Parliamentary debates: Tuesday, 21 October 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.

Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

Petition of Hone Pani Tamati Waka Nene Harawira requesting that the House halt the amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act and urge the Government to protect Māori customary interests in the marine and coastal environment

petition of Tanya Waikato requesting that the House urge the Government to cancel the contract with the School Lunch Collective and reinstate contracts with local providers.

Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered 33 papers.

2024-25 annual reports of:

Education Review Office

Remuneration Authority

Ministry of Social Development

Southern Response

Land Information New Zealand

Department of Conservation

Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd

Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence

Ministry of Health, together with the Cancer Agency and non-departmental appropriations

Independent Children’s Monitor

Inland Revenue

Department of Internal Affairs

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, together with the Prime Minister’s statement under section 222(3) of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017

Office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner

Ministry of Justice, together with the Office of Treaty Settlements and Takutai Moana: Te Tari Whakatau and non-departmental appropriations

Ministry for Women

New Zealand Customs Service, together with the Border Chief Executive Board and non-departmental appropriations

Oranga Tamariki - Ministry for Children

Parliamentary Counsel Office

Ministry for Primary Industries, together with non-departmental appropriations

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, together with the National Emergency Management Agency and non-departmental appropriations

Public Service Commission

Ministry for Regulation

Serious Fraud Office

Social Investment Agency

Te Puni Kōkiri

Ministry of Transport

reports on non-departmental appropriations for 2024-25 of:

Media and Communications portfolio, Energy portfolio, Social Development and Employment portfolio, and the Tourism and Hospitality portfolio in Vote Business, Science and Innovation

Ministry of Education, Ngā Ara o te Mātauranga: The pathways of education 2024, incorporating New Zealand Schools: Ngā Kura o Aotearoa and WorkSafe’s Statement of performance expectations 2025/26.

I present the annual report of the Office of the Ombudsman. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Ten select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the review briefing on the 2023/24 annual review of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited

report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the petition of NZEI

reports of the Environment Committee on the:

Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill

report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, How ministers and officials developed the first emissions reduction plan - and how to do it better next time

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill

Public Finance Amendment Bill

reports of the Justice Committee on the:

briefing into the Justice Cluster

Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill

report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand.

The bills are set down for second reading and the review briefing, report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the briefing into the Justice Cluster are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of three bills.

Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill, introduction

Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill, introduction

Telecommunications Amendment Bill, introduction.

Those bills are set down for first reading.

Members, I have received a letter from Camilla Belich seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the Minister for the Public Service’s publishing of an open letter on 19 October about upcoming industrial action. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Politicians, including Ministers, express political views regularly. Not everyone agrees with those views. That is the nature of our democracy. I do not think the expression of a political view warrants the setting aside of the business of the House in this instance. The application is declined.

to the Minister of Finance

What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Yesterday, Stats New Zealand released the latest figures for the Consumers Price Index—the CPI—which showed annual CPI inflation increasing slightly, from 2.7 percent in the June quarter, to 3 percent in September, but remaining within the Reserve Bank’s target 1 to 3 percent band.

How does this result compare to past inflation?

This is the fifth consecutive quarter that annual CPI inflation has been within the Reserve Bank’s target range. Prior to that, inflation was above the top of the band for three years. Let me remind members that inflation in the four quarters of 2022 was 6.9 percent in the March quarter, then 7.3 percent, then 7.2 percent, and then 7.2 percent in the December quarter. These crippling price increases continue to have an impact on Kiwi families and businesses.

What is driving the current bump in annual CPI inflation?

Almost a third of the annual inflation figure was due to food items—including dairy, meat, and fruit and vegetables—which have been impacted by rising global commodity prices. The good news is that domestic price pressures continue to ease. Non-tradables inflation—that is, for goods and services not exposed to international competition—fell to 3.5 percent, which is the lowest rate since mid-2021. None the less, there are pockets of concern. Local authority rates rose 8.8 percent in the year to September, and that’s why we are clear, in Government, in our call for councils to focus on the basics and to keep rates under control.

What is the outlook for inflation in interest rates?

Economists were expecting the current bump in inflation to peak in the September quarter. Looking ahead, commodity export prices have levelled off, and so food inflation is expected to ease and inflation is expected to fall to somewhere near the mid-point target of 2 percent early next year, easing pressure on households and businesses. Clearly, the Reserve Bank is not concerned about lingering inflation, as it reduced the official cash rate by half a percent earlier this month, and financial markets are fully expecting the bank to make another 25 basis point reduction at the next opportunity in November.

to the Prime Minister

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

Yes.

What was the annual rate of inflation one year ago and what is it today?

What I can tell the member is that it’s not 7.3 percent, which is what it was under his Government. Because he had an 84 percent increase in Government spending, he drove inflation up to 7.3 percent, and then what he ended up doing was actually tripling our debt as well. So thank you very much, Labour.

Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Yeah, I think I can anticipate that. The Prime Minister might like to answer the question that was actually asked of him.

Well, our inflation rate is at 3 percent. It was at 7.3 percent under Labour.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that. The Prime Minister keeps addressing matters that he doesn’t have ministerial responsibility for. He is absolutely responsible for what the rate of inflation is today and what it was one year ago when he was also Prime Minister.

I think it was about 2.2 percent, maybe 2.5 percent, depending on exactly what you’re talking about. But I’d just say to the member that two of the big drivers of our inflation chucking up to 3 percent—which is well within the band, which is where we need to be; not 7.3 percent like the last lot were at. But if the member feels so strongly about helping the Government, he could do two things. One is he could actually come on board and actually support fast track because that’ll get more renewable electricity built. Actually, he could repeal the oil and gas ban and support that decision because, actually, that would help lower electricity prices. Electricity prices are about 11 percent of the growth we’ve seen in the last quarter, and, actually, council rates are the other 9 percent. I’d just say to the member, get on board and actually support the council rates caps too, but I haven’t heard a single word from you about that, so I look forward to seeing that.

That’s because I don’t make comments like that.

Sorry.

What proportion of current inflation is driven by the increase in Government prices?

I don’t have that number with me. What I can say is that isn’t it fantastic that this is a Government that, through excellent economic management and getting a grip on Government spending, has been able to lower domestic inflation from 3.7 percent to 3.5 percent? It’s definitely not 7.3 percent as it was under a Labour-Greens Government, and if Labour and the Greens really cared about it instead of all the crocodile tears, then what you’d do is support fast track.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Once again, the question was about something that the Prime Minister does have responsibility for, which is the increase in Government prices during his time as Prime Minister over the last year. He doesn’t have any responsibility for the other issues that he was raising, which is what was happening previously. He hasn’t addressed the bit that he is actually responsible for, which is what proportion of current inflation is driven by the increase in prices being imposed by his Government.

Well, he did answer that right at the start, and as you know, inflation figures are taken over time and they do indicate a trend. So it’s not unusual that people go back in history to report how that trend has followed.

Is he still laser focused on the cost of living; if so, why do basic staples cost more than ever, with bread now 50 percent more expensive than it was just one year ago?

Well, I appreciate the member, based off this fine document called New Zealand Future Fund, which is a fantastic document—

Point of order, Mr Speaker.

No, I think—wait on.

No, I’ve got to make the point—he’s economically illiterate.

No, that is not an acceptable answer. There was a pretty straight question asked. Give a straight answer.

What I’d say is there are two big drivers to our slight increase in inflation—that is, electricity up 11 percent and council rates up 9 percent. Actually, council rates being up 9 percent to 12 percent over the last wee while is actually also a contributor to Government fees and charges. I’d just say to the member, if you want to do something about electricity and lowering electricity prices and electricity inflation, which is three times the level of inflation, support fast track, come out and give the commitment for a decade that you’ll repeal the oil and gas ban, make sure you get to a single position on public-private partnerships—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was about the price of bread. The Prime Minister hasn’t addressed the price of bread at all. It’s a basic staple. Most New Zealanders eat it every day. It’s pretty important to them. I think they want to know why it’s gone up by 50 percent in the last year.

Well, I think an answer that points to drivers of the price increase does address the question.

Why have rents increased by 2.6 percent over the last year, according to the Consumers Price Index figures released yesterday, when he said his $3 billion tax cut for landlords was going to lower rents?

Yeah, there’s a story of two tails on rents. One is, actually, for new rents, prices have lowered, and for existing rents, prices have gone up slightly.

Can the Prime Minister confirm that inflation has been managed within the 1 to 3 percent target band for the last five quarters, after years of being out of control; if so, what steps has the Government taken that have helped make that possible?

Well, good economic management from this coalition Government; a senior team that actually understands economics and can deal with numbers, unlike what we’ve seen in the great New Zealand Future Fund documental pamphlet.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. On at least three occasions, sir, you have told the Prime Minister that he’s not to talk about the policies of other parties during question time; and in this instance, it’s in response to a question from his own side.

Yes, and—speaking to the point of order?

Point of order. I mean, this is an Opposition that’s been there two years, sir, and this is their first economic policy—

No, no—order! That’s not a point of order. You were pretty quick off your feet—two people off their feet on that point of order. I have stamped on that prior. It is not appropriate for the Government to use questions to attack the Opposition. It never has been.

How many New Zealanders are currently on a jobseeker benefit today, and how does that compare with one year ago?

About 217,000. But what was incredibly tragic was that in a period of low unemployment—about 3.2 percent—60,000 more people got consigned to benefits and jobseeker benefits; it increased by 50 percent. The last Government had no interest in connecting people into work and training—

Point of order. Mr Speaker, once again, the question was about a period in which the Prime Minister is responsible. He was Prime Minister for almost the entirety of the last two years. I was asking him to compare unemployment today to one year ago. I wasn’t asking him about historical unemployment numbers; I was asking him how has unemployment increased over the last year.

That is true, but it’s not inappropriate for a Minister to refer to a situation that they inherited at some point, when there is a change of Government; that is in Speakers’ Rulings.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister did not inherit the unemployment rate a year ago; he had been Prime Minister for almost a year at that point. The question was about what has happened in the last year.

Well, that might be true, but he’s talking to a trend. The Prime Minister might like to elucidate, that gets closer to the specifics of the answer required.

Well, we’re turning things around, and you’ve got to start with the brutal facts of your reality. The reality was that we started with a 3.2 percent unemployment rate and 60,000 more people on the jobseeker benefit—up 50 percent under the last Government. What is this Government doing? We’re making sure that young people are connected to employment, work, or further training. That’s why you’ve seen the work that we’ve done on 18- to 19-year-olds being a parental responsibility. That’s why you’ve seen the work that we’ve been doing on traffic lights and obligations that people have to look for work.

Does he stand by his claim from five months ago, that “Unemployment is just almost peaking and about to come down.”; if so, how does he explain the fact that it has continued to increase and is now at its highest number, in terms of job seekers, since 2012?

Yeah. Look, economists forecast that we’re peaking about now. We expect that that will start to trend down, as the economy is growing. But here’s how it happened: I mean, basically, if you increase Government spending by 84 percent—and a lot of it wasteful, including the $66 billion on—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Not only is he not responsible for the issues that he’s raising, but they’re not relevant to the question that was asked. If he’s going to attack the Opposition, he’ll at least need to have some attempt to make it relevant to the question that was asked.

With all due respect—[Interruption]. Just a minute, everyone. You took things right back to 2012, so for the Prime Minister to reference matters that might have occurred between 2012 and 2025, it becomes somewhat reasonable.

Why should New Zealanders believe him now when he confidently predicted unemployment had peaked, yet it’s still going up; he said, over a year ago, that the economy had “turned the corner”, when it’s shrunk since then; he said his Government was going to increase infrastructure investment, but instead has cut it by $2.9 billion, putting thousands of people out of work?

Well, I can tell the member that we are a Government that is getting spending gripped up. We do not increase Government spending by 84 percent. We have inflation down from 7.3 percent to 3 percent. We’ve had eight interest rate cuts, not 12 interest rate rises. We have a projection for the next two years that we’ll grow faster than Australia. There are 240,000 jobs being created, while our Minister for Social Development and Employment is doing a great job getting our people ready for that. Importantly, we’re going to get people back into work. But it’s interesting, a day after their first policy launch and not a single question on this.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister is very helpfully promoting Labour’s latest policy release. I seek leave to table it.

Surprisingly, you will find that I already know that it’s publicly available.

In relation to unemployment—

Wait on, wait on.

—can the Prime Minister confirm that unemployment now is lower than was projected in the 2023 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update?

Yes, I can, and what I can also confirm is that we’ve taken 21,000 people off welfare and into work. The efforts of the Minister for Social Development and all of that team—they’re doing an excellent job making sure we’re getting people connected to work training: the case management efforts, the obligations, the traffic light system, the 18- to 19-year-olds; all designed to get people to work.

Question No. 3—Laura McClure. [Interruption] Just wait for the quiet to occur over here.

to the Minister for Children

What is the Government doing to improve outcomes and actions?

Since coming into office, we have focused the children’s system on what matters: the safety and wellbeing of children. That is why I set four priorities for Oranga Tamariki: ensuring the safety of children and young people, supporting caregivers, addressing youth offending, and improving complaint management and practice. This focus is now seeing results. Today, I am pleased to announce we have not only achieved but surpassed the Government target of a 15 percent reduction in serious and persistent youth offending. We have done this more than four years ahead of the deadline, keeping communities safe by supporting young people to make better choices but also holding them to account when necessary.

What is the Minister doing to support caregivers?

We have significantly improved the support Oranga Tamariki offers to caregivers. We have increased the guidance and training that caregivers can receive and also established a caregiver panel as a way of receiving direct insight into caregiver experiences. This will play a key role in shaping the caregiver work programme and ensuring continuous improvement. Multiple and unplanned care arrangements have been associated with negative outcomes for children, and that’s why it’s great to see that, in the last year, 86 percent of children in out-of-home placements have had stable living arrangements with two or fewer caregivers.

What is the Minister doing to support front-line social workers?

We have had a real focus on supporting our front-line social workers through professionalisation of the workforce. Oranga Tamariki has faced a sharp increase in reports of concern recently—up 44 percent overall. However, the front-line workforce has responded incredibly well to the increased demand and largely maintained the levels of service and timeliness. I want to thank the social workers who work every day to improve the lives of our children and young people. I’m impressed and inspired by your work.

What is the Minister doing to improve the standards in Oranga Tamariki residences?

We have had a real focus on lifting the standards within our care and protection in youth justice residences. In response to recent reviews, including the abuse in care inquiry, we have legislation progressing through the House this afternoon that will see changes to improve the safety for children and staff by repealing the ability to undertake strip-searches of children and young people, allowing universal searches on entry to secure youth justice residences, and requiring search plans to be made with children and young people in all residences. Staff in residences tell me they have noticed a real difference. They feel empowered to do their job and have confidence that, when they escalate concerns, they will be acted on, not ignored.

How is Oranga Tamariki improving its relationships with partners and providers?

We know that Oranga Tamariki cannot achieve everything on its own. Oranga Tamariki have been engaging with providers on a new commissioning and investment plan. While this plan is implemented, Oranga Tamariki will be extending most contracts due to end this year through to March 2027. This will provide stability and certainty for the provider sector and minimise disruption to services. Last week, I was at the Mokopuna Ora conference hosted by Waikato-Tainui. The Mokopuna Ora initiative has seen 98 percent of children that they engage with successfully remain out of State care. This is an example of what we can achieve when we all work together and focus on fixing what matters.

to the Minister of Finance

Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Yes, including my statement that I put more effort into my Uber Eats order than that member put into her policy brain fart yesterday.

Why did she say last month that “We’ve got inflation under control” when inflation has increased over the last four quarters and is now at 3 percent?

Well, I said that last month because, three years ago, inflation was 7.3 percent, and now it’s 3 percent.

What does she say to Sarah, who told Stuff, in relation to rising prices, “Everywhere—food, petrol, electricity and gas, the list could go on. Basic commodities are now becoming luxury items.”?

Well, I would say to Sarah what I say to people who ask me similar questions, which is that we acknowledge that times are tough and we acknowledge that for some everyday food staples like bread and cheese and butter—as has famously been debated—things are a bit higher than they were a few years ago. However, when you look at things in the round, inflation is back within the 1-3 percent target band. Ultimately, the ultimate measure of affordability in the economy is whether wages are rising faster than inflation, which they are. The Government’s plan is to build a more productive economy so that wages rise faster than inflation over time so that people can get ahead. We acknowledge that inflation was a problem three years ago. We acknowledge that inflation is now back within the band; we need to keep it there. Most importantly, we need to make the kind of productivity-enhancing investments in infrastructure and planning reform that will allow growth to continue and wages to continue to rise.

Are doctors, teachers, nurses, allied care workers, ACC workers getting ahead; if so, why are they striking on Thursday?

Well, I’m not going to enter the bargaining between the people that the member has pointed to. However, what I would say is that the Government is engaging in good faith with those unions, with representatives of those unions. We encourage them to meet us and settle so that people who are in our hospital system can get the care that they need, and kids can go to school and get taught by our brilliant teachers with an excellent new curriculum—or a curriculum that is coming—and a structured literacy approach that is already paying massive dividends for our young kids.

Why won’t he listen to teachers who are saying they are getting a pay cut and are striking on Thursday?

Teachers are not getting a pay cut. They’ve been made a reasonable offer. Not only that, the Government has said that we will pay the teacher registration fees, which is quite an annual impost on teachers that the Government is now meeting for them. Most particularly, I would point to the investments in Budget 2025—

For the political ideology, not for teachers.

OK.

For a long period of time—

Just a minute. Some of those interjections aren’t particularly helpful. It’s clearly an important matter—(1) because it’s been asked in a question in the House; (2) because we know that there is considerable concern by a number of New Zealanders. The answers for the rest of this answer will be heard in silence. Start again.

I was just going to make the point, Mr Speaker, which is that something that I think many members in the House will have heard for a long period of time, in relation to education, is that we need to do more for learning support. The Government agrees, which is why in Budget 2025, we made the single largest investment in learning support in a generation of over $700 million for a range of incredibly important initiatives to provide better support for kids who need it most. The teacher unions have often said that is what they want for education. The Government is delivering.

Will she and the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, front the teachers strike on Thursday, given she promised there would be no cut to front-line services?

The Government will be at the bargaining table, which is where they should be. [Interruption] Well, it’s a bit difficult to settle a pay negotiation unless there are two sides at the bargaining table. We encourage the unions to enter the bargaining table in good faith. But also, the Opposition needs to realise—as the unions should do—there is no magic money tree in this economy. [Interruption] I encourage the Labour members to go to fiscal literacy school; they need it.

to the Prime Minister

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

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

Yes.

When is the last time that the Prime Minister directly talked to a teacher, nurse, or firefighter about their pay and conditions?

Friday.

And what, exactly, did that worker have to say about this Government’s, in real terms, under-inflation pay offers for those workers?

What they did is they told me how well structured literacy and structured numeracy is working, which is fantastic, and how much they appreciate that. They also said they appreciate the $750 million investment in learning support. With respect to their union, they made a comment that maybe they’re not representing their members as well as they could be.

Does it pay better to be a landlord or a nurse under the rules of the economy that this Government has set up?

I reject the characterisation in that question. I don’t know what she’s trying to get to. Probably teaching.

Do nurses have safe working conditions?

Look, the member could help by actually getting her union friends to come to the bargaining table. That’s what is needed here. The reality is that we have kids who have missed a hell of a lot of school. We’re two weeks away from NCEA exams. We’ve got 6,000 patients who are going to be disrupted, after Labour ran the wait-list up 30 times. And we’ve actually got parents who are being mucked around—

Point of order. I asked a very simple question with one leg, which was regarding this Government’s resourcing of two particular entities—whether his Government had given more support and resourcing to landlords or nurses. He did not address the question.

No, that was not the question. Your question was “Are nurses working in a safe environment?”—or some other such as that—and I think the response was reasonable in that regard. Is there another supp?

What does the Prime Minister have to say to workers and delegates who can prove that they have turned up to the bargaining table while the Government negotiators sometimes don’t turn up, in the instance of Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and otherwise do not have the mandate to unlock the resources necessary for decent pay and conditions?

We’re ready to meet with the unions any time. How about they cancel the strike and we meet on Thursday?

Can the Prime Minister confirm that over 500 primary principals have settled with the Primary Principals Collective Bargaining Union (PPCBU) because they bargained in good faith, with openness and transparency, and that more principals are leaving the New Zealand Educational Institute and joining the PPCBU for that very reason?

I can, and I thought they did a very good deal. They got a very good deal for their members, closing out the negotiation last Friday. They got a 2.5 percent increase immediately. They get a 2.1 percent increase in October. Within 12 months, they’re up 4.7 percent. We’re not backdating settlements, so every week that goes by, members are missing out from the unions by not settling and not being able to come with good-faith bargaining. The other thing they did very well was that they made very clear what their priorities and what they’re trade-offs were, and it was a very constructive negotiation. I think they got a good deal for their members, and I think all parties were satisfied.

to the Minister of Transport

What announcements has he made on the next steps for the Government’s Roads of National Significance programme?

How many times?

Well, many times, because there are many roads.

How many times have you announced this?

Many times, Mr O’Connor. I was pleased to confirm—[Interruption]

Wait. Sorry. That response from the Minister was probably acceptable, given the speed with which there was an interjection on him before he had even started, but we’ll just settle things down.

I was pleased to confirm, yesterday, that a combined funding of nearly $1.2 billion will see the Government’s roads of national significance programme move to the next phase of development. This is about building a long-term pipeline of transport infrastructure investment to address our deficit and deliver jobs and growth. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) board has now endorsed investment cases for all of the roads of national significance and has approved funding for the key next steps. This is a very important part of building a transport pipeline that I hope we can all get behind.

What specific investment cases have been endorsed by the NZTA board?

The NZTA board has now endorsed investment cases for all of the roads of national significance—most recently, in August, sections two and three of the Northland Expressway; the East-West Link, a critical project for congestion between State Highway 1 and State Highway 20; Hamilton Southern Links, which will unlock 17,000 new houses; Petone to Grenada and the Cross Valley Link, which is very important for Wellington; State Highway 1 Wellington improvements, which includes a second Mount Victoria and second Terrace tunnel, which we’re thinking about naming the Julie Anne Genter Memorial Tunnel; and the Hope Bypass.

That was an unnecessary reference to another member of the House but one that the House might choose to hold you to.

What will the $1.2 billion of funding to progress the RoNS—or roads of national significance—go towards?

Of this combined funding of $1.2 billion, $675 million is for consenting, design, route protection, site investigations, and some early works, and $515 million is for property acquisition, to get under way on these projects. Some people seem to think you can just turn up and build a road tomorrow; you can’t. There’s actually a whole bunch of stuff that has to happen.

Oh, really?

Yeah, well, you guys didn’t build any, so don’t come at me about building roads. Some of this work is very important before we can actually start construction, and, of course, it helps build the pipeline for the future.

What projects are in construction already?

Construction’s under way on Takitimu Northern Link Stage 1, which used to be called the Tauranga Northern Link; phase one of State Highway 29, Tauriko West, the Ōmanawa bridge replacement; and, of course, Ōtaki to north of Levin. Construction is due to begin on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway in November. Procurement on the Northland Expressway section one is progressing, with a preferred bidder due to be confirmed in 2026, and recently we had consents granted for Cambridge to Piarere, which is the extension to the Waikato Expressway. Takitimu Northern Link Stage 2 has had a fast-track panel appointed, and Mill Road Stage 1 and Belfast to Pegasus and the Woodend Bypass are currently working through their fast-track applications.

7. on behalf of to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does she stand by her statement that “the coalition Government is delivering for workers across the board”, and in what way is recent and upcoming strike action a reflection of that delivery, if at all?

Yes, I do stand by my statement in the context in which it was made. This Government is delivering for all workers, both in the public and private sectors. In my own portfolio, I am focused on getting the workplace relations laws right to ensure workers have access to more and better jobs. I’m not responsible for any union’s decision to strike, but I will say that the Government is concerned about any impact that strikes may have on patients, kids’ education, and working parents. These are tough economic times, and we need to acknowledge that any Government spending, including the money to fund public sector salaries, comes from the taxes of other working Kiwis.

Why do nurses have to strike in order to highlight that patients are at risk due to unsafe staffing levels?

Nurses don’t have to strike. What I would encourage them to do is to get back around the bargaining table because it’s not possible to have a conversation in a strike.

Why do firefighters have to strike in order to highlight that communities are at risk due to unsafe equipment and fire trucks?

Once again—I feel like I might say this ad nauseam—nobody needs to strike. In order to have a negotiation for a bargaining proposition, two parties need to sit around a bargaining table.

Are more than 36,000 nurses, 11,500 healthcare workers, and over 40,000 teachers all striking for political reasons?

I can’t speak to why a particular union might take that action. However, what I would encourage them to do, once again, is to get around the bargaining table, because you know who loses out in a strike? It’s the patients. It’s the 6,000 patients who are waiting for their surgeries, for their diagnoses. Those people will not find it fair that they have to cancel their appointments because unions decided to go on strike. In the interest of fairness for those patients, I would ask the union to get back around the negotiating and bargaining table; that’s how you have a conversation.

Does she understand that patients are already facing delays in getting their operations, does she understand that there are already problems to do with staffing in the teaching workforce, and does she appreciate that the reason that they’re taking strike action is in order to make things better for patients and students?

I understand a great many things, but one thing that I understand—that that member seems not to—is that in order to have a conversation with two parties negotiating, both parties need to be around a negotiating table.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education and asks—

Stop—just hold on a minute. There’s sort of a general murmur all around the House, so we’ll just, quietly, start again.

to the Minister of Education

What announcements has she made regarding supporting students with higher and complex needs?

Strengthening learning support for students with additional needs has been a priority of mine since day one. That’s why we delivered the largest boost in learning support in a generation and are expanding the special school network. Now, this Government has released the extended New Zealand Curriculum, a resource that provides support for students with high and complex needs, typically Ongoing Resourcing Scheme - verified children, and it outlines learning in literacy and numeracy. This is the first time in our history that anything like this has been provided, and it’ll support around 12,000 students with high and complex additional needs from term 1 next year. Specialist teachers are already receiving high-quality professional learning and development (PLD) to support the extended curriculum and provide students with the education that they deserve.

How is she backing specialist teachers to support these students?

Previously, teachers working with these students with high and complex needs have needed to adapt the existing curriculum to the needs of those students and create their own resources. The extended New Zealand Curriculum will reduce the burden on teachers by providing them with the tools that they need to support their students with additional needs. So far, we’ve delivered over $4 million in PLD for teachers to support students with complex needs using the Expanded New Zealand Curriculum, and nearly 3,000 teachers and countless students have benefited already. And it’s just the beginning.

Why has she made these changes?

Strengthening learning support is one of my six education priorities and the Expanded New Zealand Curriculum is an important part of that because we value the progress that all students are making in the curriculum, and this initiative is inclusion in action. An example of this in action is the adaption of structured literacy to make literacy accessible to children with high and complex needs. For children who aren’t able to use their voice, reading and writing might just be their superpower. Structured literacy is even more important in these contexts, and students are using their adaption technologies or pointing to answers on a screen to show they’re learning.

What feedback has she received on this announcement?

Well, Maureen Poulter, president of the Special Education Principals’ Association New Zealand—or SEPANZ—has described the New Zealand expanded curriculum as “a historic moment for complex learners”. She said, on behalf of SEPANZ, “This targeted investment in the capability of the specialist workforce is a powerful statement of the commitment to equity and to honouring the right of all students to access high quality, effective instruction. Thank you for your commitment and the Government’s commitment to these structural and professional changes.” This Government is delivering for our highest-needs students like no Government before.

to the Prime Minister

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

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

Yes.

Does the Prime Minister think that thousands of workers are striking on Thursday because they want to disrupt the lives of the patients and children that they care for every day; or are they striking because his Government has chosen not to provide them with better pay and working conditions?

Well, I think it’s a terrible tragedy that it’s going to impact kids who have missed out on a lot of schooling, kids who are about to go into NCEA exams; I think about the parents being mucked around, and I think about the 6,000 patients that are missing out on their surgeries because a Labour-Greens Government increased the wait-list by 30 times. This is a politically motivated move by unions; it’s unwarranted, it’s unfair, and they should just get back to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.

Do nurses have safe working conditions?

Yes, and we value all the contributions of our workers—our public sector employees. But, look, I’d just say to the members, push your unions to get back to the table. Let’s not talk about Palestine as the No. 1 issue when you come to meet a Minister; actually care about educational outcomes and attendance. Isn’t it fantastic the progress we’ve made on getting our kids to school, making sure we teach them on structured literacy, structured numeracy, the NCEA refresh, so we get our kids set up for the future? We’re making tremendous progress on education so our kids can get high-paying jobs down the road.

The line of questioning is going to stop if the barracking that accompanies it continues.

How are nurses and teachers meant to shoulder rising costs—like household power bills, which have actually gone up 11.4 percent in the last year—when their pay hasn’t increased anywhere near as fast as inflation?

Well, that’s why I’d encourage the member to get in behind and support fast track, because there are 25 renewable energy projects that will increase electricity generation in this country by 40 percent. That’s why I would encourage the member and her party to actually support the repeal of the oil and gas ban for another decade so that we can get the thermal capacity that we need to be able to put downward pressure on electricity prices.

How are our teachers and healthcare workers meant to feed their whānau when pay offers continue to lag behind growing inflation while fruit and vegetable prices have increased by 7.4 percent in the last year?

Well, that’s just not true. I’d just encourage the member to encourage her friends in the unions to get them to get back to the bargaining table. That’s where this can be worked out.

Why is he passing the blame for the current state of industrial relations on to our teachers and healthcare workers, and the numerous sectors that have had to take industrial action this year, instead of taking responsibility for his Government’s inadequate offers?

I’d just say, we value all public sector employees—our teachers, our nurses, our doctors. This is an issue about unions: unions not choosing to get to the table with good-faith bargaining; unions not wanting to take new offers out to their members; unions wanting to go on strike when there’s a teacher-only day and Labour Day on Monday. We’ve just come out of school holidays, and they want to do it two weeks before the next exam period. This is about unions who choose not to go to binding arbitration when the Minister offers to both Health New Zealand’s CEO and the senior doctors’ union to go to binding arbitration. They refuse. They’re not serious.

to the Prime Minister

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

Yes.

Does the Prime Minister accept that Māori customary rights to the foreshore and seabed existed before the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and, therefore, cannot be lawfully granted or extinguished by Crown legislation?

Yes, we do—in answer to the first part of the question—but we are striking the right balance between recognising Māori customary rights and also the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders by just bringing the legislation back to what was intended back in 2011.

Is the Prime Minister opposing iwi and hapū customary title over the foreshore and seabed because it limits his Government’s ability to approve seabed mining, bottom trawling, and deep-sea oil drilling?

No—because we want to ensure that it’s interpreted and applied as the Parliament intended.

If the Crown is claiming that no one owns the foreshore and seabed, why is it granting foreign companies the right to gain consent to, and to profit from, seabed mining and deep-sea oil drilling?

We’re a Government that is actually trying to make sure that we get the marine and coastal area (MACA) legislation back to what it was intended to do in 2011, which balances the customary rights of Māori and the interests—the legitimate interests—of all New Zealanders. That’s what we’re doing here.

Does the Prime Minister find it curious that a member would sit in this House but question its right to make laws?

Well, the Prime Minister may make a very brief comment.

I assume all members are honourable.

Does he believe the Government’s track record on stewardship of our coastal and marine environment instils faith in the New Zealand public?

Sorry, I missed the question. Could you repeat it, please?

Āe. Does he believe the Government’s track record on stewardship of our coastal and marine environments instils faith in the New Zealand public?

Yes, and I’m very proud of the work that we have done across this House on improving protection for the Hauraki Gulf, in particular.

Does he think the closure, the ban on scalloping, the ban on crayfishing north of Auckland, and the state of the southern blue cod fishery demonstrates good Government stewardship of the coastal and marine environment?

I have great confidence in our excellent Minister of fisheries, who balances all of those considerations.

Does he believe the Government’s track record on the stewardship of our harbours and rivers instils faith in the New Zealand public?

Yes, and I also believe that they see that the improvement in Māori literacy rates for new entrants is also giving them great trust in what this Government is doing, as well.

Does the fact that two-thirds of rivers and half of groundwater bores are contaminated by E. coli, nitrogen, and other contaminants, while two-thirds of lakes are in poor or very poor condition demonstrates good Government stewardship?

We want to make sure that we protect our natural environment but also this Government is unapologetically focused on economic growth, as well—as well as also lifting the immunisation rates for young Māori under the age of two.

Who should New Zealanders trust more to look after our coastlines, based on their track record of stewardship: te iwi Māori or New Zealand Governments?

This is a Government that’s actually making sure we advance New Zealand economically and we protect our environment, and we’ll continue to do that.

Does he believe his Government’s current MACA amendment bill actions are helping to bring iwi Treaty settlements to a close, or drawing them out even longer?

It’s not about Treaty settlements. This is about striking the right balance between the recognition of Māori customary rights and also the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders. In having had a lowering of the threshold under the courts, we’re bringing this back to what Parliament intended in 2011. It’s pretty simple.

to the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology

Does he stand by all of the Government’s decisions regarding the game development sector; if so, why?

on behalf of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology: Yes, I stand by the support that this Government is providing for our high-tech, high-performing game development sector, particularly our recently announced funding increase for early stage game development from 2026, which more than doubles the support they currently receive. As a result of the industry’s hard work, talent, and creativity and the Government’s continued support, the game development sector has seen strong growth, with a 38 percent increase in pre-tax income over the last financial year and a 29 percent increase in employment.

Why didn’t he increase the game development sector rebate, given a recently published review found that raising the cap would ensure New Zealand remains globally competitive while continuing to benefit from the revenue, jobs, and innovation they generate?

As I said in my answer to the primary question, the sector is doing incredibly well, including a 29 percent increase in the number of people employed, and the decision was to focus the increased funding—$2.75 million—for the Centre of Digital Excellence.

How many game development jobs will end up overseas as a result of the decision not to increase the funding cap when 200 Kiwis a day are already leaving the country to find work overseas?

Well, I’m not sure that that member has been listening, but we have seen a 29 percent increase in employment in the game development sector. We are performing better than Australia and actually have a better scheme than Australia, so why would they go when they get a better offer here?

What’s more important to the Government: keeping well-paid, high-tech jobs in a growing sector in New Zealand, or giving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts to tobacco companies?

Our Government is really, really proud to back our high-performing game development sector. They’re doing incredibly well. They’re doing better here than they are in Australia, and our Government backs growth, we back exports, and we back the sector.

If the Government is proud, and if the Government is interested in economic growth, why won’t he do all he can to create jobs and wealth here in New Zealand and increase the game development sector rebate?

As I said, we have doubled the amount of funding for the Centre of Digital Excellence, which is about early stage game development. That is where we saw the opportunity to provide additional support. The sector is really incredibly positive about the work our Government is doing, and I am surprised as to where that member is getting his intel from, because it’s clearly wrong.

Does he agree with the Prime Minister that young New Zealanders struggling to find work should move for jobs that don’t exist, or will he commit to investing in a growing high-tech sector to generate well-paid and innovative jobs for the future?

I’m not sure that member has his ears on, because I have said that employment has grown 29 percent in the last year. The industry has earned $513 million in 2024 and is projected to surpass $750 million this year. It’s great news, the sector is in great heart, and we’re supporting them.

My question is to the Minister—[Interruption]

Hold on, Dr Campbell. The House will just gather itself. Questions are heard in silence.

to the Minister for Vocational Education

What recent announcements has she made about vocational education?

This Government has delivered on its promise to disestablish Te Pūkenga and rebuild a vocational education system that works for New Zealanders. We’re restoring regional decision-making to our polytechnics and putting industry back in the driver’s seat for work-based learning. With the passing of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill, 10 regional polytechnics will be stood up by 1 January 2026, with four to be considered early next year, and eight industry skills boards will also be established on 1 January 2026. This reform is a key part of our Going for Growth agenda, rebuilding a system that delivers real skills for real jobs, supports businesses, and strengthens the pipeline of talent that keeps our economy moving. It’s about ensuring vocational education drives productivity and prosperity.

What does this mean for industry training?

It means industry is back where it belongs, in the driver’s seat of industry training. Through our reforms, eight new industry skills boards will take charge of standard setting, qualifications development, and the endorsement and moderation of delivery of industry training. This ensures apprenticeships and on-the-job training are practical, relevant, and directly linked to skills that employers need. This reform supports our Going for Growth agenda, empowering industry to train for the future, boost productivity, and drive stronger economic performance.

They’re very long answers.

What does this mean for the regions?

It means regions are back in control of their polytechnics. Under Te Pūkenga, decisions about training and education were made from the centre, disconnected from local needs. Our reforms restore regional control, with polytechnics empowered to respond to the skills and industries that are important to their communities. It means local employers can be confident that their polytech graduates are job-ready, learners can study and train close to home, and communities benefit from a stronger, more sustainable regional workforce. This is about putting regions back in charge and unlocking the full potential of local economies, ensuring skills, jobs, and investment flow to support this Government’s Going For Growth agenda.

Good. Now we’ll have a very concise answer to what I presume is the last supplementary.

Excellent. What does this mean for the learner?

It means learners can be confident that they will have access to qualifications that are industry designed and regionally relevant to give them the best opportunity to gain employment. These reforms give learners stronger pathways from study to work, greater confidence in their qualifications, and better support from stable, accountable providers—all part of this Government’s Going For Growth agenda to deliver real skills for real jobs.

Does she agree with Civil Contractors New Zealand’s chief executive Alan Pollard, who said about her reforms, “It is not about training but about cutting costs.”; if not, why not?

I’m delighted to say that Alan Pollard has been very keen to be involved in the reforms and has made himself available to be a board member of the infrastructure industry skills board to help drive these reforms.

I present a legislative statement on the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill.

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

I move, That the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 23 March 2026.

The Government is committed to recognising and delivering a comprehensive response to the royal commission for survivors of abuse in care, and this bill builds on the significant amount of work that has been delivered in the 15 months since the release of the commission’s final report. In May, the Government announced a significant investment of $533 million to improve the current State redress system as quickly as possible for survivors of abuse in care, investing in changes that have a direct impact for them. Key investments include increasing the average redress payments for new claimants from $19,180 to $30,000; providing top-up payments of 50 percent to survivors who have already settled claims, to ensure consistency with increased payments—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m sorry to interrupt the speaker at the moment, but it is really difficult to hear when members next to me are having a constant conversation on this serious matter.

Yes, I’d ask members, if you have conversations, to head out to the lobbies to hold them there. The Minister will resume her speech.

We’ve introduced a common payments framework so that survivors receive the same financial redress for similar experiences of abuse regardless of where in State care that abuse occurred, and we’ve improved system capacity to increase claims processing over the next three years. So far, agencies have paid over $11 million in top-up payments to over 900 survivors, at an average amount of almost $12,000.

This bill provides that the purpose of the State redress scheme is to recognise a person’s experience of abuse in care and offer a pathway as an alternative to litigation, to provide for redress for abuse in care. Redress includes a financial payment, an apology, access to care records and legal services, and counselling or other wellbeing services. The bill will apply to redress schemes operated by Oranga Tamariki and the ministries of Education, Health, and Social Development. It will also apply to claims arising from programmes for young people run by Te Puni Kōkiri and its predecessors, and the Department of Corrections in relation to claims of abuse in youth penal institutions. The bill will require these agencies to publish their eligibility criteria for redress. The bill does not apply to claims that currently sit with school boards, faith-based organisations, or other non-State providers.

In May, the Government also stated that its intention is to introduce a new process regarding how some very serious offenders who are survivors of abuse in care access financial redress. This is to ensure that the granting of financial redress to people who have committed serious offences does not bring the State redress system into disrepute. This new process applies to survivors seeking redress who have been convicted of serious, violent, or sexual offences and sentenced to five years or more in prison. In these circumstances, a serious offender will need to apply to go through an additional process administered by an independent decision maker who will determine whether they receive financial redress. This is modelled on very similar frameworks that apply to redress systems in Australia and Scotland. Other forms of redress, such as an apology and wellbeing supports, will still be available.

This is in no way intended to diminish the abuse that those survivors suffered. As we stated in the formal apology, the harm that was inflicted on people in State care has caused lifelong harm and changed the course of people’s lives. However, this Government thinks it’s really important, to maintain public confidence in this scheme, that redress payments to serious offenders are considered through a separate and independent process.

This bill is not focused on lower-level offending. Many survivors of abuse and neglect in care have had interactions with the criminal justice system. The specified offences and scope of the presumption are those that fall within Schedule 1AB of the Sentencing Act 2002. This includes 42 offences that are on the most serious end of the violent and sexual offending spectrum and that attract a maximum sentence of between seven and 20 years. Not only does a person have to be convicted of one of these crimes but they also have to have been sentenced to five years or more in prison. The process will apply to all new claims made from 9 May 2025, and we expect that it will apply to around 100 claims a year. It does not apply to claims lodged prior to this date or to top-ups of pre-existing claims.

To assist in identifying survivors who are also serious offenders, all survivors lodging a new claim will be required to declare any specified convictions when applying for redress. Survivors will also need to consent to a criminal record check in order for State agencies to verify their convictions. Criminal record checks will be done when a survivor has declared a specified conviction with the requisite sentence length. Consent underpins this process and will be required before any action is done by agencies. To uphold the integrity of the system, the bill creates new offences for failing to declare relevant convictions. These offences carry a maximum penalty of $5,000.

The bill provides a “without reasonable excuse” defence where a person has a legitimate reason for providing false or misleading information—for example, if a person with cognitive impairment is unable to recall the details of their offending. While failing to declare or disclose relevant convictions is a serious matter, the availability of a defence and the maximum penalty of a fine, and not imprisonment, reflects the unique circumstances and vulnerability of many abuse survivors.

A person who is found to be in scope of this regime will be able to apply to an independent decision maker, known as a redress officer, who may overturn the presumption against providing financial redress. Modelled on similar approaches in Australia and Scotland, the redress officer will need to be satisfied that a redress payment would not bring the redress system into disrepute. The redress officer will be a statutory officer, who will be required to be a retired judge, King’s Counsel, or lawyer with at least seven years’ standing. When making their determination, they will need to take into account a range of relevant factors, including the nature of the offending, the length of time since the offending took place, the age at the time of offending, any rehabilitation done, and any submissions made by the person. The survivor will be able to reapply to have the presumption overturned within three years of the decision by the redress officer. This provides an incentive for survivors to rehabilitate and an opportunity for them to obtain financial redress. Survivors will continue to have the ability to seek remedies through the courts.

Finally, the bill supports more meaningful personal apologies to be made by the State redress agencies, to meet the needs and expectations of survivors. The royal commission found that most survivors do not receive apologies that they feel are genuine or personal. Survivors said that many apologies felt insincere, lacked acknowledgment of the harm they experienced, and did not accept responsibility on the part of the State. The Government is addressing these concerns through its improvements to redress offerings, with a focus on personal apologies that better reflect what survivors have asked for: recognition, accountability, and sincerity. The bill includes legislative protections that enable the State redress agencies to offer more genuine acknowledgments, including taking direct responsibility for abuse and neglect where appropriate. A common apologies policy and supporting guidance is also being developed to support redress agencies to deliver apologies that are more personal and acknowledge the abuse, harm, and neglect encountered by survivors.

I know that the Social Services and Community Committee will give the bill careful consideration, and I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I want to begin this contribution by acknowledging all survivors of abuse in care. It has been over a year now since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care’s report was tabled in this House, and we will soon commemorate a year since the Crown apology last November. Survivors, their whānau, their communities, advocates, and supporters all had so much hope in the royal commission’s findings and recommendations, and the promise of healing, justice, and change for the better that was signalled in that apology. And now we have this bill.

Instead of taking responsibility for the harm the State caused, this Government is promising to further punish survivors, making a mockery of the Crown apology. At the apology, the Prime Minister said, “For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the Government must take responsibility.” Instead, in this bill, the Government is proposing an approach that would allow the State to shirk responsibility for the harm it caused to people it was supposed to be caring for.

We know that abuse, neglect, and trauma in care is connected with criminal behaviour and imprisonment. The royal commission made this connection clear throughout its reports. Experts tell us this, survivors tell us this, but the Government refuses to listen. Like so much of their response to abuse in care, once again the Government is ignoring the royal commission’s findings and recommendations. The royal commission explicitly recommended that all survivors be able to access redress, including those in prison or with a criminal record. Presumptively excluding survivors of abuse in care from accessing financial redress is discriminatory, and counter to a trauma-informed, survivor-focused redress system.

The bill itself is called the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. This is a misnomer. If we were actually here today to begin the process of legislating for a redress system, I would be celebrating it, but I am not. The royal commission recommended a single, independent redress scheme governed by legislation that was survivor-focused, trauma-informed, and accessible to all survivors. And I quote, “Properly independent, it would avoid the need for survivors to approach the organisations they distrusted, an interaction many found distressing or traumatising, and it would also eliminate the inherent conflict of interest these organisations face in investigating themselves.”

What survivors got was a continuation of a deeply flawed, existing historic claims scheme, with a promise of having a single entry point and a common approach to assessing payments—a promise that has not even been kept yet. As our leader said at the time, “Putting more money into an existing redress system that so many of the survivors have already said they have no confidence in just isn’t good enough.” Survivors have every right to feel disappointed and ignored by this Government.

The much-trumpeted redress announcement, in May this year, ignored every recommendation the royal commission made about a redress system. It totally ignored what survivors wanted and expected. Instead, we have a cynical, poorly constructed bill, inaccurately named the “Redress System”, that does little but enable the Government to once again avoid responsibility for the wrongs the State committed against children, young people, and vulnerable adults. The bill’s specifications of what a redress scheme does refers only to recognising abuse in care, with no mention of neglect, harm, or trauma, and it’s definition of abuse does not explicitly include racial or cultural abuse. This bill is morally bereft. It is cynical. It is a dog whistle to their base. It should never have made it into this House, and that is why we on this side of the House utterly oppose this bill.

I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki to speak to this legislation. It’s deeply concerning the way that this legislation has been pitched as if somehow it is fulfilling the recommendations of the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State and faith-based care, when, actually, it betrays the intent and the mana of the inquiry’s findings. Instead of justice, we now see the division of survivors, deciding the people who can access redress and those who are too undeserving. That’s really heavy on the heart when you think about the generational impact of abuse in State care on our whānau , on our whaikaha, on our takatāpui, on te iwi Māori, Pasifika, those in our community who remain harmed at this time.

I bring into the House the words of Toni Jarvis—Toni Jarvis, who was sent to Holdsworth School where he was sexually abused. He ended up in the Invercargill Borstal and later in Paparua Prison in Christchurch, because, you see, a lot of borstal and State care boys were also in prison with him. “I changed a bit after I got out of prison, and I haven’t been back for 40 years, but I’ve still got a lot of issues and problems with violence, and I’ve turned my life around, but crime is a part of my story. I didn’t know what a relationship was. I often ran away from relationships. I didn’t know how to be intimate because of the beatings and being sodomised.”

These people who suffered in State care ended up in prison because of what they suffered, and yet now have legislation that is ignoring the call for creating a new, independent survivor-centred system as per the recommendations of the royal commission and, instead, uses a thing called “presumption”, because the Government is worried about disrepute on its system that it has established, and that all we’re doing is entrenching the existing Crown-based system that protected itself.

There are 200,000 survivors, and I bring to the House, again, the voice of another who was harmed in the system. This is Poi McIntyre. Poi McIntyre was in Kohitere and was treated so poorly that he was lucky to survive the violence and bullying suffered in Kohitere. It was the training ground, Poi shared, for jail. After Kohitere, as a 15-year-old, Poi ended up in youth prison in Invercargill. Serving his sentence, he experienced violence, physical abuse from staff, and fighting was so common you had to fight to survive. In the end, he spent 23 years in prison. Poi McIntyre would not be able to access redress through what we’re proposing. Poi McIntyre, 23 years in custody, has been a victim of abuse in Kohitere and then, following on from that, moved through a system that abused further.

How can these survivors find justice in a system that has the haves and the have-nots? The Government is making the redress conditional because you’re choosing those who are the deserving and you’re parking the rest who have been impacted by the Crown, by faith-based institutions—and many of these survivors are Māori.

Now, our survivors, our morehu, deserve a system that centres the redress and the approach on what they have experienced, and it should be independent, as we’ve already heard. We need to take responsibility as the Government on what has occurred and not try to change the deck chairs and retain the power within the Crown, and acknowledge that independence is required—because how do you assess, how do you critique, and how do you improve a system when it’s yourself looking at yourself?

Survivors have gone through so much harm and they are seeking accountability. The system that has been established and the presumption that is coming will only serve to undermine the justice that should be served to these most vulnerable members of New Zealand communities. We do not support this legislation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Firstly, I want to acknowledge all the survivors. I have read quite a few of your stories now and it makes for some extremely sobering reading. The ACT Party supports this bill. I’m a member of the Social Services and Community Committee—a great committee—and I think this bill will be coming our way; I’m really interested to hear from those survivors and the public about their experiences.

Listening to the Opposition’s comments about the point around the bill about those that have committed serious violent offences, sexual violence offences, and done more than five years—look, I unreservedly accept the fact that those that suffered that kind of abuse may have gone on to commit crimes; 100 percent agree. But it does not do the victims of those crimes any justice to know that, potentially, their abuser may now be getting financial compensation.

Sorry to other victims.

Are they also victims?

Look, I hear that over there. But if you were one of those victims right now, of one of the other victims—

If you were sodomised?

Someone over there said, “Even if you were sodomised?” Even if you were sodomised, does that give you the right to go and do that to another person? A hundred percent it doesn’t. Does that give you the right to go on and commit another violent crime? It 100 percent doesn’t. Yes, it may set the scene, but that is completely unacceptable. [Interruption]

That’s enough.

It’s a complete disrespect to those other victims out there. Yes, we need to support people, we need to make sure people are reimbursed, but those that have gone on to make more victims, they are complicit in this as well and that is not how we need to live our lives here in New Zealand. We need to take ownership of our issues and our problems.

I support this bill. I support the redress system and the framework that we’re setting up here, and there are checks and balances in place like other countries have done as well. I commend the bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. I’m hoping that, through the course of this debate and through the select committee process, we will find common ground, which is to ensure that we recognise the victims of abuse in State care, and that we are developing a redress system that is trying to meet the delivery that is achievable within an effective time frame that is acceptable to the victims.

This redress system, as it’s been characterised in this House, is not depriving anyone of redress. It is said, very clearly and succinctly, that this will provide a different framework under which those that have committed serious violent and sexual offences will be dealt with in a slightly different process. It is a reality that when you are the victim of that serious, violent and sexual offending, you will feel aggrieved if the State pays significant financial redress to your offender. That is not saying, in this legislation, that there will not be redress; it is saying there is a process to be applied. I think that when we drive emotive speeches that are suggesting that we are depriving anyone of their right to be heard, it is unfair to the victims and unfair to the work that has been done by a large group of people to develop a system that is trying to deliver a positive outcome.

The widespread abuse of children, youth, and vulnerable adults in State care is one of the darkest periods in New Zealand’s history. Many of these New Zealanders were ignored, silenced, or forced to deal with a convoluted and uneven system, during redress, for decades. This bill is attempting to modify and clarify a redress system to address the concerns that have been reported. It is a matter of trying to deliver a consistent approach that is easily accessible and survivor-focused. In that approach, we have to recognise that there are anomalies that will need to be considered in this process. The anomalies that need to be considered will be difficult to navigate, but let’s be clear to the House and to those that are listening that this is not removing the right of redress. It is providing a system where those that have been convicted and have served serious sentences for violent offending and sexual offences will be put through a slightly different framework.

I just think it’s really unfortunate that when we heckle in this House, when we hurl abuse at each other as we’re making speeches, we are not presenting this House in a proper light. We are not presenting this issue in a respectful manner. This is the House for debating the issue, this legislation will go to select committee, it will be considered, and it will be put forward to produce a redress process that is accessible, consistent, and fair. We cannot ignore the fact that, in amongst those victims, there are those who have caused victimhood. This is not about a recounting of those that have had a terrible life and about committing petty crime; this is about recognising that those who have committed serious offences of a violent and sexual nature need to be treated slightly differently.

I hope that, through the course of this debate, we will remove some of this emotive narrative and go back to the point that we are trying to achieve. There is no perfect answer in this space. We are dealing with lives that have been damaged, and we are working through the process by which the State can redress. I commend this bill to the House.

E te Pīka, tēnā koe. Kei te iwi mōrehu, tēnā rā koutou. Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui. Tōna tikanga, mā Mariameno ēnei kōrero, engari i te korenga o tōna waka rererangi, mā māua ko Debbie i te rangi nei.

Kei a koutou me ā koutou tini pīkautanga ngā māngai. E Tū, kei te mihi atu ki a koe, mōu me te whakatinana mai i ēnei kōrero hei waha ki mua ki te aroaro o tēnei Whare.

[Mr Speaker, thank you. To the survivors, greetings to you. Be strong, be brave and resilient. It was supposed to be Mariameno that delivered these statements, but with the cancellation of her flight, it is up to Debbie and I today.

You and your many burdens have your own spokespeople. Tū, I acknowledge you for embodying these statements that are given voice before this House.]

This bill is a betrayal of survivors, plain and simple. It weaponises redress and turns what should have been healing into another form of punishment. It says that some survivors deserve compassion and others do not. That is not justice; that is control. The abuser has no grounds to criminalise the survivors for their abuse—the State’s abuse—and deny them redress. Those who survived the violence of State and faith-based care know this truth. The system broke them long before any laws were broken. Many of those convictions were born out of the trauma inflicted by the very institutions this bill now seeks to protect. To deny redress on that basis is to deny responsibility for the harm that the Crown and the Church caused in the first place.

The Government says it wants to prevent the redress system from being brought into disrepute, but it was the State and its agents who shamed this country; not the survivors. The disrepute lies in decades of silence, denial, and delay by consecutive Governments and their agencies. Let’s be clear: this bill breaches the most basic principles of human rights and natural justice. It discriminates against a class of survivor based on their criminal record, punishing them twice for a system that failed them first. It undermines Aotearoa’s obligation under international human rights law, including the convention against torture, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which require the State to provide redress to all victims of institutional abuse, without discrimination.

Survivors have spent years fighting for truth, for acknowledgment, for redress that restores dignity; this bill strips that away. It is not what survivors have fought for. It’s not what was promised. It is not justice; it is re-traumatisation sanctioned by legislation. The path to healing does not come from exclusion or moral judgment; it comes from accountability, compassion, and courage. The bill lacks all three. Parliament must reject it and, instead, return to a redress model designed with and for survivors, one grounded in equity, dignity, and justice. Instead of confronting that history, this Government has chosen to re-write it, to draw a line through the names of the very people it failed first. One in three children placed in residential care by the State ends up in prison later in life. That number is 42 percent for mokopuna Māori. Māori account for 67 percent of the children in State care and 81 percent of those who were abused in those institutions. These are the people who are now being excluded by this bill.

Te Pāti Māori affirm our commitment to the survivors, ki ngā mōrehu, and to our mokopuna who are currently incarcerated by the State. We will implement the 81 of the 183 recommendations from the Whanaketia report. We will end the State care of mokopuna Māori. We will establish an independent mokopuna Māori authority, co-designed by survivors. We will empower the rights of mokopuna. The right to care for, love, and grow mokopuna Māori must be reclaimed by whānau Māori to enable genuine healing to begin. Inā kē te kōrero e mea ana, “Ki te kotahi te kākaho, ka whati; ki te kāpuia, e kore e whati”. Kia kaha, kia māia tātou.

[As the saying goes, “If there is but one reed, it will break; if many are bundled together, they will never break”. Let us all be strong and courageous.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on this Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill at its first reading. “The bill provides that the purpose of a redress scheme operated by a State agency is to”—firstly—“recognise a person’s experience of abuse in care;”. I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge all of those survivors of abuse in State and faith-based care that we are aiming to address. Although we cannot change the past, we can try and recognise it in the present and help them into the future.

The first is to “recognise a person’s experience of abuse in care;”. The second is to “offer an alternative to litigation to provide for redress for abuse in care, including the provision of 1 or more … financial payment …: an apology: counselling or other well-being support.”. This bill does something else as well, which you’ve heard from some other speakers today: it also legislates that a survivor of abuse in State care, convicted of serious violent or sexual crimes and sentenced to five years or more in prison is not automatically eligible for a financial payment of the redress scheme. Instead, these survivors can apply to have their financial redress considered by an independent decision maker. That is to ensure those payments to serious offenders do not bring the scheme into public disrepute, which is important because it’s important that we take the public with us on this challenging journey, to address this.

In terms of the redress officer, it establishes that it must be an independent person, appointed by the Minister, who is either a retired judge, a King’s Counsel, or a lawyer with at least seven years’ experience, and who also understands the criminal justice system and the findings of the royal commission into historical abuse in State and faith-based care. These will be very experienced people. The redress officer’s role will be to assess claims, where the presumption against the claimant applies, and decide if it should be overturned.

I myself have worked in criminal courts and prisons around New Zealand, and I do know that the victims often become the victimisers. I understand the challenge of the balance that we are seeking to strike here, and it is a challenging one—it is. Like I said before, it is important that we keep the public with us, to ensure this scheme is not brought into disrepute.

As speakers before me have said, this does not rule out payments, but it does mean there will be a mechanism for those convicted of serious offences, and I’ll just cover a list of some of them now—there are many of them—it’s sexual violation, attempted sexual violation, assault with intent to commit sexual violation, sexual connection with consent induced by threat, sexual connection with a dependent family member under 18 years, sexual connection with a child, indecent act on a child, sexual connection with a young person, indecent assault, exploitative sexual connection with a person with significant impairment, compelling indecent act with animal, murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, strangulation or suffocating, aggravated wounding, discharging firearm or doing a dangerous act with intent to do grievous bodily harm, using firearm against law enforcement officer, poisoning with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and a number of others. So they would have to be convicted of one of those offences, and they’ll have to have served more than five years or more of imprisonment. That’s quite serious, and it’s something that deserves some more attention. But like I said, that does not automatically preclude them; they can apply.

We’ll have time to discuss this further in select committee, but the redress officer will need to take a number of things into account, including the nature of the person’s offending, the term of imprisonment imposed in that person’s sentencing, the length of time since the relevant offending took place, the person’s age at the time of the relevant offending, any rehabilitation undertaken by the person, any information put forward by the person, any submissions made by them, and any other matter the redress officer considers relevant.

This is a carefully balanced piece of legislation. I look forward to hearing submissions at the select committee, which I chair, from people with an interest in this matter, which is one of significant interest to New Zealand and New Zealanders. I commend the bill to the House.

I think that this kaupapa is such a heavy kaupapa. Despite the initial signs from the Government that they were on board, it has actually ended up being one of the biggest disappointments that we have seen from this Government. That’s sad, because there’s no doubt there has been a very much bipartisan type of approach to this. No one really wants the Government to fail with regards to this kaupapa, because if the Government fails, then people are affected, and there have been so many people who have been affected by this kaupapa.

It touches the hearts of people all around the country, particularly our people—particularly Māori. I myself have seen so many cases of redemption in te ao Māori, as have my whanaunga and others here in the House, Māori in particular. We have seen people turn their lives around from their torturous beginnings in life, through no fault of their own. I won’t give any names today; I might later on. But I look at them and I look at how they affected our lives and I think we tangi for them. There’s so much sorrow and sympathy.

My colleague Willow-Jean Prime talked about the disappointment, because no one is born evil—no one is born evil. No one should be penalised for ever and a day. My mother, I think I’ve said before, spent 20 years, the longest serving Parole Board member in this country, appointed by the National Government—appointed by the Rt Hon Jim Bolger, actually, who we’re going to honour on Thursday.

Jim and them, they look for answers from Māori communities. Māori communities talk about redemption. They talk about giving people an opportunity. Sadly, this bill just penalises them. I know they’re not being written off, but people who have been victims of the State are still being penalised by the State, and that’s the problem with this bill. They’re still being penalised by the State, and there is no let-up; there is no relief for them.

I can give you stories of some of the worst people around who drive our bus at the marae, who teach Māori to our kids, who work with Māori and Pākehā in our community. Sadly, this bill is—I hope that we can get to the bottom of it when we go through the committee stage. There is so much to work through here, and people who deserve another opportunity are looking at this and thinking that this is a cynical attempt by the Government to once again avoid responsibility for the harm it’s caused.

Obviously you’re going to get an angry response from many of the victims out there. It makes a mockery of the apology from the Prime Minister, which I accept was sincere on the day. Many of us accepted that, but it does make a mockery of the Prime Minister, because he did say for many of you what happened changed the course of your life, and for that the Government must take responsibility. Well, this is not showing responsibility; this is just showing a complete misunderstanding of what survivors have gone through.

What’s more, the royal commission recommended that survivors who are in prison or have a criminal record should not be unduly penalised—clear as a bell—but, sadly, this bill penalises those people. My hope—our hope, on this side of the House, and I’ll give the Government the benefit of the doubt; there may be some hope there that we can traverse this and work through this, because justice has to be given to survivors who serve their sentences and are working to heal and contribute meaningfully to their families and whānau. The whole point is that they cannot and should not be punished twice. Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. The bill implements the recommendations of the royal commission of inquiry into historical abuse in state and faith-based care to, firstly, recognise the experience as a person of abuse in care, and, secondly, to offer an alternative to litigation to be able to provide that redress. I commend this bill to the House.

I first want to start with a statement about the victims of violence under the categories that have been excluded in this legislation. Absolutely nothing excuses the violence to the people who have suffered the acts that happened in that context—nothing. Having said that, it is incredibly important that nothing ever excuses violence, and in this case, we know that there was incredible violence visited upon New Zealanders who were in care, and we were responsible for that. We take responsibility for that as a Government. That’s our job. As a Parliament, we take responsibility.

My concern with this law is it will do the opposite. It shirks responsibility for cruel acts, for things that harmed people so, so absolutely deeply that it set their lives absolutely askew. These were damaging acts. We know that because we asked people to inquire, and they inquired deeply, and they came to a recommendation to us as a Parliament. They went through all the harrowing stories, and they said, “Our recommendation is we need to treat everybody who has had these things happen to them the same way because we need to recognise what happened was wrong.”

It is very important we honour the recommendation in this case. I appreciate that there will be people in the public who need to be brought on that journey. They need to be told “We are doing this because what happened was wrong. We need to stand by not only an apology but by our sense of ownership of what happened. That is our obligation.” We need to say, “Look at this royal commission, look at what it has found. We need to tell the stories, and we need to take responsibility.”

It’s our job in this country to lead, not follow. We shouldn’t be worried about public opinion before we’ve had a chance to have that conversation. If I had seen a law here that suggested that all the money that was going to be set to the victim of some terrible abuse was going to be given to the victim of the victim, well then you might have an argument. We might be able to discuss that in a different way. But that’s not what’s being proposed here.

What’s being proposed here—and this is particularly for Minister Costello, who seems to be saying something quite different—is a presumption that people in this situation have no right to redress. These acts happen to them too. What we are doing is we are dehumanising a group of people, and we are making a problem that is gnarly, that is difficult, that is grey, and that is messy—we are making it something that is far too simple because we know and the public know that, actually, the people who have this kind of abuse happen to them, the consequences are so damn real. They end up committing violent crimes. They fill our prisons. We cannot—we cannot—deal with this until we are prepared to take full responsibility, and that means we have to stand by our principles and take the public with us, not worry that they will misunderstand because these are the only people who are helped by this piece of legislation. The only people are the State that saves a bit of money—a sad amount of money. And, yes, that’s true. They save about $12,500 if the person stands by the presumption, and that is inappropriate.

I ask this Parliament to think twice about this legislation because it is not about standing up for victims, this piece of legislation—it’s not about that. It’s not even close to it. We need to take on board our apology.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is an honour to rise and speak in this first reading of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. It has been quite annoying, actually, to sit over here on this side and listen to some of the claims that have been coming from across the House, because I think that there will be abuse survivors who are listening at home, and some of them may actually be upset to hear the claims from the other side—which are untrue—that this is going to mean that some people aren’t going to be able to get access to redress. Actually, this doesn’t apply to most people; only 5 to 6 percent of claimants may even fall into this category, and most of them have not gone on to cause other victims in the system.

I think that the claim that this is somehow discriminatory is terrible. This is a very balanced bill that means that where there are some very real sensitivities, then we are looking at a different way of approaching those people. They’re still going to be addressed to—it’s still going to be through an independent process. They will still have the right to seek potential redress and so they still have that available. It is absolutely irresponsible for people across the House to imply that people will not have that, and, actually, it makes me deeply angry when I know that there are people who will, potentially, clip their speeches—

Just let the Crown own up to its faults.

—and think that they can just show this and say—there are some people who only get their news based on what some of these clowns say. So I’m really concerned about—

Some of these “clowns”?

I apologise, Madam Speaker. It was unnecessary for me to say that, but it is actually unfair, and I commend the bill to the House.

The question is, That the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

I move, That the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill be reported to the House by 23 March 2026.

I present a legislative statement on the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation 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 Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill was introduced on 12 November 2024, and on the same day the Prime Minister apologised on behalf of the Crown to survivors of abuse and neglect in care. The bill reflects the Crown’s ongoing commitment in its response to the recommendations from the abuse in care royal commission of inquiry.

The royal commission was one of the most significant inquiries in New Zealand, and over six years it examined our care settings, heard from survivors, and made comprehensive recommendations to address past wrongs and ensure a safer care system now and, also, for the future. This bill is an important part of our wider response, and complements the work already well under way to implement the commission’s recommendations. We are committed to doing better for survivors, and I know these changes to our existing legislation will make a difference. I’m pleased that the bill has reached its third and final reading.

I want to begin by acknowledging the survivors who shared their experiences with the royal commission, and who also made submissions on this bill. Their courage and honesty have been instrumental in helping to shape this legislation. Their voices are deeply valued, and will continue to assist us and strengthen and improve the care system.

I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee and my parliamentary colleagues for their thorough consideration of the bill, and advice they’ve given to refine and strengthen our legislation.

The bill amends four pieces of legislation: the Children’s Act 2014, the Crimes Act 1961, the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, and the Public Records Act 2005. I’ll now describe each of the amendments to the individual pieces of legislation.

The bill strengthens the children’s workers safety regime in the Children’s Act. This change aligns with recommendation 58(b) in the royal commission’s final report, which is about ensuring that the Children’s Act is fit for purpose. Under this bill, it will be unlawful to employ a core worker if they have an overseas conviction for an offence that is equivalent to a New Zealand offence specified in the Children’s Act, or a conviction for certain offences involving harm against minors in the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. It’ll mean that people who have been convicted of overseas offences involving serious harm, including harm against children, equivalent to a specified New Zealand offence cannot be core workers unless they have been granted an exemption by the chief executive of a key agency. There was widespread support for this change during the select committee process, and no person or organisation submitted against it.

The bill changes the Crimes Act to add “disability” to the definition of a “vulnerable adult”. This directly responds to, and reflects, the royal commission’s recommendation 26 in their report. In the Crimes Act, someone is a vulnerable adult when they are unable to remove themselves from the care or charge of another person—it is not about any inherent characteristics of that person in care. The Crimes Act amendment will mean those caring for disabled adults will now understand that they have a statutory duty of care towards them.

The amendment to the Oranga Tamariki Act will provide greater protection for children and young people in residences, including youth justice residences. The bill will enable the search of residents, staff, and contractors to youth justice residences on entry to prevent unauthorised items being brought in. The bill also introduces approved search plans in both youth justice and care protection residences, which must be developed with children and young people. Search plans must take account of a child or young person’s needs and preferences, their experiences, and they’ll be able to request their plans are reviewed. This change aligns with the royal commission recommendation 78 to have a fit for need and individualised care system. This was also supported by submitters. The ability to provide input and have a voice in these plans is also important for their wellbeing and safety. Importantly, these changes also include the removal of authority to strip-search children and young people in residences.

The changes to the Oranga Tamariki Act will also clarify the maximum time a child or young person can remain in secure care, in a secure care unit, without judicial oversight. Currently, the Act provides that a child or young person must not be kept in secure care for more than 72 continuous hours, or more than three consecutive days, without judicial intervention. The bill removes the reference to the period of up to 72 hours. This means that the child or young person can only be held in secure care for the shorter of the time periods currently allowed. This will provide greater accountability and protection for young people in care. A further change was made, as a result of the select committee process, to clarify that secure care starts on the first day the child or young person is placed in secure care. Oranga Tamariki and the select committee heard from care-experienced young people about these changes, and I want to acknowledge and thank them for contributing to the select committee process.

The fourth and final part of the bill updates the Public Records Act. Many survivors have shared stories of their poor experiences when seeking access to their care records. The royal commission made a number of recommendations to improve record-keeping systems and processes, and record access requests, and spoke about survivors’ experiences and outcomes when requesting their personal records. The bill will introduce new powers for Archives New Zealand and the Chief Archivist to support improvements in record-keeping practices. These changes received widespread support, with no submissions against the change. Submitters suggested that there should be more transparency about the action plans and performance notices that will be put in place using these new powers. A change to the Public Records Act will see these reported in the Chief Archivist’s annual reports.

All of the amendments in the bill represent a significant step to improving the safety and wellbeing of children, young people, and adults in care. I acknowledge that there is still a lot more to be done to ensure the wrongs of the past are not repeated, and this Government is committed to continuing this work with urgency and with care. I want to acknowledge the effort of all parties throughout this process. Although we may not agree on everything, we agree that change needs to happen, and protections need to be stronger for our children, our young people, and adults in care.

I’d also like to thank my colleagues the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister for Children for their support and contributions. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. In three weeks’ time, together as a country, we will be commemorating the National Day of Reflection, on 12 November 2025. As we are all aware, this day marks one year from when the Prime Minister delivered an apology on behalf of the Crown to survivors who endured abuse, harm, neglect, and trauma in State and faith-based care.

I want to take us back to that moment. I want to quote the words of Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who said in his apology statement: “It’s a hugely important day for us, the representatives of the Crown and of successive Governments, that we finally—finally—acknowledge the thousands of confronting experiences of neglect, abuse, trauma, torture, and that we finally own up fully to our failings and offer our sincerest apologies. We are sorry. Today, all of Aotearoa New Zealand will bear witness to the truth: to what survivors experienced, to our decades of wilful ignorance, denial, minimisation, and to our conviction to end such horror and vile acts from continuing.”

As survivor advocate Keith Wiffin reminded us, what happened over decades “Ripped families and communities apart, trapping many into a life of prison, incarceration, leaving many uneducated, and ill-equipped to cope in the outside world. It has tarnished our international reputation as an upholder of human rights, something our country likes to dine out on.” Keith went on to say, “Today’s speech by the Prime Minister is an opportunity to bring about some healing, relief, and comfort. To achieve this, he must connect with survivors as being genuine and sincere, for example by committing to timelines to deliver redress for all those who have suffered. Survivors have witnessed a Royal Commission of Inquiry play out for six years. It’s three years since the state was given recommendations for an independent redress scheme to be incorporated, but we sit here today with nothing. The public of this country has invested heavily in this inquiry and like us they expect outcomes.”

It was on this day that the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill first entered this House. As Keith’s comments foreshadow, in comparison to the magnitude of the harm, the bill felt underwhelming at the time. Hopes had been high that the Government would announce a new independent redress system—but, still, it was something, and it is for this reason that Labour has supported this bill throughout, with some reservations, as we have noted, along the way.

During select committee hearings, survivors, advocates, and experts criticised the limited scope of the bill and the lack of engagement with survivors. While the general intent of the bill was supported, the changes were called “piecemeal”, “tinkering”, and “a squandered opportunity”. I would like to acknowledge Ihorangi Reweti-Peters, who, in an article in The Post, talked about how “Although the intentions behind the amendment bill are constructive and signal governmental commitment to addressing historical abuses, a notable concern remains: survivors were not offered the opportunity to review or provide feedback prior to the bill’s introduction to Parliament.”

Some submitters opposed the bill in its entirety, saying it was a distraction from the work to respond to all the recommendations. We have not seen a great deal of action from this Government, so perhaps they have been distracted—unless you call kicking the can down the road “action”. In their response to the royal commission, published in May this year, the Government declined to accept, or had not even started to consider, 85 of the royal commission’s 207 recommendations from across the two reports, Whanaketia and He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu. The Government has fully accepted only 19 recommendations, and they claim to have completed a mere 13.

Much of what is in this bill are small steps towards the recommendations in Whanaketia and He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu. The royal commission identified significant issues with data collection, record-keeping, and information management practices. The previous Labour Government had started work to improve the Government’s record system. The provision in this bill to improve record-keeping and the Chief Archivist’s ability to enforce compliance with the Public Records Act is a welcome change. I encourage the Government to continue to work in this area. For people who were taken away from their families and communities, Government records are sometimes the only place where information about them can be found.

Similarly, the improvements in the vetting of people who seek to work with children and young people are welcome. But there is much more work to do to build and maintain a system whereby all care staff and care workers are vetted, registered, and well trained, with powerful mechanisms to enforce appropriate standards. We wholeheartedly welcome the removal of the use of strip-searching for children and young people. This is entirely consistent with the royal commission’s recommendations and is a well-overdue change.

The bill demonstrated so clearly why proper and meaningful consultation with survivors, experts, and advocates is so important, and why this is one of the central recommendations of the royal commission. The change to the Crimes Act to include disabled people as vulnerable adults was not supported by submitters. As a result, if passed, we will have something in legislation that is not supported by the people it is supposed to be there for. This result is wrong and should not have occurred. The Minister was well placed to consult properly or to remove this part of the bill, or to do further consultation, but she chose not to. That goes against the entire point of the royal commission.

Further, we were concerned about the inclusion of the potential use of force during searches at youth justice facilities, and I submitted several amendments to include the use of proven de-escalation methods as an approach to avoiding the use of force—but these were not supported by the Minister and the Government. As we know so well, the children and young people who are in youth justice facilities have complex and often traumatic backgrounds; they need trauma-informed, specialist, wraparound approaches, not force. This bill is a missed opportunity to mandate the use of modern approaches to behaviour management—approaches that are rehabilitative and not potentially harmful.

This sits alongside the Government’s pilot boot camp legislation, to put these into law—no doubt soon—to be again considered in this House. This reminds me of the broad findings of the royal commission. As the royal commission showed us, children, young people, and disabled people mostly ended up in care because of discriminatory attitudes and beliefs about them—attitudes and beliefs like racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and the lack of care for people who were doing it tough. As a country, we have some improvements in terms of challenging and eliminating discrimination, but we have much, much more to do.

This Government’s approach to Māori, Pacific, disabled people, people receiving income support, and young people in the youth justice system demonstrates that discrimination is alive and well in this country. If we want to make sure that we never repeat the horrors contained in the royal commission’s findings, we need to take seriously the recommendations for public education and awareness-raising campaigns, and a great deal more urgency should be placed on implementing all of the royal commission’s recommendations.

On this side of the House, we will continue to hold this Government to account for the promise to take responsibility that it made in the Crown apology. This bill is at least a start at preventing abuse, harm, and neglect in care, and supporting survivors, which is why we support it. That is my contribution from this side of the House. As I said at the beginning of my speech, one of the key points that I wanted to make is how important it is that, in anything that we are doing, the involvement of survivors is so important. It has been overlooked in this piece of legislation, and I worry that we are not heeding the advice and the recommendations of the royal commission about the pivotal role that survivors need to play in redress and in responding to the recommendations of the royal commission. We support this bill to the House.

The Green Party supports the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, because survivors deserve for us to support progress. I’m aware that survivors are also very clear that this is in no way going anywhere near the depth of support for the royal commission of inquiry recommendations that survivors deserve. However, the Greens will absolutely continue to work with prioritising survivor experience and survivor voice, and working with any Governments, to ensure that we really are prioritising their experiences.

Now, I will firstly go over the key concerns from this part of the bill, because I then want to—if Madam Speaker will allow—make sure that I take up my responsibility as a former violence prevention Minister and the understanding of trauma-informed approaches that we must see in all and any legislation when it comes to responding to the abuse in care.

Survivors have been very clear that they should have deserved full engagement with this bill long before it came to anyone—to any MP or to the public—long before, from the get-go. We’re aware that the Minister stated that they could have made submissions during the public select committee stages—yes, of course; but, actually, no, it’s not good enough. Survivors should have been fully engaged from the very start. We also need to recognise the barriers that can prevent the public and survivors, especially, from engaging in the normal democratic systems.

There are also still concerns from survivors over new section 384KB, inserted by clause 28, and the use of force that is still permitted in care settings. That continues to normalise violence. It moves us away, instead, from the de-escalation techniques and the violence prevention techniques that we instead should be prioritising. I want to acknowledge that this bill, again, has been a missed opportunity to focus on incorporating and focusing on those de-escalation and trauma-informed care techniques, rather than still normalising use of force.

There is still—and this is one of the big concerns—institutionalisation of youth justice residences and care institutions. So there is concern that the changes contribute to further and re-institutionalising youth justice residences when, again, instead there should be a shift away from the punitive, institutionalised models and towards community-based and trauma-informed care models. That’s a really important concern to highlight.

I do want to centre the voice of disabled people who can see that there is a flawed definition of “vulnerable adult”. I understand the intention of care that it is designed to pick up and protect. However, disabled people have been very clear that the proposed definition risks framing them through a lens of deficit and dependency, rather than recognising autonomy, agency, and mana. It is important that we note and continue to work with those concerns, and that instead there must be—and this is hard but enduring—co-design approaches: proper relationship engagement design approaches to legislative protections for and with the disability community to ensure that the language does not continue to rob them of their dignity and mana.

We must continue to ensure meaningful engagement, relationship upholding, and consultation when it comes to any progress on the royal commission of inquiry conditions. I note that only 28 of the 138 recommendations have been completed or have seen progress initiated, so we all have a responsibility to move a heck of a lot faster or more meaningfully than that. Those are just Government decisions—any Government of the day. We have much to gain as a country from ensuring that this is a good process. That actually will benefit all of us for role modelling how we can properly care for survivors who have been abused in our State care system.

With that, Madam Speaker, I do hope you will allow—survivors have been very clear that we cannot talk about any one piece of legislation without understanding the whole approach of the Government, and I pull on this as a third reading, which I am aware can sometimes take a wider approach.

Just less than an hour ago, we have seen, in this House, the assisting legislation of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. That redress system bill is relevant to this bill, because all of our legislation approaches need to take up the strength-based and trauma-informed approaches that are so necessary—that the royal commission of inquiry demanded, that survivors have demanded, that research indicates is the most enduring way that we can heal our nation of intergenerational harm and violence.

Surely, we would all want for that, but, in the former redress system bill, you are seeing some survivors’ abuse and violence undermined and minimised by creating a hierarchical structure that sees only some survivors being paid redress—what all survivors should be entitled to—and that, to me, is one of the biggest harms against the royal commission of inquiry, against the evidence, against the survivors: that the State is choosing to minimise and undermine the harm that it has caused only to some people, that it is saying that only some people’s harm deserves to be recognised, only some people deserve to be recognised for the violence that was inflicted upon them by the State.

Let’s be very clear that all people who perpetrate harm need to be held accountable, and we have a system for that in place already. The redress system is instead sending a message to only some survivors: “I’m sorry; your harm does not deserve to be recognised, unlike other people’s harm.”

Let’s remember that when we are affording survivors redress, that it is that child, that young person who we need to be recognising—that young person and that child who have been violently abused and sexually, violently abused in the State care institutions. That’s who the redress is to—to a child and a young person who have been violently harmed by the State. By not recognising their harm and by minimising their harm, that is not the State taking accountability for its own violence; that is the State choosing to discriminate about who worthy survivors of violence are, and who deserves to have their violence recognised. That is the complete opposite of a trauma-informed approach. It is the complete opposite of what survivors collectively, and the research and the royal commission, have demanded for all of us.

Back to this bill, because it was really important that I put that on record and I am proud of putting that on record—and I note some of your speakers stood up for about 10 seconds and also asked us to not be emotive.

They’re not my speakers.

Has that bench seen this times nine [Holds up report] of the reports and the evidence and the harm and the lived experience of survivors to then stand up and demand us to not be emotive? What is that bench saying about the level of recognition that violence deserves? I leave that on the Hansard for that side of the House to have to live up to for decades—well, for ever, now. It’s on the record. That’s what that side of the House has called for.

A truly progressive step in recognising and prioritising and centring survivors of State abuse would be one that is strength-based; that sees in every single survivor the opportunity for them to be properly supported as they wish to be, to be able to live and thrive in their community, to understand that we are not asking individuals “What is wrong with you?”; we are instead asking “What happened to you?”; that we are working with whole of whānau and community and not just individuals who were harmed by the State; that we are ensuring that our responses are culturally grounded, recognising that the majority of survivors are Māori; that we are ensuring that we acknowledge the systemic harms of colonisation and the violence of colonisation when we are working with healing; that we even include healing when we are talking about any redress and response to abuse in State care; that we prioritise healing and strength base for all survivors. That is the system that we should be aspiring to. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I’m not quite sure how to take that previous speech where we have all been categorised into a box and it was saying that this side of the House doesn’t care about the harm that was caused to victims of abuse in State care. I’m really struggling to kind of even respond to some of the rubbish that has been spouted from the other side of the House. Marama Davidson talked about us having a responsibility—

Respond to survivors.

Yeah, well, I’m actually one of those survivors, so can you just calm it down and allow people to have their own opinions without rubbishing everybody under one category, because at the end of the day, we can talk to multiple survivors who will all have a different version of how this has affected them, how this has traumatised them, and how they want us, as a Government, to respond to that. Not all survivors think the same, not all survivors want the same kind of redress, and this is a complex subject. But to categorise everybody on this side of the House as being responsible for that harm? We are doing the best that we can, under really horrible circumstances, in having to take on this complex situation.

Now, this bill is in response to the abuse in care inquiry. In no way, shape, or form has anyone on this side of the House stated that this is going to be the be-all and end-all and fix of what has to come. Not everything that needs to be changed across the children’s system and across the system of care has to be done through legislation. There are ways to change practice, there are operational changes that need to happen in the background, and there’s work to be done that does not require legislative change.

This Government has worked tirelessly in the background, changing practice across the youth justice system and professionalising the youth justice system to make sure that our young people are actually cared for in a way that is appropriate. To say that this Government hasn’t responded fast enough—I feel that there are certain things where there will be unintended consequences that need to be thought through before we change legislation. We have to make sure that legislation is clear, that it is meaningful, and that it’s actually going to make real change, and so these fixes that are within this piece of legislation are meaningful changes that can be done right now to make a real difference in young people’s lives across the sector.

In the Oranga Tamariki Act, the changes are around clarifying secure care, which was really quite a muddy ground. Young people didn’t actually have the security of knowing how long they were going to be in secure care, and so we are changing that. It is also about making sure that not only are children and young people safe in a youth justice facility but that the staff are safe, as well. It’s about making real, meaningful changes to make sure that they are safe within an environment that is, essentially, their home. But to say that we are institutionalising our young people and that we are going to encourage violence by having reasonable force is, I think, a bit irresponsible.

Reasonable force is not about violence; reasonable force is done in good practice, with good training, to make sure that de-escalation does happen first, before reasonable force is used, and to say that that’s not going to happen is actually disingenuous. In the committee of the whole House, it was explained quite well to the Opposition that de-escalation training will happen, and so to say that that was not addressed is actually quite a joke—to say that we didn’t address that problem.

Look, we hear it quite a bit that these changes that are done have not been done in consultation with survivors, but what I would say is that there was six years of consultation with survivors—six years of an inquiry into the abuse in care, six years of listening to survivors, and six years of writing survivors’ stories, to be held and written for everybody to be able to read that going into the future. Six years of experiences are now in writing and, actually, we will be able to go back to that throughout history.

What I don’t think we need to do is to constantly stop the work that we’re doing to have another talkfest when what survivors do want is for something to happen now, and that was the whole point of the recommendations. The point of the recommendations was that that was what the survivors were wanting through the consultation that happened in the redress for the abuse in care inquiry.

I think, to say that there was no consultation is a little bit low, because there was six years of consultation. There was also time for a lot of this stuff to happen previous to this Government. The previous Government knew that this inquiry was happening; it knew of some of the recommendations well before we came into Government, and I think that we need to stop attacking each other and actually work together to move forward.

Another part of the bill that I really wanted to emphasise and that I feel will make a really big difference is the amendments to the Public Records Act. Now, for far too long, people who have been through the system—and I’ll speak to the children’s system, in particular—have not been able to have access to their lives. Every piece of documentation at every visit and every conversation that’s been had is documented, and not to have access to your life and to your story is unacceptable.

On top of the changes to the Public Records Act, there is work going on in the background—particularly with Oranga Tamariki—around an upgrade to our front-line technology system, which will allow young people to have access to their lives in their own time and under their own rules on how they want to be able to access their information. Whilst we look at legislative changes as being something to celebrate, we also need to understand that that’s not the only way that we can respond to the abuse in care inquiry.

Not everything requires legislation, but what it does require is level-headed conversations around what is best for those who have been through the system and been let down by the system, and around how we can actually have a positive approach to this, rather than trying to have a jab here and there about who did what to whom, because we’re never going to move forward if we’re constantly looking at these things in the negative. Whilst I appreciate that the Opposition is supporting these bills, what I would have appreciated more would be their speaking to the positive changes and speaking about how this will have a great effect on those who have fought for years to be heard and who have fought for years to have some of these changes made—and it was all made political. It was not about those who had suffered, and it was not about those who had been through a system and had been absolutely hurt and harmed; it was all political. It’s actually quite disappointing.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the third reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. I don’t intend to take up the time of the House. This is an important piece of legislation that needs to be brought into law.

I think, to put some context into this bill, it was introduced at a time when the apology was being delivered and we wanted, as a Government, to ensure that there was a clear message that work had commenced, was under way, and was being prioritised. At no point has the Government or anyone debating this issue in the House suggested this is an end point. This is about the legislative reform that we could bring to the House. It is a difficult process to pass legislation, so that is why it has taken longer than I think many of us would have wanted it to, but it is a starting point of legislation that needed to be passed to ensure that some of the recommendations that were made could be addressed as quickly as possible and demonstrate the Government priority. I think that’s what this bill has achieved.

The bill comes after incredibly, deeply traumatic findings of the royal commission into abuse in care. It acknowledges the harm inflicted. It does not seek to minimise or mitigate that harm or suggest that the journey is over. It is about ensuring some steps—and we keep moving forward.

As the previous speaker, Karen Chhour, outlined, this is not only a legislative response; there is a lot of work and policy that is being driven. I think it shows good faith that, through this process in the Social Services and Community Committee and in the debates in the House, we have found a common ground, and I hope we can continue to find that common ground as we move forward to address the recommendations of the royal commission.

The bill is a start. The bill is a process. Change needed to happen; more change will continue to need to happen. This is a starting point that New Zealand First commends and, therefore, we commend this bill to the House.

E ngā mōrehu, e ngā toenga rangatira kua ora tonu ahakoa te mamae, ka nui te w’akamānawa ki a koutou katoa.

[To the survivors, the remaining leaders that have endured despite the anguish, I honour all of you.]

We stand, Te Pāti Māori, in staunch support of the survivors of abuse in care. We stand with those who have carried decades of mamae, who have had to hide in shame because of the State’s violence, and we stand, sadly, for those who have had to be silenced in their pain. We stand in the shadow of the truth, and we acknowledge that it has come too late for many.

This nation was extremely emotional when it received the news from the royal commission and the report and the nine texts or manuals of all of those survivors’ pain. This House, if I remember rightly, was full of emotion. In fact, it was full of emotion downstairs when every CEO had to stand up and talk about their agency’s part in this. I refuse to hear from those in this House that think we are not allowed to be emotional about any part of this bill. Absolutely it was political, because some of our mokopuna and our tamariki were only in there because of who they are and where they came from. Colonisation is political, and to deny that in this House is to deny the very existence of the pain and the reason why they were in State care.

I want to also talk about acknowledging those who couldn’t be in the room for the apology. I remember being downstairs and hearing and seeing all the pain. We heard from rangatahi who told us how they were treated differently because of who they were. We heard how cruel the Crown treated them. We heard about the Crown’s care—its conditional, colour-coded, and cruel behaviour.

One survivor said, “We lost our reo, our whānau, and our w’akapapa, and the State called that protection”. So when the Government says that this bill is a step forward, ka pai; we can agree on that, but when it says it’s enough, we definitely do not agree, and we do not support this bill.

Never said that.

Then why is this bill here like it is? What the bill misses is what the survivors asked for. They asked for the disestablishment of Oranga Tamariki. We missed what the survivors asked for. They asked for change. I don’t care what anyone who isn’t a survivor in this House has to say. They cried, they pleaded, they begged for change. This bill patches the law. There’s no change. It doesn’t change the power; in fact, it strengthens everything that created the pain. What we’ve got here—it leaves the same ministries, the same hierarchies that oversee the very systems that broke the tamariki in the first place.

This is not transformation—be very clear, w’ānau mā. This is business as usual. This is maintenance. We’re hearing every excuse. Every survivor waited decades to be believed. Our solutions that we had were there, right in front of us all, to agree across every party in this House, and that was to adopt the 138 recommendations of the Whanaketia report—138 recommendations. “Give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”—that wasn’t what we said; that was what they wanted: to take into account, to give effect, to make sure that every judgment that comes in takes into consideration their rights and interests. Kāo. Missed the beat. They also wanted to make sure that we had a Māori survivor, mokopuna-ora, w’ānau-ora authority; an independent, survivor-led, tikanga-based kaupapa. Let those who have lived the harm be part of leading the healing. Kāo. Same agencies, same people, same people that created the harm. Nothing’s changed.

They wanted to see funding for prevention. They were so caring about everyone else that could be in the same boat as them. They wanted to ban strip-searches of children, stop the treating of trauma with trauma. Kāo—missed. They wanted a guaranteed lifetime of access to their records under Māori data sovereignty. Missed. The kaupapa beneath all of this is that it’s the same system that removed our tamariki, our mokopuna, in the first place. I think the sad thing is that if we had a Prime Minister who truly supported this apology, then he would have proved it, and this Government would have proved it in everything they did. No; we’ve gone from apology to no action. Let the survivors lead. Let whānau fund and be funded first. Publish the truth. We don’t support this bill. Kia ora rā.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki, supporting our awesome co-leader Marama Davidson, who laid the foundation for the work that’s being completed to date, but the work is not complete. We are merely in a process of trying to improve and broker solutions which focus on the victim.

In reviewing the Whanaketia survivor experiences and thinking of the six years of evidence that was presented to royal commission, and as someone who was fortunate to have a mum and a dad and who was raised in a loving home, I can only share my aroha to the mōrehu, the mōrehu who suffered in a system which harmed them. The abuse was not by accident. It was a system which established power and control and silenced the voices of children. It was a system that broke a generation of young people—where, yes, some have fallen into harm’s way; they have been imprisoned, they have not been good spouses or parents, they have struggled in relationships, they have struggled to keep jobs, and yet it was the system that did this to them, and it was by design.

This legislation is merely just one part of a cog of a bigger, wider conversation we have to have as New Zealanders, as we consider what the pathway forward is. How do we listen intently to the voices of ngā mōrehu and the evidence that they firmly presented before the royal commission? Then, with the report with the 138 recommendations, how can we see the recommendations coming into full effect? This is incremental change, and we believe it is not moving fast enough to bring about some reconciliation for those who have been harmed at the hands of the Crown by those who were meant to look after them.

I want to reflect on the royal commission and their kōrero in relation to imprisonment and the correlation between State care and imprisonment. It’s been especially high for those who have been victims of State care. The research found that one in five within our prison system has been a victim of abuse in State care. We spoke earlier about the redress system and the presumption that is going to be imposed upon them, but we’ve disproportionally impacted this population of harmed people. They are now grandparents. They are disproportionately those who have filled up our prisons and who have filled up our gangs. Whanaketia holds the voices of the voiceless who have sat for a lifetime and finally found light and the ability to share their stories. They were stories that were hidden, they were stories that were silenced, and they were stories of those most vulnerable.

I bring to the House the story of Mr NK. His hometown was Taitoko Levin. He shared about how, as a 14-year-old, he was sent away to boarding school and then to a bootcamp in Tūrangi. He suffered abuse there. The officers would hold him down, they would beat him, and they would kick and push him around and press him on his chest. Following the harm that was inflicted, he spent a lifetime in and out of jail for small sentences of burglaries and thefts. Then, he got a big sentence for aggravated assault and was only just released, recently, in 2012. Now, he describes, in his evidence, the cycle. Surely, we’re at a point where we can say to Mr NK, “We hear you. We know Whanaketia has provided the path for us to make amends and try to do better for their children and mokopuna.” What we are asking, as Te Rōpū Kākāriki, is: have we done enough? Have we done enough in these amendments and what we’re proposing? The select committee has heard, and there’s opportunity for us to do more. We have come so far, but we can, absolutely, do more.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak at the third and final reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill is a response to the royal commission of inquiry into historical abuse in State and faith-based institutions. As the Government made it very clear from the very outset, it is to implement urgent reforms or broader responses to the commission’s 138 recommendations—they’re still in development. There’s a lot more work to come. Unfortunately, some members of this House are very aware of that, and they are seeking to use this for political gain, which is unfortunate, because this is a serious issue and a serious matter for many, many New Zealanders—both those directly affected, those indirectly affected, and for all of us. We need to acknowledge what they have been through, and we need to have a responsible discussion in this House, as it reverberates across our nation, for the sake and the betterment of our people.

There are some changes to be made to the Oranga Tamariki Act, the Children’s Act, the Crimes Act, and the Public Records Act—an omnibus bill, to make some changes to that. I’m just going to give one example of things I think the Opposition has been irresponsible about: that is, making some changes around the Oranga Tamariki Act, around de-escalation and the use of reasonable force for young people in that environment. Unfortunately, I have heard endless critique against that.

Now, I’m going to share one little story to say why these people should really wake up and live in the real world. A number of years ago, I was working as a lawyer, and I was contacted by a father of a young man who’d been accused of a very serious crime. I went to see him in Invercargill Prison, and while I was helping him fill out the paperwork to get a lawyer who was appropriately qualified for the level of seriousness of what he’d been charged with, he, without warning, attacked me, punched me to the face, and knocked me to the floor. While he was attempting to continue that, and I was fending him off, two corrections officers came in and tackled him and got him off me. I stood up, my shirt covered in blood. I can tell you that I was thankful that reasonable force was used that day to stop that man from continuing that assault.

There are, unfortunately, many cases where people will use force against themselves or others, and reasonable force needs to be used to stop that, so let’s have a responsible conversation as we continue this piece of work, ladies and gentlemen. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is important—and I take note of the previous member, Joseph Mooney’s story, and acknowledge what he said—but I want to go back to what our Labour leader said when we first started this. The Hon Chris Hipkins said, “It’s a hugely important day for us - the representatives of the Crown and [of] successive Governments - that we finally acknowledge the thousands of confronting experiences of neglect, abuse … trauma, … torture, and that we finally own up fully to our failings and offer our sincerest apologies. [We are sorry] Today - all of Aotearoa New Zealand will bear witness to the truth - to what survivors experienced, to our decades of wilful ignorance, denial, minimisation and to our conviction to end such horror and vile acts from continuing.” The Labour position was very clear in terms of where we were at.

We don’t resile from that. We also don’t resile from supporting this bill today—obviously, with reservations, because we want so much more to be done. I don’t come here to criticise or condemn any of the stories from the Government, from Minister Chhour. I do respect her story, her life story, and her position. The problem is that so many of the experts through this have been ignored, and that is where so much angst comes from in the community. Believe it or not, many of our community, many of our people, want the Government to do well with this kaupapa. It is important the Government does well with this kaupapa, but when you have initiatives, like boot camps, that were clearly recommended against by experts in the community—absolutely adamant that that type of a strategy was not going to, and does not, benefit people who’ve been through the system—totally ignored by the Government, it does not help.

It doesn’t mean to say that people are going to walk away from the Government, and, as I said, others will be opposed to this bill today. We are not. We just want more—we want more. Oranga Tamariki is a shining example. The former Minister Kelvin Davis went down the track of recommendations in terms of having an all-Maori board to respond to the types of tragedies that were happening within the Oranga Tamariki system, where babies were being taken, and whānau were not being consulted. We wanted to avoid all that, so we put in the necessary, I suppose, people—despite survivors saying there was no more need for Oranga Tamariki, and they’re still saying that, and that is still being ignored. But, as a Labour Government, we did not get rid of Oranga Tamariki, either, but we have put in people who we think are incredibly necessary in terms of the process going forward.

Minister Chhour has worked with those sorts of people—people like Dame Naida Glavish, who’s been an adviser, and other good people within the Oranga Tamariki area. Also, contracts have been given to our community organisations. That is one of the ways forward. This Government must look to go down that track, in terms of giving communities the opportunity to deal with this kaupapa.

You sound like you’re saying our policy.

That is happening, but that is not happening enough, to that member.

Oh, come on!

No, it’s not happening enough. Even Mr Seymour would agree with that here, with his charter school stuff. He would want more in terms of what’s happening with communities. I certainly acknowledge that there has been an effort from the Government in this area, in terms of this bill, and that’s why today we will be supporting the bill. But the bill does not go far enough and, in many ways, is a missed opportunity.

I was listening to Joseph Mooney, and I do sympathise with what Joseph Mooney was saying, but the use of force contradicts survivor- and trauma-informed practice. I think that’s the thing, Mr Mooney. I mean, how can we legitimately be against abuse in State care while still—and this is the point—allowing the State to use force, you know? Obviously, some common sense is going to come into it, but—but—this has been the kōrero of many survivors through the years; that the State is not listening.

In particular, I think we brought out the kōrero of Ihorangi Reweti Peters, who’s an advocate. His name has been mentioned today—a survivor of abuse in State care who served as a member of the rangatahi reference group and on the Māori recommendations working group for the royal commission of inquiry into abuse. Just today—just today—in The Post, he criticises the manner in which the Government has gone about this process by limiting the involvement by survivors and by ignoring the call for a real, independent redress system. That’s what survivors are saying. It’s quite damning, what he’s saying, and I know that people on the other side will respect this view. It was clear that the Government cared more about—well, they probably won’t respect this view—how they look to voters than acting on the promises to survivors.

Oh, don’t be like that.

Well, that’s from a survivor, Mr Seymour, and you should respect that. It’s someone who has been to hell and back, and rather than rubbish it and, as you accuse us of, being all political, maybe we should respect what that survivor has said.

We do. We’re not politicising it.

No, you are politicising it, because you’re not listening to what we’re saying. While we support the broad aim of the bill, Mr Seymour, let’s not pretend—

The member is running out of material.

I haven’t run out of material. I’ll keep going for another 10 minutes, if you like. While we respect the broad aim of the bill, the reality is that the Government is just not going far enough. It’s just the start, Mr Seymour, and you can’t just put in processes like boot camps to look after things. If we were the Government, we would have a vastly different bill. We would have a bill, Mr Seymour, that takes into account the Treaty of Waitangi, that, sadly, you have a problem with. Survivors, as you well know, have been very clear—but you don’t understand that, because you’re stupid in the head—

Oh!

But he is stupid in the head.

Mr Jackson, are you calling me stupid?

No, not you. Sorry, Mr Chair.

Well, you were.

My apologies. I was calling Mr Seymour stupid. All right? Is that OK?

Stick to the bill.

Certainly not you, Mr Speaker. What I’m trying to say, Mr Seymour, is that one of the calls from survivors was that the Treaty of Waitangi be respected and be part of this whole legislation, but Mr Seymour has got this weird sort of resentment to the Treaty and doesn’t understand that part of the Treaty process is that there is a special consultation process that has to be set up with Māori, that Mr Seymour disagrees with and refuses to be part of.

I say today, in this third reading, that whilst we as Labour will agree with the bill, we are way off where we want to go. We need to understand that you have to consult with communities much better. You have to consult with Māori much better. They do not know the way forward with regards to this, and survivors have to have a certain level of confidence, and they don’t at the moment. They’re feeling excluded. They’re feeling ignored. They’re not feeling part of the process. This Government needs to stop attacking communities, survivors, Māori. But we will support the bill, because it is at least a start. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

This is a five-minute split call—Paulo Garcia. Apologies, I have been left with an incomplete list.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Alongside the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill, this bill, the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, is another step forward in the Crown’s response to the royal commission’s findings, making an important start to changes to improve the safety and wellbeing of children, young people, and adults in care. The bill aims to protect people in State care today and into the future. This is a legacy owed to the courageous nearly 2,400 survivors who provided their experience and shared their experience of abuse that has contributed to the commission’s work, which has now resulted in this additional step to improve the safety and wellbeing of children. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I remember when the Prime Minister apologised on behalf of successive Governments for what has happened to New Zealanders in care. I think, at the time, there was a lot of hope by those who have been impacted that something would actually get done. Today, we should be joined together in celebration that at least something is being done, albeit this something is a redress that is not enough.

Let’s be really clear, a lot of harm has been done to New Zealanders who were in care and who, through no fault of their own, were subject to the kind of punishment that you read about from other places around the world, not in New Zealand. But it is a fact that it happened here. It’s a fact that we, as a Parliament, should be doing as much as we can to, as the key word in the name of this bill says, redress that situation. We’re not even saying “compensate them” for what they’ve lost. We’ll never be able to compensate for them. Using a word like “redress”—redress can mean all sorts of different things to different people. I hope that everyone that has been impacted by abuse in care goes one more step and tells the select committee how and why this is so wrong.

As my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson said, we will support this bill not because it’s enough, but because we want it to be enough. We want those who have been subjected to the abuse in care to have another day so that they come to another forum, so they lay out the abuses of their lives one more time in the hope that something will be done, even those who, through this bill, will not qualify for any redress. That’s why I say redress can mean different things for different people. Clearly, for some people, redress will mean they will get something; redress for others will mean they get nothing, no matter what abuse they suffered. I reluctantly accept that we support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In this third reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, we are not doing everything in one hit. As other speakers have talked about, we are doing many things in the background. We cannot do it all at once. I think that the gravity of what we all heard as evidence, it really means that we should take it into account with everything we do. From this moment and every moment forward, whenever we’re thinking about people that are in vulnerable positions, we should always, in this House, have cause to think about survivors of abuse in care and those that are vulnerable. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. As the last speaker on the Labour side, I wanted to talk about why we’re supporting: it is step one in a process that, we hope, helps change the settings so that people are looked after in a different way when they’re in care and do not have a repeat of the experience that people have had before.

Part of the criticism across the House today has been a suggestion that we in the Opposition are too critical; that we have too many things to say that are critical. I urge the Government to remember that it’s our job to absolutely be zealous advocates for people in the system. That’s our job. I think that the select committee process that I was involved with, and this piece of legislation, did exactly that.

I want to start with the example of one of those glitchy issues. We’ve got a situation where children are going through strip-searches, and they’re going through a process of going into an environment which is not ideal, to say the least. We have come to an agreement, in this legislation, that that won’t happen anymore, and that was a really good thing. But when we were in the select committee, we got to a gnarly discussion about the related issue of the use of force. There were lots of opinions in the select committee about that, and there was close questioning. Absolutely, that should happen; it doesn’t mean that the story that we heard from our chair, actually, of that select committee from the Government benches today is not correct: that there isn’t risk for people in those situations, that we shouldn’t look after the staff, that we shouldn’t look after the other children in those situations, and that we shouldn’t have to face the reality that sometimes force will be used. It does not mean that. What it means is that the people in Opposition, on those select committees, are doing their job. They are absolutely holding that space and asking those questions. That’s an important job to do. It wasn’t an easy one to remedy, and it hasn’t satisfied the Green Party, but this bill actually has got the support of this House as a result.

I recently stole myself to watch Adolescence. I had not quite managed that. I’ve got the sexual and family violence portfolio, and I just couldn’t bring myself, given what I am seeing and reading about on a daily basis in my job, to watch that show. But that show is a really interesting examination of a child going through a process. It didn’t mean the child hadn’t actually been involved; in fact, I don’t want to spoil the plot, but the child had committed the act. But that process was terrifying, as we were watching it from the outside. Our process has to be as human as it possibly can be, because we actually need a degree of safety for those people going through those processes. They come from all sorts of traumas, and we know that, so it’s incredibly important.

Now, one of the things that this law change will do is it will check the background of the people that are working with these very vulnerable people. It will check their backgrounds much more thoroughly than they’ve been checked before. That’s an incredibly important thing, because we know this is a place where violence grows—a relationship where somebody has no choice but to be there is a place where violence grows and there is predatory behaviour—so it’s really important that we make these amendments, and we change the system so that we’re checking overseas convictions.

I was interested to see that, in Australia, an enormous amount of money is being poured into systems of vetting, etc., because they have a state system, and so people move from state to state. We are lucky, in this country, that we have a contained couple of islands. We can do this job well, and we can change this effectively, I think. So that’s something that’s happening here.

There was a discussion with regards to the changes in this legislation over the Crimes Act. In this legislation, there is use of the word “disability” as a category of vulnerable person, and that caused a lot of controversy. I think that you’ve heard, in other speeches, people talk about why that upset people who didn’t want to use that term because it felt like “disability” was being equated with “vulnerability”, and it was the, kind of, defining feature. Now, that was discussed, and, in fact, the wording has been kept, but I just wanted people who are from outside of this House to understand what that was about: that definition fits within a context. It’s a definition of a vulnerable adult in the situation where a person is unable, by reason of those definitions—and that’s age, sickness, mental impairment, disability—to withdraw himself or herself because they are in the charge of another person. They are completely vulnerable in that situation, so the two go together. The disability goes with the vulnerability of not being able to get out of the situation.

I think there is a good argument for an alternative use of language here, because that’s what the stakeholders wanted. I think it’s really important that people realise that what is happening predominantly in this legislation is that we are recognising the vulnerability of people, the fact that they cannot leave these situations, and they are more vulnerable as a consequence. I think that’s a really important part of this legislation.

Now, I wanted to return to the issue of safe havens, because I use that language, having thought about it a lot. It’s become a core value that I’ve got, and that is a Labour value, I think: that we need to create safe havens for people, and that those safe havens are, hopefully, in their own homes. At the moment, they are simply not. We’ve got way too high levels of domestic violence and sexual violence in this country, and sexual violence is actually on the rise. We also have our utterly precarious housing, and a lot of these children that we’re talking about here are actually coming through the most broken of those situations, and they don’t have safe housing. When they move into these systems, and they move into what was described—I think, by one of the Green members—as “institutions”, it’s incredibly important that we role model that kind of safe environment.

In this case, that was a difficult discussion because it wasn’t the safety of one of these children; it was the safety of many of these children. Things like the searching that was needed for the safety not only of that child but for the safety of the other children in the place. There was a balancing act to be done.

What I became satisfied of, in this inquiry in the select committee—and I entered it rather late; people had already started—was that people were asking those searching questions, were thinking about those things. We, as a consequence of this legislation, won’t have got everything right, but we’ll be a lot better off, and those children will be a lot better off than they were. It’s a good step on the way.

Now, I just want to spend the last part of my speech talking about the bit that’s a worry, and that is the lack of engagement with the sector. I don’t accept what Minister Chhour said when she said, “We have been engaging for six or seven years.” That is just not good enough. This engagement has to continue and it has to be a partnership, and I think it has to be a partnership with the people impacted. They won’t all hold the same view, and we won’t all actually be able to suggest we know because we’re a victim—that’s actually irrelevant. It’s about us all being involved in those processes and honouring those people who are most impacted.

It’s not a case of owning that space; it’s a case of letting others be in that space and participate fully in designing the kinds of solutions here. Hopefully that means that we come up with better solutions. I commend this bill to the House.

Ka tino tata te mutunga o tēnei pire, nā reira he kōrero poto tēnei e pā ana ki ngā taipitopito o te pire nei.

[We are near the conclusion of this bill, so this will be a short speech about the details of this bill.]

Thank you very much for the considered speeches, particularly in just the last 15 minutes. I feel the weight of legislation like this—what it is that we are discussing, what it is that we are doing—and I appreciate the āta whakaaro me te āta kōrero hoki o ngā mema atu, nā reira ka tuku au i te pire nei ki te Whare [careful consideration and mindful discussion also of other members. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House].

I present a legislative statement on the Medicines 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 Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

During COVID-19, many New Zealanders were bemused that important treatments could not be allowed in New Zealand because they did not have Medsafe consent. Many people asked why it is even necessary for New Zealand to have an agency that consents things that are widely accepted in other countries. As a result of that, all three coalition parties campaigned on a concept, similar to what is in this bill, known as the rule of two. It simply says that if two other jurisdictions have consented a medication for an indication, then it can be used in New Zealand.

I want to thank Sam Uffindell, the chair of the Health Committee, and indeed the entire committee for the improvements that they have made to this bill, most notably changing the bill so that the range of countries which can be a consenting country can now be set in regulation rather than hardwired into primary legislation. This will go a long way to ensure that New Zealanders can have access to the best and latest medicines with minimal bureaucracy, and that is a very good example of this Government fixing what matters for New Zealanders.

There will also be changes to prescribing in two ways. One is that pharmacists and nurse practitioners will have their ability to prescribe medications expanded. That is particularly important in rural locations where nurse practitioners may be acting alone in remote areas and people need their prescriptions quickly.

Finally, there will also be changes for all prescribers so that in times of emergency, alternative funded but unapproved medicines can be prescribed in situations where there is a shortage of the approved medicine. This can be very important in times of—

Point of order, Mr Speaker. We’re all told time and time again not to wear our party insignia in the House, and the Deputy Prime Minister comes in here time and time again with it on. Good on you for taking it off.

Thank you for the reminder, and I’m sure the leader of the ACT Party will be very grateful for that reminder. So thank you for removing it. Continue.

Yes. There are such things as magnanimity and grace, but they take time to earn in the House, and some members clearly have not spent that much time here just yet, but we have hope for them, just as we have hope for all people.

Allowing all prescribers to prescribe will mean that people can get access to medications at critical times. Finally, the Government has made a decision that it would like to introduce an Amendment Paper at the committee of the whole House stage, and that is very important for medical conferences. The whole point of a medical conference is that medicines which have not been approved or funded in New Zealand can be marketed and shown to clinicians who might well want to prescribe them in the future.

At the moment, many New Zealand medical practitioners end up taking time to go to places like Fiji or Australia to attend these conferences. We are going to introduce an amendment that will, effectively, legalise them here in New Zealand. That means that there will be an estimated $90 million in economic benefit over the next decade from being able to have these conferences here. This is something that has come through the Ministry for Regulation’s red-tape tip line and is a very good example of the Government listening and responding so that there can be more opportunities for New Zealanders to do well and to have greater opportunity to improve their lives through their own efforts.

That is all I need to say about this bill. It’s very short. It’s very positive. It will open up a lot of opportunity for New Zealanders around medication, and I hope that other parties will join in with magnanimity and grace to support something that can only be good for New Zealanders. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Gosh, what a surprise. I didn’t expect to be taking a call essentially in support of the bill as it’s currently drafted and as amended and tweaked and considered—in great detail, actually—at the Health Committee to come here today and learn that, at the eleventh hour, there will be an amendment dropped at the committee of the whole House—without the ability for submitters to submit—that allows marketing and advertising of pharmaceuticals in New Zealand. Yes, it may be a great idea; however, it has come through the Ministry for Regulation, which, we know, is a creation of the ACT Party and is an interesting institution, given that it’s supposed to be about deregulating but is actually also being seen as a bit of an institution for fast tracking. I do have real concerns about that, and Labour will be looking very carefully at the detail of that amendment to see whether we agree with that or not.

We wouldn’t want to deprive the country of much-needed money and productivity. However, we don’t also want to be like some foreign jurisdictions where we are seen as taking a silver bullet for every possible remedy, with relentless marketing on TV and with the big pharmaceuticals crowding out and basically medicalising other solutions for what could be lifestyle or other issues. I just want to put that on the record, because this is completely unexpected. We were given no warning, as far as I’m aware, and I think it does show, again, a bit of a lack of respect for due process by this Government.

Labour does support the bill as it’s currently drafted. As I said, we looked at it in detail at the Health Committee, mainly because we do see that it’s very difficult for a small market like New Zealand to be attractive to pharmaceuticals and particularly for those who are only going to be treating a small part of the population. It does beggar a question, really, as to whether at some point in the past we may have been better joining forces with our friends over the Ditch to have a more combined market. It is very difficult to get the economies of scale that are needed, and so, for that reason, we think it’s a good idea to rationalise how we look at the safety and availability of medicines. We asked a lot of questions about the system that is being introduced, and we are convinced that it is good to refer to the considerable work that is done by like-minded jurisdictions.

We also are happy that the medicines that are introduced will still need a sponsoring pharmaceutical company. That does provide a level of accountability that, we feel, will avoid New Zealand becoming a dumping-ground for inferior batches of drugs, or drugs that could potentially be harmful. I’m thinking, here, when we’re talking about safety, that these are important issues, because we’re a generation that has seen the harms caused by drugs like thalidomide. They are in the minority, but the impacts can be devastating. This is one of those areas of lawmaking where we really need to weigh up the benefits and the risks, and make sure that we are not being unduly difficult and disallowing potentially lifesaving drugs for people in New Zealand who need them, while also making sure that we don’t put members of the public at harm. It has struck a pretty good balance, we think.

The question we have, really, is whether this is going to be the magic bullet that the Government likes to think. There are a number of other issues in the health system that we think are really worthy of a great deal of attention, including funding the system properly, workforce planning, tertiary planning and how that works with workforce, what our immigration settings are, and how we make sure we have the right numbers counted. We’ve got the Government saying, you know, “We need eight full-time nurses on the front line in ED departments in Dunedin Hospital.” We’ve got the nurses saying, “We need 16.” That kind of focus, I think, would see some really big impact. This is going to be more niche. Nevertheless, medicines, we do accept and agree, are the new frontier for intervention, and can make a remarkable difference to the lives of the people who get them. Time will tell whether this bill will be everything that the Government has said it will be.

I think the other area that we do have a little bit of concern about, though, is around the technical panel that the Minister will be able to appoint, because we don’t want to see the politicisation of the health system and because we are all too aware of the heavy lobbying presence of pharmaceutical companies globally. They have huge market share, they invest a lot of money, and then they definitely reap the profit, and they use that to be able to lobby. We want to mitigate that influence coming into our democratic institutions. What we normally see with the appointment of these advisory committees is people who are appointed for their technical expertise, who can make evidence-based decisions and can justify them on evidence, and who the public can trust to have their best interests at heart. When we are now looking at the Medicines Classification Committee being a ministerial appointment, we don’t think that is correct. It should be appointed by the director-general. Some people could argue the toss and say that, in reality, that’s kind of what happens anyway, but I think that the way the law is currently drafted in this bill just leaves that too open for our liking.

The other thing we would say is that extending the exemption to prescribing unapproved medicines to nurse practitioners and the change to include prescribing pharmacists seems reasonable. Particularly, I think, we do want to see people work up to the top of scope of practice. We are already seeing changes that, I know, from a mental health perspective, I think are great, around nurse practitioners and the medication for ADHD and the difference that will make for those who are not normally able to access GPs or the health system or even psychiatrists and the specialist level of care who end up often in our courts and then in our prisons.

Working to top of scope is a good idea, and I think, for pharmacists, we’ve also seen conglomerate pharmacy groups that, in some ways, have disempowered a little bit the active role that the community pharmacist can have in terms of being able to provide good advice—good health advice—make good decisions, and also approve where appropriate. We think those are reasonable changes; they are pragmatic. But again, it’s important to review them and to make sure that we are not unnecessarily putting people at risk. Labour would like to see the devil in the detail when the regulations and the executive orders come out about how those types of safety issues are going to be handled.

That’s probably all I’ve got to say on this. We do welcome the Medicines Amendment Bill. People can be assured that we have given it a great deal of scrutiny at select committee, and I feel really grateful that we have somebody like my colleague the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall there who can ask these clinical expertise - type questions.

Unfortunately, today we have now seen a massive change in terms of the bill that will be dropped at the committee stage. I don’t understand why this was not foreshadowed. I don’t understand why it has to be introduced now as a fast track, rather than earlier in the piece so that submitters could express their opinions. I certainly feel there are a lot of New Zealanders who would not want to see New Zealand emulate some of the jurisdictions such as the US, where watching dinner TV, every ad that comes on seems to be about some magic pill that is going to save your life or make you live to an old age. That’s not the New Zealand we want, and I think people should be very cautious. We will be asking lots of questions and probably doing quite a lot of research into the official documents to find out why this late amendment is going to come in so late in the piece. That’s for the committee stage, and I’ll just forewarn you, Mr Speaker, that we would seek your indulgence in that committee stage to really traverse those questions given that they would not have been to a select committee. With those comments, I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the Green Party, I rise to also tautoko this legislation. I acknowledge our colleagues on the Health Committee, who sat and heard from a range of submitters. I think nearly 200 submitters came before the select committee, in writing and orally, and there were about 30-odd in terms of oral submissions. The voice of support was very strong but there were also cautions within what was shared.

I look back to members of the Wellington Community Justice Project, who are a group of student volunteers at Victoria University, and they shared that whilst overseas regulators have been historically reliable, it doesn’t mean that it’s always that way. While the bill allows the Minister to make rules for verification through secondary legislation and they can be refined and reflected to best practice at an international level, they felt that there still needs to be something within the text of the bill itself to ensure that the regulatory authorities themselves are regularly assessed and uphold standards of international best practice. That’s really helpful in terms of the way in which we look at a system in its entirety, acknowledging that the Minister will be a part—one of those important cogs—of the approvals, ultimately, and that the legislation also opens up the space for us to have two overseas-recognised regulators putting forward medications.

Reflecting also on submissions, Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Otangarei Trust from Whangārei spoke to the select committee. They, as clinicians, celebrated the way in which there could be an expansion in terms of prescribing, knowing that we have shortages in the workforce and we have such a talented range of kaimahi within the health system who could join in this space with that relevant clinical supervision and the right provisions in place for their clinical safety, but they could also become prescribers. In Ōtāngarei, for those that don’t know, this community has high levels of deprivation. It’s an urban community in Whangārei, and they have big waiting-lists, like many do in the primary care system. The nurses and the manager came online and shared that they really welcomed the opportunity, at a community grassroots level, to increase the way in which they can provide access to timely quality medications for their communities that they serve.

I think that that really reflects the intent, knowing that it is a bit of fast-track medicine legislation and we don’t know what the amendments will be, and that’s a pity, because we could have had that interrogation by submitters if it had been received earlier. The opportunity for us to sit as a select committee, ask the relevant pātai, or questions, and then for submitters—because the submitters were diverse. We had industry, we had health sector, we had leadership from the health sector, and we had our students who had put forward their voice, and so there was a missed opportunity there for us to interrogate what are proposed amendments.

We know that we want to get faster access to medicines, and it’s absolutely welcomed, but there also needs to be consideration around the wider pūnaha hauora—or the wider health system—in terms of both medication and the medicines but also access to those skilled clinicians that are needed in the community but also in secondary and tertiary care. Thinking about those issues, it is a question for the Government and the Ministers to consider: how do we fuel and how do we resource the health system to be as effective as possible? While we’re gearing up access to medicines and we’re recalibrating the way in which we can get medicines into New Zealand, how does the system overall prepare for that, and then will that see the ripple effect in communities like Ōtāngarei, or in Hokianga Health and Hokianga Rāwene—at the hospital there—or at Te Hiku Hauora in Kaitāia? Will they see benefit in knowing that they’re always under clinical pressure to the demands of community?

There’s a significant lack in primary care right now—for instance, in the far Far North. In Kaitāia, there are some 3,000 whānau that don’t have access to a GP right now. It is like we are here in one part of a system and we’re gearing it up for action, and then we’ve got these other areas within te pūnaha hauora—our health system—that need solid support and resourcing, and then, of course, we need to find the relevant workforce to go to rural populations and provide support.

I think that, in terms of what the Green Party supports, we absolutely honour the way in which voices came through in the select committee and the way that we, as a select committee, worked together in our questioning and the robustness of the dialogue, considering also the way in which we can, as the Health Committee now, just challenge ourselves as members of that Health Committee. When it comes time for the committee of the whole House and the amendments that are to come in, we can take a look at it with our own critical eye, knowing that we have had hands on the steering wheel to date. They will be new amendments that we’re not aware of, and we all could take the opportunity to have a good look at them and to look at the pros and cons that might be there. But also, knowing that we have that general support around the House for this legislation, how can we ensure that whatever amendments come through don’t undermine that collective support that we have across the House—which is great. It’s great to be working together and seeing this legislation come through.

On behalf of the Green Party, we absolutely know that this is an important step in terms of supporting increased ways in which our whānau, our hapū, and our community can access increased medications within whatever sphere of illness that they suffer, but the wider questions still remain and are outstanding in terms of what are the remedies, what are the solutions, and what resource is there to support the strengthened workforce, who will need to take on board this legislation and become those prescribers. Is the training, the supports, and the clinical supervision there? Is the workforce ready to deliver it, are we gearing them up, and do we need to look at the commencement date?

These are the types of levers that are available to help ready the system to start receiving these opportunities coming up, and then, further, the health system in general. We cannot turn a blind eye to the pressure points that exist within a strained health system in terms of workplace safety, patient-staff ratios, and pay and equity—and, as we start supporting more kaimahi to be prescribers, can we afford that, because it’s awesome for them clinically, but can the system afford that? We see that strikes are coming up on 23 October, so clearly there are some issues within the health system. But, by and large, we are here and we tautoko, in general, for now. As we get into the committee of the whole House, we’ll see what those amendments look like, and we’ll put the relevant interrogation and robust consideration into that space.

I thank the Minister and all of those who have provided submissions into the process. Your voice was heard. Your voice clearly articulated both considerations and some concerns, but through the process we have come out the other side, and the Green Party supports this. Kia ora.

Excellent. Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with great pleasure I rise to support the Medicines Amendment Bill, and it’s great to hear the other parties in the House so far are supporting this bill as well. This bill is about making it easier for New Zealanders to access medicines they need in a timely manner, because we know that some of these medicines can be the difference between life and death.

We’ve also heard one of the main amendments of this bill, from the Medicines Act 1981, is going to make a new pathway in which we can get medicines approved here in New Zealand. It does seem a little bit strange that when there’s been other countries of the same ilk who have approved medicines that we would have to have a long, drawn-out procedure before they could be used here in New Zealand. This is about having new pathway to speed that up.

It’s also about increasing the ability of some of some of our healthcare professionals to be able to prescribe what we call section 29 medicines. This is very important because we know, as COVID showed, sometimes there are breaks in the supply chain. We need to have alternatives on hand because, as I say, this is about the lives of New Zealanders and the quality of life of all New Zealanders. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Medicines Amendment Bill in its second reading. What a great Health Committee we have. We had a great process of taking a look at this bill. We worked collaboratively and I think we have produced some good amendments which the entire committee unanimously agreed to. We heard 185 submissions and oral evidence from 32 submitters.

The point of this bill is to help more New Zealanders to be able to access the medicines that they need. It will allow the medicines to be approved for distribution in New Zealand when they’ve been approved by two other overseas jurisdictions. This makes sense. This will reduce the time it takes to get the medicines approved. It’s called the rule of two. It’s great to see that the coalition Government—we came into this coalition with the same concerns around the processes around Pharmac. This bill goes some way to amend some of that.

There will also be a couple of other additions into this bill where we will ensure that those prescribing, whether they’re nurse practitioners, or, as we included, pharmacist prescribers, will be able to work at top of scope. Because they have really good clinical skill levels—very high clinical skill levels—enabling them to prescribe medicines under section 29 will ensure that if there is that break in the supply chain, as others have mentioned, these prescribers will be able to get these medicines out to patients.

We did also do a little amendment around replacing calendar days with working days. It was a tiny technical amendment which actually would have slowed down the process for progressing these medicines through the approval process.

This is a very good bill. I acknowledge the committee and all of those from Medsafe who worked on this with us so we could understand the entire process. The committee, as I mentioned, recommends all the amendments unanimously. I commend this bill to the House.

Five-minute split call—Tākuta Ferris.

E ara ake nei au ki te waha i ngā kōrero mā Te Pāti Māori e hāngai ana ki tēnei o ngā pire e kīia nei ko te Medicines Amendment Bill, me te whakamahara i te Whare ki ngā tatauranga o te iwi Māori, he kino, he kikino i roto i te ao hauora. Whakatipuranga atu, whakatipuranga mai. Nō reira tēnei whai a te Minita nei kia karo i ngā āheinga e tae mai ai te rongoā, te āwhina rānei, te mātanga hauora rānei ki te whakatika, ki te whakarauora i te tūroro, ka pōhiritia. Tēnei āhuatanga ka pōhiritia.

Nō reira nau mai, haere mai. Haria mai te ito o tēnei o ngā pire kia horapa, kia tere, kia horo te taetae atu o tēnei mea te rongoā ki roto ki ngā ringaringa o te hunga e hiahia ana. I te mea, ko tātou e mārama pai ko te iwi Māori e tāmia ana i roto i ēnei tū whakahaere o te ao hauora. Nō reira kei te Minita, tēnā koe. Kei te tautoko ake Te Pāti Māori i tēnei o ngā pire nā runga anō i tōna āhei ki te hāpai i te hauora o te iwi.

Taku wero ki te Whare, he aha i kore ai e pēnei i roto i ētahi atu whakaritenga? He aha i kore ai e pēnei i roto i ngā whakaritenga mō Te Tiriti o Waitangi? He aha i kore ai e pēnei i roto i te ao mātauranga? He aha? Nō reira kia kaha rā. Me te tauira: kei te mahara ake au ki te tauira i whakatauirahia e te iwi Māori i roto i te wā o te Spanish flu. I kōkirihia e Apirana Ngata, tāna whakariterite mai i ngā kuia, i ngā kaumātua, i ngā wāhine o te motu kia tū hei nēhi i roto i tērā wā. Mō te aha? Mō te whakarauora i te iwi i te korenga o te āhei o te Government ki te tuku horapa nei i te ringa manaaki, whakarauora, whakahauora i tērā wā. I riro mā te iwi Māori anō ia e whakarauora. Nō reira ka pai—ka pai. Kawea atu, e te Minita—kawea atu. Whakatauirahia tētahi āheinga e piki ai ngā tatauranga o te iwi Māori i roto i tēnei ao o te hauora.

Nō reira kāore mātou mō te tohe i te ōritetanga, kāore mātou mō te tohe i te mana motuhake, ngā pikinga, ngā kakenga i roto i te ao hauora. Kei te pōhiritia e Te Pāti Māori. Nō reira ka tautokona ahakoa kua eke kē ki te komiti whiriwhiri tuatahi, haere tonu ki roto ki ngā taupatupatu i roto i te komiti o te Whare katoa. Hei reira anō ētahi pātai e iri ana—hei reira anō ētahi pātai e iri ana.

Kei te mārama mātou he pire e tautokohia ana e Malcolm Mulholland me āna kaupapa whakarauora i te iwi Māori ki te mate pukupuku me ōna tū āhuatanga, me te tautoko anō hoki a Dr Rāwiri Jansen. Nō reira e tautoko ana mātou i tā te tokorua rā whakapae: Ka piki te whakawhiwhi o te hauora o te iwi Māori i roto i tēnei tū āhuatanga.

Ko tētahi o ngā mōreareatanga, ne, ko te heke i te taumata ine, ne? Te whakaheke i te taumata ine mō te aromatawai i ngā rongoā ka kuhukuhu mai ki te whenua o Aotearoa—tūpato. Me tika rā tā tātou ine, tā tātou arohaehae, aromatawai i te urutanga mai o te rongoā ki te whenua o Aotearoa, i te mea, mātou kei te mōhio ko ngā toenga o ngā rawa o te whenua ka taka mai ki te iwi Māori. Ko tā mātou e mea nei ko te toi, ne, ko te taumata o ngā rawa ka kuhu mai ki Aotearoa me riro i te iwi Māori. Nō reira kia kaha rā, e te Minita, kia kaha rā. Whakapikihia te hauora ki tō tāua iwi, whakapikihia te hauora ki te whānuitanga o te motu, otirā te hāpai, te toko ake nei i te oranga o te iwi Māori. Nō reira huri noa, huri noa, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou.

[I rise to give voice to the comments, on behalf of Te Pāti Māori, regarding this bill known as the Medicines Amendment Bill, and to remind the House of the statistics of the Māori people: they are bad, very bad in the health field. Generation after generation. This Minister’s intention to present opportunities for the arrival of medicine, of help, or of a health expert to remedy and treat a patient, it is welcomed. This kind of thing will be welcomed.

And so welcome, welcome. Bring forward the ethos of this particular bill that it is disseminated widely, so that medicines arrive quickly and with haste into the hands of those that need it. We are all well aware that it is the Māori people that are oppressed in these types of processes of the health field. And so, Minister, thank you. Te Pāti Māori supports this particular bill because of its ability to improve the health of the people.

My challenge to the House is: why was it not like this in other applications? Why was it not like this in other applications regarding Te Tiriti o Waitangi? Why was it not like this in education? Why? Therefore, be strong. And the example: I remember the example provided by the Māori people in the time of the Spanish flu. It was promoted by Apirana Ngata, who organised the elderly ladies and gentlemen, and the ladies of the nation to become nurses at that time. What for? For the treatment of the people due to the Government’s lack of ability to provide care, treatment, and remedies widely at that time. It was left up to the Māori people to treat themselves. Therefore, this is good—it is good. Carry it forward, Minister—carry it forward. Exemplify an ability to improve statistics of the Māori people in this health field.

We will not debate equity, we will not debate self-determination, the improvements and enhancements within the health field. They are welcomed by Te Pāti Māori. Therefore, it will be supported even though it’s already made it to the first select committee and will progress through the stages of debate in the committee of the whole House. At that point, there will be other questions posed—at that point, there will be other questions posed.

We understand that it is a bill supported by Malcolm Mulholland and his Māori health initiatives related to cancer and all of its associated issues, and also supported by Dr Rāwiri Jansen. Therefore, we support both of their hypotheses that the health of the Māori people will be improved with this function.

One of the dangers is the reduction in the measurement standard, right? Lowering the measurement standard for the assessment of medicines that come into the country of New Zealand—be careful. We must appropriately measure, analyse, and assess the importing of medicines to the country of New Zealand because we are aware that it is the leftover resources of the country that fall to the Māori people. What we are saying is that it should be the best and highest standard of resources that come into New Zealand that are received by the Māori people. Therefore, be strong, Minister—be strong. Improve the health of our people, improve the health of the wider nation, indeed, to promote and support the health of the Māori people. To everyone all around this place, greetings and thanks to you all.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the second reading of the Medicines Amendment Bill. My colleague Hūhana Lyndon already outlined some of the reasons why we feel more confident in our support. As it would have been noted, initially, we had some concerns around the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over the overseas regulators and that there need to be adequate protections. Also, we wanted a more streamlined approach and to get some certainty and/or guarantees that it would not compromise medicine safety, and that the interests of Māori and medicine are appropriately protected.

I want to commend the Health Committee for the work they did to also put in place some changes to the bill. One thing I did want to note around the list of recognised overseas regulators is particularly around the fact that, yes, we did have a framework—that’s now been created and it’s been tightened—and the new section 22AA, inserted by clause 7. One thing that I did want to point out is the requirement that the person or body “conducts their business and releases reports in English.” I think that needs to be further looked at by the Minister and the Government because I think, to me, this does narrow the range of regulators that the Government could be tapping into. Right now, it’s the Anglosphere as well as countries that may conduct a business in English, but I also want to acknowledge that, ultimately, there may be countries that may be putting quite a bit of resourcing into the medicine space that may not choose to conduct their business in English. Ultimately, the Government could be choosing to resource adequate translation and interpretation services within the public sector to make sure that we can tap into those spheres and resources when they do exist.

Another part of this bill is around the prescription of unapproved medicines by pharmacist prescribers. I think this has potential to broaden the scope of the workforce that is able to do this. I note that, particularly, unapproved medicines are prescribed in a more common way due to global shortages, but, at the end of the day, if we’re going to be broadening who’s able to do these prescriptions, the workforce needs to be adequately supported as well.

Pharmacies across the country—those that are more community-led—are facing a more perilous position due to the creeping corporatisation of the pharmacies. Part of the public having trust that this new system will work in practice is also knowing and being confident that our workforce is grounded in knowing the community and being able to adequately prescribe in a way that also meets the specific population needs. I think this is where the Government needs to also do additional work to better support our pharmacists, and our pharmacies more broadly as well. We know that the way in which the contracts work is very out of date and also that pharmacies are the almost the front line and the first point of contact for many population groups that are not able to access other forms of primary care. For example, pharmacies are often the point of contact for people who have been recently incarcerated, who may have gang-affiliated connections, people who the system has left behind but who none the less deserve access to healthcare.

With these broadening provisions for the prescription of unapproved medicines, what will be key is ensuring that the workforce is supported so that these decisions are made in an informed way. We also hold concerns about the current state of our healthcare system because I think, sometimes, bills and the intent of bills are not often matched with the resourcing and realities on the ground. In order for this bill to be successful, I think we will need to make sure that our Public Service and people at the front lines, pharmacies, and GP clinics are given the support that they need. This is, I think, a future area of work that the Government needs to continue embarking with so that the public has the confidence so that when there are, for example, global shortages of approved medicines, that those prescriptions are made in a way that genuinely meets the need of our communities.

But on the whole, we welcome the Government taking steps to give people greater access to medicines, to make sure that we tap into global knowledge where we can, but that we also create greater protections to make sure that when we are making these decisions, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t having undue influence on how we choose to do them. Kia ora.

I rise to support the Medicines Amendment Bill, which makes meaningful improvements to our health system. It will allow medicine already approved in recognised overseas jurisdictions to be approved in New Zealand within 30 working days. It also enables the wider prescribing of unapproved medicines in specific cases, while ensuring all the prescribers stay within their professional scope over their approved list.

These changes will improve access, reduce delay, and support timely and high-quality care. For communities like Mt Roskill, this means faster treatment and better health outcomes. I commend this bill to the House.

Just before the next speaker—Dr Cheung, I just encourage you to not read your whole presentation, particularly when it’s that short. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also will make a relatively lengthy contribution to the Medicines Amendment Bill, which Labour will be supporting, but, obviously, we do have some concerns so we’ll be cautiously supporting—and that late amendment does give rise to some extra considerations, which my colleague Ingrid Leary said will be well and truly interrogated at the committee of the whole House stage, given that it hasn’t had any scrutiny to date.

The bill, as has been said, creates a new consent by verification pathway for Medsafe to approve medicines faster, and that sounds like it’s a really good idea. We do agree that, certainly on the surface, that does sound like a really good idea. People should have access to medicines quickly and efficiently, and anything we can do to improve the process under which the current system works is good news. If a medicine has full approval from the two approved overseas regulators, which we’ve heard today being termed as—I can’t now actually remember what the term was, but it was something to do with the number two, which I thought was a little bit ironic and—

Rule of two.

The rule of two—rule of two. Thank you, Jenny Marcroft, for availing me of that information. The two approved overseas regulators, then, therefore, its sponsor, which would be the pharmaceutical company, can apply for a streamlined approval to be able to market it here. The bill also extends the prescribing rights for unapproved medicines, which I think is really important, to nurse practitioners and prescribing pharmacists.

I would like to take the opportunity to give a wee bit of a shout-out to nurse practitioners and nurse prescribers, who I think do an amazing job. Before plying my wares in this House, I worked for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and represented some fabulous nurse practitioners and nurse prescribers, which is a relatively newish concept within the scope of what nursing offers in New Zealand. It is something that we should continue to support: the ability of our fabulous nurses to do more and more in our healthcare system.

The updates and processes for recognising approved overseas regulators now needs to be based—and this bill purports to do that—on clear criteria instead of naming them directly in the legislation, which we think sounds sensible. Listening to my colleague Ingrid Leary earlier on making her contribution, she provided a little bit more detail about that, and we’re happy to agree with that.

Now, it also changes how members of the Medicines Classification Committee are going to be appointed. My understanding—having looked through this bill and having listened to some of the kōrero at the select committee process—is that that’s now going to be a ministerial appointment, not by the Director-General of Health. That is something that we do take issue with, and I’m going to elaborate on that a little bit more.

If we look at the main issues, I think the main issues in this bill that do warrant some clarification—there’s probably six main points. Labour does support the bill, but we support it with some caution. We support faster access to safe, effective medicines, and we are relatively reassured that the patient’s safety remains central, as proposed in this bill. But we do want to say that it’s not automatic, the approval process, and so it’s not quite what the coalition agreement promised.

Oh, 30 days!

But, nevertheless, we understand the complexities around thinking what you might do before you get to Government and then having to work constructively to do so. But—

How did the member learn about that?

Just noting the point, Mr Seymour—just noting the point.

The key limitations remain. It still requires a sponsor application. Companies need to see a commercial reason to apply in the first place, and the biggest barrier to that is going to be and will remain Pharmac funding, not necessarily Medsafe approval times. Unless Pharmac can fund the medicine, companies simply aren’t going to bother making those applications and applying in the first place. Therefore, the outcome from that is that patients still won’t benefit from those medications. In itself, the bill—again, happy to support it, but it certainly won’t fix access on its own.

The third point worth mentioning is that it applies only to new medicines. It doesn’t include changes to existing drugs, new indications, formulations, or administration routes, and these actually make up a large share of the Medsafe applications. The practical, real-life implication might not necessarily be as big as it sounds on the tin.

The fourth point I wanted to make was about changes to approved overseas regulators. We are pleased with the select committee process with regards to this and the improvements that were made. The regulators will now be approved by criteria that won’t necessarily have to be locked into legislation, and that allows the flexibility that I think is required in that circumstance. It also allows for the flexibility, if political interference—something that could affect trust in regulators.

The fifth point is the prescribing changes. I think it absolutely is a reasonable extension to reflect what is, as I intimated earlier, a more and more modern practice when we look at who can prescribe and how those prescriptions are made. It’s particularly helpful amid any kind of global medicines shortages. We have had plenty of examples in this country, over the last short while, where, for one reason or another, there have been particular shortages or particular blockages in either the medicines that we hold or in the way that we’ve been able to disseminate them to the public. I think that that’s good, but it should be reviewed regularly, and I think that that is just wise. Most people would agree that when we’re talking about something as critical as the safety of medicines, we would like to ensure that that is reviewed regularly to ensure that the safety continues and, therefore, the effectiveness is in place.

The last point, as I alluded to, was the committee appointment change. We are opposed to this aspect and I think it is worth being very explicit about that. The Medicines Classification Committee, we think, should remain absolutely independent. I think that’s important not just from a practical point of view or a procedural point of view but also from the perspective of public trust and the absolute public buy-in that needs to happen to maintain the integrity of a robust system. Technical appointments, we think, most definitely belong with the Director-General of Health and certainly not the Minister.

The bill, as we say, is about ensuring safe, timely access to medicines, which is something that I think everybody in this House agrees that every family and every person deserves in this country. Certainly, Labour agrees with that. It is our focus and it remains our focus: making it cheaper and easier for everybody in this country to see a doctor or a nurse, a professional that is close to the home. Speaking of which, we know that, certainly under this Government’s watch, it’s become harder than ever to see a doctor or a nurse or a specialist. I can’t help but reflect on the fact that National’s focus on cutting corners, on shifting control to Ministers rather than making the system work for patients, has been a step in the wrong direction. We know that families are paying more, they’re waiting longer, and they’re getting less. While this Government may tinker around the edges—and certainly this is one aspect of tinkering that we do support—it’s not part of the bigger picture and it’s something that doesn’t go nearly far enough of what needs to happen in this country.

We support this bill because it improves efficiency, but I want to reiterate the point that faster paperwork doesn’t mean faster access if Pharmac isn’t properly funded. We believe that Kiwis deserve quick, safe, effective, and affordable treatments and medicines that work as well.

It’s unfortunate that on something that has wide support of the House, the member who just resumed her seat, Tracey McLellan, couldn’t but help herself to take the opportunity to spread misinformation about what this Government is doing in the health sector. I find it is my obligation to remind the House that this Government is putting more money into health than ever before—ever before. Despite the amount of money we have to spend on interest because of the previous Government’s mismanagement of the economy, we have put more money into health than ever before.

My constituents of the mighty, wonderful Whanganui electorate, like the previous speaker said, are pleased to see another pathway for the speedy approval of medicines here in New Zealand, and I thought that it would be valuable to end the pre - dinner break contribution to this bill by noting what those countries that are recognised as part of the fast-track 30 - working day approval for medications, the “working day” part being added as part of the Health Committee process—those are the European Union, Australia, Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Switzerland. If a country has a medicine approved by two of those countries, then clearly it is appropriate for approval here. I commend the bill to the House.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30.

The House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break, we were discussing the Medicines Amendment Bill. We’re up to call No. 10 and it’s a split call for Labour—Helen White.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to start my call by talking about the things that are really good about this bill and that we very much support. I think the swift approval process makes a lot of sense, and it looks like the Health Committee did some very good work making sure that there are a great deal of standards around that situation, and I like the amendment with regard to nurse practitioners and prescribers.

Like one of our other speakers, I’ve worked as a lawyer for people who have been doing those jobs and it’s a great career pathway. They are extremely skilled, they are well trained—they have four years of training, they have 300 clinical hours—and they are good people to extend that part of the Act to.

I am concerned to hear about a new amendment. If the Minister has what sounds like a substantial amendment ready, I’d like to see it. I would have liked to stand up and take this call knowing the full effect of it because it sounds like it’s about medical conferences in New Zealand, and that’s a very different purpose from the rest of the Act. It will be something that we will need to scrutinise. I’d love to see that amendment. I don’t know if it’s good or bad.

The concerns in this area for New Zealanders are very real. I recently read a book that many people in this House have probably read, which was called Empire of Pain and it was about the opioid crisis in the US. It didn’t actually mention New Zealand in it. It wasn’t that it didn’t touch us, but we had very different rules around the way that medicines are advertised, etc., and it has absolutely caused a world of pain in the US to have had the rules they had.

People have such a right to care about rules in this area. We had a select committee process and if this amendment was something that was seen as beneficial and was on the boil, it would have been really good for the people who made submissions to be able to contribute their knowledge in this process. I picked up an article that was about the lessons to be learnt from that crisis. That was by a New Zealand doctor and so I simply don’t know whether I’m dealing with something that might open New Zealanders up in a way and make them vulnerable or not. It’s best practice that it goes through a select committee process, for a good reason. There are experts in this field, international lessons to be learnt, and we have a very powerful pharmaceutical industry across the world. We have the example of what happened with the Sackler family enterprise in that book. If anybody is interested, I think it’s an amazing read. And they weren’t alone.

These kinds of loopholes in the law have caused huge tragedies and the ways that we structure our laws can make a huge difference, and so it’s really important. I don’t mean to suggest that there is an issue here, because I simply don’t know. I would like to see that amendment as soon as possible. I will be looking at it carefully, and I know that my colleagues will, but that’s not really the point. The point is, it’s the people who are the experts in the area, and it is also the people who might be the victims of anything that we get wrong in this House.

I love our select committee system and I tell young children that I visit that it is the most incredible thing about New Zealand and the parliamentary system that they can make a submission, that people will listen to them, and, actually, if we get it wrong, we can change things before it’s too late through that system. It is a participatory democracy. So I would like to see that—the sooner the better. Other than that, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

The purpose of this bill—the Medicines Amendment Bill, in its second reading—is to speed up the approval of, and access to, medicines for patients in need in New Zealand. Therefore, it is good for patients in need; it is good for the families of the patients. We are a Government that puts patients first. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Medicines Amendment Bill. I wasn’t a member of the Health Committee, but there were a few times when I subbed on and the committee were considering matters of secondary legislation powers in various bills. I do think that that is an interesting matter to consider, when you’re thinking about medicines and how they are regulated, because there is a huge amount of public interest in terms of getting it right and making sure they are accessible.

I did go back and read some of the submissions in relation to this bill, and it felt, to me, like there were three categories of issues that submitters were really focused on. The first was the approval times for medicines to get approved by Medsafe; the second was the issue of actually attracting those big providers—those big companies—to New Zealand, given what Pharmac does and doesn’t fund and the timing in terms of it being inside New Zealand and being able to be funded; and then there were some submitters who spoke to broader issues in this space as well, in terms of access to medicines, which I do think are relevant, because, largely, the suggestion was that while this will fix some of the issues, it’s not going to address all the issues that are relevant in terms of New Zealanders being able to access medicines.

Before I speak to the content of the bill that we have in front of us now, I just wanted to echo the comments made by Helen White in relation to the Government’s indication that we’ll see an amendment at the committee of the whole House. Much like Miss White, I am disappointed that that hasn’t been brought to the committee at an earlier stage, because, as I’ve said, I think this is an area of huge public interest, and I suspect that there would have been submissions in terms of what is and isn’t permissible at those medical conferences. I do think it’s a shame, but I would just urge the Government to ensure that members of the committee have access to that as soon as possible.

The committee of the whole House is, of course, only effective when we’ve truly been able to engage with the materials well. Certainly, as long as there’s a sufficient gap between this second reading and the committee of the whole House, there’s an opportunity to speak to the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall and ensure that as many conversations as is possible can be had with relevant stakeholders before the committee stage happens.

The first thing I always tend to look at, in terms of legislation that comes to the House, is the gap that it’s trying to fill, to determine what the scope of the gap is and whether the legislation has done that. This bill’s regulatory impact statement cites research comparing the registration of medicines across 20 OECD countries, which, in shocking news, between 2011 and 2020, New Zealand ranked last for the approval of modern medicines. It is about looking at that quite shocking, in many ways, gap, in terms of New Zealand being able to be relatively similar to countries that we would consider us ourselves similar to.

However, there is also the secondary issue which came up in multiple submissions about medicines not being funded by Pharmac, and external providers not seeing that as a viable opportunity. While this certainly does address one of the issues, it doesn’t address the second leg of the issues, and so there’s actually a big question mark about whether this will go the whole way in resolving the issue of ensuring that there is access to medicines.

Many who’ve spoken about the bill earlier this evening have spoken about the two-limb test, or the test of two. I also forget the precise—

The rule of two.

The rule of two. We’ll get it eventually, won’t we? The rule of two. I do think, looking at the select committee’s report, and their work on this section in particular, it was useful to see how they shifted from that list of specific countries to a broader power so that a determination could be made on a set of factors, as opposed to just looking at those countries themselves.

There was one submitter who pointed to the fact that part of the rationale for that being a sensible way to go is that we can’t always guarantee that, in other countries, their authorisation agency will be politically independent; it could be motivated by lobbyists in very, very different ways, and they gave some, I thought, quite useful specific examples of that as well.

The secondary legislation point—so that is the piece that creates secondary legislation—it’s in clause 7, new section 22A, which gives the Minister the power to gazette and then recognise on the basis of those new criteria. But again, I would like to say—and I know I probably said this many times—that I do think it’s a very careful line to walk, in terms of understanding where we should set those secondary powers. Recalling my time on the Regulations Review Committee last term, there was a reflection on the trend towards creating broader powers in secondary legislation, but, as a House, we should always be remembering that the accountability mechanisms have remained the same.

We have the Regulations Review Committee—absolutely—but that has limited capacity, and it certainly does rely on issues coming to it at times, in terms of people challenging whether the power is—

Hey, don’t talk mean about that committee.

I hear the enthusiastic contributions from the current chair of the committee, Arena Williams. It is a very important role, that function of the committee, in terms of deciding not to be explicit and giving these broader powers is useful, but we also must be mindful that that is exercised in the way that it should be.

I’ve spoken to one of the changes made by the select committee to the bill during the process. I also mentioned that there were other submitters who spoke about broader issues. The Law Association’s submission was one of those, and the Law Association said that “The Bill may get medicines into the country faster. That’s a good thing. Yet, it means very little if patients in most need of them cannot access a pharmacist in the first instance”. They went on to say, “The cost savings of addressing issues at their root are also significant. If the hospitalisation rates of those who could not afford a prescription, representing an unmet need, were reduced to the levels of those with no unmet needs”. They say that “there could be 27,000 fewer hospitalisations over a three-year period. With the cost of staying overnight in a hospital being estimated at $1,200,”.

The point here is that an important piece of the access to a medication’s story is people actually going to their pharmacy to get it. The cost of getting that medication is often a barrier for people, and they propose that there should be free prescriptions. This is, of course, something that the Labour Government introduced and that, in July this year, was removed. That is a factor that is going to still be front of mind for a lot of people who are choosing whether they do make the choice to spend that money getting their prescription, or whether they go another week, and if they go another week, we risk them presenting in the hospital. That’s just something to be mindful of. This isn’t the whole story of access to medicine.

Earlier this evening, Ingrid Leary spoke to one of our objections, which is the appointments process, and she spoke to the fact that our view is that, given the independence required but also the technical requirements—and so technical expertise of the individuals—that, perhaps, the director should be making these appointments, as opposed to the Minister. At the moment, in our Crown Entities Act, it is quite specific about how appointments can be made, but I’d just like to draw the House’s attention to a review that the UK did, in 2016, where they overhauled the way they make appointments.

They have a new code of practice that was introduced in 2016, with updates in 2024, with a real understanding that for the public to trust these institutions, they need to know that they’re independent, and they need to trust not only the individuals who are in those roles but the way in which they were appointed. There’s an opportunity to learn from the UK, look at our appointment system, and see whether, in regard to roles such as these, we should now be looking to a more independent model. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this very sensible bill, which is the Medicines Amendment Bill, and I do commend the Associate Minister of Health and the Health Committee for their diligent work in this.

A couple of things that really excite me about this: firstly, the expansion of nurse practitioners to be able to prescribe unapproved medicines where that’s appropriate to their scope of practice. That was very painful, I’d have to say, as a GP, to have to prescribe medicines just because they were unavailable—that made it a section 29. It meant that otherwise approved medications, just because they came from a different manufacturer, were no longer able to be supplied, so it was very, very tedious. I commend the bill to the House.

I move that the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Does the member have a legislative statement, or—

Yes. I present a legislative statement on this—

On the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill.

Yes, indeed I do.

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

This third reading represents the final stages of the bill.

Could you say, “I move”.

Well, I can do.

Thank you. That would be helpful.

I move, That the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Thank you. Now you can carry on.

The third reading represents the final stages of this bill, and members will be well aware of the long backstory to this legislation. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act was enacted by the National-led Government in 2011 following significant consultation and widespread dissatisfaction with Labour’s earlier Foreshore and Seabed Act. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act includes a clear expression from Parliament of the circumstances under which customary marine title (CMT) will be granted.

Now, what is customary marine title? It recognises a form of title over the coastal area, our beaches and coastal parts, including offshore seas, and, some arguments have been made, out to several miles offshore. With the customary marine title comes valuable rights—in particular, the ability to grant consents or not grant resource consents for certain activities, but also ownership of minerals, excluding the nationalised ones such as gold and silver, but also a whole host of other minerals and potential other things.

Now, the Act sets a test that must be met for customary marine title to be recognised. The current wording of section 58 of the Act plainly states that in addition to holding the specified area in accordance with tikanga, the applicant groups need to have had exclusive use and occupation from 1840 to the present day without substantial interruption. Now, that was in the legislation.

As I noted in my speech in the first reading, this was intended to be an exacting test designed to balance the range of interests and ensure title is recognised only where applicants have maintained very strong interests. Our starting proposition is that all New Zealanders—all New Zealanders—have an interest in what happens in the coastal area and usually expect to have a say in things like resource consents. That is why a high hurdle was put in the legislation before moving away from that basic proposition.

The Government’s view is that the courts have interpreted the requirements for the test for customary marine title in a way that has materially reduced their intended effect, to the point where it was necessary to take action to ensure the Act operates as originally intended. Last year’s Supreme Court judgment in Re Edwards confirmed that the earlier judgments, particularly in the Court of Appeal, did not apply the test in line with Parliament’s intent. However, the Supreme Court’s own interpretation of the test has since been applied in the lower courts, with no apparent change to the outcomes, resulting in extensive awards of customary marine title, including the entire coast from Kāpiti to Manawatū and in southern Wairarapa.

During readings of this Act in the House back in 2011, the Hon Chris Finlayson and the Hon Tariana Turia both emphasised the Act was intended to recognise customary marine title in specific parts of the coastline. No mention was made of the entire coastlines.

Customary marine title comes, as I said, with significant rights like the permission right, which enables customary marine title holders to give or decline permission for some resource consents. The Act is clear that customary marine title is a form of property right. Customary marine title holders cannot exclude the public as conventional property owners can, but holders do have a strong say in the kinds of activities that can occur in an area where customary marine title is held.

The Act has mechanisms to ensure that public interest infrastructure can proceed in CMT areas without permission if necessary, but many smaller-scale activities and structures will require permission from CMT holders—people wanting to erect jetties or renew their resource consents for jetties, for instance, or people wanting to create new aquaculture businesses that would employ locals. The balance struck in 2011 was that such recognition would require a high threshold, and that’s what was intended. The bill clarifies the wording of the current test and provides additional guidance to decision makers in interpreting and applying the test.

Key elements include more tightly defining what “exclusive use and occupation” means, requiring decision makers to base any influences on a firm basis of physical evidence, not just cultural associations in that second part of the test, and thirdly, placing the burden of proof more squarely on applicants to demonstrate that they meet both legs of the test.

In terms of retrospectivity, the bill will alter and override decisions of the courts made after 24 July 2024, the date I announced the Government’s policy. Retrospective provisions in legislation are reserved for exceptional circumstances and these are exceptional. The current approach to the test by the courts is damaging to the takutai moana process as a whole. If the bill has prospective effect only, it would be unfair to those applicants who, by way of scheduling, would be subject to a stricter restored test, while others retain awards under what Parliament regards as an incorrect interpretation of the legislation. This necessitates the broadest possible application of the amendments to the bill and the test is—[Interruption]

Everyone that is on the speaking list is going to get a chance to have a speech. I can understand that there will be some interjections here, but I’m just asking people to just tone it down a level, please.

The test, as amended by the bill, will apply to all undecided applications from 25 July 2024. As I’ve said previously, the Government recognised the impact this has had on affected applicants and has provided $15 million to support costs for re-hearings. I recognise that this will be very disappointing to groups who have been through the process. Now, this is not something that we’ve done lightly, but there is a long way to go and much of our coastline still to be considered, and we believe, as a Government, that it’s important to get that right.

The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act sets a carefully judged regime that strikes a delicate balance between interests—public, private, and tangata whenua. The sole purpose of these amendments is to ensure that that balance continues to be struck and is an enduring one. There are many outstanding applications to the Act waiting to be determined. Iwi, hapū, and whānau have been waiting a long time for these matters to be resolved. Once the test is corrected by this bill, the Government looks forward to making steady progress in resolving their applications. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

In a week where this House lamented the loss of Jim Bolger and his legacy about correcting injustices and wrongs of the past, I can’t help but think about the last time I caught up with Jim Bolger at the airport, when he talked about what he knew of his experience with Ngāpuhi and the Ngāpuhi settlement, but, more importantly, about the reason why he felt it was important that this House continue to correct the injustices of the past. I can’t help but think about him on this occasion. The third reading of this bill continues a long legacy of this House, over many, many years, of treating Māori as second-class citizens. It’s continuing to ignore their historic, their customary, and, indeed, their property rights to many of the spaces that Mr Goldsmith has just outlined in his speech.

Now, on a slightly happier note for myself, I want to acknowledge that yesterday was the birthday of my baby girl. Happy birthday, Mariah. Why I mention her is that her middle name is Te Aweawe o Te Rangi, which honours my ancestor from Ōtamatea, who has whakapapa, mana, and customary title to the Kaipara. There’s a reason why our people do this, there’s a reason why our people give names like that, there’s a reason why we continue to honour the memory of our ancestors: so that these things are never lost in time. In saying happy birthday to my baby, I’m now saying thank you for carrying on the legacy of your tupuna.

I sat here and listened to the Minister not just in his third reading speech but in the progress of this bill now, which has taken over a year. I thought we could go toe to toe on quotes by the Hon Christopher Finlayson, we could go toe to toe on quotes around Treaty settlements and this particular matter that are in the Hansard and quoted in this House. But I thought, no, what I’m going to do is continue to grow that record and evidence for our people to continue to show our customary title to te takutai moana. I want to start by acknowledging, first, I come from a proud tribe called Te Aupōuri, and our ancestor is Tumatahina. Tumatahina is famed for saving his people by ushering them along the takutai moana, leading them to safety to the place they now call home today. That is an unbroken link of our ancestor Tumatahina and Te Aupōuri in the Far North. I want to raise, in particular, our ancestor Tumatahina, and acknowledge and bring to the attention of the House my matua, the Hon Shane Jones, also a descendant of Tumatahina, and let it serve as a reminder to my matua Shane Jones and the coalition agreement that saw this particular bill enter this House.

Next, I want to acknowledge I am a descendant of Tarutaru and Ruapounamu, which makes me a descendant of Te Rarawa. For those in this House who know where Te Rarawa is, you’ll be familiar with where the Ninety Mile Beach is. You will be familiar with many of the other places south of the Ninety Mile Beach, where Te Rarawa calls home. We have an arrangement there to look after the Ninety Mile Beach on behalf of all New Zealanders, which was agreed on by this House. Yet, for whatever reason, this Government continues to say co-governance, co-management, or working alongside Māori, is not the thing to do, and would rather score political points instead of underscoring the good frameworks that are already in place that allow management of places like the marine and takutai moana—in this instance, the Ninety Mile Beach.

My next whakapapa comes from Ngāti Ōkiwa, Ngāti Kahu, which is my mother’s people in the Whangaroa Harbour. We continue to live there, we continue to harvest seafood there, we continue to look after that place when councils have forgotten that place for a long, long time. Then, when it becomes fashionable to have a bach by the beach, the councils all of a sudden remember and then try to price us out of paradise. Guess what! We’re still there. I want that to reaffirm my whakapapa and my heritage to my Ngāti Kahu whānau.

My grandmother is a Davis, and that’s how I’m related to the Hon Kelvin Davis. I come from another place, called Waikare, which makes me a descendant of Te Kapotai. You can tell by the name Waikare that it’s right by the ocean, and we continue to live there, and I want to reassert on the Hansard this evening my ongoing whakapapa, my ongoing heritage, and my ongoing customary title to Te Kapotai, to Waikare, and to my people in the upper inlets of the Bay of Islands.

I’ve already spoken to my whakapapa to Ngāti Whātua, the Kaipara Harbour, and how my people continue to hold their customary title at the Kaipara Harbour, starting at Ōtamatea, heading out to the West Coast.

Then I come down to my next whakapapa link. I’m a descendant of Te Whakatōhea, of te whānau Pāpuni, the tupuna Pāpuni, Ngāti Rua. For those of you who have ever journeyed around the coast, you’ll come to a beautiful spot called Omarumutu, which I call home. That is where my people continue to live, that is where my people continue to practise their customary title and their mana and their whakapapa to our home, at Omarumutu. I want to acknowledge my Whakatōhea whakapapa.

Next, I’m a descendant of Te Mauparaoa, which makes me a descendant of Ngāti Kahungunu. Many people in this House know Ngāti Kahungunu, generally related to the area of the Hawke’s Bay, but more specifically, for me, it’s to the northern part of what we now call the Hawke’s Bay region, to a small community just north of Nūhaka, which is where my tupuna Te Mauparaoa comes from. That’s why I claim to be of Ngāti Kahungunu descent and why I continue to live and work alongside my whānau in that area, to continue to show this Government and to show everybody in that district that the descendants of Te Mauparaoa and the descendants of Ngāti Kahungunu continue to hold customary title, mana, and whakapapa to that region.

Finally, I am a descendant of Rongowhakaata, and for those in the House that will know Rongowhakaata, it is in and around the Gisborne district. I am the descendant of two sisters that were taken after Ngāpuhi went south; their names are Wahinekino and Hauora. That gives me my whakapapa to Rongowhakaata, and I want to acknowledge Rongowhakaata, who continue to show how Rongowhakaata cares for its environment, for its region, and, in particular, for a beautiful part of the coast that many of us New Zealanders call home. They continue to show their mana and their whakapapa to a part of New Zealand which links them inextricably, and there is no law or no legislation that can be passed in this House that will extinguish that, despite the efforts of this particular bill trying to do that.

The Minister, during the committee of the whole House, spoke about some of the whakapapa of this bill and he mentioned the Labour Party. In 2004, I was at university in Auckland and marched across the bridge against what the then Labour Party were doing. One of the traits of a good politician, and indeed a good person, is that they recognise when they do wrong and they apologise for that. They work hard to make sure that they can fix those injustices of the past, and when we became Government in 2017, it was one of the first things the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern did, in recognising that what Labour had done in 2004 was wrong and unjust. She publicly apologised for that particular matter, and we continue to work on our relationship to build that bridge again and build that relationship with the Māori people.

I hope that this Minister and this Government recognise, some time in the near future, the wrongs of this bill, and may find it in themselves to come back and apologise not just to the people of this House and of this Parliament but to the Māori people right around the country. It makes me sad that we are here doing this particular bill. I thought Mr Finlayson described the purpose of this bill quite well over the past few days, and I hope that what he has said continues to echo in the ears of New Zealanders right around this country as we look towards protecting our beautiful foreshore and seabed.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I wish to speak to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. Is it an accident that the second reading of this bill was held on the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Waitangi Tribunal? A committee of the whole House happened on the anniversary of the 1975 Land March—and here we are, reading the third reading, on the week that Jim Bolger will be laid in his grave.

I wish to recount a brief story about Jim Bolger. A gentleman called Sam Hunt got on an Air New Zealand flight—the great New Zealand poet Sam Hunt, I mean—and he found that he was sat beside Jim and Joan Bolger. They were on the way to an Anzac celebration. They talked about the futility of war together, and Hunt said to Bolger, “Do you know the poem ‘The Gunner’s Lament’?”, and Jim Bolger said he did not know the poem. Sam Hunt, being a great poet, remembers other people’s poems well. There’s a poem by James K Baxter:

A Māori gunner lay dying

On a battlefield north of Saigon,

And he turned to his pākehā cobber,

“I reckon I’ve had it, man!

“And if I could fly like a bird

To my old granny’s whare

A truck and a winch couldn’t drag

Me back to the Army.

“A new cap and a coat and a well-paid job

Looked better than shovelling metal,

And they told me that Te Rauparaha

Would have fought in the Vietnam battle.

“On my night of leave the town swung round

Like a bucket full of eels.

The girls liked the uniform

And I liked the girls.

“Like a bullock to the abattoirs

In the name of liberty

They flew me with a hangover

Across the Tasman Sea,

“And what I found in Vietnam

Was mud and blood and fire,

With the Yanks and the Reds taking turns

At murdering the poor.

“And I could see the reason for it

In a Viet Cong’s blazing eyes -

We fought for the crops of kūmara,

They are fighting for the rice.

“So go tell my sweetheart

To find another boy

To cuddle her and marry her

And laugh when the bugles blow,

“And tell my youngest brother

He can have my shotgun

To fire at ducks on the old lagoon,

But never to aim at a man,

“And tell my granny to wear black

And carry the willow leaf,

Because the kid she kept from the cold

Has eaten the dead man’s loaf.

“And go tell Keith Holyoake

Sitting in Wellington,

However long he scrubs his hands

He’ll never get them clean.”

Sam Hunt turned to Jim and Joan Bolger, and both of them had tears streaming down their faces because they are people of empathy, and they understood the meaning of that poem and its context of our colonial history.

No good can come from a bill of this character. It is a bill that explicitly leads into those worst mind-sets of colonisation that, at every turn, Māori are cut against and undermined and undone. For all the efforts of this Chamber and this House to make amends for those cruel histories of colonisation, this bill forces the Crown back into a position of dishonourability. I said in the first reading that if the patterns of colonisation are still present, then how can we say we are in a post-colonial era? That classic pattern was confiscation followed by exploitation—confiscation followed by exploitation.

The Minister acknowledged in the committee of the whole House that he was concerned about the impact on the fishing industry of recognising customary rights. The Minister is more concerned with giving away seabed rights to Aussie miners and bottom trawlers than with recognising the customary rights of indigenous New Zealanders. As such, this legislation has—and I said this in the first speech—a treasonous character, because its first service is not to New Zealanders; its first service is to offshore corporate interests in regard to seabed mining off the Taranaki coast being but one example, and it is also unconstitutional, because it does not protect the tino rangatiratanga of iwi Māori to their lands, forests, fisheries, and oceans.

Let’s be clear: customary rights, native title, or aboriginal title is a thing—as Debbie Ngarewa-Packer pointed out in her questions to the Minister today—that pre-dates Te Tiriti. It is a thing that is recognised in other colonised lands that don’t have treaties, such as Australia, and it was recognised from even the earliest days of Government in this country. Even that awful legislation from 1865 acknowledges that “Every title to and interest in customary land shall be determined according to the ancient customs and usages of the Maori people, as far as the same can be ascertained. … ‘Customary land’ means land which, being vested in the Crown, is held by Maoris”—sic; this is what they say—“or the descendants of Maoris under the customs and usages of the Maori people”.

These provisions can be traced back to the Native Lands Act of 1865. That awful piece of legislation still acknowledged that it provided that land that is held by Māori in accordance with tikanga Māori shall have the status of Māori customary land, and the burden of proof, as per the original Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 (MACA Act), should fall on those trying to prove extinguishment. This reverses the burden of proof. The practical effect of this bill shifts the burden of proof on to Māori. Section 106(3) of the MACA Act states that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, non-extinguishment of customary interest will be assumed—that is, the default is that Māori have customary rights. The new section 106(2) now stipulates that applicants must prove that they have exclusive use and occupation over the land since the applicable period, without substantial interruption. Since “substantial interruption” can include an extinguishment of title, the new section 106(2), in effect, mandates that the applicants prove that their customary interests have never been extinguished so as to amount to a substantial interruption. Therefore, the practical effect of this amendment is that non-extinguishment is no longer presumed and is something applicants must now prove.

That is a fundamental injustice, an undoing of even the most basic principles of common law—let alone tikanga Māori, let alone the obvious fact of history that Māori had been here for hundreds and hundreds of years and used the marine coastal environment. This is a cruel injustice, and it is founded on a tissue of myths that, somehow, the Minister’s bill restores the intent of the original Act. I’ve just outlined that, in new section 106, it clearly does not, because it shifts the burden of proof back on to Māori to prove the most ludicrous and obvious thing: that they have customary use of the marine and coastal environment.

No good can come of it. There’s no decent future for us as a country if we keep doing shitty legislation like this. It’s nasty. It’s the worst kind of rubbish that has come before this House, and it will be undone by a future Government, and we will have to stand up and apologise, Minister, for this nasty piece of legislation to somehow try and restore the honour of the Crown that you are disdaining.

Get thee hence, Satan—this is the worst pettiness and nastiness.

Just be careful not to get personal.

A personal attack on Satan, I’m sure, is allowed.

No, no—I just don’t want to see a particular member referred to in that way.

Let me be clear about what I’m saying with that—the origin of the idea. Just as when Jesus spoke to Peter and said, “Get thee hence, Satan”, he wasn’t accusing Peter of being Satan. He was saying the idea that he carried had its origin in the devil’s mind-set. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to talk on the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. ACT, along with our coalition partners, will be supporting this amendment bill tonight. I think the Minister has clearly articulated why the Government has put this forward. As he said, in 2011 there was an exacting test to establish customary marine title, and we all accept that there is such a thing. That has, unfortunately, been undermined by a number of court decisions, including, obviously, the Re Edwards decision. We will be supporting this because it does restore what Parliament intended, it does restore an exacting test. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill third reading. This bill fulfils a specific coalition agreement between New Zealand First and National. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act replaced the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and sought to provide clarity and certainty around how customary marine titles are determined.

My leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has been a champion of equal citizenship and protecting the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders in the marine and coastal area of New Zealand. As a party, we are committed to one law for all and that every New Zealander is treated equally regardless of race, religion, or background. The differential here is—

Hobson’s Pledge.

Constitutional rights.

—as we are hearing the scaremongering and the third-rate sloganeering of what is occurring here, the point that we have reached is that this is not removing the rights for Māori. Māori, like any New Zealander, have the opportunity to enjoy their coastline and enjoy the benefits. I think we go back to when the first claims were lodged under this Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act, that every single centimetre of our coastline was subject to a claim. That is the point, that this legislation needed to be clarified, and that is exactly what this piece of law is clarifying.

We see the rights of Māori still continuing to be protected under the initial interests of this legislation. That is what this legislation brought in place. It revoked the foreshore and seabed legislation and brought in an opportunity where the Māori Party at the time recognised there would be discrete, limited numbers of claims. The Prime Minister of the time, John Key, made it very clear that there would be very limited numbers of successful claims because of the need to prove uninterrupted title for the duration since 1840.

This is the point that we’re here to make—

You don’t even know what you’re talking about.

This is the point that we’re here to make, that the heckling is irrelevant to the point that we’re trying to clarify in law. The intention of the legislation needed to be upheld. This piece of legislation is clarifying the intention of the original legislation, and, therefore, New Zealand First commends the bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. E te iwi whakarongo mai. Number one, no Government in history has ever had the right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori—this is literally why Treaty settlements exist—number two, no contemporary Government possesses any form of right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori; and, number three, no future Government will ever possess any form of right or authority to extinguish any Tiriti-based Māori rights. This is because Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a fully binding legal treaty in law, with full current legal effect internationally and domestically. It is a treaty binding two countries in a legal constitutional framework called Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It’s pretty simple—

Well read—you’re reading it well.

—and the simple truth is that it will never go away—that’s all right; I wrote it, too.

This means that what this Government is doing now guarantees that the fight for Te Tiriti justice only deepens from this point on, and continues on into the next generations. They’ve set the playing field for generations to come, condemning our children, our tamariki, to needless, endless, perpetual fighting, with costly court cases, societal disharmony, and time-, energy-, and money-wasting on a staggering scale. Well done, Government—well done.

You know, there’s a big, long list of our country’s desperate needs that the money could have been better spent on—like homelessness, poverty, or the cost of living. I tell you, everybody out there, that honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a cheaper option for the country in the long run, and who shoulders the burden? Who shoulders the burden here? Whānau, hapū, and iwi shoulder the burden here—the financial burden, the time and energy burden, and the people burden.

Many of our kaumātua who marched in 2004 are no longer with us, and, after 21 years, we’re being sent back to the beginning. After 21 years, the struggle continues, and it must, Minister—and it must. It must because this is the ultimate dismissal of rangatiratanga, this is the ultimate dismissal of mana motuhake, and this is the ultimate dismissal of the Māori constitutional right.

E ngā mātua tīpuna i te pō, maranga mai. E ngā uri o He Whakaputanga, maranga mai. E ngā uri o Te Tiriti o Waitangi, maranga mai. Amohia ake te mana motuhake me te tino rangatiratanga ki mua ki te aroaro o te Kāwana-Tianara mō ngā tamariki mokopuna te take. E te iwi, haere mai rā.

[To the forebears and ancestors in the darkness, arise. To the descendants of the Declaration of Independence, arise. To the descendants of the Treaty of Waitangi, rise up. Take up self-determination and sovereignty and take them before the Governor-General for the children and grandchildren. To the people, let’s go.]

Nō reira, e te iwi Māori, do not despair. Do not despair—we’ve seen it all before, and there’s nothing new here. We’ve fought it before, we’ll fight it again, and here we go—and don’t worry. When we get rid of this one-term Government, we’ll repeal this legislation back to 2003—2003. Our mana—mana whenua, mana moana, tino rangatiratanga, and mana motuhake—are unextinguishable. They are untouchable. They are for ever—they are for ever.

Governments continue to lie, deny, obscure, obfuscate, and deliberately confuse to keep the public from seeing, knowing, and truly understanding the truth of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that is that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is good for everyone. It provides rights and protections for every person in Aotearoa. Equally as important is it provides rights and protections for te taiao—the environment—of Aotearoa, ki uta, ki tai [on the land and the sea]. The silver lining, everybody, for all of the peoples of Aotearoa is that the tide of understanding is rising. The tide of understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is rising. It’s rising in our young people in this country. It’s rising in our youth, it’s rising in our children, and as it rises—and it will continue to rise, generation after generation—the old, pale, stale, deeply held racist views of Te Tiriti o Waitangi will set like the sun. They’ll set like the sun, and a new era of Te Tiriti celebration will emerge.

To everyone in Aotearoa out there, I say mānawatia Te Tiriti o Waitangi [cherish the Treaty of Waitangi]. We do not support the bill. Tahuna te pire. Kei raro.

[Burn the bill. I take my seat].

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. We’ve been told by the Minister that this is a carefully judged, balanced bill; yet Māori did not ask for the marine and coastal area, takutai moana legislation, nor the foreshore and seabed legislation that was before it. Māori have been here yesterday, we’re here today, and we will be here tomorrow. We are intergenerational. We participated in a legislative process, going to court to seek recognition of our rights that we’ve always held, and now we have a Government that has completely changed the playing field again. How is this fair? Where is the justice? Why can Māori not hold property rights like any other New Zealander? At what point did Māori have their rights to the takutai moana, the foreshore and seabed, extinguished by the Crown? At what point and how did that happen?

That has been a question in this House that I placed before the Minister during the committee of the whole House: tell us when and how did Māori rights to the foreshore and seabed become magically extinguished. E kore e riro: it has not been lost. But what we have is a counterfeit Kāwanatanga, changing the rules again; an illegitimate use of kāwanatanga as per what the Waitangi Tribunal has already declared, and this massive hara that ripples through to te ao Māori. Right now, people are burning the bill on the coastline, affirming that they are there now and they will be there tomorrow because we are not going anywhere. Tākuta is right, for it just raises another generation of Māori with issues. Māori got issues. As we get treated poorly, Kāwanatanga atu, Kāwanatanga mai [by successive Governments].

Dishonourable Kāwanatanga wherever we look. So at what point will Kāwanatanga finally meet us in the middle and look to build a Kāwanatanga that will finally honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

We have gone too far in this journey. We have just come through and seen a massive support for Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We see massive community turn out and support, and yet we have a Kāwanatanga that seems to be missing the memo. You’re missing the memo of community coming together for positivity and celebrating those things which are uniquely New Zealand, and that is Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the tuakana, He Whakaputanga, 28 October 1835. Nau mai, haere mai. You can google it. It’s next week. We’re going to be remembering it.

As I reflect on the strength that we gain as members of the Opposition, knowing that we have people burning the bill in Ahiparapara and Waipapakauri; in Hokianga ki te tonga [southern Hokianga], Hokianga ki te hauraro [northern Hokianga], Whangaroa, and Taipā Ngāti Kahu; as we come down the coast to Te Moana-o-i-Pipiri and into Waimate Taiāmai; Whangārei-terenga-parāoa, out to Te Ākau Roa o Ngati Wai, and heke mai ki roto o Tauranga Moana [coming down into the Tauranga region], Bay of Plenty. They are all saying, “We are here, respect us, come to the table with us, and let’s talk about honouring our unextinguished mana takutai moana. E kore e riro—e kore e riro. [It has not been lost—it has not been lost.]”

Because that’s the thing: you change the goalposts because the courts start endorsing us. The courts started recognising the fact that we had tribes and whānau who actually went through the honourable Crown process, the rules set by the Crown, and then they came out the other side—e tika ana, kei a koutou tonu te mana [it is true, you still have the authority]. That retrospective element of this legislation is demeaning. It demeans the effort of years of claimant preparation. Yes, when the marine and coastal legislation came in in 2011, we all lodged claims because we’re affirming that we’ve never been anywhere and we’re not going anywhere today or tomorrow either. We acknowledge the fight at home. We are merely vessels here for today and we will be apologising in the future when we pana this tūkino [push out this abuse], this terrible wrecking ball of legislation that is destroying Crown-Māori relations right now. There will be apologies and we will be here to watch, and my mokopuna will be there to watch you as well.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is Parliament, not the courts, that makes the laws of this land, and this bill makes clearer what “exclusive use and occupation” means, and it strengthens the requirement for physical evidence of exclusive use. It delivers on a coalition agreement commitment with New Zealand First. I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. This bill is not, as the Government insists, a tidy clarification of an old law; it is an incredibly blunt instrument that tears at the very foundation of justice, upends our court processes, and undermines a hard-fought relationship between te iwi Māori and the Crown. We are told that it will restore Parliament’s original intention, but in truth, it rewrites that intention, it narrows it, and it applies new rules retrospectively, overturning the work of the courts and reopening wounds.

I’m going to lay out the three key reasons that I’m opposed to it. Those three are that it rewrites the legal test for customary title to make it virtually impossible. Secondly, it applies the rules retrospectively, undermining the rule of law and basic fairness in New Zealand. Thirdly, it damages the Crown-Māori relationship.

Before going into those, I would like to talk about the truth, the deal—what was actually done. The reality is that Casey Costello was a spokesperson for Hobson’s Pledge, a group that is on the record, clear for being fundamentally opposed to indigenous rights. And so, lo and behold, in the coalition agreement—

Just remember that this is actually a Government bill and the coalition was referred to, but we’re not going to start pointing to individual members of the House.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. My reputation has been impugned in that. I have never been opposed to indigenous rights. I have never been accused of being—and the reference is that somehow I’m racist in the rhetoric that was just being displayed, and I ask the member to withdraw and apologise.

Madam Speaker.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask—just a moment, Mr Jackson. I will check. I don’t think that the member referred to Ms Costello as being racist; she mentioned Hobson’s Pledge.

No, I did not, Madam Speaker.

Just a moment. One moment. Hold everything. The member did not call the Hon Casey Costello a racist.

No, I did not, and I would just like to highlight that the regulatory impact statement to this bill refers to the coalition agreement, which includes this legislation to take away customary rights, so that was mentioned as one of the key reasons that this decision was taken by the Government.

It’s fine to refer to the Government. We’ve just got to be careful when we’re getting testy here that we don’t start referring to individuals.

I think it’s important that New Zealanders know that the reason this legislation is before the House today is it was part of a coalition deal. That happened well before any of the court judgments came out in the past year. It was a deal done as a dirty deal that legislated away Māori customary rights to gain power—and I want that on the record.

The first point I would like to cover off is the fact that this rewrites the legal test. The first and most fundamental flaw in this legislation is that this bill raises the bar to make it absolutely impossible for iwi and hapū to meet the requirements and that was the intent of this legislation. It insists that evidence of exclusive use and occupation that is continuous and physical and manifested since 1840—in fact, what it does is take away spiritual-, cultural-, and tikanga-based connections, the very relationships that the 2011 Act passed under National was designed to recognise.

Under this new regime, a whānau’s ability to control access to their rohe moana must be proven through continuous physical activity, as if tikanga can only exist when measured in footprints and fishing nets. That narrow material test is not what this Parliament agreed to in 2011. The original Act balanced evidence of physical use with tikanga, oral histories, and the reality of colonisation’s disruptions.

The substantial interruption I referred to, under the current law, occasional authorised public activity did not automatically break customary occupation, but under this bill, any other use, authorised or not, can destroy a claim. This, effectively, means that even when we maintained ongoing connection, any intrusion by others, no matter how brief, no matter what, it counts as an interruption. That is not legal clarity; that is legal sabotage.

Together, these provisions rewrite the test so even the most tenacious kaitiaki will struggle to meet it. This Government has set the test, defined the evidence, and judges the outcome, and then congratulates itself on its fairness.

The second point I’d like to make is the retrospectivity of this legislation. I would hang my head in shame if I passed this as a Minister of Justice. The second fatal flaw is its retrospective reach. It applies the new test back to 24 July 2024, meaning that any case heard before the New Zealand courts can be reopened. Court decisions made in good faith, applying the law as it stood, will be swept aside with this legislation.

Cabinet was explicitly warned by officials not to proceed in this way. That advice was ignored and, as a result, up to seven cases may now need to be reheard, affecting more than 280 kilometres of coastline and consuming millions of dollars in costs. Officials gave clear advice that reopening cases would undermine confidence in the legal process and inflict further costs on all parties, and they were right.

These are the hapū and iwi who have spent years gathering evidence, appearing in court, and trusting that the Crown would respect judicial outcomes. To now turn around and tell them that their success will be set aside because Parliament has changed its mind because of a coalition deal is betrayal. As one claimant told reporters, this change feels like mocking the judicial system, and that’s because it is. No responsible Government should legislate backwards. Retrospective lawmaking offends one of the oldest principles in our common law, that people should know what the law is when they act.

The irony is rich. A Government that preaches certainty and stability is delivering exactly the opposite—years more litigation, confusion for developers, and a flood of re-hearings. The retrospective clauses should have been removed at the Justice Committee, but instead, this Government has doubled down, insisting on political power to reach past. It is absolutely constitutionally reckless.

The third point I would touch on—and perhaps the most serious consequence—is the damage this bill does to the Māori-Crown relationship and to New Zealand’s social fabric, which this Government doesn’t seem to care about. The Waitangi Tribunal has been clear on what it says this bill does—a gross breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. Its urgent inquiry found that the challenges would significantly endanger the Crown-Māori relationship and undermine decades of slow progress towards partnership and mutual respect.

We should listen, because we have been here before. In 2004, the Foreshore and Seabed Act caused huge upheaval within New Zealand. Tens of thousands of people protested, political parties fractured, and trust between Māori and the Crown was broken. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 was designed precisely to heal that rupture. It guaranteed a public process while creating a fair pathway for customary recognition. It was a careful balance that was forged through years of negotiation, goodwill, and compromise. Now, this Government is breaking that balance.

Māori leaders have described this bill as worse than the Foreshore and Seabed Act because it goes further, not only blocking new claims but reopening those that were already won. Former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson—again, hardly a left-wing radical—warned that this legislation would be extremely harmful to race relations and it will rip away the good work that was done. His words carry the weight of experience. We know from our history that when the Crown chooses to legislate over Māori rights instead of negotiating with iwi, the result is always the same: division, litigation, and mistrust.

I would go on, but I would like to conclude that this bill is a huge error of judgment—legally, morally, and politically. Just like pay equity, this Government is rewriting the rules, moving the goalposts, and punishing those who have acted in good faith. It tells iwi and hapū that when they succeed in the courts, Parliament will simply legislate over their rights. It reopens those wounds, it breaches the Treaty of Waitangi, and it invites years of fresh division.

All of it—every clause—would have been avoided if this Government had listened to its own officials, to the Waitangi Tribunal, to the judiciary, and even to its own former Attorney-General. Chris Finlayson’s warning should ring in every National MP’s ears. These amendments, “do not restore the law. They undermine it. They are extremely harmful to race relations.”

When their own senior architect says the Government is dismantling the very framework he built, that should give you cause to pause. This bill will not bring certainty; it will bring more litigation. One day, perhaps, not long from now, National will look back on this vote and realise it has made a grave mistake that it will live to regret, because history does have a long memory. When Governments choose expedience over fairness, politics over partnership, and division over dialogue, history remembers. I do not commend this bill to the House.

The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill restores clarity to the principal Act to ensure Parliament’s original intent is followed. The amendments align the recognition of the customary marine titles more closely with tikanga and address concerns addressed by the courts. The bill is also part of the agreement of the coalition Government and agreed to and supported by all Government parties. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

This call is a split call. I call Cushla Tangaere-Manuel.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tēnā rawa atu tātou katoa i tēnei pō. I just reflected on a picture of my father signing the Ngāti Porou Takutai Moana deed in good faith. Pictures of him, my uncle, Dr Mahuika, my pakeke, my kuia, my aunties, and my cousins, who would just be so disgusted that I’m here to defend it tonight.

I want to acknowledge Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which covers the eastern seaboard of the North Island, mai i Mātakitaki-a-Kupe tae noa atu ki Wharekāhika, ki Pōtaka [from Cape Palliser to Hicks Bay, to Pōtaka]. Heoi anō rā [however], I think the best way for me to address this bill is as a Wīwī Ngāti [true blue Ngāti Porou descendant], as Ngāti Porou being the first and only iwi to have our own takutai moana bill. When these kaupapa kōrero started, one of my uncles, Eru Paenga, stood up at our marae at Rākaitemania in Te Horo and he said, “My God, for 77 years, I thought the beach was mine.” So began a journey of 20-plus years of justifying our kaitiakitanga of our takutai moana—20-plus years of justifying a whakapapa that we know. At 1150, Nukutere landed in Rangitukia. In 1350, followed by Horouta.

Then we populated and lived on and went about our business as kaitiaki of our Ngāti Porou, waited until these ridiculous claims before we actually had to prove that only Māori populated and were resident and did any business before 1840. Well, we knew it was before 1100, and here we were, in good faith, negotiating, according to the laws of this House and the laws of this land, and the result, as I said, was a takutai moana bill.

Now, after 20-plus years—and here we thought we had an agreement binding by the laws of this land—here we are. The self-proclaimed party of property rights, trampling all over the rights guaranteed to us, even though they were our rights before the courts were even established in this land. We came to the party as good partners and as good kaitiaki and tangata whenua to find something that met the interests of the public and the interest of kaitiaki. For goodness’ sake, we’re not talking about Oriental Bay; we’re talking about Hicks Bay. We’re talking about Tokomaru Bay and bays throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and Aotearoa that you have no evidence, Mr Goldsmith, of public being denied access—

Ngāti Porou is excluded.

Oh, don’t you tell me about Ngāti Porou. We all know you wanted to be Ngāti Porou, but anyway, we’re talking about takutai moana, which this Government have no evidence that public have been denied access to. As I said, the party of property rights, trampling on legal agreements. [Change of Speaker] Mr Speaker, tēnā koe. Kotahi mai. We’re not talking about a shift in goalposts; we’re talking about changing the whole game. Guess what! The Minister is an expert on Ngāti Porou. Ngāti Porou did it once, and we’re ready for you again. You can keep changing the rules. You can keep shifting the goalposts. We’re here for it because our kaitiakitanga is forever. Your reign as Government is for one more year, so don’t get too comfortable.

Hoi anō rā, though my tīpuna and some of my cousins who are still here fought the good fight in good faith, the trust is zero. This is not just a disgrace for your relationship with Māori; it’s a disgrace for your relationship with New Zealand. This is not the New Zealand we want to be. Hei whakakapi, i kī mai tērā o aku tīpuna, a Rerekohu, “Ko tōku upoko ki tuawhenua; ko ōku matimati ki te huka o te tai.”—“My mana stretches from the hinterland to beyond the shore, and so shall it be” mō āke, āke, āke tonu rā. Kāre rawa atu au e whakaae ki tēnei pire [for ever and ever. I absolutely do not commend this bill].

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand to speak about the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. The bill seeks to restore the clarity to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act, it seeks to protect property rights that foster legal clarity, and it seeks to reduce legal disputes and ambiguity. I commend this bill to the House.

There’s been so much great kōrero tonight, I feel I can’t add a lot, but I see the Minister for Māori Development over there and he must be very embarrassed about this bill tonight. In fact, he should be ashamed of the bill, and he should be ashamed of himself. He thinks it’s a big joke, but he is the Minister for the Waitangi Tribunal, so I want to read this, because maybe he has not communicated to the bloke who’s not interested in Māori rights sitting by him. This is what the tribunal says, for these two fools over here: “The Crown failed to consult with Māori during the development of [this kaupapa]”.

More importantly—see these two; you can see, the whole House, these two over here not interested at all as they walk over Māori rights—“The Crown has breached the principle of tino rangatiratanga by exercising kāwanatanga over Māori rights and interests in te takutai moana without providing any evidence for one of its key justifications—namely, that the public’s rights and interests require further protection beyond what is already provided by the Act. The Crown also failed to inform itself of Māori interests.” A total breach of Māori rights—and these two over here, not even interested in the kaupapa. You’ve got a Minister for Māori Development who should hang his bloody head in shame, because we have heard the kōrero tonight, and what we know here is that this Government will attack Māori rights at every opportunity that it can—at every opportunity that it can.

You see, their former mentor Chris Finlayson has said, “These amendments do not restore the original intention of Parliament. They undermine them.”—they undermine them. This is the former Attorney-General, and interesting enough, in this morning’s paper, we heard more comments from Mr Finlayson when he said that what nobody disputes is that the changes to the foreshore and seabed original Act make it harder for iwi and hapū—make it harder for iwi and hapū. In terms of what the Government is doing, they are undermining the work of Chris Finlayson.

We are asking, in te ao Māori: why is this continuing? Why is this happening everywhere? The tribunal has given its decision, but when you look around at all the quotes, it just goes on and on. When Finlayson says, “These amendments do not restore the original intention of Parliament. They undermine them.”, there’s no doubt about that at all. What they are doing with these foolish amendments is destroying the settlement that the National Party and the Māori Party reached in 2010. They are not interested in the agreement. In terms of the Treaty principles, the tribunal recommends that: “the Crown halt its current efforts to amend the Takutai Moana Act; the Crown make a genuine effort for meaningful engagement with Māori; and the focus of this engagement should be on the perceived issues of permissions for resource consents, rather than interrupting the process of awarding customary marine title.”

I ask tonight: why does the Government feel the need to intervene with the law? I look at what Cushla Tangaere-Manuel was saying: our people, they trust the law; they go through the process—our kaumātua work through the process; they chuck everything at this; they come and win at a court level—then Government changes the rules. Government changes the rules. Why does Government feel this need to continually attack kaupapa Māori? Rueben Taipari says it’s worse, actually, because it’s blatant. What they did in 2004 was a negative reaction; 20 years later, we’ve shown that that’s never been the case. We’ve never stopped access to the foreshore. Aperahama Edwards, who was so furious that he stood up in the gallery here and insulted the National Government, said that this is tantamount to a raupatu or confiscation. It goes on and on. These people are hurting. As Hūhana has said, they’re burning; they’re burning this law out on the beaches—they’re burning them on the beaches.

Burn the bill.

Yeah, they’re burning the bill. And it cites, as quoted, this is so mean-spirited. Even more so, we had the New Zealand Law Society, who talked about “aspects of the intended changes affecting te Tiriti o Waitangi Treaty of Waitangi (Treaty) relationships, the rule of law, access to justice, and other constitutional issues including breaches of fundamental rights. The Law Society does not support the proposed changes and recommends they do not proceed.”

I want to ask tonight: when does this stop? When does this Government stop attacking Māori? That’s the question that our people are asking. Constantly, the attacks are coming, whether it’s section 7AA, whether it’s the Treaty of Waitangi, whether it’s the tribunal. When do the attacks stop, Mr Goldsmith? When are you going to say, “No, actually, we respect the rule of law—we respect the rule of law.” Your former mentor has disowned you. He has disowned the National Party.

No, he’s come to us.

I know—he’s not that far, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer; he’s not that far. But your former mentor is so disgusted with what the party is doing that he is saying that you are scared of the future. You are scared of Māori asserting themselves in this world, and you have learnt nothing, Mr Goldsmith—nothing—because Mr Potaka has been able to teach you nothing. Obviously, he has not been able to pass on the value of the Waitangi Tribunal—

Can I encourage the Hon Willie Jackson to direct his comments to the Speaker. Thank you.

Oh, yeah, thank you, Mr Speaker. I was just saying how ignorant—

I did hear you.

No, no—I’ll take that back again, I suppose. But the reality is, we have an attack on Māori rights that has been clearly exhibited tonight by this side of the House, and we ask the question: when will it stop? When will the attacks stop on Māori and on kaupapa Māori initiatives? From the time Peeni Henare stood up tonight and talked about his whakapapa and talked about how he has been affected, how we have been affected, all the way through to Hūhana Lyndon, Tākuta Ferris, all the way to Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. We had Ginny Andersen speaking about the connections in terms of Hobson’s Pledge in this House; coalition deals done on the basis of extinguishing Māori rights—on the basis of extinguishing Māori rights. We had a New Zealand First former Hobson’s Pledge leader actually expressing and rolling out her clear concerns that Māori rights had to be extinguished, and that’s been expressed tonight, too.

So in wrapping this kōrero up tonight, we ask the question: what next? What is the next kaupapa that will be attacked by this Government and by this Minister over here who refuses to accept the words of his predecessor, who has said that the National Party just don’t like Māori getting too big? That’s what he said. “They just don’t like Māori getting too many rights.”—that’s what he said. He is disgusted with this party. He’s got a Minister of Māori affairs who is having no influence on the Minister of Justice. We ask tonight, and we say to our people out there, that the fight will continue. The fight will continue in terms of this type of kaupapa, in terms of Treaty rights, in terms of what’s going to be happening over the next few weeks. This side will continue to respond and expose the other side for what they are doing.

This is the most racist policy—I’m talking about policy here; this is the most racist policy that this Government has supported probably in—what, the last two weeks? The reality is that they exceed themselves week by week. I want to say tonight that this has been a great exhibition from our side of the House. I’m proud of the way we’ve stood up. I hope that our people can see and hear that this is an Opposition who will whakakotahi for the kaupapa—whakakotahi for the kaupapa. The kaupapa will be to fight this Government on every issue where they attack Māori, which is coming weekly, which is coming fortnightly. I say again to the Minister of Justice over there and the Minister of Māori affairs: hang your heads in shame, and we will continue with the fight. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the last speaker on this third reading of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill, I don’t want to drag it out, but I do want to just put on record that Ngāti Porou has got a carve-out from this Act and their takutai moana is not going to be affected by this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

So we’re up to call No. 3, which is a Labour Party call. Just for the attention of the whips, there is a note by agreement that Labour swapped their 10-minute call No. 2 with the Green Party on this bill. So I’m just noting that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill—as you correctly so stated—was a bill that we discussed last week, interrupted. So it is worth taking a couple of minutes to re-explain what the bill does.

The bill establishes the legal framework for time of use, or congestion, charging, a tool that, if used correctly and if implemented correctly can help us manage traffic flow and improve productivity on some of our busiest roads, which is really important. It allows local authorities working with Waka Kotahi to propose and to implement schemes, and these schemes will charge vehicles entering high-traffic areas at certain times of the day. It’s relatively straightforward, but the key is in how it’s implemented. The overall aim is to reduce congestion, improve travel reliability, and fundamentally just make better use of their existing infrastructure.

If we look at the international context, congestion charging is obviously not new; it’s already in places like London, Singapore, Stockholm, Milan, and very recently has come into play in New York. All of those schemes tend to work quite well, so there’s no reason for us not to have a good crack at implementing it here. In all of these cities, even a small reduction in the number of vehicles on the road has actually led to really big improvements in traffic flow, which is important, but also in things like air quality and in travel times. I’m sure that there are many people that can relate to the need to do something about some of our most congested roads.

Now, the Ministry of Transport’s modelling here, in this context, suggests that there’s no reason that we shouldn’t assume that we can’t have similar gains in New Zealand, potentially cutting peak-hour traffic in Auckland, for instance, by as much as 12 percent and bringing congestion down to what people could relate to as those “school holiday” levels.

Now, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee worked very diligently on this, and the committee received a range of submissions—as one would expect—from local councils, from the transport sector itself, from freight interests, from privacy experts, from everyday New Zealanders who were interested in this bill. The committee worked, I think, quite constructively across the parties. I’d like to acknowledge that and thank all of the people that took the time to make those submissions for their thoughtful engagement.

We will be supporting this bill because we support the bill’s broad intent. We did participate, obviously, quite forthcomingly in that select committee process and pushed quite hard for some of the amendments that were accepted to make sure that the framework, ultimately, is fair, that it actually does work, and that it’s locally driven—which we think is an important aspect of this bill—and that there’s a requisite amount of accountability, because it’s important for the public to be able to trust the system that they’re very much going to be a part of.

If we look at the key issues and improvements from that select committee process—and, in particular, focus a little bit more on the part where it was really important to look at that strengthening of that local decision-making—one of the strongest themes that came through in that submission process was a really genuine concern about local authority voice. As introduced, the bill gave Waka Kotahi significant control, including having the chair of each scheme board and, ultimately, also the casting vote. Through the select committee process, as is the way it should work, there was an opportunity to rebalance that somewhat. Also, note that a cap on board membership was removed, ensuring that each participating local authority, as you can imagine, can be configured in various different ways depending on the geographic location of the scheme under consideration. It’s really important to remove that cap to make sure that every local authority who had some skin in that game was able to be represented on that board.

Now, I think, quite importantly, the chair will also now be independent. I think that’s really important, because rather than being not independent, it’s important that it be appointed jointly by the local authority and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) so that there’s that proper buy-in and the proper neutrality and the independence of the chair.

Certain key decisions must also be ratified by a majority of local authority members before being sent to the Minister, so the Minister is able to have that information in full. These changes mean that local councils, I think, will have a real influence over the schemes, and that’s because they affect local residents, and it is hyper-local and it is situational. That seems only right and fair.

With the second aspect, there was a need to clarify the legal status and transparency. The committee agreed to clarify that scheme boards are not separate legal entities; they operate as collaborative governance bodies. We also ensure that the information is subject to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act—the LGOIMA—as a means by which to ensure that that provides that transparency and that accountability.

With respect to privacy and data protection, a number of submitters mentioned this—including the Privacy Commissioner—and they raised concerns about the use of camera and vehicle tracking technology. The committee responded by requiring that each scheme include an impact assessment on privacy specifically, so that’s something that doesn’t get lost in the broad range of measures that scheme boards have to deal with. The NZTA and enforcement authorities, it’s incumbent upon them to develop those privacy policies in consultation with the Privacy Commissioner. We think that those safeguards are important, and we think that should they be implemented properly, they’re important to be able to maintain that public confidence.

With regard to the use of the revenue, the bill now makes it clearer that revenue must first meet the costs of operating in the scheme and any surplus must be reinvested in the local transport improvements. Importantly, the amended clause ensures that funds are used in ways that “contribute to the effective, efficient, and safe land transport system in the public interest.”, which I think makes sense: if you’re collecting revenue from an area it makes sense to be able to reinvest back in the areas that are relevant in that scheme and do so in a way that doesn’t counterbalance what is the purpose of the bill, which is to reduce congestion. Labour continues to believe that the funds should support public and active transport, and help people shift away from cars where possible.

With regard to exemptions, there was obviously some debate on that because the scheme is only going to be as good as it is robust, and by definition that means that there should be few exemptions. Initially, only emergency vehicles were excluded, and the committee has now given the Minister flexibility to exempt public transport, buses, and school transport services, which I do think is important, recognising the role that they ultimately play in also keeping cities moving and freeing up those networks.

The themes of the submission, if we had to sum it up, were that people were concerned about equity. Many submitters stressed that congestion charging shouldn’t unfairly burden lower-income drivers or particularly when people have few other choices. It’s all very well to incentivise a change of behaviour, but those behavioural alternatives have got to be available to do so. Public transport was another theme: councils and advocates alike emphasise that schemes must be accompanied—and will only be as good as they could be—with requisite attention to those reliable, affordable public transport outcomes as well, and options. There was a strong call for meaningful community consultation and engagement—which is the theme of any good process really, isn’t it? It will only be as good if that is well implemented.

Going forward, Labour’s view is, as I said, we’re happy to support the bill. It is the right tool. It must be implemented in the right way, congestion charging absolutely has an opportunity here to make our cities more livable and more productive. As long as it’s fair and transparent and it gives people real alternatives, there’s no reason why it won’t work well.

We’ll be supporting the bill and we will continue our focus on making sure that when we’re having these conversations, we’re focusing on the quality of life for all New Zealanders, which includes their transport system.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill, in support because New Zealanders already face a high cost, sitting in traffic. We face that cost in many ways: time delays, getting home to family, getting to jobs, getting to work, getting deliveries on time.

This bill is about freeing up traffic so we can have a more free-flowing system. Look, it’s not a silver bullet; it’s—to mix your metaphors on projectiles—an arrow in the quiver. It’s not going to be the thing that solves all the issues in our transportation system, but it is an important hammer in the tool box.

Now, that’s a mixed metaphor!

Yeah, now we’re really getting into projectiles!

I’m waiting for one that will actually relate to cars.

Ha, ha! The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is, I think, the most collegial committee that this House has in its repertoire. We really did work quite well as a committee on this. As the previous speaker, Tracey McLellan, pointed out, working towards bringing councils closer to the decision making; giving a strengthening to the provisions on the way that revenue that is above operating costs will be used to improve traffic locally, because New Zealanders want to see the costs of this system—that they will pay in to make sure that traffic can move more efficiently—going towards ways to improve traffic in their area. That’s something the committee really did work together quite well on addressing, having investment agreement with the Minister to prioritise the spending in the area in ways that improve the experience of traffic congestion for those people using the scheme. I think it’s a great idea. I commend it to the House.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and also as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to speak on the second reading, and I’m delighted to do so.

As our resident builder, Cameron Luxton has just said, this is one tool in the tool kit to help reduce congestion. I’ve got to say that I thought this process was Parliament at its best. This is responding to an issue which local government has asked central government for many, many years—I’m looking across the aisle there at the Hon Phil Twyford. He’s acknowledging, I think, when I was both a councillor and the Mayor of Wellington coming to see him and saying, “Actually we want, as part of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving thinking, to have this tool in the tool box”—congestion pricing—“to reduce the time which people spend in traffic, and also to be a revenue tool towards Let’s Get Wellington Moving.” This is also very much in alignment with the Infrastructure Commission, which has encouraged us to price things so that it spreads peak demand. That doesn’t matter whether it’s transport or other forms of infrastructure.

The select committee worked really, really well together. We listened very carefully to the submitters. We asked good questions. One of the things I really like is that members on both sides are asking questions, and you wouldn’t know whether people were Opposition or Government most of the time. They’re asking good questions because they want the answers, and the submitters brought thoughtful, constructive submissions to us.

The other thing that we did is we proposed a number of, I think, very constructive amendments. The good thing was that, for some of those amendments, we got some push back on those amendments from, shall we say, across the road there. We went and argued for those amendments—the three particular ones that we argued for—and the Minister said, “Actually, after hearing that, I’m buying that.” I thought that was really, really good, because it showed to me what a select committee should be all about: hearing the evidence, hearing the submitters, giving advice, and arguing for that advice, and ideally that advice being accepted. I thought that was a really, really great thing. That’s how select committees should work, ideally, and maybe that’s one of the things constitutionally we ought to be thinking about.

I think also there was very much a desire on this—because it’s intended to be a long-term thing, dealing with long-term transport infrastructure—for multi-partisan agreement. Again, the more we can do that in any area, ideally without watering it down, the better that will be for “New Zealand Inc.” I want to say thank you to the Minister, I want to say thank you to the select committee, and I want to say thanks to the officials and to all the submitters for all your input.

We’re already used to higher charges at times of higher demand in lots and lots of different areas, whether it’s public transport, peak and off-peak fares, aviation, accommodation, energy. All of those things cost more at the times when they’re in the highest demand. Time of use charging is about trying to manage and spread that peak when there is high traffic use. It’s not about charging all the time; it’s about charging at the times when there is the highest traffic use. As I said, that’s something that local government has been asking for, for many years, asking for the empowering legislation to put that tool, that hammer, whatever it might be—that saw—in the tool kit.

The reason for time of use charging is to reduce congestion at peak times. Two ways: one is to encourage people to change the time at which they travel, and the other one is to ask them to change the mode by which they travel. It’s a way that induces less congestion, and doing this can enhance the efficiency of the transport network and raise economic productivity. I can recall, in introducing the second reading, the Hon Chris Bishop’s comments on the New York scheme, which he’d just been to see, which has just started, and saying, “This is working really, really well and people are actually going, ‘We didn’t like the idea, but now we like it—we see what it’s doing’ ”.

I often hear people say, “I’ve got to use my vehicle, I’ve got to use it at peak time, so why should I have to pay for it?” The reality is that, at the moment, you spend a lot of that time at peak time travelling and you’re stuck in traffic, so you’re paying a cost. That cost is in your time, in your fuel, etc. The idea of time of use charging is to encourage a few people—it doesn’t have to be a lot; it might only be 10 percent. If 10 percent of the people change the way they travel, it means that, instead of being stuck in traffic, you’ve got relatively free-flowing traffic. That’s what this time of use charging is all about.

Also, it potentially allows us to delay or to avoid expensive capital investment where that might otherwise be proposed just for the sake of relieving peak congestion. If you’ve got congestion all the time, sure you need to invest in something, you need to invest in new infrastructure, but if it’s only at the peak, if you can spread that peak, if you can avoid that capital cost, that is a good thing for “New Zealand Inc.”

It’s also a potential funding tool. The late Let’s Get Wellington Moving, as I indicated earlier, was predicated on a funding deal which included a local share, of which part would have come from a time of use charge or a parking levy, and I’ve already referred to discussions that I had with the Hon Phil Twyford at the time. I think, at the time, you said, Mr Twyford, that you didn’t want another tax before the 2020 election, but it might be worth revisiting after the 2020 election. That’s, I think, where we got to.

What goes on tour stays on tour, Andy.

Ha, ha! Well, I’m guilty there as well. I also submitted, as Mayor of Wellington, along with Greater Wellington Regional Council on behalf of the Wellington region, to the 2021 inquiry on congestion charging, which Greg O’Connor chaired on behalf of the Auckland area—but, obviously, Wellington was very, very interested in this.

What did we hear in terms of the changes that we recommended in the bill? I want to pick up on a few of those. First of all, the bill establishes a very structured process: it sets up scheme boards, which involve both councils and New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to design proposals; to consult with the public—that’s really, really important—on those proposals; to consider privacy issues—that is also really, really important; and to recommend those proposed schemes to the Minister.

Now, originally the governance structure that was proposed was that NZTA and councils would have, basically, the same weight but that NZTA would have the chair, so NZTA would be dominant. The councils, when they came to us and submitted, were very, very clear: “You do that, we’re out.” They were pretty blunt on that. They said, “We are not going to be beholden to NZTA, beholden to the Government. We are partners in this, and we need to be equal partners in this.” They, basically, said, “This is not just about State highways; it’s also about local roads.” So we proposed, and I think that’s had broad acceptance—it’s one of the ones we pushed with the Minister—an independent chair appointed jointly and unanimously by NZTA and by the councils, and that’s set out in section 65V(1)(d), in clause 4.

We also made some changes to ensure that every council that has joined the process is involved, is represented on the scheme board, and also some key points in the decision process that councils have to agree to or the scheme doesn’t proceed. Those are set out in new section 65ZAC. We’ve really listened very hard to councils. This is about treating councils with respect and working together in partnership. We’ve also said that we want to protect the NZTA in case a whole lot of costs get loaded on to NZTA, and that’s the addition of section 65W(cb), which means that NZTA has to agree where there’s a whole lot of potential costs imposed on it. NZTA has got to be able to agree with that or to say, “No, no, we’re not happy with that particular situation.” That’s the first area of change.

The second one that we argued for was exemptions for the time of use charge. Now, we started off with the only exemption being for emergency vehicles. There was some argument that, no, emergency vehicles should be covered too and they should have to be subject to the charge, but the vast majority of people said, “No, we don’t agree with that.” We had arguments on the other side, saying that things like freight should be exempt from that, but our view was that freight can choose to travel, to some degree, when it wants to travel, and it also benefits from having less traffic on the road. The one we did argue about was public transport, because the whole rationale for time of use charging is to change the time or the mode, and public transport is about the mode. We argued for that, and that is in there. Also, rural school buses are in there as well—not that there’s a huge number of them, but they’re also in there.

The third recommendation is about any surplus funding, if there is surplus funding—and that’s not the primary driver; the primary driver is about changing behaviour—and where it can be used. The original proposition was “Anywhere in the region”, but what we said is, “No, actually what we want is a much closer nexus between where the revenue is raised, the congestion area, and the area where it is spent.” That is included there, in section 65X(3).

Just to finish off, I think it’s been a very, very good process. I think we’ve got to a very good outcome, and I just want to thank everybody who has been involved in this. It puts in place something in the tool kit that local government has been asking for, for a long time, which hopefully should save the country a significant amount of money in congestion and, potentially, in capital programmes. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to support the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill, though I do have some significant reservations, mostly about missed opportunities to make this legislation truly transformative. I mean, let’s make no mistake: we’re in the middle of a transport cost of living crisis. New Zealanders are trapped in car dependency, with inadequate alternatives in public transport, walking, cycling, or even car sharing. This Government has made that cost of living crisis worse by halving the walking and cycling budget and increasing the public transport farebox recovery, which directly translates into higher bus and train fares. Our regional councils wear the blame for that, while central government escapes scrutiny. But in this dark transport landscape, time of use charging offers a wee glimmer of hope.

That’s right.

So the fundamental—oh, you like the dark transport landscape? That’s great!

The fundamental problem with the transport policy is its obsession with building more roads and tunnels. These projects simply move the choke points, rather than solve congestion, although there are some necessary roading improvements to avoid slips and dangerous areas. We are not against all road improvements, by any means; we just think that the bulk of the billions ahead over the next 60 years are not the best investment.

I did support congestion charging at council, both as a councillor and as mayor—as did my colleague over here—and it’s actually quite nice to think that we’re going to get it. We’re going to be part of the solution together, so thank you. I caught the end of your speech, Mr Foster, and I agree on many points. I’m sure that you, as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, made some great leadership improvements there.

I’m also glad that local government has a very strong role in the control and use of the funding generated, which is highly appropriate and necessary. I am particularly amazed and delighted by new section 65Z(2)(c) in clause 4, because it mentions economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts—long live the wellbeings, I say.

However, this bill could be much better. Expert submitters on a similar topic in the 53rd Parliament made some compelling cases for low-emission zones, which have proven successful overseas, not least in London. Because congestion is only one negative impact of our car dependency, the health costs from air pollution actually exceeds the cost of congestion itself, and yet this bill ignores that evidence entirely, presumably because it’s an inconvenient truth that air pollution from motor vehicles—and this is the 53rd Parliament, so no doubt the costs have increased, like everything else—causes approximately $10 billion in social costs every year, including 13,000 cases of childhood asthma prevalence. Now, we could actually invest in stopping health problems, and that might save in the long term some of our shared health costs downstream.

There are some problematic imbalances in the governance. As I understand it, Waka Kotahi holds disproportionate weight in decision making, and while I really appreciate that the Wairarapa has separate councils from the metro Wellington, the idea of having three Wairarapa mayors and one capital mayor on a board fills me with a little dismay.

I do think that the bill should explicitly require that the revenue fund public transport and active transport infrastructure, but this is legislation that we won’t oppose. We support its intent and recognise it as slightly watered-down progress, but progress none the less. Thank you.

This bill is a game-changer for tackling congestion in our major cities—Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, possibly Hamilton, city of the future—

“The Tron”.

“The Tron”. We’ve seen that in other jurisdictions—in particular New York, which my colleague Andy Foster mentioned, and which implemented the scheme and has had great success since its introduction in January this year. A 60-minute journey in Manhattan has now been slashed to about 15 minutes—

15-minute cities!

15 minutes. Traffic reduction has fallen by 10 percent. The noise complaints in the city of Manhattan have fallen by 70 percent. The city raises $50,000—or $50 million, I should say—each month from the scheme that it can then plough back into public transport, and buses travel faster in Manhattan as a result. It’s been a real win all around for the city of Manhattan, and now we’re going to be able to trial it here in New Zealand, and that’s a great thing.

It’s been a pleasure to be part of the select committee process. In summary, we’ve made four broad changes that, I think, address the key issues that came from the select committee submissions. The independent chair, I thought, was raised by a lot of submitters and will go some way to making sure that the scheme board makes decisions in an impartial manner for the benefit of people in the city. There are strengthened privacy protections so that the scheme board must adhere to those protections to protect the privacy of people. It clarifies that the revenue gained must be ploughed back in for the benefit of public transport in the scheme, in and around and within—as we’ve discussed in select committee—the area, and it clarifies the exemptions that are basically allowed. For this scheme to be successful, fewer exemptions were considered, and, really, we’ve only allowed emergency vehicles, and public buses for particular schools as well. Look, that is it. It’s been a great bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

I was in the House for the previous debate on the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill, and it’s hard to imagine a debate that could have had a more deeply felt and visceral opposition, from this side of the Chamber at least, and a kind of implacable difference, really, between the Government and the Opposition benches, by contrast. I think we have to kind of celebrate the moments where there is a kind of constructive consensus across the House because it doesn’t always happen, and when it does, I think it’s a good thing. I’m pleased to see that time of use charging is in this kind of cherished category where there is quite a lot of shared agreement between the political parties and an ability to progress an important reform like this in a constructive way.

Good things often take time, and I’m very pleased to see that policy work that I started as transport Minister, probably seven or eight years ago, has finally found its way, through a succession of other Ministers, to this House in the form of this bill. It’s true what Andy Foster said before, that he beat a path to my door asking that Wellington should be able to implement congestion charging. It’s not that I said no because it was a bad idea; I said no because it was premature, and there needed to be a significant amount of thinking and policy work done before I think we were ready to implement a reform like this. I’ve always been of the view that this, alongside zoning reform that allows our towns and cities to grow, to grow up, to embrace density, to build the fabric of a modern city—that and time of use charging on our transport network are two of the most critical reforms that will allow our cities to grow.

We have some major problems to unlock, particularly in our largest cities, that have the legacy of really poor 20th century policies that, essentially, locked in the 1950s, very dispersed, urban form cities that are utterly dependent on motorway systems, that cannot efficiently move people and goods around. This reform, and zoning reform to allow more intensification, particularly around transit corridors, is going to help us move our cities into a much more efficient and livable 21st century form. The dirty secret of modern cities is that cities of scale that are growing cannot build their way out of congestion. It is simply not possible, because when you have a growth in population, a growth in demand to move goods and people around, every time you expand the roads, in that context, you simply induce more demand. Auckland is a textbook case study of induced demand. It is not possible to keep adding more and more road space and think that that’s going to reduce congestion, because it never does.

We have a problem, because congestion, if we continue to refer to Auckland as our kind of case study here, is dragging down our productivity in the city. It means that for people and goods to get where they need to go in our economy, it takes much longer. Time is money. It literally costs more money to get goods and to get people, to get tradespeople, to the jobs they need to do.

It also severely undermines the efficiency of our labour market. Cities are basically labour markets, and if you stop people getting to the jobs that they might want to do, you dramatically reduce the efficiency of the labour market, because firms cannot get access to the choice of workers and the number of workers that they need to do their jobs. Firms cannot get access to the customers that they need to do the work that they do. For individuals, when you’ve got a city that’s transport arteries are as clogged up as Auckland’s are, individuals cannot get access to the full range of opportunities that the employment market offers, so labour productivity gets dragged further and further down. Those are some of the reasons why this reform is so important for the future of our cities.

So time of use charging and this framework will allow congestion charging to be brought in by local authorities, working in partnership with Waka Kotahi, NZTA. They will be allowed to put in place schemes that will charge by time and use charging to add a charge to people either entering a particular zone with a cordon around it or a particular stretch of, let’s say, a motorway network. By adding a small charge to the use of that particular roading network at particular times of the day, it will incentivise people to change their transport behaviour, to take another mode, to get on the train or the bus or the ferry or to time their journey for a less expensive hour when they don’t have to pay that extra fee.

There’s now a really great body of evidence and research internationally from places like London, Singapore, Stockholm, New York, Milan, who have implemented these schemes. We can say with certainty that it has the potential to reduce 10 percent or more of drivers at a particular time of day when the charging is in place. For those of us who are used to the school mid-afternoon rush hour, you know—in my case in Auckland—when it’s school holidays, that 10 to 15 percent of traffic that’s not on the road before and after school makes all the difference. It’s not like we’re saying a reform like this raises the prospect of everybody being forced off the road and having to take public transport or bike to and from work. No, if you can shift 10, 12 percent of people, in terms of when they choose to travel and how they choose to travel, it’s a vast increase in the efficiency of the use of the network, and that’s what we want to see.

For a city like Auckland, I return to my theme, it’s simply not possible to keep adding on road space and building more motorways. In Auckland, if you look at the motorway network, it just isn’t possible. If you look at Spaghetti Junction, for example—you’ve got this radial network with motorways coming in to a place like Spaghetti Junction—you physically cannot engineer more road space there. That’s why reforms like this are really necessary.

There’s a really interesting sidebar to the story about time of use charging as a way of alleviating congestion, and that is that because of the electrification of the vehicle fleet, petrol excise, which for a long time through hypothecation has basically funded our transport system—because of the electrification of the fleet, that is no longer going to be the case and we face declining revenues from petrol excise. We have to find other ways to fund our transport system and the technology that’s in use here, and what will very likely be a shift to electronic GPS-based road-user charges for all vehicles—a technology that’s already in place for a significant section of our trucking fleet—will mean that petrol excise can be phased out and replaced with a much more comprehensive way of raising revenue based on people’s real-time use of the transport network.

It offers a way out of that problem. It’s actually very efficient and very fair. There’s also a third reason—and, actually, it’s quite an exciting reform for New Zealand—and that is that our cities have largely been based on the idea of universal car ownership, and dispersed suburbs where we built motorways, you know, an hour’s drive out into the countryside from the centre of the city or from where the jobs are, with the idea that people can drive to work, is, in effect, a huge hidden subsidy, those roads, to the transport costs that enable this dispersed pattern of urban development. Time of use charging on the network, which will ultimately replace the petrol excise, will allow those costs to be fully calculated and brought into the system.

My beautiful Mt Roskill electorate is home to many working-class families. Addressing congestion and improving our transport network is critical for Mt Roskill’s future development and wellbeing. The people in Mt Roskill actually face daily congestion and long travelling times. It impacts families and businesses alike. This actually drags down our productivity. This bill encourages travel outside the peak hours, which can ease congestion and improve travel reliability.

However, I made it clear in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that I only support this bill with one clear condition: if any revenue is collected in the Mt Roskill electorate, I want it to return to Mt Roskill—for future transport infrastructure. Our community deserves a real, lasting investment in a safer, more efficient transport network. I commend this bill to the House.

We’ve had a lot of technical talk about the nature of this bill tonight and what it does, and about congestion charging in the abstract. I think the comments from our colleague Dr Carlos Cheung just now about Mount Roskill is the first time that someone has tried to relate it very specifically to a particular area. I am going to reject one of Dr Cheung’s claims that the money collected in Mt Roskill should be spent in Mt Roskill. Of course, the Auckland motorway and roading network is a network, and the spending needs to go across the network to ensure that the network functions effectively, which of course will, in turn, help people in Mt Roskill.

I want to talk about the experience of living in Auckland. Now, I live in West Auckland and I try to stay in West Auckland because, frankly, getting out on to the roads is a nightmare. The length of time it takes to travel to other places, especially at peak times, is, frankly, ridiculous. The better thing is to try to avoid getting out there and to time one’s travel so that it doesn’t occur during peak hours, but every now and again it happens, and I, like many other West Aucklanders, have been stuck on State Highway 16, which resembles a parking lot, a car park, from about 4.30 p.m. until about 5.45 p.m. each day, with traffic moving very, very slowly.

I’m sure that my colleague Dan Bidois, across the way, has had pretty much the same experience coming down off Onewa Rd and into the city. We do spend a lot of time sitting in traffic, and so that’s a behaviour that clearly needs to change. We actually need to see if we can reduce the number of cars on the road.

What I find interesting about this proposal is that when we’re trying to charge for time of use, there’s been a number of references to school holiday time. We’re trying to get our roads to have the level of not congestion that they have during school holidays. There’s an interesting little supposition underlying that: that, somehow, school kids don’t deserve to be on the roads—they don’t deserve to use the roads because the roads are better when they’re not there. I guess what we are trying to do with this bill, though, is not just take the kids off the road; we’re trying to take the adults off the road. We’re trying to get workers to rethink how they might move in and out of the city. We’re trying to ensure that people take account of all the costs there are with commuting.

It does mean, once we start charging workers for using the roads, that we do need to have viable alternatives for them. We must ensure that they have a choice to either pay the congestion charge, or to move along less congested routes, or to take—and this would be, I guess, the best solution—public transport. That’s a viable solution along State Highway 16 now that a busway is at last being retrofitted into State Highway 16. It should have been there right from the start, but it’s getting there now. That should help some of the congestion along that way. But it does make the very clear point that we need to have those good public transport networks to make congestion charging really work. So it’s not just the case that we still have the same number of cars on the road but people just pay some money; we actually need to get those cars off the road. That viable alternative does make a real difference.

That’s why I’m really glad that one of the proposals that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee worked through was the one that Dr Cheung referred to: that money collected by the congestion charges—spent, first of all, on the operation of the congestion charging scheme; that seems sensible, but then it goes back to improving the land transport network within the area. Now, I’m hoping that the boards that work on congestion charging are able to direct that towards public transport. Of course, there are many ways that we can improve roading networks, but it does seem to be that the fair and equitable thing to do is to ensure that we have a viable choice for people who would otherwise pay the congestion charge.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a privilege it is to stand and take a call on the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill. We are supporting this bill, as has been traversed well. There are a number of reasons why congestion charging is a great idea: the environmental benefits, the revenue generation beyond what we already have, the sustainable infrastructure, improved cities, and, of course, economic efficiency, which is what we’re all about on this side of the House: economic growth and efficiency. London and Stokholm are both great examples of congestion charging working where traffic reduced by 15 percent to 30 percent in London; 20 to 25 percent in Stokholm. It’s a great piece of work. I commend the bill to the House.

It’s really sobering to hear the drama and the horror stories coming from Auckland about their traffic problems. I just invite anyone who is over it: come down to the deep South. We’ve got beautiful clear air, we don’t have a lot of congestion, and it takes about 25 minutes to do the 27 kilometres from my place to the airport, which I do quite frequently—it’s a beautiful drive, fantastic farmland on the way there. Sometimes, occasionally the mist will roll in over the Taieri Plains and you’ll get to the airport and realise that the planes won’t be able to land—that’s because Air New Zealand’s changed them to ATRs. But times like yesterday, I was able to get out despite the wind and it really is a wonderful place to live.

Auckland, on the other hand, is a prime candidate for this congestion charge. I can tell you that we look at Auckland, London, Singapore, Stockholm, Milan, Manhattan. The real horror story, and what could be in our future in parts of New Zealand, is the experience that I’ve had in the many visits that I’ve done to the beautiful city of Jakarta. The same distance—27 kilometres—from the airport in Jakarta and to the main city can take usually around an hour and a half, but if you get peak-hour traffic, it can take you 4½ hours. I’ve done that myself—10 kilometres an hour or less, to the point where it was actually quicker near the end to hop out of the car, pay the driver while we’re at a standstill, and walk the last three blocks to the hotel so that we wouldn’t get caught with another half hour or so of congestion. As the Hon Phil Twyford has said, once those cities are gridlocked in that way, there is really no turning back.

Jakarta is a wonderful city—wonderful people, great food, productive—but really buckling under the challenge of its traffic gridlock, and I’d hate to see Auckland get like that. One solution: Aucklanders come south. If you’re not going to do that, have some congestion charges and then, as my other colleagues have said, have some better public transport options. That’s the key part to this: because we know that for planning purposes, having the congestion charge is great—it is going to change behaviours—but it’s really difficult for some people if there are not other options available to them.

We need buses, we need trains, we need bus fares and train fares that take into account people’s circumstances and that also enable people—like children, for example—to be able to attend sports games, to be able to attend training. We did have these half-price fares; the Government has removed them, so I’m keen to know what this Government is going to do to make sure the other side of the ledger of the congestion charge is about enabling people to get other forms of transport. If they don’t do that, then I suspect this could be a way of just generating much-needed revenue to balance their books. I’m hoping that’s not the case because there is a great deal of consensus in the House tonight about the utility of this bill, and it also seems like the select committee process went well. As Phil Twyford said, we have to celebrate when the House is of one mind, but we do need to ensure that the cities that we want to be more productive, more livable, more accessible are also more enabling for those who need to get those other forms of transport.

When Labour came up with this idea—and let’s not forget that: that this was work that the previous Labour Government did and the previous Labour Government sought bipartisanship on—very active in our minds were the many reasons to free up public transport and get rid of congestion. It wasn’t just about equity; it was also about the environment, it was about productivity, it was a whole system’s approach. That is why we went through the work very carefully: because we need to ensure that people can move around and that this is not just kind of a way of taxing middle New Zealanders, ordinary New Zealanders who are trying to get to their jobs, who need to work in the city, who don’t have other forms of transport and therefore get stung with another cost of living thing that is going to impact their back pocket.

There are some other areas of concern as well, and that is there’s a lot of assumption around councils working in partnership with central government. I was at a breakfast this morning where I heard the Hon Chris Bishop really lay into the councils, saying how useless they were, how they were rorting money from ratepayers to try to get infrastructure happening. It didn’t sound like the beginning of a beautiful relationship to me, and so I think we need to make sure that the Government can have a relationship with councils that is going to enable real partnership, because if that doesn’t happen then, again, this is not going to work for many people.

We also think that new section 65C(2), inserted by clause 4, allows too much ministerial control, and that’s about protecting local autonomy. It’s the second time that I’m standing in the House today concerned about ministerial control. Earlier tonight, we talked about the Ministers being able to appoint what should be technical experts to the panel that gives advice and makes decisions on the Medicines Act. It seems to be a bit of a trend with this coalition Government, and now we see it again in a completely different area where once more the governance and the decision making is all vested in a Minister, where the democratic institutions of power really require that not to be so concentrated so that there is transparency and accountability and a firewall, if you like, between Ministers and those who might be making operational decisions. That’s not going to happen if we keep section 65C(2) as it is.

My colleague has also mentioned—Dr Deborah Russell—the concept of equity and the fact that the roads need to be enabling for everybody. This is not just about business, it’s not just about those who need to go to a place of work; but, actually, this is about families, it’s about seniors who need to get out and get about—what are their transport options?—it’s about kids being able to go to places in the school holidays. We also need to make sure that we look at broader transport solutions for other parts of the country.

I’m all for hypothecating the money—I think Auckland sounds like it needs it to address its own problems. We don’t need your money in the South; our roads are great. What we do need, though, is we need rail-enabled ferries and we need coastal shipping and we need a port and rail structure that makes sure that the South Island can operate independently of the North Island when all that congestion gets out of hand or when there’s another COVID epidemic or something else that happens that shuts down the country. At least the South Island would be able to use our ports, use freight, and use rail-enabled ferries to support the rest of the country. We’re quite happy to do that—we’re hard workers in the South—but we won’t be able to do that and help out our North Island friends if those other broader transport systems aren’t enabled.

The other thing, I suppose, is just really noting that former Minister of Transport Simeon Brown has said we want to make sure we’re not adding further cost to people using roads during a cost of living crisis. We agree with the congestion charges, but it is difficult for people to hear that kind of promise and then see this kind of policy implemented. It’s a little bit like hearing Simeon Brown say that doctors have crossed an ethical line when they assert their right to stand up for their patients and talk about safer staffing and better pay and conditions to make sure that people receive adequate healthcare. It’s a shame that Minister Brown said that, because it might come back to haunt him, especially if these other mechanisms that we’re discussing in the House tonight are not put into place. Then it could look very much like a money-grab, and that would be such a shame when the thinking behind this congestion charge is for the right reasons and does have bipartisan support.

What the bill does: it offers a critical opportunity to modernise transport management, and we think that, with proper amendments and fare safeguards, it can reduce congestion and it can create a more enabling environment for cities. It will probably make Auckland a little bit more livable, but the offer still stands: if it doesn’t work, and if those public transport options don’t come out and you do find yourself on a motorway somewhere, Mr Speaker, sitting in traffic moving at 5 kilometres an hour, wondering why you’re paying a congestion charge and why your cost of living hasn’t reduced and why the traffic isn’t moving, then I do extend to you a sincere invitation to come down south and experience a good life where it only takes 25 minutes to do 27 kilometres to the airport from South Dunedin to the Taieri Plains.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, in the interest of brevity, I was really pleased to see in the introduction, mechanisms for a scheme board to adjust to charges, manage scheme operations, etc., because I remember going to the Mount and paying the gold coin at the little toll booth with the people in the booth. They eventually did get rid of that, and I knew that was probably a bit of an antiquated system. Then, they moved to digital, but I’d never pay my bills on time, and I’d always get a snail mail $8 bill with a $5 admin fee, and I was just like, “If I knew about the bill, I wouldn’t have the admin fee.” So there’s definitely room to improve, I think, but I’m all for this process, so I commend it to the House.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie—pō ararau. [Good night—good night.]

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.