NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) : The Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill was to be historic legislation for Auckland, offering tremendous opportunity not just for the people of Auckland but also for the people of New Zealand. The Auckland Governance Legislation Committee did not hear just from Aucklanders. The members of the committee had a day in Wellington to hear from people there, and we heard people from other parts of New Zealand. Although we are here to deliver a strong regional entity for the people of Auckland, which they have never had in the last 50 years, and although we are here to deliver strong units of local representation, we are also here to be able to put a model in place that we can stand up and say, with our hands on our hearts, could work in other parts of New Zealand. That is not to say it is up to us to make that decision; it is up to people in other parts of New Zealand to decide whether they want to have change in their areas. I am proud to stand to support legislation that is supported by the Opposition in terms of providing for one unitary authority, that is supported by the Opposition in terms of providing for local boards, and that is supported by the Opposition in terms of providing for the funding of those local boards in order to give them decent functions and powers.

But the debate that we have had has not been about this historic day for Auckland, it has not been about the public transport system that we want to fix, it has not been about Auckland’s urban design that desperately needs to be better, and it has not been about the lost opportunities to attract major events, which we will finally, maybe, get. There has been a whole lot of scaremongering from members on the other side of the Chamber. We have seen this in the provisions around the protection of the sale of assets, for which there is a clear provision within the Local Government Act 2002, in section 97. We have seen this in the amendments that Opposition members have put up about a Social Issues Board, when know that Paula Bennett has already established one. We have seen this when the Opposition talked about mammoth costs, which they have absolutely no evidence of. The point I would make about that relates to the cost of delay. Aucklanders have been waiting for this step. The previous Labour Government set up the royal commission because it did not want to make a decision. Aucklanders have been waiting for this for not just 10 years; they have been waiting for this for over 50 years. Finally, we have had 18 months of a royal commission looking at the issue, with 3,500 submissions made to it, and we have had a select committee process in which 2,500 submissions were made. What exactly would the Labour Opposition want to see happen?

We have had over 2½ years of consultation, but now it is time to make a decision, and sometimes decisions can be hard. But I am confident, and I know the Labour Party agrees with me on this, that we will finally deliver a strong regional entity to the people of Auckland, we will finally deliver some local boards that will have real functions and powers, and we will finally deliver to those communities a real say over local issues. I am proud to support this legislation. I am proud to be in this Chamber on a historic day for Auckland, talking about the opportunities that have been lost and the opportunities that Aucklanders will be able to take in the future. It is sad that we are looking at Opposition members on the other side of the Chamber unable to stand up and say they actually agree with us on those issues. There are areas where we disagree, but, actually, a lot of those areas are not in this legislation. I am proud to stand here to support this legislation, which provides for one regional entity for Auckland and a system of strong local representation. This is a historic day for Auckland. Thank you.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) : I listened to Nikki Kaye, who has just resumed her seat, saying how proud she was to get up to defend the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. What a pity the Cabinet Ministers have not done that. We had Jonathan Coleman, who stumbled and dithered in the debate until someone told him it was the wrong debate to be talking about. We have two other people—the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, and the Associate Minister of Local Government, John Carter. They are both sincere people who talk with passion for Auckland. Well, I talk with passion for Auckland too. Nikki Kaye did not tell us one thing. She did not tell us why she has not told the ratepayers of Waiheke Island—and they would love to know—why they should be funding the intersection improvements along Ti Rakau Drive in Pakuranga. They will not hear that from Nikki Kaye, but they will be paying for them. She should put them on the ferry, take them out to Ti Rakau Drive and show them what they will be paying for.

This is what this bill is about: it is about the executive not fronting up. I want people to tell me why the executive is not down here defending its legislation. Have we heard Steven Joyce talk about this? When is Steven Joyce getting up and having a go? What is Wayne Mapp saying about this bill? Rodney Hide is one person who talks about it, but does Murray McCully? No. Jonathan Coleman has had a go. Paula Bennett—there is a name. She will get in any scrap as long as it is between teenagers and she can step inside, but she will not get involved in this debate. There is Maurice Williamson. Have we heard from him, a good Auckland member, a bit of a maverick? But, of course, no, we have not. He has his gag on. There is John Key. We do not see John Key. Not a word from him. Judith Collins sits there day after day, saying nothing, absolutely crushed by this debate. That is why, I think, they call her “The Crusher”. She has been crushed by this debate, and has not got up to speak. People of Papakura think this is disgraceful. What did we have last night? We had Mr Tremain from Napier getting up to talk about the Auckland bill when we had Ministers from Auckland who were not saying anything. That is quite interesting, really. We had Colin King from Kaikōura getting up to have a go. But where were the Auckland Ministers?

I have to say that the people of Auckland would have expected that an administration that has such important legislation for Auckland would get up and defend it, but no, that has not been the case at all. They have sat there with their mute buttons on. They have sat there with their gags on. I had National people tell me yesterday that they were not allowed to speak. We went for about 2½ hours with no National person getting up at all. They tried that tactic—the big silence. In the end the people of Auckland will realise that, when the mail drop goes round the Papakura electorate asking why the National member did not get up to speak and why she was so quiet, and when it goes round Botany to Pansy Wong’s supporters asking why she did not get up to support the bill. As the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Pansy Wong represents half the population of Auckland, well over 600,000 to 700,000 people, but what did she have to say? Yes, she was in the Chamber, she was busying herself, she sat in the Chair, but she did not say “boo”. I think she must have found it pretty hard even drawing breath down here, because over on the Government side they got people from out of Auckland to stand up and have a say.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) : Thank you for the opportunity to speak once again on this very important Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill.

Dr Rajen Prasad: Something new! Something new, Paul!

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: I want to take a further call on the powers and functions of the Local Government Commission, because, as we go forward and this very important bill is expeditiously enacted by the wonderful National-ACT coalition, the Local Government Commission will become more and more important. I think it is really important to realise that the Local Government Commission is a quasi-judicial body, and its decisions can be challenged only on points of law.

One of its major things is to ensure that it does everything practical to keep communities of interests together. As I said last night, the bill’s commentary makes it very clear that the bill will empower the commission to undertake consultation before determining the city’s boundaries, but it does not specify a process or require any particular person to be consulted. In the commentary, members of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee urged the commission to carry out a comprehensive consultation process with Aucklanders before setting the city and the local board boundaries. Dr Prasad says I should say something new. Well, this is hugely important for every Aucklander, for every board, for every ward, and maybe even Dr Prasad might take some interest in this very, very crucial decision-making.

The reality is that when it came to the southern boundary, catchment issues, Treaty issues, and development issues have probably overridden communities of interest. So the duties of the Local Government Commission are going to be incredibly important. I go back to those small communities south of Pukekohe, to Buckland, which is 200 to 300 metres away, and Tuakau, which is connected by a sewerage system to Pukekohe, but has had community of interest involvement for over 100 years. It may be that the Local Government Commission can use its extended powers—its flexibility—to include those areas if those areas want that to happen. It may be that it is outside normal interpretation, but I think it very important that Parliament is aware that the Local Government Commission is charged with the responsibility of doing everything practicable to keep communities of interest together. Exactly how far they can go outside the existing boundaries is not well defined, although, indeed, they have the flexibility to do so.

When we come to Part 3, “Transitional arrangements”, we learn that the Local Government Commission must determine the boundaries no later than 1 March. I understand an interim report will occur in November, and there will be the opportunity to make submissions. I say that it is absolutely vital that the Local Government Commission is adventurous, innovative, flexible, and courageous in deciding on communities of interest, and that it does the very best it possibly can for the whole of Auckland, particularly for Franklin. I challenge the whole of this Committee to support the Local Government Commission in doing this very important work. I challenge the whole of this Chamber to ensure that it can be courageous, that it can be flexible, and that it is given the appropriate resources to ensure that that happens. It is somewhat ironic that it was none other than the Hon George Hawkins who put in a finely crafted amendment—

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : I would like to raise a couple of issues in the last hour of this debate. One of them is the extraordinary hypocrisy of the ACT Party in refusing to support—

Hon John Carter: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member knows that that word is out of order in this House and should not be used.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): It is a longstanding tradition that that word is not used in referral to people or parties in this House. The member will desist from using it.

SUE KEDGLEY: I would like to discuss how extraordinarily unusual it is that the Minister of Local Government, who has, of course, masterminded this legislation, has gone around publicly declaring his support for the single transferable vote (STV)—I have seen him on television on numerous occasions supporting STV, and he has told the public that the reason for his not supporting Māori seats is he supports STV—but now we learn that he will not vote in the House for STV. The excuse he is using for not voting for it is the collective responsibility of Cabinet. In the meantime the Government is saying it would support Māori seats, but because of ACT it cannot. So there is a sort of game going on here whereby they blame each other. It is an extraordinary situation. He runs around all over New Zealand saying he supports STV, then he comes into this Chamber and votes it down.

As a result, Auckland will likely have a mayor who gains only 20 percent of the vote. As John Banks pointed out yesterday in a very revealing radio interview that I listened to, only about 40 percent of people vote in local government elections, so one would need only 20 percent of the vote to be voted in. With the powers in the bill, powers that no other mayor has, that mayor—for example, John Banks—would be able to control the Auckland Council, dominate the council, and drive through his agenda. So it is extraordinary that ACT is using as an excuse for its opposing Māori seats the fact that it supports STV, then, when it comes to the crunch, voting against it. I know we are not allowed to use the “h” word, but it is hard to think of other words that could be used as a substitute.

The second issue I wanted to raise is that I think everyone should read an article in today’s New Zealand Herald by Joel Cayford warning us of what is happening quietly behind the scenes. He is concerned that the new Auckland Transport Agency being set up to replace the Auckland Regional Transport Authority will be completely independent, and that it will not be required to give effect to the Auckland regional transport strategy and will not be accountable for delivering a regionally agreed transport strategy. In other words, a body will be set up that the people of Auckland have no control over. He points out that already the Auckland Transition Agency has written to the Auckland Regional Council and said that it is not appropriate for the regional council to publicly notify the regional policy statement, which is being reviewed, and which is, in fact, the paramount strategic planning document for the region. Aucklanders need to be aware of that. The agency is already saying that the regional council should not be able to publicly notify the most significant planning document for the region. He warns that it looks as though the same thing is going to happen to water; that body will be completely separated off from the Auckland Council, it will be a completely separate entity, and it will be required to be accountable to not the new council but, rather, the Government.

We are starting to see the hidden agenda come through. The Government needs to be aware that this new council arrangement will be in place for 1 year before the next election. Aucklanders will have plenty of time to discover that this great new model, which Nikki Kaye has been going on about, has not delivered grassroots democracy. The local boards, which are little more than community boards, have not been given the powers that Mr Carter and others are promising. They will quickly become disillusioned when they realise that despite all the spin about empowering local boards, the local boards do not have any power.

Hon JOHN CARTER (Associate Minister of Local Government) : I want to take a call to respond to the speeches made by George Hawkins and Sue Kedgley and to comment that I had expected this morning, given that we have about half an hour left for this debate, that the Opposition would want, finally, to set out its thoughts on directions and plans for how Auckland might work. Unfortunately, Mr Hawkins’ speech was all about asking why this or that person has not spoken.

For a start, I say we are in the Committee of the whole House. The second thing is that there is a report of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee to Parliament about what happened, so it is appropriate that the majority of the speeches from Government members are made by members who attended the select committee. It is the select committee’s report to Parliament. To suggest that, for some reason, the Government, the executive, is dodging its responsibilities is silly.

Hon Darren Hughes: Too busy chairing select committees.

Hon JOHN CARTER: Exactly. I certainly did chair the select committee, and I was pleased to do so. I was pleased about the cooperation we had from every member of the committee. It was a very good select committee, which did a lot of very hard work. It is just silly to suggest that, for some reason, it is wrong for members of the select committee to be taking the majority of the calls in the Committee on this bill.

I had thought that this discussion would be about setting the pace and setting the future direction by talking about how Auckland will actually look as we move forward. So, in the absence of anything in that regard from the Opposition, I ask members to allow me to take a few moments to explain to Parliament the changes the select committee recommended to the legislation. Primarily the issue was this: we were looking to ensure that there is an overarching regional structure that will look after the things that matter to Auckland. The neat thing about that is that the Opposition members absolutely agree with that. They are supportive of it, and I say to them it is to their credit that they have added to the strength of that. They need to be recognised for their involvement as we moved forward and made this bill a better bill at the select committee. I recognise the contribution made by the members of the Opposition, along with that of the members of the Government. It was a good team in that regard.

The second issue, and the biggest issue of concern to the people of Auckland—and I know that one or two members have already commented on this—was the issue of the local boards. I listened to the address by Sue Kedgley, who has blinkers on with regard to the functions of those boards and other issues relating to them. Again, I say the Labour Opposition members, along with members of the Government, worked very constructively to make sure we got this bit right. They recognised, as we did, that the most important thing we could do after we got the overarching structure right was to make sure that the local voice—local democracy; the heartbeat of Auckland—was given the opportunity to express itself. So, again, I commend the Opposition for working with the Government to make sure we made the bill a better one. I think that, generally, we can all stand in this Chamber and say we made the bill a better bill, and, as a consequence, we will make Auckland a better place.

I think it is a great disappointment that Sue Kedgley still has doubts. I can understand why she may have them, but she should have taken the advice of her colleague Sue Bradford, who was actually one of the most strident voices in the select committee and the member who inquired most often about how this arrangement will work. Members of the Opposition and members of the Government would agree with me about that. Sue Bradford repeatedly questioned the officials on how the arrangement will work. She came away from the select committee satisfied that we have got it generally right. No one is suggesting we have got it absolutely perfect.

Hon Darren Hughes: That’s true.

Hon JOHN CARTER: Absolutely—I am the first to say that, but let us remember that this arrangement is a work in progress. We have a third Auckland bill coming up, and it will allow us to adjust those things that we find need to be reconsidered. We are prepared to do that. That is what this Government is about. We do not just put something in place and tell people that is it, so they must take it or leave it. We are prepared to work with people and with Parliament to make Auckland a better place, so the legislation is a work in progress in that regard. It is silly for Sue Kedgley to suggest that there is something fatally flawed in the work we have done with regard to the local boards.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) : I am pleased to take a call. I have been waiting to take a call since late yesterday evening when I felt utterly compelled to come down to the Chamber, having heard the very wise words of Mr Chris Tremain. Let me tell members why I felt compelled to come down to the Chamber and listen to Mr Tremain in full flight. Well, he spoke about the Māori seats. I found his views interesting, to say the least, and patronising at best. He spoke of the renaissance we are seeing within the Māori culture and said it was somehow the reason why we do not need Māori seats on the super-city. For some reason, the fact that we now sing the first part of our national anthem in Māori means we do not need Māori seats in Auckland. The war we have waged has been won, apparently, and we can all sit back and feel very satisfied with what we have achieved. But Chris Tremain’s speech did not stop there. I thought we had reached a new low when Mr Tremain explained to us that if Māori can organise a hīkoi they can organise a campaign across 70,000 voters. A hīkoi and a campaign in a super-city election is exactly the same thing!

I have two words to sum up the speech we heard last night from Mr Tremain: naive and patronising. We heard from that member that, for all the Government’s chat about listening to people, every single submitter who told the select committee why Māori needed specific representation was wrong. And, apparently, not just the submitters were wrong—the 15,000 who marched on the issue were wrong, according to the Government. We heard an utterly patronising explanation as to why. But it did not stop there. The explanation we heard from Mr Tremain, further on, was that women are represented well in Parliament and do not need specific seats in this House in order to get represented. Mr Tremain now sounds to me more like the Peter Cetera of Parliament fighting for the honour of women. I say to Mr Tremain that first past the post did not afford greater representation to women or minority groups in this House. What are two of the big contributors that have seen greater representation in this House? Firstly, MMP certainly helped the cause, and, secondly, Māori seats certainly helped the cause, as well. So I say to Mr Tremain that he shows an absolute lack of understanding of the fundamentally important things about our democracy that have enhanced representation in this House. I thought that what we heard from him last night was an absolutely naive presentation of the current reality in New Zealand. I was disappointed by that.

But it did not stop there. When it comes to the representation issue we have not been talking just about the importance of the Māori seats; we have been talking about the other groups that absolutely deserve a greater say in the way that the Auckland Council will work. We have talked about ethnic groups in Auckland. We have also talked about young people. I want to come back to that issue, as it specifically relates to the election process and to the representation young people can expect to be afforded through the super-city structure. Young people represent 37 percent of the population of Auckland. That is mammoth. They have communicated with the select committee and their members of Parliament. I know that many of them approached their local member on this issue and asked what MPs thought the chances were of a young person—someone under the age of 25—being elected to the council.

It is a very simple question. Let us look at the way it currently works in New Zealand. I found out how young people are currently represented across the various councils and local boards. The numbers are dismal—fewer than 10 across the country—and the Government expects that the new structure, with wards with as many as 70,000 people in them, will be an accessible ground for young people to campaign in and win in their own right.

I think young people are electable—absolutely—and I think they should be given the same opportunity as everyone else, but I want to inject a little reality into the situation. A young person campaigning against an opponent who is doubtless well-resourced and well-funded will have some difficulties working across such a large ward, and we need to acknowledge that.

PAUL QUINN (National) : I say to my friend and colleague Jacinda Ardern that unlike her colleague Shane Jones, I will not chastise her for mispronouncing the word “hīkoi”. If Shane Jones wishes to lambaste her, she should give me a call and I will come running to her aid.

This is the last time that I will have the opportunity to speak and address this debate. Unfortunately, I have been summoned to attend a select committee meeting in order to hold the Opposition to account. So unfortunately I will not be able to partake in the rest of the debate. I take this opportunity to provide some overview commentary on some of the comments that we have heard from the Opposition. I would like to start with my friend and colleague the Hon George Hawkins. In his contribution last night he wondered aloud in his offerings why the Government members had not been standing up to debate, and why the Ministers had not presented themselves to front up to the debate. Well, let me tell the Hon George Hawkins that the reason we have not had to respond is simply due to the quality of the offerings from the Opposition. There has been nothing to respond to.

The Hon George Hawkins got up last night and said that we would sell the assets. When he was challenged to say which assets, he said that he did not know. The point is that Labour has not offered up anything to respond to.

Moana Mackey: What about the Māori seats?

PAUL QUINN: I tell Moana that in frustration and, I might say, at the request of the Opposition, we have had to get up and entertain those members. We have had to get up and entertain the Opposition members because they got frustrated and bored with their own contributions.

As my time shortens, I want to lay out for the record my congratulations on the outstanding contributions to the work on this bill, under the great leadership of the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Rodney Hide, who has led this process, in close consultation with, and support from, the Hon John Carter. Of course, the Hon Darren Hughes—I think the member has that title, but there are lots of “honourables” on that side of the Chamber; they were dishing them out like gongs—criticised the fact that the Associate Minister, John Carter, chaired the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee. He said that it had never been done before. Well, so what? We are visionaries. This shows the seriousness with which we take the issue. We wanted strong leadership and we wanted an experienced member to chair that meeting. John Carter was the man to do it. I am tremendously proud of the work he has done.

I want to congratulate the other National members of the committee. Nikki Kaye has done an outstanding job over the last 24 hours in rebutting the contributions from the Opposition. Simon Bridges made an excellent contribution. Dr Paul Hutchison has represented his constituents as a true constituent MP, and that should go on the record. In fact, I might nominate him for a gong in this year’s Honours List. I think that would be deserved. The list goes on. Tau Henare led the subcommittee hearing on the Māori seats.

Simon Bridges: Jackie Blue!

PAUL QUINN: Jackie Blue was another one. They all gave outstanding contributions. We really have to wonder where Phil Twyford was in all of this.

Simon Bridges: Raymond Huo!

PAUL QUINN: Raymond? Was he on the committee? No.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) : I want to make some comments about one of the amendments that Labour is putting up in this debate. It proposes the establishment of an Auckland Services Performance Auditor. This is one of the many recommendations of the royal commission that this Government has chosen to sideline and ignore. Aucklanders will judge the success of the super-city on three things. The first is rates: what it will cost us. The second is democracy: whether we will still have a say in the running of our city. The third is the quality and scope of the services of the city. The royal commission recommended that council-controlled organisations be established for virtually all of the council enterprises. Two of the main ones will be the new water monopoly, which the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill will go a long way to establishing, and the new Auckland Transition Agency.

I want to focus my comments on the water monopoly for a second. It is a hugely ambitious project, a vertically and horizontally integrated water company dealing with drinking water and waste water right across the city—huge assets that are essential for the long-term well-being of the city. Water, as we know, is a human right—nothing is more essential for human survival than access to water—yet there is concern and anxiety across Auckland today about the likely impact of this new organisational merger on water bills for Aucklanders. We know that the Government policy and the recommendation of the royal commission is that volumetric pricing be rolled out across the city. We also know by comparative analysis of water charging across the different territorial authorities in Auckland that if the volumetric pricing regime currently used by Metro Water were to be implemented in other councils, then a family of four in the North Shore, Waitakere, or Manukau would be looking at a $700-a-year increase in their water rates.

This alone is reason enough to seriously consider an appropriate accountability mechanism for this new monopoly company. The amendment that we are putting up from this side of the Committee proposes that the new performance auditor be responsible for ensuring that the water company is accountable, that it is transparent, that its pricing practices are subject to scrutiny, and that it is held accountable for providing the highest standards of customer service. The performance auditor would report publicly not just on the water company but on all of Auckland Council’s operations and all of its council-controlled organisations. It would conduct a 3-yearly efficiency and effectiveness review of the new water company. We all have a stake in this issue. Auckland ratepayers are all water consumers.

The other aspect to the amendment is an annual performance audit of the Auckland Council. This provision needs to be in the bill because the water monopoly is well under way. This bill mandates the establishment of a fully integrated water company, and it has to be put in place if Aucklanders are to have trust and confidence that the new water company will behave in a way that is appropriate for a publicly owned monopoly, especially one that deals with such a vital commodity as water.

I want to make it clear that the proposal does not detract from the governance responsibilities of the Auckland Council. It does not set out to undermine the responsibility of those people who were elected through the political process and who are responsible for the council-controlled organisations and the operations of the council. The purpose of this amendment is to provide analysis, reporting, and advice so that Aucklanders can see with some regularity and transparency the quality of the operations of the Auckland Council. If we are going to go down the track of amalgamating, rationalising, and integrating all the operations of the council into such large operations, it is essential that this performance auditor is an advocate for citizens, that it protects the interests of citizens, and that it is able to go into bat to assist the politicians and the political process.

It is also a check on the bureaucracy.

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister of Local Government) : I thank everyone for the contributions to the debate. I think it has been a worthwhile debate on such important legislation. Let me walk through as many of the amendments that we will be voting on as I can.

First of all, I will explain what the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 62 involves. The amendment to clause 17C is a technical, consequential amendment to the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. The amendments to clauses 18 and 19 and the schedule will, as we have announced, extend the northern boundary to include the whole of the Rodney District, with a single-member ward based on the rural area of that district.

There are also amendments to the Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act that relate to annual reports. There currently is a requirement that each council prepares an annual report after 12 months. If we think about it, we realise it is silly for them to be doing that when they will have only 4 months to go. It will also be impossible for them to do their final 12-month wrap-ups. The amendment to clause 23 and the new clause 23B oblige the Auckland Transition Agency to prepare a planning document for the Auckland Council that will apply until the end of the 2010-11 financial year. New clause 23C fixes up a drafting error. New clause 23D requires that the existing local authorities prepare annual reports for the remaining 4 months only, but it also clarifies that they must set rates for a 12-month period in order to provide income for the new council. It also removes the obligation for the local authorities to prepare and adopt an annual report for the 2009-10 financial year and for the 2010-11 financial year; instead, they must prepare one report for the period 1 July 2009 to 31 October 2010, which is just a wrap-up report.

That is the Government Supplementary Order Paper that we will be voting on. There is also a range of amendments from members. Several in Hone Harawira’s name cover various options for having Māori seats: having Māori seats voted out of the general wards, having the Local Government Commission decide on Māori seats, and, indeed, having mana whenua seats, with candidates signing statutory declarations that they are mana whenua.

There is also a variety of amendments from the Labour Party. They are interesting because they go beyond the issue of Māori seats to picking up on the idea that there should be legislated advisory boards. This issue would be properly considered in the debate on the third Auckland Council bill, if Parliament was of such a mind. For example, Raymond Huo’s amendment includes the insertion of a new clause 12B, which would establish a statutory Asian Advisory Board. That option could be looked at in the debate on the third bill, because it does not relate to electing anyone, so that debate can be had again. Likewise with Su’a William Sio’s amendment to establish a statutory Pacific Advisory Board. Yes, he can raise that issue now, but it would be better raised in the debate on the third bill. Likewise with Jacinda Ardern’s amendment to establish a statutory Auckland Youth Council. That can be relitigated when we debate the third bill, which will be introduced into Parliament towards the end of this year and debated early next year.

I make the point that those amendments undermine local government to the extent that they involve our deciding through legislation how it will structure its advisory boards and how it will have its youth councils. One will find that local government bodies are doing those things all around New Zealand, but they are doing it in their own way, uniquely, and they can evolve it over time. They have an obligation to do it under the Local Government Act, and they do it. The danger we have is that if we make it statutory, we freeze how it should be done and how the relationship should be managed. If we think about it, we realise that this legislation may exist for 50 years. Of course, it will be amended over that time. But the proposed amendments would mean that Parliament was setting in place how the Auckland Council would interact with the community throughout the Auckland region. We might do better to give it a broad steer that it should have that interaction, then leave it up to the people of Auckland and the council itself to decide how it does it. Mr Prasad is shaking his head; he thinks we cannot do that. I just signal caution. It is something for Parliament to decide, but it may well be wiser to allow it to evolve, because all the wisdom does not exist in this place.

I also make the point that Parliament in that way would be establishing a category of citizens and interaction. We would be saying that a certain group is special, that mana whenua, or Māori, will have a certain number of seats, that Pacific Islanders and Asians are special enough to have advisory boards but not special enough to have their own seats. Again, we would be freezing that; the only way that it could be changed would be by coming to Wellington.

Dr Rajen Prasad: Only a mechanism to change laws.

Hon RODNEY HIDE: No, it is not only a mechanism; it is actually a legislative device. It is making the law. We have not done that for local government. We have had mechanisms evolve, and they are working quite well, whether in Manukau, Porirua City, or anywhere else. They are not legislated for.

In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone. I think the debate has been good. There is plenty of debate to be had, because we have the third bill still to come, when we will reconsider the whole issue of advisory boards. Thank you very much to everyone.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The time for this debate has concluded. Members may wish to note that there have been 202 speeches, by my calculation, from 49 different members.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 62 in the name of the Hon Rodney Hide be agreed to.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : I will be very brief on this. One would have to be completely crazy to take up the student loan repayment bonus. Therefore I think it is important that before people take up the repayment bonus, they receive adequate advice, so that they can ensure that they are making a prudent decision. There are very, very few circumstances in which it would be in somebody’s best interests to take it up. My colleague Trevor Mallard has put forward an amendment to that effect, which would ensure that somebody receives appropriate advice and guidance before taking up the repayment bonus. I commend his amendment to the House.

COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) : It is indeed a pleasure to speak to the Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill during its second reading. I would like briefly to cover off the intention of the bill, the reasons why someone would take advantage of its provisions, and some of the work that was given significant consideration by the Education and Science Committee.

I will start off by saying that this bill is consistent with the National Party’s goals of creating incentives for people to get ahead. It is consistent with the National Party’s vision of aspiration and making the most of one’s opportunity. It is a worthy bill. It is designed to do two things: first, to encourage students to pay back their student loans quicker; and, second, to reduce the cost of, or add value to, the student loan scheme. From that point of view I would like to go through some of the points that I think are good reasons why people will take up the opportunity.

The select committee learnt that there are a significant number of people who are risk-averse or debt-averse, and that these are the people who will take up the opportunity. We learnt that some 40,000 people have paid off, in effect, more than the compulsory part of their payments. The projections from the officials are that this bill would increase that number by another 14,000-odd, to a level of 54,800 people.

Student borrowers who have completed their degree and are thinking of going overseas would be very wise to take up this opportunity while they still have that interest-free component. The facts and the figures also show that this bill is designed so that borrowers who are overseas can take advantage of the bill’s provisions. Fifteen percent of all borrowers in the student loan scheme are overseas, and that is 77,000 people. Of that number a significant proportion have overdue payments, and they are a group that the Inland Revenue Department has great difficulty managing. It is expected that 4,800 borrowers overseas will take advantage of this opportunity. There are also carers or parents who would like to give their children a first-class education with a debt-free start; those people will certainly take up the opportunity. A basic analysis of the figures shows that borrowers in the last 3 years of their student loan repayment schedule will be advantaged by doing that.

I would like to take up the point mentioned by Mr Hipkins at the conclusion of his speech that there needs to be a safety or health warning for borrowers who enter into this situation. I suggest, from my experience, that the advice should be given long before students takes on a student loan to ensure they are undertaking education that they will see value in. There certainly is value in education, but if, in effect, students do not take up those opportunities, I say that it would be far better for them, long before they start their studies, to give consideration to taking on that debt or repaying it.

In the debate on this bill, Opposition members are effectively backing those who are privileged against the hard-working Kiwis. Members on the other side of the House want to take a serious look at themselves. They no longer represent the working class of New Zealand; they are a combination of university lecturers, unionists, and other people.

This bill has a lot to recommend it. I am very confident that it will add value to a lot of people’s decision making, and on that basis I take great pleasure in supporting it.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) : Periodically the Vice-Chancellors Committee releases a report on the destination of graduates from universities, and that tends to chart the salary band that new graduates go into. Typically it is not very high. Frequently we are told that a degree will enhance people’s earning power and therefore they will be able to earn more in their lifetime—and I hope that is true. I am concerned, however, that many people who, on emerging from a university or a polytechnic with a degree, and encumbered by student debt, are not in a position for many years to take advantage of this legislation. We have legislation that is designed for the wealthy—for those who have additional money left over after they have already paid off what they need to pay off on their student loan and have then paid out for living expenses. If one has a spare $500 sloshing around after that, then this bill may be of some assistance to those people. However, for the vast majority of people this is not going to provide any relief at all. I am pleased to say, however, that there is one redeeming feature to this legislation: my colleague Trevor Mallard’s Supplementary Order Paper. I congratulate the Government on accepting the Supplementary Order Paper, even though it was not accepted in the select committee. It was accepted by the Government in the end, because it is the only thing that makes this bill tolerable and it is the only reason why Labour will move to support it.

The Supplementary Order Paper relates to the “health warning”—the piece that says “for goodness’ sake get some financial advice”. It inserts new section 45G with its heading: “Commissioner must advise borrowers to seek financial advice”. In other words, the commissioner is required in all material to provide information about repayment bonuses and make sure that people get financial advice. The only people that this bill really suits are rich, stupid people. They are people with extra money but too stupid to realise that their money would work better for them if they put it into an interest-bearing account than if they reduce a loan that does not have any interest on it. It is particularly ridiculous legislation in that the only time it is likely to make an impact on anybody’s student loan debt is towards the very end of the life of that debt. We will not stand in the way of it, however, because the Government has seen fit and seen the sense of accepting my colleague’s Supplementary Order Paper that inserts this “health warning”.

• Bill read a second time.

STUART NASH (Labour) : Just before lunch we heard the Hon Sir Roger Douglas stand up in this House and tell us that the Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill will take money from the pockets of the poor and give to the rich. That is very rich, coming from a man who proposes to raise the level of GST so that he can cut the top personal tax rate. I would like to know how that will help struggling Kiwis who are below or on the average wage. Mr Peachey, who followed Mr Douglas, lectured us on financial literacy, asking why graduates would not pay back an interest-free student loan so they can help the Government. Help the Government? “Help the Government?”, I say to Mr Peachey. That would be like how he has helped the 70 percent of hard-working, ordinary Kiwis on under $40,000 a year by giving them no tax relief, like how he has helped Kiwis to realise their superannuation dreams by butchering KiwiSaver, like how he has helped Kiwis by cutting their adult and community education courses—and the list goes on. Wherever Mr Peachey is—there he is—I ask him to give me a break.

I stand to speak in support of this bill in its third reading, but I am actually quite ambivalent about it. It is a bit of a nothing bill, which will help very few and achieve not much. The fact that we are debating this bill under urgency is a little perplexing, but then again, so is much of the National Government’s agenda. I must admit that some students will take up this scheme, but I think the vast majority of reasons for taking it up will not be financial ones. The reasons for early debt repayment, despite the financial disadvantages of repayment, are varied.

I found it interesting that Mr Dunne could not confirm that the number of students who have already expressed an interest in taking up this scheme was over and above the standard number of students who pay back their student loan early already. About 20,000 Kiwis pay back their loan every year. Apparently about 180,000 Kiwis have student loans, and about 1 percent of them have shown an interest in early repayment. I tell members that well over 50 percent of the students who have already shown an interest in paying their loan back this year—about 600, which is the number of votes that we need in order to take the West Coast back, and we will do that—are people who had already decided to pay back their student loan early, anyway. They are putting out their hand for this bonus, which has just come along. I would like to know how many of those people who are paying back their loan early are in the final 2 years of their loan repayments, anyway. Those people will have worked out that this scheme is—for the final couple of years of their repayment schedule—a small window of financial opportunity that will actually make them better off. The Minister cannot even tell the House how many students the Inland Revenue Department has forecast will take up this scheme. I say to the Minister that I would have found that information most helpful and relevant.

I paid off my student loan early, and I did so simply by increasing my mortgage when I bought my first house. But the reason for my debt consolidation was that at that point in time, the interest on my student loan was actually higher than the interest on my mortgage, so debt consolidation actually made sense. But, if I had an interest-free student loan—in fact, I cannot remember; who brought in that student loan legislation. The previous Labour Government brought in the interest-free student loan legislation. Who voted against that interest-free student loan legislation? The National Opposition voted against the interest-free student loan legislation. I ask members whether Mr Peachey was part of that Opposition.

Hon Member: Corporate tax cuts!

STUART NASH: National gave corporate tax cuts as well; it is unbelievable! It is just obvious, yet again, that the Labour Party is the party of the students. I ask members to imagine voting against interest-free student loans.

As I was saying, there are many reasons why someone may pay off an interest-free student loan, but very few of them are actually financial. For some people, there may be a psychological rationale: they just do not like being in debt. But that is not a financial reason. The reason may be one of debt consolidation, but that is not a financial reason. It may be that they have received a gift from their grandmother, who will have to pay gift duty if the amount is over $27,500 per year, by the way. But that route to full debt repayment is not a financial reason, because the investment of such a gift in an interest-bearing account would actually be more beneficial to the recipient. It may be that an employer has given someone a healthy bonus, and he or she wants to pay off an interest-free student loan. But I contend that none of those reasons are financial ones. I think we get the point: paying off an interest-free student loan, as proposed by this scheme, may be taken up by some graduates, but if they do so it will not be because of a financial decision. I contend that the majority of those people would have paid off their loan early, anyway.

I would support anything that helped university graduates to get ahead. I worked as the director of strategic development at the Auckland University of Technology, and I wrote a draft business case for the purchase of the Manukau campus, so I do know a bit about the stresses and strains that students and graduates are under in this day and age. Times have changed since the vast majority of the members in this House were students. Student loans have placed a whole different level of stress on graduates these days. Student loan debt has increased at an alarming rate. If I thought that this bill would actually make a difference and help graduates, then it would have my unqualified support. But it does not do that, so I do not give it unqualified support.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Revenue) : I seek leave for the remaining provisions of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill to be taken as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sought for that matter. Is there any objection? There appears to be no objection. That course of action is agreed to.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : It is a pleasure to take a call in the resumed Committee stage of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill. The Labour Opposition concurs with the Government’s motion to have the remaining parts taken as one question in order to facilitate a more coherent and general discussion. It is also perhaps appropriate to note that, in contrast with some of the other legislation that has been debated in the last few days, this bill genuinely needs urgency for the sake of clarity to taxpayers and proper tax planning.

This bill makes some important changes to taxation law, but in doing so has represented very poor legislative process. It provides for the reform of international tax rules, with the intention of making New Zealand residents with active businesses in overseas markets compete on an equal footing with their competitors. It aligns life insurance taxation rules closer to the accounting treatment of life insurance profits, and at the same time it extends portfolio investment entity rules to life insurers’ savings products. The bill provides for payroll giving to enable the establishment of a flexible system and manageable compliance costs. The taxation of emissions units is provided for—we might say thankfully in the light of recent decisions, given the loss of the cap from the “cap and trade” system.

The definition of “associated persons” is reformed. Tax thresholds are raised to reduce compliance costs for small and medium sized businesses. That was a particular priority of the outgoing Labour Government, which put this bill in place. The tax treatment of relocation claimants and overtime meal allowances for employees is clarified. The bill includes changes to the income tax rules for petroleum mining—a matter much discussed earlier in the Committee stage. It provides for the new film grant, the Screen Production Incentive Fund, and it makes a number of other changes.

This bill is being debated under urgency again today. Labour supports the bill, but it is very concerned about the rushed process for the bill. The major Supplementary Order Papers were delivered late, without sufficient time to properly consider them. It is a huge and complex bill; I am advised it is the largest tax bill ever, outside the rewrite legislation. The deadlines were rushed, denying members proper and sufficient time to consider its provisions, and there was a general lack of sufficient time to fully consider the immense levels of detail in the bill. For that reason, the Finance and Expenditure Committee was very reliant on professional tax advice.

The process was imperfect because of the breadth and depth of the provisions in the omnibus bill, and the select committee therefore had the following to say in its report: “The size of the bill, and the depth and breadth of the material it covers, have made our consideration more difficult than it might have been otherwise. In trying to meet the report due date for the bill, we and our committee consideration processes have been put under considerable pressure. We do not consider it desirable to put a number of very distinct and significant proposals into one bill simply because they relate to one area of law.” That is reasonably strong language in the formal context, particularly in the context of the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s commentary on tax legislation, which is a matter normally reserved for the driest of the dry, as the Minister in the chair, Peter Dunne, will no doubt attest.

There are several very important substantive areas in the bill. The first that I will mention in summary today is the definition of “associated persons”. There was extensive discussion of these provisions, and right around the select committee there was an agreement that we had a common aim: to ensure that genuinely associated persons were covered so that they could not evade tax, and that the rules be tightened to avoid unintended consequences for those whom the association was tenuous, or who could not have been expected to know about a particular investment or tax liability of a person deemed to be associated. We appreciate the Minister of Revenue’s willingness to discuss those changes through his officials with the committee. I think, and all members of the committee think, that good work was done in that area, and we thank officials for working in detail through those provisions with us all.

The main bulk of the bill is associated with the international tax rules. It is an incredibly important and complex area, particularly as the world is globalising. As we all know, the factors of production and therefore much of our tax base is becoming more mobile and effectively harder to tax. It is for that reason, amongst many others, that we await with interest the outcome of the Government’s Tax Working Group as we look forward to an ongoing discussion about the optimal balance between different forms of taxation in that regard. This tax legislation modernises the international tax rules, particularly in respect of controlled foreign companies—for example, to “ensure that key provisions relating to CFC rules … were set out clearly in one place in the legislation.” The select committee recommended “technical amendments to the accounting-based active business test for CFCs … to reduce the cost of applying the test.” It also recommended that “for the purpose of the tax-based active business test, consolidation be permitted only when the taxpayer has an income interest of more than 50 percent in each of the CFCs to be consolidated.” The amendments will “allow an active CFC to pay royalties, interest, and rent to an associated CFC … without the associated CFC having to recognise any passive income only if the CFC and the associated CFC were liable for tax in the same jurisdiction.” So there is some tightening there. There are a number of like rules around controlled foreign companies, which were important for the committee to get its head around and are important to modernise because they reflect the changing nature of business practice in this incredibly globalised environment.

There was discussion of the taxation of life insurance businesses, and the select committee recommended a number of amendments to make the proposed provisions clearer and more flexible. For example, “all direct and indirect expenditure incurred by a life insurer would be deductible in the shareholder base.”, and “in relation to non-life insurance policies life insurers are able to claim a deduction for movements in the outstanding claims reserve.” The amendments ensure that “where a life insurer has overpaid tax on the life office base under the existing rules, the overpayments would be carried into the new rules and could be used to satisfy tax liabilities arising on both”. It is fair to say that the committee in closed session also considered in some detail some particular aspects of the rules that applied to particular aspects of the sector. I will not go into the details of that, for obvious reasons, but I simply note that the committee spent considerable time with officials clarifying a matter that was of some interest to some in the industry.

There was an extended discussion, both in the select committee and on the floor of the Chamber, of the tax treatment of petroleum mining. Several members have raised this issue in terms of a taxpayer-specific matter, so I will not repeat the taxpayer-specific element. I will say that the committee wrestled with the need to avoid multinational oil companies ripping New Zealand’s tax base off by literally hundreds of millions of dollars by, for example, attributing to its New Zealand profits the cost of debt incurred in foreign jurisdictions. The Labour Party wants to go on record as supporting to the nth degree the Government’s moves to track this practice down and stop it. Not only is it totally unjustifiable, but it is literally robbing the New Zealand taxpayer and beneficiaries of much-needed revenue. We certainly encourage the Government to pursue the transfer pricing and transfer attribution of cost by multinationals in this regard.

A particular case of the reverse could potentially have been caught inadvertently: a New Zealand company that was investing offshore may have been caught by an unintended, potentially retrospective element if, indeed, it had entered into a contract before the effective date of the announcement of this provision. We are taking the Minister and officials at their word that we will be able to work through in good faith with that taxpayer, on the basis of the common law, a position that reflects the common view of the committee that this was not the primary issue that the provision was designed to solve, and that we were wary, as is longstanding parliamentary practice, of any retrospective element that operated to the detriment of New Zealand business.

There are many, many pages of detail that I could go through. I have touched upon the main areas of work. There are many others that other members will want to touch on. I will, however, refer to the fact that we got quite a lot of last-minute Supplementary Order Papers. Perhaps because I am a former Minister, I always take a very dim view of officials not providing to the Minister in sufficient time material that then ends up having to come through the Minister to the floor of the Chamber as a Supplementary Order Paper.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Revenue) : At the outset of this debate on the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill I want to make a couple of points. Firstly, this is the resumption of a Committee stage debate, so a number of the measures that the previous speaker, David Cunliffe, referred to have already been disposed of in earlier parts of this debate. But I think he was simply reintroducing our memory to those matters. I want to comment on the point, though, about rushed legislation. I cannot accept his assertion in that respect. I want to place on the record, once more, a little bit of the history. This bill was introduced in July 2008, over a year ago. Because of the intervention of a general election it had not progressed far before the change of Government last November. It has been worked on pretty efficiently by the Finance and Expenditure Committee during the course of this year.

One of the issues I was conscience of as the bill was proceeding was that the implementation times for a number of the regimes that it contains—the international tax changes, the changes to life insurance, payroll giving, and there were one or two others as well—were much shorter than they are in the bill at the moment. So rather than the legislation being rushed, I wrote to the select committee recommending that it defer the implementation dates to, in some cases, next year. I did that simply because I wanted to make sure there was sufficient time. One of the reasons I am grateful for this bill being taken under urgency today is that I am getting many inquiries from a number of people seeking assurances that we will stick to this timetable, that the dates that we have amended in the bill will be honoured, and it will not be further delayed. I do not think we can draw a conclusion from that about rushed legislation. We can draw a conclusion about the size of the bill, and I am freely conceding—as I have done before—that this bill, in retrospect, did bite off too much territory. In future we will do things a little differently.

I want to pick up on the comment the member made about the associated persons changes, and I was grateful for his intervention on this point. I say to the Committee and to any of the public who are anxious about this provision, that from the outset we were seeking to simply ensure that the law as put in place—in this instance way back in 1973—worked as it was intended to at that time. We were not seeking to broaden the scope or to introduce new definitions or changes to definitions through that mechanism, but simply to ensure that what we thought we had been doing since 1973 was accurately reflected in the law as it stands today.

Mr Chairman, let me make a quick comment in response to the member about petroleum mining. Again, there are very substantial points of agreement. One of the things that could conceivably happen under this bill—and I am not being taxpayer specific when I make this observation, but certainly to illustrate the point that Mr Cunliffe was alluding to—is that it could well be possible in the future for a company to take advantage of the changes we are making to the international tax rules in terms of the active/passive test, and, therefore, be subject to taxation in the jurisdiction of their location only, and not double taxation in New Zealand. At the same time, have we not changed the petroleum mining law being able to write off the cost of exploration incurred on that offshore jurisdiction against the New Zealand tax base? So the New Zealand taxpayer in that hypothetical situation not only gets no tax but is paying out a tax deduction to that company. That clearly would be wrong under any reasonable assessment of the law, and that is the sort of situation we are trying to guard against.

With regard to some of the issues that are coming up in the remaining parts of this bill, I draw members’ attention to the amendments to the KiwiSaver Act that are contained in Part 4 of the bill. These relate particularly to the situation that has had some publicity of recent times where a contributor has died intestate, and the difficulty that the family have had in gaining access to the funds that have been deposited in KiwiSaver. This bill corrects that unfortunate situation and has been backdated to the time of the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in 2007 and will be a huge benefit to those families who have been suffering as a consequence of the loss of a family member in that situation and being unable to access the funds that they contributed to KiwiSaver while they were alive. I am grateful for the Committee considering and adopting that amendment in the bill. I am also keen, therefore, to see it pass so that those people who are in a state of anguish can have some relief.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) : Much has been said about the size of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill. I concur with the remarks of the honourable Minister of Revenue about the work done by the officials. We commend that work, as well as the work done by the Minister, who in a letter to the Finance and Expenditure Committee stated quite clearly that changes would be put in place in terms of the timing of the legislation.

The bill addresses a number of areas for change. It provides for the reform of international tax rules. Among other measures, it introduces a tax exemption for foreign active income of controlled foreign companies—the CFCs, as they have been referred to in this debate already. It also addresses aligning life insurance taxation rules more closely with the actual profits of term life insurance businesses. But the area that I would like to discuss is the introduction of the voluntary payroll giving scheme.

We all know that New Zealanders are generous with their money and their time. Nielsen Media Research found out that 75.4 percent of the New Zealanders surveyed supported the community and voluntary sector in 2007. They supported that sector either by making committed or ad hoc donations, volunteering, or through another form of support. The research also indicates that less than one in every five people who donated to charity filed a tax rebate for the donation. Payroll giving represents an opportunity for those who give to gain an immediate tax benefit, thus eliminating the need to file a rebate annually.

Following the introduction of similar legislation and a Government-initiated campaign to promote payroll giving, the level of participation in payroll giving in Australia doubled. An initial target that has been suggested is that New Zealand aim to achieve a level of participation comparable to that of Australia. I suggest that we aim to surpass the level of participation in Australia by 2011, the year of the Rugby World Cup, when we will also surpass Australia on the rugby field. From research conducted by the Tindall Foundation, it predicts that unless the Government and business put significant effort and resource into promoting and encouraging similar participation in this country, payroll giving is unlikely to gain traction.

Payroll giving is about enabling employees to receive the benefit of payroll donations each pay day in real time, and without the need to have donation receipts. People who make donations other than through payroll giving can continue to claim a charitable donation tax credit at the end of each tax year. A main concern raised by the Finance and Expenditure Committee was the risk that employers could default in transferring payroll donations to the chosen donee organisations, especially in insolvency situations. To address that concern, the committee recommended a number of changes to the bill. They included an amendment to schedule 7 of the Companies Act 1993 to confirm that when an employer goes into liquidation and has not passed on employees’ donations to donee organisations, the return of those donations to the employees will have the same priority as the payment of their unpaid wages.

That was a short cameo on payroll giving. We have made a number of other, more in-depth changes to our tax regime. The bill supports the emphasis this Government is putting on tax reform and tax policy. It is part of a series of tax reforms that will continue into the future of this term of Government.

STUART NASH (Labour) : I say to Mr Lotu-Iiga that I wish we could get one thing clarified. First and foremost, the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill was introduced by the previous Labour Government on 2 July 2008. It is not a National bill; it was not part of National’s agenda for tax reform. I think we need to get that clear once and for all.

The Minister in the chair, the Hon Peter Dunne, is right; this bill has had quite a long process. As I have mentioned, it was introduced on 2 July last year. The reason it has taken so long is perhaps that Parliament dissolved for the general election, and then we were back into it. But having said that, I also understand the need for urgency on the bill, because business tends to operate best in an environment of certainty. The sooner this bill is passed, the greater the level of certainty there will be for a whole range of businesses. So I support the urgency on this bill in the Chamber today.

As has been mentioned, we support this bill. We have already voiced our concern—I think every speaker has voiced his or her concern—not about the rushed process but about the size of the bill, coupled with the amount of time we had to spend on it. We are concerned about—and my colleague David Cunliffe talked about this—the late nature of the Supplementary Order Papers, which were tabled without sufficient time to properly consider them. Supplementary Order Papers 34 and 35 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne were released on 4 August and 25 August respectively. This is a huge and complex bill—most tax legislation is complex—but at 825-odd pages that really made things very tight. There was a general lack of sufficient time to fully consider the whole immense detail of the bill, but we did our best. As has been mentioned, we relied on the officials and our consultants.

I will talk about the amendments to the Income Tax Act. In 2007 around 3,500 pages of New Zealand tax legislation were enacted. This legislation included the Income Tax Act of 2007. At 2,800-odd pages, that Act represents the fourth and final stage of a project begun in 1994 to rewrite income tax law in plain-language style. As the length of time taken to complete this task shows, this rewrite was an ambitious and aspirational, but absolutely necessary, task. I know that sometimes the words “tax legislation” and “plain English” in the same sentence are a bit of an oxymoron, but this is the way things work out in tax legislation. This task was a definite step forward in terms of New Zealand tax law. But as an inevitable consequence of the rewriting process, there was a temporary but large increase in the number of remedial amendments necessary in order to maintain the tax law in sound working order. This increase was in part because very few remedial amendments had been enacted since December 2007.

Of the remedial amendments proposed, approximately 115 are typically of a very minor nature. They are intended to correct matters such as incorrect numbering and cross-referencing, printing errors, the use of incorrect terminology, punctuation issues, and omitted words. Despite perceptions and beliefs to the contrary, even tax officials and drafters make the occasional mistake. I think we would agree that making 115 drafting errors in 3,500 pages of legislation, or in the 2,800-odd pages of the Income Tax Act 2007, is not a bad effort overall. Other amendments in this bill are of a less clerical nature, but arise from both rewrite issues, include submissions to the Rewrite Advisory Panel, and from clarification of policy in business as usual drafting. These 160-odd amendments affect provisions in the Income Tax Act 2007, the Income Tax Act 2004, the Tax Administration Act 1994, the KiwiSaver Act 2006, as the Minister has alluded to, and the Stamp and Cheque Duties Act, amongst other Acts. Of these amendments, 30 issues were referred to the Rewrite Advisory Panel for resolution.

In addition to the 119 remedial amendments included in the bill at its introduction, the officials recommended that the Finance and Expenditure Committee propose the inclusion of about 150 further remedial amendments, the need for which had been discovered since the introduction of this bill. As that shows, a lot of work went into this legislation, at the officials level, at the Finance and Expenditure Committee level, and at the consultant and advisory level.

Several Acts that amend tax Acts have been enacted since the bill was introduced to Parliament. They include the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading) Amendment Act 2008, the Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Act 2008, and the Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Act 2009. A number of the cross-references in the bill need to be adjusted to take into account the changes made by those Acts. The officials recommended that the committee include such amendments.

CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) : I rise to speak in the continuation of the Committee stage of the very large Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill. I acknowledge members giving leave to combine the debate on the remaining parts of this bill in order to facilitate its completion.

Much was said about the bill by speakers when we last addressed it, and I am sure we will hear some more points now and in the third reading. We are speaking about Parts 3 to 7, which include clauses 518 to 629, and the title. They cover about 140 pages, which points to the substantial nature and breadth of the bill. We must also note that a large part of the original bill is no longer in this bill, because it formed part of the small to medium sized enterprise tax recession assistance bill, the Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill, which we passed in March.

I would make the point that we have an additional Supplementary Order Paper—34. I understand that it consists of simple remedial drafting changes to the substantial legislation, and I would be interested to have an assurance that, in fact, that is the case. I fully accept that it has no policy change from what the select committee saw and what many, many submitters spent much time on at the select committee.

I should acknowledge, as this will probably be my final time speaking in the Committee stage, the assistance of the Minister of Revenue, officials, and members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, both in the previous Parliament and in this Parliament, in facilitating this bill going through to at least this stage. Cooperation was extended in many, many areas. I acknowledge that other members have recorded that for Hansard, and I appreciate that. I also acknowledge that at times the select committee had to begin meetings early and finish late to facilitate the process.

When the Minister spoke earlier he spoke about the need, the commercial imperative, to provide some certainty for the many, many sectors of business affected by the bill, from insurance to payroll, to you name it—to the Inland Revenue Department itself—as to when certain parts of this wide-ranging bill would be implemented. I agree totally with what the Minister said. The commentary states that the Finance and Expenditure Committee was not particularly pleased with the breadth of the bill, with its wide-ranging nature, and all the commentators also picked up on that. But that does not mean that the bill did not go through the due process. I note that many of the discussion documents that led to this bill, particularly those about some matters that have already been raised in the debate, actually appeared under the previous administration—as far back as 2006 and even 2007. The legislation was introduced in July 2008, I think, it came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee in September or October 2008, and we picked it up with a vengeance early this year as Parliament got back to normal behaviour, if you like.

That was just a quick note to acknowledge all those who have assisted with the bill, to reiterate the points made in the commentary, and also to put on record for those who pay strict attention to the commentary of the bill not to misinterpret the commentary or to try to put words into it. The commentary speaks for itself and it is not meant to be anything other than the thoughts of the committee at that time. Other speakers have alluded to some of the issues in and around that. On that note, I look forward to the third reading.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour) : I rise to take a call on the bill and wish to affix my contribution on the provisions in relation to remedial amendments in the bill, in particular the clauses concerning KiwiSaver. The bill introduces a number of remedial amendments to the KiwiSaver scheme, and in the Finance and Expenditure Committee we spent a certain amount of time hearing submissions and deliberating on them. A number of submissions are no longer relevant, due to the removal of the employer tax credit. What is interesting are the issues surrounding the definition of member credit contribution in section YA 1 of the Income Tax Act 2007 and in section OB 1 of the Income Tax Act 2004. Officials are of the view that the definition should be amended to exclude the $1,000 kickstart payment and the member tax credit. This would have the effect of preventing members from double-dipping, which would occur if the Crown contributions were included in the calculation of the member tax credit.

A technical issue arose in relation to whether the amendment would be intended to be retrospective or prospective. If it should be retrospective, the recalculation of the member’s accounts would be required. As the independent specialist adviser Therese Turner pointed out in her report, recalculation of a member’s accounts would be required. Given that some members may have already withdrawn from the scheme, that would be problematic.

I cited this relatively small part as an example to show how important it is for us to work together to bring our tax law up to date, which is the main purpose of this bill in general, and to provide some certainty to make the relevant clauses operative. It is particularly so to the 1.1 million New Zealanders who have signed up to the KiwiSaver scheme. I congratulate the Hon David Cunliffe on taking the initiative for the multiparty banking inquiry by the Labour, Green, and Progressive parties. There are two major concerns; I cited this one because the savings concern is particularly relevant to what we are talking about now.

Two major concerns were expressed by submitters across the board. The first concern was that banks have grown faster than the surrounding economy, indicating that wealth has transferred from the trading economy to the non-trading economy, which has made it harder for us to grow a healthy, sustainable economy. The second concern, which is relevant to this bill, is our low savings rates and spending habits of New Zealanders. Unfortunately, the Government’s only response so far to the low savings rate is to cut KiwiSaver. The KiwiSaver scheme introduced by the Labour Government was designed to lift private sector household savings in New Zealand. By cutting the incentives for KiwiSaver the National-led Government is decreasing the amount that ordinary Kiwis will be able to save. The Government’s plan betrays the over 1.1 million New Zealanders who have already signed up, and the Government’s move has effectively taken away opportunities from future generations. Thank you.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) : I rise to take a call in the Committee stage of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill, which Labour supports. I will deal with a couple of technical matters for a start. An important change has been made through this legislation to the treatment of petroleum mining revenue, and I endorse the steps that the Minister of Revenue started in the previous Government and has continued in this Government to clarify that the petroleum mining losses that are incurred by a foreign branch of a company cannot be offset against petroleum mining income earned from New Zealand.

To put that in perspective, New Zealand has become quite prospective for oil and gas. The price of oil and gas is a lot higher than it was a few years ago, and some of the traditional sources of oil either have become risky for development companies or have been depleted in their reserves. Although as a country and a world we need to transition away from fossil fuels for environmental reasons relating to climate change and also for energy security reasons, it is clear that for some time to come the world will use petroleum products and that they are valuable. It is clear that it is in New Zealand’s interests that where we have some of those reserves we use them, rather than import from Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that. That adds to our wealth as a country.

In New Zealand we do not have a Government-owned oil and gas sector. A lot of overseas countries do—for example, Saudi Arabia; most of Norway’s exploration and recovery of oil is done by a State-owned company. If a country does that, of course, the returns from the oil that go through that State-owned company benefit the country, and the tax rules are not so important because the profit is earned for the country through the State-owned company. But in New Zealand we do not approach oil and gas that way. We leave it to private enterprise companies—some of them are owned by State-owned companies from overseas, actually—to explore for, find, and extract petroleum products in New Zealand. Recently they have been successful. One of those successes has been the Tui Area oilfield off Taranaki. Many millions of barrels of oil have been extracted from it, and that has benefited the New Zealand economy.

The benefit to the New Zealand economy comes from two sources. One is the royalty that is charged on the recovered oil. That royalty is quite small. Indeed, I wonder whether there is any royalty on oil. I cannot recall.

Craig Foss: Yes.

Hon DAVID PARKER: There is a royalty on oil, as there is on precious metals. A royalty is recovered on the oil, but the main profit for New Zealand is the taxation on the profits of the oil company. Those profits need to be properly taxed in New Zealand. Oil companies have been saying that they will offset against their New Zealand oil-based income, expenses that do not relate to New Zealand. It is as simple as that. They have been trying to say that they will deduct those costs in New Zealand that are incurred overseas. Actually, I suspect that if we got to the bottom of it, we would find that some of what they deduct overseas is being deducted again in New Zealand. It is very hard for us to tell, because we cannot see into the detail of those overseas transactions.

This legislation makes a very important change to our law by saying that the only costs that can be deducted by oil companies for tax purposes against their oil revenues in New Zealand are the expenses that they incur in exploration and development in New Zealand. It does not have to be from the same well, but it has to be in New Zealand. That is a good change, and I express my support for it.

There is a possible problem with this change in that we have created a problem for some increasingly successful New Zealand - based companies that are exploring overseas, including Greymouth Petroleum, which is now working in Chile. That company says that this change is contrary to its interests. I understand that we have had advice from the officials to the Finance and Expenditure Committee that they do not think that is necessarily the case, but none the less this issue needs to be monitored. I am sure it will be monitored by those affected, who will lobby their members of Parliament if they think that they can prove their case.

I will talk briefly about a couple of other things. Firstly, I will talk about the GST treatment of emission units. That provision was originally in this bill. This bill had a slower passage than the emissions trading legislation that was passed last year, and that provision does not now need to be passed because, of course, we already have an emissions trading scheme. We have an emissions trading scheme that is rational, that is economically effective, that will not drive industry out of New Zealand—contrary to the claims made by some members of the Government—and that will reduce emissions so as to benefit New Zealand.

Why do we have that scheme? Well, New Zealand already has an obligation under the Kyoto Protocol to take responsibility for its emissions above 1990 levels. After the next version of that agreement, which we hope will be agreed to at Copenhagen or thereafter, New Zealand’s obligation will be tougher still. We will have to reduce our emissions substantially below 1990 levels. There are two or three ways we do that in the economy. One is through education, which is a good thing to do. Another way is through regulation, and that is also a good thing to do, in parts and where necessary. But if we do it all through regulation we end up having to regulate thousands of different transactions through the economy, all of which have an effect on emissions. To do it through regulatory intervention becomes very complex and administratively expensive, in that it becomes a large compliance cost and annoying for members of the public.

An emissions trading scheme changes the relative cost of doing business. It changes the economics of producing high-intensity goods or services and makes doing that relatively more expensive than it is to produce low-emission goods or services. Through that scheme we change the productive base of New Zealand over time. It takes a long time, but we have to start. Through that we gradually change our economy—and other economies in the world are starting to do this too—away from activity that causes emissions towards activity that reduces emissions. Emissions will go down sustainably. That is what the effect of the current emissions trading scheme would be.

From a policy point of view, the effect of that scheme in New Zealand is attained by a cap on the number of free units that we give away to people. Some people are exposed to competition from markets overseas that are not properly pricing emissions. It is very proper that we protect those industries against closure by saying that they have a base level of free emissions that they do not have to pay for. At the moment it is 90 percent of their 2005 emissions, so they are required to pay for only 10 percent of their 2005 emissions. That will not drive people out of business. The current scheme does not allow people in the industry sector to increase their emissions above 90 percent of their 2005 emissions, because to do that would make New Zealand poorer. They might make $1 profit at the margin, but the country would suffer a $25 loss at the margin.

The amendments that are currently being proposed by the National Government will actually make New Zealand poorer and will make the scheme less efficient economically, and they are to be criticised. They have been brought here because the Māori Party has said that it will support legislation to soften the scheme, having said just a week ago that it would support only legislation that would toughen it. That is an act of a word that I cannot say in this Chamber. It is either that or it is abject incompetence. Those members may think that they can justify it on the basis of the one or two shekels that they have received from the National Government, but I cannot see why they would have sold out their interests for that.

In respect of the other provisions in this enormous taxation bill, there are a lot of things in here, but I am somewhat surprised not to see anything in it fixing the terrible mistake made by the National Government in abolishing the research and development tax credit. That mistake has not been fixed by this bill. This bill runs to 800 pages, yet it does not fix up the abolition of the research and development tax credit. The undermining of KiwiSaver—another revenue measure that used to give tax credits to employers for the contributions made by employers—has not been fixed by this bill. Employers still have to face that cost under the new, shrunken scheme without any support from the Government, whereas previously they received a tax credit for it. With regard to the amount of the tax advantage for participants in KiwiSaver, the generosity of the tax credits available to employees who are saving through the scheme has been halved. That has not been fixed by this bill. Those are two glaring anomalies. Neither does the bill make good on the promise that National won the Treasury benches on—that is, that we can have everything we had under Labour plus tax cuts. That promise was never affordable. It has been reversed, but once again this bill does not fix that problem.

AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) : I am very pleased to take another call in the Committee stage of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill. It has been some time since we last debated the bill’s Committee stage and since I last spoke. We have heard other speakers talk today about the comprehensive and extensive nature—perhaps too extensive—of the bill, and there certainly are a number of important elements within it. I hope my contribution is able to add more to the wisdom in this debate than the contribution of the member who has just resumed his seat, the Hon David Parker, who held up the bill and said there was a lot in is. I thank Mr Parker very much for that in-depth analysis of this 823-page bill. Yes, there is a lot in it; he got that quite right. I hope to talk in a little more detail about some of the matters in it.

International taxation and life insurance are two of the big component parts of this bill, but a number of smaller aspects have been a little overlooked in the debate, due to the comprehensive nature of the bill and the big elements in it. One that I will touch on, because I do not believe it has been mentioned in the debate thus far, is the provisions around stapled stock. Stapled stock is not something that is discussed widely outside tax and business circles, so I will take a moment to explain what I mean by that phrase. Stapled stock is a set-up that companies often use whereby debt securities—debt instruments—are attached to equity instruments sold by that company. We have seen that this structure can be used to enable companies to pay moneys to shareholders that would otherwise be classed as dividends, and to call it interest, thereby giving themselves quite a substantial tax advantage through the interest deductions that the company gets, although the money ends up in the same place.

The bill set out to say that for that sort of stapled stock arrangement issued after 25 February last year, all the payments were eligible to be treated as dividends, as if the entire payment related to the shares, as if the entire security was a share. That is an important part of ensuring that there is fair treatment of those moneys, and that companies cannot use that sort of structure to effectively avoid tax. The date of 25 February 2008 is important. As far as we know, at the time when this rule change was announced no major NZX companies had stapled stock in existence. We also know that a number were certainly looking at doing that, so it was a step that had to be taken.

As the bill proceeded through the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we looked at this matter in a little depth. We recommended some important changes to make sure that there was not excessive overreach in terms of these provisions. Among those we looked at was ensuring that debt stapled to a wide range of fixed-rate shares could still be treated this way as a valid instrument. We also thought it was important and appropriate that people with small, closely held companies—family companies and the like—where this sort of arrangement came about through a shareholders’ agreement, had the freedom and flexibility to enter into that arrangement. We were working to ensure that we protected the tax base against the inappropriate claiming of interest deduction as a way to avoid paying tax that would otherwise be payable, but without going into the realm of unnecessarily cutting down the flexibility and the options open to companies to arrange their affairs. As I said, what we will now have under these rules will enable all the payments to be treated as if they are shares, all the payments to be treated as dividends. But when we talk about company thin-capitalisation rules, with those stapled instruments the debt component can still be treated as debt.

In respect of that particular provision, it highlights that there is quite a lot in the bill beyond the title provisions of international tax and life insurance. Those are the leading ladies in the bill, but there are a number of quite important lesser issues that the select committee spent an awful lot of time working through.

At this stage I take a moment to thank Craig Foss for his chairmanship of the select committee. It was a difficult process to work through the bill but the committee worked very well. All the committee members should be acknowledged for their contribution to the work on the bill. Certainly, the officials spent a lot of time with us. I commend the Minister of Revenue for not only introducing the bill last year but also having the political tenacity—

Hon Peter Dunne: Masochism!

AMY ADAMS: —perhaps it was—to still be here shepherding the bill through the House, despite a change in Government. It is no small piece of work on his behalf, and on the behalf of our committee, as well. It is an excellent piece of work, and I think it makes real progress in ensuring that out tax regime is brought up to speed.

STUART NASH (Labour) : First and foremost, even though we are debating the Committee stage—and are about to go into the third reading—in urgency, I think it is important to note that after the first reading of the Taxation (International Taxation, Life Insurance, and Remedial Matters) Bill it went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Select committee examination is quite an important part of the legislative process. Some of the other bills before the House recently have not gone to a select committee. Therefore, the public does not have any right or ability to present submissions on them. In terms of process, this bill followed a very good process. The select committee received and considered 78 submissions and heard 51 oral submissions. As members can imagine, they were on some very complex areas of tax law. Reading those submissions and doing the background reading on the oral submissions was quite onerous, and that is what I think a lot of members mean when they say that there was quite a tight time constraint.

It seems a while since we mentioned one of big aspects of this bill, and that is associated persons, which I would like to talk about. Amy Adams is right; this bill is about more than international taxation, life insurance, and remedial matters. This bill covers a whole raft of provisions and a whole raft of changes to the actual tax system. It is the largest tax bill, apart from the rewrite, to come before the House. Let us talk about the definition of “associated persons”. This part of the bill received much consideration from all members, and resulted in many reams of paper spitting out a whole lot of judgments from officials, consultants, and advisers. We wrestled with the risk that by relaxing the rules the resulting law might not catch people who should be caught by an associated persons rule. We all acknowledge that the implementation of this provision will be very important, and the ongoing supervision and monitoring by officials will also be important. Because it is a complete rewrite, we may be back in this House considering amendments if it does not look good.

The committee proposed amendments that aimed to reduce uncertainty, which is what tax legislation should be about, and to narrow the scope of the proposed test to exclude truly arm’s-length transactions. The amendments included narrowing the scope of the tripartite test and excluding certain relatives from it. An example was given of parents who divorce, the father marries again, and the woman he marries has a son from another relationship; that relationship would have been caught before. We wanted to make sure that those quite tenuous relationships were excluded, and to create certainty. We created an additional exception test for relating companies, we recommended that the test apply not only for the purpose of land provisions, we excluded charitable organisations from the test, and we created an exception for certain employee trusts and an exception for partnerships. As I said, the associated persons section took up quite a lot of time.

I would also like to talk about international tax rules. I take the Minister of Revenue’s point that some of these provisions had been debated and discussed in the earlier Committee debate, but that was a while ago and I think it is worth reiterating them. This area was incredibly complex and deserved a lot of attention. Well, it received a lot of attention, but it probably deserved a little more attention. We quite quickly got down to layers of complexity that reflect the ongoing game of poacher versus gamekeeper. I think we all understood that in terms of the global economy and global competitiveness New Zealand’s international tax regime needed to be amended, and that was what the bill did, but many private entities, of course, hire very, very expensive—the best—tax lawyers and advisers to ensure their tax is minimised. I think it was Dr Michael Cullen who said that if as much time and energy went into creating wealth in this country as go into looking at ways to avoid tax, we would be a very wealthy country. The Crown’s officials are required to stay one jump ahead whilst also maintaining the integrity of the tax system, and making sure that New Zealand retains its global competitive advantages.

The bill strikes a reasonable balance between the need to remain internationally competitive and the need to provide clear rules that allow the integrity of the tax base to be preserved. The committee ensured that key provisions relating to controlled foreign company rules were set out in one place in the legislation, making the rules more accessible. We recommended that technical amendments to the accounting-based active business test for controlled foreign companies—

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to a proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 34 in his name to clause 2 be agreed to:

to omit from subclause (29) “and (5)”.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Immigration) : It has taken quite some time to come to the Committee stage of the Immigration Bill. This is very important legislation that, I know, is very much welcomed across the Chamber. There is a time to be gracious in debate and there is a time to be aggressive with the Opposition. I say on this occasion that this bill has had great bipartisan support throughout its formation, and a lot of the work was done on it under the last Government and previous Ministers of Immigration. I acknowledge the contribution of former Ministers of Immigration Paul Swain, David Cunliffe, and Clayton Cosgrove.

Hon Steve Chadwick: That’s very courteous. That is very good.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Thank you.

Immigration is absolutely vital to New Zealand’s interests. When we look at the contribution it makes to our economy, we see that it is actually right at the centre of everything New Zealand does as “New Zealand Inc.” The Immigration Service makes half a million decisions each year. It makes decisions that bring people into our country with the skills we need that we cannot grow on our own shores. It brings tourists, who bring nearly $9 billion of foreign exchange earnings into this country each year. Immigration is something on which this country was built. So immigration is very much at the core of New Zealand’s economic well-being.

It is very timely that we are having this complete rewrite of the Immigration Act 1987. I acknowledge the contribution of the officials to this process. They have put in a heck of a lot of work over the last 2-something years. It has been trying at times, I know, to get such a massive piece of legislation right. It is a 500-page bill, with 13 parts. The officials have certainly given excellent service in getting the bill together, both to me and to the former Ministers of Immigration. It really has been an extensive work. It has been a well-consulted bill. There have been over 4,000 submissions on the bill. I believe that 90 people appeared in person before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee at various stages. I acknowledge the work of the select committee in its report back on this bill.

I have tabled a pretty extensive Supplementary Order Paper. I know that there are Supplementary Order Papers from other members, as well. The Government Supplementary Order Paper covers a number of elements. There are technical amendments, relatively minor in nature. There is an amendment that was recommended by the select committee itself, relating to the ability to cancel deportation orders in certain circumstances. Then there are a number of matters that the Government believes need addressing. This bill has been quite some time in passing through the legislative process. As I said, the first reading was 2 years ago. Time has moved on and we want to make sure that we have an up-to-date and flexible framework for immigration policy. The bill is framework legislation. It does not stipulate the specifics of immigration policy; it sets the playing field within which any given Government can implement its own policies. The idea is that it is flexible and enduring.

One of the main features of the bill is that there will be a universal visa system. It will be a much simpler, more streamlined system to replace the current visa permit and exemption system. There will also be provisions that enable trans-Tasman travel. We are aiming to streamline trans-Tasman travel. The provisions in this bill will allow people to be processed from offshore in a way that we would not have envisaged when the 1987 legislation became law. There is also a new refugee and protection regime. I am sure that we are going to have some discussion about that as the bill progresses through the Committee stage. The establishment of a new single Immigration and Protection Tribunal is a major change that will certainly streamline some of the existing processes and take a lot of bureaucracy out of the process. There is also a new classified information system, which will allow classified information to be taken into account when important decisions regarding whom we want to bring into this country need to be made. Of course, more flexible compliance and information powers will enable immigration officers to do their job.

In conclusion, in immigration legislation we have to balance the national interest against the interests of individuals. Of course, the facilitation aspects of immigration are not dealt with in the legislation. A lot of it is elements of policy and settlement services, so by definition the legislation tends to focus more on the compliance aspects. I think we have come up with some very good changes that I hope the Committee will support. I certainly commend this bill to the Committee.

Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) : I thank the Minister of Immigration for his generous remarks. There is an outbreak of peace that will endure for much of the evening, although not perhaps all of it. The legislation has been well described by the Minister. I endorse his remarks and I do not have to repeat them. That means I might get my introductory remarks made within 5 minutes instead of within 10 minutes—we will see.

Certainly, Labour has been very involved in the legislation, and the Minister was kind enough to acknowledge previous Ministers of Immigration. I think it would be a good idea if we reminded ourselves that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee spent an awful lot of time on the legislation, after Ministers themselves had spent years on it. The current Minister has had it on his desk for many, many months. The Hon Vui Mark Gosche deserves mention, because his contribution as the chairperson of the committee was undoubtedly pivotal. He was a South Auckland MP. He is a man who has a history in the union movement. He understands job substitution. He understands the needs of Pacific Island communities. So he has a very good idea of the balance that the Minister spoke of, and I think he has a clear view that the bill in its current form is in pretty good shape.

Since that time Supplementary Order Paper 32 has been tabled by the Government. It is a biggie. It is bigger than most pieces of legislation to come before this House—there are 106 pages of it. Labour members were granted a copy of it by the Minister, and today we have had an opportunity to have a first cut at it with officials, including some very capable officials. I thank the Minister and his staff for affording us that opportunity. It has increased our understanding of some of the detail.

Frankly, some of the technical detail is above my head, but fortunately it is not above the heads of previous Ministers such as David Cunliffe, Lianne Dalziel in particular, who is a lawyer, and Clayton Cosgrove. We have got ourselves to a point where we are prepared to debate some of the details of the legislation to gain further information to support much of it—in fact, a great deal of it—and to make up our minds on some aspects of it that may require us to suggest alternative wording, or may, indeed, end up with our simply opposing this or that clause.

One issue where we do have an interest and are at variance with the Government is the issue of review. Our considered view is that with legislation of this size—which, after all, replaces legislation that is 22 years old—and of this complexity and breadth, and which has this sort of impact on the individual lives of a number of people who are either visiting or wanting to live in New Zealand, having a review clause might not be such a bad idea. In fact, not reviewing the legislation after a period of time is almost certainly a bad idea. All major legislation that has come to the House in my time, in the last couple of decades almost, has been subject to review either by statutory requirement or by dint of necessity—that is to say, legislation that is as big as this and as complex as this, notwithstanding the scrutiny given to it, will be subject to interpretive differences, either by the court, or by officials who are putting it into place, or by the positive or negative actions of immigration lawyers and immigration consultants.

So it is somewhat dynamic, and therefore review is inevitable. If review is inevitable, why do we not make it a matter of statute? Just as soon as the Labour Party members have worked out which part we want to amend, we will as a matter of course put up a couple of review clauses—and I hope we are supported by other parties—to give the Government a couple of options, to see whether it will buy that.

The case against a review clause is worth noting, and it is that strictures are caused. If the legislation states that a review will take place within this time or within that time, it might turn out that it is not the ideal time. There are ways round that using wording, and I will demonstrate that when I sit down and get my pen out. But I think that officials have an aversion to thinking about a review now; having just spent so many years working on the Immigration Bill in the first place, they do not want some troglodyte coming along and saying “Let’s have a review.” I absolutely understand that from a human perspective, but the truth of the matter is that a review clause simply puts in statute that which is inevitable. One thing it does do is enable the Government of the day to say to the complainant of the day that a review of the legislation is coming up—that, actually, it is a statutory requirement—and the complaint, or the observation, or the concern can be taken into account in that review process. I think the Government should think carefully about that.

So there we are. It is a good bill, with a long gestation, and it is very substantially, but probably not entirely, supported by the Labour Party. We acknowledge the significant number of amendments that have come forward from the Green Party. We may or may not support them. We would like to hear the arguments, especially those from Keith Locke. We acknowledge the contribution of the Māori Party and its amendment to Part 1, and we will hear about that soon. For the moment, I will close by thanking the Minister for the generous use of his time and his officials’ time, reasserting my appreciation of Vui Mark Gosche, and saying that the passage of the bill is to be commended.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) : I am very pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Immigration Bill. It is a significant bill. I was not part of the discussions that took place in the committee during the last term of Parliament. The purpose of this bill is, as the Minister said, to do a complete rewrite of the 1987 Act, and certainly the world has changed dramatically since that time. The world migration flows have changed dramatically, travel is cheaper, it is easier to get around, places are more accessible, and, of course, on the way we have had September 11, which really put the world on notice of security problems at our borders.

Since the 1987 legislation there have been a number of amendments. The old legislation is very complex, and this bill attempts to simplify it. As it is, New Zealand is very much dependent on migration, and each year we bring in 45,000 permanent migrants. In the 2007-08 year we approved a record 188,000 temporary work permits. Over the last 5 years permanent and temporary migrants have accounted for 60 percent of the growth of our workforce, helping to sustain and grow New Zealand business, so migrants do contribute hugely to New Zealand’s economy. Of course, with an ageing population in New Zealand and over 600,000 New Zealanders living offshore, it is not too surprising that one in four workers was born overseas, and in Auckland that figure is even greater at one in three workers.

The bill sets out to simplify the visa system. The 1987 Act currently provides for a visa for travel to New Zealand, a permit for permission to stay in New Zealand, and exemptions, as some people do not have to hold a visa or permit, or both. So this bill establishes a universal visa system that is simpler and more flexible in managing non-citizens’ travel to, and stay in, New Zealand. The visa will signify that the holder has the right to travel or stay in New Zealand. The bill establishes three classes of visa—the resident visa, temporary entry visa, and transit visas.

It is unfortunate that we inherited a dysfunctional Immigration Service, with poor management practices, a silo mentality, and an unacceptable variation in the quality of decision making between branches. That came out with the Auditor-General’s review. I know that our Minister is determined to address these deficiencies and has the department working on implementing the recommendations of the Auditor-General’s report. The chief executive officer has appointed an adviser to assist and monitor the reform.

As an example of changing the culture, a scheme was started in August this year. It has been trialled in the hospitality and tourism sector, whereby Immigration New Zealand must advise applicants, in a timely way, of the status of their temporary work permits. That will go some way to help change the culture. It is a more reactive approach in terms of making sure that permits can be assessed and processed in a more timely way.

This bill will, hopefully, in part, go some way to addressing the National Government’s immigration aims, and they are to retain Kiwis and attract more home. Certainly, policies have been produced by the Government to meet our skill needs and to attract business and retired migrants. There has been a significant business migrant policy, which has become more flexible, with reduced English level requirements, in order to try to attract migrants with significant skills and to provide financial back-up to New Zealand. I am sure we will benefit from that. In the last business migrant policy under the previous Government there were very few applicants. They were in the range of 10 to 20, or thereabouts. Of course we need to have a better Immigration Service, and I believe this bill will go some way towards achieving that.

On the way we had September 11, and what happened then shocked the world. I looked at the recent statistics of migrants and flows coming in and out of New Zealand, before and after September 11, and it was quite astonishing. People virtually stopped in their tracks overnight. New Zealanders came back to New Zealand in their droves, people did not go away from New Zealand on their OEs, and the world basically stood still. It is really recovering only now, but, of course, the recession has also had a further impact on that. This bill looks at security measures and has some more provisions for immigration officers, so that we can make sure that security is maintained.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : The Immigration Bill is a very big bill; as the Minister of Immigration, Jonathan Coleman, said, there were 4,000 submissions on it. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee spent a lot of time hearing those submissions. I was on that committee as the Green Party representative. Most of those submissions were critical of the bill. In the Committee stage the Green Party will essentially be putting forward amendments that are in line with substantial criticisms that have been made by reputable organisations like Amnesty International, the Human Rights Commission, etc.

It is disappointing that, on such an important bill, we are dealing with the Committee stage, which should really get to the heart of the bill, in urgency, and at a time when a lot of members want to go home, or go off to see the reception for the All Blacks and the Wallabies at Parliament, and what not. It is disappointing because this bill was reported back from the select committee about a year ago, so there does not seem to be any real reason for it to be included in the urgency motion.

The Green Party has four amendments on Part 1, and in my contributions on this part I want to outline the importance of those amendments. The first one amends clause 4(1) as regards the definition of “biometric information”. We propose to exclude iris scans from that definition. The current definition includes “(i) a photograph of all or part of the person’s head or shoulders: (ii) the person’s fingerprints: (iii) an iris scan;”. The Green Party is worried about the creep towards a surveillance society, and part of that creep is the increasing use of biometric identifiers. We see that iris scans, which are starting to come in around the world, are an even more intrusive form of biometric identification. We are not convinced that they are needed for immigration purposes.

In fact, at the select committee there was some criticism on the question of biometrics. For example, the Human Rights Commission in its written submission said: “the Commission is not convinced that there are compelling reasons for requiring biometric data to be collected from everyone who wishes to come to New Zealand. It is concerned that this could set a precedent for the compulsory collection of biometric information in other areas or lead to data being exchanged with other countries.” Then it goes on to say: “there is no indication in the Bill about how the information will be dealt with—for example, how it will be stored or for how long.” There was a lot of discussion on biometric information, which will be dealt with in consideration of Part 2 of the bill. The Privacy Commissioner, who was also a bit worried about this issue, effectively intervened in the discussion in the committee. Some changes were produced as to privacy assessments and when biometric information collecting systems are introduced. We will talk about that later, but I ask members to at least exclude iris scans from the system that is being applied.

The Minister mentioned speeding up travel to Australia. This will involve New Zealanders being photographed and their facial characteristics being compared against the chip in their passport. That is not a particularly wonderful step, but certainly we do not want to go one step beyond that to iris scanning. I think there was a lot of concern among New Zealanders when the United States introduced fingerprinting for everyone going to America, including people in transit. I was fingerprinted in Los Angeles International Airport, where I sat in a transit lounge for an hour. I hopped off an Air New Zealand plane and hopped back on to it an hour later, and in the meantime I was fingerprinted. It gets a bit over the top. Supposedly, from the American point of view, it is part of the war on terror, but it tends to affect ordinary people a bit too much. Biometrics are also being introduced in terms of fingerprints for such things as people getting out library books. We are moving more and more down that track. So I thought that perhaps setting a base here by removing iris scans from the Immigration Bill would help in not letting it spread to the rest of society, with people having to clock in at work using iris scans, etc.

The second amendment to clause 4 of Part 1 that I want to talk about changes the definition of “relevant agency”. These are relevant agencies for the purposes of having classified information for the purposes of immigration processing. Normally when we think of agencies with classified information we think of the Security Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Security Bureau, and the Police. The Green Party wants the definition to be restricted to those three agencies, as it traditionally has been, rather than adding a whole pile of other agencies. I will read out the other agencies: the Aviation Security Service, the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Department of Labour, Maritime New Zealand, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry of Fisheries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the New Zealand Customs Service, and the New Zealand Defence Force. All of these agencies will now be able to say that particular bits of their information are classified. The chief executives of those organisations will have all sorts of rights—we will discuss them later on in the Committee stage—to withhold information and stop the Immigration and Protection Tribunal from making it public. We do not believe that is necessary, particularly in immigration cases, where we want maximum transparency so that people who are going before the New Zealand Immigration Service, the tribunal, or the Minister are able to properly see the case for or against their staying in or coming to New Zealand. So the nature of this amendment to clause 4 is to cut out all of those other organisations. Eleven of them should not be there; just the Police, the Government Communications Security Bureau, and the Security Intelligence Service should be left.

I think this amendment is important because, as we all know—and we discuss this in Parliament every day—departments like to hide things, for various reasons. Sometimes it is just to avoid embarrassment if they have made a mistake, and that is why we have the Official Information Act to try to get this information out. We spend a lot of time asking questions in Parliament to get out information that people are trying to hide. So why should we give these agencies the right to determine as classified all this stuff relating to individuals with immigration cases? It is also a bit problematic if all of these 11 other agencies become, in effect, mini - police agencies in terms of their classified information, investigatory powers, etc. We are creeping down that path a bit in the Search and Surveillance Bill that is before the House. That bill is creeping down that path in a parallel way. That is the Green Party’s motivation for putting up that particular amendment.

Our next amendment is to clause 5(2)(a). This amendment is supported by Amnesty International. It also relates to classified information. Clause 5(2)(a) expands on the definition of “classified information”, which it says is information that “might lead to the identification, or provide details, of the source of the information, the nature, content, or scope of the information, or the nature or the type of the assistance or operational methods available to the relevant agency;”. I remind members that “relevant agency” covers those 14 agencies, not just the traditional security agencies. Amnesty International suggested—and the Greens support this—that rather than “classified information” being defined as information that “might” lead to a problem, it should be defined as information that “will be likely to”. Otherwise, any chief executive of an agency might say that if he or she discloses a particular bit of information, it “might” lead to something else. It is very vague wording. We have all seen in our work as MPs how agencies chop out all sorts of things from Official Information Act requests, and if we give them too great a scope, saying that something is classified if it “might” lead to a problem, we might not get the information that is required.

The next amendment is to clause 5(3)(a).

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage debate of the Immigration Bill. I join the Hon Pete Hodgson in thanking the Minister of Immigration, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, both for his courtesies in his remarks and also for making available the officials’ time to brief us on Supplementary Order Paper 320. I guess this is one of those processes that the public does not see often enough, where there is active cooperation between the parties right around the Chamber. There is a once in a generation nature to this rewrite of the Immigration Bill—let us hope it is only once in a generation. It has passed through the hands of, if I can count, at least five Ministers. It has had the same officials, but five Ministers. So I guess we can fairly say that a great deal of the credit—or the discredit, depending on how it all works out in the end—will be attached to the loyal officials who have worked on it all the way through. It is really humbling for Ministers to realise that we are but a blink in the imagination of the officials who serve us, before they move on to train the next one.

With due humility, let us record that Labour supports this bill. There is one part of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper, in respect of refugee and protection provisions, that we will be opposing. In respect of all other provisions, including the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper, we will be rendering support. That reflects the long process of consideration that this bill has had. To give some due credit to my colleagues, the bill had its gestation right back in about 2003, or 2004, when the Hon Lianne Dalziel put together some ideas for the consideration of the then Minister, Paul Swain, and officials were working from that point on a range of ideas.

Also about that time, to be fair, we should record that there were a number of celebrated cases, or at least celebrated by the Rt Hon Winston Peters, of individuals like a member of Saddam Hussein’s Cabinet who ended up sunning himself on a beach in Tauranga or somewhere. We decided it would be a good idea if we made the border a bit more impregnable. So some of the early drafting around the reform programme put a higher degree of emphasis on the security side of things, and on ensuring that officials and agencies of the State had what they need to do their job on behalf of the public.

It is also probably fair to say that by the time some early versions of the bill had passed through Minister Swain’s hands to my own, there was a need to rebalance it in favour of the protection of civil liberties and human rights, to ensure that we had a clean New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, and that we had the general support of the Privacy Commission. All of those things were achieved, which is a credit to the long hours that were put in by officials and office staff; we recognise all of the above today.

It is also timely to recognise the extensive work that was done under my successor Clayton Cosgrove by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee chaired by Vui Mark Gosche. My colleague Darien Fenton is one the alumni of that illustrious committee. The bill as it is presented to the House has a 33-page intensively written committee report, which I think adds great value to the bill. It has continued the process of rebalancing from the early focus on ensuring the rigour of the border and that officialdom had the appropriate powers to ensure that private protections were in place.

I will also contextualise the legislation within the broader context of the way that the process of immigration management is changing. A word of warning to Government members: it follows from the fact that immigration Ministers come and go, rather like pass the parcel in a Belfast pub. There is no point in playing politics with the Immigration Service. If we do that, it is a bit like playing politics with the police force; it makes it hard for the officers appointed to defend the interests of the public to do their job, and in the end, we all lose. So we will not be playing politics with this bill or with the state of the Immigration Service, which I know ain’t perfect. It was not perfect before I saw it, it was not perfect when I had it, and it ain’t perfect now. But it is filled by and large with people who get up every day to go and serve the public interest and do their very best. As politicians, we ought not to be taking out on them our frustrations about the complexities of the modern world. That is not to say that if there are particular instances of malpractice, we should not draw that to the public attention.

In that regard, the Immigration Bill before us today was part of a broader immigration change programme that had three layers, and I imagine the Minister is still addressing himself to all three. To quickly recall those layers, they are the policy and strategy layer, the legislative layer, and the operational layer. There have been some surprises at the operational end of things that we do not need to dwell on today, but I say to the Minister that there is also a fair degree of bipartisan support for the ongoing improvement to both the policy and the operations that provide the context for this bill, in the area, for example, of the services, information technology systems, and its processing operations.

That is enough of a quick walk down memory lane. The key changes we will be discussing in the Committee stage relate to the purpose of the bill. It is to provide a stronger, more flexible, and enduring foundation for a modern immigration system. It aims to facilitate the entry of the people we want, and to ensure that we can keep out the people we really do not want. It is the sovereign right of any nation to make that choice. Immigration is not a right; it is a gift that is bestowed on the person seeking to enter a country, and it is the responsibility of the Crown to offer that gift appropriately, with good process, with appropriate protections for human rights, but with the national interest in mind. Whatever side of the Chamber we are on, it means that there will be people we say no to. We will say no to them because they do not meet the standards we require in terms of raising the average, because they do not fall into a designated humanitarian category, or because they carry with them risks to our international reputation or, God forbid, security. It is the sovereign right of any nation to turn people away and to welcome them in. If we do welcome them in, we carry with us the responsibility to ensure that they are properly integrated into our society, that there is room in our schools for their children, even if sometimes—I will put in a particular plug for the Pacific community—the immigration status of their parents is in question; we ought not to block the access of those children to school. It is not their fault that there may be a question about their parents’ immigration status. I will be bringing that up again later.

There is a valid purpose for this bill to provide both the safeguards that the State needs to carry out those roles, and the protections that must continue to ensure that they are not abused. In any complex organisation, in any Government agency, there is the potential, as my Green colleague has said, for mistakes, etc. For that reason, we have updates to technology-driven matters like biometric processing; access and management of classified information; a more transparent and equitable deportation system that will also be faster, but more balanced; better detention and monitoring; and more appropriate incentives for third parties to comply. We will have time to discuss each of those issues as we go through the debate. These are contextual comments. I thank the Minister again for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : I will follow on from the comments made by members of this House in regard to the Immigration Bill. This is a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the immigration legislation. One will find there is common cause amongst members of this Parliament and past Parliaments to ensure that we get it right to the extent that is possible. We see a great deal of support across the parties in the Chamber to make sure we have the best bill going forward. As a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which looked at this bill—and there are some Labour members here that were on that committee—I would like to pay tribute to Mark Gosche who did a tremendous job of leading this bill through the committee, and also to the now Speaker of the House, Lockwood Smith, who lead the National charge in regard to the bill. He had a huge impact on how the bill was treated during the committee’s deliberation. Those two individuals need to be singled out for special mention and support.

I congratulate the current Minister of Immigration, Dr Jonathan Coleman, on getting this bill to the stage where it has come before the Committee. That is a tribute to his hard work. As the previous speaker said, many Ministers have endeavoured to get the bill to this stage, but have not had that kind of success. I say well done to the Minister, and well done to the officials who have spent many years progressing this legislation.

It is important that New Zealanders understand that this is the Immigration Bill, but it is only a procedural bill. When we talk about immigration, many New Zealanders think of who can come into New Zealand. They think of the people who come into our country on a yearly basis. This bill does not deal with that issue, as such. The nature of who comes into New Zealand is outside of this legislation. This bill sets the procedures of how our immigration system works. When New Zealanders hear us talking about the Immigration Bill, they actually think it sets out how many people come into our country each year, who those people are, and what their country of origin is. The reality is that the public perceptions of what immigration is about are quite different from what we are talking about here tonight. This bill is about the structure of how our immigration system operates. It is about some of our border issues. It is about the nature of the review process and our visa system. It is much more about the procedural aspect of immigration than the practical aspect that individuals in our community will identify with when we talk about immigration.

I think National and Labour will come together on this bill, because the parties have a common approach to immigration, in that we see the benefit of it for our communities and our country. The Green Party will probably provide the most different point of view on the legislation. The Greens did that in the select committee. Although it may not necessarily be in the best interests of New Zealand to follow what the Green Party is proposing, it is an important part of the process of coming to the conclusions we do in this bill to have that voice advocated in the committee and in the Chamber. Its view may not reflect the end result that would be practical for New Zealand, but it is something that adds value to the final result we get. I encourage Keith to stand up and say what he thinks. I know that he will be representing some people who made some submissions in regard to this bill—

Hon David Cunliffe: Go easy!

DAVID BENNETT: Yes, well, even though that idealism may not reflect what a country would endeavour to do in practical terms, it may well have a value in theoretical terms. We congratulate the Green Party on putting its view forward.

We will see a good bill come out of this session. It will be a bill that sets up a procedure going forward for New Zealand immigration that will be in the best interests of all New Zealanders. It is one of those things where we never get a final result that is perfect. It is a bit like the tax bill that we have just debated. It is an area that is so big and that has so much complexity that we cannot cover it all off in one bill, and think it will be done for ever and a day. It is something that will develop and will change over time. We look forward to this bill progressing.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō. Me pēnei rawa te kōrero, ko tāku ko te whakairi i te āhuatanga o te kōrero mō te Tiriti o Waitangi ki mua i te aroaro o tēnei Whare i tēnei pō mō te wā poto i roto i te reo Māori, kia taea ai e te katoa o tēnei Whare te mōhio ko te hōhonutanga o tēnei kaupapa ki tēnei Whare. Ko te tangata nāna tēnei wāhanga o te Pāti Māori i whakairi ki mua i te aroaro o te Whare Pāremata, ko taku hoa ko Hone Harawira. Ko tōna hiahia me kī, kia whakairi tē tāhūhū kōrero i raro i te āhuatanga o te Tiriti o Waitangi. He aha te pānga o te Tiriti o Waitangi ki te haerenga mai o te tangata i tāwāhi ki konei, he aha te wāhanga o te ao Māori ki tērā haerenga mai o tangata kē ki Aotearoa nei.

Ko te mea nui o roto i te Tiriti o Waitangi, tētahi mea i kōrerohia i roto i te pire o Tāmaki-makau-rau, kia whai wāhi te ao Māori i roto i ngā nekeneke o te motu nei. Nā runga i te aha? Nā runga i te mea ko te Tiriti o Waitangi, he kōrero i wānangahia e te ao Māori, e te ao Pākehā i ngā rau tau kua hipa hai painga mō te katoa. Koinei te tino hiahia i puta i roto i te pire mō Tāmaki-makau-rau. Kai te pērā tonu i tēnei wā mō tēnei pire. Kai hea te wāhanga o te ao Māori ā-tangata whenua nei i roto i ngā ture o tēnei Whare Pāremata? Nō reira, koi nei te mihi ki a tātau katoa i tēnei pō. Kia ora tātau.

• [An interpretation in English was given to the House.]

[Greetings to you, and to us all this afternoon, Mr Chair. My part, by way of explanation, is to put the case of the Treaty of Waitangi before the House this afternoon, and to speak in Māori for a brief period so that everyone will have a deeper understanding of it in this Parliament. My colleague Hone Harawira was responsible for this part from the Māori Party that was put before the Parliament. He wanted to ensure that there would be references to the Treaty of Waitangi in terms of its relevance to immigrants coming here, and the impact Māoridom would have on people coming to New Zealand from elsewhere.

The most important factor in the Treaty of Waitangi, something that was debated in the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill, was Māoridom’s participation in local government in this country. Why is that? It is because the Treaty of Waitangi has been talked about and debated over the past 100 years by Māori and Pākehā as being beneficial for all. This is really what was wanted to come out of the Auckland Council bill. That is the feeling at the moment about this bill. Where is the place for the Māori people of the country in the laws of this House of Parliament? So this is my acknowledgment to us all this afternoon. Greetings to us all .]

As I mentioned in te reo Māori, I rise to speak on behalf of my colleague Hone Harawira, who has put before the Committee Supplementary Order Paper 18 for it to consider. At its heart is our belief that a reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be added to the Immigration Bill to enable Māori to have a statutory right of participation in the management of immigration, consistent with the rights guaranteed to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi. I made reference to the Auckland situation, because one of the things that people find hard to understand in any discussion about Te Tiriti o Waitangi is its practical implications: what the drop-down effects are of having Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a part of legislation. We know that in the health sector, for example, people talk about participation, they talk about protection, and they talk about partnership. In terms of this Immigration Bill we hope that participation, in terms of setting the rules, and partnership, in terms of coming together with others—not by ourselves—to be able to set the scene in respect of immigration are important aspects. We have framed that under the terms of a Treaty of Waitangi clause; in other words, the legislation is to be consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi.

In debating other immigration bills we have talked about references made by Dr Ranginui Walker, a very famous writer in Aotearoa. He described the Treaty of Waitangi as the original charter for immigration. He referred to the Treaty as providing the source for all migration to Aotearoa from Europe, Australia, and the United Kingdom. He referred to the fact that Te Tiriti o Waitangi guaranteed a developing social contract: a partnership of the two cultures. At its very core were expectations that Māori, as a Treaty partner, should be consulted on every aspect concerning migrants who wished to reside here. In the past we have put up Supplementary Order Papers to try to find that space, whether it be through establishing a consultative body over immigration policy or by being actively involved by way of providing education programmes.

Tangata whenua understand the intentions of the Treaty signatories in 1840; we believe that they were very clear. There was recognition by both parties to the Treaty that immigration was having a significant impact on the land and on Māori culture. We believe also that the architects of the Treaty knew that what the Treaty represented would establish a precedent in terms of how the British Empire recognised the culture, the rights, the traditions, and the way of life of indigenous peoples against the arrival of immigrants and the onslaught of immigration. So, in terms of immigration, we expect that all new citizens to Aotearoa should be able to learn about the history of this land and to appreciate the context that we all share arising from Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We want every New Zealander to appreciate the opportunities that Te Tiriti o Waitangi offers to us all in a shared future.

We are focused in this bill on ensuring the provision of immigration advice that reflects the significance that this nation places on Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I am mindful too, of course, that in the confidence and supply arrangement that we enjoy with National, both parties have agreed to act in accordance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In terms of what we are facing right now, I say we have a confidence and supply arrangement that acknowledges Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We are soon to have an emissions trading scheme arrangement come before the House, as discussed by the Minister today, that holds Te Tiriti o Waitangi out there as an important document, especially around the huge issue of emissions trading and climate change. Here in this bill the Māori Party is again attempting to put the whole notion of the Treaty before the Committee by way of a small but significant Supplementary Order Paper that we think, and hope, the rest of the Committee will find is appropriate under the circumstances.

I suppose the discussion is really aimed at the Minister of Immigration, as he ushers through this particular bill. Indeed, having set the precedent, we will be looking to try to again have Te Tiriti o Waitangi in front of all legislation as it comes to the House. The key will be our working together on the drop-down effects and the practical implications of similar legislation, but, more important, on the impact of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We would expect that as Treaty partners Māori should be consulted on every aspect concerning migrants who wish to reside here. Surely one would accept that that is an appropriate reaction on the part of tangata whenua, just as much as our expectation that we should have seats on the Auckland Council. We would expect a partnership approach, in which tangata whenua, in the spirit of manaakitanga—of looking after each other as fellow countrymen and women—and in a demonstration of rangatiratanga, can develop systems of whānau, hapū, and iwi to help immigrants and refugees to adjust to life in Aotearoa when they arrive here. It must be a huge adjustment for many of them.

Nothing in the bill serves to provide incentives for whānau, hapū, and iwi to produce economic, social, cultural, and environmental benefits from pooling their skills, knowledge, talent, and experience with those of new New Zealanders. I suppose that is one of the downsides of the bill. So Supplementary Order Paper 18, which we have put forward today, is intended to give Māori a statutory right of participation in the management of immigration. We say that was and is consistent with the rights guaranteed to Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi—the Treaty of Waitangi—and we would hope, as I said earlier, that we have widespread support from across the Committee for the intention of my colleague Hone Harawira and the Māori Party to put Te Tiriti o Waitangi constantly in front of the nation. Kia ora tātou.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) : Thanks for the opportunity to say a few words on the Immigration Bill, which I am very pleased to see is progressing through the House. I will comment on the contribution made by Te Ururoa Flavell for the Māori Party and his colleague Hone Harawira, but I will do so in the context of recognising that this bill completely changes the format of the previous legislation, particularly in the area of having established the purpose clause. Given that Hone Harawira’s amendment would add another clause to the purpose clause, I will comment on the fact that we are looking to replace legislation that described itself as “An Act generally to reform the law relating to immigration, and in particular to remove the need for persons who are in New Zealand unlawfully to be dealt with by way of criminal prosecution”. That is rather an unfortunate way to describe such a fundamental piece of law.

We have now a purpose statement that traverses a number of different issues, right through from the purpose being “to manage immigration in a way that balances the national interest, as determined by the Crown, and the rights of individuals.”, to looking at the way that that purpose is achieved. A number of provisions are placed in the purpose clause, such as requiring non - New Zealand citizens to hold a visa to travel and to stay in New Zealand, facilitating access to skills and labour, supporting families, allowing for the management of the immigration aspects of border control, and the list goes on. Personally my favourite is to have finally recognised in our law that we are supporting “the settlement of migrants, refugees, and protected persons.” as a statement of purpose in the legislation. I think that is a huge advance, and it is something that I have certainly been looking forward to see written into our law for a considerable length of time.

I acknowledge what the member Hone Harawira is trying to achieve by moving an amendment to add a new clause 3A in order to make the legislation consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi, but I will go back over time and explain an approach that I adopted when I was the Minister of Immigration and had the privilege of holding that portfolio. I felt that it was really important that before we started developing this new law—because this law has been in the development stage for a very long time—we consulted with Māori about what their expectations might be of a new Immigration Act, so we started a consultation process. The very first consultation we had was a complete and utter disaster, and I can stand here and say that I accept full responsibility for that. The main reason was that I attended that initial consultation, having invited people whom I felt ought to be in the room for such a consultation, and I discovered that, in fact, there was not a unified view from those around the table. Ranginui Walker was one of the people in the room, and he certainly made that very fine and sound statement that if we were looking for our original statement of immigration policy, then we need look no further than the Treaty of Waitangi.

It was a very powerful meeting. I remember having a very interesting engagement with several of the individuals there, and I learnt a lot from that particular occasion. I learnt that the Crown could not call together a group of people and say that it had consulted with Māori about which way was the right way to go. I started a process of going around individual iwi and talking to iwi—listening more than talking, to be honest—to find out what people wanted out of an Immigration Act rewrite. What I started to hear, because it was a job that I left incomplete, was that people wanted to see people making the decision to migrate to New Zealand being tied up with an understanding of the country they were migrating to. Therefore, an understanding of the Treaty need not be an administrative function for Māori within New Zealand, but a knowledge base to be shared with new migrants to this country.

A number of Māori made the point to me that under our citizenship laws there needs to be an understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi and of the relationship that we have in New Zealand, yet that is not in our immigration law. My answer to the question that is posed quite justifiably by the member is that this is not the right place for this clause. In my view, it is better that the immigration legislation remains silent on the matter, but that the conditions against which immigration status—and residence status, in particular—is granted should be more inclusive of the objectives of the Treaty and the understanding around that. Certainly, in terms of establishing the immigration programme on an ongoing basis, consultation with Māori is not dependent on having a Treaty clause in the document. In many respects I am arguing against myself, because I tend to have a view that it is useful to have consultation obligations written into legislation, but a clause that simply asks for: “The interpretation and administration of this Act will be consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi.” does not, in my view, get to the heart of the issue. The issue is that the people who choose to make New Zealand their home need to have a good understanding of the nature of the Treaty, which establishes one of the very foundations of our nation.

That is my view and it was part of a consultation that I had started, but it was incomplete, as I said. I certainly would encourage the Government of the day to think about continuing that conversation, because it was a very, very worthwhile process. It certainly opened up my eyes to a lot of issues that I would have been completely unaware of otherwise.

The only other comment that I will make on Part 1 is in relation to a clause that I had some concerns about, and the Minister has tabled a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the particular provision. I had some concerns about the new clause 5C, which had been moved by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from another part of the bill. I think that the problem that arose with the wording that was framed in the clause was that the use of the new phrase “while liable for deportation” had not really been picked up with its new meaning. Simply taking the provisions of the previous law straight out of the current Immigration Act and inserting those as the new clause 5C(1) resolves the problem with the clause that I had raised, and I am very grateful to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, for resolving that issue. I know that a couple of my other colleagues have commented on the issue of how well we have been served in terms of preparing for this debate, and I too acknowledge the Minister for making officials available to work through these issues with us. I appreciate that very much, and I am sure that the bill will be stronger for it.

ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tāmaki) : The Immigration Bill is a very substantial piece of work. Clearly, a lot of effort has gone into it. I was not a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which dealt with it, and when I look at the size of the task I must say that I am not sorry about that. The select committee is to be commended for its attention to detail and for the very solid and cooperative work that it has put into this bill. I also acknowledge the role of a number of Ministers of Immigration, because it has clearly passed through several sets of ministerial hands to reach the point where it is at now, although I believe that the current Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, deserves a lot of credit.

• Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ALLAN PEACHEY: When we broke for the welcome dinner break I had just been commenting that the Immigration Bill is very substantial and complex legislation, which has been worked on by a lot of people for a long time. I reiterate my congratulations to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee; I was not a member of the committee during its deliberations. It clearly did a very good job, as did several Ministers from both the current and previous Governments. I reiterate my compliments to the present Minister in the chair, Jonathan Coleman, for the fine job that he has done in getting this bill to the Committee.

When legislation is as far-reaching and, as I have said, as complex as this bill, it is very, very important that Parliament gets it right. That takes time, and it takes attention to detail. The time has gone into this bill; so has the attention to detail. As the previous speaker, Lianne Dalziel, said, this is once-in-a-generation legislation. It is worth getting it right.

Addressing specifically Part 1, I say the bill contains a statement of purpose. In summary, the purpose is “to manage immigration in a way that balances the national interest, as determined by the Crown, and the rights of individuals.” As a previous Labour speaker has commented, every nation has the sovereign right to control who comes across its borders. It is not a right to live in a country; it is a privilege. But it is important to get the balance right between the two, and it is my view that this bill does that. The primary objective of reforming the legislation is to establish a stronger, more flexible, and more durable legislative foundation for New Zealand’s immigration system. The objective is to facilitate entry into New Zealand, and to enable people to stay in New Zealand who are of the types that New Zealand wants and needs.

H V Ross Robertson: Come on, a bit of passion, Allan! I know it’s been a long day, but come on!

ALLAN PEACHEY: Is Mr Robertson not enjoying this speech?

H V Ross Robertson: I want a bit of passion.

ALLAN PEACHEY: Well, we decided on this side of the Chamber that on the last evening of urgency we would tone down some of the hard truths that we have had to say about the Labour Party and the previous Government. If the member would like to take a call himself and have a crack at me, I would welcome that. It might get me motivated to take another call later in the evening.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: If you do that, we’ll ask Aaron Gilmore to take a call.

ALLAN PEACHEY: Ha, ha! The business of the Government is far more serious than this, surely. I guess one of the privileges of being in Opposition is that members do not have to take anything very seriously, because they are not responsible for anything.

In fact, given the intention of this bill to set up a strong, more flexible, and enduring legislative foundation for New Zealand’s immigration policy, it is important that there is as high a degree of cooperation across the floor of the Chamber among all parties as can be achieved. New Zealand needs to control who crosses its borders; it needs to control who is allowed to stay. Immigration is a very, very important part of the fabric of what makes up New Zealand, and of where many New Zealanders came from. So immigration needs to be managed in a fair and balanced way: a way that balances the interests of the Crown with the interests of the individual. Thank you.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : I want to give an explanation of my amendment to clause 5(3)(a) of the Immigration Bill. I think it relates to what the previous speaker, Allan Peachey, was talking about: sure, we control who comes across our borders, but we have to do so in a very fair way. The Green Party is concerned, as were various submitters, that the definition of “security” as it relates to withholding information deemed to be classified was too loose. My amendment takes out a piece of it. That is, instead of information being determined as classified if it is likely “(a) to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or the international relations of New Zealand;”, my amendment seeks to omit “or the international relations of New Zealand;” because it is so vague. As the Human Rights Commission said in its submission, “Apart from the implications of using classified information in a wide range of immigration matters, relying on concerns about the potential effect on New Zealand’s international reputation is problematic. Decisions about what amounts to a significant impact on a country’s reputation can be subjective. In the United Kingdom they have been described as ‘makeweight’ and held not to justify detention without trial in the absence of other reasons:”. The Auckland District Law Society said that the current definition, which includes the phrase “significant impact on New Zealand’s international reputation”, is considered too wide and incapable of sufficiently precise definition.

I think members can see that in this Chamber we debate what is in the best interests of New Zealand’s international relations. We have big disagreements on that matter. For example, at the moment I am looking at the ways in which the leader of the World Uyghur Congress, Rebiya Kadeer, could come to New Zealand and explain the cause of her people. If members look at that and how it will affect New Zealand’s international relations, they will see that it will improve our relations with the Uyghur people, it will improve our relations with the Tibetan people, it will improve our relations with the democrats of China, and it will improve our relations with democratic-minded people throughout the world, but it will not necessarily improve our relations in the short term with the Chinese Government, which is suppressing the Uyghur people as we speak.

One can look at international relations in the short term or the long term. It may be that there is some penalty for New Zealand from the Chinese Government if we allow Rebiya Kadeer to come to New Zealand, but if we give encouragement to the democratic forces of China, that will carry on to other issues, such as the fact that the Chinese Government at the moment is aiding Bainimarama in Fiji. If we have a more democratic China that might not be the case; it would help everyone. So it would be much better not to have vague terminology in that clause. Let us say that Rebiya Kadeer applies for a visa. We do not allow her to come in, and the information explaining why we are denying her the visa is classified because it would affect the international relations of New Zealand. That is not the democratic path to go down. It would be much better to support my amendment and take that particular definition out of the bill.

It is quite clear that Governments try to keep things under wraps as much as possible; I know that in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee a lot of the documents we are provided by the ministry have bits chopped out. I think that often the ministry chops them out because those bits may embarrass other Governments. Sometimes there is a good reason for it. Other times it is because the ministry does not want to engage in more public diplomacy, and everything is done behind closed doors, and not very effectively. Effects on international relations are matters that are debated in this Parliament, and debated across the community, and people should not be denied visas to come into the country under the cover of classified information. Thank you.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : I am very pleased to take a call on the Immigration Bill. I want to let members know that I will be relying on very fine former Ministers of Immigration to look at the detail of the bill, but I was on the select committee—

Keith Locke: Which one?

DARIEN FENTON: All three of them, actually. I was on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee chaired by the Hon Vui Mark Gosche. I was on the select committee with David Bennett, who has now taken over the chairing, and is not doing a bad job. He aspires to be like Mark Gosche, but he has not quite got there yet.

Hon Member: You’ve gone soft.

DARIEN FENTON: Well, that is true. I also recognise the officials in the House tonight. We got to know each other rather well, I think, over the very long period that we considered this bill.

As other speakers have said, Labour supports the bill. We will consider the amendments, because it is a large and difficult bill, and it deals with some very tricky issues. We have to remember when we debate this bill that those on the receiving end of it are real human beings. It will affect people’s lives. During the select committee process, I found some of the issues quite difficult to grapple with. There were things like detention—locking people up—classified information, and special advocates. On the surface, those things seem pretty harsh. But the thing that I primarily learnt in my time considering the bill is that immigration, by its very nature, is discriminatory. There is not a Human Rights Commission aspect to it, where one can say that one group of people should not be treated differently from another, because of human rights legislation. We reserve the right to decide who can live and work in New Zealand, and I support that. I must say also that I support the “Kiwis first” policy when it comes to jobs. But I support our doing that in a humane and compassionate way. We have international obligations. We have an international reputation. We are a country of migrants, and we all have stories in our families about those who came here hoping for a better life.

I want to address the purpose clause, and, in particular, clause 3(2)(b)(i), which is about “contributing to the New Zealand workforce through facilitating access to skills and labour;”. The bill was drafted, debated, and referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in very different times from today. It was a time of high employment and of growth, and New Zealand was relying on skilled migrants to fill the gaps in our workforce that we could not fill ourselves. Of course, that has now changed, but during those few years many migrants came here on a promise that they could start a new life here. They thought New Zealand was a good choice. We went out and encouraged them to come here, and we said they would be welcome here. As I said, things have changed dramatically since then, because of the recession.

I want to reflect on one particular group of migrant workers who are facing difficulty at the moment. Over the past few weeks, telecommunications workers have been locked in lawful dispute with a contractor called Visionstream over that company’s determination to force those workers into “take it or leave it” owner-operator contracts. About 100 migrant workers are affected by that, mainly from the Philippines, but from other countries as well—South Africa, Fiji, India, and others. Many of them live in the North Shore area that I work in, and, indeed, where the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, works. It is a shocking position that they find themselves in. Some of them left their homes and jobs with the biggest telecommunications employer in the Philippines, and they came here at our invitation, believing that New Zealand was a great choice. We advertised on the Web that it was a wonderful place to come. We needed them, and they were encouraged to come here. We needed them to do the job, because we did not have skilled workers here to do that work. Actually, we still do not. But the workers in that group who are on work permits are in no-man’s land. They have no choice about accepting the owner-operator model, because their permits do not allow it. They cannot swap from being on work permits over to the business migrant category—they just cannot.

Visionstream has indicated, as I understand it, that it would employ the migrant workers, but only on fixed-term contracts. I am told that Immigration New Zealand has said that is not acceptable. I know they are still waiting to hear, and I know that the Minister of Immigration has said that he is keeping a watching brief on it, and I hope that is right. Even the Hon John Carter, the member for Northland, said to those workers when they came to see him that they should not sign that contract because it is such a bad one. So they wait.

Another group within that group of migrant workers managed to get through the work-to-residence requirements and are now New Zealand residents. They have been made redundant. They have been given 4 weeks’ notice with no redundancy pay, nothing. They are not entitled to any assistance—nothing—until they have been here for 2 years. I understand those rules, but the point is that a major New Zealand company is using its power to force its workforce into less pay and poorer conditions. Those migrant workers, who came here with hope, whom we invited here, who have skills we need, and whom we needed at the time, are being thrown on the scrap-heap.

I wanted to address the purpose of the bill, but I also want to ask the Minister to do what he can to intervene for those workers. It is a terrible situation. It is not something that any of us feels good about. It is bad for those workers and their families, but it is also bad for New Zealand. It is bad for our reputation. We will need those workers when the economy picks up. We will need migrants, I am told, to look after us when we all grow old. Apparently we will need lots of migrants, so we will have to do a lot better when it comes to how we treat migrant workers. They do have rights; they have rights under our international obligations. But they have rights under New Zealand law, as well. I do not want migrant workers whom we have invited here being put at the top of the list of people we are going to get rid of first. That is happening, as well. They have rights and we need to enforce them. We need to make sure that this particular group of workers are looked after and that we do something about them. I implore the Minister to intervene; otherwise, how would we ever get skilled migrant workers to come here? Thank you.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : I think I remarked earlier that there is a 33-page commentary from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on the Immigration Bill. The member who has just resumed her seat, Darien Fenton MP, was a valued member of that committee. It is a very short summary of a very extensive set of work that the select committee undertook. How short? It does not even mention that the committee changed the purpose clause just a bit—just a bit! When I look at the old clause 3, I see that it had about 8 lines. The new clause 3, which is the subject of this part of the debate, has about 40 lines.

I will take members through some of the changes that have been made to the purpose clause, but before I do I echo the sentiments that have been raised by my colleague and friend Darien Fenton. It is of great concern to us to see immigration once more in the political frame associated with an industrial dispute. There is a long-held bipartisan consensus around the principle that jobs ought to be for New Zealanders first, and that immigration can play a valuable role filling the gaps—especially the skill gaps—when they arise. Any suggestion—as has from time to time been raised in the context of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, and now is being raised in the telecommunications sector—that employers might be deliberately letting workers go in order to lower costs, and filling their positions with fixed-term migrant workers, is not in the long-term interests of the Minister in the chair’s colleague, Mr Joyce, who wants to get broadband rolled out, and it is also not in the interests of New Zealand. We are just putting a little flag down around the Visionstream dispute. Hopefully it will all work out; hopefully the workers’ terms and conditions will be revised and peace will break out. That is a little marker of warning.

It is probably also worth mentioning in the context of the purpose clause that it is good for everybody if there is a steady and balanced stream of net positive migration into New Zealand. We have a birth rate slightly less than two. We want to grow and develop as a country. We appreciate the skills that people bring in. We have skill gaps to fill. A predictable and steady rate of net inwards migration is a good idea. Under the previous Government it tended to average about 10,000 to 15,000 persons net per annum, and already in the life of this Government we have seen the good old National Government rollercoaster starting up again. Immigration dropped to 3,000 per annum, and it is currently running at—the Minister of Immigration will be able to confirm it—about 3,500 per month net positive. So we are back up towards 30,000 inwards per annum.

Here is a prediction; members might call me a soothsayer. Given 2 years of that rate of immigration, Winston Peters will rise from the crypt to rally the country against migrants. That is not good for New Zealand, and it is not good for migrant New Zealanders. Maybe he will start in Epsom; I do not know. I want to see every individual human being who comes into this country treated on his or her own merits; a system of infrastructure, including schooling and health care, that can cope with the flow; and that we do not knock the housing market through the roof and force Alan Bollard to—I almost said Don Brash; that was an echo from the past. Of course, he is now gainfully employed tilting the Government to the right, but that is another story. Anyway, we need predictable migration flows in line with the purpose clause, which states that we need to get a balance between the needs of the country for skills and protection for individual rights.

I hear members ask with bated breath how the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee amended the purpose clause. Why was the purpose clause expanded from eight lines to 38?

Hon Lianne Dalziel: It was all the hard work of the select committee.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: And what a magnificent select committee it was! Let me read out a few of the excellent additions to the purpose clause; it will be a long night. Labour members are here for the duration on this bill, because the flights out of here have already left.

John Boscawen: Not all of them. There’s a 9 o’clock.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: There’s a night one?

John Boscawen: You can still make the 9 o’clock.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: In the member’s dreams! It is Thursday night, so he should bring his sleeping bag. He will be here tomorrow and Saturday because Labour members love this bill and we want to give it the attention it deserves.

Darien Fenton: Look how big it is!

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It is a big bill, and I am only on clause 3. In particular I am on lines 8 to 35, and I warn you, Mr Chairman, that I may need a second call.

The purpose of the Act, of course, is “to manage immigration in a way that balances the national interest, as determined by the Crown, and the rights of individuals.” That wording is a slight modification from previously. The original clause 3 stated that the purpose of the Act is “to manage immigration, through balancing the rights of the individual and the national interest …”. The reformulated clause 3(2) states: “To achieve this purpose, the Act establishes an immigration system that—”, and then it is spelt out in a whole lot more detail. It “requires persons who are not New Zealand citizens to hold a visa to travel to, and to be granted entry permission to stay in, New Zealand;”. That is an important clause, because, of course, we no longer have visas and permits. Rationality has broken out. It took me about 6 months as Minister of Immigration to work out what the difference was, and now there is no difference, because they are all called visas. This will help the next 15 Ministers that the fine officials have to train, because it will be that much quicker for the new ones.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: It didn’t take me 6 months to work it out.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Well, this is my opportunity to record for posterity that, in my humble opinion, the Hon Lianne Dalziel—I apologise to the current Minister—was the best Minister of Immigration New Zealand has ever seen. I honestly believe that. She was visionary, she was great on the detail, and she brought a lawyer’s mind to the portfolio. I think she was a fantastic Minister, and some of the core principles of this bill go right back to her time as Minister. I say to Lianne that it was a pleasure to learn from her. I will always believe that. But that is enough love in this Chamber.

Clause 3(2)(b) states that the immigration system “provides for the development of immigration instructions for visas that enable people to stay in New Zealand to meet objectives determined by the Minister, which may include objectives such as—(i) contributing to the New Zealand workforce through facilitating access to skills and labour; and (ii) supporting families;”. It was very important that the select committee brought families into the clause. They have been elevated both there and, I believe, later on in the purpose clause where it talks about supporting “the settlement of migrants, refugees, and protected persons.” for reunification purposes. Clearly, families are more important in the reformulated purpose clause.

A number of paragraphs in clause 3(2)—paragraphs (c), (d), and (e)—start to talk about the role of officials. The immigration system “(c) allows for the management of the immigration aspects of border control … (d) provides a process for recognising and ensuring compliance with … international obligations; and (e) includes mechanisms to ensure that those who engage with the immigration system to meet its requirements to gather information … (ii) allow for deportation … (f) establishes a specialist tribunal …”, etc. Those paragraphs remind us that inherent in the purpose of the rewrite is to more tightly specify the powers and ambit of officials. I invite the Minister to take a call and explain to the Committee how, in his mind, he has approached the delicate job of balancing the responsibilities of officials with the required limits on official power. With that, I think it is appropriate to invite the Minister to take the next call.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : I was saying over the dinner break that I was not going to take any more calls on the Immigration Bill—and perhaps the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, will respond to Mr Cunliffe’s earlier comments. But I was moved to take a call, and I suppose it is to make a plea to the Minister. Not long ago—in fact, about 5 minutes ago—I went next door for a short period of time, because my darling wife had said there was a discussion on television that I might be interested in. She said the mayor of Whanganui was on television—a Mr Mark Laws. Is that him?

Hon Members: Michael.

TE URUROA FLAVELL: Michael Laws.