Parliamentary debates: Tuesday, 11 March 2025

E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kīngi, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

[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 and humility for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Members, I’ve received a letter from Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the incident at a Gisborne school where a student was burnt by a lunch provided under the Government’s school lunches programme. Not every injury sustained at a school can be the subject of an urgent debate. The authentication provided by the member does not provide information about any further actions being taken by the Government except that a wider investigation into the incident is under way. An urgent debate is a way of debating actions by the Government. The absence of action or the existence of an ongoing situation do not warrant an urgent debate. The application is declined.

I call on the Clerk to deliver petitions.

Petition of Murray Richard Tingey requesting that the House urge the New Zealand Defence Force to ensure that their ambulances only have Red Cross emblems which comply with Article 38 of the First Geneva Convention.

That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee. A paper has been delivered for presentation.

Government response to the referral of the petition from Renn Monn Lee.

That paper is published under the authority of the House. Thirteen select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the:

2023-24 annual review of the New Zealand Tourism Board

2023-24 annual reviews of AgResearch Limited, Landcare Research New Zealand Limited, the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited, and the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Limited (trading as Scion)

2023-24 annual reviews of the Accreditation Council, the Real Estate Agents Authority, and the Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Limited

2023-24 annual reviews of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the External Reporting Board, and Kordia Group Limited

2023-24 annual reviews of the Financial Markets Authority and the Takeovers Panel

2023-24 annual reviews of the Institute of Environmental Science and Research Limited, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited

reports of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the:

2023-24 annual review of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

2023-24 annual review of the Ministry of Defence and New Zealand Defence Force

2023-24 annual review of the New Zealand Antarctic Institute

international treaty examination of the NZ-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and Agreement between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Promotion and Protection of Investments

report of the Justice Committee on the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill

report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Gayleen Mackereth: Make English an official language of New Zealand

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill.

The bills are set down for second reading. The international treaty examination is set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced.

to the Prime Minister

Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes, especially our action to unlock infrastructure investment. The Waikato Expressway is a great example of the impact that modern, reliable infrastructure can make for families and for businesses, and now we’re bringing the same experience to Northland—more jobs, more growth, more connectivity, and more opportunity for every New Zealander living north of Auckland. It’s no surprise that I saw today the Northland Corporate Group said the expressway is “exactly what our economy needs to drive growth, create jobs, reduce costs, and enable export expansion.” We’re serious about economic growth and ensuring that Kiwis can get ahead, and delivering infrastructure like the Northland Expressway is just one part of that vision.

Why is he willing to wait until term 2 for the chaos David Seymour’s caused to the school lunch programme to be fixed, given kids are going hungry; lunches are still arriving late or not at all; some of the food is inedible; and, in the worst cases, kids are being physically injured by exploding lunches?

Well, the incident we saw last week was unacceptable and not something we want to see at all. I think the Minister has fronted really clearly on that, actually suspending those type of lunches. Importantly, he is working his way through the issues to make sure that we get better-quality food and better on-time performance.

What will it take for him to finally step in and fix the mess his Government has made of the school lunches programme, particularly given the one Minister who actually seems to want to get it sorted out, Erica Stanford, is being ignored by David Seymour?

Again, this is a Minister that’s working incredibly hard through some very challenging issues to make sure that we get our food back to scratch and to make sure that we deliver on time, in full. There’s some improvement happening; there’s a lot more that needs to happen; and, as I said, the Minister is wanting to make sure there are improvements in place for term 2.

Will he guarantee that one of the three partners in the school lunch collective going insolvent won’t lead to any kids going hungry; if not, why not?

That is what we have been assured: that, despite the liquidation, the school lunches programme is not at risk. Obviously, that’s a commercial matter, but our key thing is to make sure that we are getting what we have contracted for and that that is delivered.

Can the Prime Minister confirm that yesterday’s on-time delivery for the healthy school lunch programme was 99.74 percent; and is that better than the delivery of the vaccine roll-out, which someone forgot to order?

The first part of the question might be answerable—not the second.

I can answer the first part of the question. The answer is yes. It’s been good to see improving on-time performance. Now we need to see what’s delivered in full, and I’ve got every confidence in the Minister to do that.

Why has the number of rough sleepers in Auckland increased by 53 percent over the last four months, and is it a coincidence that that occurred at the same time his Government kicked 690 Auckland households out of emergency housing?

Well, I am incredibly proud of our record on housing, unlike that last Government. We have stable rents; we have 4,000 to 5,000 people off the social housing wait-list, which went up four times under Minister Megan Woods; and, importantly, we’ve taken 2,000 kids out of motel accommodation and got them into proper homes and houses through community housing providers in Kāinga Ora (KO). I put our record up on housing against yours any day of the week. [Interruption]

That was the day’s worth of barracking all used up in one question. Calm it down.

Well, does he agree with Tama Potaka that the link between people getting kicked out of emergency housing and a rise in homelessness is “not anecdotal, it’s real”, and, if not, will he provide evidence of where the kids in emergency housing actually went?

As we have said before, we have taken 2,000 kids that were being raised in motels under the last Government, and we now have them in proper homes and proper houses through community housing providers in KO. I thought that member would actually want to celebrate that and actually think that was a good thing.

Is the Prime Minister aware that when the Leader of the Opposition says that people have been “kicked out” of motels, what he actually means is that they have been offered the opportunity to go into social, transitional, or private sector housing and are, therefore, in homes?

That is how I understand it—

Point of order.

—and, importantly, 80 percent of the people that have left—

Hang on, I’m dealing with a point of order here.

Sir, the Prime Minister is not responsible for what the Minister of Housing believes—

The question was, “Has he seen reports?”, so that brings it into line.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am proud that 80 percent of the families that have been moved out of emergency housing have been moved into proper houses. That’s where you should be raising families. I think we should be celebrating across the aisle here that 2,000 kids have been moved out of motels and into proper houses. It was a debacle under that previous Minister, who did nothing on housing.

What happened to the 20 percent who haven’t been moved into sustainable housing?

The message, very clearly, is that if they need our assistance and help, we are there to help and assist them. They haven’t needed it.

to the Minister of Finance

When will the Treasury’s next set of economic and fiscal forecasts be released?

Each year, Treasury does two sets of forecasts: one to accompany the Budget, and another at the half-year update. In an election year, as a bonus, there’s also a pre-election update. Looking ahead, the next Treasury forecasts will be those that accompany the Budget, on 22 May.

What will the new economic forecasts show?

Broadly in keeping with other published economic forecasts, I expect the Treasury’s forecast to show a return to growth in the December quarter of last year, then picking up over this calendar year. Consistent with other forecasts, they are also likely to show unemployment peaking in the first half of 2025 and then declining. Treasury is currently working through its detailed forecasting process. What I would say is it’s a hard time to be a forecaster, with a lot of uncertainty around the impact of other countries’ economic policies and responses.

What will the new fiscal forecasts show?

Well, again, the Treasury is still working through their process, and the Government is still working through our Budget decisions. What I do know from previous updates is that within the overall fiscal picture, some elements will show an improvement over the previous forecasts, and some will show a decline. For example, the outlook for global bond yields means that finance costs are likely to be greater than they were at the half-year update. That is to say, the costs of servicing New Zealand’s debt will be higher. And, given my experience of forecast revisions last year, I am not holding out hope for an overall positive fiscal surprise. That seems unlikely, but it is still early days. As with the economic forecasts, there are many risks that could affect the fiscal forecasts.

What will her approach be to the new forecasts?

The Government has a deliberate medium-term approach to fiscal consolidation, and we’ve always said that we will not overreact to movements up or down in the forecasts. We have set Budget allowances that drive spending restraint and require savings to fund Government priorities. None the less, the Government will look at options during the lead-up to Budget 2025 and consider whether the new Treasury forecasts warrant any further action.

to the Minister of Finance

Does she stand by her statement that “We are taking steps to ensure that we will grow faster than we otherwise would”; if so, what is her growth target for jobs and incomes?

I may well have said that—it sounds like something I would say—but my office has not been able to access the verification, so I don’t know the context and am mindful that that member has quoted me out of context and incorrectly in the past. To the second part, the Government has a target for inflation but no explicit target for other economic variables. Needless to say, my ambition is to deliver policies that support more job creation and higher incomes.

That was on notice. She should have asked the Clerk’s Office.

We did.

Point of order. If someone, as Carmel Sepuloni says, should have gone to the Clerk’s Office, and we did, and the answer was no verification, then I want to know why that question’s been accepted for this House without verification.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. If I can just clarify for members: we did seek from the Clerk’s Office what verification was offered. They said that that was for Labour to determine whether they would share that with us. Labour were not forthcoming in sharing it with us prior to question time commencing.

Point of order—speaking to the point of order.

Hang on. It’s getting to a bit of a “dates in scones” argument, which I’m not very keen on. But we’ll hear from you.

Speaking to the point of order. I appreciate the Minister’s concerns that Labour was not forthcoming; however, we did not receive a request for the authentication for the RNZ 18 March 2024 interview that we authenticate—that we used for this question.

Right. Let’s move on.

Why, then, are there 6,248 fewer filled jobs than this time last year, according to Statistics New Zealand?

As we have gone through in this House again and again, unfortunately, when inflation is left to go out of control and interest rates are hiked very far, that has a negative impact for both economic growth and for job creation. What I would highlight for the member is that the number of people unemployed today is markedly similar to that which was predicted in the pre-election fiscal update. Members, for your reference, if we go to Q1 for 2025, the number of people unemployed predicted at the pre-election update was 165,000. The half-year update confirmed exactly the same number. If the member wishes to say that this is a result of Government policies, I would commend to her that she then explain why the previous Labour Government were predicting exactly the same levels of unemployment.

Is she therefore committing to “grow the economy faster than [it] otherwise would”, as stated in a Radio New Zealand interview, than the annual growth figures of 3.4 percent for 2026, as forecast by Treasury in the half-yearly fiscal update?

Well, my ambition in all of the policies that we deliver is to drive our growth rate, and therefore job creation and income growth, higher. I have, however, within my arsenal, a small piece of humility, which is to say that, while our Government should be driving policies on a daily basis that will help the growth outlook, we should always be mindful that there are factors that remain outside of our control, not least of which are global economic conditions and the decisions made by other Governments. While that member is welcome to say that those factors somehow wouldn’t affect her, I’d suggest she consult with the new spokesperson for jobs and incomes as to what her view is.

Why then have the Treasury or the Reserve Bank not upgraded their forecast, given her claims that the Government will grow the economy faster?

As I outlined in my patsy question, the Treasury actually update their forecasts twice a year: at the half-year update and at the Budget update. The member can look forward to updated forecasts at the Budget.

How can she claim that she will grow the economy “faster than we otherwise would” when current job statistics, Treasury, and Reserve Bank forecasts do not reflect any of her claims?

Because of two things. The first is, as I have outlined to that member laboriously, the forecast rate of unemployment is markedly similar to that which was forecast prior to the election. Second, I can stand here with great confidence and say that a Labour-led Government, at this juncture in history, would have done more economic vandalism—

No, you can’t say that—no, you can’t say that. You can talk about this Government, but not any previous Government, other than reference to matters that directly affect the portfolio.

Gosh! How many mistakes did she make?

Well, that could be a mistake—talking out loud like that too.

to the Minister of Transport

What announcements has he made on the Northland Expressway?

I thank the member for that excellent patsy. Yesterday, I was thrilled to announce, alongside the Prime Minister, the Government would formally open the registrations of interest for the first stage of the Northland Expressway at the infrastructure summit later in the week. This marks a significant milestone in this Government’s commitment to build roads of national significance around the country. Connecting Northland to Auckland in a new, resilient, safe, and efficient new expressway will unlock growth, boost productivity, and drive higher living standards.

What benefits can Northlanders expect from this Northland Expressway project?

The Northland Expressway will unlock the true economic potential of the North. The right analogy is the Waikato Expressway, delivered by the last National Government, which was a game-changer for Waikato and Hamilton, and the Northland Expressway will do for the North what the Waikato Expressway has done for Waikato. This is an investment in the upper North Island area—the economic powerhouse of the country, with 53.7 percent of our population and 55 percent of GDP. This is an investment in growth and productivity.

What feedback has the Minister received on this announcement?

It is great news, and that’s been reflected in the feedback. The chair of the Northland Regional Transport Committee says it will be “a real game-changer”. Northland Corporate Group co-chair Andrew McLeod says it will be “transformative for the upper North Island. Without it, the ability for Northland to support Auckland from the North, via logistics, energy, food … forestry, and construction … will remain underutilised and [barricaded].” And, of course, there is an New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report into the Northland Expressway, which shows significant economic interest.

When does the Government plan to begin construction on the Northland Expressway?

Formal procurement will begin this week on the first section. Registered parties will be invited to submit a formal expression of interest, with a request for proposal in mid-2025 for up to three short-listed bidders. The preferred bidder is expected to be announced early next year, and a public-private partnership contract finalised by the middle of the year, with construction expected to begin soon afterwards on the first section from Warkworth to Te Hana, which is expected to start in late 2026. We will be getting on with the other sections of the expressway, particularly around the Brynderwyns, which is a very important corridor to look at as well.

Over the top.

Yes—that would be a good description of the contribution being made by the member.

to the Prime Minister

E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Yes, and especially our actions to get our healthcare system focused on patients, not the back-office bureaucracy. We are already spending a record amount in health, but last week the Minister of Health, Simeon Brown, announced a range of new actions we’re taking to make it easier for Kiwis to see a doctor. We’re training more doctors and nurses, we’re paying them more, and we’re creating more opportunities for them to work in primary care, serving the community. We’re putting more funding into GP clinics so that they can enrol more patients, and we’re introducing a 24/7 digital platform so that Kiwis can see a doctor when they need it. Kiwis deserve timely, quality care and access to healthcare, and we won’t stop until we deliver exactly that.

Is homelessness in Auckland increasing or decreasing as a result of his Government’s decisions?

Well, what I can say is that we’re getting more people out of emergency housing, we’re taking more people off the social housing wait-list, and rents are stable.

Are answers like that why, when I asked the Prime Minister a year ago in this House, he refused to guarantee that nobody would be made homeless by his Government’s policies?

What I can tell you is that our Government is doing everything that it can after the legacy that was left by a Greens-Labour Government that did an appalling job on housing. We are working on making sure we get more houses available for sale. We’re making sure that we get rents stable, we’re making sure we take people off the social housing wait-list that went up four times, and we’re making sure we get kids out of motels. That’s a good thing, and I think that that member would be wanting to celebrate that.

Can the Prime Minister confirm if every person currently sleeping homeless on the streets of Auckland City is able to get access to housing under his Government’s policy settings?

They are able to come to the Government and actually ask for and get the assistance that they need, and we will take anyone’s efforts to come and actually get the support that they need.

Is more people sleeping on the street, following his Government’s decisions to tighten access to emergency housing, what he means by his “growth strategy”?

What I can tell the member is there are less people in motels and emergency housing, and more—

But they’re on the street, mate.

No, no, they’re not. Two thousand—

Yes, they are.

Would you like to hear the answer? When we—[Interruption]

No, hang on—just calm. Don’t barrack through the middle of an answer. You’ve asked your question; let him answer.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. When this Government came into office, there were 3,141 households in motels thanks to the last Government. Today, there are 591. We have put more families out of motels and into proper homes, where kids should be raised. Almost 2,000 kids now live in houses, not in motels. That is a good thing.

Will the Prime Minister—[Interruption]

No, wait—just wait. Just wait—OK.

Will the Prime Minister spend just a few hours in Auckland Central to come and meet the people who his Government’s decisions have made homeless?

I reject the characterisation of the question. The last Greens-Labour Government made housing worse for all New Zealanders, whether they own a house, whether they rent a house, whether they need a community housing provider or a social house, or whether they’re in emergency housing. We are proud that through focused and good management, we have taken 2,000 kids out of motels and put them into proper houses. That’s a great thing.

Can the Prime Minister tell the House whether the social housing wait-list, which is one very clear measure of unmet housing need, has increased or decreased during his term of Government, and how does that compare to what happened to that social housing wait-list the last time the Greens were anywhere near Government?

I mean, it’s an important context. The social housing wait-list went from about 6,500—it went up four times under the last Government. We have taken up to 4,000 to 5,000, from memory, out of the social housing list, and they are now off that list. That is a great thing. It means that people who are on the list have a better chance to get a State house or a social house.

Come look these kids in the eye.

I just think that member should say that we’ve got work to do, but we’re making great progress—and we’re doing a lot, lot more than what you did in Labour-Greens.

Can the Prime Minister confirm that Māori do not make up 50 percent of that wait-list?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Can the Prime Minister confirm that Māori no longer make up 50 percent of that wait-list?

Well, what I can say is that by virtue of the wait-list coming down and by virtue of the 2,000 kids coming out of motels and into proper houses, there’s less Māori in emergency housing and there’s less Māori on the social housing wait-list. That’s a good thing.

to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality

What recent announcements has she made about increasing visitor numbers to New Zealand?

I have recently announced a range of investments and initiatives to boost tourism in New Zealand. This includes yesterday’s announcement of a $3 million boost to secure more international business events in New Zealand. This investment will allow Tourism New Zealand to increase their annual conference bid development from 90 to 110 bids, attract high-value incentive programmes, and sell New Zealand as a world-class location for business events. This is the next step in our tourism boost package, following previous announcements, including the Australia campaign and a regional fund to attract more international visitors to our fantastic regions.

How will these announcements improve overall visitor numbers?

Our visitor numbers remain at 85 percent of pre-COVID numbers, so we need to keep pushing to get back to those levels. Large-scale conferences result in large numbers of extra visitors, who may not have made the trip for a holiday alone. When people come to New Zealand for business, we want them to go home and to consider returning for a holiday, as well as telling their friends and families about our wonderful country and our warm hospitality.

What economic benefits does she expect to see as a result of these announcements?

Every visitor who comes to New Zealand puts more money in the back pockets of Kiwis. The additional investment in securing business events will deliver more than $30 million in incremental spend to the economy. Business event participants spend, on average, $175 more a day than other visitors and often travel during the off-peak season, boosting tourism and economic activity year-round. More tourists mean more people in cafes, more people spending in our shops, more bookings for local accommodation, and more job opportunities for Kiwis.

What feedback has she seen on these announcements?

I’ve recently announced a range of investments, and the feedback has been incredibly positive. Business Events Industry Aotearoa chief executive, Lisa Hopkins, said the business events announcement was one of the best investments in the sector she has seen in her career. And she only managed to get 19 cartwheels in, hearing the news! The “Everyone must go” campaign has exceeded our expectations in terms of its reach into Australia. It has had unprecedented support from the industry and has created a sense of urgency, with over 900 deals now on offer for Australians. It is clear that New Zealand is open for business, and we are looking forward to welcoming more visitors to our shores.

to the Minister of Health

How many procedures were performed in the new Tōtara Haumaru surgical building for the most recent month other than January for which data is available, and how does this compare to the monthly average if Tōtara Haumaru’s projected annual capacity of 15,500 surgical and endoscopic procedures were evenly distributed throughout the year?

I am advised that in February 2025, a total of 720 procedures were completed at Tōtara Haumaru. As the member will be aware, this is different to the 15,500 procedures evenly distributed, as the facility was opened with the intention of delivering 2,000 elective procedures in the first financial year. I am advised that Health New Zealand is on track to deliver against this target, as work continues to ramp up at Tōtara Haumaru. Once operating at full capacity, it is projected that up to 8,000 surgeries and 7,500 endoscopy procedures can be performed within the complex each year.

Does he stand by his statement, “I want as much planned care as possible to be delivered in partnership with the private sector”, when existing public facilities are being underutilised?

As the member will be aware, the last Government, which built Tōtara Haumaru, failed to allocate the funding to operate it. It’s a bit like the Yes Minister show, isn’t it, where you’ve got an empty hospital and nothing is actually able to be done. The former Minister of Health had to find the operational money to be able to get the hospital operating. They’re now gearing up the hospital, so that—

It’s not a speech—it’s not time for a speech.

Is it acceptable for surgeons to work in private hospitals during the hours they are paid to work in public hospitals, as requested by one of the private hospitals bidding for the Government’s outsourced procedures?

If the member is wanting to have a debate around using the public or the private system, I would point her to a Cabinet paper taken by Chris Hipkins to Cabinet back in 2020, which said that there would be an increase in the use of private providers, in order to make the best use of all the capacity that is available in the health system.

That’s all good. But the question will be asked again.

Is it acceptable for surgeons to work in private hospitals during the hours they are paid to work in public hospitals, as requested by one of the private hospitals bidding for the Government’s outsourced procedures?

Well, as I said, if the debate is going to be around whether or not we should use the public system or the private system, I would point the member to a Cabinet paper taken by Chris Hipkins, as the Minister of Health, to Cabinet in 2020, where he said, “There will also be an increase in the use of private providers in order to make the best use of all the capacity that is available.” It also said, “The ministry is facilitating discussions with the New Zealand Private Surgical Hospitals Association to ensure a national approach is developed”—

No—that’s enough. That’s enough. I’m sorry, it might be interesting to some, but we’ll hear the question again, and the Minister will attempt to answer the question.

Is it acceptable for surgeons to work in private hospitals during the hours they are paid to be working in public hospitals, as requested by one of the private providers bidding for the Government’s outsourced procedures?

Well, one of the things we’ve outlined is to ensure that there are proper arrangements between public and private systems, particularly around workforce, to ensure we are growing the workforce together and so that the ad hoc basis that had been happening in the past—and she outlined an example, which is the type of behaviours that had been happening in the past. We want to see long-term agreements put in place, just as was outlined in the Cabinet paper that Chris Hipkins took to Cabinet in 2020.

Who is correct: Christopher Luxon, who on 7 June 2022 said, “Privatisation is not a big philosophical driver for me at this point in time”; or Simeon Brown when he said, “I’d like to see as much planned care—those elective surgeries—done by the private sector”?

I think the answer to that question is that Kiwis needing elective surgery don’t care who is providing it; they want it done in a timely manner, and under the last Government the number of people waiting more than four months for elective treatment increased by 2,500 percent. We’re on the side of getting things done, and just as Chris Hipkins took to Cabinet in 2020, we’re going to use the public system and the private system to get it done.

On the basis of that answer, is there a medical condition called “an own goal”, and can it be fixed?

I think it’s called Lester Levy.

The Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall—just wait till everyone has calmed themselves down.

Has he been advised that performing 10,579 additional elective procedures in private hospitals will mean that the milestone of 63 percent of patients waiting less than four months for elective treatment in the current financial year will be met?

I’ve been advised that Health New Zealand will be both insourcing and outsourcing in order to achieve that number by the end of this year so that we can make sure we are increasing the number of elective surgeries being done. As I said in my previous answer, I don’t think Kiwis waiting for elective surgery are caring too much about who is delivering it; they want it done, and that’s what we’re focused on doing.

to the Prime Minister

E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Yes.

What exactly is his growth strategy to utilise and develop our local wealth base here in Aotearoa so we aren’t reliant on risky offshore capital?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

What exactly is his growth strategy to utilise and develop our local wealth base here in Aotearoa so we aren’t reliant on risky offshore capital?

Well, I reject outright the characterisation of that question. New Zealand has done a very, very poor job, over a number of decades, of attracting capital to New Zealand. Frankly, whether it’s international pools of capital or whether it’s domestic pools of capital, we want to be able to partner with that private capital so that we can actually get infrastructure built—more roads, more hospitals, more schools. That’s what New Zealanders want, and that’s how we deliver better public services for them.

Is it fair that the overseas banks New Zealanders bank with bring in $3.5 billion of excess profits a year and the half-overseas-owned supermarkets New Zealanders have no other choice but to shop at squeeze them out of $1 million in excess profits daily when most people are struggling to get by?

The question would be OK without those various descriptors that are in it, but the Prime Minister can have a shot at answering it.

Well, I’ll just say to the member, that’s why this Government wants to make sure that there is real competition in banking and in energy and across all of our sectors in this economy. That’s what we’re doing. Sadly, it didn’t happen under the last Government.

Is it fair that the biggest early childhood education provider, which New Zealanders have to send their tamariki to so they can go to mahi, pulled in $32 million of tax-free profits last year while most people are struggling to get by?

I mean, this just characterises the Greens’ position, doesn’t it? It’s a de-growth agenda of living in a hermit kingdom. Actually, it’s OK that commercial enterprises that provide products and/or services to consumers or customers or to the New Zealand public actually make a fair return for their efforts. That’s quite OK.

Supplementary.

No, you get three—sorry, I’ll come to you next.

Will the PM acknowledge that the higher costs of borrowing and the need to pay dividends to shareholders mean that privatisation ultimately ends up costing New Zealanders more than if public services stayed in public ownership?

Well, I mean, there’s quite a lot to that question that is, I think, rather disjointed and doesn’t hang together, but I’ll answer the first part. I can give you very good examples where, actually, New Zealanders can get operations that they need in the healthcare system, and, frankly, whether it’s delivered through the public system or the private system, we want them to get the procedures and the help that they need. Private hospitals in many cases are geared up at scale to deal with a number of procedures and operations that New Zealanders can get quicker if we use that capacity, so it’s not a private versus public argument.

Can the Prime Minister confirm that New Zealanders have been bringing capital from across the seas since Kupe showed up in a sailboat with some kumara, but, sadly, xenophobic attitudes have been here nearly as long?

Well, in so much as the Prime Minister has responsibility.

Well, what I can confirm is that we know that the New Zealand economy has suffered from what we call “thin capital”, and we have done a poor job of attracting capital to New Zealand and investment to New Zealand. We know we need the investment because it’s actually capital to grow our businesses, which actually creates higher-income jobs and more jobs for people. It’s that capital and that joint venture that actually end up creating those international connections and those networks and that knowledge that’s transferred into New Zealand. That’s a good thing.

Will the Prime Minister increase public ownership of the basic things we all need just to live—like school lunches, healthcare, and childcare—or will he choose to sell off Aotearoa and funnel even more profits to offshore corporates instead?

I have to say the Greens are totally deluded on economics. I mean, I don’t know how to say it any other way, but, honestly, that is a question that just makes no sense, and I reject it.

to the Associate Minister of Housing

Does he stand by his statement that “Emergency housing will always be available as a last resort for those who need it”?

In the context in which that statement was made, yes. Emergency housing was intended to be a last resort—not the first resort—and it remains a last resort in most towns and cities in Aotearoa New Zealand for those with a general need for a short-term stay in temporary accommodation.

Is the Minister saying that those who are homeless in Auckland, which has risen 53 percent in only four months, aren’t in genuine need of emergency housing?

There are many people with a genuine need for emergency housing in New Zealand, and there continues to be transitional housing places in Auckland.

Is he saying that those who are homeless in Wellington, which has risen over 40 percent, aren’t in genuine need of emergency housing?

I’m also saying that there are a number of programmes and pathways for those who are either homeless or with severe housing deprivation to actually reset their situation. For example, there is Housing First, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, single site supported housing, and even private housing that people can access by way of housing support products, which continue to be supported by this Government.

Is he saying that front-line providers, the very people who administer those programmes and pathways he just outlined, are wrong when they provide him with examples of people unable to access emergency housing because of the policy changes that he brought in?

I can observe, as does the census data from 2018 to 2023, that severe housing deprivation actually increased over 10 percent during those five years. I can also observe that those providers which the member refers to also have the opportunity to engage on these other programmes which I’ve enunciated in my previous answer.

Will he therefore meet and engage with front-line providers, with cameras present so that everyone can see, and tell those—

Oh, for goodness’ sake!

Shall I start again, sir?

There are no comments while a question is being asked. Start again.

Thank you. Will he meet with front-line providers, with cameras present so everyone can see, and tell those very people who are dealing with increased homelessness every day, looking them in the eye and saying that he is right and they are wrong?

I sense and completely understand the member’s and the Opposition’s frustration at our successful delivery and commitment around over 3,000 children leaving emergency housing in the last 15 months and 2,000 by way of the Priority One decision making. And I sense the member’s frustration that—[Interruption]

That’s enough, thank you.

—his Opposition, when they were in Government, were unable to deliver on these matters. But however, I’m very proud of the efforts that we’ve taken. Officials continue to monitor the situations that have been described, and I do also engage with housing providers and others on these very issues.

to the Minister for Regulation

What recent announcements has he made about cutting red tape?

On 27 February in the mighty Invercargill, Ministers Penny Simmonds, Andrew Hoggard, and I released the findings from the Ministry for Regulation’s review into agricultural and horticultural products. Rapid access to veterinary medicines and agricultural chemicals is essential for lifting agriculture productivity and growth in the agricultural and horticultural sectors. Yet some firms have waited over five years for Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) approval, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. The review has made 16 recommendations to approve the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (HSNO) and agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines (ACVM) processes, which Cabinet has accepted. EPA and MPI have begun implementation, and the two Ministers responsible expect to get it done very quickly.

What are the potential economic benefits of improving access to regulated agricultural and horticultural products in New Zealand for these products?

The costs of getting this wrong, as we have been, are substantial. Sense Partners, an economic consultancy, estimate that halving approval times for agricultural products could lift productivity in the sector by $272 million. Conversely, losing EU market access for fruit and vegetables due to delayed product approvals as the EU moves on with its standards and our farmers and horticulturalists can’t get the right products, that is estimated to risk a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar loss. Being able to get these products through a sound regulatory system is vital to our productivity. By bringing together two disparate ministries that have been dis-coordinated, the Ministry for Regulation is making that happen.

That’s a very, very long answer.

What particular recommendations did the review make regarding the approval process under HSNO?

Well, the review identified reducing the backlog of EPA assessments as a high priority. Setting robust targets to accelerate assessments and reduce the queue is a key recommendation. Increasing the use of group standards and rapid equivalent pathways will also accelerate approvals. I would like to thank the Minister Penny Simmonds and her officials for their work throughout the review and now in implementing these recommendations quickly.

What particular recommendations did the review make regarding the approvals process under the ACVM?

What’s the ACVM? I hate acronyms.

Agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines.

It’s easy to say. Carry on.

At the risk of lengthening my answer, I will read out all of the acronyms in full. While smaller than the Environmental Protection Authority’s backlog, the agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines queue also requires improvement. The review recommended expanding registration exemptions, enabling self-assessments, and using international assessments to save time on agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines. Minister Hoggard is already implementing these through his modernisation programme, and I’d like to thank him and his officials for this work in making this review a success and implementing its recommendations quickly and efficiently for the benefit of our farmers and our horticulturists.

to the Minister for Land Information

What announcements has the Government made about making it easier to deliver critical infrastructure projects?

A wide Public Works Act reform is under way, but we’ve announced recently critical infrastructure streamlined proposals, whereby incentive payments of an additional 15 percent of the value of the land will be made available to landowners for early agreement; an additional 5 percent of the value of the land in addition, as a recognition payment, acknowledging the special significance of the land in question for these critical infrastructure projects; and a streamlined objection process, whereby the landowner, himself or herself, can object directly to the decision maker, saving time and money, while preserving Land Valuation Tribunal and recourse to judicial review if necessary.

What projects will benefit from this streamlined land acquisition pathway?

Thank you very much for the question and the opportunity to answer it. This faster and fairer process will apply to projects consented in Schedule 2 of the Fast-Track Approvals Act, along with, and including, roads of national significance, as identified by this Government in its ambitious work programme. These might include, for example, Mill Road, Woodend Bypass, Cambridge to Piarere, the Northland Corridor—aka expressway—and a second Ashburton bridge.

How will Kiwis benefit from these changes?

New Zealanders will benefit enormously from these changes. As I say, these will be faster and fairer for all involved, including the payments and processes that will benefit the landowners themselves. But, of course, the transport infrastructure, for example, will enable emergency services to get much more quickly to the scenes of accidents when they occur, as opposed to being stuck in traffic or having to take the long way round. Parents will get home much more quickly on the way home from school, or out to their workplace for that matter, and our farmers will get their food and fibre to tables around the country and to our ports that much more quickly. This is a real gain for New Zealand families.

How do these changes fit in with the Government’s wider PWA—correction, Public Works Act—reform?

What’s PWA?

Mr Speaker, the Public Works Act was then spelt out—

We shouldn’t use acronyms. Half the people listening to this have no idea what that is. That’s why I don’t like acronyms. Say the whole thing. Ask the question again.

How do these changes fit in with the Government’s wider Public Works Act reform?

Thank you, sir. For your information—or FYI—the Government is making—[Interruption]

I haven’t got around to terminating a question yet, but I’m very close!

Thank you, sir. In relation to the Public Works Act, we’ve announced a broader package of reform on which we will make further announcements in due course. In the meantime, we will shortly be introducing legislation to give effect to these critical infrastructure elements of the fast track and roads of national significance Public Works Act regime.

to the Minister for Trade and Investment

Will the Government honour Christopher Luxon’s pre-election promise for a free-trade agreement with India within its first term?

Well, New Zealand’s relationship with India had been run down over the past six years, much more than we realised. There had hardly been any ministerial visits, no Prime Minister visited in the six years of the Labour Government, and the then Labour foreign Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, during a press conference with the Indian foreign Minister in New Zealand, said that a trade deal with India was not a priority for New Zealand. Well, I can confirm that Prime Minister Luxon is much more ambitious for New Zealand, and we have increased engagement, at official and ministerial levels significantly, including a meeting between Prime Minister Luxon and Prime Minister Modi. Of course, the Prime Minister will lead one of New Zealand’s largest business delegation visits to India next year. And for the member, yes, we remain committed to delivering improved access for Kiwi exporters through a trade agreement with India this term.

Does he agree with the Prime Minister on Radio New Zealand this morning, who said that dairy is a “difficult conversation” with India?

Well, yes, I do. It’s clear that dairy is important for both our countries and both Governments, but the one thing that we won’t be doing is litigating or negotiating trade deals with any country of the world via this Chamber or via the media. I know that member was opposed to that when the Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in that very chair, said she was off to Europe to do a deal and didn’t allow that Minister to bring back the meat and dairy access he would have got without that Prime Minister selling him out.

Will he set a minimum threshold for agricultural market access for dairy in any free-trade agreement with India, given that it is our single largest export industry; if not, why not?

Well, I think it’s clear that successive Governments have always argued for a better deal for New Zealand exporters, particularly the high-quality food producers from New Zealand. Most concerningly, what we do need to address before we even have a chance to negotiate with a country like India is the decline in trade we saw over the six years of the Labour Government, where our exports to India fell by $550 million. In the very same period of time, Australia increased their exports by $7 billion into that market. That member, like every New Zealander, can rest assured that we work hard to get the very best deal that we can with India for New Zealanders, because our relationship with India is a priority for this Government.

Supplementary.

Supplementary question.

One more here. You know there’s a three-question rule.

Well, it sounds like five already.

It might have felt like that, but it’s only three.

Will he rule out signing the promised comprehensive free-trade agreement with India if it excludes dairy?

Well, it will be called a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, like the one with the UAE in six months and the NZ-Gulf Corporation Council that the previous Government said wasn’t possible—all done within a year. But I won’t be negotiating via this Chamber or the media with any Government around the world.

Will the Minister promise not to return from India, as a trade Minister once did, promising that he had secured $500 million of potential orders when it was zero?

Well, yes. Most certainly, when this Government makes a commitment, we work hard to honour it. But what has happened since the election in just 15 months is, whilst over the six years of Labour our exports to India went down by $550 million, through working hard to get non-tariff barriers down through the Deputy Prime Minister and I visiting India six times in total, from memory—more than Labour did in their entire time in Government—our exports to India have grown by more than $300 million, which is good for New Zealand companies.

Was it correct for the Prime Minister to say on Radio New Zealand this morning, “We didn’t even have a relationship with India”, given the commitment and efforts of Indian and New Zealand business people and politicians over many years to build that relationship?

Well, yes, it was correct. The reason for that is that member’s foreign Minister stood in public in Auckland, beside the Indian foreign Minister, and said a trade agreement with India is not a priority for New Zealand. How unambitious can you be? Businesses around New Zealand, New Zealanders, Indian - New Zealanders have worked hard on that relationship. They always did. They were let down by a Labour Government over six years.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. To the Minister: how will the relationship between New Zealand and India benefit from the trade delegation to India next week, which will include prominent Kiwi-Indians and representatives from across Parliament?

Well, when Prime Minister Luxon met Prime Minister Modi last year, a personal invitation was extended to our Prime Minister to visit India with a delegation. Next week, we will have a 120-strong delegation full of New Zealanders travelling to India with the Prime Minister. There are a number of Cabinet Ministers; cross-party, four MPs from across this House, including the Opposition; 19 members from our community groups, including a significant number of Indian New Zealanders; a strong business delegation; media; a kapa haka group; senior officials from our ministries; and two notable New Zealand cricket representatives who will join us also. We want to strengthen the relationship across the board with India. It is a significant strategic priority for us, from people to people, from culture, areas to work together in the Pacific, and certainly by growing trade between our two countries it is good for the citizens of India and will be good for the citizens of New Zealand.

That concludes oral questions. For those who have other business outside the House, please leave without the conversations on the way. There’s an awful lot of noise for conversations being taken outside.

I move, That urgency be accorded to the introduction and passing through all stages of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill; the committee stage of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024–25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill, the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill, and the Customer and Product Data Bill; and the third reading of the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill.

The Government’s moving urgency this afternoon not with any pleasure but because it is necessary in order to advance the bail amendment changes that we want Parliament to deal with as quickly as possible, and for legal reasons we want to come into effect as quickly as possible. I note that copies of the bill have been provided to the Opposition in order to allow them to have forewarning about what is coming, given the urgency and significance of the bill.

Given that if the House went into urgency just for the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill, it would then lift immediately following that, we have added some other items into the motion so that we can continue the ordinary sitting day, and it was meant to be an extended hours day tonight into tomorrow morning anyway. There are four committee stages that we want the House to deal with today, anyway, and into tomorrow morning, and then there’s the third reading of the regulatory tidy-up bills, which I think are relatively uncontroversial.

The Government’s intention will be to lift the House before 1 o’clock tomorrow so that a members’ day can still occur. In other words, it’s essentially an ordinary Tuesday, except for the fact that we are expediting the passage of urgent amendments to the Bail Act that I hope the House will approve of. Thank you, sir.

I understand that the Government wishes to introduce a bill.

Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill, introduction.

The bill is set down for first reading immediately.

I present a legislative statement on the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

I move, That the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

From the outset, this Government has been clear about its commitment to an efficient and effective justice system. Electronically monitored bail is an important tool for managing defendants on bail. It enables the court to restrict the movements of higher-risk defendants in the community, under Corrections’ monitoring.

A defendant on electronically monitored bail is restricted to their address, and they can only leave for specific reasons or for a purpose specified by the court, such as attending medical appointments. Any unapproved absence will alert Corrections, who notify Police when they suspect a condition has been breached. Corrections and the court have a safe and well-established approach for allowing a defendant subject to electronically monitored bail to be absent from their address when appropriate—for example, as I said, a medical appointment. Under this approach, the courts specify the purposes for which the defendant may be absent from their address. Corrections make the day-to-day assessments and approvals necessary to give effect to what the court has agreed.

Concerns have been raised that the current law may, in fact, require the courts to approve each and every absence for the roughly 2,000 defendants subject to electronic monitoring. This would place an untenable burden on the courts and justice agencies, and it would be less responsive to the circumstances of the defendant, with consequences for public safety. For this reason, this bill makes a targeted change to align the legislation with the practices of agencies and the courts for more than 10 years. It does this by amending section 30M of the Bail Act and inserting several new sections to codify the usual practice taken by Corrections to enable the efficient and practical management of the large population of defendants on electronically monitored bail.

The bill does not affect the core elements of the electronically monitored bail regime that are there to ensure defendants are actively monitored. It will continue to be the case that any unapproved absence will alert Corrections, who notify the Police. The court will continue to be able to set the purposes for absences and other details as appropriate. It can also continue to authorise or deny any specific absences, where it considers it appropriate to do so. I’m confident that these amendments will support Corrections to continue doing its job, while maintaining public safety and supporting the management of defendants.

The bill applies the new provisions to all authorisations for absences that the court makes after the bill commences. It also validates conditions made by courts that provided for Corrections and others to approve absences. This is to avoid the need for most of these defendants, currently on electronically monitored bail, under these conditions, to come back to the court to vary these conditions. In a small number of cases where conditions involve parties other than Corrections, the validations will last only 60 days after commencement. This is because, going forward, the court will only be able to enable electronically monitored assessors, who are currently Corrections staff, to approve absences, not other parties. The 60 days provided will allow time for the conditions to be replaced.

To conclude, I want to thank members for accepting the need to pass this bill rapidly through all stages. It’s critical for the safe and efficient management of defendants on electronically monitored bail that we make these changes and update the law as soon as possible. I want to emphasise, again, that the bill is in keeping with more than 10 years of practice by agencies and the courts. These amendments will enable Corrections to continue to manage these defendants in accordance with the purposes specified by the court, and they will avoid any negative impacts on the courts, to ensure a practical, safe, and efficient practice going forward. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As was mentioned by the Leader of the House, we’ve had an opportunity to see the bill for a short period of time and, look, we are going to support this bill going through the House, but I’m concerned that it has been drafted very hurriedly, and I think it actually needs amendment.

I know that I want to put one particular amendment around absence for voting into it, but much more critical—I’m looking at this. The framework is this. The practice that has emerged is that the court says that, yes, we can have electronic bail, and then we have these electronic monitoring assessors, who do the fine tuning. It might be for work, it might be for childcare, it might be for joint custody pick up, or whatever, and when those things change, as they always do, the electronic monitoring assessors then can say, for instance, “Yes, OK, you can change your day from Tuesday to Wednesday for picking up the kids from preschool.”, or whatever it might be, which is all perfectly sensible.

The problem is that these electronic monitoring assessors don’t actually have the power in the current Bail Act to do what they’re doing. The practice has emerged, but the kind of practice has got ahead of the law, and, in fact, the law is pretty clear that only the court has the power to impose electronic bail conditions.

Now, there is actually an important question about how much power you want to devolve down. One policy question in here is to what degree should that power to, essentially, dictate electronic monitoring conditions be given to a corrections officer—fundamentally a bureaucrat—rather than it being a judicial decision? That’s a really important question.

I think the intent of this bill is, actually, for the court to be able to delegate a very substantial amount of power. I think that’s the intention, but here’s the thing, Minister: I’m not sure it actually does that effectively, because in this new section 30MB, the closest it comes is to say the court should “enable an EM assessor to approve, in their discretion,” but the section before says, essentially, that it’s the court’s job. You’ve got a kind of bit of a disjunct.

I think we need a very clear legislative statement that’s saying, “With the court’s authorisation, an electronic monitoring (EM) assessor has the power”. You kind of need a declarative statement that the EM assessor is empowered to make these decisions, not a kind of weak, “The court must enable an assessor”, because it’s Parliament that’s conferring this and we need to have that in the legislation.

I think we need—and it shouldn’t be for me; I’m sure there are drafters who are much better than me—to make sure we have that empowering statement very clear. But that’s just kind of a first read, going to the first hurdle, saying, “Does it actually do what it intends to do?”

Now, I get why it’s under urgency, because if the power’s not there, then today and tomorrow the Department of Corrections will be in a bind.

I’d really appreciate it, Minister, if you would let the House know what the court decision which prompted this is, because I haven’t actually been able to find it, but I understand there must be one out there. It would be really useful to see that legal analysis as well. Essentially, put everything on the table. We know you’ve got a Crown Law opinion, and that’s privileged. You can waive privilege—or the Government can waive privilege; it’d be nice to see that too. When we see this under urgency, and we want to do our job well, we want to give this a good working over because, clearly, it’s actually about liberty—it’s an important part of our role.

Yes, we support it. We actually think that the idea of people on bail being able to maintain connections with their communities, and being as flexible as possible, as consistent with kind of human rights and good lawmaking as we can, is a good thing. But we do think there’s work to do on this piece of legislation. Minister, I’d love it if you could, when we come into the second reading soon, address some of those issues. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, we also support the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill, in its intention. Also, like the previous speaker, the Hon Duncan Webb, has mentioned, some of the need for urgency and the concern right now that the Department of Corrections is operating in a less than legal manner is very real. I think it does warrant us to review it in more scrutiny, understanding that this is a bill that is planning on going through all stages of the House today, without select committee and also with only a committee stage. As we are going through this process of first reading, second reading, and also third reading, I think there is definitely scope for us to discuss with the Minister of Justice further some of the nuances around this bill, as we get into that committee stage, in lieu of a select committee stage.

I think, overall, in terms of the intention of this bill, it is, like the previous speaker has highlighted, predominantly to do with defendants who are remanded in custody while waiting for the conclusion of their criminal charges, and the fact that they do have electronic monitoring (EM) and can be placed on EM bail if the court considers EM bail restrictions will mitigate the risk they will otherwise pose in the community. On balance, the reason that the Green Party is in support of this is the broader scope, which I’ll touch on later, but I think, in terms of the specificity, I do share some of the concerns that the previous speaker has mentioned in terms of the newly introduced sections 30MA, MB, and MC. I think we’ll have more scope and room this afternoon to discuss that further.

I think, in terms of its core function, we do see that, in practice, Corrections is currently doing a lot of this work when, legally speaking, it is the court who has the mandate. In practice, some of this covers things like medical appointments, meetings with lawyers, appointments with Government agencies, or even just to shop for essential household supplies—it is very much a humane and a rational and a common-sense thing to do. I also think that, through this bill, what we’re seeing is this broader idea—and I think it’s really important for us to put it on the table as well, the broader issues and scope when it comes to our current remand system.

In terms of electronic bail itself, one of the things that usually would be of concern for the Green Party is the fact that this is retrospective in nature. In fact, this is a practice that Corrections has been doing for a little while. I see that the departmental disclosure statement did state that there is supposed to be advice being provided by the Attorney-General around consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but I think, at this stage, as far as I can see, I couldn’t locate it on the Ministry of Justice website. It would also be good, like the previous speaker suggested, if there is any additional material that will help the House with the discussion and the debate that we are going to have today—it will actually be really helpful to get the bigger picture around the reason for some of this history and the context of some of this, and also the reason for its urgency.

Broadly speaking, I think it’s really important to note that often when we’re looking at things that are retrospective, section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is very clear in terms of retrospective penalty, but I think, in the context of this, one of the things that we wanted to highlight once again is the fact that, when we are looking at this particular bill, it’s retrospective. However, it doesn’t necessarily construe a penalty for the offender itself or for the defendant who is remanded in custody. One would assume that being in remand is actually in itself a violation of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but that is a conversation for later readings.

Overall, the Green Party is supportive of this bill. It’s understanding of its urgency, but we also have additional concerns and additional, I guess, curiosities that we have for the Minister around the scope and the circumstance and the history that meant that this bill has been brought into this House under urgency. Like I said before, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act test for section 26, in this case, does hold, because we do not consider it, in our opinion, as a retrospective penalty. We look forward to further discussions in the second reading and beyond.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak in support of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. As we’ve heard from the Minister of Justice, this bill will make some adjustments to the Bail Act 2000 to do with electronic monitoring conditions for when a defendant is on bail in the community but under electronic monitoring conditions.

As we’ve already heard, the courts impose particular authorised purposes from which a person can be absent from specified addresses, such as medical appointments, appointments with lawyers, shopping, childcare arrangements, etc. What this bill really is doing is just codifying the current practice at the moment, where Corrections can make adjustments to the timings around some of those absences. This has been occurring for quite some time, with Corrections making sure that the community remains safe while these people are being electronically monitored, but it’s practical, so they can actually attend to these specified appointments, etc., that the court has authorised.

We will be supporting this, as we do not want to disrupt the important work of both the courts and Corrections by imposing any unnecessary burden on those organisations. ACT will be supporting this bill. Thank you.

Mr Speaker, thank you. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to also speak in support of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. I commend the Minister of Justice for taking the proactive approach in this space to rectify an issue where common sense and practice may have moved faster than the legislation. It’s about correcting something that is just addressing a risk where there may be an anomaly. I hope that, as we debate this in the House, we manage to actually stick to the details of this very tight piece of legislation that is rectifying a process. It is not changing our justice system, it is not offering penalties that don’t exist, and it is not about changing how we manage remand prisoners generally. It is about electronic monitoring.

To go back, electronic monitoring has been a really important tool in addressing the safety and vulnerability of victims who have gone through the process and where the defendant may have been given bail, it was able to address the sense of safety and security that many victims felt during the court process. It’s been an incredibly important tool that will continue to be an important tool. But, as with any tools, they need to be adjusted and modified to meet with the changing environment of our justice system, and it has been a changing environment. We are wanting to ensure that those that are on remand still have the ability to go about the necessary activities for their lives whilst we still provide the victims an assurance.

This is a practical process, whereby we are not being forced to put defendants back towards the court and clog up our court system, allowing a practice that is in place to continue to operate effectively and address the minor amendments and changes and concessions that need to be made on electronic monitoring. Again, the Minister has outlined what will actually be the outcome of this. I think it’s been a very proactive piece of legislation. I appreciate the support across the House to ensure we can get this moving as quickly as possible to provide the surety for those hard-working individuals who work within the remand process, which is a very fluid and demanding environment. We have, on behalf of New Zealand First, no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā tātou. E tū ana au ki te whakapuaki i ngā whakaaro o Te Pāti Māori mō te pire e kīia nei ko te Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill.

Ko tā mātou, kāre mātou i te tautoko i te kawenga ohorere o te Whare o ngā ture whaitake i roto i te ao o te ture. Me te mōhio anō hua noa atu, hua noa mai, ko ngā tikanga o Te Tāhuhu o te Ture o tēnei whenua, ka tāmihia tonutia te iwi Māori. Nā konā ka whakaara ake ahau ki te tuku i ēnei whakairo.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, indeed greetings to all of us. I stand to express the opinions of Te Pāti Māori regarding the bill known as the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill.

Our opinion, we do not support the urgent progression of the House of the meaningful legislation within the legal sphere. And we are aware that however they be produced, the practices of the Ministry of Justice of this land will continue to oppress the Māori people. That is why I rise to offer these thoughts.]

Whilst the bill is presented in a positive light and it’s an addressing of a systems glitch, if you might want to put it that way; a legal loophole being closed; administrative improvements to make things more efficient; and so on and so forth, we can’t help but express our dismay at the fact that given that the justice portfolio and the justice reforms being promoted by the Government at this time have unequivocally—all of them—had official advice saying that they will disproportionately impact Māori negatively. Although this is a relatively simple set of changes and it is aimed at fixing what is a congestion problem and making things more efficient, the haste with which it is being put through the House in one day denies any Māori group—not Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa, or any other Māori legal group—the opportunity to provide some commentary on the potential impacts on te iwi Māori, and in a country with a Parliament and a constitution founded on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, where two equal constitutional partners agreed to work together, we just can’t bring ourselves to openly endorse it.

This is just a reoccurring theme. A reoccurring thing we have to deal with is how readily and easily dismissed the Māori opinion and view on lawmaking is in our country. I rise time and time and time again to raise it as an issue and, regardless of the select committee processes and our raising things in those areas, the concerns never see the light of day, and neither do the concerns of the many legal groups that come to the select committee process and present, who all unanimously advise the Government that these swift actions and the limiting of Māori input into the devising and generation of laws for the country continue to entrench the disproportionate nature of the Māori presence in the justice system in Aotearoa. We know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s born out of institutional racism, systemic racism, attitudinal racism, which are all things that have been long investigated, commented on, published in this country by our own justice systems—by the police, by the Ministry of Justice themselves—and yet here we are, doing it again.

We really are just bewildered that the only solutions the Government has to offer are ones that entrench Māori overrepresentation in the country’s justice system—a set of conditions that has been prevalent since the 1980s, when the late Moana Jackson began his investigations into that justice system. I know that the Government hasn’t bothered to have a look at any of that work, and that’s why we keep coming back to here—keep coming back to here. We do not support the bill. Tēnā koutou.

I rise to support the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill on behalf of the National Party. This bill allows the practical, safe management of defendants on electronically monitored bail; therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk on this bill, the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. As has been suggested and talked about by colleagues, this bill addresses an urgent issue, hence the fact we find ourselves in urgency. I do also acknowledge the fact that that is the way these things have to happen. There are consequences if it wasn’t to happen in this particular way, but it may just require that little bit of explanation for anybody listening at home as to why this in particular is so urgent.

The bill addresses an urgent issue that Crown Law have advised that the conventional practice where Corrections are authorised to approve absences for defendants on electronic monitoring and it’s not compliant with section 30M of the Bail Act. As has been noted, this is a matter of custom and practice, essentially, that has been operating in this way for quite some time. It’s just a matter of fact, really, that the operational, procedural logic behind doing it this way hasn’t kept up with—well, the legislation certainly hasn’t kept up with that evolving mechanism.

These absence requests allow defendants to attend things like weddings, funerals, tangihanga—any other important life event which naturally occurs inside a Corrections facility, as it does any other facility, and therefore must be accommodated. I think there is something like 30,000 requests for such absence requests per month, which is, I think, a lot bigger number than most people probably would have assumed. You can only just imagine the logistics that go into all of those decisions.

The bill has been introduced also, it should be noted, to not just retroactively make compliant the existing practice of Corrections but also acknowledging that without this change there would be significant impact on both courts and defendants as the courts themselves would have to therefore take up that mantle and make those absences approved in some sort of other process-orientated way. It doesn’t take too much thought to just imagine how the court process would become even further clogged up than it already is.

The bill will, as I said, retroactively validate existing authorisations—existing authorisations as well—made prior to this bill so that defendants don’t need to seek approval a second time for absences which have already been approved. That just streamlines that. Obviously, on this side of the House, we’re absolutely thoroughly interested in anything that prevents further delays to the courts. That’s why we will be supporting this as a necessary thing to do. We fundamentally support the use of electronic monitoring and ensuring that, where possible, people can stay connected to their communities in whatever way is still applicable to them.

Thinking about this particular area, that prior to the election when the National Party were all very gung-ho about law and order and what they would do and what they wouldn’t do, I note that both Minister Mitchell and Minister Goldsmith were very vocal in calling for tighter restrictions on who would be eligible to receive electronic monitoring and those bail conditions and going as far as to label the existing system the epitome of soft on crime. Systems were inadequate, they called them, and they said that authorities often failed to respond quickly, so it’s quite surprising that, again, whilst we find ourselves here under urgency, very necessarily having to address this technical aspect, we haven’t heard any contributions from the other side of the House even go near what they might like to have also done in this area or why they didn’t necessarily take opportunities that were afforded to them during this process to make some of those big calls a reality. National certainly campaigned on stricter bail laws and tougher consequences for ankle bracelet breaches and a review of a whole swathe of bail decisions.

Again, we are more than happy to support this piece of legislation. We are a little bit bemused that it isn’t accompanied by or there’s no explanation of how that would have gone further, but we commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support this bill to ensure that a longstanding and efficient practice for the management of defendants on electronically monitored bail continues, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and thank you for that really well-thought-through last response from the Government on this important bill, the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. This is an important issue, which is an urgent issue, and we know that from the fact that Crown Law have advised that the conventional practice where Corrections have authorised to approve absences for those defendants who are on electronic monitoring is currently not compliant with section 30M of the Bail Act. So we have a problem.

This is effectively a non-compliant practice, and it has been the way that Corrections has been operating the electronic bail system since back in 2013. It’s important that this House does vote to make sure that it’s corrected. They approve approximately around 30,000 absence requests per month, and so it’s a high-traffic area that we need to make sure is right in order to make sure community safety is paramount. These absences allow defendants to attend things like weddings, funerals, tangi, other important life events, and functions. What this bill effectively does is retroactively makes compliant the existing practice that Corrections undertake. Without this change, it’s really important to note that significant impacts both on courts and also on defendants would occur, because courts, in fact, would need to approve those absences.

The bill clarifies, quite rightly, that the court may authorise electronic monitoring (EM) assessors to approve a defendant to be absent from their EM address. An EM, or electric monitoring, assessor is, in substance, the person who has been rightly approved by either Police or Corrections to take up that role. The bill as it is will retroactively validate existing authorisations made prior to the enactment of the legislation we’re doing today, and that will mean that defendants don’t need to seek approval a second time for absences which have in fact already been approved.

As already stated, we will support this legislation. The changes that this bill makes already for the existing practices of Corrections and courts with respect to absences—this bill simply ensures that the practice is compliant with the Bail Act. We want to make sure that that does occur and that existing authorisations are valid, and that is the reason for the retrospective element to this legislation. We want to prevent further delays in the courts, and we know that there are some significant delays still in our courts presently, so it’s important that we avoid any further bottlenecks in our system.

Corrections does need to be able to continue to do what it’s done since the electronic monitoring system was established back in 2013. We support the use of electronic monitoring, ensuring, where it is always possible, that people can stay connected to their communities. That’s an important part of reintegration as well.

There are quite a number of people on bail. Many have not been convicted of a crime, and because of the presumption of innocence, they should not be confined or in any way restricted that is not consistent with community safety. There are others that are yet to be sentenced, but it’s important that we don’t mix up what is EM bail with home detention, and that is quite often done when these things are either covered publicly or discussed publicly. There’s quite an important distinction there.

Just to conclude, we know that there are thousands of people on electronic bail and thousands more on remand in our prisons. These are all people who are accused in cases currently before the courts who have not yet been convicted or acquitted or who have not yet been convicted but are not yet sentenced. It is important that the backlog the courts create is not made worse by this situation.

The Ministry of Justice here has estimated that the amount of time people spend on remand is expected to grow to an average of 91 days by 2031, and that means the average amount of time people spend on EM bail is also likely to increase, so we need to get this right.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill, and essentially, as we’ve heard throughout the course for this first reading stage, with this bill we’re joining common practice with the technical law. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I just want to acknowledge and thank all members across the House for their views and input into the first reading speeches. It’s been enlightening and helpful to get a steer from parties as to their relative levels of support for the bill, and I’m encouraged that we’ll be able to progress this in a timely manner. It is obviously of some urgency and some importance, and I appreciate the views of members across the House, who agree with the Government that it is important to clarify that the electronic monitoring (EM) conditions that we put in place are lawful, and this will just reinforce the common practice, which is undertaken via the Department of Corrections and via the courts.

We agree with the Opposition in their view that we want to support faster resolution within the court system and in justice. I’ve noted, with some interest, the proposed amendment by Dr Webb, and of course we can discuss this later on, but at this stage I don’t think we’ll be supporting Dr Webb’s amendment, on the basis that you can vote while you’re on EM bail—you can undertake a home vote. I’ve undertaken a few of those myself, campaigning in Dunedin over a few years, and, obviously, there is a system whereby you can conduct a vote in your own personal home. You can have someone bring you a vote, you can fill it out, and they can take it back with them, and that will hopefully resolve the issue that Dr Webb is raising.

It is disappointing to hear that the bill won’t be supported by all parties. I just urge Te Pāti Māori to reconsider their support for the bill. We understand the background and some of the issues that they may have with the process and the general, sort of, policy differences that we have with that party, but the practical effect of their opposition will be to, essentially, try and make it harder for people on EM bail to do things like go to the doctor, visit their lawyer, go to the hospital, go do their groceries if they need to, go get housing support—housing advice—go to a tangi, as the Hon Ginny Andersen pointed out. I’d just urge them to reconsider whether or not that’s something they want to be supporting, whether or not they want to support making it harder for those individuals to do that.

That’s a summary of where we are. I hope that we can continue to progress this bill through the House with some pace, and I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Thank you. Look, this is not an inconsequential bill, so it’s disappointing that the members of the Government are not really exploring the challenges in this bill; they’ve clearly had it prepared at pace. In my previous speech, I asked two perfectly reasonable questions and asked the Minister of Justice to come back to the House at second reading and respond to them. Firstly, what was the judicial decision which triggered this concern? If there wasn’t one, just say so. Secondly, will he waive privilege on Crown Law advice so we can see the full analysis? They are saying there’s a problem, and at the moment we’re taking their word for it, so I’d really like to see that.

I’ve had very little time to look at this bill, but the other thing that strikes me is the retrospective nature of bills like this. Tidy-up bills, where you’ve been doing this and it turns out it’s wrong, are all very nice, but I guess there are two aspects to it, and I’m not sure that it really addresses the second aspect.

Firstly, there are people out there who have been happily saying, “You can have bail and you can do this and you can go to the shops and you can go to tangi.”, totally outside of any authority, and so they’ve been acting illegally. There’s a possibility that they’re civilly liable for acting outside of any legal authority they have and they need an immunity and that’s fine. But the other thing is that the people who have been told “Go to this tangi.” or “You can go shopping every Tuesday morning.” have actually been in breach of bail. That’s an offence under section 38(c) of the Bail Act. What they need is it to be very clear that their offence—because you can’t grant that extension, leave, or indulgence from bail if you simply don’t have the legal authority to do so: it’s void; it doesn’t count.

Now you’ve got people out there who, through no fault of their own, because it’s not intentional—it’s just a breach; it doesn’t require intention—are in trouble. It needs to be made absolutely clear because there’s a strong presumption against retrospectivity in those kinds of things. There needs to be a provision in this bill—and, you know, you need to get drafting, because if you’re doing it under urgency, it’s happening pretty soon. There needs to be a provision in this bill which says that people who act in reliance on an authority given by a corrections officer, or, it appears in some cases, even a social worker—not even an employee of the Department of Corrections—are immune from prosecution for any breach of the Bail Act flowing from that decision.

That’s actually quite important, because if we don’t have that, that’s hanging over them. It’s all very nice to say that the executive—that is to say, the Crown—wouldn’t prosecute, but it needs to be made clear that no offence has occurred and they did nothing wrong. Otherwise you’d say, “Well, you were in breach of bail on this occasion.”, when in fact—well, in fact they are, but we need to create a world in which they weren’t, and that’s one of the things that Parliament, here, can do.

I get why you want to fix this as quickly as possible, but it’s got all the hallmarks of being drafted on the run. I suspect while I speak, people are busily drafting amendments that we’ll see on the Table at some stage in the future. Sure, I’ve got a little bit of knowledge of the law, but this is just someone reading it from a position of—and I’m no expert on bail, I’ll tell you that, but it just doesn’t seem to quite do what it really, really needs to do.

Look, yes, we agree with it. We also agree with the principle that people who are on bail, particularly if they are charged but not yet convicted, need to have the most liberty that is consistent with community safety. Fundamentally, that’s I think what we’re trying to get at: that the Bail Act’s job is to make sure people turn up to their court appearance but also that, particularly when you’ve got violent offenders or those accused of being violent offenders, the community is kept safe from them. It is a balancing act. Electronic bail is a really good way to do that because community safety is enhanced because you can constrain exactly where they are—it’s at this property or this part of a property, with these limited conditions. But we see that change can be needed.

I said before—and I was disappointed a little bit that the Hon James Meager didn’t address it—that the philosophical question is where the line is drawn between, essentially, delegating control over someone’s liberty to an unelected bureaucrat, and the role of a judge. Now, in the court process, the registrar can also—only with the agreement of the prosecution—agree to variants of bail conditions. I do have a residual concern that we are putting into the corrections system a high degree of control.

I’ll be honest—and I’m sure my colleague the spokesperson for corrections, Tracey McLellan, will have something to say—the Department of Corrections isn’t a shining star of good procedure in terms of some of the work it does. I’m not saying they’re not people who are trying their very hardest to do a good job, but they’re constrained on all kinds of fronts. Certainly, there’s a risk that the attention to the important balancing of rights—which is what judges do: the exercise of discretion, taking into account fundamental rights and freedoms, and the need for community safety. Understanding the legal interaction between those is actually quite a tricky job.

I am concerned in this bill that it, basically—if I’ve read it right, I think it’s in new section 30MB in clause 5—enables an electronic monitoring assessor to approve pretty much anything. The court has an ability to either say, “Yes, for childcare and your medical needs, we give the electronic monitoring assessor the ability to do that.”, or it can say, “Or do whatever you want.” Now, “do whatever you want.” is extending a huge amount of, fundamentally, power to the electronic monitoring assessor.

The other thing I’m curious to know is—in the legislative statement, it referred to the fact that the electronic bail conditions had been delegated to the Department of Corrections and others, including social workers. I’m very keen to know what “and others” means, and how the social workers got thrown in there as well—“and others” could mean anything at all. It might be skilled professionals like psychiatrists, I don’t know, but it could also just be anyone. We need to know who had that.

Also, in terms of the transitional provisions—because most of the words of this piece of legislation are in fact transitional provisions, and I can see why, because it’s actually pretty tricky. I don’t understand yet, because I haven’t got my head around it, how the transitional provisions are going to work for these approvals, which are so wildly outside of any reasonable delegation that they could have imagined existed.

If a social worker or the cleaner was allowing these extensions, what do the transitional provisions do to those? Do they give an immunity for prosecution for people there as well, and what about going forward? If your social worker said to you that you can pick up your kids from kindy at the usual times—and that was your social worker. Now, it’s hard to validate that, because the new regime doesn’t allow it. It’s not like saying that, well, we’re going to change the rules, and we’ll deem the rules to have been always applicable—it still falls outside of that. That’s a challenge, as well.

Look, we get it: there’s a mistake and we’ve got to fix it up, but I’m yet to be convinced that this is in the right form, and the committee stage has got a lot of work to do.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As we mentioned in the first reading, the Green Party supports this bill in the sense that it provides a practice that is not punishment in nature to the existing system. However, I think as the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned, there are a number of concerns in this bill and I think I would just like to spend this particular reading in lieu of a select committee process to actually highlight some of these concerns, which I’m sure that we will have more time to discuss during the committee stage.

As everyone has said, this is a current practice, but there are a number of issues with this current practice. I think first of all there are the privacy concerns. In the departmental disclosure statement, it does mention that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was consulted around this. Most of us bear in mind that, in order for absence to be granted in new section 30MA or new section 30MB in clause 5, or even in clause 4 of this bill, a registrar or even an assessor may be able to access some of that personal information. I think we haven’t really quite teased out in terms of the privacy component of this bill and the implementation of this bill, even though it’s an existing practice, and in terms of particularly its interaction as we see with some of the latest updates around the information privacy principles (IPP) of the Privacy Act 2020. I think, from a privacy perspective, there’s actually a lot of things to discuss and to hopefully have a conversation with the Minister of Justice for some elucidation. That’s my first point.

I think the second point that I would also like to mention is that as we are talking about the fact that these sorts of assessors etc. will be able to assess from a corrections perspective as opposed to the existing structure of having the court for those kinds of assessors to do it, what situations would be considered appropriate context for absence to be granted? Again, just because it’s current practice, like the previous speaker said, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the right process to do.

One of the bills that we did discuss last year was around the Corrections Amendment Bill, which is now the Corrections Amendment Act 2024. During the debate of that particular bill, one of the things that we really highlighted is the removal of cultural competency within that bill. As we’re seeing that the Department of Corrections is now in a position where they are granting some of these absences, it does make me wonder in terms of what cultural competency is granted in terms of what leave will be allowed in that case.

We heard about the fact that, yes, things like going to appointments, going to meetings subject to going to Government agencies, picking up from daycare—we’ve heard some of these, but what about things that are more cultural in nature? For example, for people who needed to attend a tangi, would they be provided absence, or would they be provided leave for the entire duration of that tangi? Or is it just like, “Actually, we’re going to go with a standardised funeral or bereavement leave where you can go for one day and choose which day you want to go.”? A lot of these sort of have broader implications and cultural implications if Corrections is in charge of this particular aspect. That’s one of the other elements that I think really deserves some attention when we are progressing through the committee stage.

I think the other thing that is central to the Bail Act 2020 but also is central to the discussion we have right now is the fact that we what we’re seeing is a drastic increase in the number of people who are on remand. Indeed, some of the latest studies that have been done and some of the latest articles that have been written around remand—most recently, one of the ones that I picked up on was at the end of last year, which talks about how as we see the way that our remand system works, we’re seeing more and more people who are unsentenced people who may not be guilty of offending being placed into these situations. Now, again, understanding that we’re looking at the system with electronic bail and also with absence, we are seeing those who are on remand who may not be within the prison system, but we must acknowledge the interaction between our view and our position on remand more broadly.

For those who are on remand, we are seeing that 54 percent of females in our current, for example, prison system etc. are on remand. It is a threefold increase from a decade ago. We’re seeing as of the data from April 2023 that I had available to me—considering we’re currently going through all of these under urgency. In the data that was available to find from April 2023, 89 percent of young people are on remand. A lot of this does come into the fact that when we are discussing this bill and the broader context of remand and electronic bail, it does beg the question of why is this something that the court system is unable to do?

I think one of the previous speakers—the Hon Ginny Andersen—has mentioned in the context of this that, yes, we do want Corrections to possibly be able to do some of these in order to not create that backlog and bottleneck in terms of our court system. However, I think the bigger question is: why are there so many people on remand right now that we need to have this system in the first place?

If we do actually treat people on remand, as is stated in our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (BORA) under section 25(c), as “innocent until proved guilty”, surely that remand as a concept of us punishing people without any formal sentencing and without proving they’re guilty is a flaw in our current system. With something like this, as we see an increase in the number of people who are on remand, are we actually seeing that the practice that is being put forward here that we would like to codify is actually a response to the wider issue of remand and then providing a technical fix, as opposed to us addressing the genuine issue of why there so many people who are in remand, and why is the court not able to handle the workload and we have to pass it on to Corrections instead?

Again, another piece of really important context around this, when it comes to remand, is in, let’s say, the data from October 2023. This is in the context of the prison population and those who are in remand in prison, but I think it highlights again the broader issue that 40 percent of our prison population in October 2023 were on remand and that that is a quadrupling in two decades. I think these are the broader issues that also possibly deserve some attention as we look at the technical fix that is this bill.

Lastly, I would like to highlight—and I think I’ve highlighted it previously—the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 context of this bill, and particularly the retrospective nature of it. I did just, again, have a look on the Ministry of Justice website, and it is clear to me that although an attempt was made to upload the BORA report—as stated in the departmental disclosure statement saying that there is a BORA report—that BORA report is actually not available. The link doesn’t work on the Ministry of Justice website, and, fundamentally, it begs the question that it’s very hard for members of this House to really scrutinise a bill and really provide the kind of analysis that we need as a legislature and as people whose primary role is to make law for Aotearoa New Zealand. We are kind of stabbing in the dark because we don’t have that information available to us, such as, fundamentally, a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consistency report, which is not available, or else the link is broken. That is a genuine concern.

I can stand here and say that, yes, in that report, we might see some evidence of conversations around consistency with section 18 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, particularly around freedom of movement. I mentioned this before, in terms of some of the issues and consistency with retrospective penalties in section 26, which apparently weren’t something that the BORA report—in terms of the boxes actually considered, which I thought is kind of obvious. But, again, in the broader issue with remand under section 25(c), I think all of these bring a broader context to some of the things that we need to be looking at when we’re discussing this bill.

Lastly, I just want to very briefly touch on something else that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb mentioned before. That is the fact that we’re looking at something that is predominantly within the judiciary that has now been passed on to the executive through Corrections, and that separation of power and that broader context, I think, is something else we would like to ask the Minister during the committee stage. With that, we support that, and we really look forward to the committee stage and to having conversations with the Minister.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Oh look, it seems to be a Green Party policy shop this afternoon. I want to say thank you very much to the hardest-working Opposition MP, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, who’s back. He’s here—he’s ready for a committee stage.

Look, I think why we’re doing this has been really well canvassed in the first reading. We’re in the second reading at this point. We want to make sure that the current practice is, in fact, law-abiding. I know, and I can hear the concerns coming from some of the Opposition. I think, like, let’s just get this fixed and get this across the line, and there could be some great member’s bill ideas out there. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I suppose it’s really on us to kind of bring back some logic and some sense into the discussion that’s been heard before the House—sometimes time-filling becomes a distraction to what is really at heart. We’ve heard a few commentaries across the House about the alarmist kind of strategy around what could and what might, and setting bail, and this is not what this bill is about. This is about the electronic monitoring exemptions for bail conditions that already exist. This is not overruling the court system. It is not overstepping the mark. This is not breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is not to be overthought and overanalysed and create scaremongering amongst the public.

It is also, as the Hon James Meager highlighted, an opportunity to make the best of difficult situations in electronic monitoring and actually deliver some positive conditions. Maybe there might be a chance in this House to stop panicking, to stop the victim narrative, to stop being an obstruction to implementing some good changes, and to recognise that this is an opportunity, when electronic bail conditions are put in place, to actually allow some exemptions and some conditions to allow those that are on remand to have some quality of life in their conditions, to seek help, to seek guidance, to seek support, to seek family members, and also to complete the justice process.

It is a system in place already. There was an anomaly identified where perhaps this may need to be tightened up in terms of the process, and that is exactly what this piece of legislation is doing. That is why we are doing it under urgency—to ensure there is the clarity that members across the House are seeking—and that is why New Zealand First will fully commend this bill to the House, acknowledging the incredible efforts of the Minister of Justice to make up for lost time in the corrections process that has been slipping it. Thank you.

Ki te reo Māori aku kōrero i tēnei wā, i roto i tēnei pānuitanga tuarua o tēnei pire e kīia nei ko te Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. Ka taka ki Te Pāti Māori ngā kupu whakaaraara o te iwi Māori e whakapuaki i roto i tēnei Whare nā runga i te mea kua roa te reo o te iwi Māori e kauparehia atu e tēnei Whare. I tēnei wā, kei te rongo atu ahau i ngā kōrero a te Whare nōna te mana whakahaere e whakaiti nei i tā te taha ki te tangata whenua o Aotearoa whakapuaki i ngā whakaaro nui, mōrearea nei, mō tōna iwi.

I roto i te kotahi tau me te hāwhe, kāore anō ahau kia rongo i te taha Kāwanatanga e kōrero nei mō ngā aupēhitanga i runga i te iwi Māori. Kāore anō ahau kia rongo i te taha ki te Kāwanatanga e kōrero nei mō ngā kupu whakatūpato a Te Tāhuhu o te Ture mō āna panonitanga ture i roto i te rāngai ture o tēnei tau. Kāore anō ahau kia rongo i tētahi whakaaro e puta atu ana i a rātou he manaaki i te iwi Māori.

Ka mutu ka taea e tēnā mema, e tēnā mema te tūtū mai me te whakaiti i te wāhi o te reo o Te Pāti Māori ki te whakaara ake me te whakapuaki i ngā whakaaro o te iwi Māori, te iwi kua roa e mauhere nei e tēnei Whare, te iwi kua roa e mau kino nei i roto i ngā tikanga whakahaere a Te Tāhuhu o te Ture o Aotearoa.

Nō reira kāore au mō te whakarongo me te whakaae ki ngā kōrero a tēnā pāti, a tēnā pāti e mea nei ko tā mātou he whakamataku i te tūmatanui, he whakamataku rānei i te iwi Māori. Ehara.

Ko tēnei panonitanga, āe, he tikanga me panoni nā te mea kua tekau tau, neke atu, e tārewa hē ana. Ko wai hoki rā te Whare ka whakaae kia haere i runga i te pōhēhē e tika ana āna tikanga whakahaere, me te ao ake tekau ki muri kei te hē ngā whakahaeretanga.

Hanga tūmeke ahau i tēnei āhuatanga, me te kawe tere nei i tēnei whakatikahanga, me te kī atu kua pai ināianei, me haere tonu ahakoa te kauparetanga o te reo o te iwi Māori, ahakoa te kore whai whakaaro ki te tokomaha o te iwi Māori e noho nei i roto i ngā tikanga whakahaere a Te Tāhuhu o te Ture.

Me pēhea rā te iwi Māori? Me pēhea rā e rangona ai ngā kōrero whakatūpato, ngā whakaaro whakaaraara i tēnei Whare ki ngā auē me ngā taimahatanga, ngā aupēhitanga o te iwi Māori i roto i ngā tau? Kāre au i te kite i te huarahi. Kāre au i te kite atu i te huarahi i te mea kei te mōhio ahau mā roto i te komiti whiriwhiri ēnei āwangawanga nui, ēnei kupu whakamōrearea nui o te iwi Māori, ā, ka taka noa ki te taha.

Nā reira kāre au e whakaae ki ngā kupu a te mema kātahi anō ka noho. Kāre e whakaae ki ngā kupu a te heamana o te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Ture. Nō reira—

[My comments will be in the Māori language at this time, in this second reading of this bill known as the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. It falls to Te Pāti Māori to express the words of alarm of the Māori within this House because the voice of the Māori people has been deflected by this House for such a long time. At this time, I am hearing the statements of the House who holds the governing authority belittling the opinions of the people of the land of Aotearoa expressing significant thoughts, dangerous ones, for his people.

Within a year and a half, I have yet to hear the Government side speaking about the oppression of the Māori people. I have yet to hear the Government side speaking about the cautionary words of the Ministry of Justice regarding its legislative amendments within the justice sector this year. I have yet to hear a single thought being expressed by them that is respectful of the Māori people.

Furthermore, each member is able to stand and disparage the role of the voice of Te Pāti Māori to raise awareness and to express the opinions of the Māori people, the people that have long been incarcerated by this House, the people who have long been badly ensnared by within the procedures of the Ministry of Justice of Aotearoa.

So I am not about to listen and allow the comments of that party and that party that assert that we are merely scaring the public, or scaring the Māori people—not at all.

This amendment, yes, it is a process that should change because it has been suspended badly for 10 years or more. Who is the House that will agree to continue on the erroneous belief that its management procedures are appropriate, when 10 years later the management is wrong.

I am somewhat surprised by this situation, that this amendment be carried under urgency, and then to say that it’s OK now and we should continue, despite the voice of the Māori people being neglected, despite the lack of consideration given to the many Māori people that remain within the procedures of the Ministry of Justice.

What are the Māori people to do? How are the words of caution to be heard, the thoughts that alert this House to the cries and the difficulties, the oppression of the Māori people over the years? I don’t see the pathway. I don’t see the pathway, because I know through the select committee of these significant concerns, these words of danger to the Māori people, and they will merely fall by the wayside.

So I do not agree with the words of the member who has just taken his seat. I do not agree with the words of the chairperson of the Justice Committee. So—]

Can I just bring the member back to this particular bill.

Āe, kei te kōrero ahau mō te pire nei. Nō reira ka waihohia ake āku kōrero i reira. Ahakoa te tōwai o ngā kōrero, me tōwai ka tika i te mea kāre anō ngā taringa o tēnei Whare kia tahuri mai ki te iwi Māori, ā, ka mau tonu Te Pāti Māori ki tā te iwi Māori e mōhio nei nō roto mai i ngā wheakotanga o tēnā whakatipuranga, o tēnā whakatipuranga, o tēnā whakatipuranga tahi me ngā ture o tēnei Whare.

Kāre mātou e tautoko i te pire. Kia ora tātou.

[Yes, I am speaking about this bill. So I will leave my comments there. Despite the repetition of the comments, it is appropriate that they should be repeated because the ears of this House have yet to turn to the Māori people, and Te Pāti Māori will maintain what the Māori people know through the experiences of each successive generation together with the laws of this House.

We do not support the bill. Thanks, everyone.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m happy to take a five-minute call to support this bill, which is going through, and it’s fitting because I actually visited Whanganui Prison yesterday. Some of the points that they were making around prison population and the remand population were quite helpful in terms of understanding this bill because—what was the quote he used? He said, “As the muster grows, the quality goes.”, and that’s what we’re seeing in Aotearoa: lots of people in prison and lots of people in jail on remand who could otherwise be out in the community on electronic bail.

That’s why we’re supporting this bill. It means that more people can stay in their community and go to really important appointments and things that they need to run their lives and they’re able to do that freely. I know that that’s a real challenge for people.

There was a 14-year-old boy that I met in Ōtepoti—in Dunedin—and I won’t go into the details too much around his offending, but he was presented with the choice of whether he could go on electronic bail monitoring or go to a youth justice residence. He picked the youth justice residence, and the reason he did that was because he said it was too hard to follow the bail conditions while he had the bracelet on. He said it was too hard—that the rules and the curfews were far too hard and it was much easier for him to just go to the youth justice residence. I want to remind people that that’s an expensive choice that people are making, because it costs far more to incarcerate people than it is to allow them to go about their lives and have relative freedom whilst still being monitored.

This is a good change that makes things a little bit more reasonable, because the way that we treat people while they’re on bail, when they’re in jail, or whether they’re in prison directly affects the way that they will engage with the justice system or offend again or not. The more that we can treat people like human beings—allow them to go to the supermarket, allow them to go to the Ministry of Social Development to talk to their case worker face to face, allow them to go to appointments where the doctor actually physically needs to see them—the more it is a really important part of respecting the humanity of all people in our society, including those who may have been sentenced or who are awaiting sentencing.

That’s, basically, the crux of our support. There’s not a whole lot more to add than that. I’ve pulled out all the stories I have, so I will conclude there and say that we commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s good to see a relative sense of unity across the House on this piece of legislation, bar our friends in Te Pāti Māori, but I don’t think we’ll see much of that ever happening. This is a pragmatic change—really good legislation. We’re doing it quickly so we can ensure nothing falls through the cracks, so I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I’m going to take probably a few more minutes than what the previous contributor just managed to conjure up in his contribution and talk about this bill at the second reading—not to be confused with the first reading; that was just a few minutes ago.

When we consider the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill, there are some other aspects to this and some other parts to the puzzle, I should say, or some other pieces to the picture, that might help kind of elucidate the background a little bit. The changes that the bill makes, as has been said, are already the existing practice of the Department of Corrections, and the courts, as well, with respect to granting absences from electronic bail addresses, and that’s kind of one aspect. This bill simply ensures that the practice that’s been happening for a number of years now is compliant with the Bail Act and that the existing authorisations continue to be valid.

It’s probably important to note that when we are talking about these types of things, not everybody has the chance or the opportunity, so to speak, to have a little bit of a look inside the justice system. It’s a system that probably the vast majority of people aren’t familiar with because they don’t interact with the justice system on a day-to-day level, and, hopefully, for most people, they never have to interact with the criminal justice system. But it’s a unique environment and it’s full of all sorts of processes, procedure, rigour, and structure, and then there are lots of things that happen that sometimes can feel a little bit ad hoc, or a little bit not quite tight enough, considering the types of situations and the circumstances that are at play here within the criminal justice system.

It’s important to note, I think, that when we’re talking about changes like this, it is ultimately about people, and people who are incarcerated, awaiting trial, or on bail are innocent until proven guilty are exactly that. They are still people who have some rights and who have considerations; and the State, as the person potentially taking away that liberty, has responsibility to ensure that the system that people find themselves in is a robust one. Of the people on bail, many have not been convicted of a crime at all, and because of the presumption of innocence, they should be confined—and I think most people would agree—in the least restrictive way which is still consistent with community safety, which is obviously paramount and incredibly important. Other people that we may be talking about when we’re considering this piece of legislation may have gone through that process but are yet to be sentenced.

We’re talking about people that find themselves in different stages of that system, and people have been assured that when they’ve had leave prior to today, that it’s been granted correctly, that it was a valid decision, and that they haven’t, in fact, therefore been in breach of the Bail Act. I think that goes not only for the people who are on electronic monitoring but also, as my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has said, the myriad of people who have made those decisions, and I think that the vast majority of the public would be quite surprised to know that it’s not necessarily the legal profession, or the types of people who work within Corrections that they might have assumed would have been the people making those decisions. In fact, it can often be people from various different professions, including social workers and other people. It’s incredibly important for the people who find themselves in the Corrections department, and also the people who work within the Corrections department, that those assurances can be made.

It’s not a simple thing. There’s been several contributions from the other side of the House that have almost been flippant to the fact that questions have been raised on this side of the House. I can assure you that, certainly when we come to the committee of the whole House stage, there will be several clauses and several questions and undoubtedly some amendments required because with all the best intention in the world, sometimes the simplest things that seem simple can very easily have unintended consequences. Whilst we haven’t had a huge amount of time to pour over this particular bill and consider those ramifications, it is very clear, even having a quick look, that there are some questions—some really, really valid questions about the logistics and about some aspects of this bill that may need to be further tightened up.

It’s interesting—although not everybody might agree—that there was a contribution from the other side of the House that suggested that this bill itself may need tightening up, as if that was simply the advice that was received, and yet the members of the National Party and New Zealand First and ACT have had an opportunity to elucidate this House on the fact that we still are none the wiser as to really what is the impetus behind bringing this bill to the House today, other than needing to fix something up. How, after several years, has this suddenly arisen? My colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, in his very first contribution in the first reading of this bill, posed the question as to what was the information or the court decision—I can’t quite remember the exact phrasing that he used. It was clear that there was some sort of judicial process or advice that lent itself to the fact that this was required, in quite an urgent fashion—hence the fact that we find ourselves in urgency.

I found it a little bit amusing, or bemusing, that contributions may have simply sort of downplayed that as perhaps needing, or may need, some sort of tightening up. When that incongruence happens, it does raise some questions. Whilst the members on the other side of the House—the Government members—have made very, very short contributions and haven’t taken the opportunities before them today to be able to provide those answers—and they might not know. I don’t know what their internal processes are, but the people that are taking the calls in the House today might not be privy to the ministerial level of knowledge, and that’s fair enough. We understand how these things happen when urgency is in play. That’s why the committee of the whole House stage exists, as members well know, as an opportunity to be able to tease those out. We would also like to just, I suppose, give a little bit of prior warning to the fact that amongst the questions that have already been asked during this first and second reading, it will be absolutely incumbent upon the Minister to give us some more details about how this came about. We would like to know specifically how long this has been in play. How long have they known that this will require a fix—so to speak?

The other aspect that I wanted to mention is that, when we think about the sort of broader aspects, we know that thousands of people are on electronic bail, and thousands more, unfortunately, are on remand in our prisons. Some other contributions have noted the escalating proportion of people incarcerated through our corrections system—I think it is even up as high as 42 or 45 percent—who are actually on remand, which means different things to different people. It’s certainly, I would hope everybody would agree, not an ideal situation—that’s all of these people who are accused in cases currently before the courts who have not yet been convicted or acquitted and who are awaiting sentence.

We do fully understand that to not do this today would absolutely, without a doubt, necessitate that there be some other work necessary, and it would add to what would eventually be a measure that would actually contribute to further backlog in the court. We know that that is unacceptable by any stretch of the imagination, not the least of which in terms of court process. It actually just takes victims longer to get the satisfaction that they need through this process as well. For those reasons, we continue to support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There is no need to wander and waffle. This is a required change, and I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker.

I call Camilla Belich.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members are very keen to make contributions to this bill, as I can see, across the House, so I look forward to the member Catherine Wedd’s no doubt substantive contribution to this bill when she gets the opportunity to speak as part of this split call.

It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call in this House, as always. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak yet to this bill at first reading, so it’s my first opportunity, really, to outline some of the thoughts that I have had around this bill, which, to be fair, I haven’t had in front of me for that long due to the nature of the introduction of this bill. But, like other colleagues in the Labour Party, I obviously support this bill. Sometimes bills like this do come before the House, and it’s an opportunity, really, for the House to reflect on our duties as parliamentarians to make the public services and the responsibilities that Government has in this place in relation to corrections work effectively, and that is an important service and it is an important responsibility that we do have.

In this particular case, there is a situation where there is a need for clarity around the responsibilities that these third parties, or these electric monitoring assessors, have in relation to those who are on electronic bail. It would be, from our perspective, a difficult position to oppose this bill due to some of the very key reasons that people may need to be on electronic bail and not be at their specific address—for example, for the seeking of urgent medical treatment. I mean, I think that that is a relatively practical reason that someone would need to change address. I understand that this doesn’t have the full support of the House—I’m sure there are other good reasons, and I haven’t heard all of the contributions so I can’t speak to those—but there are certain situations like urgent medical treatment or like, I imagine, those who are on electronic bail doing things like going to their jobs and doing things that will actually help their recovery and help them participate in society that benefit from this bill.

It is not a usual process that we are going through today in hearing all the stages under urgency. Like I said, I think that this is a practical reflection of the need to clarify this, but this has been in practice for over a decade, so I’m not 100 percent clear of the exact reason to necessitate the urgency. Once it’s been identified, I think probably a sensible suggestion might be to make sure that it is cleaned up and that there is clarity in relation to the processes.

This is a retrospective bill, and I’ve thought about the comments to make about that, because usually retrospectivity is something that we shy away from in lawmaking, for a very good reason: it shouldn’t be that people act in a certain way and this House then subsequently changes the law—or the rules of engagement—under which they operate. It’s not a good way to make law, but I have looked through this documentation in the short time that I have had. I’ve seen that there has been advice provided in the departmental disclosure statement to say that the retrospectivity is justified based on the fact that it benefits those under electronic monitoring, and I’ve kind of thought about that and I’ve thought that, well, I guess it does in the sense that this does allow a greater sense of freedom for those who might otherwise be subjected to staying at the location that they have to be under for electronic monitoring, or, indeed, if we didn’t have these laws which permit electronic monitoring and bail, it would mean that they, in fact, would have to be incarcerated.

Just quickly, before I end—this is a short call—I think that the other thing to note about this is that a really important role that we have, as parliamentarians, in setting the law and a huge responsibility that we have to make sure that we get things right is when we do deal with incarceration and with taking away freedoms from people. A fundamental thing that only the State should have the ability to do to its citizens is to create rules that do lead to the loss of liberty, and so it’s a very serious thing, but this bill does allow more liberty than may have otherwise been available for those who are under electronic monitoring, so I can see the rationale behind it.

I think there’s more information that would still be good for that to come out. I saw that there was a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet under it, but I was not able to read that before this reading. I’d like to comment on that if I have another opportunity.

Look, I rise to support the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill because this is a common-sense approach, it rectifies a process. It’s all about ensuring that we have safe electronic monitoring in our community, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s been really interesting to hear the wide variety of commentary on this bill, which is an incredibly important one.

It’s important to clarify, I think, right at the start that electronic bail is quite different to home detention, because I’ve been seeing a few comments coming in from people who are watching. It’s really important to make it clear that electronic bail is definitely not the same to home detention, and those two should not be conflated. Electronic bail, which is what this bill sets out to rectify, is something which offenders are granted before conviction but prior to sentence, whereas home detention is punishment in itself. It’s important to note that electronic bail in itself is not a punishment but a public safety tool. People on electronic bail must be given timely approvals for absences, and so this is what this bill sets out to do. We realise this bill amends the Bail Act back from 2000, and those amendments relate to the absences of criminal defendants who are granted bail with conditions specifically under section 30B of the Bail Act.

As we’ve already discussed, if there are situations like a tangi, an important community event, then those on electronic monitoring (EM) bail are able to do that, and it’s appropriate that this is done the right way. As we’ve seen from the information that’s been provided by the Government today, that Crown Law have advised—quite urgently, as they often do—that the conventional practice where the Department of Corrections just authorise to approve absences for defendants was just not compliant with that section 30M of the Bail Act. The fact that it’s non-compliant requires this bill to have a retrospective element in order to go back in time and make sure that those approvals were done legally. It also sets up the framework to make sure that those approvals, going forward in time, are also done legally.

Overall, we know that those people who are in prison on remand and haven’t been provided EM bail is growing in New Zealand, and in New Zealand the figure I have here is 43 percent of people in prison in New Zealand are not sentenced and are awaiting court processes, which is a lot higher than other countries. I had a quick look at a few other countries, and the UK, for example, has only 18.3 percent of prisoners in that space.

It is quite concerning that the rate of people who spend further time on bail or who are detained, waiting to find out whether they are in fact guilty or not guilty, is due to the fact that the time spent on bail exceeds, sometimes, any sentence on conviction. I think it is incumbent upon all parties in this House, whether they’re Government or Opposition, to really take a good look at how our justice system is operating. If we have 43 percent of people in prison not being sentenced when we compare ourselves to other like countries who don’t have that high rate, I think we do need to look at the way our court system is operating and at our general approach to the prison system when it seems to be not operating that fluidly at all.

I do wonder whether the urgency of this legislation—how has that come about? I’d be interested to know, and I’m sure we’ll ask through the Official Information Act, whether it is with the delays being so prominent that we’ve had to act urgently. Is it the fact that some of those hold-ups in the pipeline through the criminal justice system—has that put pressure today for us to have to pass this so urgently, because if it does not, does it have other implications down the pipeline for the system? I think those are important things for us to understand, in time.

But we’ve been clear about it today: the Labour Party does support the changes that this bill sets out to existing practices that have been quite clearly identified as not being in line with the existing legislation. This bill ensures that the practice is compliant with the Bail Act, and it’s really important that people know their rights, people understand what they are, and they are followed through correctly. I also hope that as part of these changes, there will be clear communications given not only to corrections staff but also to the customers as well to make sure that people are informed of their rights in terms of these changes.

We do want to prevent further delays in the courts, and to do that we need to make sure that Corrections need to be continuing to be able to do what it’s done since 2013, to manage the EM absence approvals, and we need to make sure that’s been done legally. We support the use of electronic monitoring and ensuring, where possible, people can stay connected to their communities. One of the important points of EM bail is that people may still be able to hold down employment, may be able to continue their residential tenancy, and may still be able to maintain connections with whānau, whether they’re parents or they’re a caregiver to others. Those functions still need to be able to operate and people need to go about these daily requirements, even if they’re still waiting for their court case to come up, and so having clarity around a process which gives people an ability to attend functions and to have that in place is really important.

I think it’s worth noting how many people are actually using this system. It’s a big system for New Zealand, and I think that that highlights the point of why it’s so important that we get these things right. That’s why, on issues that are sensitive, where it is important to act with urgency, we see all parties supporting the right thing to be done in this space. I think it’s worth stating again that the people we are speaking about are all people who are accused in cases currently before the courts, and it is through no fault of their own that there is a delay for not having their court case heard in a timely manner. These people have not been convicted or acquitted, but they have not even had their opportunity to go through this process.

We note that the fact that there is this backlog is a concern, in terms of the job ahead of not only Corrections but, of course, also the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice always does that good work in looking at the pipeline and how many more people are coming through this system. It’s important to note that some of the changes that this Government have brought in—legislative changes—will see our prison population continue to grow, and it will continue to put pressure, not on just the prison infrastructure, but all of those support services that go with that infrastructure: that’s mental health, that’s family violence counselling, that’s drug and alcohol addiction support, and it’s also all the work that goes on through Corrections with monitoring bail electronically.

It is concerning that we have a Government, now, who has significantly cut back funding in public services while still wanting to significantly increase our prison population. It will be important that we maintain strong infrastructure to provide our communities with safety, but also to provide people with all of those support services that not just make electronic monitoring possible but also give people the opportunity to get the support and the assistance they need to stop crime reoccurring.

I think that’s the main problem we have with this Government: we do not have a plan to break the cycle of crime. We have a Government that’s very interested in locking people up but not so interested in looking to the solutions to stop that cycle occurring again and again. Of course, those are victims in New Zealand. The revictimisation of people is something we need to urgently address, and we need to do a lot more if we are serious about saying that victims are central to our justice system. I commend the bill to the House.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill, the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. I know that our Government absolutely has a plan to crack down on crime. That’s why we want to get through this bill very quickly and get back to those other bills, like the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill, which I’m very, very excited about passing very soon in this House. I commend this bill.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill.

Members, the House is in committee on the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. We start with Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 and 5, “Substantive amendments”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

I just thought I’d make a couple of opening remarks. This is, you know, a little bit unusual for Parliament to be bringing through urgent legislation to correct a practice that has been undertaken for the last 10 years or so, whereby we’re talking about people who are on electronically monitored bail. These are people that haven’t had their court case or been sentenced and they’re awaiting their trial or their sentencing. Because there is serious concern around public safety, they’ve been put on electronic monitoring. The majority of people in this circumstance—there’s about 2,000 at any given time; in fact, right now it’s 1,859 people—are there for serious violent offences, and that is why they’ve been put on electronic bail.

A number of people have made the point that there’s a lot of people on there. And, yes, that is a symptom of delays for justice and that is why one of the primary focuses of our broader justice policy is to speed up the processes of the courts: so less people are waiting for so long to get their things sorted out. That is the broader sort of context.

What we’re trying to do with this legislation is to make it clear that corrections staff have the ability to deal with exemptions so that they can go to a doctor’s appointment or something like that without having to go back to the court. There’s been recent sort of indications from the court that it does need to go back to the court, and if that was followed for all these—there’s been, on average, 30,000 a month—then that would seriously clog up the court system, which we’re wanting to avoid and that’s why this legislation is before us.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Obviously, here we are under urgency, and the Minister of Justice will know that, not three hours ago, I put some questions to him whilst he was in the Chamber at the first reading. This bill, of course, it being under urgency, hasn’t gone to select committee, so I’m hoping that we’ll get the indulgence. It would be a little bit different from a usual committee stage, and we can have some wider policy discussions around the bill. If I had had the opportunity to quiz officials at select committee, I would certainly have asked them how it was that we got here.

I understand that it was about 2013 when the management of electronic bail was given to Corrections. There were only about 400 people on electronic bail then, and now, obviously, it’s grown. I asked, actually, whether there had been a particular court case that gave rise to this, because if this is unnecessary legislation, I’d like to know that. The Minister has, I think, said something along the lines of—or at some point it’s been said that—the courts have raised concerns. I really want to know in what forum that happened. Was that a court decision? I’m aware that there is, quite appropriately, a liaison between the Minister and senior judges, and that may well have been where it was raised. It would be good to know that. I guess the other thing is that I think it would really be appropriate—if he’s not going to hand over the Crown Law advice, which would be really nice—to get a much more fulsome explanation of what the advice was. I’ve taken the time to sit down with the Bail Act and try to get my head around it. I’d really like to hear that.

In terms of the substantive question, or the wider policy question, I think there’s a danger that—let’s face it; let’s just get it right—Corrections have done something illegal, right? They’ve breached the law; they’ve been acting outside of the law. There’s a risk, in this piece of legislation, that we simply look at what they’ve been doing and say, “The problem is you’ve been acting illegally. The fix is to permit it retrospectively.” That’s a topsy-turvy kind of way to approach a problem. If the problem is—and I think I just heard the Minister say—the courts do not have the resources to address every variation of an electronic bail condition, the next question is: how much should be delegated? Not: give them what they’ve been doing. It might be more—I don’t know—but it might be less. I suspect that if you sat down and did a good policy process around this proposed amendment, you would draw a very clear line between the role of the courts in outlining and framing electronic bail and the role of the electronic monitor assessor.

It might be that the Minister is going to table an amendment—I’m sure he will; he usually does: he doesn’t usually get it right the first time around—to frame up exactly what the distinction is, but, at the moment, it looks like the court can, essentially, delegate 100 percent of its role to a crew in Corrections who manage bail. I’m not sure that that’s actually good.

Rima Nakhle didn’t give a long speech, but she said a couple of things, and one was the importance of protecting victims of crime. We want to make sure that these decisions that assessors make correctly weigh up the considerations, including looking after and protecting victims of crime. Are we just validating everything that’s gone on, or has there been independent thinking? I think there were three questions in there, and I hope you’ll have a crack at all three of them. Thank you.

A couple of things happened that led to this change. Firstly, there was an operational review by the Ministry of Justice conducted to simplify the language used in bail notices, and that work gave rise to questions as to whether the standard practice, which was Corrections approving defendants as being absent, was clearly enabled under the Bail Act. That was a ministry review.

Since late 2024, some judicial decisions have also raised questions as to whether this common practice was clearly enabled under the Bail Act, and in some cases, the courts imposed conditions that required the defendant to seek specific authorisation from the court for each absence, instead of using the practice in place since 2013 of defendants asking Corrections to approve absences. I’m not going to name the specific cases, because a Minister shouldn’t comment on matters before the courts, because there may be appeals.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the Minister of Justice for those responses. Just following on from the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, around this, I think it is important, in lieu of a select committee process and the fact that we’re doing all of this in one day in the House, that some of the framing around this bill is teased out. Again, like the previous speaker, we didn’t get a chance to talk to officials or get any sort of advice.

I think, from what I’m hearing, in terms of from the Minister, there was an operational review by the Ministry of Justice and they suggested simplifying the language and standardising the practice. Then the Minister mentioned some judicial reviews in 2024. I think my first question for him, from that, in terms of the judicial review—which does raise a concern—is: despite that, and despite the fact that there might be some recommendations from the judicial review, why does the Minister or the officials feel the need to do this under urgency, with the same level of speed that we’re doing now? I think, again, I’m just interested to hear, from the Minister’s response to the previous speaker, around exactly what the advice was that the Minister was given, potentially from the Crown report, on the need for urgency.

If this is something that we’re seeing simply as an operational review and for simplicity, etc., we could actually have had a select committee process, or taken the standard process as a result of that, considering that the practice is already in place. Was it going to create a legal conundrum as a result of judicial reviews for the court system, for the corrections system? Where is the issue that is currently there, for us to be doing this under urgency? Again, we are putting through a bill, as a legislature, that we have no context for, other than that it is the standard practice. Again from a legislature perspective, as lawmakers, that’s very disconcerting.

In terms of some of the other questions we’re looking at, on the broader context—and, again, just to provide, I guess, specific examples of what the previous speaker was also asking for—at this stage, what is the scope of Corrections’ ability to grant some of these absences under the current practice? For example, if we’re looking at something that is already in the existing legislation, without the amendments, it talks about, for example, specifying the purpose or purposes. Is this a case where the court will allow for an absence and give a broader, I guess, allowance, and then Corrections go and deal with some of the nuances, in terms of potentially changing it? I really want to focus on the idea of “purpose” or “purposes”, which implies that, whether it is the court system or whether it is the Corrections system, they’re currently able to provide those sorts of absences for multiple, I guess—maybe it’s in one single block of leave, but for multiple events, so to speak.

I guess, again, I’m just trying to get a sense in my head of the broader scope of what the current practice is within that, and what has Corrections been doing instead of the court. What has the court been doing, and does the court even match up with Corrections? That’s one of my questions. And, again, the first question I had for the Minister was: why do we need to have urgency if it is simply something that is part of a review, and who then would be at fault if it were not being done under urgency?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m a little alarmed at the idea that cases which are actually likely to be public cases wouldn’t be discussed in this context, because, as people have pointed out, we absolutely need to understand the practical implications of this situation. I have a couple of questions for the Minister of Justice. One is, with regard to the operational review, when did that first come to light? When was that question first asked? And when was he first aware that that was an issue?

But also my understanding is we’re talking about case law in late 2024, which isn’t very long ago. What I want to know is: at which court were those issues at play? For example, I would like to know, really, what the circumstances are in that situation. I’m actually going to be able to look up the case and I’d be pleased to do that. I want to know in which court has this arisen as an issue, because it gives me an understanding as to the degree of harm that might have been involved. I really want to know much more about the context for this change in discretion.

I also am keen to know what the wraparound is, in terms of auditing. What’s happening here? We’ve had an illegal act for a long time. Has anybody done an audit of it in terms of which situations this discretion has been used and what the context is in terms of who’s been given that bail for how long, for what purposes, and what the possible complication is there? If we are looking at a retrospective law, it’s really important we know that that is a reasonable request and a reasonable ask in terms of what we are doing here. I very much want to know what’s the case, what happened, what was the problem that was pointed out to the judge? Was it once? Was it more than one? I got the understanding from the Minister that he was actually talking about more than one case.

I’m also concerned there’s a pattern in our system of, when we’ve got a problem, simply appealing—simply burying the problem and appealing and appealing and appealing when we actually know there’s a problem. I want to know: was this a case which was appealed, despite that, because that bought some time and delayed it and perhaps there was a hope it would go away? Was it something that went from a lower court to an upper court? Forgive my ignorance on this particular case and whether it went forward, but I would really appreciate and value the enlightenment of the Minister who’s in the chair. Thank you.

Look, I was just going to give some more context. All participants in the criminal justice system have been acting in good faith and on a shared understanding that the courts could ask Corrections to approve absences for electronic monitoring defendants.

The system’s been in place since 2013. It has worked well for more than a decade and ensures timeliness for defendants and the courts, and it’s pragmatic. Corrections, Police, and prosecutors, in preparing materials for the court to consider when they issue an electronic monitoring bail order, have recommended that the Corrections’ electronic monitoring bail team approve the absences. Corrections have been ministering orders as they have been imposed by the courts. This has had the benefit of defendants having an accessible way to seek a necessary absence. It also ensures court time is not used for the day-to-day task of such things, and courts can focus on more substantive matters. That’s been the practice for 13 years.

As I’ve said, questions have arisen over the last few months as to whether the legislation actually sustains that. The question is: why are we doing this with urgency? We’re doing this with urgency because the proposed amendment is narrowly defined to allow a longstanding and efficient practice to continue and to validate electronic bail conditions that permitted parties, other than the courts, to approve absences. Quick action will minimise any negative impacts on the courts. I’ve already said that there’s been around 30,000 a month of these. And so, if we went through a normal 12-month process, there’s a lot of activity. It could minimise negative impacts on the courts, agencies, and/or public safety because another alternative would be a much broader set of exceptions, which would have an impact on public safety.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just had a couple of questions for the Minister of Justice. I know there’s been some discussion about how we can’t talk about what’s before the courts, but it would just be really interesting to understand what brought this particular issue to the Minister’s attention, if we’re able to know. Was it a smart person in the Crown Law Office doing some extra hours work who just happened to stumble across it in a bill somewhere, or was it by something going a bit wrong that was picked up later on? It would just be interesting to know. We’re all voting for it, we’re all pretty much happy here, but you always do things better if you understand kind of where things weren’t picked up initially. Is there any information that the Minister might want to share or be able to share on what triggered the haste of this passage of legislation under urgency today, and how it kind of came to light?

We know that there’s been things in the past under both Governments—whether it’s stuff to do with holiday pay or Corrections is a common one that comes up—where there’s been an oversight in terms of what the legislation sets out to do and what is practically operating and what’s happening in the real world. It’s always wise in this committee that we are aware of those issues and how they’ve come about so that in the future we can try and turn our eye to all these details. Any information in that space that he’s able to shed light on would be good.

My question in relation to the bill is about that relationship now between the person who’s getting electronic monitoring on bail (EM bail) and their Corrections person they’re engaging with, their bail person, because what this bill kind of does is it devolves a range of responsibilities that typically sit with a court. They would be setting bail conditions about where someone would reside, who they can associate with, whether they can work, maybe they need to be supervised by somebody, maybe they need to not take drugs or alcohol. There’ll be a range of things in that space. It’s not clear—so maybe he could point me out to the part in the bill—as to exactly where that line sits between what the court sets up and what the corrections officer can have a bit of leeway over in terms of changing.

I guess the point I’m getting to is that a lot of that kind of comes down to the relationship that the person on EM bail will have with their corrections officer. If they’ve particularly got a great relationship and they talk and they get on great and there’s good compliance, does that mean that that person on EM bail gets a bit more leniency to be able to change conditions slightly, and change it here or there, or do something different to what the court might have initially intended, and is that all OK under this bill? Then the flip to that would be if they don’t have a great relationship, if they do not like each other and the corrections officer considers this person is continually not doing what they should, and the person on EM bail feels like the corrections officer is not giving them a fair crack, does that mean that they will have an overly punitive approach?

I guess what I’m looking for is a level of reassurance from the Minister that the devolution of this power away from courts into the corrections space is still going to deliver the kind of community safety outcomes and rights of people on bail that we feel are necessary. It is a bit concerning what has been happening in the meantime without that clearly stipulated in law, and maybe that goes back to my first point: were there some instances where this hasn’t been working quite so well, and is that what has called for this urgency motion today?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I think, while the Minister of Justice is waiting and getting some advice for those questions—because I think some of those questions are really, really important for us to answer—I want to go back to something the Minister mentioned before, in terms of the process. My understanding from what the Minister is saying is that, look, this is a practice that’s been happening for 13 years, it’s working—

10.

10 years. It is working; there seems to be some sort of agreement. I think the issue, again, that we have here is: if that’s the basis for us to do that under urgency, there is a general concern that even when we’re looking at things like the regulatory systems bills, when we are looking at improvements on the current system, it still requires us to go through the entire process, including all of the readings and select committee. We may not always get the most number of submissions on a regulatory systems bill, but it is still an important part of our legislative process for us to have all of that.

I am concerned that the Minister says that if it is something that’s already working, is not broken, we will just introduce a bill and then get it all through. I guess, you know, that is something that if the Minister wouldn’t mind considering as part of future bills when we are looking at something like this.

The question I have is picking up on possibly the relationship point that the Hon Ginny Andersen mentioned before, but I think, here, one of the things that I want to specifically focus on is actually new section 30MB(2)(b)(i). We understand that the way that the bill is laid out is you get the court that can still specify that. You get the court enabling an electronic monitoring (EM) assessor to do some of that, which is what you see in 30MB(2)(c). Then you get this weird middle ground, like in 30MB(2)(b), where the court is able to specify some details of an authorisation, and the assessor will fill in the blanks and do some of the other ones, which in itself—possibly—is something that could work. My first question to the Minister on that is how does the communication work, again, between the court and the EM assessor when they are knowing what details to fill in, where one is missing some?

I think the more interesting part is when he does say it is not inconsistent, under new subsection (2)(b)(i), with the details specified by the court. I’m just trying to think of a hypothetical situation here. My understanding is the court can provide some details—for example, let’s say time or times of any day during which a defendant may be absent. And then the EM assessor is like, “I will provide some of the other details”—for example, the purpose and purposes—“but the time that the court mentioned is wrong and is inconsistent with what we know.” In those kinds of cases, then, does the EM assessor actually trump the information provided by the court? How is inconsistency in the detail resolved?

I guess my three questions, broadly: is this something, like the regulatory assistance bill, that the Minister considers does not need to go through a full process because it’s something that’s already working, in which case there are concerns; and would the Minister then also consider introducing other bills for systems that may be identified as already working, and let’s just put that all through under urgency? On the more specific questions, around 30MB(2)(b)(i), how does the communication go between the court and the EM assessors, when some will give some details and the EM assessor will give other details, and how are inconsistencies in those details resolved?

Just in terms of the timeline, Ministers were made aware of the issue in late 2024. We were formally briefed on 20 February this year, and agreed to drafting a Cabinet paper, which was completed before introducing this bill. We moved swiftly when the issue was raised.

In terms of the devolution of power to the Department of Corrections, the court still has to set purposes and it can set other parameters when it comes to absences. Defendants can also still go to the court to request an absence. I just wanted to make that point.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just two things, really. Firstly, I’m really perplexed. If this was a select committee—and it’s the closest we’re going to get to a select committee—I’d ask for the clerk to provide advice. In terms of not referring to the decision, which would be really informative to have the words of a judge to know that a judge has worked through the Act and said, “Oh, here’s the problem and here’s how it works. Here’s the practice of it and here’s my reckons on it.”—a little more fancy than that, but a scholarly and thoughtful exposition of the problem. The Minister of Justice said, “Oh, I can’t refer to a judicial decision in the House.” I understand the principle of comity, but you can refer to a judicial decision in this House and people frequently do.

The relevant Standing Order is Standing Order 116, which is very clear—and I was trying to find the further Speakers’ rulings but I didn’t get a chance. It says that “(1) Matters awaiting or under adjudication in, or suppressed by an order of, any New Zealand court may not be referred to in any … debate, or question,” etc., etc. It may be that the Minister does want to take some advice on that, because if, from what I’m hearing, there is a concluded case where the matter is closed and the judge has reached a conclusion on the law, and the conclusion is, “You’ve been doing it wrong.”, it would just be helpful for the record. I mean you’ve obviously got it there at your fingertips, so please hand it over, metaphorically speaking. Just please do that.

The other thing is this—and you’ll see that although you haven’t got tabled amendments in, I have. One of them is actually one that really is important and it relates to the voting rights of people who are on electronic monitoring. Mr Meager referred to it before. It suggests an amendment to section 30L(1)(b), which actually lists things that you’re automatically allowed out for—you don’t need permission, you’re automatically allowed out—such as to attend scheduled court appearances, to seek urgent medical treatment. I propose that seeing as we’re looking at the very question of when you’re allowed out from your electronic monitoring, we should add to that “to vote in a general election or referendum by attendance at the nearest voting place”.

Now, you can say, “Oh, you can telephone vote or you can get a special vote.”, but the fact of the matter is that if you’re going to make voting accessible to people who are on electronic bail who aren’t convicted of an offence, then they should be allowed to walk to their nearest voting place and cast their vote. A lot of them don’t know about telephone voting, quite understandably, and I don’t know who’s on electronic bail. I only knew this was a problem because I knocked on a door of someone who was electronically monitored on election day and she said, “I’m not allowed to vote.” And I said, “Well, surely Corrections has helped you out.” She said, “No.” So I asked Corrections, “What assistance do you give to people on electronic monitoring?” And they said, “None.” These are people who have a vote—these are people who have a vote—and Corrections do nothing.

What we need is when you’re on electronic bail—have you heard of innocent until proven guilty? Have you heard of not depriving people of rights who’ve yet to be convicted of a crime? Well, I wonder sometimes with the attitude of that Government. Letting people vote in a general election is a fundamental right. Not putting this amendment in would be a fetter on one of our most precious and fundamental rights. It’s an easy fix. We’re here today. The Labour Party’s giving this bill a good going over, because that’s our job as Opposition, but fundamentally we’re cooperating with the Government on fixing this legislation. We’re here to make it better. This amendment would be another improvement to the legislation that falls within the very question of when a person on bail should be allowed to leave the monitored premises. It’s a good amendment and it’s something that’s an easy fix and should be done. I hope the Minister will give it proper, fair consideration, just like we’re considering his bill.

I want to thank the Hon Dr Duncan Webb for raising that issue. I have given it full and fair consideration, but it is a separate policy issue, because this bill is amending only section 30M—it doesn’t amend section 30L, which is a separate policy issue. To the point he himself has made, it is already possible to undertake a vote from home, but that is an issue that’s not been covered by this bill.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I just had a question in relation to new section 30MA in clause 5. In that section, the court must specify the authorisation’s purpose or purposes, and, in particular, the defendant is able to be absent from an address, so it does kind of relate to the point made by my learned colleague Duncan Webb. Under new section 30MA, the court has to “specify the purpose or purposes for which the defendant may be absent.”, and so I would like to understand, in practice, when this is going to be put into operational guidelines for Department of Corrections staff. What changes need to happen to make sure that those Corrections staff who are going to be operating under this change—do they need operational instructions to make sure that they are doing this correctly?

What would also be interesting to know from the Minister of Justice is whether they need any additional training in order to be able to make sure that this is carried out adequately. We’ve already understood that there will be an ability for corrections staff to have a bit more leeway in saying when this would occur or not, but surely this will need to be accompanied by some sort of an equivalent to what is in the police instructions manual, or the operational instructions that officers need to be clearly aware of so that they are following the letter of the law in this space, and given the fact that it does appear that they haven’t been doing this—hence the requirement for this legislation—is this an area where he is concerned that there may be some other areas where there’s not been a clear delineation in terms of what the court has determined around what’s happening with electronic bail monitoring and what corrections officers are, in fact, doing?

If we are in a situation where we’ve got an increasing population either on remand in prison or on electronically monitored bail—if that population is growing, it would seem to put a greater impetus on the requirement to get the operational instructions very clear for corrections officers. This is also in light of the fact that there’s been an increase in the number of our corrections officers. There’s been a recruitment campaign and additional pressures put on workers in that space, and always when there’s an intake of new officers, it must be essential for operational instructions, training, and guidelines in terms of how the day-to-day management of electronically monitored bail is actually going to play out in that space.

Under that new section 30MA, which is enabling them to, for example, be absent from the address that’s been specified—for areas like that, it would be really helpful to understand from the Minister whether there is a change to corrections officers’ operational instructions; secondly, is there a training programme designed to make sure that front-line staff are fully aware of all of the legal framework that they need to comply with; and, thirdly, what undertakings is the Minister able to provide so that the new intake—the additional corrections officers that have been brought on board recently—have also had the appropriate training and information to make sure that the legislation is complied with?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister, for your response in terms of some of the clarifications around new section 30MA, particularly on the fact that courts do specify the purpose and purposes. I think that is very helpful, but I think the Minister of Justice hasn’t really responded to my question around what is the current process and procedure for when the court and the electronic monitoring (EM) assessor—the details that are provided are inconsistent. Who then prevails in those kind of circumstances? This is new section 30MB(2)(b)(i)—for the Minister’s ministerial support.

When it comes to that—and I think the other thing I want to mention while the Minister is potentially getting some advice on this from his advisers—the next part I want to sort of mention is around new section 30MC(c). Now, admittedly, part of this bill is pulling on the existing section 30M and sort of basically—like you see in clause 4—repackaged a little bit, including other things. In the existing Bail Act 2000, you do see some of the things being included like “the time or times of any day during which the defendant may be absent:”—this is new section 30MC(a). But some of the other things are included as well, such as the “place or places”, which is not in existing legislation.

Also what I’m more interested in and hoping to get some clarification advice from the Minister is new section 30MC(c), “any other requirements that the defendant must meet that the court, or an EM assessor, decides to specify under [section 30MB](1) or (2).” There are some examples of other requirements here, including authorised modes of transport from authorised places or routes. I just wanted to check if there are other examples for other requirements, because now we’re seeing some of the things that are very, very specific in terms of what would be deemed to be not so much “time or times” or even “place or places” or even “purpose or purposes”.

My sort of two primary questions are still: how does the EM assessor and the court resolve inconsistency? And the second question, which is new section 30MC(c), which is: what are some of these other requirements other than the examples that are given? Surely, by the very nature of the examples that are given, we are seeing that the court must have some sort of elucidation or advisers as well.

I think I want to just finish in terms of going back to what the Minister mentioned before, and this is one of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendments and this is a tabled amendment on adding a new section 30L(1)(b)(vi) to the principal Act. I do actually think that this is something that the Greens will be supporting, but I also think that if this is something that the Minister considers that is not actually, for example, within the scope of this bill, we are looking at the Minister introducing something like this. One of the things that was concerning to me before, when the member who proposed this tabled amendment was speaking on this, was that we were hearing members from the Government parties laughing. I genuinely think that for someone to be granted the fundamental right and their civil and political rights under our international governance is actually no laughing matter.

What I’m hearing from the Minister before is that the Minister may consider this out of scope but did not rule out considering this particular amendment. I would very much encourage—and this is something that you will find that we will support—the Minister that if it’s not being introduced as part of this bill, that it is considered at a later date.

Just quickly, in relation to the first question about who prevails when there’s inconsistency, the court prevails.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. That was the most ridiculous contribution from Hamish Campbell I’ve heard. Here we are in urgency—in urgency—dealing with a bill about people’s liberty, and Mr Campbell would have us truncate it.

I think this is now the time to drill down a bit, and I’ve got two questions which are a little bit detailed. I’m sure the Government will scoff that we take an interest in whether the words used in the bill actually have the effect and make the bill workable, but the relationship between amended section 30M, inserted by clause 4, and new sections 30MA and 30MB, inserted by clause 5, is dictated by section 30M(3), which says, “An authorisation under this section”—which is a court authorisation to vary bail—“is subject to ‘sections 30MA to 30MC’.”

Now, what those latest sections do is not kind of ameliorate it, they wildly change it, so I think “subject to” is entirely the wrong thing to say, because it doesn’t limit the scope of section 30M—which is what “subject to” means: it means you can do all this except what it says there—the latest sections extend substantially the powers of electronic monitoring (EM) assessors. So “subject to” is just the wrong phrase. An authorisation under this is “further extended by”, it’s not “subject to” at all. In fact, it’s the opposite: it doesn’t limit it, it extends it. I’m actually worried that the linkage between those two sections—created by those two little words “subject to”—is deeply problematic.

The second thing is the interrelationship between the words of the Act and how it seems to work. It seems that there is a group of people in Corrections whose job it is to run the bail stuff, right? In the Act, they’re identified as these electronic monitoring officers. One of the questions we have is whether the court, when it is talking about a particular person’s bail, has to talk about a particular electronic monitoring assessor, because the definition of electronic monitoring assessor in the principal Act is “a person authorised under section 30E to act as an [electronic monitoring] assessor”. If we go to section 30E, it talks about the responsibility for management of electronically monitored bail. It says that the Commissioner of Police or the Department of Corrections can then nominate a person or persons for the management of electronically monitored bail.

The danger is this: that all of those words add up to saying, “When someone is given electronically monitored bail, they are given an electronically monitored bail assessor.”—a named person. As I understand it, that’s not what happens. In fact, they say, “The Department of Corrections will sort it out.”—the electronic bail team at the Department of Corrections will make all those decisions for you.

If you’re going to authorise a group of people—not an EM assessor, but electronic monitoring assessors generally, which is an identifiable closed group—then you better say it, because at the moment, you don’t have the authority. If you just sort of loosely point to the electronic monitoring team at Corrections and say, “You guys can sort out the details of the kiddie pick-up at kindy or travel to and from the tangi.”, then you’re in trouble because you haven’t identified an electronic monitoring assessor. That’s actually quite problematic. It’s a detail, but you’re going to find yourself back here very quickly, doing the same thing again, unless we get it right here.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I am increasingly concerned that I just don’t have, as somebody who has picked up this Act, enough understanding of the actual context that we’re dealing with—[Cellphone rings]

Electronic monitoring!

Have you breached your conditions?

Call an assessor!

My friend was just talking about that problem—about understanding who is making these decisions. I take my friend the Hon Ginny Andersen’s point here—that she was talking about that close connection. It really is a very different thing giving a court, which is off at a distance—there is an element of impartiality about that system. That is what the legislature thought it was doing—it was giving that power to a judge who was once-removed, who had no skin in the game, and now we’re giving it to who? I simply don’t know. Are we giving it to a small cabal? Are we giving it to a group of people with some form of skill? Are they going to be close or removed from the person that they’re dealing with? I simply don’t know. I’m not sure if the Minister does know, but if the Minister of Justice does know, I think it’s really information I need.

I think that’s the kind of thing where, if we had the name of the case that was being dealt with, we might understand better, because then we’d be able to see it. Now, I just cannot, for the life of me, agree that this is not the kind of information that the Minister is able to share. It is absolutely able to be shared—that information—because that’s why we’re here, by the sounds of things. There’s been a series of cases where this has been problematic. Surely, we need to know, in those circumstances, was it a little cabal dealing with the bail in a way that was objected to and went to the court? I just don’t know. Was there a disastrous outcome as a result of something?

I absolutely take the point made by the Hon Ginny Andersen—that there is a significant difference here in the capacity to abuse a situation. Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have every faith in the Corrections department and those officers and look at them and think they’ll be acting in good faith, but it’s also the sort of thing I need context to understand. I need to know whether this is the appropriate change to the law or whether, in fact, there should be further checks and balances in this case—none of which I know.

Now, I appreciate I didn’t practise in this area of law, but neither did the New Zealand public that’s relying upon us to put through this law in a way that makes sense and is transparent. For those watching today, I’d ask whether you would expect that they would understand what is going on here. It’s our job, as the Opposition, to ask you these questions, but it’s also your job, Minister, to answer the questions when they are reasonable. There was a case, I presume—there may have been several. What is that case? I would like a further understanding of why the Minister won’t share those cases with this place, which has the obligation to make a decision like this, particularly when we are talking about retrospective legislation. It is not a frivolous matter. I would ask that. Thank you, Minister.

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous speaker, Helen White. It’s not a frivolous matter, and nobody would say that it is. What we’re essentially trying to do is enable people who are on electronically monitored bail—these are people that have committed a serious offence; well, they are being accused of a serious offence and are awaiting trial or sentencing for, in most cases, serious violent offending, and the courts have decided that public safety requires that they are not put in jail on remand but put on electronic monitoring (EM). What we’re trying to do is come up with an efficient system to deal with the very frequent—like, 30,000 times a month—instances where a decision needs to be made about whether they should go to this or that thing and be able to do it without breaching their conditions.

We had what everybody thought was an efficient system with decisions being made by EM assessors with Corrections, and the concern is that all those decisions, individually, will have to go back to the courts, which would gunge up the system. Now, we’ve talked about the cases, but the advice that I’ve had was that bail decisions had been made orally in list courts, so they didn’t provide the full reasoning of the court. There were three instances, and then there were two in Christchurch which are not finally concluded. That is, they’re under appeal, and that is why I do not want to be referring to them.

My question to the Minister of Justice relates to gaining a better understanding as to the nature of the retrospectivity here. Does this legislation retrospectively put into electronic bail conditions a discretion that allows, in the future, those electronic monitoring conditions to be varied in the way that is set out in this bill, including delegation from a judge to some other person—an EM assessor, I think is the term that’s used in the legislation?

I can understand, then, if that is the case, that that is the Minister’s desire not to have to go back to the court for all of the extant electronic bail conditions that have previously been imposed, which now perhaps need that clarity of condition going forward, or is an addition to that retrospectivity a retrospective validation of the decisions that have already been made without that power?

The bill will validate existing and historic conditions that authorised electronic monitoring on bail (EM bail) assessors to approve absence of defendants from their bail addresses. It will validate those existing and historic conditions that were imposed by the assessors. This will prevent the need for those conditions of approximately 2,000 current defendants on EM bail to have to go back to the courts to have to be remade once the bill passes into law.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I think this is probably a point that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb may also want to address, as well as the Hon David Parker, because I think the Minister of Justice has just given us some additional pieces of information that is very interesting in the context of this bill on why this bill has been introduced in the House under urgency, and that is to do with the potential concerns around those who are currently on bail having to go back to the court in terms of some of the conditions and also some of the issues that this bill is hoping to address.

Maybe others will have more specific questions, but my broader question is: if this is a genuine concern for both the Minister and also for the current judiciary system, particularly in light of the judicial review that the Minister mentioned before, what are some of the repercussions that we’ll see if this bill isn’t being done in the way that we’re doing it now, essentially? From my perspective, it sounds like there are genuine concerns around not so much the legality of it but, from a judicial-review perspective, the ability for people to challenge previous decisions. I think that might be a key thing to discuss here and the need for that retrospectivity. But, because, again, we haven’t had a chance to ask the officials about this specifically, I’m not seeing, I guess, the repercussion of that judicial review for those people who were granted absence as part of that bail. Now that they are all void, despite the fact that they were granted by Corrections, would that be a challenge that we’re looking at here? I’m not really sure what the Minister means in terms of taking it back to the court.

One of the traditional rules against which we judge the proprietary nature of retrospective legislation is whether it is conferring rights or taking rights away from people. Upon that basis, I’m interested in hearing from the Minister of Justice in response to the question that was put by Helen White as to whether the rights that a person currently or previously—prior to this legislation being passed—had to have their case for an exception being made to their electronic bail requirements to enable them, for example, to go to a funeral or some other event that might be deemed appropriate; whether there is any instance where rights are being taken away compared with the status quo?

My second question thereunder is whether there is any risk that a person on electronic monitoring now who will, effectively, have their electronic monitoring (EM) assessor assessing their requests for an exception to their electronic monitoring—whether it is possible that the EM assessor may apply their reasoning in a way that might have been more strict than a court would have done before the passage of this legislation?

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you. I haven’t asked a question yet because I’ve been listening with interest in so far as what the Minister of Justice’s responses were going to be. Because, as noted, this is under urgency, this stage of the process is our only real opportunity to uncover and to pick up potential problems that may not have been spotted before through the Minister’s own process or through the officials’ process. It is incumbent upon us to ask questions, be they big ones or little ones.

My question to the Minister stems from the fact that I don’t feel as if I’ve heard a sufficient answer to a question that was posed earlier about the procedural training aspects. I understand it’s operational, but it is important to this process because it potentially has an impact on the successful implementation, so to speak, post this process. I’ve just had a look at the job descriptions of the people that we’ve been talking about in this Chamber, the electronic monitoring (EM) assessors—and noting the fact that the Minister had previously said that there is something like 30,000 decisions a month about changes to those conditions or variations into the way things work, which is quite a lot. Obviously there’s a context to that, because I don’t know off the top of my head how many EM assessors there are, but it strikes me that therefore, when you look at the role itself, it could make up a reasonable proportion of someone’s professional work duties to undertake these decisions.

Therefore, can the Minister tell us a little bit more about what thinking has happened or what considerations have taken place to ensure that these changes don’t require, in line with my colleague the Hon Ginny Andersen’s previous question, not just a change in the way personnel at Corrections may operate their duties, but actually, possibly even, given the custom and practice and given its 12 years, some sort of change management process. And, if that is the case, then how would that impact on their ability to continue to do the thing that they’re already doing, but now with the legitimacy of that within their industrial relations sphere? I’m sure that that’s been thought about in terms of an operational frame, but if the Minister had any further information about that, that would be fantastic.

Just in terms of training, it’s been the practice for more than 10 years. Updated material will be provided to corrections staff as soon as the bill is passed, but my advice is there is not a need for updated training.

In terms of nobody’s taking any rights away to use the court system around this if people desire to, the point I’d make in terms of the current arrangement—the current arrangements are that there’s about 2,000 people—well, 1,859—on an electronic monitoring bail. The average absence requests approved each month have been 32,000 a month; the average declined has been 1,123. People can make a judgment about whether that is too lenient or not. That is a reasonable policy issue, but it’s not fundamentally being dealt with by this legislation.

What this legislation is attempting to do is to be clear in the law about the current practice that the courts are able to rely on electronically monitored assessors to make these decisions, rather than each individual one having to come back to the court. As everybody knows, the court system is under enormous pressure, has large backlogs, and a huge focus of this Government is to reduce those backlogs so that people can get on with their lives and have access to timely justice. If we don’t do this, and if we take 12 months to consider this through the normal select committee process and all that, then a lot of time and effort in the court system will be taken up dealing with these often very routine matters. That will make it more likely that people who just want to get on with their lives and get an outcome in the court process will have to continue to wait longer to do that. That’s not what we want to do.

Thank you, members. Before I take the next contribution, if I could ask members to really focus in on the scope of this particular part. Members have made very good contributions to date around the authorisation and the need for that authorisation. I acknowledge that, but the Minister of Justice has been systematically addressing each of those issues, so I’d like to hear new material.

It’s brand spanking, shiny new, Mr Chair—thank you for the call. I’ve got two points and I’ll try and squeeze them both in.

The first is that, when rights are affected by what’s, essentially, an executive decision, there’s almost always a right of review or appeal, right? You’ve got a corrections officer here, who’s part of the executive—and my first question to the Minister of Justice is a really easy one. If they make the wrong decision, what right of review or appeal do they have? If they say, “No, you can’t go over to your ex-partner’s house every Tuesday and spend time with your kids.”, because you’ve fallen out with the corrections officer and it’s a capricious decision, what right does the person have? It may be that what we need in this—because we’re authorising a delegation down to the pretty nitty-gritty level, we need to make sure there’s a right to go to the court if necessary and say, “I would like to see this reviewed.” I’ve read it; I’ve read the bill. I’ve had a good—or decent—read of the bill in the time available and I can’t see that.

Now, if you’re in prison and you are refused a particular right, you actually do have a right of review within the prison system. Where is it here? I think that’s actually really, really important because you’re affecting people’s liberties, and you should want to have their liberty determined by an application of the law. If it’s gotten wrong, particularly by a low-level corrections officer—I respect their work, but they’re not decision makers usually—what’s the right of appeal?

The second point, I think, goes to the very heart of this bill. It’s one of my tabled amendments there—they’re not numbered. It’s the one relating to new section 30MB—I don’t think you’ve got it in this bill—and I referred to this in my first reading speech: you are attempting to empower electronic monitoring (EM) assessors, but you never do it. I mean, if you’re going to confer a power, you need to have power-conferring words. All you sort of say loosely in section 30MB is that a court can enable. It doesn’t even say “delegate”; it uses really loose, untidy, and fuzzy language.

My new section—which, knowing you and your previous record, you’ll take it away, tidy it up a bit, and call it your own—is headed “Electronic monitoring assessor may be empowered to approve authorised absence”. Subsection (1): “An electronic monitoring assessor is empowered to approve an authorised absence. This power is subject to subsection (2).” Subsection (2): “An electronic monitoring assessor may approve an authorised absence only to the extent that he or she is enabled to do so by the court under section 30MB(1)(b).” It’s doing what you need to do—you need to use those words in a piece of legislation. You can’t sort of loosely wave to the intention to give someone this very significant power to either expand or limit the liberties of a person on electronic bail. You actually need to use words that say, “We are creating this power, and the power has this extent, and it’s limited this way.”

If you are not going to either adopt my tabled amendment or put one up of your own that looks a bit like it, please explain to me how the words “the court must … enable an EM assessor to approve, in their discretion, the defendant to be absent from the EM address”—how does that actually confer a power? The court can do that if the power exists, but you haven’t actually done what a section needs to do. It should say, “Here’s this officer recognised by the law, and here’s the power we want to confer, and that’s what we’re doing.” That’s what my tabled amendment does. Honestly, if we don’t get this right, if we find out that we still haven’t properly fixed this—and this is the problem with haste: we haven’t properly fixed this—we’re going to find ourselves back here when some judge who’s cleverer than you and I points out that there’s a hole in this legislation. I’d really appreciate it if you would explain how the power that you’re giving to these officers, these assessors, is actually conferred. This is a central part of this bill, and I don’t think it works.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I think we are now getting to the crux of this particular bill, which is whether the restriction that is being granted by Corrections is more strict than the restriction that would be granted by the court, as some of the previous speakers have been asking.

I want to refer to—now finally uploaded with the correct link—the consistency report with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. To be fair, I am a little bit disappointed that section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was not touched on in the report. I want to refer the Minister of Justice to paragraph 6, which states, “If the Act is amended as proposed, it is likely to improve the speed and suitability of authorisations.”—which is fine—but “If Judges are required to set the conditions for absence … they may find it necessary to make a more generous allowance than is required.” Although it does not specify that it is required, the point here is that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report seems to indicate that, if this was taken by the court, the decision would be more generous—in terms of what is allowed under 30M and 30MC, around maybe, potentially, “time or times” or “place or places”—than it is in the hands of Corrections.

Can I just check with the Minister: is that, then, a restriction on what legally is allowed right now, putting aside what the current process is? Under the current legal requirement, is the restriction in accordance with section 18 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on freedom of movement if the court may give a more generous response? That’s my first question.

I want to pick up on something the Minister mentioned before, which is around new section 30MC(2)(b)(i), that any inconsistency we’re looking at is determined by—the ultimate decision maker if there is an inconsistency would be—the court. One of the things the Minister mentioned is to avoid potential future instances of judicial review, etc., but I wanted to check with the Minister whether the inconsistency can be trumped by the court. Would that actually avoid the situation that the Minister is referring to right now, in terms of judicial review, whereas, for example, someone says, “We actually don’t agree with what Corrections has been saying. We are going to apply for judicial review, because we think that it would be inconsistent with a court ruling”, and the Minister has just said that the court is still, basically, the power holder of some of those inconsistencies and that what they say goes. Would that actually negate the concerns that the Minister has right now, in terms of that judicial review level?

Those are my two questions: (1) if we can get clarification: in the current law setting, would a more generous allowance be given for absence; and (2) in the sense of inconsistency, would it actually mitigate the issues we have with judicial review? Thank you.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. One of the difficulties that we have with legislation passed under urgency is that we are rushing to catch up, in the Opposition, with the actual drafting of the legislation and so the questions occur to us as we are in the debate; this is another one of those.

I asked the Minister of Justice as to whether he’s confident that the language in new section 30MB(1)(b) works in combination with new section 30MB(2). I’m just worried that it might be a little bit circular in that the discretion that’s given to the court is that the “Court must specify”—in the heading—“all details of authorisation or enable EM assessor to approve authorised absence.” And then subsection (1) says, “the court must—(a) specify all details of an authorisation; or (b) enable an EM assessor to approve, in their discretion, the defendant to be absent from the EM address in line with an authorisation’s—(i) specified purpose or purposes; and (ii) details specified under subsection (2).”

Then it gets a bit confusing because subsection (2) has three options that are set out at (a), (b), and (c). The first is “to specify all details of an authorisation.”, (b) is “specify some details of an authorisation”, and then the assessor can do things that are not inconsistent with the details that are specified, and, then, (c) says to enable the assessor to set out all of the details. Now, if the assessor is, under (c), specifying all of the details, how can the language be right in (1)(b), which says that the assessor is authorising, “in their discretion, the defendant to be absent from the EM address in line with the authorisation’s— … (ii) details specified under subsection (2).” Maybe that does work. I’m just trying to get my head around as to whether there’s more than one meaning of the details being specified. I mention that as a note of caution about rushing through these things without the benefit of select committee scrutiny.

My second question relates to the fact that the Minister quite rightly says that we don’t want to clog up the courts with administrivia, to be honest, and repetitive statements of conditions. I suspect that if we looked at the thousands of people that are on electronic monitoring, there will be a standard set of conditions that normally apply as to the exceptions that are always approved. If that is the case, why doesn’t this legislation save everyone a lot of time by setting out that list of the standard conditions and then say to the court, “Well, the court can just adopt the standard conditions, or it could vary the standard conditions, but it doesn’t have to restate them all the time.”, because nine out of 10 times—or I suspect even more than that; it’s probably 95 out of 100 times—the standard conditions are applied by the court. But, each time, they have to be stated. This repetition seems to me to be undesirable. Was any consideration given to drafting some standard conditions which would enable the court to do this a lot more efficiently, whilst retaining the ability of the court to override those in a special case?

The question was raised around the ability to appeal the decisions that were made, and the advice is that the defendant could bring a judicial review or can simply go to the court to request an absence if they’re not happy. Complaints are—my advice is—relatively rare, in terms of the decisions that are made around that. In terms of the drafting of the words and whether it is strong enough, the bill permits the court to enable Corrections to approve absences, and the drafting—you know, all the advice I have is that it is sufficient for the task, which is to clarify what everybody understood to be the correct practice for last 10 years.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Right, good evening. The House is in committee on the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. We are on Part 1.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve had a very fruitful dinner break. I’m sure the Clerks will assist soon, but I’ve tabled an amendment to assist the Minister of Justice and his hearty advisers, because this is an administrative action.

I took the time to go and look at the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee guidelines on administrative action and, essentially, what they say around rights of appeal and review, which are the same. They do say “that legislation should provide a right of appeal if the rights or interests of a particular person are affected by an administrative decision.” And this is bang on, right? The officers here—the electronic monitoring assessors—make very significant decisions about the rights of people on electronic bail. The guidelines there—I’m sure the Minister knows them well—run through what you need to consider. It does then go on to say, “The value of an appeal must be balanced in the particular circumstances against a consideration of the … costs, implications of delay, significance of the subject matter, competence and expertise of the decision-maker”—which here is quite low, by the way, by overall standards—“and the need for finality.”

Now, can I just say that I have looked at this, and in fact this decision would be—a decision of the assessor would be, at least technically, appealable under section 42(3) of the Bail Act, because it’s a decision about bail. In fact, section 42(3) deals with decisions about bail conditions. In fact, we don’t want appeals, because they’ll clog up the court, Minister—this is your whole big point. What my proposed new section 30MB(3) and (4) says is that in the event that the defendant is dissatisfied with the decision of an electronic monitoring assessor, he or she has the right to seek a review of that decision by a person authorised by the chief executive of Corrections or the Minister of Police to conduct such a review. The review should consider the merits of the decision in fact of law, as well as the procedure used to reach that decision. It’s a full review. It’s not just “Did he get a fair hearing?”; it’s “Was the right decision made?”

The next one’s quite important, because it says there is no right of appeal to a decision under subsection (3), under section 42(3) of this Act. The full-fledged right of appeal to the court that made the overall bail decision is actually clearly cut off, because you’ve got an internal review. It’s, essentially, right-sizing the review to the shape and size of the decision. If you don’t do this, there’s two things that happen. Either you have an actual right of appeal to the courts or a judicial review, or you have nothing. Neither of those is quite right. In terms of the decision-making power set out in—it’s, essentially, an authorisation set out in new section 30MB inserted by clause 5. We do need some sort of ability to revisit that decision, because just making the same application again and again isn’t actually going to do that. I’d be very interested in that.

The other thing I’d say, before I conclude this contribution, is urgency: you know, it is a little bit problematic. This is a bill that just on—I’ve only really started looking at it as it’s been tabled, and throughout today started digging into it. It would really benefit from a select committee examination and a tidy up. I’m sure Professor Dean Knight would agree with me, because he said so on LinkedIn—and he’s looking at this very bill now. He’s actually watching, or at least interested in, these proceedings. There’s a really good argument that once this bill is passed, it should immediately be referred to select committee, because there’s a lot of mechanics in it, there’s a lot of moving parts, and whilst the objective is simple, the operation of it is quite difficult.

So, Minister, two things: will you look at that right of review, that tabled amendment? And, secondly, will you refer this bill to select committee for post - legislative scrutiny so that we can make sure we haven’t made any mistakes or errors? Mr Chair?

Dr Duncan Webb.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m sure my friends on the other side have some thoughtful and deep contributions to make.

The other point I’d like to raise is the fact that we need an immunity in this situation, because to date—and I touched on this briefly on a kind of policy basis, but I’m now referring to my tabled amendment, which proposes a new section 30ME to the principal Act, which details immunity from prosecution, because the people who have been going about their life whilst on bail and leaving their homes have been in breach of their bail. Bail breaches are a criminal offence under the Bail Act.

The new section 30ME, “Immunity from prosecution”, would actually address the issue. It would do it by saying that “where a person has acted in a way which was in breach of bail conditions because they reasonably believed that they were entitled to do so by virtue of an apparent authorisation by”, and then it lists them: an employee of the Department of Corrections; a constable; an employee of Police; or, and this is the weird one, a person who had been delegated to provide that authorisation by one of the above—that covers your social workers. Then “that person is immune from prosecution”—but it’s more than that—“and is deemed to have acted in accordance with the relevant bail conditions”. That “deemed to have acted” is important, because even though you’re not prosecuted, you still have committed a crime, right? You need to have the law say, “No, we’re going to have a deeming provision which says your conduct is deemed to be legal. No one can say that you broke the law.”

Now, the flip side of that is civil liability, because there’s a whole lot of people out there whose boss said to them, “You’ve got the ability to authorise these, essentially, leave applications”—applications to leave the electronically monitored premises—and they did it. They’re actually conceivably liable for any losses. If someone got prosecuted or even just got outed for being a law-breaker, when in fact they weren’t—or they shouldn’t have been, because they thought they were entitled to do it—then you’ve got a problem. My proposed new section 30ME provides immunity from civil suit “where a person is purported to vary bail conditions notwithstanding the fact that they did not have the legal authority to do so. They’re immune from civil liability, provided that they are one of these”—and then I go through those naming provisions again, and then I say, “and their actions were reasonable and within the authority that they’ve purportedly been given.”

This isn’t like just a usual agency provision; this is the delegation of a legal authority. There are people out there who’ve acted in good faith and honestly, but they’re actually now in real strife. We need to give them the protection that they deserve. Now, I think the Act, in some ham-fisted kind of way, does that, but this is what you get in urgency. There’s no clear speaking here, and the Minister hasn’t really referred to a lot of the material points, the flaws in the Act, that I’ve pointed out. It would be really appreciated if he could—you know, those two or three things. Appeals is a big one, post - legislative scrutiny, and the deemed not to have breached bail and civil immunity would be really useful.

In relation to the requirement for a review, the defendant can return to the court to obtain authorisation for their absence if they don’t like the decision of the authorised assessor. And if they go to the court and obtain an authorisation and they don’t like that, then they’ve got the right of repeal, and we think that is sufficient.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just picking up the points made by my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, in relation to people who may have unwittingly broken the law and have not known that they have broken the law. My question to the Minister of Justice is: what steps has he taken to communicate to those people directly that they did not break the law, so that there is an element of certainty? In doing this, I raise the principle of certainty, which is so very important in our legal system, jurisprudentially, not just for the so-called good, upstanding citizens but, actually, for all who fall under the rule of law.

It’s really important that those who have been caught in this conundrum, in this confusion—which could be seen as an operational confusion, and yet they have unwittingly broken the law—do need to have some certainty around what they can and can’t do. My question to the Minister is: what communication has happened to those particular people? How will they be able to know, in future, whether they can take the guidance from the said people that were referred to in the amendment by Dr Duncan Webb—certainly, I think it was the one before new section 30ME—and has there been any advice given by officials or by the operational staff, actually, as to what the impact has been amongst prisoners who have unwittingly been able to have some freedom, thinking they were following the letter of the law, found themselves to be in breach, now there’s going to be a retrospective change.

What impact is there on the ability for the system to be able to get those people to act with certainty? It just really feels like scrambled eggs; it feels like that to us. It’s retrospective, which is never a good principle, and the principle of certainty means that all people under the law need to be able to rely on that certainty. We know that those who would have been subject to this are amongst the most marginalised, and usually those who have the least amount of communication about what is going on.

I’d really like to know if the Minister has turned his advice to that, whether the officials have turned their minds to that, and whether, operationally, anything has been done: not to protect the rights of those people but actually to protect the rights of the public at large; to know that there is still a form of a social and legal contract with those who otherwise might think—there is a saying, Mr Chair: “The law is an ass”, and in order to be able to have stability in the legal system, we need all citizens to be able to be part of that social contract.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to amend section 30L is ruled out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert subsection (3) in new section 30MB to clarify “Electronic Monitoring Assessor” be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert subsection (3) in new section 30MB to require the electronic monitoring assessor to provide details to the defendant be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert subsections (3) and (4) in new section 30MB be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert new section 30MD be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert new section 30ME empowering the electronic monitoring assessor to approve authorised absence be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert new section 30ME in relation to immunity from prosecution be agreed to.

The Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert new section 30ME in relation to immunity from civil suit is ruled out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

We come now to Part 2. This is the debate on clause 6, “Other amendments”; and the Schedule. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Oh, I was expecting the Minister of Justice to have a bit of a yarn about this. Look, this does appear to be fixing up things that have been done wrong already. I have one question in particular that I’m sure the Minister is expecting, because, in his legislative statement, he refers to “social workers and others” who have made these decisions.

Now, one thing is clear: that social workers and others—and I’m very keen to know who the others are—are no longer authorised. You know, people who are not actually employees of Corrections are no longer authorised and those people—and it may be that there’s only two or three of them; that would be helpful to know. From my reading of the Schedule, Part 2, the actions of those social workers and others—non-employees of Corrections—are not validated. You’ve got people who might be living their lives and they’ve got a routine to their life—might even be going to work—and, come Royal assent or a day thereafter, that will come to an end. Now, it may be that Corrections has in place a system where they’re going to kind of get a corrections officer to almost rubber-stamp those decisions to make sure that there’s not a gap.

I’m interested: have I got that right? That because, going forward, they’re not going to be permitted, the validation of them doesn’t exist either. If so, what is the plan to address the people whose authorisations to leave their bail premises are expired? It’s just a really simple, but I think quite important, question, Minister.

The Hon Dr Duncan Webb.

Oh, thank you, Mr Chairman. If the Minister isn’t going to answer that—I hope he does; I’m very happy to just have a pause to let him do that.

I guess I’m also interested to understand exactly how this is going to work because you’ve got this general rule in new clause 9 which says the amendments in Part 1 are only forward-looking. Then you’ve got the fact that new clauses 10 and 11 apply in other circumstances—apply to “pre-commencement authorisations.” Now, this, I guess, is where it really bites, because the question I have is: how are you describing pre-commencement authorisations? It can’t be “any pre-commencement authorisation”.

There’s a real risk here because it’s sloppy. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude to our hard-working parliamentary counsel, because they’ve done this clearly in haste, but, really, I’m genuinely asking for an—you just get up and say, “Oh, here’s how it works. Read this, then go here and across there.” That’s what we’d be doing in select committee. Our advisers would be really helpful in doing that. For me, for the committee, and for the general public, can you just work through exactly how this works? It seems to me that there’s no really good definition of an authorisation that occurred under the old law, because it can’t be just that—it’s got to be more than that. Although you’ve got a definition section there, I can’t see—I mean, the old law means section 30M as in force. Well, that’s not going to work because that’s exactly what was being breached.

So, Minister, if you could just walk us through that, because at the moment, it seems that an authorisation under the old law could be anything, no matter how flawed, whereas we’re actually looking at a much narrower clause. If the Minister could—[Time expired]

A question was asked about the approvals by Corrections “and others”, and who might that be. My advice is that they’re small numbers, but, for example, it could have been the staff at a residential treatment facility in the past, but going forward, only “EM assessors” from Corrections will be able to approve absences. They’re validated for 60 days, and the conditions will be replaced in that time.

Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My apologies, I seek leave to ask for my no vote to be recorded in the previous vote. My apologies, I was too busy reading something else and missed the call for my no vote.

OK. That’s the end of Part 1—that Part 1 stand part?

Yes.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The vote will be so recorded.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a question for the Minister of Justice, similar to the previous speaker’s but kind of coming from another perspective. I’m looking at clause 9 of the Schedule—the new Part 3—and how it interacts with clause 10. I have to say that we have seen—and I think the previous speaker also stated—a number of transitional arrangements made under various schedules as part of bills, but I have to say that this one is one of the more peculiar and obscure ones.

In clause 9, it talks about amendments generally applying “only to post-commencement authorisations”. My understanding—and, again, this is why I am seeking clarification from the Minister—is that the amendments apply to authorisations after commencement even if the following occurs, i.e., if there is a varying or substituting or imposing electronic monitoring condition after commencement as something for pre-commencement. Either we’re varying an electronic monitoring condition or substituting or imposing an electronic monitoring condition. How does that work in the context of clause 10(2)(b), which talks about authorisation that occurred under the old law?

In clause 9(2), it says the exceptions are clauses 10 and 11, and then in clause 10, you have the exception that means anything with authorisation that occurred under the old law stands and is validated, but clause 9(1), paragraphs (a) to (d) invalidates all of the conditions and authorisations that were mentioned before. Are the authorisation under clause 9(1) invalidated or not? I think that’s my first question—if the Minister wouldn’t mind clarifying.

Thank you, Mr Chair. A couple of things—first of all, in Part 2, in the Schedule. The Bail Act refers to Police and Corrections, and I understand that the Minister of Justice—that’s you—after consultation gets to choose whether it’s Corrections or Police who administer electronic bail. Part 1 was in fact quite neutral—it didn’t actually refer to Police or Corrections—whereas here in Part 2, you’ve kind of locked in that it’s Corrections that does it. It’s an important point, because we do drafting at committee stage. When you refer to—for example, in new section 11(1)(b)(i) of Schedule 1AA, inserted by clause 6—the employee or agent of the chief executive of the Department of Corrections, it should arguably also refer to Police. That’s the first thing—that you’ve got a Corrections-focused amendment when, in fact, it should be Corrections and Police, because that’s what the Bail Act itself does. There’s a mismatch.

The second one I touched on in the debate on Part 1, but this is where it really comes up. The Act itself talks about electronic monitoring (EM) assessors, whereas in new section 11(2) of Schedule 1AA, you refer to the “Department of Corrections EM bail team”. Now, there’s a real question here about—[Change of Minister in the chair] Oh, upgrade.

Oh, thanks, mate.

There’s a real question here about whether you can in fact, under the principal Act, refer something to a loose class of people who are loosely authorised to be assessors. To say that the authorisation need not specify precisely and may refer only generally—that may be OK for certain validated authorisations, but you haven’t done the job. It needs to apply to all authorisations, because the Department of Corrections will continue to write on their bail application forms that their nominated assessor is the Department of Corrections EM bail team. That’s something which needs to be addressed.

Thank you, Mr Chair. While, I think, a number of us are still waiting for a response from the Minister for Mental Health or their adviser, I would like to ask another question. This is to do with new clause 11(1)(b), which is to be inserted into Schedule 1AA of the Bail Act by clause 6(a) of this bill.

I think, first of all, there was something that the Minister mentioned before in terms of some of these employees being currently—and please correct me if I’m wrong or if I misheard, because it’s very important. Currently, there is a small number of employees from residential treatment centres who are granting some of these bail leaves in the capacity of some of these electronic monitoring (EM) assessors, but I’m just checking: is a residential treatment centre employee an employee of either the Department of Corrections or the New Zealand Police? Those two are the only two that, unless there is another agreement that we don’t know about, because there’s been no definition that I can see—again, please correct me if I’m wrong—of what is the current criteria for approving an EM assessor. I’m just checking—no, I can’t see anything at this stage.

Please correct me if I’m wrong as to whether the residential treatment centres are either the employee of the Department of Corrections or the New Zealand Police. How do we actually then determine an EM assessor? I think that those are my two questions.

My third question is around the definition of an employee under clause 11(1)(b), because it says here: “an employee—(i) of the chief executive of the Department of Corrections; and (ii) not authorised under section 30E(2).” Now, I had a look at section 30E(2), as well as the adjacent section 30E(1), which is “the chief executive of the Department of Corrections.” and “the Commissioner of Police:”. What we’re seeing here is that it has to be an employee of the chief executive of the Department of Corrections and not authorised by the chief executive of the Department of Corrections, so which one is it? Is the person meant to be or not meant to be authorised by the Department of Corrections? Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Just a couple of queries. We’re in extended hours so it’s always a little bit hard to get the feel from our constituents, our groups that help determine our kōrero and whakaaro around Te Pāti Māori, but we have managed to get some questions from our external rōpū. So one of the questions that’s come up is whether the use of discretion will be equitable—i.e., that Māori will not be discriminated against by the electronic monitoring assessor. Is there a breach of Te Tiriti rights? Corrections or Police, or there have also been known as private companies or private security groups, are in these assessor roles; we must remember that private security are not Crown and therefore it’s a breach of Te Tiriti. We’d like to just know where the Minister for Mental Health stands on this, and is this bill Tiriti-centric?

I just will remind the member that we’re on Part 2 and the Schedule, so questions in relation to this need to be related directly to the part that we are actually discussing. But if the Minister for Mental Health did want to answer that question?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I thought that Mr Tom Rutherford was going to have a serious call, because we’re still waiting on the responses to all of our previous questions, but if the Minister for Mental Health isn’t going to respond or is waiting to respond or is still waiting for advisers, we are happy to keep going while we buy the Minister some time to seek advice. My next question for the Minister is around clause 11(3)—

I’ll indicate that the Chair would be looking for the Minister’s involvement at some stage before any closure was to be entertained.

Thank you so much, Mr Chair—very much appreciate that. Also, to take a very small interlude and side track just to welcome back Tarsh Kemp. I assume this is probably one of your first features in the committee stage since you have returned—so welcome back to the fold as part of the committee stage.

My question is around clause 11(3), which is around the authorisation “is ended at the start of the 61st working day”. Actually, it’s a very simple question to the Minister: I would like to know the rationale behind 61 working days—i.e., I’m assuming a little over two months, but 61 is a very interesting and precise time—and whether that’s taken from an existing provision from other Acts or other bills, or is it something that is very specific to this bill? And how would that relate to what we see in clause 9? If the authorisation is ending at the start of the 61st working day, would that mean that the provisions and exceptions that we see under clauses 10 and 11 would be void but clause 9 would still stand? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair—first time that I’ve been able to contribute to this committee stage. I just wanted to ask the Minister for Mental Health some questions in relation to the Schedule, which is listed in Part 3 but is empowered by Part 2, which we’re discussing at the moment. That’s just in relation to some of the definitions which are here.

I know that my colleague Dr Duncan Webb has already referred to the quite unusual definition of “old law”, which is defined in the interpretation section here. I think readers of this bill will note immediately that there isn’t a definition of electronic monitoring (EM) assessor in this bill. We’ve had a couple of questions around who an EM assessor can be, and I think those are valid questions which I understand remain unanswered. I did double-check with my learned colleague as to whether this was defined somewhere in the bill, because it’s very difficult to understand the bill without knowing that, and he referred me back to the primary piece of legislation, which does talk about EM assessors.

What I wanted to ask the Minister is perhaps whether he would agree to an amendment to include clarification that that same definition applies to this new bill, because it’s really fundamental to the work that has to be undertaken in this bill and, for me, in my reading of it, it isn’t clear that it does apply to that. When you look at the definition in the original Bail Act, it talks about section 30M. Obviously we are amending the Bail Act, but we are additionally putting in other sections. Perhaps the original Bail Act could be clarified to include that it does in fact cover the EM assessor references in this Act or the exact same definition could be included within this particular part as well. It’s just a relatively straightforward question following up on some other questions around definitions that I hope the Minister can address.

Thanks, Mr Chair. Just following up from Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, who is ably leading the charge once again for the Opposition—holding them up for his persistent lines of questioning. He asks, “What does clause 9 and 10 do?” I’ve been advised that clause 9 is about how the amendments will apply to authorisation after the bill commences. Clause 9 does not invalidate anything. Clause 10 is about validation of past conditions; authorisations made before commencement.

The member Lawrence Xu-Nan also asked about residential treatment facilities, and whether the facility staff—employees of Corrections, and/or Police, if I understood the question right; residential treatment facilities are not employees of Corrections or Police. Going forward, only the electronic monitoring assessors who are currently from Corrections will be able to be enabled to approve absences.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister, for the response to my questions.

Just to signal to the Minister for Mental Health that there were two other questions that I’m still waiting for response or clarification or acknowledgement of, and that is new clause 11(1)(b)(i) and (ii), because both of them refer to “the chief executive of Department of Corrections” and I don’t know what that section means when it says an employee that’s appointed by the chief executive of the Department of Corrections and at the same time not authorised by the chief executive of the Department of Corrections under (ii). So that clarification would be very much appreciated.

I think my question comes from, again, clarification from what the previous Minister, the Minister of Justice, was saying in terms of the fact that currently you do have electronic monitoring (EM) assessors who are not an employee of either of those two. I’m assuming that, in that case, those EM assessors would be covered under new clause 11(1)(a) as an existing EM assessor as opposed to having to be an employee of either the Department of Corrections or Police.

Then, if it’s not covered under 11(1)(a), therefore, any decisions that are currently made or have been previously made by residential treatment centres would not be validated by this amendment and by this particular schedule—which just ties into some of the discussions we had before in terms of judicial review; whether that would then still create the same potential legal challenge that the Minister is trying to avoid in the first place by bringing all of this under urgency.

Then, the other thing, lastly, in terms of new clause 9(1), thank you so much for that clarification. From my reading—again, I could be wrong, so clarification would be very helpful—it says, “only to authorisations that occur after commencement, even if they occur in any of the following:”. Ergo, any of the “following” would not be applicable, which means that they would be ruled out. But if they are to be ruled out, again it comes down to I’m not sure if they are then in effect or not, under new clause 10. Thank you.

Mr Chair, thank you, and once again just following up for the very hard-working Opposition MP Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. Why 60 days for the validation in clause 11? The rationale for 60 days allows time for defendants in the youth court to get their conditions varied. Some youth courts only sit once a month. This will also give time to replace any other conditions not involving Corrections.

Why is there not a definition of electronic monitoring (EM) assessor in the bill, was another question. “EM assessor” is defined in clause 3 of the Bail Act. References to “EM assessor” in the bill refer to the Bail Act definition, and that’s consistent with standard practice.

We come now to the Schedule. The Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to the Schedule is ruled out of order as not being a serious amendment.

We come now to clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on clauses 1 to 3, “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

Thank you. Just about did a David Seymour there. No, I’m all right. Thank you, Mr Chair. Just a couple of things as we get towards the last hour or two of this debate and the first one is actually just a question about commencement.

I’m not proposing an amendment but it’s just a little odd to say the Act comes into force the day after Royal assent. You’ve kind of got a day in there that you’re leaving begging. Why not just have it come into force at the moment of Royal assent, which is what you see in other legislation? I’d just be curious as to why you’ve decided to have that extra day of illegal activity when you can fix it up a day sooner. That’s my first one.

Then, in terms of the title, this isn’t really creating electronic monitoring, so the title we’ve got is actually a little misleading and you could run through any number of more accurate titles like, “Oops” or something like that. Because that’s what it is, right? It’s fixing up an “oops” that has grown over time, over the past, you know, nine-odd years since 2013.

My tabled amendment just suggests—actually, a very sensible tabled amendment—making it a little more accurate because what you’re trying to do is correct Corrections, to make electronic bail workable and consistent with the legislative framework. You’re kind of getting the legislative framework to catch up with the kind of misbehaviours of Corrections.

My suggestion is we just call it the “Bail Corrections to Run Electronic Bail Amendment Act”, because it’s both. It actually does double duty that, doesn’t it? Because it’s Corrections to the legislation; it’s also Corrections that run electronic bail. So a very clever, quite witty—if I may say so—double entendre in there. If you’d be so kind as to adopt that title, it would give greater literary merit to our legislative book and also be a better reflection of the nature, purpose, and effect of this bill.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Just responding to the Hon Dr Duncan Webb and his question about commencement the day after the Royal assent, I’ve been advised by officials that that’s a standard approach.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to start with clause 3, on the principal Act, before coming back to clause 1, “Title”.

I think, in terms of the principal Act, it does say that the bill amends the Bail Act 2000, but I think throughout this debate, the committee stage, we’ve seen that there are a number of potential fishhooks in the way they are linked up and interact with the primary Act, which makes me think of whether what we see in front of us actually covers everything that the bill is meant to cover. For example, I think the Minister for Mental Health previously mentioned, quite accurately, that there is a definition of “EM assessor” under section 3 of the principal Act, the Bail Act 2000, but all it says is that the EM assessor’s definition is the same definition as in section 30E, and section 30E was precisely what we discussed before around what is the definition of “EM assessor”. What we’re seeing is sort of this ouroboros circle; we are not really getting the clarification, because all of them just say, “Please refer to this one section.” and neither of those sections actually refer to it very clearly and succinctly.

On to the title: we fully endorse the tabled amendment that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb proposes, because, again, the issue that we see here in terms of the title—other than the fact that it can go broadly—is that we are seeing this bill being introduced under urgency with a very rushed job. We talked a lot during the committee stage about the fact that just because it’s current practice doesn’t mean necessarily it’s the best practice. The fact that we have not been allowed to hear from the general public—and I think, before, our colleague from Te Pāti Māori, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, also mentioned in terms of the fact that we haven’t been able to go to our constituents to seek advice and particularly other implications that this bill introduces, despite it being the current process. For the Minister, I think there is something to be said about whether the title actually accurately represents the process that we have gone through today, and whether something else should be proposed instead.

I think, most importantly, like the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, has mentioned, electronic monitoring isn’t really what the issue is here; it is the authorisation of the electronic monitoring that is creating the issue that we have here. I wanted to check with the Minister if the Minister would consider amending the title clause to “This Act is the Bail (Electronic Monitoring Authorisation) Amendment Act 2025”, or even, alternatively, “Electronic Monitoring Authorisation Reform” or “Authorisation Improvements” or “Retrospective Authorisation Amendment Bill”?

Again, that more accurately captures the definition of this bill, because it’s not just simply that in general we’re seeing electronic monitoring reform. As we have, again, discussed during the committee stage, and particularly previously under other parts—and I think there have been a number of members who contributed around the broader policy question around remand and around the issue of electronic monitoring in general. But we are not actually seeing any of that as a part of this. Basically, would the Minister consider “Bail (Electronic Monitoring Authorisation) Amendment Bill” or “Bail (Electronic Monitoring Retrospective Authorisation) Amendment Bill 2025”?

In answer to that member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question, the answer is no.

Thank you, Mr Chair. This is a somewhat overlooked part of the committee stage; none the less, the title and commencement clauses are just as important, if not more important, than many other clauses, and it’s important that we scrutinise them as well. It is our role.

I have a question in relation to the commencement. The bill refers to a definition of the old law, which is, essentially, the law that applies after 3 September 2013 and before this bill commences. Essentially, the retrospectivity aspect of this bill, which has been discussed at length, means that once the passage of this bill occurs, which is the day after Royal assent, it won’t actually be effective the day after Royal assent, which is what it says in the commencement clause; it will actually be effective right back to 4 September 2013.

My question to the Minister for Mental Health: is the commencement clause appropriate, given the inherent retrospectivity of this bill? We acknowledge that it needs to be retrospective; we are voting for this bill that will very shortly be an Act. But I ask that question, because it doesn’t seem to recognise the fact that the effective change that this law makes, through its commencement, is to, essentially, change the law right back to 4 September 2013. That’s my question to the Minister.

I can confirm for that member that the commencement date is correct.

The Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 1 is ruled out of order as not being a serious amendment.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Thank you for all your time in the first and second reading speeches and for the insightful debate during the committee of the whole House. This bill amends the Bail Act 2000 to clarify that the court can enable Corrections to approve absences from the electronic monitoring (EM) bail address for defendants on EM bail. For over 10 years the practice has been for the courts to enable Corrections to approve absences for defendants from EM bail. This allows for the efficient and safe management of defendants by Corrections and prevents the courts from needing to be involved in frequent day-to-day decisions. What this bill does is enable Corrections to continue to manage the day-to-day absences of defendants. Specifically, it does this by enabling the courts to continue to enable Corrections to approve absences in accordance with purposes specified by the courts.

This bill will also validate conditions that involved Corrections and others to prevent the need to reissue conditions for the over 2,000 current defendants and to provide certainty for agencies and defendants. I think it’s important to prevent the negative impacts on the courts, agencies, and defendants of requiring the courts to approve specific absences, hence the use of urgency to progress the bill through all stages.

I extend my thanks to the policy teams at Justice and Corrections and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their work to support the passage of the bill through the House. I would like to thank MPs from around the House for their support of this important bill. On this basis, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We do support doing things legally. That is, essentially, what this bill is fixing up.

Who knew?

Look, I’ve said it before: Corrections was illegally granting people indulgences to leave their approved premises. Now, we also think it’s really important that we get this right and that the decision is made at the right level. Electronic bail is good, and the principles in the Bail Act are clear that people should be on bail wherever it’s consistent with community safety and other things, such as the likelihood of their absconding—that’s good. If the best way to achieve that—the best way to strike that balance—is to put them on electronic bail, rather than put them on remand in our crowded prisons, that also is good, and that should occur.

The other thing I’d say is that we also absolutely agree that enabling people to remain connected with their communities gives them the best chance of changing their ways and averting disaster; so electronically monitored bail, where you can go to your kid’s school play or attend work or visit your sick mum and all those kinds of things, is actually a critical part of having a rehabilitation-focused corrections system, a system which doesn’t fracture the relationship between the offender—or, in this case, defendant—and the community. That’s good, but I’m not sure we needed to do this under urgency, and if we did need to do it under urgency, my very strong view is that the Justice Committee should have a look at it, because the more I tried to draw the threads together, to put the pieces of the legislation together and confirm how they worked, the less convinced I was that it worked effectively.

Now, I’m hopeful that it’ll muddle along—it’s a patch, because that’s what it is, right? It’s a running patchwork on the hull of the justice system. I’m certainly not convinced it’s the most effective one. I put a number of amendments up, and some of them were perhaps a little too Labour for the other side, but others of them were perfectly reasonable suggestions. My suggestion that there be a quick-fire right of review, rather than having to go back and make an application to the courts for variation of bail, was, in fact, focused on the efficiency of the bail system and balancing the rights of someone who’s had an administrative action done that affects their rights—the right to have that reviewed or appealed in some way, and the size of that decision—but the Minister of Justice was not interested.

The words in the Minister’s mouth when he said, “Oh, thanks to everyone around the House for their cooperation.”—well, no thanks to you, because we come here prepared to support the Government in fixing things up. It would be nice if, for a change—we’ve seen this bill today, and yet we’ve come up with sensible amendments, but none of them are seriously considered. You don’t have to like them all. You can have a think about them, but none of them are seriously considered, and that’s just disappointing.

I’m also concerned that the Act itself loosely, kind of, points to the electronic bail assessors and says that the judges can give them some role in managing the extent and detail of bail arrangements, but it doesn’t actually empower them. I’m concerned that the very crux, the very problem that is being sought to be solved—people have been wondering about making decisions which they have no legal power to do—isn’t actually solved by this legislation. In fact, if you look at it, if you go to the legislation and you look at this new section 30MB, “Court must specify all details of authorisation or enable EM assessor to approve authorised absence.”

The way they do it, in authorising a defendant to be absent from the EM address, under section 30M, the court must specify all required details of an authorisation—so that’s option No. 1—or enable an EM assessor to approve. But nowhere does it say that these EM assessors have the power to approve. Now, identifying an EM assessor is one thing; empowering them to make a bail decision is actually—this is a bail decision. The court might give the general outline, “Yes, this person is on electronically monitored bail.” The court actually doesn’t have to give any further details; they can just say that the rest of it is delegated—so if they go to work, what hours it is; if they pick up their kids, what hours it is; medical appointments, and all those things. But there’s no actual conferment of power in there, so that’s actually a real concern.

Also, I’m a little concerned at the lack of clarity around some of the things that were going on. At one point, I talked about people who weren’t Corrections employees giving these authorisations, and the Minister kind of said, “Oh, you know, not much. It’s not a big deal.” I’m still yet to be convinced that the people whose authorisations were by social workers or people in, I think it was, rehab facilities—that the authorisations to leave authorised premises given by those people are not actually simply void; that those people aren’t now illegally breaching their bail conditions. And come the day after Royal assent, any a shred of pretence will be gone, because I don’t understand that those people are captured in the pretty lengthy and confusing transitional provisions. This is what you get when you make legislation on the hoof. Now, I accept that, once the Government has taken advice and has accepted the advice that there is a breach of law, it does need to move to address it. But this has all the hallmarks of undue haste. So I’m concerned about that.

Fundamentally, in conclusion: yes, we get it—and this is the way the Government has chosen to address this problem—but, because there’s these 2,000 people out on electronic bail, and the fact of the matter is this Government’s been quite clear, and, in fact, a number of the backbench Government MPs stood up and said, “We’re going to be tough on crime,” which is, essentially, saying there’s going to be more of these, both in remand, on bail, and on EM bail, so the problems are going to get bigger. We get it. We actually want to make sure the bail system does work effectively, but we do think it should be both legal and legitimate. At the moment, we’re not sure it’s either, particularly around the ability to revisit those decisions. There are a whole lot of people out there who have been, essentially, breaching their bail. Under the current law, they’re in breach of their bail. I was surprised that one of my amendments which talked about civil liability was considered out of order, because that’s a real thing, and equally surprised that my title was considered to be not serious, because it was actually a perfectly reasonable title amendment.

If the Minister won’t address a select committee, certainly, it may be something that, on this side of the House, we’ll go to select committee and say, “Let’s give this a good bit of working over,” because we didn’t have the benefit of official advice, which is really useful for people like the Opposition to do genuine scrutiny, rather than scrutiny on the hoof. If you don’t like the quality of my tabled amendments, well, they were all drafted in the past hour or two, so there’s a reason for that. I do think select committee should have a really good look at this and make sure that it does actually work—if it doesn’t work, if there’s flaws in it, to identify those and report back to this House and make recommendations to the Government to change. We do need to get bail right. It is an important part of our justice system, and this, really, just feels a little hurried for my liking.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa to support this bill, but I have to say that there were moments during the committee stage where I feel like I wasn’t getting the clarity that we really needed for this particular bill in light of the fact that we are doing this bill under urgency and we are going through all of the processes this week. You do hear certain people who might say that the way that we scrutinise a piece of legislation might be alarmist or scaremongering, but I think it’s important to reassure people of the work that we do as a legislature, and having to scrutinise a bill without the ability to have public consultation is anything but.

In terms of the bill itself, there are a number of things that I would like to address, predominantly from some of the observations and some of the responses that we received from the Minister of Justice during the committee stage. I think, first of all, we do see that predominantly the bill is actually about the issue that we have right now, in terms of the authorisation of absence of those who are on electronic monitoring (EM), but it wasn’t until asking the Minister a number of times what spun all of this sort of urgency and the need for us to do this today through all stages that we were able to get something out of the Minister—that it wasn’t simply just to do with operational review from the Ministry of Justice and sort of bringing everything up to a piece of standard practice but mainly because there has been concerns around legal challenges of the current practice because it is not strictly adhering to the current Bail Act 2000. There have been instances of, potentially, judicial review as a result of that.

I think the first part of this highlights very much the issue of process. When we are seeing something like this being done throughout the thing, when it is only during the committee stage that we actually have something that has been challenged as part of judicial review by the court system—we need to look at it at this stage—it is only after the first and second reading that you realise the magnitude and the implication of this bill in terms of our constitutional arrangement, but also in terms of our court and our legal system in general. I think there is definitely something to be said about the process.

Then the other thing that we have heard during the committee stage is the fact that, when we are looking at this particular bill, it’s a standard practice that has already been implemented—we are just putting in legislation for something that already exists—but, as we have seen with other regulatory systems bills that were introduced in this very House, just because it’s minor and technical improvements, again, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t go through a full and robust process, particularly with select committee and public consultation. Again, we may not receive all that many submissions, but it is important for people to be able to actually contribute to that, and for people to say, “Hey, is the current practice actually a good thing or not?” I think just making the assumption that it is a good thing is not entirely accurate, considering that’s currently being challenged both in terms of standard operational review and also judicial review. That’s the first concern that we have from a process perspective.

The second concern we have is in terms of the way the bill was drafted. During the committee stage, it was the best opportunity—and actually, frankly, the only opportunity—for us to seek guidance and clarification on the details and specificity of each of the clauses and lines of this bill. There were definitely moments where we did not feel reassured by the policy intent and by the way some of these phrases have been drafted.

Again, this bill is amends the Bail Act 2000. There are a number of instances where we are trying to find an ounce of consistency—or inconsistencies potentially—between this particular bill and also the Bail Act 2000. The main purpose of that is because this is something that the Minister of Justice said that we need to do, and he mentioned a timeline of this only being consulted on in February, etc., so we had a very quick turnover for this. Again, the rush job means that there are a number of instances where we weren’t able to get specific clarifications on how this bill will work in practice and whether this bill will achieve what is intended, which is to ensure that we don’t have the same issue of people being able to challenge the existing system and the existing practice as a matter of legality.

To give you some examples of where we weren’t convinced in terms of its consistency with the principal Act—things like in the Schedule, new section 11(1)(b)(i) and (ii). I asked about the fact that both of them refer to the chief executive of the Department of Corrections. Paragraph (i) says it is an employee of the chief executive of the Department of Corrections, and, paragraph (ii), at the same time not authorised by the chief executive of the Department of Corrections. Things like this—you know, what does it mean? Is it consistent? I mentioned before during the committee stage that we’re seeing constant referral to the definition of the EM assessor, but without clarification of the way that the EM assessor is currently defined under section 30E(2) of the principal Act, and also under section 3 of the principle Act. The “Interpretation” kind of goes around in a bit of a circle. Again, there are issues and concerns from the perspective of consistency.

The third concern I would like to raise is around the idea of the ability to review. Again, we hear that this is to make sure that it is legal and what we do is legal—which would be very much appreciated, because like the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, mentioned, it is nice when we do things legally in Aotearoa. But in this case, one of the things that we weren’t able to clarify, for example, is the fact that the whole point of this is to ensure that the EM assessor is able to have a level of certainty that they’re able to issue some of these absences, but there’s no ability to challenge any of the decisions that are made, because there are no provisions in place in terms of an independent review—which is normally what we see in other bills of a similar nature, when you have a member of the executive, which includes our departments, that can make decisions that affect others—and how they are able to be held accountable by matter of specific provisions within the legislation. But we are not actually seeing that in here.

I think what is concerning in some regard is the fact that the Minister said that, under new section 30MB(2)(b)(i), if there is an instance of inconsistency, the court is ultimately able to make the rule; it has the final say. If a person was to challenge the conditions or their application to grant absence from electronic monitoring under the conditions of this bill, what we’re seeing is that, if they are rejected, rather than being able to go through the route that they are going through now—which is through various processes, including judicial review—they then will make an application to court, because the court then is able to decide whether this particular decision that is made by an EM assessor stands. My concern is what sort of burden would this add to the court system if we’re seeing that one route has been closed to these people but another route has opened through the court system. Again, that is something that we haven’t been able to tease out and seek advice on.

Lastly, going back to the fact that, again during the committee stage, we were very grateful that the Ministry of Justice uploaded and corrected the link for the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) report so that we were able to see the concerns of, and the analysis done by, the Attorney-General on consistency with section 18 of BORA. That was very helpful, and upon balance, it is still something that we see as not being a retrospective penalty. Again, we weren’t able to consult more broadly than we were able to today. With those concerns, we do support the bill, but we’re interested to see how it will be implemented.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on this third reading of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. Look, it’s not just nice that we obey the law in New Zealand; it is, in fact, essential. This bill is being done under urgency because a problem was identified by Ministry of Justice officials and was brought to the Minister of Justice’s attention. I want to thank those officials for doing that. They saw that there could be, potentially, some issues with the electronic monitoring provisions of bail. But let’s be clear: the courts remain the body that determines if someone gets bail and if they are eligible for electronic monitoring for that bail. That remains, the very strong judicial oversight of bail remains, and the opportunity for defendants to apply to the court to vary bail remains.

What we are doing here is, in fact, codifying a current practice where Corrections can ensure that a defendant can be absent from their residence when they’re on electronic monitoring for purposes already specified by the court but they may need to vary some of the hours or days when they’re doing that. This is a very sensible piece of law, clarifying the fact that Corrections can make these changes and codifying what is usual practice. This will mean that we do not need to have people going back to the court all of the time, reducing pressure on the courts, and I know everyone in this House is very concerned about timeliness of justice and making sure our courts are not overburdened. With that, I will be commending this bill to the House on behalf of ACT.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Following on from my colleague Todd Stephenson’s learned words, the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill will be supported by New Zealand First. It is important to clarify that what we are dealing with is that the Bail Act did not adequately provide for the approach that was in place. The Minister of Justice, who is focused on effective and efficient justice, identified this anomaly and acted as he should to ensure that we rectify this and continue on a pathway of effective and efficient justice.

This is not a running patchwork; this is a proactive approach to an issue that was needing to be rectified. Therefore, it is being done as it should be, as a priority in this House, to ensure that electronic monitoring continues to be a useful tool, that we don’t overburden the court system, and that we continue to work proactively to identify future anomalies in our justice system in such a manner as would be appreciated as we continue to a common objective, I think, in this House: to ensure that we do the best within our justice system. Therefore, New Zealand First commends this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou ano e te Whare. I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori to oppose this bill. Why? Well, the first statement we want to make is that the system is broken and the system doesn’t work for our people. So is this justice or injustice? Why? We’re in urgency and Te Pāti Māori do not support any bills when they’re going through urgency. Why? Because we need to have the time to actually meet and discuss these amendments and bills with our communities. Our whānau are important to us.

They trust you to speak on their behalf—that’s why you were elected.

Our communities are important to us and our community voices are important. This step has not seen this process go through. We’ve heard that from many of the members here tonight and throughout the day that we’ve all said that this needed more time to go back out to our constituents in our communities to have their say so that they could provide a voice here in this Parliament. That’s what this Parliament is about—you’re right.

Making tough decisions.

So this is how we’ve decided we oppose this bill. I want to remind our whānau at home that there are 2,000 Māori on electronic monitoring bail. There are 30,000 queries and responses for leave requests. This affects our people.

This Government puts pressure on our people, on our whānau, in terms of how we get to respond. We’ve put up with a lot as a Māori community. We have put up with the defunding of section 27 reports, which lead to Māori and lower income people in prison. The gang legislation, three strikes legislation, the removal of prison reduction targets—we have put up with all of that. All we’re saying is that we want our whānau to have a say—to have the opportunity to join select committees, and put in submissions so that they have the right to make some decisions. Te Pāti Māori do not support the bill. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to support this bill for the reasons that my learned colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan has already articulated, but I’ll repeat it anyway as a sort of repeat double act.

There are three key reasons that we’re supporting this bill, and the first is that we do believe that people who are being electronically monitored should be able to have timely access to be able to do things like apply for absences so that they can go to the shop, and go and do the other things that are on their approved list. The second is that not passing this legislation has the potential to create an unacceptable backlog in our already overburdened court system, so we wouldn’t want to see that either. Look, the third, as my colleague Dr Duncan Webb has already said, is that it’s pretty good for things to be legal, and we support things being legal here. So these three things are all very important to us, and so that’s why we are supporting the bill.

I do acknowledge the concerns that have been articulated by the previous speaker, Takutai Tarsh Kemp. Obviously, urgency is never an ideal way to do business, and I think that all of us in the House would much rather prefer it if we avoided the use of urgency, but I think that, in this instance, our not using urgency could create the risk that some people who, through no fault of their own, would be unfairly illegalised for a mistake that was made almost over a decade ago, and so that’s not ideal.

I just wanted to acknowledge the hard work of the officials that have drafted this and the hard work of the wider Public Service sector and the wider infrastructure that supports it—the Department of Corrections, the Police, and the wider judiciary—because it’s really important that we actually keep in mind that it is hard working out there. There have been a lot of increases in the offences, there’s growing work pressure, and there are growing demands on that sector, so it’s important to acknowledge them for the good work that they’re doing. I mean, I guess that nobody’s perfect, but this will help all those hard-working people not only in the front lines but it’s also important to acknowledge the people in the back lines, the so-called back line/front line division—you know, the policy officials who spotted this mistake and brought it to the attention of the Minister.

I think it’s really notable that we’ve been able to pass this correction to the mistake in just a single day. We’ve progressed it through all aspects of the legislation in a single day, which I guess testifies to how efficient lawmaking can be when we put our minds to it, and how efficient the drafting of legislation and how efficient just the wider Public Service really is. I think it’s important to note that.

I also wanted to repeat the words of praise that have already been lavished on my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. I think that the Minister for Mental Health said that he was ably leading the Opposition, and one of the ACT Party colleagues says that he’s the hardest-working Opposition MP. Certainly, that’s been our experience with Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, and I think it’s thanks to the efforts of people like—

: Don’t tell

Well, look, the successes of our colleagues are celebrated by everyone, from the leadership to the lowliest backbencher such as myself. There’s no hierarchical division in the Greens. We’re all co-leaders and we’re all backbenchers at the same time. Look, that inclusive leadership style is why the Greens were at 15.5 percent in the recently released Roy Morgan poll.

Now, I’ll pivot back to the real importance of this—[Interruption] It’s good to appreciate your colleagues. I also wanted to appreciate what has been said by other colleagues in the Opposition. I really liked the turn of phrase that Dr Duncan Webb used, which was “a running patchwork on the whole of the legislation”. It’s in these sorts of colourful turns of phases that we get an opportunity to really explore in the House.

In closing, we all know that it’s really important that we humanise people, even though they might be under electronic monitoring, and this is why the Green Party is supporting this legislation. Thank you.

I’ll leave some of the other comments to be made by my colleagues, but I do want to put on record the comment that was made by Te Pāti Māori, which is they do not ever support the use of urgency—ever, full stop. I would love to see them pass a Budget or any other future legislation if they ever get the privilege to serve in Government—heaven forbid. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, thank you. I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of that was, but never mind.

No purpose. Purposeless.

Purposeless. Labour, as we have said, obviously will be supporting this at third reading, as we have done at first reading and at second reading, but, certainly, the committee of the whole House stage highlighted the fact that there are several holes, a few gaps, and so our support is somewhat begrudging in so far as this doesn’t feel like it’s a well-planned-out piece of legislation.

That’s not to be disparaging of the people that have done that work but rather of the need for the rush behind it and the fact that it’s in urgency and, therefore, has quite obviously missed out as a good process should be in the benefits of going through a select committee process. The select committee process exists for a reason. Those reasons are to be able to find those things that need to be amended, to make those changes, to listen to advice, and to improve the legislation once and for all. Under urgency, which this bill has been afforded, or accorded, it has missed out on that. But we nevertheless understand that behind that is a need to pass this bill.

The Government has been forced, essentially, into rushing through this bill, mainly because—and this is the underlying issue—the justice system simply isn’t in a position to be able to cope with the ensuing chaos that would happen should this not be corrected and, having identified the problem and not fixed it, should there be a different way for the courts to have to address this issue.

Obviously, on this side of the House, we’re not interested in participating in, or causing, that type of chaos, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Government haven’t had sufficient time to have, themselves, identified some of the gaps and some of the potential issues that my colleagues, in particular on this side of the House, were able to raise during that committee process and were able to ask questions about. Unfortunately, those answers weren’t necessarily forthcoming, and we find ourselves being none the wiser on some of the more important things, but, as I said, that’s where the “begrudgingly” comes from, because we nevertheless still need to support this bill.

As I said, if we were to reject this legislation, quite literally thousands of people on electronic bail could see their absence approvals suddenly invalidated. The courts, who are already under immense strain, would be, again, quite literally swamped with thousands of additional applications, and that would be an absolute mess. That is why we’re voting for it. It’s not good lawmaking. The bill also is just, essentially, the bare minimum.

To reiterate, this process, whilst in urgency and not ideal, does at least force a little bit of focus on to the very, very obvious flaws which I think have been well ventilated tonight, and with that lack of critical detail, it will be interesting to see if there are some other workarounds required as the operational phase of this kicks into gear, because, particularly, my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb isolated two specific things that I think will rear their ugly head in the future to raise some issues.

It’s been a decade of legal non-compliance, and it’s good that this has been noticed. For more than 10 years, the Department of Corrections has just been operating outside the law when it comes to this and approving absences for those on electronic bail. We’ve heard through this process that something like 30,000 of those applications are approved, let alone the ones that are not approved, every single month and have been done for such a long time.

During the course of examining this bill through this urgency and rushed process, there was the opportunity to also table some amendments, as is normal, and there were some really sensible amendments that were generated from this side of the House, particularly when we think about probably the biggest risk here, which is the issue of liability and even civil liability, which was ruled out of scope, but it certainly didn’t seem to be out of scope from our perspective, and it’s one of those things that, therefore, still lingers as a concern.

It took legal opinion, we think, from Crown Law, but the other point that we would really like to make sure that is focused on in this final opportunity for us to say anything on this bill is that we’re still really none the wiser about the impetus. Where did this information come from? We’ve heard some information from the Minister of Justice about the potential for—for lack of a better word—cases in Christchurch that are pending resolution, and so he didn’t want to elucidate on that further, which is his prerogative, but we still really don’t know what that advice was, and my colleague Helen White implored the Minister to think about ways in which that information could be released to just provide the necessary context, which, of course, is why we’re here. We’re literally passing a bill into legislation without an important part of that puzzle, so that feels a bit undercooked as well.

As I have said, there are some alarming vagaries in this. It lacks some key details. The retrospective immunity certainly comes to mind, and I’ve mentioned that civil liability, but the bill retroactively legalises past absence approvals. At almost the end of this process, I still don’t feel like there’s an awful lot of clarity about how that immunity for those who had previously relied on the old system is conferred and how that necessarily will be communicated and various other aspects of the operation of that. We’re in a situation where those people, those electronic monitoring (EM) assessors, we’re told to believe, will be protected from legal action for unknowingly breaching the Bail Act and are protected from that civil liability, but are defendants who acted in accordance with previous approvals fully protected from all of those legal consequences? I think that remains an outstanding question as well.

In terms of future oversight and accountability, again, this process, whilst talking about what could be perceived as quite a narrow bill, does raise the question about administrative oversights and not, essentially, allowing this to happen again. There were questions posed during the committee stage about what safeguards would be in place to ensure that all of the aspects—has that fine-tooth comb been run over various other aspects? If we knew the provenance of the identification of this problem, we may have been able to answer that for ourselves.

Whilst technically a technical fix, it would have been much, much more preferable to have a little bit more information about how this could impact future things. If the legislation is meant to streamline the justice system and prevent delays, which is certainly why we are supporting this bill, it just conjures up all sorts of other things that the Government should be doing and should be taking the opportunity to make contributions on, even whilst talking on this bill about the much bigger problems that exist in our justice system when it comes to court delays and when it comes to all sorts of practical implications of navigating that system.

The backlog in headquarters is growing, and the remand population is increasing, and whilst that might not seem overly specific to this bill, one of the reasons that this is so important and the implications of this are important is, quite frankly, because of the really high numbers of people on remand. Electronic monitoring is being used more than ever. We do support the use of electronic monitoring. It’s an important part of keeping people tied to their communities, people who haven’t almost certainly been necessarily convicted or certainly haven’t been sentenced. We wouldn’t want the issues that have been raised through this process to sully the concept of electronic monitoring, and, having said that, we commend the bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, e tautoko ana au i te pire ki te Whare.

[To the Speaker of the House, I commend the bill to the House.]

That was an incredibly short speech—an incredibly short speech. It’s perhaps the shortest that I’ve heard that member, Greg Fleming, give.

It is a pleasure to be able to take another call on this bill. At the last reading—I believe it was the second reading that I spoke on—I said I would try and find the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) vet, which was not tabled there, but is mentioned in the regulatory impact statement. I kept my word to the House, and I found the BORA vet for this bill. The reason that I decided to dig it out is I thought when we have bills like this which are passed under urgency, which are related to people’s fundamental freedoms and detention and the deprivation of liberty, it is very important to make sure that these bills are consistent with our fundamental rights. I thought it was important that at least it was touched on in this debate.

To briefly go over some of the content of it: the BORA vet was I think signed off only yesterday, so this is a very, very quick ascension of this bill to the House. We saw it earlier in the week as—I can’t remember exactly what it was called; it was “urgent bill” or something like that. Anyway, it was very mysterious. Then when we actually found out what it was about it was—not disappointing, but maybe slightly less impactful than we may have thought. This is signed off yesterday by the Attorney-General, the Hon Judith Collins KC, and it does discuss some of the issues in relation to this bill. It does conclude that it’s compliant with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and I think it’s important to note that for the House, because although we are talking about a retrospective law and we are talking about restriction of movement, the conclusion was that those fundamental rights are not breached.

I personally believe—and I’m sure that many others hold the view in this House—that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet is very important and something that we should maintain, and so I think referring to it is helpful. The thing that I did find particularly revealing about this, though, is that the main right that it focuses on is restricting movement of the persons on bail. The BORA vet concludes that it’s demonstrably justified this limit on freedom of movement. However, it doesn’t really address the retrospectivity aspect of it, which I would have thought would have been the main aspect that we would have been concerned about.

Thinking about it, I do think perhaps it’s due to the fact that this is maybe even more immediate, right? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a very short document, less than two pages—just over one, really—and that wasn’t discussed. I’ll just leave that with the House as something that I thought was interesting to reflect on that I don’t think has been covered in the debate to date.

The other issue that I wanted to raise about this bill is I still really don’t know exactly the reasons as to why this bill has suddenly come about in such an urgent fashion. I was thinking through, well, what are the reasons that this might be the case? We’ve had other urgent bills through the House recently. We had one on the greyhound racing ban—it was very evident why that needed to be brought through. We had another recent bill which I think was around people being able to challenge perhaps convictions or something in court—that was very obvious as to why it had to be brought with such urgency.

This, though, is in the interests of the people who are on bail to have this flexibility, because essentially, the decisions that the monitors are making are, “Oh yes, you can go and buy groceries. You can go to your medical appointment. You can do things like go and see your lawyer.” Essential things really to allow the person who’s on bail to have access to justice and so it’s in their benefit, so I don’t imagine that they would complain about it. However, obviously—as everyone has said—it is important that we make sure that we are compliant with the law.

That’s why we are supporting this bill. That’s why even though it’s come through with urgency, we’ve made sure to scrutinise at committee stage. We’ve made sure to go through every clause. We’ve made sure to do things like look through the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, suggest amendments to make sure we do our part to ensure that this particular law is fit for purpose. It has been a very rushed process, but these things do sometimes happen, and I think the whole House has really played a role in allowing the Government to fix this problem. I commend it to the House.

I rise to speak in this third reading in support of the Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill. It’s an urgent legislative change that was required to ensure the longstanding and efficient practice of management for defendants on electronically monitored bail. Most of the parties in this House support it. Therefore, any more debate would just be a waste of time, so therefore I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. While most of the parties are supporting this bill, I’d first of all like to take a moment just to respect the views of a party that hasn’t supported the bill. They’ve been concerned that it’s too flippant, because this is an important area and urgency is being overused. I take on board the reasons for that. There’s been a lot of trauma in the Māori population over the use of prison, and I can understand a party that is looking through that particular lens as being really wary of where we use urgency. I don’t intend to be wary in the use of urgency when I look at the problem before us, and our party has decided to be pragmatic about this, but that does not mean that you haven’t heard quite a vigorous Opposition tonight to a flippant use of urgency.

In the committee stage, I asked some questions about what had motivated this bill, and I couldn’t get a lot of answers. I still only have a vague idea about what provoked it. I know, because the Minister of Justice seemed to relent and give us a bit more information, that there were perhaps four cases where somehow this electronic bail and its legality reared its head, and that they were oral cases. I also know that there was some sort of report done by officials who raised concerns about the legality of these actions.

Now, I absolutely take the point that has been made, quite often, that this is a law that will retrospectively allow the legality of something that, in fact, has given people perhaps more liberation than they otherwise would have. They’re on electronic bail and they’ve been given an opportunity to go to, perhaps, a funeral, or shopping, etc. I do appreciate that that’s a different circumstance from where you’re restricting people in lots of ways, but we’ve always got to remember also that there are victims in that situation. There’s always two sides. When somebody is given that kind of freedom, and they’ve committed a crime, there’s another person on the other side of that. I actually haven’t heard that point of view raised at all tonight, that there are victims in this situation.

We, obviously, had a legislature that chose many years ago to put the courts in charge of these decisions. I appreciate that time has rolled on, and if you have 30,000 decisions, some of which are probably quite minor, that’s not really something that the court is equipped to make. And maybe it never was. Maybe it was the wrong decision at that time. Maybe it should have been more streamlined than that, but that doesn’t mean that the solution before us tonight is perfect, either.

I heard my friend the Hon David Parker suggest at one point in the committee that perhaps there was a very different way of dealing with this situation, where we would have had more specificity in the bill. I was interested in that, because I was concerned—I didn’t know what these decision makers would do in this situation; what they had been doing. I heard there was no review of the last 13 years of decisions to see whether the system was working or broken. There was no consideration of what was going on here when you take a decision that’s being made or is supposed to be made by a court, which has got distance from the situation and doesn’t know the personalities involved and actually is listening in an objective way, and you give that decision to another party that is not so far away and may well be someone who is much closer to the situation and also may lack the very objectivity we’re looking at.

For example, there’s two things that can go wrong there. One is that this power can be used in an abusive way towards the person who is on electronic bail, but it also could be used negligently with regard to the person on electronic bail. Those are things which we train our judges to guard against, to be very careful about, and they’re away from it. If somebody is, perhaps, in a closer relationship, they are more tempted to use those powers punitively or when in fact somebody’s just annoyed them. Those are the kinds of things which I think are part of a human difference, and I don’t propose that everything goes back to the court, here, but I would have liked to see a thought process around the checks and balances around this system. OK, we’ve got somebody who’s on electronic bail; what is the system they are now going into? Who’s going to make those decisions and who’s going to make sure that those decisions are fair and reasonable decisions towards them and towards the victims, perhaps, of their crime?

Both of those things need to be looked at, and I haven’t really been satisfied tonight that what’s been come up with here is anything other than “We’re just going to roll on with what we’re doing, without actually knowing what it is.” That’s why I asked the Minister several times; I said, “Who’s making these decisions?” It was as plain as that, and I never really got an answer to who’s making these decisions, what checks and balances are in place. Again, I didn’t get those answers. That’s because, probably, this matter is being rushed. That’s actually the point that was being made by the Māori Party tonight—they were very wary of a rushed decision.

I am not at all sure that everything is good here. I know that it is better than the alternative. The alternative is that we send all this stuff back to the courts and no one gets anywhere. We already have those roadblocks in other areas in our court system. For example, we actually at the present time have situations where someone will apply for bail and they will be going in front of the judge to talk about bail at the same time as they’re going to talk about their substantive hearing. They’ve been inside so long or their solution has been found but it never actually happens in time. That’s because we have terrible delays in our system, not because they’re working well.

Yes, delay is a huge issue, and I don’t want to add to it tonight by any kind of objection to this pragmatic attempt to make sure that the law functions and that people can get their electronic bail. If somebody’s got a funeral, I want them to be able to get there. If they’ve got an urgent medical appointment, I want them to be able to get there. All of that is good, and I’m wary of questioning the people who’ve made those decisions in terms of their integrity, and I think I made that clear on my questioning. I am, however, really concerned that I still don’t know whether those checks and balances are in place. It may be that the people who are making the decisions have already thought of that; they’ve already got nice, good, safe systems in place. But when I asked the Minister about that tonight, I got absolutely no assurance that he even understood or had inquired about what those systems look like.

Our job, when we have something come in here before us like this—particularly something that’s retroactive—is to make sure that we are asking those questions, but it’s also the Minister’s job to answer them. When there is cooperation around the House, when we’re all on the same page—or almost all of us are on the same page—saying, “Look, we want to make sure this comes through tonight; we want to make sure we’ve fixed the situation as far as we can.”, that’s a good thing, but what, actually, any good Government needs to do is make sure that it fronts with the answers.

What this needs, given it’s gone through so urgently, is a review at some point. I would really like information about how this policy has been used and how it has been working out and what those cases were that came before the court, because I don’t know whether they were complaints that the system has been abused; I don’t know whether they were complaints that there was negligence and some victim had missed out as a consequence. Thank you.

It really is a pleasure to be the lucky last speaker on this bill. What I would like to say is I really appreciate the expressions of concern from across the House about urgency, but what I will say is this: when we have the best justice Minister in over seven years at the helm of the justice ship, I know that this urgency for this bill is a sound move. I commend this bill to the House.

Members, the House is in committee on the Land Transport (Drug-driving) Amendment Bill, the Taxation (Annual Rates for 202425, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill, the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill, and the Customer and Product Data Bill.

We come first to the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, and we begin with the debate on Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 6, “Amendments to Parts 1 and 2”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Point of order. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

The question has been asked for this to be taken as one question. Is there any objection? There is objection.

I am pleased to speak on the debate in Part 1 of the committee stage of the Land Transport (Drug-driving) Amendment Bill. I know members opposite were very, very keen to get up and head me off at the pass, but I’m very, very proud to be speaking in support of this bill, because this Government is committed to improving road safety by targeting the highest contributors to fatal road crashes. In recent years, an average of over 100 people were killed in crashes where a driver had consumed impairing, prescription, or illicit drugs. This represents around one in three road deaths and it is too high, too many, and something must be done.

This bill will introduce roadside oral fluid testing to better detect and deter drug-driving. It amends the Land Transport Act to fix the current issues with the oral fluid testing regime that prevented it from being implemented when it was passed under the previous regime. It moves to a roadside drug-screening regime with infringement notices issued following positive laboratory tests. This is a change from the current regime which attempted to implement a testing regime resulting in infringement notices issued at the roadside, despite device technology not being sufficiently advanced to meet the required evidential threshold. This Government identified that this was an issue and moved quickly to resolve it.

Part 1 sets out the preliminary provisions, including key definitions and consequential changes to the sections in the Land Transport Act that set out the responsibilities of drivers. These responsibilities include to not drive if the concentration level of a listed qualifying drug in their oral fluid equals or exceeds the concentration level in a notice issued by the Minister of Police. The Government is committed to bringing these new powers into force as soon as possible. We are targeting December 2025, once the necessary operational matters and regulations are in place. I note that there is an Amendment Paper in the name of the Hon Chris Bishop that, obviously, the Government is supporting and will help address some of the issues raised in the select committee stage. With that, I look forward to the contributions of the members in this debate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take the first call in this committee stage for this bill. As a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and as Labour’s transport spokesperson, it was a pleasure to be part of this process. I want to acknowledge and thank the Associate Minister of Transport for those introductory remarks. He has touched on a number of factors that we’ll work our way through this evening and tomorrow. A lot of those, I think, will fall in part—sorry, Minister?

We’ll finish tonight, won’t we?

Very, very hopeful, I would suggest, but I doubt it. There are a number of issues that I’ll particularly touch on in Part 2. The overriding consideration that the Minister hasn’t touched on in addressing this bill is that there are a number of concerns that have been addressed by the Attorney-General in her report to the House. I know that we’ll, obviously, be working our way through those, because some of them—well, there are two issues, but they need to none the less be addressed.

The Minister indicated in his introductory comments that the intention of the Government was for this to be operational in December of this year, and my first question to the Minister would be: what confidence does he have that that can actually be implemented, given the tension around the procurement of devices? I only ask that, Madam Chair, because he has raised it himself, even though that comes in a later part of the bill. The Minister none the less did raise it.

In terms of Part 1 specifically, the interesting thing there is the interpretation section. I think it’s fair to say that the select committee didn’t turn its mind to the interpretation section much, because there wasn’t much in there. One thing that does come to mind, however, is that when you look at the definition that’s provided for a “family of qualifying drugs” in clause 2, it identifies two examples there and gives a specific “for example”. My question to the Minister is: is he comfortable that the examples that are given there are such that they are purely an indicative list? Why is it that an example is given, as opposed to just leaving it to the fact that there is a list of drugs that have a similar chemical structure, instead of identifying them? In that case, is he comfortable that that carries it on? It might be that that is the case because that’s why the “for example” is given there.

My other question is: there was a lot of conversation around who was going to approve the screening devices, and whilst the definition that’s there for “oral fluid screening device” is one that is approved by the Minister of Police—whether the Associate Minister of Transport is comfortable that that is actually the appropriate Minister. I know there are subsequent clauses further on in the bill that touch on what that Minister of Police needs to do in terms of consultation with other Ministers, but my question for the Minister is whether the definition of the “Minister of Police” in the interpretation section is appropriate. It might be that there is no suggestion that it’s not going to be the Minister of Police there—but whether that’s listed there is appropriate. Perhaps I’ll leave it with those few questions. I’ve certainly got a few more.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A pleasure to be able to take a call in this committee of the whole House stage. This was a very well debated bill at select committee, so the questions from us will be quite targeted about those things that still remain as a concern. You will be aware that the committee managed to find cross-partisan consensus on many of these issues. Labour does support an approach that’s been broadly outlined by the Associate Minister of Transport.

There were some particular concerns around the way that we stop people and how that will be reasonable, but also just provisions that help us all to maintain the public’s confidence and trust in the system when they’re being brought to the roadside by police officers. Everyone needs to buy into that for it to work. There have been several jurisdictions around the world where things have gone wrong and where parliaments have needed to come back and revisit those provisions that they have put in place in the last 10 years. We want to make sure we get this right and we get this right, now.

I want to ask the Minister a question. Amendment Paper 256, in the name of Chris Bishop, is something new, since we were able to traverse the many rights implications. It’s also new since the Attorney-General gave her opinion on the way that rights were being limited in this case. I’d like the Minister to step the committee through the provisions in the Amendment Paper that apply to Part 1, please.

I rise to take a first call on this first part, seeing as how the Associate Minister of Transport isn’t standing to respond to questions that have been put forward thus far. I want to broadly start with raising the concerns that were raised by many submitters, and then a series of questions to the Minister.

At the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, we heard from a range of expert submitters who made the case that there is simply not enough evidence to correlate impairment with oral fluid levels and with blood levels. The Minister opened up his statements this evening by saying that this was a key part of the Government’s road safety strategy. I wanted to ask—because we didn’t hear any evidence at the select committee—does the Minister have any evidence about the estimated reduction in deaths and serious injuries that will be achieved through oral fluid testing, firstly? If not—and I do understand that there are some pretty large claims being made about the improvements to road safety that can be achieved through compulsory oral fluid testing—rather than just relying on numbers of deaths and serious injuries or fatal crashes where people may have tested positive for a qualifying substance, I think it would be useful to understand how many fatal crashes would have been prevented by oral fluid testing, where we would have any reason to believe that they would have been prevented by having mandatory oral fluid testing.

Obviously, it’s not going to prevent every single instance of impaired driving or driving under the influence of a qualifying substance, but also, when the Government uses those broad numbers about how many fatal crashes had drivers who had had some sort of potentially impairing substance, the reality is—and we heard this at the select committee—oral fluid testing devices are likely to be able to test for only one or two substances. Even if it’s the one or two or three most common substances, it’s not going to capture all of the substances that fatal crashes have drivers testing positive for. Will it be possible that drivers will know which substances the oral fluid tests will be testing for—at the time they’re in operation? That’s a whole lot of questions related to the overall objective of the bill, and then we’ll get into more detail on the specifics of each part further in this debate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members, for the questions. I’ll start with Tangi Utikere. I liked the question where he asked, “Who will approve screening devices?” Asked and answered: Minister of Police. He meant to ask whether I’m comfortable that the Minister of Police’s definition in the Act is the right one. Yes, I’m very comfortable with that. The Minister of Police is also defined and already in the Land Transport Act as well.

The member asked whether we have confidence that the provisions can be enacted in time for Christmas. Yes, we have the utmost confidence in the Police to deliver on this; although, we have, if you note, in the amendment to the commencement clause, the commencement clause is going to be amended to April, I believe, or sooner, depending on regulations. The intent is to try to get this implemented by December, but the bill, if you look in the commencement clause—I know we’re skipping into the commencement clause, but we might as well get this covered off now. If it has not come into force by 1 April 2026, it comes into force then. And the Act comes into force when set by Order in Council. That’s how that one works. But, yes, we’re fully focused on implementing and working hard to meet the December 2025 timeline.

The member also asked whether we are comfortable with the indicative examples in the definition of “family of … drugs”. Yes, they are illustrative examples to illustrate the nature of the different types of drugs in the families of drugs anticipated.

Arena Williams asked if we could step the committee through the amendments in Part 1. Absolutely; there are only two. The first is to insert a definition of “elective oral fluid sample”, which means “a sample of oral fluid taken from a person under section 71DC(2)”. The second change is a change in the “oral fluid sample” definition, from section 71DA(1A). That’s struck out and is replaced by 71DE(2).

I actually think that is all in Part 1. Let me just double check that for the member. No, in clause 6, we are striking out 71D and 71DA and replacing it with 71DE. Then, in clause 6(2), we are striking out 71D and 71DA and replacing it with 71DE.

I thank the Associate Minister of Transport for his answer there. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee spent quite a lot of time with how the testing regime would work for people who might for some reason not be able to meet the requirements of the first oral test, and what the committee was really concerned about wasn’t the people who were trying to somehow evade it or get around it or take a long time because they were being uncooperative. We were thinking, here, about the mum on her way home from school with the kids in the car, who might be trying her very best to comply with police instructions but might not be able to produce the amount of oral fluid.

I’m sorry, I’m going to be talking about oral fluid here and the amount of it required, because the committee sat around the room and all got to do one of these tests, and Andy Foster was one of the people who—you know, it is not unusual—could not produce the right amount of oral fluid. He was chatting a bit, as you might if you are on the roadside with some people in the car with you, interacting with the police. My point here is: if we’ve got this group of people—perhaps it’s one in eight people, like the people who were sitting around the committee room; we don’t know how many people it is; it’s quite a few people—and so at the second stage of the test, it then requires a blood test, or at least the original framing of this testing regime does. You might think, well, that’s reasonable; you need a way of making sure that people aren’t somehow gaming the system by trying to avoid it.

What I’m really asking the Minister is: is this creating a second step of a second oral fluid test? There are policy reasons for doing that, reasons we would be broadly supportive of and like to hear about. There are also policy reasons why you would not do that, as the committee also heard about from the experts. We would like to be very clear what’s being created there.

This does lead to some broader questions, which I will pose to the Minister a little bit later, which do relate to Part 1. They’re about what the Attorney-General set out for the Transport and Infrastructure Committee when she was giving her view on whether this was an unreasonable search and seizure. The number of times that you might be required to do a test goes to the amount of time that Police might be asking Parliament to authorise them to keep someone on the roadside to detain them and the degree of invasiveness of the search. One breathalyser test, as is required now for alcohol testing—and we think that’s reasonable; we suggest no change to that—is quite different from even the oral test that someone has to do where they have to produce an amount of oral fluid; I’m sorry. That amount is, for some people, quite hard to produce in the time frame, and so we will have people who are then either required to have another oral fluid sample or are then required to take what is a pretty invasive search, and the invasive search, here, is the blood test, and that is also something that might not be administered on the roadside; that might be administered elsewhere.

We get into these sort of compounding issues of whether it is reasonable for Parliament to set aside a special set of powers for police to conduct what are increasingly more invasive searches, with increasingly onerous powers of detention. What I’m trying to understand here is: is the amendment intended to deal with that? Can we stretch through the policy issues of how we’re going to deal with that? This is coming from a Labour Party that supports this regime and wants to make it as effective as possible and as reasonable as possible so that people do comply with it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll just indicate to members that I am getting some advice on the specific numbers requested by Ms Genter, but just on the point from Arena Williams around the section 7 report and the issue of unreasonable search and seizure, we think it is a justifiable limit on the right to be free from unreasonable—

What is—

Well, if the member would like me to continue the sentence, I can finish off. We think it is a justified limit on the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, because the policy purpose of the bill is to prevent road incidents and road deaths in New Zealand. We think this is not an unreasonable step to take in order to prevent that kind of behaviour. Therefore, we think the steps taken to require people to provide oral fluid—and I know we don’t want to talk too much, at length, about oral fluid from any particular individual in the House, but that is part of the system that’s going to be in place. We think that’s not an unfair expectation of those who may well be putting others at risk through their own behaviour. That’s to address the first point.

On the second point, around whether it creates a second oral fluid test, I’ll get some advice from officials and come back to the member very shortly.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not a common appearance at these committee stages so bear with me, Madam Chair, as I muddle my way through this.

As a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that oversaw this bill going through the select committee stage, I did have some issues that I would like to test with the Associate Minister of Transport. One of the things that the select committee has been asked to do, in examining this bill, was take on advice from officials that there wasn’t an ability to provide specific examples of oral fluid screening devices for the purposes set out in this bill, which is to introduce new criteria for approving oral fluid screening devices that better reflect the limitations. Minister, there is an attempt here to introduce a new scheme of oral fluid screening tests that will come along with other impositions, as we heard, on civil liberties for New Zealanders who are going about their lawful business.

I would just like to understand from you, Minister: what do you think should be going into these calculations on approving an oral fluid screening test based on time frames? I’ve had a look through the bill and I couldn’t see anything regarding time limits for these new devices, so I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that, Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll address Mr Luxton’s question in one second, but just to address Arena Williams’ question from a couple of contributions ago, the question was around whether this is creating a second step in the process. The bill requires an officer to collect an oral fluid sample to send for laboratory analysis. Amendment Paper 257 before the committee of the whole House provides for an opt-in regime where a person can elect to provide a further sample where any sample already obtained is not sufficient for that person to seek a private analysis. In the instance where on the spot they were unable to produce the required level of oral fluid, they are able to elect to provide a further sample.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the Associate Minister of Transport, and it’s starting with clause 4(2) around the “family of qualifying drugs”. I would like to come back to the conversation around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA), because, again, I’m sure that the Minister is very conscious as well that this is one of the few bills which has a specific section 7 report, in which case that has incredibly high thresholds, so I think it does warrant for us to come back in terms of some of the potential BORA violations that we do see here and some of the concerns around that, which I’ll discuss in a bit.

To start with, I would like to ask the Minister about the definition for the “family of qualifying drugs”, assuming that “qualifying drugs” has the same definition as in the principal Act. What is different here is that he talks about sharing a substantially similar chemical structure—for example, with benzodiazepine. I’m sure the Minister is aware that with all benzodiazepines, it is a chemical compound that includes both a benzene ring and a diazepine ring as part of this chemical structure. I think what I wanted to check with the Minister is in Schedule 5, Part 1 of the principal Act. It does list a number of benzodiazepines as a part of that already. Are we anticipating—first question—additional chemical structures that are similar to benzodiazepine that aren’t listed in Schedule 5, Part 1, of the principal Act? If so, what are we looking at?

Just by looking at the bill—apologies, I was not part of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on this, so I did not have the time to scrutinise this bill very carefully—one of the things that is very specific in Schedule 5, Part 1, of the principal Act is the amount that is able to be detected in the system for drug-testing purposes. But, if the Minister has additional benzodiazepine-like chemicals that are not part of that, I can’t see, in this bill, the actual volume that is allowed to be able to pass a particular threshold. I guess the question is: what are the benzodiazepines that we are looking at that are not listed in Schedule 5 of Part 1?

I think the second question, which we’ve been talking about and other people have addressed as well in terms of some of the BORA implications—it comes down to what I see on page 19 of the regulatory impact statement, around the fact that there is a concern that was raised in there. I wanted to check with the Minister if this has been teased out as part of the new bill already on the potential consistent issue and legal challenge around the accuracy, because I think what we are seeing here in terms of the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and the right not to be arbitrarily detained potentially would meet the threshold of limitation on a person’s right under section 5 of BORA.

I think the key focus here is around the reliability of the test. Does the Minister then have the confidence that the test is reliable enough that it meets the threshold for limitation under section 5 of BORA? If not, then is there any way for us to potentially look at this bill in a more BORA-consistent way?

I guess these are my two questions—three questions. The first question is: is the definition of “qualifying drug” the same as in the principal Act? Schedule 5 of Part 1 of the principal Act specifies a list of benzodiazepines that are already listed, but it mentions additional or similar chemical structure that may not be listed as a part of that. Is that the intention of this particular clause? If it is and there are other benzodiazepines that are considered, is there a limit that is being given in this bill or in the principal Act? Schedule 5 and Part 1 are very specific. In terms of the BORA implications, are the tests reliable or accurate enough to warrant the limitation on BORA under section 5?

Madam Chair, thank you. I’ll address Mr Luxton’s question—I have some advice here. The question was around the approval of screening devices: any thoughts on how the time frames to undertake the test is reflected in the legislation. I’m advised the bill requires the police Minister to consider the accuracy and the extent to which the positive screening threshold indicates recent drug use. While the time it takes a device to return a result is not a consideration, the Minister must take into account that it will be a relevant operational consideration for police. That may go some way to addressing that point.

I understand there’s probably not enough time left in the night to answer all the questions from members—I’m sure there’ll be some time in the morning when we get up after having some beauty sleep—but I want to address Mr Xu-Nan’s points around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA). I’m not here to provide legal advice, but if I was to provide some guidance as to why we think it is a justified limit, there are a number of limbs to any BORA test.

The policy must have a sufficiently important purpose, and so I believe that the prevention of road deaths on New Zealand’s roads, especially given that we’ve heard that one in three are caused by this kind of impairment, is a sufficiently important purpose.

Is the mechanism being used relevant to the policy goal? Yes, we think it’s directly relevant; I think that test is clearly met. Is it no more than is reasonably necessary to produce that outcome, or not more than a minimal impairment? We think that requiring a small oral fluid sample to prove an absence of impairment or of drugs in the system—sorry, it’s not necessarily impairment—is about the minimal threshold you can go to, to try and reduce this kind of impact on our roads.

Overall, is the impact of the policy proportional to what we’re trying to achieve? We think that requiring some roadside drug testing is proportional to the overall policy outcome, which is to try and reduce the number of horrific road deaths caused by drivers who take it upon themselves to intoxicate themselves—take drugs—and drive on our roads.

Now, I’m sure there will be a number of questions in the short time we have available on this part, and I look forward to continuing those in the morning.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House is suspended until 9 a.m.