Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) : I move, That the Alcohol Reform Bill be now read a second time. The bill implements the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report Alcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm. The bill represents a balanced approach that aims to support the safe and responsible sale, supply, and consumption of alcohol. It will increase community input into local alcohol licensing decisions and improve the operation of the alcohol licensing system. The bill repeals and replaces the entire Sale of Liquor Act 1989, and for the first time in more than 20 years Parliament is acting to restrict rather than to relax our liquor laws. This bill will make fundamental changes to how, when, where, and what New Zealanders drink. In particular, the bill hones in on the disproportionate impact that alcohol-related harm has on our young people.

I take this opportunity to thank the Māori Party and United Future for their approaches to the report back of this bill. I also thank the Justice and Electoral Committee chair, Chester Borrows, for the sterling job he did in steering the committee through its consideration of the bill. My thanks also go to the Justice and Electoral Committee for its hard work and sensible recommendations.

Altogether, the committee received 1,647 substantive submissions and 7,175 form submissions on the bill, and sat for more than 90 hours of hearings. The majority of submitters who expressed a view on the bill supported its intent, but considered that further restrictions on the sale and supply of alcohol were warranted. The Government has acted on these concerns, adopting all 130 of the select committee’s recommendations.

One of the major, substantive changes recommended by the committee is to require supermarkets and grocery stores to display alcohol in only one, non-prominent area of the store. This move aims to reduce concerns about the normalising effect of alcohol sales in supermarkets alongside sales of everyday household goods. It will also reduce the exposure of young people to alcohol. The select committee recommended introducing a minimum age of 20 years to obtain a manager’s certificate. This is in line with the minimum age to be a licensee, and reflects the increased responsibility of managers under the new regime. The bill also now requires Police, Fire Service, and Defence Force canteens and messes to implement internal codes of practice that will closely follow the rules and restrictions applying to clubs.

Other changes to the bill are designed to improve the workability of the legislation, and to more closely reflect modern business practices. For example, the bill now explicitly prohibits convenience stores from selling alcohol. The definition of “grocery store” has been amended to make clear that dairies are not eligible for an off-licence. The term “grocery store” will be limited to premises that sell a wide range of food products and other household items, where the principal business is the sale of food products other than convenience foods. A further trading hours amendment provides for limited exceptions for genuine events to the national maximum hours.

Although the select committee has made major changes to some parts of the bill, the provisions that will have the biggest impact on young people remain essentially unchanged. Once the bill is enacted, it will be an offence for anyone other than a parent or guardian to provide alcohol to an under-18-year-old without a parent or guardian’s consent. In addition, when alcohol is provided to an under-18-year-old, the parent, guardian, or authorised person will need to ensure that the alcohol is supplied in a responsible manner. The bill also introduces a new purchase age regime: 18 for on-licences, and 20 for off-licences. The committee did not make any recommendations in this area, as these provisions will ultimately likely be subject to a conscience vote in Parliament.

Of course, legislation alone will not be enough to turn round our drinking culture. That is why, in addition to the measures contained in the bill, the Government recently announced that an extra $10 million per year of excise revenue will be used to fund alcohol treatment and workforce training. The Government announced also that an expert forum will be set up to examine whether further restrictions to advertising and sponsorship are necessary to reduce alcohol-related harm. Alcohol advertising is a complex and evolving area, and the impacts of any further restrictions need careful consideration.

The Government will continue its investigation into a minimum price regime alongside the introduction of this bill. A key part of this investigation is obtaining alcohol price and sales data from the alcohol industry. I remain very hopeful that this information will be provided voluntarily. However, a regulation-making power has been added to the bill as a backstop measure should non-regulatory options for obtaining this data fail, or if further data is required.

The bill will provide a strong and enduring legislative framework for the sale and supply of alcohol in New Zealand, and I commend the bill to the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) : Given the Alcohol Reform Bill’s genesis, I should be welcoming its report back from the Justice and Electoral Committee, but I am not. Although Labour will not oppose the second reading of this bill, there is not much enthusiasm on this side of the House for what has been a squandered opportunity.

Never before in our history has there been such an in-depth review of alcohol as that conducted by the New Zealand Law Commission. It was an incredible review, and I want to place on record a tribute to the New Zealand Law Commission for the work it did. It did an outstanding job. It heard submissions all around the country; its members went out after hours and saw what alcohol was doing in our streets and our communities. At the same time, the level of public support for change is unprecedented. Communities from one end of the country to the other are taking to the streets to oppose the granting of liquor licences. This is unprecedented.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Hear, hear—Wainuiōmata.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: The member for the Wainuiōmata area calls out, and I know that people in Glenn Innes have taken to the streets, as well. Down in Christchurch recently the same thing happened in the Ilam electorate, the electorate of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. People are absolutely determined to have a say in what is happening in their communities. More than 3,000 New Zealanders submitted to the Law Commission on its draft report. When we combine that number with the number of those who submitted on this bill and the previous bill, that is over 5,000 submissions in total, and there were just over 7,000 form submissions from interested groups and individuals.

I have to say that this bill is a travesty, because it does not even begin to address the challenges that were posed by the evidence that the Law Commission has put in front of the Government of New Zealand and that should have been the basis for a bill that was introduced into the House. The bottom line is that this bill ignores what the people said they wanted. The Government did make itself available to the corporate interest, but not, I am afraid, to the people of New Zealand. The truth is that this bill adds almost nothing to the bill I introduced into this House 3 years ago, which had its first reading in March 2009. If the Government had amended the bill that I introduced with the few additional elements added to that basic framework, and if it had referred that to a select committee by way of a Supplementary Order Paper, then we could have had this legislation passed and enacted by now. It could already have been taking place and we would not have to have communities marching in the streets demanding something that this legislation would have already given them.

The other thing—and this is the real reason why I think the Government decided not to do it as a Supplementary Order Paper to my bill—is that we would have had amendments dealing with the question of the breath-alcohol content levels, as well. The move from 0.08 to 0.05 would have been within the scope of the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill but not within the scope of this bill, and that is the reason why the Government did not want my bill amended; it wanted a new bill so that it could leave the transport amendments outside the scope of the bill.

Our Prime Minister just loves to kick the tyres on these tough issues, but he does not like to make decisions, and that is what kicking the tyres is all about. Sometimes we need to have a Prime Minister who is prepared to get up and make hard decisions, and this would be one of those decisions that I would like to have seen from our Prime Minister—like the decision of a former Minister of Health who, in an election year, was prepared to put smoke-free environments on our legislative timetable.

This Government has not got what it takes, in my view, and this Prime Minister does not have what it takes, to make these decisions. It is intolerable, in the wake of the evidence presented by the Law Commission. I am particularly disappointed that this bill is one of the final acts of this Minister of Justice; it could have been the one law reform that could produce a legacy that any—any—Minister of the Crown would be proud of. As a Minister who jointly spearheaded the ministerial committee on the Drivers of Crime nearly 3 years ago, he should have been able to do better than this.

I went to an Alcohol Action conference a while ago where a number of us were asked to imagine what New Zealand would be like without alcohol damage. I am not saying “without alcohol”; I am not putting up a proposition in terms of a wowser’s argument here. I am talking about what we were asked to imagine: New Zealand without alcohol damage. I immediately thought of the lives that would be saved, of the resources that would free up in our hospitals and within the health system as a whole, and of the resources that would flow to the justice system.

Imagine the impact that a New Zealand without alcohol damage would have on our police, our courts, and on our prisons. I thought of ACC levies and the fact that they would plummet in the earners account and the motor vehicle account. I thought of the families that would be freed from the scourge of domestic violence. But imagining New Zealand without alcohol damage is an unrealistic dream, unfortunately, while we as a nation are not prepared to contribute to the change that would make it a reality within ourselves, our families, and our communities, or to require it of this place—Parliament—and require us as members of Parliament to vote for the right thing.

Unfortunately, most of the public discourse around alcohol reform is self-interested, not public-spirited. That is why there is such huge support for increasing the age to 20 but not for removing cheap booze from our supermarket shelves. As I have said on many occasions now, law reform in its own right cannot provide the total solution. What is required is a major attitudinal shift towards alcohol and the level of societal tolerance for the behaviours it induces. Law reform that is evidence-based can make a difference to an environment that has normalised alcohol as an everyday commodity, masking the devastating consequences that it is having on our communities from one end of the country to the other.

The impact of the retail sector—particularly the two supermarket chains—must be addressed. It has been driving down the price of wine and beer and fuelling the pre-loading generation. Pre-loading has become the norm in that new generation of drinkers, who have had virtually none of the restrictions that we had when we first started to drink. I do not think we would be brave enough in this House to take wine out of supermarkets, but we should set a minimum price that would prevent wine from being sold for less than $2 for a standard drink. This new generation does its own cost-benefit analysis—I call it a price-trash analysis—“How little can I spend to get trashed?”. That is what these young people do today. I am talking about people in their 20s and 30s; I am not talking about people under 20. That is what happens—when the prices spiral down, the harm climbs higher.

There has been an exponential growth in the number of off-licences, and the amount of alcohol now consumed from off-licences as opposed to on-licences has flipped. In terms of alcohol consumed now, twice as much has been bought from off-licensed premises than from on-licensed premises. It is a measure of inequity, as well. A study done by Otago University showed that lower socio-economic suburbs were likely to have more liquor outlets than any other suburbs. That is fuelling the problems that we see in places like South Auckland.

We cannot ignore the enormous burden that we are all being invited to carry for the sake of those who are causing harm in our society. As Sir Geoffrey Palmer said, not everyone drinks in a manner that is harmful, but the consequences of harmful drinking affect us all. We have to want change to happen. Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity, and it ought not to be treated as such. It should not be advertised or discounted, as both of those actions are designed to increase consumption, which does nothing to fit the harm-reduction objectives of a responsible regulatory regime.

There is a connection, well researched and evidence-based, between accessibility and harm. Accessibility is about the convenience of the outlets, their hours of operation, and the price of the alcohol, and all three have to be addressed—and I say sooner rather than later, as later will be too late for too many.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : It has been a privilege to chair, through the Justice and Electoral Committee, the debate that has been circulating on alcohol over the last term. It is interesting to note too that the previous Government introduced the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill on 6 August 2008, which the previous speaker, Lianne Dalziel, spoke on, which was just a few days before the House rose, with the Government having spent most of that previous year debating such hugely important things as the Electoral Finance Act. Subsequent debates went on through that time, and the Electoral Finance Act was railroaded through the select committee process.

I have been through these debates a couple of times in this term, firstly, in debating the bill promoted by the previous speaker, which was given its first reading by the incoming National Government in March 2009, and then in transacting this current bill, the Alcohol Reform Bill, which was brought to the House by the Hon Simon Power. That came after the Law Commission was asked to bring forward the report back in respect of its discussion paper, so that the bill could reflect as many of those recommendations as possible.

I am proud to have been in charge of steering this legislation through the Justice and Electoral Committee. I thank select committee members for the way in which they engaged in a bipartisan manner with the several thousand who engaged with the committee in bringing their submissions. About 1,500 of those gave their own written submissions, and several thousand more sent in form submissions. There were over 90 hours of hearings that this committee went through.

I thank those people who, previous to this select committee process, contributed their expertise through this process and through the public debate. Gerard Vaughan, Doug Sellman, and Paul Quigley are individuals in particular who have gained some notoriety—and quite justifiably so—for the way in which they have brought before the public of New Zealand the issues around the consumption of alcohol.

I thank those community groups like the Glen Innes Drug and Alcohol Action Group, and similar groups in Māngere, Ōtara, Christchurch, and other parts around the country, because this is a process that people have engaged with. I reject very roundly the suggestion from the previous speaker that the Government and Government members were prepared to engage only with corporates, because that is total crap. In fact, Government members engaged with those particular people and with those alcohol action groups not only as members of the select committee but also as individual members of Parliament and as caucus committees, as did those members from the other side of the House.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: That’s not what I said, and don’t use language like that—that’s revolting.

CHESTER BORROWS: If they want to sit incredibly high or tall in a saddle—like that member on her high horse—I tell them they have got the wrong end of the stick.

A number of themes have come out of the public discussion on this debate, and one is that we cannot legislate for a culture. We do have the problem of a binge drinking culture in this country, and we need to deal with that problem. We will not deal with it by way of legislation, but we can assist a change in behaviour through legislation, and I believe that that is what we are achieving through this bill—albeit we will not turn round 80 years of liberalisation, from the times of prohibition, in one bite. I do not believe that any Government of any hue would be able to do that.

The other underlying—or overriding—theme that has come through all of this debate is that everybody’s drinking is a problem except my own. I do not mean mine personally, but I mean ours individually as we discuss it. Everybody believes that we have a big problem with alcohol in this country, but they refuse to look at the manner in which they themselves drink, or to tailor that according to the research and the study that we understand.

The third point is that everybody in the sector points at somebody else for creating the problems around alcohol. If we talk to people who are running bars, and those who are managers of on-licensed premises, we find that they point to individual responsibility, the drinking that people do before they turn up at bars—that is, the level of alcohol people have on board before they start drinking—and whether bar managers can determine the level of intoxication of their own patrons. They throw it back on those patrons. If people want to talk about supermarkets and the accessibility and availability of alcohol—the availability of cheap alcohol, as the previous speaker said—we can quite rightly make the point that alcohol has never been as cheap as it is today. It is unrealistically cheap in respect of other commodities and it is unrealistically cheap in respect of the cost of production, and not only is the supply of alcohol as cheaply as it is unfair to the producers but it creates a huge social problem. It is interesting to note that as quick as the previous speaker was to seize all the benefits of the legislation she previously put forward, her legislation never addressed minimum pricing. In fact, that issue came before the committee time and time again, and, thankfully—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: It came out of the Law Commission report.

CHESTER BORROWS: Well, some of us did not need the Law Commission’s report to tell us that there was an issue about minimum pricing, and that that needed to be addressed. In this bill it is being addressed, albeit it is there as a facility for regulation. We are saying to the retail industry that retailers had better supply us with the information they have in relation to costs and the mechanisms for costing within supermarkets, or we will deal to them via regulation and via this legislation. I have already indicated that this is a statement made to alcohol retailers.

The point is, too, that a number of the crucial issues and critical issues around drinking have been addressed through this legislation, albeit it has not gone as far as a number of people would have liked. I was at a public meeting in Manurewa just last week and I spoke to a group of people there. Those who were attending the meeting were very disappointed that they had not achieved their end goal. I said to them: “You need to be aware of how you have changed the debate, and you need to be conscious of the fact that you have made significant changes in turning round the debate from one of liberalisation to one of constraint.” When I reminded the groups that they needed to take some heart from that, they responded in two different ways and in the manner in which one would expect activists to respond. Half of them said: “Well, we’ve got so far to go and we’re looking forward without looking behind to see how far we’ve come.”, and the other half of the group were so grateful for the fact that the Parliament had taken cognisance of what the group was saying and gratitude for the fact that all their hard work had achieved a number of things.

I have to say that it was very good to have the input of Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the Law Commission report on this issue. In fact, I think he believed at one stage that he was so popular he could come and do a “Don Brash” on the Labour Party and seek to roll his good friend Phil Goff for the leadership. However, I understand that he has taken retirement, or realignment, in respect of that.

Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson is giving me the signal to wind up, and I understand that. It is just the one finger, and will not appear on the front page of the New Zealand Herald.

We have addressed community ownership of these problems by allowing communities to be able to dictate how alcohol will be sold and supplied within their areas, and that has been a long time coming. We have differentiated between supermarkets and dairies to make sure that alcohol cannot be sold within dairies, because when the ability to sell alcohol was extended to supermarkets back in the day, that was where Parliament intended it would go. We have addressed the purchase age of alcohol, and there has been a constraint, a restriction, a lifting of the age to purchase alcohol to take away. That is a good thing.

Parental supply is something where, through this bill, we have put the responsibility of supply of alcohol to minors back on to parents, albeit there is not a legislated drinking-age. When the select committee investigated what that drinking age would be, there was no consensus. I have covered, for instance, the restrictions on price.

I finish by making one point, and that is to go back to what I said about the sector. Every part of the alcohol industry points to another as being responsible for the evils of alcohol. Every problem with youth drinking starts from an adult wanting to push the envelope, push the boundary, in respect of what is acceptable. New product designs, the way alcohol is sold, and the mixes of energy drinks and alcohol are just some indications. It is over to us as legislators in this Parliament, and it is over to those people involved in the industry, to take the lead and take the responsibility, albeit this is about individual responsibility. Thank you.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) : I begin by acknowledging the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Chester Borrows, for the diligent chairing that he undertook during the exercise that he has just described, and by paying tribute to all the members of the select committee who heard submissions on the Alcohol Reform Bill.

The first thing I want to say is that this bill is better than the legislation that we have at the present time, and much of that is down to the hard work of the officials, some of whom I see are in the Speaker’s gallery. I acknowledge their input into making the legislation better than what we have on the statute book at the moment. I acknowledge each of the members of the select committee for the work that they did in looking at the provisions of the bill and trying to work out how to make the law better. That is the best exercise that any parliamentarian can involve themselves in in this place.

There are a number of really important recommendations from the Law Commission’s report that are incorporated in the bill, and they are incorporated well. There is much harsher regulation of the irresponsible promotion of alcohol, and that has been a long time coming. It is good to see it in the legislation. There is a regulation-making power to ban dangerous alcohol products, and to restrict the alcoholic content of ready-to-drink beverages. There are better and new enforcement provisions around alcohol offences, and there are tougher penalties for those who breach them.

So that is progress. It was for that reason that members on this side of the House, in response to answers given at the select committee by submitters, asked them whether, although the bill did not go as far as we would like, it was enough of an improvement on the status quo for them to want us to support it. Unanimously the community groups said that, yes, the bill was better than what there was at the moment and would we please support it as far as it went. So in the second reading debate Labour members will vote to read the bill a second time.

I mentioned that the officials are in the Speaker’s gallery, and that is an unusual thing, as members will know. Normally we have officials in the well of the House, ready to assist us in the Committee stage. There will be no Committee stage for this bill in this Parliament, because there is not enough time to progress the legislation through that stage, so we will not be able to scrutinise it fully. Expectations were raised amongst the nearly 10,000 submitters who expressed their views to the committee. They had their hopes raised that this much better bill would actually become law prior to the election, but those hopes have been dashed, because there will not be time, and we will not have a detailed level of scrutiny in the House itself as to the provisions of the bill. That is a real shame.

The other real shame is one that has already been alluded to by my friend and colleague the Labour spokesperson on this issue, Lianne Dalziel. That issue is that we did what we do far too often in New Zealand at the moment: we, or at least the previous Government, sent this issue off to the Law Commission for an expert, dispassionate review of the law on this subject. The Law Commission was asked to hurry its review, such that it did not produce, as it normally does, a draft bill for Parliament to consider. But, none the less, the commission came back with its recommendations.

They were comprehensive recommendations, they were good recommendations, and they were carefully thought-out and backed up by the evidence. If we had done what we should do as a matter of course with Law Commission reports, which is to model legislation on the entirety of the report, bring it into the House, have it read a first time as per the Law Commission’s recommendations, and have a good old debate about what the Law Commission said we should do and why we should do it, then we might be in a different position.

But, as usual, the executive thought it knew better. It rejected the idea of bringing forward a number of the Law Commission’s recommendations into legislation. Many of them did not make it as far as the bill. So what we are looking at today in the House is a much-truncated version of what the Law Commission asked us to do and said would be necessary to make a real change to our binge drinking culture.

In his earlier contribution Chester Burrows very properly recognised that we do have a problem with alcohol consumption in New Zealand—we do have a binge drinking culture. He said that legislation should not be the only solution that we apply to that sort of thing, and of course he is right. But it is a necessary, if not a sufficient, thing to apply to this sort of problem.

If anybody needs evidence of that, they just need to think about the difference in New Zealand now compared with 25 years ago on issues like drink driving or smoking in public places. The huge culture change we have undergone in this country over questions like those has not all been because of the law, but changing the law was what kicked things off.

Those changes made it safe, for example, in the case of the smoking question, for people to say they did not want people smoking next to them or in their workplaces. With the drink-driving question, they made it OK for people to say “Hey, look, you’ve had too many drinks. How about you just stop there and, if not, take a taxi home?”. The law plays an incredibly important part in these matters.

What we have failed to do is make the law comprehensive. The Law Commission said that we should have looked at four important areas where this bill fails to address any questions whatsoever. The first is a lack of minimum pricing. In its final report, the Law Commission said: “We regard pricing policies as the central plank of any reform package aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm.” It is very clear that inexpensive, readily available alcohol is one of the key drivers of alcohol harm, yet there is no action on the table to deal with this issue.

The international evidence is unambiguous: price is one of the most effective ways to combat alcohol harm. Just as we saw with the smoking issue, price makes a difference. If we do not deal with price, we fail as a Parliament to address the sort of culture change that we all know we need in this area.

The second issue on which the Law Commission urged action was the availability of alcohol. We have had an experiment going on in New Zealand since we last had a comprehensive reform of alcohol law. Essentially, we have had laissez-faire—basically, very free availability of alcohol, on very few conditions. It has not worked, because we have this binge drinking culture in place. We needed to address the excessively free availability of alcohol in this country, and the bill does not do it.

The third issue is advertising and sponsorship. Ninety-four percent of submitters to the select committee wanted greater restrictions on advertising, and the bill just does not go there. Seventy-nine percent actually advocated a complete ban on alcohol sponsorship. Labour agrees that those three steps—dealing with price, dealing with availability, and dealing with advertising and sponsorship—would have made this bill so much better.

I mentioned a fourth issue, and it is the issue of the legal alcohol limit for driving. I will not go into that in any detail, but it is a matter that Parliament will just have to address if it wants to get serious about these questions.

I conclude my remarks by saying that, yes, this is better legislation. It is a shame it will not pass in this Parliament. But it is legislation that could have been so much better if politicians did not think they knew better than the Law Commission, and if they did not pay excessive heed to the interests of the industry. Failing to address those issues of availability, price, and advertising and sponsorship means that this bill is truly a lost opportunity for us to address the binge drinking culture that we see causing so much damage in the daily lives of so many New Zealanders.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : The Green Party will support the Alcohol Reform Bill too, even though we do not think it goes nearly far enough. We congratulate Chester Burrows on his impartial chairing of the Justice and Electoral Committee, and the thousands of New Zealanders who took time to make submissions on this bill.

It is interesting that in all the articles and all the commentary that have been written about this bill, I have not come across one commentator who believes that the bill goes far enough. Even Michael Laws said in a column the other day that the bill was simply too watered down to have an impact. Tapu Misa said in her column: “The Government has … diluted [the Law Commission’s recommendations] into an insipid, ineffectual brew to make us feel like something is being done.” She said: “If I were in the alcohol industry I’d count the updated Alcohol Reform Bill as a win.” That, sadly, is the reality. All the way through this debate we have seen that tug of war between vested interests and the public interest, between the liquor industry, the hospitality industry, and the food industry on the one hand, and on the other hand Alcohol Action and the health professionals who have to pick up the pieces that result from alcohol abuse. So far, to this day, the vested interests have been wining hands down, and we assume that that is because the Government is simply not prepared to get offside with these vested interests.

I spoke to Sir Geoffrey Palmer the other day, and he is clearly extremely disappointed that the key recommendations of his report, such as price, have been rejected. He pointed out at the time that the Law Commission report is a package; if we want real change then one has to accept the whole comprehensive report, the package of reforms, and not simply cherry-pick them. But the ironic thing is that in diluting the Law Commission’s recommendations to the point where they will not be effective, the Government is completely out of step with public opinion, which is actually clamouring for political leadership on this issue. People are simply fed up with the havoc and the destruction that alcohol is causing in our society—the violence, the injury, and the hospital admissions. People are demanding a tougher regime.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians said recently that given the incredible harm that alcohol causes in our society—and it pointed out more than 1,000 deaths a year, costing the health system $1.2 billion in direct costs from dealing with alcohol—it cannot understand why its key recommendations to combat the ultra-cheap price of alcohol, and the irresponsible marketing of alcohol, had not been included in the bill. But there is still time, and we are still hoping that the Government will realise that it has seriously miscalculated public opinion on this issue and that it will support some of the changes we will be putting up as amendments to strengthen the bill.

We do need to remind ourselves that alcohol is a drug, a legalised drug—the equivalent, we are told, of a class B drug—so it does seem odd that we would allow a legal drug to be sold 24/7 right around the clock in virtually every dairy and supermarket in the land. The number of outlets selling alcohol has doubled in the last decade to the point where there are now more than 14,000 outlets selling it. In fact, one submitter to the Justice and Electoral Committee said there were far more alcohol outlets in New Zealand than there were in Australia, despite the fact we have only about one-fifth of Australia’s population.

It is extraordinary too that we have allowed this legalised drug to be heavily marketed and advertised, including to teenagers and young people. We do not allow morphine to be advertised and promoted, and targeted at children, so why do we allow the legal drug alcohol to be, especially when there is compelling evidence that alcohol advertising encourages people to start drinking at a younger age and to drink to excess? There is so much liquor advertising on television that 90 percent of children are exposed to alcohol advertising, not to mention marketing, on television every week. It is not surprising that alcohol advertising normalises and glamorises drinking, and makes young people think it is cool and sexy to drink. It is hardly surprising that there is intense peer group pressure on teenagers to drink, or that it has got to a point where young people think that they actually have to drink to be cool and to enjoy life, and that actually not drinking at a party is abnormal, uncool, and even nerdy. In our view, we will never reduce our binge drinking culture if the saturation advertising, marketing, and sponsorship of alcohol continues unabated. We want to see a tobacco-style prohibition on all alcohol advertising across all media, and a phasing out of the alcohol sponsorship of, and advertising at, sporting and cultural events.

There is also compelling evidence that cheap alcohol encourages people to drink more often and in large amounts, yet we allow supermarkets to sell alcohol so cheaply—at below the cost of production—that young people can go to their supermarket and load up every weekend with their 20-pack of beer for about $15. Submitter after submitter said to the select committee—just as Sir Geoffrey Palmer did—that price was the single most important issue in reducing our binge drinking culture. Submitters pointed out that alcohol is sold so cheaply in supermarkets that even liquor outlets and bars can buy their alcohol more cheaply in a supermarket than they can from a wholesaler—how ridiculous is that? Yet this amended bill does nothing to stop supermarkets from engaging in that predatory practice of selling alcohol below the cost of production to entice young customers into their shop.

Supermarkets told us in the select committee: “Oh no, we are not selling liquor below the cost of production.” But when we probed that in a secret hearing, the supermarkets had to basically admit that they had created a complex system of rebates and discounts that enable them to sell liquor at below the cost of production, even while they claim they do not. This Government readily admits that increasing the price of tobacco has been an effective strategy in reducing the number of smokers, so why would we not use the same effective strategy to try to reduce the number of drinkers? Why would we have one rule for cigarettes and a completely different one for alcohol? It does not make sense.

We support the proposal to allow local communities to develop local alcohol plans, but we would point out that these plans will be able to be appealed by businesses, and, as Doug Sellman has pointed out, thousands of New Zealanders will have to put in a huge grind. They are going to have to turn up to hearing after hearing against a well-heeled alcohol industry and its high-flying lawyers. So, as he pointed out, it could take years to bring any real change in the number of liquor outlets in New Zealand, or to reduce the number of hours during which they operate.

Other issues that we think are tremendously important include warning labels on alcohol, particularly about foetal alcohol damage. We have warnings on cigarettes and tobacco products; why not on alcohol? It is almost incomprehensible that the legislation does not lower the drink-driving limit. It allows people to drive around intoxicated. We strongly support the Government’s stated intention of a 5 percent limit on the content of ready-to-drinks, and we consider the threats from Independent Liquor that it will challenge our ruling and continue to import liquor over that limit as an outrageous breach of our sovereignty and an outrageous attempt to circumvent our laws.

The Green Party is divided on the issue of the age of purchase—we will be exercising a conscience vote—but, in general, we think that the drinking age is not a main issue because alcohol is a problem in all age groups. Ninety-two percent of heavy drinkers are aged 20 or over. It is just too easy to divert the debate into one about the drinking age, when it affects every age group. We think we need to address alcohol as a social problem, not a youth problem. The reality is that excessive drinking, particularly in adulthood, is contributing to crime, injury, family violence, and sexual assaults. I think it is 80 to 90 percent of prisoners who have alcohol or drug-related problems. New Zealanders are fed up. They want real action. I appeal to the Government that it is not too late to take some real action.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. We do not have to look too far to consider why this Alcohol Reform Bill is necessary. Just 4 days ago, while the eyes of the world were upon us, spectators and members of the public, acting under the haze of alcohol-induced behaviour, threatened to ruin the wonder of the Rugby World Cup opening ceremony for all of us.

Of course there were issues with transport, with forward planning, and with safety and security that are rightly matters that local and central government must attend to, but we cannot avoid the conclusion that drunk and unruly passengers were hitting the emergency lever on the trains and causing chaos, that wild party-goers were creating havoc at the Viaduct Basin, and that, as my co-leader Pita Sharples has pointed out, at least six of the paddlers on the Te Tai Tokerau waka were taken to hospital after being assaulted by drunk members of the public. This is a shame and a disgrace, and I have no tolerance for alcohol-induced behaviour that places public safety at risk. This may sound hard-line, but I make no apology for our stance. We are faced with a situation in which Māori have four times the rate of alcohol-related mortality as non-Māori, and more than double the rate of years of life lost due to alcohol. We also have the special responsibility of knowing that half of our Māori population is aged under 24 years—the age group that is vulnerable to a far higher level of alcohol-related harm than any other.

I am proud that in Te Wai Pounamu in 1879 all of the South Island iwi joined together to petition Parliament for the total prohibition of alcohol in the southern provinces. And I am deeply sorrowful that here we are 132 years later still tinkering around the edges of alcohol reform. But it is a start, and we acknowledge that some progress has been made. The Māori Party appreciates the spirit of cooperation that has characterised the negotiations our parties have had over the last year with Minister Power, and we mihi to him for his willingness to consider our proposals to move towards a more comprehensive and all-inclusive approach.

We are driven by the wisdom of Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa, the Māori Medical Practitioners Association, which has detailed the impact of alcohol upon our lives. The excessive availability and consumption of alcohol has damaged the lives of whānau in a vast multitude of ways, including through motor vehicle accidents, psychiatric crises, cardiac and neurological emergency, assault, financial strain, and childhood suffering. In line with this advice, we do not agree that a treatment focus on brief interventions will address the longstanding effects of alcohol abuse in our communities. Alcohol addiction is often a chronic and relapsing condition. It does not occur in isolation; mental health, public health, and social problems often coexist with addiction.

We are also mindful of the advice of the National Committee for Addiction Treatment that the capacity of addiction services needs to at least double to enable those who are most severely affected by addiction to gain timely access to treatment. The Māori Party recommends that there should be substantial investment in multiple approaches, bearing in mind that no single approach will work for everyone.

We have been concerned that some of the rhetoric around the association to the Drivers of Crime alcohol work stream restricts treatment options to a context of offending. We believe that a far wider approach that takes a whole-of-life perspective is desirable. Approximately one-third of people with alcohol-related harm change organically as a natural development, without the need for clinical intervention. These are people who make the lifestyle change because they have support around them to address their behaviour. This is Whānau Ora. The Māori Party believes we must really focus on the long-term outlook, the intergenerational shift, that will ensure that we reduce alcohol-related harm right across the whānau.

We must be mindful of a recent article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, which reported that a large proportion of New Zealanders report the experience of physical, social, economic, and psychological harms because of others’ drinking. This broader context of Whānau Ora must be considered in the discussion of alcohol reform. We need to invest in well-being and to study the motivators and triggers that are associated with alcohol use within the whānau. It is about denormalising drinking and distancing our communities from the grasp of the alcohol industry. We need to put the blame for the problem where it belongs, get out of the pockets of the booze barons, and stop blaming the consumers. Alcohol is a drug, and those who produce, market, advertise, and sell it should be the ones who are criminalised, not those socialised into thinking it is normal.

Although we wholeheartedly see the need for significant investment in the sector targeted at alcohol treatment services, we are strongly in support of any initiatives that lessen accessibility to alcohol—whether by limiting trading hours, limiting the number of alcohol outlets, or limiting the types of alcohol products available. We also maintain that alcohol taxation, minimum pricing, and advertising restrictions are the most powerful tools in addressing the harms of alcohol use. We support the intention to keep these priority areas open, such as monitoring overseas developments on minimum pricing and working with the industry to investigate minimum pricing.

We also support the proposal for a cross-agency advertising and sponsorship review, as recommended by the Law Commission. We are particularly supportive of the Law Commission’s advice that alcohol advertising and sponsorship could be addressed by limiting product information to an objective, plain-packet format, which is much the same thing as my colleague Tariana Turia is advancing in the area of tobacco prevention.

We are disappointed that local authority plans remain voluntary. The liberalisation of alcohol sales, opening up supermarket sales, extending opening hours, reducing the minimum purchase age to 18, and increased numbers and density of outlets have all compounded the problem of alcohol addiction in our communities. We cannot help but be concerned that local flexibility may, in fact, open up more opportunities for alcohol-related harm.

I will share with the House the comparison made by Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu with the regime of environmental management. It was Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu’s contention that the rights protected under article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi include the capacity to protect and preserve the well-being of our greatest taonga, our people. Accordingly, its view is that iwi have a right to be decision makers on the supply and regulation of alcohol within their respective ancestral lands. The proposal to enable iwi input into local decision-making will be proposed as a key amendment to the part of the bill on local alcohol policy.

Finally, we reiterate our concern about representing alcohol harm as essentially being along the criminal justice trajectory of offending and victimisation. Alcohol harm, like tobacco-related harm, is a complex and comprehensive issue that requires innovative leadership across many levels.

The Māori Party will be supporting the second reading of the bill, and we propose to introduce amendments during the Committee of the whole House stage in order to reflect the areas where we have yet to achieve consensus. In the Committee stage I will therefore be introducing various amendments, including to omit clause 14 from the bill, thus ensuring that the Police, Fire Service, and Defence Force bars are not exempt from its provisions; to provide for the appointment of members by local iwi or hapū on to licensing committees within territorial authorities; to identify proximity to schools as a determining factor in licensing decisions; and to restrict storage of alcohol to a concealed section of a grocery store or dairy. Kia ora.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) : I am pleased to have the opportunity to take a brief call in the second reading of the Alcohol Reform Bill. This bill has been debated at length by constituents in my electorate.

I think it is important to bring perspective back to the debate. The bill is looking to reduce the harm caused by alcohol as a result of excessive and/or inappropriate consumption of alcohol. We are not talking about the moderate consumption of alcohol that many people whom we represent enjoy. It is important that we keep that perspective. There is no expectation that alcohol is harmful to an individual when consumed in a moderate and responsible way. The Greens member Sue Kedgley talked about the fact that we could be implementing quite Draconian measures similar to the smoking legislation that has been passed, but we need to remember that we are talking about two quite different issues, in terms of the impact on one’s health. It is also quite ironic that the Greens propose such Draconian measures when that same party wants to legalise cannabis.

I want to leave on the record that this bill is about reducing harm. It is about reducing harm caused as a result of either inappropriate or excessive consumption of alcohol. We are not talking about the bulk of New Zealanders, the people we represent who are quite happy to have a glass of wine or a beer on the odd occasion and to be quite sensible and normal in that consumption.

SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) : One of the greatest professional pleasures and privileges I have had in this Parliament has been dealing, on the select committees I have been on, with really significant social issues: tobacco on the Māori Affairs Committee and alcohol on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I say from the outset that alcohol has been an altogether much more complex and multifaceted issue. One of the reasons for that comes, I suppose, from a silly little anecdote I heard some time ago about a congressman who was asked by a constituent to explain his attitude towards whisky. He said “If you mean that demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I am against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public funds to comfort little crippled children, then I am for it. This is my position and I will not compromise.” As I say, it is a silly little story that I do not intend anyone to take seriously, but it does contain a kernel of truth that I think much of the media reporting and the public health lobby, and many of the speakers, have missed—that is, that alcohol, fundamentally, is neither solely good nor solely harmful.

The Alcohol Reform Bill, which we have made significant changes to, acknowledges and really grapples and deals with the significant harms. I agree with everything that has been said in this House about the harms in terms of justice, police, health, social, and family areas. Enormous harms flow from alcohol, but it is also worth bearing in mind—and I think we did so as a committee—that for the majority of New Zealanders, alcohol is actually enjoyed moderately and responsibly. As a select committee, we took a bill that was already doing a lot to curb harm and we did more. I think we made some significant and good changes to the bill, which is now before us in its second reading. But to say that the bill only ever dealt with harms, and that that is all we should have focused on, would have been an overly simplistic position.

The Minister of Justice has talked about a pendulum in this area, and I think that is absolutely right. There is a spectrum, if you like. I think Charles Chauvel’s words were that we have a laissez-faire approach on the one side—and that is what we have had, to some extent, since 1989—and at the other extreme we have, I suppose, prohibition, and no one was advocating that. We have in this bill swung the pendulum quite some way—more than ever before, indeed—away from liberalisation and towards a tougher regime. But I think we have also been mindful of those tensions I have talked about and of the need to have an enduring framework. It is all very well, as some members—Lianne Dalziel is one of them, I think—have said, to say that we should have done all these other things. But tensions are involved here, and we needed and wanted to have an enduring framework that would stand the test of time. I think in this bill we basically have that.

I will not go through the select committee changes; there are 130 or thereabouts. I thank and acknowledge all members—I think all members engaged constructively—and the officials, who did a fantastic job. I briefly say on the conscience vote—the issue of age, which is, indeed, likely to be a conscience vote—that my position, and perhaps that of some others, coming out of the select committee was that it ultimately became a pretty simple issue. I will be voting to put the age to 20, simply because that is what the vast majority of people who submitted to us and whom I have spoken to all over New Zealand have said they want. But it is also because all of the research we saw that came to us also pointed that way. Research from the US effectively said that when the age went up all over the United States, the road toll for 15, 16, and 17-year-olds came down, and also that alcohol damages the normal growth and development of a teen’s brain. We heard that over and over again. So I think there are very strong reasons to put the age up.

But I come back to the point that ultimately we have moved the pendulum.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: No you haven’t. You’re not even passing the law.

SIMON BRIDGES: Lianne Dalziel says that we have not actually moved the pendulum. Well, Charles Chauvel, the member next to her, thought we had. We accept that the other side says it is not far enough, but we have moved the pendulum. Like Charles Chauvel said, legislation is necessary but is not a sufficient condition for getting the change we need. The kind of change that we really need, in addition to this legislation, is—as I think the Prime Minister said, as well—a cultural change. It is the sort of change that sees parents—I know it is old-fashioned—being parents and not trying to be mates to their children, who are going out to parties and the like. It sees mates actually being true friends, not just mates, and looking after their mates when they are out. And I know Lianne Dalziel will not agree with this, but it also sees a good healthy dose of individual responsibility in this country, of people acknowledging—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Don’t you judge me.

SIMON BRIDGES: She does not like it—I said she would not—but we need individual responsibility. So the legislation is a good thing, but we need more. We need a cultural change in this country.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) : I start by commenting on the contribution of the previous speaker.

Simon Bridges: Don’t you know my name?

CAROL BEAUMONT: If the Alcohol Reform Bill, I say to Simon Bridges, was going to get passed in this term, we might actually say that progress will be made, but the reality is that this bill has been delayed and now effectively kicked for touch, and we will not see any change for a considerable period of time.

I will start my contribution by acknowledging the Hon Lianne Dalziel. Lianne Dalziel, whom the previous speaker was commenting on in a somewhat disparaging way, has been passionate about this issue and has worked on it for an extremely long time, trying to get real change. As Associate Minister of Justice, Lianne Dalziel asked the Law Commission in August 2008 to review the law on the sale and supply of liquor. She requested that the Law Commission provide robust evidence on which to base a new set of alcohol laws, which is always a good place to start. Lianne Dalziel also introduced into the House the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill. She has continuously worked on this issue since that time, trying to ensure that we get robust, evidence-based changes to law. I really want to say that she has done a great job in that regard.

This issue causes a huge deal of harm in our society. I am a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, which heard the submissions on the Alcohol Reform Bill, and one of the things that really sticks in my mind is a piece of research that was reported in The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Association. It talked about and compared different types of drugs. The interesting thing about alcohol is that it is the only drug that causes more harm to others than to self. In other words, alcohol abuse is bad for individuals who are abusing it, but the harm that that abuse causes to other people—whether they be partners, children, or strangers—is huge and significant. That harm can be due to people becoming more violent. A lot of family and sexual violence certainly has alcohol involved. It can be due to people failing to be able to adequately operate machinery and cars, and I will come back to that point, thereby causing accidents and harm to others. I think that is very important when we are looking at alcohol.

I agree that it is more complicated than dealing with tobacco, because there is no safe level of consumption of tobacco. With alcohol, probably most of us in this House would agree that there are many people who drink in a way that is not harmful. They enjoy drinking and do so in a responsible manner. But that does not undermine the extent of harm that is caused in our country by alcohol abuse—certainly, 30 percent of all police-recorded offences, 34 percent of recorded family violence, and 50 percent of all homicides. ACC estimates that almost a quarter of all claims are alcohol-related, as are 70 percent of emergency department presentations for injury. Those are just some of the statistics. I think that is really important.

This bill has probably caused me the most reflection. It has made me think of my own use of alcohol and about how, through different ages, one can see alcohol abused on a daily basis. Probably all of us know of, or are around, people who abuse alcohol regularly. This is deeply ingrained in our culture, so I do accept cultural change is required.

I want to acknowledge a few other people. I acknowledge the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Chester Borrows—I think he did a really good job and he is a very fair chair—and the other members of the committee. We were all engaged around this issue, and we all reflected, I think, very seriously on the points that were raised. I certainly want to acknowledge the work of the officials. They had an enormous workload. We asked many, many questions and they found the information and really tried to respond effectively to what we were asking them, so I want to put on record my thanks. The bill that is before us for its second reading is undoubtedly a better bill than the original legislation. But I particularly want to thank the submitters. There were nearly 9,000 submitters. We heard 90 hours of submissions, and they were powerful. Whether they were from individuals, from community groups, from medical experts, or from everybody else in between, they were powerful submissions.

Our community recognises that we have a problem with this issue. It is something on which people want to see real action taken. I think of groups like the Glen Innes Drug and Alcohol Action Group, which made a very powerful submission, I believe, to Sir Geoffrey Palmer and to our select committee. I think also of people in the community like the Oranga Society, which has been working with its local community to try to have fewer alcohol outlets in the area and to challenge liquor licences. I want to acknowledge them. I also acknowledge individual submitters like Gemma Bergin from Royal Oak, who came to our select committee because she lives right next door to an off-licence. She has a young baby. That off-licence often has very noisy surrounds and individuals who are intoxicated hanging around, causing disruption to her and her family. Her partner was physically assaulted when he tried to quieten down one group. She came to the select committee and told us her story, and there were many other personal stories.

There were some very, very sad personal stories as well. Probably the most powerful submission came from the group of parents of adult children with foetal alcohol syndrome. They had adopted children at a point when that syndrome was not well understood, and they had to spend many years trying to figure out what it was about their children that just did not make sense, and why those children could not develop attachments, could not behave responsibly, and had real trouble taking responsibility for their actions. That was a very powerful submission. So I thank the submitters for their time, and say that it is very sad that we have not lived up to their expectations. The Government will not be providing the comprehensive response that they sought. I think that is a real tragedy, given that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, as people have said.

I think there are probably not that many times where Parliament has the opportunity to move on social policy because there is huge community clamour for us to do so. Often Parliament is legislating and there is fundamental opposition in social areas. I take the smoke-free legislation as an example of that. That legislation was very brave, and the world as we knew it was going to collapse because of it. In the case of alcohol, the community clamour is for much more significant change than we will be getting. I have acknowledged that this is a better bill than the one that was introduced, but I think there is still a long, long way to go.

I think it is worth noting that it has been 24 years since the last full review of alcohol laws. We have the opportunity with the Law Commission report, Alcohol in Our Lives: Curbing the Harm, to take a response that is both comprehensive and evidence-based, and we will not be doing that. Nobody here would say that we should not be balancing the rights of individuals to enjoy alcohol while minimising harm, but there are issues around pricing. Others have spelt out properly that pricing is a major issue when people abuse alcohol. Heavy drinkers and young drinkers are particularly influenced by price, the commercialisation of alcohol and its accessibility, and the lack of restrictions regarding advertising.

I have to say, and Charles Chauvel mentioned this, that it is truly a tragedy that we are not dealing with the issue of the blood-alcohol level for driving. The public are saying to us to drop the blood-alcohol level to 0.05 grams, like most other Western countries. The evidence is absolutely clear, and many of us now know, thanks to the efforts of journalists and others, that one can drive a car perfectly legally while drunk in many, many cases. It is absolutely appalling that the Government is allowing that to continue. The number of fatalities caused by alcohol is just a disgrace. I personally feel that one of the biggest problems with this legislation is that we are not dealing with that issue. Yes, it is about culture but legislation can send a very, very clear message. In this case we are missing the opportunity to put forward legislation that will send that clear message, that will deal with the issue comprehensively, not in a piecemeal fashion, and that will really honour those in the community who have asked us to take serious action. Certainly, what will be seen from this side of the House, if we get the chance—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member’s time has expired.

PAUL QUINN (National) : I preface my contribution by acknowledging the harm that alcohol causes in our society; that has been alluded to during the course of this debate on the Alcohol Reform Bill.

One of the things that I understand and am told about politics is that it is about the exchange of ideas. In my view, when exchanging ideas it is very important that those ideas are based on fact, and not mistruths and rhetoric. Sadly, this debate on alcohol reform is riddled with mistruths and rhetoric. We heard the contribution from the Green Party member Sue Kedgley, who repeatedly said that supermarkets sell alcohol as loss leaders. She knows full well that the pricing lists were provided to the Justice and Electoral Committee, as well as the discount regimes that they provide depending on volume. I have them in front of me. Yet she insisted on, in my view, misleading this House by saying that supermarkets sell alcohol as loss leaders.

The other point that I will note was made by Chester Borrows. Two things surprised me about the submissions. I say in response to the urgings of Lianne Dalziel in this debate and the praise that she gave to Geoffrey Palmer that my suggestion to Geoffrey Palmer was that he did not need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars travelling the country to find out and inform himself about alcohol. All he had to do was open up his window on to Roxburgh Street and take a whiff of the air, or walk 2 minutes down the road—it is all downhill, as Charles Chauvel knows—to Courtenay Place. He would then have found out the problems with alcohol. But no. Typical Geoffrey Palmer was bludging on the taxpayer, doing a roadshow around New Zealand, and then producing a report full of rhetoric.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would not normally do this, but those last comments—although I know they were not directed at a member of this House but to a former Prime Minister and now the head of our Law Commission, who has provided an independent report to the Government on the subject matter of this debate—were completely out of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I am not persuaded at this point that they are. Can I just ask the person controlling the sound to moderate that a little bit in this instance as well.

Dr Kennedy Graham: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take exception to the comment from Mr Quinn earlier that my colleague Sue Kedgley was misleading the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I think that the member who was speaking was referring to the information given. I do not think, with the way in which he couched that comment, that any slur was intended. That is my interpretation. I listened very carefully.

Dr Kennedy Graham: May I speak to the point of order?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I have ruled on it, but I will hear the member.

Dr Kennedy Graham: My understanding, and we could check the record in due course, is that he said that in full knowledge of information that was supplied to the committee, she made a comment that in his view was misleading the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I think that is a debating point.

PAUL QUINN: An overwhelming impression is left with me from the select committee process. I should say that the days of passing judgment based on the roar of the coliseum are way gone. I would have thought that if anyone would know that, it would be the Green Party members. But, as Chester Borrows said, two things stood out. One was that everyone blamed everyone else. Of course, the classic was Mr Bruce Robertson, the hospitality industry representative. He said: “Not us; blame the supermarkets.” Everyone blamed the supermarkets.

The other thing that stood out was to “Do as I say, not as I do.” The classic example of that for me was when five doctors turned up and espoused the view that alcohol sales should be banned from supermarkets. Charles Chauvel was chairing the meeting, and after everyone had had their go, I quietly asked how many of them drink. Four of them put their hand up. Then I asked where they buy their alcohol from. They said it was the supermarkets. I said: “The supermarkets? You want me to ban it from supermarkets because you cannot stop yourself buying it from the supermarkets.” They said that it was not them; they were saving the young people. This was the problem with the whole of the submissions. Everyone blamed everyone else.

Here is another classic. We heard a lot about the Law Commission report. In the report there are three pages—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Have you read it?

PAUL QUINN: Yes, I have.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: The whole lot?

PAUL QUINN: Yes, I have. There are three pages dedicated to licensing trusts. Only two licensing trusts in New Zealand still have monopoly sale rights. One is in Southland and the other is in Waitakere. The statistics out of Southland on the licensing trusts show—and this is from research from the Parliamentary Library—that the rate of alcohol-related violent crime in Southland is 36 percent. In the Southern Police District, which takes in a much wider group, it is 31 percent. The national average is 33 percent. In other words, in an area where alcohol is sold only through licensing authority outlets—no supermarkets can sell it—there is actually a higher violent crime rate, yet everyone is blaming the supermarkets.

I say that if we are going to actually get a paradigm shift in our drinking culture, then let us focus on the facts. There is no simple solution—I agree. In fact, I often think that the simplest solution to this problem and the way to get a paradigm shift is probably to increase the age to about 25. Will that ever happen? No. In fact, in the Sunday Star-Times we saw a new theory. The latest theory in the Sunday Star-Times is that research shows the link to poor parenting. Do members see? I ask them to tell me what the reality is. This is the sort of rhetoric that goes around.

Here is just one last example, by Garth George from the New Zealand Herald. I am sorry about this, I say to Derek. Garth said on 16 June that the Law Commission alcohol report “recommended raising the legal drinking age to 20.” It did no such thing. It actually recommended that the purchase age be raised to 20. Even the commentators cannot get it right. I say let us focus on the real facts and try to reach a long-lasting solution. Thank you.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) : I have enjoyed listening to the debate and the submissions from different speakers around the House on the Alcohol Reform Bill. I acknowledge that the issue of alcohol legislation and alcohol regulation is not an easy one. Alcohol is not the same as tobacco. It has both its positives and its negatives and our response needs to reflect that.

It is also a deeply political issue. Chester Borrows is absolutely right in saying that everybody agrees that something must be done about the harm caused by alcohol in our country, with a little caveat—so long as that something does not affect them. For that reason, politicians and political parties can be a little bit nervous about taking bold action on the regulation of alcohol. What disappoints me most about the piecemeal changes that the bill introduces, positive as they are—and let me reiterate that Labour is supporting them, because the moves contained in this bill are positive—is that this really was an opportunity for all political parties to get together and make some really meaningful change.

The Government knew full well that Labour would have supported much more meaningful change than this. I think the Greens would have supported it too, and the Māori Party would have supported it; the only party that I am sure would not have supported it would have been the ACT Party. Combined, almost all of Parliament could have pushed through some really meaningful change—and that, in a way, would have taken the politics out of it.

Mr Quinn referred to politics as being the exchange of ideas. Another definition of politics is the art of the possible. Truly meaningful change was entirely possible in this bill, because we had near unanimity around the House. If National had got on board with this issue, we would have had near unanimity around the House on some of those changes.

Chester Borrows also said that we could not legislate for culture. Well, I think the Smoke-free Environments Act disproves that statement, because that Act, through a number of different changes over the years, has changed our culture around tobacco, and it has resulted in a reduction of the use of tobacco and the harm caused by tobacco. Now, as I said, I am not saying that our response to alcohol should be exactly the same as our response to tobacco; they are two entirely different substances. But it does prove that we can affect the culture around a substance through legislation.

Chester Borrows was also right in saying that we spend a lot of time pointing fingers at one another, rather than getting together and actually coming up with a solution. I think the hospitality industry, the liquor industry, the supermarkets, and the retailers are guilty of that—and political parties are guilty of that as well.

I go back to my statement that there really was an opportunity here for all political parties to get together to create meaningful change. We would have liked to see a mechanism to increase the price of alcohol, because we know—the international evidence is unambiguous, as my colleague Charles Chauvel said—that increasing the price reduces consumption, and harmful consumption. Again, we have seen it with tobacco. In fact, just this week—yesterday, in fact—I visited my local primary health organisation. I spoke to a smoking cessation coach, and I asked whether we had done the right stuff in this term of Parliament. She replied “Absolutely.” I also asked her about putting up the tax, and she said that every time the tax was increased, more and more people quit. It raises the threshold and captures more and more people every time.

The same thing would happen with alcohol. There would be less and less harmful consumption of alcohol, not by increasing tax—I think that increasing tax captures too many responsible drinkers—but by increasing the minimum price. I think that is the mechanism that we should be using.

Paul Quinn disputes the fact that the supermarkets loss-lead. The mechanism by which the supermarkets loss-lead is actually quite a simple one. They take the rebate that they get across the entire range of products they receive from one brewery, or other supplier of alcohol products, and apply that rebate to one particular product on any given week, thus drastically reducing the price of that product, but at the same time retaining the ability to say they have not been loss-leading across their range of products. That is exactly the mechanism that they use to push one particular product in any given week.

I remember this from my student days. We would look at what product was the cheapest that week, whether it was Tui, Rheineck, or one of those other quality products on the market, and that would be the one we would buy. I remember Rheineck being 50c a can. They did that other wonderful trick of saying—

Charles Chauvel: Ew.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I know; it was disgusting. That is a prime example of buying something for one purpose only, and that is for its alcohol content and its cheapness, because no one would buy Rheineck on the taste, that is for sure.

That is what students were doing. They were buying as much of one particular product as possible. The supermarkets also said that customers could only buy 3 dozen at a time, so of course we bought 3 dozen, and then went back and bought another 3 dozen, and went back and bought another 3 dozen. The supermarkets did not stop us, because the limit was of course just a marketing ploy to make customers think they had to somehow game them by buying as much as humanly possible. The supermarkets did not mind; they were delighted that their marketing worked absolutely perfectly. So, yes, we need to increase the price, and yes, there is loss-leading. We could have taken that opportunity to increase prices through this bill.

The other thing on which we would like to have seen greater restrictions is the availability of alcohol. We know that reducing the availability of a substance reduces the harm. We know that, and that is why we have prohibition on so many substances. I will not debate the merits of prohibition as a policy in and of itself right now, but the reason we have so many products prohibited is in the name of reducing availability, and we reduce availability in the name of reducing harm.

So why not apply the same principle to alcohol? Why is alcohol different from those other harmful substances? Nobody has given me a reasonable answer to that question. No one has been able to explain why we treat alcohol so differently from those other substances.

Louise Upston and Simon Bridges both, in a way, referred to a spectrum or a pendulum. Louise Upston questioned why the Greens would like to see the pendulum move one way towards the middle for alcohol, when they have argued in the past—I do not know whether that is their policy now—for moving the pendulum in the opposite direction towards the middle for other substances like cannabis. But that is what they are trying to achieve, I believe, by trying to move these different substances towards the middle. I do not oppose that; I think that makes a lot of sense.

Simon Bridges said we had moved the pendulum a long way towards the middle. That is not true at all. We have squeaked it just a touch from extreme commercialism. I think we are still in the zone of extreme commercialism for alcohol, and there is a long, long way we could go in terms of bringing that pendulum back towards the middle. No one is advocating prohibition for alcohol, but that pendulum could move a lot further back towards the middle.

I would like to touch briefly on the other side of harm reduction. We have talked a lot about supply limitation; I would like to talk about demand limitation as well. Rahui Katene touched on the fact that we need to see greater availability of addiction treatment services for people addicted to alcohol and other drugs.

Unfortunately, under the current Government we have seen mental health and addiction removed from the list of priorities for district health boards. As a result, we have seen some front-line mental health services and addiction services being cut, because the district health boards have had to move their funding into the other areas the Government deems to be greater priorities than those. Addiction service provision needs to double. We do need to deal with demand limitation. This bill does not go all the way, but the provisions in it are worth supporting, so, reluctantly, Labour supports this bill.

AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) : I am very pleased to be the final speaker in the second reading debate of the Alcohol Reform Bill. I do not want to traverse a lot of the ground that has been well covered by others in this debate, but let us just say that across the House I think we have agreement that control of alcohol and dealing with the harm it causes is an issue that we all acknowledge to be a significant one for our society. I think where the differences start to come in is that on this side we are very aware that although legislation is absolutely a part of that solution, it will never be the whole of it. We have to recognise that, and if we think there is anything this House can do that would deal with all the issues around alcohol, short of prohibition—and history tells us that would not work either—then we are not being realistic.

For myself, I came into the Justice and Electoral Committee while that committee was part-way through consideration of this legislation. I want to add my voice to those who have already commended the chair, Chester Borrows, for the excellent process he ran, and, in fact, all of the committee members for what was, I thought, the very constructive way they approached this bill, from all sides of the House.

In listening to the debate this afternoon, I have been surprised by how little some of the specifics within the bill have been touched on. I will certainly not run through them all, but I do want to comment on a couple of the provisions that I am particularly enamoured of. I think the most important of all the changes this bill will bring is the ability for local communities to have a much greater say in where and how alcohol is sold in their district. If there is one thing I hear as a local electorate MP, it is that communities want to have a say on where alcohol can be sold within their communities. In fact, they are always staggered to find that under present law they do not. This bill will deliver that to communities. It will allow the people of Selwyn and communities like Halswell and Rolleston, where these are pressing issues, to work with the Selwyn District Council to ensure that the planning rules reflect their needs. I think that is a tremendous advancement in the law on alcohol control. The bill as reported back from the select committee will be effective in decreasing the visibility of alcohol in our supermarkets, and I think that is a positive step forward.

The other thing I think is worth commenting on—and I do so as a parent of children reaching the age where I am sure I will have to deal with these issues—is that I am very pleased to see that the bill contains a provision that would make it an offence for anyone to supply alcohol to those who are under 18 without their parent’s or guardian’s consent. It is my job as a parent to decide how I want to raise my children in terms of alcohol consumption. I would be horrified if my young teenage children were to go to parties and be plied with alcohol by other parents or older children without me knowing about it. I absolutely endorse that new offence provision.

The other area where I think tremendous steps have been made—and there are many—and the one I want to touch on is the fact that this bill increases and enhances penalties for irresponsible marketing of alcohol, particularly those products and marketing promotions that are specifically aimed at targeting young people. That sort of behaviour is reprehensible and should be stamped out, and this bill sets up the tools for that to occur.

In closing, the comment I make on the balancing of interest we have had to do in this bill is that I think it is very important that on any issue this House deals with, and in particular those that cut across all of society, we do not just listen to the activists who beat a path to our door. Of course we must hear from them, but I think it is valuable to go out, stand on the streets in our shopping communities and shopping areas—as I have done around Selwyn—and talk to the people who would not necessarily make an appointment to come and see their MP. I have spent many an hour standing, asking people what they think about alcohol reform, whether we should have alcohol in supermarkets, what the purchase age should be, and whether they want other people to be able to supply alcohol to their children. Having done that for many hours and having talked to very many of my constituents, I am convinced that the moderate and sensible but important advancements we have made on alcohol control are a good balance between curbing alcohol harm and still protecting—as colleagues on this side of the House have said—the responsible use of alcohol, which most New Zealanders are able to enjoy.

Let me just close where I began, by saying that legislation is a part of the solution. It will never be the whole answer; that is something for the whole of society to continue to address. But I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) : I move, That the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill be now read a first time. I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee. This bill is an integral part of the Government’s blue-green programme to strengthen New Zealand’s environmental and resource management systems. This significant bill puts in place a system of environmental protection for the ocean beyond the 12-mile territorial sea covering the 400 million hectares in the exclusive economic zone and the 170 million hectares in the extended continental shelf.

This bill recognises the opportunities and responsibilities that go with New Zealand being a significant maritime nation. The ocean area over which we have jurisdiction is 20 times our land mass and is the fourth-largest of any nation. The bill also recognises that our ocean resources are coming under increased development pressure from a growing global population, the depletion of resources on land, and advances in technology that are making the use of ocean resources more possible.

I acknowledge the support of the Māori Party, the ACT Party, United Future, and the Green Party for this important bill. Such a broad consensus shows that this is a bill whose time is due. National proposed this reform from Opposition as part of our blue-green agenda announced in 2006. We have revised these proposals with the support of officials. We sought further independent advice after the Gulf of Mexico disaster to ensure that we were putting in place the best system possible for environmental protection.

This legislation will manage the adverse environmental effects of activities in the exclusive economic zone, which are currently unregulated. That includes the construction of petroleum platforms, seabed mining, possible aquaculture developments, carbon capture and storage, marine farming, and energy generation proposals that may evolve. The legislation will do this by providing a regulatory framework similar to the Resource Management Act for classifying certain activities as permitted, discretionary, or prohibited. This classification will depend on the environmental effects of those activities. The consent function will rest with the Government’s new Environmental Protection Authority.

For discretionary activities, consents will be needed. All such applications will need to be publicly notified, and will require an environmental impact assessment and take account of both the receiving environment and the cumulative effects. We are also providing a mechanism for effectively dealing with consents that straddle over the exclusive economic zone and the territorial sea. This new legislation will not duplicate the existing regulatory processes for fishing governed by the Fisheries Act or for shipping under the Maritime Transport Act. It has also been carefully designed to ensure it is consistent with New Zealand’s international obligations.

There will be a transitional period once the bill becomes law. The Government will require those already undertaking discretionary activities in the exclusive economic zone and the extended continental shelf to apply to the Environmental Protection Authority within 6 months of the legislation coming into force, and they may continue those activities until those consent applications are decided. Existing oil and gas installations and associated infrastructure will be exempt on the basis that they are already operational. Existing licences for mineral prospecting will also be exempt on the basis that those licences contain environmental controls.

There will of course be an intervening period as this bill travels through the legislative process and comes into effect, as is the Government’s intention, on 1 July 2012. That is why the Government is also putting in place interim measures to ensure a smooth transition to the new regime.

Environmental impact assessments will be required and undertaken for oil and gas drilling operations. Operations will be required to comply with the latest beefed-up drilling safety rules, which were developed in the United States following the inquiries into the Gulf of Mexico disaster. These measures complement the recent announcements made by the Minister of Labour on the establishment of a high hazards unit, with four new inspectors, specifically for the petroleum industry. The Minister of Transport is also reviewing the liability insurance requirements for the industry and is looking to raise that insurance level above the current $30 million.

Some have advocated that we should have just extended the Resource Management Act out beyond the 12-mile territorial sea. This would have been too cumbersome. It would have required an extensive planning regime that is out of proportion with the likely scale of activities out in the exclusive economic zone. Others have questioned whether the Environmental Protection Authority should be the consenting authority and have said that it should instead go to regional councils. The reality is that these are highly specialised skills and the Government’s view is that once one goes beyond that 12-mile limit, these are really national issues and it is more efficient for it to be done by the Environmental Protection Authority.

The Government views New Zealand’s “clean, green” brand as being important, but this does not mean that in our ocean environment we should ban everything, any more than we ban everything in our land environment. It does mean ensuring that we have world’s best practice environmental standards and systems, and that is what this bill introduces.

This bill is consistent with our broader Government agenda of ensuring we grow the economy but doing it in an environmentally responsible way. I acknowledge the support of groups like the Environmental Defence Society and the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association, which have welcomed this move as they know it will provide better environmental protection as well as certainty of process for those who look to develop the largely unrealised potential that lies in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf. It will help to manage the adverse effects on the environment while allowing for the sensible development and community engagement in decision making.

New Zealand has been aware of the need for this legislation for a long time, and this bill represents the culmination of years of work. If we do not act we risk harm to the marine environment, and, in my view, there is a reputational risk for our country in respect of not having world’s best practice in the exclusive economic zone. This bill is part of a wider body of blue-green reforms already instigated by this Government to ensure that we have world-class environmental management systems. The time for a robust environmental management regime of our vast oceans has come. I commend this bill to the House.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) : As we heard from the Minister for the Environment, the exclusive economic zone extends 12 nautical miles out from the coast to 200 nautical miles out, and the continental shelf, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, extends to an area of about 1.7 million square kilometres round the New Zealand coastline. It is about 20 times New Zealand’s land area, and it contains, as we know, some of the wildest seas and marine conditions in the world.

Over the last 3 years we have seen an absolute failure on the part of this Government to regulate New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: Well, we hear a cry from the benches opposite that nothing was done by the previous Labour Government. As far as the extent of the continental shelf was concerned, that was confirmed only in 2008, so the Minister needs to get his facts right before he shouts abuse across the Chamber.

The reality is that this Government has had 3 years, at a time in which it has rapidly and massively expanded marine exploration activity, including offshore drilling, but nothing has been done—nothing, whatsoever—to provide any sort of protections for the marine environment. So I do not want to hear too many pious words from the Minister about the so-called blue-green agenda and its triumphs. We will say a little more about that so-called agenda a little later.

But let us just be very clear, for the record, that for the past 3 years there has been no adequate oversight of the safety of offshore drilling, despite its massive expansion; no requirement for consultation with affected communities, as Te Whānau-a-Apanui would tell the Associate Minister of Energy and Resources, the Hon Hekia Parata, if she actually fronted up to one of their meetings rather than hiding from them; and no adequate monitoring of the activity that has been undertaken over this time. We are just lucky, given the wild seas, the difficult marine environments, and the lack of oversight and safety conditions, that we have not had a problem.

I am glad we have not had a problem, but it is a matter of luck. It is not a matter of regulation, and it is not a matter of oversight. Let us not kid ourselves: nothing this Government has done, as it has overseen that massive expansion of drilling activity offshore, has shown the slightest concern for offshore safety or for the environmental considerations that ought to have been taken into account.

Worse than that, though, and worse than the fact it has taken the Minister all of his term in office as Minister for the Environment to finally get around to regulating the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf—despite having promised that it would be a priority for him; he has said time and time again on the record that his new Environmental Protection Authority would have the task, as a matter of priority, of regulating the exclusive economic zone—it has taken until the end of his tenure in office to be able to do anything about it.

What is he doing? He is not proposing passing legislation, and he is not proposing to the House that we take urgent action to remedy the scandalous situation that I have outlined. He is introducing the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, which has a prospective passage date of 1 July next year. Even with the best course of action available, if the Government manages to get re-elected, and if the select committee process does not take longer than anticipated, this bill might become law in about 10 months’ time. Not only will we have had 3 long years of inaction, but we could add another good part of a year to that before the Minister was able to do anything in the legislative field to remedy the lack of any standards in our offshore drilling industry for environmental safety.

If that were not bad enough, let us have a look at what the bill does. The Minister said “Oh well, we don’t think we should apply the RMA standards to our exclusive economic zone and our continental shelf.” But let us look at what the bill actually does. The explanatory note states that the bill seeks “a balance between the protection of the environment and economic development.” in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf.

It is the Minister’s rhetoric continuing. He pretends to be blue-green, but there is nothing green about his agenda. He pretends that a balancing act needs to go on between our economy and our environment, whereas those who have actually thought about these questions know that it is exactly the same question, representing two different sides of the coin. To pretend that we can have only as much environmental protection as our economic development priorities will allow us, is the fallacy that lies at the heart of that Minister’s so-called blue-green agenda.

The legislation itself is deficient because of the test I just mentioned—the so-called balancing test. It would be much better, even if the Minister would not apply Resource Management Act standards, to look at the sort of exercise that the Resource Management Act requires to be carried out when assessing any sort of activity. That is what the Environmental Defence Society asked the Minister to do. He should be very careful before he claims the society’s support, because the Resource Management Act calls for the promotion of the sustainable management of natural and physical resources.

The Minister asked earlier what Labour’s policy is on this issue. Well, I tell him that that is our policy—the sustainable management of natural and physical resources in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf.

What is wrong with applying that settled test, that well-known legal test, to what ought to happen between 12 miles out and the end of the continental shelf? That is the question that has to be asked, instead of introducing this developers charter, by stealth, which will simply lead to the economic—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: What’s “by stealth”?

CHARLES CHAUVEL: I will tell the Minister what is happening by stealth in a moment, but let us not be under any illusions. All that this bill will do is act as a new National Development Act, just as in the Muldoon days, for offshore drilling activity. That will be this Minister for the Environment’s legacy.

What is stealthy about the legislation is that the standards it is to set into place are all to be developed by regulation by the Minister himself. We do not know what sorts of environmental protections, if any, will be enjoyed under this legislation. We do not know the substance of the sorts of protections that are intended for the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf, because—guess what—the Minister gets to make them up, under this legislation.

It is just a repeat of what we saw with the Environmental Protection Authority legislation earlier in the year. We hear grand promises and great rhetoric about the blue-green agenda, and then we see the tawdry reality of what actually will occur: a weak legislative framework, no proper guiding principles, and no following of settled law. Then it will be all up to the Minister to fill in the detail when it suits him.

Well, I tell the Minister that that is not good enough; it is not the sort of protection that most New Zealanders want to see for the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf. It will be on the Minister’s head, I tell him, if we are unlucky enough to experience difficulties in an offshore drilling or exploration activity in the interim, because he has tarried for the best part of 3 years now, and it will be the best part of another year before we see any sort of legislation on the books. Even then it will be inadequate, and it will be up to the Minister to decide how to fill in the detail of the legislation by regulation.

This is not environmental legislation; it is a developer’s charter. It is an exercise in cynicism because it involves introduction and first reading with 8 days of this Parliament left to sit. There will be no time to debate it further than what we have today, and it cannot possibly become law until the middle of 2012 at the earliest. This is an attempt by the Minister and the Government to look as if they are doing something, but it is just an exercise in cynicism, and Labour will not support this sort of duplicity in any way.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : I rise to support the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill at its first reading. It is very appropriate that in this week, Conservation Week, we debate this bill’s first reading. It should have been done under Labour. All New Zealanders are keen to protect and conserve our natural environment. We understand that our natural resources are precious and that they offer us opportunities, but also that they impose responsibilities. We Bluegreens in the National Party believe that the economy and the environment can, and must, go hand in hand.

It was interesting to hear Labour saying that the continental shelf designation happened only in 2008 and that nothing could have been done before then. That is absolute nonsense. Labour certainly could have introduced legislation on the exclusive economic zone and just added the information about the continental shelf later. More drilling was done under Labour in 2005, 2006, and 2007 than has been done in the last 3 years.

We have robust legislation in the form of the Resource Management Act to care for our environment on land, but that legislation covers only 12 miles out into the ocean. The exclusive economic zone—the area of sea, seabed, and subsoil—goes from that 12-mile limit to 200 nautical miles offshore, where New Zealand has jurisdiction. As we have said, it even extends to some places beyond those 200 nautical miles because of the continental shelf, but that would not have stopped legislation being passed while Labour was in power.

New Zealand has one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world. It is an area of ocean that is 20 times the size of our land mass, and up until now there has been no legislation to protect it. We are introducing this bill because it is our responsibility to manage this huge area well. This much-needed legislation will fill a gap, and will give effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to manage and protect the natural resources of this area.

The new law will work in tandem with existing laws to manage the exclusive economic zone and the environmental effects of activities like petroleum exploration and mining. We do not want to see in New Zealand the sort of environmental disaster that was seen in the Gulf of Mexico. I make the point that one of the reasons that this bill is being introduced later in our term is that after that disaster we commissioned a review to make sure that we got it right and learnt from what had happened before.

This bill sets up a general framework for our regulatory system, and will make the Environmental Protection Authority responsible for consenting, monitoring, and enforcing activities within the exclusive economic zone. It will set up a consenting regime to regulate activities, and it will require public notification and consultation on regulations and consents. All consents will require an environmental impact assessment, and there will be a responsibility on consent holders to avoid, remedy, or mitigate any adverse environmental effects. The enforcement of penalties will be aligned with the Resource Management Act.

This is good legislation. We have developed it responsibly. It has taken a little longer than we had hoped, because of additional research and because of that interest in what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. But we have worked on it steadily and responsibly. We have heard from iwi that it is too fast. We are now hearing from Labour that it is too slow. I think it is probably in the right time. New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone needs to be managed well, and this legislation will set the framework to do just that. It will give us world-best environmental practice. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. Before I turn my attention to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill I would like it to be known that those of us who participated in the hunt owe a debt of gratitude to the man sitting in the Speaker’s seat. However, some of us are better shots than others—

Hon Steve Chadwick: Did you catch anything?

Hon SHANE JONES: One approaches these matters looking at it as either a resource or a pest. My puku says that no pest, if it is good for us, should be allowed to disappear without being devoured. This bill is not good for us. I say to the Minister for the Environment that we on this side of the House, especially those of us who have had family or friends go into the mining industry or the exploration industry, are not antagonistic to the notion that we should use the natural resource endowments that we have in our country. We do not find it inimical that we should look for jobs so that we do not end up agreeing with the policies of the current Government of exporting too many of our young people over to Perth and other such areas where they work in those mineral or mining industries but remain reluctant to create our own mining industry. I want to put that on the record. That is not where we on this side of the House are coming from. Much of the roots of this party go back to the very industry and land base that this bill is endeavouring to cover off.

I think it is important that we call the Minister on his track record in relation to this bill. He is a qualified engineer, so without a doubt he has more than a passing political interest in environmental policy. No one can be qualified in engineering without having a sense of how resources, the environment, people, and effects all work together. But I remain very reluctant about seeing much benefit from the statutory process that this bill outlines. For example, will we see a rerun of the water imbroglio? We all knew how important the effects of poor water utilisation were and the negative effects of that, and we look to this Minister to address that problem. We were served up with a dilution of what was a promising set of ideas. It is not unreasonable for us to have severe doubts about the man’s stewardship and, I guess, the man’s gall in bringing this bill before the House.

I could go on to talk about land-based mining and exploration, and obviously I have in mind lignite. We may disagree as a matter of public policy whether such exploration activities will increase the economic benefit to our country or worsen our international obligations. These points are legitimate in this debate. When we come back and say that we are not going to back this bill, it is not because we are unwilling to back the utilisation of our natural resources. We are deeply fearful that this framework will not incentivise those who are investing capital, those who are taking risks, and those who are in the business of exploration, in terms of addressing the negative economic or, dare I say, environmental externalities. Therein lies the rub. This is a framework the Minister is bringing forward, but how on earth can anyone have any confidence in it? It is a bit like the ill-fated transport legislation that the disgraced Steven Joyce, now that he has ruined New Zealand’s reputation through the train failure, is seeking to bring forward—that is, too much power descending to a subsidiary level of legislation. We will not know how robust, how actionable, or how enforceable this particular set of rules and standards will be, because of these regulations that will flow from this legislation. If it is to have any fangs, then that is where they will be found. They will not be in the motherhood and apple-pie statements that are in the title of the bill, and a host of other florid terms. How is the public to derive any confidence that when things go wrong, the people perpetrating the wrongdoing will be held accountable? Therein lies the major weakness of this bill.

There is a philosophical debate as to whether legislation ought to create strict and highly prescriptive criteria that can be enforceable. This bill does not seek to do that. What this bill seeks to do is dilute and water down the raison ďêtre of the Resource Management Act. It draws a distinction between the agenda of growing economic output and trying to safeguard the environment. It calls for a balancing act. Well, who will do the balancing? The balancing will be done by the regulator. Who is the regulator? The regulator is that Minister sitting over there, the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It is not unreasonable for us to say that we should look at the man’s track record in respect of two major types of natural resources. It may be that the Minister thinks that this is a more efficient way for us to manage the effects of this exploration activity. Well, efficiency has to be measured against not just confidence but also effectiveness. The public have every right to demand that we test the effectiveness through an open, democratic, parliamentary-based process, not in shady drafting amongst officials, who more than likely will suffer political pressure to come up with a level of regulation that not only simplifies—simplification is not necessarily a bad thing—but also when we suffer dilution and the ability to enforce environmental standards is written so far down that no court and no legal organisation as a part of the judiciary is capable of enabling a citizen or a group offering its services on behalf of a citizen to hold them accountable. That is a deep constitutional point.

Why on earth, if this area is so big, as the Minister for the Environment has just described it, has he taken this path of least resistance? We would not tolerate it with land-based activities. The sad thing is that there are fantastic resources in the ocean environment. On that point the Minister and I probably agree. I personally would like to see the development of that iron sand stretching from Ngāmotu, New Plymouth, right up to somewhere near the Kaipara Harbour. I think it is a fantastic idea and that we should seek investment. I would prefer to see the investors in the form of our State-owned enterprises, but if we have a set of environmental standards that are doubtful or dubious, then we are not building a fast flight into development; we are building more roadblocks and more fear, and it will spread severe anxiety in the community. That actually incentivises them to slow down the process, not to hasten it. That is a small example where I think most members of the House would see great benefit if we could extend on what the Māori hapū in Ngāti Māhuta near the township of Taharoa did when they sought to move ahead with the export of iron sand. That is a small example where we need an industry around that type of natural resource category.

The Minister should not believe that by coming up with this threadbare piece of legislation, where the majority of the decision making will be done through regulation, he will build a constituency within garden-variety Kiwis to improve and increase the pace of this exploration. It will have the opposite effect. I say to the Minister that it will have people who do not want to see that kind of industrial exploration worsen the sense of ill will about it. I think that is a tragedy with this bill. The tragedy is that the bill will have the opposite consequence, yet many of us on this side of the House are very keen to see such exploration and activities happen, but happen only when we have a framework that is transparent, that shows accountability, and that does not have the effect of looking as though it is riddled with weasel words and is sneaky. When it is sneaky it will enhance the fears of those who in many cases are just as well organised as those who are taking the risk and putting together the capital. I think it will have the opposite impact at a time when we on this side of the House are willing to explore ways to enhance jobs and grow wealth through a clever and defensible utilisation of our natural resource endowment. Unfortunately, this bill will have the opposite impact.

DAVID CLENDON (Green) : Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora koutou. The Minister for the Environment, in his opening remarks, quite rightly pointed to the fact that the Greens will support the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill being referred to a select committee. That is a decision we made after some considerable thought. It was quite a finely judged decision, I have to say. We are committed to supporting this bill being referred to a select committee because some good and positive steps are proposed in it. It is, however, a curate’s egg of a bill: it is excellent in parts but, equally, there are some very unsavoury elements that we would need to see excised, amended, or added to in order for our support to go beyond the select committee process.

We have long acknowledged that there is a considerable gap in our legislative and regulatory frameworks to the extent that, for example, there is no requirement currently for any environmental impact assessment of activities that seek to exploit the seabed in the exclusive economic zone. Under the current regime, of course, the Resource Management Act covers matters out to the territorial sea. Beyond that, other than legislation around shipping, navigation, and fishing there is a significant gap in our legislative framework, due to a whole host of historic and other reasons we will not undertake to encompass here. We see considerable value, for example, in the establishment of a legislative framework.

We are fortunate—and I am sure the Minister will acknowledge that we are fortunate—to have a very substantive independent paper prepared by the Environmental Defence Society and published earlier this year under the title Governing our Oceans. We wholeheartedly endorse a number of recommendations from that paper. Not the least of those is the call for a royal commission of inquiry to undertake a comprehensive review of all of the existing mechanisms of international best practice and the current legislative framework, including the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone, and the continental shelf. For reasons of history and convenience we treat those as separate and distinct, but in a sense—physically and, certainly, ecologically—we are talking about a continuum. There are no brightlines between those three zones. We think that any management framework and any legislative framework need to acknowledge that the separations are matters of convenience, not reality.

We entirely support the necessity of giving a level of environmental protection to the exclusive economic zone sooner rather than later, as the Environmental Defence Society has indicated. So we support in principle the establishment of some governance prior to that more comprehensive review and inquiry being undertaken. We do, though, have serious reservations about some of the content of this bill, some of the attitudes and assumptions that underpin it, and some of the absences—some of what is lacking—from the bill. We are particularly concerned to see the emergence once again of the word “balance”, which we have come to understand is a coded word, shall we say, for an unwillingness to engage with a notion of absolute environmental bottom lines. We must insist on some absolute environmental bottom lines if we are genuinely interested in environmental protection.

Anyone who has read the Government’s recently released energy strategy will know that in terms of this so-called balance the Government clearly expresses a preference. It would tilt the balance, if you like, in favour of economic development, which is designed to attract foreign investment. We are told it will potentially generate a $13 billion to $15 billion bonanza.

Clause 61(2)(a) of the bill says that the Environmental Protection Authority may “grant an application … if the activity’s contribution to New Zealand’s economic development outweighs the activity’s adverse effects on the environment;”. Anyone persuaded by that chimera—that illusion—of a $14 billion to $15 billion bonanza awaiting us in seabed resources might be persuaded to ignore the very real environmental and social dangers and costs. It is notoriously difficult to do any sensible assessment of the potential value of exploitation of a resource. It is equally difficult to put figures or some sort of value on environmental quality and environmental protection. These are some of the issues that I say this bill avoids rather than engages with.

A recent Cabinet paper pointed out that part of the reason for this bill is that the exploration industry is concerned about a lack of certainty and regulatory process that could affect their considerable long-term investment. A point was made that the reputational risk to companies that cannot demonstrate compliance with high environmental standards could compromise their willingness to invest, or, indeed, their willingness to participate. In accepting that there might be a legitimate concern, I suggest that those companies should be careful of what they wish for. Given that we are talking about what the industry refers to internationally as frontier areas, and given the extraordinarily high risk and the various dubious assessments of environmental or economic return, any organisation that was genuinely committed to long-term environmental protection would have no choice but to deny or to refuse any of the sorts of exploitation, deep-water drilling, and the like that might otherwise be mandated.

The Environmental Protection Authority was established against the opposition of the Greens. We opposed its establishment because it was not an independent agency. It is a Crown agency for the purposes of section 7 of the Crown Entities Act, and as such is subject to direction by the Minister. We acknowledge that clause 22 of this bill seeks to remove the ministerial option of directing the authority to fulfil Government policy one way or another. We can applaud that provision. Unfortunately, any good intention of that provision is seriously undermined by clause 62(4), which denies the agency the right to impose any conditions on a consent approval that have previously been prohibited or vetoed by regulation. In other words, it allows the Minister a back door to ensure that the authority is constrained in what conditions it might place on consents. As I say, that effectively undermines the bill’s apparent good intentions.

Rather than taking this very convoluted approach of giving a little bit of power to the Environmental Protection Authority and then seeking to limit its powers, we challenge the Minister to actually assign the higher status of independent Crown entity to the authority, as he indicated he might do in a speech earlier this year. That would clearly give the authority the mandate—the authority—that an organisation absolutely needs if it is to fulfil its role under this proposed legislation.

We are told that the Environmental Protection Authority will monitor compliance and be responsible for enforcement. My question is where within the authority currently it has the capacity to do that. In respect of an offshore drilling rig in deep water, for example, I would be surprised if the authority inspectors—if we had any—got access to that site through any other means but the good officers basically hitching a ride with the oil company. That suggests that, in practice, it would be very difficult for the agency as it currently exists to do any sensible management, monitoring of compliance, or enforcement of anything that might come under this bill.

The bill talks at some length about taking a cautious approach; it encompasses, effectively, the precautionary principle without actually using those words. Again, it almost seems to avoid coming to grips with the precautionary principle, which is well acknowledged, well proven, and has traction nationally and internationally as a concept and as an application of that concept. We wonder why there has been an attempt to simply talk about taking a cautious approach to decision making, rather than being more explicit about applying the precautionary principle.

The matters to be taken into account by the Environmental Protection Authority include a whole host of things, including the protection of biological diversity and the protection of rare and vulnerable ecosystems. My final comments are that the authority, in order to fulfil this proposed role, will need a remarkably better understanding of, and body of knowledge about, the deep-water marine environment. We know very little about that environment, and this bill does not address it. We look forward to further debate on the bill.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) : The Māori Party has taken a keen interest in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, particularly in respect of its capacity to provide for an effective environmental management regime in the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf—essentially, the seabed and subsoil of Aotearoa. Respect for the marine environment—the acknowledgment of the importance of land and waters that have provided sustenance—is an essential element of the Māori world view. Implicit in our tikanga is the reminder to respect and protect nature so that future generations may enjoy the same quality of life that we cherish now. We entered into an analysis of this legislation, therefore, with a view as to how it will enhance the sustainability of our environment, and enable mana whenua the rights and responsibilities encompassed in our understanding of kaitiakitanga. We see any investment in protecting our primary ecosystems as being necessary for future economic prosperity, and for the benefit of future generations. As seafaring people, we appreciate that we have partaken of the food garden sown by our ancestors for our benefit. In due course, it will become time for us to resow, to ensure sustenance for the generations to come. That time is now; the opportunity is here, through this legislation. This legislation sets out an obligation for adverse environmental effects to be avoided, remedied, or mitigated.

In coming to this bill, I am reflecting on the submission of one of my Ngāti Kuia whanaunga, Raymond Smith, who presented a submission to the ministerial panel reviewing the Foreshore and Seabed Act on behalf of the rūnanga. He said in that submission: “We need to be part of that group that decides it. We believe that … if we do have our mahinga kai, our pingao areas, that need to be protected, we need to be able to rāhui. We need to be able to have those tools with teeth … for environmental protection, sustainability and even our customary protection, our cultural protection.” This view was reflected throughout our consultation, in the very limited time period between when this bill was introduced and its first reading today.

We understand that iwi welcome a legislative framework to protect environmental outcomes in the marine environment, but there are two overarching issues for them: namely, what is the process to ensure that iwi are involved in further policy development and what are the regulations, and where do iwi fit into the regulations? There is no doubt where iwi are concerned that we want to avoid any potential risk of harm to the environment and, subsequently, any threat to the present and future economic well-being of New Zealand. We see the extension of the responsibilities of kaitiakitanga as taking up a vigilant stance to watch out for the health and safety of people; to safeguard the biological diversity and integrity of marine species, ecosystems, and processes; and to protect rare and vulnerable ecosystems as well as the habitat of depleted, threatened, or endangered species. Our commitment therefore to manage the cumulative effects of all activities on the environment is our uppermost concern in this bill.

First and foremost, we are pleased that the legislation will provide for consultation with Māori and will ensure consideration of Treaty settlements and customary rights and/or interests granted under the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011. But we are concerned, from some preliminary views of iwi, that the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill currently contains insufficient protection for, and recognition of, Māori interests. There are a number of areas where the regime needs to be strengthened, which could improve the opportunity for more meaningful participation by Māori and enable better protection and recognition of Māori interests. We have approached the Minister with our suggestions in this regard and hope that he will give due thought to his response. One particular suggestion, for example, is for a mandatory requirement for a cultural impact assessment to be completed before an application can be accepted and provision to be made for cost recovery for iwi participation in processes. The preliminary assessment from the iwi we consulted is that they consider that the bill does not meet existing precedent and, of course, in their view and ours it should be seeking to improve upon existing statutory precedent. They also believe that the bill is somewhat hollow. The substantive criteria for balancing environmental impacts and economic outcomes are left to regulations and/or decision makers, which may not provide desirable surety for environmental outcomes.

We note that the Environmental Protection Authority advisory committee, which carries over from a similar committee under the Environmental Risk Management Authority, would also have a role in providing advice on process and decisions under the new legislation. The authority will make decisions on consent applications and will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the legislation, including information management, monitoring, and enforcement functions. If the Māori advisory committee is to be the principal mechanism to facilitate the recognition and protection of Māori interests, it is a poor substitute for explicit statutory recognition of iwi rights and the inclusion of a stronger Treaty of Waitangi clause. At the very least, if the Māori advisory committee is to play an important role, it should be explicitly provided for in the legislation that its advice must be taken into account. I am mindful, too, that the recent Waitangi Tribunal report on the Wai 262 claim, Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, discussed the role of advisory committees in some detail and recommended that they should have broader roles, including the discretion to comment at will rather than on referral, and with input from iwi and hapū as to appointments. The appointments to the Māori advisory committee should be considered in areas where iwi have strong coastal interests, and there should be direct iwi and hapū input into those appointments. One of the amendments we will be proposing as the bill proceeds through the House is that statutory status should be accorded to iwi that in some way provides for iwi to be recognised as a partner to the Environmental Protection Authority when it makes its decisions.

The last comment I will make is about clause 14, the Treaty of Waitangi clause. The way this clause is currently worded sets out how the bill recognises the Crown’s responsibility to take account of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, rather than as an obligation on a decision maker to have regard to, take account of, recognise, and provide for the Treaty or its principles. This clause is therefore more of a declaration of the Crown’s view that the bill complies with its Treaty obligations, rather than a provision that places a positive, forward-looking obligation on decision makers in terms of the Treaty and Treaty principles. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is insufficient from a Māori point of view. It is also inconsistent with the Resource Management Act, which will apply where activities occur within 12 nautical miles, and which contains provisions that expressly require decision makers to have regard to Māori interests. Our recommendation to the Minister is that the clause should be replaced by a provision requiring that the Treaty or Treaty principles be taken into account. This could be done as part of clause 12, which lists the matters to be taken into account when making decisions under the legislation. It could also be done by way of a new, forward-looking Treaty provision.

We have made a commitment to the Minister that we are happy to work on redrafting the Treaty clause to ensure that it will recognise and respect the Crown’s responsibility to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and throughout the whole of the bill, not just the specific parts referred to in the current version. Our support for the bill can be assured only for the first reading. We hope that sending the bill out for consultation during the select committee consideration will enable a far more comprehensive analysis of the bill, and we will be actively encouraging whānau, hapū, and iwi to make submissions.

Dr CAM CALDER (National) : It is a pleasure to rise and take a brief call on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. It is great to note the fact that we have the support of a wide range of parties—the Greens, the Māori Party, ACT, and United Future—for this legislation. It is remarkable that we should be criticised by the Labour Opposition for bringing this legislation to the House. In the last few years of the Labour Government some 18 wells were drilled in Taranaki. Was any environmental protection put in by the Labour Government? Zero. How much? Zero, nothing, nada. It is risible to believe that we should do nothing, just because the continental shelf has not been completely defined at this stage.

We are bringing this bill to the House to protect the marine environment. We believe in economic development, but also protection of the environment goes hand in hand with that development. At this point in time I would like to give credit to those at work in the North and South Taranaki bights, where oil exploration and development has been going on for 50 years. In fact, as far as I am aware, there has not been any leakage to date from any well hole there, which is a superb reflection on their professionalism and involvement in best practice. The catastrophe we have all noted with alarm in the Gulf of Mexico has even heightened their resolve to improve their activities. It has certainly informed our framing of this legislation. When I talked to an industry leader in Taranaki some months ago he pointed out that the catastrophic spillage was the result of a highly unusual cascade of events, which is a little bit analogous to the holes in a Swiss cheese all aligning at the same time. That was the likelihood of those events occurring.

The exclusive economic zone is a pretty recent construct. Historically, the territorial sovereign limits extended out 3 miles—the distance of a long cannon shot. In the 1970s, a tuna fleet from the United States encountered Ecuadorian naval gun boats. The dispute was taken to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and, as a result, the third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was enacted, defining the exclusive economic zone at 200 miles. This bill reflects New Zealand’s management and protection of the natural resources of the exclusive economic zone, which is an obligation under that United Nations convention. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) : Labour is opposing the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, and I will talk about some of the reasons why. Clearly, we have always been in favour of appropriate, responsible, and sustainable use of the environment for economic purposes, but our deep concern over this bill is that its protested balance between economic benefits and environmental protection is insufficient. It is insufficient.

This legislation is not robust enough to give either the Greens or the Māori Party—whose members I have just listened to very carefully—any reassurance that any of the things they profess to hold dear will be maintained under this legislation. Why is that? This bill does not balance, or provide us with any assurance of balancing, economic interests and environmental protection, because in the end it comes down to regulation. Although we might have some confidence in the Environmental Protection Authority, which will be given the oversight of this regulation, it is dependent on the say-so of the Minister for the Environment for the things that it is meant to monitor and assess. The authority is dependent on the Minister’s determination of regulations, which will not come anywhere near this Parliament, will not go anywhere near the Green Party, and will not go anywhere near iwi. The regulations will be the prerogative of the Minister to determine. In our view, that is not sufficient to guarantee the kind of protection that is required.

In the wake of the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, the world has woken up to some of the very serious possible threats if deep-sea drilling and oil exploration are undertaken without due process and without proper monitoring and assessment. When these things happen 200 kilometres out from the shore, when they take place out in deep-sea waters, it is very difficult for anybody in this House to say they know what is really going on. Therefore it is incumbent upon this House to make sure that the protective legislation around deep-sea oil drilling, for example, is as robust as it can possibly be. But that is not what this legislation offers.

There is no guarantee of protection. What we have is the offer of regulations as the need arises, made by a Minister whose track record has been remarkably poor in this regard to date. As the Minister for the Environment he was prepared to sanction and support mining on protected parts of the conservation estate—on schedule 4 land in the conservation estate. It was not until 2,000 people marched down the street in Nelson that this Minister realised he was on the wrong side of public opinion—that he was on the wrong side of how people felt about the need for proper protection of our precious environment. This is the Minister who supported exploratory measures around Dun Mountain, out the back of Nelson, which was exactly the area where his Government had mooted a cycleway extension. So we were being treated to the prospect of a cycleway being constructed around potential mining operations. That would have been a great tourist attraction for the Nelson area!

I cite these examples because this Minister for the Environment, in this legislation, is asking us to trust him to get the regulations right and, worse than that, to get the balance right between economic prosperity and advancement and environmental protection. This Minister has no credibility in that regard. Already, with two proposals very close to home for him, he has failed the test—he has failed the test. It was only latterly that he said that Kahurangi National Park would not be touched by mining.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I was involved in creating the park.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Oh, yes—in the latter days. Gosh! It was well under way under a Labour Government, for goodness’ sake! He just comes to it last. It is like opening buildings that the Minister had nothing to do with advocating for in the first place. You know, that happens. We accept that. We accept that a previous Government can set something up and an incoming Government gets to sign it off. I understand that; that happens.

But in this regard this legislation is asking us to put faith in a Minister to make regulations that do not come anywhere near this Parliament for discussion. That ought not to be sufficient for the Māori Party. I am glad that Rahui Katene has drawn attention to the fact there is not adequate provision for consultation with Māori. We have already seen the fuss that has been created over the Raukūmara trench and the oil exploration by Petrobras in that area. I suggest that having a two-and-a-half line clause in this legislation—clause 26, which refers to the Māori advisory committee—is not sufficient.

I also draw attention to the Green Party’s comments. On 24 August, when this legislation was introduced by the Minister, the Green Party derided it for assisting dangerous extractive industries that contribute to climate change. I am sorry, but today it seems to me that the Green Party is looking more blue than green. The National Party might like to celebrate its blue-green status, although I have to say that with the opening of a lignite mine and the announcement of the opening of a plant in Southland, the blue-green credentials of the National Party must be in tatters. The Green Party is beginning to align itself—in a foreshadowing of its possible coalition arrangements with National—in a way that makes it look now more blue than green. I ask the Green Party to consider this again. I hope that it listens really carefully to the submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee and comes down opposing this legislation at its second reading.

One of the other things that becomes apparent in this legislation is that there is a need for interim measures until this law is passed, which will not be—even by the Minister’s own admission—until 1 July 2012. Interim measures need to be put in place. It says in the explanatory note of the bill that these interim measures will be developed in consultation with the industry, or the various industries, I presume, that will be engaged in activities in our exclusive economic zone and our extended continental shelf area. I just hope that the consultation with the industries in this respect is a little more robust than the consultation with the film industry over the legislation surrounding that industry, so that our legislation is not for sale.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) : I am pleased to speak in the first reading of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. But I must say I am rather staggered to be in a situation where the Greens have very clearly supported this bill going to the important select committee stage, where the public can have their say and submissions can be heard, while the Labour Party has just flatly refused—it is just flatly opposing this legislation. I find that staggering. The fact is that our oceans are a major engine driving our climate system. Also, our oceans have been in existence for 3 billion years longer than our land. Yet here we have the Labour Opposition with no interest in regulating and protecting this vast resource.

Hon Maryan Street: Yes we do; we just don’t want Nick Smith to do it.

LOUISE UPSTON: I find it to be somewhat staggering that we are in this position.

The oceans, of course, provide vast opportunities, whether it is in mining, electricity generation, carbon storage, or aquaculture development—marine farming. These are just the opportunities that we know of. I am sure we will come across many opportunities in the years and decades ahead. But the interjection from the Labour speaker says it all: it is about one individual—one person. Labour members are so into personalities and not the issues of the day. They are not interested in actually debating economic opportunities to grow our economy as well as protect such a precious resource.

This bill has got it right. We clearly need to have protection in place. At the moment, unfortunately, the resource management extends only to the 12-mile limit. This legislation looks at putting a regulatory and protection framework in place for an area that is 20 times the size of our land mass. If we look at that opportunity, we see that it is enormous. Clearly risks are also involved, and that is why it is really important that we have that balance in place and that we have legislation that protects this amazing resource—this amazing asset—on our doorstep. I will not go through all the provisions of the bill, other than to say this is clearly part of a wider plan in terms of getting the balance right between economic growth and growing our exports, and protecting our environment. This bill relies on the creation of the Environmental Protection Authority, which is already in place. It clearly recognises that our environment is our greatest asset. We cannot do anything with that asset, we cannot look at the opportunities that are available, if we are not willing to protect it in the same breath. That is why I am proud that we have a Minister who is willing to take such bold steps.

Quite frankly, I am disappointed that we have an Opposition that does not even want to debate the issues. Good on the Green Party for allowing us to send the bill to the select committee. This is an important step, not just for now but for many decades ahead. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : As my Labour colleagues who have spoken before me have said, Labour will be opposing the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. I say to the member who has just resumed her seat that fine words are all very well and good, but what we need to have is decent legislation if we are serious about protecting New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years. Did nothing in 9 years.

MOANA MACKEY: That is not true. Dr Smith says Labour did nothing in 9 years, and he knows that is not true. An awful lot of work went into this issue. Unfortunately, while Nick Smith was parading up and down the country saying the beaches belong to everyone—no deals; do not let Māori have access to the foreshore and seabed—and while he was planting New Zealand flags and raising up all the racial tension that resulted on the foreshore and seabed issue, that work had to be put on hold, because clearly there were implications for the foreshore and seabed issue of the oceans policy work that Labour was doing. We went through that period of time. As the Minister well knows, he could have picked up that work. He has picked up the work that Labour was doing in this area, but he has made significant changes to it, which has meant that Labour cannot support it.

Another three things have changed since that time. The first is that we have a National Government, which, the minute it came into office, went out and said to the world that it wanted more oil and gas exploration in New Zealand. National ramped that up big time; it has never denied doing that. It saw that industry as becoming a big part of New Zealand’s economic future. So National went ahead and ramped it up—and the Minister is acknowledging that—despite there not being the protections in place. Despite there not being any protections in the exclusive economic zone, the Government went ahead and said it wanted to do a lot more oil and gas—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It hasn’t happened yet.

MOANA MACKEY: It has happened. Come up my way. I invite any Government Minister to front up in Gisborne and on the East Coast, instead of running away and hiding every time they are invited, and explain their position around oil and gas exploration in the Raukūmara Basin. But they do not come. They hide, and they send Government officials. Our local MP does not show up; the Minister does not show up. No one fronts up to talk to the people on the East Coast who are concerned about what is going on in their exclusive economic zone. That is the second thing that has changed.

The third change is that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was a big wake-up call for everyone. We had been told time and time again that technology had developed so far—which I am sure it has—that there were a lot more protections in place, that we were able to do this work in a way that was a lot safer, and that we would not have the kinds of accidents that we have had in the past. I think largely the public had accepted that. The public had accepted that the technology made oil and gas exploration a lot safer. What the Gulf of Mexico disaster showed us is that those dangers are very much still there, and they are there in a big way. If we are not able to deal with them, if we do not have liability issues sorted out up front, if we do not have the capacity to carry out a clean-up in the country, is this industry something that we want to ramp up, as the National Government is doing, before we get those protections in place?

It is all very well for members to criticise the previous Government and criticise Labour for not supporting this legislation, but we have taken all that on board. We have learnt from the developments that have happened over the last few years, and we do not believe that this legislation will provide the protection that New Zealanders want, to guarantee as much as we can that the kind of disaster we saw in the Gulf of Mexico will not occur here in New Zealand.

Three things about this legislation are concerning. The first is that, as we know, the Resource Management Act applies out to 12 miles. The Resource Management Act’s principles are very clear, and they are very well known. They are around the protection of our natural environment and our natural resources. But when we get beyond that 12-mile zone, the well-known principles of the Resource Management Act, principles that have been well tested and that people understand, no longer apply. Instead, the Government has put in a new test, which is around a balance, which is always a nightmare—a balance between economic development and environmental protection. I know that the community I live in on the East Coast is asking why we could not have the same principles. Why is it that beyond 12 miles apparently those principles of environmental protection do not apply and it now becomes a balance, but within the 12-mile zone they do apply?

The Minister, Nick Smith, is on record as saying this is because what occurs in the exclusive economic zone does not affect communities. I say again to the Minister that if he really believes that, he should come to Gisborne and say it. He should go up the East Coast, go into the tribal areas of Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Ngāti Porou—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s not what I said.

MOANA MACKEY: —it is—and tell them—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’re making it up.

MOANA MACKEY: I say to the Minister that I am not making it up. The little smile on his face tells me he knows very well that is what he said. It was a direct quote. The Minister said that the Government was not extending the principles of the Resource Management Act out, because what occurs there does not affect communities. Does the Minister believe that? He has gone quiet; he has gone absolutely quiet. It does affect communities. The communities along the East Coast, where that exploration is occurring in the exclusive economic zone, are very affected, and they were not consulted.

There are no environmental protections in place. If the Minister is so passionate about the exclusive economic zone and its protection, why did he not put on hold those consents until all the protections were in place?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because it’s only seismic surveys, and they were only subject to consents.

MOANA MACKEY: They are only seismic surveys. Yet there were still intrinsic dangers in carrying out that work. Because this legislation will not be in place until July 2012 at the earliest, will he guarantee that if National decides that prospecting will go ahead, nothing will occur before the regulatory framework is in place—absolutely nothing?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: We’ve put interim arrangements in place.

MOANA MACKEY: Interim arrangements in place. Again, I say it would have been nice if National members had fronted up to the numerous meetings on this issue, held in the local community, to explain this, instead of sending four officials from the Ministry of Economic Development, who had to sit there and say they did not know, because it was a political decision. Our community could not get the answers it wanted, because not a single National MP would front up. I think that, in itself, is very, very telling.

The exploration that occurred in the Raukūmara Basin, as the Minister well knows, has caused enormous distress in the East Coast communities. Iwi leaders, who should have been part of the consultation process, heard about it on the news. They heard on the news that it was happening. Since then they have not been able to get answers to some very simple questions that the community has been asking about that exploration in a very ecologically sensitive part of the marine environment. What made it even worse was that for a number of years now, the move that people have wanted to make is to put that area into a marine reserve. That was the kind of move from the Government that they were hoping for regarding the Raukūmara Basin, because it is ecologically significant, because it is environmentally sensitive, because it has breeding and feeding grounds, I say to the Minister, because it has a number of endemic species—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is that your policy?

MOANA MACKEY: The Minister will have to wait with bated breath to hear Labour’s policy. None of the environmental protections were in place.

The Raukūmara Basin is an ecologically sensitive area, and it is incredibly seismically active. When we look at the number of shallow earthquakes over the last 10 years, we see that with the exception of Canterbury, most of them have occurred in the very area where the exploration is taking place. Also, it is interesting to note that the other part of the country where the industry is currently doing exploration is in Canterbury, off the Canterbury coast. The two most seismically active parts of the country are currently the areas where we are exploring. We know that these oil and gas reserves are now harder and harder to get to, because all the easy resources have already been exploited.

We have major concerns that the Environmental Protection Authority will be the body that administers this legislation. The Environmental Protection Authority is under-resourced, incredibly under-resourced, for the amount of work and the responsibility that the Government expects it to carry out. It is not autonomous, so the Minister can direct it, and therefore it is not solely about protecting the environment. It is about carrying out the will of the Government of the day, which is not what was promised. Most tellingly, the Environmental Protection Authority does not have environmental protection as one of its purposes. The Government refused to support an amendment that would have made environmental protection one of the purposes of the Environmental Protection Authority. That tells us an awful lot about the particular agency that is to administer this legislation.

We do not have any detail on this legislation. All the detail on it is to be set out in regulation. This is something that the Government has been doing more and more of. So how could anyone have any confidence—any confidence—that this legislation will protect in any way? This is one of the reasons why Labour will not be supporting this legislation. It comes from a Minister who has weakened just about every single piece of environmental protection that the previous Government put in place. He has sat by while oil and gas exploration has been ramped up, and then in the dying hours of this Parliament he has introduced a bill that will provide, he says, some form of protection. We say we cannot see that in the legislation—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Her time has expired.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) : I move, That the Local Government and Environment Committeeconsider the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill.

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) : I move, That the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. I would like to thank the Social Services Committee for its consideration of this bill and its recommendations, which the Government will accept. The committee received 39 written submissions and heard 10 submitters. Most of these supported the proposals to strengthen the criminal law to better respond to the ill-treatment and neglect of children.

Without wanting to diminish the concerns expressed by some submitters regarding the effectiveness of the proposals in protecting children, from the perspective of the criminal justice system there must be adequate provision in the law to hold accountable those who inflict serious offending against the most vulnerable members of our community, and, specifically, those who choose to turn a blind eye.

The Government has been developing a number of other initiatives that focus on reducing family violence and improving outcomes for those living in at-risk situations, such as the recently released Green Paper for Vulnerable Children.

The select committee received a small number of submissions that were opposed to the proposed change to the definition of “claim of right” on the grounds that the change was unnecessary. I consider that the incorporation of a property right criterion in the definition of “claim of right” is needed to ensure that the use of the defence conforms to the common law in comparable overseas jurisdictions. The bill also clarifies the scope of the sexual grooming offence and increases the penalty of the offence of possession of an offensive weapon.

I support, and so does the Government, the committee’s recommendation to amend the proposed offence in new section 195A of failure to protect, to clarify that where a third party breaches a duty to protect a child or vulnerable adult, the breach must have been grossly negligent. The committee also recommended that the offence based on a failure to protect be amended so that a person cannot be charged with the offence if he or she was under 18 years at the time of the act or omission. Parents and caregivers aged under 18 years remain liable under section 195 for a failure to take reasonable steps to protect their child from injury.

The committee recommended a number of minor and technical changes to the bill to clarify wording and ensure appropriate consistency with other provisions in the Crimes Act.

This bill sends an important signal to those who remain in a household with children who have the potential to be harmed, injured, maimed, or killed. It is a critical step to ensure that this Parliament sends a firm message to those who would choose to turn a blind eye to the abuse and neglect of those children that this Parliament will not tolerate that behaviour or those omissions.

This bill is an important change to the criminal law, and I look forward to listening to the debate with some care over the next few minutes. This is an opportunity for Parliament to stamp its authority on an issue that has long escaped Parliament’s lawmaking efforts.

This is a time for the Government and the Parliament to take a stand on the neglect of children, to stand up for those whose voices are too small to be heard by those in authority, and to recognise the fact that we have an obligation to protect the most important and, of course, the most vulnerable members of our society. I thank the members of the Social Services Committee for their consideration of the bill and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) : It is a pleasure to take a call on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), especially since the Social Services Committee considered it and I was a member of that committee. The Minister of Justice, Mr Power, seeks the strength of the signal this Parliament ought to send about the level of intolerance there should be towards abuse of children. Certainly, that assurance is given from this side of the House. We will be supporting this bill, and join with the Government, in the provisions this bill contains, about the very clear signal the Government wants to give. So now, under the provisions of this bill, if somebody is in a home where abuse is taking place and the person is aware of it, and provided that the abuse is of a particular nature, in that it is out of the ordinary, then there is a process and there are criminal responsibilities, as well as a responsibility to report that.

However, this is the third year of this Government and child abuse in these 3 years probably has been a constant reminder to us about one of the dark sides of our society. At the end of 3 years, the question I ask is: “Is this it? Is this what we are going to do? Is this the sum total of what this Government could have achieved in 3 years in this particular area?” So what do we have? We have had, over the last 3 years, some very punitive provisions towards children and young people who have fallen foul of the law, who have been abused, or who have done things we would not consider appropriate. So we have tried those negative, punitive provisions. I remember the big debate—one of the most intense debates we had in the early part of this Parliament—around boot camps. Even though the Government had been told that all of the research tells us that they do not and will not work—most submitters said that to the select committee at the time—but did the Government listen? No. The Government could have spent the same amount of resources and time really trying to find out what the factors are that lead families to abuse.

• Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: It is a pleasure to resume what I was just getting into prior to the House rising for the dinner break, and now the Minister is listening to this contribution. The Minister has sought from this side of the House a very clear statement that this Parliament is sending through this bill to people about the safety of children, and how important it is for anybody who has responsibility for children to conduct themselves and undertake their roles, relationships, and activities in such a manner that those children are not jeopardised. That assurance is given unequivocally from this side of the House; hence our support for this bill and our support for all of the provisions of the bill.

The process in the select committee was very, very useful. We went through the bill in some detail. The officials did a great job. The committee was well led by Ms Katrina Shanks, and we had a lot of opportunities to discuss what is in this bill. So I say to Minister Power that the assurance is given in this particular way. But I was reflecting, after giving that assurance, on the fact that over the past 3 years, child abuse has really been in everybody’s minds in New Zealand. There has been a lot of discussion and discourse about it, so it has been at the forefront of our minds—cases have come up, discussions have been widespread, and citizens have shown their abhorrence for child abuse in any form—and this side of the House has supported any reasonable bill that has come up, any reasonable proposal, to address the needs of children and families over the last 3 years.

But what I was then reflecting on was, after 3 years, is this it? Is this the total programme that the Government had for children? If so, then clearly something is missing, because, by and large, much of this has been quite punitive, in a sense—you know, the exuberance around Future Focus and boot camps, which are largely punitive. The Government has provided punitive measures in order to bring people to account, particularly children, young people, and their families. We wonder why the Government has made it so difficult for children through its own policies, and why it is difficult for the Government, as indeed we saw last week in the House through questions to the Minister for Social Development and Employment and the Prime Minister about child poverty. Really, everybody in this House knows there is a link between child poverty and child abuse and all of the things that do go wrong in families. We know—figures tell us—that there are 200,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand. We have sought an assurance, some confidence, from the Government that it was aware of this, that it had an idea in mind, and that it actually had some plans around this. But what we have heard this week, under quite intense questioning from this side of the House, was really a game being played, but not actually talking about what the figures were. There was a lot of discussion about definitions, but at no point was there ever an acceptance by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, and any other Government members that there is a problem. There are about 200,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand, and what is the programme to get them out of poverty? There is nothing here. Indeed, this bill, one would have thought, would address that. Is it addressing what the consequences of child poverty are, what the consequences of family dysfunction are, when it comes to child abuse? We can pass provisions like this, and they are to be supported because they are part of the framework, but they do not go far enough, particularly at the end of 3 years when this now represents the last leg of the Government’s total programme around children.

The other point to be made is that one would have thought that somewhere there would be an acknowledgment that 40,000 children go to school hungry. That, again, reflects that something is wrong in our society. There is no dispute about those figures; schools tell us about them, parents talk about them, and voluntary groups go out and feed those children. When we look at those kinds of figures, we look to the Government to ask it about what other things there are and how the Government might address them. Then there is no answer. It is far easier for the Government to come up with punitive measures of this kind, and leave it at that. Every provision in this bill emerges out of a story that has been told and has been very public. Whether it was the Kāhui twins, Waihopai, or something else, each one of these things comes out of things that have gone wrong. The Government wants to give the impression that it is addressing the fundamental issues; in fact, it is not. These measures are still window dressing.

One would have thought that by this stage, the Government would have worked out the need for a holistic examination for all of these issues. Its answer is the green paper; the green paper will do it all. Well, the green paper is actually a white flag. It says that we not know. The green paper simply goes out and asks people whether they think the Government should be doing this. Well, we do not need the green paper. Each of the issues raised can be addressed now and should have started some time ago so that the future for those children and their families would have been far more sustainable, at least getting them out of that particular risk.

In the end, one has to draw the conclusion that the Government does not have a comprehensive plan around children; the Government has given up that space to the green paper, and it has come up with acts of conscience, so to speak. I hope that speakers will get up and explain how it is that this bill addresses those fundamental questions. The Government has been absent for children. Its programme has been devoid of constructive ideas and much of it has not worked. Thank you.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : It is my pleasure to take a call on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) tonight. The safety and well-being of our children is an issue that National is absolutely committed to. We believe that the proposals contained in the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) close some of the worrying gaps in the law around the protection of children. I am proud to be part of a National-led Government that is fast tracking proposals to further protect children from assault, neglect, and ill-treatment. It is hard-hitting, but in the end this legislation will help to change lives.

The bill makes changes to ensure that children are adequately protected. It introduces new enforceable legal responsibility, making a person criminally liable for the failure to protect a child or vulnerable person when another person omitted to perform a legal duty and the accused was aware of the duty and the harm the omission would inflict on the child or vulnerable person.

This legislation broadens the scope of section 195 of the Crimes Act. It extends the application of the offence to include vulnerable adults, it increases the age of a child to a person under the age of 18 years, and it extends the liability for omissions to perform legal duties. A new offence of failure to protect has been introduced. It imposes criminal liability on a member of a household, or a staff member of a hospital, institution, or residence where the victim resides, who has frequent contact with a child or vulnerable adult, who knows the victim is at risk of death, serious injury, or sexual assault as a result of an unlawful act by another person or an omission by another person to perform a legal duty, and who fails to take reasonable steps to protect the victim from the risk.

A person may be regarded as a member of a particular household even if he or she does not live in that household. If the person is so closely connected with a particular household that it is reasonable to regard him or her as a member, then that person will be considered liable. Also, the offender must be older than 18 years at the time of the act or omission in question to be prosecuted for failure to protect a child or vulnerable person. A person under 18 can be prosecuted only if he or she is a parent of the victim.

The Social Services Committee also considered whether these provisions should amount to an offence subject to the three-stage regime under section 86A to 86I of the Sentencing Act 2002. Other areas covered in this bill are the scope of the claim of right defence, which is available for some offences relating to property where the accused believed that they were legally entitled to deal with the property in the way that they did. The amendment will limit the defence to circumstances where defendants believe they have a personal right to the property concerned.

The bill will also increase the penalty for carrying an offensive weapon in circumstances that prima facie show an intention to use it without reasonable excuse. The maximum penalty for the possession of an offensive weapon will be increased from 2 years’ imprisonment to 3 years’ imprisonment.

The bill also broadens the offence of sexual grooming. Currently the offence of sexual grooming of young people in the Crimes Act does not support prosecution in situations where the sexual grooming has been discovered through covert police investigations.

This bill is an important part of National’s work to tackle violent crime, make communities safer, and protect our most vulnerable people. I look forward to further debate in the House on this bill. Thank you.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) : Malo le soifua, talofa lava, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2). Labour will support this bill through to the Committee stage. Labour has made it quite clear that whenever there is debate about legislation that is aimed at the protection of children from assault, neglect, or ill-treatment, we will always support those measures. However, we do need to make it quite clear that we have reservations about certain provisions and their ability to be effective in combating the actual problem.

The bill is very narrowly focused in that it talks about protection from assault, neglect, and ill-treatment, it addresses emerging knife crime problems, and there are some specific parts to the bill. According to Minister Power, the new offence of failing to protect a child or vulnerable adult will hold accountable household members who fail to notify authorities of abuse. The Minister has said: “It will no longer be an excuse to say you were not involved in the abuse. Standing by and doing nothing makes you involved, and this bill makes it clear.” But, as my colleague Dr Rajen Prasad said earlier, when we look at what this Government has done in the past 3 years, we cannot help but feel like asking whether this is it. Is this the sum total of what this Government wants to do to address a very serious problem?

Collectively, throughout this House, we all agree that in terms of the abuse of a child—any child; it does not matter what race, colour, ethnicity, or religious belief—there is a collective responsibility. The entire country has a responsibility to ensure that that child is looked after, loved and cared for, supported, and given every opportunity to grow up to become an adult who contributes to society. The problem that we have is that this is a very broad issue and the Government is trying to focus us. It almost appears that it is content to say that—

Kris Faafoi: We’re tough.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO: —yes; it is being tough—as long as it places the people who are causing the violence in jail, then that will solve the problem. Well, members of Social Services Committee have heard time and time again evidence from significant organisations and individuals who are at the grassroots and who know their business. They have said to us that simply putting people into jail does not solve the problem. We need only look at South Auckland, at Manukau.

When this Government decided to do the tax switch and pay significant amounts of money to the highest-income earners, and to then increase GST for the rest of the New Zealand population, what did the South Auckland population get? A third jail—a third jail. We have to ask ourselves whether that is what this Government wants South Auckland to focus on. Is that what the kids should be aiming for? Should the families be aiming for that third jail? Well, I am saying no.

The problem this country has is not just a few parents who are unable to care for their children and end up beating them and destroying the lives of the very people whom they are supposed to love. It is much more deep than that and it is much more complex. It cannot be addressed simply by holding up this legislation. Although the bill is to be credited, and we are supporting it, that is not the sole answer. That is why we are saying we will support this bill through to the Committee stage, but we do have reservations.

We could probably achieve better outcomes to address the particular problem by non-legislative initiatives, such as, I would say, increasing incomes for families. Families having incomes that can sustain them is one part. If businesses or companies are unable to look after their workers, then I think what Labour is proposing about increasing the minimum wage is a step in the right direction. I think that Labour’s proposal to remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables is a step in the right direction. I think that having no taxation on the first $5,000 of income is a step in the right direction. Why? Because we have seen the reports from Every Child Counts and the report from the Child Poverty Action Group, which said that there is a relationship between poverty and violence and between poverty and child abuse.

I was shocked to hear from colleagues who work for Child, Youth and Family who say that every time the Warriors lose a game, there will generally be violence in some homes—not all homes, but some homes. The mixture of poverty and alcohol consumption, and the lack of control around these things, is also a contributing factor to the problem that we are addressing.

I hear all the time from organisations such as the Methodist Social Services and the Salvation Army that the problems are much deeper and more complex, but that this Government is failing to recognise that. This Government is not advancing the resources for the wider community to be able to work collectively and holistically to address these problems, as my colleague pointed out earlier. There needs to be an overall effort not just by the Government but also by other agencies and the communities if we are serious about addressing the fundamental problems, which is what we are trying to do here.

The point I am making is that every New Zealander and every organisation that is dealing with child abuse and working with families in that field will question the seriousness of this Government, and will question whether the hearts of its members are really in the right place, or whether they are simply playing politics—as they did in 2008. We know that in 2008, in order for National to win the election its members went out and started threatening and playing the hard line that every person who committed a crime would be sent to jail, and in jail they would rot. But we know from listening to people working in this area that that is not the case. We know that at some stage we have to release those people and bring them back into society, and rehabilitation and engagement with the community are both part of what we have to do if we are serious about addressing the issue of child abuse.

Jami -Lee Ross: You’re speaking about the wrong bill.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO: The member is saying that I am speaking about the wrong bill. That is exactly the problem of that Government—its members are so fixated on attempting to put people in jail when the problem will not be solved by simply arresting people and putting them in jail. The problem is much deeper and much more complex, and legislation alone will not solve it, nor will the green paper that has been released in time for the election.

I think that National members need to be reading the reports of Every Child Counts, reading the reports of the Child Poverty Action Group, and looking at those recommendations. Labour certainly is doing so, and Labour will focus on making children the centre of policy, because Labour is serious about this problem.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) has two purposes. The first is to remove the claim of right defence, which is what the “Waihopai Three” used successfully in their case. I know that my colleague Keith Locke has talked at some length about claim of right and why it needs to be retained, and he will do so again—certainly, during the Committee stage. I think it was quite remiss of the Minister of Justice not to make it plain in his second reading speech earlier today that this bill deals with two quite different issues, not just one. Any removal of the defence of claim of right is an attack on the civil rights of citizens in this country. That needs to be exposed, and the Green Party is absolutely opposed to the removal of the civil rights of citizens in this country. National might think that that is a great idea, but we believe that citizens are entitled to much more dignity and respect than that.

The bill also increases criminal liability for adults who abuse children, with a whole different range of provisions in this bill, some of which the Green Party agrees with, such as the provisions about the offence of sexual grooming, for example. But we have always had a real concern about extending criminal liability to those outside of the household who have not been directly involved in child abuse and neglect—that is the new section 195A, substituted in clause 7—and we echo many of the submissions made to the Social Services Committee, which also suggested there was a real issue here around the lack of certainty about who was captured by the definitions in this bill, the lack of certainty in the new laws, the uncertainty as to the degree of negligence—the standard of proof of negligence, or act, either omission or commission—that was required in order to be subject to criminal liability, and the difficulty in providing protection for vulnerable family members who may well be aware of things that are going on but who are not in any position to report that. As well, there were other submissions from those involved in the health profession who were very concerned about the criminal liability that might be ascribed to them under the provisions of this bill. That was echoed by the Association of Social Workers, by the Children’s Commissioner, and by a number of submitters, who understand and agree with the intent but who do not feel that the law is sufficiently clear at this stage. I am not convinced yet that the select committee has made the changes that need to be made in order to make sure it is sufficiently clear, so that those who should not have legal liability ascribed to them are protected from it.

In addition, the Children’s Commissioner at the time identified that mandatory reporting, which is what, essentially, this provision does, has been identified elsewhere globally, particularly in Ireland, as not being proven to be effective in reducing child abuse or, necessarily, increasing the degree of reporting. So there is a real issue here around evidence; if there is to be law change, particularly criminal law change, it has to be evidence-based. There has to be some proof that it will do what the intent of the bill wants to do. But there is none, so this legislation undertakes a major change in criminal law without the evidence that it will actually work. Evidence-based law, particularly when it comes to crimes, is absolutely critical.

But that is not the only thing I want to talk about, because I do want to touch on some of the things that have been said earlier by other MPs this evening. Although the desire to punish child abusers—people who beat and kill children—wife beaters, and people who beat and kill their partners is palpable and real, and the law provides for that punishment, it is not the only part of the story. There were many submissions on this legislation that included lots of stories, the more horrific stories that had got into the media, in particular, of maltreatment and child death—horrifying stories to justify support for this legislation. But, again, they are not the only stories. It is very easy to focus on the worst cases, and to focus on the clear personal responsibilities of those who have acted cruelly against vulnerable children. But because that is only part of the story, unless we address the other part we will not deal with the child abuse that occurs in this country, or deal with the drivers of abuse, and that is what I want to address tonight. As hard as it might be for the community to hear this, there is more to it, and we have to respond to these issues of child abuse, neglect, and maltreatment not only as individuals, in taking personal responsibility and holding people personally to account, but also as a community and as an economy.

There was an earlier discussion around the Child Poverty Action Group’s report Left Further Behind. This is the report that the Minister for Social Development and Employment has rubbished, because she is irresponsible in refusing to acknowledge the evidence that is put before her about these issues. This significant report goes into great detail, particularly around the link between poverty and violence. The authors are very clear in saying that on the evidence, there is a link between poverty and violence against children. It is very hard to unpick the exact nature of the causality there, though. So it is not as if poor people are bad people; it is that poverty is a driver of the conditions that tend to lead to violence and neglect. Child abuse is defined in that report as “anything which individuals, institutions, or processes do or fail to do which directly or indirectly harms children or damages their prospects for a safe and healthy” future. It is not just individual cruelty here; we are talking about institutional neglect and disregard. We can clearly put poverty, poor housing, poor education, and poor health into the pool of drivers that come from institutional decisions. Decisions are made by institutions like this one—like Parliament—as to who gets what resources, which is often what Parliament is making decisions about. So we have the Child Poverty Action Group’s report that shows that link, and we have the Every Child Counts report He Ara Hou, which focuses particularly on Māori and Pacific children, and which also identifies the link that poverty is behind many of the drivers of violence and maltreatment.

I think it is also worthwhile noting, though, that what we are talking about here is that if that poverty is the driver behind maltreatment and neglect for many families and for many children, we are talking about the majority of children, in those cases, who are at risk, whereas the legislation and the provisions for criminal law legislation in this bill deal with only a tiny fraction of the children who are at risk, and, even then, it does not deal with it at all, because it only deals with the perpetrators after the fact. So if we want to stop child abuse and neglect, we must deal with the drivers that put the majority of children at risk. which we can stop, because we can alleviate poverty, we can eliminate poverty, for our families.

One of the biggest causes of mortality that has a social gradient, which has been shown by the Children’s Social Health Monitor: 2011 Update, released just a few weeks ago, is sudden unexplained death in infancy, or cot death. Cot death is one of the biggest contributors to mortality, to death of children in this country, which is driven by social issues around poverty. So if we want to protect the majority of children from death and injury, we must deal with poverty. It is the only solution. Incomes have to go up for beneficiaries and for low-income working families. They must go up. Politicians do not want to deal with benefits, but benefits must increase. Housing provision must increase. The costs of housing have to be brought down, because housing is a major driver of poverty in this country. The quality has to be improved, because the drivers relating to the majority of kids with social gradient issues around going to hospital are things like bronchitis and asthma, which are often driven by living in cold, damp homes. We have to fix the housing crisis in this country. We have to make sure that early childhood education is universally provided so that we can ensure not only that our kids get access to the best-quality education but also that we include all our families in our communities. The drivers of violence include poverty. Poverty is the cause. Poverty is what we must eliminate.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson.Malo le soifoa. Talofa lavaki a tātou katoa i tēnei pō. He pai ēnei kōrero. He pai ki te whakarongo ki ngā take kua puta mai. Ko tā mātou ko te kī atu, e, ko wai o tēnei Whare Pāremata ka whakahē i te hiahia ki te tiaki i wā tātou tamariki mai i te tūkino a tētahi atu. Me tere whakatika i te ture ka tika.

[Greetings, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, and welcome to us all this evening. These contributions are wonderful. It is good to listen to the issues that are emerging. All we need to ask is whether anyone in this House of Parliament would really want to oppose the desire to have our children protected from any ill-treatment by someone else. The Act, of course, must be amended quickly.]

It is unlikely that any party would oppose the concept of placing proposals to protect children from assault, neglect, and ill-treatment on a faster track than was originally intended. Certainly, that is not what I have heard tonight. No politician, no New Zealander, I would hope, could turn a blind eye to the wicked toll on our nation in respect of the horrific situations of abuse and neglect of our children.

E ai ki te Ao Māori, he taonga te tamaiti. According to Māori thinking at least, every child is a treasure, although sometimes we do not necessarily carry that out amongst some of our families. Every child deserves the protection of a safe home, a secure upbringing, and a healthy life. Of course, it is interesting timing to be considering the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) in the wake of a report that we came across just recently. It is called Left Further Behind: how policies fail the poorest children in New Zealand. It is important to note from the outset that this report makes it clear that although most of the discussion in New Zealand about abuse and neglect is focused on the behaviour of individual carers, a more useful discussion and analysis would consider the significance of economic, income, and poverty factors, which were alluded to by my colleague Metiria Turei.

The report makes two qualifying statements: firstly, that child abuse is not limited to those on low incomes and those living in poverty, and, secondly, that most children living in poverty and in low-income households do not experience abuse. Notwithstanding this analysis, the report also goes on further to explain that there is an observed relationship between poverty, abuse, and violence—a relationship that has, obviously, disastrous consequences for some of the most vulnerable children in our society.

So we come to this bill, which seeks to amend aspects of the Crimes Act 1961 and to protect people from assault, neglect, and ill-treatment. We bring our comments to this debate with that in mind. This bill is very much focused on the roles and responsibilities of individuals. It extends the duties of parents and those with actual care or the charge of vulnerable adults and children, and it broadens the offence of ill-treatment or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult.

So what could we define as abuse? Well, in that regard I came across a statement from the National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse, from Ingarangi, which states, as a starting point: “Child abuse consists of anything which individuals, institutions or processes do, or fail to do, which directly or indirectly harms children, or damages their prospects of safe and healthy development into adulthood.” I thought that was a pretty good definition.

I want to set out these comments as the context for our wider discussion on this bill, because I believe that we cannot restrict our response to the child abuse crisis by simply placing the onus on the individual, or in the hands of one person. All of us are implicated. It takes a village to raise a child.

The Māori Party has supported this bill, largely because the intention is for children to live in an environment free from violence, and this is consistent with umpteen traditional accounts of tikanga of the care of children from Te Ao Māori. The Māori Party supports at least the clause in Te Tiriti o Waitangi in respect of taonga, and, of course, children, and indeed all people are taonga. The protection of our most precious resource—he tangata—also underpins the values of other groups such as the kōhanga reo movement and the kura kaupapa Māori movement. In this context, we believe it is absolutely appropriate that children and vulnerable adults are protected from the risk of violence by a third party, or the failure of the third party to perform a legal duty.

But I cannot stand here, hand on heart, and say that we agree with every aspect of the bill without question. There are some issues that we did want to address. In particular, the issue that came through at the Social Services Committee was whether we have the balance right in the introduction of liability of people. The liability extends to those who are not actually involved in the mistreatment but have frequent contact with the child, or vulnerable adult, and fail to try to protect them from mistreatment by others.

In this respect we share the concerns of submitters in terms of whether creating liability as the issue is the most effective course of action we can be taking to eliminate child abuse and violence against children from our lives. Surely the most searching issue for us all is how we can encourage all members of the community to create and maintain a violence-free society.

The bill creates a new enforceable legal responsibility, making a person criminally liable for the failure to protect a child or vulnerable person. Such an intervention was heavily criticised in some of the submissions, from what I have seen. The Wellington Community Law Centre was opposed to the use of criminalisation and increased penalties as a means of addressing serious social ills. In its view, the increased criminalisation of child abuse is not effective, and it is an expensive response with no evidence to show that it actually works.

The Whitireia Community Law Centre also considered that increased penalties for those who do not fulfil their legal duty to report child abuse may promote accountability but do little to assist those who are actually suffering at the hands of the abusers. In its view, the Government should increase funding for agencies directly connected to help those in abusive relationships, such as Women’s Refuge.

I would be interested to hear the views of the Minister of Justice on these comments, and, indeed, the views of whānau, hapū, and iwi. This whole area is highly contentious. It is complex. How do we ensure that every child is protected and free from abuse? Part of the debate brings certain assumptions to the discussion, such as that child abuse will necessarily emerge out of relationships where domestic violence occurs, and that child abusers are necessarily linked to adult relationships where violence is a factor.

There is an assumption that all adults are necessarily able to intervene in the ill-treatment of a child, whether or not they are in a relationship—violent or otherwise. What about the situation for women who have been battered and threatened by an abuser, and who may not have the ability to protect the child or intervene on the child’s behalf? These are key questions that need some discussion, and they were alluded to by Metiria Turei.

Although the legislation may provide greater ability to identify a person or persons to be held responsible for causing intentional harm and/or injury of a child, we are concerned as to whether it will provide protection to adult members of the household who may also be at risk of harm and/or injury. The last thing we want to see emerge as a result of this legislation is more women arrested, charged, and incarcerated for failing to protect tamariki. I ask the Minister for the evidence for, and the analysis of, the phenomenon of battered woman’s syndrome.

The Department of Corrections has a very helpful statement on the definition of battered woman’s syndrome that I think bears understanding in this legislation. It describes battering as “[reducing] the victim to a state of fear and anxiety … that stretches her perception of fear beyond the timeframe of the battering incident. The relationship becomes characterised by ‘cumulative terror’ because of the constant state of fear that pervades the relationship.” It goes to state: “Repeated battering diminishes the woman’s motivation to respond, she becomes passive.” Her “sense of emotional well-being becomes precarious”, and, in effect, it prevents her “from perceiving and acting on opportunities to escape from the violence.”

We also know that battered women will bear the brunt of violence in a household in an attempt to protect their children from harm. This comes through time and time again. So we seek assurances that their efforts to do so will not lead them into a situation in which they are criminalised as a third party.

In closing, I say that the Māori Party is very concerned, and that we must take such analysis into consideration before progress can be made on this legislation. We will be looking to the Minister again for his advice on how such advice has shaped the bill. At this stage, then, we will not oppose the bill, which is driven, I hope, by the need to keep all children safe. However, our subsequent decisions rest on how these issues are raised throughout the debate. Kia ora.

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) : Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), a bill we had before the Social Services Committee for some time. We spent a great length studying this in detail and hearing from the public. I start by congratulating my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell on his speech, and I recognise that he and the Māori Party support this legislation. I say to Opposition members that I hope they will too. I did hear that they were through the committee—

Hon Steve Chadwick: We’ve said that.

TODD McCLAY: I ask the members whether that is all the way through.

Dr Rajen Prasad: All the way through.

TODD McCLAY: Well, that is good. I thank them for that, because I think it is important that our House works together wherever possible and whenever it can when it comes to issues of young people and children. I ask for—[Interruption]—I have not lost anything yet—the Green Party to rethink its issues. In fact, what its members have said is that they will not vote for the legislation, because we need to address the wider issues. Well, there are no issues wider than children who are abused and killed in this country.

It is important that members of this House think about what is important to them, the bigger issues and so on, but, fundamentally, in New Zealand far too many children are abused, far too many children are killed, and far too many family members and others sit by and watch it happen, and do not do enough about it. I recognised when we were at the select committee that in some cases the other people who would sit by these children while they were harmed were themselves victims also. But do members know what? That is not good enough for us in New Zealand. Every adult has to know that they not only have the ability to step in but also must step in and seek help and assistance when a young child is to be harmed. Children are some of the most vulnerable people we have in society. Too often adults around them in their own homes do nothing when they are being harmed by people they know.

Every year there are very many cases of children being abused, harmed, and killed. In my electorate of Rotorua there was a very high-profile case of a beautiful young girl, young Nia Glassie, who was killed. There were many adults in that home, whom the courts had dealt with, but nobody stepped in and nobody did anything about that. We had another high-profile case of the Kāhui twins, who were murdered. There were many adults in that home, and nobody knows what happened. There has been a high-profile court case, but nobody stepped up to say they knew what happened, they knew the person responsible, or that this is what we should do. Nobody has even said they wished they had acted to stop that from happening. Personally, I believe Chris Kāhui killed those children, but, actually, that is for others to consider now. What concerns me the most is that nobody stepped in and nobody has been held to account.

In Ngāruawāhia earlier this year a little baby of 6 months of age named Serena was killed in her own home. There were four, five, or six adults living there. They disappeared. Nobody knows what happened. Somebody from that community spoke up afterwards, a next-door neighbour who did not want to be named in the media. Those around her abused her and threatened her because she thought it was important that somebody stood up for the life of that young baby.

This bill will not fix all the ills. It will not stop people killing children in our country, sadly. What it will do is send a message to family members and to other adults that when somebody is vulnerable, a child or another adult, they have a duty to protect them, to step in, to do something about it, and to seek help when they think that that young person is in harm’s way. If they do not, then the bill before us, when it is the law, will hold them to account. When we come to the Committee stage I want to canvass and speak about other parts of this legislation, but at this stage I say that I am proud to have played a role in the way this legislation moved through the select committee. I commend it to the House.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) : Malo e lelei, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. It really does sadden me to stand and speak to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), not because we fail to support the bill—we do—but because it does not go far enough. There is much more that needs to be done; there is much more that is not being addressed. Also, it forces us to reflect on the harm that has been inflicted on so many of our children in New Zealand. When looking at this bill, we cannot help but think of the Kāhui twins, as mentioned by Mr McClay. We cannot help but think of children like Delcelia Witikā, baby Serenity, James Whakaruru, and many other children who have been treated incredibly badly. All of us who have children cannot even imagine what would drive someone to do that to their own children or to somebody else’s.

Our concern really is that although we support this bill, a lot of what the Government is doing will not address the issues that cause this abuse to happen. We have seen many reports put out recently that raise the awareness of, and draw the correlation between, poverty and child abuse, yet nothing is being done to address the extreme levels of poverty that we as a country are facing. The Government is failing New Zealand on that front. It talks about child abuse and the neglect and ill-treatment that are occurring, yet we see the Domestic Violence Reform Bill, which was widely consulted upon, continuing to languish at the bottom of the Order Paper. The last time I looked before today, it was at No. 58 on the Order Paper. Today, sadly, I look at the Order Paper and see that it is now at No. 72. So it is difficult to take the National Government seriously when it talks about child abuse and the need to address the child abuse that is occurring in this country. Something that should be considered urgent, something that should have been treated with a level of urgency, has instead just been pushed further and further back down the Order Paper.

We, of course, support any measures to prevent and mitigate the harm caused by child abuse. However, we have reservations with regard to the ability of certain provisions to be effective in combating the problem. According to the Hon Simon Power, the new offence of failing to protect a child or vulnerable adult will hold accountable household members who fail to notify authorities of abuse. It will no longer be an excuse for a person to say that he or she was not involved in the abuse: standing by and doing nothing makes people involved. This bill, according to the Hon Simon Power, makes that clear.

I have to say that, really, the Government has an appalling record when it comes to looking after the most vulnerable children in our society. Multiple reports this year have highlighted the plight of children. Although we support any efforts to combat child abuse in New Zealand, the Government has failed overall to protect children from poverty-related harm, which extends to abuse. Just last week, or the week before, I attended the launch of He Ara Hou: the Pathway Forward Report on getting it right for Aotearoa’s New Zealand and Pacific children. Some of the comments made there related to the poverty that our children are living in and experiencing. We know that with higher levels of poverty, we are at risk of higher levels of abuse, as well. So we wonder why the National Government is failing to address the level of poverty. Mānuka Hēnare, who did a lot of work on that report, said the single most important moral issue that we face is the poverty that we as a country are experiencing.

What concerns me is that although Māori and Pacific people make up only about 22 percent, I think, of the overall population, we make up over 50 percent of the number of children who are in poverty. Just over 200,000 children are in poverty and just over 100,000 of them are Māori and Pacific children. There is something wrong there, and that issue is not being addressed by the National Government. Despite its attempts to address the issue, if it cannot address the real issue, which is the poverty that our children are experiencing and the poverty that their parents are living in daily, then this kind of legislation will do little to actually alleviate the problems that we face.

We have heard from the Government about its green paper, and we saw it all over the news when it was launched. But as one school principal in Waitakere said to me, if this really is an urgent problem, if the abuse of our children really is an urgent problem, then why would the Government not push legislation that addresses it to its full extent—really addresses it—through under urgency in Parliament? That school principal knows that the National Government has no problem in using urgency in this House when it suits its needs: when it means pushing through things like national standards, which had no evidence base whatsoever, and which were not going to do anything to alleviate the problem of abused children. We have seen urgency used to push through legislation with regard to workers’ rights: the 90-day fire-at-will bill, which, again, will do nothing to address the problem that we face in respect of abused children. We have seen the Warner Bros Hobbit legislation pushed through in urgency, and, again, that did nothing to address the problem that we as a country face in respect of child abuse. All of that legislation the National Government prioritised and deemed to be urgent, yet it does nothing to address what should be the main issue of priority for any Government. That is to the National Government’s shame.

I think we all saw the media coverage of that green paper when it was launched. Afterwards I had a few conversations with the people who were involved. Is it not interesting that the Minister for Social Development and Employment decided to send the woman who heads the organisation that is the nation’s advocate for the rights of kids the paper 3 days in advance? The Minister said that woman would be allowed to speak on the day that the paper was launched, and that she wanted her to comment on the paper and tell the Government what she thought.

Hon Steve Chadwick: Oh, really?

CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes. When the leader of that organisation got back to the Minister for Social Development, she said she did have some points to make about some things that she thought were not addressed, or were not addressed well, in that paper. She said she would like to comment on that on the day that it was launched, because the Minister had said she could comment on it. Is it not interesting that the Minister for Social Development then held her here, but no longer gave her the right to speak on that paper?

This bill does not go far enough. Many things have been pushed through under urgency by that Government, but there is nothing that addresses the issues that we are facing, nothing that addresses the issue of child abuse, which we should be taking seriously as a Parliament.

Someone raised earlier the issue of the risk of increased family violence during the Rugby World Cup. That is another area in which the National Government has fallen down. It has done nothing to increase funding to the family violence prevention organisations over this period of time, despite the fact that we know through all the research that when we hold big sporting events like this, there will be increased levels of drinking and there will be increased levels of violence. Instead, the Government is silent, and nothing has been done to address that issue.

I look at this bill and I think yes, sure, we are going to support this going to a select committee, but, at the end of the day, we know that it will do very little to actually address the problems that we face. It will not help us to avoid situations like those we have confronted and experienced in the past, and it will do very little to protect our children. Thank you very much.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : In speaking to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), I think it is important to note there are a few things that we witness in this House that are a bit rich. One of the things that is a bit rich is to hear members from the other side of the House criticise this Government’s move against domestic and family violence. They introduced into Parliament the bill that the previous speaker, Carmel Sepuloni, was speaking about, and which is currently languishing at No. 72 on the Order Paper, days after this House rose for the last election—and then she talked about urgency! What did the Labour Government concern itself with under urgency in the House? It concerned itself with the Electoral Finance Act under urgency. It squandered the time in this House that it could have been using on this domestic violence legislation to have a tilt at—jiggery-pokery—an election it knew it was going to lose. Yet Carmel Sepuloni gets up in this House and tries to confront this side of the House with digging around with Parliament’s time in order to feather its own nest.

The other thing in relation to her talking about urgency is that those of us who were in the House between 2005 and 2008 remember the 1,700 amendments to the emissions trading scheme legislation that the Labour Government shoved up in the morning, and which were law by night. Labour members want to sit tall in the saddle on a high horse and claim the high ground, but they are wrong, wrong, wrong, and the public out there know it.

Another duplicity that I cannot get over in this House comes from the Green Party, because the Green Party, in terms of this bill, believe that it is fine to go on to private property to do a million dollars’ worth of damage to the Waihopai spy base, and walk away free because of an ill-conceived perception of the claim of right. At the same time, it is wrong to live in a household where one knows that child abuse is going on and to be able to walk away from any culpability whatsoever and say: “It’s not my kid, you can’t pin it on me. It’s not my kid, you can’t pin it on me.” The Green Party tries to justify its ridiculous stance on this piece of child protection legislation by saying that it is bigger than just this.

We talk about poverty, we talk about the causes and the drivers of child abuse, we talk about those who are living in inequity, we talk about those who have had a hard upbringing, and we talk those people who have been abused themselves and go on to replicate that behaviour, and it is all true. They all add to child abuse, and, guess what, we cannot fix it with one piece of legislation. We have laws in this country against rape, but people still get raped. We have laws in this country against murder, and people still get murdered. We have laws against child abuse in this country, and children are still abused—abused more than in just about any other Western country in this world.

We have had a number of names called out tonight but what we forget is this: if any one of us had the finger pointed at us right now, or a microphone shoved under our nose, we might at best be able to name five children who have been abused and killed in the last 10 years. But what we know is that about one child a month is killed in this country. So in the last 10 years there have been 120 of them, and largely they are faceless and nameless because of that abuse and the fact that that abuse is endemic in this country.

I cannot believe that a party that sits where the Green Party sits will not support this legislation, on those spurious arguments, but I do not know why I am surprised. The Green Party is the party that believes that we should not be able to go to the supermarket and buy alcohol, but we should be able to go to the dairy and buy Kronic; that if one has a bad back one should be able to grow a few plants of dope, and that would not be a problem, whatsoever. Its members believe that people can pee in a stream and poo in a caravan site but we have to have a clean streams accord and do something about that. It is absolutely duplicitous. They would criticise a dairy cow for doing exactly the same thing, bearing in mind they are animals. So it does not surprise me whatsoever that the Green Party has absolutely no problem with saying in terms of this bill that it is OK for someone to walk to Waihopai, slash the balloon with a knife, and do a million dollars’ worth of damage, but if someone is living in a house where they know a child is being abused and it is not their baby, then they should walk away scot-free. That is rubbish. We believe that people should be held to account.

Te Ururoa Flavell made a point that it takes a village to raise a family, and I believe that it does take a village to raise a family. I believe that at this time in this country, and with the statistics that we have to deal with, we should hold that village responsible for the raising of that child. I say to the House there is nothing worse than having to investigate child abuse allegations and child homicide. When one walks into a house and is met with just a closed-door attitude and the fact that there are only two witnesses to whoever killed or abused that child and one is dead and could never speak for themselves, as an investigator it is a horrible situation to be in. At the same time, trying to investigate, for instance, a death in an institution where everybody involved in that institution has every reason in the world to shut up and say nothing, and the rule of law and inculcating the right to silence allows them to do that, is a very, very difficult prospect. I can say that for investigators there is nothing harder to investigate than child abuse and child sexual abuse.

I am pleased to see that the Government has taken a stance on offending in respect of sexual grooming. The provisions of this bill allow, for instance, an investigator who is engaging with a paedophile online to make an arrest, hold someone to account, and put them before a court on charges prior to an offence actually taking place. Obviously, for an investigator to masquerade as a minor online in order to bring out the paedophile, to be able to confront them with the nature of their offending, and to explore what other offences they may well have been involved in, the investigator needs the ability to engage with the offender and to stop the offender short of committing an offence against a minor.

The bill also moves to increase the sentence for carrying a knife. In a number of our communities around this country carriage of a knife has become a regular thing. Unfortunately, when young people are heading uptown on a Friday night, a number of them are carrying knives. Previously, the law required evidence of an intention to use that knife in a crime, but the bill makes carrying a knife an offence if it is without reasonable excuse. That is how it should be, because the risk of carrying a knife in volatile situations is one that is far too severe.

I will finish by commenting on some remarks made by Su’a William Sio about where this Government has gone in respect of law and order. He was talking about South Auckland and its record of crime. We need to just bear in mind that going into the last election the previous Government had 300 police left in its quota of 1,000 to put on the street. The incoming National Government said it would take that 300 and would add another 300 to the quota.

Carmel Sepuloni: Took from other places in the country to put them there.

CHESTER BORROWS: Three hundred of those 600 police were placed in South Auckland. What that has meant in South Auckland, where that member who was interjecting resides, is 25 police cars double-crewed with relievers and their supervisors for 24 hours a day. The Labour Government had 9 long years to do it and did not. Since the National Government added the extra police we have seen a dramatic reduction in crime in South Auckland—that is lives saved in South Auckland. However, we will be waiting a really long time before members on that side would ever acknowledge any of it. More fool them.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : That was a very disappointing speech from Chester Borrows, who is a more reasonable member of the National Government. It really highlighted the deficiencies in this Government’s approach to dealing with child abuse and family violence. I think it is pretty appalling to say that the reason domestic violence legislation has not been progressed is that Labour passed the Electoral Finance Act.

Mr Borrows did not actually explain why domestic violence legislation has not been progressed in National’s term of Government. He gave a cursory mention of poverty and the connection between child abuse and poverty, and then he moved on and ignored any discussion of that issue, which is at the core of the problem. Then we got a rant against two of my colleagues on this side of the House, Carmel Sepuloni and Su’a William Sio. I respectfully say that Su’a William Sio knows his community in South Auckland a lot better than Mr Borrows knows the community, and Carmel Sepuloni knows her community in west Auckland very, very well.

I know from my colleague Su’a William Sio that family violence and child abuse are big problems in South Auckland and need to be addressed. Labour is supporting the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), so I do not know why we had to be yelled at. We are supporting this legislation, because we want as many tools as we can have to deal with child abuse and family violence. But we will point out the double standard when National members stand up in this House and give these fine speeches about child abuse and family violence, and about what we need to do, when the Government has cut funding to the very agencies that are working at the coalface to deal with child abuse and family violence.

It is all very well to pass legislation dealing with the tragic death or injury of a child after the fact—after the crime has taken place. That is fine; people need to be held responsible for what they do or, in terms of letting it happen, what they do not do. But it does not change the fact that a child has still died or been abused, and unless we make that our focus, and unless we say that our focus has to be that we do not need laws like this any more because we are dealing with the issue of child abuse so that children are not being put in that situation in the first place, then debates like this are pointless. We will go round and round in circles. It is like putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

What we in Labour have been talking about is putting children at the core of the policy work that we do. I can tell members that if the Government had done that, we would not have seen the cuts in family violence prevention spending that we saw this year. It is unbelievable that Women’s Refuge had its funding cut by more than $700,000 a year. It is unbelievable. How can that be justified, given the family violence problems we have in this country, and given that Women’s Refuge takes the women and children out of those dangerous environments and gives them a safe place to say?

I want to talk about the Tairāwhiti Abuse Intervention Network, or TAIN. This is an organisation of social service providers in Gisborne and the East Coast that has come together to deal with the horrible reality that we have an enormous problem with family violence and child abuse in Gisborne. We are one of the worst areas in the country. The network has been doing amazing work and has been working together very well. The network involves a wide range of organisations, including Government departments and the police.

The network is actually starting to get results, so imagine its surprise when earlier this year it was told that its funding was not secure and that it will have to apply to keep its child advocates, who are doing amazing work around the country and are now gone, unless the communities themselves can find the funding to keep them on. The network was told this at the beginning of June, and that it had to get its applications in. From 1 July the network did not even know whether its funding would continue and whether it could continue to employ its staff. It was having to jump through ridiculous bureaucratic hoops to keep doing what is has always done very, very well, because this Government, in a desperate attempt to pay for last year’s unaffordable tax cuts—which, by the way, did not go to the very families we are talking about—decided to trim some money from family violence prevention funding.

The Tairāwhiti Abuse Intervention Network was very disappointed. It did not get all the money it was hoping it would get. Even worse, it is now on an annual funding regime, whereby it does not know from year to year whether it will have any security of funding or whether it will get funding at all. If the Government really wants to do something about family violence and child abuse, why would it do that? That is why the words from the members opposite are so hollow. Speeches in this House will not make a difference when the Government is chopping off at the knees the very organisations that are at the coalface every single day. Those are the people who will actually get some traction when we talk about dealing with family violence and child abuse.

I want to talk about some of the changes that are happening in the Housing New Zealand Corporation at the moment. These changes will make it even harder for us to get on top of this problem. I have had people come to me; I had one in my office a couple of weeks ago. This woman had taken her 6-year-old daughter out of a gang house. That woman deserves a medal, as far as I am concerned. She was born into a gang. Everyone she knows is in the gang. That is just the reality of her life. But she wanted better for her daughter than she had, so she moved to a Housing New Zealand Corporation house. Her daughter was doing well in school. Now, she had some issues with intimidation from the gang. They would come around and try to scare her because, you know, they do not like people who walk out and try to leave that situation. This created a situation with her neighbours, who were understandably concerned at this activity. They complained to the Housing New Zealand Corporation and she was evicted—she was evicted.

On what planet is it good for that 6-year-old child, whose mother took her out of a gang house, to send her back to a gang house because of petty politics from this National Government and its approach to the Housing New Zealand Corporation? I am sick and tired of seeing people come through my office—and I know my colleagues feel the same way—who are victims of the stupid policy that the Housing New Zealand Corporation has.

The Housing New Zealand Corporation has a one-size-fits-all, “we’re going to get the bad buggers out” policy—all that kind of rhetoric—without looking at the individual circumstances of each situation and asking what it means for the child in that situation. What is in the best interests of that child? Is it letting them stay in the Housing New Zealand Corporation house, away from a gang environment, or is it being able to stand up in Parliament and say: “We’re getting tough on really bad tenants.” and sending that 6-year-old back to a gang house? How is that in the best interests of children and in the best interests of keeping children free of abuse in this country? It is not—it is not at all.

Then we have the changes that are happening with the current restructuring of the Housing New Zealand Corporation, where, apparently, our social housing provider no longer has any social role, at all. Housing New Zealand Corporation staff—tenancy managers—have traditionally done a fantastic job working with tenants, developing relationships, and connecting them to other social service providers and other Government departments where appropriate. They keep them housed and make sure they can sustain their tenancies, which for some tenants is not easy, for a range of reasons.

The reality is that a number of people in Housing New Zealand Corporation properties have high and complex needs and will always require some level of pastoral care and support in order to be able to sustain their tenancies. I know that the Government does not like that reality—I know that it would like to get all these people out of Housing New Zealand Corporation houses—but that is the reality. It is why we have social housing—to protect these people, to look after them, and to make sure that every child in New Zealand is able to grow up in appropriate, affordable, safe housing.

But now this Government says that actually the Housing New Zealand Corporation has no social role whatsoever. Well, do members know what? Tenancy managers are often that fresh pair of eyes that walks into a house and sees that something is wrong and that there is a need that has to be addressed. This Government has said that now they should just ignore that—they should just ignore that—because that is the problem of Child, Youth and Family or the Ministry of Social Development.

One of the biggest problems we have in our public sector is the siloing. Everyone is pushing these people from one Government department to another, and no one is taking responsibility. Why are we not saying to every Government department that comes into contact with a vulnerable family or a family where there might be some need that there is no wrong door? Why are we not saying that where there is a problem, we fix it? Why are we not saying that where a tenancy manager sees a need, they deal with it? They do not just say it is no longer their problem. They do not just say that that is the problem of the Ministry of Social Development and they do not have to worry about the things they have seen.

The changes to the Housing New Zealand Corporation will see our vulnerable children in an even more perilous situation, and none of the fine words that we have heard from Government members tonight will do anything to improve their position.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) : It is a pleasure to take a call—the final call—on this bill. I have to remind members of the Opposition, who sound as though they have not actually read a word of this bill, that it is the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2). I say that it sounds as though they have not read a word of this bill because for the last half an hour I have not actually heard the bill itself being addressed. We heard about domestic violence and about child poverty, but it was as if someone in the Labour research unit decided that today those were the issues those members were going to talk about, regardless of the bill that was on the Order Paper.

I cannot allow all of those claims to go unanswered. Many of them are false, many of them are without merit, and many of them are without substance. I will take the first point. Anyone listening tonight to the Opposition could be under the impression that this bill deals only with poor children and children from poor families. Let me remind the House and anyone watching that this bill is about every child. Every child who suffers from domestic violence and every child who is not cared for properly is a child whom this bill protects.

I will read out a definition for Labour members who have not actually picked up the bill. We know that some Labour members have not picked up the bill, because Carmel Sepuloni did not even know that this bill had been to a select committee. She said that Labour would be supporting this bill going to a select committee. I am sorry to inform Carmel Sepuloni that it has already been to a select committee. We know how much she cares about this bill! She did not even know that it had been to a select committee. Let me read out the definition. New section 195(3), inserted by clause 7, states: “For the purposes of this section and section 195A, a child is a person under the age of 18 years.” That means that every child counts. That means that every child who has suffered from somebody not providing them with the necessities of life, and every child who has not had someone looking out for them, is a child whom this bill covers. So to Labour members, who have said just about all night that this bill is about only poor children, I say that it is about every child. I wanted to correct that, because I was somewhat offended that not every child was considered equal in the speeches coming from the Opposition.

I will also answer the claims that this Government has done nothing about domestic violence. That could not be further from the truth. My good friend Chester Borrows reminded me earlier that this Government dealt with the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill a number of years ago. It was one of the first—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member. I am having increasing difficulty hearing what the member is saying. Can members just tone it down.

JAMI-LEE ROSS: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was almost at full volume, but I will try to speak a bit louder if you like. This Government has dealt with the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill. The Opposition claims that this Government has done nothing about domestic violence, but the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill has been passed by this Government. It increased penalties for domestic violence against children. In that domestic violence legislation we extended protection for child victims of domestic violence, and we introduced police safety orders that extended protection from abusive adults. Those were some of the measures around domestic violence that this Government has dealt with. The members opposite who say that National has done nothing about domestic violence are absolutely wrong—they are absolutely wrong.

I will also answer something that Dr Prasad said. He was one of the first speakers from the Opposition. He made a bold claim that National has not done enough for children. Let me remind Dr Prasad and the Labour Opposition that Labour had 9 years to pass a bill like this. Labour had 9 years to pass a bill on the protection of children. It had 9 years to pass a bill that doubles the penalty for cruelty to a child. Did Labour pass a bill that doubles the penalty for cruelty to a child? No, it did not. This Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) doubles the penalty for cruelty to a child. Did Labour, when it had 9 years in Government, pass a bill that creates a new offence of failure to protect a child or vulnerable adult? No, it did not. But Labour members have the gall to come here tonight and say that National has done nothing and has not done enough for children, when we are here today debating a bill that the National Government brought in and put on the Order Paper. It has been through a select committee, I remind Carmel Sepuloni again. We are here debating it because this Government is about action. This Government is about protecting children. This Government is about dealing with domestic violence, through the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill passed already by this Government. I ask the Labour members opposite who think that not enough is being done for children and that not enough is being done about domestic violence to stand up tomorrow morning, look in the mirror, and ask themselves what Labour did in its 9 years in Government.

We are here today debating the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) because it is an important measure. It is something that National members are passionate about, and it is something we are doing right here, tonight. I say thank you to Labour members for supporting the bill. It is good to hear that they are supporting the bill, but many of the claims they have been making tonight simply just do not stand up to scrutiny.

Let us talk about a couple of other points in the bill that have not had much discussion. They are important points. A part of the bill has not had a lot of discussion, but we also need to cover it. This bill also changes the law around sexual grooming. It gives the police the power to prosecute people who are detected by police to be engaging in sexual grooming activities. Currently, the law does not allow a person to be prosecuted if the person whom they were sexually grooming was a police officer operating under cover. That is quite a flaw in the legislation as it currently stands, which this bill also seeks to change. Somebody who is engaging in the act of sexual grooming, whether they are doing it to a minor or to a police officer posing as a minor, is still engaging in sexual grooming. The current legislation does not allow anything to be done about those people who sexually groom an under-cover police officer, and this bill will allow the police to take action on that.

Another point in this bill that I want to talk about, which I have not heard mentioned at all tonight, is that the maximum penalty for the possession of an offensive weapon will rise from 2 years’ to 3 years’ imprisonment. I am sure many members of Parliament, when they are out in their constituencies, have heard from members of the public—and I heard this myself on Saturday at my stall at the Howick market—that the penalties are just not strong enough for people who commit crimes in the community. This bill will increase the maximum penalty for possession of an offensive weapon from 2 years’ to 3 years’ imprisonment.

I repeat that one of the other significant parts of this bill is the doubling of the penalty for cruelty to a child. This Government is taking action. This Government cares about the protection of children. We reject the accusation that the Labour Opposition has made tonight that National has done little for children. We are right here, debating a bill that Labour itself had 9 years to introduce but did not. National is taking the action. National has brought the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) to this Parliament, and I look forward to it being passed sometime in the near future.

Hon SIMON POWER (Acting Leader of the House) : Following the agreement of the Business Committee I seek leave, following the second reading of the Māori Purposes Bill, for the bill to be divided into four bills, as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 270, and for the four bills so divided to be set down for third reading forthwith, without debate.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.