Parliamentary debates: Thursday, 14 August 2025

Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Next week, the House will consider the third reading of the Local Government (Water Services) Bill and make progress on the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill and the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. The hours of Tuesday will be extended into Wednesday for further consideration of Government business, and Wednesday afternoon will be a members’ day, and indeed the evening.

Two petitions have been delivered for presentation.

Petition of Daniel Matthews requesting that the House require that all players in youth school sports wear clearly visible numbers on the back of their uniforms

petition of Whakatāne District Grey Power Association requesting that the House urge the Government to commit funding for a second bridge in Whakatāne.

Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered a paper.

Ministerial response to the petition of Bowel Cancer New Zealand.

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

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the report of the Controller and Auditor-General Immigration New Zealand: Managing how it makes decisions about skilled residence visas

report of the Health Committee on the briefing on the advance directive system.

The reports are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of two bills.

Veterans’ Recognition Bill, introduction

Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill, introduction.

Those bills are set down for first reading.

to the Minister for Pacific Peoples

Does he stand by his statement, “We absolutely have endeavours to get Pasifika people into employment”; if so, why?

Yes, and I acknowledge the current high rates of unemployment, particularly for Pasifika, which is the unfortunate after-effect of a historic period of out-of-control inflation, rapidly rising interest rates, and stagnant growth. That’s why our Government is relentlessly focused on growing the economy to support Pasifika and all New Zealanders with better job opportunities, higher wages, and a brighter future.

Is it correct that the current unemployment rate for Pasifika peoples is double what it was at the end of 2023 when his Government came into office?

The current rate of unemployment for Pasifika is around 12 percent, and it is correct that when we first came into Government it was around 6 percent.

Why did he cut $22 million out of the Tupu Aotearoa Pacific employment and training programme at a time when Pasifika unemployment is more than twice the national average?

What we’re wanting to do with Tupu Aotearoa is collaborate with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), who have similar programmes, and we wanted to enhance the benefits we saw from Tupu Aotearoa in the last financial year, that delivered 2,551 outcomes. We believe we can do a better job in collaboration with MSD.

Is he saying that the $22 million previously allocated to Tupu Aotearoa is now being used by MSD for targeted Pasifika programmes, and, if so, what are they?

What I’m saying is that the collaboration between what the Ministry for Pacific Peoples (MPP) does with Tupu Aotearoa and with what MSD was also doing with young people not in education, employment, or training is giving us a more fine-tuned, focused delivery mechanism.

Why, when officials advised him that “targeted programmes such as Tupu Aotearoa with defined interventions are critical to moving Pacific peoples into employment, education, or training.”, did he ignore the advice?

Because we’re able to focus on other MPP-delivered programmes such as the Pacific Business Trust, which supports Pacific businesses to be successful and thrive and which delivered 320 jobs in the last financial year.

Why, at a time of rising unemployment, did he shut down the Tauola Business Fund, which supported Pacific businesses to foster growth and create employment opportunities?

Because the Pacific Business Trust, as I’ve described, is already delivering effective and efficient services, plus there are other programmes such as those run by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—such as Alo Vaka, which is supporting Pacific workers into higher-quality, better-paid jobs with some success.

Why would he make things worse for Pasifika families, when more are struggling to pay the bills and meet the rising cost of living, by cutting back a programme that helped more than 1,300 people into work in the last year alone, given that Pasifika unemployment is more than twice the national average?

We’re looking to a range of endeavours for employment for Pasifika people, which include broader endeavours such as backing infrastructure, backing construction—we’ve announced the $6 billion pipeline for projects before the end of the year. We’re also backing hospitality and tourism. So as a wider suite of all-of-Government endeavours, we’re looking to improve employment for Pasifika.

to the Minister of Foreign Affairs

Does he agree with the Prime Minister that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost the plot”; if so, why?

Yes, in the context that the comment was made. The Prime Minister and I, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, talk often on matters of foreign affairs that are important to New Zealand. That’s why the Government has committed more than $37 million of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. We’ve also called for Israel and Hamas to implement a ceasefire, called for Hamas to release hostages, and for all parties to allow for the safe, rapid, and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid. We have also declared Hamas a terrorist organisation.

Can he confirm media reports that the reason New Zealand is yet to recognise Palestinian Statehood despite commitments from France, the UK, Canada, and Australia, is because ACT Ministers stopped it at Monday’s Cabinet meeting?

Can I just remind the Minister to—well, answer, but just indicate that it’s on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs?

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is overseas; I’m the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the moment.

That’s fine—that’s good as gold. As long as we’re clear.

I’m not going to talk about what happened in Cabinet, but it is very clear that the Government is united in making sure that we make the decision that’s not only right but right for New Zealand. We are going to consider all of the information before us, and we won’t be doing—as some members of this Parliament do—grandstanding and rushing to a decision.

Does he agree with David Seymour that recognising Palestinian Statehood as it currently exists would mean making friends with terrorists; if so, why is the Government spending the next month deciding whether they will make friends with terrorists or not?

I didn’t see the comments that the Deputy Prime Minister made, and they may well have been as leader of the ACT Party. But very clearly, what Mr Seymour may have been commenting on is the role that Hamas plays, who are a terrorist organisation who are active in harming people in that area. The member is right: the Government is going to take an appropriate amount of time to make a decision that is not only right but right for New Zealand.

Why is the Government allowing the resistance of ACT Party Ministers to undermine New Zealand international credibility and reputation, just as they did in the Deputy Prime Minister’s letter to the United Nations Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights?

No, that absolutely is not correct, and I refute it. What the Government won’t be doing is grandstanding in this Parliament on an issue that is so important merely for the theatrics of politics. We will be making a decision that’s in the best interest for New Zealand and is the right decision, but we’re going to ensure we consider all parts of this decision before we rush to any conclusion.

Does he agree with the Prime Minister that we have been friends with Israel for a long period of time, and is New Zealand still a friend of Israel, following their actions over the last two years?

New Zealand has a very long history with Israel, as we have many former Israeli citizens that live in this country. However, we are going to consider what is in the best interest of New Zealand and what is the right decision. And I say, again, to all leaders of parties in this House: political grandstanding for the theatrics of getting on television is not in the best interest of New Zealand.

Does he think words on the international stage will convince the leader who has “lost the plot”; if not, why won’t he take further actions, such as sanctioning Israel?

It’s interesting he asked what actions New Zealand has taken. New Zealand has issued eight ministerial statements since October 2023 and delivered 29 statements at the UN. In these, we have been clear in our condemnation of Hamas and our calls for hostages to be released; for humanitarian access into Gaza; for all parties, including Israel, to abide by international law; and for a ceasefire in this conflict to be enacted.

to the Minister of Finance

What reports has she seen on COVID-19 and the economy?

Oh, I haven’t been able to stop reading Treasury’s long-term insights briefing.

What’d it say?

It’s a great read. It highlights the dangers of excessive Government spending. It also highlights the importance of promoting fiscal discipline through transparency and accountability. The Treasury briefing states that “during the COVID-19 period, the previous Government suspended its fiscal rules … and established the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) to fund the fiscal response.” The suspension of normal fiscal rules resulted in significant expenditure occurring outside the operating allowances framework. Subsequent reviews found that this reduced the ability for the Government to monitor the quality of the spend of New Zealanders’ hard-earned money, and that the transparency of expenditure should have been better.

What reports has she seen about people taking responsibility for the COVID19 spend?

I did see a report yesterday that key decision makers during COVID-19 have refused an invitation to participate in public hearings on phase two of the royal commission of inquiry into COVID-19. Sadly, the COVID-19 inquiry has cancelled its second week of public hearings, which I think will be upsetting for some New Zealanders.

Why is it important for those who made decisions on COVID-19 spend to attend public hearings?

Point of order.

A point of order, the Hon Kieran McAnulty.

Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

Hang on. Excuse me, Megan Woods, there is a point of order being taken by your shadow Leader of the House.

Sir, the primary and subsequent supplementary were related to reports that the Minister has seen. The third supplementary is asking his opinion on why things should happen that aren’t related to the reports.

Yeah, that’s quite correct. And I would have moved on that had you not been quite so quick out of the blocks.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The supplementary question, though, followed directly from the answer given to the previous supplementary, and so it is in order, in that instance, for it to be able to flow. Although it was not directly linked to the primary question, it was directly linked to the answer of the supplementary.

No. I’ve just ruled that out, so we’re not going back over an argument about that. Is there another supplementary?

He keeps failing his auditions for Leader of the House.

OK—look, another comment like that and it will also be an early end to the week for you as well.

Is there anything else in the reports on the COVID-19—[Interruption]

Stop—too much comment. Start again.

Is there anything else in the reports on the COVID-19 spend the Minister would like to comment on? [Interruption]

Is there anything on how many of your donors took the wage subsidy?

Are you listening to this? Is that in order? That’s a direct allegation of corruption.

Well, then you do something about that through the proper channels. But the reality is that the rule has always been that if a political question is asked, there will be a political response to it. That was, without doubt, a very clear political question, and I’m sure that the answer is going to be along the same lines.

It’s about as straight as it comes, Mr Speaker—straight as a die. The report, as we’ve canvassed in the House this week, makes it clear that the Government engaged in an extremely large spending programme in response to COVID-19. Some of it was related to the pandemic that was befalling the country and, indeed, the world at the time, but much of it was unrelated, and New Zealanders are bearing the price for that still today.

Have other countries held public hearings with decision makers?

Well, this will be an incredibly brief answer, I’m sure.

Yes.

Good.

to the Minister of Housing

How many social houses funded in the 2024 and 2025 Budgets have been built?

Forty-five.

How does that measure up to Nicola Willis’ signed pledge to a net increase of 1,000 social houses in Auckland every year?

Well, they’re completely different numbers, in the sense that—the question was: “How many social houses that were funded in Budget 2024 and 2025 have been built so far?” That funding starts on 1 July 2025, which has just been—it’s about eight weeks ago. Forty-five of those houses have been built, but the funding goes until 30 June 2027, so there’s a couple of years. The question the member just asked is about the commitment to build 1,000 homes in Auckland per year over a three-year period, which we’re making good progress on.

How is 45 houses good progress on the signed pledge to build a net increase of 1,000 social houses in Auckland a year?

Well, firstly, there’s a long way to go until November 2026, for starters, and the second point is that many houses have been built in Auckland over the last 18 to 19 months.

How can he credibly dismiss leaders in the construction sector who link the Government cancelling Kāinga Ora projects and insufficient funding for social houses to the 18,000 jobs lost in construction since this Government took office?

Well, Kāinga Ora, and the community housing sector more broadly, is about 5 to 7 percent of the construction market, so it’s on the margins of the construction sector. I’m not denying it makes a difference, but 93 percent of the residential construction market is the private sector—it’s not the community housing sector and Kāinga Ora. Kāinga Ora has built around 2,500 net new homes over the last year. They’ve got a build programme over the next couple of years of around 2,000 gross homes, and, of course, you’ve got around 2,000 community houses on top of that—and that’s not even counting Māori housing, which there is quite a lot of additional support going into, which my good colleague the Hon Tama Potaka has made announcements about, and many of those projects will be starting construction in the next year or so as well.

How can he deny making things worse when 18,000 construction jobs have been lost, the Government has only contributed 45 new social houses, and homelessness in parts of the country has increased by over 90 percent?

Well, there’s 45 new social houses built from the Budget 2024 funding that the member asked about, but the actual funding is 2,000 over the next two years, additional community housing funded programmes, on top of Kāinga Ora’s existing build programme. As I pointed out to the member a couple of supplementaries ago, the community housing programme and Kāinga Ora is around 5 to 7 percent of the residential construction market. The biggest thing we can do to get residential construction going again is to get inflation down and get interest rates down so that we can get confidence back into the market. Now, the good news is there’s some green shoots of change coming through, and I’d invite the member to look at the announcement by Simplicity Living just this morning of 500 new build-to-rent houses in Queenstown, which is a housing market that desperately needs it. They’re making the investment, and it’s great to see.

to the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology

How many jobs, if any, have been lost in the science sector since the formation of this Government?

The Government is in the process of reforming our science sector to better support a growing economy and provide higher paying jobs for New Zealanders. As part of this, we are disestablishing Callaghan Innovation, which has resulted in a reduction of 134 roles. Approximately, a further 350 have been disestablished as we reform the primary research organisations. This includes technical and support staff. Despite these changes, I am encouraged by data from the biennial Stats New Zealand Research and Development Survey that show the broader New Zealand science sector has actually grown from around 28,200 roles in 2022 to around 30,600 roles in 2024.

Would he consider highly skilled scientists abundant and easy to come by, or are they positions that we should be actively trying to keep in Aotearoa?

I would consider highly skilled scientists to be important to the science, innovation, and technology system, and what we’re doing is providing them with certainty and other opportunities.

Does he think that scientists who have just lost their jobs following the closure of Callaghan Innovation will stay in Aotearoa, or will they find opportunities overseas?

I think that scientists who have been disestablished through part of the reforms will have a skillset that will be able to be applied in other parts of the science sector, as we saw at that presentation that was made here in Parliament last night with the two scientists that moved from Scion out into private to commercialise their product.

Does he think that his Government rushing to axe the jobs of around 500 scientists and researchers across various agencies, many of whom have been forced to uproot their lives and go offshore where their skills are valued, is encouraging talent to come to New Zealand?

I think reforming the science system to be more efficient with clearer strategic direction will be what will encourage scientists from offshore to come and work in New Zealand.

Can he see any long-term implications of allowing many of our top scientists with unique and critical skills to leave Aotearoa, including a National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist who left for Germany after being “unable to survive in a place that doesn’t value public good science?”

I refute that last allegation. We do value public good science, and I can see those skills being deployed elsewhere in the wider science system.

Has he made any progress on clarifying what research will be deprioritised given his cut to science funding?

Those are discussions that the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council are working through.

to the Minister of Health

What recent announcements has he made about health infrastructure?

Yesterday, I was in the sunny Bay of Plenty to open Tauranga Hospital’s new, expanded intensive care unit and high dependency unit (HDU), completing a $21 million upgrade to boost critical care capacity in the region. This project increases ICU and HDU capacity, refurbishes the coronary care unit with room to expand capacity, and adds three negative pressure rooms for infection control. These improvements will ease pressure on the emergency department, reduce wait times, and improve access to specialist cardiac care—all part of our plan to put patients first.

How will the new ICU and HDU benefit the people of Tauranga?

The new ICU and HDU provide more space and dedicated facilities for critically ill patients. Previously, critical care services were limited by having only 20 beds across one floor, which often struggled to meet demand. Now, intensive care and high dependency capacity has increased from 10 to 16 beds on a dedicated floor, while a coronary care unit is on its own floor with room to expand to 20 beds in the future. This futureproofs the hospital to ensure that the people of Tauranga have access to timely, quality healthcare.

How will the new expansion of critical care capacity help achieve the Government’s health targets?

That’s a very good question. Expanding critical care capacity will improve patient flow from the emergency department for unplanned admissions and it will reduce the need to delay planned surgeries. This will ease pressure on the emergency department while ensuring that people receive the elective surgeries they need, both of which are essential to meeting our Government’s health targets for having shorter stays in emergency departments and faster elective treatment.

What other recent health infrastructure announcements has the Government made?

Well, good news: our Government is delivering major health infrastructure projects to provide timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. Construction has recently begun on the new acute mental health unit at Hutt Valley Hospital, and in Budget 2025, we gave the people of Nelson certainty that their hospital redevelopment is moving ahead. Upgrades will also soon be under way at Middlemore Hospital, which have been long delayed, despite being funded in 2018. Our Government is not only focused on funding projects but also on delivering them. These projects are all about increasing capacity, reducing wait times, and putting patients first.

to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety

Will she formally consider the report to be published by the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity next January; if not, why not?

Kiwis are welcome to take part in the people’s pay equity select committee if they wish. However, it is not a formal parliamentary process and therefore there is no statutory obligation to formally consider the report. This Government is not planning on making further changes to the pay equity legislation. And any aspiring Government of the future who does promise to make changes would also need to be upfront about how they would fund it.

Does she agree with the human rights—

Just a moment. You need to wait until your team are all ready to listen to you.

Does she agree with the Human Rights Commission in their submission to the People’s Select Committee when they stated, “The 2025 amendments undermine previous progress to address systemic undervaluation of female-dominated occupations and are inconsistent with the human rights dimensions of Te Tiriti and our international human rights obligations”?

No, I do not, for two basic reasons: the acting Attorney-General considered the bill and decided that it appears to be consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that any limits on rights were reasonable and justifiable. I’m also confident the new pay equity system meets our international obligations.

Is she concerned, then, that the Pay Equity Coalition Aotearoa have asked the United Nations to investigate the Government’s changes to pay equity?

No, I’m not concerned by that at all. Anybody, as far as I’m aware, can make any claim or representation to the UN, but ultimately, it’s up to the UN whether or not they take that on board.

Will she then commit to reversing her changes if the United Nations finds that the Government has breached their international obligations?

I can’t possibly agree to a hypothetical that that member has alluded to. What I would say is I’m very confident that we do meet our international obligations.

What recent reports has she seen on pay equity?

I’ve seen many reports on pay equity, but there was one interesting one from this week from a left-leaning commentator named Chris Trotter. When he was talking about political parties and pay equity, he said, “The price of this rock-solid commitment, however, is more and higher taxes. It is simply not possible now to avoid the issue.”—

No, no, sorry. You can’t use a Government question to lay an attack against the Opposition, which is clearly where that’s going. So I’d suggest that either Laura McClure ask a different question or, more preferably, the answer takes a different tack.

All right, I can give it another go.

Not along the same lines.

OK. I have seen many reports on pay equity and I’ve seen a very interesting one from this week which alludes to the fact that anybody who wishes to have the old system back would also need to know how to fund it.

How does she respond to Tony McCombs, grandson of the first female MP Elizabeth McCombs, when he told the People’s Select Committee that if she were here, she would “rise with righteous rage and ask, ‘How dare you? How dare you erase progress with the stroke of a pen? How dare you undo a century of struggle in a single vote? How dare you silence the voices of working women and call it reform?’ ”?

Look, how I’d respond to that is twofold. Firstly, we have not touched equal pay. We have changed the pay equity system, which is about valuing different jobs against each other. Secondly, to that point, I would say to that man who is talking about women that I am a woman that stands for women in this Parliament, and he does not speak for all women.

Question 8, Dr Hamish Campbell. [Interruption] We need to just let everyone settle. [Interruption] Sorry, far too much noise going on across the House. Question 8, Dr Hamish Campbell.

to the Minister for Mental Health

What recent announcements has he made in relation to a promotion campaign for better mental wellbeing for New Zealanders?

Oh, look, good question, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much for informing me of that. [Interruption]

It’s important he’s in the front row for that important question. As the Minister for Mental Health, one of my top priorities is strengthening the focus on prevention and early intervention. On the weekend, I launched the Top Up campaign, a national promotion initiative encouraging Kiwis to take everyday actions to support their mental health. The campaign utilises the evidence-based Five Ways to Wellbeing and aims to make mental wellbeing part of daily life for everyone. Whether you’re on the farm, in the office, at school, or at home with the kids, better mental health is something we all have a stake in.

What evidence supports the approach taken in the Top Up campaign?

The Government is not just focused on ensuring the right support is in place to treat mental health issues but we’re focused strongly on preventing Kiwis from getting to that point. The Top Up campaign is built on the Five Ways to Wellbeing, which are supported by extensive international and local research. Those actions have been shown to improve mental wellbeing, aid recovery from distress, and help manage long-term mental health challenges. This is about evidence-based, common-sense tools, and proven techniques that anyone can use to top up their mental wellbeing.

What support is being provided to communities through the campaign?

Well, mental health is not just the treatment of mental illness but the promotion of mental wellbeing. To complement the promotion campaign, the Mental Health Foundation will run community grants offering up to $250,000 annually for two years. This will fund grassroots wellbeing initiatives, empowering local solutions at the community level. This campaign is about helping Kiwis make those preventative actions part of the everyday life and continues to reduce stigma around mental health issues.

How will the Top Up campaign be delivered and how many people will it reach?

The Top Up campaign directly contributes to one of the Government’s mental health targets, that 25 percent of the mental health ring-fenced funding is spent on prevention and early intervention. The Top Up campaign aims to reach up to 2.6 million Kiwis annually through a wide range of multimedia channels. There is a dedicated website, topupwellbeing.nz. I’d encourage all Kiwis, including members of this House, to check out the website and see what actions they can take to keep their mental meter topped up.

to the Acting Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (Grocery Sector)

Does she agree with Nicola Willis, who said in 2023 that “National will take action to get food prices under control once more”; if so, why are food prices still going up under her watch?

on behalf of the Acting Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (Grocery Sector): Yes. This quote is from a statement about rampant food price inflation seen under the previous Government, in which inflation in the year to June 2023 for food hit 12.3 percent. In answer to the second part of the question, food price inflation has been much lower under this Government. The Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation is also down. Work is well under way to address specific competition issues in the grocery sector, and I’ll have more to say about that this quarter.

Does that provide any comfort for struggling families when food prices are growing faster than incomes?

Overall, wages are rising faster than inflation, but we acknowledge that it’s a tough time for many people. However, life is better in terms of food now than it was two years ago in June 2023, when food prices were rising at 12.3 percent; in the September 2023 quarter, when food prices were rising at 8.8 percent; take another random quarter, for example: in December 2022, when food price inflation was 10.7 percent; oh, just another random quarter: March 2023, 11.3 percent; compared to the year to December 2024, for example, when food price inflation was 1.3 percent.

Is she concerned that many families cannot afford rising grocery prices, including the price of butter, which is up almost 50 percent; cheese up 30 percent; and mince now costing up to $22 a kilo?

Yes, I am concerned about families who are doing it tough, which is why this Government is working so hard to lift growth and rebuild the productive part of the economy. Because the ultimate way to get the cost of living under control for Kiwi families is to raise wages and grow the economy so that all New Zealanders have more opportunities, both income and in other aspects of their lives.

Does the Minister believe that cheese, butter, and mince are luxury food items reserved only for New Zealanders who are wealthy and sorted?

Absolutely not. They’re the staple for many families, including my own.

When will the Minister take responsibility for doing nothing on grocery prices while things are getting worse, not better, for Kiwis still struggling at the checkout?

I reject the assertion in the member’s question. The Government has an extensive work programme under way around grocery competition and, as I said in answer to the primary question, I’ll have more to say about that in the next few weeks.

to the Minister for Resources

What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand resources sector?

As the Minister for Resources, I see green shoots rising from the ashes of wood. It was reported in The Press, veritable organisation of the fourth estate, a surge of mining is taking place in the West Coast, hundreds of high-paying jobs hitherto unseen, major infrastructure investments, three mining operations snuffed out over the last recent period of time until the arrival of our Government and my good self, over 500 direct and indirect jobs, increased exports, and suitable level of political leadership and promotion sadly unable to move the two aged characters fighting yesterday’s culture wars, perched 200 metres in a coal cart, otherwise known as a night cart, in the West Coast.

What reports has he seen on New Zealand’s attractiveness as an investment destination for resource extraction?

Just before the Minister starts answering, can you just move the microphone just a little bit. Believe it or not, you’re hard to hear!

It’s nice to see at the end of the week, humour has returned to the House. New Zealand has been ranked in a recent survey, where we are now 12th out of 82 jurisdictions for investment appeal; a 36 percent improvement after having languished for a long period of time, as a consequence of bitterness and demonisation. We are now regarded as a better destination than Western Australia. Sadly, there are residual voices, Luddite-like, who seek to undermine this project. They will be unsuccessful. Where there are ongoing issues pertaining to the accelerated allocation of consents for the fast track, the Minister and I will be dealing with that in short order.

What other reports has he seen on new investment in the resources sector?

Earlier this year, our Prime Minister convened an investment summit. Not long after that summit, Rua Gold continued to expand its drilling programme, an increase they achieved of 300,000 gold equivalent ounces; Oceania posting a quarterly net profit of $118 million now that lizards have been sent where they belong; Santana Minerals raising $65 million; Westland Mineral Sands, a market leader, recently applied for a resource consent which I presume they are guaranteed to get; Tega, consent for its proposed Barrytown operation, not that far from Blackball, a place where a brass bust of myself has been contemplated.

Why is growing the resources sector critical for New Zealanders?

Jobs, jobs, mahi, labour—not of the party type, but of the physical exertion type. Exports: the only way that we can fight our way out of our economic challenges. For every mining job, 1.6 jobs in addition are created. Building and engineering investment is coming. In September, watch this space for great, important investment announcements. And because parts of the South Island, much to my surprise, were formally joined to Australia, the place is riddled with minerals potential. We are a Government that will unlock that strength and potential, and no fanatical green creed will deter us.

to the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing

What is the Government doing to support small businesses?

This Government backs small businesses because when they succeed, they can create more jobs, pay higher wages, and help grow the economy. I’m pleased to report that the Regional Business Partner Network, the Government’s primary tool for supporting businesses on the front line, engaged with a record number of businesses last year. Comprising business chambers and Business Mentors New Zealand, the network supported nearly 4,500 businesses to grow and succeed.

How is the Government supporting businesses with artificial intelligence (AI)?

Small business owners sometimes raise with me that they are uncertain about how best to adopt AI. To address this, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has upskilled business mentors and growth advisers in the Regional Business Partner Network to guide business owners on using AI to boost efficiency—training the trainers, in other words. In other words, the Government has today announced an increase in funding to Business Mentors New Zealand by $350,000 per year for the next two years. This will enable them to support an additional 750 businesses annually, giving more business owners access to the wealth of knowledge and guidance that this service provides.

What else is the Government doing to support these businesses?

We need to enable a lift in productivity for small businesses in the 21st century, and that means building New Zealand’s digital business infrastructure. One key tool is the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN), a unique digital identifier for every business. It streamlines interactions by automatically populating core information, saving time, and boosting productivity. Over a million businesses are now registered, with projected economic benefits of $550 million. We are exploring ways to increase the use of the New Zealand Business Number.

How is eInvoicing progressing and what impact will greater uptake have on the economy?

These are not quite sufficient to contemplate a brass bust being made of me, but nevertheless I hope the House will be interested to know that eInvoicing is taking off, with over 52,000 businesses registered and more than 350,000 eInvoices issued last year, a 479 percent increase in the last financial year. Smoother, faster, and safer eInvoicing means businesses spend less time on administration, get paid sooner—including by the Government—and face lower fraud risk. The Government’s backing this. By the end of this year, all agencies processing more than 2,000 domestic invoices annually will have eInvoicing systems in place.

to the Minister of Internal Affairs

Does she stand by her statement that online casino-type gaming providers should not have to make community returns because that would create “a perverse incentive to increase gambling activity in order to increase revenue for these organisations”; if not, why not?

Yes, I do stand by my statement. When community groups are reliant on funding from the proceeds of gambling, there is an incentive to increase gambling in order to increase revenue for those organisations. The advice I receive from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) is that this makes it harder to reduce gambling, because community organisations are dependent on the funding that they receive from gambling. I am open to a requirement for online casinos to make community returns, but I ask the member to at least recognise that there is a trade-off between minimising gambling harm and promising community groups funding from the proceeds of gambling.

Does she agree with Bowls New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Mark Cameron that “What the Government is planning here is, effectively, to provide more opportunities for gambling, but then take away that revenue stream giving back to the community.”?

I am not taking away any funding from sports clubs, and there is no evidence that the regulation of online casinos will reduce the funding available through class 4 societies, Lotto, or the TAB. The intention of the Online Casino Gambling Bill is to reduce gambling harm, not to provide funding sources for sports clubs.

Why did she not consult with the community and sporting organisations prior to introducing the Online Casino Gambling Bill, given Richard Reid of Capital Football’s statement that “For something with such huge implications, it defies belief that the sporting community has not been consulted”?

To that question, I am meeting with representatives from the sports clubs next week. There are many stakeholders interested in the Online Casino Gambling Bill, and I need to balance their interests. I also note that the decision to not require community returns was made by Cabinet over a year ago, and is just being raised as a concern with me now. But I would also note that the DIA, in their advice to me when we were considering these matters, suggested to me that while community funding contributions can be a significant good for communities, they also make it harder to change gambling policy over time. I want to focus on minimising gambling harm, and that means getting that right. If we need to change the laws later to minimise further gambling harm, that could be a trade-off that needs to be considered.

Will she write to the select committee, asking for more time to allow sporting groups and community organisations to have their say on the Online Casino Gambling Bill?

No, I will not, because I have faith in that member and in all other members of the Governance and Administration Committee that they can do their work on time and within the month supplied by this Parliament.

Was the Minister for Sport and Recreation, Mark Mitchell, wrong when he agreed that sporting organisations’ concerns that they would lose funding were justified?

I haven’t seen those particular comments from the Minister for sport, but I understand where his concern is coming from. I believe that there is a concern in the community that I’m touching the funding that is currently available, and that is not the case. I have not seen any evidence that the funding from class 4 societies, the TAB, and Lotto will be affected by the regulation of an online gambling market.

to the Chairperson of the Health Committee

Were any items of business relating to Health New Zealand removed from the Health Committee agenda this week after the agenda was originally distributed and before the meeting took place; if so, what were they?

Yes, Mr Speaker, the New Zealand Health Plan 2024-2027.

Did he remove the item as a result of any conversations with, or communications from, the Minister or anyone from the Minister’s office; if not, why did he remove it?

To the first part of the question, no.

I present a legislative statement on the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) 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 Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This is a momentous day, in some respects, and not just because I’ve been out in Upper Hutt this afternoon with the Prime Minister, turning the sod on the Te Papa Biodiversity Research Centre, although that—

It could be the Melling Interchange.

Well, my friend Grant McCallum says that it could be the Melling Interchange. Not all good things come to those who wait, Mr McCallum—a little bit like your Northland Expressway. It’s not just because of that, but because we are going to pass this very important piece of legislation. Members will be aware of the fact that we have a three-phase programme to reform the Resource Management Act (RMA). Phase one was done, phase two is well under way, and complementing this bill is a suite of changes to that national direction, which the Government has just finished consulting on, and we will be moving to get that into law as quickly as possible.

What we’ve been trying to do throughout the programme of reform is achieve some quick wins to make sure we can unclog the arteries of growth in our economy while we lay the foundations for the full-scale reform of the RMA, and this is one of those ones that creates targeted changes that will make a difference. The bill and the Government’s amendments, which met with the House’s approval yesterday and on Tuesday, will make it easier to consent new infrastructure, including for renewable energy. It will make it easier to build houses and for the primary sector. It will enable investment in renewable energy to bring to life this Government’s Electrify New Zealand programme to meet our emissions reduction targets. It will implement reforms to pillar one of our Going for Housing Growth policy to release land for housing and build infrastructure. It will facilitate the development and the efficiency of our ports to strengthen our international supply chain networks.

The bill will make it easier for farmers in the primary sector, including the very important marine aquaculture sector. I acknowledge my good friend and colleague from New Zealand First the Hon Shane Jones, who has worked so hard on that particular part of the legislation.

Generally, the bill will simplify and streamline the consenting system and make it much more efficient, particularly around enforcement and compliance. We have tried to focus on things that will have the largest impact in the short term, and there are some things that we’ve deliberately left to phase three of our reform programme. As I say, we’ve tried to walk the line the whole way through between making sure we can get things done quickly because people elected this Government to get things done, but we also want to lay the foundations for longer-term reform.

Can I start by talking a bit about Auckland housing. We are making Auckland Council enable greater development capacity around our City Rail Link (CRL) rapid transit system. At $5 billion, this is the biggest transport project ever completed in New Zealand. Mayor Brown and I are both ambitious to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity, and we have an opportunity—a confluence of events or a confluence of factors—that enables us to bring this together through this bill. The confluence of events was the desire by Auckland Council to withdraw plan change 78, which has been under way for a couple of years now, or for at least a couple of years, in Auckland. Auckland Council wishes to withdraw that plan change because they wish to downzone particular parts of Auckland as a response to the Auckland floods, but the law doesn’t allow them to do that. That’s a legitimate request.

At the same time, we have the City Rail Link coming to its conclusion, and it will open at some point next year, and it’s the Government’s view and also the view of the majority of Auckland councillors that it doesn’t make sense to not take advantage of that opportunity by allowing for more housing around City Rail Link stations. I don’t know of many people in Auckland, or, in fact, many New Zealanders, who don’t think that if you’re going to build a $5 billion new rail connection with these fantastic new stations at Mount Eden, Kingsland, Aotea, and other places, it doesn’t make sense to not also zone in a way that allows commercial and residential mixed-use facilities around those railway stations.

I was very fortunate last week, with the Prime Minister, the Minister for Rail, and a range of other people, to actually go on the first test train. It was very cool—it was very cool. I’ll tell you what, when the City Rail Link opens, Aucklanders are going to be blown away, and they will use it. It will, I think, be quite transformational for the Auckland CBD but also the surrounding areas, including Mount Eden. Actually, some of the biggest benefits are going to be seen out West, and I know that some of western—

West is best.

That’s an interesting “West is best” from a man wearing a keffiyeh around his neck—I’m not sure whether the member really thinks that. Some of the biggest benefits that the CRL is going to going to provide actually go out West because the travel time savings are on the western railway line. I know this might sound quite strange, but, actually, one of the biggest benefits of the city rail loop or link is that it massively creates time savings for the western line, and you are going to see—in fact, you’re already seeing it in advance of this. You are going to see growth along the—

Yeah, but what about the level crossing at Avondale? That’s going to be a problem.

Well, the member asked about the level crossing. I am very concerned about the level crossing, and this Government—not the previous one; this Government—has, alongside the city council, put quite a lot of money into investing in level crossings. One might well ask what the Auckland members of the Cabinet were doing for the last six years, in which the level crossing problem was known about and precisely nothing was done.

In fact, one of the great challenges in this area is that we’re having to grapple with, one, the level crossings because, to fully take advantage of the City Rail Link, you have to remove them. Nothing was done for six years. We are grappling with that. Secondly, the land around Mount Eden station, which is currently a large car park—and when the CRL opens, it will be a large car park because the previous Government had a foundation agreement that involved carbon zero and wellbeing initiatives and a whole bunch of airy-fairy nonsense, and there was a whole lot of uncoordinated, disconnected activity that has resulted in precisely nothing happening.

It’s the Mayor of Auckland and I—following on from the work that Simeon Brown did as Minister of Transport—who are actually getting on with making sure we can take advantage of those opportunities. Sadly, the CRL will open and Mount Eden will probably look exactly the same way it looks right now. It could have been so much different if the last Government had not spent five years farting around on a fantasy light-rail programme and had actually thought rationally about the City Rail Link and about making sure that we could take advantage of those opportunities.

Anyway, it’s all good—it’s all good. People elect National-led Governments to fix screw-ups by the last lot, and that’s exactly what we are doing. Anyway, I got slightly sidetracked in relation to Auckland housing capacity, but the member makes a very important point.

Another big benefit of this bill, if you can just indulge me for 30 seconds: goneburger to the Gordon Wilson Flats. It’s a very exciting day. This eyesore on the vista of the Wellington skyline will be no more. It was very unusual to use primary legislation to get rid of the Gordon Wilson Flats, but I’m looking forward to getting out the TNT.

In fact, I’ll tell you a story. The other day, I went to a quarry and I got to blow up some stuff. I got very excited because I thought I was going to be there with the TNT—like literally blowing the button—but it turns out that you don’t do that any more. It turns out that they line up all the TNT and then it’s all electronic, and I thought I was going to get to push a button. Well, I did push a button, which is literally a thing on an iPad. But I pushed the thing, and it went “Boof!” It was like “Boomfa!”

Do that again. How did it go?

“Boof!” Anyway, it’s going to be good, because once this bill passes, Victoria University won’t need a resource consent. It’ll be a permitted activity to demolish the Gordon Wilson Flats, and I’m going to be the first down there, not to hit the TNT, but to at least push the button on the iPad, and it’ll go “Boom!” It’s going to be good—it’s going to be good.

The Gordon Wilson Flats are sort of emblematic of the wider problem around heritage, so there are provisions in this bill, as a bit of a stop gap, to make it easier for councils to delist buildings—for example, the heritage-listed gas tank in Miramar, which the council has listed, in its wisdom, which they also want to delist. If members have other examples of other silly things like that, they can direct them to their local councils. It will now be easier to delist those things and replace them.

There is regulation-making power for the Minister to modify or remove RMA policies or plans that hinder development capacity. The bill also puts in place our plan stop provisions, which will be very important as we transition to the new system. It’s a bit of a pot-pourri of changes, but it’s very important in advance of RMA phase three. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, as we’ve heard from the Minister—in between some coughs, and I hope that he recovers soon—it is a bill that covers a lot of different areas.

Labour was supporting this bill when it was introduced and even at the second reading, despite having concerns about some of the changes that were made at select committee, and that was largely because, of course, Labour repealed the Resource Management Act (RMA), unlike this Government, which has brought it back by repealing Labour’s Spatial Planning Act and Natural and Built Environment Act (NBEA). The Natural and Built Environment Act did many things to both, with a dual purpose of improving our environment—something this Government seems very disinterested in, and, in fact, wants to actively do the opposite on—and making the system more efficient, because it was incredibly inefficient.

Some of those aspects of the NBEA, the Government is now bringing across into the RMA, piece by piece—dripping it all in front of us. Some of those aspects related to designations and insurance for prosecution, and a lot of the renewable energy consenting was similar as well, and so we are very supportive, on this side of the House, of enabling renewable energy. But something happened on Tuesday morning, and that was that a very large Amendment Paper was dropped and it made significant changes to the bill, changes that we were not even able to debate in this House because Government members chose to stand up and close the debate on these very important aspects.

One of those aspects is changing the special privileges that renewable energy was going to get in order to include thermal, and at first look, you might say, “Thermal? Oh, that’s a bit like geothermal. That might seem like a good thing.” But, no, it is about coal. This—

Baseload.

Oh, I’m hearing people saying “baseload” from across the House, and I asked the Minister specifically if it could be restricted to firming, but no—no, no, it cannot. So this is open slather on thermal electricity. This is all about burning the coal. I am not surprised when the Minister says that carbon zero is airy-fairy nonsense, as he just did, because he is clearly trying to go in the opposite direction.

This bill and other bills have been an opportunity for this Government to demonstrate some commitments to carbon zero—some commitment to enabling things that will reduce emissions. You may say that, well, the renewable energy was one of those things, and yet it has just been undermined in one fell swoop by this Amendment Paper that we first saw on Tuesday, which was also the day when we were debating this in the committee of the whole House stage.

Shameful!

It is shameful.

Now, there were other changes, as well, that came at that stage. One of them relates to section 70. We were opposed to the changes to section 70 throughout the progress of this bill, but an additional change came to section 70 to say that regional councils can now permit discharges that have floatable or suspended materials. This is not just a little bit of pollution; it is a very strange change in direction of the Resource Management Act, which is there, in its purpose, to achieve sustainable management, but now regional councils will be permitting floatable or suspended material.

We also, at this very late stage, had the ability for the Minister to now stop plans. In fact, it’s not an ability for the Minister to stop plans; all planning must stop. There are some exceptions and the Minister gets to decide whether or not those plans could come through, and there is a deep irony to be standing here a year after this Parliament—again, with a late-notice amendment on the day that something was being discussed in committee stage—stopped the Otago Regional Council from notifying its land and water plan. That plan was stopped, and now all the other plans have been stopped too, but this bill, in its amendment at the last minute, now says that the Otago Regional Council has to notify some changes. It must notify changes, and so it’s going in totally the opposite direction, because, of course, the Otago Regional Council’s plans are deeply out of date and it needed to be notified. But this Government is saying, “No, no, no—just wait. Wait until the end of 2027 before you do anything else, except Otago Regional Council, who we made stop last year, but now need to get going again.”

This is a terrible way to make laws. This House has to spend so much time tidying up the mistakes of this Government that are made hastily, that do not go through select committees, and that members see only on the day that we are going into the committee stage. It just is so disrespectful to this House, to all the people who submit on those bills in the first place, and to the public, who then have no say on them.

Another change that was introduced in that last-minute Amendment Paper was that the Minister can now just intervene in anything that a council is doing, pretty much, and this intervention—it’s all based on money. We’ve heard the Minster say that it’s about things that hinder development, and that’s what it is all about—hindering development—but, of course, the Resource Management Act is there for sustainable management. It is not a development Act. Of course, there can be some development under the Resource Management Act, and we all agree with this, but now the Minister is making it all about development and not about the environment. That bit is, again, forgotten. The Minister can intervene, and those decisions are all based on the economics of a situation, with nothing to do with the environment, and we did not get to test that in the committee stage of the House.

There are some other changes I want to touch on briefly. We support the more efficient consenting of infrastructure. We all know that the country has a huge infrastructure deficit, but, again, the Government members added, or the select committee came back with natural gas being included in that infrastructure that could have these special consenting requirements.

We also see hazards being amended, as well. Hazards are something that we all know New Zealand is very prone to, and there does need to be—and there seems to have been in the past—agreement across the House that we need to do better at enabling councils to stop new development on areas where there is a hazard and where there might be, say, new flooding. I see across the House members from the Hawke’s Bay, who are very aware of this issue, as are my colleagues from Auckland. There are parts of this bill that do better on hazards, and that is a good thing. However, some of this has been undermined in the select committee process, again, by enabling infrastructure to be exempt from one of those hazards provisions.

We also see that whilst we wait for the Minister’s new version of the RMA, we wait for stronger hazards provisions, because in the last term of Government, there was work going into national instruments about hazards, and that work, we were told, was continuing, but now it’s on the back-burner again, waiting for this next stage of reforms. That is a real disappointment, and I think that should go more quickly.

We’ve also heard from the Minister about housing, and one very useful exchange that we did have in the House was about the Auckland plan and the intensification there, and qualifying matters do need to be site-specific for that. That was a useful conversation, and I thank the Minister for that during that debate.

But, overall, we see again this terrible process and these last-minute changes, and it is all about doing worse for the environment. This Government calls it pragmatic, and they call us ideological. I say, please, can we just try and do better for our environment.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m really reflecting today on this point in Aotearoa’s history, because this Government has this absolute onslaught when it comes to rushed, ill-thought-out legislation. In all of that rush and overwhelm, it can be easy to forget that this Government actually has choices, and the choices that it continues to make, particularly even with bills like this, are to focus on distraction.

We’ve just seen it right now, with the Minister talking about this bill. He was either glossing over the very significant parts, which do have significant implications for our communities and our environment, or he was just completely ignoring them. I think he called it a pot-pourri of legislation, and that is accurate. But I think, more accurately, it would be called piecemeal, and so many submitters in the process who took the time to actually submit on, again, this absolutely rushed bill pointed that out. It was that the role of this legislation is unnecessary. It’s going to, in the interim, make things more complicated for councils, not simpler, and so why is this Government still pushing ahead with this? It is so frustrating to see.

I want to also touch on the context of this legislation, specifically this week, because, just taking this week, we’ve had further last-minute amendments that have come in and that threaten, again, the very purpose of another core environmental bill—the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill—in terms of the Government allowing these last-minute amendments to allow commercial fishing in the high protection areas. Just before that, we had the Local Government (Water Services) Bill and, again, that was completely missing the opportunity to secure significant investment in water services for the health of our people and the health of our environment. Instead, they’ve chosen not only to leave behind communities but to allow more sewage to discharge into our rivers, streams, estuaries, and beaches, not just today, but for the foreseeable future, when that bill locks in investment decisions.

This bill, unfortunately, is no different when it comes to its failures, and yet the Government has choices and it has chosen to go this way. Now the first choice it has made, which is the most disappointing one for me, as someone with a background in fresh water, is it has completely and utterly failed to protect fresh water for all Kiwis. Now, this is not a political thing. This is a duty of care that every Government has, and the really bizarre thing about it is that those members are actually overriding their very own legacy of the National-led Government of John Key, which put in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and they’re systematically dismantling it. This is part of it, and I want Kiwis to know that not only is it illogical but it is absolutely disingenuous—the way they have put forward these last-minute Amendment Papers to make these protections worse.

Now, what I’m referring to when I talk about the removal of these protections is the changes to the section 70 discharges. This is so significant that for the first time in the Resource Management Act’s (RMA’s) history—an Act that was set up to deliberately avoid, remedy, or mitigate environmental impacts—this bill now directly allows and permits significant adverse effects in our most degraded waterways. Now, we’ve had some rationale bandied about for these changes—you know, there was a lot about “Oh, it would cause farmers to need to get consents”—

It would.

2,500 of them.

—and the thing that is completely missed from all of that is that—and it’s so clear that they have no concept of why. Why do you think they need consents—why do you think they need consents? They need consents because our environment is deteriorating to a point where significant adverse effects are present as a baseline, and that’s what triggers the need for consents. It is the actual physical, chemical, ecological changes that are impacting our precious rivers, our lakes, our estuaries, our streams, and our beaches right now, today. It’s all of those areas down at the local river, the beach, and estuary that we used to be able to swim in, we used to be able to go catch some fish in, gather kai, and now we cannot do that.

So what does this actually mean in practice, because it can kind of sound quite technical. To paint a picture at home for Kiwis—especially those Kiwis who are already on boil-water notices because their drinking water is polluted, and those Kiwis who like to take their kids and whānau out for a swim or go fishing and have got sick as a result—what it looks like is that when this Government is faced with a pollution tap that is going full bore and the environmental bucket is overflowing and causing all of these issues that we see in our environment today, the Government’s approach is not to just turn off that tap to actually address that pollution. It’s to smash a hole through the bottom of the bucket and call that a solution—“back on track”. People are seeing this for what it is and rejecting it, and I’m so heartened to see the strong response—particularly from our environmental groups, and iwi and hapū—because they’re absolutely seeing that.

Now, if those changes to section 70 weren’t bad enough, we also saw with these last-minute amendments that the big lobby groups—I’m talking about Federated Farmers, and I’m talking about DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb—wanted the Government to go further in terms of the pollution. My colleague Rachel Brooking has pointed out those issues when it comes to changes to the literal visual clarity of the water to the extent that water can now be unfit for stock to drink.

Now, from someone who’s not from a farming background, but who has spent the better part of decades working alongside farmers on their own farms and their own private land, that looks like the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff to me. This longstanding baseline protection that’s been in the RMA to make sure that the water that our stock has access to is fit to drink is now gone, and I wonder how these changes impact on drinking-water protections. I wonder how they impact on source water protection, our fair-trade agreements, and our economy, when it comes to the rest of industry who actually rely on clean, safe water to operate, but we don’t know. We don’t know the answer to this, because they have been introduced at the last minute, when lobby groups have gotten another bite at the cherry, and that is completely unacceptable.

The second choice that this Government has made with this bill is, unfortunately, just as significant, and it’s pointed out really clearly in the supplementary information that talks about the disclosure statement. It talks about the immense powers that this Government is granting itself, and, ultimately, what this Government, again, has made the choice to do is that it has decided that they are local government. It has decided that it should be up to the Minister to be a gatekeeper on what councils can and can’t do. So it’s what the hey with democracy—it’s gone out the window, and that’s completely unacceptable.

The other really concerning part of it is that the Minister for the Environment is involved, but they only have to “be satisfied that the provisions have a negative impact on economic growth, development capacity, or employment”. Those are, apparently, our environment Minister’s new roles. There’s nothing about the environment in there from our environment Minister, and it absolutely demonstrates how warped these Government members are in their perception of their roles and responsibilities. Lessons are not being learnt, and Kiwis will have no choice with this next resource management bill—if this is how the Government is going to carry on—but to take their example, drill a hole in the bottom of the bucket, and drain this Government out.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a bit of a sombre moment from that side. Let’s cheer it up a little bit, because this bill, the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill, is about one thing: getting things done. For decades, the Resource Management Act (RMA) and our planning and consenting system have been the biggest handbrake on developing land for housing, building infrastructure, and rolling out renewable energy. It has tied up good projects in years of paperwork, cost blowouts, and frustration. Today, that starts to change.

This bill is not an end game. It is a vital bridge in the full repeal and replacement of the RMA with a new system based on property rights and environmental limits. But New Zealanders can’t wait five years for that relief. They need that change now, and so this bill delivers some short-term wins: faster consenting, simpler processes, clearer permitted-activity rules for farmers so that thousands of them are not lumped with expensive consents and driving up the costs on farms. That means more homes, more infrastructure, more energy projects delivered, and happier farmers in the communities around them, delivering what Kiwis need sooner, cheaper, and with less bureaucratic drag.

ACT believes that development is a right, not a privilege. As long as it meets the clear rules that protect people and the environment, this bill empowers local councils to make decisions within safe harbours. It is giving communities a voice, but stopping the endless contradictions and delays, and, yes, it trusts builders, farmers, and business owners to get out and do it right, without having to ask Wellington for permission every step of the way.

We are not giving a free pass to bad actors. This bill strengthens enforcement. It has higher fines and no more insurance to cover those fines, and it considers the applicant’s compliance history when issuing these consents. That means that cowboys are held to account—cowboys on site or cowboys on the farm. That means that people who don’t follow the rules are not holding back those who do.

This bill has a principle right in the middle of it that makes it simple: let’s make it easier to build. If you want to build a house, install a wind turbine, or expand a port, you deserve to know what the process is, how long will it take, and what it will cost. This bill delivers consents lasting up to 35 years, it doubles the lapse period for consents, it extends permits for ports—very important, as the Transport and Infrastructure Committee looks at our maritime sector—it gives one-year default consenting for renewable consents, and, yes, it gives one-year default consenting for thermal electricity.

Now, some members on the other side might be confused by thermal electricity, as we’ve heard in the speech from Rachel Brooking, but it is a massive win for the energy and manufacturing industry. What has become clear is that the wonky race to net zero has left us without the security of coal and gas thermal firming up electricity markets, and without that firming, you cannot go out and build the renewable energy, because getting contracts without firming is very difficult, as our generators have found. Generators that are wanting to renew consents or to seek new consents to build gas-fired or coal-fired power stations have access to the same one-year priority consenting pathway that wind and solar are getting, because they go hand in glove.

ACT, in Government, is making sure that the lights stay on and that this country has plenty of electricity to power homes and businesses in the years to come. It’s common sense—and you’d think everyone in this House would support common sense, but you can hear a few members getting nervous about losing their favourite red tape.

This bill clears the decks for growth. It unlocks opportunity, protects property rights, and delivers results faster. It is the first step towards an RMA replacement that will actually work for New Zealand, not against New Zealand and New Zealanders. Our country cannot afford to spend another decade stuck in a consenting malaise, a maze, while housing costs rise, infrastructure crumbles, and renewable energy waits in line. This bill is the start of turning that around. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, this has just been described as a pot-pourri of initiatives. They are all very, very welcome, and I love everything that my colleague Cameron Luxton has just said, but I want to focus on one particular, for me, very welcome component, and it’s extending the licence to occupy for ports.

I think very, very few Kiwis would actually realise that in September next year, every single one of our ports—I think maybe one will be exempted because of special earthquake legislation—will lose its licence to occupy the space in which it is in, which means, effectively, that it will become unconsented and it will become unlawful. I’d just ask you to think about what that would mean, because there’s been complaints from the other side of the House about this being a rushed bill. So what do we want to do: do we want to wait for that year to expire, and then say that, well, all our ports have now lost their licence to occupy?

Let’s get real about this. We want our ports to be able to continue to operate, and one of the things that this bill does is extend that right to occupy to 2046. Now, frankly, I think that should be permanent, and I’ll come back to that in just a moment. But when you think about what our ports mean to our country, something like 99 percent of our exports, by volume, and over 80 percent of our exports, by value, go through the ports. If we switch that lifeline off, our country will die, and die very, very quickly. We cannot afford for that to happen, and so it’s essential that we fix this issue.

We make life so hard for ourselves. That red, green, and brown tape that we wrap around ourselves is slowly killing our country. What it does is it kills the lifestyles, it kills the living standards, and it kills the ability. We have the Opposition regularly saying that we want more money for this, that, and the other. We’ve got to earn that money—we’ve got to earn that money. We can’t just expect to keep borrowing it from the rest of world. We have to earn that money, and we earn that money through exports. We have to have our ports operating to deliver those exports.

We often hear what I see as being a very, very shallow, binary nonsense, which is that we either cut services or we increase taxes—no. The answer—and New Zealand First is very, very clear on this—to what we need to do is we need to grow our economy. That is absolutely essential. All of these issues, whether it’s mining or whatever form of economic development it is, are about growing our economy, and New Zealand First is quite unashamedly willing to intervene and willing to reduce regulation to improve the way in which we’re able to do our work. As a Government, we are determined to reduce the barriers that there are to doing business and to being able to grow the wealth, which is good for all Kiwis.

We’ve just talked about the extension of the right to occupy, but there is something that’s missing in this bill, and in the committee of the whole House stage, I asked about dredging. Almost all of our ports—I think all of our ports, actually—have to dredge, and for some of them, many times a year. If you think about that, if they’re not able to dredge, effectively, what that means is that those ships—the bigger ships, at least—are not able to get into those ports. That would slowly strangle our economy.

We have a dredge that goes around the country and is literally sort of operating at one port after another after another to keep our ports operating, but at the moment, to get the right to do what they call maintenance dredging, you have to get a new consent, and the problem is that those consents, increasingly, are becoming contested. As they’re contested, often the people that are contesting them say, “Look, we’ll go away if you give us some money.” That is extortion.

We have to deal with those things, and being able to dredge a port to keep the port operating has to be part of the port’s right to operate. That is something which I’m assured is going to be dealt with in the larger stage of the Resource Management Act reforms, but I think it’s important to put it on the record that this is an essential change that needs to be made. It needs to be made in that legislation and we need to get on with doing that, and it’s an important message that we send not only to the ports but also to the export community that operates through those ports.

I also want to say that there’s a lot of talk about water quality, etc., and that’s important. But what we also do in terms of anything that’s got its feet in the water, we’ve given them, essentially, temporary or short-term consents, which they’ve got to then go and reconsent again. It doesn’t matter whether it’s irrigation or whether it’s dams—and we saw what the cost of reconsenting dams on the Waitaki was. We understand that it was at least $180 million, and it may have been more than that that we don’t know about. That is money that comes off electricity users. We complain about the cost of electricity—well, hey, here we are imposing extra costs on ourselves. These are the kinds of things that we’re doing.

We’ve just been having a long debate about local water, and, again, that same thing occurs. Because it’s got its feet in the water, we have to go and reconsent it, and the standards that get applied to reconsenting it are astronomically high. One town that we visited recently—Jamie and I—has 30,000-odd people. The cost of taking that waste water from a perfectly environmentally appropriate system for water and putting it to land was $500 million to $700 million between 30,000 people. If you think about that, that is utterly unaffordable. If we want to make the boat go fast, and if we want to even allow the boat to get into our ports to make the boat go fast for “New Zealand Inc.”, we have to change these things.

I’m delighted to see these changes are here. We need to fix our consenting system. If we want to be a wealthy country in order to afford the lifestyles and the living standards that we want and to afford the quality public services, we have to do these things. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Sadly, this is another example of this Government’s intent to remove crucial environmental protections in the so-called facilitation of vested interests whom they represent. The member opposite made a point—

No, no—I’m going to just interrupt the member there for a minute. That might be something that could be said on a campaign stump, but it’s not something that could be said in the House. No one in this House can be accused of being in the pocket of anybody else. It’s a longstanding convention in the House, so we won’t be changing that today. So if the member would refrain from making that type of statement, he will carry on with no loss of time.

Sure—thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that. Let me express myself differently, then.

My colleague opposite—Cameron Luxton—made the point that development is a right and not a privilege. May I suggest that it is the duty and the responsibility of the legislator to protect the commons and the common good. That means that where you are allowing the facilitation of industrial activity of businesses and what have you, it must be done in a way so as to not harm the commons.

One obvious example of the commons that this legislation specifically fails to protect is fresh water. Now, you on that side of the House get sick to death of us talking about fresh water all the time, but we will keep talking about it, because this is a Government that at every turn has taken the opportunity to remove protections from fresh water.

Fresh water is the most fundamental commons that humans have. Next to oxygen, the next most necessary ingredient in life is water, and this Government has, through this legislation, weakened freshwater protections once again.

Let me give one example of that. It has removed the requirement of farms smaller than 50 hectares to have freshwater farm plans. Now, what does that mean in practice? Freshwater farm plans are practical steps and guidance for farmers so that they can avoid critical source areas of drinking water, for example, so that they can protect the environment through the way that they do their farming and where they graze their animals. It’s a very sensible thing to have a freshwater farm plan as most farmers, I would say, are genuinely concerned about how they can have the least negative impact on fresh water. This legislation removes the requirement for farms smaller than 50 hectares to have freshwater farm plans. That means that a third of farms in this country won’t need a freshwater farm plan. That is extraordinary—that is a third of the farms in this country. Why is the Government so against freshwater farm plans?

What is more, in clause 57 of the bill, it introduces an amendment which allows the Minister for the Environment to approve industry organisations to provide certification or audit services, such as for freshwater farm plants. Industry themselves have said to Minister Hoggard that they did not want to audit farm environment plans, so all the other farms that are required to have freshwater farm plans can now have those plans certified by an industry body. That is what I mean when I talk about the problem of the influence of vested interests on Government policy. I mean, it’s hard to deny that this is what seems to be playing out, because there’s no question that the good of the commons—the public interest—is protected by water protections, and why is it so important for us to protect water? Because rivers, lakes, and aquifers are the sources of our drinking water, among other things.

This is a critical issue for us right now. In Southland, where we’ve seen dairy intensity, and in Canterbury, where we see dairy intensity, we also see the highest rates of elevated nitrate contamination in drinking water. That is contamination that most affects rural people—800,000 New Zealanders exposed to hazardous levels of nitrate are living in rural New Zealand. It is the very farm pollution that goes into the aquifer that ends up in the drinking-water bores of rural New Zealanders that is threatening them with methemoglobinemia—blue baby syndrome—with pre-term birth, and with bowel cancer. This is a critical issue, and it is exactly why it is the duty of the Government to protect something as fundamental as fresh water. We will not be supporting this legislation.

Look, this bill is about action, development, and progress. The current Resource Management Act (RMA) is ineffective and it’s a handbrake on our economy. We are releasing the brake so that we can get things built and consent things a lot easier.

This change to the RMA is going to be better for infrastructure, renewable energy, housing development, and the primary sector. It’s backing our farmers and our growers, and supporting the growth in our economy.

Look, it’s a common-sense approach. It makes some practical changes around natural hazards and emergency responses. When disaster strikes, we want to be able to respond quickly, effectively, and efficiently. This bill makes some very practical changes, and, coming from a region which was devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, this is welcomed.

We’ve already heard about the changes to heritage and many other things, particularly renewable energy. We need more solar farms and we need more wind farms, and this will make it easier to consent. This is about getting the wheels moving in our economy. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to begin with an emphasis, I guess, around the process that we saw at the committee stage. The process around this bill was poor, and I think there’s no denying that on either side of the House. The Government’s Amendment Papers 347 and 348 were tabled only on the day of the committee stage. Both of those Amendment Papers contained pretty substantive changes to the bill, and, in fact, Amendment Paper 348 contained controversial changes to the bill.

By tabling these Amendment Papers so late, just when we were about to debate them, at the committee of the whole House stage, that meant that the Government chose to bypass public scrutiny on those amendments—again, substantive and controversial amendments. It chose to circumvent select committee scrutiny on those issues, and these are issues of significant public importance. I do want that on the record.

Really, what that did was to change the trajectory of the bill and the trajectory of our support for the bill, because, largely, this is a bill that started out being rather sensible. It drew a lot of its content from Labour’s Natural and Built Environment Act, and so we were at a position then where we could support the bill and what it was aiming to do, while also bearing in mind that it does bring in more efficient consenting for infrastructure. That is something that, on this side of the House, we support. I also acknowledge that parts of the bill do better when it comes to natural hazards, which is also something that we support on this side of the House.

But that balance was tipped, and it was tipped by those last-minute Amendment Papers. The bill was derailed by the poor process that this Government chose to go through with those last-minute amendments, and so the scope, I believe, has been undermined by the process that we’ve seen here today.

To make matters worse, the responsible Minister, Minister Bishop, said during the committee stage that he had publicly announced a number of those changes previously. He said—and I quote—“members have had a good opportunity to kick those issues around.” That is not the same as actually seeing the detail in the Amendment Papers before us, being able to hear public submissions for and against the amendments, and considering the expert advice that we would have seen had these amendments gone through select committees. It’s not great lawmaking, and it was further undermined by the Minister during the committee stage.

On some of the issues that we particularly oppose, I will begin with the amendments around energy. Now, Minister Bishop has consistently framed this bill as a way to promote renewable energy—he said that time and again during the committee stage, as well—and yet the amendment that we finally saw added coal and gas. It added “thermal electricity generation” to the “specified energy activity” definition for streamlined consenting. Inclusion of natural gas pipelines when it comes to the “long-lived infrastructure” definition undermines our climate goals, and, on this side of the House, we don’t think that that is “airy-fairy”. We do think that we have a duty of care to address climate emissions and to progress our climate goals.

Fossil-fuelled power generation will now be fast tracked through the normal Resource Management Act (RMA) consenting process and the fast-track process, as well. This is really not the trajectory that New Zealand should be going down, and, through these amendments, this Government is taking us further backwards.

It is taking us further backwards also when it comes to freshwater protections—I did touch upon that during the committee stage, asking the Minister questions around section 70. That is the amended rules about discharge. We opposed this change when we considered the bill at select committee because we felt that we have a duty of care here as well, to ensure that our rivers are swimmable and not just to say that, just because rivers are polluted, we can continue to make them worse and pollute them further. That is what this bill does, and that is why Labour had a differing view at select committee, and yet it just blew my mind that those last-minute amendments took us further backwards when it came to freshwater protections.

In fact, it includes, now, rules “that allow as a permitted activity a discharge of contaminants that may allow the following effects in the receiving waters: any conspicuous change in the colour or visual clarity [and] the rendering of fresh water unsuitable for consumption by farm animals.” Those were the amendments that were tabled at the eleventh hour that take us even further backwards than the position that we disagreed with at the select committee stage. The Minister’s response to my question there was that Waikato Regional Council would have to consent over 2,500 farms for activities that they were currently undertaking as a result, if that change wasn’t brought in at the last minute.

I do acknowledge the point made by Steve Abel, and I agree with that point—other members, I believe, have made it. We’re not saying that we want the farms shut down—nobody is saying that—but the resource consenting process, and my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor made this point during the committee stage, would have just required a resource consent process that would have then ensured that those farms took the steps that were reasonable, that were needed to improve freshwater quality, and that is what we would have supported. He also made the point that many farmers around the motu have been focused on improving freshwater quality and acknowledged that—

They still are.

They still are, absolutely, but this amendment plays to the minority of farmers who aren’t, and it allows them further degradation of our fresh water, and we don’t support that.

Oh, I wish you people went to the country.

The final point that I wanted to make was the issue around a third of our farms not needing freshwater farm plans. The importance of freshwater farm plans was something that the National Government underscored in their blue-green document prior to the election. In that document, they talked about the need, and they waxed lyrical about the need, for increasing freshwater farm plans. Yet now they could have changed the threshold such that lifestyle blocks weren’t included, but a third of farms were excluded from this requirement.

In closing, I will say, I know members opposite—one in particular keeps yelling that we need to live in the real world and has done so during the committee stage as well. Really, what this Government is showing, both in terms of the process of pathetic lawmaking from the other side when it comes to controversial and significant changes that are in the public interest—is that they are so out of touch with New Zealanders; that they are fine to make promises in the election campaign when it comes to progressing environmental protections for New Zealand but, when it comes to delivery, they will go back on their word. They will break their promises, they will take us, as a nation, backwards by systematically dismantling environmental protections, all in the name of economic growth. We’re not against economic growth on this side, but we want to see a better balance of the two.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s a great pleasure to rise and take a call on these important changes to our resource laws. As chair of the Bluegreens caucus, I can say that we are very focused on having a pragmatic balancing of the environment with the economy. They have to work together—that’s really, really important—and the area that I want to focus on that this bill has addressed is where it will allow us to electrify New Zealand. It’s about building renewable energy, and not importing Indonesian coal, like the last Government specialised in. This is all about building renewable energy.

In Northland, as you drive over the Brynderwyns to the Far North, way up there, we’ve got the opportunity to actually develop a whole lot of renewable energy and, therefore, supply Auckland as well as Northland, and to grow our economy. This bill will allow us to do that in a much more pragmatic and efficient manner, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the chance to take a short call on this bill. We find ourselves in a little bit of an odd situation, don’t we? Not that long ago, this was a bill that we would have been able to support and now we simply can’t. That original sort of bipartisan potential has just kind of been derailed really. That’s a shame because, as my colleague the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan has said, much of the original bill was from our own Natural and Built Environment Act, and there was some good stuff in there. I don’t think anybody on this side of the House, or certainly anybody in here, would disagree that the economy is incredibly important—of course the economy is important, and fundamentally the economy is about people, and fundamentally the economy is there to work for people and for good. There’s no divergent thoughts or feelings about what’s important. It’s about how we get there and what we’re prepared to sacrifice on the way.

I do fundamentally believe in a world where there’s generally the opportunity to have your cake and eat it too. There’s plenty of ways to negotiate sometimes really big problems, and this bill reeks of short, sharp, cheap, and nasty as if very little thought has gone into it, all because of those last-minute amendments. It’s poor process. The lack of scrutiny, I think, is embarrassing and the Government should be embarrassed. Government members have made very brief contributions singing, heralding the virtues of this bill as if it was somehow well planned, well thought out, and well organised. And yet the need for some last-minute amendments—Amendment Papers 347 and 348—certainly demonstrate otherwise.

I noticed a couple of members from the Government have got a bit huffy and have feigned a little bit of umbrage at the slight reference to the fact that there may have been some influence in those amendments coming through, but what’s the alternative? What’s the alternative? Just lazy and shoddy? I’m not entirely sure that either scenario is something to be proud of. Certainly, the very brief contributions that we have heard from the Government today don’t necessarily blow us over with really robust knowledge either, do they? The previous contributor’s very few words that he had to say about renewable energy are certainly a case in point.

As I said, the original bipartisan potential has well and truly been derailed. We could have supported this bill if it hadn’t been for those last-minute amendments. That is important. It is important for us to maintain that integrity of that process and we cannot therefore undermine what could have been some reasonable intentions by doing that. Fossil fuels fast-tracked, climate goals undermined—that was how someone that I was looking just before rising to my feet has just summed it up.

The Minister promised a bill that would support renewables, but these amendments now fast track coal and gas power generation and include fossil gas pipelines in “long-lived infrastructure”—there is an assumption that it’s here for a long time, not a good time. This is a sunset industry, and whilst there were plenty of ways to communicate, via this bill, a real commitment from New Zealand Inc. behind the concept of renewable energy and good clean green energy, doing this, I think, sends a dangerous signal to undermine that. Fundamentally, what that could have and should have been about was about good green jobs. That is the way of the future, and allowing these amendments to go in, which is the reason that we won’t be supporting this bill, is a shame. I wish the Government members making contributions would read up a little bit more about the energy sector so that they can some more sensible contributions.

What we are doing by passing the second Resource Management Act amendment bill into legislation very soon is to allow sectors like renewable energy—boosting housing supply and reducing red tape—to grow. That means growing New Zealand. That means reducing the cost of living for New Zealanders. That means providing reliable energy. This is why I support the bill to the House.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Thank you. It’s a duty rather than a pleasure to rise and take the final call for the Labour Party on this particular bill, the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill. I say that because in the last 48 hours, there have been a couple of examples of what is a pretty poor, shoddy, sloppy process from the Government over there, and this is one of those shining examples.

The reason I say that is because this was a bill that actually came out of the Environment Committee with bipartisan support. It was a bill that carried the support of the New Zealand Labour Party, amongst others, and that was because the select committee had diligently worked through the issues, the end result of what came out of the select committee was consistent with our values and our thinking when it comes to the environment, and it also had a lot of the content that existed in a previous piece of legislation in this space that Labour was responsible for, and that was the Natural and Built Environment Act. That’s why we were able to support it when it came out of the select committee and that’s why, when going into the committee stage, we thought that we would be supporting it again, and then what happened was we saw this shoddy process from this Government, basically, requiring us to do a complete U-turn on that. That’s not something that we wanted to do easily, but, really, when one looked at that last-minute Amendment Paper that had been dropped by the Government, there was no other option but for us to simply indicate that we could not support the changes that the Government was seeking to advance.

I want to indicate, alongside other colleagues, that it was a last-minute amendment—well, actually, it was not just one, but it was a last-minute Amendment Paper that contained a suite of changes that really made it quite different. It is highly irregular that you get something out of a select committee that has some sort of multiparty level of support for it, and then, basically within a 48-hour period of the bill receiving its third reading, there is a complete U-turn because of the lack of bipartisanship around this particular approach. So that is disappointing.

One of the interesting things, of course, is that this bill has a significant impact on local government, and what we are starting to see, of course, from this Government—and, really, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise—is the way in which this Government have a real sense of disdain for the communities around Aotearoa New Zealand. They have that strong sense of disdain because of the inability for them to value what communities bring to the whole picture here.

It’s interesting, you know. They like to sort of bellow from the sidelines there, but they’re not prepared to sort of tell us what it is that they really think, and I’ll tell you what—I’ll give the Government something. I’ll give the Government something: at least they’re consistent. At least they’re consistent in not contributing to the conversation much—certainly when it comes to the committee stage—but at least they’re consistent. So we’ll give them that.

But one of the things that this bill does is it really does change the role and responsibility of local government. This was something that I did challenge the Minister responsible for RMA Reform on during the committee stage, and do you know what he said to us? I will tell the House what he actually said. He said that these are decisions that have been publicly announced and that, really, it was up to members to kick them around for themselves. Well, since when did we have something coming out of a select committee process with complete changes that was now a responsibility for members of the Opposition to kick it around amongst themselves when the Government is not prepared to play ball in this particular realm? So it is very lazy in that sense.

This is a bill that does create a very significant change for local councils. Basically, it will call a halt to many of the planning preparations that councils are under way with, and I think that that is really, really unfortunate. When we think about the opportunity that councils have been through around district plan changes, there is a lot of resource, there is a lot of energy, and there is a lot of time, actually, that goes into that. I know that there are other members in the House—and there are certainly members opposite—who have local government experience, and they will, I’m sure, attest to the roles and responsibilities that exist within that particular sector. What’s really interesting in terms of this change—and our colleague Lan Pham talked about this—is that, actually, when you step back and have a look, the focus is on economic growth, the focus is on the need for employment—

Jobs—creating jobs.

Yeah, and that’s something that this Government is clearly failing in. I mean, we hear Mr McCallum say that the focus is on jobs. Well, the Government really needs to be doing something about that, because people are leaving this country faster than this Government would like them to remain. So this is not going to be the answer to, basically, the huge job losses that this Government is delivering for communities around the country. Of course, Christopher Luxon promised to make things better, but he is making them worse. This bill does not have the sort of thread of the environmental aspect alongside economic growth and the role of employment and jobs, and so that’s pretty disappointing.

The final thing that I wanted to say is that I think that the approach from the Minister in response to questions put in the committee stage for why the new section 80V in new clause 23A is to be included, around—you know, there are some exemptions for the planning process that wouldn’t land, necessarily. Some of them are automatic, and I think they’re pretty straightforward, but there are some that actually require the authority to apply for an exemption. The Minister has, basically, indicated that under the criteria, there is a catch-all—it’s really over to anything that the Minister thinks—and if we’re looking for the legislative provision there, it’s in new section 80V(2)(h), and the Minister has cited that himself when saying, basically, that if it’s any other reason that the Minister considers appropriate, then that’s what will carry.

So it is unfortunate that the Government has changed its tune when it comes to trying to address an issue in communities that is so important that it wants to turn its back on communities by landing an Amendment Paper and putting in front of the Parliament a bill that is completely different to the one that came out of the select committee. On that basis, alongside many other concerns, I do not commend that bill to the House.

It’s rich of the previous speaker, Tangi Utikere, to blame people leaving the country on us. There’s this thing called the lag effect. There’s been so much damage and abuse to this country, it takes time to fix things. Within 18 months—if you go back to the election, it was so dark and bleak and people were drowning in red tape and green tape and they couldn’t see where they were going—we repealed the Resource Management Act too, we introduced fast track so developers and builders have some certainty and clarity around design and consent.

Today, we introduced part two of the legislation, which provides certainty around energy, infrastructure, housing—Gordon Wilson Flats, gone—and very soon part 3, so New Zealand can go and grow, and we will attract and retain people in this country like never before.

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 second time.

This bill proposes amendments to the Public Works Act 1981 (PWA), which is a crucial tool for acquiring and managing land to support public infrastructure projects. The bill contains targeted amendments to the Public Works Act, specifically focused on speeding up the delivery of critical infrastructure projects—that’s a term to which I will return shortly to define. Of course, other detail within the bill, as reported back from the select committee, can be found in the legislative statement, so I don’t intend to rehearse that in detail. In short, we want a faster and fairer fashion for the acquisition of land under the PWA for these critical infrastructure projects.

Members might realise that later this year, I intend to introduce a bill that will propose broader changes to the PWA, to improve its efficiency, effectiveness, and clarity, following a review of the Act involving an expert advisory panel last year. I want to say it, again, publicly, for the record, my thanks to that panel for their expert and very prompt deliberation on these matters.

I’d also like to add my acknowledgments and thanks to the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Mr Andy Foster, and a number of other members who are present in the House today—as, indeed, the chair himself is, I see. I’m grateful for their scrutiny of the bill. They have improved it through their hard work, thoughtful consideration, and have made valuable improvements accordingly.

I also want to thank everyone who contributed through submissions. The insights and expertise shared by experts, industry, and the public alike have further strengthened this proposed legislation: the system working as it should.

I do wish to point out, before I go any further, that there is an urgent need in this country to address our infrastructure deficit and for critical infrastructure to be built at a faster pace to support New Zealand’s economic growth and productivity. Through progressing this bill, we can address the deficit and reduce the costs and delays associated with the uncertainty when developing critical infrastructure. Of course, this sits alongside other Government measures in the resource management and planning space, including that which has just been passed by this House.

This bill outlines an accelerated process for acquiring land for public works that are of national or regional significance. It is targeted and only provides for a finite set of projects. Eligible projects must be either listed on Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 or the roads of national significance identified in the Government policy statement on land transport 2024. Only those agencies that can use the Public Works Act to acquire land—being the Crown, local authorities, and network utility operators that are requiring authorities—will be able to use the critical infrastructure process. Private entities cannot acquire land under the Public Works Act, and this bill does not change that fact.

The accelerated process for eligible projects is aimed at addressing the key barriers to efficient delivery, including insufficient incentives for landowners to agree early to their land being acquired and delays caused by objections. The bill targets these issues to streamline delivery, including through premium payments, in addition to standard PWA compensation measures, to recognise and incentivise impacted landowners, and introduces a written submission process in place of the right to object to the Environment Court. I’ll speak more about these shortly.

It’s also important that I point out that the bill will introduce, or maintain, multiple safeguards. It will retain requirements to attempt to acquire land by agreement and negotiate in good faith with the owner first before the issuing of a section 23 notice of intention to take land.

The Environment Court process will remain for objections to the acquisition of protected Māori land for critical infrastructure projects, as it can only be acquired through the standard Public Works Act process and not the accelerated process. Judicial review will remain as a judicial check, and the Land Valuation Tribunal can still determine compensation claims. And I clarify that that applies to all the projects caught within the regime and the fact that protected Māori land can sit outside the regime is a further and separate point to that. Finally, I point out that the bill requires that the processes outlined within it be reviewed after three years to ensure that the amendments are fit for purpose.

I move now to key elements of the bill and the amendments proposed by the committee, which again, I acknowledge and thank them for. The several changes that they recommended for the purpose of clarity, workability, and consistency are outlined in their report, so I don’t intend to focus on all of them today, but I would, encourage anyone who’s interested in further information about these to read that report. I will instead focus on the committee’s key recommendations that have resulted in changes to the bill.

The new written submissions process streamlines a very slow process that can take between six and 12 months for an objection to be heard by the Environment Court—submissions of course, in relation to the project, as opposed to the submissions to the select committee. The committee identified that the proposed time frames for the written submissions process may be too restrictive, for example, where there are multiple owners to liaise with, landowners live rurally, or where unexpected circumstances create challenges, such as sickness or bereavement.

The committee recommended to retain the time frames as they are currently in the bill—10 working days for each stage of the process, except for making a submission, which is 20 working days. However, the committee did propose changes to remove a limit that only allowed for one extension of 10 working days. It recommended that each stage of the process can, instead, be extended by a maximum of up to 20 working days. I agree that this change strikes the right balance of allowing flexibility to grant landowners more time, when reasonable, while still capping the overall extension time to maintain time efficiencies. It’s a balance, in other words, and I’m grateful to the committee for helping us to strike that correct balance.

I move now to designation requirements. The bill had set out that land required for critical infrastructure projects could not be compulsorily acquired, unless the designation under the Resource Management Act was in place for the project. A designation is, as the name suggests, an area of land designated for a public work, such as a road or school. It allows for works or projects by requiring authorities, that is the Minister of the Crown or local authorities, to progress on the site or route without needing a land-use consent from the council or complying with any rules in the district plan.

The committee heard from the Public Works Act users that the designation requirement may create barriers for some projects, contrary to the intent of this legislation to speed up the process. For example, some projects run the designation and land acquisition processes concurrently and other projects choose to seek a resource consent rather than a designation, deeming them ineligible. The committee recommended, therefore, that the requirement be broadened, and I support this approach.

Requirements can now be met where the project is allowed under the Resource Management Act, has resource consent, has a designation, or where a notice of requirement for the project has been given under the RMA, or a designation application has been lodged under the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024. This change removes unnecessary barriers for using the accelerated process to meet the bill’s objectives of speeding up delivery.

Speaking of speeding up delivery, with two minutes left, I’ll just point out that landowners whose land is acquired for a critical infrastructure project will be eligible for an incentive payment that includes 15 percent of their land value with a minimum of $5,000 and a maximum of $150,000 payment, if they agree to the purchase of their land early. An agreement must be made before a section 23 notice of intention is served, which begins the compulsory acquisition process. A recognition payment of 5 percent of the land value, with a minimum of a $5,000 and a maximum of a $92,000 payment will also be made available for all landowners whose land is acquired or taken for a critical infrastructure project.

The committee has recommended clarifying how the payments will apply in circumstances where the landowner whose land has been designated obtains an order from the Environment Court under section 185 of the RMA, meaning that their land must be acquired by the requiring authority under the PWA. The select committee recommended to set out that acquisitions for critical infrastructure under section 185 of the RMA will be eligible to receive the recognition payment. This change aligns with the intent of the proposal. However, as such proceedings are initiated by the owner, landowners in these circumstances will not be eligible for the incentive payment.

In closing, I do want to again acknowledge the valuable suggestions made by the committee in their report to bring the bill to this stage. I appreciate that they carefully considered the experience of landowners in the process and that they provided ideas for improvements to the bill. New Zealand needs and deserves critical infrastructure to be delivered faster, to support its growth in the economy, and I believe that we are achieving a faster and fairer regime through the amendments suggested by the select committee and the legislation itself. For that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party, and, as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I want to acknowledge the comments that the Minister for Land Information has just made, very fulsomely addressing many of the issues that the select committee did canvass. I do want to indicate that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill today, and we supported it through the select committee process as well.

There are a couple of things that still don’t sit too comfortably with us, and maybe we’ll be able to look at those through the committee stage if the Minister is amenable to maybe considering some of those changes. I do want to acknowledge colleagues on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Madam Speaker, you’ll see, perhaps, from the select committee’s report that we were required to report this bill back by mid-September and we have reported back early—much is the work ethic of that particular select committee. Even though we have reported this back early, that has not been, I believe, at the compromise of submissions and the like.

I want to also acknowledge the officials that did provide support to the committee. Some aspects of this bill were technical and largely historical, so I want to acknowledge Land Information New Zealand and also the Ministry of Transport as well. We did receive quite a number of submissions and there were opportunities for submitters to speak to their submissions.

One of the reasons that we do support this bill is because it is important that there is a process around utilisation and build of critical infrastructure, and it is important to note that that’s specifically what this bill is about. Many of the projects that are outlined in the schedule are transport-related projects. It’s worth acknowledging that part of the reason why we are supporting this bill is because the bill itself only relates to projects that are captured by Schedule 2, so the Public Works Act will still apply as a process and a provision to projects that are not listed in Schedule 2 of the bill. And so that is an important distinction as to why we are continuing to support this particular bill.

One of the real concerns that we do have—and this is contained in the report—is the change to process around appeal right opportunities and, largely, objections. What this bill would deliver would be a requirement for any objections or submissions—apart from Māori land, which would still be able to be appealed to the Environment Court, which we think is appropriate, but for any other objectors that have submitted that want to file an objection, that wouldn’t go to the Environment Court; that would go to a Minister of the Crown. There is a bit of tension in that provision from our perspective, because, effectively, the person or people that would be exercising the decision-making capacity over those objections would be the same individuals as part of a Government that would be looking to progress the projects that are listed in Schedule 2. And so we still do hold the view that a level of independence should exist—that someone who objects to a decision or an outcome should have the right to have that independently assessed, not for that to be assessed by a Minister of the Crown. So that is still something that we’d like to contend with as we move through committee stage.

One of the arguments, perhaps, could be that, OK, that’s fine, except there is still a right of judicial review as a process through to the court on matters. Now, we all know that the process for judicial review can be very costly, it can be very expensive, and while we look at the items listed in Schedule 2 of the bill, it will carry a very heavy price tag. That should not be the reason that a barrier would exist for someone being able to access that—you know, like, you wouldn’t do it because of the cost. So that is something that is still a concern for us. I do hope that there is a little bit of movement in that space.

The other thing is, obviously, the Minister is required to have regard to all of the submissions and the objections. The select committee took that on board, and, as the Minister has said, did put an extension opportunity in there to make sure that it was fair and reasonable, not unlike provisions that exist in other legislation—like, well, the Resource Management Act—that identify an extension period for information to be provided. It’s pleasing to hear that the Minister, in his comments this afternoon, is supportive of that.

One minor example of a change that was made by the committee—and it kind of lends itself to the fact that the way in which people go about their daily business is very, very different. We as a committee had some interesting conversations with officials, actually, around how one could be assured that a notification or a notice had actually been received by an objector or a submitter or an applicant or what have you. We, thankfully, I think, are moving away from just the fact that you would dispense the notice and make sure that there are ways in which you could make that particular course of action happen in a reasonable sort of way. One example is the addition there around the fact that a notice must be served or given by sending it to the last known electronic address. Simple things like that that are seen as safeguards, and I’m pleased to hear that the Minister has agreed to take those on board.

Finally, what’s important is that this is a bill that does also have a post-enactment review provision, and so what’s been inserted there is a requirement for this bill to be reviewed three years after enactment. Not every bill is subject to a post-enactment review clause, but the committee was of the view—and the Labour Party’s of the view—that, actually, three years is probably a fair time period to land on by which there could be an assessment by way of review as to where things are at with the Schedule 2 projects that are listed, but also if there have been any issues that have arisen. For example, if this bill does continue through in its final form with no objection process—apart from Māori-owned land—through to anything other than a Minister of the Crown, it might, as part of that review period, identify that that is an actual concern and be able to address that.

So those are some of the issues that were teased out at the select committee. As I say, the Labour Party is happy to continue to support this bill through to the committee stage.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I want to start with a couple of stories—stories about people here in Aotearoa who have been affected by decisions by the State, or an agency of the State, who were attempting to acquire their land for a public infrastructure project. Of course, the Government of the day would have said it was critical infrastructure, and they absolutely needed the land.

In the case of the Kāpiti Expressway, in 2014—I believe it was the Kāpiti Expressway; one of those north-of-Wellington roads—Patricia Grace appealed to the Environment Court. In fact, at the select committee, we heard a submission directly from Patricia Grace, which was incredibly powerful and moving, and she made the point that she would not have been able to take the action she did to protect her ancestral lands. It was upheld by the courts at the time, the Environment Court and the Māori Land Court, which directed that a public reserve be placed over that land for the benefit of Patricia and all of her whānau, her ancestors. That would not have been able to happen the way it did if this legislation that we’re debating today had been in place. That’s what we heard at the select committee.

It’s deeply ironic to me that a Government that proposes—or purports—to care about property rights is at the same time making decisions to make it easier to take away those property rights. And, of course, when we’re talking about land and a relationship to whenua, that is much deeper than some sort of financial interest and property. For tangata whenua, the connection to land is—it’s intimate, it’s part of who they are. It’s not just for this time; it’s about their ancestors; it’s about the people that will come after them, their descendants. That relationship to the land is not unique to tangata whenua, but it is very deep, and it’s something that I believe all humans should be learning from, because our connection to land is very important. Whenua is necessary for us to sustain ourselves.

Obviously, during the 20th century, traffic engineering was invented, and, tragically, many countries decided to pursue a project of destroying cities, taking people’s private property, making way for motorways in some Holy Grail of being able to relieve congestion—which, of course, it doesn’t. Indeed, most of the motorways—which either have been built or will be built—will not deliver the economic benefits that are supposed to justify the cost of putting them in place. We know that, objectively.

Kāpiti Expressway did.

The Kāpiti Expressway’s benefit-cost ratio was 0.2, my friend, 0.2. That means it cost much more—five times more—than the economic benefits of building that road. Of course, the men opposite—and it’s like 90 percent, 95 percent men opposite—have a deeply religious faith in the economic benefits of highways. They repeat it ad nauseam. That doesn’t make it true. There’s zero empirical evidence to support the claims that are being made. While they speak, often, of the Infrastructure Commission and the report that was just made in the National Infrastructure Plan, we were briefed on that at the committee, where they made it very, very clear that New Zealand has spent too much on transport, too much on roads. We’re not getting good value for it. It’s not delivering the economic benefits that are promised—and if that Government actually believed that they did, they would have submitted those projects to the Infrastructure Commission’s infrastructure priority list programme that Minister Bishop set up. But of course, they haven’t done that, because they know that the independent adjudicators will look at it and say, “This case does not stack up.”

But that’s not what I’m talking about, because we’re not just talking about economic benefits here. We’re talking about something much bigger, much more important, which is the deep connection that people have with the land that sustains them, and that in the mistaken belief in progress, from the 20th century, civil engineers and traffic engineers took great pleasure in building large concrete asphalt structures over the land, dividing up cities, making it difficult for people to get around without using a car. And, unfortunately, here in 2025 in Aotearoa New Zealand, we’re carrying on this absolutely ludicrous path of trying to create economic benefit by building motorways. What the Government’s proposing to do with this legislation is ride roughshod over people’s relationship with land.

I have another story, so it’s not just Patricia Grace—and I recommend anyone watching this speech to look up the story of Patricia Grace and to look up the submission that Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira put forward to the select committee, because it was very powerful. Because of the protections in the Public Works Act, which are now being taken away for the list of projects specified in Schedule 2, she would not have been able to protect her land, and a motorway would have run through it. It’s not just about her; it’s the land of her whānau.

There’s also the story of Tony and Debbie Pascoe. I’ve visited the Pascoes’ farm, and I know that Tony, who’s nearly 60 years old, was born on that land. He hasn’t been holding up the project out of greed or selfishness. He has a deep connection to that land. He lived almost his entire life on that 11 hectares. So he knows it really well and he feels very connected to it. He doesn’t want to sell up. And what he knows—which should have been obvious to anyone—is that the Mt Messenger Bypass is an absolute dog of a project. And the reason it got put forward is because some contractors are making a ton of money out of this project. Was it necessary? Was it necessary? [Interruption] Yes: here, again, comes that blind faith. If there were alternative options put on the table that would have delivered the same benefits in terms of safety, in terms of efficiency of the road—

Build the second tunnel. Build the tunnel—tunnel to Rongotai.

There were options for that project that would have delivered the same benefits by improving the existing road—and maybe putting a tunnel in at one part. But what has happened, instead, is that a billion dollars will be spent on this dog of a project and a huge amount of indigenous biodiversity will be lost.

But here’s a person—a person who was born on this land—and one thing he knows: the way the road has been designed and built, the amount of water that will come down and affect the hillsides—means that we are going to see slips because they’re just bulldozing trees. It’s absolute nonsense that the other side of the House believe that there’s no amount of money that is too great to spend on a road, and that we should just ride roughshod over people’s connection with the whenua rather than listen to them and understand from them. This country could have saved a lot of money by having a more intelligent approach to the Mt Messenger road, but instead, they listen to engineers and contractors who directly benefit from the work—

That’s unusual! Engineers, experts?

Directly benefit—no, people who have a vested interest—

Can I just ask the member to come back to this bill?

The majority of the projects in Schedule 2 of this bill are not projects that are needed to respond to climate change. In fact, they will actively take us backwards, and the Green Party, having listened to the majority of the submissions, including those from individuals, from iwi, from Māori groups, from community and other groups, opposes this bill. We have concerns about the rights of Māori and other landowners to appeal against a Government decision to take their land. The bill was developed an incredibly short time frame. In fact, originally, when it was referred to the select committee, the report-back date was in September. That was still less than a full six months for the select committee to consider the bill, but the report-back date was in September. Yet here we are in August, and we’re debating the second reading of the bill.

That’s because there was a Government directive to the select committee—and, by the way, select committee is meant to hold the executive to account, not to do the Government’s bidding—and the Minister said, “We want it faster, we want it faster.”, so we didn’t take the time to actually listen to all the submissions and to consider. So it was limited pre-consultation, a truncated select committee process, in order to assist the fast-tracking of projects named in Schedule 2. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to climate change has not been a criterion used to determine these projects, and most of them will be counterproductive to that goal. But look, who’s surprised? We’ve got a Government of absolute dinosaurs who don’t have moral convictions, who have zero interest in understanding and valuing the very things that make life possible, and they are rushing as fast as possible to take us into the last century—or even further backwards. The Green Party will not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on this Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. I’m also a member of the hard-working Transport and Infrastructure Committee that got this bill back to the House sooner with bipartisan support from across the House. I acknowledge Tangi Utikere’s contribution, which I think was quite valuable, going through what the select committee experienced hearing submissions. I also acknowledge some parts of Julie Anne’s contribution—

Please use the member’s full name.

Julie Anne Genter—sorry. Yeah, I acknowledge some parts of Julie Anne Genter’s contribution, which were heartfelt. We did hear about connection to whenua that people feel—Māori, others, people who have lived and died and been born on land that has been in their family for a long time. So I do acknowledge there is a lot to be thought about when the Government takes land for the use of the public to provide infrastructure.

Some parts that I didn’t agree with were the characterisation that these projects are bad because they’re not contributing to reducing climate change—I think that was the term used. Well, we got the high-voltage direct current cable replacement, we’ve got the Lower North Island Integrated Rail Mobility Programme, we’ve got Marsden Point Rail Link, we’ve got Northwest Rapid Transit, and we’ve got Papakura four-tracking.

I think this is not just a bill that’s trying to get projects done for the good of New Zealand; it’s also a bill that’s trying to get projects done so that New Zealand can get its mojo back. We have been held back for too long. Our fast-tracking Act that this Government has put in place is being helped along by making sure that where there is land which is needed for these critical public infrastructure projects, it can be taken, but in a respectful way as far as that can be. It’s a delicate balance, so it has to be as far as that can be managed.

The select committee, as has been acknowledged by my colleague from the Labour Party, thought very deeply about this and came up with some changes, which the Minister has acknowledged are acceptable, and went through this in a considered way. So I commend this bill to the House.

I’m pleased to rise as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and it’s been great to have the contributions before me from members of the committee and also from the Minister. I particularly want to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for the collaborative way in which it worked through this and also to thank the submitters who gave us a lot of valuable insight and valuable things to think about.

We need to get infrastructure delivered. I think too few Kiwis understand our collective problem. The Infrastructure Commission’s already been referred to. The Infrastructure Commission has told us, and it’s in its draft infrastructure plan, that we are in the top 10 percent of countries in the world in terms of the level of our GDP which is invested in infrastructure. So you’d think we’d be in great shape, but we’re in the bottom 10 percent in terms of the results we get. So we have to change things. The biggest thing we’re doing is we are hamstringing ourselves—I said that in the last debate when we were talking about the Resource Management Act—with suboptimal decisions.

We’re sometimes investing in the wrong things. And we might all argue about what the right things are. That’s why we need a national infrastructure plan which can have multi-partisan buy-in. We see political undermining of the investment pipeline. We flipflop from one Government to another and we’ve got to try to stop doing that. We have to deal with red tape. This is all about part of that red tape. Because some of that red tape is extraordinary and it really does tie us in absolute knots. We made some changes already today with the Resource Management Act.

The fast-track Act is about cutting through that red tape and getting projects built. This bill is about accompanying that fast-track Act. Because you might give it consent, but if you haven’t got the land to build it on, you need to have the access to the land to be able to build those projects on.

So this bill amends the Public Works Act 1981. What it does is it allows for a fast track for Public Works Act acquisitions of land which are necessary to build as we’ve already heard—a defined, narrow set of projects. They’re listed in Schedule 2. They are public works. So they’re not housing works. So the housing projects which are in the fast track are not part of that because they’re not public works. But what is there are fast track and also roads of national significance listed in the Government policy statement. So it’s a very clearly defined set of projects.

What the bill does is it removes the right to appeal to the Environment Court, except—and we had quite a number of submissions from iwi and hapū—in respect of protected Māori land. So we wanted to understand exactly what protected Māori land meant. So we got that clarity, but that is excluded. That right to appeal to the Environment Court still remains for protected Māori land.

It also sets up a new process for a challenge. So instead of the Environment Court, you go, essentially, to the Minister. I’ve got some comments to make about that very shortly. And it also puts in place in law a 15 percent incentive payment for early agreement to try and get agreement early so you can get on with projects. In fact, that’s the reason why we’ve already heard that the committee was asked to bring this back earlier—it’s so we can get on with projects.

In fact, it’s interesting: the Opposition has said to us that we’ve got too little activity going on in the building sector. We want more activity. This bill is about helping to do that. Because what’s happened is, yes, a lot of things have been stopped. The reason that a lot of those things have been stopped is because of the sheer cost—the cost blowouts that occur but then the sheer cost—of building. And it’s actually been very interesting. I’m not going to pick on ferries or anything like that, but what I would say is it’s interesting to see some data about Kāinga Ora, because why was that dialled back and why has that had that impact on the building sector? And we haven’t really heard that. I’ve got here the top 50 builders in the Canterbury region—the Christchurch region—Kāinga Ora is one of those. And this was for the 12 months to March 2024. If you look at the cost per square metre of building, Kāinga Ora is the highest: $4,785 per square metre. The next highest isn’t even close; it’s $3,776—a full $1,000 a square metre less—and the raw average is $2,840. So not much more than half. That’s why some of these projects were stopped—because they just did not deliver value for money.

This bill, in a sense, is about helping to kickstart things again. So, yep, things have been dialled back because of the lack of value for money. This is about the importance of getting on with the job to get Kiwis working, to get that new construction done, and to get that more disciplined construction done, and to deliver the projects that we need.

So the committee asked about a number of things. First of all, we wanted clarity about what was a public work and what wasn’t. So the private subdivisions are not. That would have been a misuse of the Public Works Act. So even if they are on the fast track, they are not public works. We also, as I said, wanted clarity about what protected Māori land is and what it’s not.

We’ve already heard that the compulsory taking of land is a big deal, especially when that land is people’s home. It may be that it’s been their home for generations. It might be a farm that’s been there for generations. If it was Māori land, it would be whenua that’s been there for generations. So that land is a place where people have put their blood, their sweat, their tears, their memories. So it is very, very important. We all know, of course, the iconic Australian movie, The Castle, where the Kerrigans had to fight against a big, bad—

Tell him he’s dreaming.

Yeah, tell them they’re dreaming.

Straight to the pool room.

Straight to the pool room. Yeah, we’ve all got it. But that was a great story of the little guy standing up against the big guy and it showed the emotional value of land, of home, of memories.

So acquisition needs to be undertaken with a great deal of care. We spent, as a committee, quite a lot of time thinking about, actually, what that meant. So we were very exercised about the process that actually happens before you get to that compulsory acquisition. So that compulsory acquisition process—the section 18, section 23—doesn’t change. So you’ve still got to go through that first bit of talking to them. Saying, “Look, we’re thinking about it.” And then saying, “Look, actually, we are going to compulsorily acquire your land.”

One of the changes that we were asked to make in the bill, originally when it went in, was one that said that you have to have either the consent or the designation in place before you applied for compulsory acquisition. In other words, you did them sequentially: designation first, then compulsory acquisition. That was clearly going to take a lot of time, it was going to frustrate the intent of the fast-track Act, and it was going to slow these projects down. So what we’ve done is actually say that all you’ve got to do is to have applied for designation or applied for the resource consent, and then you can do the Public Works Act process.

What we were very exercised about is we didn’t want to see—and it’s good to put this on the record—an agency saying, “Look, we’re going to apply for our designation today and tomorrow we’re going to knock on people’s door and say, ‘We want your land.’ ” That is not a good process. We want to try and minimise the amount of surprise that there is there. So that is something which we’ve put very, very strongly. We asked a lot of questions about that, and we were advised that a public preliminary process—so we want to build a road. Where’s that road going to go? So most of the time there will be a public preliminary process that will signal that there are some options and which option is the one which is decided on. That’s an important thing. It’s not there in statute but it’s an important thing that is done so that there is a high level of transparency for potentially affected landowners that they might be in the firing line. That’s very, very important.

The second thing that we got from the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) officials is that they very much saw themselves as gatekeepers. So if we hadn’t done that process well as the requiring agency, you may come a cropper from them if you hadn’t done the process. What were the options? Could you go route A, B, C—whatever it might be. What were the options that you might choose? Why did you choose the one you chose? What level of engagement was there? So LINZ acting as a gatekeeper, I think, is quite important.

And the third one that they said is, of course, if you haven’t done that properly, there’s the judicial review, which we’ve already heard about. That’s a big bar for most people, but it is a bar that you’re more likely for an appellant to get over if you haven’t done that process properly. So our strong encouragement is that in using these accelerated powers, that is done in a way which maximises transparency, especially around options and rationale so that potentially affected landowners understand why the agencies that are involved have got to where they’ve got to. We did really leave with the Minister an encouragement to give some thought about whether there should be a stronger statutory process around that.

We also, as I said, heard a lot of concerns about the removal of the Environmental Court process. The reason for that is just the length of time that takes, the uncertainty, and the potential for it to go to the High Court. But the number of times we were told that the court’s actually been used is very, very small. For the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), in the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, there were only 49 objections. That represented 3 percent of all the properties the NZTA acquired. Julie Anne Genter has quite rightly pointed out the case which we heard from Patricia Grace, which was a very, very compelling one—a very good one—and I well remember that at the time that the expressway was going through.

Then, finally, we also heard concerns about the neutrality of the decision maker. Again, we’ve made some observations that perhaps, instead of being a Minister that makes the decision, maybe there should be a panel set up, just as there was for the fast-track consent process that at least gives that idea of independence there. Also, a lot of submitters said, “We would like not just to do things on exchange of letters but the ability to be face to face with somebody—kanohi ki te kanohi.” That was very important. So, again, we encourage that in the process going forward.

Again, thanks for all the hard work there was from the committee. We made a number of changes there and I think they will stand the bill in good stead. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I stand in support of my colleague Julie Anne Genter, who clearly articulated our position of opposition to this fast-track public works legislation.

Now, the basis of this opposition is really property rights and the ability for whānau to have mana whakahaere, Māori mai, Pākehā mai, tauiwi mai across their lands. And that’s the issue—that with fast-track public works, you’re taking it out of their hands. You’re even taking the ability for them to go to the Environment Court out of their hands and handing it back to the deciding Minister. It is really difficult to see how a whānau being impacted by this legislation will be able to find any wriggle room to rescue or protect that whenua, who might be whenua tuku iho [bequeathed lands]. As we’ve heard, this isn’t just a Māori issue; this is an issue for everyday New Zealanders, who could have their properties taken through this legislation.

Now, this isn’t a helping hand for the landowner; this is actually harming their mana whakahaere, their mana over their whenua, because they will not have any route to be able to contest the taking of their lands. Because you’re giving it all to the Minister—you’re giving it all to the Minister—and that’s an overuse and overreach of ministerial power.

Now, considering that, and then the ability for Māori to retain their right to go to the Environment Court, it’s really expensive. I don’t know how many of the members of this House have ever been to the Environment Court and had to pay the legal bills. It’s significant. So even though members of the Government might say, “Oh, but, Māori, you can still go to the Environment Court.”, the costs are outrageous—the costs are outrageous. Technically, the costs are outrageous legally. And I’m acknowledging Whaea Patricia Grace, who gave her submission, but also is a legend in this space in terms of the way that they had to fight tooth and nail as whānau to protect their whenua tupuna tuku iho [ancestral and bequeathed lands] from the taking by the Crown through the Public Works Act. And that has not been left anywhere for us as Māori to find another route, except the Environment Court, and it’s just so outrageously expensive.

Now, the incentive payments are another issue, and Ngāti Toa rangatira gave a comprehensive submission of their concerns in terms of what this legislation is. It’s about tinkering around the edges. They’re not interested in having conversations about the tinkering. They want to see this legislation pulled back and take away the incentive payments and come back to the tēpu. As I have shared in this House previously, iwi Māori can find workable solutions with the Crown, but that requires the Crown to come as open, sitting at the tēpu, kanohi ki te kanohi, as we’ve just heard from my colleague from New Zealand First—kanohi ki te kanohi—that we might sit as partners and equals in looking for workable solutions in terms of what happens with this whenua. Ngāti Toa rangatira explicitly shared their concerns in their submission in terms of the way with which this legislation undermines Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This legislation undermines their settlement that they have already gone through and puts at risk all of those things that are intrinsically important to Ngāti Toa rangatira iwi.

They have said in their submission that they are open to workable solutions, but that requires the Crown to take this off the tēpu, come back to the table with Māori, and have a meaningful conversation. But we know that this Government is not willing to do that. They are going to ram raid this legislation through because it’s all about being fast. It’s all about efficiency and economic development, eh—back on track.

But, you know, with what’s happening here with private property rights, Māori mai, Pākehā mai, tauiwi mai, that’s the risk here—that families will be put at risk in the loss of their whenua and the land for their future generations. That’s a conscience that we have to sit with here. No matter how much of a dollar and a carrot you might dangle in front of that whānau’s face, if they say no, why can’t they say no? Why can’t they say no? Why do we have to go then to a deciding Minister, who is also the Minister over this legislation to then say yes or no? Because, ultimately, the will of the Government of the day will take precedence over that whānau, instead of just going around their block and carrying on with your road or your infrastructure or your railway.

So, you know, these are the concerns of everyday New Zealanders. These are the concerns of hapū and iwi who gave submissions. We continue to oppose this, because we can do better and public works is necessary, but it’s also harmful if we don’t have fair, workable solutions for the whānau impacted, as well as for the good of our community. Kia ora.

We need to get stuff built in this country, and you can’t have it both ways, complaining, “Well, stuff’s not being built, but, actually, I’m going to object come hell or high water on X,Y, Z project.” For too long, we’ve been a country of no; this is a Government of yes. This bill contributes to that.

To address the previous speaker Hūhana Lyndon’s concerns, protected Māori land is actually exempted from this process. If it is required for—

Did they not read the bill?

—they may not have read the bill—key infrastructure projects, then they will be able to still go through the Environment Court process.

Just to clarify, this is a good bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s been interesting to listen to the debate in this House, because it does actually demonstrate the difficulty of compulsory acquisition. As the member Hūhana Lyndon said, it’s a Government that actually has as one of its centrepieces the protection of private property, and yet here this bill—which we support—is in fact undermining private property rights for the benefit of the State.

Now, there are, of course, many instances where that is necessary, where there are public works—particularly those public works that we support, like hospitals—and additional land is needed. We can’t have a situation where one or two landowners can, effectively, either stymie the project entirely or demand extortionate prices. Now, if it’s a supermarket that’s being built there, let them play those commercial games, but when it’s a piece of infrastructure being built for the benefit of all New Zealanders, then compulsory acquisition is justified. But I think it really is important to recognise that it can be very traumatic to be told that this house, this home which you have made your own, which you’ve raised your kids in, is going to be bowled for some heartless piece of public infrastructure, no matter what good it does.

Certainly, I just want to recognise what occurred in Christchurch, because that must be the largest compulsory acquisition in New Zealand’s history, where huge tracts of the city were acquired compulsorily—not under the Public Works Act; under special legislation. Then, of course, we had the residential red zone and the trauma that that caused. But, you know, it is an object lesson. If you look now and see the benefits of those decisions—decisions of a National Government, unfortunately—they nevertheless can be seen.

Interestingly, this bill creates two things: the kind of disruption payment and the incentive payment. It actually does something quite unusual, which is it pays over the odds. So the usual rule, that the ACT Party’s fully aware of, is just compensation—“just” in the fairness sense, not as in “just enough”, but just compensation—whereas, in fact, this bill does something different because it’s trying to accelerate the process, which is to give more than just compensation for a more speedy process. We get it. Certainly, if you were a commercial player in the market and you wanted to do a deal and you wanted to do it quickly, you might be prepared to pay for that, but it’s an interesting use of taxpayers’ money to put it into private hands just because you want to go fast. But, nevertheless, we understand the reasoning behind it.

I do want to make one other observation, and that is about compensation for private property. Moments ago, we heard the Resource Management Act, where the bar is being lowered on things like water pollution. That is conferring a benefit on private property owners who are able to emit effluent and the like, but there’s no compensation for the public harm. But here we’ve got the very inverse of that situation, where the public is getting a good and overcompensating the private interests. It’s quite an interesting mismatch, where there’s no compensation for the public under the Resource Management Act harms—effluent—but overcompensation for private property owners under this piece of legislation. Just a strange asymmetry.

The other thing I just wanted to note here—again, we’re supportive of this because we are supportive of good services for New Zealanders. But one of the challenges as I see it—and I haven’t had the opportunity that Transport and Infrastructure Committee members have had to study this—is Schedule 2, because the whole thing is about critical infrastructure projects, and Schedule 2A is the critical infrastructure projects. As with the fast-track Act, it’s a Government list, so there’s no test of whether or not it’s critical. Certainly in public works law, generally, you’d have to demonstrate that the thing that you wanted to do had sufficient public interest to displace private property rights, but here the Government has just listed a set of things that it reckons are sufficiently important.

There is one that I wanted to identify, because at least one end of it ends up in my electorate, and that is the Belfast to Woodend bypass. There it is—State Highway 1 North Canterbury Woodend Bypass Project, the project that the Government said was going to be started already but it hasn’t; also a project that the Government said would not be tolled and now they are looking at tolling it. So if you—[Interruption] That’s right. So to those people of Woodend, Rangiora, Kaiapoi, you know, I’ve got to say that this is the document that we’ve got to look to. So if you’re disappointed, Woodend, Rangiora, Kaiapoi, Ōhoka, look to your local MP, who’s actually not doing much about it and has in fact put the Woodend Bypass project on this list. You’ll be paying 1,300 bucks a year to get to work on that tolled road because of the National Government.

But, you know, we do need to look at whether these things are in fact critical projects, because I struggle to see—and I did hear Julie Anne Genter, who’s never been a lover of roading projects; I heard her eloquent speech. But there’s a real question, because this is a road that is extending a motorway, an existing motorway, out into, you know, 30 kilometres perhaps out of Christchurch City. Its sole purpose, really, is to enable commuters to come from home to work or shop or play in Christchurch, which is a fantastic place to do all those things, but it would be much better if they lived much closer to where they wanted to work, play, shop, and do those kinds of things.

So this road, to say that it is critical, to say that we should truncate decision-making processes—because that’s what this really does. You’ve got to remember that under the existing Public Works Act regime, there are very robust processes to challenge what’s going on, including valuation challenges, including challenges around whether the public work is in fact a public work that meets the appropriate threshold. That’s what’s being truncated here by the use of this list. It should be a very high bar, is my basic point. Perhaps the Woodend Bypass is—I don’t think it is, but let’s ask someone who actually knows whether it meets the test of being critical infrastructure.

Yet here we have a Government that looks like they can’t pay for it because they’ve given tax breaks to landlords, so they’re going to toll people going to work. They’re going to toll people going in to work in Christchurch from Kaiapoi, Rangiora, and Ōhoka. You know, that’s a real strange situation to find themselves in. But Matt Doocey’s silent on the matter, strangely. He wants to get rid of the T2 lane, you might be interested in, member for Rongotai. Matt Doocey wants to get rid of the T2 lane and wants to toll a road—bizarre that he’s got that set of priorities.

But, anyway, it’s a bill that does more good than harm, and in that case, if it makes New Zealand better for most New Zealanders, we’ll be supporting it on that basis.

People across New Zealand are tired of waiting. Infrastructure takes too long to plan and build. Let’s look at the record from our Opposition. They wasted $34.8 million. They tried to build light rail in my electorate, Mt Roskill. After six years, I don’t even see a single section or single piece of light rail in my electorate. So we need to find a smarter and faster way to deliver the infrastructure our country urgently needs. This bill modernises the Public Works Act to support faster delivery of nationally significant infrastructure, because people in New Zealand want infrastructure to be built. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a very short call on this bill, the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. Labour will be supporting this bill because in terms of the intent and the purpose that my colleague Dr Duncan Webb outlined, it has got a significance by way of projects that are important to carry on with.

I just want to talk very briefly about something I just remembered. It happened in Māngere, when the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) needed to extend the motorway network for CBD Aucklanders to get to the Auckland Airport. Now, that’s fine, but when you don’t consult the community as to the purpose of the road or you don’t want to hear the community—and I was quite alarmed, because the motorway infrastructure was going to come right through my living room. So I didn’t understand as to why I was a member of the community that really questioned the infrastructure design. It was a happy ending because between the officials and our elected members and our community, we were able to engage in a process that allowed people from Māngere to really understand the purpose of the infrastructure, the reasons why people need to give up their land to achieve the outcome, and we were able to challenge.

What I’ve read quickly in this bill is that the benefits are that it will allow a process that, yes, has been outlined when I read the notes. In terms of the landowner, or the person who has an interest in the land that is in question, there is a process that you can go through in terms of the written submission, and sometimes people in our local community—for example, South Auckland—may not have the necessary background in terms of understanding infrastructure or understanding the bigger processes of, for example, the NZTA.

What the bill does do, and it will be the relevant authority, the Minister for Land Information must take certain cases into account, which I think is a good thing. But when people of a local community don’t understand the criticalness of infrastructure to allow bigger projects to take place, as long as they can have a step in the process where they can question, where they can understand the ins and outs, that is important. So, on that note, Labour does support this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

In one hour, I’m going to be driving home, down Transmission Gully—a fantastic road of national significance—on to the Kāpiti Expressway. What a fantastic road that is—110 kilometres per hour—despite what the member from the Green Party may have said about it. Very soon, as you then get past Ōtaki, we’ll be starting work on the Ōtaki to north of Levin Highway. These are fantastic roads, but we have learnt from them that we can improve the process where we need to acquire land to build them. They have saved lives; they have transformed our communities. I love them, I support them, and that’s why I’m commending the bill that the honourable and gallant Minister has brought to the House. And can I just take a couple of seconds to finish by saying a very happy birthday to Savannah, one of our wonderful House staff. I commend the bill to the House.

Glen Bennett had a very significant birthday, yesterday, as well.

Thank you.

So we should say happy birthday to him as well, even though it’s one day late.

You are welcome to sing, and in light of it being my significant birthday this week, I am, potentially, going to sing my whole contribution this afternoon—I thought that might be a way to do it—so the whole House can celebrate with me my coming of age and hitting a significant milestone.

Please yield! Yield!

Someone else would like to sing for me? That is great. Thank you.

This legislation has been well traversed, and it’s obviously the space, in its second reading—as it’s come back to the House from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. There are some things we need to continue to talk about, and my colleagues already—Tangi Utikere, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, and my colleague from South Auckland, Lemauga Lydia Sosene—have articulated some of the key reasons why it’s the balancing of supporting something with the challenges that come with that. As we look at this legislation, the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill, we want to acknowledge the fact that it’s not something that we desperately want. As was said, you know, someone’s lounge was in the path of a potential highway. And the fact is that a family home, a family property, is something that is significant to most people.

As others have talked about their own electorates and what’s gone on, I’ve looked at some of the projects that have gone on in Taranaki and in New Plymouth in recent decades. Sadly, a previous mayor, Mayor David Lean, passed away a couple of months ago. He was an innovative mayor of the 1980s and 1990s in New Plymouth, and it’s not sexy and it’s not cool but he got across the line and got New Zealand’s leading waste-water treatment plant built in his time as mayor, to actually change the game of what was going on back in the 1980s, when the discharge of waste water was just pumped out of the Waiwhakaiho River into the ocean and was pumped out in front of the main part of New Plymouth City. It took a lot of land, it took a lot of investment to ensure that this innovative, large-scale project was built to ensure that we protected our waterways, we protected our oceans, and we protected our environment. It was around the Public Works Act, it was around acquisition of land, and it was around ensuring the funding was in place for what still is an important piece of infrastructure that has stood the test of time.

Now, we have challenged the Government and we will continue to challenge the Government, on their record in terms of getting on with building things and getting on with ensuring that infrastructure is where it needs to be, and that’s why it is important for us to cautiously support this legislation—so that things can continue to move forward. We know there’s streamlining that’s needed. We know that the process of land acquisition can be messy, it can be challenging. When it comes to critical infrastructure, when it comes to opportunities for communities like the waste-water project in New Plymouth in the 1980s, it’s hard. I don’t want my land acquired by the Government, I don’t necessarily want these things happening in my neck of the woods, but at the same time, if we want to build a better future and a better community, then there are certain things—not everything, but there are certain things—that do require Government intervention and land to be acquired. So I look again. It’s 40 years since that project kicked off and has been operating, and it makes a difference for our community, for our environment, and for our water.

Now, I remember I subbed in at one stage—or in reading some of the information and the legislation over the last few months. It did occur to me, and I was concerned, around the right of the landowner or the person of interest to object to the land acquisition, and the fact that the Environment Court was removed and it now was a process that was through written submission with no opportunity for oral hearing. But I’m glad to see that in terms of where we are in the House today—and again, we move to the committee of the whole House once it’s gone past the second reading—there is a judicial process that still is able to be used to review the procedural issues that fit in. So, yes, there are some things that people are struggling with in terms of their voice in the process, but the fact that there is a judicial process involved—I’m glad that that is in there. If we can tighten that or work on it further, then I would be happy with that.

As I think about the land around myself and the land in Taranaki and what the future looks like, there are some real challenges. I don’t want to get into our Northern Gateway, but there are challenges there. Again, what is the potential of something that actually has a significant environmental footprint, that, yes, cuts a road through our environment? But, actually, there are some opportunities in terms of the regeneration of our environment and of our local iwi being involved in perpetuity to ensure that there’s pest control on a piece of land that had been overcome with pests and overcome with possums and other imported species. Actually, yes, there’s a road, and it’s State Highway 3, going north, but the fact is that work has been done to ensure that there is an environmental lens put over that, which will actually improve the wetlands and the space there.

But the challenge, we know, is that there is land that needs to be acquired, and that is a challenge for a family, and I want to acknowledge that. It’s great for us to debate this and talk about, you know, let’s just get on with this and make it happen, but actually it is people’s lives and it is people’s history and so we need to be sensitive. We need to ensure that the legislation has the right balance—that yes, there is acquisition, yes, the Government does need to make challenging decisions, but also there has to be respect for those that it steps into.

Finally, around the protected Māori land, as I was looking at the legislation this afternoon, I looked at page 7, and there’s a whole section there that does talk about the fact that if it’s protected Māori land that is required for any critical infrastructure project, the landowners would be able to use the Environment Court process. The fact that Māori land has the opportunity to engage with the Environment Court is important. It goes on to list things like Māori freehold land, Māori reserves, general land owned by Māori that was previously Māori freehold land, land held by a post-settlement governance entity. It goes on through Māori reserves, Māori customary land. I think that is important.

I finish on that because there’s one other situation in New Plymouth that hasn’t quite got there yet. It was a council decision made a number of years ago. It was Waka Kotahi at the time, back in the early 2010s, and it’s the motorway going from New Plymouth to Bell Block and Egmont Road. My colleagues in the House who are from Taranaki know the Egmont Road is a huge challenge. But the interesting thing with this was the council had it under control, because they were going to just cut a road to the side that was going to go from Egmont Road up to Bell Block, but they didn’t quite do their homework correctly. So the New Zealand Transport Authority did their piece and they built the motorway, and there’s now this really dangerous intersection where cars have to pull out into a 100 kilometre zone.

The challenge was that they hadn’t completed their homework, and there’s actually urupā in that space. So they said, “Yeah, of course we’ll do this.” This is sort of, I think, in 2009, 2010. But of course they can’t cut this road straight through, because they weren’t able to acquire the land because of its cultural significance, because of hapū and iwi requirements—and just to do the right thing, because it’s an urupā, right? There is work under way so that potentially in the future, we hope, there will be another route that will be able to be put through, and I’m sure other solutions will be found for that.

But, again, it’s that challenge of land acquisition. It’s a challenge of legislation like this that we can put in place, but then it’s also ensuring that we map out our lands, our cemeteries, our urupā, our sites of significance so that when a decision is made, the right decision is made, and it is actioned and we don’t have to go back to the drawing board and recreate it.

We support this and we look forward to, I guess, a robust debate in the committee stage, to get this legislation right.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be speak on this bill, the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. It’s good to see across the House there has been support for this. When we’re developing infrastructure, we need the certainty that there will be some cross-bipartisan agreement at least. None of this committee has done this with any sort of light-heartedness. It’s been taken very seriously. All of the considerations that have gone before the committee have been carefully thought through, and where they have brought back this bill for our further consideration, I think they’ve done an excellent job and I commend the bill to the House.

The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee by majority be agreed to.

This bill is set down for committee stage next sitting day.

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Constitution 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 Constitution Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by four months and one day after the bill receives its first reading.

This bill amends the Constitution Act 1986 to support the continuity of executive Government and a smooth transition of power after elections. Elections are a natural point of uncertainty in our system, and it’s important that during a post-election period, the incumbent Government can continue to act in a caretaker capacity. Now, the Constitution Act currently allows Ministers to remain in office after an election for 28 days, and this is meant to give enough time for the election results to be finalised and new MPs to be appointed. When there are recounts or polling adjournments that delay the official count, it can be more than 28 days before election results are finalised, after which time ministerial tenure expires. It is constitutionally untenable for the Governor-General to have an outcome where the Governor-General is left without advisers.

Indeed, this is what happened following the 2023 general election when recounts delayed the return of the writ and the final vote count. While party leaders worked together to find a stop-gap solution in 2023, I consider that a clear and fit purpose rule is preferable to that option. Therefore, this bill ensures that this will not happen again in the future.

This bill amends the Constitution Act so that Ministers can remain in office after an election until the writ is returned and list MPs have been declared by the Electoral Commission. If there are delays to the official vote count, incumbent Ministers will remain in office and executive Government will continue. This will provide certainty and build resilience in our constitutional arrangements, following an election.

Given the constitutional importance of arrangements governing the post-election period, I considered it essential to consult with parliamentary parties on the proposals in this bill. I’d like to, at this stage, acknowledge and thank parliamentary parties for their thoughtful contributions to the development of this proposal.

The smooth and swift transfer of power is a critical part of a well-functioning democracy. The changes in this bill will ensure that there will be a continuous executive Government following elections despite any delays to the official count, and this will provide New Zealanders with certainty about the resilience of our post-election processes. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. This is, as with a number of constitutional bills, in some ways a tidy up, but you don’t tidy up the constitution lightly. The requirement that a Minister of the Crown—a member of the executive—be a member of Parliament has been convention in New Zealand for a long time. It is interesting that it isn’t convention everywhere, but in New Zealand we expect people holding a warrant to be a Minister in the Government to be a member of Parliament.

The 28-day rule was an exception to that that came about after the outgoing Muldoon Government kind of muddied the playing field for the incoming Lange Labour Government, and, I think, Geoff Palmer pushed that reform through. The last election showed that under a mixed member proportional—MMP—Government there could be a circumstance where 28 days wasn’t enough, and whilst members who were clearly re-elected could be rolled over in their ministerial roles, it became problematic for a Minister who wasn’t re-elected, although they had stood, and that was, in fact, Nanaia Mahuta who had to resign her foreign affairs portfolio that was picked up by, I think it was, Grant Robertson. But of course, if there is business to be done, it’s a little awkward if all of a sudden, a new Minister has to pick it up from scratch simply because that outgoing Minister wasn’t re-elected. So this bill essentially says you can remain a Minister regardless of your status as an MP until a new Government is formed.

Now, I think that probably is the right fit, but let’s have a good chat about that at select committee, because there is a very strange situation; for example, a recent poll would have had us with a hung Parliament, and that could cause quite a protracted period of negotiation across several months, which could, in fact, result in a new election being called. So you’ve got someone who isn’t an MP but could conceivably, in a very narrow set of cases, be there for a long time. So it is absolutely worth thinking about all of those—and, sometimes, we look at it and go, “Oh, that’ll never happen.” But what we know is that in constitutional situations, things like that, in fact, do happen. It is so important to have a legitimate Government that we have to—the risks are so high that we have to really examine carefully these possibilities.

If we look at it and think that that is a realistic possibility, perhaps we should look at other fixes. But certainly, what did happen did seem to be unnecessary and an unfortunate diversion for the Government of the day. There is of course the convention—the very strong convention—that the Public Service are very keen to enforce, which is that a caretaker Government doesn’t really do anything; that they might sign off formal documents and the like, but they won’t be instituting any major policy or making any significant appointments. So again, that means that the importance of it perhaps falls away somewhat, but these things are never static, and those things, such as that caretaker convention, are only conventions; another strange kind of quirk of the Westminster system, where we have these unwritten understandings, which are seen as having some more than merely moral force, if not quite legal force, whatever that means. So relying on those kinds of protections can lead us into trouble.

Of course, the Muldoon constitutional crisis was a situation where a constitutional convention was just blatantly ignored. But it’s going to be another fun bill in front of the Justice Committee, because we really don’t have enough to do! So this will be a good addition to our workload. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve got a number of things to point out here. First of all, our constitution actually needs transformation, not just tweaking. The reports of Matike Mai, the issues of whether we have a second House, improvements to select committee processes—these are all the things that it would be great to be grappling with.

I do appreciate the way that Minister Goldsmith wrote to our co-leaders back in June and we had a chance to consider this, discuss this, and as a party we are fine with this very minor change. It would be so refreshing if this wasn’t an exception.

I also agree it’s not only if the counting takes longer; there is the potential for some natural disaster to cause a hiccup and therefore we need to just continue as we are for a little longer. But what I find really extraordinary is that here is the Government bringing something forward to say, “If there is a hiccup with the counting, we can carry on and we know how and we’re not going to fall into some sort of hiatus.”, while simultaneously saying, “Oh gosh, counting at the moment is taking a long time. There’s a delay in the counting. We must get rid of same-day enrolments. We must even get rid of them for a fortnight beforehand.”

So it seems contradictory that you’re tidying up a fairly hypothetical situation and yet, under the guise of being tidy, under the guise of being ready, and under the guise of “they can’t count it quick enough”, those entitlements for people voting from prisons, people who have moved house, people who are actually waiting till nearer the election—because sometimes policies only get announced just before the election or there’s some big scandal or you did your advance voting and you think, “Well, I’ve just heard a little bit more about that candidate. I don’t want to vote for them. I wish I’d waited.” It is not necessarily a matter of being disorganised. People may think their details are up to date and then find when they go to the polling booth that they’re not up to date.

I think that the idea of allowing for the situation where the count’s taking a little longer is supportive, in a fairly modest way, of our democracy. But I would like the Minister to respond as to whether this is not a complete contradiction.

I also had a constituent raise a particular issue about this detail. This bill has yet to finish its first reading, it’s going to go to select committee—I have no great concerns that we won’t be able to iron out some bits of wording—but I think it’s wonderful that somebody’s already watching in enough detail to come back and say that they’re writing to me in the capacity of Green Party spokesperson for democracy and electoral reform “to express a concern that the Constitution Amendment Bill, which is currently before the House, has clause 5 where it allows Parliamentary Under-Secretaries to remain in office until the election of the next Parliament.” While this constituent supports intent, as does the Green Party, “the wording seems vague enough that, arguably, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary ceasing to be a member of Parliament for some reason other than an election, perhaps early in the three-year term of Parliament, could be allowed to stay on until the next election.”

All I am doing is urging us to look at that point when it comes to the select committee and look forward to subbing in on the Justice Committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Constitution Amendment Bill. Just for my colleague in the Green Party Celia Wade-Brown: you do have to be enrolled but that doesn’t require you to vote or vote for a particular person, but it is very important and, in fact, is a legal requirement you are enrolled—so just to clear up any confusion there. This is a small but sensible change.

As the Hon Dr Duncan Webb actually outlined, this was an issue at the last election, where we actually had members of this House who were Ministers but who weren’t re-elected have to give up their warrants. All this is trying to do is actually just put in place very sensible arrangements around the transition at an election.

It has been obviously consulted with by all parties across the House even before being introduced, which I think is very important, and, of course, it is going to go to the Justice Committee, which I’m lucky enough to serve on, and we will look at it at more detail.

It also has been informed by a number of other reviews, including the review of the last general election that, again, the great Justice Committee undertook, and also some other independent work by the Electoral Commission.

So, yes, this is a relatively small change, obviously important. It will obviously be looked at in detail, but ACT does commend it to the House. We look forward to looking at it in more detail shortly.

I also rise to take a short call because this is both a short bill and a very small bill, but it is a constitutional necessity. I think somehow we’ve managed to get away without it, but you could conceivably get into the situation where you get to the end of 28 days and suddenly, as it says, the Governor-General has no advisers—i.e., there is no Government, and that’s slightly problematic. So you do need somebody who is operating there in a caretaker role until the new Government is able to be put in place. Really, essentially, that is all that this is about.

You could also say it is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary’s anti-discrimination bill, because clearly they feel a bit put upon—or there is a feeling that they are a bit put upon at the moment—so it fixes that little anomaly. I think this has been talked about for several Parliaments in a row, that this ought to be dealt with, so finally we’re dealing with this. I guess the only question I would have is why it can’t be lumped in with a bunch of other pieces of legislation, so that it’s more efficient. But, clearly, we need to have this there just in case.

Of course, we had the situation where we were talking about the whole voting system and when people are entitled to enrol. One of the reasons we made those changes is to try and make sure that we don’t end up in this situation of actually getting past the end of 28 days because we haven’t had results actually come through, and we just slow the whole process down. They kind of fit in a way—belt and braces, hand in glove, if you like. So I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to rise as we begin the journey of the Constitution Amendment Bill. This bill seeks to amend the Constitution Act 1986. Essentially, the purpose of why we’re embarking on this journey as such is to make sure that our country always has an operating Government between election day and when the new Parliament is sworn in. I look forward to conversing about the pros, and maybe there might be some cons, in the Justice Committee, one that I’m very privileged and honoured to be part of—a very hard-working committee. But for now, I’ll commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to stand in support of this bill. Although, much like my colleagues on this side of the House, I do have to raise some issues in terms of how we’ve arrived here, but also the real focus on listening to submitters during the bill. In truth, members have been speaking about the Electoral Amendment Bill because the genesis of this bill was that they were together as part of an omnibus bill before they were introduced to the House. However, we do have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act section 7 vet on the initial omnibus bill, so I do think it’s very relevant that members are speaking to that as well.

I agree with my colleague Celia Wade-Brown that there does seem to be a conflict in terms of the philosophy behind the two, in that this is removing a statutory time limit to enable, in my view, a focus on democracy, democratic protections, and stability. Now, one could argue that democratic stability is also about listening to as many potential voters as possible and allowing as flexible a process as possible for them to be registered. Therefore, it would have felt very awkward, in my view, for that omnibus bill to stay intact. So I can see the logic in separating the two to try and create some distance between the philosophies.

But if you were to listen to an argument that was just made that, essentially, one of the reasons that the Government is proposing to limit the ability of voters to register up to election day is to avoid breaching the 28-day rule. Well, the Government is then just fixing that issue, and therefore it shouldn’t be an issue to give as many voters the right to register up to election day, because, essentially, they’re removing the 28-day rule. So in my view, it would make sense to do that, if that creates the issue, and then allow people to enrol to vote so we can hear from as many people as possible. So the philosophy behind the two just doesn’t sync at all for me.

I do welcome as many submitters on this bill as possible. I think it’s important that we hear from many people. I’m hoping that we hear from Sir Geoffrey, who did put in place the 28-day rule. My colleague Duncan Webb has spoken to the genesis of that rule being in place, which was the situation in 1984 when you had the incoming Labour Government and Muldoon’s Government and a serious question about whether the New Zealand dollar needed to be devalued or not; some extreme tension which lead to the creation of that rule. My concern is this: that was a situation where we had a first-past-the-post Government. We now have a mixed-member proportional Government. The period of negotiation is potentially going to be much longer. Again, as the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said, we may face a hung Parliament at some stage. So my sense is that I would like to hear submissions on the removal of the 28-day rule, but also on what additional things we could put in place to ensure we have a protected system.

Now, we had Jonathan Boston in front of us when we were considering the four-year term submissions. I put a question to him about whether the caretaker provisions—which are currently referred to, I think, in chapter 6 of the Cabinet Manual—should be legislated for. Right now, they’re not, and they’re actually quite broad. So there are two questions there, really, for potential submitters out there who are listening. One is: are the caretaker provisions in the Cabinet Manual specific enough? They’re framed quite generally. For example, Governments aren’t to take major decisions and they shouldn’t make significant appointments. But we potentially could do with some clarity around that. The second question is: should those provisions be lifted into legislation so that they are rules by which we have to abide? My sense is that if we are taking away this 28-day rule, these are things that we ought to be considering.

The last thing in my last 20 seconds is that I think we need to think about the rules applying to an existing Government leading up to an election versus the ones in a caretaker period, and note them as separate. Right now the Cabinet Manual does not do that. So I welcome submissions and commend it to select committee.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to rise in support of the Constitution Amendment Bill. If there’s one thing I enjoy in being a member of the Justice Committee, it is anything relating to constitution. This is a good change around amending the bill to improve the resilience of the mechanisms that provide for the continuity of executive Government. The many points that many members from across this House have made—I’m looking forward to fleshing those out through the select committee process and receiving the submissions to the Justice Committee as well. Therefore, I commend it to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Constitution is not necessarily my forte and not something I get out of bed with excitement and passion about. But I’m glad that some people do get really excited. That’s wonderful. And it takes all sorts for the House of Representatives—because that’s what it is, right?

1986 was a good year. I was 11 years old, so to do the math—

Big birthday!

It’s like a sequel from my previous call. Anyway, focus, focus! It’s Thursday afternoon.

In 1986, when the original law was passed, it was a different Parliament. It was a different environment. It was first past the post. Cabinet was obviously made up of members of the ruling party; there were no coalition deals and that type of thing. There were 95 MPs in the New Zealand Parliament in 1986. There were 20 members of Cabinet and there were very few, I understand, under-secretaries. But of course now with the MMP system, now with the fact there are negotiations that take place, and now with the fact that it isn’t just clear cut on the night of who is in power, we need to go back and to reconsider, as this House does on multiple occasions. The world changes and this place also moves and changes with the times; sometimes slower than it should, but it does move and change with the times.

So as we look and as we’ve heard from others this afternoon, what the bill does—I won’t really go into it, actually, because it has been traversed and talked about, but my contribution wants to be about the faith in democracy and taking this to select committee and taking this out to the public for submissions. The Minister who brought this bill to the House this afternoon talked about the fact that he is going to move that this will be reported back to the House in four months and one day, which we can’t debate because it’s beyond four months. It may be small, it may seem like just a practical piece of work that we’re doing that makes sense, but the challenge I want to put to the Government and to the Minister is that that democracy is under threat around the world and also in New Zealand, and there is a need to protect democracy and people’s faith in democracy.

So, yes, we can do a shorter process and have it done and dusted and back in the House in four months and one day, but I want us to think about what signals it sends to the public. Yes, it’s a few pages long, but actually it is around ensuring that people have faith in democracy. It’s not just us in our little bubble doing our own thing, protecting ourselves, and making sure we’re paid properly or making sure that, yes, Government continues to stand up, and has continuity. It’s making sure that people can engage in the process, that people can feel and see that the process is transparent, that people can have faith in the process that we undertake in this House, and that we’re not just slamming things through for the sake of it or just to make sure that, yeah, that might be right, that might be necessary, it might create more flexibility, and what others have talked about.

I want to come back to the fact that as it goes off to the Justice Committee—as submissions open—how do we make sure it is open, it is transparent, and people feel included in the process going forward so that faith in democracy is protected, because it is important. You might think, “Oh, yeah, come on, Glen, it’s just, you know, la, la, la!” But actually, it is important because we’ve seen, in this House, laws that have gone through in urgency. We’ve seen, in this House, things that have been done. I happily criticise the Government, but also take responsibility for what we are doing to make sure that we protect the institution—not for ourselves, not for our Cabinet, not for our parties, but protect the institution for New Zealanders, for democracy, and for a way forward that means that people choose to come and vote, choose to engage in this House, choose to engage in the legislation process, and choose to know that we’re doing what is right, not for us but for our country and for democracy.

So as it goes to select committee—six months, we’d love that; I understand we have the numbers—let’s consider the fact that it’s around ensuring people have faith in our democracy and that we’re doing what is right for the people and not what is right for us.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll start by actually wishing that previous speaker Glen Bennett a happy birthday for yesterday, and I’ll tell him that it’s just a number; don’t worry too much about that. Also, I acknowledge there’s another birthday girl that has just taken her seat here with Savannah as well, so happy birthday to you, Savannah.

So I stand as the last speaker on the last call of this first reading on the Constitution Amendment Bill. As has already been traversed by numerous speakers, it does make some changes to the electoral process, both leading up to the election as well as subsequent to the election. I actually think that these changes have been thought about for many terms prior to now. Obviously, one of them is getting rid of what they call the 28-day rule and another one there is stopping same-day enrolment.

So I’m looking forward to seeing the work that comes back to the House from the Justice Committee, a very busy committee, as we all know. I think they’re up to almost 50 bills that they’ve put through this particular term; a huge amount of work. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Constitution Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

I move, That the Constitution Bill be reported to the House by four months and one day after the bill receives its first reading.

I move, That the Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I present a legislative statement on the Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. This bill aims to—

I was just going to say, if you’re presenting a legislative statement—I haven’t got that on there, so I’m just going back to get the right word. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move that the Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill aims to improve revenue collection on goods by making collection fairer and more effective. The bill amends three existing Acts: the Customs and Excise Act 2018, the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, and the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985. It makes small but important changes to those existing pieces of legislation.

The primary aim of the bill is to introduce a levy regime to modernise the legal framework under which Customs recovers the costs of its goods management activities. These activities keep New Zealand safe and support our economy through the efficient flow of legitimate trade and compliance with border obligations. The smooth flow of trade is vital to our economy. I am very pleased and proud to say that Customs’ border management system is demonstrably one of the most efficient in the world. Most legitimate trade crosses the border quickly, with a minimum of disruption to industry. A recent study found that 98.7 percent of trade transactions, other than those referred for compliance checks, are processed within five minutes.

Customs already has an existing cost recovery regime in the Customs and Excise Act 2018, but this bill makes it more robust by enabling levies to be made as an alternative to fees by recovering goods management - related costs. Levies are a more appropriate type of charge when costs are recovered for a specific purpose and there may not be a direct line of sight between the costs and a payer. Levies are charged on classes of people or organisations—often those creating risks—to recover the costs of activities undertaken to achieve certain purposes, such as risk management. A fee, on the other hand, tends to be paid by an individual, person, or organisation for a specific service that they individually benefit from. An example of a fee is paid by an individual for their passport—[Minister coughs] Excuse me.

Now, this is the point of the day where I say have a drink of water. Just take your time, it’s OK.

Excuse me. [Minister coughs] I came out of my deathbed to come here! An example of a fee is a fee paid by an individual for a passport. The bill is only enabling legislation and does not itself create new levies or change existing cost recovery rates. [Minister coughs]

It’s OK. I’m going to allow, if the Minister would like, another Minister to continue the speech. It might be helpful. Thank you, Scott Simpson.

Yes, thank you, Scott.

on behalf of the Minister of Customs: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just to finish off where my colleague has left off, under a recent separate but related process—following extensive engagement with industry—the Government has made decisions to support Customs’ financial sustainability and to improve fairness to fee-payers and taxpayers by ensuring that those who create the need for or benefit from Customs’ services bear the costs of those services.

This bill enables some of those decisions to be implemented. The first is to replace Customs’ existing goods fees with levies from 1 April 2026. In addition to becoming levies, those cost recovery charges will be restructured to avoid some current cross-subsidisation between the types of fee-payers.

As well as enabling levies on goods, the bill will also enable a levy on arriving commercial vessels to fund Customs’ costs related to their management. This will end the situation whereby ship costs are partly met by goods fees. We need robust funding mechanisms in place and these need to be continually modernised to support Customs’ work to eliminate border and revenue risk and efficiently facilitate legitimate trade.

There are important safeguards in the bill. The first is that before any new levy can be made, the Minister of Customs is required to consult the appropriate persons, representative groups, Government departments, and Crown agencies. A recent example of this type of industry engagement was the process that the Government undertook at the end of last year to test and inform advice which led to Customs’ goods cost recovery changes. Public consultation resulted in submissions being received from a range of businesses and industry bodies. Officials held discussions with a range of shipping, airline, freight, and e-commerce companies.

Alongside this, a stakeholder reference group helped to ensure that the consultation material was high quality, and an industry-led, low-value goods technical advisory group was involved in testing the feasibility of options put forward to recover the cost of activities related to these goods.

The second safeguard is that the bill limits the scope of the levy-making power. To be recovered, costs must be incurred by Customs in or for the purpose of performing a function under the Customs and Excise Act or any other legislation relating to goods management.

The bill also prevents duplicate or overlapping recovery of costs—for example, costs that are already being recovered under the traveller-related levy. The border processing levy cannot be recovered under a goods levy.

The bill also makes specific improvements to two other revenue systems. Part 2 amends the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 to clarify an existing power that further regulations can specify agencies to collect fees to fund product stewardship schemes which ensure that the environmental impacts of a product are minimised across its lifetime. Those amendments also enable Customs’ trade single window system to be used if Customs was to become a fee collector in the future.

Part 3 amends the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985, and it will benefit some importers returning imported goods that do not meet specifications or are faulty. These changes will make it easier for replacement or repaired goods to be exempt from GST or for GST to be refunded as is appropriate.

The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee considered the bill and reported back to the House on 9 May this year, and I want to, on behalf of the Minister, thank the committee and the chair, Tim van de Molen, for its careful consideration of the bill. I appreciate its efficient deliberation of the bill, which means the benefits can be realised quickly. The committee recommended that the bill proceed without amendment.

In summary, this bill improves existing revenue collection systems and supports regulatory efficiency. The amendments will ensure Customs can fulfil its important goods management role at the border to protect New Zealand. Again, I thank the committee for its considered work and to those who took the time to provide a submission on the bill. I look forward to the passage of the bill through its remaining stages and commend the bill to this House.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 August 2025.