual violence act explicitly and clearly. That’s why we’re wanting to send a clearer message, and the hope is that that message will get through, particularly to young men in this country.

I find it interesting that we’ve had universal support for tougher sentences for stalking and tougher sentences for some things, but when it comes to the broader message around accountability and consequences, there seems to be a variety of views and opinions, but that is where we come from on this matter.

16:40

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick couple of questions for Minister McKee around the Firearms Licensing Review Committee appointments. When we were at the hearing, advertisements were only just going out for the committee, with no confirmed date for that $4.7 million that was allocated. I was just wondering: what is the confirmed appointment date, and will the committee be operational before the enforcement of the new Arms Act regime begins?

16:41

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his question; that’s a good one. On 23 September, the Firearms Licensing Review Committee will be established. We are very close to announcing the appointment of eight members and the chair. They will be set up ready to go on implementation date, which, as I mentioned, is 23 September 2026.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Picking up the couple of comments from the Minister of Justice with further questions—one of the things we saw from the sector insight around wāhine Māori is the fact that one of the most common reasons for wāhine Māori to be incarcerated is because of shoplifting. Reducing the incarceration rate for wāhine Māori is both the Ministry of Justice’s and this Government’s priority, yet we have seen legislation put in place that actively goes against that priority. I want to check with the Minister: how then would the Minister reconcile both making it worse for wāhine Māori but also, at the same time, wanting to address the issue—as we heard from other speakers—

As related to the Estimates.

Yes, because there’s no budget in Budget 2026 that specifically addresses this. There’s no itemised, I guess, appropriation in Vote Justice that specifically addresses this.

What is also important to note, because the Minister mentioned the victims of crime survey quite a lot—I would like to put on record that that is a projection; that is not actual data. But at the same time, in that data, in terms of the victims for Māori, for disabled, for rainbow, they have increased significantly over the last few years. How would the Minister, in Budget 2026, address the increase in the victimisation particularly for those communities?

The Minister did mention Te Ao Mārama, and it’s also important to note that in Budget 2026, Te Ao Mārama’s funding has been continuously paused to expand the programme, despite the fact that we know Te Ao Mārama works. On top of that, we also saw in the Budget—if the Minister wouldn’t mind elucidating for this committee why there has been no additional funding for the Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, despite the fact we know that Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou works.

Those are our questions specifically around the victims figure around Māori that the Minister has mentioned before.

My question is: in Budget 2026, the Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime has been given additional budget, despite the fact that the ministerial advisory group (MAG) has wound up, as far as the Minister has reported. So why has that particular MAG been given an additional $450,000 in 2026-2027? In the Supplementary Estimates that were received at the same time as Budget 2026-2027, despite multiple resignations from the MAG over the last year, there has been no reduction in the funding or no drawdown of the funding of that particular MAG, so where has that money gone, despite the multiple resignations?

Finally, just around the ministerial advisory group, looking at that $450,000, is the Minister expecting that ministerial advisory group to continuously take on additional functions and/or seek additional advisers for that ministerial advisory group, and if that is the case, does the Minister know who those advisers for the ministerial advisory group would be or have been?

16:45

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just going to answer the member’s question around Te Ao Mārama. Te Ao Mārama is a pilot programme that’s been under way for a couple of years. It’s been in eight different sites. The reason why we have not apportioned any more money to it is because we need to await the evaluation. The member had said that it’s been successful; well, there’s actually been no evaluation to tell us of its success. On this side of the hall here, we actually want to make sure that we put money into successful programmes that have shown us that they are successful. We have to stop throwing money at different programmes that have not shown whether or not they have that success. Until we get the review on Te Ao Mārama, which is expected sometime in 2027-28—it’s not being undertaken by us; it will be undertaken by the courts themselves, and it will be a robust programme—then we can decide what works, what doesn’t work, what we can roll out, for instance.

What I will mention about the Te Ao Mārama programme is that there are some aspects of the programme that have worked well that do not have any cost implications at all and have actually been rolled out to other courts throughout the country, as well, as a result of showing that it did work fine. But for us to put money into a programme, we need to ensure that that programme is financially sustainable and does have good benefits for the people that are using it, for society, and for our community, because, quite frankly, we think the country has had enough of Government throwing money at schemes that don’t necessarily work.

16:47

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question can be for both of our Ministers. You know, in this this role that we have, the mahi that we do on the Justice Committee, we often hear the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied”—

Oh, yes.

I hear that my chair, Tom Rutherford, the wonderful chair, is agreeing with me. There’s a lot of kōrero as well about how when “justice delayed is justice denied”, this is where victims are also suffering. So, Ministers, talk us through how this outlook, as well, is being addressed with the appropriations, please. Thank you.

I’ll defer primarily to my colleague Nicole McKee, but I’ll just make the point that if we look at the broader justice priorities for the Government over the last three years, number one has been to reduce the number of victims of crime; number two has been to reduce the number of serious repeat youth offenders exemplified by the ram-raiders of old, which we have dealt with very effectively as a Government; but the third area has been this one, which the member has referred to, about speeding up the processes of the courts, because there have been huge delays to justice. That means that people can’t get on with their lives or can’t get their disputes resolved or, in the Family Court, can’t get their situations resolved in a timely fashion. We’ve had a huge focus as a Government on looking at the many, many things that we can do, through changes of legislation; changes of technology, such as greater use of audiovisual facilities; changing the rules within the courts; getting cooperation between the Police, Corrections, the courts, and the judiciary—all designed to speed up the process. The good news is we’ve made good progress on that, and Minister McKee might like to outline some of that.

16:49

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, there has been a lot of work that has been done over this term of Government to try and help speed up the courts and their timeliness. Minister Goldsmith referred to legislation. Some of the legislation includes Family Court Associates being progressed. There was a pilot that was under way when we came in. We’ve actually managed to get another eight Family Court Associates out around the country assisting judges and freeing up judges’ time. We have legislation coming through which will empower community magistrates to do more work, which will also free up judges’ time. We’ve made changes to the Coroners Act so that we can get them moving quicker as well.

One thing that the member has mentioned: “justice delayed is justice denied”. When families are waiting to hear outcomes about loved ones and how they’ve passed, waiting eight years can be absolutely over the top. The changes from the Coroners Court have also allowed us to speed up the justice process. Of course, we’ve put up the judges caps across various courts in order to ensure that those that are retiring—and, of course, there are a lot of boomers across the country, in all fields but especially in the courts, who are starting to retire. We’re putting the caps up to ensure that the process for those that are retiring and the new ones that are coming in is not stalling in any way; that there’s a smooth process there. Of course, the very last thing which is about to be implemented this year is Te Au Reka, the digitalisation of our courts, and this, indeed, will also speed up the process, once that’s under way.

When we came into Government, we were told that there was, on average, around 12 events that a person needed to attend when they were going through a court process. At the moment, I think we’ve got that down to around about nine events—I will be corrected if I’m wrong there, but I think it’s around nine events—and we expect to try and get it even lower. It should be sitting at around six events per person. To double it to 12; to get it down to nine—we’re halfway there.

I just want to note that we’ve only got about eight minutes left, so I’ll take Vanushi Walters.

16:51

Thank you, Madam Chair. One question for the Minister of Justice, very briefly, on legal aid. We had the review recently, which identified the shrinking pool of legal aid practitioners, and remuneration or appropriate fee-setting as two of the key issues. The response thus far, and in the Budget, is the line under justice demand-driven cost pressures, with an initiative response which is explicitly a one-off allocation. My concern is that this isn’t addressing what we’ve heard in the report, because we now have a zero allocation in 2027-28 and 2028-29. I’m just curious as to the Minister’s plan in terms of his intentions with the one-off and what the intention is over the three-year budget forecast to address the issues that have now been very clearly identified as a result of the report.

16:52

Yes, in terms of legal aid, we did a triennial review of legal aid, as the member notes; it had been a bit delayed from the previous Government, who I don’t think had done it in a timely fashion, but we got on to it. We came up with suggestions, and those suggestions weren’t met with great enthusiasm by the legal profession. We then went back and decided, “Well, how are we going to do this?”, because, as a country, we’re spending significantly more on legal aid. It has increased significantly over the last few years, but the demand is even higher.

We wanted to look at, “Well, what is it that’s driving this demand upwards?” Some of that is the fact that more people are electing jury trials, and they, of course, are much more intensive and expensive. What we’ve done is we’ve put some extra resources into this year, and we’re going away and having a more fundamental root-and-branch look at what we can do in the broader system, to make changes that may take pressure off legal aid and to focus those limited resources to where they’re most required.

16:53

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a supplementary on that. Is the Minister of Justice considering bulk funding for legal aid, given his previous comments?

I just note that I’m still awaiting answers on my questions around spending from the Electoral Commission, the functionality of particular provisions in the Crimes Act, and also the number of roles being restructured and types of roles in the Ministry of Justice. It’s frustrating not to hear those by the end of this hearing, so I won’t speak too long, to ask the Minister whether he will be able to come back to me with answers to those questions.

I did want to ask, in relation to move-on orders, what resourcing has the Minister put in place—considering that I understand he is still intending to pass the move-on orders before the election—and what resourcing has been put in place to provide education to the community and the police about how move-on orders will be implemented? We understand there are concerns that facilitating move-on orders, especially in relation to some of the provisions that are preventative, may require additional resourcing from Police. What forethought has gone into that?

16:54

Just quickly, in terms of the Electoral Commission, one of their core functions—for which they’ve always been funded—is to encourage people to enrol.

Their hands were kind of tied behind their back by the previous Labour Government when it introduced election day enrolment, because they had this big campaign to encourage people to get enrolled, but at the same time, they were saying, “Please get enrolled, but by the way, it doesn’t matter if you do or you don’t because you can just rock up on election day and get enrolled.”, and so fewer and fewer people were being enrolled in a timely fashion and there were more and more people not enrolled prior to writ day. That was the problem there, but I understand—my advice is—that there’s been an extra $2 million allocated on top of the normal allocation for enrolment advertising.

In terms of the Crimes Amendment Act, in terms of citizens arrest—she asked about that. There is no age specification, as there hasn’t been in the existing law, which has been in place for many decades. The difference was that it applied after 9 p.m., but it didn’t apply before 9 p.m.

16:56

Madam Chair, I also have a couple of questions on the move-on orders, and am conscious of the time. What support—if anything—will the ministry provide to homeless whānau who have been moved on, and what support can these people expect to receive from the Government in these situations?

Final question: has the Government considered the implications of the Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, especially when it comes to whānau accessing kai and essentials in a situation where the main provider has been trespassed from the only supermarket in their area, especially for people living in rural and isolated communities?

In terms of the move-on orders—what was the question? Oh, the question was around the support for people who are struggling with housing difficulties. Of course, the purpose of the move-on orders is not our response to housing issues. We have many tools with which to help those who are in need in terms of housing, and my fellow ministers, Ministers Potaka and Bishop, are responsible for the many, many millions—if not billions—of dollars we spend on housing support in this country. The move-on orders are focused, from a justice response, on dealing with and reclaiming our main centres, town squares, and CBDs for the enjoyment of people who live there, who work there, and who visit there, so that people can feel safe in those environments.

16:57

Just a quick one for Minister McKee again, around Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. At the hearing, we heard about the Minister’s plans for the changeover between the current regulator and the new one, Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. I was just wondering if there has been a liaison team set up to transfer the work over between New Zealand Police and Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand?

My understanding is that the Ministry of Justice and New Zealand Police are working quite closely with each other and that they have been working on an information-sharing agreement as well, to make sure that that is up and ready to go on 23 September, when the transfer takes place. It is not so much a liaison team but rather those that have been working in both entities still working together to make sure that the implementation is sound.

I’ve been told by the teams on both sides that everything’s looking pretty good, that they’re on track, and that the agreements are actually coming around very, very quickly and very well. I look forward to further agreements being made with other agencies to implement what we call the red-flag system—if you recall during the Arms Act—where the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service will also get some information-sharing agreements with Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand and, of course, with New Zealand Police as well. That will come after—in fact, they may be working on it now—but it’s not needed to be implemented by 23 September.

Members, the Minister’s time in the chair, in this portfolio, has come to an end. We now have the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio from 5 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. The Hon Jan Tinetti, chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee—sorry, you were just blocked from my vision there.

16:59

Oh yes, sorry, Madam Chair. I sat in the wrong place.

The Governance and Administration Committee met on 17 June to hear evidence on Vote Public Service. This is the first time that we’ve had the opportunity to scrutinise the evidence of the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government under the new portfolio area where the responsibility of digital leadership functions has been transferred on 1 April 2026 from the Department of Internal Affairs to the new Government Digital Delivery Agency.

A number of things were talked about at this particular meeting. Budget 2026 proposed to allocate $131.5 million for Vote Public Service. It’s a decrease from the estimated actual spending of $132.7 million in 2025-26, and it comprises, again, the new appropriation for Government Digital Delivery Agency and then other matters within the Public Service.

As I said, a variety of topics were covered at the hearing. We talked about changes in workforce and resourcing for the Public Service, the role of new technology, and, of course, the Government digital delivery agency. Some other subjects were covered briefly in that hearing as well. Record-keeping and the review of the advertising campaign were two such topics. I will leave it there because I know that we have a short time and spokespeople will be wanting to ask their questions. Thank you.

17:01

Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome to the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government. I have some questions, and I know we’ve only got half an hour with the Minister, so I have two areas that I’m interested in looking at.

The first area is the biggest area. This year’s Budget was focused on a reduction in the Public Service headcount in order to balance the Government’s Budget. We’ve had very few details on the nature of those cuts to Public Service job roles. I did ask the Minister of Finance when she was in the chair around what progress had been made. I also asked her around the fact that subsequently, since the original cuts were announced in the Budget, there has also been a request to chief executives to produce by the end of August a report on the nature of the cuts within their particular agencies. The Minister of Finance told me that those are two separate processes, so I’d like the Minister, as the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, to explain both of those processes, if they are indeed separate, and if the Minister of Finance has said they are a separate process, what the overall reduction would be. The Budget announced $2.4 billion in money that would be saved due to these job cuts and around 9,000 fewer roles. Is that still the case?

Specifically for the Minister, in relation to these cuts, can the Minister name the public services that New Zealanders currently receive that they will no longer receive as a result of the cuts? A specific question as well: is the 55,000 reduction over the entire forecast period and the number of 1 percent of a growing population fixed, or will that rate of Public Service headcount fall or rise depending on the population? I think that’s important for understanding what the impact of this decision will be. Also, because this has progressed somewhat since the Budget, can he give us an updated forecast on the costs of redundancies and resulting change in contractor and consultant spend as a result of the decisions made in this Budget?

17:03

Well, there were a lot of questions there and I’ll try to remember them as I go through. The first point was around the two sorts of areas of focus. One was the public sector transformation, which is set to save $2.4 billion, as the member said, and then alongside that, but not entirely the same thing, is a reduction in headcount.

It’s worth just reminding people that when Bill English left as Prime Minister and we were kicked out in 2017—although people might sort of question that—47,000 people were working in the public sector. Then we came back six years later and that 47,000 had grown to 63,000. It had been an increase of 34 percent, so 16,000 extra people were hired over six years. New Zealanders quite rightly sort of scratched their heads and thought, “Well, am I getting a 34 percent better service from the public sector?” Then they looked at school attendance and that had dropped. They looked at immunisation rates and those had dropped. They looked at the state of the public finances and it had gone badly into reverse. They looked at law and order and it was falling apart. They quite legitimately asked the question, “Well, we’ve hired all these extra people and the outcomes that we’re getting are worse.”

We have set a goal as a Government to restore the overall numbers of public servants to the historic kind of mean, which is roughly 1 percent of the population, which would take us back to 55,000 in three years. We have ourselves that goal, and in the interim, we’ve asked chief executives to come up with a stepping stone towards that in the next little while. We’re getting some advice coming back about how people will do it and how they’re going to achieve it. That is a work in progress, but we’re sending a very clear message that we want to get our house in order.

Why does this matter? This matters because, ultimately, in this Budget, the core figure of this Budget is that we are still borrowing over $11 billion this year. We’re spending that more than we are earning it as a Government. That bill is being passed to future generations. We have a determination, on this side of the House, to live within our means. We have set a goal to get back to surplus, and part of that is being disciplined in our spending.

Now, it’s much easier to go on a hiring spree and hire a whole lot of people. It’s more difficult to bring that back, and that’s what we have to do as a Government. It’s not about cutting; it’s about bringing the overall numbers back to a historic average. At the same time, of course, by being clear in our outcomes and targets and focus, we are determined and expecting to have better outcomes for New Zealanders as a result. We’ve managed to achieve that in things like truancy, in immunisation rates, in restoring law and order. There isn’t a perfect relationship between the number of people that a Government hires and the outcomes, and that’s what our focus is.

17:07

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some further questions for the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government, really around the artificial intelligence (AI) assumption. In the context of a large number of cuts across the Public Service, AI is often heralded as the kind of hero that’s going to step in and do that work for them. My questions here are really around what the Minister has factored in as the costings for AI. I had an opportunity to ask the Minister of Finance that question back in scrutiny week and was told, well, not much, really, other than that 970 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences had come in, at a cost of $423,289.50 in the 2025-26 year.

My question, really, for the Minister is: what is the forecast spend on AI for the Public Service? Of the jobs that are going and the cost saving that is assumed on that basis—some more detail around how many of those jobs are likely to be offset through the use of AI, and what is the cost attributed to that uptake and adoption of AI? Also, what work or examination has been put into the fact that there will be a lot of issues that result through the use of AI, where the Public Service process takes longer because members of the public can use AI in ways that tie up or complicate those interactions? I’m interested in some answers from the Minister on those questions.

17:09

Well, I thank the member for his question. Towards the end of it, he was making a point which is most relevant, in the sense that New Zealanders are using AI and they’re adopting it vigorously. We’re living in the moment of a very significant technological change, which, like every significant technological change, will bring some benefits and it will also bring some problems. Our goal in Government—and every New Zealander out there will be thinking, “Well, how do I maximise the benefits and minimise the problems?” That’s what we’re doing there. We’re expecting the Public Service to be early adopters.

Wearing my Communications hat, if I speak to a chief executive of One New Zealand or one of the communications companies, and you ask them what they think about artificial intelligence (AI) and what are they worried about, they’re worried that their competitors will figure out how to make better use of AI faster than they do, and they’ll go out of business. That is the competitive tension that many businesses around the country are facing: how do I stay ahead of the technology? How do I figure out how to make use of it faster than my competitors in order to succeed?

Now, that sort of logic, of course, doesn’t apply if you’re the Inland Revenue or the Ministry of Justice; you don’t have a competitor out there trying to beat you. Our worry is: how do we motivate the leadership of the public sector to ensure that they are as agile and fast in looking for ways to make use of this technology and don’t just sort of cruise and coast for five years and let things pass them by. As is obvious to everybody, there is room for improvement in the delivery of services. If I take the example of Justice, where we’ve just been in the last half hour, there are still long delays in the court system, and that is because of very clunky old systems. The use of AI may be able to speed that up in a useful way, so of course we’d be expecting people to do that.

The overarching purpose of expecting ministries to make use of new technology is not to reduce headcount; it is to deliver better services. That’s what it’s fundamentally all about. We want to have better services that are more attuned to the needs of New Zealanders to make it easier for them to do things. One of the mantras that we’re trying to get through is “tell me once”. New Zealanders deal with the many elements of the Public Service and are constantly having to fill out the same information over and over again and are frustrated by that—finding ways whereby we can get that information in a more seamless and digitised fashion. Case in point on that is the Electoral Commission, where every three years, we’ve got to go through this laborious process and send letters out to every letterbox in the country getting people to enrol all over again, which should be a very simple digital task. Those are the sorts of basic things that New Zealanders would expect us to do.

17:12

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to follow on from the line of questioning by my colleague Reuben Davidson around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies in the Public Service. My first question to the Minister is: is it the Minister’s expectation that when going out for procurement for artificial intelligence providers across the Public Service, departments go through an open tender process and follow the procurement rules for procuring technologies that will get rolled out for use in their departments?

My second question is: what safeguards, if any, is the Minister planning to take around tech procurement and issues around the deployment of artificial intelligence? We’ve seen some rather large-scale failures of technology procurement in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in Immigration, just over the past couple of years, so it would be good to get some assurance from the Minister that we are walking into this brave new world with eyes open, so to speak.

My third leg of the question around the use of AI is: will the Minister guarantee, as artificial intelligence gets rolled out through things like the Government Digital Delivery Agency, that the Minister will cement the right to see a human and the right that in all judgments, in whatever automated decision-making processes, and in whatever things an artificial intelligence might contribute to the decision making of, the human who is being judged by the AI has a right to have that decision reviewed by a human being? I’ve used exactly two minutes of my question; I’ll sit down now and let the Minister answer.

17:14

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know I did ask a lot of questions in my first call—I wanted to make sure I got them all in—but I haven’t had an answer yet to the types of roles that will be cut; the types of public services that won’t be available to New Zealanders as a result of this Government’s cuts. We’ve heard the Minister’s justification for them, but what New Zealanders will experience—those who aren’t directly made redundant from their roles in the Public Service—is really the Public Service roles that will no longer exist.

I’d like the Minister to either provide an answer to that today or, if he can’t, please give an indication of whether prior to the election the Government will be able to clarify the nature of those cuts. I think it is quite imperative as to whether New Zealanders support the direction of travel in relation to the public sector cuts to know what public services will no longer be available. I think it’s a really basic question, and I’d like an answer to that. I’ll leave that there. I do have another area I want to cover if there’s time.

17:15

Well, in answer to that question, obviously our focus has been to maintain and preserve, where possible, front-line workers. In fact, there’s been significant increases in front-line workers over the last few years in Corrections and in parts of the courts in terms of court security. Front-line numbers have not been reduced. But there were, over the past few years, big increases in middle-management, for example; some areas of policy, for example; and some areas of back-office support, for example, and those areas are being reduced back to somewhere towards historic norms. There had been, as I said, a hiring spree over the previous few years.

In terms of Mr Xu-Nan’s question—

No, Mr Hernandez.

Oh, no, Mr Hernandez’s questions around tech procurement, yes, of course, I would be expecting the processes to be followed appropriately. We have a particular focus through the Government Digital Delivery Agency to get some coherency around that. We don’t necessarily want 39 different departments having individual contracts with the same people, and we do want to gather efficiencies of scale. That’s why we’ve got a central office that is guiding and directing in that space. That, I think, is very important.

Yes, he referred to various IT failures in the past, and so, again, we have a huge focus on reducing the likelihood of those. Of course, there will always be things that go awry, but it is important that we try to reduce the chances of that happening as much as we possibly can. We’re, again, getting some greater centralised direction and leadership from the general group there in order to reduce the Government Digital Delivery Agency, which has been relatively recently set up and put within the Public Service Commission.

17:18

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do want to thank the Minister for giving some areas that may be impacted, but I do think it does ask New Zealanders to suspend disbelief somewhat to look at the scale of the cuts being proposed and believe that there will be no impact on the services New Zealanders receive. I would appreciate if there would be more detail on the actual nature of the cuts in terms of how they’ll impact New Zealanders.

I just want to move on to the Public Service Commission. That obviously plays an integral role within the Minister’s management of the Public Service. We did have, under the year in review, the Public Service Commission—we have, under the Minister, and actually the previous Minister’s tenure, had a difference in approach in relation to the Public Service Commission. One of those things was we had a Facebook campaign that was run by the commission, and I think around about $250 was spent on boosted posts. Then we had a review that cost $67,000 and came four months late. I wanted to ask the Minister if he’s reflected on that and whether he has instructed the Public Service Commissioner to make sure that decisions of that nature have more foresight in the future. One of the findings of the review was that there was the possibility of the political neutrality of the Public Service Commission being compromised. I wanted to ask the Minister: what has changed in the Public Service Commission since that review in order to prevent that happening again?

Related to that, I wanted to ask the Minister: there’s recently been decisions made by the Public Service Commissioner in relation to their role in bargaining. This has surfaced in relation to a number of different sectors—most recently in health—and just to understand what the Minister’s direction has been to the Public Service Commissioner, and for what reason he has decided that the commissioner is going to take a more active role in public sector bargaining—in fact being the instructing body on behalf of negotiating parties.

17:20

My expectation of the Public Service Commission is that they operate in a politically neutral manner, and I think it is one of the strengths of our political system in New Zealand that we have a long tradition of a politically neutral Public Service. It will always be a point of commentating and observation; people will have their different opinions.

One important thing for the Public Service, generally, to consider is that they look to improve the level of overall trust that New Zealanders have in them. I think it’s a fair observation to make that institutions across the board, whether it’s politics, Public Service, the judiciary, the police, the media—many have suffered a reduction in public trust, particularly through the COVID period. There is a real focus on restoring those levels of trust. The good news is that all the surveys that have been done recently still indicate—I can’t remember the exact figure off the top of my head—reasonably high levels of trust in the New Zealand Public Service, but there’s always room for improvement. My message to the Public Service Commissioner is always to be mindful of that.

In terms of their engagement in pay negotiations, the tradition has been that the chief executives of the various departments are responsible for those negotiations, but they’re perfectly within their rights to ask the Public Service Commission to lead those negotiations, as well. In some instances, that has occurred that way, and we expect them to go about those in a good-faith way, mindful of the fact that these negotiations are always difficult and we’re trying to get the best value that we can for taxpayers and for citizens. We also want to have as much money available for investing in various programmes, and so those negotiations are carried out as best they can.

17:23

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just really want to follow up on the line of questioning that my colleague Camilla Belich is asking, because the Minister of Justice has not answered the question around how many jobs are going to be lost as a result of the baseline savings reductions exercise.

It’s really interesting seeing the shift of messaging from the Government. When all this stuff was being announced earlier this year around Budget time, they were all gung-ho around how they were going to scrap thousands of Public Service jobs and they were going to cut so much waste from the bureaucracy, but now that it’s closer to election time, the Minister’s tone has become a little bit more restrained. I wonder if some polling has come through that has shown that actually New Zealanders around the country are realising that cuts to the Public Service—even in the so-called non-frontline roles—are harming the ability of the Public Service to carry on the work.

I’d encourage the member to stick to the Estimates. You can put your view on why things might be happening, but please stick to the questions around the Estimates. Thank you.

This is very related to the Estimates, because, if you actually look at the Budget documents, these baseline reduction savings targets are in the Estimate documents.

Yeah, I get that part of the question, and I’m asking you to stay on that part of the question.

And I am staying on this part, Madam Chair.

Great—excellent.

My question is: how many jobs at this stage, now that we’ve had the benefit of a few months to really nut down and actually estimate how many jobs are going to be lost from the Public Service reductions.

The second leg of my question to the Minister is: has the Minister read the newly released report by the Public Service Association (PSA) which showed that deliberate vacancies in non-clinical roles—also known as administrative roles, also known as backroom roles—have actually harmed people. For example, if there are not enough administrators, clinicians have to do administrative work, which reduces the time they can spend on patient care.

My first leg of the question—will the Minister answer the question—how many jobs in the Public Service will be lost as a result of the Government’s planned baseline savings reduction targets? The second leg of my question is: has the Minister read the report from the PSA, and does the Minister agree that the loss of Public Service capacity, even in so-called non-frontline roles, can lead to actual service cuts and actual degradation in the experience that the consumers of public services experience?

17:25

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just trying to remember the first question—

The jobs—number of jobs.

The number of jobs? Well, the number of jobs—and the member is capable of maths, I’m sure—it was 47,000 when we left Government in 2017, it went up to 65,000 soon after we got back, and our goal is to get back to 55,000 in three years. I’ll leave the member to do the maths there. It had gone up a long way, and it’s going to come back down about half of the way that it went up, because there has been some population growth over that period, and we’ve also invested more in the front line, particularly in the corrections space. That’s the answer to that one. The second one—what was the second one?

It was about the non-clinical roles.

Ah, yes, thank you. I agree that everybody wants to ensure that we have the right people in the right job, and that’s what we’re setting out to do. In terms of saving some money, that’s about ensuring that our overall Budget is sustainable, but I can ensure New Zealanders listening in that our focus is delivering better public services. We do that by ensuring that we’ve got a clear focus. Notwithstanding all the extra public servants that were hired and the huge increase in spending we had during the six years when Jacinda Ardern was in charge, basic things like getting children immunised and getting kids to school went backwards. The number of people living in emergency accommodation went through the roof, so the outcomes—

We’re going forward now, and we’ve got two minutes left. I know we’ve got one more question, so could you round your question up, please?

Well, yes, I’m just answering his other question; he asked me if I’d read a Public Service Association (PSA) article, and I’m afraid—

A report.

—I haven’t read that in great detail, and to be honest I’m a little cynical towards the PSA, because they’re out there in our public ministries outwardly campaigning against this Government. They’ve got little postcards saying, “Throw out the Government”, and it does worry me. In terms of overall perspective, when we have a very significant majority of public servants being members of the PSA and that PSA is actively campaigning to overthrow the Government, it is a bad look, I think overall. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.

17:28

Thank you, Madam Chair.

In about approximately one minute.

I’d just reflect that the Public Service Association (PSA) has been around for well over a hundred years, and I understand this is only the second time that they’ve had a campaign to change the Government, so you can make your own reflections on that—as it was raised, Madam Chair.

I do have a quick question: mergers. Is the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government planning further mergers within the Public Service?

17:29

It will fall to the next Government to make such decisions, but we are certainly not making the assumption that the 39 or 38 departments and ministries that we have at the moment are the only way that things can be structured and arranged.

I would make this point: I haven’t had an opportunity to refer to the Prime Minister in this debate, but one of his greatest attributes is his ability to handle complex management challenges such as this, where we’re trying to organise the broad Public Service in the most efficient way to lead to the best outcomes and to hold our chief executives to account for that. I’m working very closely with the Prime Minister on potential different designs and structures, but no decisions have been made.

17:30

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take this call to open this debate as the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. This is just to provide a very quick summary of the areas that the select committee members discussed with the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. I want to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Cameron Brewer, and his officials for answering questions that the committee members asked. The Commerce and Consumer Affairs appropriations fund has a range of work that is led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The portfolio covers financial markets competition, consumer and commercial matters, corporate governance, intellectual property, and standards and conformance.

The select committee noted that for 2026-2027, the Government is seeking $305.6 million for the Commerce and Consumer Affairs appropriations, which is $8.8 million less than the previous year’s estimated actual expenditure of $314.4 million. The select committee members were interested in discussing banking competition, especially how it’s working for small businesses. We also discussed beneficiaries of open banking, and the Minister suggested that increased competition among lenders has improved conditions for mortgage borrowers, including young people and first-home buyers.

The select committee was interested in financial crime as well, and we compared how it works in Australia versus New Zealand. The Minister told the select committee that he would seek advice on the level of financial loss for consumers as well as the amount of compensation banks are paying. We discussed recent and proposed legislative changes, and in that, we also discussed the surcharge ban bill—the short form of the Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill. The Minister told the select committee that he is still considering various options to see how that could be proceeded. We discussed reporting on fuel price data, because the select committee noted that the ministry had stopped its reporting on fuel price monitoring data when the international fuel crisis happened. But we also note that since our hearing, the ministry has resumed publication of its weekly fuel pricing monitoring.

Other than these issues, we also discussed extreme weather events and insurance claims, product standards, and safety. There was quite a lot that we squeezed in the time that was available with the Minister, and I look forward to the debate. Thank you.

17:33

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start, first, with the issues of the day. The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is responsible for the $86 million appropriation to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), so I want to ask him about what was reported today, which will be of concern to him, I know, and the finding of the FMA that consumers are being sold in New Zealand add-on insurances and extended warranties that are effectively of no value to them and that are entirely a waste of money. This will not surprise him. These also match the findings of the Commerce Commission in late 2022, which was when further changes to the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) regime were made—changes to the CoFI regime which his Government has reversed.

The FMA’s investigation and enforcement funding is what I want to start to ask him about first. It’s a good news story. It goes up from $17.4 million to $24.5 million. I want to ask him first: what enforcement action does he expect the FMA to be taking, particularly around junk insurances? He will also be familiar with what the Australian Federal Government are doing to ensure that junk insurances are not something that Australian consumers are burdened with. In the Australian Treasury’s advice to Government recently, they found in the scope of tens of millions of dollars to be the cost every year to Australian consumers in terms of insurances which are, frankly, a complete waste of time, energy, and money, and a predatory practice.

I want to ask the Minister what his expectations are of the FMA, given that it was his Government that put the enforcement function to that agency—an agency which is beleaguered by some troubles within it, and I would also offer him the opportunity to comment on that. But what I’m interested in here now is that if we have a regulator that has taken its eye off the ball, and a Minister who has too, how can we ensure that those consumers who are being lumped with these products which are of no value to them are going to get some regulatory relief, especially in the context where this Government has removed some of those key protections within the CoFI regime? I’ll start there.

17:35

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the member too for her interest in these matters. Just on the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), yes, it is going through challenging times, but we continue to have full confidence in the FMA, more so than ever before, with the appointment of a new chair and a new board member. As the member indicated, they have, since 1 July, picked up more responsibilities, as the member is well aware, in layman’s terms, by having oversight of consumer credit.

I hear what she’s saying as far as the insurance sector and what she described as junk insurance products. I know that the FMA, with consumer oversight now of credit, as you may have already seen in some of these reports, is going to hit pretty hard those that are basically loan sharking car sales all around the country. The FMA is going to be focused on those. The FMA is also going to have a focus on any attached insurance policies, too, that may add up. But for those that have pretty much only got the option, in their own eyes, to take the terms and conditions that that car salesperson is putting on them, normally at huge compounding interest rates, they need to be aware that the FMA—the tools that we have given them—have ratcheted up their ability to monitor this. They have responsibility now to have consumer credit from the Commerce Commission, and they have a big focus as they unleash across consumer credit, particularly on the car sector.

17:37

I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for those answers, but the question was: what enforcement action does he expect his regulator to take with the increased appropriation which he has given them for enforcement? I look forward to his response to that. His comment earlier that the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has been given new tools for licensing and monitoring is not right. The licensing and monitoring regime has been transferred from two regulators to one—that’s true—but the compliance spend that FMA has access to has been cut by this Minister. Isn’t that the key to fixing this, Minister? I agree with you that licensing is a key component of that, so why is that not reflected in the appropriation?

A third question for the Minister. The FMA has given targeted feedback to insurers. Those are the insurers that the Minister himself categorises as loan sharking car sales. Those loan sharks have been slapped on the hand with a wet bus ticket by this regulator. Will the Minister name them now if he is not going to pursue regulatory action?

17:38

As I said, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has oversight now of consumer credit. We had about 35 skilled people move from the Commerce Commission over to the FMA in that realm of consumer credit, and they are determined to get on top of many of the issues that the member has articulated, and that’s in and around the car sector, particularly the used car sector, and loaning and insurance products. If they are seen to be in breach of the law, the FMA has given me every assurance that these people will be in their sights and they will be coming down hard on them.

17:39

The problem we have is that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs knows who these bad actors are and won’t even name them for the committee. Minister, is there any clearer breach of the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) than a 2 to 3 percent loss ratio insurance product? It’s effectively an insurance product which never pays out. These are insurance products which are not valuable to consumers, that they do not understand, and they are sold under push conditions to the most vulnerable consumers there are, to single mums who have gone into a car yard with a Work and Income New Zealand payment because they need a car to get to work. Why won’t this Minister take action, and why has this Minister spent time reversing some of those changes that CoFI requires insurers to act in good faith and actually put some of the practical implications in place? Is that because the commerce and consumer affairs policy advice appropriation has been cut to $14.564 million this year, and what were the fulltime-equivalent assumptions that sit behind that? How many policy staff did he get rid of, and is that why he doesn’t have useful advice about what impact this is having on the consumers?

17:40

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I suppose it’s probably about now, when I’m being asked, potentially, for some comments as to operational priorities, that I remind the member that the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), as she well knows, is an autonomous, independent Crown entity, with a new chair and an independent board, that comes up with its own work programme. The FMA has given us every assurance that the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, which it has now taken over from the Commerce Commission, is going to be a big priority for it. Once upon a time, when the FMA replaced the Securities Commission, it was a capital markets regulator. Its remit is much wider, going across town, and it has plenty of tools to make sure that anyone in the consumer credit space, and any vulnerable New Zealanders that are getting ripped off when buying cars or insuring cars—those perpetrators will be prosecuted.

17:41

I just want to clarify—that was a helpful answer from the Minister—will vulnerable consumers who are being ripped off by car loan sharks, as the Minister categorises them, be prosecuted in this coming year? Madam Chair?

Arena Williams.

I think that was a no from the Minister, so I’ll move on to the product safety standards and trading standards—

The Minister actually clarified that people will be prosecuted. The Minister might like to comment—it’s not the Minister that decides that date, whether it will be this year or not—

17:42

No, no. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I articulated, this responsibility for the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, and those that fall outside the legal bounds of it, now falls to the autonomous independent Crown entity called the Financial Markets Authority, so I’m not going to stand up here and start putting forward dates of prosecutions, who should be prosecuted, and name and shame them—that’s not my role. Otherwise, I may as well push the FMA aside, take it out of the statute, and we can leave the House and go and create our own inspectorate and go and put our own enforcement upon them. We’re not doing that.

So now that that’s clear, we’ll have the next question, thank you.

Yes. The problem is that the Minister’s regulator has done exactly that—has used a targeted feedback mechanism, which is pretty novel, to tell the insurers who are, as the Minister would categorise it, ripping off vulnerable consumers. They are doing that. We are none the wiser in this committee about who they are, yet the Minister does know who they are, and so whether this is having an impact in the market remains to be seen, because they’re not being publicly required to change the behaviour, nor are they even named.

Minister, product safety standards are important to me; you know this—no surprises there. Congratulations on taking action on the blind cords. But I want to ask you about the appropriation. As it stands, the money allocated to that falls, in real terms, and also doesn’t keep up with cost pressures. I’ll say the worry genuinely: I’m worried that this is something where Ministers have a lot on their plate, and this is the thing that comes second in the portfolio, but it is one of the most critical things. Button batteries and asbestos sand, for instance, is something that is deeply concerning for Kiwi parents, and these are being sold, still, on our shelves by some of the most widespread and well-respected retailers in our market. Why, Minister, have you not increased the appropriation for this? Are we asking the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to get more for less, when this is something that is already deeply underfunded? Ministers haven’t been able to take quicker action for those parents who are very, very concerned about this.

17:44

Thank you, Madam Chair. At the Estimates in June, I pretty much foreshadowed, after years of coroners’ reports, and after the loss of too many souls—young souls—that this Government was going to get on top of corded blinds. As you can see, we have begun that process. The regulations have been drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and I expect that they will be out for public consultation soon, and then the regulations around the corded blinds will come into effect 12 months after that.

Just on the corded blinds issue, because it was one that we discussed at length at the Estimates: we have taken a decision since then. But for those families that are concerned, and corded blinds are in their homes, there are ways to fix those and to make them safer, and that can be found out on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) website—sometimes that can be as easy as going down to the local hardware shop and buying a fastener, or shortening up the cords. There are ways of doing that, as I said, via the MBIE website. So corded blinds are something that I know the previous Government looked at, I know there have been a number of coroners’ reports, and we’re getting on top of it. Public consultation on the regulations are coming out soon.

17:46

Following on from the Minister’s answer, what I really want to know is given that there is a cut to this appropriation, how many fewer compliance interventions does he expect the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to be able to take? The question is about button batteries, asbestos sand, and those consumer products which are particularly of concern for parents and children. Also, given that his Government has changed the rules for building products, in an attempt to create more competition in the market for building products—which is a good thing—this has allowed more products that are either lacking in certification because the certifications have been of dubious means, or they do not meet the New Zealand standards, but they can’t check everything. That’s the problem we have here: we have a system that is designed not to check everything but to be from trusted sources.

My question is: the asbestos doors, the warped windows that cause injury, the lead taps—these are all things which MBIE should be taking action on; they are causing real harm but they are also examples of products where information campaigns won’t change the game, because they get installed in a house and then a homeowner changes. The impact of these will be long-term. Is the Minister sufficiently focused, and has he resourced his department to be able to take action now, before these things become real problems in the decades to come?

17:47

Thank you, Madam Chair. A fair enough question: is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment sufficiently funded to be able to have a sufficient oversight, particularly around product standards and product safety—and, I would argue, your emphasis there being on child safety? The answer is yes. We had that announcement, made by the Hon David Seymour and me in a Toyworld on Ballance Street a month or so ago.

A very memorable occasion.

There was much fanfare and wide acclaim by most people, because we are aligning ourselves with EU, US, and Australian and Canadian standards, from memory. Those standards will be out for consultation in due course, and then there’ll be a six-month transition period.

When it comes to the ongoing issue as to the work we’re doing in relation to, as the member described it, asbestos in sand, that was discovered by testing it at AUT. It’s important to remember that we’ve had 23 recalls and about 47,000 units of product recalled. We are now working through those issues to see where we can effectively tighten up the system, if it’s going to deliver a real result. In the meantime, those retailers need to be sure of themselves, when they’re selling this stuff, that it’s safe, and consumers need to take every precaution they can. The best precaution, of course, is not to buy any coloured children’s sand products; that’s the abundance of caution. MBIE has got—if they wanted to look at it and see if it was safe or not, or if they wanted to get rid of it—a lot of advice on their website. But we continue to work through these matters. A lot of product has been recalled, and we will be arriving at a decision as to what we can do to tighten up the system to make it more foolproof going forward.

17:50

Thank you, Minister. I’ve run out of time on that, but I want to ask him now about liquidations. The official assignee appropriation falls, in real terms, by $2.4 million—that’s a big movement for that appropriation Why, when insolvency is up—in figures published today—by 74 percent in the retail sector, are we seeing double-digit insolvencies every day in New Zealand and a $3.7 billion tax cut owed by businesses to the IRD? Why is it that the IRD has more money to recover these funds, but under the Minister’s appropriations, the organisation charged with collecting that debt falls, in real terms? Is he expecting the caseload to fall; is that part of the strategy? Or is it the case that there will be no ability to collect that debt? If he could give us some insight into what his plan there is, when this will be an ongoing Government problem, when the economic hardship and financial hardship that people and businesses find them in will continue to increase.

17:51

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just on the broader issue of liquidations: yes, we know the numbers have been coming through, but as the Minister of Finance, I think, and others have pointed out, the number of new company registrations and the number of new businesses are significant as well. For example, there have been 62,000 new company registrations as of 30 June. As WellingtonNZ said to me just the other week—that economic development agency based on Taranaki Street, for the Wellington region—“Cameron, we know you hear a lot about closed restaurants in Wellington, but there have been more restaurants opened in Wellington in the last two years than there have been closed.”

17:52

That is wacky stuff from the Minister. Is his answer that they can foreclose with massive tax debt owing, wages owing, and creditors in debt, and the official assignee can get no funding from the Government to recover any of it because they can start a new business?

We are very proud of the Inland Revenue’s more active debt collection approach. We all know what Inland Revenue’s balance sheet looked like when we walked in here at the end of 2023, when everyone who wanted one got an interest-free loan. Those businesses, many of those businesses, are why they may have got a stay of execution through COVID, and Inland Revenue may have been given the instruction to lay off and take the pressure off these businesses. None the less, for a lot of businesses, they got that stay of execution, they took those wage subsidies, they took those interest-free business loans, they survived for a couple of years, and then guess what happened? Inflation took over, interest rates took over, and they got cleaned out. They got cleaned out, and now we’re left with a lot of business debt on the IRD ledger, which the Minister is systematically working through and cleaning up.

Arena Williams. I think we’ve got time for about one more question.

17:54

Customer and product data-sharing is part of the Minister’s appropriation. What is happening with the contract of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment with Payments NZ—why can’t Revolut get a licence, and why are fintechs and New Zealand’s market bleeding to death while waiting for accreditation and the ability to participate with open banking, which was promised to them?

You can have another one, while the Minister’s thinking.

Madam Chair, we don’t have any more time. So I can only think that the Minister does not intend to answer the question. I’ll watch him carefully, if he does wish to.

Oh, look, well, if we’re talking about the payment services regime, she knows that there’s two pieces of work that have been led, and discussion documents, both by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and, more latterly, by the Reserve Bank. We know that we’ve got a lot of work to do in the area of our payment services. We know that we were once a leader in EFTPOS in the late 1980s, and in many aspects—

Oh, a good decade. Bring back the EFTPOS decade.

Doocey still has his Post Office book. But we know that we were leaders and we’ve got a lot of work to do. Those two retail payments services discussion documents are out by both MBIE and the Reserve Bank, and we are looking forward to assessing that and making positive changes.

This debate is interrupted. It is time for me to report progress. Just before I do, I’d like to pass on the House’s thanks to the security team. There was a wee incident up there this afternoon. Thank you very much; please pass that on to your team.

Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill and reports that it has made progress on the bill. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

The Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill is set down for further consideration in committee on the next sitting day. The House adjourns until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 August.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m.