Parliamentary debates: Thursday, 15 May 2025

The House is resumed for the extended sitting: Government orders of the day, continued. Members, in accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, the House will debate the first reading of the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill, to be followed immediately by the remaining stages of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.

I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill.

Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none, and leave has been given. The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill.

Tākiri mai te ata, ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea. E mihi ana ki a koutou kua tau mai nei i runga i te karanga o te rā.

E ngā mate, haere, haere, haere ki te pō. Ki a tātou te hunga ora, tēnā tātou.

Tihei mauri ora!

Ka mihi au ki ngā mana o ēnei whenua, ko Te Ātiawa, ko Ngāti Toa Rangatira, tēnā koutou katoa. Ko te Kāwanatanga tēnei e mihi nei ki te kaupapa o te wā. E Ngāti Hāua, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Dawn breaks, it lightens, it brightens, it is day. I acknowledge you who have come here in support of the call of the day.

To the dearly departed, rest in peace, go into the night. To us, the living, greetings to all of us.

It is the breath of life!

I acknowledge the authorities of these lands, Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Toa Rangatira, greetings to all of you. The Government hereby acknowledges the undertaking of the day. Ngāti Hāua, thanks and greetings to you all.]

In March, I was welcomed on to the Ngāpūwaiwaha Marae in Taumarunui to sign Te Pua o Te Riri Kore, the Ngāti Hāua deed of settlement. It was a great occasion, and I’ll never forget it. The sun was shining in Taumarunui and I received a warm greeting. I want to thank the members of Ngāti Hāua who have gathered to watch the bill being read for the first time, both here in the gallery and online across the motu. You have shown great strength and determination in coming to this point.

It was a special occasion. I did make the mistake of deciding to drive myself from Auckland to Taumarunui and I got a ticket on the way back, but that’s by the by. I’ll set that aside. Today marks a significant milestone in the shared history of Ngāti Hāua and the Crown, and it’s a testament to the commitment of everybody involved that the Ngāti Hāua settlement journey has been a long one, and it’s important today to remember and pay tribute to leaders and the many whānau members who passed on before they could see the fruits of their efforts.

One significant leader was the late chair of the Ngāti Hāua Iwi Trust Eugene Taupene, who passed away in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I personally didn’t have the honour of meeting Eugene, but his rich legacy has guided these negotiations. I want to acknowledge and thank the Ngāti Hāua negotiation team for their collective effort—the chair Graham Bell and his team: your wisdom, patience, and determination were critical in achieving this settlement, which truly promotes reconciliation.

On the Crown’s side, I acknowledge the work of my predecessors, the Hon Christopher Finlayson and the Hon Andrew Little. I particularly want to acknowledge the work of the Chief Crown Negotiator, Dr John Wood. I want to thank my ministerial colleagues, Crown agencies, local authorities, and members of Parliament who are here today to mark this occasion.

Today’s speaking marks another milestone for Ngāti Hāua in their settlement journey. Negotiations started in 2017 but Ngāti Hāua have been looking for justice for generations. As Ngāti Hāua negotiations manager Aaron Rice-Edwards said, “We’ve been an iwi that has been pushed in the shadows but we’ve always been a tough fighting iwi. We never give up. It’s taken us over 160 years to come to this point, to realise that vision of riri kore (no more fighting.)”

The settlement is grounded in the Crown’s acknowledgments and apology for its many breaches of Te Tiriti. I formally delivered the Crown apology to Ngāti Hāua at the signing of the deed of settlement in March. During the ceremony, we all felt the enduring hurt of Ngāti Hāua. The day was a poignant reminder of the importance of the Crown recognising and acknowledging its wrongdoings. At the ceremony, I also spoke of the statutory pardons for Ngāti Hāua tīpuna and Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu and Te Rangiātea, which are facilitated through the Ngāti Hāua settlement. Alongside the deed, this bill records the Crown’s treatment of Te Rangiātea and Mātene and the resulting intergenerational stigma and mamae experienced by their uri and by Ngāti Hāua. This bill will enact long-overdue statutory pardons for these Ngāti Hāua tīpuna who were treated so harshly by the Crown.

In recognising the harm caused, we’ve worked with Ngāti Hāua to build a redress package that addresses these grievances. It provides for the return of 64 sites of deep cultural significance to be transferred as cultural redress, including sites that will be jointly vested with some other groups; a cultural revitalisation fund; and recognition of the innate connection of Ngāti Hāua to their rohe, and their obligations as tangata tiaki, through a range of mechanisms such as Te Pou Taia—a joint management committee—relationship redress with many Crown agencies, and financial and commercial redress of $19 million for the right to purchase a number of commercial properties.

The deed of settlement also recognises the importance of Te Pou Tikanga to Ngāti Hāua, the innate values that underpin Ngāti Hāua’s aspirations for Treaty settlement, and the vision for a restored relationship with the Crown. It’s my hope that this settlement will mark the beginning of a strengthened relationship between Ngāti Hāua and the Crown, based on mutual trust, cooperation, and partnership.

Madam Speaker, friends: no settlement can fully compensate for the loss and prejudice that Ngāti Hāua people suffered. Through this settlement, the Crown hopes to restore its honour and alleviate Ngāti Hāua’s deep sense of grievance. Today is about looking forward to the future, while acknowledging the long and difficult journey it’s taken to get there.

I believe that the settlement lays the cultural and economic foundations for Ngāti Hāua to reestablish their connection with their rohe, strengthen their identity, and provide for a stronger cultural, social, and economic future for generations to come.

I think there are huge opportunities in the decades to come for Ngāti Hāua—particularly the new generation coming through—to thrive and prosper and build on the opportunity that is provided here, and to restore particularly economic prospects. I acknowledge that this is the first reading of three to support the passage of this legislation through the House, and my preference is that the bill should proceed without delay to the Māori Affairs Committee so that we can progress this settlement as soon as we can. I commend this bill to the House. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te Atua nāna nei ngā mea katoa. Ko te mihi tuarua ki te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Āpiti hono, tātai hono, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate. Āpiti hono, tātai hono, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.

Ki ngā uri o Ngāti Hāua, tēnei te mihi maioha, tēnei te mihi whakamānawa ki a koutou. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huihui mai tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. The first greeting is to God to whom all things belong. The second greeting is to the House that stands here, greetings. As the lines of descent connect us all, the deceased come together. As the lines of descent connect us all, the living also come together.

To the descendants of Ngāti Hāua, affectionate and venerated greetings to you. And so, thanks and greetings to you, to all of us gathered here.]

Today marks a significant moment in the House; one of reflection, one of long overdue recognition, and one—hopefully—of hope, as well, for the future. I’m humbled to be able to speak today in the first reading of your bill, the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill, that gives legislative recognition to Te Pua o Te Riri Kore, the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Hāua, signed on 29 March at Ngāpūwaiwaha Marae in Taumarunui.

This is not the beginning of the Ngāti Hāua story, nor is it the end. It is a chapter that, I believe, carries a great weight—a chapter built on strength of the generations of your uri whānau, hapū, and the leaders who never gave up pursuit of justice, truth, and tino rangatiratanga.

Your rohe encompasses the Upper Whanganui River, stretching from the slopes of Mount Ruapehu to the townships of Taumarunui, Ōwhango, and National Park as well. In the early 19th century, some Ngāti Hāua hapū also settled in Heretaunga in the Hutt Valley, where I hail from now. Their history is one of connection, connection to the whenua, to the waters, to the taonga, and the natural world, as well as one another. But it is also a history that is marked by systemic marginalisation and profound breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

From the 1840s onwards, the Crown failed Ngāti Hāua in its most fundamental responsibilities as a Treaty partner. In 1846, when conflict broke out in the Wellington region, Ngāti Hāua tūpuna were targeted and punished not for wrongdoing but just for their presence, for their resistance, and for their identity. Te Rangiātea was sentenced to life imprisonment and died behind bars. Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu was hanged. Five others were exiled to Australia. These were the actions of a Government not seeking peace; they were acts of domination, they were acts of fear, and they were acts of injustice.

This set in motion decades of Crown aggression in Whanganui, in Taranaki, and in the Rohe Pōtae of Ngāti Hāua that stood beside the Kīngitanga in times of war. You stood to protect what was rightfully yours, your culture, and your rangatiratanga, and yet the Crown continued to meet Ngāti Hāua with force, with confiscation, and with legislative trickery. From the 1860s onwards, the Native Land Court used much of this to individualise and alienate Ngāti Hāua land. Much of this was done without any consultation, without informed consent, and with no fair compensation. The Waimarino Block was awarded in hearings where many Ngāti Hāua never knew it was even happening, and was quickly purchased by the Crown, including lands where kāinga once stood. Promises made during the construction of the North Island main trunk railway were not kept.

This is an opportunity for some of these injustices to be addressed, for what is contained within this bill to enable Ngāti Hāua to move forward. I want to say today that I look with hope for this to be moved ahead, and I wish to acknowledge all of those who have come here today for the passage of the first reading of this bill today.

He mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huihui mai tātou katoa.

[Warm regards to you all. And so, greetings and thanks to you, to all of us assembled here.]

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Kia ora, Ngāti Hāua in the gallery. It is always tough reading, but it particularly strikes me, reading your settlement bill—and I commend the size of it and the scale of it—that, from that first decade since the signing of our founding agreement, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Ngāti Hāua has been mistreated by the Crown, and in every subsequent decade from 1840, when the tūpuna were wrongly killed and five exiled to Australia, to Tasmania, with the specific instruction that they be treated poorly. “Treat the prisoners harshly” were the instructions of the Crown.

In the 1850s, Hāua joined the Kīngitanga movement, a movement to defend the lands of iwi Māori from invasion by the British. They were at Parihaka; they supported that protest. When the Crown invaded, in 1881, they arrested Hāua people and destroyed their property. In the 1860s, they were labelled as “hauhau” and “rebels” by the Crown and have suffered the stigma of that labelling. Then, through to the 1880s, the Northern Main Trunk Railway was put through their lands. The Crown used public works legislation, and when we speak in this House, to this day, about the problem of public works acquisition of Māori land, here it is; it begins during the colonisation of Aotearoa and the Main Trunk Line. Further, land was acquired for dams, the Taumarunui native township, the Crown establishment of the Tongariro National Park, without consulting Hāua—incident after incident, in decade after decade. It is a means of understanding the unrelenting mistreatment by the Crown of this iwi.

Ngāti Hāua are virtually unable to exercise kaitiakitanga over the forests, waterways, the kāinga, and the wāhi tapu of the rohe, and have suffered poverty, poor housing, low educational achievement, and lack of opportunities for social and economic development. This, in turn, has damaged the spiritual and cultural wellbeing of the iwi and led to the dispersal of the Ngāti Hāua population to urban centres. They have persistently called for the maintenance and recognition of their rangatiratanga, and here today, in this House, it is our purpose, as the representatives of Pāremata, this Parliament, to take that step towards restoration of the rangatiratanga of Ngāti Hāua. I am very glad to be speaking in support of this bill, which takes that step.

I read the accounts of the court martialling and sentencing of Te Rangiātea, an elderly and sick and immensely unwell man, who was confined for life, and Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu, to be hanged by the neck until dead, and the grisly and exceptionally harsh behaviour of the Crown. At the time of his hanging, the commanding military officer said it was “a most sanguinely display of vengeance”—vengeance? This is the nature and the character of the British invasion and theft of Māori land in our history, in this country, in this place. Here we must stand, in this House, and acknowledge it and make good. I want to say that this bill pardons Te Rangiātea and Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu for their convictions and recognises their character, their mana, and reputation as well as that of their uri, and we stand in support of that recognition.

We stand in support of that pardon, and we thank you for your presence here, because you, by your presence here, are in fact going some way to restoring the honour of the Crown. Kia ora koutou. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam speaker. A bill that has been a long time coming has been introduced to the House today by the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, who has reflected on the experiences he’s had in Taumarunui when the deed of settlement was signed. This is another step on the journey that this Minister is continuing on behalf of the Crown, on behalf of this Government, on behalf of this Parliament, and on behalf of New Zealand, to seek, as Ngāti Hāua has done, a meaningful relationship with the Crown in a peaceful way—a journey that Ngāti Hāua has been on for a long time—and this bill is recognising that.

Putting down the historical context of it, the stories, as we’ve just heard, the extreme martial law—extrajudicial—the way the British and the Crown acted over decades and decades has been put down on paper, and we’re trying to find a way forward as one people in this country, with our own pasts and histories and things to look back at, things to look forward to, but we need to make amends as best we can and seek forgiveness as best we can. That’s what this apology and this settlement is trying to do, on behalf of the Crown, today.

Thank you, Ngāti Hāua, for your patience and your persistence. Thank you to your representatives, who have come here today; I’m sure we will see many more of your iwi coming to this House as this bill progresses through the House. We need to accept what’s happened in the past and make amends as best we can; that’s what this bill is doing. The ACT Party supports this bill. Thank you.

Kia ora e te Māngai. Ruapehu Maunga, Whanganui Awa, mai i Te Kāhui Maunga ki Tangaroa, ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. Ngāti Hāua iwi, Ngāti Hāua tangata e tū, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou.

Ko Taranaki Maunga e mihi nei, ti’ei mauri ora.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Ruapehu mountain, Whanganui river, from the Alpine Clan to the sea, I am the river and the river is me. The people of Ngāti Hāua, the citizenry of Ngāti Hāua that stand here, greetings to you and to us all.

Mount Taranaki greets you, it is the breath of life.]

I am pleased to talk, as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, in this first reading of the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill. This bill gives effect to matters contained in Te Pua o Te Riri Kore, the Ngāti Hāua deed of settlement of historical claims. Te Pua o Te Riri Kore was signed earlier this year by the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations on 29 March 2025, between the Crown, the Ngāti Hāua Iwi Trust, and Te Whiringa Kākaho o Ngāti Hāua. The bill contains provisions related to redress that require legislation for their implementation. Other aspects of the settlement are provided for only in Te Pua o Te Riri Kore, as they do not require legislative authority.

I believe that anyone living in New Zealand cannot fully understand the place where they reside without the knowledge of its history, and a great place to start is the historical account contained in local Treaty settlements. When reading the historical accounts within this bill, you realise that breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi began immediately after its signing. The historical account illustrates the many occasions where the Crown did not meet its obligations as a Treaty partner. Of all the travesties that are accounted for in this bill, tūpuna losing their lives is a poignant one for me. One tūpuna—Te Rangiātea—was sentenced to confinement for life, and died soon thereafter in prison. Another tūpuna—Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu—was sentenced to death and was executed by hanging. This all occurred in the 1840s, where there was a conflict over land in Heretaunga between the Crown and Ngāti Hāua. During that conflict, a number of tūpuna were captured, including Te Rangiātea and Mātene. But other tūpuna were captured and exiled to Australia as well.

As the case is with other historical accounts contained in Treaty settlements throughout New Zealand, the Crown caused numerous wrongful conflicts. From the late 1850s, Ngāti Hāua joined the Kīngitanga movement and supported their whanaunga in fighting the Crown in Taranaki. In 1865, the Crown confiscated land in Taranaki, which included land in which Ngāti Hāua had interests. That same year, the Crown ordered an attack on the Kīngitanga at Ōhautahi Pā. Ngāti Hāua supported the peaceful protest at Parihaka against the Crown’s attempt to enforce land confiscations. In 1881, the Crown invaded Parihaka, arrested Ngāti Hāua people, along with many others, and destroyed their property, along with other great travesties. Since the 1860s, Ngāti Hāua have endured the intergenerational stigma of being labelled hauhau and rebels by the Crown. The amount of land that Ngāti Hāua were dispossessed of by the Crown is immense, from land for the North Island main trunk railway to the very large Waimarino block, to lands on the banks of the Whanganui River, or to the Taumarunui native township, all occurring with various wrongdoings by the Crown.

One cannot change the past, but you can change the future. This settlement contains a redress package that returns culturally significant sites. It has a cultural revitalisation fund, financial redress, and statutory pardons for the two tūpuna who were tried under martial law and treated with exceptional hardship, who I spoke of earlier. Settlement packages never go far enough in the minds of many, but I do truly hope that this settlement bill provides opportunities for a better future for a very proud iwi, which is Ngāti Hāua.

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā rā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tēnā rā tātou. E tū ana ahau ki te tuku i ngā whakahōnore ki tō tātou ariki nui, Kuīni Nga wai hono i te po, te whare kāhui ariki whānui tonu, rire rire hau, pai mārire.

E ngā mana whenua o Ngāpūwaiwaha, e Ngāti Hāua, Ngāti Hāua ki te rangi, Ngāti Hāua ki te nuku, Ngāti Hāua e tū ake nei.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker, indeed greetings to us all. I stand to offer recognition of the honour of our great monarch, Queen Nga wai hono i te po, the wider royal family, peace and goodwill to all.

To those with authority over the land of Ngāpūwaiwaha, Ngāti Hāua, Ngāti Hāua on high, Ngāti Hāua on the land, Ngāti Hāua who stand here.]

I stand here sharing threads of hononga as an uri of what once was called Hauhau and Pai Mārire faith, and also as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee. Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou mō tā koutou hīkoi roa, mō tō koutou hokinga mai ki te ūkaipō. Tēnā rawa koutou.

[I hereby acknowledge you for your long journey, and your return to the homeland. Many greetings to you.]

Let us be clear: today is not a celebration of justice delivered. It is a solemn recognition of mamae endured, of rangatiratanga undermined, and of whakapapa forced to conform to a Crown-controlled process.

We mihi to Ngāti Hāua. We acknowledge your strength, your persistence, and all that your iwi have endured to reach this point. Ngāti Hāua have arrived here not just bearing the weight of raupatu but the burden of being forced to negotiate their identity through a framework not of your making.

The settlement signed at Ngāpūwaiwaha Marae on 29 March represents both the potential of redress and limitations of a system that remains fundamentally colonial. This Treaty settlement process is Crown controlled. We know the Crown sets the rules. These processes are determined by the Crown and often limit discussion, limiting an equitable redress. We know settlements are capped at representing 1 percent of what was lost, and the future generations will come back to 99 percent. “Full and final” for Māori, but never final for the Crown, who retain the power to legislate and override, forcing iwi to into Western legal entities—they must form Crown-approved legal structures.

Settlements create division: a process that fractures whakapapa, forcing our people into artificial legal entities, and a process that creates division, sometimes, and not unity among whanaunga. Let us not pretend this is justice. This is a political process, not a just one. It is what the Crown is willing to concede, not what Ngāti Hāua are truly owed. Still, within the constraints of this framework, Ngāti Hāua have carved a path forward. The statutory pardons for Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu and Te Rangiātea are powerful. They restore the mana of two rangatira wrongly convicted for defending their people. These were not just isolated acts of injustice. They were calculated attacks on an iwi defending its whenua, its oranga, and its tino rangatiratanga.

The return of 64 culturally significant sites, including Makakote Pā, Ngā Huinga, Whakapapa Island, and the guardianship of Hikurangi Maunga alongside Maniapoto—these are more than land parcels. They are reciprocities of identity, whakapapa, and wairua. The $6 million cultural revitalisation fund and $20.4 million in financial redress, while a fraction of what was lost, may support Ngāti Hāua in rebuilding the economic and cultural foundations endured by colonisation. The creation of Te Tātairango o Te Karauna provides a platform, though imperfect, for ongoing engagement.

But let us be clear: partnership was promised in 1840. It should not require a settlement to begin. This is not an end; this is a beginning, but one born not from justice but compromise. Ngāti Hāua iwi deserve more than an apology. They deserve full rangatiratanga. The Crown must now go beyond symbolic acts. It must stop weaponising legal processes and start honouring the full process and promise of Te Tiriti.

Ngāti Hāua, uri of warriors and orators, your mokopuna will stand taller because of what you have reclaimed. Ka tika a muri, ka tika a mua—when we put things right, when we put the past right, we clear a path for the future. Te Pāti Māori stands in support of this bill in its full entirety.

Mā te tika, mā te pono ka tū te mana motuhake. Tēnā rawa koutou katoa.

[Through truth and integrity will self-determination be realised. Many greetings to you all.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Ruapehu te maunga, ko Turakina te awa, nō Rangitīkei ahau. Ko Dossor Redmayne tōku w’ānau, ko Suze tōku ingoa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata.

[Greetings to you all. Ruapehu is my ancestral mountain, Turakina is my river, I am from Rangitīkei. My family is Dossor Redmayne, Suze is my name. Greetings and thanks to you all. Welcome to Parliament House.]

Today we celebrate Ngāti Hāua. One of the tangata whenua tribes of Te Kāhui Maunga, Ki Tangaroa—the mountains to the sea. The work to reach this day, the first reading of the Nati Hāua Claims Settlement Bill, spans decades, with resilience, persistence, and aroha passed down through your kaumātua, your negotiators, and your whānau.

There are many to acknowledge and thank: Graham “Tinka” Bell, chair of the Ngāti Hāua Iwi Trust, and vice chair Lois Tutemahurangi, who couldn’t be here today due to the recent passing of her brother Keith Rama—ngā mihi; Brett Anderson, Aaron Rice-Edwards, Joey Allen, Louise Wahapa, Piki Taiaroa-Whatarangi. Ngā mihi to all those trustees past, too, who have played a significant role: Jim Anderson, Rumātiki Henry, Teresa Hall, and others. And finally, to those who are no longer with us, but on whose giant shoulders this mahi started: Eugene Topine, Hikaia and Celia Amohia, Titi Tihu, Archie Taiaroa, Kevin and Flo Amohia, Ngaire Amohia Etana—just to name a few.

I want to acknowledge you all, Ngāti Hāua: your strength, your dignity, and your unwavering pursuit of justice. For generations, your people have carried the weight of the Crown’s actions. Today, the Crown acknowledges and apologises for its breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. You suffered extensive harm as a result of unjust and unlawful Crown actions. This included warfare, the unlawful deaths of your tūpuna, the confiscation and wrongful purchase of lands, and the erosion of your tribal structures and leadership. These actions tore at the fabric of your iwi. They caused deep intergenerational trauma and enduring loss of tūpuna, of land, and of your reo.

Today, the Crown seeks not to erase history but to recognise it, to apologise for it, and to look to a shared future. The settlement includes both financial and cultural redress as a means of restoring the Crown’s recognition of the mana of Ngāti Hāua and enabling a new era of prosperity and self-determination. It recognises Ngāti Hāua’s deep and enduring connection to your whenua, your awa, and your taonga tuku iho. But more than redress itself, this is a foundation. It’s a platform from which Ngāti Hāua can continue to grow on your own terms, in line with your aspirations and grounded in your tikanga.

Tinka, I am truly grateful for having got to know you over the last couple of years. Your determination and commitment is infectious; your kōrero wise and inspiring. During our most recent conversation last week, while you were sitting on the side of the hill in a bush, you talked about Minister Goldsmith’s commitment to this process. You were gracious and grateful. He turned up and fronted up, you said. As did you, Ngāti Hāua—96.6 percent of your members agreed to the settlement package and post-settlement arrangements. I know you’re excited about the future, Tinka; excited about creating a powerful and revered region for all whānau, for Māori and non-Māori. I could feel your energy for the name of your post-settlement governance entity, what it symbolises, and the mana it carries, which lives in your heart and the hearts of Ngāti Hāua.

Te Whiringa Kākaho o Ngāti Hāua takes inspiration for its name from the whakataukī “Whiria ngā kākaho, e kore e w’ati”—“Weave together the kākaho reeds, they become unbreakable”. Your name emphasises strength and unity. Ngāti Hāua, you knew before the Crown acknowledged it: unity is a key driver of any collective endeavour. Te Whiringa Kākaho o Ngāti Hāua reflects and celebrates this kaupapa. To the people of Ngāti Hāua, thank you. Thank you for your generosity in engaging in this process. Thank you for holding to your mana and for walking a path that was never easy but always principled.

As we look ahead, may this settlement be a stepping stone to renewed prosperity, cultural strength, and enduring rangatiratanga for Ngāti Hāua. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ki a koutou, Ngāti Hāua, kua tae mai nei i tēnei wā, e mihi ana ki a koutou. E mihi ana ki a koutou i whakarangatira i a mātou i tēnei wā. Rawe. Rawe ki te kite i a koutou, ngā kaumātua, ngā rangatira. E mōhio mātou ki ā koutou mahi ki te kōkiri i tēnei kaupapa. E mihi ana ki a koutou. Waimārie ana mātou i tēnei wā ki te kite i a koutou. Nō reira tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. To you, Ngāti Hāua, who have come here at this time, I acknowledge you. I thank you who have honoured us at this time. Great. It is great to see you, the elders, the leaders. We aware of your work to progress this endeavour. I acknowledge you. We are fortunate at this time to see you. And so, I hereby greet all of you.]

After that mihi, Tinka, I’m a bit worried about you and your National Party affiliations—a bit too close there, I thought! I thought you were with us there for a few years, when you were with Te Puni Kōkiri, but clearly you’ve changed sides, as we have to in this changing world. But I want to mihi to our last MP who put that kōrero out there, because that’s what it’s all about: getting to work with Governments, whoever they are. So ngā mihi nui ki a koe, Tinka.

You know, sometimes I feel I’m part of you, too, you know? As you know, I’ve got a long relationship with Taumarunui. That bloody Archie Taiaroa used to drive me crazy. He used to tell me I was an urbanite who was lost and needed to find my way home, and my mother used to tell him to shush up. And she used to tell Shane Jones to shush up too, because he was the chairman of the fisheries commission. We remember Archie Taiaroa well, don’t we, Shane? He was such a rangatira in terms of this kaupapa.

Archie sort of set the base, didn’t he? I think of him sometimes when I’m back in Taumarunui with my Auntie Chrissy, who always has pakangas with you too! She tells you she should be running the tribe and running Ngāti Maniapoto, and then can’t get on the Ngāti Maniapoto board, you know?

I feel so much a part of Taumarunui, given my grandparents had a farm just outside of Taumarunui, at Matiere, and I played rugby down there. I should have made the King Country team, I thought. So I look at you today and I mihi to you and I acknowledge all the people. I think about all the people from that time—our people who know how to work with Governments.

So I just want to join in all the praise. I was going to get a bit negative—I feel in a bit of a negative sort of space—but I watched our Minister this morning, Minister Goldsmith. You know, it’s a funny time for us in te ao Māori, as we see what’s happening around us, and I’ll get on to that a bit later in the day—

Ha, ha!

We’ve got Shane Jones, as you know—

Kia ū ki te kaupapa, e kara.

[Stay on topic, my friend.]

“Ū ki te kaupapa” [“Stay on topic”]—that suits Shane Jones right now. I want to get on to his kaupapa at the tribunal, but I might save it for another time.

But this is a time to celebrate. It’s time to celebrate, and sometimes we have to say that, well, we got here. But we had some challenges from Ngāti Ranginui about our rangatahi—you know, “Who’s going to inspire us?”, they said, and I want to get on to that. But I think that’s one of the challenges for the tribe, particularly in Taumarunui, because you’re sort of in the middle of nowhere, right—I mean, Taumarunui is not exactly the most exciting town in Aotearoa. So how do we pass on the benefits of this settlement and inspire some of the rangatahi around Taumarunui, so that when they go to Auckland, they are representing Taumarunui?

You know, we hear all the kōrero from these Ngāpuhi that “Oh, I’m from Ngāpuhi.”, or we might hear “I’m from Ngāti Porou.”, but we don’t have enough of them talking about the tribe. But they should do, given the proud legacy that’s been put in place by Archie; by you, Tinka; and by you, kaumātua. You want them to carry the kaupapa all the time. You want them to say—you know, some of us can’t even say the tribe’s name well enough, you know?

We need to teach our rangatahi all of these sorts of things, because that’s part of being part of a settlement, isn’t it? It’s not just about the pūtea; it’s carrying the name, it’s carrying the iwi, it’s carrying the tīpuna, and I think these are the lessons from these settlements.

Long ago, we gave up on seeing justice in terms of the pūtea, because we all know in the House that the pūtea can never represent the justice. But the apology does mean something. The apology does mean something, and it gives us a chance to think, “Well, where to now?”

So I say today, and I mihi to you all and to the House for this acknowledgment. I look forward to the next steps in terms of this settlement and where you go as a tribe in terms of your inspiration with rangatahi, and, again, to you, Tinka—even though you’ve changed sides—mihi nui ki a koe, koutou katoa i tae mai nei, tēnei te mihi i a koutou, tēnā anō tātou katoa. Kia ora.

[Big congratulations to you, to all of you who are in attendance. This is my greeting to you, greetings to you all. Thank you.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. Ko Ruapehu te maunga, ko W’anganui te awa, nō W’anganui ahau. Ko Carl Bates taku ingoa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Greetings and thanks to you all. Ruapehu is my ancestral mountain, W’anganui is my ancestral river, I am from W’anganui. My name is Carl Bates. Greetings and thanks to you all.]

Welcome, Ngāti Hāua, to te Whare Pāremata. Welcome to your House, to our House. Welcome to this very special day in your journey.

Suze Redmayne, my colleague and friend, spoke to me after the deed of settlement was signed on 29 March earlier this year, and spoke to me about how significantly and how profoundly the morning had touched her and the kōrero and the stories and the engagement she had that morning. Willie has just spoken—

Willie Jackson.

Willie Jackson has spoken about who would like to go to some rohe around this country. Madam Speaker, I’m sure I can speak for you, as a member of Parliament in that area; my colleague Suze Redmayne; and, of course, myself as the member of Parliament, the mema Pāremata, for Whanganui—that we all love coming to Taumarunui to engage with you and see you. I’m looking forward in my future role—as the rohe that I am responsible for expands a little, maybe after the next election—to spending a little bit more time engaging and getting to know you.

Suze spoke about the significance of the statutory pardons for the tūpuna Te Rangiātea and Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu when she spoke to me after the signing of the deed of settlement. It was interesting that just late last year, I’d been reading a book, because the Prime Minister, in his wisdom, had added me on to the Justice Committee. I’m an accountant, not a lawyer. I’m the better of the two professions. I know how to look after the pūtea. But I thought I’d better learn a little bit more about the journey that New Zealand has been on, and I read a book, Fragile Foundations: The Application of English Criminal Law to Crimes Committed in New Zealand between 1826 and 1907. It spoke about the story of your tūpuna as one of many stories like theirs across the country, and the way in which the application of British law in New Zealand had been challenged and how we had these fragile foundations on which justice in New Zealand was built.

When I joined this House and had my maiden speech, I spoke about the story of Taranaki Maunga and its journey down the Whanganui awa, up the coast, ultimately settling to where it is now, and the tears that it left behind that create the awa that we all live by and are part of. When I shared that story and shared how I’d learnt that at primary school, I never thought in that moment that I’d be referencing that story so many times in such a short period of time I’ve had the privilege and the honour of standing in this House. I hope that through each settlement that I’ve had the privilege of speaking on as a member for the rohe that we all love and is close to our hearts—that each settlement that goes through this House breathes more life into our awa and enables all people who live by our river, by our awa, to look forward to what, in this case, the post-settlement entity is going to provide as an opportunity for your people. I look forward, in my role, to working with you and being part of that journey.

Today is a special day, and there are members who I think are probably more qualified than me to kōrero this morning who are going to be part of the journey as this bill is taken through the Māori Affairs Committee. But it really is a recognition, I think, from this side of the House that we have our local members of Parliament that represent the rohe in which these settlements relate speak on the bill, and hopefully be part of a positive journey where we can have a few less tears go down our awa in the years to come. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Otirā e tū tautoko ana ahau i te mihi ka tukuna atu e Te Ātiawa ki a koutou, ki a tātou, Ngāti Hāua, i tēnei ata. Nō reira nau mai, haere mai, whakatau mai rā.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, I stand in support of the greetings offered to you, to us, Ngāti Hāua, by Te Ātiawa this morning. And so, welcome, welcome, welcome.]

Rightfully so, today, Hansard will record the names Rangiātea and Mātene Ruta Te Whareaitu in the records of today’s Hansard. I say that because I can’t imagine how difficult it has been. Ngā uri of these two kaumātua have had to carry the burden of what happened to their tūpuna, and it’s right that this House acknowledges the incidents that happened under martial law in Aotearoa. It should never have happened. It should never happen again.

I want to acknowledge all of the uri of these rangatira for carrying that burden. I won’t say the word, but they were labelled. It wasn’t right that they should be given labels, and they paid the ultimate price for standing up for their rights in our country. There have been many mentions of those who’ve been involved. I won’t name all of them, but I can’t help but think that uncle Archie Taiaroa will be happy today. I want to acknowledge everyone that has carried this kaupapa to this day.

I also want to encourage all of the members of Ngāti Hāua to submit to the Māori Affairs Committee. We heard from the chair, David MacLeod. I am absolutely certain that he will manage the process of getting this bill through the committee—every part of it—in a way that, hopefully, we see the second reading before the end of the year. I would so enjoy if we were able to pass this bill before Christmas, and it is possible. I’m saying to all other parties that we in the Labour Party will work collaboratively to make sure that that happens.

I want to also just highlight a recent report from the Controller and Auditor-General. The name of the report is How public organisations are fulfilling Treaty settlements. I encourage the leadership of Ngāti Hāua to have a read. It’s my sincere hope that the issues that have been raised in that report will not be a burden on Ngāti Hāua. If you read the report, you will see how the implementation of Treaty settlements have been impacted basically by the inability of public organisations to be able to deliver on the settlement. I’m not speaking out of turn here. It’s well documented that there are agreements that have come through this House that still have not yet been delivered on.

So there are a lot of mechanisms within this Treaty settlement that we’re about to finish the first reading on. I encourage Ngāti Hāua to have a look at it and to be vocal: tell the Government, tell the Crown—no matter who it is—that your expectation of delivering what’s in the settlement actually gets delivered—because no amount of apology will ever satisfy any of us if we don’t deliver on what we say we’re going to—so that this Parliament never ever impacts on Ngāti Hāua in the way that it has that’s recognised within the settlement.

Nō reira ki a koutou, ko te tūmanako kia uhia mai e te Runga Rawa āna manaakitanga ki runga ki a koutou, o Ngāti Hāua. Tēnā rā tātou.

[And so, to you, the hope is that the Most High covers you, Ngāti Hāua, with his care. Greetings to us all.]

E kara, e Atawhai, maranga wairua mai. Tēnei anō te rangi i whakaritea, ka kitea kua oti te whakaea, kua oti te whakatutuki ngā tūmanako i wahā mai e koe i ō hīkoinga maha ki Te Ūpoko-o-te-ika. Tēnei anō hoki te rā i whakaritea hei whakamihi mā te motu, hei whakamihi mā te Whare Pāremata ki te ngoi, ki te werawera, ki te kaha, ki ngā roimata i tukua kia taea ai e tō iwi, e tō hanga a Ngāti Hāua te whakatutuki i tā rātou i ohia ai i te wā i a koe e matomato tonu ana.

Nā reira e te iwi, koutou kua tatū mai ki Te Ūpoko-o-te-ika, tēnei te Whare e tū nei a mātou, he pononga nā koutou. Ko te kawa o tēnei wāhi, ka pau te toru tau kei a koutou te rangatiratanga me aha wēnei tuari, wēnei pononga wā koutou. Nā reira ko tā mātou he tautoko i roto i te pānuitanga o tēnei pire i tēnei rā. Te ngako o roto, ngā tikanga kua whakapūmautia ki te kapu o te pepa, me te wahanga i oti i tō koutou wā te whakaea.

He wā anō e haere ake nei, mā āpōpō anō āpōpō e kōrero. Māku, me tōku rangatira, a Winitana, me tō mātou pāti e kōrero mō tēnei wā tonu. Engari tukua māku anō tētahi kupu e whakatakoto ki tō koutou aroaro: ko te tau 1976, ahau te kaikōrero i te Manu Kōrero i tō mātou kura, i Tīpene. Ka meinga mātou kia haere ake ki Taumarunui. Kātahi te wāhi anuanu ko tēnā, koia ko Taumarunui.

Engari tokomaha noa atu ō mātou mātua o Ngāpuhi i heke ki reira, mahi puhi ai. Ko taku taokete tētahi, a Jim Reihana me tana wahine, te kaihana a Archie. Nō rāua te whare i te taha tonu o te marae i te pokapū o te tāone, i Taumarunui. I reira mātou, ngā poi o Tīpene, koia te wā i tūtaki ai ahau ki a Tiki Pāreti rāua ko Titi Tehu. Mēnā ō koutou kaumātua, nāna mātou ngā poi o Tīpene i whakatau. Ko te wā tērā i ākona matātingia ai mātou ki te hītorīa i tērā wāhi, me te whakapapa o tērā wāhi ahakoa 17 noa iho ngā tau.

Nā reira tēnei tūnga ōku he tuohu me te mahara ake ki ō koutou mātua. Nā reira tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[My friend, Atawhai, rise in spirit. This is the day that was determined to see the conclusion of the resolution and achievement of the hopes that you carried on your many journeys to Wellington. This is also the day that was decided on for the nation and Parliament House to acknowledge the energy, the sweat, the strength, and the tears that were expended so that your iwi, your people of Ngāti Hāua, would be able to accomplish what they desired while you were still with us.

And so, to the iwi, you who have arrived in Wellington, to this House of ours that stands here, it is your servant. The protocol of this place is that once three years are up, you then have the authority to decide what these servants, these attendants of yours are to do. And so, what we are doing is supporting the reading of this bill today. The essence of it, the procedures that have been enshrined on the surface of the paper, and the burden whose realisation was brought to completion in your time.

At a future time, it will be up to tomorrow to speak for tomorrow. It is up to myself and my leader, Winston, and our party to speak of this time. However, allow me to offer one more word before you: it was the year 1976, I was the speaker in our school, in St Stephen’s, in the Manu Kōrero speech competition. We were then made to go to Taumarunui. What a cold place that was, Taumarunui.

However, many of our parents from Ngāpuhi moved there to work in the forestry. My brother-in-law was one, Jim Reihana, and his wife, Archie’s cousin. The house right beside the marae in the middle of the town, Taumarunui, was theirs. If they are your elders, they were the ones that welcomed us, the St Stephen’s boys. That was the time at which we started to be taught the history of that place, the genealogy of that place, even though we were only 17 years old.

And so, this speech of mine is a bowing of the head in remembrance of your forebears. And so, greetings to you, indeed to all of us.]

Naturally, we stand and speak in support of the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill. As I said in our Māori language, we acknowledge the generations that have gone on, and one of them I have already done in an earlier speech in my career: read into the record the tohunga of this broad area of Ruapehu, Whanganui, Taumarunui, ā Titi Tihu, and also his fellow traveller, the descendant of the trader Barrett, known on the marae up at that area and a feature of the Kaitupeka Marae of the 1970s: Tiki Parete.

Now the task lies with those who will carry the settlement forward, and it’s a timely reminder how onerous, from time to time, that responsibility will be. It’s important that all of us take note of the recent report of the audit department that reminds each Government that these are ongoing obligations. The focus of giving effect to the Treaty will gather momentum when seen in the context of what did the Crown commit itself to do in relation to individual, specific settlements. I have no doubt in my mind, as further refinements go forward with other work pertaining to the broader Treaty debate, this is an area that will remain of high importance.

So, to the broader whānau of Archie Taiaroa, to the current leaders, to the community of Taumarunui: a place to shelter—I hope that this settlement represents a piringa, a place to shelter, in times of adversity in the future. Kia ora tātou.

The question is, That the Ngāti Hāua Claims Settlement Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Permission has been granted for a waiata, and we’d love to hear your voices, please.

Waiata—“Koia Nei”

We’ll just wait until people leave the gallery—and perhaps other people are making their way in—before we take the next call.

Tēnā tātou e te Whare. E mihi kau ana ki a koutou i tau mai i tēnei o ngā rā. Ko te āhua nei ko te rahinga o koutou i tae mai. Heoi anō e taka ana te wā.

Ko tēnei te pānuitanga tuarua. Ka mutu tērā ko te committee of the Whole House. Ka mutu tērā ko te pānuitanga tuatoru. Kāre au e hiahia kia noho roa koutou, nō reira me tīmata tātou ināianei.

Nō reira nau mai, haere mai, whakatau mai ki tō Whare.

[Greetings to the House. I greet you who have come here this particular day. It appears that most of you have arrived. Anyway, time is passing.

This is the second reading. Upon its conclusion, it will be the committee of the whole House. Once that is concluded, it will be the third reading. I do not want you to be sitting for too long, so we should begin now.

And so, welcome, welcome, welcome to your House.]

I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.

Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill be now read a second time.

Tihei mauri ora!

Te Whare e tū nei, e te Whare Miere, tēnā koe. Te papa i waho nei, tēnā koe. Te mana whenua o tēnei rohe, tēnā koe. Te hunga mate, haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te whenua o ngā tūpuna. Te hunga ora, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Ka mihi ki ngā maunga kōrero, ki ngā awa rangatira, ki te whenua taurikura o ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, e ngā kāwai rangatira, tēnā tātou katoa.

[The breath of life!

The House that stands here, the Beehive, greetings. The land outside, greetings. The mandated authority of this region, greetings. The dearly departed, farewell, farewell, farewell. Farewell to the land of the ancestors. To the living, greetings to you, to all of us.

I acknowledge the storied mountains, the noble rivers, the bountiful land of the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui, the lines of noble descent, greetings to us all.]

This bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed by Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui and the Crown in June 2012, which settles all the historical Treaty settlement claims of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui. It is a privilege to welcome everybody here this morning to Parliament to host you for the final readings of the bill, and it was a wonderful opportunity to meet earlier and to have some kai together.

Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui is an iwi based in the Tauranga region, one of three Tauranga Moana Iwi alongside Ngāti Pūkenga, and Ngāi Te Rangi. Their area of interest extends from Ngā Kuri o Wai Whare, north of Tauranga, inland of the summit of Mount Te Aroha, extending south-east along the Kaimai range to Pūwhenua and reaching south into the Mangorewa River.

Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui are hapū-centric and this is the source of great pride to them. The primary hapū affiliated with Ngāti Ranginui are Pirirākau, Ngāti Taka, Wairoa hapū, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāi Tamarāwaho, Ngāi Te Ahi, Ngāti Ruahine, and Ngāti Te Wai.

According to the 2023 census, 9,967 people, precisely, affiliate to Ngāti Ranginui, and their historical claims relate to the war and raupatu in Tauranga, Crown purchasing of the Te Puna-Katikati blocks, and the operation and impact of the native land laws and land loss. The quantum in the financial commercial redress is $38 million.

I draw members’ attention to the Order Paper and note that the third reading of the bill is scheduled to come next, when we’ll speak more about the hapū and the significance of the settlement. In this reading, I just want to focus on the relevant procedural matters enabling the bill today.

The bill had been part of an omnibus bill, along with the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill, which was introduced into Parliament in November 2015 and read a first time in April 2016. In 2016, the omnibus bill was considered by the Māori Affairs Committee, which included public submissions. The committee received and considered seven written submissions and three supplementary submissions and reported back, but Parliament did not consider it because Ngāti Ranginui asked for the progress of the bill to be paused to enable them to address overlapping claims with the Hauraki iwi.

In late 2022, Ngāti Ranginui approached the Crown about finalising their Treaty settlement as soon as possible. This proposal was discussed with the other two Tauranga Moana Iwi who are party to the omnibus bill—Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Pūkenga—and they agreed that the omnibus bill could be divided so that Ngāti Ranginui could proceed while the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill continues to be held for a second reading. The previous Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Andrew Little, agreed to propose the division of the omnibus bill to Cabinet so that Ngāti Ranginui could move to the second and third readings and on to enactment, and in September 2023, Cabinet agreed to this. I’m pleased to be able to pick up this work and to progress this bill today.

Two Amendment Papers were drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, one to divide the omnibus bill and the other to make minor technical changes required to reflect changes that have occurred since then. I want to thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office for doing that. On 21 March 2024, I moved a motion in the House to discharge the omnibus bill from the second reading and to refer it to the Māori Affairs Committee to consider Amendment Papers. The Māori Affairs committee has considered those Amendment Papers and reported the omnibus bill back to Parliament as two separate bills: Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. The committee has agreed to their recommendations and updates technical terms.

The most substantial change over time is the relationship redress in cultural and heritage sector agencies. Up to 2016, the Crown offered a taonga tūturu protocol which was solely with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. In 2017, a collective relationship agreement, Whakaaetanga Tiaki Taonga, was developed to provide a relationship with the wider range of cultural agencies, and the Amendment Paper makes these changes. I thank the committee for its consideration.

Ngāti Ranginui has worked tirelessly with my officials to bring the settlement to this point. I look forward to speaking about the particulars and the details of the bill in the third reading speech coming up soon. So, Mr Speaker, I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Kua tāngia tēnei tauākī ā-ture i raro i te mana o te Whare, ā, ka kitea ki te paetukutuku a te Pāremata. Ko te pātai kia whakaaetia te mōtini.

[This legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be seen on the Parliament website. The question is that the motion be agreed to.]

Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te Atua nāna nei ngā mea katoa. Ko te mihi tuarua ki te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Āpiti hono, tātai hono, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate. Āpiti hono, tātai hono, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.

Ko tēnei te mihi ki a koutou o te iwi, ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui. He mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa i tēnei rā whakahirahira. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huihui mai tātou katoa.

[The first acknowledgment is to God, to whom all things belong. The second acknowledgment is to the House that stands here, greetings. As the lines of descent connect us all, the deceased come together. As the lines of descent connect us all, the living also come together.

I hereby greet you of the people, the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui. A warm greeting to you all on this important day. And so, greetings and thanks to you, and all of us assembled here.]

I stand today to speak on the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, a bill that marks both an end and also a beginning. It marks the end of a long and painful chapter in a history that we need to acknowledge, and that is part of what we are doing today. Also, I would like to think, and I hope, that it’s a beginning in a new relationship between the Crown and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui—one grounded in acknowledgment, one grounded in redress, and also one grounded in a hope for a better future for both parties to this agreement.

The suffering endured by Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui was not incidental. It was not accidental. It was systemic, it was targeted, and it was unjust. This is reflected accurately in the Waitangi Tribunal’s report, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana. It lays out clearly the devastating impact of the Crown’s actions. Actions that stripped over 290,000 acres of land from hapū, undermined hapū authority, and led to generations of marginalisation. These breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, especially article 2, which guaranteed tino rangatiratanga, were profound.

The raupatu of Tauranga Moana followed the Crown’s aggressive military campaign. It included the infamous battles of Gate Pā and Te Ranga. Under the shadow of the Crown’s New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, the Crown labelled the people of Ngāti Ranginui as “rebels”, as it tried to justify the seizure of their whenua. But history shows us clearly that these were not the actions of what the Crown called “rebels”. These were the actions of a people defending their homes, their whakapapa, and their sovereignty. In this bill, the Crown formally apologises for those actions. That apology is not symbolic; it is a necessary act of recognition, and without that acknowledgment, there can be no hope of reconciliation. Without truth, there can be no justice, and this bill reaffirms both.

Labour has long upheld Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the foundation of our land, our country. Not just historically, but as a living, breathing document. It is a covenant. Te Tiriti speaks not just to the rights of Māori but also to those responsibilities of the Crown. Those responsibilities were clearly broken for Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, and this bill seeks to redress some form of justice.

In doing so, we must recognise the context from which it has emerged. Originally, part of the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, this settlement was designed to address the shared and overlapping interests of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, and Ngāti Pūkenga through collective redress. But as the process evolved, it became clear that unity did not equate to uniformity, as often is the case with the Treaty settlements process. Each iwi and hapū has its own kōrero, its own priorities, and its own pace. The decision to divide the omnibus bill, made by the Māori Affairs Committee after careful consideration, allowed the bill to proceed independently, reflecting the readiness and the mandate of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui to move forward. This was the right decision. No settlement should be delayed because of complexities elsewhere, and every hapū has the right to see its own journey to justice recognised on its own terms.

This bill has been shaped by many years of negotiation and refinement. It reflects not just the endurance of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui but also advice, advocacy, and the courage of all those who have worked to bring it to this point in time. I would like to acknowledge the negotiators, those who worked in the Office of Treaty Settlements, and all of those whānau and individuals who have supported behind the scenes, whether it be preparing kai, organising papers, or doing all of the endless hours of work to bring this claim to this point in time.

The Treaty settlements process is far from perfect. It does not even equate to a drop in the bucket to what has been taken and lost. But I genuinely hope that this process paves a way of hope, opportunity, for the next generation to take this land of ours and to make it into something that recognises who you are, what you can become, and what we can share together.

Nō reira, he mihi mahana ki a koutou i tēnei rā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[And so, warm regards to you all today. Greetings one and all.]

Kia ora, Mr Speaker, and kia ora, Ngāti Ranginui. We stand in these settlement speeches to acknowledge the harm caused to your iwi in the process of colonisation and raupatu—the injustice of the way that the Crown treated Ngāti Ranginui and the people of Tauranga Moana.

I have some of my earliest memories of travelling with my parents down from Tāmaki-makau-rau, in a little Mini, on gravel roads, through the Karangahake Gorge, to Tauranga, where my grandmother lived. She lost her first husband in the Hastings-Napier earthquake in 1931 and travelled with two young children to Tauranga to start a shop in Cameron Road—a florist and antique shop. When I was a kid, I didn’t know the meaning of this word “Cameron”. We now know the weight and gravity of the history associated with that name and the impact on your people and the people of the Waikato and the people of the Bay of Plenty.

My mother was born in 1938, in Tauranga, and she spent her childhood raised in the Bay of Plenty. On her deathbed her older brother John called me—she’d lost her ability to speak—and he said, “Recall to your mum how, when we were kids, we would take the horses down to Pāpāmoa Beach, and we would take off the saddles and the bridles and we would ride them bareback into the breaking waves, and we’d shriek with laughter. The horses loved the sea, and we loved the sea.” I recounted that story to my mother, and she smiled, and she wept—that was her memory of her childhood, her most precious memory.

We, as tangata Tiriti, me as a Pākehā, come to understand that the blessing of the life that we enjoy in these lands, and the “haere mai, haere mai, haere mai” that we were offered when our ancestors first arrived—that is what we must make account for, in understanding the atrocities and the horrors of the history that led to our presence in these lands, that led to my mother’s childhood in Tauranga. Here today, for us to account for that history and to make good that history in so far as we can—because there is no recompense, there is no compensation, there is no satisfactory acknowledgment of the impact of the raupatu and the loss of lands and the loss of the ability to exercise self-determination and the rangatiratanga. But here, today, the purpose of this bill and the settlement is to take that step towards fulfilling the ability of Ngāti Ranginui to express their rangatiratanga as mana whenua, as mana tangata, as mana moana of your part of the world.

I bumped into a gentleman that I met down in the Bay of Plenty, in Tauranga, actually, in the resistance against the Petrobras oil drilling. I was part of Greenpeace, and we stood with Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāti Porou and other iwi of the Bay of Plenty against that drilling there. Ngāti Ranginui sang a version of “In the Ghetto”, I believe, but changed all the lyrics to be about resisting the desecration of the customary waters of the peoples of the Bay of Plenty with oil drilling, and that resistance was effective. I would say that, in this reading, in this history, in this account, in this bill, we see the incredible resilience and dignity of Ngāti Ranginui, in your holding on to your rights of tino rangatiratanga in your rohe, in your lands, in your waters.

The infamous image of the kuia giving water to Booth at the Gate Pā battle. That image of the dignity of Māori in expressing aroha, even to their assaulter—this is something that we, as a nation, must recall. We must remember that it is tangata whenua Māori who have shown the generosity that embodies the core spirit of what makes Aotearoa what it is to this day.

I acknowledge the raupatu and the confiscation of the Tauranga district lands, that it had a devastating effect on the welfare and the economy of Ngāti Ranginui hapū and deprived those hapū of wāhi tapu, access to natural resources, and opportunities for development at Tauranga, and prevented Ngāti Ranginui from exercising mana and rangatiratanga over land and resources within the Tauranga Moana—a scorched-earth policy. Shameful—a shameful history. We thank you, Ngāti Ranginui, for being here today, because you go some way to restoring the honour of the Crown by your presence, so thank you for that.

As tangata Tiriti, we must account for this history, we must understand it, we must seek to step into it, and we must open our hearts to the generosity of the likes of Ngāti Ranginui in seeking reconciliation. But that must take serious account of the impact of colonisation. I echo the feelings of my colleague from the Labour Party that these settlements are never sufficient. They are, in a sense, less than a 1 percent offering of what is lost, and we, as Te Pāti Kākāriki, do not accept the principle of a full and final settlement. Whilst this settlement is that—because that is the current legislative structure, and we will be supporting this bill—we do not accept the principle as correct. The relationship between tangata Tiriti and tangata whenua is a living and eternal relationship. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a living agreement. It is a binding contract which is the founding of the relationship with tangata whenua Māori and all those who came since, whether we are Pākehā or tauiwi. So the idea that we would settle the relationship makes no sense—it has no logic to it.

Hoki whenua mai [Land return] is a deeply held principle by Te Pāti Kākāriki. If we recognise that in the essence, the sordid land grab, in the words of Cameron himself—the sordid land grab—that was the raupatu in the Bay of Plenty and the Waikato and Taranaki, well, the obvious amends is to give back the land—return the land—and I’m glad to see that this bill goes some way to returning some of that land. But we must recognise and we must be welcome to step into the truth, that for us to truly make amends for colonisation and the impact of it, we must be prepared to return more land and allow tino rangatiratanga, in the terms of tangata whenua Māori—in their terms—to be expressed, as was the contract, as was the agreement that we, my ancestors, signed up to in 1840.

We today commend this bill to the House. We thank you, Ngāti Ranginui, for being here, and we acknowledge your dignity and your mana. Kia ora koutou katoa.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Te Wai, Pirirākau, Ngāti Taka, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Pango, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāi Tamarāwaho, Ngāi Te Ahi, Ngāti Ruahine, and all your tīpuna and all your ancestors that you represent here today and your descendants to come.

I have stood and spoken in this House on behalf of the ACT Party on a few Treaty settlement bills. In the 18 months since I’ve been elected, I’ve been privileged to speak on the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Act—close to home—and, recently, the Te Ture mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara 2025/Ō-Rākau Remembrance Act 2025, the history of which touches deeply in some of the history outlined in the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.

This is, for me, an emotional moment to speak on such a bill. I am a child of Pāpāmoa. I come from the Bay of Plenty; this is where I am from. I read about the history, and it’s history that I know quite well—as much as one who didn’t descend from it and live part of it can hope to know. These acknowledgments are long overdue. When I was a young fulla—I actually said something similar in the Ō-Rākau Act—I probably spent too much time wagging school, but I was doing some things. At one point, I drove over to the site of the Battle of Ōrākau by myself when I should have been at school, because I was interested in the history. But that history stemmed from a story that I have shared with some people, some who are even in this gallery today, where I went about trying to understand the history of my own area because I didn’t feel like I was learning it properly. I remember one day I left school—probably during English class—and got my way over to Pyes Pā and went looking for a battle site that I’d read about but didn’t know anything about and wasn’t being taught about.

Actually, first I should say, growing up, my generation started learning about Gate Pā, better known as Pukehinahina. We started learning about that, and it was talked about the way the toa and the wāhine treated with their enemy—there was a declaration on the way that Māori toa were going to treat with their enemies. I found the great line “If thy enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink.” to exemplify what I’m trying to talk about here.

Pukehinahina was a known battle. It was sat there as a monument with an Anglican church on it, and we all knew it was there, but we didn’t know about Te Ranga. I went looking that day for the battle site. I had old maps that I’d found—God bless the internet for giving information out. I was trying to track the topography of the land and the rivers and the road, trying to find this place. So imagine a 15-year-old—myself—bashing through a bramble bush on the side of the road and finding this concrete plinth with old writing on it that could barely be understood. You know, it was not a well-kept mark of the site. But, for me, I could start to see the way things happened there, and it was deeply emotional for me sitting there—I mean, remember, I was 15 years old; this was quite a shocking thing to try and discover for oneself.

I’m glad and proud that today that site has been taken care of, acknowledged, and shown to the people of Tauranga and the people that travelled that road between Rotorua and Tauranga. But I recognise also the deep pain of the battle of Te Ranga, and the way that pain has carried on through the generations probably reflects why it was not in the state that it is now. It is a good thing that it is now being looked after, but I can completely empathise with those who would rather have just looked away and not thought about that particular site.

The raupatu and confiscations are something that Tauranga was—you know, reading Victory at Gate Pā?, Buddy Mikaere’s book, you can see the constraints on the descendants. You know, moving into areas like Judea, in Tauranga—“Ju-daya”, I suppose, if anyone else is reading it—how that was marginal land, and how they no longer had access to places like Kōpūrererua and the fertile places around to harvest kai and grow. It was not a great—“not great” is an understatement; it was a horrible, horrible situation for a century, for decades and decades. But today, this House starts to recognise, by going through the motions of passing into law, the deed of settlement. That has, as we’ve heard, been a long time coming back from the splitting of the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill.

Also, I note that in some of the settlement, there is land to be returned. A lot of people outside of the Bay of Plenty know about Mount Maunganui—Mauao—know about the hill that sort of sits there and is the symbol of our area and a sacred hill to Ngāti Ranginui. There’s also hills like Pūwhenua and Ōtānewainuku getting returned in this settlement in a way—still with access to the public, but returning.

Talking to my wife this morning, I asked, “What are you doing today, darling?” She said, “I’m going to go and get the bloody stoat that I’ve heard is running around in Ōtānewainuku right now.” So as I stand here speaking about the settlement and how Ōtānewainuku is being returned, my wife is currently out there trying to eradicate pests on that very piece of whenua, and I felt that was quite a poetic situation to find myself, and ourselves, in.

My children are being raised in the area. They’re learning about where all the reefs are. They learn where the hills are and the rivers. I don’t shy back from telling them about the history of Tauranga, but I also tell them that this is their place. This is where they’re from. This is where they’ll always be able to come back to. We know the rivers, as much as I can discover them and my family can discover them. We know the waters, the hills, and the bush as much as we can. It probably was a bit too much as a young fulla trying to get out and go places that perhaps weren’t always public access, but I wanted to experience everything that our beautiful rohe, your beautiful rohe, has to show.

Tauranga was supposed to be a safe harbour. It was discovered by Tamatea-arikinui and the waka Tākitimu, eventually opening up for your people to settle. Te Awanui, Tauranga Harbour, was supposed to be—and it is—a safe harbour. Te Awanui was supposed to be a safe harbour and it was not. The Crown ships came in, opened up another front of the Waikato Wars, and that’s where this pain starts. Today, we’re not finishing the pain but we’re taking another step on that path of sorting it out. I thank you very much for listening to me ramble on. Ngā mihi. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora. Tēnā koutou katoa. Forty-five years ago, in a meeting of the National Party caucus, a then young MP with a Māori background, one of only four who had won a European seat since 1854, raised the contrast of Arthur Allan Thomas getting a $1 million while the Māori in Tauranga were being offered $200,000. There are some people here who remember that.

The reality is that we were the beneficiaries of the representation from the Tauranga Māori of a man called “Ed” Morgan, a brilliant legal scholar from Oxford University who spent four years in Changi prison and yet went down to Tauranga to practise law and acted for the Māori at the time. He came before the then select committee and he said this to the members of Parliament representing this issue, in which a pittance was being paid to the people of Tauranga. He said to the members of Parliament: “You sit here in the seat of princes. May you treat this matter in a princely fashion.”

Well, that did not happen. It’s the last thing that happened. But times move on and, four years later, someone who had a connection because some of his relations are buried at Matakana Island became, in the snap election, the MP for Tauranga.

Who was that?

And happily said, in all those years, “I’m entirely happy to be the MP for Tauranga”, as all sorts of aspersions were being flung at us. So this is a great day, delayed though it may be, but one should remember the facts of the matter and how sometimes one is able to help. Do you remember: it’s 1990—one—and we have a situation where the kiwifruit ownership by Māori in Tauranga is over 10 percent of nationwide and it’s indebted to the tune of $92 million, all occasioned by Treasury and the Ministry of Māori Affairs making the decision and not the local Māori themselves. Then, the MP for Tauranga, as you will recall, started an action against the Minister of Finance, saying, “You have failed to exercise a duty of care, and we’re going to take you to court.” Well, they caved in and that $92 million was written off. Sometimes things do work out.

Can I say to the people of Tauranga that it’s great to see you here today and, so late in the piece nevertheless, in a settlement that is much more acceptable. I didn’t come down to speak today until I was watching on television and I saw you all here, and I thought I’d better get down and put this story right. The last thing is that you are in the area where one of the most significant ports coming into the future still remains to be Tauranga. Could I just say, from this far away still, don’t let that be sold to someone else. Make sure it remains in local control. It will be far more valuable in the years to come if people have the foresight to see the shape of transport and shipping in the future, going forward. It will be seriously, seriously important, and at a critical time, as I’m watching from this far away, I see that some want to sell it. Make sure, whether you’re European or Māori in Tauranga, that that doesn’t happen.

Kia ora tātou. Thank you very much.

Tau ake au ki te tau nei ko Rua-tipua ko Rua-tawhito

Ngarue i runga, ngarue i raro

Ngarue i Te Iho a Tāne, Te Iho a Tāne ko taku waka ko Takitimu.

Rere mai te maramara, ko Ihinui, ko Ihiroa, ko Te Āwhiorangi

E ko wai kei runga nei, e tū pā-whaiake

E ko au ko Uenuku, e tū pā-whaiake.

E Rata, e Rata! He aha tāu e hanga, e tū pā-whaiake

Inumia te kawa—tākina te kawa!

Te kawa tūānihinihi te kawa

Te kawa tūārangaranga te kawa

Te kawa o wai? Te kawa o Takitimu

Inumia te waka o Tīrari, inumia te waka o Tīrara

Inumia te waka o Rongokako, inumia te waka o Tamatea-ariki-nui

Turuki turuki, paneke paneke

Turuki turuki, paneke paneke

Haramai te toki, haumi e, hui e, tāiki e.

[I recite the recitation, it is Rua-the-powerful, Rua-the-ancient

Reverberation above, reverberation below

Reverberation upon the essence of Tāne, the essence of Tāne, my ancestral canoe is Takitimu

The woodchips fly, it is Ihinui, Ihiroa and Te Āwhiorangi

Who is this above me, launch the canoe

It is I, it is Uenuku, launch the canoe

Rātā, Rātā! What have you constructed, launch the canoe

Internalise the ceremony—recite the ceremony!

The ceremony is one of breadth

The ceremony is one of turbulence

Whose ceremony is it? It is the ceremony of Takitimu

Internalise the canoe of Tīrari, internalise the canoe of Tirara

Internalise the vessel of Rongokako, internalise the vessel of Tamatea-ariki-nui

Advance, advance, progress, progress

Advance, advance, progress, progress

The adze comes forth

It coalesces, it assembles, it is bound.]

Nō reira kei ngā hekenga o Tamatea-ariki-nui, heke rawa mai ki a Rongokako, ki a Tamatea-pōkai-whenua. Rere iho nei ko Ranginui tōmua, ko Kahungunu tōmuri. Haere mai, haere mai, haere mai.

Whakatau mai ki roto ki tēnei Whare. Kawea mai ngā nawe o rātou mā hei whakatutuki i roto i tēnei rangi. A rau mahara, a rau manako, ngā hiahia o te hunga kua ngaro nei i a tātou. Hoki nei ōku mahara ki tērā pāpā o koutou, he pāpā nō mātou, ki a Te Huikākahu mōna i tohe roa kia toitū te rangatiratanga o Ranginui, o Tauranga Moana ki runga ki te mata o te whenua.

Kei ngā mātua tīpuna i te pō, e ara. E ara, hoki wairua mai i roto i tēnei wā. E whai nei ngā mokopuna i te ara i parangia e rātou i roto i te wā i a rātou, kīhai rātou i eke ki te toi ora kia tae ki tēnei wā. Hoki wairua mai, hoki wairua mai, hoki wairua mai.

Kawea mai tō rātou ihi ki roto ki tēnei rā kia āta whakarongo ki ngā kōrero a tēnā, a tēnā, a tēnā i roto i tēnei Whare. Kāre au mō te tōwai i ngā mahi kua oti kē i a koutou te whakatutuki i roto i ngā rau mahara, i ngā tau maha. Tēnā koutou i ā koutou mahi.

He mahi ka haere ao te pō, pō te ao, whakatipuranga atu, whakatipuranga mai ka ea te kōrero, “hinga atu he tētēkura”; kua tae mai te tētēkura o tēnei rā. Haere mai rā.

Haere mai rā me te tini tūmanako mō te āpōpō. Kawea mai ō mokopuna i roto i tēnei rā kia titia te whatumanawa, te ngākau, te pātukitanga o te whakatipuranga ka heke mai, ka heke mai, ka heke mai.

Me tō tātou mōhio, tēnei tohe a te iwi Māori, e kore e oti i te rā nei. Ahakoa tērā taha o tēnei kōrero, e mea nei au ki a tātou i roto i tēnei rā, tauāraia te pō, tītoko ko te ao mārama. Kia whitikina ā tātou tamariki, ā tātou mokopuna ki ngā hihi o Tama-nui-te-rā, kia kaua rā e noho nei ko tātou i roto i te kupenga a te Kāwanatanga, engari kia ū tātou ki roto ki te kupenga o ngā mahi a ngā mātua tīpuna, tatū iho ki a koutou o Tauranga Moana i roto i tēnei rangi.

E hika mā, kia tika te whakahua o ō koutou ingoa i roto i tēnei rā. Māku te rārangi. Nō reira kei ngā hapū katoa o te rōpū whakamana i ngā hapū o Ranginui, arā ki a Pirirākau, ki a Ngāti Taka, ki a Wairoa hapū arā Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Rangi, koutou tahi me Ngāti Pango, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāi Tamarāwaho, Ngāi Te Ahi, Ngāti Ruahine, koutou tahi, tātou me kī, me Ngāti Te Wai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā rā koutou katoa.

Kotahi taku kōrero ki te Whare ki te reo Pākehā.

[And so to the descendants of Tamatea-ariki-nui, descending to Rongokako, and to Tamatea-pōkai-whenua. Flowing on to Ranginui first and Kahungunu later. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Welcome into this House. Bring with you the grievances of those who have passed on to be resolved today. The many memories, the many hopes, the desires of those who have been lost to us. My memories return to that patriarch of yours, a patriarch of ours also, to Te Huikākahu, who fought for so long so that the sovereignty of Ranginui and Tauranga Moana would remain on the face of the earth.

To the forebears and ancestors in the darkness, arise. Arise and return to us in spirit at this time. The grandchildren are following the path that was blazed by them during their time, they did not reach the pinnacle of health in order to be here at this time. Return, return, return to us in spirit.

Bring with you their enduring power today to carefully listen to the comments of each of us in this House. I will not repeat the actions that you have already completed through the many memories and many years. I congratulate you on your work.

It is a job that continues by night and by day, and with each successive generation the saying is embodied, “as a leader passes”; the leadership of today has arrived. Welcome.

Welcome to you and your many hopes for the future. Bring with you your grandchildren today so that it may be embedded in the bosom, the heart, the heartbeat of the generations to come.

And we are aware that this struggle of the Māori people will not end today. Despite the opposing side of this discussion, I say to us today cross the threshold of darkness, the world of light rises. That our children and our grandchildren may be illuminated by the rays of Tama-nui-te-rā, so that we do not remain within the net of the Government, but we instead engage in the net of the actions of the forebears and ancestors, and including you of Tauranga Moana today.

My friends, let your names be pronounced accurately today. Allow me to list them. Therefore to all the hapū of the mandated authority of the hapū of Ranginui, that is to Pirirākau, to Ngāti Taka, to the Wairoa hapū of Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Rangi, you along with Ngāti Pango, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāi Tamarāwaho, Ngāi Te Ahi, Ngāti Ruahine, all of you, I should say all of us, with Ngāti Te Wai. My thanks, congratulations, and greetings to all of you.

I have one comment to make to this House in English.]

To the Government: this apology is in your name. I hope that from today, this afternoon, and every day into the future, you treat Ranginui with the respect, the sanctity, the honour, and the mana that is in this apology. E te Pīka, tēnā koe.

E te Māngai o te Whare, nei rā te mihi ki a koe.

Ki te hunga mate, koutou ngā tūpuna o Ngāti Ranginui kua rere atu ki tua o te ārai, koutou i patua ai e te Karauna i te pakanga o Pukehinahina me te pakanga o Te Ranga, moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā.

Ki a koutou, ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui kua tae mai i tēnei rā, kei te rere ngā mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa. Kua roa te haere engari kia mataara, kei te tata tonu te whakatau, kei te tata tonu te iti Kahurangi.

[Mr Speaker, I acknowledge you.

To the dearly departed, the ancestors of Ngāti Ranginui who have gone beyond the veil, you who were killed by the Crown in the battle of Gate Pā and the battle of Te Ranga, rest in peace.

To you, the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui who have arrived here today, warm regards flow to all of you. It has been a long journey but remain alert, settlement is close, the valued treasure is close.]

I wish to acknowledge the descendants of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, those who have made the long journey today to be here, whether in body or in spirit. I wish to acknowledge those who did not make it, those who began this long journey many, many years ago, and who now watch from above as stars in the great cloak of Ranginui. They have returned to the final resting place of our ancestors but their legacy and their spirit lives on.

It is my great pleasure as always to rise in support of a bill such as this. Of course, the passing of legislation is a crucial step in the process of redress, as is the issuing of a formal apology by the Crown, an accurate historical record, a recognition of the Crown’s failings and violence, a return of lands, and a payment of compensation, but it could never truly be enough to compensate for the immense loss and pain suffered at the behest of the Crown.

As long as the web of colonialism exists in Aotearoa and around the world there is little justice for indigenous peoples. This means there is still work to be done to transform our society into one which recognises the unique place and experience of tangata whenua in Aotearoa as the original custodians and descendants of this land.

This day marks a milestone in that journey for the Crown and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui. But we still have so far to go. Nā reira, e tika ana te kōrero i ō tātou tūpuna “Titiro whakamuri, kōkiri whakamua”.

[Therefore, the saying of our ancestors is true “Look back, go forwards”.]

I commend this bill to the House.

Tihei mauri ora!

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira, mā tēnā koutou katoa. Te Whare e tū nei tēnā koe. Te papa e takoto nei tēnā koe. Kei ngā mate haere, haere, haere. Nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata.

Ko Dan Bidios tōku ingoa. Ko Tainui te waka, ko Waikato te awa, ko Kakepuku te māunga, ko Ngāti Maniapoto te iwi. Ko Ngāti Huia te hapū. Ko Te Kauwae te marae. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[’Tis the breath of life!

To the esteemed, the many voices, the people, and the distinguished leaders, greetings to you all. The House standing, greetings to you. The ground we are upon, salutations to you. To our departed, farewell, farewell, farewell. Welcome here to the Parliament.

My name is Dan Bidois. Tainui is my canoe, Waikato is the river, Kakepuku the mountain and Māniapoto is the nation. Ngāti Huia is the subtribe. Te Kauwae is the marae. Thank you all.]

It’s a pleasure to speak in what is the second reading of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. I wish to acknowledge the journey that Ngāti Ranginui has been on for 161 years to get acknowledgment from the Crown, from this House, for the wrongs that have been done and to redress for those wrongs, and, most importantly, to pave way for the future. It is a great privilege to speak in this debate.

I don’t have a direct connections to the Tauranga, Bay of Plenty area, but my tūpuna do. Often I get asked if I’m related to the Bidoises of Te Puna, and I have to say, “No, unfortunately, I’m not.” I am actually related to the Bidoises in Te Puna, but the Bidoises that came from France had 14 children, so we all go back to that strand of one of those 14 children.

It is a fantastic part of New Zealand, a fantastic part of Aotearoa, and a great privilege to have played a small part in this bill in my role when I was on the Māori Affairs Committee. This bill has been backwards and forwards some times since it was originally introduced in 2012. One of the first steps that the Māori Affairs Committee did was to divide this bill from the Tauranga Moana collective redress bill. It is great to see the willingness of the iwi to move forward. I certainly look forward to hearing the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill in its final reading, as well.

This is an important day. It is a good day for the hapū and the iwi of Ngāti Ranginui. I will be speaking again in the third reading. So I will save a more fulsome debate around the purpose of the bill and our aspirations and our willingness to engage for the third reading. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. E papaki kau ana ngā tai. He tai wiwi, he tai wawa he tai ki uta he tai ki waho. Ko tēnei te tai o te tangata e tau nei ki konei. Aku nui, aku rahi tēnā koutou katoa.

[The coast is clapping. They ascend and descend to the shores and out to the ocean. Here are the waves of people whom have arrived here. Dear esteemed, dear noble people, greetings to you all.]

I’ve often sat here in Treaty settlement bills and heard the readings and I’ve loved the experience, and I’ve often thought, what would it be like—what would it be like to see my friends in the gallery? I look up there and I can see so many of you up there today, and I’m getting emotional already and I’m still going to get through a third reading speech yet. But it is just so wonderful to see you here and to be part of the redress but also the celebrations and the moving forward at the same time, and I am so grateful that I have got the opportunity to talk with you, to talk around what’s happening in this process, but also to be part of your journey as well.

Now, I want to talk about my connections to Ngāti Ranginui, and I’ll start with where you came from. Ngāti Ranginui descended from Tamatea Arikinui, captain of the Tākitimu Waka, and when the Tākitimu Waka arrived at Tauranga, Tamatea Arikinui conducted rituals and ceremonies on Mauao to open the whenua for occupation. One such ritual which I have a deep connection with was the establishment of the two altars of Ahurewa. These were developed to establish centres of wānanga of learning. These were Rehutai on Mauao, and Hikutai on Tutara wānanga, and it’s the Tutara wānanga where my connection goes to, and I am for ever grateful that you wrap your arms around me in my journey when I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to have an impact on the lives of your mokopuna and your tamariki and your rangatahi.

I’m actually going to extend that a little bit: my husband Dave and I are forever grateful. I acknowledge that Dave is now at the Merivale Community Centre, and I’m doing a shout-out to them to get them on Hansard but also because they’ve got a watch party going on there today because they are so excited, and many of them couldn’t come down, but they are so excited to see this reading coming through.

The second reading of a bill is often around the process; the “what has happened to date?” This has been a long process, and settlement bills are a long process, but this one more so in many cases because there was the omnibus. There was the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress, and now we’re talking to the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, so that’s been part of that long journey as well. No journey and no redress is ever going to make up for the hurt and the long history of hurt that has been experienced, but, as I know, Ngāti Ranginui are resilient and are strong and fight their corner—gosh, do I know that really, really well—and that is why it’s just such an honour to be here speaking in the House today.

As many of the speakers have said here so far, we have the third reading coming up, and the third reading is where we will talk a lot more about some of the people in the journey along the way and some of the hurt that has happened in that journey along the way. But this, as I said, is a long history that you have had in the Tauranga Moana region, and that long history is being recognised here today. No longer are people now saying Tauranga is quite a new city; we are actually recognising you as the mana whenua, alongside the other two iwi of Tauranga Moana. You are being recognised here today, and we will talk further about that in the third reading.

I look forward to sharing that journey, and I look forward to hearing more of that. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

I rise today to speak in support of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill during its second reading. As the member of Parliament for the Bay of Plenty, I have the privilege of representing a region rich in history, culture, and significance to many iwi, including Ngāti Ranginui.

This settlement is not just words on paper or numbers on a ledger. It represents generations of patience, perseverance, and the pursuit of justice. The journey to this moment has been long and challenging. The original omnibus bill, the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, was introduced in November 2015, nearly a decade ago—I had only just finished school at that time. It was considered by a select committee in 2017 and had been awaiting its second reading in the House since then. In 2022 Ngāti Ranginui approached the Crown about finalising their Treaty settlement as soon as possible. I’m pleased to note that the other iwi who are part of the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective, Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Pūkenga, agreed to the bill being divided so that Ngāti Ranginui legislation could proceed independently.

On 21 March last year, the House agreed that the omnibus bill be referred to the Māori Affairs Committee for consideration of two Amendment Papers, and after careful consideration the committee divided the bill on 3 April, allowing this Ngāti Ranginui settlement to progress while issues with the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective continue to be resolved. This approach speaks to the balance we must strike in these matters, respecting the unity and shared interests of iwi while also acknowledging the autonomy and unique circumstances of each group. I commend the Ngāti Ranginui Settlement Trust and their negotiating team for their enduring commitment through what has been a lengthy process.

Today, as we debate this bill, we must reflect on the profound significance of what we are addressing. This settlement acknowledges the deep mamae, the pain and suffering, carried by Ngāti Ranginui since the raupatu of 1864. The Crown’s actions during this period, the unjust war, forced land takings, and scorched earth campaign undermined the mana and connection to whenua of these hapū. According to the 2023 census, 14,928 affiliate to Ngāti Ranginui, and 57 percent of them are under the age of 30—sorry to my friends Tamati Tata and Turi Ngatai, who are in the public gallery and who fall just outside of that age range.

Ngāti Ranginui’s historical Treaty of Waitangi claims relate specifically to war in Tauranga, Crown purchasing of certain land, the operation and effects of native land laws, Māori land legislation, and public works taking in the 20th century. These are not distant historical footnotes but lived realities that continue to shape communities in our electorate today. I acknowledge the hapū, who have maintained their tikanga despite generations of alienation and marginalisation in their own rohe. Your resilience is remarkable, and this settlement represents not just recognition of past wrongs but a foundation for future prosperity.

When I walk through the Bay of Plenty, I see the legacy of these historical injustices, but I also see the strength and determination of tangata whenua, who have never surrendered their connection to place and identity. This settlement, while it cannot undo the past, provides meaningful acknowledgement and redress. The bill before us includes significant elements: financial and commercial redress of $38 million, which will provide economic opportunities for current and future generations; the return of five sites of cultural significance; two properties of cultural significance vested jointly with other iwi; and relationship redress with key Crown agencies. The settlement also includes the vesting of wāhi tapu and a right of first refusal over certain Crown lands.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking with kaumātua and rangitahi from Ngāti Ranginui. What strikes me most is how they speak of this settlement not primarily in terms of financial compensation but as a platform for cultural revitalisation, a language-land connection identity and tino rangatiratanga.

I had so much I wanted to say. I have so many friends sitting in the gallery today who have rightly come to see not just the second reading but the third reading and this bill becoming law. I support this bill, not just as one of the Bay of Plenty MPs but as someone who believes deeply in the importance of addressing historical injustices. The passage of this legislation will mark a significant milestone for Ngāti Ranginui, for the Bay of Plenty region, for our nation. It demonstrates our commitment to honouring the Treaty of Waitangi and building genuine partnerships based on mutual respect and understanding. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Rapua te huarahi whānui hei ara whakapiri i ngā iwi e rua i runga i te whakaaro kotahi. Tihei mauri ora! Kei aku nui, kei aku rahi. Ngā tāngata o te motu. Takitumu waka, ngā uri o Tamatearikinui, Ngāti Ranginui, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i tēnei rā. Tēnei te mihi mai i ōku iwi Ngāti Whitikaupeka ki a koutou i tēnei rā, he rā whakahirahira mō koutou katoa. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou, mauriora ki a tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. Pursue the pathway that brings us two people together under the one thought. Greetings all. Dear esteemed, dear noblemen. The people of the land. Takitumu canoe, and the descendants of Tamatearikinui, Ngāti Ranginui, this is my greetings to you today. I acknowledge you on behalf of my people of Ngāti Whitikaupeka. This is a big day for you all. And so, thank you, thank you thank you, good health to us all.]

Whānau mā, can I acknowledge each and every one of you in the gallery today: those that can be with us and, of course, those that cannot be with us today. I want to acknowledge the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill in the second reading here in te Whare Pāremata before us all today.

At the moment, it’s a bittersweet moment as we look back to the past and we look at where we are now. We also acknowledge the difficult and tumultuous times of the last 18 months. Today, we make an apology. We make an apology on behalf of the Crown to yourself, Ngāti Ranginui, but it doesn’t stop here. The values, the kōrero, that we all put into this House today, stand true. Those values are a way forward for all of us to acknowledge, to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the partnership and the commitment that our whānau, Māori, and Pākehā alike signed up to back in 1840 in a kaupapa that we must honour now.

I’ve seen today, and as I look across the House, whānau, friends, ngā hononga katoa [all the relationships]. Whāea Ngāreta e mihi ana ki a koe, ki tō whānau hoki. Matua Turi tēnā koe i muri rā.

[Whāea Ngāreta, I acknowledge you and your family. Matua Turi, greetings to you at the back there.]

But, particularly, I think of many of my friends and hononga back to Waipapa Taumata Rau and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. My friend Rohario Murray messaged me this morning because she’s stuck at the airport. She sent me some words that I want to put on record today for Hansard, because the small thing that we can do as members of Parliament is to represent those that we love, those that we have connection with in this House on their special day.

She said, “These words acknowledge that the Crown unreservedly apologises for not having honoured its obligations to the Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and regrets its failure to acknowledge the mana and rangatiratanga of Ngāti Ranginui for many generations. The Crown deeply regrets that, over time, its actions severed Ngāti Ranginui hapū from their traditional lands, deprived them of opportunities for development, caused significant harm to the social and economic development of Ngāti Ranginui, undermined the wellbeing of the iwi and its hapū, damaged the autonomy and ability to exercise customary rights and responsibilities, and marginalised them within their own rohe.” Rohario goes on to say, “E te whānau, the work doesn’t end today, but the vision carries on, brighter, bolder, and grounded in whakapapa.”

Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa Ngāti Ranginui i tēnei rā. He kaupapa nunui he kaupapa roroa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, mauriora ki a tātou katoa.

[This is my salutations to you all Ngāti Ranginui. This is a big day and a long day for you. thank you, and good health to us all.]

Ki ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, nau mai haere mai ki tēnei Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[To the people of Ngāti Ranginui, welcome to the Parliament. Thank you, thank you, thank you all.]

I want to acknowledge everyone here in the gallery. It was great to be here with you this morning for the mihi whakatau and some kai. I also want to acknowledge everyone who can’t be here: elders, tīpuna passed, and also everyone back home in Tauranga Moana. Kia ora to all of you on this historic day. It’s so good to have you here to be able to address the past wrongs that were done to your hapū and your iwi: the historic breaches of Te Tiriti, the confiscation of land, the loss of cultural sites, the loss of mana, the marginalisation—this is a step towards addressing all of that.

It is also an opportunity for all of you to move forward. We heard this morning about wanting to look forward. Acknowledging the past, yes, but also taking the opportunity of the future to build economic opportunities for you and your whānau. This is the launching pad for that, so I want to acknowledge that.

I want to also say that as the MP for Tauranga, I will work to engage as constructively as I can, not only with Ngāti Ranginui but with the other two iwi in Tauranga Moana, so I can filter back what you need from us and, also, to know that I am always there for you.

Look, there is so much more I want to say, and I will have that opportunity in the third reading. We do need to get this done because I know you will want this third reading to get done by 1 p.m. today, so I will leave it there. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Kāti kia whakamārama atu ki wōku rahi, ki ōku tini whanaunga o Ngāti Ranginui hei te pānuitanga tuatoru ka whakaranea ake ahau i waku mihi me waku kōrero mō tēnei kaupapa te pire kei mua i a tātou. Me te mea anō hoki kia ea te amuamu a tōku matua a Willie Jackson he aha te take kāore kei a ia tētahi kāmeta kia kite atu ki runga i wā tātou hoa mahi ki roto i te Whare?

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. And so allow me to explain to my relations of Ngāti Ranginui that on the third reading I will elaborate my acknowledgments and my speech pertaining to this bill before us. And also to satisfy the arguments made by my uncle Willie Jackson. Why does he not have a camera to see our work colleagues above in this House?]

However, I do want to take a very quick opportunity in the second reading—as I scan the House, there are four members who were here at the reading of the bill that was done about 10 years ago with respect to the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective, and here we are with Ngāti Ranginui.

What I observed this morning with Ngāti Hāua—who were the first bill this morning—was something I hadn’t seen before in my 12 years in the House. While I accept that the Business Committee is the way to look towards how we might finesse this tikanga of ours as we’ve all accepted with respect to Treaty settlements, I do want to put it on the record and on floor of the House for consideration of parties as we get to the Business Committee that what we normally do is five-minute calls for the first reading, 10-minute calls for the second reading, and 10-minute calls for the third reading.

I wonder if perhaps there is scope and if there’s a will in the House to flip the second and first reading calls as the first reading is an important one where our tribes and our whānau who come here to start of the process of the bill—I think that deserves the time of a 10-minute call for members across the House while the negotiations after the select committee continue with officials, the Minister, and of course the tribe. By the time we get to the second reading—and I support this bill—what’s here in the Amendment Paper and bills of this nature are already complete. What we do here are just some technical minor changes if that’s all that’s required. Then we go into 10-minute calls for the third reading.

I leave that thought on the floor of Parliament whereby if we could for this particular process in the future flip the second reading time frame for the first readings, and the first reading time frame into the second reading, so that we can honour the mahi that we do here today and the work that so many have done to make sure that this particular kaupapa—and many other kaupapa like it—progress into the future.

Nō reira e te Māngai o te Whare ka waiho ēnei kōrero ki te pātū o tō tātou Whare. He pito kōrero ka whakahokia.

[Therefore, Mr Speaker, I’ll conclude my speech here within the walls of our House. I stand down.]

It really is a privilege to stand up and make my contribution to the beautiful kōrero that’s taking place this morning. We’re in the second reading of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, and I’m absolutely privileged—and I thank the House for this privilege, and the people of Takanini that put me here—that I’m the deputy chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. In front of me is the chair, my good friend David MacLeod, and I’ve got Dan Bidois, my good friend who helped shepherd this bill as we went through the changes.

We’ve heard some very profound and detailed accounts of what’s involved in this settlement bill, so if you don’t mind, as the last speaker on the second reading, what I would like to do is maybe just a few acknowledgments. I’d like to acknowledge the attendance of the Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy, our former Governor-General. Thank you for being here, and thank you for your tautoko for this important mahi. I’d like to also acknowledge our kuia and our kaumātua across the House in the gallery. Thank you for making the journey here, and thank you for teaching the generations that come after you how important this type of kaupapa is as well, and to never give up.

I’d like to also acknowledge the presence of my good friend Matt Winiata, the chair of the Manurewa Local Board—and I’m so pleased to see your father here. Mr Ranginui David Winiata, thank you for raising your son to be the person he is. Matt was on the news a few months ago for shedding tears when he gave a kōrero to the Auckland mayor saying, “Manurewa has a lot of vulnerable communities. Please, please make sure that pūtea”—money—“comes to Manurewa.” So thank you for being here today. Thank you for the love that you give South Auckland communities, Matthew.

We’ll go towards a third reading now. I commend this bill to the House.

The Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.

Members, the House is in committee on Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. The bill was divided from the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. Parts 4 to 6 and Schedules 4 to 6 of that bill were divided into Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. We therefore begin with the debate on Part 4. Part 4 is the debate on clauses 76 to 92, “Preliminary matters and settlement of historical claims”. The question is that Part 4 stand part.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 4 set out on Amendment Paper 288 be agreed to.

Members, we come now to Part 5. This is the debate on clauses 93 to 152, “Cultural redress”, and Schedules 4 and 5. The question is that Part 5 stand part.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 5 set out on Amendment Paper 288 be agreed to.

Members, we come now to Part 6, the debate on clauses 153 to 197, “Commercial redress”, and Schedule 6. The question is that Part 6 stand part.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 6 set out on Amendment Paper 288 be agreed to.

Schedule 4: the question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 4 set out on Amendment Paper 288 be agreed to.

The question is that Schedule 5 stand part.

The question is that Schedule 6 stand part.

Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2, on the title and commencement. The question is that clause 1 stand part.

The question is that clause 2 stand part.

Mr Speaker, the committee has considered Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

I move, That the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill be now read a third time.

E rere tonu atu ngā mihi kua mihia ki ngā uri o ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui. Tēnā koutou. E ngā kāwai rangatira, tēnā tātou katoa.

[I’d like to add to the acknowledgments made to the people of Ngāti Ranginui. Greetings to you, dear esteemed leaders, greetings to you.]

I had the privilege of moving the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill earlier today, and it’s now my honour to see this bill reach its third reading; a significant occasion, as it draws to a close the individual settlement journey for Ngāti Ranginui, which has been a long time coming. In fact, it was all the way back in 2012, when the late iwi leader Colin Bidois said, “We are coming out of a long tunnel, the job had been done and now was the time to pass the baton to the next generation.” It’s an honour to be here to carry that baton to the finish line on behalf of this Parliament and to mark this particular occasion.

I begin by acknowledging Ngāti Ranginui, who have joined us in the House, many who have travelled long distances to witness this occasion. I’d like to welcome those who are tuning in and watching or listening on live stream or on the radio today. I want to thank Stan for giving me this scarf that came from Maharaia Winiata’s visit to Edinburgh, and I’m wearing it with pride today to acknowledge this occasion. I pay tribute to the tūpuna and kaumātua who took the first steps to seek justice for Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, who had a clear vision of what they wanted to see for their people. I deeply regret that many are no longer with us to witness this momentous occasion, where the vision of achieving redress for the iwi has become reality. I spoke this morning about the long history, and going back, way back, to the 1860s, when appeals were made to rectify things, decade after decade, and today, finally, we have the acknowledgment.

I acknowledge the representatives of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Settlement Trust, the post-settlement governance entity that will receive the settlement’s assets on behalf of Ngāti Ranginui, and will represent the iwi in its ongoing relationship with the Crown. I thank the settlement trust and the negotiating team for their enduring efforts; I particularly want to acknowledge Te Pio Kawe, Kimiora Rawiri, Rob Irwin, and Huikākahu Brian Kawe, who championed the settlement. When I met with the group, they advised me it had been a long journey, and all the kaumātua who presented the claims at the Waitangi Tribunal had, sadly, passed on. To honour these tūpuna, Kimiora Rawiri made the deliberate decision to be present in Tauranga Moana today, to be with the people who made this day possible.

Ngāti Ranginui acted honourably and reasonably in its negotiations with the Crown, with dedication and hard work into completing this. So I want to acknowledge the two previous Ministers, Christopher Finlayson and Andrew Little, as well as the Government agencies and local authorities that worked hard to make this happen. I want to extend my thanks to Dame Patsy Reddy, who I saw up in the crowd there, who was the chief Crown negotiator for these negotiations, ably supported by officials from the Office of Treaty Settlements and Takutai Moana: Te Tari Whakatau.

As we gather here today for this important day, we also look back on the past and recognise that the Crown severely wronged Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui in the years following. The settlement and the Crown acknowledge its historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, including that it was ultimately responsible for the outbreak of war in Tauranga in 1864, in which Crown troops killed members of the hapū and wounded others in the battles of Pukehinahina and Te Ranga. The Crown has acknowledged that the raupatu of lands in Tauranga and subsequent Tauranga District Lands Acts 1867 and 1868 were unjust and a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. In the subsequent bush campaign, the Crown inflicted the scorched earth policy, destroying villages and cultivations, which forced many to flee. The policy had a devastating effect on the welfare and economy of the Ngāti Ranginui hapū.

The Crown has acknowledged the conduct was unreasonable and unnecessary, and was a breach of the Treaty. The raupatu, along with the purchase of the Te Puna-Katikati block soon after, and the operation impacted the native land laws, flaws in the Crown purchasing and the acquisition of Ngāti Ranginui, and, in a number of different ways, left Ngāti Ranginui without sufficient land for their present and future needs. This contributed to the many hapū enduring long periods of social deprivation, and the historical account goes into great detail about that.

The Crown has acknowledged that it failed to deal in a satisfactory way with the grievances raised by successive generations of Ngāti Ranginui, and recognised that those grievances were sound, were real. On 21 June 2012, at the signing of the deed of settlement, the Crown apologised to Ngāti Ranginui for its actions and omissions, and expressed profound regret for its breaches. I regret the time has taken so long for the apology to be enshrined in law, and I’m thankful that it will be rectified by the passing, imminently, of this bill today.

The settlement provides redress that will recognise traditional cultural, spiritual associations of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui in their rohe, which includes vesting 15 sites with significance, and two sites jointly with other iwi, and a wide range of relationship redress with Crown agencies. That includes financial and commercial redress of $38 million, which will provide Ngāti Ranginui with an economic foundation to build a durable settlement. Of course, no amount of settlement can ever fully compensate for the losses suffered, but it does represent a commitment to establish a partnership that begins to restore the Crown relationship with Ngāti Ranginui, and starts a new journey towards reconciliation and prosperity. I note this journey will include the Tauranga Moana iwi collective redress and natural resources arrangements over Tauranga Moana. Mr Kawe has reminded me that Ngāti Ranginui will not see the completion of their claims without that redress, and it will be provided for in future legislation.

I heard the challenge this morning to inspire the rangatahi. That is the job not just of this Parliament but, of course, of all of us here in the House, and you on the marae, in your schools, in your homes, to inspire the next generation going forward. Our Government, of course, is committed to growing our economy so we can attain high living standards, by restoring law and order so people can feel safe in their communities, and to deliver great public services such as education, ensuring that our kids are going to school, getting a world-class education, and being prepared to succeed in the modern world. This, genuinely, I believe, is a land of opportunity. Sure, it’s not perfect, but show me a country that is. And, yes, we’ll have disagreements going forward—of course we will. But the good thing is that we can talk to each other still, civilly, live in peace, and work through the challenges that we face.

So I firmly believe that the opportunity here is for Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui to enter a golden age in the years ahead. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ki a koutou Ngāti Ranginui i tae mai nei i tēnei wā, e mihi ana ki a koutou. E tika ana ki te maumahara ngā rangatira kua hinga. Nō reira moe mai moe mai moe mai rā. Ka nui tēnā.

Ki a koutou te hunga tae mai nei, e mihi ana ki a koutou. E mōhio ana tātou katoa ki te mahi tinihanga o te Karauna. Me maumahara tēnā. Engari ko tēnei te wā ki te whakatikatika tērā kaupapa. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To you, Ngāti Ranginui, who have arrived here today, greetings to you. It is important to remember our esteemed leaders who have passed. And so, farewell and rest in peace. That’s that.

To you the people who have arrived here, greetings to you. We understand the deceiving act made by the Crown. Lest not forget that. But this is a time to rectify that. And so, greetings to you all.]

It’s good to have everyone here, and you would have heard all the kōrero today supporting the kaupapa—apart from Winston Peters, who went off on another tangent. I’m not sure what kaupapa he was talking about today, but it certainly wasn’t the bill. It was lovely to see him, though. He was a wonderful Tauranga MP, wasn’t he? He was a wonderful Tauranga MP, and I had a bit of a kōrero with him out there, but he certainly wanted to get that kōrero out.

I want to acknowledge Dame Patsy here, for your tautoko for our various kaupapa and for being tremendous through the years, and our rangatira who are here today. It’s really good to see you.

Kiritapu Allan and Mita Ririnui, both former Labour MPs—hopefully, still Labour MPs. It’s good to see them, and they’re here because of a very serious kaupapa, a kaupapa that is repeated time and time again in terms of what has happened to our people. Scorched-earth policy, the denial of the opportunity to advance tino rangatiratanga—it’s all the same. The theme is all the same, and you hear it time and time again.

That’s why it’s good to hear that kōrero coming through, but I really did enjoy that kōrero from—who was our young man this morning? Te Pio, was it? He wasn’t so young, actually, when I looked at him—he looked a bit older than me! But he was asking for inspiration in terms of housing, health, and—you know, “Inspire us: housing, health, education.” I thought it was a good kōrero. Well, have I got the party for you! And guess what! It’s not the Māori Party; it’s the Labour Party.

But I thought it was a great kōrero, to get up after our whaikōrero and challenge us about what the kaupapa are going forward, because there’s only so much you can do. With these pūtea or with a transfer of properties, there’s only so much you can do. You can’t have Governments who say, “Well, there’s the Treaty settlement, Māoris. Now, go away.” I heard that kōrero this morning. It was a challenge we had to deal with when I was a Minister, when Kiritapu Allan was a Minister, and when Mita Ririnui was a Minister—it’s that “Hang on, it can’t be just a Treaty settlement.”

I thought that was a tremendous kōrero this morning, and that’s why I’d put it to the Minister: what are we going to do in terms of housing, what are we going to do in terms of health, what are we going to do in terms of education? That’s what the people were saying—that’s what you’re saying now.

But we all come to these types of hui and we all behave and we don’t put down challenges. Well, I’m not one of those ones who behaves. I’ve got to put down a challenge, too, to this Government over here, because the sad thing is we’ve got a nation of Māori under attack—let’s not forget this. And I know that everybody says, “Oh, kia whakakotahi mō te kaupapa” [unite for the cause], but, hang on, we’ve got a Tribunal under attack, we’ve got Māori health under attack.

Not true.

“Not true”—“Not true”! We’ve got a Treaty under attack, and shortly you’ll hear from a party who are under attack—

Right, Mr Jackson—the bill.

This is the bill.

The bill.

This is the bill. I’m talking about the bill and the ramifications coming from this bill.

The bill.

I’m talking about the bill. I’m talking about what’s happening in terms of our people and what the flow-on is happening in terms of the bill. This was put on the floor this morning by our people. They put this on the floor in terms of: what is the future, where is the investment from the Government, and where are we going? It’s only right—I know what you’re saying, Mr Speaker. You’re talking about a bill, but what is the flow-on in terms of Māori society and what is the future for our people?

Now, what I’d say today is that you can’t just apologise for the past and forget about what’s happening now, surely—surely, Mr Speaker—and that’s what our people are saying. So if you’d heard the kōrero this morning and the challenges this morning, the speakers in te reo Māori and in English—I’m only translating what I heard. I’m sure the audience here would reiterate that, and they’re saying, “This is all good and well, but what about our input? What about some investment? What about some follow-up? What about what’s happening politically in this Parliament, in terms of certain members?”—that was in the kōrero today. [Assistant Speaker gestures for member to resume seat]

No, I’m not sitting down—I’m not sitting down. I’m not sitting down. You don’t walk over our kaupapa as it suits you, Mr Speaker.

Leave the House, Mr Jackson. [Interruption] Leave the House, Mr Jackson. Leave the House, Mr Jackson.

Point of order.

No, there will be no point of order. Mr Jackson, in light of the—[Interruption]

Point of order, Mr Speaker. This kaupapa is about Te Tiriti. That is the only way that this settlement has come into the House. You should not be using this power to stop kōrero e pā ana ki tā tātou Tiriti—Te Tiriti nō te tino rangatiratanga [speaking about our Tiriti—Te Tiriti in regards to tino rangatiratanga]. This is not an expertise that this House has. There is no grounds to be using your power to silence the voices of those who are here to tautoko this kaupapa today. That is out of line.

Thank you.

It’s a very unfortunate occurrence that’s just happened, Mr Speaker, because you can well understand what it feels like for tangata whenua Māori when they come into this House, which is a House built only through the possibility of the agreement between tangata whenua Māori and the Crown in 1840. Every board in this House and no board in this House could stand but for that agreement. And you understand what it must feel like for Māori when one of their people is ejected from the House for speaking the truths that we all know to be true about the need for us to make proper amends for colonisation. And the purpose of this bill—I believe it is utterly relevant to the bill; I agree with Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and I agree with Willie Jackson. We are speaking to the bill when we speak about what the future holds for Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui.

What I wanted to say was that when I talk to people who are not New Zealanders, who have not had the privilege and the blessing of being raised in the bosom of this land and at the generosity of tangata whenua Māori, I try to explain to them what Māori culture is and I say it is a host culture—it is a host culture. If you show up on a marae, despite all the horrors of what has been done to Māori by colonisation, you will still get haere mai, haere mai, haere mai—welcome, welcome, welcome—and they will give you a cup of tea. First of all, they will hongi you. The hongi is an extraordinary greeting because it is where people touch faces—the most intimate greeting. It’s extraordinary as a cultural form; we share the breath of life, tihei mauri ora. They give you a cup of tea, they feed you more than you can eat, they sing you songs, and then they offer you a bed in the belly of their ancestor, in the wharenui.

This is the generosity of tangata whenua Māori that we all, as tangata Tiriti, are the beneficiaries of. This is the generosity of Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui in their coming here today to assist in restoration of the dignity of the Crown. But we must assist in that restoration.

It’s New Zealand Music Month this month, and I think one of the most important songs written in the last 25 years was written 20 years ago by a guy called Dave Dobbyn. It’s a song called “Welcome Home”, and the opening lyric is:

Tonight I am feeling for you

Under the state of a strange land

You have sacrificed much to be here

There for the graces I offer my hand

Welcome home

Later in the song he says, “You’ll find most of us here with our hearts wide open”—you’ll find most of us here with our hearts wide open. And then he also says:

There’s a woman with her hands trembling

Haere mai

And she sings with a mountain’s memory

Haere mai

This is the kaupapa of tangata whenua Māori across this land. My mother, raised in Tauranga, was raised in the bosom of that love and generosity of the Tauranga Moana peoples, and I am eternally thankful for that blessing.

One of the kaumātua today said that—my paucity of understanding of te reo Māori, but I did pick up one thing he said: ngā kaupapa Papatūānuku and te whenua [the subjects about Papatūānuku and the land]. I recall that in 2011, shortly before the struggle against the Petrobras drilling in the Raukūmara Basin, I went down to the beach of Pāpāmoa, where my mother had swum as a child, and we scraped the oil off the beach from the Rena oil spill, with the local iwi.

It is my hope and my dream for our nation that we stand together and we stand for the restoration of Papatūānuku, and that we recognise that together we are stronger. That is the pact and the bond of love, I believe, that was made in 1840 in the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and we must restore the true meaning and sense of that agreement to work together in mutual respect.

In the words of Moana Jackson, that Treaty is a profound and visionary base upon which to build a country, and here, today, this settlement bill is about upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is about stepping us towards that profound and visionary nationhood. It is only possible in acknowledging the truth and the darkness of our history. It is only possible in us being with our hearts wide open and listening and paying attention and genuinely wanting to hear. Because Te Tiriti is a pathway to the relationship, but the relationship is the living thing. So we must uphold that relationship through listening and through respect. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take this call for the third reading. You all saw my second reading speech, so I won’t go on too long; I’ll be respectful of the time and make sure we can get on to the planned activities afterwards.

At my second reading speech, I talked about my experience and touched on the history a little bit, and the present state of affairs. But what I actually do want to talk about is the future of Tauranga. Tauranga is an amazing part of New Zealand. It’s the export hub. We have the port. We have the beaches. We have the people. We have a growing population of people who are outward-looking, who want to do well, who want New Zealand to be a thriving place and want the beating heart of the—I call it the upper central North Island. Like we, in Tauranga, are where the future will be for New Zealand. But we have to get some things right. We have to get our incredibly expensive housing under control. We have to get our infrastructure sorted. We’ve got a lot of things to fix when it comes to the public services in our area.

Moves like this to recognise past wrongs, make amends, and set up post-settlement entities that are committed to the area to be brought in financially, brought in culturally, brought in spiritually, brought in as a community—that’s how we’re going to grow and create a future for our people, of all stripes and whatever time they arrived. The only way we can do this is by being future-focused and thinking about where we’re going.

The city has got a bright future. We have dark clouds; we have issues come through every now and again, but moves like this set up for the future is what we need to be doing. If you want to stand up and do a speech, as I’m sort of touching on now, you should save it for a general debate speech. But what I’m saying is that Tauranga with Ngāti Ranginui, with what you have come today to hear the Crown apologise for—recognising the past and make settlements and plans for the future, is what we are trying to do. We are trying as a country, as a Parliament, to put New Zealand on the path to where we want to go.

I thank you for coming to this House today to hear our korero, to hear the Crown and every member of this House from every party stand up and talk to it. I thank you for the forgiveness that you’ve shown, the welcome, and what you’ve given to the people of Tauranga, including my family, and I commend this bill to the House.

Hei tīmata ko te reo Māori.

E te iwi koutou kua tau mai ki te aroaro o te Whare Pāremata ki te pae o te Whare Pāremata nau mai haere mai. I roto i ngā mihi i puakina ai i te wā tuatahi o tēnei tohe o tēnei hīkoi o koutou i whakaingoatia ai ko te ingoa o tērā manukura o te wā nō ōku mātua a Maharaia Winiata. Me whakahua e au te ingoa ō tō koutou mārohirohi a Maharaia. Me tana whakatauki “Inā aro pai ngā tāngata ki ngā mea papai ka taea ngā mea papai”. Me whakaū e tātou i a tātou e kōrero ana mō te rā āpōpō, me pēhea rānei te pai me pēhea rānei ngā hua, me pēhea rānei he tauira hou e whakarānea ai mā roto i tēnei whakataunga kua oti i a koutou ka whakaeangia i tēnei wā. Nā reira tēnā koutou Ngāti Ranginui. Tēnā koutou Takitimu waka, tēnā koutou Mātaatua waka, tēnā koutou Arawa waka me te mahara ka wehe atu a Kahungunu i a mātou i roto i te Tai Tokerau ka noho ka awhiawhi ka hapū kō wai rānei, nā ko koutou ngā uri.

[I’ll start my kōrero in the Māori language.

To you people who have arrived here to Parliament, to the debating chamber, welcome. During the first debate pertaining to this bill I spoke about that esteemed leader of yours, Maharaia Winiata. I shall make mention of that bloke of yours, Maharaia. And his saying as well: “If people focus on the good in things they will inherit good benefits”. We need to instil this as we speak about the future and its benefits, its outcomes, and also what are the new possible avenues we can look in to within this settlement as it comes to fruition. And so, greetings to you Ngāti Ranginui, Takitimu waka, Mātaatua waka, Arawa waka and to also remember the eponymous ancestor Kahungunu who once lived in the northern region and slept around with who knows, and hence we have you the descendants.]

I want to join and remind New Zealanders, remind the House, that this has been a very long journey for this particular tribe from Tauranga Moana. Hailing from Tai Tokerau, there are many connections in relation to this part of te ao Māori, but this day belongs to you people. This is a group of Māori leaders, whānau, who made a decision, pragmatically, within the confines of what successive Governments have been prepared to stand up for. We will craft together, we will agree, to an endowment to take us forward.

As we must say at every single reading: this is only one step of the journey. We are a nation of 5 million - odd people—and, by the way, I belong to a party that doesn’t like the notion of a big population—I would remind everyone that these settlements, an act of pragmatism, settled, however, with the best of intentions, integrity, represent a tūāpapa—a platform—to go forward on.

I don’t really want to recite the various elements of the history of Tauranga Moana from a Māori perspective, because that’s been done. I want to talk a little bit about what needs to carry on. I look forward to working with the leaders of Tauranga Moana over a future for Pukehinahina, working with my colleagues, with the blessings, hopefully, of the senior members of the other side of the House, so those iconic sites are portrayed, are promoted, are accepted, as a key feature of what it means to belong to our country and recognise the past of our country in the context of that particular part of the Bay of Plenty.

I also want to remind the House that there are quite a few marae down there that were the recipients of the Provincial Growth Fund. But the hapū up there [Points to the gallery] forgot rule No. 1 in Māoridom. Reciprocity: nāku te pūtea mā koutou te pōti—engari horekau koutou i pōti mōku [we have the money, you have the votes—although you didn’t vote for me].

I’m sure that the members that hail from this part of our motu know that there is an enormous amount of work to be done, but we are focused on upgrading infrastructure. Recently, I had the privilege of going and standing in that area with Waitaha and related people around the broader Tauranga area to ensure that, when Tauranga grows, when this area prospers—because it is in the “golden triangle”—that integrated and central to that journey are tangata whenua. That is why a Treaty settlement does represent leverage.

I don’t want to broaden our discussions beyond that, because, really, we should celebrate the fact that one of our smaller iwi—and I too come from a smaller iwi: Ngāi Takoto and Te Aupōuri—have made a courageous decision to move on from a chequered past which represents an imperfect history of our country. But our greatness lies in front of us, and with settlements of this nature, with willing fellow travellers, don’t underestimate what we can do; and we need to do it together, because we are a small cork bobbing around in a broad, huge world, and unless we work together, unless we commit to share the responsibility of enriching our nation, the rest of the world does not owe us a living.

Ki te hunga taketake koutou kua tatū mai ki roto i te Whare i te rangi nei, ngā mihi ki a koutou. Tāria te wā mātou ka puta ā tinana atu ki waenga tonu i a koutou tū tahi, mahi tahi, kia ea i a tātou tētahi tauira hou e taea te whakawhanake ā-ngākau, ā-tinana, ā-wairua hoki. Kia ora tātou katoa.

[To you who have come to this House today, salutations to you. In due time, we will come to you in person to stand together and work together to implement new solutions so that you develop physically, wholeheartedly, and in spirit as well. Thank you all.]

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave from the House to plead for another five minutes as I whakapapa to this iwi, and as their Māori representative in Parliament.

I’ll put the leave. Leave is requested for a five-minute extension for Te Pāti Māori. Is there any objection? Yes, there is. So it’s a five-minute call.

How miserable. Mōrena tātou. Ka tangohia taku pōtae.

[I take my hat off.]

I wear this pōtae in this House as an acknowledgment of my tūpuna that went to World War II—Ngā Kaupoai [the Cowboys]—as I see this place as the trenches of a modern-day war. Today, as our people sit in the gallery, the war comes to a halt as I acknowledge the years of sacrifice by this iwi. I’m not going to call you a small iwi or a big iwi; you are an iwi with mana and you stand in that in your own right, as we do in this House.

I find it difficult today, as this will be the final speech before I also am ejected from this House. They continue to eject us from the House. Te Tiriti was a promise of kāwanatanga over their own people. Article 2 was the assertion of our pre-existing rights to be undisturbed of our full and exclusive rights to our whenua, to our moana, to our kāinga, to our taonga.

You will receive 1 percent of your total due, and be told that this is full and final. This must never be full and final. The other 99 percent—the door must be left open to our mokopuna to continue to fight.

I will never apologise for what I do in this House, but I feel an apology to my people—that you will be silenced for 21 days, when one of the most ruthless legislations will hit this House next week and a Budget that will ignore you. We don’t need promises from any party in this House. We need economic autonomy. We need economic sovereignty. We need to be left alone to do what we need to do, to be undisturbed of our full and exclusive rights.

Tika tonu ngā kōrero a Willie. E kī e kī kua panāia ia ki waho. I hāmenetia ō tātou mātua tīpuna. Kei te hāmene tonu tātou i tēnei rā. Tāhae whenua, tāhae moana, tāhae mokopuna. Me pēhea rā tātou e whakaatu ki te ao te mana kei a tāua te Māori. Ranginui maranga mai, maranga mai.

[What Willie said was correct. What a shame he has been ejected. Our ancestors were punished. And we are still punished today. Confiscating our lands, our waters, and our grandchildren. How are we to show our mana Māori to the world? Ranginui, rise up, rise up.]

This Treaty claim mustn’t be in vain of the many that didn’t see this claim go through. Our mokopuna who are not yet born, we must declare to them that we will never be silent in this House and that haka is an elevation of our voice and the voices of our ancestors that have gone, our voices today, and the voices of our mokopuna that are to come.

Kia kaua tātou e wareware ki tērā. Nō reira e ngā uri o Te Rangihouhiri tēnā koutou tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[Let us not forget that. And so, descendants of Te Rangihouhiri, salutations to you, thank you all.]

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. E te whānau whānui o ngā hapū me ngā uri o Ngāti Ranginui tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Ki te whenua, ki te moana, ki ngā māunga ngā awa ngā ngāhere hoki o Tauranga Moana karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai. E tū ana nei he uri nō te Tai Tokerau. Nō Ngāpuhi nui tonu ahau.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. Greetings to you the extended tribe and descendants of Ngāti Ranginui. To the land, the ocean, the mountains, the rivers and the forests of Tauranga Moana, call upon us. I stand, a descendant of the Northland tribes. I am from all of Ngāpuhi.]

The first time I visited Pukehinahina and Te Ranga Pā, I was taken there by Matua Tamati Tata, a kaumatua from Ngāi Tamarāwaho of Ngāti Ranginui. On that day, our ope stood silently in the rain, the tears of Ranginui soaking our cheeks as Matua Tamati shared testimony of what the land and its descendants had witnessed. I can recall with perfect clarity the crack of thunder, like the explosion of a cannon, punctuating our contemplation and fracturing time to transport us back a century and a half earlier to the so-called Battle of Gate Pā, as though the atua were demanding that we never forget that place or the people who belong to it or the theft of lands and lives at the hands of the Crown. Nothing can undo that mamae—the pain and loss. No compensation will ever be enough, and for that I am so sorry.

Today, Parliament will pass the Treaty settlement bill for Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, and of course it is my great honour to stand on behalf of the Greens to express our support for its passage. Professor Joanna Kidman, of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa, and Dr Vincent O’Malley wrote that “public and State memory can be fickle in settler nations and is often at odds with tribal memory”. Iwi and hapū histories must be honoured and told, not whitewashed or denied. Tangata whenua, through the ongoing machinations of colonisation, are continuously being gaslit into believing that our stories do not matter, when in fact they have been stolen and warped and sold to us as a lie or myth or shame.

The passing of this bill represents the remembering, reclaiming, and retelling of Ngāti Ranginui histories, by and for not only them, but for those who came before and those who are yet to arrive. It will restore ingoa Māori to places whose original names were erased or written over—Te Whāngai-a-Tamarāwaho, Te Hopuni, Huharua, and Te Wharepoti, to name a few. But the Crown will only return a fraction of the land ripped away through raupatu and the compensation offered could never match the mauri of the whenua which Ngāti Ranginui always were, rightly are, and will always be true descendants and custodians of.

Today does not mark a conclusion but, rather, the reset of a relationship between the Crown and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui—a commitment which, unless actualised and honoured, is mere lip service. That is why we, as representatives of the Crown, must always uphold our obligations and commitments to this relationship, as for over a century our predecessors have failed to do.

To the descendants of Ngāti Ranginui who have gathered here or are listening from afar: thank you for your patience, your fight, your love, and your incredible grace. You have demonstrated what it means to lead with heart and spirit.

I wish to conclude with the words of Dr Maharaia Winiata, who reminds us to hold on to the aspirations of our ancestors for something better and in doing so knowing everything is possible: “Inā aro atu ana te oranga ki ngā mea pai, ka rere te wairua, ka taea ngā mea katoa.”

[“If life is focused on the good things, the spirit will fly, everything becomes possible.”]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. E te Māngai o te Whare, kia ora koutou katoa. One of the great aspects of Treaty settlements is the lack of partisanship shown in this House. All parties, as far as I know, have voted for and supported all Treaty settlements that have gone through this House—all 102, if I’m not mistaken. I have felt this this bipartisanship most acutely on the Māori Affairs Committee. Today is a day for this House to continue the spirit and tradition of non-partisanship, to pass the Ngāti Hāpu o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, to acknowledge the wrongs of the Crown, and to begin a process of reconciliation, healing, and renewal, and to realise the promise of the people here today, the people of Ngāti Ranginui, for our nation and for the promise of the Treaty of Waitangi—to uphold and to live up to the articles in the Treaty.

A lot has been said today about the atrocities of the past. Today, it goes on record that this House acknowledges those atrocities. Part of this process is a redress package, which includes $38 million. I acknowledge what other speakers have said: no amount of redress can make up for the mamae and the loss that this iwi have felt over 161 years. But this redress will enable them to move forward, to begin that process to look to the future. What does that future look like? Well, that future certainly, as I understand, is about the revitalisation of te reo, the revitalisation of Māori culture, the social development, and economic development.

We have had speaker after speaker speak about the opportunities in the great area of Tauranga, of the Bay of Plenty, for the people of Ngāti Ranginui. It is our hope, at least, collectively, that they can turn their attention to the future. I’ve heard Ministers in this House say that they look forward to working with the iwi on their shared goals and aspirations.

I wish to acknowledge a number of people in this House. The first are Ministers Finlayson, Little, and Goldsmith. I also wish to acknowledge the local officials and negotiators as part of this process—and Dame Patsy Reddy, it’s nice to see you here today. Local MPs past—Winston Peters—and present. We’ve got a number of local MPs—my colleague Sam Uffindell, Tom Rutherford, Rawiri Waititi, and those past as well—and my colleagues who were on the Māori Affairs Committee to look at this bill and examine it in more detail.

This is a good day. This is a good day where we acknowledge the past and make amends for that so that we can move forward together as one people and as one nation. It is on that basis that I commend this bill to the House. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and kia ora anō. My colleague sitting beside me—Shanan Halbert—mentioned in his second reading speech that one of the jobs that we can do as politicians during these settlement bills is actually talk about some of the people and get their names on the Hansard. Somebody that I want to talk about a little bit here today has had, or had had, a long history of unifying Ngāti Ranginui over time. So I want to talk about a dear friend, a confidant, and leader, Dr Morehu Ngatoko Rahipere, who, along with many leaders of Ngāti Ranginui, was a catalyst for the shepherding of this claim.

Morehu was a driving force for the unification of Ngāti Ranginui in his time. He was a gentle and wise kaumātua whose guidance to me is something that I will always remember. I remember coming into my job as tumuaki at Merivale. I wondered for a bit what I’d come to. But I remember the first meeting with Morehu, and I remember him giving me the OK—“You’ve got this. You’ve absolutely got this.”—and I will never forget that. I’ll never forget the gentleness and the wiseness, but I’ll also never forget how strong he was as well and how he could make many of our parents quiver in their boots as he would just walk through our carpark. He was an amazing man.

I also remember when he found out that there had not been a pōwhiri or welcome for me at Merivale and he ensured that that was going to be rectified. So he arranged for a pōwhiri to happen at the Huria Marae because that was the first time that I had been there. I think, Graham, that was the first time he saw you and he said, “You’ve brought someone really impressive along with you.” So there’s a lot that I remember very fondly from him.

He was a descendant of Paraone Koikoi, whose son Ihakara was killed at the Battle of Gate Pā. It was Paraone Koikoi who was forcibly taken to Te Papa following the battle, to witness his land’s confiscation. It was cut up and given to soldiers and surrendered Māori. Whilst it was clear that this deeply hurt Morehu, and the scars of this remained throughout his time, he had the fortitude to see the best in people, and his demeanour meant that if you were in his presence, you felt the impact beyond the words he expressed; more so the wairua he exuded.

Morehu is the example of the potential for change, for the understanding and most certainly for tolerance, and I honour his family, his hapū, his marae Huria and Wairoa, and his iwi that are here today as we finally deliver and participate in the second reading and third reading of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.

That hurt that happened all those years ago is felt strongly throughout Tauranga Moana today. I saw that hurt. I saw so many young people who had lost touch with their identity and their whakapapa. I saw the result of that. I saw that those young people had lost hope in many ways of their future. But I also saw an iwi that were standing up and wanting to do the best going forward.

I do credit my time at Merivale as the best experience of my life. We knew that we had young people that had, through the hurts that happened so many years ago, lost their way a little bit. But we had a community there who worked alongside iwi to ensure that we could turn that around, and that is still happening within Tauranga Moana today. The settlement that we see here today is another step in the direction.

What we want for our mokopuna, our tamariki, and our rangatahi is a positive, bright future going forward, and I see that. I see that with the young people that we see coming through, and it is wonderful to have them here as part of this celebration—this acknowledgment of the hurt but this celebration of this milestone of heading forward. But as we’ve heard here today, this is not the end of the journey. This is still right near the start of the journey: the acknowledgment by the Crown of the hurt that has been caused, the redress and the work towards really supporting the iwi to become the amazing people that the world will see—that we know they already are—and to have that support of all of us around you.

I still go through Tauranga and I go to events that happen, such as the commemoration of the Battle of Gate Pā on 29 April every year. I always make sure I go to those events, because every single year I hear more about that history and more of that understanding, and I strongly believe that the more that we acknowledge the history, the more that we acknowledge the true history of what has happened, young people will have a different future because they’re acknowledging the wrongs and the hurt that happened in the past and they take that into their brighter future going forward.

I am happy to say that that is one of the things I’m very proud about—the Aotearoa history curriculum. And I will say that the Tauranga Moana iwi coming together and influencing the delivery of that in schools in the Tauranga Moana region is second to none. The work that you have done to facilitate that and support that is a shining example to the rest of Aotearoa.

Ngāti Ranginui, I speak humbly to you. You were written out of the history books for an uncompromising and staunch stance to protect your land, your language, and your culture. Despite generations of legislation passed in this House, and in local government buildings in your whenua, you have survived. You have planted and ignited that fire within your tamariki, your mokopuna, many of whom are here today. The mana and the mauri are there to be defiant, to be Māori, to be proud, and I salute you. You have a vision for your people to actively participate in all aspects of Tauranga Moana as mana whenua, in partnership with many others, including the Government, with a clear view to realising the dreams of your tīpuna, distant and recent, like Morehu.

Let this day, this moment, this legislation provide you with that extra bit of respiration of your story to be etched in your memory for ever. But you don’t need this House to give you that permission; in fact, we already know that you have never wavered.

Morehu, I remember and honour you. I shed a tear today, knowing you are smiling from ear to ear, seeing this day finally arrive. E te ngaro e te ngaro Ranginui, ka kitea ka kitea ka kitea—Ranginui, who was, who is once lost by the hands of others is seen, is heard, and is present. Kia ora.

I call on Dan Bidois—oh, my apologies. I call on Sam Uffindell.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Just a slight height difference there!

E ngā iwi, e ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha.

[To the authorities, to all the voices and the many involved.]

It’s an honour to be able to rise and speak in favour in the third reading of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. I want to, once again, acknowledge everyone up here in the gallery: this is your day. To all of the elders here, this is a very special day. I know that there are a lot of people who won’t be able to be here, they may have passed, they may be back home in Tauranga—and kia ora to everyone there as well. I want to give a mention to the chair of Ngāti Ranginui, Charlie Rahiri, and to all of his whānau and to all of the different hapū that are here for this claims settlement. And also, too, some of our elders that we see around the moana a lot: I won’t call you out by name, but it’s very good to have seen you here in the gallery and to have seen you for breakfast in the mihi whakatau earlier today.

As I mentioned earlier, this is long overdue. I remember last year, with the Hon Jan Tinetti, we were there at St George’s church, where they had the 160th commemoration of the Battle of Gate Pā (Pukehinahina). It’s quite incredible to think that everything that happened back there—the confiscation of land, the loss of mana, the loss of the ability to make a living on the land—it has taken 160 years to get us to be here in this House where the Crown is apologising and making redress for what has happened. While that is likely not to fulfil the damage or the hurt that did occur, it is, hopefully—as was called out at the breakfast this morning—an opportunity to start to repair and also to move forward and to take the opportunity that is, hopefully, there through this settlement.

As part of the settlement, it does call for cultural redress, reserve management. There is a financial compensation of $38 million, a return of 15 sites of cultural significance, and also a redress of the relationship with Crown agencies. And as was called for, there is a desire that it doesn’t just end here but there is a desire and a commitment to improve the relationship between the Crown and the Government and the hapū and iwi here today. As I mentioned in the second reading, I give you my pledge that I will do more than what I have already done to help to build those relationships and to be closer to you, to learn more about what has happened, and to bring your voice back here into Government, as the member for Tauranga.

There are some significant economic opportunities. When a member rose to speak at the breakfast, they said that your iwi want several things, but there was a quest for better education, a quest for better housing, and a quest for economic development opportunities. Those are three things that we all want. We need our young people to be educated so that they can have the best chance that they can have in life. We need more housing. We know in Tauranga how unaffordable housing is. It is the most expensive major city in New Zealand. And we need to make sure that we do a lot more, that that housing is provided and accessible for you and your families and your children so that they can have a proper shot at living a life of dignity and fulfilment.

And then there are the economic opportunities. I note that we have significant opportunities in the Bay of Plenty around kiwifruit. I was talking earlier today with Whetu Rolleston—one of many Rollestons, no doubt, here in the gallery—around the opportunities with kiwifruit, and Māori have a very vested interest in making sure that those can be realised. I do acknowledge that there have been some real challenges in Māori raising equity to upgrade or purchase orchards, because it constrains how Māori land is viewed, and that there is an existing inequity there that does need to be addressed. But there are big opportunities there.

There are big opportunities in the seafood space around Tauranga Moana. I heard the former member from Tauranga—the Rt Hon Winston Peters—talk about the Port of Tauranga and the considerable opportunities. I would echo his wish that divestment by Bay of Plenty Regional Council is picked up and kept in local hands as much as possible. I’m glad to see some nodding heads in the audience on that.

Look, I want to acknowledge everyone who has helped make today happen. Dame Patsy Reddy has also been mentioned a number of times already. The previous Ministers Finlay and Little, and today the Hon Paul Goldsmith, and all of the rangatira here today that have fed into this process to make it a reality. This is your day. This is an historic day for Tauranga Moana; for Ngāti Ranginui, for your hapū, and for your iwi; and, as I see the pictures up there being held in the gallery, your tūpuna—I’m sure that they would have wanted to be here and I’m sure they are here in spirit to see this settlement occur.

Look, it is an honour to be able to speak in favour of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare.

Ka tangi te titi ka tangi te kākā ka tangi hoki ahau, tihei mauri ora.

Ko tēnei te mihi ki a koutou ngā hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, he mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The titi cries, the kākā cries, and so do I, ’tis the breath of life.

This is the acknowledgment to the people of Ngāti Ranginui. A warm greeting to you all.]

As we come together today in this third and final reading of your bill, it is good that we discuss, as well, the claims that you bring within this bill, what that represents in the Treaty relationship going forward, and, as this House continues to grapple with what that Treaty relationship looks like, in the way our tikanga plays out in the Whare and how we bring this House into being also a marae of ways—that’s how I consider it.

When this House is considering Treaty settlement bills, we take on a different āhua, we take on a different way, and we accommodate, as much as we possibly can, in the constraints of what we are, to provide a forum where two peoples can come together to understand and connect. We’re still evolving as we grapple with that, but I think it is important to note that that is part of what the ongoing Treaty relationship is. It is understanding and working together as much as we possibly can, and it is having that door open to ongoing conversation which I believe is the ongoing Treaty relationship, which will always continue to be a struggle but it is having that door open, it is having that dialogue available, and being able to openly talk to each other, which embodies the Treaty relationship and how it will go forward.

As part of that, I think it is important that we are able to discuss not only the historical claims that are a part of this bill but how they impact on the future, in those contemporary claims, such as what housing will be provided for your iwi, what the job opportunities are, and what are the hauora services that are going to continue to work within your communities. Those are just as relevant today as the historical claims that are in this bill.

I would like to acknowledge that, yes, this bill is important for the redress it carries—the financial redress of $38 million, the cultural redress of those name changes, those wāhi tapu, those important elements, and also the apology from the Crown. But what is that apology if it does not have a genuine commitment to an ongoing Treaty relationship—that is how we conduct ourselves in this House, on this day, and how we take ourselves forward into the next steps. Because it is on our shoulders right now in terms of how we create a future for the future generations of Māori and Pākehā and everybody else in New Zealand. It’s on our shoulders right now how we conduct ourselves to pave that way forward for the next generation.

I’m so proud to be here today. I’m humbled to be part of this chapter of history. But there is a long way for us to go—a long way. I wish you all the very best, from the bottom of my heart, and all the best in your future ongoing endeavours and aspirations—wawata katoa. He mihi mahana ki a koutou. He mihi aroha ki a koutou. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.

[A warm greeting to you all. And a heartfelt greetings to you all. So then, greetings, greetings, greetings to us all.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as we enter in the final stages of the third reading of this very important kaupapa today, the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. Thank you to the House for giving me this opportunity to make my contribution to what is a historical day, as we’ve heard.

Just a recap on what’s going to be going forward after today—the main provisions of the bill: there are provisions for cultural redress; financial and commercial redress of $38 million—nowhere near what you’ve lost, but it’s something; the return of 15 sites of cultural significance; two properties of cultural significance vested jointly with other iwi; and relationship redress with Crown agencies.

Mr Speaker, a colleague from across the House earlier read out part of the apology, and, if you don’t mind, I’d also like to read part of it as well, the apology in the bill. It says: “Through this apology the Crown seeks atonement for the wrongs of the past and to establish a new relationship with the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui based on mutual trust, cooperation, and respect for … the Treaty of Waitangi”.

I’d like to draw the attention of the House very briefly, if I may, to a public hearing that took place yesterday as part of our Māori Affairs Committee mahi. It was the report of the Controller and Auditor-General with respect to how public organisations are fulfilling Treaty settlements. I’d encourage members of the public to read this, especially in light of when we’re talking about going forward with our Treaty settlements and the obligations. It was quite confronting and quite damning, if I’m allowed to say that, Mr Speaker. And I know that members of the committee were determined to help and to do whatever we can to make sure that obligations are met going forward.

My colleague Tom Rutherford, the MP for the Bay of Plenty, who is sitting beside me—very young but very wise—in his second reading speech spoke about the patience, thanking our Tauranga whānau here today for your patience. When we think about this patience, what are we talking about? We’re talking about over 150 years of patience. And if I was to think of a picture, it’s almost like you’ve been chiselling away—chiselling away at a sculpture where the medium making up the sculpture is your tears, and the tears of those before you. It’s almost like it’s been bound together with immense heartache. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that you came here today for just a little bit of closure, and yet what you saw was a shameless display of disrespect for what you’ve been through, and theatrics.

Thank you for constantly teaching me, a person that was born in Australia to parents from Lebanon, who has my own issues with countries around Lebanon that have tried to overtake Lebanon and crush our language and our culture. Thank you for teaching me patience and thank you for teaching me that forgiveness is actually never ending, because that’s constantly what I feel with every Treaty settlement that we try to progress. Yes, there’s a lot of flaws, as we can see by this report, but I know that I and a lot of my colleagues are trying.

So God bless you as you go forward, and God bless the other two iwi with their progression in gaining some type of settlement. And I pray for all of you going forward that your mokopuna can reap some rewards from what’s happening today.

I commend this bill to the House.

Kāti e te Whare, kua wāwāhia e ōku tuakana e Charlie e tōku pāpā e Tāmati ngā whakapapa here o ōku rahi o Te Tai Tokerau ki roto i a koutou o Ngāti Ranginui. Nō reira e mihi kau atu ana ki a koutou, otirā ki a tātou katoa kua tau iho mai ki runga i te kaupapa kua whakakāhui ai tātou i te rā nei.

Ka huri atu ki a koe kei taku pāpā e Turi. Me taku tangi mōteatea ki tō pāpā, ki a Kihi kua roa rawa e takahi nei i te nukuroa ki roto i au o Te Tai Tokerau. Me tāna kōrero ki ōku iwi, ki ōku rahi, “Kia ū ki te mana motuhake o te hapū. Tirohia ki ngā painga o tēnā whānau, o tēnā whānau kia tū pakari mai ai ko ngā hapū ki roto i ngā mahi kei mua i te aroaro.”

E taku pāpā, e Kihi, hoki wairua mai ki roto ki wēnei kōrero. E taku tuakana e Frank, ka rere ngā mihi me ngā roimata ki tō pāpā, ki a Huikākahu. Te hunga nā rātou tēnei kaupapa i kōkiri ki roto ki ngā tau maha kua pahure ake nei. Nā rātou ngā mamae me ngā kōrero a ngā mātua tūpuna i kōkiri kei mōnenehu ki te pū o mahara, kia korikori tonu nei ki runga i te rae o tēnā, o tēnā o tātou e tau nei.

Nō reira te hunga wairua, te hunga mate ki a koutou, haere, haere, haere.

Nā ka whakahokia mai ngā rārangi kōrero ki a tātou me tā tātou kaupapa, e te iwi.

I a au e rangahau ana i ngā kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei kaupapa, kaua mō te kawenga o te kerēme mō ngā tau tata kua pahure ake nei, engari ka hoki waku mahi rangahau ki roto ki te taima o tōku tupuna o Tau Henare. Nā i te tau 1927, i puta mai te ripoata e kīia nei ko te Sim inquiry. Nā i taua taima ko tōku tupuna a Tau Henare he mema o tēnei Whare. Ka tū mai taku tupuna me tāna kōrero e pā ana ki tērā kaupapa i rangahau i ngā tūkinotanga a te Kāwanatanga ki runga i a koutou o Tauranga Moana.

Anei te kōrero a tōku tupuna, a Tau Henare. Hei tāna, “Ko ngā kino o te Kāwanatanga anō nei he waikura; ka kore e moe, ka kore e mutu.” Ne? Ka waiho atu au i tēnā kōrero ki runga i a tātou katoa i te rā nei. Nā ko taua tau rā, anā, ko te 1927. Anā, anga mai ki tēnei wā tonu, te tūnga mai o tana mokopuna tuarua ki roto i tēnei Whare, kua kitea kei te pērā tonu. E tika ana wāna kōrero ki tēnei Whare, otirā ki te katoa i taua taima, i te tau 1927.

Nō reira e aku rangatira, tēnā, kua kōkirihia nā koutou i tēnei kaupapa kia ūngutungutu i ngā ō ngotongoto kia pakari ai ngā hapū katoa o Ngāti Ranginui ki roto i ngā tau maha kei mua i a koutou.

Koinā tāku e hari nei; koinā tāku e pōuri nei. E pōuri nei. Kua rongo atu koutou katoa ki te āhuatanga o ētahi o ngā kōrero kei roto i tēnei Whare. E hoa, ko te mahi a wētahi hei wāwāhi i ngā take Māori kia noho ki tēnei pouaka, ki tērā pouaka. Engari o te ao o te Māori, e tika ana te kōrero, anā, ko ngā kokonga o te whare ka kitea, engari ko ngā kokonga o te ngākau ka kore e kitea. Nā i te rā nei kua rongo koutou i te ngākau o ētahi o mātou e hāngai pū atu ana ki ngā kaupapa e kōkirihia nei e te Whare i te rā nei, anā ko tā koutou take kei mua i te aroaro o te Kāwanatanga.

Kei te kapo ake au i ētahi o ngā kupu i rangona e māua ko taringa i te ata nei. Anā ko te kī a tōku tuakana, a Te Pio i te rahi i tae mai ki mua i te aroaro o Te Ātiawa i te ata nei, me tana hiahia mā tēnei Whare ētahi mahi hei whakaohooho ake i a tāua te Māori, hei whakaihiihi ake i ā tātou rangatahi, i ā tātou tamariki mokopuna.

Heoi anō ka tūohu tēnei Ngāpuhi ki mua i a koutou, me te kī atu e ngā hapū katoa o Ngāti Ranginui, e hoa, ko koutou kē ēnā i whakaohooho nei i a au, whakaihiihi nei i a au. Kia tiro atu anō au ki roto i a au anō o Te Tai Tokerau kei te anga pēhea mātou ki hea? Nā, koutou tēnā i takahi nei i tēnei huarahi, para nei i tēnei huarahi mai i te wā o ō tātou mātua tūpuna tae noa ki tēnei wā. E kara e Te Pio, e mihi atu ana ki a koe me ō kōrero hei whakaaweawe, hei whakaohooho ake i a tāua te Māori ki ngā mahi nui kei mua i te aroaro o tēnā iwi, o tēnā iwi, o ngā hapū katoa o Ngāti Ranginui i te rā nei.

Nō reira e ōku rangatira, kua kite atu ahau i te āhuatanga o ētahi o ngā wāwāhitanga ki roto i te pire, me taku hari kua whakahokia atu ngā wāhi whenua ki a koutou.

I rangona e māua ko taringa i te rā nei te kōrero a tōku matua, a te Hōnore a Shane Jones, e pā ana ki te whenua rā, i tau te pakanga ki runga o Pukehinahina, me tana tono mai ki tēnei taha o te Whare, anā ko ngā mema matua, ngā mema teitei o tēnei taha o te Whare hei tautoko atu i ngā whāinga o koutou, me tana tautoko ake i te kaupapa o Pukehinahina.

E te Whare, i kō atu i te 10 tau ki muri, ko au te heamana o te kaupapa Homai He Rā. Ko au te heamana i kōkiri i ngā take katoa e pā ana ki ngā wāhi pakanga i te wā o ō tātou mātua, ō tātou tūpuna. I taua wā tonu ko au te heamana o te pā pakanga, a Ruapekapeka, i Te Taitokerau. Anā, i noho tahi mātou katoa ko koutou, te hunga o Ōrākau, o Pukehinahina me ngā wāhi huri, huri noa i te motu whānui.

I reira mātou, ka kōkirihia te kaupapa, me te kōrero, āe, me tautoko tonu te whakahokinga mai o te whenua, ka tahi. Me te whakapakari ake, me te hahu ake anō i ngā kōrero a ō tātou mātua tūpuna, ka rua. Anā me ū tonu ki te tapu me te mauri o aua wāhi mō ā tātou mokopuna tamariki ā taihoa ake nei. Koia ko ngā whāinga i taua wā, arā, koia ko ngā whāinga tonu i tēnei wā.

Nō reira kia kapo ake ahau i ngā kōrero a taku pāpā, a Shane Jones, arā ki tō tātou Whare me te wero mō te āhuatanga ki a Pukehinahina.

Kāti e aku rangatira, kua roa rawa tā koutou hūnuku mai i te nukuroa kia tau iho mai ki runga ki tēnei Whare, kāre e kore he nui tonu ngā mahi kei mua i ō koutou aroaro hei oranga mō ā tātou tamariki mokopuna ā taihoa ake nei. Engari kei te tika ngā kōrero a ētahi o mātou o tēnei Whare.

Mō te āhuatanga ki te Tiriti o Waitangi, ka kore e oti noa, ka kore e pau i te wera o te rā, engari ka ū tonu ki te ngākau me te whatumanawa o tēnā, o tēnā o koutou; o tēnā, o tēnā o tātou. Nō reira me pērā tonu ka tika.

Ka mutu ka tiro atu ahau ki te toenga o taku taima, nā kua kōrero atu ahau mō te āhuatanga ki te kāmeta: ka kitea ki tērā taha o te Whare, engari ka kore e kitea ki tēnei taha o te Whare. Kei te mōhio a Turi ki taku whakapapa ki a koutou. Tēnā pea ko te huarahi tika kia tīkina atu e Peeni tētahi kāmeta mōku, anā ki roto i taku poraka whenua kei roto i te ingoa o tōku tupuna, a Tāpeka, mō āna hea kei roto i ngā poraka whenua kei roto i a koutou.

Tēnā pea te huarahi tika kia tīkina atu e au taku kāmeta hei kawenga ki roto i tēnei Whare me ngā kaupapa maha huri, huri noa.

Kāti, e aku rangatira, me pēnei pea taku kōrero whakamutunga ki a tātou katoa i te rā nei: ko ēnei kōrero ka whakairihia ake rā ki te tāhuhu kōrero o Ranginui e tū nei, ka poupoua ki roto i a Papatūānuku e whārikihia nei. Ka tirohia ki ngā pae maunga, ki ngā awa whakatere taniwha, ki ngā awa me ngā tapuwae a ō tātou mātua tūpuna hei paraninga ki te rae mō te hunga o nāianei me te hunga o āpōpō. Ka whītikina ki te ora, ka whītikina ki te oranga tonutanga o tāua te iwi Māori, o ngā hapū maha o Ngāti Ranginui.

Turuturu ōwhitiwhiti, whakamaua kia tina. Haumi e, hui e, tāiki e.

[Well, to the House, my senior Charlie and my uncle Tāmati have already opened the genealogies that bind my people of Northland to you, Ngāti Ranginui. Therefore I greet you, indeed all of us that have arrived here on the item that has brought us all together today.

I turn to you, my uncle Turi. We should grieve for your father, for Kihi, who journeyed across the land to my people, to Northland, for a long time. And his statement to my iwi, to my people, “Hold fast to the self-determination of the hapū. Look to the advantages of each family so that the hapū may stand strong in the endeavours before you.”

To my uncle Kihi, return in spirit to these discussions. To my senior Frank, condolences and tears flow to your father, to Huikākahu. To those who progressed this initiative for so many years past, those who pushed through the anguish and progressed the words of our forebears and ancestors so they are not relegated to the memory banks, so that they remain in motion across the front of mind of each of us here.

And so, to the souls of the departed, rest in peace.

Let the focus of my statements now return to us and our work, people.

As I researched the information regarding this subject, not for the passage of the claim in recent years past, but my research efforts within the time of my ancestor Tau Henare. Now, in 1927, the report was produced that was known as the Sim inquiry. Now, at that time my ancestor, Tau Henare, was a member of this House. My ancestor stood to speak on that initiative to research the abuses of the Government on you, Tauranga Moana.

Here is the speech of my ancestor Tau Henare. According to him, “The evils of the Government are like rust; they don’t sleep, they don’t end.” Right? I will leave that statement for all of us today. That was on that day—i.e., in 1927. Now we address this particular time, and the rising of his great-grandchild in this House, it can be seen that things are just the same. His comment to this House is true, indeed for all of that time, in 1927.

And so, to my noble leaders, you have progressed this work so that delectable fruits may cascade to strengthen all the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui over the many years before you.

That is what pleases me; that is also what saddens me. Saddens me. You have all heard the nature of some of the comments within this House. My friend, what some would do is split off the various Māori issues to sit within this box and that box. But the world of the Māori, the statement is true—i.e., the corners of the house can be seen, but the corners of the heart are never seen. And so today you have felt the heart of some of us regarding the work being progressed by the House today, and your issue that is before the Government.

I will take some of the words that my ear and I heard this morning. That is the comment of my senior, of Te Pio, when many of you arrived before Te Ātiawa this morning, and his desire that this House might endeavour to rouse us, the Māori people, and energise our young people, our children and grandchildren.

However, this Ngāpuhi bows before you, and says to all hapū of Ngāti Ranginui, my friend, you indeed are the ones that rouse me, and that energise me. Let me take a look at myself, at Northland, where are we heading to? Well it has been you that walked this path, and that blazed this path since the time of our forebears and ancestors right up until this time. My friend Te Pio, I acknowledge you and your comments that inspire and arouse us, the Māori people, for the great endeavours before each of the iwi and all of the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui today.

And so, my noble leaders, I have seen the nature of some of the sections within the bill, and I am happy that land assets have been returned to you.

My ear and I heard today the speech of my uncle the Hon Shane Jones regarding that land, where war came to Gate Pā, and his appeal to this side of the House—i.e., the senior members, the prominent members of this side of the House to support your aspirations, and his support of the initiative of Pukehinahina.

To the House, over 10 years ago, I was the chairperson of initiative Homai He Rā. I was the chairperson that progressed all of the issues regarding the battle site in the time of our forebears and ancestors. At that particular time, I was the chairperson for the battle fortress Ruapekapeka, in Northland. Now, we sat together with you, the people of Ōrākau and Pukehinahina and similar sites all across the country.

There we were, progressing the initiative, and discussing, yes, and supporting the return of land, in the first instance. And also strengthening and resurrecting the narratives of our forebears and ancestors, in the second instance. And also maintaining the sanctity and life force of those places for our grandchildren and children in the future. Those were the goals at that time—i.e., those remain the goals at this time.

Therefore, I take the statements of my uncle Shane Jones—i.e., to our House and the challenge with respect to Gate Pā.

Well, noble leaders, you have been traversing the length of the land for a long time now to come to this House, without doubt there is much to be done before you for the benefit of our children and grandchildren to come. However, the statements of some of us of this House are true.

With regard to the Treaty of Waitangi, it will never truly end, it will not be burnt up in the heat of the sun, but it will remain in the heart and soul of each of you, of each of us. And so it is appropriate that it be so.

Furthermore, as I look to the remainder of my time, I have spoken about the factors surrounding the scarf; it can be seen on that side of the House, but it can’t be seen on this side of the House. Turi knows my genealogy to you. Perhaps the right pathway for Peeni to access a scarf for me, now, is through my land block in the name of my ancestor, Tāpeka, and his shares in the land block amongst you.

Perhaps that is the right pathway for me to access my scarf to carry within this House and the many initiatives surrounding it.

Well, my leaders, perhaps my closing statement to all of us this day should be this: these are the discussions that will be suspended on the apex ridge of heaven above, and embedded within the earth spread out below. Look to the mountain ranges, to the rivers of our spiritual guardians, to the rivers and the footsteps of our ancestors and forebears to be immortalised in memory for those of today and those of tomorrow. To be bound by wellbeing, to be bound by eternal health of us, the Māori people, and the many hapū of Ngāti Ranginui.

Let it be realised, let it transcend, and be bound tight. It coalesces, it assembles, it is done.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I look up to my friends in the gallery and I reassure you that I’m the last speaker. I’m the last politician you’re going to have to hear from today, talking before we actually see the action. And so I say: thank you so much for sitting in the gallery for the last nearly three hours, listening to the debate, speaking about your home, what this means, what it means for you going forward. So I say: thank you so much for putting up with all of us and coming to spend time with us, and I’m the lucky last. I hope they’ve saved the best till last, but you’ll be the judge of that—you’ll be the judge of that.

I do rise to speak on the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill, now at its third and final reading. I just want to quickly thank Neil Te Kani, who is watching from Tauranga and sent me a text and thanked me for my speech in the second reading. And I say thank you to Neil because I wear a pounamu every day that he gave to me and blessed for me. So thank you, Neil, for doing that on my behalf.

It’s a privilege to witness this momentous occasion, the culmination of a journey that began long before this legislation was first introduced nearly a decade ago. In my speech during the second reading, I outlined the history of this bill and the significance of the settlement for Ngāti Ranginui. Today, as we prepare to pass this legislation into law, I want to reflect on what it means for our region and for New Zealand.

First, I wish to acknowledge once more the representatives of Ngāti Ranginui who have journeyed to be with us today, and those who have worked tirelessly throughout this lengthy process. Your patience, persistence, and commitment to your people has brought us to this moment. The settlement we are finalising today addresses historical injustices that have shaped our region for generations. The raupatu of 1864, the undermining of hapū authority, and the systematic alienation of land—these actions by the Crown violated the Treaty of Waitangi and created wounds that have endured across generations.

As the bill completes its passage through Parliament, we’re not just transferring assets or making financial redress; we’re acknowledging the truth, restoring mana, and creating opportunities for genuine healing and development. For the 14,928 people who affiliate to Ngāti Ranginui, more than half who are under the age of 30, the settlement represents not just closure for historical grievances but a platform for future aspirations. The $38 million redress, the return of culturally significant sites, and the establishment of meaningful relationships with Crown agencies will establish Ngāti Ranginui to build on their vision for cultural revitalisation and economic development.

Throughout the progress of this bill, I’ve been heartened by the spirit of kotahitanga, demonstrated by all involved. The agreement of Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Pūkenga to allow the settlement to proceed independently speaks to the mutual respect and the understanding among the iwi of Tauranga Moana. The unanimous support from the Māori Affairs Committee and the broad cross-party backing for this legislation reminds us that Treaty settlements transcend political divisions. When we work together to address historical injustices, we strengthen the foundations of our nation.

With the passage of this bill, the Crown’s formal apology will be enshrined in law, acknowledging the specific breaches of the Treaty and expressing genuine remorse for the suffering caused. As one of the Bay of Plenty MPs, I’ve witnessed the profound impact that unresolved Treaty claims have had on our communities. The finalisation of this settlement removes a significant barrier to progress and creates space for new opportunities. I’m particularly excited about what this means for the hapū of Ngāti Ranginui, and others, who have maintained their strength despite generations of challenges. The settlement provides tools and resources to support their cultural, social, and economic aspirations.

While this settlement marks the end of a long legal process, it truly is a beginning. It establishes a foundation for the future relationship between the Crown and Ngāti Ranginui, one based on partnership, respect, and shared prosperity. As we conclude the legislative process, I acknowledge those who have contributed to bringing this settlement to fruition: the negotiators, the trustees, Crown officials, parliamentarians past and present, and the many community members who have supported this journey.

The settlement is a testament to the enduring strength and vision of Ngāti Ranginui. It’s also a reminder of our collective responsibility to honour the Treaty of Waitangi and to build a more just and equitable New Zealand. It’s with great pride that I support the third and final reading of the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill. May it serve as another step towards healing, reconciliation, and shared prosperity for all New Zealanders. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

The House is suspended, and will resume at 2 p.m.

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

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, yesterday, oral question No. 8 led the House into presenting itself in a less than favourable light. The content of the question led to numerous points of order, each referencing the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings, presenting matters that were relevant but, on their own, contestable. I’ve taken time to review the Hansard recording of these proceedings, and I will present to the House a new Speaker’s ruling, which builds upon, although not exhaustively, Speakers’ rulings 55/1, 56/4, 157/5, and 192/5, and Standing Order 390, and specifically, Standing Order 390(1)(c).

In considering all of these points, I’ve reached the conclusion that I should not have allowed question No. 8, although I note that no party raised issues with the question during the pre-publication period. It was reasonable, then, to reach the assumption that the House had accepted the content of the question, as the House is, of course, the architect of its own procedure. Nor should I have allowed the word used in response to the question to go unchecked. The member concerned may wish to think about a belated action to uphold the dignity of the House.

Those who assist members in the preparation of questions need to be more rigid in restricting questions to the confines of all parts of Standing Order 390 and also the provisions around answers. Accordingly, I offer this new ruling to the House, which should bring together all of the matters that were raised yesterday in a fairly concise form.

The ruling is: “Oral or written questions may ask a Minister if they agree with comments made in news or opinion articles or broadcasts, but cannot repeat comment if it is of a discreditable nature to any member of this House. The use of socially unacceptable language or profanity, even if relevant to authentication, in either questions or answers, is not permissible, and that has long been a position in this House.” All other rulings on matters relating to Standing Order 390 are upheld.

Point of order. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much; I’m sure the House will benefit from that clarity. I have one question, just for everybody’s understanding: is the restriction outlined in your new ruling in regards to members personally, not in regards to views or policies that they may hold?

Well, you raise immediately the need for there to be some discretion in the consideration of these matters, but if you take that situation yesterday, that was an article that very unreasonably attacked certain members in the House and characterised them in a way that is totally unacceptable. Those sorts of comments included in the question are now not going to be permitted. It would have been easy to ask the question simply if they agreed with the article. I hope that makes it clear.

Point of order, please. Mr Speaker, can I ask you as to which country the flags currently being flown outside of Parliament represent?

They’re not being flown at the moment, they—

Outrageous.

Member, we’re on a point of order; if the member wants to leave the House, he should do so voluntarily before he’s asked to.

They’re not being flown at the present time; they were there for a short recognition ceremony this morning that has been, as I understand it and I have been advised, undertaken for quite some years.

Mr Speaker, can I also thank you for your ruling and the clarity around that. I think it will help the House.

In terms of next week, the House will consider the first reading of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill and the second reading of the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill. Wednesday is a members’ day, and, on Thursday, the Minister of Finance will deliver Budget 2025.

I thank the Leader of the House for the update. Could he inform the House if the Government intends to move urgency following the Budget, and, if so, he might like to know that we have cleared our diaries on Friday and all of Saturday.

Yes. As I’ve advised the Business Committee previously, there will be urgency, and I’m looking forward to having a beer with him on Saturday night.

Yeah, well, I’m not sure I’d be willing to join you—but anyway.

You weren’t invited.

Well, it’s all right. This is my place—you can either go or stay.

No petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation. I present the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament: Summary of annual returns as at 31 January 2025. I also present the following report of the Controller and Auditor-General entitled Oranga Tamariki: Inquiry into procurement and contract management. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Ten select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

Report of the Economic Development, Science, and Innovation Committee on its first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament

report of the Education and Workforce Committee on its first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Controller and Auditor-General, Draft Annual Plan 2025-26, and the

committee’s first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament

report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Committee on its first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament

report of the Governance and Administration Committee on its first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament

report of the Health Committee on the petition of Chris Gilmore

report of the Privileges Committee on the question of privilege concerning the conduct of four members during proceedings of the House

reports of the Social Services and Community Committee on the:

petition of Ihorangi Ahi Bay Potiki Reweti Peters, and its

first scrutiny activities report for the 54th Parliament.

The scrutiny activities reports and the report on the plan of the Controller and Auditor-General are set down for consideration.

Members, the final report of the Privileges Committee on the question of privilege concerning the conduct of four members during proceedings of the House has been presented. The report is set down for consideration on the next sitting day, which will be Tuesday. I’m highlighting this for the House now because this is an important debate, and one that I’m sure members will want to prepare for.

In this report, the committee’s recommendation is that three members are punished for contempt. In each case, the recommended punishment is that the member be suspended from the service of the House, one for a period of seven days, and the other two for a period of 21 days. It might be interesting for some of the media who have reported to understand that it’s a recommendation at this point as the House hasn’t yet dealt with it.

These punishments recommended by the committee are very severe and are unprecedented in this Parliament. As far as I’m aware, since the House first met in 1854, no member who has been found guilty of contempt has been suspended for more than three days. I’m also conscious that, unlike in previous such cases, suspension from the service of the House now carries a substantial financial penalty. The committee’s recommendation therefore represents a significant development in the practice of the House. A proper opportunity for debate must be provided before the House arrives at a decision.

I also note that the committee’s recommendation was adopted by a narrow majority. That is an important point when the effect of the recommendation would be to deprive members of a minority party of their ability to sit and vote in this House for several days.

As the committee’s report states, the Speaker has a duty to protect the rights of members of all sides of the House. In particular, there’s a longstanding convention for Speakers to safeguard the fair treatment of the minority. I intend to honour that convention by ensuring the House does not take a decision next week without due consideration. In my view, these severe recommended penalties placed before the House for consideration mean it would be unreasonable to accept a closure motion until all perspectives and views had been very fully expressed.

I would next like to set out how I intend to apply Standing Order 255(2), which deals with the consideration of a report of the Privileges Committee. It provides that the chairperson, or a member of the committee, may move a motion that reflects the committee’s recommendation. The motion may be amended, and an amendment is not required to reflect the recommendation, as long as the amendment is relevant and otherwise in order.

As with many other situations when proposals are made to this House, it is not an all-or-nothing decision. I also note Standing Order 129, which provides that when an amendment has been moved, a member who spoke before the amendment was moved may speak again.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. You outlined in your consideration that one of the matters that influenced you was the inability for those members to not be part of the Budget presentation.

No.

Yes, you did.

I didn’t mention that. I simply said—

Well, it’d be part of the debate.

Well, just so you’re clear, I said that the recommended penalties, if adopted by the House, would see the members suspended from the service of the House for several days.

But the point is, if you go back to last year, they weren’t in the House for the Budget then.

Well, that’s not the issue that I’m dealing with. Point of order, the Hon Chris Bishop.

Mr Speaker, thank you for those remarks. Is it the case that it is your intention that the question that the report be adopted in relation to the Privileges Committee report into this matter will be put on Tuesday, because, just from a timetabling point of view, Wednesday is set down to be a members’ day and, of course, Thursday is Budget day.

Yes, I’m well aware of that, but the Standing Orders are that the report of a Privileges Committee is dealt with at the first opportunity, which is going to be some time just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Just for clarity in terms of the House and those listening and watching, you are expecting a wide-ranging debate, potentially, involving the three people who did not turn up to the Privileges Committee but who may very well be in the House, and you are anticipating that they will put forward their perspectives as to why this punishment is unnecessary or severe?

Well, we are—

Speaking to the point of order.

No, hang on—just let me just respond to that. Firstly, there is a motion before the House which is debatable, so any member who is legitimately in the House may speak to it. I’m making it clear to the House that it is an amendable motion, and it always has been under the Standing Orders. We’ll go to the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and I’ll come to the member.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Are you saying that we’re going to have a debate, and anybody can move an amendment if they wish to, but, at the end, are you going to put the motion?

Yeah, that always happens.

Good—thank you.

Well, hang on: whatever the motion is left on the floor of the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Speaking to the point of order from Shane Jones, I just wanted to clarify with you that, when the point was made about the three members not attending the select committee, that was the statement that was made by Shane Jones, and, if that was the case, I didn’t realise that they were required to attend the select committee.

No, no, they’re not—no one is ever required to attend at the Privileges Committee, but they leave the result of that exercise in the hands of the committee. However, I’ll make the point that no one at this point, despite what the media have been reporting, is suspended from this House, and will not be until there is a vote from the House indicating that that is to happen. So all members in this House can speak in this debate.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you. As you’ve pointed out, sir, this is, in terms of the recommendation, unprecedented and the House has not considered a proposal from the Privileges Committee of this ilk before, and, unlike other debates, every member has the right to speak. It is unusual in the sense that we are debating something that has not come from any particular caucus in this House, but from a committee, and it is a split recommendation. Given the significance, in order to get a true reflection of the House’s views, would you consider a personal vote on the question being put, after that debate?

No.

No bills have been introduced.

to the Minister of Finance

Fạiȧkse’ea, Mr Speaker. Does she stand by her statement about the pay equity changes that “the process that we have set up is fair. It’s robust”; if so, how is cancelling 33 pay equity claims under urgency fair?

on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Yes, I stand by my statement. We’ve made changes to the pay equity system that make it fairer and return it to its intended purpose: addressing gender-based pay discrimination. Despite what some may have suggested, any claims that have already been settled remain in place and fully funded. Claims that had not yet been settled under the old system have been discontinued because it is not practical to have two different systems operating at once. That would create uncertainty and unfairness.

Was accounting for the fiscal savings in her Budget the reason why urgency was used to cancel 33 active pay equity claims?

No.

How does using urgency address the warning she received from Treasury officials on 14 December 2023 that “while it would be possible to legislate to apply any new process to existing claims, such a retrospective action would need to be justified”?

Well, the Government did think it was justified, which is why the Government legislated.

How can she justify the cancellation of 180,000 workers’ pay equity claims, when many, like secondary school teachers, will be locked out of lodging a claim under the new rules?

Existing claims have been discontinued but the law has been reset to allow claims to be resubmitted.

Does she agree with advice from Treasury that “amending the legislation in a way that had the potential to reduce the fiscal cost would be seen as a degradation of the rights of those female-dominated occupations that have not yet raised a claim”?

No, because pay equity claims continue to exist. In fact, we have set aside money to honour existing claims that have been settled and future claims.

Why did she not take any action to protect the rights of those female-dominated occupations, given the warning from Treasury that those rights could be degraded, or was saving her Budget more important?

I disagree with the characterisation. Pay equity is important, as is the Equal Pay Act 1972, and we are honouring the commitments in that Act.

to the Associate Minister of Finance

What recent reports has he seen about tax and spending in New Zealand?

I’ve seen a number of reports about tax and spending. Some commentators say we should be taxing much more, spending much more, and borrowing much more, but to quote the words of a recent ANZ economist, New Zealand has recently been on a “debt-funded spending spree”. It’s resulted in high inflation, higher mortgage payments, higher petrol prices, and eye-watering prices at the grocery store. Fundamentally, this economy does not need more taxes and irresponsible Government spending; it needs fiscal restraint.

Can he confirm that net core Crown debt will not increase to 53.8 percent of GDP?

Well, the Budget is only a week away, but I can confirm that. Under the Government’s plan, debt is forecast to be 45.2 percent of GDP by 2028. It’s interesting, the Treasury has recommended a debt-to-GDP ceiling of 50 percent. This is a ceiling rather than a target. Our fiscal headroom is our insurance policy. We need to be able to respond to future shocks like another pandemic or an earthquake. Sadly, some people do not share this view. I have seen some people suggest we should have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 53.8 percent. This would be irresponsible for New Zealand’s future.

Will he rule out $88.9 billion in new taxes on New Zealanders in Budget 2025?

Yes, indeed, I can rule out increasing taxes by $88.9 billion in new taxes in Budget 2025. At this time of global economic uncertainty, and with New Zealand exiting recession and entering a growth phase, the last thing this economy needs is a massive tax and spend Budget.

Will he rule out a wealth tax and capital gains tax in Budget 2025?

Yes. I’m also happy to rule out an inheritance tax and, indeed, other taxes that other parties are proposing.

What about a fun tax?

Oh, the justice Minister asked me about a fun tax! I can also rule out a tax on fun. In fact, I can rule out all of those dangerous taxes that would put at risk our hard-won economic recovery.

So, on the issue of fiscal management, does he consider spending $88 billion and more over four years, yet still running a deficit, to be both tax and spend and “debt and inept”?

Well, I think the Rt Hon Winston Peters makes the point very adeptly, as he always does.

to the Minister of Health

Does he support GP services being free, publicly owned, and adequately resourced to reach underserved communities?

Well, the member from the Green Party might be surprised to learn that our GP services are private businesses. Our Government is focused on ensuring GPs can deliver timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. Our focus is on providing support to those with the greatest need. This includes maintaining zero fees for children under 14, offering reduced costs for low-income individuals with a community services card, and ensuring discounted access through the Very Low Cost Access Scheme. These initiatives help ensure that those living with the greatest need have access to GP services, and it comes on top of all of the work we’re doing to grow the number of GPs in primary practice, such as increasing the number of—

Yep. Good.

Is he concerned that one in six people avoid going to the GP because of cost, and, if so, what is he doing to reduce the cost of accessing care?

Well, the Government, as I said, is very focused on making sure that those who have the greatest need have access to primary care. And as I said, the Government does a number of things to support that access: maintaining zero fees for children under 14, offering reduced costs for low-income individuals and families with a community services card, and ensuring discounted access through the Very Low Cost Access Scheme. What I can tell the member, though, is that increasing taxes on general practitioners—

No—that’s enough. Thank you. That last bit was unnecessary and shouldn’t happen again.

Does he think the current capitation funding model is successful at remedying health inequities, and, if not, what does he plan to do about it?

Well, the capitation funding is designed to ensure that we can increase access for primary practice. Health New Zealand and the Ministry of Health have got work under way to look at how it can be improved, to ensure we improve access for all New Zealanders to be able to access primary care.

Is he committed to ensuring that health inequities are addressed in the capitation funding model review that he has just spoken about?

Well, look, the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand have work under way which is focused on how we can improve access. But, as I said, there are a number of things the Government does to ensure those who have the greatest need are supported to access their GP—as I said: free access for children under 14, offering reduced costs for low-income families with a community services card, and ensuring discounted access through the Very Low Cost Access Scheme. The Government does a number of things to support people who have the highest need to be able to access their GP.

What is the Government doing to grow the GP workforce and improve access to primary care?

Well, our Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen GP clinics and put patients first. Over this term, medical school placements will increase by 100 places—a major investment in growing our GP workforce and ensuring access to timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. We’re also funding 50 graduate doctors a year to train directly in GP clinics, helping to get more doctors into communities where they’re needed the most.

Why did he not maximise funding for GP training placements to 889 places by 2027?

Well, we have, as I said, increased spaces by 100 medical training spaces over the course of this term of this Government. That is the biggest increase in many, many years—about increasing medical training places through our universities. This Government is very focused on growing our workforce. We have more doctors at Health New Zealand, more nurses at Health New Zealand. We’re very focused on increasing access to primary care as well so that people can get timely, quality access to healthcare.

Will the Government commit to funding in greater amounts mobile healthcare clinics to access underserved areas such as South Auckland, to ensure people can be reconnected to GP services?

Well, as I said, there’s a number of things the Government is doing to increase access to GP services for those who need it the most. As I said, zero fees for children under 14, reduced fees for those families with a community services card, and ensuring discounted access through the Very Low Cost Access Scheme—which I know serves a number of clinics in South Auckland—so that people in those communities are able to access their GP at a low cost. We’re very focused on targeting the Government’s resources to maximise the benefit, rather than the Opposition’s tactic, which is to tax more, borrow more, and spend more.

No—hang on. I’ve warned the member once, now twice. There won’t be a third warning.

to the Minister for Women

Has she sought advice on the impact on closing the gender pay gap from moving the pay equity claim threshold from a 60 percent to a 70 percent female-dominated workforce; if not, why not?

I receive a range of advice on the gender pay gap, and, indeed, closing the gap does remain a top priority for me. The gender pay gap, as I’m sure the member will know, is a very complicated matter that can be caused by a number of factors, including organisational, sectorial, and indeed national. They can be addressed in a number of ways, not just through resolving pay equity claims. And regarding the threshold, I was advised that the majority of claims do meet the 70 percent threshold to be raised under the amended pay equity legislation.

Has she sought advice on the gender pay gap implications of secondary teachers who have a 63.6 percent female-dominated workforce and will not meet the threshold for a pay equity claim under the changes that her Government has made to the legislation?

As I said in my first answer, I have received a range of advice. The great majority of the claims that have been paused can indeed restart because they do meet the 70 percent threshold, and I would encourage them to do so.

How many workers will be able to proceed with their claims under the changed thresholds her Government has put into place?

What I would say to that member is that there are, of course, a wide range of people who have been in the process of raising a claim. As, I think, the Minister responsible outlined to the House yesterday, it is estimated about 180,000 members of various unions have been part of previously raised pay equity claims.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was very specific. We are all aware that 180,000 workers were covered by claims under the previous legislation. The Minister has been telling the House that very few people will be impacted by moving the threshold from 70 percent to 60 percent. I asked the Minister very specifically what that number now was. If she doesn’t know, she can say that, but she did not address that question.

But the Minister doesn’t have to accept the position that’s been put in a supplementary question. Well, the reality is there are now no claims. They’re all extinguished. So the question is: until new claims are lodged, how would you know what the numbers are?

Well, she could have said that.

Well, she could have, but I caught on to it, and I’m sure most of the House did.

On what date was she made aware the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety had notified the Prime Minister that reviewing the approach to pay equity was one of her five priorities?

I would advise the member to put that specific question in writing. What I can confirm to her is that I was first alerted to it in November. I was then, indeed, included in meetings in March, and I was consulted throughout the process.

On what date was she consulted on the work the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety received in December 2023 on options to change the Government’s approach to pay equity?

The initial conversation I had with the Minister of Finance regarding pay equity occurred on 9 November 2024.

Did she attend the Cabinet strategy committee report back in early 2025, where options for a future approach to pay equity were discussed?

I’d need the member to put in writing the specific date of that. What I can confirm is I was included in a Cabinet strategy meeting on 3 December 2024.

You’re not a member.

As the member has acknowledged, I am not a member of that particular committee. I was included in a strategy meeting on 3 December 2024.

to the Minister of Education

What recent announcements has she made about supporting the Government’s target of raising student achievement?

Our work programme is defined by pace, clarity, and outcomes and is delivering exactly what we said we would. We’re investing nearly $100 million to ensure that extra help with maths is available across all stages of primary and intermediate schooling so that children get the extra help they need, an approach we’re already delivering in reading. We’re embedding financial education into the curriculum so students are taught how to budget, save, invest, and understand things like insurance and loans. Our kids deserve a world-leading education to give them the best possible start in life, and that’s what we’re delivering.

What feedback has she seen about her actions to accelerate maths achievement?

Feedback from schools has been very positive. One student from Cambridge Middle School who has been involved in our maths acceleration trial said, “When I started, I couldn’t answer, like, a simple question really, but now I can do division, fractions, percentages all pretty easily.” Having heard the Government will be expanding the programme to reach up to 34,000 years 7 and 8 students, one principal said, “Fantastic support. We needed this all the way.” But what I love to hear from students is what it means to experience success. One student involved in the trial said, “I love maths. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done this year.”, and that’s why this is a Government committed to progress and achievement.

How are her recent announcements supporting teachers?

This Government recognises teachers’ ongoing commitment to raising student achievement, which is why we’re investing to back our teacher workforce. Twenty-thousand teachers have received high-quality professional development in structured literacy, 15,000 have received structured training in maths, and over 836,000 maths resources have been delivered to students and teachers in primary and intermediate to support the new world-leading maths curriculum. We’ve delivered on our promise to remove the cost of teacher registration and practising certificates, and that is just the start.

How are her recent announcements supporting parents?

The Government backs parents to be a key partner in their child’s learning. To support parents, we’ve launched the parent portal, to provide clear guidance in the curriculum each year in English and maths, videos about starting school, the phonics checks, guides to parent interviews, explainers about structured literacy, and all the resources that you need to support learning at home in English and maths. We’ve already had 231,000 visits to the page, making it the Ministry of Education’s most viewed page. Parents want to know these things about their child’s learning. They want to be involved. My message to parents is, “We have your back. That’s why we are supporting you and restoring your place at the heart of your child’s learning. Thank you for everything you do to support your child on their education journey.”

On the subject of raising student achievement, will the Minister set aside funding so that some members can study Economics 101 and History 101 to learn that Marxist, pinko money-wasting never ends well for any country?

Well, the Minister has no responsibility for the education of members.

I didn’t say members; it could be students.

You did say members, but if you want to—

Oh, it could be a student member—you just assumed that, didn’t you?

Yeah, I think you can split hairs, but just—

I’ll rephrase it, then.

Yeah, that would be good.

On the subject of raising student achievement, will the Minister set aside funding for some students to study Economics 101 and History 101 to learn that Marxist, pinko money-wasting never ends well for any country?

We’ve already invested an hour a day in reading, writing, and maths. We’ve invested multiple tens of millions in professional learning and development along with resources, and we’re updating the curriculum in all of the areas that the Deputy Prime Minister has alluded to today.

to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety

Is it accurate that 180,000 workers are affected by the cancelling of 33 pay equity claims?

First, I would like to give hope to the member and any woman watching who would like to raise a pay equity claim. You can do this. Any woman or union can do this today under the new system this Government has introduced. The work that has been put in to date under previous claims has not been wasted. The material and evidence may be able to be used for the new claim.

Yeah, just a moment. It is a very straight question. It was on notice. If there’s anything you want to add, that’s fine, but you should answer the question in the first instance.

In response to the question about the number of workers who were covered by the 33 pay equity claims in progress under the previous system, that is the estimate I was provided by the Public Service Commission. The figure is based on the data they have on claims in the public sector and some of the claims in the funded sector. The figure will not include all workers in the funded sector, as the Government is not the employer and so does not hold all that information.

How many of the 180,000 workers are employed in the funded sector in services such as Plunket nurses, early childhood education teachers, or hospice workers?

As I’ve said previously, from the figure that has been provided to me by the Public Service Commission, that is based on the data that they have on claims in the public sector and some of the claims in the funded sector. As the member will be aware, the public sector does make up a large majority of that number.

Has Cabinet made a decision on whether it will fund successful pay equity claims in the funded sector such as Plunket nurses, early childhood education teachers, or hospice workers?

My understanding is that this may have been information provided maybe a year ago, that the Government, under Minister Nicola Willis’ pay equity reset, suggested that the funded sector would not be funded by the Government for pay equity.

So why won’t the Government fund successful pay equity claims for core services in the funded sector, given their funding comes from the Government?

That was a decision that is not within my remit. That is a question for the Minister of Finance.

Is the reason why they won’t fund successful pay equity claims, such as for Plunket nurses, early childhood education teachers, and hospice workers, because the Government’s Budget won’t add up?

No. I think some things do need to be made clear. We do still have a pay equity system. We will still be funding some of these claims, but when it comes to things that are in relation to the Budget, the member has been here for quite a while and should know that I’m not the Minister of Finance, I’m not responsible for the Budget, and I can’t give out information that relates to the Budget or anything that may or may not be Budget-sensitive. I’m simply the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, responsible for the legislation that underpins the system. You know, I’m not responsible for everything. [Interruption]

I’d just say to the House that there’s been quite an emphasis and focus on the stricter application of the Standing Orders. One of those Standing Orders talks about the barracking and the point where barracking becomes heckling. I can’t quite remember the number, but I’ll research it later. But I’d just suggest that members take that into account when they feel the need to start yelling across the House. Jan Tinetti, is there another question?

No.

to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries

Does he believe bottom trawling is damaging; if so, should it be banned?

No, I do not consider that bottom trawling should be prohibited or banned, and, yes, it can have effects on the environment. However, with clever management measures, these things are all capable of being mitigated.

Does the Minister agree that bottom trawling is rapidly losing its social licence due to the destruction it causes to marine habitats and its high emissions profile, and, if not, why not?

No. The bottom trawling techniques that are pursued by the New Zealand fishing industry are relatively harmless, and I hope the member isn’t following catastrophisation of what may happen in less enlightened nations.

Why is New Zealand the only country still bottom trawling in the South Pacific despite growing international concern and environmental evidence?

We, on this side of the House, are not going to ostracise the men and women working, earning a legitimate living, in an important segment of the economy. The reference to seining and trawling in New Zealand refers to an established practice, and, yes, from time to time, it does happen in the Hauraki Gulf, which shouldn’t bother anyone because the Hauraki Gulf is basically a mud-stained bottom.

How does the Minister reconcile his decision to scrap plans to restrict bottom trawling in the Hauraki Gulf with his Government’s commitments to marine biodiversity, especially in light of the 97 percent decline in whales and dolphins, and the functional extinction of species like crayfish and scallops in parts of the gulf?

As befits my approach to politics, I deal with science and technology, and I can assure the House that the Tīkapa Moana bill being promoted and brought forward by our colleague the Minister of Conservation already allows for a host of areas to be excluded from bottom trawling. I think it’s important that we remember that our Government is interested in doubling exports, not exiling industries or buying into the weaponisation of legislation designed to de-industrialise New Zealand. That was on display yesterday with the Green alternative budget.

Has the Minister seen Sir David Attenborough’s new documentary Ocean, which contains some of the most graphic footage of the damage that bottom trawling can do to the seabed?

Many generations of New Zealanders have followed, with a great deal of interest, Mr Attenborough. However, Danish seining, trawling in New Zealand, is a vastly different proposition from the graphic images that feature in that particular movie. There are thousands of New Zealanders who rely on this industry for their jobs, generating export. As I said, again, we must not allow emotionalism to overcome science.

Is the Minister intentionally undermining public trust in marine protection laws and weakening New Zealand’s international reputation on ocean conservation, or is that just a byproduct of his unwavering servitude to the seafood industry?

You can ask the question again, but the last part is to be struck out of the Hansard record.

OK. What is more important to the Minister: maintaining public trust in marine protection laws and New Zealand’s international reputation on ocean conservation, or maintaining the trust of the seafood industry?

Proclamations of international reputation without a chequebook that can actually meet the costs of environmental dues is a pipe dream. The fishing industry and the techniques of the fishing industry are constantly being reviewed by regulators, and New Zealanders can sleep happy tonight knowing they have a pro-industry champion in the matua.

to the Minister of Justice

How is the Government progressing with its plan to restore law and order?

The Government continues to progress its plan to restore law and order with vigour. We’ve given Police the additional powers they need to disrupt the activities of gangs. We stopped taxpayers funding the proliferation of cultural reports. We’ve made sweeping reform to the Sentencing Act to put more serious offenders in prison for longer by restoring three strikes and restricting sentencing discounts by adding additional aggravating factors so that offenders are more appropriately held to account. Our target to reduce the number of victims shows this is working, with more than 28,000 fewer victims recorded in the latest stats. There’s been great progress, but there is still a lot more to do.

What is next on the law and order agenda?

Parliament is currently considering a range of legislation, including the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, which makes changes to ensure that, if convicted, adult sex offenders are publicly named and held to account if that is the wish of their victim. And shortly, the hard-working Justice Committee will report back on legislation to make stalking an illegal and jailable offence for up to five years—much work to be done there.

Why is it important for the Government to restore law and order?

Because it needed restoring in 2023, when we came to Government, and communities across the country didn’t feel safe. People deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their communities and to have confidence that the justice system will hold those who disregard the laws to account. Every victim that is spared from going through the trauma of crime deserves the attention of the House, and that’s what we’re focused on today.

What other actions is the Government taking to restore law and order?

As part of our Q2 plan, the Government intends to make decisions on a range of matters, including reforming the Crimes Act to further strengthen consequences, particularly in response to views of the ministerial advisory group on retail crime, led by Sunny Kaushal, relating to low-level offending, and strengthening trespass laws. We also intend to progress law changes to make citizen’s arrest provisions more effective, and I look forward to the other side supporting these sensible changes.

On the topic of law and order, has the Minister read any reports proposing $88 million in new spending but zero dollars to Police and $770 million in cuts for Corrections?

Well, yes, I have seen those. I’ve seen those reports, and they’re related to the Green Party. It is a state—

In that case, you don’t have to answer it. We move now to question No. 9.

to the Minister for Social Development and Employment

Was cancelling 33 current pay equity claims consistent with her commitment to reduce persistent disadvantage as outlined in her employment action plan; if not, why not?

Our Government is committed to maintaining a process to raise and resolve pay equity claims, and this process is open for claims. The Employment Action Plan ensures we are working across Government to provide greater opportunities for more New Zealanders.

Is the gender pay gap an example of persistent disadvantage?

No.

Did she advocate for her Employment Action Plan objective to reduce persistent disadvantage when the pay equity changes were discussed at Cabinet?

If the member had read the action plan, she would understand that persistent disadvantage is disadvantage that is ongoing for two years or more over a life course or intergenerationally—which is why we are focused, for example, on reducing the number of young people on benefits, because if they go on to benefit under the age of 25, they will spend 20 future years there. That is persistent disadvantage.

If the gender pay gap is not an example of persistent disadvantage, what is?

I just answered that.

Just give her the fact again.

Twenty years for a young person under the age of 25 going on to a jobseeker benefit or a main benefit.

How does cancelling the 33 pay equity claims align with her action plan’s concern that there are “persistent and serious gaps in the labour market participation and outcomes for specific population groups, especially women”?

That’s why we have a range of Ministers who work on the labour market issues, including the Minister for Women, including the Minister of Education, the Minister for Vocational Education, and other Ministers as examples. This is a cross-Government piece of work to improve outcomes for all New Zealanders, including women.

to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs

What recent announcements has the Government made about increasing competition in banking?

Recently, I announced the next big step for open banking in New Zealand. Cabinet has now signed off on the regulations for open banking, and we’re now on a clear path to delivering more choice and better service for Kiwi consumers. The major banks will have until December to get ready for open banking, and that means that there will be certainty that open banking will be live by this Christmas.

What is open banking and how would it help Kiwi consumers?

Open banking allows New Zealanders to securely share their banking data, like transaction history and account balances, with third parties such as fintechs. It aims to increase competition and innovation in the financial sector by enabling new services like budgeting apps, new payment methods, and loan-comparison tools. And importantly, consumers stay in control. Data is only shared with their consent, and providers must meet strict security standards.

What are some examples of open banking in practice?

Well, there are many great examples overseas of open banking in practice, and I can’t wait to see what New Zealand - based fintech start-up companies will come up for us here in New Zealand. Other countries have seen exciting start-ups flourish under open banking, and examples include one called Revolut, an app that links to other banks for easier budgeting, payments, and multi-currency use; and then there’s UNO Home Loans, a tool that speeds up mortgage comparison using income and spending data from banks; and then, thirdly, Canopy, which verifies rent and income from a streamlined process when moving house.

What else is the Government doing to increase banking competition?

This Government is laser-focused on increasing competition in the banking sector and that is for sure. As members will know, the Government has called for a select committee inquiry into banking competition following the Commerce Commission’s study on personal banking. Now, the hard-working Finance and Expenditure Committee received more than 200 public submissions which showed broad concern about the level of competition. Recently, I also announced a programme run by the Financial Markets Authority to help level the playing field for fintechs challenging the big banks and to further boost competition.

to the Minister for Disability Issues

Does she stand by her statement, “That is why we are prioritising disabled people, their families and carers”; if so, why?

Yes. Prioritising disabled people, their families, and carers is a priority for this Government, and that’s why we provided a record $1.1 billion funding boost to Disability Support Services in Budget 2024. The state of affairs left by the last Government needed immediate action to stabilise the disability support system. Just announced today in Budget 2025, the Government has provided $190 million of social investment for vulnerable New Zealanders, including support for Autism New Zealand’s early screening and intervention programme that provides services and support for whānau, caregivers, and professionals. Our Government is focused on improving the lives of the nearly one in six disabled New Zealanders.

How many people included in the care and support workers’ pay equity claim are employed in Disability Support Services?

I don’t have that number on me, and I would encourage anyone who has a pay equity claim to continue with their process.

Has Cabinet made a decision on reallocating the funds held in contingency to settle the care and support workers’ pay equity claim?

I’m not going to comment on comments that may or may not be subject to the Budget.

Why did she agree to change the threshold from 60 percent to 70 percent, making it impossible for Peke Waihanga—the Artificial Limb Service—to lodge a pay equity claim, given their workforce is 65 percent women?

The Government made a decision to make a process that was fairer and more transparent, and claims can be made, and I’d encourage women and unions to do so.

How will she ensure access to artificial limbs, orthotics, and rehabilitation, given Peke Waihanga is already disadvantaged by previously settled claims that mean they could lose their staff to employers who pay more?

I don’t think that’s an issue that is any different from any employment space. I would encourage that organisation to look at supporting their employees.

to the Associate Minister of Agriculture

What recent announcements has he made about strengthening regulation to support the welfare of dogs?

Last month, I announced new regulations that will create infringement offences for dog owners who cause their animals harm by leaving them chained up for days on end. Regulations will prohibit chaining vulnerable dogs, like pregnant or young animals, except for very temporary situations, and will give enforcement agencies real teeth to intervene swiftly where there is clearly observable harm associated with the long-term chaining. I want to send a sharp, clear message to dog owners that this poor behaviour towards animals is unacceptable and there will be consequences.

Why are the regulations required?

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the SPCA here. They told the Government back in 2021 that the powers available to animal welfare inspectors under the regulations were not remotely adequate to address the almost 1,500 complaints about chaining that they received in 2021. Serious mistreatment of animals is already an offence under the Act, but criminal prosecution takes a lot of money and a lot of time. These infringement offences will allow appropriate action to be taken quickly to address the problem.

How will these new regulations focus on the wellbeing of dogs?

The Government took a bit of time to work through a few different options, and we’ve landed on outcome-focused regulations. In some cases, there could be good reasons for a dog to be tied up for periods of time, as long as it’s in a way that preserves the standards of animal welfare. So these regulations will target harm. They will list a series of clearly observable outcomes where welfare is compromised. This will enable inspectors to know straight away whether an infringement fine is justified.

How will the regulations be implemented?

Look, it’s important to note that these regulations won’t affect most Kiwi dog owners, who treat their dogs exceptionally well; for those that don’t, however, there will be a six-month period after the regulations are made at the end of the year where inspectors will focus on education and working with the community. This will be followed by a common-sense application of the law. I’d also note that even with these regulations in place, the most serious breaches can and will proceed to prosecution where necessary.

There’ll be members who need to leave the Chamber for duties elsewhere in the precinct. They may do so quietly, as we’ve come to the end of oral questions.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Valuers Bill.

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

I move, That the Valuers Bill be now read a first time.

Under Standing Order 276(3), the bill’s explanatory note states the committee nominated to consider the bill. The question therefore is, That the Valuers Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

I present a legislative statement on the Social Security 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 Social Security Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Our Government believes people are better off in work. We have already taken steps to strengthen the welfare system’s focus on supporting people off benefit and into employment, and our approach is working. During the first month of the traffic light system, obligation failures decreased by 9 percent. Between January and March this year, over 23,000 people cancelled their benefit because they found work. This is an 11 percent increase on the same period from 2024.

This bill seeks to amend the Social Security Act and the social security regulations to expand and enhance welfare settings to continue supporting people off welfare and into work. The welfare system will always be available to support people when they need it, but as this Government has said from the start: people who can work need to meet their obligations to look for a job and be held accountable when they don’t.

I want to quickly outline the key policy proposals in the bill. Quite simply, this bill introduces non-financial sanctions to expand the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) tool kit. Non-financial sanctions provide an alternative option to reducing someone’s benefit, which is a financial sanction, when responding to a person’s first work-related or social obligation failure. They will only be an option for a person in active case management and/or a person with dependent children. Money management and community work experience are the first two non-financial sanctions implemented from 26 May.

The bill also extends the period over which an obligation failure counts against people from 12 to 24 months, with the exception of youth clients, increasing the likelihood that those who are repeatedly refusing to comply with their obligations will have their benefit cancelled if they remain on the benefit for more than a year.

The bill will require new applicants for certain benefits with work-related obligations to have a completed job seeker profile before their benefit is granted, and this change will encourage work-focused conversations from the earliest possible opportunity and help MSD to better match people to suitable job vacancies.

The bill will also reduce the amount of time someone who is on jobseeker support has before they reapply for the benefit from 52 to 26 weeks. This means that clients will have more frequent engagements with MSD about employment.

As this bill goes through its third reading, I would like to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its considered recommendations to improve the bill and, in particular, their recommendation to include two further non-financial sanctions: report job search and upskilling. These additional non-financial sanctions will be available by October. I want to put on record my thanks to the officials who worked hard on this very important piece of legislation and the MSD staff that get up each and every day to support New Zealanders into employment. I also want to thank the members of the public and organisations who provided both written and oral submissions on the bill.

Once more, I want to remind members of this House and the public that the non-financial sanctions proposed in this bill will only affect those who are not complying with their obligations. Most people on benefit are doing the right thing, and these changes will have no effect on them.

The bill represents another step forward in refocusing our welfare system, creating a more transparent, accountable, and work-focused environment for job seekers. MSD front-line staff do an amazing job, actively engaging with job seekers, informing them of their obligations and responsibilities and the consequences when they don’t through the traffic light system. But they also provide incredible support to help New Zealanders find work. This matters because work is more than about money. It also gives people a sense of purpose, independence, and connectedness, leading to a better future and helping families to break out of the cycle of intergenerational welfare dependence.

Simply put, our Government believes that people and families are better off in work, our economy is better off when people are in work, and our Government is committed to making this a reality. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s very sad to hear that type of kōrero from the Minister for Social Development and Employment because the reality is that this bill makes life hard again for beneficiaries, who feel they’re very much under attack from this Government. We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and we would like to think the Government would be working a bit closer with them. We have opposed this bill all the way through. We think it’s grossly unfair and far too punitive—is certainly the position that we, as Opposition, have taken up, certainly the Labour Party position.

It’s grossly unfair to Māori who make up—we’re talking 15 percent of the population, yet Māori account for 36 percent of all main beneficiary recipients. The miserly bill doubles the period—and that’s the problem here; we were certainly tested when we were in Government over this—during which obligation failures are counted against someone, adds non-financial sanctions for first failures, and forces beneficiaries to reapply for their benefits every 26 weeks. That is very, very tough on whānau who are already struggling—already struggling at ground level, already struggling in the community. You’re talking about a devastating effect, perhaps, on families who don’t deserve to be going down that track. So it’s not a bill about supporting people; this is a bill about punishing people, which, sadly, is how this Government is being perceived out there in the communities.

It’s another attempt by the Government to blame beneficiaries instead of taking responsibility for their policy that has spiked unemployment numbers. Why punish the unemployed for an unemployment problem that this Government has surely created? While they’ll say that there is no major increase in terms of unemployment figures, the unemployment figures are still at an unacceptable level. Māori unemployment is up to 10.5 percent, with an increase in terms of 7,000 more people going on to benefits.

We’re particularly disappointed because when we were in Government, and when I was an employment Minister, Māori affairs Minister, Māori development Minister, there was a focus in terms of targeted programmes—targeted programmes in terms of women, targeted programmes in terms of Māori, targeted programmes in terms of Pasifika. These now are programmes that this Government is withdrawing from. They’re not seeing the benefits of a targeted and focused programme. Benefit and jobseeker numbers have risen significantly under this Government as a result of worsening economic conditions—I think we understand that—but this Government needs to take some responsibility for the consequences of their actions instead of blaming the unemployed for being unemployed.

The Government has all but given up trying to get beneficiaries into work and now it’s trying to, essentially, force people away by making accessing the benefits they are entitled to increasingly difficult. This is something that we traversed through the committee stage, the difficulties that some people have in managing this and working with AI and working with computers. You’re talking about sometimes people with multiple problems, difficulties just trying to survive, and then all of a sudden, they have to reapply for a benefit. Doubling the amount of time a failed obligation counts for does nothing but further punish job seekers. It certainly doesn’t help them find employment and it is a disproportionate punishment, especially if they’re caregivers. Again, the Government is not showing enough empathy, sympathy, and aroha in that direction.

Similarly, making job seekers reapply every 26 week is only designed to make being on jobseeker support an increasingly frustrating experience. It’s just to force people off regardless of whether they’re going into employment. Enforcing money management as a non-financial sanction could lead to a variety of issues, especially if beneficiaries spend more than half of their entitlements on rents and bills such as water and power.

This malicious and spiteful legislation is nothing more than whipping the poor and then charging them for the beating. The Government is, essentially, admitting it would rather punch down on our most vulnerable rather than do anything to help them materially improve their lives.

Not only are these suggested changes cruel and counterproductive, they’re also unfeasible. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has admitted—again, we traversed this through the committee stage, and we also had feedback from MSD—during scrutiny week that they’re already under huge pressure as their front-line operational capacity has remained broadly unchanged. But they have had 700 cuts in terms of their backroom staff. So how do you ask an agency already under huge pressure to roll out the Government strategy and programme? It is next to impossible. Don’t get me wrong, there are good people at MSD. They worked with us, and they worked with the Government, but they are not social workers. They are not social workers. But they are also not robots and they’re not machines. They can’t roll out a Government strategy when they’re undermanned and having to do multiple things. So 700 cuts to the backroom staff would make it near impossible to roll out a tight programme that the Government wants.

The rise in main benefit recipients now mean they must serve an additional 30,000 more people. We’ve already seen a decline in accurate assessment with a quarter of beneficiaries not receiving their full entitlements. Now the Government has heaped more pressure on MSD’s operational capacity, essentially doubling the amount of jobseeker applications MSD must process in any given year, notwithstanding the forecast rise in job seeker numbers.

This is on top of other requests that the Government has heaped on them, such as implementing the traffic light system—a very controversial system—and increasing the amount of job seekers eligible for case management, increasing the amount of sanctions imposed on beneficiaries, increasing the amount of meetings the job seekers must attend. It’s not always possible to attend all these meetings. As I said, some of these people are struggling as it is. Miss the meeting, miss their allowance. Miss their allowance, miss their pūtea, the money owing to them, the whānau suffers.

Government has to look at this. The Government has to be more understanding that sometimes it’s not about a second warning and it’s out; sometimes it’s about a third, fourth, or fifth warning. I know that’s hard for some on the other side to understand, but when you give up on them, you have to understand the consequences in terms of that family and in terms of that community. I know that people on the other side do work at the coalface with some of these people, but understand some of the difficulties that they have to go through.

The regulatory impact statement (RIS) alone shows the Government should not have proceeded with these changes. Clear as a bell, the RIS for this bill highlights one of the consequences—and this is what I’m saying—may be that MSD will have to direct more resources towards compliance and, therefore, away from employment initiatives. They will literally have to put less resources into helping beneficiaries to work. Surely, the principle of this is to get them into work, but it’s going to have the opposite and adverse effect. Research cited in the RIS highlights that sanctions may increase mental and physical health problems, including substance abuse and poverty. The RIS highlights that previous work on reapplication showed that cancellations of the benefit as part of the reapplication process often led to a new application, suggesting procedural denials rather than ineligibility. The RIS also highlighted that focusing on those close to return to work via case management was almost certainly to the detriment of long-term beneficiaries.

In summary, this welfare policy will hurt people, not help them. I denounce this policy. We in Labour absolutely denounce this policy. It is the wrong policy. It is too punitive. It’s about punishing people all the time. We need to take another way. We need to look at things a different way, a more embracing way, a more aroha way. That is the view of Labour, and we will stick by that and put that again in place when we’re back in Government. Kia ora.

The Government has outlined their formula to get us back on track to grow poverty, grow inequality, grow the number of people living in their cars, and this formula includes cutting benefit increases, keeping benefit levels below the poverty line, then increasing unemployment, followed by increasing benefit sanctions. And just watch as more people experience material hardship and food insecurity, and as UNICEF reports that Aotearoa continues to be one of the worst countries for children’s wellbeing in the developed world.

The Minister should be ashamed to even refer to this bill as supporting people into employment, because there’s nothing in this bill that does this—absolutely nothing. She either did not read the bill or is just choosing to omit the bits of this bill, the majority of this bill, that will simply push people further into poverty. The so-called non-financial sanctions—and that is, I think, an inaccurate description of what they do—will push people further into poverty. I think calling them “non-financial sanctions” is simply incorrect, because let’s outline the benefit sanctions that are in this bill, and what they do.

Compulsory money management will put 50 percent of someone’s income in a payment card that then they won’t be able to use to pay their rent, to pay their bills, or for other basic essentials, when we know that most people on the benefit are already paying 50 percent of their income on rent. We know that this benefit sanction, deemed “non-financial”, will literally leave people unable to keep a roof over their head. There’s a financial impact in here.

Then let’s look at community work experience. Most organisations who were consulted reported that they were not so keen to participate in this because it actually destroys the purpose of volunteering and it burdens those volunteer organisations. That benefit sanction will do nothing to adequately support people to engage and to be part of their communities. And what’s worse, people subjected to the sanction as well as others will be unable to access things like hardship grants. For those who don’t know, people on the benefit, many of them, rely on hardship grants on a sometimes regular basis, sometimes even weekly basis, just to survive. How can we call these sanctions “non-financial” when they strip away people’s ability to access the very assistance that allows them to sometimes have food on the table?

Then we also have two benefit sanctions that were added later in the piece—terrible lawmaking process, because the Minister outlined in the Cabinet paper that she intended to do this and didn’t let anyone in the public know until later in the select committee stage, stripping away people’s ability to submit on these two other so-called non-financial sanctions. If the Minister was so confident about the process that she was following in her policies, she would have let people know of her intentions so that these sanctions could be adequately scrutinised.

Let’s talk about the so-called job-search report, which will then force people to apply for three jobs each week, but then those people won’t even be able to access the assistance that then allows them to enter into employment—so, for example, financial assistance that allows them to have access to uniforms, that have access to transport, that have access to a vehicle that allows them to get into that very same job. Literally, what the Government is doing is making it harder to get into employment, and no matter how much evidence we present to the Minister over how benefit sanctions do not work—they simply push people further into poverty—the Minister seems to not care, but I actually think that it’s beyond the Minister not caring.

The Minister always intended to increase poverty in this country, because I cannot see anything in this legislation that does otherwise, and we’ve already seen the impacts of Government policies. For example, there is the stripping away of subsidies that allow people to access basic essentials, such as prescriptions and such as public transport, and that number is growing—the number of children who don’t have the bare essentials. like food at the table, to just be well.

It’s really clear to me that there’s nothing in this bill that will support children to thrive and parents to find employment. It’s also clear to all of us—it doesn’t take anyone doing an economics paper to know this—that there are not enough jobs out there for every unemployed person on the benefit. Those are facts. This means that the Government has not just relied on increasing unemployment—they haven’t created enough jobs to actually ensure that everyone who’s unemployed has an opportunity to get into work—they gutted benefit increases only to then increase financial sanctions.

But I want to also believe that a different future is absolutely within our grasp, because, under the last National Government, I was privileged enough to actually take part in a campaign to get rid of a benefit sanction affecting solo parents. At the time, around 2017, there were 17,000 solo mums who were affected by the sanction for simply not naming the other parent of their child, being stripped away of income support. The National Party then did not care. They did not care about the fact that solo parents were being pushed deeper into poverty as a result of this benefit sanction. They had no evidence of working. They constantly opposed repealing it.

But we changed the Government and we got rid of the sanction, and if it were up to the Greens, we would not only get rid of the sanctions imposed in this piece of legislation but all benefit sanctions, because it’s actually the Government’s responsibility to show us and demonstrate that their policies are working as intended. So far they haven’t. They’ve gone off vibes; they’ve gone off cruelty; lack of empathy. But we should not expect anything else from a Prime Minister that called people on the benefit, during the campaign trail, “bottom trawlers”. This is the kind of attitude that the Government members take when it comes to the people living in poverty—using names, conjuring beneficiaries who they’ve never met to simply try to make ideological points and punch on those that are literally sometimes sleeping in their cars, often many of them receiving income support, working to make ends meet.

What’s worse is that in this piece of legislation, the Government also narrowed the definition of what we call “work gap”, which is the definition that allows people to then apply for a benefit by narrowing who is considered to have a work gap. Effectively, what the Government is doing is limiting who can access income support. This is to get them on track for their target of 50,000 less people on the benefit. It is not about getting those 50,000 people into work; it’s simply to strip 50,000 people of income support. The Government has admitted that they don’t care where those people go when they are not on the benefit. They simply want to get 50,000 people off income support.

For what? To pay for tax cuts for landlords. That’s basically their motive. They’re taking away resources from the poorest people in our country to give money to the landlords. It shows that this Government is reheating their nachos by bringing back policies from the 1980s: having massively increased unemployment and inequality simply to give bucks to the wealthy few.

I want us to commit—and I commit everyone on this side of the House, at least from the Green Party—to fighting back against this piece of legislation. We commit to listening to the voices of people on the benefit, and we bring them with us in our campaigns to change this Government and have an income support that allows people to live with dignity. In fact, I would say that caregivers form a large part of who is on income support. It’s the work that is actually the most under-appreciated by this Government, because if this Government appreciated caregiving, raising children, they would not have income support for those that are raising children, and are focusing on raising children as a primary task, below the poverty line. This Government has decided to treat caregiving obligations as not worthy of livable incomes.

I want to mihi to everyone out there doing their best to access income support under our Government, that is making it harder for them to do so at a time where even Work and Income staffers are telling us that their phone line is “oversubscribed” because of the policies that this Government has introduced. We even have the case managers telling us that they don’t have the capacity to help people and continue with programmes to prevent homelessness because of shameless and terrible, cruel policies that simply increase poverty. We know that something is terribly, terribly wrong. No matter how much the Government members on the other side may try to spin this as a positive thing to help people get into unemployment, the facts speak for themselves: this bill will increase inequality, poverty, homelessness, and will not support people into employment. No matter what the Government member says, it doesn’t actually match the facts that are in all the reports, all the evidence, all the research—because they don’t care. All they’ve cared about, as they’ve indicated to us, is calling beneficiaries “bottom trawlers”, punching down on those who need help the most, and increasing unemployment. This isn’t a Government that is here to serve the many; simply to serve their wealthy few mates.

We will fight for an economy that works for everyone and to repeal this terrible and shameful piece of legislation as soon as we get back into power. Let’s make this a one-term Government.

It is appropriate for a member in a debate to raise points that are of a debating nature. It’s not appropriate to use language that is attributed as a quote when it is out of context. So it’s an interesting contribution to the House, but a contestable one.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Social Security Amendment Bill. It’s great to see that this bill has come for the third reading and, after the third reading—hopefully, it will be going through the House today—that the changes that this bill intends to bring will be implemented.

On this side, we really want to encourage people to get into employment, but listening to that contribution from the Green member Ricardo Menéndez March, it seemed like people who go out to work are doing something wrong, and that people who are sitting on a benefit are actually doing something right and that they should be supported to stay on a benefit. On this side, we want to see that those who are on a benefit—I know there are some circumstances because of which people end up on the jobseeker benefit—are supported so that they can get back into employment. There are some people who are always actively looking for employment, but there can be a small fraction of people, those who are on the jobseeker benefit, who get demotivated after some time and then become too relaxed, staying on a benefit. We want to make sure that they understand that if they continue to stay on a benefit, it’s not going to help them, it’s not going to help their family, it’s not going to help anybody, and it’s better that they continue to look for employment. For that, we are putting several mechanisms in place in our welfare system.

The existing traffic light system: I don’t understand why the Labour member said that the traffic light system is controversial; it’s actually quite a transparent system. It makes it very, very clear where people sit when it comes to their compliance. The other thing that the Green member has, I think, missed seeing is that these sanctions are only for people who are not complying. If people are complying, there are no sanctions. If they don’t comply with their first obligation, if they miss that, there is this money management sanction, which the ACT Party campaigned on, and we are really happy to see that this is being implemented through this legislation. Fifty percent of their funds will be put on a card. They will be able to use this money for essential goods, so it’s a non-financial sanction. Money is still there, but it’s the form they get money in that is going to be different.

Community work: how could a member criticise the requirement of community work? This is just five hours per week for four weeks. Community work will give these members the opportunity—those who are on the jobseeker benefit—to go out and interact with different organisations, meet with different people, and maybe that is how they will find their new opportunity, their new job: upskilling. Why would people not want to upskill when they are on a benefit? Of course people would like to see that they are being upskilled—they get that opportunity.

Reporting on a job search: if they are on the jobseeker benefit, I don’t think there should be any hesitation reporting on a job search. But somehow the speeches that I’ve heard from the Green member and from the Labour member are kind of stigmatising job-searching. On this side, we want to see that people are actually going out and actively looking for opportunities, because we want to see that everybody is able to flourish. All these changes that this bill brings are actually good changes. We want to see that these changes are actually helping people, motivating people. These changes are to remind people that their circumstances can change, and that’s why the Government is putting these kinds of changes in place: so that we can support people to get back into employment, to do well for themselves, and do well for the community as well.

I would end by saying that the Labour member and the Green member, the contributions that I heard from them, were basically indicating that it’s totally fine to be dependent. On this side, we want to encourage empowerment; on that side, they want to encourage dependency. It’s very clear from their contributions, and it’s very clear from our contributions what we are advocating for. We really want to see people being successful in their lives, and that’s why we support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Social Security Amendment Bill. I’ll stick to the facts. I heard a lot in the previous contributions about this not being a caring Government. The facts are we are a caring Government. Anybody who goes into public service has a heart for caring, and sometimes caring has a different look. Our way of caring is encouraging people to get out there and make their lives better, and sometimes that is giving someone a hand up, rather than a handout. That’s what caring looks like. New Zealand First is very much about taking responsibility for our lives. It means helping people who need help, but also helping those who want to get out and make a better life for themselves. We see that the introduction of some of these processes and controls not only makes the system more efficient and effective but it also gives people a reason and an opportunity to step up in their lives. So that is why New Zealand First will support the bill.

I’d also like to make a mention to all of the people who work at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). Whilst they’re not social workers, I hear and have had feedback that many people have had extraordinary service from them. I just want to acknowledge them, because every single person that they help, they never quite know, maybe, where they’ve gone in their lives, but every now and then you’d get a phone call from someone and say, “Do you remember? You helped me once upon a time.” So I just want to acknowledge all of the MSD people out there who are working hard in service to the people of New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I stand on behalf of Te Pāti Māori this afternoon to express our unequivocal opposition to the Social Security Amendment Bill. When I think about this bill, I think about a whakataukī that we serve by at our marae “Amohia ake te ora o te iwi, ka puta ki te whai ao”

[“Support the health of the people and they will achieve wellbeing”].

The health and wellbeing of our people is paramount, and we must do whatever it takes to ensure our people are well.

Seventy percent of Māori are under the age of 40, one in three Māori is under the age of 25, 30 percent of our people are on the benefit, and 35 percent of our people are the working poor. The unemployment rate is skyrocketing to 10 percent. It’s unacceptable. This legislation is under the guise of promoting employment and reducing welfare dependency, which threatens to exaggerate poverty, undermine human rights, and disproportionately harm Māori communities. We’ve been hearing from both sides of the House this afternoon about what’s not working, what should be working, how it should happen. I want to share my experiences out in the community, front-lining with people.

Urgh.

Yes, here we go again. You know why? Because I tell you a real story, a real story from people I sit with and have sat with, to hear their stories of struggle. Of course, “Pōhara Street” is alive and kicking.

Whānau talk about how hard it is. Whānau are struggling out there, on the daily. They can’t make ends meet, and these sanctions are taking away, for them, their livelihood, because the benefit, for some families, is the only option. Don’t get me wrong; there are whānau out there who don’t want to be on the benefit and they want to live a better life, but there are just some things that stop them from doing so.

Can I talk about the families who come off the street every day, at the marae. They actually ask for jobs. They want a job. They want help with a job. They can’t get one. Do you know why? Because they have backgrounds and pasts that the system doesn’t allow them to move past—their past. We’ve had whānau that have come off the streets that have come out of jail, they want jobs but they can’t get one; or there is an employer who wants to give them the opportunity to get that start, but when the police vetting comes back, they haven’t met the criteria, so they can’t get the job. So they’re back and they’re needing to be on a benefit. Do you know how that feels for those whānau? They feel shame. They feel whakamā. Therefore, the cycle continues.

There were programmes out there that were able to help these families actually get better employment options. They could put them through training. But those funding opportunities for providers have disappeared. Funding has disappeared, and our people are no longer able to seek opportunities to further benefit themselves. I tell you, being whakamā is one of the most horrible feelings to have as a whānau member, and Māori providers are always out there trying to ensure we do give our people a hand up. They don’t actually want a handout; they want a hand up.

I also want to say that we need solutions. There are solution. Whānau Ora is a solution. The Kaiārahi workforce is a solution. Bringing Ministry of Social Development workers out from behind their desks and into the communities, working alongside providers and partners, is a solution. But the bigger solution is that our whānau need to know how big their voices are, how important they are. A hundred thousand people marched. There were 307,000 submissions. We heard those voices, and we want to continue to listen to the voices of our people. The biggest voice for whānau, though, I can say, is that we need to ensure this Government is a one-term Government. Kia ora.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to oppose this bill, not just in principle but with deep disappointment at the process and the policy. At every stage of this bill’s journey, the public, the experts, and the Minister’s own officials have told us clearly and consistently that this is going in the wrong direction. Community groups, disabled advocates, parents, young people—thousands of people took the time to engage with this legislation, and 97.5 percent of them opposed it, yet despite overwhelming evidence and lived experience, this House has chosen to pass this bill that will make life harder for those already doing it tough.

The Government has spoken often about responsibility, but this bill shirks its own by refusing to uphold the most basic responsibility of all to ensure that people can live in dignity. Let’s talk about what this legislation really does. It introduces sanctions that will prevent people from accessing hardship assistance—that is non-financial. That is missed meals, unpaid bills, and eviction notices. It is parents unable to get their children to the doctor. It is families being pushed further to the edge in a cost of living crisis.

We heard from CCS Disability Action that these sanctions would directly harm disabled people and their whānau. We heard from Save the Children about the financial strain of repeat medical assessments for people already fighting to access the correct benefit, and the truth is that many of these people shouldn’t be on the jobseeker benefit at all. Systemic barriers keep them from accessing the supported living payment. That is not a failure of an individual; it is a failure of the system, yet this bill compounds that failure by adding more penalties, more hoops, and more bureaucratic hurdles.

This House was told that 41 percent of benefit entitlements are being mis-assessed—41 percent—that most sanctions are overturned on review, and that front-line discretion is being increasingly inconsistently applied, and instead of fixing these failures, this Government is formulising them.

The Green Party is also deeply concerned about the lack of transparency shown throughout this process. At the select committee, MPs were prevented from asking officials basic questions. That is not just bad process; that is undemocratic. It leaves Parliament to vote on policy without the full picture. That is not how good law is made. If the goal here was employment, where is the investment in what works? Where are the policies for accessible transport, community-based training, or proper childcare support? If the goal was dignity, where is the commitment to raising benefits above the poverty line? Where is the plan to tackle homelessness, not worsen it? This bill answers none of those questions. Instead, it embeds deeper inequality, punishes people already let down by the system, and sets us on a pathway that will only increase social harm in the long term.

The Green Party believes in a welfare system that lifts people up, not locks them out. We believe in evidence-based policy. We stand today with the thousands who raised their voices, with the families who feel the weight of this law, and with the communities who deserve more than performative responsibility. They deserve justice and dignity.

This bill should never have made it this far. We urge the Government to stop, to listen, and to change course. You can still course-correct. We recommend that this bill be discharged and that this House turn its attention to what really matters: ending poverty, not entrenching it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Social Security Amendment Bill. This bill aims to make the welfare system fairer, more effective, with the aim to empower people rather than trap them in dependency. The majority of New Zealanders are in employment; there is a small number who are not. We help them—the taxpayers help pay to support those people. We want to give them a hand up; we don’t want to keep them in dependency, and that’s what this bill is about. For 15 years, the only option has been financial sanctions for people who don’t comply with their obligations. This is introducing non-financial sanctions to help empower those people. We want to lift individuals and families up. Fundamentally, we believe in New Zealanders and how much they are capable of, and that’s what this bill is about. It is a good step forward. We are here to support people, but people need to comply with their obligations—98 percent of beneficiaries do. For the small number who don’t, we will support them to develop the skills they need to get back into employment. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this bill. I want to contribute something a little bit different to this debate, but I think it’s absolutely where we should have our eye on the ball. This bill is a cynical distraction from a deliberate decision to create more unemployment in this country. One of the things I was proudest of as a backbencher in the last Government was that our unemployment rate fell to a level it hadn’t been at before, and it was very clear that we were moving people who had been in families where there had been what I would consider systemic, ingrained unemployment into employment for the first time.

We are back to levels of unemployment I am concerned about, and it isn’t by accident. I was in this House when we reversed the law that meant that the Reserve Bank Governor, when they were making decisions about their monetary policy which has a huge impact on employment, had taken away from them that they should be mindful of maximising sustainable employment. We were told that this was because they couldn’t possibly do two things at once.

Well, actually, I would say that maximising sustainable employment is absolutely the core to the same thing that the Minister got up today and said. She said, “We all want people in work”. I agree. We all want people in work. We want to maximise the people in work. But what I’ve heard—and it’s like listening to your drunk uncle. I hear from some of the people in the Chamber things like “People are sitting on the benefit.” Well, there might be people who need to have strong sanctions and obligations, and they were already there. They have always been there. There have always been sanctions for that little group. Most of the people who find themselves unemployed this year who were not unemployed last year, the reason that they are unemployed is because this Government chose to have a policy where it prioritised other parts of the economy.

Maximum sustainable employment means the level of employment where, if you have more, it puts pressure on the economy and inflation goes up. There’s an interesting irony there. It’s, basically, saying that those people who are unemployed are doing everyone else a favour because they’re keeping the pressure on wages down. So it’s one of those ironic things. We actually rely in our conceptual thinking on having a group of people who are unemployed so that wages don’t go up, and when there are less people than maximally sustainably employed—when we have less people employed than that—wages tend to go up. Well, good luck. I’d love them to go up. Yes, our economy might need to be readjusted, and our thinking might need be readjusted in other ways, but we need people in this country employed, because I agree with the Minister that it’s absolutely paramount that we focus on everybody being employed and wages going up in this country.

There is too much of a divide between people. I know that often lots of us will be a part of circles of people where people are earning enormous amounts of money in this country. I’d like to remind the public when they’re thinking about sanctioning those who are unemployed and talking about people who sit around on the couch—first of all, I’d like to remind them just how much those benefits are. It’s about $353, I think, if I became unemployed tomorrow. Now, butter in this country has gone up. It’s gone up about from about $4.50 earlier this year to $7.50, I think, on average. Actually, if you googled this, you’d find that the amount that butter is is something like $11, quite often. So if you find a $7.50 butter, you’re lucky, and we’re talking about $350. Toothpaste would be about $5 for one of the economy brands. So take the $300 that we’re talking about here and think about what happens if you’re suddenly unemployed tomorrow.

We pride ourselves on having a safety net, but it’s not the best safety net in the world. It’s not one, really, that you’d want to sit around for a long time on, waiting or lolling out on the couch, which is the myth that has been proliferated here and is proliferated by this piece of legislation. It’s just not a very nice lifestyle choice, is it?

Most people would rather work, and I am absolutely in favour of that, and I do want to bust the myth that there is no support on this side of the House for having a level of obligation and sanction, if that becomes necessary. But what we’re being asked to do today is focus on and demonise a group of people whose numbers have gone up in the last year because of a deliberate decision by this Government to create more unemployment because it wanted inflation down, and we’re being told, “Focus on them. Don’t look over here—it’s not us; it’s them. They’re just sitting around on the couch. They’re just behaving badly.”

Let’s just talk about one of those groups: the youth. They’re a really problematic group, and it’s really easy if you’re old to think that the youth are lolling around on the couch. You may even be able to find a few in your own family who are capable of such things. But, actually, if we look at the numbers, the youth in this country are facing an unprecedented crisis in terms of unemployment. Between the ages of 15 and 19, we have rates of unemployment that are 24 percent. That’s almost a quarter of people in that age group who have not got a job, and if we visit it on them and we say that it’s all their fault and that we just need to sanction them and kick them a little bit—if we take away their benefits, if we manage their money, and if we take away any level of respect for those people that all those things imply, what are we saying?

I have a lot of faith in that group of people. They have been through really hard times when the rest of us, when we were looking at unemployment due to the possibility of a pandemic—when that happened to us, we created a wage subsidy. The unemployment benefit wasn’t good enough for us. People who came into sudden unemployment were given more than the group we’re talking about now, because that wasn’t good enough for those who were suddenly going to be unemployed because it was a group we identified with and whom we knew had mortgages and obligations—and we didn’t find them at fault.

It is very easy to think about the people in that situation—that 5.1 percent right now. Those workers at Kinleith, that group of youth—it is very easy and tempting to demonise them. But we actually treated ourselves a lot better when, in fact, it was our turn to be suddenly unemployed, and, actually, that was the right thing. To reach out and support people in that situation, to support them more realistically, and to get them through that crisis was something that the Labour Government did proudly.

All the barking on that goes on about all the wastage and the waste of spending and the debt—I remember the National Party clamouring for further subsidies. Further subsidies for their mates who—[Interruption] That’s what was going on. They were actually clamouring for more spending at the time, and now they’re sanctimoniously not doing so.

Can we come back to this bill—come back to the bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, I will. I am simply responding to the heckling I’m getting because I’ve obviously touched a nerve.

To return to this bill, I think the point of this bill is to distract New Zealanders. I think it is that kind of approach that is so easy in politics. Find yourself an easy victim, an easy enemy, one that makes it attractive to people. Talk about people sitting around on the couch, when in fact it’s not that people have sat around on the couch because they weren’t sitting around on the couch in the Labour Government; there were record amounts of employment and that is something that actually changes the game for people. That’s a game-changer.

So I am proud to be part of a party that thinks about people in a very different way, and values our youth and values our potential. It is time for New Zealand to think very carefully about the next 20 years and what it wants, because, with silly little bills like this that are trivial and petty and cruel and are actually just blaming and distracting, this Government has things to learn.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to correct a statement I made in the House during slot No. 3 of this debate.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Thank you. During my speech, I used the term “bottom trawlers” to refer to statements that the Prime Minister has made in the past. I was referring to “bottom feeders”, which was in the context of quotes where he said “bottom feeding” in relation to welfare in 2023, during the election campaign.

Noted.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Social Security Amendment Bill is aimed at enabling beneficiaries to get back on their feet by getting back into work. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a bill that punishes young people, and I have four points to make about how it does so. But, first, I want to talk about a young woman that I met in my electorate of Manurewa recently. I’ll call her “KJ”—a really cool young person just trying to get ahead, recently enrolled in a course about building and construction, and getting back on her feet. She lives in one of the amazing youth facilities for homeless youth. For the first time this year, she experienced sleeping at a bus shelter. She was 16 at the time. She was living with her nan and a number of her cousins before that. She was working in a warehouse after school, packing groceries. She left her school for that job, which then fell through for her when she moved in with her boyfriend and it, ultimately, wasn’t a safe environment for her.

There are many young people like her who experience homelessness in our communities in South Auckland. These are young people with no adult in their corner, nobody who is looking out for them, and nobody who is making sure that they are going to school fed, clothed, warm, and dry. Nobody in her life who is able to provide her with some guidance and some support to get back into her education—until she was one of the people lucky enough to find her feet with a social housing organisation like the one that she is in now. But that social housing organisation has a waiting list of 300 young people between the ages of 15 and 19, and that has increased 200 percent since last year.

There are more and more young people who are facing not only homelessness but joblessness and a lack of education opportunities. They are the people we are considering today when we pass a piece of legislation like this, which introduces new sanctions that can be novelly and uniquely applied to young people. These are sanctions that other jurisdictions we like to compare ourselves to do not use against young people, because young people are the most vulnerable people when it comes to the burden of meeting the requirements of something like this. Young people who experience a situation like KJ’s deserve our help, our support, and all of the resources of the State to get them back on track. This bill does exactly the opposite of that and will punish people like KJ, who have had a bit of a break.

It’s a real shame to look at this kind of bill, which ignores the reality of youth unemployment, when this is also a Government that is crushing the industries that employ young people—14,000 construction jobs gone since the day this Government took office; a major employer of young men in the electorate of Manurewa, almost one in 10 young men employed in the construction sector. That industry is on its knees because this Government will not invest in a pipeline of public infrastructure builds and housing builds which we desperate need. Youth unemployment is not about sitting at home and languishing away; it is about a lack of opportunities, not a lack of motivation. Young people in New Zealand are hopeful for their futures, but when they don’t have jobs to go to because of the economic choices taken by a Cabinet that ignores their needs, they are being deeply let down by the people who are meant to represent them—many of them too young to even have a say in the democratic process.

It’s young people like KJ who are going into an employment market now where they will be systematically disadvantaged, because it is these years when they need to get their start. The National Government says that they want to get young people into employment opportunities. Well, it’s people like her who are competing against 35-year-olds because those 35-year-olds have been let go. It’s the same experience I had in the global financial crisis, when young people like me were competing for jobs with people who were much older and more experienced than us, because the total size of the number of jobs in our economy drastically shrank. This Government is overseeing a steeper economic decline, and a steeper decline in industries, like building and construction, which generally employ young people.

Punitive sanctions like this also increase the reapplication frequencies and, therefore, punish instability. People, like KJ, who don’t have general access to a car or general access to transport, who face burdens to actually get into the office, let alone the technological burdens of being available online or through the phone, are also then disadvantaged by having extra sanctions placed on them.

This bill also extends periods where one mistake will be recorded on their record. If KJ gets something wrong, it will be on her record for two years. She’s only 17; she will muck this up. Other people will too. This is a bill which actively stops young people getting ahead. This is a Government that has made choices to make it harder for young people. This is a Government that should be ashamed of that record.

People who can work should work. People deserve to be more independent, on their own, and have a life away from welfare. People also deserve to have a Government that is fiscally responsible and that will help those who need help to be on their own two feet and enjoy a better life. So, therefore, I fully commend this bill to the House.

Glen Bennett.

Oh no, not this guy!

It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s hilarious. It is really funny, as we stand in this House this afternoon, and as we criticise our most vulnerable, that it is a joke.

So, as I stand here, controlling my anger and my distaste for—as I stand in this place, which is so artificial. This place has no natural light. This place has no natural air flowing through. This place is in many ways a cocoon that protects us from the outside world and from what is reality.

I think this is what this bill actually is about. It’s the disconnection from the grassroots. It’s the disconnection from the light and from the air of humanity that we need to address and talk about this afternoon. There’re laughs and there’re jeers, and I’m fine with that because I don’t expect anything better from the Government side of the House. The last time I spoke on this bill, I was mocked.

Somebody’s in a fantasy world.

I was accused of being in a fantasy world—and, again, this afternoon—and I do not live in a fantasy world, because I live in the real world. I live in a community. I have been at the grassroots and continue to live in that community where this means something for them tomorrow.

This means something for them tomorrow because the journey they have been on, the experiences they have lived, are the reason many of them unwillingly sit on a benefit, who unwillingly have to go into the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) office, and have to go there not under their own will or choice, not happily or with delight, but with shame, but with embarrassment. I’ve sat in the MSD office in Wellington, I’ve sat in the MSD office in New Plymouth countless times with people who are embarrassed, are ashamed that they can’t pay their own rent, that they can’t fix their own car, that they can’t feed their own family. Yes, we say we need to be punitive: “They can just go out and get a job. It’s all good. Fine with them.” We always have to come back to circumstances. The problem with this artificial room with no natural light is the fact that we actually can’t see because it’s so within the small box of legislation. You have to look out beyond that box and you have to look—

Do you want to speak to the bill a little bit?

I am talking to this bill. You have to look out of the box of this room, Mr Mooney.

Mr Mooney said that National is about being fairer, National is about being more effective with our money—that’s what he said. He said they’re all about a hand up. We agree that it’s about a hand up, but we don’t think it’s about a boot in the guts. We do not believe in that. We believe in a hand up and we believe and know that our communities are better, our communities are richer, our communities are more prosperous when everyone has a hand up. We are with that, and we are on that kaupapa, and we want to make sure it happens. As I stand in this box that is so sterile, I think we need to reflect on those who we are talking about and we actually need to be talking with them.

This legislation does a number of things. I don’t really need to go into it because it’s been addressed several times already in the third reading, but I think we need to look at, actually, the reality of what it does out there. Does this fix the problem of unemployment? No. Does this lift people’s mana? No. Does this lift our society and our communities of people who aren’t able to find work? It does not. All it is is a kick in the guts, and it’s unfair.

We look at the unemployment numbers for our NEET community—our young people who aren’t in employment, education, and training. In the March quarter, there was just over 12 percent of our young people who are aged 15 to 24—it was almost 13 percent, actually—who are not in education, not in employment. We as a community need to stand up for them and make sure that they have every opportunity they have. I look at the community and the young people I have walked alongside for many years—

I’m hearing nothing about this bill.

I say to that member who is shouting out at me, if they walked at least a week in their shoes alongside them, they’d understand there are challenges that are there and we need to step up for the sake of a hand up. This is not a hand up; this is a boot in the guts. This will push people down.

The other thing in this legislation I want to address is the capacity of MSD. During scrutiny week last year, MSD admitted that they are pushed beyond capacity. This is just more paperwork, red tape—have we heard of that before? This is more sanctions that MSD staff have to work on and have to deal with. We look at the rise in terms of those on the main benefit. We look at the fact that jobs in the backroom of MSD are going backwards by at least 700, and we wonder how, not only from a practical level but a humane level, we can actually agree to legislation like this in the House this afternoon.

Now, the Social Security Amendment Bill is something that we will never agree on—we will never agree on.

You don’t understand it. You haven’t read.

Thank you. Do you want to have a chat or a yarn, Mr Mooney?

No, no one’s going to have a chat across the House, thanks.

I just think it is disrespectful and it is rude and it is arrogant—it is arrogant—that this member would just continue to barrage myself in terms of what we’re doing and what we’re standing up for today.

I have a young person who is in my life, and the circumstances of their life I don’t need to even go into in this House. But I remember about two years ago, he came to me and said, “I need to get a job. I’m struggling and I need to get a job.” And I said, “Great. Let’s figure this out. Let’s figure out a CV for you. Let’s put it together.” So we sat down and it was not easy to write a CV for this young person who, through circumstances not of their fault, they had never been in work since dropping out of school—circumstances not of their doing but in terms of family circumstances that caused trauma and serious harm to this young person. Is that an excuse that he sits on the dole? No, it’s not an excuse, but it’s the reality of why he’s there. So I helped with this one-page CV, which was very limited to name, contact details, what they like, their personal statement about who they are as a person. We put that one-page CV together, and then proceeded to go around New Plymouth to every tradie, every small shop, every business we could think of to give him a chance to get a job.

It didn’t work. He had no experience. He had been given no opportunities whatsoever. There was nothing that anyone wanted to touch this young man with because of experiences that had gone through his life which were not of his doing. Then, of course, the fact that there was no proven record. So he had to go back into the Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) office. He had to go back and continue to be on the dole. I remember sitting with him in the WINZ office that afternoon, after we’d spent probably three months just popping CVs in and around. The fact that he was actually so whakamā that I had to talk for him because he’d tried but he gave up—he thought, “Why would I bother?” It’s why would you bother when the door gets closed on you time and time again. I stand with him and I still stand with him, and I hope and I pray that he will get a job one day. But all I can do is stand beside him until that day comes.

This legislation isn’t fair. This legislation doesn’t pick people up, and I am opposed.

The Opposition can talk all day about the unemployment rate and how people struggle daily, but words are meaningless without action. On this side of the House, we focus on delivery. That’s why, last month, I organised a job fair with the Auckland Business Chamber to help people in Mt Roskill to get back to work, because we believe that employment is the key to break the cycle of poverty. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill.

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

I move, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2025.

New Zealand faces a significant infrastructure deficit. This has spanned generations and different Governments. To acknowledge that fact, to admit that fact, is not a politically partisan point; it is, in fact, simply reality. As our population grows and our existing assets continue to age, demand is mounting for us to build smarter, faster, and better, so that we might boost this nation’s productivity and lift living standards for all New Zealanders. This challenge is particularly pressing for our transport networks. We need these routes to operate a 21st century standard, to move goods from Kiwi farms to global markets, to ensure that first responders can reach people in need, and to allow everyday Kiwis to get to work safely and efficiently so that our economy can continue moving.

Madam Speaker and colleagues, the Public Works Act 1981 is the legislative tool that gives central and local government the authority to acquire and manage public land for the new infrastructure that New Zealanders need and deserve. I think it’s fair to acknowledge—again, over a period of time and not a politically partisan point—that aspects of the operation of this legislation are no longer fit for purpose. Inefficient processes are causing costly delays, and too often the only progress on a project is a legal battle dragging on in a courtroom. These hold-ups are escalating costs and slowing the delivery of new roads, schools, housing, renewable energy projects, and hospitals. I should also add that as a matter of fairness to landowners, faster and fewer processes are most certainly needed. Our proposed amendments to the Public Works Act, on which I’m speaking right now, will accelerate the delivery of critical infrastructure which is essential for New Zealand’s economic growth.

Speaking now as to the scope of the bill, it is designed to respond to the current critical infrastructure deficit and, as such, will apply to a finite set of projects. I’ll make this point again at the close of my remarks, but for the clarity of the House now, I point out that other reforms in relation to the Public Works Act will be progressed by the Government separate to this—a bill on what we’re calling “critical infrastructure”. The bill will streamline the Public Works Act’s land acquisition process for critical infrastructure projects that are listed in a schedule to the bill. These are public works projects that are listed on Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 and the roads of national significance identified in the Government Policy Statement on land transport 2024. I should also emphasise that only the agencies that already and currently can use the Public Works Act to acquire land or interest in land—these being the Crown, local authorities, and network utility operators, that are what we know as “requiring authorities”—will be able to use the critical infrastructure process. There’s no broadening of the mandate of the legislation in that respect. So just to be very, very clear, private entities cannot acquire land under the Public Works Act, and this is not going to change with the proposed amendments to the legislation.

Talking now about a replacement objection process—the bill introduces a faster, fairer land acquisition process by replacing landowner objections to the Environment Court, with a streamlined submission process. It outlines the new objection process and establishes the criteria that decision makers must use when determining whether land can be compulsorily acquired under the Public Works Act. Importantly, judicial review remains an option, and I’m confident that this process ensures natural justice rights are upheld. Judicial review, as members will likely know, relates to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. It’s the right of a person who is affected by Government decision-making to go to the court and to test whether the authority of the executive branch of Government has been exercised in a way that is reasonable. That much will not change, and goes to the important point around natural justice rights—for example, the right to be heard.

The Public Works Act separates public works into central government and also local works. The decision maker for central government work is the Minister for Land Information. A local authority, on the other hand, is the decision maker for a local work, as you might expect. Most land acquisitions under the Public Works Act are settled by agreement. In other words, a compulsory acquisition does not need to take place in the majority of cases. However, when objections are made and these reach the Environment Court, costs rise hugely for all concerned and project timelines blow out. The bill’s proposed submission process will significantly reduce delays by allowing a decision within approximately 60 working days by the time the whole process is played out at its maximum, compared with the six to 12 months, or even longer, that it can take for the Environment Court and subsequent court hearings to hear objections. So while the bill streamlines the objection process, it will still require agencies to negotiate in good faith with landowners for at least three months before compulsory acquisition is considered.

Addressing now the subject of incentive payments to encourage agreement—of course, noting that whether it’s the streamlined process or the current standard court process, it is better for all concerned if agreement can be reached on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis. To encourage landowners to reach agreement, therefore, on land that is needed for critical infrastructure, the bill introduces an incentive payment of 15 percent of the land’s value for those who negotiate and sell early in the process. To ensure the scheme remains affordable, payments will be capped at $150,000, with a minimum payment of $5,000, notwithstanding the calculation that’s otherwise made on the percentage basis. In addition, there is a recognition payment regime whereby the legislation provides an additional 5 percent recognition to landowners whose land is acquired, whether by agreement or compulsorily, as acknowledgment that their land is being used for critical infrastructure which will serve a significant purpose in improving the lives of their fellow New Zealanders. This payment has no minimum amount and is capped at $92,000. Of course, those who are adept at mathematics—of any gender—will know that the combined total of these is $242,000 where both incentive and recognition payments apply.

I should emphasise again, for the sake of clarity within this House but for anyone also following along closely who may be affected by such moves—in a positive way, I hasten to add—that the recognition payment and, where applicable, the incentive payment that I’ve just outlined will be made on top of the existing compensation provided under the Public Works Act. So the new critical infrastructure incentive payment will replace the limited incentive payment regime currently under the Act, but again I emphasise, it is on top of the 100 percent of the value of the land that is already able to be established. In addition to the point I made earlier about the retention of judicial review avenue, so too will the Land Valuation Tribunal remain available to determine compensation disputes.

I think it’s also important to highlight that protected Māori land will be excluded from this regime in a way that I’ll now point out. The Government acknowledges that the historic confiscation of land, including through the previous versions of the Public Works Act, is a source of pain for many New Zealanders. In contrast to that history, more recently, acquiring Māori land for public works has been, and will remain under this regime, a last resort. Protected Māori land, as defined under the Public Works Act, cannot be acquired through the new critical infrastructure process. Owners of this type of land retain their full right to object through the Environment Court. If land acquisition must occur, such landowners will be eligible for the recognition payment and, where applicable, also the incentive payment to ensure that their role and contribution are properly acknowledged with respect to their unique connection to the land. That’s a matter of legal and moral force, as far as I’m concerned.

Agencies will be able to opt out. In other words, those who are responsible for critical infrastructure projects will have the ability to opt out of the new process on a project-by-project basis. If they choose to opt out, then any landowner objections will continue to be heard by the Environment Court, as under the current system.

Finally, transitional provisions are provided for in the proposed bill. They’ll allow agencies to maintain momentum for critical infrastructure projects where land acquisition processes have commenced before the enactment.

Finally, or my additional final point—my final, final point—is that there will be a review after three years to ensure that the legislation is operating in a faster and fairer way as we intend. As I’ve said earlier, in addition, there is a broader review of the Public Works Act outside this critical infrastructure kaupapa, and we’ll have more to say about that and more in the House in due course. In the meantime, though, I look forward to colleagues’ contributions, and I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I’m just wondering whether there were any other final points from the Minister.

We hear from Government “and we’re here to help”—it’s often said when officials come knocking on the door. Unfortunately, the Public Works Act is not one of those areas where most people see a huge benefit. Indeed, it’s a piece of legislation that’s been in place for a long time, as the Minister said, and it’s necessary to ensure that we do allow for infrastructural development across our country. In many places and at many times and on many occasions, landowners and the Government are aligned; they still see the value of actually developing a work or a project that often impacts on the private land that someone might have or the interest that they have, and that moves along reasonably smoothly, and has done over decades, really, to give us the infrastructure we have. But, from time to time, conflict arises.

The Labour Party will support this piece of legislation, but we do expect the select committee to scrutinise this very carefully, because there are some serious questions that need to be answered. The Minister has said, and we agree, that there is an infrastructural deficit across our country. It’s been exacerbated at times—take, for example, the previous National Government that brought in “sweat the assets” on the roading infrastructure and then increased the tonnage of the trucks. That actually led to the rapid decline in the roading network that we’re facing across this country, and I’m sure my colleague Tangi Utikere will raise those issues.

The projects in Schedule 2 are, for the most part, transport—there is one big housing project, but they’re transport. What isn’t in here is a list of water projects. The National Party and ACT—and New Zealand First too—criticised and slammed the Labour Government for its water initiatives, called “three waters”, and said it would throw that out and would put other alternative initiatives in place. We’re yet to see them. We’re yet to see any infrastructural proposals around water for this country. We have a couple of discussion documents and a bit of a proposal that tries to rope councils in, but, actually, we’re not seeing much action. So, I do say, while we welcome the list of transport projects in here, and one for housing, there is a deficit in the deficit list that we should be looking at.

Look, the Minister has outlined some of the technical details of the legislation, but I’d like to refer to the issue of property rights, which is where the conflict occurs in the Public Works Act: that is, the property rights of a landowner and then the objective of Government to move through that. The Government has got itself into a bit of a bind, I have to say, because it’s been talking about the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, which will form part of this process down the track, but enhancing property rights, it says—RMA reform and enhancing property rights. Well, I’ll put on the record now that jurisprudence will determine where the balance of that lies into the future. All the learnings, all the experience, and all the judicial advice that comes from the RMA in its cases over many years will be thrown out, and so people who think that they’ve got better protection for their property rights, through the RMA reform, are being misled by this Government once again.

This bill rides over property rights, for good purpose; that is, it moderates them. It doesn’t allow access to the Environment Court; people can choose to go to the Minister for decision making. This, potentially, might streamline the process, but it doesn’t give any guarantees. The incentives through additional payments are a good step forward and probably will incentivise that hurry-up, but there is in section 39AAM an ability for the changes to be made to that compensation. The select committee, in my view, should scrutinise that: why should changes be able to be made when we’re passing this through the legislation?

Labour will support this, but there are many questions that need to be answered by the select committee, and I know that my colleagues will be referring to some of those. Yes, we need good cooperative behaviour between landowners and the Government in infrastructure development, but we need to ensure that the balance is always maintained between property rights and the Government and other fairness through this process.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The country that we live in does need investment in infrastructure. The most pressing need is for infrastructure that rapidly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, that helps us stop the loss of biodiversity, that helps us end child poverty. There are so many things that we need to be investing in and, unfortunately, this Government is not making the right choices, by and large.

This bill seems to be directly linked to the Fast-track Approvals Act, which the Green Party opposed, and it is not the reform of the Public Works Act that we need. We do need to reform the Public Works Act, and I was really sorry that Government MPs did not vote for my colleague Hūhana Lyndon’s member’s bill that would have righted a historical wrong and made sure that Māori land was no longer taken in the same way under the Public Works Act. Of course, that was voted down by this Government—hardly a surprise. This bill is the next stage in the fast-track approvals process, which is all about bulldozing through key critical checks and balances from the compulsory land acquisitions process in order to facilitate projects that, by and large, are taking us in the wrong direction.

It doesn’t even matter whether you don’t believe in climate change. I’m sure there are Government members who don’t believe in climate change and don’t think we should do anything about it. The irony is that the vast majority of the transport projects listed in Schedule 2 don’t even stack up according to the supposed objectives of the Government itself. If we want a transport system that’s reducing cost, that’s improving productivity, that’s helping more people and goods move around the country, the vast majority of the transport projects listed in Schedule 2 do not do that. They certainly don’t make improvements in a cost-effective way, and we know that from initial cost-benefit analysis. Although, if you ask the Government now for any information around cost or benefits related to any of the many highway projects that they are proposing to fast track, they will say, “We don’t know the cost.”

So they’ve made these projects a priority without knowing the cost and without knowing the benefits. We have decades and decades now of evidence about what supports economic productivity and what the opportunities are for countries in terms of reducing the cost of moving people and goods. It turns out that what’s good for the economy or productivity is also what’s good for the climate, is also what’s good for consumers. That is not spending billions of dollars on four-lane highways in cities or in the middle of nowhere, because there are more cost-effective ways to do it. The Government MPs just have absolute blinders on when it comes to this.

They will say over and over again that they care about cost-effectiveness, they care about economic productivity, they care about growth, and yet they will consistently support projects—really, it’s like cargo-cult economics. They’ve been to some richer countries, and they saw some big roads and they think if we build them here, it will facilitate economic development. Go learn something about transport economics. It’s so interesting. It’s so fascinating. There are huge opportunities for New Zealand to reduce the burden of transport costs and it’s not through four-lane highways at any cost anywhere. It’s actually a bit deranged what’s happening. It’s a bit deranged the way they’re so convinced that a four-lane highway is the answer to any problem in the absence of any actual economic analysis.

The Green Party is not going to support this bill. We’ll be looking closely at it at select committee. As has been mentioned by the Hon Damien O’Connor, there are real tensions between the things they say they value—like private property rights—and this sort of bill which, basically, gives more power to the executive to compulsorily acquire land. They make up for it through making it possible for people who have their land taken to get maybe a bit more financial compensation. However, that doesn’t reflect the fact that for many people, whenua doesn’t have that monetary value; it can’t be replaced with money. There is an attachment to the land that must be respected and there’s more than just humans living on the land, and we should respect all life.

We would like to see a reformed Public Works Act. This isn’t it. This is just a Government that is very autocratic and seems to hate the environment and has no concept of the challenges that are actually facing us.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. The Minister in charge has already gone through everything that this bill does, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. But what I would say is that we all know that we need to deliver a lot more infrastructure and we need to deliver in a timely manner, in an effective and efficient manner, but we also know that, when we are delivering infrastructure, there are a lot of processes, a lot of steps that are involved. Land acquisition is something that is a very important step when we start thinking about any new infrastructure.

We have seen that some of the processes need streamlining. So what this bill does is it streamlines the objections process that is experienced when the step of land acquisition comes, and it also introduces some incentives. So what we want to see is that the process is faster but, at the same time, the process is fairer as well. Of course, we want to hear from the submitters in the select committee process. My colleague Cameron Luxton is on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I’m sure that the contributions that submitters will make in the select committee process will be taken on board.

So we look forward to seeing in what form this bill is reported back from the select committee. The ACT Party supports this bill. Thank you.

I’m delighted to rise to speak to this bill—[Knocks water glass] That’s not a good start!

It’s all about making sure that we improve our economic productivity, and where I wanted to go to—and this is front and centre for New Zealand First—was the Infrastructure Commission. They presented to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which is where this bill is going to go to for consideration. What they said to us was, “We’re investing enough money in infrastructure in this country to do the job that we need to do; the problem is that we’re not getting value out of that money.”, and what is happening there is that the processes, in many cases, whether it’s the consenting process, the Public Works Act processes, etc., are holding the country back. So it is essential that we make sure that the Public Works Act process is efficient, and that is what this Government has been doing a lot of work on.

As we’ve heard already, taking land compulsory is a really, really significant step. It’s important that there are safeguards there. What this bill does, though, is to make sure that the Ministers who will make decisions in this case have to step through the same criteria as the Environment Court would have done previously, and that gives some protections there. It also brings in, as you’ve heard, some incentives to try and reach agreement first, and that’s obviously an important thing that needs to be done.

But I did want to tell you one very, very quick story and it’s the story of Mt Messenger. We’ve already talked about that last week in respect to the Wildlife Act. You have a new road being built up one valley, through a hill, down—OK, you don’t have a new road, Madam Speaker, but there is a new road being built up one valley, through a hill, and down another valley to then make the whole highway system work better. The problem is that somebody at one end of one valley is not willing to sell. The process has got convoluted. The New Zealand Transport Agency have had to do a very, very complex, very ingenious structure to try and make sure that they can actually build the road, but it is going to come at a cost of hundreds and probably hundreds of millions of dollars because of one person holding out in terms of the Public Works Act. If this was made more efficient and more effective, that means all that money could have gone to something else, whether it’s roading, whether it’s public transport, whatever it might have been, somewhere around New Zealand. That is about making New Zealand fly faster, fly higher, go faster, and that is really important.

That is what this bill is all about. I’m looking forward to seeing it in front of the select committee, and I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Kei konei ahau ki te whakamahara i te Whare ki ngā āhuatanga o te whenua, ngā whenua ka tangohia i te iwi Māori me tēnei pire.

[I am here to remind the House of the features of the land, of the lands that will be taken from the Māori people with this bill.]

Kia ora. I think, given the nature of the earlier debates in the House this morning, it’s really interesting that this Act, the Public Works Act, which has been around since about 1864, I think, is being amended to speed things up. Now, te iwi Māori haven’t had a very good history or relationship with the Public Works Act since its inception in 1864. We talked about the 1863 invasions, this morning, when Tauranga suffered great losses, land losses—all kinds of losses—and a lot of those losses were exacted out of them through the first iteration of this Act. There’s about 66 million acres of land in this country and, before the signing of the Treaty, Māori owned them all. There were a bunch of early land sales which were deemed illegal by the mid-1850s—

Back to the bill.

Catch up, junior—you’ll learn about this. You obviously weren’t paying any attention this morning. Those land losses were deemed illegal. This would hold out until the 1860s, and, in the 1860s, Māori still retained about 80 percent of the North Island, where Tauranga is an iwi, where the invasions of Grey happened, where a lot of the land loss suffered by te iwi Māori was incurred. But, hey, hey, hey—get back to the bill! These people, I tell you—this is a Whanganui MP.

Māori have suffered loss of land from the Crown through the Public Works Act since 1864, and the scale of that land was probably somewhere in the range of 20 million acres, leading into the 1900s—20 million acres. Today, they want to show up with this piece of paper and tell me that incentive payments are going to build trust in te iwi Māori because it’s going to fix everything!

You want to learn to listen. You want to learn to go and actually speak to the people who suffered land loss on a staggering scale in this country, at the hands of this very legislation—at the hands of this very legislation. The Government, with all these boys from Tauranga who talk so wholeheartedly about their journeys as young men looking at ancient pā sites and battlegrounds—that’s the story in the morning, but in the afternoon it’s “Let’s push the old Public Works Amendment Bill through.”

Māori want roads, too.

I’ll tell you about Māori and roads. Māori retained a lot of land into the late 1800s, and do you know what the Public Works Act allowed the Government to do? To put paper roads through that land and carve it up, because the Government was able to then go and take land that was 5 acres either side of that road, even if the road wasn’t built. So don’t throw your things around from that side of the House, because you know absolutely nothing about it.

Please don’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

Don’t let the Government throw their ignorance around the House like it means something when the people in the Government obviously know nothing about the history of the thing. You’re in here pleading “Poor you” and “I’m going to look after Tauranga Moana” in the morning, and you’re here in the afternoon passing an amendment to the same Act that led to a lot of the devastation that the Māori people around the country have had to live with. So ka haere tonu.

[So it continues.]

By the 2000s, the retention of Māori land in Māori hands was down to about 4 million acres—4 million acres, and a large proportion of that was tied up in the Māori Land Court, which isn’t like the title suggests, right? It’s the “Pākehā Control of Māori Land Court”.

Māori suffer the greatest losses, and despite the guarantees or the hopes of the new legislation that perhaps, one day, Māori land will be valued at the same value as general land—why would that not already be the case? That’s another story for another day.

Anyway, here we are. We find ourselves listening to ideas all proposed on the premise of good economic productivity that has never managed to trickle down to te iwi Māori. So we do not support the bill. Tēnā koe.

We’re in desperate need, as a country, to get on and build infrastructure. If you look at the estimates from the Infrastructure Commission, or independent consultant estimates, the need for infrastructure around this country is running into the hundreds of billions of dollars, so I support this bill. The purpose is simply to look at streamlining the land acquisition process under the Public Works Act for the Fast-track Approvals Act and those projects that are listed in Schedule 2—and, in particular, the roads of national significance, which is a high priority for this Government.

I look forward to the select committee process, as deputy chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, along with my colleagues Andy Foster and Tangi Utikere and other colleagues around the House; we’ve got members from the Green Party here as well. I want to reassure people that you’ll get a fair hearing at the select committee, so I’d like to encourage people to submit on this bill. Particularly, I’m keen to hear from those who have been through the land acquisition process before, whether it’s private individuals, iwi organisations, or also private companies, just to understand what the current fish-hooks are with the Public Works Act and to make sure that we’ve struck the right balance with this bill. Otherwise, I commend the Minister for Land Information for bringing this bill to the House, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be able to take a call on this bill at first reading. It’s a very important Act that this bill is seeking to amend, because it is one that when it is utilised, it is overtly empowering. What that means is it basically has the potential to railroad over many people’s rights. My colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor touched on those property rights and landowners’ rights that this has the interface alongside, so it is important that we do take some time to talk through some of the issues that might come up in select committee. As my colleague has said, we will be supporting this bill to select committee.

I look forward, as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, as Mr Bidois has said, to engaging with the submitters over this. I do hope that many people will submit to have their views known, because the need for safeguards in any form of empowering legislation is very important, and so that’s part of the process, so I look forward to that.

The bill has a couple of schedules attached to it. Schedule 2, which basically identifies the list of critical infrastructure projects—and it is a significant list. But when one looks through those projects there, the overwhelming nature of them are transport-related. When we look at the Airport to Botany Rapid Transit project, when we look at the Auckland Level Crossing Removal Programme, when we look at an alternative to the Brynderwyns, these are a whole range of transport-related infrastructure projects that are currently on the Government’s roads of national significance list.

Now, whether they actually come to fruition, of course, is another question, but it is interesting that they are contained here. When one looks at the regulatory impact statement (RIS)—interestingly enough, this is actually a Government bill that does have a RIS associated with it—it does identify that depending on the final decisions that are taken, any roads of national significance that are due for construction over that three-year period will need to acquire around 500 properties. That’s a significant amount, so it’s important that we do engage and hear from the community around this and, in particular, around the list of projects that’s contained in Schedule 2.

When I was having a look through there, there’s not much in the South Island, of course, because this is a Government that doesn’t really care about infrastructure in the South Island, but there is the Lower North Island Integrated Mobility there. And, of course, it’s good to see my colleague the Hon Kieran McAnulty here, because he is responsible for securing the funding for the Wairarapa line between Wellington and Masterton whilst in Government, and it’s good to see that there’s secured funding as well for the Wellington to Palmerston North line in Schedule 2 on page 26 of the bill. So it would be interesting to hear from communities in those affected areas about what this bill might mean for them to be able to deliver on the infrastructure needs of this particular project.

Mr O’Connor did reference the fact that I may wish to touch on some of the transport needs around infrastructure as they relate to this bill. While I have done that, I do want to pick up on the point that he has made around the real need for increased investment in infrastructure, particularly when it comes to transport. He cites, rightly, the one example—that the former National Government introduced an ability for an increase in tonnage of heavy vehicles to be travelling the rail network. What does that mean? It means an increase in the need for maintenance costs over a shorter period of time. So it’s these decisions that have led to the infrastructure deficit that this country is facing and so it’s important that we do think about this.

One of the concerns that we will be interested to look at, at select committee, is the role that decision makers will have. What has already been said from the Minister is that this will basically move some of that decision-making capacity from the Environment Court across to Ministers. While Mr Foster talked in his contribution about how Ministers will follow the same process, we must have our eyes open to the fact that it is Ministers that will be making these decisions—very different from those of the judiciary. So through the select committee process, we will be looking to tease that out to ensure that there is a level of robustness that is still within the bill to ensure that that is an important factor that is taken up.

So it is important to see this come through select committee. I look forward to working with colleagues around the House to see what we can do to make it a better bill. I commend it to the House.

We are reforming the Public Works Act to support economic growth and to make it easier and cheaper to build infrastructure. This amendment bill will streamline the land acquisition process under the Public Works Act for critical infrastructure projects, such as the Crosstown Corridor, which involves constructing a railway from Avondale, via Wesley, Mount Roskill, and Onehunga, to KiwiRail Southdown freight hub. People in Mt Roskill will be very happy to have this project fast tracked as it will improve the transport network and benefit people in Mt Roskill. It will be a great day for Mt Roskill. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. As we listened to the arguments and the debates around the House, I’ve been reading up and trying to understand a bit about what this legislation is about, what it does, but also why it is necessary. I have questions around the need for this legislation. I have questions, but, at the same time, as, I think, our small—we often think of it as small and agile, but often it’s heavy and big and clunky. But we get to take things to select committee, where the public gets to engage, where we’ll get professionals from infrastructure industries, we’ll get people from the public, and we’ll get people from the environment sector to actually have their say and to engage in making the laws—which we present here at first reading—at select committee, hopefully making them better if they need to be, or throwing them out completely if they need to be, and that is a good thing. So I’m glad that the Government is taking this to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I’m glad it’s not being rushed through under urgency, because there are questions when it comes to the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill.

I just want to touch on briefly, this afternoon, the role of the Environment Court. As I was looking through the legislation, there’s several references to the Environment Court. Looking at the explanatory note at the start, it talks about the fact that this bill is around “streamlining the objection process, which replaces the right to object to the Environment Court with a natural justice process allowing for written submission to the decision maker[s]:”—written submissions, not an oral hearing, not going to the Environment Court, but written submissions made to the decision maker. Now, that might sound OK on paper. It might sound like something that’s fairly non-offensive or that doesn’t cause any issues, but I believe that there’s something we need to dig into, we need to think about, and we need to understand.

Although legislation, as I said earlier, is done in isolation and we focus just on this bill, we look at what’s gone before: the Fast-track Approvals Act, which is mentioned in here, and what that does in terms of undoing some of our environment protections. We look at what this law does, if it goes through as it is currently written, and what that’s going to mean in terms of our environmental responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Environment Court.

I was reading up on this and I looked at some comments that have been made about this bill. It was Simpson Grierson who made a few thoughtful comments around some concerns they have. I think it’s always good to listen to experts and understand what they say. Like we’ve already said, we’re happy to take this to select committee to develop it more and to understand whether it’s something we will continue to support. But a comment that Simpson Grierson made was that in removing the Environment Court objection process, there are potential concerns regarding the independence of the primary decision-makers—as I said in my earlier comments, the fact that the Environment Court doesn’t participate but the fact you can write a submission to the decision maker. Simpson Grierson put some concerns around that. They put some caveats around the fact that we need to be cautious and we need to be careful.

Yes, I understand what the Government is doing. I understand that they’re moving things through faster. I understand that. But it can’t come at the expense of democracy. It can’t come at the expense of those who have skin in the game, whose land it might be, or who might have connections to that space—that they just get ignored or they just get to write something to the decision maker, because that is a concern.

Simpson Grierson also went on to say that this is a piecemeal and fragmented approach to legislative reform and it runs the risk that we’ll end up with a disjointed and confused Act.

Select committees are one of my favourite parts of being a politician—the fact that we get to thrash things out, the fact that we get to have a contest of ideas across the table, and the fact that we get to listen to submitters, to experts, and to concerned members of the public who want to have their voice heard. So we will vote for this this afternoon. We will take it to select committee. But I caution the fact that, again, there are environmental protections that seem to be loosened and relaxed by this legislation, and I think we need to take that into consideration.

New Zealanders wanted a Government to get stuff done, and New Zealanders understand that that takes actually doing things. What this bill enables is agreement between parties to acquire land in order to move things along that need to happen in this country. It’s practical, it’s by agreement, it’s what New Zealanders want in terms of being able to get stuff done in this country. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

I move, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2025.

We are up to No. 5 and it is a National Party call.

Madam Speaker, thank you. Look, there were three key issues that came out of the select committee. Firstly, one was from the National Sporting Organisations. In short, they think they generate about 30 percent of the income but get 20 percent of the profits. They’d like a different proportion set in law. We think probably regulation is the place for that. It’s a fair point, but regulation may be better than capturing it in law.

The second was around new products—virtual, fantasy, and even things like in-race betting. Again, there are some valid questions there, particularly I think in the fantasy space. However, this bill is probably too narrow for them to be incorporated into that one.

The third issue was really around the monopoly issues, and, in particular—and we heard some discussion last night—around the fact that some bettors feel like they were banned because they were too good but they don’t get given a reason. At the moment, that’s in clause 8 of this bill. I think it’s a fair point to raise, but I do think there’s an open question about whether that should be captured in this primary legislation or in regulation. That would be worthy of a bit more discussion, perhaps at the committee stage. Other than that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Costley.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Racing Industry Amendment Bill for its second reading. This bill is to safeguard the long-term financial sustainability of New Zealand’s racing industry by extending TAB New Zealand’s existing monopoly on sports and race wagering to include online betting.

As my colleague Tim Costley just outlined, this bill was considered by the Governance and Administration Committee. They’ve poured a lot of time into considering the legislation, listening to the submissions received on it, engaging with the racing Minister as well, in particular. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

So this is the split call at call six, is that correct?

That’s correct, yeah.

So you realise that that call was missed, so I’m just alerting the members that when it is the call, for the party to take the call at the right time.

Yes, I apologise for that, Madam Speaker. I wasn’t in the Chamber so I’m sorry for my lateness. [Interruption] Pardon me? I missed that. The Green Party is supporting this Racing Industry Amendment Bill. I just wanted to say that we are not dewy-eyed about the insidious character of gambling in our society. I have a now deceased member of my family that was of modest means but who spent a large amount of money on the horses and other forms of gambling. This is not an unfamiliar story in our country. Gambling can be a very destructive practice.

It is all important that if there is gambling that a substantial amount of resources are funnelled towards those who work in the prevention of problem gambling and help people who have gambling issues. Gambling is like an addictive substance. It is something that people get into a habit of and find it very hard to stop. It has similar effects on the brain as addictive substances. It is like a stimulant; the thrill of losing and the thrill of winning have a similar chemical effect. So the Green Party in supporting this bill is not endorsing the scale of a gambling sector that gives a relatively tiny amount of what it makes to dealing with those people who suffer the negative impacts of gambling in their lives that impact their families and impact their children.

Our party policy requires that we prevent new forms of gambling that are associated with harm and regulate all existing forms of gambling to prevent or minimise harm. So we take a harm minimisation approach similar to the approach we take on drugs. This bill does not prohibit online betting services by offshore operators—I mean it does, rather, that’s exactly what it does. It does prohibit online betting services. Online gambling is one of the riskier forms of gambling due to its easy access and easiness to conceal. Offshore operators are also not covered by New Zealand law and the protections provided by regulation and any income that offshore operators garner from New Zealand domestic gamblers do not contribute to those racing code distributions.

We previously have supported legislation in 2019 to introduce offshore betting charges with revenue distributed amongst the racing codes, which we determined was sensible, given the current racing industry provides a service to offshore vendors for no compensation. The same justification applies to prohibiting offshore betting.

The primary point of the bill is to protect the financial sustainability of the racing industry, and my colleague Celia Wade-Brown last night articulated very clearly just how dependent the racing industry is on income from gambling. But not just the racing industry; other sports are dependent. From memory, as much as 40 percent of the income of tennis in New Zealand comes from gambling, which is notable. Given our issue with the impact of racing on animals, for example—and I’m noting the clear and commendable position of this Government to bring greyhound racing to an end with the support of every party in this House—we are concerned at the impact of gambling, and we would like to see more efforts made to minimise it.

One of the obvious things that could be done—as a point of note before I finish—is the prohibition on the advertising by gambling outlets. Advertising has a very marked impact on those who are dependent on things from alcohol to tobacco to gambling, and it would be an easy step to prohibit the advertising of gambling in this country. That is something that I’m sure the Green Party would support. We will be supporting this bill, however. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to stand in support of the Racing Industry Amendment Bill. I note a number of the comments from the submitters about, too often, the slow passage of legislation in the House, whereby, by the time this comes into effect, the sector will have moved on again. Such is the nature of online gambling and the way that people interact with the sporting sector. Noting a significant increase, in particular an interest at the moment, for example—I was checking on some statistics earlier—that betting out of New Zealand on matters such as the NBA finals, which are taking place right now, causes a significant spike in the betting. I don’t have a horse in that race. Sadly, my Los Angeles Lakers got knocked out early in the playoffs.

Oh, what?

Yeah, I know, right? Everyone thought LeBron would take us to the glory land, but, sadly, that didn’t happen.

But hey, “Up the Wahs!”

It’s always “Up the Wahs!”, but never say that it’s our year. I didn’t say that.

But you notice there is, as the season of sports continues to play out—and in particular in the US, where there’s a significant growth in interest from New Zealand and Australia in betting on sports generally through the US predominantly. I think one of the main reasons for that is simply because of the sports analytics related to the likes of NBA and NFL which far outweigh any kind of sports analytics that we might see here in New Zealand. But I suspect that that’s coming. I don’t think listening to Jeff Wilson, as much as I admired him as a rugby player—I don’t think listening to him as a sports analytic is going to help your betting odds. But certainly, as technology continues to show its impact on, in particular, the racing industry but more broadly speaking the betting industry, it’s important to make sure that legislation like the one we’re supporting here and the regulations that follow this, continue to keep up with the market.

We note that there was a significant number of submitters on this particular bill, predominantly in support. One of the common themes that came through from the submitters was the fact that—and my Green colleague mentioned it and I thought explained it quite well with respect to problem gambling and gambling harm. We know that in the legislation as it currently stands, there’s a view to making sure that those that are working in minimising harm from gambling continue to receive funds to be able to do that important work as we see the growth of this industry. We want to see that continue. We’re encouraged and heartened by the point that it’s in this particular bill to make sure that we continue to have a view towards minimising harm from gambling.

We note too that the provision in the amendment and the bill itself also speaks to giving the TAB the ability to identify problem gamblers, those who they can deny the opportunity to place a bet, which I think is important. However, I’d make the point, though, that the policing of that, I think, I’m not too sure how that might work. If it’s strictly up to the TAB to be able to do that, that’s fine, I get that, because that’s the one portal we’re trying to make here with respect to online gambling and sports betting, in particular on the races. But making sure that we can enforce that, continue to monitor to make sure that TAB are, indeed, fulfilling that particular part of the bill that we are debating here today.

The next part, which I think is quite important and it’s been raised by a number of speakers in the House, is the formula by which they distribute money to the codes here in New Zealand. There were a number of comments about making sure that those codes were well represented on the board. We know that the Minister can already appoint members from certain codes to that particular board. While this bill doesn’t exactly make sure that the Minister does that, because the Minister still has the right to appoint to the board anyway, we would encourage, through the ongoing dialogue with this bill moving forward, that we would be able to make sure that those sports are represented fairly.

On Sunday, I had the good fortune, thanks to the Minister for Sport and Recreation, the Hon Mark Mitchell, who helped me get along to the Tall Blacks and the Tall Ferns game in Hamilton on Sunday. Simply looking at the odds and talking to a number of people around me, people were extremely interested in how they might be able to be part of the betting syndicate or the betting fund, if you will, from Sunday. That’s why, with the significant growth and sponsorship that goes into basketball, I think, and we think on this side of the House, that it’s important that those particular emerging and growth sports such as basketball in this country can have a voice at the table when the dividends or the money is divvied out amongst the sports.

I already mentioned how it depends on the season and where people are betting and what sports are going on at the time. So you see those surges and you see it in New Zealand, and making sure that in the community that that support continues to flow.

Just one final point from me, because, as I say, we support this bill. The other point we want to make is around making sure that there’s an amendment in this bill that talks about allowing the Minister to receive information or data from the TAB. I think that’s a great thing. My question for the House and for the Minister, moving forward, is: will that data be transparently afforded to the New Zealand public? Is it data that could be reviewed and analysed by this House? Is it data that can continue to inform this House’s deliberation on the regulations moving forward? Whatever those might look like with respect to this bill. I think we’re already in great agreement across this House that data and information is king. I acknowledge that the Minister can receive and can demand that data from these sources, but we want to make sure that as we deliberate, that that data becomes available to this House and also the public, if that’s able to happen.

But none the less, we’re supportive of this particular bill. For those who, as I said, get into sports betting—I for one keep an eye on sports overseas. I’ve spoken about the NBA. Just finally from me, in the first week of September is the start of the NFL season. My Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl recently and I expect them to repeat next year. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I won’t be taking a very long call, because I believe that my colleagues from right across the Chamber have actually iterated very succinctly what this bill is all about.

Having said that, I just want to go to the genesis of where this bill actually comes through. The background is the Racing Industry Act 2020 that, effectively, created TAB New Zealand as a statutory entity to manage sports and race wagering, actually empowering them to partner with offshore operators and introduce things like betting information news and point-of-consumption charges to generate extra revenue for TAB in order for them to support sporting entities. However, what actually happened is that the offshore operators, effectively, have captured the market, and TAB was not able to continue to fund the racing industry, which relies very heavily on the TAB revenue to operate. I think it’s really important to note that.

The Racing Industry Amendment Bill actually safeguards the long-term financial stability of New Zealand’s racing industry, extending TAB’s ability to give funding to sporting codes, and I think it’s a good thing. I thank the Governance and Administration Committee, who worked really hard, and the clerks and the advisers, who have actually given us expert advice. I commend the bill to the House.

This call is a split call—the Hon Dr Duncan Webb.

I’m not well known for my support of the racing industry. Having said that, I do enjoy going to the races on occasion, sometimes with my friend Kieran McAnulty; his tips are pretty good. Certainly, I’m pretty sure that he supports the racing industry via the TAB, as do many other New Zealanders.

I actually want to have a bit of a focus in my speech on gambling harm, because I do think whenever we’re talking about gambling and, being a responsible Government around gambling, we do need to think about gambling harm. In fact, one of the most harmful forms of gambling is online gambling, and whilst this bill won’t solve all of those problems, it will at least in respect of the racing industry. By making it illegal for operators—other than the TAB—to offer gambling around racing to New Zealanders, it means that there’s a tighter regulation around that.

It’s not often that we, kind of, support monopolies, but, in the case of sports gambling and gambling on racing, I think it’s appropriate for two reasons: one, so that we can have better oversight over harm minimisation, but also because of the fact that the TAB, in part, funds both sports and racing. So this is a good thing for both those reasons. I was quite gratified to see the good work that the select committee did, both around regulation-making powers, to just flesh out somewhat the expectations, or the ability to make regulations around different kinds of gambling harm and the responses to them.

We know that, in fact—perhaps bizarrely—when you’re gambling online, through an account, the ability to track gambling behaviour is greatly enhanced, so the TAB and anyone else in that space is able to see problem-gambling behaviour, see repeated gambling, and see the time at which people are gambling, and all those kinds of things. The ability to make regulations to do things like place time restrictions on when a person can bet or place restrictions around the amount they can bet, but also—and this is really important—put regulations around how to respond to people who self-identify as problem gamblers. In fact, that’s one of the main things people do—they kind of wake up the next morning and think, “What have I done?” They self-identify and say, “I’ve got a problem, and I need the operator”—here, the TAB—“to help.” It’s absolutely a duty on that operator to respond in a proportionate and appropriate manner, and there have been instances, in respect of some gambling operators, where that hasn’t occurred.

I just did also want to touch on some other aspects of the bill, and in particular the refusal of bets. In one sense, we can see why the TAB should be able to refuse any bet from anyone at any time, but I see now the select committee, in considering it, if you’ve got a monopoly operator—and people do gamble; they like to have a flutter on the horses or whatever—then we have to be a bit more responsible about turning people away. I think the committee actually landed at a pretty good place, which wasn’t actually to constrain the TAB’s ability to refuse bets; I think that it’s actually really important for them to have that ability. But they could make mistakes—it might be a mistake as to identity, might be some other mistake about the amounts they’re betting, or whatever it might be. Now, they have to give reasons for a refusal of a bet, and I think that’s a sensible thing to do. So if they’re like, “Oh, no, I’m not that John Smith” or “No, that wasn’t my bet; I was betting on behalf of someone else”, or whatever it might be, I think that’s a good thing.

Look, great news for the racing industry—good work. Pity about the pokie machines that aren’t going to be banned; that’s a real missed opportunity. I know that we would have done that, and I think that would have reduced gambling harm and been good for the community. But, overall, it’s a worthwhile piece of legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This amendment will extend TAB New Zealand’s exclusive right for sports and racing betting to include online platforms, but it will be a boost for Kiwi sports and racing. It’s expected that that revenue will mean more will be fed back into sporting bodies. I just had a bit of a nosy—in 2023, for example, in the Wairarapa electorate, some of the beneficiaries of the $17.8 million contributed to communities that year were Central and Southern Hawkes Bay Eventing, for cost of medical for an event; Wairarapa Cricket Association; Wairarapa football club; Wairarapa Bush Rugby Referees Association, that was for replacing gear; and Wairarapa Netball Inc. So there is a lot of good that comes from the contributions that they distribute throughout our communities.

I also had a good talk to a mate of mine from one of New Zealand’s premier thoroughbred studs, Sam and Catriona Williams of Little Avondale, and I think they’re still actually celebrating their success at the Australian yearling sale, where they sold a Zoustar colt for a record $1.7 million. The Wairarapa is still incredibly proud of their success, and Sam tells me that they’re absolutely in favour of this bill. So am I. I commend it to the House.

I’m very pleased to be the final speaker on this side of the House to do with the Racing Industry Amendment Bill. It’s important that I make a contribution for the bill as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee.

Last night, we heard Minister Jones, in terms of the legislative statement to the second reading, and we know that the second reading is about the process on this bill. We understand that protection and long-term sustainability is very important to New Zealand’s racing industry. This amendment bill to the Racing Industry Act 2020 is to extend the TAB’s existing land monopoly for sports and racing betting to include online-provided wagering. Labour, under the last Government, had progressed some of the work in this space, and we are quite disappointed that the Minister has not taken on board those class 4 licences, which cause a lot of harm in our community, and has not factored it in at this time. So we look forward to the committee stage, where we can scrutinise and ask specific questions around online harm minimisation.

My colleague Tangi Utikere acknowledged and highlighted the workforce—the over 13,500 workers in the racing industry. Actually, if you include the volunteers and those who work at racing meets, that figure goes up to 40,000 jobs in the racing industry. That’s a significant amount of workers that contribute in terms of the revenue that is gathered for the racing industry, to the extent of $1.9 billion that is circulated into the industry. We heard also the comments and contributions on the relationship of TAB New Zealand and Entain, which is about 25 years old and counting, and we know that there’s a payment of $100 million secured as a result of that relationship—revenue that is continuing to be generated in Aotearoa.

I wanted to highlight, in my contribution, the online harm minimisation that is prevalent in our community. We’ve heard Dr Webb make some comments, and others in their contributions. It is really important—and for the record—the class 4 licences that are prevalent in our community cause a lot of online harm. Whilst, for the punters, it is their decision how they spend their money and where they go to in terms of the community, I wanted to raise the issues and the focus as to why harm prevention, consumer protection, and harm minimisation are really important issues. Under Labour, we did lobby that, for class 4 licences, there needs to be the understanding, of those in the racing industry, that whilst it brings revenue and the sustainability of the industry is important, there is another factor that the Problem Gambling Foundation and community groups have raised with specific MPs.

As an MP in South Auckland, I understand the importance of online gambling harm. There is a side that punters in our community have that choice; that’s not a problem. But where those that cannot control—they would like to gamble and continue to do that. It is affecting our Māori, our Pasifika, our ethnic community, and what is alarming is our younger population.

So the South Auckland communities—one of the things with the class 4 licences that I understand that was raised with TAB New Zealand, who then chose not to—[Mic static]

I think it was just interference, but if I’m told different, we’ll do something different. Carry on.

TAB New Zealand were then told not to—oh, I’ve lost my train of thought, but anyway. As we understand throughout Aotearoa, the online world for our younger generation is really prevalent. Some of the decision making that happens around online gambling—I personally believe that there’s not enough emphasis of not enough education. When you have a community who can make choices but they don’t have as much money as other wealthier communities, sometimes those choices for our young people can diminish.

Through the Governance and Administration Committee process, it was interesting to read some of the information and submissions by the national sporting organisations that wanted to say, “Yes, it’s good to have this revenue. Yes, it’s good to have the amendment of the Racing Industry Act.” But there is a big part of that to do with harm minimisation. So one of the things that I will continue to question in the committee process is: have we got the instruments right? Do the Minister and the officials—yes, there’s a big component around the revenue and what that brings into Aotearoa, but there has to be the commitment and there’s got to be the right legislative tools to be able to counteract.

One of the things that I want to raise and put on the record is the balance around online gambling harm, and specifically for Māori, for Pasifika, for ethnic people, and for our young people, particularly around the language of the tools that will provide the policies.

I did a bit of research in terms of the online gambling in New Zealand, and there were public submissions and I have a report here from June 2020 that I wanted to quote from. One of the things with the approach to harm minimisation that was raised by submitters was those experiencing problem gambling behaviours—there needs to be a specific ability to make sure that the tools that this legislation brings are achieving that balance. My concern is around, specifically, young people who don’t fully understand that when they have X amount of dollars only so far, what the harmful effects are for them when they make the choice to gamble online.

The research, in terms of what is provided here in one of the reports, is really important for people of Aotearoa to consider. When we in this House, in this Whare, are going through and making the legislation, it is important that submitters have the opportunity to express their views and provide different perspectives, and it is important that there’s a strong support and focus, in the right temperament, for harm minimisation, specifically for those with problem gambling behaviours. So what the evidence tells us—and what I’ve been talking to just in terms of the South Auckland area, which is one of the highest areas of concentration of the class 4 gambling machines and the proliferation to specific groups in our society, is important.

I have been to race meetings. I have appreciated that whole community. There have been people in my family who have gone to those meetings but actually end up with harm minimisation.

For the record, I wanted to raise those points whilst I have the time, because the thing with online gambling harm is it’s hidden; it’s 24-hour access. So there is a good side to it and then there’s the dark side of it. We who are making the laws in this country have to be cognisant of those features and that we achieve the right balance. We cannot ignore that—not in communities like ours in Māngere and South Auckland.

Just as I finish off, I look forward—whilst we on this side of the House disagree with some of the features that were presented, we will be supporting it through to the next phase. But I really want to stress that whilst we are getting it right for the revenue, the things around online harm minimisation and consumer protection are very important issues to our community. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be standing to speak on the Racing Industry Amendment Bill in its second reading. Look, I think it’s important to note that the profits from the TAB are directed back into sports and racing here in New Zealand, rather than having profits from betting going offshore; it is good to see that that money would be directed back into New Zealand.

One of the TAB’s goals is to increase participation in the racing industry, and this is an area where I have some experience. I’ve had the opportunity to contribute as part of a syndicate. I think we owned an ear of a racehorse, perhaps. There were 24 of us, I think, in the syndicate. We had three horses—thoroughbreds. The first horse was called Alvera, and, well, it won a few races and got a lot of seconds and a few thirds and provided us with a lot of joy. The second horse we had was Run Forrest Run, which, when it went up a grade, turned into Walk Forrest Walk, but it still gave us a lot of pleasure. The last horse we had was a horse called Lord Snow, who was no good at all, and we haven’t had a horse since.

But I do recommend it, actually. It was a great experience and it was a great way to follow the horses, be involved in the industry, know that you were supporting a trainer, and a lot of fun. So, with that little diversion, I commend this bill to the House.

Glen Bennett. This is a split call—it will be half of a split call.

Kia ora, Madam Chair. Thank you.

It will be half of a split call.

Half a minute—

No, five minutes—half of a split call.

I’m a whole person but half a call. That’s OK. I rise as a complete novice when it comes to the racing industry. In fact, I have a confession to make that I’ve only—and the Hon Keiran McAnulty is behind me—ever been to one actual race meet, and that wasn’t even a real one; it was a demonstration one. But I’m sure I have some comeback, because it was at the Kentucky Derby. Surely that’s a comeback. So I’ve never actually been to a real, live, racing industry meet, but I’ve been to a demonstration at the Kentucky Derby, so, surely, that gives me some credibility to speak for at least—well, only five minutes, but I will try to keep my comments short and to the point. In fact, I’ve got no idea.

But I live in New Plymouth, and as you drive into the beautiful city of Ngāmotu, we have our wonderful race course that sits on the left-hand side, hovering above our beautiful Tasman Sea. It is a place of life and energy, it is a place that has race meets regularly, but also it is a place that’s under strain and under challenge. I guess, with modern society and as the world moves rapidly, and as previous speakers have said on all sides of the House, the challenge of our online world, the challenge we have of people being able to bet online 24/7. Although I’ve never participated myself, I do see the merit in a good afternoon out when you get to go to the races, you get to put on that beautiful hat and those really impractical heels and boots and whatever you wear, and go to the races on a muddy, soggy Taranaki afternoon.

But we need to consider the fact that with this legislation, we need to look at the harm that can be done, and so I feel confident—I never thought I would stand in this House and speak to a piece of legislation that was around gambling. Being brought up in the Salvation Army, it was something that was forbidden. But I’m glad, as I read through and look at our notes, look at the legislation in front of me, of the fact that something the previous Government began, and then something this Government has continued, is something that we on this side of the House, us in the Labour Party, can support.

But, as my colleague the Hon Duncan Webb did state earlier, there have been a few things removed, and we don’t feel that’s OK in terms of some give and take when it comes to downsizing of pokies around the place. But, unfortunately, that has been ignored when it comes to the legislation in front of us this afternoon.

But as someone who’s been at the Kentucky Derby and seen two demonstration races, I really want to acknowledge the proud history—and to you, Madam Speaker, I’m sorry if I get this wrong. But my honoured and learned colleague the Hon Kieran McAnulty does assure me that we should always back a Sharrock in New Plymouth.

I couldn’t possibly comment. I’m neutral while I’m sitting up here, Mr Bennett.

I hope that’s OK. I hope I haven’t been set up. But we should always back a Sharrock in New Plymouth. For the whānau out there, the Sharrock whānau, who have been deeply involved in the racing industry for years, we acknowledge them and what they do, because it is around our economy. But we also need to work on how we prevent hurt and harm, and this legislation is something that goes some way to do that.

I just want to finally comment on some of the restrictions that some of the submitters talked about during the select committee stage. There were definitely submitters that raised concerns about the prior powers held by the TAB in New Zealand to restrict bettors from placing bets for any reason and without requirement to identify why bets were refused. They also went on to comment about this bill. They were concerned that it amends to provide the specific circumstances where TAB New Zealand can refuse a bet, such as having been identified as a problem gambler, convicted of relevant offences, or engaged in threatening behaviour to TAB staff.

It also specifies that the TAB must now inform the person seeking to make a bet as to the reason for any refusal. I think that is good because often in the past, it was something that was unknown to the better. It is good that the TAB must now inform the person seeking to make the bet and give them a reason for any refusal.

We support this legislation. We look forward to it going to the committee stage and to ironing it out. I know there are a couple of amendments already on the Table in the committee stage that we will be looking into. Labour supports the legislation.

I move, That the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of this bill is to minimise disruptive impacts on the public, who often lose out, who are caught in the middle, when these partial strikes occur. I believe changes are needed to the strike provisions to help improve collective bargaining settings. The current strike provisions do not appropriately balance the rights and consequences in situations where there is not a total withdrawal of labour.

That is why, to achieve the bill’s purpose and to provide a far more effective and efficient bargaining environment where rights and consequences are better balanced, this coalition Government is restoring employers’ ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes, a mechanism that was in place between 2015 and 2018 and worked well.

A partial strike is a type of strike that is less than a full withdrawal of labour. This bill gives employers an additional tool to respond to partial strikes. It will help incentivise parties engaged in industrial action to return sooner to the bargaining table and reach agreement.

The previous Government took this tool away in 2018. This means that if an employee engages in a partial strike, the employer’s main options are to either take no action or accept the partial strike action and the output loss, or to suspend or lock out the employees for the duration of the strike. Doing this would obviously escalate the dispute and, when it falls to the public sector, likely increase the level of service disruption on the public. In this way, employers lack options to respond to partial strike action in a measured and proportionate way.

Since 2018, we have seen partial strikes disrupting services where patients face delays in receiving medical scans and treatments due to prolonged waiting lists, kids missing out on education, parents missing out on work, and train passengers left waiting at platforms.

I want to share some recent examples of how disruptive partial strikes can be. In August 2024, patients faced delays in getting medical scans and treatments because hospital-based MRI and nuclear medicine technologists undertook partial strike action, including limits on the number of scans completed each day. This resulted in a reduction of around 50 percent of scans, delays in early cancer treatment, longer waiting lists, increased outsourcing costs, and required additional front-line staff to cover the striking workers’ radiology work.

In 2023, students’ education was impacted when teachers undertook partial strike action which included refusing to teach certain year groups on particular days, disrupting both the students’ learning and their parents’ ability to work.

In 2024, the New Zealand Defence Force Public Service Association members took work-to-rule action, took coordinated breaks, and stopped working at heights or off site. In response, the Minister of Defence authorised uniformed personnel to cover civilian work in some selected areas.

I fully appreciate that employees can strike in support of their collective bargaining goals, but the disruption to the public and customer services that can often result from partial strikes should not continue without consequence. Restoring an employer’s ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes will help promote an early return to bargaining and reduce impact on third parties.

I’d like to take a moment to explain how the current law isn’t working and how my bill will improve it. There are no provisions to allow a more nuanced or proportionate response for employers to respond to a partial strike. Employers can either take no action and accept the partial strike action and the output loss, with a big impact on them and their customers, or suspend or lock out the employees for the duration of the strike, with a disproportionate impact on the workers.

This amendment will enable employers to make a specified pay deduction in response to a partial strike by either reducing employees’ pay by a proportionate amount, by using a specified calculation, or by deducting a fixed percentage of 10 percent of their pay. I believe it is important that the partial strike provisions are workable for employers, especially for those with large workforces.

Employers would be free to decide whether to deduct pay or not. If an employer decides to do so, before any deductions are made and for greater transparency for employees the bill does require that the employer provides written notification about the deduction to employees within specific time frames. I believe it’s important that employees are made aware of the financial impact of the partial strike action reasonably promptly. If an employee or a group of employees consider that the employer has incorrectly applied or calculated a specific pay deduction, the bill allows unions to challenge the application or calculation by requesting information relied on to calculate the pay deduction, and employers must respond to the written request as soon as reasonably practicable.

The Education and Workforce Committee considered a wide range of suggested amendments to the draft bill but concluded most were not needed. This is not surprising, because the legislation, like I said, was working quite well from 2015 to 2018. The committee did decide to express more precisely what different sections of the bill meant. These included, for example, ensuring that the union specifies in their strike notice whether employees will continue to do some work and clarify how to find an employee’s usual hours. I support these suggestions, and I believe the new legislation will be more effective as a result. I want to thank the committee for their work and all the members of the public who took the time to submit. I understand that some of the changes that the select committee took arose from good suggestions from those submitters.

I understand, also, that some submitters argue that the legislation would somehow undermine workers’ right to strike, weakening their collective bargaining power, or entrench poor working conditions. I don’t agree with this. Employees will have the same rights to strike as they do now; there will just be consequences for doing so.

My intention with this bill is very clear. Disruption to public and customer services that has resulted from partial strikes should not continue without consequences. I want to provide for a far more effective and efficient bargaining environment where the rights and consequences are more balanced. Restoring employers’ ability to make pay deductions for partial strikes will help minimise potential disruption to services and incentivise both parties to return to the bargaining table and reach agreement in good faith sooner.

This change to collective bargaining is consistent with the Government’s Going for Growth direction to reduce the compliance burden for employers and ensure settings are proportionate. I’m confident that this bill will promote more harmonious industrial relations across New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think this is, once again, a piece of legislation that shows that this Government has no regard for workers in this country whatsoever. I’m surprised that the second reading is being held at a time when we have had such an attack over the last couple of weeks on our workers, particularly our women workers in this country.

I sat on the Education and Workforce Committee and heard the submissions. I just want to put on record here how many submitters there were. The committee received 620 written submissions on the bill. In support of the bill, out of those 620, there were four—I’ll just say that again: four in support of this bill.

Four, is that all?

Four, that’s all. Opposing the bill were 606; unclear on whether supporting or opposed was three; and overall view was unclear as submissions focused on potential changes to bill was seven.

The—

The party of victim-waiving narcissists disagrees.

Oh, did I just hear somebody over there talking about victim waiving? Yeah, it just shows what they think about workers in this country—absolutely shows what they think about workers.

What we think about you—what we think about you.

Yeah, Simon Court, that’s right—just for the record, so that we can get that on there too.

The rationale provided for opposing this bill—and there were six main reasons why people actually oppose the bill, and I want to go through those reasons that people gave during the select committee process. The first was that the changes will diminish workers’ rights to strike, or their rights generally. I heard that the Minister said that that is not the case. That is not what the people who were submitting on this bill were telling us throughout the select committee process. They’ve been in these positions before. They know between 2015 and 2018, they’ve had experience of this. They know that these changes will diminish their rights or their right to strike, and their rights in general.

The most common concern raised by submitters was the concern that the ability for employers to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes will have a negative impact on the right of workers to strike. That was from just over half of those submissions. They opposed this part of the bill for that reason.

The one that I really want to talk about, though, is actually the second main reason that was given as to why people were absolutely opposed to this particular bill. That was that deductions in pay in response to partial strikes are unfair, particularly when they are in response to work-to-rule industrial action. So what this could mean, Madam Speaker, is that you or an employer could employ somebody with the conditions of employment laid out so they have their hours of work laid out and they have their tasks laid out in their employment agreement, and then they, out of the goodness of their heart, volunteer to do extra work.

So let’s take the case of a teacher, as an example. In their employment agreement—the collective employment agreement which informs the individual employment agreements as well—hours of work are laid out in that collective agreement. Now, not many people know that but it is laid out in the collective agreement. Many of our teachers go over and above that. We know that. We know that sports teams happen, for example, when teachers spend their after-school time or before-school time coaching sports teams and, often, are really busy either in evening sports events or weekend sports events; arts and culture; rock quest—we had that here in the Legislative Chamber recently. Many teachers go over and above what they are employed to do, to be able to enable those young people to share their creativity with the world. They will go on trips and camps with them. But if they’re in the middle of industrial bargaining and negotiations and they decide to do a work-to-rule, this is what this bill enables to happen: they decide that they’re only going to work the hours that they are employed for, and there can be a pay deduction. Now, those extra hours are not in the collective agreement; they are doing that out of the goodness of their heart. But this bill will enable the employer—who will be, usually, the Ministry of Education in this point, because they are responsible for paying the teachers—to make a partial deduction.

Now, I thought, well, that can’t be true. I thought that maybe—because you’re employed for what you’re employed for, and I thought that can’t be true. So I specifically asked this question of officials at the Education and Workforce Committee, and the select committee said, “Well, yes, it does.” It can do that, and it is case by case, but it absolutely enables that clause, that work-to-rule to overstep the employment agreement and for there to be pay deductions that can be made. It says that in the departmental report, in case anyone wants to check that out and look that up. I have to say, it’s a very good departmental report that has been made on this, because it lays it out very, very clearly, but also all of those objections that were made to it.

Another theme that came through was that people were opposed because the changes will further exacerbate the current imbalance of power between employees and employers, and weaken employees’ positions in the collective bargaining. Now, something that has been noted in this House many, many, many times is the inherent imbalance in the bargaining process. We know that employers have the power of balance—the balance of power, I should say. We absolutely know that that is the case; it is well documented. But, unfortunately, the whole idea—and I’ve got colleagues in the House that can say this really eloquently because they’ve worked in this area for so long; that’s you, Helen White. They know that in any of these negotiations, the employee has only got that right to be able to strike in the industrial bargaining process to restore balance, and this is being minimised and taken away from them in this piece of legislation. That was something that people talked about.

They talked about the changes being inconsistent with New Zealand’s domestic and international obligations. That is a real concern, particularly in the international—well, mostly in the international obligations part of this. You know, we can look at the New Zealand part, and I encourage people to go and read the departmental report, but the international obligations—

The ILO doesn’t care about people who don’t get their scans though, do they?

—and I hear the member over there once again talking about the International Labour Organization. I’m talking about trade agreements, actually, Simon Court. So you should actually, Simon Court, do your homework on this and not just make your ideological judgments around this, because I think that that’s a very ill-informed interjection that you have made from over on that side of the House.

The last area that people talked about was that the changes will increase strike action and incentivise workers to fully withdraw their labour. This is something that is a reality when disincentives like this come in, to those partial strikes. The Minister talked about a specific example where a partial strike had happened. I’ve already had people say, “Well, if that’s going to happen and pay is going to be taken, we may as well go off full time.” That’s what this is trying to stop—to still give people that right to strike, but to ensure that productivity is maintained and not completely withdrawn.

I want to finish up by just quoting a press release that came out from Rachel Mackintosh, who at the time was the acting secretary of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. She says, “Industrial action is supposed to help level the power imbalances in employment relationships that favour employers. This change undermines that and tips the balance of power even further in favour of employers by introducing a punitive response to legitimate industrial action. … The only winners of this Bill will be the lawyers. This legislation will lead to increased litigation, and prolonging bargaining and industrial action at the expense of both workers and employers.” Labour will not be supporting this bill.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 May 2025.